I deleted the post about Lenski’s commentary on Romans, primarily because it was coal and not worth reading. Also, the commitment it created to comment on the rest of Lenski’s work has thusfar prevented me from actually reading the thing, and I’d like to get the book returned to my pastor before Christmas (I read slowly, being a Zoomer) (It’s over!) Perhaps, with my newfound illness, I will find more time to read. So far, this has not happened! But we will see.
I am, as some might regard me, a coddled baby. That’s the impression I get talking to the local university sluts. They all come from broken homes, they all have had to fend for themselves for ages, they all work outrageously long hours for outrageously little pay (as if a job at Panda Express doesn’t pay $15/hr starting wage), they’re all putting themselves through college. Perhaps that reflects more on me, and the company that I am able to keep; after all, there are rich she-generates as well, but I never seem to find myself conversing with them! Curious! But I’d like to take the opportunity to examine myself and where I stand in the world.
I have an outrageously comfortable bed. Supreme stuff, obnoxiously comfortable. I sleep in a university dorm room like monarchs from the 17th century would dream of sleeping, only to wake up beside one of their seven mistresses’ to find that they were dreadfully uncomfortable. I wear nice clothes (not due to wealth, but circumstance). I was raised in a home with two parents who both love each other AND love me. I was not beaten or brutalized, neither by parent nor sibling, of which I have multiple. My first car was old, and I quickly received another, nicer car, of which I did not pay. To this day, I’m not certain how I got away with that. I was fed a diet of raw milk, vegetables, steak, and eggs, usually against my will (I was a dreadfully picky eater for most of my life, only recently starting to emerge from my shell), put on Creatine in 8th grade, and never received a single vaccination. Although I have a tendency to succumb to coronaviruses when I enter a new space (new semester, new job, etc.), I either never caught COVID or sloughed it off so quickly with my powerful immune system that I didn’t notice. I have an IQ roughly two standard deviations above the White mean, which would, of course, make me probably the stupidest person in my immediate family. Rather that continue to count all my blessings, I will engage in Apophatic sociology and state the four things that separate my upbringing from material and spiritual perfection.
I was not raised in the Christian faith. (has since been remedied!!!)
I was not taught hand-to-hand combat. (work in progress!!!)
I was not taught how to talk to girls. (work in progress!!!)
My patrilineal heritage is not as red-blooded American as I would prefer. (This cannot be helped)
I have a Canadian friend whom I met when I was 13 in a discord chat-room. This man, who will go unnamed, has been my strongest supporter throughout the years. Simply put, nobody has never believed in me more than the Canuck. He likens me to great men in history, and prophecies that I will certainly attain to great things, be remembered by history, my family, and my God, for generations to come. So, then, you might understand my self-frustration when I, as I am now, rest in my filth at 10:42 AM having not yet left my dorm room, cancelling plans and staring at twitter dot com X DOT COM because my throat hurts.
Potential is a topic which pervades my thoughts and permeates my meditations. If I am happy, it is because I feel I am living up to the gifts that God has given me, and if I am sad, it is because I squander the same. I made these three pieces of art in Adobe Illustrator once, just to express the stress.
(yeah yeah I get it, I do some queer impressionistic stuff to process my le feelings from time to time.)
I’m not a big believer in the idea that genetics or background accord any sort of moral superiority, but they do grant superiority in worldly respects. There’s a lot of people in the world that I am simply, baseline, by genetic advantage, smarter, stronger, faster, etc., than; I’d wager to say, in the prime of my youth as I now reside, that group is most people. If there is such a thing as a “genetically superior” (a term which requires 6 million asterisks) human being, I probably belong to that group. And yet? I squander it. Daily I fail. I’m an undisciplined mess. I barely read, I barely write, I barely lift, I barely study, I never cultivate myself, etc., etc., etc.. Men who are, eugenically speaking, less worthy to reproduce than myself are nevertheless beating me qua Manhood on account of their greater ability to Trust The Plan. Nature had humbled them, yet they are exalted, and nature has exalted me, yet I am humbled.
I can’t really grumble, since I know it is my sinful nature that has made a shipwreck of my physiology. I’m sick right now, but it’s not debilitating; if God retains His instant patience with my foolishness, I will recover, I will re-start my studies, my social life, my exercise routine, etc., and will continue to cultivate the absolutely undeserved gifts I have received from the same. God-willing, before I turn twenty-five I will have claimed a wife of similar-quality stock to myself, and before I turn forty I will have at least seven children who will all have to suffer the same mental struggle I am going through now: to realize one’s giftedness, to look oneself in the mirror, and to say “wow, I really am just evil, lazy, egotistical, and ungrateful.” Perhaps, then, it is a good thing that God makes us sick from time to time. Firstly, upon the unbelieving world, and the Old Adam, no punishment is too severe. The altogether worthless mash of human flesh absolutely deserves brain-eating amoeba maggots that start with the toenails and finish with the hair. The Christian thing to do is to glorify God when He decides to remit punishment to those deserving (everyone), and to wonder aloud with awed terror that the punishment is so much less that it could, should, and will, be. Secondly, upon the Christian, God delivers us to unpleasantness to chasten us, so that we start to “get it,” more. “OOOOH. I’m dying! My flesh has no power to withstand this world! God could kill me in an instant and would be justified in doing so! Despite my genetic advantage I am also dust and to dust I shall return! There is nothing that keeps my wicked self at any one moment out of hell, but the sovereign pleasure—the arbitrary will, restrained by no obligations, hindered by no manner of difficulty—of God.” I have done a great amount of worldly boasting in this article, have I not? Yet, if God decided that I should choke on one of my vitamin pills this morning, none of my advantages would grant me anything in God’s court. You can imagine the scene, it’s a little funny.
