The Church Should Never be Democratic

To be Human is to be in Error

Let's face it, humans left to their own devices and means are just incomplete. In all things - Jesus Christ is Lord -we pinned our mark as we began, laid a beacon so that we may have our point of reference. All of human order has been de-divinized by Christ.  Democracy or any other government has no more claim to worship than did Caesar. To mistake any existing or proposed social order for the Kingdom of God is a great crime against humanity. We need to readily acknowledge that democratic governance is unsatisfactory, and so will be any other government instituted by men. Everything short of the consummation of the rule of Christ is unsatisfactory.

God made us this way, for we are his likeness, like Him but not equal to Him. Lest we get confused, let's set the record straight:"For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen." Romans 11:36. God made man and everything else in the universe for his own glory, to praise and worship him. Do not lay any undue significance to man and his ways; Paul repeats this in his epistle to Colossians

The Supremacy of Christ

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities-- all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.… Colossians 1:15-20

We have incompleteness, non-perfection so that we may acknowledge His perfection. It is said that 'you don't know what you've got till you've lost it'; at our very best, we were ordered by God in Aden, but we lost that order, and left on our own we cannot help but mess up, we lose orderliness. We will get ordered again when Christ comes to rule over earth someday. All Christians long for this day, the coming of Christ in His full majesty and glory to reign over earth.

The best that a human system can aim at is to remind us of this truth, for this incompleteness sustains the hope of God's redemption and restoration in an unsatisfactory world. There are tensions and contradictions within democratic theory and practice. Especially problematic are relationships between the individual and the community, between formal process and substantive purpose, between popular participation and power elites. We should do not deny these and other problems. It's not a perfect system, to put it aptly:-

"Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary." Reinhold Niebuhr

Human ideology is dynamic; democratic or autocratic theories and practices are still developing. The churches need to encourage a lively examination of the problems presented by each system and their possible resolutions without bias. I believe I have punched some holes into the democratic ideal.

Now allow me, for illustration of the inadequacy of any human system, to burst Plato's bubble too, that way you will be left with a choice to make, for I believe that the right to choice is a 'Prior Right' too. The existence of choices and the opportunity to bring that choice to the fore is the sole reason why I bother, it's the spark that ignites a fire in me, and it's why I write. Here now are some arguable and shocking aspects of Plato's and Socrates depiction of the 'The just city' of:

 

Banishment: after describing the just city in every one of its aspects Socrates shocking solution on how we might go about instituting such a city is unfathomable. He suggests going into an already existing city, banish everyone over ten years old and raise the children in the manner he has outlined.

Media gag & Propaganda: Socrates justifies the use of certain propaganda. The content and style (dramatic or Lyric) of stories told to the young guardians should be controlled to ensure that are they immunized against the fear of death. In the arts of painting and architecture he forbids the artists to represent characters that are vicious, unrestrained, slavish, and graceless. He further suggests telling all citizens some useful fiction such as "the myth of the metals." The myth contends that all citizens were born out of the earth. The myth is meant to persuade people to be patriotic. They have reason to swear loyalty to their particular plot of ground and their fellow citizens. That plot of ground is their mother, and their fellow citizens are their brothers and sisters. The myth holds that each citizen has a certain sort of metal mixed in with his soul. In the souls of those most fit to rule there is gold, in those suited to be auxiliaries there is silver, and in those suited to be producers there is either bronze or iron. The city must never be ruled by someone whose soul is mixed with the wrong metal; according to an oracle, the city will be ruined if that ever happens.

Another fiction that will be told to the guardians is that it is unlawful for them to even handle gold or silver—it is impious for them to mix earthly gold and silver with the divine silver and gold in their souls. Guardians receive no wages and can hold no private wealth or property. They are supported entirely by the city through the taxation of the producing class. They all live together in housing provided for them by the city. Socrates' reasoning is clear: if the rulers are permitted to acquire private property, they will inevitably abuse their power and begin to rule for their own gain, rather than the good of the entire city.

Slaughter of the weak: in an eerie resemblance to Hitler's Third Reich in his book Mein Kempf, Socrates prescribes that doctors should only treat the healthy, who suffer from a single, curable ailment. They should not be trained to deal with the chronically ill. Those suffering from an incurable physical disease should be left to die naturally. Those suffering from an incurable mental disease should actively be put to death.

Dissolution of Family: In what I find most shocking Socrates proposes that all spouses and children be held in common. For guardians, sexual intercourse should only take place during designated festivals. Males and females will be made husband and wife at these festivals for roughly the duration of sexual intercourse. The pairings will be determined by lot. Some of these people, those who are most admirable and thus whom we most wish to reproduce might have up to four or five spouses in a single one of these festivals. All the children produced by these mating festivals will be taken from their parents and reared together, so that no one knows which children descend from which adults. At no other time in the year is sex permitted. If guardians have sex at an undesignated time and a child results, the understanding is that this child must be killed. To avoid rampant unintentional incest, guardians must consider every child born between seven and ten months after their copulation as their own. These children, in turn, must consider that same group of adults as their parents, and each other as brothers and sisters. Sexual relations between these groups are forbidden.

Socrates explains that these rules of procreation are the only way to ensure a unified city. In most cities the citizens' loyalty is divided. They care about the good of the whole, but they care even more about their own family. In the just city, everyone is considered as family and treated as such. There are no divided loyalties. As Socrates puts it, everyone in the city says "mine" about the same things. The city is unified because it shares all its aims and concerns.

