Riffin' On Romans 8 (The North Star; the Identity)

“For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.” Romans 6:14

                The sheer capacity for suffering, is in and of itself, a sin, by strictly academic frameworks. The Church’s notion of “original sin” is about capturing as much- any creature that is not God has a capacity for acts which create suffering, “sin”. The only way out of sin, and this is something the modern church has struggled with, as they seem to outright oppose this as “heresy” or a “blasphemy” of sorts, as if “sin” really can be meaningfully differentiated in a final way… is to utterly hand over/”surrender” your identity to that of God, incarnate…to see yourself as “One in Christ” or “One in God” through the utter giving of your life to them, via ritual, and the effective acting out of this in each and every remaining moment of your mortal life.

                People who do as much are charismatic…they’re likeable. They also, while violating no moral laws, while never meaningfully infringing upon the ten commandments… behave in ways that violate the very normative-disciplined codes which are being advised to the parishioners of the church…they are sexually liberated, perhaps even sexually liberal…they do not see the world at all in terms of vice or sin, but, instead, love…and the idea of an eternal evil is laughable to them, as it never has been all of that relevant to their life as a Christian. Their generation is looking like one of the last robust generations of Catholics in this country, at the moment… they’ve been living a truth, these types alluded to in today’s passage who have escaped “sin” as a “master”, that is in stark contrast to Church dogma.

                What good is a system that tries to force you into transcendence by forcing you to follow an example that those rooted in transcendence/salvation day in and day out themselves refuse to ever follow? A broken one…

What good is a system that tries to force you into transcendence by making “sin” your master? Every religion does it, but need not do it problematically…these codified systems of rules are about culturing the ability to make sound moral decisions into acting agents…but once such a skillset is cultivated, the real master should be God…infinite potential…and that’s a world where God orders Abraham, temporarily to kill Isaac… that’s far different from a world in which Abraham conscientiously objects along moral lines. Morality is not your master even…just God…

                If you really get into the weeds of what is actually on the books in nation-states…you realize that the codified laws do a poor job of capturing the sorts of situations that we as individuals are likely to face in our comprehensive lives…we could never actually live under the law, entirely. We are actually divine beings, an offshoot of God, and the disciplines/constraints we place upon ourselves need to be about accessing that Infinite potential (not creating a comprehensive road map for living), and time and time again we’ve come to realize the only way to set individuals up for success in regards to accessing said infinite potential on the fly…is to turn them into mystics…people whose only persistent rule is to turn to God for guidance on every situation.

For example, God asked Abraham to commit murder, which eventually  was against a ten commandment. The morality of that situation is…you listen to direct commands in the moment over codified systems in the subtext…

                And that’s the secret, methodically. To get to where you understand morality deep enough to call the shots in the moment, but also can turn it all over to God and listen to the guide within. To escape “sin” as your “master” is to establish communion with God at all moments…in “communion” you are in a state of radical “grace” which seems to potentiate the individual’s ability to assert their will upon the social world, which naturally supercharges Men of God to live blessed lives within communities/atypical social dynamics.

This, is the only strategy, it appears…that could eradicate “sin” as a social reality. If by “original sin” we have a persistent capacity for sin, this means that we need to seek out righteous/wise behaviors at all moments in this world to really lean into what this life is all about. But we aren’t stuck until death as the West has been deluded into kind of automatically thinking. Through “communion” with God on this side of existence, you can actually meaningfully root the foundation of your identity “in God” and escape, albeit often temporarily, the capacity for sin. This is the whole point of spiritual practice, as well as civilization. Ideally, we all do this…

                How to do it quickly is to look at the world as if you are God’s stand-in.

The great Khan lives on in me, actually…