0:10 - Introduction to John 8
1:58 - The Challenge of the Adulterous Woman
6:50 - The Nature of Accusations
14:15 - False Dichotomies in Life
25:28 - The Role of Conscience
33:22 - Redemption and Forgiveness
35:30 - Moral Improvement and Self-Reflection
39:57 - Conclusion: The Power of Moral Clarity
The lecture centers on a detailed analysis of John 8, specifically the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery. The speaker shares personal reflections on the profound implications of this biblical narrative, emphasizing how it encapsulates the critical differences between the Old and New Testaments. The story unfolds with Jesus in the temple, confronted by the scribes and Pharisees who present a woman accused of adultery, urging Jesus to render judgment based on Mosaic law, which prescribed stoning for such offenses.
An exploration of the intricate dynamics of this scenario reveals the intention behind the Pharisees' actions, as they attempt to entrap Jesus, forcing him to either disobey the law or condemn a woman to death unjustly. The speaker discusses the tension inherent in Jesus' response, highlighting his wisdom in navigating the moral dilemma. By stating, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her,” Jesus shifts the focus from judgment to self-reflection, inviting the accusers to consider their own sins before condemning another.
The speaker delves into the symbolism of Jesus writing on the ground, interpreting it as a representation of grounding oneself in reality amidst chaos. This act serves as a bridge to discuss the importance of maintaining one’s moral compass while confronted by societal pressures and false dichotomies. The lecture points out how people often seek to present binary choices in ethics and morality, which can obscure deeper truths and lead to destructive choices.
The analysis continues with the implications of this story in contemporary contexts, where the accountability of one's actions is often avoided. The speaker draws parallels with modern society's tendency to coerce individuals into binary judgments, such as support or opposition to political movements. The exploration of credentialism is presented as a modern-day incarnation of the moralism seen in the accusations against the woman, where people's value and voices are often tied to societal validation rather than their inherent worth or intellect.
Furthermore, the discussion leads to a reflection on the nature of conscience and moral responsibility. The speaker questions the characteristics of true empathy, particularly in contentious relationships, highlighting how genuine moral reckoning requires both self-awareness and the courage to confront one’s failings without resorting to violence or condemnation toward others. This complexity is reflected in the speaker's narrative with personal anecdotes about encounters with cruelty and the struggles in seeking understanding and resolution.
The lecture culminates in the examination of forgiveness and moral growth, aligning with Jesus’ directive to the woman, “Go and sin no more.” The speaker posits that this call to moral improvement resonates deeply with the notion of redemption, emphasizing how a commitment to continuous self-reflection and ethical living allows individuals to transcend their past actions. The closing thoughts reflect a hope that understanding these lessons from scripture can empower individuals to navigate their lives with greater moral clarity, resisting the societal pressures that often dictate false choices and narratives.
Ultimately, the lecture serves as both a thorough articulation of a biblical account and a philosophical exploration of moral dilemmas, societal expectations, and the profound journey toward personal and communal integrity.
[0:00] All right, so, good morning. I've spent an embarrassing amount of years pondering this one since I first heard it when I was in the church choir as a child.
[0:11] This is John 8, and really, I think, cuts to the heart of the differences between the Old and the New Testament. Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives, and early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him, and he sat down and taught them.
[0:30] And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery. And when they had set her in the midst, they say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us that such should be stoned. But what sayest thou? This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman, standing in the midst.
[1:35] When Jesus had lifted up himself and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? Has no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more.
[1:59] This is amazing, deeply powerful. So, remember, of course, Jesus was bound by the laws of the Old Testament. And so, if Jesus had said, don't stone her, then he would have been revealed as disobeying the laws of the Old Testament, which would have been extremely dangerous. So this is a kind of trolling. And this is like, honestly, it's like one of those impossible situations that someone in a movie gets into. And then when they get out of it, you're like, wow. Okay, that makes sense. But wow. I mean, I remember reading the Thomas Covenant series by Stephen R. Donaldson, I think, a very verbose and eloquent author and a good author. And in it the hero makes friends with a horse that comes when you call it and then when he's in a dire emergency like many many many many chapters later he calls this horse and you're like oh okay yeah yeah that makes sense that's that's a good out that's incredible i'm sorry to diminish the story of jesus with this fantasy novel but this is a very very powerful statement.