GOD: Bona Fide, to the stand!
BONA FIDE: Glory be to God!
GOD: How do you plea!
BONA FIDE: Not guilty, Lord!
GOD: On what grounds?
BONA FIDE: Lord, lord, I am genetically superior than all those wastrels you just cast into Hell. See, I’m White! I’m an American! I come from German, English, and Dutch stock Lord! Most of my ancestors were Christian! I-I-I can bench 235! I once trolled illegal immigrants on a discord server! I’m based, Lord, I’m based! Did I not write Holy Saturday in your name? Did I not anathematize Baptists on the internet in your name?
GOD: You’re spiritually Jewish, your ancestors were Papists, you haven’t hit 1repmax in months, you aren’t based, you dated a witch for eight months + you have blasphemed My Name *checks notes* 6 gorillion times and counting + Truly I say to you, I never knew you.
BONA FIDE: *as he’s being thrown into the lake of fire prepared for the devil and his angels* the witch was nicer to me than the Christian girls you seeeeeeent
[insert infinite years of intense screaming as the fires of Hell boil my liver and I am tormented by the knowledge that it’s all my fault.]
Fin.
My sorry state in the throne room of God is common to mankind—that is, all the wretched creatures sold under sin, chattel slaves of the Devil. If I had consulted my lawyer before going before the stand, I might have been smart enough to plea “I am a sinner, yet I have been baptized into the Lord Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit, and I believe His promise to save me.” It’s easy, if you’re an unspiritual wretch at least, to forget that without the Gospel everything we have is actually hopeless. The university sluts I mentioned earlier would have willingly slept with me, and truth be told, I might have conceded myself to them, if not for 2 thoughts: “Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats: but God shall destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body,” and, more operatively, “What the hell would I have if I lost my faith?”
Setting aside eternal separation from God and the sure promise of Hellfire for a moment, despite my boasting and coping, I cannot stand on my own two feet by my own power even in this life. It cannot be so that I should blaspheme Christ by uniting my body with that of a whore; if I was to, I would have to repent of Christ. Yet to repent of Christ is to lose…everything. I would have no more mental grounding with which to perceive the world. I would have no standard by which to judge evil. I would have no promise of an eternal reward (rather, the opposite). I would know with certainty that life is meaningless, that all that can be done is to embrace sensuality and pursue limitless pleasure; yet even that is vanity. Even worse, if I was to repent of Christ, it’s not like things would get materially better. Actually, they’d get worse. As I’ve said before, I hardly attract the sort of woman that really WOWs the flesh. The great irony is this: to become great among men, such as needed to efficiently pursue hedonistic pleasure, as a sort of Bronze Age Pervert acolyte, I have a need to cultivate my divine gifts, which is only possible with the help of God, Whom surely I should need to turn away from to pursue hedonism at all. It truly does seem that all things work out for the Elect. The capital-h House always wins: I am trapped in a perfect scheme concocted by the brightest minds1 of the antemundane period, afflicting me with exactly two choices: starve as a wolf, or prosper as a lamb. That Eternal Slave-Trader, Jesus Christ, who rescued me from the chains of the devil only to cast upon me a light yoke of pure gold, has given the command: SERVE OR DIE! And lest I forget my place, and start to feast on the soil of the world in which I serve Him, an anti-geophagy mask—that is, a Common Cold—has been affixed upon my face. If I do not eat out of what the Master has given, why, then, I suppose I shall not eat at all. If my God did not provide, then I would surely die this hour. If it be His Will, I shall surely die before I hit “publish.”
I sub-titled this article “A Reflection on being sick” before I wrote a word of it, and I have done very little reflecting on being sick. Rather, I have reflected while sick, which is a similar, but different thing. The end of the matter is this: I am dying. Not now, God grant, but soon. Soon enough, at least. I have no advantage in the flesh that should save me from this, even if I manage to hold on ten years longer than my vaccine-addled, obese, pasteurized milk-enjoying peers. I have nothing—nothing—apart from God, who has saved me through His Son Jesus Christ. And in Him, not only do I have all that I seem to have (which, really, is on lease), but I also have the sure expectation and trust in good things to come. Which, I suppose, should tide me over until, God grant quickly, I recover from this nasty cold. I do not deserve this: It is far to good for me.
depending on how you interpret Genesis 1, the plural here is either an affirmation of the trinity or out-and-out tritheism. I, however, affirm the Athanasian Creed.