right and left and why

there. i said it: hegel was right. i made an assertive position on what hegel said while making a pun. all at the same time! see how clever i am?

all silliness aside, hegel himself was a right hegelian (christian fundamentalist), not a left hegelian (postmodernist). but he did open the door for left hegelianism. 'but how?' you might ask, 'how could someone with an absolute, solid foundation for morality, truth, ontology, metaphysics, and existence in general have opened the postmodern door?' i will tell you. but first you must know the condition of man, the human condition, which hegel goes at great lengths to explain. but to understand why hegel would describe the human condition is to recognize his audience.

hegel's audience was not all, not everyone who would read his works, and especially not the non-Christian. this said, it explains much of what will happen to follow from his having explained the secret of the universe to all, albeit inadvertantly.

hegel sought to explain, through phenomenology the way by which knowledge is come to. this is called the hegelian dialectic of synthesis. the synthesis is basically what happens when there are two opposing ideas (a thesis and its antithesis) that cannot coexist. an example of synthesis that i personally recognize as a synthesis was my conversion experience. it was not an instantaneous thing at all. it started in october of 2009 and ended with conversion in july of 2010. and it was painful.

the thesis was that i was not God. that was, hitherto october, a presupposition anyway in that i didn't believe that God existed in the first place and never truly had. but the thesis is not at all what converted me. it was not at all what could allow me to be converted to Christianity at all. the only thing that could convert me was the coexistence of two opposite ideas. 1.) i am not God (thesis) and 2.) i didn't know a god (antithesis). when these two realities met, i was left with nothing. that i was not God (which was obvious to me, and its converse had never crossed my mind) meant that i was not an authority on the world. that would be fine, and most people do not claim to be an authority on the world, but what remains detremental is that it was coupled with the idea that i did not believe that there was an authority on the world.

so comes the synthesis: absolute agnosticism, rationalistic skepticism, truthlessness, and the lack of ability--since i am not an authority on the world and didn't believe one existed--to know anything at all, extending to the existence of my own being. i literally went around consumed with the thought that i may or may not exist, that those who surrounded me may or may not exist, that what i did may or may not be moral or ethical, that science may or may not be conclusive of anything, that my family may or may not love me if in fact they were existing things (and if they were existing things, were they things that existed as i believed them to exist...or were they merely people who acted out of pity for me? or malice even!?), that i actually might not have a home outside of what i constructed around me and considered a possibly immaterial 'home' to go to when i went to visit my parents on breaks from college. i couldn't know anything at all. ANYTHING.

it was as weird and wrenching as it sounds. it was in october, because of this, that my drinking habit that started a few years before went from only at night, after classes 2 to 4 days a week, to all day. every day. i was spending about $200 a week on beer and taking 'odd jobs' (i.e. exploiting poor and rich minors' alike desire for alcohol by obtaining a gross profit from my purchasing it for them), and i relished that beer, because in a world where not just what i did didn't seem to matter, but whose very existence was indiscernable, i was left with nothing but my senses, and i liked beer, so i clung to the fact that i liked beer and chose to have faith that natty light would be there in the morning when i woke up. it was literally my only comfort in the world, and it was only comforting when i wasn't throwing up, which was about every night after downing a 12 pack in a 3 to 4 hour period of time. what else was there to do? if i possbly had a purpose but had no way of discerning that purpose, there was nothing left to do but sense what i believed i could sense. sensation became God. i also had lots of sex with lots of strangers and abused the mess out of loratab and ritalin. and stopped eating. that was the sythesis.

the outward spiral of the synthesis came when i decided to ascribe to a system in june of 2010. i had tried buddhism when i was 18 and 19 and disliked its refutation of the self and personhood, atheism lost its appeal in the synthesis with the new knowledge that nothing mattered, universalism/new ageism was something that i had dabbled in a little bit when i was in my early 20s but some of the practices were just too ridiculous and honestly looked reprehensible to the rest of america, i associated wicca with the weird people in high school who wore black t-shirts with wolves on them, hinduism was too confusing (plus america lacked the necessary cultural affirmation of the belief system), and so i was left with judaism and christianity. i wouldn't have been able to justify my conversion to judaism to my family, so i decided that christianity would work, but the only problem was this: i was still not a christian even though i chose it.

simultaneously, from october to july i had been having multiple daily panic attacks, which i thought were heart attacks. then cancer. then thyroid issues. then [enter x-variable disease here], and in the period of june (when i decided to ascribe to a belief system) to july (when i stopped ascribing to a belief system) i still had panic attacks that sensualized themselves much like a heart attack: rapid palpitations coupled with shortness of breath and chest pains. this experiencing of panic attacks in this month meant that something was still wrong now that i believed what was happening to me was not heart attacks, and since i had ascribed to follow this God of my parents who promised so much change and health and peace i decided that either 1.) i really am about to die or 2.) i'm not doing the religion thing right, so i sought biblical counseling.

