Paul Balluff-The Final Lesson

Wednesday May 27, 2009 • 186 Comments 

I actually haven’t deviated from my stated intent to file three posts following specific themes. It just turns out I get to make one of the same points using a different object lesson. This should be the last lesson from this source.

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Be arrogant if you must. Be ignorant if you must. But don’t be arrogant and ignorant. This is a John Immel original aphorism. I accept royalties.

In some Christian circles, the accusation of arrogance is worse than the charge of misogyny in a National Organization of Women Conference. This stems from the fact that in these circles, Pride and Arrogance tend to be synonymous, and Pride becomes a catch-all spiritual failing: tossed within an utterly erroneous notion that humility is manifest in self-deprecation, self-doubt, and self-destruction. Whatever… This all ends up being “Method and Manner” fraud.

Arrogance is nothing more than the assumption of superiority and anyone who has worked to achieve any level of expertise or mastery, by definition, has earned that assumption. This does not preclude weakness, or inabilities, or failures. Indeed, someone who sets out to be a true master of any discipline works relentlessly to be aware of their weakness so they can remedy and overcome. The road to mastery is nothing more than an iterative process of increasing self-awareness.

Self-AWARENESS is an encompassing state: a macro vantage point over the sum of self; the ability to place all of one’s abilities, skills, talents, expertise, greatness, weaknesses, ignorance, lacks, intemperance, and ignobility in context to reality.

By way of contrast, self-ABSORPTION is a prohibitive state: a micro vantage point with no sense of the sum of self–a willful ignorance of self in context to reality.

My aphorism is designed to identify this state of self-absorption. Being arrogant and ignorant is the worst of all worlds. If one does not know what they don’t know because they are unwilling to ask (or more insidious, willing to HEAR), they can never, ever, find an effective solution to any life problem. This kind of SELF is narrow in perception, and indulgent in action.

We all know people like this. To some degree, we were all like this: think teenager. Think adolescence. Most parents know to bite their tongue and wait out the stupidity, praying to God that eventually self-awareness will spring eternal. If not, maybe God will let us eat our young.

We tolerate such self-absorption out of teenagers, sort of.

  • Their willful ignorance: the belief that they know everything while making no effort to know anything.
  • Their belligerent evasion: purposely hiding behind hostility and indignation when confronted with error.
  • Their argumentative legalism: playing the strict literalist game when linguistic games suit, and flat ignoring the violation of basic principles and common communication intent.
  • Their lip service to forgiveness: the demand for moral absolution while demonstrating no willingness to change conduct or attitude.
  • Their conduct blank check:  the fundamental expectation that others must pay for their moods, intemperance, laziness, inability, and lifestyle.
  • Their relational presumption: the belief that they can act however they want because Mom and Dad are obligated to suck up their intemperance.
  • Their moral equivalency: “Well, yes, I’m sorry but you did THIS. So you are no better than me.”
  • Their petulant emotionalism:  the endless manipulation of feelings-criticisms are catastrophic hailstorms of excrement and compliments are disproportionate sonnets of love, beauty, and butterflies.

We grant grace to all of these self-absorbed failings because we understand it to be a developmental stage–a finite period of time where young psyches work to get that macro vantage point on self. We wait for the emerging self-awareness because we believe the developmental cost will be far exceeded by the relational value a healthy, productive, valuable adult can contribute. In this environment with this expected outcome, love, and forgiveness, and grace, and mercy spring from a deep, deep well.

It is from this expected outcome, this deep, deep well, that God approaches us.

Inasmuch as we see people seeking the path to self-awareness, we are willing to embrace them on the path. But our energy shrinks to a dull ebb when we realize that arrogance and ignorance are combining to create the perfect storm of self-absorption and the inevitable self-indulgent outcomes.

Injustice grows exponentially when the self-absorbed, self-indulgent soul can demand moral absolution in the name of Christianity. When “Forgive Me” is uttered in belligerent command and moral absolution is the required response, mercy and grace have lost their meaning. When any person can write a moral blank check with the expectation that someone else MUST cash it, values, and justice, and proportion, and boundaries have been reduced to ash.

This is exactly how Christian Forgiveness is currently being taught: that the magic words of “forgive me” are sufficient to the cause. And if that doesn’t get the immediate moral absolution, the next bit of sanctimony is the moral relativism of “We are all just dirty rotten sinners.”  The overt proposition is “You are not any better than me, so someday you will need someone to wink and nod at your bad stuff too.”

