Thoughts after the 3 Aug 2013 meeting @ Eric's:

<aside> 💡

IMPORT STILL IN PROGRESS - intrawiki link correction

Early in my second tour of Austin I attended many meetings of the Cigars and Theology meetup group. It was a sort of mission of the Gateway Church. I was able to maintain a constructive conversation with open sincerity right up until it became necessary to write this note to explain why I was rejecting the group’s assertions that I had some creed guiding me.

</aside>

At last night's meeting the entire room, beginning with Eric [ the leader ], supported by Bill and Dennis among others, insisted that I, Guy, have a "code" that I live by. Actually Eric asserted "we all have a code that we live by" and I disagreed for myself, only to find the whole room incredulous and insisting that I must have a code that I live by. Leaving aside that such things as how others operate internally are fundamentally unknowable, i.e. that Eric can have no legitimate basis for any assertion about the inner workings of another person, I feel I should explore the idea further.

As they all backpedaled to meet my challenges, effectively undefining the word "code" in the process, I got to the point where I felt like I should tentatively accept that, according to their undefinition of "code", I could admit there must be one for me. Now having thought about it more, I must re-assert my position in a different way. The real difference between where I'm at and what they're asserting can be found in their own Bible, in one of my favorite verses:

Jeremiah 31:33-34 Is this pair of verses not almost a description of postmodern deconstructionist culture?

(33:) I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34: And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord.' For they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

This passage exemplifies the mode I live in. The point being: If the "code" is as they say, that though I may not know it, or that "it changes", or that it's a "paradigm", or that it's merely a behavioral pattern; if I have such a code, then the only way that code could be known is in the full person of myself revealed. That is, my code must necessarily be a "living code", in just the way that the law is written in my inward parts. My very being is my code, and my history and my experiences, "encoded" in my genes and my mind and my heart, is the only accurate code to which anyone can refer. And "referring to" it is most un-code-like in any meaningful way I can identify. For I access my code merely by being myself, and this "other entity", this supposed consultable source, simply is nowhere and with no one except that it be my entire self.

This quote of Whitman's is quite essential to this difference in perspective I'm expressing. I suggest that the reader consider it carefully. Here's the full poem, which I think you'll find in the same spirit as my redemption poem.

As Smullyan quoted God quoting Whitman:

I give nothing as duties, What others give as duties, I give as living impulses.

Thus in my very human nature is the law of god (as Guy-self) being made manifest.

That is, I am the embodiment of my "code", which is "the law" as manifest through my unique life. This "code" then is the very same semantically as "the Word" from John, and "logos" as in the Greek. It is most certainly not a script, or even a table of values, that I live by. I make decisions without conscious consultation of some recorded source. There is no code, written on stone or figurative, which I consult as I live my life. (You'll note that this is the ultimate scary which postmodern thought presents to the Christian (modernist and earlier?) worldview.)

Meaghann says that if I were to have a code, it would be something like this:

Live with full integrity in the present.

This is OK in that it would seem to be a unifying summary approach that I could be said to use. But this cannot be the code which Bill, Eric, and others meant because it is too simple and lacking in any detailed application. I do not consult such a code as I navigate the oodles of decisions I face every day. I don't "refer" to it. I don't even meditate on it as a mantra, though I suppose I could perhaps be better off if I did. To "consult" a code like that suggests that the code stands in its own form (in the Platonist sense) as a sort of other party than myself which I (presumably as a conscious decision maker) access and contemplate on a repeated basis in the process of living and choosing. But this separation of myself into separate parties in that way is very much not how or who I am. I am someone who more than anyone I've met really does live as an integrated person. For example, I recognize that all conversations that go on inside my head are with myself, and not with any supernatural other. (See how supernatural others tie back to Platonist forms? There's no form-space just as there's no super-nature.) Where God exists is in a shrinking "realm of the unknown" (as naturally derived by the agnostic veil idea). Or as I prefer to redefine god to better match the God others believe in as being more revealed every day, God can be seen as the all of everything, becoming greater and more known as human awareness expands into more and more of nature.

You may notice that if they assert that I have a code, and then backpedal to say that "code" is synonymous with a "set of values" (Bill et al), and further allow that "it changes" (Bill), and accept that I may not even be aware of my code (as if they could be more aware of it than I could... notice that they are the ones conflating "code" with "identity"), and even assert that my conscious awareness of my code is not required to possess and even use it (Eric), then I must fail to see any distinction to be made between this supposed code and my very whole self.

Please keep in mind that this paragraph is hypothetical, ie. representing the stance I found myself required to take in that conversation. For myself, I find it simpler to not get overly excited about having "code" be exactly "identity" because as I see it just as my "personal code" is really just an incomplete attribution of me as deemed by a self, or the laws of nature as we know them are similarly just an incomplete attribution of nature as deemed by a self, so then we can see plainly that no "codes" or conceptions of the attributes of any deeply derived being are ever possibly complete, and further that being such, they cannot ever suitably map exactly to the whole being itself, which stands as itself being its very form in and of itself entirely. So be it the cosmos, Guy, Eric, or North America, the real thing is never fully comprehended esp by any language-bound set of attributions which we might see as a code.

In just this way I see no distinction to be made between Logos (the word, the laws of nature) and Nature herself; that is, God is in itself Nature exactly, Nature being the embodiment of Logos (the laws of nature) just as I am the embodiment of my "code" as they'd assert. In this way, the preamble to John's gospel all falls into clarity. The full revelation of God, then, will only be demonstrated in the completion of the universe, whatever that means. Meanwhile, the full revelation of Jesus has been demonstrated in the completion of his life. And the full revelation of me will be in the completion of my life.

Some might say that Jesus lives on now. Well it's undeniable his life has taken on a legacy of literally epic proportions. But if we are to consider one's legacy as part of oneself, which is fair to do from a certain point of view, then we all live forever in our legacies, and the story of Guy will not itself be complete until long after my temporal life has ended.

The thing about the Christian story is that it is self-obviating. If Jesus completes his job and fully redeems a person, that person no longer needs a redeemer. To remain Christian one must either grab onto and ever more loudly engage in "backsliding" for the sake of being continually in need of a savior, or one must instead move beyond the savior, with all thanks if one must, and begin actually living as a redeemed person. Relative to the Christian story, I am obviously of the latter persuasion just as many Christians I meet appear to be of the former. Anyway, the Christian story includes a special clause in order to attempt to keep itself relevant post-salvation: A time-lock which works by asserting that redemption cannot be complete but in death and/or the second coming of Christ. By this plot device, Christians can then assert that they must always be a work in progress no matter how redeemed they are. Doing so also means therefore that Christ cannot get his work done as regards one person within that person's temporal lifetime, even though Jesus himself was the first example "among many" as he put it. I mean, the question here is: Just when will God "remember their sin no more" as in the verse from Jeremiah?