Saints and Society

Everyone knows the best place to find a wife is at church. And if you want to supercharge your dating life, you’ve gotta find one with a singles ministry. After all, why else would a singles ministry exist?I remember being young and unmarried. I had no purpose in life. Nothing driving me upward towards a higher goal. Yes, I was carefree, but I was also aimless. That all changed when an older woman in my church pinched my cheek and said, “Bless your heart, when are you gonna get married?” She was right. I was getting old.That one moment changed everything. I immediately begin preparing myself for my mate. I started exercising. I tried talking to girls. I even memorized 1 Corinthians 13.Unfortunately, at fourteen, I was too young to join our church’s singles group. I might have found a wife sooner if I had. But no worries, when all else fails, there was always Bible College. Bible College is the Christian version of Tinder Platinum minus the premarital sex. Usually.Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for regular articles in your inbox.Why can’t we stop harassing the singles?Now, I’m not saying there aren’t many singles that need some holy prodding. I am a strong advocate of marriage and generally think most people should work hard, marry young, have lots of babies, and live an ordinary life to the glory of God and the well-being of their souls. But, on the whole, our posture towards singles needs some serious reframing.To be fair, you singles don’t have the best representatives. You know Carl. Carl wears a fedora. He has a neckbeard that extends down to his belly button, like an unkept grassy airstrip in the middle of the Amazon. The only time he ever has an interaction with the other sex is when he pauses his World of Warcraft quest to yell at his mom for more cheeseballs. Carl would never do the extra work to make himself more attractive to the opposite sex. How about Alexa? She’s a boss babe who hustles more than a squeegee-Latino during rush hour. She’s looking to influence the world, build her brand, and provide herself stability before she ever considers a family. But one look at her designer clothes and Louis Vuitton bag lets you know that influence, brand, and stability are her euphemisms for power, fame, and fortune.Or consider Jack and Jill. There is so much sexual tension between them, but it would never work out because Jill is a feminist who hates men yet still sleeps with a different one every few weeks, while Jack believes the socioeconomic framework of marriage unjustly benefits women and should therefore be abolished in favor of a harem-style arrangement that benefits Jack. Jack and Jill are weird. Don’t be like Jack or Jill. You might break your crown and tumble off a hill.No, this article is not about those singles. It’s about the good ones. Those singles who love Christ and serve quietly. They bear their loneliness without turning it into some sort of public cross. And yet, the Church often treats these beautiful souls as secondary citizens, as if they are leftover Ikea furniture no one ever got around to assembling.Singleness is not a waiting room for those poor, unfortunate souls eager for their name to be called. No, singleness is the ultimate state of all Christians.Nor is singleness a product of the fall. But, let’s not pretend that loneliness is God’s intention for the final state, “It is not good that man should be alone.” God gave Eve to Adam. Marriage is good, true, and beautiful. Eve is the answer to Adam’s solitude. Marriage is honorable. But loneliness is not the same as singleness. We must hold Scripture in balance with itself. Christ refers to the goodness of a singleness that is purposed towards the kingdom, “There are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.”Nor is Christ the only one who speaks about the benefits of a singleness that is focused on God. St. Paul also writes,“I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband.”— 1 Corinthians 7:32-34St. Paul is not anti-marriage. He is saying that Christ’s coming has radically transformed our present age. The kingdom of God has entered the world, and in anticipation of that kingdom, a singleness that is focused on pursuing God is better than marriage insofar as it allows an undivided devotion to the Lord.Marriage was God’s first answer to loneliness. Then Jesus came, God with us. When we see God, we will no longer be lonely. In the resurrection, marriage is not abolished because love dies. Rather, marriage fades as loneliness dies. Something greater than marriage is already here and will be finally consummated when Christ comes again to receive his bride, when all will be single yet lonely no more.“For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.”— Matthew 22:30The single is a reminder of our ultimate state, in which we will be satisfied with no one other than God alone. It is not good that man should be alone, so God gave us himself. When we stand before God, there will be no more marriage, for we will no longer be alone. Singleness is a remembrance, yes, in its frequent solitude, to a time before marriage. But it is also a sign, a reminder of what is to come, when we shall be so wholly satisfied with God that no other will do. A single man or woman living their life fully devoted to God, longing to fill their loneliness with the presence of their Savior, is an immense gift to the Church that a married couple, with all their unique riches, cannot provide. The Church should treat faithful singles with dignity, not as unfinished Christians we should foist up to the altar. They are performing a ministry that the married cannot. The married display Christ’s covenant love for his bride. The faithful single displays the age to come when God will be all in all.“Virginity has brought from heaven that which it may imitate on earth. And not unfittingly has she sought her manner of life from heaven, who has found for herself a Spouse in heaven. She, passing beyond the clouds, air, angels, and stars, has found the Word of God in the very bosom of the Father, and has drawn Him into herself with her whole heart. For who having found so great a Good would forsake it?… And indeed what I have said is not my own, since they who marry not nor are given in marriage are as the angels in heaven. Let us not, then, be surprised if they are compared to the angels who are joined to the Lord of angels. Who, then, can deny that this mode of life has its source in heaven…”— St. Ambrose of Milan This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.saintsandsociety.com

Were Adam and Eve unsatisfied in the Garden of Eden? Even a little? If not, how were they tempted?Temptation is the enticement to seize unsatisfied desires by disobedience rather than through faith. Now, there are good desires, and there are bad ones. Those good desires are good in that they are ordered according to God’s nature and ours as his images. Those bad desires are bad in that they are discordant with God’s nature and thus our own. As a result of the fall, we struggle with bad desires, otherwise called concupiscence.But that does not mean that Adam or Eve did not have desires before the fall; they were just not concupiscent ones. And yet, to be tempted, even by good desires, means that there were good desires left unfulfilled for Adam and Eve. In some real way, Eden was incomplete and, though mostly satisfying, even in some small way unsatisfying. Otherwise, Satan would not have been able to deceive Eve with the promises of the forbidden fruit. After all, the best possible life is one in which you know you are living the best possible life, or else you would not be wholly satisfied.Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for regular articles in your inbox.There is a major hint of Eden’s incompleteness written into the creation story. God had just breathed life into Adam and set him about tending the garden. He tells Adam to avoid the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And then, God says something that should cause the reader a moment of reflection, “It is not good…” Up until now, everything had only been declared good. Nor had sin yet invaded the cosmos. How then could there be something “not good” in the perfect world God had created?Simply put, Eden was imperfect.That there was a “not good” before the fall of man indicates a lack of perfection even before sin had entered the world. To be clear, “not good” does not always mean evil. Evil is one sort of not-goodness, but there is also another sort. An artisan weaving a tapestry on her loom would not call a half-finished piece “bad.” Yet she would not call it complete either. However, if she found a hole or rot in some completed portion of the piece, she wouldn’t merely call it incomplete, but also “bad.”Eden was good, but incompletely so. There was no rot or stain, and yet, neither Eden nor man was as good as God planned for them to ultimately be. In this sense, Eden was “not good.” There was still more work to be done to complete creation, especially the creation of man, the