Any unwillingness, any hesitancy to immediately declare all actions pardoned, any intemperate outburst exonerated, and all intimacy restored is met with sanctimony: “How un-Christian,” or “How unloving,” or “How hardhearted.”   The result: people are browbeaten into accepting circumstance and relationships that are vicious, unhealthy and destructive.

As a brief aside, it is this doctrinal insanity that keeps women in marriages where their husbands are self-absorbed, violent scum who repeatedly commit adultery: who alternately terrorize their families or abandon them with impunity. He stands in a pastor’s office and speaks the magic words, “forgive me.” With this enchantment, the woman is placed in an impossible position.

No matter how many adjectives we try to apply to this woman’s plight–loving, long-suffering, merciful, gracious et al–to make ourselves feel better in the face of profound injustice, she is further victimized by the self-absorbed, self-indulgent, useless piece of humanity, and then incarcerated by doctrines that are dehumanizing, unjust, and destructive.

It is true that God granted divorce because of the “hardness of people’s hearts,” but we have misunderstood who’s hardheartedness is the culprit. Divorce for “biblical” reasons is an act of self-preservation and self-defense against the violence of hardhearted action. (Make no mistake, adultery is personal violence of the most brutal soul-wrenching kind.) If the hardheartedness manifests in the person seeking divorce because of adultery, abuse, abandonment, why grant divorce at all?

Did I go to far afield with my last two paragraphs? Maybe, and then again, maybe not. The underlying theme of this post is what relational boundaries are people required to keep in the face of self-absorbed, self-indulgent, arrogant, AND ignorant conduct?

It is to this I will now turn my attention.

For those of you just tuning in…I’m not going to detail the sum of Paul Balluff and his wife, Me Love You long Time, interaction. You can find the bulk of their comments on Who’s Your Daddy, Reform or Not to Reform (in the last hundred comments), and Paul Balluff Lessons.

On May 25th, Paul Balluff found a pingback on the post Arena of Ideas. Here is what he said.

Paul B on May 25th, 2009 7:00 pm

Hey - I thought this using of other’s names was a ONE time thing, John?

Paul Balluff Lessons | spiritualtyranny.com on May 8th, 2009 3:28 pm

[...] adding their 38 cents worth. They don’t agree. They say so. No biggie. This is the Arena of Ideas where it is more rough-and-tumble than other living rooms. Someone might hand me my ass in my [...]

How, pray tell do you have the gall to add my name to such a vile statement and call yourself a Christian. Oh, my mistake, maybe you aren’t.

Leave the profanity to your members and keep my name off these–if you want to toss out a pithy statement, please refrain from attaching my name to it.

For those of you who don’t know, a “pingback” is a blogging thingy that lets blog owners know when someone has referenced a post. Any time a hyperlink is posted, it “pings back” to the original. I do a lot of internal linking because so many of my thoughts are interconnected. Hence, the pingback from the post Paul Balluff Lessons to the post Arena of Ideas.

Anyway, onward…I of course was mystified by Paul’s reaction and comments because everything in the pingback was in the original post and presumably Paul had already read said post with said profane reference. A post with his name on it????

Ah, yes…silly me presuming that Paul actually read the post. He has repeatedly said that he makes no effort to follow the details of the conversation. Here is what he said when called to account by Juli.

Paul on May 26th, 2009 9:52 am

To Juli-  I do not live on this or the other sites dedicated to those with a gripe to pick over life in or out of SGM. Therefore, I missed the Arena of Ideas and in a quick scan, thought that the above saying was attributed to me. I am man enough to say that I jumped to a conclusion that it was something that I had supposedly said - I was wrong. I hope you are woman enough to see how impolite you were in your response. (”you won’t get your ass kicked…”)
On a side note to all on these blogs- Had a good three-hour talk with Jim (SGMRefuge) last night. We left on excellent terms. As I hope can be said here.
John - same apology to you here -my bad
In Christ,
Paul

There is soooooo much here.

Your bad? Your bad what? Your relational incompetence? Your intellectual ineptitude? Your blogging presumption? Your utter lack of self-awareness? Your admitted willful ignorance? Your horrific doctrinal deficiency? Your nonexistent critical thinking skills? Your endless intemperance? Your ridiculous attempt at apology? Your feeble attempts at manipulation? Your pathetic sexist appeal?

Which bad thing are we talking about, Paul? The list is growing and growing and growing.

Frankly, I’ve seen teenagers with more self-awareness, and if not self -awareness, enough embarrassment at their own ill conduct that speaks to some self-consciousness.

Let’s see…am I saved? Hmm…well, if I’m not, maybe that explains a lot. But here is the thing. I’m not sure I see how that works out better for you?