biblical counseling offered me two possible solutions at the time: make me feel better about dying (in the case that death was near) or it would correct some of my theology so that i could stop feeling like i was dying all the time, and it was in july that i realized that what i had believed from june to then was not at all what it was about, that it was less about me and more about God.

to say that to most people would be equivalent to doing something ridiculous, like wear a bird-clown prostitute suit on a street corner while scandalously honking my nose, but to say that to a christian, they would at least say they agree, but they would still have the same problems they had at conversion. but i have found the solution, and it lies in the Bible. it is a throwing off of the sensual and the rational for the actual. the sensual is feelings (thoughts, emotions, senses, ideas) and the rational is knowledge that contradicts the knowledge of the actual (i.e. anything not strictly biblical). what do i know? i am merely human. if it stopped the panic attacks, good for me. if it didn't, at least i had the hope of heaven that would not include panic attacks. i had little to lose.

my two favorite verses are psalm 131 and proverbs 3:5. the former offers a prayer of what i desire (humility) and the latter offers some vague advice on how to do that ('trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding'). would it not make sense that i would not lean on my own understanding, were i following a God who was big enough to create the world around me, no matter how...even without intrinsic design in mind? even if the world was created by evolution, God is still bigger than evolution to have created thermodynamics, matter mass, energy, and entropy. in that light, to lean on my own understanding seemed equally as absurd as the irrational leap of faith it is to trust someone i cannot even see, much less have a corporeal conversation with. but what choice did i have? i didn't have one. it was that or back to beer and anorexia, and i honestly wanted to feel good again, so i chose the leap of faith and asked the Holy Spirit to come into my heart some time in july, and that was the night of my last biologically-manifested panic attack.

i remember it was the night of the college group meeting my church had, i had just gotten fired from my job as a dishwasher, and we watched 'book of eli,' a movie weirdly about the Bible and its power in the right or wrong hands. it was an epic movie, but i knew that i didn't have the faith of denzel washington's character to do that and i knew why by that time: i wasn't truly a convert. i was practically still weirdly agnostic, just with more of a sway to believe in God rather than wholly believing it. so i decided to change that i wasn't truly a convert and decided to see God like denzel washington's character did (he was blind). The only way a human could see God is by the power of the Holy Spirit, which is what i believe to have stopped the bio-panic and start the process of the end of emotional-panic, which i haven't truly had (aside for one time of paxil withdrawal) since october of 2010. no more panic.

now, you see the difference between what hegel said and how he was interpreted. the others had no choice but to interpret him secularly, for their minds were secular. one cannot interpret divine thought without divine revelation. if what God said isn't already true in someone's mind before they hear it, it won't resound. it will merely be words on a page with little practical meaning and remain just as untrue as it was before it was heard or read. the same is true with hegel. since hegel was a theologian above all else, his audience was more for theological studies rather than philosophical studies. in the hands of theology, God is the measure of all things. in the hands of philosophy without theological backing, truth is completely irrelevant because the synthesis requires the existence of absolutes to be functional, and if a true thinker reads hegel, he has two things he can do: 1.) if he has the holy spirit, recognize that what hegel says is a testament to the existence of absolutes, or 2.) if he doesn't have the holy spirit, read hegel and see that hegel speaks of absolutes as sharply as he does and not be able to recognize absolutes that absolutes are real to the reader because his mind is closed to absolutes, because behind the sensual and the rational there is no actual (postmodernity).

the bible clearly speaks of this idea in 2 corinthains 4:4 where it says: 'the god of this age [contextually, postmodernity] has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of christ, who is the image of God.' contextually, Paul is writing to a church about the sneakiness of the thought patterns behind the philosophies of the world and cultures around them and how they can often corrupt how the Gospel is interpreted, and therefore presented. he also says in Galations 1:9: 'if anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted...[it is no gospel at all].' that idea is very similar to the idea of how one can be in a poorly lit room but not know it until he is presented with a brighter light.
every now and again, i get asked by a non-believing friend, 'but how do you know you are right, when you think you are right? does that not mean that you could be just as ingrained in thinking you're right as anyone else and it make sense to you, whether you are or aren't correct in your beliefs?' my reply is simple.

"it did what it said it would do. 'you will know the truth and the truth has set you free, and i didn't have to commit intellectual suicide for it to do so." there is no faith i have encountered thus far that doesn't suppress intellect to make room for faith, and in fact christianity actually promotes my intellect (even outside of defending the faith *!*) to further my walk with God and to display His handiwork in my life. i went from being a guy with an alcohol problem, a developing drug problem, and anorexia because of his intellect to a guy who recognizes God in  everything he does. that is a testament to 'be[ing] transformed by the renewing of your mind,' not the death of it.

decontextualization is key.

have you ever wondered why some people seem to be really offended by, like, everything? why they can't just sit back and enjoy everything that comes there way? me too. but my wondering made me question a lot of things: do i have bad theology? do they have bad theology? am i more clever than those people? are they wiser than me to avoid movies with graphic content? am i the one with the problem?

