Last Week in It Ain’t Me Babe we learned that Jesus is not the Revolutionary Leader we want; that Jesus set himself against becoming the fulfilment of our mimetic desires and so we killed him. We then set the stage for walking out into the wilderness to do the hard work of setting ourselves against our mimetic desires without being fixed up every time we access the rat’s nest of mimetic wiring that makes us the way we are. So, let’s take a trip into the wilderness and examine the concept of judgement along the way.
Today, We Escape
Planning our Exit Route from Mimetic Socio-Religious Frameworks
The Wilderness
“When Anthony heard the word of Jesus, “Go and sell what you own and give the money to the poor…then come and follow me,” he took it as a call to escape from the compulsions of his world. He moved away from family, lived in poverty in a hut on the edge of his village, and occupied himself with manual work and prayer. But soon he realized that more was required of him. He had to face his enemies—anger and greed—head-on and let himself be totally transformed into a new being. His old, false self had to die and a new self had to be born. For this Anthony withdrew into the complete solitude of the desert.” -Henri Nouwen The Way of the Heart (1981)
Where do you go from society to unravel and not be wound back up? For some people it’s right in their living room, but the curse of the privileged is that we have freedom to poke the rat’s nest but the slavery of being mended repeatedly, unable to unknot certain areas for being fixed too quickly. The wilderness where no sensible person concerned about their own safety, legitimacy and provision would go is the answer. It’s the only ironically safe place to choose enmity towards our mimetic desires. No one is forcing anyone, but the true love of God waits on the other side of enmity—oh, God doesn’t wait to love us, it is our true love of God that waits to be realised; a love that cannot be given to our heroes who, let’s be honest, are our heroes because they are our culture’s mimetic ideals. This true love can only be shared by those who pass through the waters of enmity and emerge on the other side as one.
While the desert Fathers and Mothers might not have said it like this, they knew instinctually that in order to do the hard work of the heart they had to escape not only the comfort of home but the well-meaning deontic care of their loved ones and that required what we now refer to as the Christian Disciplines of silence, solitude and prayer around which Nouwen focuses The Way of the Heart to aid us in our Christian practice.
Notice on this side of the fence that we still honour our spiritual ancestors while they sought dishonour and abasement therefore we somewhat miss the point of following them as they followed Christ—the point was not to be raised up but to be humbled even to the point of death. While everyone in whom the Spirit dwells is a saint, these few our traditions recognise as capital S Saints. If there can be an counterintuitive GOAT these were the men and women who gave up the world to see themselves as God sees them and achieve true greatness. As we learned in Power in Practice It’s almost disrespectful to speak of them in this way; to use the same soiled syntax that the world uses of people who have used their rumours of power and greatness to despoil everything and everyone around them. But rather than judge them we give them the greatest honour which is to love them beyond desire—we do not conflate them with our desires but consent to their isness influence like drawing close to the fire to feel its warmth; a deep holy contentment as they look down on us from the great cloud of witnesses to see their lives as neither heroic, anti-heroic or villainous but simply as they were.
Judge Not, that Ye Be Not Judged
One of the by-products of understanding the ramifications of mimesis is that it becomes increasingly difficult to be judgemental as we become increasingly aware of our inadequacy. Judgement is a means of reasserting our mimetic formation; the social contract we signed in violence and blood; what we worked to establish being safeguarded, legitimised and provided for. However, judgement is also how we know that our social contracts and organisations are imaginary and not part of original creation. They fail the Universality Principle of applying to all people for all time and places and so fail as proper theologies of the human body. Matthew records Jesus proclaiming that if we judge, we will be judged by the same measure and often come up wanting in our contributions to our own social structures.
I think of a judgement free society like the pipedream of a perpetual motion machine. An oxymoron of two concepts non-judgement and society. Our social structures are driven on distilled rivalry; they draw to a slow crawl in a shortage of judgement and once a new source of enmity is found and the gears oiled, they roar back to life. We judge because we can’t imagine a life without it—more than that; the life we built requires it of us as a sacrifice to Angry God who wills that the industrial complex of industrial complexes continue at any cost to the primary interface. How will we succeed if we are not judged by others or ourselves? We won’t—not by the usual means at any rate. How will we grow strong if we never meet intentional adversity? Competition drives the market! Rivalry is in our blood and makes us stronger—so we’re told.