cardinal member of the garden.And what exactly was “not good”? It was not good that man should be alone. But did God not walk among man in the garden? And yet, God still declares that man was alone. Why was man created in such a way to be left unsatisfied with the Edenic presence of God? How could the first man stand before God and yet remain lonely?Man’s first deficiency is not sin, but loneliness. And it is a purposeful deficiency ordained by God toward an ordered end. Our ultimate hope is that God will not leave this deficiency, or our loneliness, deficient.God would provide Adam with an other to aid in the fulfillment of this deficiency. Indeed, marriage was more satisfying for Adam than the alternative because Eve was “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” Though previously, Adam was in the presence of God, God is not a man. God is not bone of my bones, nor flesh of my flesh. God now gives his grace to Adam in a manner fitting his bodily constitution, as God created man to receive it.We may assume that the creation of the woman and the couple’s subsequent union completed Eden and resolved man’s loneliness, but that would be assuming too much too quickly. After all, Adam fell after the creation of Eve, not before. Marriage, with its abundant blessings, was better than the prior arrangement, yet still insufficient to fully satisfy the inner longing of man for the other.When God gave Eve to Adam, and when, through loving her, Adam’s satisfaction was magnified, his pleasure was only real because Eve reflected those aspects of God of which Adam, in his person, both lacked and desired. And Eve also consisted of that which God created Adam to so desire but which God himself lacked, namely, a fleshly body after his own kind. The same can be said of Eve’s natural longing for the bodily Adam.Only God is ultimately satisfying because God is satisfaction itself, yet man cannot understand this satisfaction unless it be through bodily means. Eve, an image of God, is quite satisfying to Adam but not ultimately so because she is not God, yet she is fleshly unlike God and can thus communicate the satisfaction found ultimately in God more fully to Adam. Adam or Eve would never be ultimately satisfying to the other, for neither were God fully, but images, created to reflect, worship, and enjoy God. The enjoyment they had in each other was real, but not maximal. A light may be reflected in a mirror, and yet the mirror will always be lacking the full splendor of the original light. Thus, man sinned. They were not forced to sin, and indeed, they could have chosen against it. But the possibility of their sin is only explained in their lack of total satisfaction in the gift of each other, given to them by God. Further, while God intended that gift to be temporally satisfying, he never intended the gift of the other to be fully satisfying in and of itself. “For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.”— Matthew 22:30Heaven differs from Eden in this fundamental way: we will be completely satisfied with God. And only when we are completely satisfied with God can it be said that God has completed his creative work in us. We shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.We will see God, and seeing God will be enough. This is the beatific vision.The nagging discontent is always present. The truth—I know I am missing something. I am incomplete. Every moment of happiness is tinged with sorrow. Every smile hides a tear. I am not enough.I hunger, and I thirst, and am never full. I leave my marriage bed only to battle lust yet again. I stare into the innocent eyes of my children as I rock them in my arms and blink—they have grown. I work and work to build a future I will never fully enjoy, and for my reward, I barely have enough to live. I read and learn and am rewarded with sorrow. It is never enough. In response, Christ tells me to partake of himself, and I will be satisfied. So I drank of the living water and only grew more discontent. I have had a part of heaven and will not be satisfied until I have had the whole. I’ve learned that a taste of the living water does not immediately quench my thirst. It only makes me more discontent about that which truly matters most. If anything, it leaves me more parched, longing even more for the celestial rain. My thirst becomes an all-encompassing motivation—that I may gain Christ!He promises untold rewards and riches. That is not enough.He promises victory and status in his kingdom. That is not enough.He promises vindication after the dark night of this life. That is not enough.If I gain heaven, it would not be enough. For what is heaven without the light?All these gifts of God are vanity if God does not give himself to me. Christ is not the means of salvation. He is very salvation of very salvation. He is not another means to an end. He is the end of all things. He is enough. Take the world, take the heavens themselves, but give me Jesus.We will see his face, and his name will be on our foreheads. And we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. As he truly is. This is the beatific vision. The end of our dissatisfaction. The end of our sin. The end of our loneliness. Fully man as God intended us to be, forever gazing into the face of God, the beginning and end of all things.How is heaven better than Eden?Man was not finally satisfied with the Edenic presen… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.saintsandsociety.com

In The Relevance of the Stars, Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete recounts a story about Msgr. Luigi Giussani, which strikes at the heart of the modern sexual crisis,One day, Giussani was walking around looking for a parking space, and he came upon two people making out in a car. He suddenly appeared in his cassock and said, “Hello.” Well, you can imagine! When they saw him, he said, “I hate to interrupt; I just have one question to ask you: What you’re doing now, what does it have to do with the stars?”“How absurd?” we might think. It seems a little pretentious, doesn’t it? These priests, bound by their vows to live in celibacy, posturing about how procreation relates to the cosmos! Sex is just…sex, isn’t it?To our modern ears, Giussani sounds awkward, even intrusive. But his question is worth pondering precisely because we have reduced the sexual experience to a mere appetite. He asks whether sex means far more than we are willing to admit.Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for regular articles in your inbox.But we have made sex small.We have made sexual gratification private.We have disconnected it from wonder. We have detached sex from covenant, fruitfulness, and the soul’s upward movement into the heavens.First, we degrade sex into something merely pleasurable. Then it becomes recreational rather than holy. Finally, it becomes utilitarian rather than transcendental. In its utility, the object of sex, the body, becomes a thing to consume rather than a person to cherish. Degradation becomes a kink. The obsession. The fetish. That overwhelming curiosity that promises ultimate fulfillment, but when gained, only drives the soul deeper into lust. Rather than leaving the sexual experience with a smile, the end thereof is guilt and shame.“It’s just sex.”“No strings attached.”“As long as we both agree, that’s all that matters.”“Porn? Everyone does it.”Our culture speaks of sex only in the language of appetite and consent. We have so over-therapized sexuality that it has lost its meaning and glory. It has become nothing more than what “I” think of it. And has this understanding of sexuality truly left people feeling liberated and happy?All the while, we scoff at “romantics” like Giussani while we roll around in the gutter of modern sexuality, flailing in our discomfort. If we deeply considered Giussani’s words, we would have to deal with an uncomfortable truth: that sex means more than we dare admit and that our culture fails to realize an ounce of its potential beauty. There must be more.What does sex have to do with the stars?Some of the Ancients, especially the Platonists, would have agreed with Giussani that sexual love (eros) should reach beyond pleasure to contemplate the transcendental. Plato defends eros in the Symposium as a first step towards discovering divine beauty,“[H]uman nature can find no better workmate for acquiring [the divine Beauty] than Love. That’s why I say that every man must honor Love, why I honor the rites of Love myself and practice them with special diligence, and why I commend them to others. Now and always I praise the power and courage of Love so far as I am able. Consider this speech, then, Phaedrus, if you wish, a speech in praise of Love.”To Plato, eros is the first step on a stairway to that ultimate Beauty—divine, pure, and eternal. The erotic love for another, to Plato, is a recognition of that person’s beauty. As he indulges in that beauty, he discovers something yet more beautiful: the person’s soul. And in his love for the soul and for the sake of that beauty, he learns beautiful things, beautiful