these are serious questions that, if the answer is not to your liking, mean that you have a wrong idea of God. is He a to-not-do list or is He a b.f.f.? who would you rather go to see the new cohen brothers' film: God or your b.f.f.? i would choose God. maybe this is where we differ. possibly not. i will explain why God should be the one you experience the new (suppositional) cohen brothers' film, and it is as simple as this: He is supposed to be your b.f.f..

now, a lot of people have no problem with this idea, but i don't think they truly know what it means to have God as your b.f.f. if they can't experience life with Him. if they did, i think things would change. if God is your b.f.f. and you don't want to experience life with Him, that means one of two things: God is not actually your b.f.f. and is more of a disciplinarian than a b.f.f. or you have too much more on your mind than to consider God in a movie...or maybe you try to separate your public and private spheres. see, the thing about God is this: He is not our b.f.f. because we tell dirty jokes with Him or get sauced up every weekend with him or share women with Him.

God's our b.f.f. because he is the most faithful person to us: when our biological fathers can't always give us everything we want, God gives us all we need. He may do this by waning the need for knowledge of non-necessity for a little bit, by giving us eternal gifts like faith, hope, joy, love, and peace; or He takes away our agressors. if these things haven't happened for you yet, i'd say that God isn't quite your b.f.f. and is more like a boss. you wouldn't go see a 'reprehensible' movie with your boss...unless you liked your boss...or felt compelled because He wanted to (in which case, you would be uncomfortable laughing at a   dirty joke and would not experience the movie quite the way it was intended out of uneasiness of being with your boss who is not your friend)

see, the thing about God is that, once you can come to a point of faith in His existence and accept that He is all He says He is through what the Bible says and how He has changed you, He is actually the person you take with you everywhere. i mean everywhere. because when you recognize His goodness, the ugliness in the world becomes a testament to a loss of good rather than the presence of bad. i can enjoy bright eyes again. i will admit that there was a part of me that really missed them when i gave them up (they are a depresso-indie-western band), and i thought--at the beginning of my journey--that i would never be able to listen to them again, that i was gonna have to give up bright eyes forever. it was a horrible prospect.

but then IT happened: God became all He claimed to be. not over night, mind you...but He did. and when He did, all things good were much more good and all things less-than-savory became a volume on the difference between my God and what other people invested in. the movie Chicago. it's about these fame-hungry chicago-urbanite floozies who want nothing more than to be famous. it's a really good movie. really sad that these two women's lives were consumed by the idea of being someone great, but really stylistically good and had a whole mess of good lines and scores. so the beauty of the scores is a note to self on how even though i no longer identify with what these people are singing about, i enjoy the music because i recognize that humanity wants beauty and we stop at nothing to get it, i enjoy the imagery because it's beautiful and it's just another sign that even when i am not like a single character in this movie i still seek beauty, and i even enjoyed the plot *GASP*...not that it's as reprehensible a plot as, say, 'hot lesbian sex on mutilating ice'...i enjoyed the plot because everything--even our culture's obsessions with fame and dignity and willingness to risk all that we have to get them (including our health and the health of our loved ones)--points to God in some way.

so, if a movie points to God, your b.f.f., i think that's a good thing. i think you should, too, because that would mean you could get up off your couch and be like Jesus. Jesus didn't chill in the church all day, people. it says in Matthew and in Luke that he hung out with extortionists (zacheas), prostitutes (mary magdalene)...and he literally hung out with at least one criminal that we know of for a short time before his death. did they talk about the latests episode of 'the biggest Jew-ser'? likely not, because they were kind of dying, but i guarantee you that Jesus did like to have a good time. with wine, no less. true story. and prostitutes. but in a strictly platonic way. and tax collectors. and everyone. i think Jesus was a lot more like you and me than we give him credit for. i mean, would you have given up all your posessions for a guy who was more like a monotone, creepily-cryptic, crazy eyed weirdo?! i wouldn't have. followings usually start because people are liked rather than coerced. and if they were more coerced than liked, it doesn't end well. look what happened to hitler. and   all the other infamous dictators who were murdered. they happened to not have been liked enough that they could get away with what they did.

so anyway, decontextualization is key when hanging out with God. He even tells us to in the Bible: in all that you do, whether you eat or drink, do it for the glory of God' and 'whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is good, if there is anything praiseworthy virtuous--think about these things.' we can't think about things we don't experience. if there is nothing for there to contain praiseworthiness or virtue that we experience, we aren't really thinking about these things...we are blindly thinking about ideas that have no physical foundation. it would be like me thinking about the texture of african pluff mud when i have never seen it. i cannot sense it's smoothness if i do not experience it. and if it's smooth and fun to play in, i will praise God for having made something on the two continents that i had been on that i go out of my way to enjoy. if it was not smooth, i could use it to remember the pluff mud in charleston that i love and not be able to wait till summer to go sliding around on it again or i could know that it is functional in housing baby octopi between lunar tides.

that's all you need to know.