If I am not saved, does that mean I get a moral and ethical pass? Does it increase YOUR obligation to overlook my conduct? So, as an unbeliever, does that mean I get to shoot you in the head and it’s just all good: leave your wife to forgive and forget? My conduct can’t be helped after all: I’m just an unsaved sinner? Right? It is by the Grace of God that such things don’t happen more often? Right?

Paul, you won’t follow this to save your life. You have shown no ability to follow a progression of thought, so I am confident this will sail right over your head. So, I am going to say it for those pastors sent to keep up with subversive material.

You guys suck at teaching your own body of doctrine. How is it that you can have a true SGM believer that can utter such inane doctrinal words? Come ON guys…my salvation demonstrated in using the word ASS? And not even jackass or stupid-ass or ridicule-ass.

How is it you have been so incompetent at teaching the doctrine of election? How is it you still have pew-sitters who CANNOT, for one second, remain consistent in their intellectual grasp of “Sound Doctrine”? How can comments, like Paul’s, be a criticism? If I am not saved, if I am not a Christian, there is not ONE thing I can do about it. So, my reprobate conduct is part and parcel of God’s Sovereign will.

He can parrot the SGM doctrine of pervasive depravity pretty good. He has absorbed the corresponding moral relativism that you all use to absolve yourselves of any and all relational failures…so how is it your pew-sitters fail to get the REST of the doctrine? From the way you advertise your doctrinal purity and monolithic presentation, this should be unacceptable. These pew-sitters should be getting demerits or something because they are NOT paying attention.

Anyway…

See, here is the insanity embedded in this whole dynamic. When it is something I’ve done, you get to rail about the quality of my salvation. Paul, when it is your manifest relational incompetence, you get to put on a Roseanne Roseannadanna act: “Oops…Never mind.”

Hommie John don’t play that game.

I can tolerate a lot. I have been more than generous with this platform. I have let you rail at liberty against the people and the content of this blog. I’ve let you and your wife accuse me of all manner of nefarious motives and actions. I have even let you justify yourself in an argument with Jim and Carol at www.sgmrefuge.com. That would be like me going to Dale O’Shields’ church and co-opting his mic to justify myself to SGM.

In all of this I have been (mostly) magnanimous.

I gave you ample time to explain the content of your lesson. I realize now you have none.

I even had flashes of letting you hang around for the comedic entertainment: as Jim is fond of saying: “That is almost funny.”

But what I cannot and will not tolerate is you presuming to give etiquette lessons to Juli. The irony in your thinking to define “impolite” is rich. And the further irony in your determination to make self-awareness a measure of your “man hood” makes me howl with laughter.

But comedic relief withstanding, that is the last straw. That is the single greatest manifestation of arrogance and ignorance that I can imagine.

You are not welcome here, Paul. There is no reprieve. I have no interest in further interaction. You are tedious, and have shown yourself willfully ignorant, arrogant, and thus irrelevant. Go co-op another blog to justify yourself if you must. But you have posted your last here.

The price of admission to this blog is both cheap and expensive. The price is self-awareness. You have no coin of the realm.

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To all, If a comment sneaks through, ignore it till I get it deleted.



Toga-Induced Christian Tribalism

Friday May 22, 2009 • 16 Comments 

By John Immel

I originally posted this on Texas HB 36: Informed Consent to an Abortion in response to something Canary, resident commentor extraordinaire, said about the concept “First among equals.”

Here is what she said:

BU-WA-HA-HA-HA.

Gee - I thought the Greeks were a bit wiser than that. To tell someone “We are all equal, but I’m first” is really dumb, and that Christian Theology adopted the idea is even dumber. Even a first grader at the end of the lunch line knows just how DUMB that saying really is in literal terms. “If I’m equal, hows come I didn’t get a slice of the sausage pizza like those in the front of the line, and hows come I didn’t get equal time to eat my mystery meat casserole?” Amazing what sort of nonsense we will ingest simply because a leader assumes authority over us and therefore must know everything. Down, Kitty. I’m finished

However, after adding my comments, I got some off line heat about my responde being a post of its own. They raised all sorts of ruckus, telling me the thoughts would get lost. People are always looking out for me.

So…even though I have been saying in my previous articles that I was going to follow a theme for three successive posts, I am going to give in to pressure and render this to the world for blogging consumption.

Enjoy.

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Canary’s ever so hysterical satire of “first among equals” notwithstanding…I want to wax brainy for a minute.