customs, and lessons. And as he continues deeper into this upward spiral of beauty, he finds Beauty itself, that to which eros ultimately points, what Christians would call God. That’s why sex, even disordered sex, bears unwilling witness to God because it longs for beauty and union, however distorted those desires may be. But in such cases when desire is twisted by selfishness, the enjoyment of beauty is profaned. That is why “no strings attached” or the term “casual sex” are false. All sex is serious. All sex is bound by transcendental chains.This is also why sex that only sees pleasure as its end is also misguided. The gratification of sexual desire as an end in itself neglects the beauty of the other. It bypasses virtue and sees in the other only a resource to be consumed. Plutarch notes,For love that is bred in a young and truly generous heart, by means of friendship, terminates in virtue.On the other hand, Plutarch recounts Aristippus’ reply to someone who tried to cure him of his infatuation. After being told that she did not love him, Aristippus answered,Pure wine or good fish do not love me either, and yet I willingly enjoy both. For the end of desire is pleasure and enjoyment.Plutarch continues,But love, having once lost the hopes of friendship, will neither tarry, nor cherish for beauty’s sake that which is irksome, though never so gaudy in the flower of youth, if it bring not forth the fruit of a disposition propense to friendship and virtue.”What the Pagans sought in the dark, Christianity brought to the lightWhile the ancient philosophers made many mistakes as they stumbled toward the truth, they did grasp something real about eros and beauty, though only dimly. Christianity brought to light what they could only stumble towards in the dark.For the Church, love is not merely an emotion or appetite, and though it can include eros, it extends far beyond sexual longing. Nor is love a useful tool. It is not a means of utility. No, love is the telos of all reality, “God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” Or as St. Clement of Rome wrote,The binding power of the love of God—who is able to set it forth? The radiance of His beauty—who can voice it to satisfaction? The sublimity to which love leads up is unutterable. Love unites us with God…. Apart from love nothing is pleasing to God…. Because of the love which He felt for us, Jesus Christ Our Lord gave His Blood for us by the will of God, His body for our bodies, and His soul for our souls.How easy it is for us, in our sinful concupiscence, to worship the creation over the Creator! To see the beauty of the other, to well up with forceful desire, and to forget that the one standing before us is made in the image of God. We rob the beauty for ourselves, rather than see in the other God himself, the ultimate fulfillment of all our desires. Our ultimate pleasure can only be found in him and him alone. Late have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new,late have I loved you!Lo, you were within,but I outside, seeking there for you,and upon the shapely things you have made I rushed headlong,I, misshapen.You were with me, but I was not with you.They held me back far from you,those things which would have no beingwere they not in you.You called, shouted, broke through my deafness;you flared, blazed, banished my blindness;you lavished your fragrance, I gasped, and now I pant for you;I tasted you, and I hunger and thirst;you touched me, and I burned for your peace.— St. AugustineCan our God, who created us, not please us? Is he not the one who has made us male and female? Did not God tell us to be fruitful and multiply? Did he not command us to “rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love.”? Was it not the lover of God’s anointed king who wrote, “My beloved has gone down to his garden to the beds of spices, to graze in the gardens and to gather lilies. I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine; he grazes among the lilies.”?True pleasure is found in God alone. We can experience that pleasure in this world when we see God through his creation, rather than his creation as the ultimate good. Sex is beautiful because in it, we can experience the mystery of God’s love. … This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.saintsandsociety.com

The period between Good Friday and Easter is often forgotten, yet it has a special impact on the story of Christianity. What is the Harrowing of Hell? What is this doctrine that has been affirmed in various forms across Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and some Protestant traditions?The Harrowing of Hell is a doctrine that is often overshadowed by both the death and resurrection of Christ, which is unfortunate. A basic understanding of Christ’s ministry in the underworld only serves to magnify his death and resurrection. The doctrine is drawn from several New Testament passages and confessed in the Apostles’ Creed, “He descended to hades.”A Lutheran Confession, The Formula of Concord, states in Article IX,For it is sufficient that we know that Christ descended into hell, destroyed hell for all believers, and delivered them from the power of death and of the devil, from eternal condemnation and the jaws of hell.The Catechism of the Catholic Church further clarifies in paragraphs 636-637,By the expression “He descended into hell,” the Apostles’ Creed confesses that Jesus did really die and through his death for us conquered death and the devil “who has the power of death” (Heb 2:14). In his human soul united to his divine person, the dead Christ went down to the realm of the dead. He opened heaven’s gates for the just who had gone before him.Article III of the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles simply says,As Christ died for us, and was buried, so also is it to be believed, that he went down into Hell.It becomes necessary to define what “hell” means in both the creed and the doctrine. In the Apostles’ Creed, “hell” is translated from the Greek hades and means “the place of the dead” or “the abode of the departed.” Before Christ’s coming, hell did not always refer to a place of punishment. Many times, it referenced the realm of the dead, where the damned awaited judgment and the righteous awaited resurrection and eternal life.Therefore, while there are different views on the doctrine, generally, the Harrowing of Hell is the triumphant descent of Christ into the place of the dead to claim victory and take captive the forces of evil, and deliver believers past and present from the devil, death, and hell.That Greedy Leviathan!“The divine was hidden by the veil of our nature, in order that, as in the case of greedy fish, the hook of the divinity might be swallowed with the bait of the flesh, and thus when life came to dwell in death and light shone in the darkness, that which is understood as the opposite of light and life might be utterly destroyed.”–St. Gregory of NyssaOh, that greedy Leviathan, that gluttonous monster feasting on the souls of men! Not one of us could escape his maw. Each image of God a collection piece in his pantry. Satan the devourer. Satan the glutton. Satan the drowner of our souls. With a gulp, we were brought within his jaws down to the lowest hell as a man in the belly of the whale.So God himself came in the image of God. The fisherman made himself bait for us. That seven-headed dragon, that sea monster, deceived by his arrogance and unending hunger, envied the Christ for his collection of doomed souls. The Christ would be the prize of his collection. He must have the Christ-soul. In his hunger, he did not question why this Christ offered his flesh and blood as a meal so willingly.There is no hope in the belly of the whale, or we think there shouldn’t be. Yet, Jonah cries from the stomach of Leviathan, “I called out to the Lord, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.” Sheol is the Hebrew equivalent of hades. “But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord!”Jesus is the true Jonah, the prophet who would rob that greedy fish,An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth…behold, something greater than Jonah is here. –Matthew 12:39-41If Good Friday is the prophet sacrificing himself to save his fellow sailors, and Easter is his vomitous resurrection upon the Mediterranean shores, then the Harrowing of Hell is Jonah’s victorious prayer in the belly of the whale.Leviathan bit off more than he could chew. In death, Jesus plundered death. He saved all who believe in him from hell and took captive Satan and his forces. And if Christ has saved us from death and hell and has claimed a prisoner of every Satanic force, we have no need to fear the forces of hell.Think on our Christ. Very God of very God yet born of a virgin. God in the flesh. And in his deepest of loves, he offers himself to the poisonous bite of that sea serpent. And as Christ opens his eyes, Satan flinches. Next to Satan stands death. Now he bows as a footstool to the King of kings. And the iron chains that once enslaved the images of God now snap around every demonic neck.Hell itself cannot handle the presence of Christ. The grave vomits up Christ, but not Christ alone. The chains hold fast every demon to that accursed ground, but every believer emerges with Christ, an army of the dead-no-longer. “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ Son of man, can these bones live?”Yes. Yes. Yes! These bones do live again!The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many.