Lord Save Us From the Bullshit

Over the last several days a thought has repeatedly popped into my melon, usually in the wake of some random idiocy. It is what it is, so you'll just have to pardon the French: Wasn't Jesus supposed to save us from this bullshit?

I claim no responsibility for the thought. Rather, it is just the spontaneous fruit of forgotten meditations, as the Aphorist might put it. But since the thought kept recurring, I decided to look at it, and lo and behold, it meant something.

We are all familiar with the idea that "Jesus saves." But from what, exactly? Most people would say "from sin," but that was not my point of entry into the whole mystery. Then again, I suppose it was, since lying is a sin, and inhabiting a Lie (such as secular leftism) must be even worse.

What I want to say is that Jesus (by which I mean the whole tradition that flows from him) saved my mind. From what? Well, for starters, from mountains of bullshit. Before the transition, my mind was a vast and fertile field for the cultivation of bullshit.

Matters were only made worse by an extensive education, for The learned fool has a wider field to practice his folly, and He who understands the least is he who insists on understanding more than what can be understood (NGD).

"Christ," writes Bailie, "went to the Cross to ram a stick in the spokes of the ritual for transforming sin into the delusion of righteousness."

But you could also say he does the same to the ritual of transforming utter bullshit into the delusion of righteous truth. We see this ad nauseam in the left's ritual of transforming self-styled victims into paragons of virtue, most recently, John Lewis.

Fifty years ago Lewis was knocked upside the head by some Democrat racist (but I repeat myself), which transformed him into a Civil Rights Icon. Ever since then he has been able to conceal his grotesque political hackery behind the meretricious penumbra of civil righteousness.

Oh please. Didn't Jesus save us from this bullshit?

What is the Ultimate Bullshit? It would have to consist of the Devil appropriating the Cross for his own purposes. Is this even possible? Stupid question. Rather, is there anything we can do to prevent it?

Yesterday Instapundit linked to an editorial by a leftist minister. Here's his take on American history:

I’ll let Ta-Nehisi Coates boil it down for you. White society was not achieved through “wine tastings and ice cream socials, but rather through the pillaging of life, liberty, labor and land.” In short, through three centuries of kidnapping, torture, murder and rape. Broken teeth, broken bones and broken spirits. Families ripped apart. Children taken from their parents. Men humiliated in front of their wives. Women brutalized within earshot of their husbands. Lash after bloody lash on bare backs. Then, sleep on a bare wooden floor. No doctor, no dentist, no nothing. Just non-stop misery with a few hymns on Sunday.

Okay then. The diffusion of a few drops of Christianity into a leftist mind transforms the idiot into a perfect idiot (NGD).

If we begin with the principle that man is fallen, then nothing he does should surprise us. We certainly would not attribute to "whiteness" what is universal in all men at all times. But once blacks are elevated to righteous victims, it is (apparently) easy for the leftist to forget that they too are subject to the law of ontological gravity, AKA the fall. If they weren't, then Africa would be a paradise instead of a place no black American would choose to live.

Roger Kimball writes of a campus group called Teach! Organize! Resist!, which "intends to stage a number of on-campus protests and consciousness-raising events between Martin Luther King Jr. Day tomorrow and Mr. Trump’s inauguration Friday":

“We intend to organize,” their web site informs the world, “against the proposed expansion of state violence targeting people of color, undocumented people, queer communities, women, Muslims, and many others.” What “state violence” would that be? While you wonder about that, note too that the organizers “intend to resist the institutionalization of ideologies of separation and subordination, including white supremacy, misogyny, homophobia, Islamophobia, and virulent nationalism.” Oh, I see.

I don't. Didn't Jesus save us from this bullshit?

Technically, yes. "[W]e live downstream from the atoning Event and in cultures profoundly shaped by it," and "live buoyed by consolations that first washed over the world at the Resurrection, consolations that were the first fruit of unconsoled suffering."

A touching story of Suffering, Death, and Resurrection:

In the spring of 2013, my worst nightmare came true. Everything that I and my closest friends had spent the previous three decades building came crashing down around us. The entire international body of students and centers, 27 years of tireless work and commitment, disappeared almost overnight.

Sounds bad! What happened?

The truth is, as crazy as it sounds, I believed I was infallible. And for a very long time, the majority of my students believed it too. In the end, I lost everything and caused untold suffering to many people only because of an irrational refusal to admit the simple truth: like most human beings I am deeply flawed.

Oh please. Didn't Jesus save us from this bullshit?

Maybe, but for only 404 Euros you can join this deeply flawed man as he "continues his ongoing exploration of the role of both student and guru in a post-mythic context."

Did he say post mythic?

Lord save us from the bullshit.