[3:17] So, this is a form of entrapment in this story. So, they drag a woman that they claim is taken in adultery. Now, this is a big challenge, and I've always had questions about this story, because this could be a woman they threatened. This could be a woman who's a prostitute that they simply paid for this. This could be, we don't know. This has not gone through a trial, a court. So, well, she's taken in adultery. So, that removes the doubt. It's supposed to remove the doubt. But who knows? They could have threatened her child. They could have dragged her there. She could have been kind of shocked and stunned. Maybe it's true, but this has not gone through a trial. So, well, she was taken in adultery. But we don't know that. That's just hearsay. That's just an accusation.
[4:06] Now, the challenge, of course, if he says, well, there's no proof. I don't know. I didn't see it myself. This hasn't gone through a court of law. Then the scribes and Pharisees would say, oh, so are you calling us liars? And then they're solved that problem as well. So he can't stone the woman. He can't not stone the woman. And he can't accuse her accusers of being liars. Or he can't express any doubt as to their honesty. So what do you do? What do you do in this situation? What I think is very powerful is that Jesus himself really takes the time to think. So this, they said, tempting him that they might have to accuse him of disobeying the law. But Jesus stooped down and with his finger wrote on the ground as though he heard them not. Trying to puzzle it out like a mathematical puzzle, like a genius with chalk on a chalkboard. He wrote on the ground. That to me is a fascinating detail. He wrote on the ground, like he's trying to puzzle this out, like he's calling for intervention.
[5:20] Now, of course, the language has changed a lot, but the concepts are the same. To be grounded. To be grounded. To be grounded means to be in your body, to be in contact with reality, and not to be too reactive, right? It's the mind that does all of these, particularly the neofrontal cortex that does all of this reactivity and escalation. But to be grounded is to say, I wonder if that's true. I wonder what the answer is. I don't know what the answer is. I'm going to write on the ground. To write is to reason. To write is to consider. To write is to think deeply. And on the ground, he didn't write on the wall. He didn't write in the air. He didn't write on the velvet of a couch. He wrote on the very ground. He wanted to be grounded. He went to the physicality. He went to matter, to material. And it was too much for his mind to conceive of. He needed to write it out. So when they continued asking him, which is a trap, try and get him ostracized or killed, he lifted up himself and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him cast, first cast a stone at her. And again, he stooped down and wrote on the ground. So he had his answer, but he continued to write.
[6:42] And this is a powerful image, of course, the quick sadists and the slow reasoner.
[6:50] The man who, panting and delirious with cruelty, demands a rapid answer from a slow-moving, deeply reasoning, empathizing thinker who wants to reason it out for himself. And, of course, Jesus knew the danger that he was in. So he thinks, he reasons, he processes. And he says, if you have no sin, then you can throw a stone. So, honestly, it gives me goosebumps. 50 years, 53 years after I first read it, Gives me goosebumps, it really does. The moral accusers, the manipulators, the hysterics, the escalators, the trolls, the entrappers, those who demand punishment, those who are hysterically aggressive and, quote, moralists covering up their own sadism, cruelty, and entrapment.
[7:50] Because they want the woman to be stoned or Jesus to be punished. The punishments were extreme. The punishments were death for some of these infractions, for Jesus.
[8:05] And this, of course, I talked about this in the live stream last night. This, of course, is the putting of people in impossible situations.
[8:17] You can't win. you condemn her, your reputation is harmed, and she dies. You don't condemn her, then you are punished as not following the law. So what do you do? What do you do? And this had some real impact on me with regards to universally preferable behavior, which is to forestall the attacks by looking at the nature of the attackers. So he's saying, oh, you are all so perfect that you can stone a woman to death and you have not sinned. And remember, in the Christian formulation, not of course that the scribes and Pharisees were Christians, but in the Christian formulation, the thought is also the sin. So what he's saying is, to some degree, you want to stone this woman for committing adultery, but if you have ever looked at a woman in lust who is not your wife, you have also committed adultery. And the real sin here is dragging her to me as a trap to destroy either her or me. So thinking outside the box of the accusations, thinking outside the fork in the road or the train tracks going one way or the other that people try to strap you onto.