–Matthew 27:52-53Death, who sought to swallow the God of the universe, is now swallowed up in victory! Death, where is your sting? Oh, grave, where is your victory? Christ has robbed your victory. And those souls whom you held fast have been stolen from your hellish collection.This is the significance of Holy Saturday, that there is no darkness into which Christ has not gone to save our souls. There is no prison he cannot open and no enemy he has not already put under his feet. Because he descended, the dead in Christ are not lost. Because he rose, the grave is no longer a mouth that devours but a door to eternal life for “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord.”And because Christ has conquered death, we do not sorrow as those who have no hope. Our Lord owns the keys of death and hell. He who conquered hell will not leave our souls in hell. “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his (Romans 6:5).” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.saintsandsociety.com

The world is slowly waking to the dangers tech poses to children. For many, the damage is done, and those responsible will be addressed too late.Last week was a bad week for the social media giant Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. On Tuesday, a New Mexico jury found that the company had knowingly misled the public about the dangers its platforms posed and had enabled harm to its users, including child sexual exploitation, and will incur civil penalties to the tune of $375m.“Meta executives knew their products harmed children, disregarded warnings from their own employees, and lied to the public about what they knew. Today, the jury joined families, educators, and child safety experts in saying enough is enough,” said Raúl Torrez, New Mexico’s attorney general.State attorneys presented compelling evidence that predators often use Meta’s messaging platform because its encryption helps to hide crucial evidence of their crimes. Further, several law enforcement agencies testified concerning deficiencies in Meta’s reporting of criminal behavior within text exchanges. Internal company records also documented that several employees and outside experts had warned the company about the risks posed by Meta's platforms to children.Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for regular articles in your inbox.Only one day later, Meta and YouTube were found liable on all charges in a landmark ruling concerning social media addiction. The jury awarded $3 million in damages to a 20-year-old California woman, Kaley, who alleged that the social media companies hooked her when she was a young child and fed her content that led to anxiety, body dysmorphia, and suicidal thoughts. TikTok and Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, were also named in the original complaint but settled for an undisclosed amount before the trial.In both cases, the social media giants have staunchly defended their innocence despite the overwhelming evidence against them. And yet, when questioned on Capitol Hill in 2024, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, had to apologize when confronted by the brutal facts of the harm his platforms have caused to children across the country.Meta and YouTube are not the only tech giants under legal scrutiny. Two weeks ago, three teenage girls, two of whom are minors, filed a lawsuit against Grok for using their pictures to generate and distribute child pornography. The pictures were then shared on a Discord server without their knowledge.These teenagers are not the only victims. According to the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a UK nonprofit focused on making the internet safer, Grok has generated approximately 3 million sexualized images, including 23,000 that appear to depict children. Sexualized images of children uncovered by the study included:* “A selfie uploaded by a schoolgirl was undressed by Grok, turning a ‘before school selfie’ into an image of her in a bikini. As of January 15th this post was still live on X.* An image of six young girls wearing micro bikinis, generated by Grok. As of January 15th, this image was still publicly available on X.* Four images depicting child actors.”While the CCDH study could not always determine whether the images were generated from photos of real people, broader studies of AI image generators have found that they often are. Major nudify websites, those that turn images of real people into pornographic material, draw roughly 18.5 to 21 million monthly visits while similar mobile apps have received over 705 million downloads with an estimated $117 million in revenue.Perhaps more alarming is that children are not only the victims of this technological leap forward, but have also been made instruments of its abuse. Many adolescents now frequently use such websites and apps. A study published earlier this month in PLoS surveyed 557 English-speaking individuals aged 13-17 and found that 55% of participants had created at least one image using nudification tools, and 54.4% had received at least one image using nudification tools. 36.3% of respondents reported having had a non-consensual image created, and 33.2% had at least one such image shared without their permission.Nor are the problems caused by social media, AI, and other technologies confined to the United States. Poland plans to ban phone use in the classroom for children under 16. In the UK, Ofcom, the government’s communications regulator, has urged social media and gaming companies such as Meta, Snap, and Roblox to enforce the age restrictions already in their policies and adopt modern age-verification tools to keep children under 13 off their platforms. And Australia has gone further, banning social media for all children under 16, yet one-fifth of minors still use prohibited apps. Tech giants have shown little incentive and even less willpower to enforce their own age restrictions.Indeed, even tech CEOs are now recognizing the issue. In support of the Australian restrictions and the need for some form of legal protection in the United States, Pinterest CEO Bill Ready wrote in a recent Time article,"Children today are living through the largest social experiment in history. For years, kids around the world have been given unfiltered access to social media platforms. The companies building these platforms gave insufficient forethought about the consequences, the worst of which include exposing them to unknown strangers and fueling screen addictions. This social experiment has been conducted at scale, and thus, the results are now painfully clear: rising anxiety and depression, eroding concentration, and classrooms competing for attention…. The cost of inaction is a generation of young people overwhelmed by anxiety and depression."The tech industry has become a modern slave trader, and our children are its most valuable assets. Like slavers throughout history, it captures, trains, exploits, and profits from human beings. Nor is this some fringe misuse. These platforms are built to draw children in systematically and feed on their attention and innocence. Only when regulators force their hand do they yield any ground.These tech giants twist everything that makes childhood beautiful into a tool for enslavement. They use children’s imagination, desires, attention, and vulnerability to bind them to the platform, extracting every last dollar through data collection, advertisements, partnerships, and premium downloadable content. And both governments and parents are letting it happen.The child becomes a product, sold by the adults she knows to those she does not. Her presence generates engagement. Her innocence generates data. Her loneliness and insecurity generate dependence. Her image can be sexualized and circulated without her knowledge. Her vulnerability is not guarded as something sacred, but exploited as something profitable. The platform is a plantation; our children are both the slaves and the crop.This is not merely a failed business plan or misguided corporate ethics, but a violation of the image of God in children. The Church stands resolute against the commodification of God’s image. To commodify a child’s body and soul is a sin of a different magnitude altogether. It would be better for a millstone to be tied around one’s neck than to face the judgment God has prepared for those who defile his little ones.St. Gregory of Nyssa, a fourth-century Church Father, reminds us that slavery stands against God’s perfect plan. Whether slavery physically shackles the body or chains the soul, the commodification of humanity is a sin against God himself who made