Letter #130: Antigravity Pride
I won't stand for this hateful rhetoric.
Dear Sir,
I write on behalf of the ACLU to inform you that your recent letter of September 18, 2024, entitled “Burning Man,” has been flagged as hateful rhetoric against the pyrophile community and the otherwise gravitied. You divisively imply that members of these groups are inherently less worthy of respect for wanting to set themselves on fire and fall off of buildings.
The “realism” which you deem “essential to a good life,” like the alleged “truth about the unseen spirit world” to which you allude, is a well-known pyrophobic dog whistle listed by self-immolation scholars at the Southern Poverty Law Center as a key indicator of harmful language.
Those who pitch themselves off of high-rises suffer wildly disproportionate rates of self-harm and suicide in this country, which social science has proven to be caused by the alarming rise of hate speech and discriminatory legislation against downwardly mobile Americans.
We dream of a future where these citizens may leap free of prejudice and fear from the tenth-story windows of their apartment complexes. Maybe then they wouldn’t have to go killing themselves.
I kid, but only a little. We’ve talked before about Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost, who seethes at the thought of any power he can’t bend to his command. Rather than admit that his own good is determined by immutable laws of Goodness he did not invent, he prefers to be cast an infinite distance from the heights of glory.
He insists as he plummets hellward that down is up: “The mind is its own place, and in itself / Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.” So close! It’s actually the opposite of that. Fire burns whether you call it tickling or not.
And yet, almost as if he’s the prince of this world or something, Satan’s reasoning is at large in the land. If you think I’m exaggerating about the pyrophiles, earlier this year one poor tormented soul literally set himself on fire “for justice.” That’s what hells’ dominion looks like.
In fact, despite manifest evidence to the contrary—the hollowed-out spirits of fentanyl junkies, the wounded children of wanton divorce, the distorted faces of rageful teenagers cheering Israeli deaths—we insist not only that we can defy the laws of the spirit but that there are no such laws, or that we can rewrite them at will. As you indicate, though, we might as well rewrite gravity.
When I wrote that only one religion is a path to God, some people probably assumed I meant Anglicanism, or Presbyterianism, or whatever. But I was drawing a more elemental distinction, between the hurtling freefall that began when Satan rebelled, and the repenting turn of the heart that sets a few lone travelers resolutely against the rush of that downward current.
Christians call this transformation metanoia, a renewal of the mind—but not everyone who has undergone it yet calls himself a Christian. All the same: wherever it happens, there is the church.
Love,
Spencer
Image: Fir0002, GFDL 1.2, via Wikimedia Commons
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In CS Lewis’ Narnia’s conclusion, a group of dwarves (don’t remember which group, possibly black dwarves, but don’t quote me—too lazy to get up and look it up) they are literally sitting in Paradise, facing each other in a circle and refusing to acknowledge where they are, instead continuously reciting their grievances, and totally unaware of the Glory around them. One of the characters tries to show them, but is called away, with the implication being that they have willed their Hell, and nothing at that point can dissuade them at this point.
So it is with us in life. We must only accept God’s unconditional love (the only condition on unconditional love?). His love will not be forced upon us, and that is the point of free will. We have the choice to accept or refuse. Our “YES” is not a word or thought alone, but is borne out through actions. We know that just saying “Lord Lord” will not avail us. Hoo boy, I got some work to do. This must be done on faith (or Faith), as once we’ve died, the Truth will be clear before us. Love alone endures, as Bishop Barron has said in an interview, as once we die, we will have no need for faith, as we will see, and no further need for hope, for the culmination and truth is all around us.
We enjoyed a lovely trip last year to Italy. The jets that flew us there, as long as the doors didn’t fall off and they didn’t fall from the skies, did their job and got us to our destination, but were otherwise irrelevant. So it is with church. Our destination is what matters, and whether we flew RCC airways or PanPresbyterian is unlikely to be important, as long as it delivers us to the correct destination. The hard part is keeping the doors from falling off. I happen to believe RCC airlines has the most flights and best accomodations, but your mileage may vary. Choose wisely, and if that carrier does not seem to be going in the right direction, book another. The destination is the thing.
I’ve been in business settings where people are enraged and wish everything would go to hell.
But funny enough, when you empathize and wait for their anger to pass, they’re often willing to work with you at the end of it, even if it contradicts what they were just saying.