[9:39] Not react, but to think. That is the great challenge of life, to not be put in these impossible situations, to not let other people define your choices. I remember many years ago watching a court trial, and the prosecution was, in my view, badgering the witness, asking a complex question and saying, it's a yes or no answer. It's a yes or no answer. It's this or that. And this happened once or twice, and the witness tried to answer with context. And eventually, the defense said to the judge, he's badgering the witness, can the witness answer in her own terms? And the judge says, yes, it is not a yes or no answer. you cannot define that for the witness letter answer on her own terms.
[10:35] And in the modern world, of course, this is everywhere. You either support the welfare state or you hate the poor. You either want socialized medicine or you want the sick to die. It is either you support this person and hate the other person or you support the other person and hate this person. All of these false dichotomies, people attempt to strip you all the time with your willpower, eviscerated by false dichotomies. Either you support taxation, or you accept that there will be no roads. Either you support the state, or you accept a warlord-driven, violent, lawless wilderness of chaos and brutality. So this false dichotomy is everywhere. Either you're very well educated and very well credentialed, or you have nothing to add to the conversation. This is a credentialism. And what that means, of course, is either you are compliant, to propaganda, which is how you get most degrees in higher education. Either you are compliant to propaganda, or you have nothing to add to the conversation.
[11:52] I wrote about this. My gosh. More than 30 years ago, I wrote about the autodidact, the self-taught brilliance of the working classes. I wrote about this in Just Poor, how the shepherds and the bakers and the butchers all got together to study mathematics and astronomy and the new science, and so on.
[12:15] Credentialism is, I cannot evaluate your judgments, but I will dismiss you if you are not ambitious and compliant. And of course, if you get these, let's say you get a PhD, from some advanced university in whatever field philosophy or something like that, well, then you have devoted, you know, a decade plus of your life or more to getting this degree. And therefore, you are heavily invested in the value of this degree. You expect to use it to get something. And so you are controlled per opposition. If you get a PhD from some Ivy League university in philosophy, you do that so that you can get a job in philosophy at some advanced Ivy League degree. And therefore, if you say anything controversial, you won't get the position. And so you are controlled. You're in debt. You have no choice, no options. It's academia or bust for the most part. And so you really can't say anything controversial. So if pushed to say something controversial, you're going to have to flake out because you've got nothing, right?
[13:25] 35 years old, you're desperate to get an academic position, you're $150,000 in debt, and one controversial statement will destroy your life. So, credentialism is a way of saying, I only want to talk to people compliant to the system who can be destroyed by anything controversial, and therefore, I can trap them by holding their future hostage to get them to comply to my statements. This is why credentialism exists. Well, it exists because people can't think, and it also exists because you need to wield a club of destruction against those you, quote, debate with to hamstring them and prevent them from saying anything controversial. Of course, that's the point of deplatforming as well.
[14:16] So, credentialism is another one of these false dichotomies. Either you are compliant and frightened, or you have nothing to add to the conversation. Either I have control over you by being able to destroy your future, or I'm not going to talk to you at all.
[14:29] So, Jesus is presented with the false dichotomy, affirm the law of Moses and destroy the woman, kill the woman, or defy the law of Moses and be condemned, ostracized, and destroyed yourself. So that is the false dichotomy. And in life, reacting to the false dichotomy as if those are your only two choices destroys your free will and dishonors your choices. When presented with a false dichotomy, it's important to slow down and reason from first principles. That's what reasoning from first principles is for, in many ways, is to have you jump the tracks of the false dichotomy that you're trying to be strapped to all the time by people in the world.
[15:23] Not reacting to false dichotomies, but rather thinking through things yourself is the foundation of free will. Because if you accept, and it happens to all of us, so obviously I'm not perfect this way either, but if you accept false dichotomies, then you really don't have any choice because your choice is prescribed by others. Yes, no, this, that, A, or non-A, true, false, north, south. Do you, letting other people Program your free will by providing you these false dichotomies. Rather than acting in the moment based on first principles and rejecting the false dichotomies is the essence to me of what Jesus is doing here. He is affirming his own free will by not accepting the false dichotomies and reasoning things from first principles. I reject, says Jesus, the choice being either the woman is destroyed or I am destroyed. Either I affirm the law and destroy the woman, or I defy the law and destroy myself. I reject that. I'm going to reason from first principles. So, the first principles are, well, what are the scribes and Pharisees saying about this woman? What are they saying? They're saying, all whose sin must be destroyed.
