Christianity as moralism
Have I already told this here? IDK. Linda found online, and I've implemented, a new preventive regimen against the postprandial hypotension that for so many years, especially as the CHF progresses, has been reducing me to a wrung-out washrag making my way back-to-bed five or so minutes after breakfast every morning. When in a course of about ten seconds BP plunges from 122/60 p72 to like 66/42 p36, it's debilitating but not dangerous, one mutters a selection of four-letter words, stumbling toward bed and a morning nap!
It's a formula, see, and I've been working it for about a week now, victoriously. Begins with delaying heart meds, which contribute to BP drop, until nine o'clock - - which is perfect, as I take the other daily half precisely at bedtime, which is nine o'clock in the evening. A cup of black coffee, which is my usual anyway, one Aleve caplet (cute word for capsule/tablet), and a twelve-ounce at least, preferably fifteen-ounce, glass of water. I usually make it ice water or ice coffee.
Then breakfast with protein but no carbs whatsoever. Good is pork or beef, but no longer on toast, so no breakfast sandwich, a years long favorite. Better is smoked salmon. Best is when Linda fixes scrambled cheese eggs, I ruin them but she cooks them just right soft, now and then a special treat for Sunday mornings.
This morning I'm having leftovers from friends over for supper last evening, artichoke dip that Linda baked, without potato chips (remember, no carbs). I would really like to have also, a serving of the baked beans she made to go with the pulled pork (first pork butt we recall cooking in more than 64 years married life, some twelve hours in an electric slow cooker) and then tear it apart. The baked beans tasty with dark maple syrup (I like dark better than the light amber that is considered better taste and tasting, but then I like lots of things that are not preferred by the smart set), and laced aromatically and borderline intoxicatingly with bourbon whiskey. But baked beans, regardless of their admirable protein content as a heart-healthy substitute for red meat, are still starchy, primarily carbs;
so that will have to wait until dinnertime, which is noon in our old time Southern household.
Now I'll go back and see if I can break the above into several paragraphs before I move on to things less serious than breakfast. Done.
What I have in mind, and this is calling it as I see it, and as in baseball it ain't nothing till I call it, which is why the new idea of perfecting the game's accuracy by electronically calling balls and strikes is stupid because it starts changing a human game to you might as well have robot hitters too, in fact why not infield and outfield as well, just a giant abc pinball machine? with the players' stats in the game algorithm we can put Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Pete Rose, Johnny Bench back in, and Don Larsen can pitch that 1956 World Series Game again. WTH, we already watch it mostly on TV instead of driving to the venue, parking, making our way to the stadium, and our seat (I always liked to sit just behind first base), and waiting for the guy to come by with the hotdogs (mustard on mine) as the giant organ plays
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTxTM3GHcaY
"Take Me Out To The Ballgame" and all that, why would you watch baseball on tv when you can be there.
Here's a memory. Forty years ago when I was traveling on business, from time to time I was in St Louis, Missouri. I always stayed at a motel, I think it was a Marriott, across the street from the Arch as I recall, and I could see the river. And I always requested a room with a window looking into, I guess it was Busch Stadium next door, so I could watch the Cardinals game. I was always there with an Australian client, a businessman named Max. I don't know what Max did evenings there before I took him for our defense industry calls the next day, but I watched real live baseball and I'm not going to watch electronic baseball.
You know, it was more than forty years ago, and I'm wondering if my mind is playing tricks on me, maybe we were in Kansas City, and I was watching out my room window, a Royals game.
Anyway, as I say, it ain't nothing till I call it. My call this morning follows on to Father Richard Rohr's meditation today titled "Participatory Morality". Fr Richard is a Franciscan, which indicates that he has a loving and human, as opposed to inhuman (not quite humanism*) theology, as opposed to literalist inerrantist prescribed dogmatic fundamentalist religion in which one's Call is self-righteously to force other people, outsiders, to live by one's own moralism and certainties. To wit: the state of Texas. The state of Florida governor assuming he was elected to dictatorial powers, converting medical judgment and local authority into a nonsensical and medically hazardous political stance, and by duress complete with financial intimidation.
Everyone who would force others to their Way, whether by force as the Taliban or by legal maneuvering, Inquisition, KKK, even the ballot.
Fr Rohr speaks of an incarnational Christianity as opposed to the moralism and its enforcement that the faith has become over its centuries.
Participatory Morality
Jesus’ message of “full and final participation” was periodically enjoyed and taught by many unknown saints and mystics. It must be admitted, though, that the vast majority of Christians made Christianity into a set of morals and rituals instead of an all-embracing mysticism of the present moment. Moralism—as opposed to healthy morality—is the reliance on largely arbitrary purity codes, needed rituals, and dutiful “requirements” that are framed as prerequisites for enlightenment. Every group and individual usually begins this way. I guess it is understandable. People look for something visible, seemingly demanding, and socially affirming to do or not do rather than undergo a radical transformation to the mind and heart of God. It is no wonder that Jesus so strongly warns against public prayer, public acts of generosity, and visible fasting in his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:1–18). Yet that is what we still do!
Any external behavior that puts us on moral high ground is always attractive to the ego because, as Jesus says, “you have already received your reward” (Matthew 6:2). Moralism and ritualism allow us to think we are independently “good” without the love and mercy of God and without being of service to, or engaging deeply with, anybody else. That’s a far cry from the full and final participation we see Jesus offering or any outpouring love of the Trinity.
Our carrot-and-stick approach to religion is revealed by the fact that one is never quite pure enough, holy enough, or loyal enough for the presiding group. Obedience is normally a higher virtue than love in religious circles. This process of “sin management” has kept us clergy in business. Hiding around the edges of this search for moral purity are evils that we have readily overlooked: slavery, sexism, racism, wholesale classism, greed, pedophilia, national conquest, LGBTQIA+ exclusion, and the destruction of Native cultures. Almost all wars were fought with the full blessing of Christians. We have, as a result, what some cynically call “churchianity” or “civil religion” rather than deep or transformative Christianity.
The good news of an incarnational religion, a Spirit-based morality, is that you are not motivated by any outside reward or punishment but by participating in the Mystery itself. Carrots are neither needed nor helpful. “It is God, who for God’s own loving purpose, puts both the will and the action into you” (Philippians 2:13). It is not mere rule-following behavior; rather, it is our actual identity in God that is radically changing us. Henceforth, we do things because they are true and loving, not because we have to do them or because we are afraid of punishment. Now we are not so much driven from without(the false self method) but we are drawn from within (the True Self method). The generating motor is inside us now instead of either a lure or a threat from outside us. This alone is a converted Christian, or converted anything.
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