Biblical Sacrifice and Its Impact on Western Civilization

This lecture, part of the "We Who Wrestle with God" tour, delves into the profound meaning of belief and sacrifice, particularly through the lens of biblical narratives. The speaker begins by sharing personal updates, including the birth of his seventh grandchild, Francis Fuller, and the release of his son's album "Overcome." He also mentions a recently published climate piece on the "big climate lie," which discusses the failure of models to account for carbon dioxide's effect on plant growth.

The Inescapable Influence of the Bible

The core of the lecture addresses the question of belief, its cultural and political implications, and the collapse of the sacred into the political, which he attributes to the "death of God." He argues that understanding the Bible is crucial, regardless of one's personal beliefs, because Western civilization, which dominates the world, is a product of biblical texts. Therefore, wrestling with these texts is inescapable.

The Bible, he explains, offers a characterization of God, humanity, society, and the covenantal relationship between them. The central question is whether this characterization is valid, which is synonymous with asking if the Bible is "true."

Richard Dawkins and the Nature of Truth

The speaker references Richard Dawkins, a prominent atheist, who once questioned the Bible's scientific merit. While acknowledging that biblical truth is often literary or moral rather than scientific, he challenges Dawkins's assertion, suggesting that the deepest findings of evolutionary psychology, biology, and biblical morality actually align. This alignment, he posits, is a natural consequence if truth is ultimately a unity.

Sacrifice: The Foundation of Stability

A fundamental truth found in the biblical library, which he considers scientifically acceptable and brilliant, is that psychological stability, maturity, social integrity, and community are all predicated on sacrifice.

What Does Sacrifice Mean?

Sacrifice, at its core, means giving something up. He illustrates this with the example of a marriage: a successful relationship cannot be "all about you." Even if it were, the "you" in question is often an immature, instinctual drive demanding immediate gratification. Sacrifice is necessary because things have a cost. To have friends, one must sacrifice personal omnipotence to allow others to participate. In a marriage, one sacrifices immediate gratification for the long-term health and integration of the relationship, considering not just the present but also the future (tomorrow, next week, decades from now). This extends to family and community, requiring the regulation and integration of desires for the moment with the future. The ultimate "game" that everyone wants to play, working for the largest number of people across the longest time, is the one to which all proximal desires must be subjugated. This, he equates to "offering up your idiot whims to the spirit of God," where the "spirit of God" represents the ultimate unity at the pinnacle of the hierarchy of values.

The Story of Cain and Abel: Two Sacrificial Approaches

The lecture then delves into the story of Cain and Abel, a short but dense narrative that lays out two contrasting sacrificial approaches to life, reflecting the conflict within the human soul and the struggle between good and evil.

Abel's Sacrifice: Diligence and the Highest Aim

Abel, a shepherd, offers the choicest cuts of his finest animals to God. This act, though archaic to modern sensibilities, signifies a profound understanding of sacrifice. Burning the offering on an altar converts it into "smoke" or "spirit" that rises, allowing the transcendent spirit (God) to detect its essence. This implies a belief in a transcendent spirit that evaluates the quality of one's offerings. Abel, as a shepherd, protects the vulnerable and occupies his position with dignity and service, much like archetypal figures such as David, Moses, and Christ. He represents the masculine spirit that sacrifices diligently, offering the best to the highest conceivable aim. Abel "does his best."

Cain's Sacrifice: Laziness, Arrogance, and Deception

Cain, in contrast, holds something in reserve. His sacrifices are "bloodless," without cost, and second-rate. This reflects laziness and arrogance, as he believes he can deceive himself, others, and God with an inferior offering. Cain presumes his own authority is higher than God's.

The Consequences of Failure

Abel's sacrifices are accepted, bringing him acceptance and admiration from the community and God. Cain's failure, however, leads to his "countenance falling"—he becomes unhappy, bitter, resentful, and angry. He blames the cosmic order for his failures, rather than acknowledging his own inadequacy.

God confronts Cain, stating, "If you did well, would you not be accepted?" This highlights the fundamental question of conscience: if one is not accepted, perhaps it's due to what one carries that doesn't deserve admission. The alternative to acknowledging personal inadequacy is to blame the cosmic order and the spirit that established it, which the speaker equates to "resentment in relationship to God and Luciferian usurpation."