[16:51] Those whose sin must be destroyed. That's what he's, again, I don't know, obviously, but that's what I assume he's writing on the ground. What is the principle behind the accusation? The principle behind the accusation is all whose sin must be destroyed. Not, oh, we found this woman in adultery. Moses says she has to be stoned. We must stone her. No, that's a specific application of a general law, which is all whose sin must be destroyed. All whose sin must be a killed, stoned, ostracized, destroyed. That is the principle. If the principle is all whose sin must be destroyed, then he talks to the accusers and say, you can only destroy this woman if you are without sin, right? All whose sin must be destroyed. Therefore, the only way to destroy a sinner is to be without sin yourself. This is, you know, it's the basic Socratic or Aristotelian syllogism. All who sin must be destroyed. Therefore, the only one who can legitimately destroy a sinner is someone without sin himself. Because if all who sin must be destroyed, and you accuse someone else of sinning while having sinned yourself, then you and the sinner must be destroyed by somebody else who is without sin, and so on, right? This is a recursive problem.
[18:16] Now, the challenge here, of course, is in the statement, and they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.
[18:36] This is a bit of an unbelievable story. I'm not saying it didn't happen. I'm just saying that the challenge is that how many cold and cruel sadistic sociopaths who want to relish the thought of hefting heavy stones and pounding in the skull of a woman, how many of those are like, ooh, I'm being convicted by my own conscience. Now, this is a religious view, which is to say that even the most cruel person has a conscience embedded in the personhood of the soul, which cannot be taken from the body save through death. That there is a ghost called a conscience in the heart, mind, and body of even the most cruel that continues to provide moral self-evaluation and objective moral self-criticism or even self-condemnation in the presence of reasoned moral arguments. In other words, he says, well, if you're without sin, cast the first stone, and because of the religious perspective, obviously in the Bible, it is the prickling of their own conscience, their own soul, which cannot be destroyed, cannot be eradicated, cannot be removed. Now, modern brain scans defy this thesis, that in the mind of an adult sadist with many decades of cruelty under his belt, that there remains a whisper of conscience.
[20:03] I do believe that when you bring moral arguments to someone that causes their conscience to bother them, and I noticed I just said they don't have a conscience. So let me sort of be clear about this. Sorry, I'm being I'm being confusing. I say, but they don't really have a conscience, but you can prickle their conscience. So what I've experienced and what I've seen and what I've heard from many, many listeners in the course of call-in shows is let's say they have, abusive parents, and they go and confront their parents with, you know, recent baller arguments and true experience and honest statements of suffering, the parents in general escalate or disconnect. Not always, but in general, most times, the parents escalate or disconnect. They storm out, they hang up, or they yell, scream, intimidate, or they just manipulate.
[20:52] So what happens is you bring your suffering to someone who's cruel, and that person might feel bad about causing you to suffer, or they might just feel bad because they're losing control, or they might just feel bad because you now have some power, and they've misused power, so they're afraid of power. They might feel bad because they want your resources as they age, they want your time, care attention as they age. And so they get mad at you and escalate because they're losing access to you as a resource. It could be that they want to portray, of course, their family as good, wise, moral, and of great appearance and status and stature. And then if you criticize them and they behave badly, then they lose the status of the family because people are saying, well, where's your son? Oh, he hasn't seen, like, it's tough, right? So then they view future. So you don't know if people who've been cruel to you and you confront them, you don't know if their reactions are because of a conscience or because of a power reversal that they hate.
[21:56] Say it is, some whispering of a conscience somewhere in there. The problem is, if the, cruel personality structure reacts to any whisper of the conscience by attacking the person provoking the conscience, then the conscience has been judoed into doing the opposite of the purpose of the conscience. The purpose of the conscience is to re-establish empathy, right? So, if I harm someone and they say to me, you harmed me, then my conscience says, you have treated them badly, you need to apologize because they're a real person and you don't like it when you get hurt and you need to re-establish your empathy with that person. So the purpose of the conscience is to re-establish empathy. If you confront an evildoer and that evildoer does more evil to you to punish you for provoking any negative feelings in themselves, then the purpose of the conscience is to re-establish empathy. But if you contact the conscience, which provokes negative feelings in the evildoer, and the evildoer then escalates his aggression, manipulation, avoidance, withdrawal, gaslighting, whatever.
