The Blackberry Walk

The many creeds of the world get much right. Their successes are not like the case with the broken clock, which is right twice a day, but rather wisdom traditions in Arabia, the East, the Subcontinent, etc, have generation upon generation formulated and layered their investigations on human nature into good doctrine. God can be found in many ways, like in nature (Rom. 1:20). Anyone with eyes to see, ears to hear, and a human heart, can find what is good in the world. The totality of truth, and the path to salvation, may only truly be found in the Messiah; but these traditions of wisdom across the world have born witness of God through His creation, and through their own image-bearing of Him as men - their conclusions oughtn't be flippantly ignored. Today we'll be looking at one such tradition, Buddhism. Buddhism in many ways, in spite of my prior praise, is a kind of inversion of the Christian view, with a total Gnostic-like disdain for the world, and a view of suffering which tells people to 'get good'. In Buddhism it is the sufferer's obligation to meditate, dissociate, and simply surpass suffering, as opposed to the Christian tradition of finding meaning in suffering as Christ suffered. But in spite of this insufficiency, Buddhism gets much right. Primarily, their focus on nonjudgement, or refusing to cling to value judgements of others. The Buddhist principle of nonjudgement is this, that you mustn't cling to one thing over another, whether this be toast over cereal for breakfast, or between competing moral decisions. Clinging to choice is the enemy, because through these identities we arouse the passions and amplify the ego, where Buddhism's aim is the disappearance of self, or Anatta. These kinds of value judgements require a valuer, a judge to determine which choice should be made, and see whether one thing is more valuable than another. The Pyrrhonist argument for nonjudgement is stronger still. On campaign with Alexander the Great, Pyrrho learnt from the young Buddhist movement, and upon his return to Athens, started the aforementioned school of thought. A pillar of Pyrrhonism is epoché, a doctrine of complete nonjudgement. For Pyrrho, all judgement got in the way of achieving ataraxia, mental tranquillity, and were to be transcended. To our Christian minds, though, avoiding judgement in this manner is undesirable. We are moralists at heart, not non-dualists, nor Nietzschean vitalists: our moral clay was moulded in Jerusalem and kilned by Christ. We each wish to follow the moral law, and want nothing more than for our communities to follow that law also. Our children, we want them to follow the moral law, and our neighbours too. And yet, this insistence somehow unravels itself. In going around town, finger-wagging at our neighbours as if we were their father, we end up breaking the law. We end up being hypocrites, being arseholes, and not treating our neighbours as we would want to be treated ourselves. Christ, like the Buddhists, asks us not to judge. "And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?" (Mat. 7:3), Christ implores us. We are called not to judge others, yet we are called also to uphold morals - how is this to be squared? The Pharisees couldn't square it. Christ thundered at the Pharisees for being hypocrites, for judging the people of Judea without practicing what they preached. And then, who should be given the authority to judge others? Only the righteous can be a good judge, only those who are without sin themselves; and yet anyone with such a prideful self-conception has such a large beam in their eye, lodged there, that makes them the least qualified to judge. The last person we should think to be righteous, to paraphrase C. S. Lewis, is ourselves. We're stuck then. On the one hand is the Pharisee, the moraliser, who maintain morals through judging; and on the other, is the Buddhist, who retreats from the world, not judging, but transcending the judgement of moral decrepitude. There is, however, a middle way. Jesus tells us the two golden rules: to love God, and to love our neighbour. All else is downstream from there. Like the Buddhist, we don't judge. We oughtn't be so puffed up with leaven as to think we could pass judgement, since that is the prerogative of God. Yet we must be moral, and we are to be moral through our love for God and our neighbour. Our love for God, our thanks and gratitude to God, once properly dwelt upon, leads us to a state of agape, of unconditional love. We realise we are indebted to God to the point of bankruptcy, that each breath, each moment of joy and good happenstance, is contingent upon His love for us; and we can't even do the few things he asks for us in return! And despite our failures and trespasses, despite the sunk project of Israel turning to sin, He let his only Son be sacrificed by Israel, as the Passover lamb, and as a sin offering, to save us all from sin, so that we will be purified in death for the Resurrection, and be part of Christ's kingdom upon His return. That is an unpayable debt. And by that debt, and that sense in us, we follow the moral law, without any care for moral laws. This sentiment is how I interpret Galatians, when Paul says we are free from the curse of the law (Gal. 3:13), and when Paul says the law is essentially stabilisers to our bike, in need of being taken off (Gal. 3:24). Moral codes and moral laws, though they point towards behaviour pleasant to the eyes of God, can become corrupt, be used as a weapon, and themselves lead us into sin (Rom. 7:8). The moral law code is something to grow up from, graduate from, so that we can follow the law engraved on the heart by the Spirit (Rom. 2:14-15). This is the Christian calling. This is the middle way between the Buddhist law and the Pharisaic law. We listen to the tutor of the moral law, now engraved on the heart, we love God, and by our love we follow His law. Such a conception purifies us of our judging others, taking us to that Buddhist virtue of nonjudgement, whilst continuing in follow the law. How might this look in our lives then? There are moral judgements and non-moral judgements; but as we shall see, every judgement is dyed with drops of morality. Simple questions of judging what to wear has the moral undertone of what ought to be worn out for the occasion. Architecture, and judging what building are beautiful, contains implicit moral judgements of 'the past was better', or 'the future is coming'. That the world is filled with moral judgements of every shade is a problem easy for the Buddhist. The Buddhist, in sticking to his principles of nonjudgement, need not pick one suit over another, nor one meal over another - there is no decision to be made. Decisions can be arbitrary, since any material concerns tie down your life force's attempt to seek escape from the cycle of rebirth. To the Christian, there is no one propositional answer, but rather a participatory answer. Christ will transform us through our image-bearing of Him; and as we begin to love God more, we begin to wear Christ (Gal. 3:27), and can judge a piece of art, for instance, not from morality, but a genuine sense of beauty. Our apperception of beauty is brought into alignment with Christ, rather than being tainted by our own moral judgements. As the only valid judge, God will judge in our stead. And without this taint, this stain of judgement, the beauty of old churches dotting the English countryside becomes that much more beautiful. And the vague anger at those Satanic mills, at Britain's change and decline, disappears, and you can appreciate their beauty without it being 'a movement' or 'a cause', or have it inspire in you a sense of elitism, exceptionalism, or arrogance. Your taste will come out in your apperception of beauty without constant comparisons between architecture new and old, or whatever other likes and dislikes. Forgoing judgement, the reds have a deeper red; you don't have to justify opinions, since you expect it of others; you don't ruthlessly critique yourself, since you don't ruthlessly critique others. The beauty of creation, once blurry, comes into focus. I'm reminded poignantly of Screwtape's thirteenth letter, where he says "I have known a human defended from strong temptations to social ambition by a still stronger taste for tripe and onions." The beauty which comes into focus will quash your pride.