A law unto itself: Socrates declares that the just city has no use for laws. If the education of guardians proceeds as planned, then guardians will be in a position to decide any points of policy that arise. Everything we think of as a matter of law can be left to the judgment of the properly educated rulers.

Creative suppression: in 'The Republic' Poets are analogous to present day musicians, actors, film makers, writers and other entertainers. In a surprising move, Socrates also banishes poets from the city. He has three reasons for regarding the poets as unwholesome and dangerous. First, they pretend to know all sorts of things, but they really know nothing at all. It is widely considered that they have knowledge of all that they write about, but, in fact, they do not. The things they deal with cannot be known: they are images, far removed from what is most real. By presenting scenes so far removed from the truth poets pervert souls, turning them away from the most real toward the least.

Worse, the images the poets portray do not imitate the good part of the soul. The rational part of the soul is quiet, stable, and not easy to imitate or understand. Poets imitate the worst parts—the inclinations that make characters easily excitable and colorful. Poetry naturally appeals to the worst parts of souls and arouses, nourishes, and strengthens these base elements while diverting energy from the rational part.

Poetry corrupts even the best souls. It deceives us into sympathizing with those who grieve excessively, who lust inappropriately and who laugh at base things. It even goads us into feeling these base emotions vicariously. We think there is no shame in indulging these emotions because we are indulging them with respect to a fictional character and not with respect to our own lives. But the enjoyment we feel in indulging these emotions in other lives is transferred to our own life. Once these parts of ourselves have been nourished and strengthened in this way, like in watching pornography, they flourish in us when we are dealing with our own lives. Suddenly we have become the grotesque sorts of people we saw on stage or heard about in epic poetry.

Despite the clear dangers of poetry, Socrates regrets having to banish the poets. He feels the aesthetic sacrifice acutely, and says that he would be happy to allow them back into the city if anyone could present an argument in their defense.

This argument from Socrates is radical yes, but it also bears very potent meaning especially now in the contemporary world of pornography and morally corrupt films, music videos and publications. The entertainment industry: TV, radio, internet and publications are all riddled with pervasions and occultism. Films, books and television shows have single handedly popularized homosexualism to its current state. The entertainment industry's extent of influence on social behavior is largely understated. Persons with all sort of agendas, from car and luxury goods manufacturers, to alcoholic beverages, to even the occult,; know this way too well and have used it to influence especially young persons. Films and music videos are riddled with subtle but repetitive messages and codes. The effect of this repetitive exposure to the human brain is a documented fact. You only need to look at a young man close to you to see the impact; their dress code, language, mannerisms and attitude – they have lost grip of reality, the shadows that the entertainment industry casts on the walls infront of them have become reality to them. Plato's Allegory of the cave is no longer unimaginable – not with a generation that thinks what they see in music videos and films is reality ad makes a conscious effort to imitate it.

You may also find Plato's stances on other pertinent issues such as homosexuality and the role of love controversial too, but no doubt insightful:

Sodomy and homosexuality: Plato criticizes love between a man and the boy he educates. Plato saw sexual intercourse as serving no useful end. Heterosexual intercourse must be tolerated because it is necessary for procreation, but homosexual intercourse, he believed, serves no end but the fulfillment of physical pleasure. Since homosexual intercourse is useless, it cannot be good or beautiful. Whatever is neither good nor beautiful should be avoided. Second, as Plato makes clear later in The Republic, the health of a man's soul is determined by the desires he aims to fulfill. A just soul is a soul that pursues the right desires. Desire for physical pleasure is not worth fulfilling. So though the good man, the philosophical man, might have physical desires directed at his young friend, it is crucial to his virtue that he not act on these; he must not try to satisfy his lust for physical pleasure. Instead, he must transmute that erotic desire into a longing for truth and goodness, and a longing to find this truth and goodness together with his beloved.

The Role of Love: I have previously mused over this in the essay Omens. Plato thinks that Love is necessary for the education of the Philosopher. Love becomes relevant because it is the emotion that motivates us to ascend to the heights of knowledge. According to Plato true knowledge does not attach itself to the observable world around us. True knowledge, instead, has as its object the realm of the Forms, the universal, eternal truths that only our mind can access. Although study allows us to make the intellectual leap toward this higher realm, love provides the emotional motivation for studying. For Plato, all action must be motivated by some desire or emotion. The emotional motivation that sends us looking for the Forms, then, is love. Love is the bridge between the world and the intelligible, the motivation for the philosopher's quest.

 

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Lessons from the Past

Somebody needs to tell the world to 'Chill Out'; it's all been done before, don't get ahead of yourselves; this earth has seen mightier things. The United States, the bearer of the democratic ideal, is certainly the world's most powerful nation ever, militarily speaking, but can it be judged as the mightiest ever? Over 500 years BC The Persians set the standard of what being truly great means; The Romans ruled for 2000 years and left lasting legacies such as The Roman Catholic Church and the Colosseum; The British Empire was so vast that at some point the sun never set on it; but they all fell …..contd..

Why even bother:

Whether it is meditation, reciting mantras, or reading this blog, the important thing to remember is that if these tools are to be properly used, we must use them and then discard them. They are only pointers, and aren't actually a 'means to an end'. The oddest part is that even though I say 'discard' them, you might end up meditating for your entire life. At some point, however, the meditation will transform from a 'means to an end' into 'just another thing', like washing dishes or drinking a glass of water ........ Contd