man in his image,"Tell me what sort of price you paid [for your slave]. What did you find in creation with a value corresponding to the nature of your purchase? What price did you put on rationality? For how many obols did you value the image of God? For how many coins did you sell this nature formed by God?God said: “Let us make human beings in our own image and likeness” (Gen 1.26). When we are talking about one who is in the image of God, who has dominion over the whole earth and who has been granted by God authority over everything on the earth, tell me, who is the seller and who the buyer? Only God has this kind of power, or, one might almost say, not even God. For scripture says that the gifts of God are irrevocable (Romans 11.29).God would not make a slave of humankind. It was God who, through his own will, called us back to freedom when we were slaves of sin. If God does not enslave a free person, then who would consider their own authority higher than God’s?"St. Gregory saw clearly what modern CEOs and angel investors refuse to see: to treat a child as a product is not merely a social evil, but an offense against God’s just order. The child is not raw material for a platform. She is not a data point to be extracted or a target market to be exploited. And she is not a body to be manipulated and passed around online. She is made in the image of God.That is why this fight cannot be left to lawsuits and regulators alone. Parents must regain the courage to say no to the tech giants, and to say no to their children for the sake of their happiness and safety. Christians, too, must boldly proclaim that any industry built on the monetization of children must be resisted.The world is slowly learning. But, for some of these little ones, it is already too late. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.saintsandsociety.com

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA – Scientists have trained living human neurons to play Doom, a popular 90s video game where players control an unnamed marine fighting hordes of demons and the undead. Cortical Labs accomplished the feat by creating a device called the CL1, which contains a microchip with approximately 200,000 living human neurons to power its computing capabilities.The neurons receive game information via electrical stimulation and transmit responses that a program interprets as actions within the game. They can send commands to move their character, find enemies, shoot, spin, and even explore the virtual landscape for clues to advance to further stages of the game.To enable programmers to send and receive information from human cells, the lab had to translate the world of Doom into the “biological language of neurons,” namely, electricity. David Hogan, Chief Technology Officer of Cortical Labs, explained how the CL1 can process a programmer’s code and interact with cells via electrical stimulation,When a demon appears on the left of the screen, specific electrodes stimulate the sensory area of the neural culture on the left side. The neurons react to that stimulation. We then listen to their response, the spikes, and interpret that activity as motor commands. If the neurons fire in a specific pattern, the doom guy shoots. If they fire in another pattern, he moves right, and so on.To Cortical Labs, the possibilities are endless for this new form of “wetware.” They claim that the CL1 uses “a fraction of the energy other technologies use,” with estimates suggesting that a 30-unit server rack consumes only 850-1,000 watts. Compare that to current computing technologies, which drain megawatts.One can imagine a world where AI corporations no longer need gigantic warehouses to store their servers and dedicated power grids to run them, and instead, run smaller, exponentially more efficient operations on living human tissue, saving countless dollars in the development of new technology. These savings could, in turn, significantly accelerate AI development and raise its energy consumption ceiling at a time when experts are concerned that AI may plateau due to energy demands. The company is already seeking to capitalize on its breakthrough. The CL1 can be bought, ready to plug-and-play, for $35,000. But if someone is unable to afford the price tag of buying one of the biological computers outright and still wants to get in on the new tech, Cortical Labs offers a cloud-based service at $300/week per machine.But using living human neurons to power computers raises serious ethical concerns. And it forces Christians to deal with significant theological questions. This advancement by Cortical Labs demands that Christians be ready to provide an answer to the following questions:* Is it possible for biological matter to experience human consciousness apart from a body or soul?* If human neurons can power computers, is AI still artificial?* Is it ethical to commoditize human biological matter?What does it even mean to be human?The human body and the unity of its parts are true expressions of the person. Man is not merely a soul with a body, but a composite of body and soul. Our souls love, think, desire, and feel, yes, but not apart from our bodies, but in an entwined togetherness, a sacramental union between spiritual and material in which true mystical grace is communicated through our physical bodies. Therefore, no “part” of the body is a mere part. To remove a member from the body does not merely hurt that member, but the whole body and soul. If it were possible to separate the soul and cast away the “lesser part,” we would intuitively recognize the loss as horrific, both to our inner and outer being. But we forget that our bodies, just as our souls, are true aspects of our identity as embodied images of God.Our flesh is an essential aspect of our identity. Our bodies are temples meant to be the dwelling places of God. As such, our flesh is sacred, set apart for God’s holy use. You are not your own. You are bought with a price.No doubt, when a member is separated from our bodies, that part is no longer considered a full human person in that it has been removed from its body and soul, but that does not mean it is not human. And whatever is human should be treated with greater dignity than what is not, considering its holy origin. We instinctively know this to be true. No one but the morally hardened or mentally infirm would treat a severed limb as he would a piece of plastic, metal, or wood.Human consciousness, then, must derive from both body and soul, for the human is body and soul. Humans know themselves, others, and the world by means of who they are, namely, through their body and soul. Therefore, apart from that human body and soul, any existing consciousness is not true human consciousness, but a pale image of the human form.If these scientists were able to train these human neurons to follow the ancient Delphic maxim, “Know thyself,” the neurons would discover themselves to be less than fully human. And if they ever became conscious in any sense, they would find the experience decidedly inhuman, not because of a difference in kind, but because of an overwhelming lack of fullness.Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for a new article in your inbox semi-regularly.Human consciousness is not bare computation but the human experience in all its fullness. How does it feel to smell a flower? Or to gaze at the moon on a summer night? My eyes shifting in anticipation as I prepare to surprise my son with a gift. My heart racing as I embrace the woman I love. Can these machines, yes, made with human matter but without a body or soul, ever have the capacity to understand for themselves what it means to lose a child, to hold her in your hands, to dig a grave, tears dripping onto the ground, knowing that for the rest of your life you will be a different person, forever changed by that one moment?No, the CL1 and other such projects can never be conscious in any fully human definition of the word. Yes, their intelligence is still artificial, even if it is also biological. Our flesh is holy.St. Cyril of Jerusalem wrote his Catechetical Lectures around 350 AD to help catechumens prepare for baptism. In Lecture XII, St. Cyril defends the Incarnation of Christ. Responding to gnostic arguments, St. Cyril notes that our bodies, and therefore the flesh of Christ, were holy by virtue of their creation by God. God does not create anything evil. Therefore, our flesh and every one of its cells, tissues, organs, and yes, even neurons, were created holy,There is nothing corrupt in man’s frame unless he defiles it with adulteries and wantonness. He who formed Adam formed Eve also; and both male and female were fashioned by the Divine hands. None of the members of the body as fashioned from the beginning is corrupt. Let all heretics be silent who slander their bodies, or rather Him who formed them.But St. Cyril recognizes that we have corrupted our flesh. In fact, we have so corrupted our bodies that we cannot save our bodies from this corruption. We are sick patients in need of a Physician to gird himself with a linen and wash away our infirmities. We are orphaned children in need of a Teacher to instruct us in our foolishness. We are hungry beggars in need of the Bread of Life to fill our heavenly desires. The prophets recognized that men were unable to save themselves and begged God, “Bow your heavens, O Lord, and come down!” (Ps. 144:5).And in our corrupt flesh, we made idols of our own bodies. We worshipped wood, clay, and metal gods made in our own image. We worshipped gods of our own likeness through the degradation of our bodies in adultery, pornography, homosexuality, and other sexual deviancies. And we created a tower of Babel in our own honor, a technological marvel crafted by our own brain matter, by … This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.saintsandsociety.com