[23:01] Then he actually receives faint calls to the conscience. The conscience says re-establish empathy, but instead he does more evil. So then the purpose of the conscience is to attempt to re-establish empathy, but the results of provocation of the conscience is not increased empathy, but increased cruelty. So then you can say, well, there's a conscience in there, okay, maybe, maybe they're reacting based upon some whispers of conscience, but even if we say we're touching their conscience, if they then do the reverse of what the conscience suggests.
[23:39] Then we have no functional access to their conscience or to put it another way their conscience or their reaction to their conscience is to do more evil it would be like if every time we said to someone you should lose weight they put on another 20 pounds.
[23:57] What could we do if we don't say to them they need to lose weight they put on five pounds a month. If we say to them, you need to lose weight, they put on 10 pounds a month. So you can say, well, but you have access to them losing weight. No, you don't. Do you have functional, practical access to someone's conscience? In other words, if you say to a person, you hurt me, do they attempt to reestablish empathy based upon feeling bad that they hurt you? Or do you get that little smile, the gaslighting, the manipulation, and the fear of the loss of resources, and therefore even a momentary appeasement, but that has nothing to do with conscience? Conscience is when you wish to have empathy for another. Selfishness is when you have empathy only for yourself.
[24:49] If you ask for empathy for yourself, but the evildoer reacts only with empathy to themselves, which is to attempt to maintain resources without admitting foundational fault, or even if there is an admission of foundational fault, to gaslight into non-existence that admission the next time you talk, to act as if nothing happened and to attempt to go back to the way things were, then you have no functional access to somebody's conscience. It should, of course, be ideally if you say, hey, you hurt me, and the other person says, oh, gosh, I'm sorry, tell me more, and they reestablish their empathy and apologize and figure out what went wrong and figure out how not to have it recur and so on, right?
[25:28] So, Jesus says that he who was without sin cast the first stone. Now, it could be, of course, that the people who were gathered there, in a sense, to stone either the woman to death or Jesus to death, that the people who were gathered there all know each other as having sinned, and therefore they won't throw the first stone because each knows that the other has sinned, and will roll their eyes and they will be subject to gossip. Oh, yeah, Bob stoned, this woman threw a stone, claiming to have never sinned, but I know that Bob cheated a customer last week, last week, and so they'll be subject. So it could not, it could be not that there's a whispers of conscience, but there's some sort of status loss from each other. So what I find tough to believe, which could of course be my own failure, my own lack of imagination, but what I find tough to believe is, and then, and they, which heard it being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one. So that is a sort of very powerful, but to me, it's more of an analogy. Are you able to access the humility of self-righteous people who, through their self-righteousness and attack on people who've sinned, have the implicit claim that they themselves have never sinned? And, of course, this is the physician-heal-thyself argument.
[26:50] Which is, why do you focus on the speck of dust in your brother's eye while ignoring the giant splinter in your own. Why are you so obsessed with stoning a woman to death rather than looking to the improvement of your own soul?
[27:08] That chart, the sort of heat map of people on the right care about family, friends, and so on first and care less about strangers on the other side of the world, whereas people on the left care about strangers on the other side of the world, dust particles, CO2, rocks, and so on, more than they care about those who are close to them. You've seen that sort of heat map. So for me, the same thing, the sort of same heat map occurs when it comes to morality. Do you care about your own moral improvement or do you lecture and harangue other people as a moralist, which is to imply that you are morally much better than they are. Now, there are people who can lecture people morally in the world in the same way that there are people who can say to others, you should eat less and exercise more. But the people who lecture others, you should eat less and exercise more, should not be fat themselves. So this, the analogy, of course, here is that there's a woman who has been caught, in the act of overeating, and all of the obese people are picking up stones saying those who overeat should be put to death. And Jesus says, well, if the principle is that all who overeat should be put to death, you guys are putting your own lives at risk because you're all 300 pounds. So clearly you overeat. So if the principle is not, well, this woman was caught in the act of overeating, right, we caught her in the act, right?
[28:34] And it's not those caught in the act of overeating should be killed because then you could just hide your overeating, right? Just go eat in the cave somewhere or in the middle of the night in the basement or whatever. So it's not those who are caught in the act of overeating. It's those who overeat. And so if people who are 300 pounds are dragging a woman into the street saying she was caught in the act of overeating. Well, implicit in them being 300 pounds is that they're also overeating. And Jesus is saying, oh, so somebody caught in the act of overeating should be stoned. Let he who has never overeaten cast the first stone. And of course, everyone's looking at each other like, bro, we're 300 pounds. I know five fat guys and you're four of them. And so they shuffle off. The principle is not being caught. The principle is, have you sinned? And of course, you know, the condemnation of loose women has a lot to do with men who've been rejected by women, right? So we assume that a woman who is committing adultery, if we assume the accusation is true, a woman who is committing adultery is doing so because she's very attractive.