God also warns Cain that "sin itself crouched at your door," implying that Cain's bitterness and resentment, coupled with his failure to take responsibility, invited sin to possess him. This isn't mere temptation but a voluntary, creative relationship with the spirit of darkness, fueled by bitter fantasizing and dreams of revenge. This, the speaker suggests, is how people commit the cruelest acts—through "a thousand hours of bitter fantasizing."

Cain's Descent into Murder and Its Legacy

Cain, rejecting God's counsel, becomes even angrier and more vengeful. He lures Abel to the field and murders him. When confronted by God, Cain's response, "Am I my brother's keeper?" is met with a resounding "yes." Cain's punishment is "more than I can bear," signifying the destruction of his own ideal, leading to a life without aim, hope, or upward progress. He is destined to wander in the "land of Nod," a place of unconsciousness and alienation from self, humanity, and God.

The legacy of Cain extends to his descendants: engineers who build cities and worship technology, the Canaanites (enemies of God's chosen people), and the first makers of weapons and practitioners of escalating revenge (Lamech). This illustrates how Cain's failure to make proper sacrifices, his anger, bitterness, and desire for vengeance, can spread throughout a community, leading to genocidal catastrophe, as seen in Nazi Germany, Stalinist Soviet Union, and Maoist China. The speaker emphasizes that this happens when individuals fail to make proper sacrifices and align with the eternal cosmic order.

The Cherubs and the Flaming Sword: The Path to Paradise

The story of Adam and Eve's fall, marked by the sin of pride, leads to God barring the road back to the Garden of Eden with "monstrous cherubs" and a "sword that is on fire that turns every which way." The cherubs represent everything one's prideful sin makes one terrified of. The flaming, turning sword symbolizes divine judgment that refuses anything imperfect into heaven. To enter paradise, everything imperfect about oneself must be "cut and burned away"—a sacrifice pleasing to God. This, he argues, is why the religious enterprise is not a "self-serving sanctimonious immature defense against the terror of death," but a confrontation with the necessity of having one's imperfections judged and destroyed.

Abraham: The Adventure of Sacrifice

The story of Abraham further illuminates the sacrificial pattern. Abraham, an old and initially unadmirable man, is called by God to "sacrifice your comfort. Leave your security." This is the "spirit of adventure," urging him to move away from familiarity and into the "terrible world." This call, the speaker suggests, is akin to a benevolent father encouraging a child to face the challenges of maturity.

Abraham faces famine, tyranny, and war, and is even called to sacrifice his only son. Through these adventures and appropriate sacrifices, his character develops profoundly, transforming him into "Abraham," the father of nations.

The Covenant: Blessings of Adventure

God offers Abraham a covenant: if he has the courage and faith to pursue the adventure of his life, his life will be a blessing to him. This means that by embracing challenges, one finds satisfaction and acceptability in one's own being. This also means that others will recognize and admire his life as a model, without manipulation or deception. Furthermore, Abraham will establish something permanent and of lasting value—a dynasty that thrives and multiplies, ensuring that those who "wrestle with God in the most adventurous manner inherit the earth." Finally, his life will be maximally beneficial to everyone else, demonstrating that individual striving can increase the probability of others achieving the same. This, he concludes, is the "cornucopia of possibility" that characterizes the potential within each individual, reflecting the image of God.

Christ: The Ultimate Sacrifice and Redemption

The lecture then connects these themes to the story of Christ, drawing parallels with the Exodus narrative of the Israelites and the poisonous snakes. When the Israelites, suffering from snakebites due to their faithlessness, turn to Moses, God instructs them to make a bronze serpent and place it on a staff. Gazing upon this symbol, which represents what would otherwise poison them, grants them immunity. This is the origin of the staff of Asclepius, where a "little of the poison that bit you" becomes the cure. It signifies that voluntarily confronting what is most poisonous can lead to immunity.

Thousands of years later, Christ states that for the world to be redeemed, he must be "lifted up like the serpent in the wilderness." The speaker asks why Christ would assimilate himself to the poisonous serpent.

Carl Jung described the Passion story as the "archetypal tragedy"—the worst possible suffering of the most innocent possible person. This includes a painful death at a young age, betrayal by a friend, abandonment by disciples, and persecution by his own people, all under a foreign tyranny. But death is not the worst. After crucifixion, Christ descends into hell, confronting malevolence itself and emerging victorious. This signifies that the path to redemption involves the voluntary confrontation with the worst possible death and the spirit of evil.