“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” –Matthew 4:1Original solitudeAdam gave names to all the cattle and to every bird, to all the animals and to every living creature. But for Adam, there was no companion. It is not good for a man to be alone. Solitude is described as “not good.” God, ultimately wanting to solve the problem of solitude by uniting man with himself, creates an excellent solution for the solitude of man that reflects God’s eternal love: Marriage.But marriage was never meant to be the final solution to solve our loneliness. Instead, marriage foreshadows a greater relationship we will have someday with Christ. And marriage isn’t enough to fulfill the desires of humanity. Even as good as it is, and even though their marriage satisfied much of their loneliness, it wasn’t enough to completely satisfy their solitude, or, for that matter, all of their desires.Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for a new article in your inbox semi-regularly.Why else would Satan tempt Eve, “If you eat of this fruit, you shall become like gods”? Every man is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desire and enticed. And when that wrong desire has conceived, it brings forth sin. And when sin has run its course, it brings death.Adam and Eve had it all backwards. What did the serpent say? “Eat this fruit, and you shall become like God!” A lie, of course. They could not do anything themselves to become any more like God. God had made them wonderfully complete in his image. No, they were not to become more like God by their own doing.Instead, God would become like them. And in becoming man, God would make man even more like God because when God becomes man, the nature of man is elevated. It was always God’s plan to become man. The incarnation, God becoming man, Jesus in the manger with a fleshly body, was never merely a result of the fall, some plan B. Marriage was the picture of something better to come, an ultimate end to our loneliness. That end where Christ, in the flesh, is standing before us, his bride, full of pleasure at the sight of us. The end, when we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. When the dwelling place of God is with man, when God shall be with us, and he shall be our God, the Lamb as was slain for us.But until then, we struggle with the same loneliness that Adam did. Single or married, we are all at times lonely in our own thoughts. Sometimes we are even lonely together. And our sin further exasperates this solitude. And we cry. We mourn. We struggle. We ask God, “Why?” Why is life so lonely?Life is lonely, so we might desire God. So that we might long for the union of our souls with his, as a bride longs for her wedding. Life is lonely because God made us to be with him, and when we are not, we are broken. We can only be whole when we are with God. As St. Augustine said, “Our hearts are restless until we find our rest in God!” In this way, our restlessness points us to seek an ultimate end to our loneliness: God himself.The temptation of ChristLook at Christ. The God-man who put on the veil of our flesh and stepped into our brokenness. Not only does he experience the everyday struggles we face, but he also meets us in our loneliness. Christ, the one who will ultimately fulfill our longing hearts, also becomes lonely for our sakes.Notice here, then, that when you are lonely, you do not sin. No, but because our Christ was lonely, we can have confidence that our loneliness does not affect our purity. In fact, it was the Spirit of God who drew Christ into the lonely wilderness:“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.” –Matthew 4:1-2The Holy Spirit led Christ into loneliness. The Holy Spirit brought him into hunger. The Holy Spirit guided Christ to the place where Satan would tempt him.Christ, recently baptized, accepting the honor of the Father, “This is my Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,” is immediately brought by the Holy Spirit, the very dove who lighted upon him, into the desert to be hungry, alone, and tempted.And here is a crucial point for you to consider. The burdens, the temptations of Christ, the hunger, and the pain were not signs of the Father’s dissatisfaction with the Son, but of his approval. Therefore, we cannot assume that when we are hungry, broken, alone, and facing Satan, God is distant from us.Rather, it is in those moments when God is often nearest, when he is stoking our desire to be near him as well. To long for him, to desire him, to seek him with all our being that he may be found and that we may evermore be pleased with him above any happiness we have ever felt or longed for. Longing for us to draw near him in faith and love. To say with the woman looking for her beloved when she finally found him,“I held him and would not let go. My beloved is mine, and I am his.” –Song of Solomon 2:16; 3:4Like the psalmist who cries out to God,“As the hart panteth after the water brooks, So panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: When shall I come and appear before God?” –Psalm 42:1–2The temptation of Christ, like all true temptation, is all about one thing: love. You will desire what you love. You may love many things, but that which you love the most will overrule all lesser desires.So that when we sin and confess our sins, we are confessing primarily that we have not loved God in the way we ought. What does King David say in his wonderful Psalm of confession?“For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.” –Psalm 51:3–4But this is a prayer that Christ will never pray, because the love Christ has for his Father is perfect. The love that Christ has for you, his neighbor, is perfect. See how Christ responds to temptation. Observe his love. His ultimate desire is revealed in his loneliness, revealed in the absence of the object of his desire, all while Satan tempts Jesus the first time, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” –Matthew 4:3By bread alone? No.As in the Garden of Eden, when Satan tempted Eve with the fruit, Satan began with one of our most basic bodily desires: hunger. Adam and Eve, who had had their fill of the Edenic harvest, were tempted with a fruit. Christ, who had fasted for forty days and nights, now hungered, and Satan tempted him with bread. Yet, unknown to Satan, Christ, though he had fasted for forty days from earthly food, had feasted for forty days on the banquet of heaven. He had dined on angelic food. Yes, the love of God is the bread that angels eat. And though he hungered in the body, he responded,“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” –Matthew 4:4Like Job, Christ cried, “I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food!” –Job 23:12But our culture tests us too. And we often allow our fleshly lusts, our bodily desires, to obscure the love we have for God. We choose the measly bread of this world over the face of God. Our culture tries to fulfill our bodily desires in many ways. One bite too many at the restaurant. One lustful look in the middle of the night. Another puff. Another drink. Another toy. A bigger house. A better retirement.Many of these desires are not wrong. Indeed, God gave us bodies with legitimate desires. But how often we twist our bodily desires and elevate them above God’s ordered plan!Look to Christ! Look to him who sacrificed it all. Who counted his bodily desires as nothing in the face of God’s pleasure. He, who through his deepest of loves for God, was given the first of the resurrected bodies—that body which will never suffer with de… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.saintsandsociety.com

