Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

• Ephesians 6:12

“‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighboras yourself. I am the Lord.

• Leviticus 19:18

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?

• Matthew 5:43-47

He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

• Luke 10:27

“In 1975, the French poet, novelist, playwright, and philosopher Helene Cixous wrote Sorties, her influential exploration of the oppositions that often define the way we think about the world. For Cixous, a thread that runs through centuries of thought is our tendency to group elements of our world into opposing pairs, such as culture/nature, day/night, and head/heart. Cixous claims that these pairs of elements are always by implication ranked hierarchically, underpinned by a tendency to see one element as being dominant or superior and associated with maleness and activity, while the other element or weaker aspect is associated with femaleness and passivity.
“Cixous believes that the authority of this hierarchical pattern of thinking is now being called into question by a new blossoming of feminist thought. She questions what the implications of this change might be, not only for our philosophical systems, but also for our social and political institutions. Cixous herself, however, refuses to play the game of setting up binary oppositions, of victors and losers, as a structural framework for our thinking. Instead she conjures up the image of ‘millions of species of mole as yet not recognized’, tunnelling away under the edifices of our world view, And what will happen when these edifices start to crumble? Cixous does not say. It is as if she is telling us that we can make no assumptions, that the only thing we can do is wait and see.”

• Sam Atkinson (senior editor), The Philosophy Book, Big Ideas Simply Explained

Helene Cixous (1937-present) seems opposed to the opposite opposition philosophy that she postulates.  Either that or she feels it necessary to remain below the fray, like a mole tunnelling underneath until the structure of the opposing philosophy above her collapses due to a lack of firm foundation.

I was tempted to skip her philosophy.  I have skipped a couple within the past couple of months, one was a feminist, the other someone of dark skin.  I thought that being male and light-skinned, my views might not be welcomed.  This is myopic on both sides of the argument.  When you are not female, your views are simply dismissed as being male views, as if I could never find common ground.  But while they say my view is myopic due to being male, their view is myopic due to not seeing that in our common humanity that we cannot find common ground.

Yet, Ms. Cixous has developed an unique method with her idea of millions of species of moles.  It is highly poetic and profound at the same time.  A mole is never going to be able to dig through something on a firm foundation.  All that the mole can do is dig around it.

Yet, if the foundation is flawed, the mole will find those flaws and dig through, unnoticed by those above, until the foundation starts to crumble.

In a way, this is what is happening with the Church, that being Christianity as a whole.  The true Church is on a firm foundation, while those that make a claim to be Christian without having the Christian faith are on shaky ground.  Who do the people follow?  Do they follow the true Christians, or do they follow the imitations?

The imitations may make grand promises.  Recently I wrote about someone who claimed Christians, if they truly believed, would never suffer, but all of humanity will suffer at one point or another.  The prosperity gospel peddlers claim that you will be rich beyond your wildest dreams, and then when you are not, they demand more “seed” money.  They get richer while you get poorer.

Whatever the draw is away from the true Jesus Christ, it will end up in emptiness.  Only in Jesus can we find a firm foundation that the millions of moles cannot dig through.

If you like these Tuesday morning essays about philosophy and other “heavy topics,” but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Tuesday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.