One cannot cope with life's suffering, death, and evil by running from them. There are evils worse than death, and standing up against evil is paramount. Christ, therefore, serves as the sacrificial model for Western civilization. The integrity of the psyche, the sanctity of marriage, the stability of family, and the community all depend on sacrifice. The "ultimate sacrifice" is the willingness to shoulder the burden of confronting evil and suffering, which is what the crucifixion represents. The call to Christ's followers to "pick up their cross" means becoming a leader, like Moses or David, and having the courage to gaze upon the serpent that poisons them.

The Altar of Sacrifice: The Foundation of Western Civilization

The speaker describes the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, built on the site of Christ's crucifixion. At its center is an altar, and on the altar, a cross, representing the individual who faces the worst the world offers and finds God's accompaniment. This central sacrifice, he argues, is the foundation of Western civilization, upon which the integrity of the psyche and the stability of the community are built.

The alternative to this path is the "pathways to hell": accepting second-rate offerings, deceiving oneself and others, living without ideals (like Cain), or being possessed by resentment, bitterness, and murderous impulses. The "straight and narrow path" to heaven requires significant sacrifice and a willingness to imitate Christ. The possibility of "God's will being done on earth as it is in heaven" depends on individual willingness to participate in this sacrificial process.

The Image of God and Personal Responsibility

Western culture insists that humans are made in the image of God, possessing divine worth and the right to self-governance. This implies a responsibility to shoulder the burden of one's destiny. The speaker challenges the audience to consider how they treat their loved ones and themselves: do they treat them as beings of divine value, or with hedonistic stupidity? He asserts that the biblical stories indicate that true self-admiration comes from bearing one's destiny voluntarily, in good faith, and with courage, not from being whiny, bitter, or resentful.

Faith and the Logos

He concludes by stating that there is no escape from faith or belief. Whether one is nihilistic or believes in the "eternal logos," these are positions of faith. The biblical stories call for faith in the logos that established divine order by taking on the full weight of existence's catastrophe. Since humans are hypothetically made in this image, the moral of the story is: "Act like it."

Q&A Session

Writing Fiction

When asked if he would write fiction to contribute to the cultural narrative, the speaker mentions a musical screenplay based on a Grimm's fairy tale ("Water of Life") and a past attempt at a noir detective novel. He expresses a desire for more creative endeavors but feels current societal concerns necessitate his current work. He hopes for a future time when he can pursue purely creative projects.

Preparing Children for "Woke/Left-Wing Culture"

To a question about preparing children for "woke/left-wing culture," he emphasizes the importance of example: - Stay married to your wife: Model a loving, committed relationship. He argues that "woke culture" often promotes an "insanely immature attitude" of immediate gratification without consequences, contrasting it with the stability and higher rates of sexual satisfaction in married religious couples. - Regular meals and reading: Establish routines that foster education, attention, and literacy. - Teach them to deal with "serpents": Play with them, toughen them up, challenge them, and set high standards. - "Do not allow your children to do anything that makes you dislike them": This straightforward rule ensures that children learn appropriate behavior, preventing them from becoming annoying to others and avoiding the parent's "monstrous part" emerging accidentally. He shares an anecdote about his son Julian, who, despite being strong-willed, learned to manage his will through consistent, firm "no"s, leading to him being a pleasure to be around and having reliable judgment.

Advice for Mexicans Facing Violence and Corruption

For Mexicans living in a country with prevalent murder, violence, and corruption, he advises: - Start with yourself: Like Jacob, who transformed from a manipulative individual to "Israel" (one who wrestles with God), one can decide to "do good." - Old Testament way: "Thou shalt not": Stop doing the stupid, counterproductive things one knows are wrong. This process of self-sacrifice leads to wisdom and clarity. - New Testament way: "Start doing what's good": Once negative habits are shed, one can focus on positive actions. He references the rich young man in the Bible, whose wealth was an impediment to his spiritual progress. - "Get your house in order": Begin by ordering one's own soul, then one's marriage, family, community, and eventually the state. - Become a leader: By standing up against personal tyranny, and then against tyranny in relationships, family, community, and the state, one sacrifices slavish habits and becomes a leader. If enough people do this, "the tyrants will vanish and the slaves will be free." He concludes by urging the audience to "get at it," as there are tyrants to confront and slaves to free, starting with oneself.