It is not wise to put a playroom on the top floor of a four-story apartment building, especially when it has ceiling windows that might as well be ladders to the roof. And we were just kids. Unsupervised kids. Bored unsupervised kids.We started by opening the window and scraping snow off the slanted roof to make snowballs to throw at each other. Soon, there was no more snow within reach. That’s how my ten-year-old self and my eight-year-old brother wound up standing on the roof of our building on an army base near Heidelberg, Germany.Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for regular articles in your inbox.Of course, as soon as we were on the roof, we just had to throw snowballs at some woman walking down below like a tiny ant under our almighty gaze. Ah, but she saw us! We were made. Quickly, we jumped through the window and ran back to our apartment, hoping she would never find out who we were or where we lived. Thankfully, she didn’t.I didn’t tell my mom about the escapade until years later. Still, even as an adult, if I had told her in person, she would have probably beaten me within an inch of my life. After all, she brought me into this world…The restlessness of boredom urges us towards God. It leads us to adventure, creativity, and the irresistible search for beauty.Boredom led me to chase hogs barefoot in a swampy Florida forest. Boredom led my brother and me to leave our home in Black Mountain, NC, for hours at a time to climb a nearby mountain without trails, again barefoot, to watch the sunset from the peak, and to find our way home in the near dark. Boredom led me to read many of the classics when my father kept us from school. They were free online and helped me make up for only having a fifth-grade education. Boredom led me to bike around town, pick cherries I wasn’t supposed to, and discover new places even my parents had no idea existed. Boredom led me to see how high I could climb that old cedar tree. I then sliced open my thumb with a pocket knife while working to cut a branch from that tree to make a bow. I have a scar today and still smile whenever I feel it. Boredom led me to make a dart gun out of a PVC pipe, wire coat hangers, and duct tape. I used it to peg lizards to the fence when we lived in Florida. Boredom led me into photography, and I began to see the beauty in every part of the world. Teenage me took pictures of everything, from wild bears to bumblebees to sunsets and flowers, all because I was bored. Boredom led me to the arts. I can still play simple tunes on the piano, and I taught myself to draw portraits; I used to be halfway decent!I hated boredom, yet boredom was one of my closest friends. I had the privilege of a childhood filled with boredom.Perhaps you had such a childhood?And then the machine came and stole our childhood. The algorithm declared, “No more boredom!” and we lunged for stimulation like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, our eyes pried open, not with clamps, but by our dread of silence. And with the loss of our boredom, we lost our sense of adventure, creativity, and connection.You can watch it in public: parents, fleeing boredom themselves, passing their tech gluttony on to their children. At a restaurant, that family will have no less than one device per person, and often more, their attention consumed by screens lest they have to deal with the boredom of an everyday family conversation. Never mind the fact that such boredom once urged families to do something together, to say something to each other and expect a response. No, little Johnny needs an iPad lest I have to exert any emotional effort. Sally is bored. She doesn’t need parents, she needs Roblox. Endless digital stimulation is like a self-indulgent, purposeless climax for the brain, release without meaning, appetite without satisfaction. Doomscrolling is as the sin of masturbation, and leaves a similar shameful aftertaste.Worse, we are guiding our children into this same effortless self-pleasure by our example because we won’t put down our own phones and be parents, much less adults. Given the choice, kids will pick the iPad, the TV, or the console every time. How do I know that? Because you’re an adult, and that’s what you pick. Can we expect children to be more mature than their parents?Bring back boredom.In play, we find God. No child plays to his fullest unless he is first bored. His boredom urges him to adventure, and in adventure, he entirely loses himself in the discovery of himself and in nature, the laws of the universe, and ultimately, God. The little girl explores her creativity and, over time, through skill and experience, finds that what she is grasping to create is nothing less than a portrait of the Almighty.All this is lost if there is no boredom. If there is no silence. If there is no nagging restlessness to do something with yourself. In our discomfort, we have traded the transcendental for trinkets and baubles. God has prepared a table for us, and the gluttons we are, we have chosen to dine on saccharine dainties instead of God’s satisfying wonders. But if we would deprive ourselves for but a moment of these passing whims, do you think God would allow us to gaze upon him in all his glory? Do you think he might give us the longing to play once again? Will our anxiety ever be satisfied if we do not first ponder our restlessness and sit quietly in it, altogether weighed down by boredom and silence, till, all at once, we have a revelation?Ah, to run through a forest? Yes! To climb mountains! To paint masterpieces, to read the classics, to play a melody on the piano over and over and over again until you hear the notes as words in your ears saying, “Well done, my child. Well done!” and pride so rises in your chest because you realize you have won! You have accomplished something meaningful that reflects the one who breathed you into existence.Go!Do something!Do anything!Even if it’s dangerous. Especially if it’s dangerous.And the next time your child says, “I’m boooooored,” don’t hand him an iPad. Take it as a compliment to your parenting and say, “Good. Be bored.” And you will have given him something far better than a passing whiff of a cheap perfume; you will have filled his nostrils with a longing for the sweet savor of God. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.saintsandsociety.com

“But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” –Romans 5:20God is a God of superabundance; some may even ignorantly accuse him of waste.He delights in the extra, or the useless, that which seemingly tends to no end but the delight of itself. He creates a lavish world intended for abundance, which we often mistake for messiness.Look at how man is created. The waste from our noses, mouths, sweat pores, dead skin, and other more earthy parts of our bodies. Our hair needs to be trimmed, our nails cut.This extends to all of creation. Trees must be sheared. Flowers must be pruned. Vines grow where they ought not to grow. Imagine counting every grain of sand, or every droplet of water. Such a task is far beyond the human mind's capabilities. Surely, there are countless stars and planets, as many as the grains of sand on the beach, with their own unique and beautiful abiotic miracles that man will never gaze upon, fragrances men will never enjoy, colors men will never see, siren songs men will never hear—all of these for his pleasure.Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for regular articles in your inbox.And look at the death of Christ. It is not merely that he died, which is already beyond any expectation we could rightly have. But examine the way he died. Yes, he must be whipped. He must have a crown of thorns placed upon his head. He must have his persecutors divide his robe. He must be nailed to a tree. He must thirst. He must give up the ghost. And he must ultimately be pierced by a spear.But must he die in this way? Yes. Because it is fitting. It fits his nature of love and opulence. It is a fitting fulfillment of Old Testament sacramentalism. It fits prophecy. But because God tells the story, because everything from eternity past to the cross and far beyond is God’s providential plan, it is God who predestined the passion of Christ, that it must happen as it did with all of its abundant messiness, to be the fitting introduction to his reign.He could have made a quick death fitting. A noose. A quick snap. Privately with less shame and suffering. And he could have made this sufficient had he predestined different Old Testament signs and prophecies so that the ones concerning the passion had never been written, but he did not. It must be apparent to us that such a quick and painless death would not be fitting according to his nature, wisdom, and love precisely because he did not choose to die in that way.Why? Because he is superabundant in all that he does. Surely, one drop of blood can wipe away the sins of all mankind when that drop of blood flows from the heart of God. And yet, Christ did not shed one mere drop of his sacred blood, the amount of which, if we possessed it, would be the most priceless gift we could enjoy. He spilled all of it. And he continually and forever calls us to drink of it in the eucharistic wine. His sacrifice is infinitely more abundant than our sin is sinful, so that our cup is constantly and eternally overflowing with his love, and the world becomes a reservoir of grace from the overflow, like a saucer waiting to catch tea. Except then even the saucer overflows, and our tea gushes all over the floor! So much grace, we don’t know what to do with all of it. So much grace, we wonder if there is even an “all of it.” Its use? None beyond itself. Love for love’s sake. God for God’s sake. An eternal testimony of itself, an ever-flowing fountain bursting forth with magnificent streams of God’s love, larger than any river, enough to embrace infinitely more than all the souls of the whole world in its overwhelming ocean. When his love pours on us, our sin is but a grain of sand in the face of a hurricane: atomically inconsequential.Ah, yes, let them call him a wasteful God; he takes pleasure in his waste.And for this cause, he does not here say ‘grace,’ but superabundance of grace. For it was not as much as we must have to do away the sin only, that we received of His grace, but even far more. For we were at once freed from punishment, and put off all iniquity, and were also born from above, and rose again with the old man buried, and were redeemed, sanctified, led up to adoption, made brothers of the Only-begotten, and of one Body with Him, and counted for His Flesh, and even as a Body with the Head, so were we united unto Him!–St. John Chrysostom This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.saintsandsociety.com

