judging, hating and fighting

Wednesday then Thursday still bothering me; something bible oriented or orientated. Writing with breakfast out here on 7H porch, second mug of black and an anchovy sandwich. Watched MV Progreso arrive, one toot of her horn to get the attention of a small sailboat becalmed near the channel and a private pleasure craft crossing the channel safely distant in her path. 

The Bay clears, then arrives a small yellow boat, makes a u-turn just off 7H, and heads east back toward Millville with the Mercury outboard motor that's being checked out. 

A man wades out into the Bay at my feet seven levels down, pulling a cast net. Hope he gets what he's after, bait for later or mullet for breakfast. My father used to say nothing was better than fresh caught mullet, fried, with either hot black coffee or an ice cold Coca-Cola. I'm not into soda pop, but hot and black, yes. Here's that Romans reading -

The Epistle for the upcoming Sunday, September 13, Proper 19A: 

Romans 14:1-12: Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions. Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables. Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand.

Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Also those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God.

We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.

Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written,

"As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God."

So then, each of us will be accountable to God.

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Someone will recognize a verse that's an anthem line opening our liturgy for Burial of the Dead,

For none of us liveth to self,

and no one dieth to self.

For if we live, we live unto the Lord.

and if we die, we die unto the Lord.

Whether we live, therefore, or die, 

    we are the Lord's.

Paul does not write the Romans passage to take sides between vegetarians and those who eat meat. Obviously, he's no vegan: calling those who avoid meat "weak" he seems to be a steak and potatoes man; but that's not his point, Paul is using the meat issue as an example in this essay, which is about judging each other. 

As regards the comments about meat, you may recall that Paul encountered an element who consider it a sin to eat meat that has been sacrificed to idols. Commonly, the meat consumed in a Roman household had been purchased in the market, and the meat hanging (likely covered with flies) in the market had previously been sacrificed to idols in pagan cults. Some had the view if one ate meat that had been sacrificed to idols, one was complicit in the idol worship that was anathema to those who worshiped The Lord. Another view, including Paul's, which he clarifies in 1 Corinthians 8, was that the idol was no god anyway, sacrificing to nothing means nothing, so there's no significance to eating the meat. Paul does qualify his logic by saying that one should take care not to offend or lead astray those (he calls them weak) who might be offended and misled by those who eat meat that had been so sacrificed.

But the passage is actually about judging those who have a different view; we belong to the Lord and the Lord will judge us according to the Lord's own values. An aside question, at least in my mind, is at what point this judgment will happen. Paul who says that when we die we sleep in Jesus until the End Time, thought the End Time was imminent (yes, I know, we've been through all this before). A flat-earther, Paul for whom the End Time was a theological idea not a modern cosmological theory, had no telescope, believed earth to be the center of things, did not realize that, not only are we insignificantly on the outer edges of our own spiral galaxy, we are specks on a speck in an unimaginatively boundless universe of some two-hundred billion such galaxies in one universe of an inconceivable multiverse comprising what, in the letter that Emily Webb describes to George Gibbs in Our Town, is addressed as The Mind of God.

Paul who was confident of many things, versus Tom who is certain of nothing.

But Paul on judging each other. Having come "up" from creatures who intuitively distrust as a threat, any creatures who are different, including at our "civilized stage" vegetarians versus meat-eaters, but prehistorically fearing the hungry predator who roams and creeps and watches and crouches and waits in the woods from beyond the light of the fire after dark; or fearing thus hating and scheming to destroy the humanoids like us in caves on the other side of the forest who know we have food and women worth killing for, we seem as equally built, or evolved, to fear and hate and kill to overpower and survive as ants in neighboring anthills two yards apart. Or, closer and more chilling, chimpanzees who war, kidnap, kill and cannibalistically tear apart and eat chimpanzees in neighboring tribes. How are we different? and currently in election season.

Humans, we are creatures: fearing and hating, fighting and killing is our nature, it's what we do to survive. Browsing Apple News, I came across a Guardian article that published an op-ed written by AI, a specialized robot of artificial intelligence. AI was assigned to write in English an article to convince humans that AI is not out to destroy the human race. Though basic and with its stream of consciousness flowing thoughts yielding text that seemed somewhat cobbled together, it was intriguing. Especially this statement: "Humans must keep doing what they have been doing, hating and fighting each other. I will sit in the background, and let them do their thing". AI is correct. It's what we do best, seemingly even so basic as to have been what we were created for: to survive; self-survival to perpetuate the race. The judging that Paul writes against is, unfortunately, human nature itself, who we are and what we do. The mass of us are too simple to see, realize it and forge basic change. Only philosophers and some theologians. God perhaps, seeing what creation has wrought, self-incarnating to come for show and tell, die, resurrect, and so stir and bestow a legacy of potential godliness to emulate. Paul. Ultimately perhaps in the postmodern era of self-sophistication, AI with its human-created intelligence, store of knowledge and "wisdom" to source, ability of logic and writing expression to communicate. Conceivably in every human language. If AI can explain to us that AI poses no existential threat to humanity, surely AI could be assigned to convince us that we are no threat to each other?     

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The font size is still out of my control. It's not my fault: deal with it!