A completely judgement free society is a utopian fantasy—but one worth indulging in, in the same way we indulge in our curiosity for perpetual motion machines. Judgement is either double negated “I judge you for judging” and thus the power source is hidden though it looks perpetual, or else judgement is removed and with it all momentum until all of what we value as society comes to a slow, inevitable halt which may or may not be worth restarting via the engine of war.
God’s Enmity as a Polemic
In the Scriptures God usually calls us to obedience in Godself by showing us how that can take place. But the instance of judgement seems to be an exception to the rule. We are told not to judge because the one who judges will judge in the end. This judgement is, however, likely a polemic against judgement. In other words, if anyone is going to judge it will be the only one who can judge properly and according to everything that is the case.
Jesus exemplified exactly what I mean by not condemning the woman caught in adultery. We all know the account from John 8 and the famous line, “let he who is without sin cast the first stone”. Almighty God in the flesh stood before us and had opportunity after opportunity to wipe this or that one off the face of the planet and He didn’t. This is an example of God speaking our language for us to understand that we are children in God’s sight who pretend at being god. Whatever metric we come up with, God gives us a proverbial “hold my beer,” moment in the scriptures.
To illustrate, my father had three boys and three girls and us boys used to play fight with him. We would do our best to try and wrestle with him and it usually devolved into a game of how hard can we hit dad in his pulpit bumper? We would go about this game for a while until Dad would turn and say in as sinister a voice possible, “my turn,” at which we would scatter and scream with glee and terror while he chased us around the house and garden. The worst we could expect was merciless tickling for our hubris which fuelled our stubby legs to run faster but give up in time to be caught and prolong the game.
God’s judgement is His My Turn moment where, in an instant, all pretence is stripped away, the blood drains from our faces in reverence to the great I AM who was and is and is to come. At this moment God sets Godself against everything we project and with which we identify apart from Him. God has no use for fulfilling the polemic of judgement, it gains Him nothing to sequester certain souls to Eternal Damnation nor, for that matter does it gain Him anything to sequester other souls to Eternal Life. Does God power the eternal lights of Heaven through the sacrificial scapegoats of the inhabitancy of Hell? I don’t think so—something tells me that God’s Kingdom is a perpetual motion machine, a philosopher’s stone granting eternal life and reward for those who possess it, and what are we possessing but the will to not engage in rivalry no matter the cost? What is eternal life but to believe that laying down our lives for one another is far greater than to take another’s life in pursuit of safety, legitimacy and provision outside of God?
3 Suggested Applications
Break Free from Your Mimetic Framework
There is precedent in the scriptures for such time periods of breaking free—times of prayer and fasting and mourning and even agreed upon times between spouses to not fulfil the duties of marriage. Beware of commercialisation of these practices as they make a mockery of any attempt to actually break free. Select a few trusted individuals to stand guard over your life in prayer and attention and do not let anyone else know that you are leaving for the wilderness.On Re-Entry Be Mindful of Judgement
Keep in mind that all judgement is a corrective action meant to bring those who have strayed from the mimetic framework back into perfect, reflective behaviour. You may consider how “back” you desire to be after your time in the wilderness.
Time in the Wilderness is Compounding in Nature
The more time you spend in the wilderness, the more you will recognise that this is where God truly speaks to us; away from the roping in of those who’s whole identity is wrapped up in how many people agree with them. If you are unable to make a clean break, set a date when you will return to the wilderness to meet with God.
Did you know that you don’t have be a paid subscriber to leave a comment?
Let me know what you think below!
Thank you for reading! In an effort to practice these things I will be moving to publishing once every two weeks to spend more time studying and delivering quality essays and to reduce the time per week that I am on the internet. I will still be around to answer questions especially for those who are supporting this publication by your continued subscriptions both free and paid.
Thanks again for reading!