A man caught in the rain does not stay that way if he has any sense about him. No one enjoys the feeling of wet clothing sticking to his skin while the winds of the storm shiver him from without. Only children enjoy playing in the rain. No, he will seek shelter from the storm.And if he happens near a bridge, he will find under it a suitable refuge in which to patiently wait while the storm passes by. The man gets no wetter, not because the rain has ceased, but because he has changed his position in relation to the rain.Origen would subscribe (maybe?)…Ancient Christian answers for our culture’s most profound questions. Subscribe for regular articles in your inbox.He cannot act upon the storm in any real sense. He may leave the safety of the bridge and vainly try if he wishes, still, rain dancing will only leave him in a more discomfiting situation than before, and have as much effect on the rain as trying to nudge a mountain with his pinky finger. It is the rain’s prerogative, as if the rain had any intention, to act as it pleases. In this circumstance, it is only within the man’s ability to react or not react. The rain is the subject while the man is a mere object playing within the rain’s being.Of God, the Doctors have staunchly noted, there are no passions. And yet, the psalmists and prophets would charge God with anger, sadness, and comedic euphoria. Are the writers of Holy Scripture and the theologians of the Church at odds with one another? Some would claim so: That Scripture is clear, God reacts in passionate empathy to the circumstances and choices of men. Else, how can God rightly be called loving?I answer, He is like the rain. And contrary to the modern mind, which rejects impassibility as if it diminishes God’s love, I believe it alone provides a stable ground for our emotional life.“For God, being good, is the cause of all good, subject neither to envy nor to any passion. For envy is far removed from the Divine nature, which is both passionless and only good.”—St. John of DamascusRain cannot properly be called wet, for “wet” is an attribute water gives to other things. Rain is not itself a wet object, but water in motion as droplets falling from the sky, wetting all it pitters and patters upon. Rain isn’t a wet thing. Rather, it is that thing which makes everything else wet.Likewise, a man may say the bridge is dry to signify its protection from the rain, but he is not, in the strictest sense, talking about the bridge’s own condition. What matters is the dryness it creates in the midst of what would otherwise be wet. In truth, dryness is merely an absence of wetness. The bridge may be dry or dripping; that is not the point. Whether wet itself or not, beneath its span of wood or stone, it provides a measure of dryness. It is not simply a dry thing, but the thing that keeps those under it dry.To merely call God loving is an understatement of enormous proportions. God is Love. He is that One by whom all true love is known and expressed. We call Him loving only by analogy, because He is not one loving being among others but Love itself. He is like an eternal rain, soaking everything it touches, drenching all things with Himself.“Eternity is a perfect possession altogether of an endless life.”—BoethiusA man can only be said to be loving to the degree that God is in him and extends from him. God is love, or love belongs to His very being. Conversely, man’s love is derivative. Like the man made wet by the rain, he does not have the quality of wetness apart from something outside of him making him wet. The loving man does not create his own love but reflects the love poured on him by his Maker.All of our emotions are responses to our human perception, whether conscious or instinctual, to this flow of God’s love. Our emotions are reactions to how we perceive God’s affection, either directly from God or indirectly through the reflections of other images of God.Therefore, we also perceive these different emotions in God’s affection according to our circumstances. Yet this perception, while analogically true, is not ontologically so. In God Himself, there are no shifting moods. His anger is not a second feeling beside His love, but that same holy love encountered by the sinner as anger. His pleasure is that same love tasted by the righteous as God delighting in holiness. What we call His “sadness” is that same love’s settled and ardent opposition to the ruin of His creatures.Again, the change is not in the rain, but in the position of man in relation to the rain. His affection is not independent of His simplicity. He is one, unchanging, eternal, “without body, parts, or passions.” The one simple divine affection is experienced diversely by creatures according to their state, such as favor to the contrite, and anger to the evil. He who dwells in love, dwells in God. But, he who is evil seeks to live in the absence of God’s love or contrary to His goodness. He has, so to speak, chosen to live under the bridge to spite his discomfort for the rain.“For what else is that which is called evil but a removal of good?... So all things are good, since the maker of all things is supremely good. But since they are not supremely and unchangeably good like their creator, in them goodness can be decreased and increased. For good to be decreased is evil.”—St. Augustine of HippoBecause we understand the world through our own limited experience, we instinctively imagine that God feels and reacts as we do. A God without reactive emotions or passions strikes us as a terrible prospect, as if He were uncaring or incapable of understanding the intensity of sorrow and joy. Nothing could be further from the truth. To say that God is without passions is not to say that He is without affection. In us, passions imply multiplicity, change, reactivity, and fluctuation. The affection of God is real, but unlike our passions, it is single, eternal, proactive, and unchanging. He is the Lord. He changes not. What we call “feeling” in the Godhead is thus single, eternal, proactive, and unchanging. The affection of God is far stronger, deeper, and more settled than our highest joys and deepest sorrows. What we feel cannot compare with the eternal reality of God’s limitless affection. This means that, far from God being unempathetic or “unfeeling,” the weight of His affection far surpasses any of our emotional understandings. We are made in His image, though we are not Him. God has ontological power; man’s power is derivative of His. Whatever wisdom man has is only reflected light from Wisdom Himself, God. And, yes, man’s emotion is derivative as well, specifically of God’s affection. Just as our power and wisdom are dependent, reactive, and changing in relation to His power and wisdom, so our emotions are dependent, reactive, and changing in relation to His independent, proactive, and eternal affection.“The Godhead is mind and word: for ‘in the beginning was the Word,’ and the followers of Paul ‘have the mind of Christ’ which ‘speaks’ in them: humanity too is not far removed from these: you see in yourself word and understanding, an imitation of the very Mind and Word. Again, God is love, and the fount of love: for this the great John declares, that ‘love is of God,’ and ‘God is love’: the Fashioner of our nature has made this to be our feature too.”—St. Gregory of NyssaTherefore, to best image God in our emotions, we must seek, through them, to reflect His affection. Because God’s love is immutable, our emotional life matures as it is ordered by that love into something stable, patient, and holy. God’s impassibility is not the enemy of human emotion; it is the pattern that our creaturely, reactive hearts are called to reflect. The hope of glory is this: that we are perfectly united in Christ, and our perception of God’s affection, whether conscious or not, is so aligned with Reality Himself that we react emotionally in perfect concord with His eternal, proactive love, and our passion… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.saintsandsociety.com