Political and social thought has been in flux, well, since humans formed confederations based on genetic codes. We call them tribes. The function of tribalism is nothing more than protection. When individuals realize they do not have the requisite strength to fend off all interlopers against their person, they look for ways to increase that power. The historic challenge was to know who was willing to share mutual best interest: value you and defend you. The easiest distinction is to gravitate to those who look like you do. Tribal-ism is effectively racism: the belief that genetic heritage means philosophical solidarity. That was a wordy way of saying that because you look like me, you will be most likely to value me.

Racism was (and still is) the lowest common denominator of social/political organization. The problem with Tribalism is that it is a bloody, bloody, bloody way to live. History proves that out.

The question becomes in every tribe: Who decides what the individual sacrifice is for the sake of the tribe to participate in the protection?

This is the beginning of political theory.

By the emergence of the Greco/Roman culture, the world had been awash in blood from the ruling power of warlords and mystic despots since time immemorial. The end result was to wrestle with that very fundamental question stated above:  “Who decides the nature of sacrifice?”

The historic power to dictate was called king, despot, ruler, emperor et al.  But this has begged a predicate question: what makes this man qualified to dictate to everyone else? The gods? Genetics?

Does being Emperor make this man a qualitatively better KIND of man?

If so, who can oppose him?

Do the gods oppose him?

If he is not a qualitatively better person, what does that say of all men?

(And here was the radical evolution of thought.) Could it be that all men are equal? If all men are equal, then how can we justify who is in charge?

The Greco/Roman world wrestled with this very question seeking many different political answers. First among Equals was one of those answers:  primus inter pares I think is the Latin.

Christianity hit the world stage dead square in the middle of this ongoing political debate and rode the evolution of thought into the Middle Ages. By the middle of the 2nd century, Christianity had become fully inundated with Greco/Roman preoccupations and concerns. Christianity found itself needing to answer a very similar tribalistic question: Who is authentic and able to participate in our group?

Over time I will expand on this BUNCHES to make my point, but I will offer this fodder now.

Philosophical tribalism is called Sectarianism. Sectarianism is really nothing more than intellectual racism: the assumption that those of like MIND will be most likely to value and validate and protect me.

So, here is the issue. The Greco/Roman world was not stupid as such… they were struggling to understand the proper relationship between the governed and the governing.

They were making an evolution of thought from the utter inequality of people, to considering how can we have all men equal but some exercise governance?

And I will never let you forget that Governance is ALWAYS FORCE.

Historically, Christianity decided that AUTHORITY dictated good and men in authority were  indeed a better KINDS of men. Christianity also decided that genetics mattered in who had authority.  Apostolic Succession is the Catholics’ solution to ”Who is Qualified?” which is really the non-genetic version of Monarch succession via birth, which really has its roots in Tribalism.

Protestants have a problem, however. They can’t claim succession, so they need a justification for “Who is qualified?” And because they started this whole reformation dealeo by saying that everyone can read the book for themselves–scripture alone–they needed to find a political concept that seems to satisfy the very obvious Biblical idea that all men are in fact equal.

Some half clever folks decided to reach back into history and pull out some Latin, with some ties to political theory. “First among Equals” fits the bill.

Political thought and evolution did not stop with the first, second, or third century.  And canonical literature draws no definitive lines around the subject: the writers tending to emulate historic Judaic social/political organization or copying emerging Greco/roman political development. And more insidious, successive generations of Christian leadership just hijacked existing Roman political structure and retrofitted with biblical shamanism to sanctify their actions.

The atrocities committed by the perpetrators of biblical shamanism and subsequent spiritual tyranny have been covered up by modern academic shills who fail to scrutinize the relationshp between the source ideas that produced the historic doctrines. It is easier to sanctify the ideas with the wonder word ”orthodoxy,” and start screaming Heresy the moment anyone points to the slithering, writhing mass of Helenisitc/Plantonist Christian thought as the source of tyranny. This is how they get around having to address the obvious destructive outcomes.

Humanity has made all sorts of social and political improvements in the last few thousand years in spite of the church. That is a hard reality to absorb, but it is obvious to those that look. Christianity has not been an agent of political or social liberty. This reality inspired these quotes by James Madison in Memorial and Remonstrance 1785:

What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny: in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not.

Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.

James Madison

Why do Christians ignore the social and political evolutions over the last 1,700 years?   Because no one wants to argue with Latin.

>snicker<

We ignore the evolutions because of a vain commitment to interpretive literalism and misplaced  “Biblical Modeling.”  These intellectual Red Herrings lead to theological cul-de-sacs and are exacerbated by slavish commitments to historic arguments and the endless dance around the “orthodoxy” tree.

But if you start asking the right questions, the Toga-Induced Christian Tribalims starts to lose its power, and eventually one realizes that the source of the spiritual tyranny is deeply embedded in sectarianism.



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