[29:49] I guess it's Hugh Grant, Elizabeth Hurley, and that prostitute he was found within the car. But for the most part, high-status men will cheat with women who are very attractive. So a lot of the men dragging out the very attractive woman who's caught in the act of adultery is their own sublimated lust. I can't have her. She would reject me. She's the kind of woman who would reject me. She must be punished. Let stone her to death. It really doesn't have much to do with the enforcement of sexual morality a lot of times. It has to do with frustrated betas wanting to destroy a woman who would never date with them or date them or sleep with them. So even their hatred is a sin. It is a sin of lust and envy. That desire to destroy him does not arise out of sexual morality. In other words, well, if she came on to you strong and you were on a business trip, would you sleep with her? Well, you'd be pretty bloody tempted and you probably would. So how dare you condemn a man for sleeping with a woman that you would also sleep with if you have the opportunity. So, universalizing the principle, it is not who is caught in the act of adultery, it is who has sinned. If all who sin must be destroyed, we're all toast. Well, except for Jesus, who doesn't sin. So, universalizing moral condemnation to turn it into a form of self-criticism is very powerful.
[31:12] Amazing. This is a lightning strike in the consciousness of the world for Jesus to say this. It is incredibly sophisticated, beyond brilliant. And we can say now, because we have, that he who was without sin cast the phone, we have that now. Jesus didn't have that back then. This is really the foundation of the New Testament, which is stop using morality as a weapon to hide your own sin and focus on your own moral improvement.
[31:45] This is to some degree a story because Jesus didn't write down anything, and the woman wouldn't have written this down. And so all the people leave. So how do we know what Jesus said to the woman? But it doesn't really matter. So after the men leave, Jesus had lifted up himself and saw none but the woman. And he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers hath? No man condemn thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee. Go, And this is the part people always forget. Go and sin no more. Go and sin no more.
[32:22] The redemption arc of the Christian world is beautiful and powerful almost beyond words. When I said this, I think back in 2015, 2016, hard to believe that's almost 10 years ago, but I said this with regards to Trump, when Trump had the Billy Bush grab them by the pussy tape that Trump expressed deep contrition and regret. And I said, so on the left, they won't understand it because there's no redemption arc on the left. There's no redemption arc. You do something wrong, you are condemned. Now, maybe you can grovel your way into being left alone, but there's no forgiveness on the left. There's only the exercise of power. So I said, Christians will forgive him because he's sincere in his contrition. But Christians will forgive him, and it will not be a major obstacle to him getting elected. In the same way, for the left, to be persecuted is to be wrong, whereas for Christians, to be persecuted is to be a Christian.
[33:23] And also for people who study philosophy and history, to be persecuted is not to be wrong. In fact, to be persecuted is very often the mark of being right.
[33:34] Just a less intelligent thing, right? To say, well, you know, he's been charged with X number of crimes, therefore he must be guilty of at least one of them and so on. Whereas anybody who reads, right, who studies history, who studies history of philosophy, the history of science knows that people who made advancements were condemned and persecuted all the time. Christians, of course, base part of the virtue of Jesus on the fact that he was persecuted. So there's a sort of fundamental divide, a lack of comprehension of the other side. Christians understand the lack of forgiveness, and those who study history understand that accusations are very often made against the best people in society. So, yeah, but people who don't read and who just react and who just want to attack and lambaste people. So, Christians and those who study history understand forgiveness and unjust accusations. Those who don't understand history and aren't really Christians don't understand forgiveness. Christians understand a lack of forgiveness because they struggle with it all the time, but non-Christians don't really understand Christian forgiveness at all. And because Trump did the right thing in the Billy Bush tapes, he did the right thing. He expressed deep contrition, apologized, vowed to do better, and has sinned. So that's forgiveness.
[35:01] So he says, go and sin no more. So he didn't say, yeah, go be a harlot again, go and sin again, go and have adultery. He didn't say that. Go and sin no more.
[35:15] So he said to the scribes and Pharisees, the hypocrites really, he said, look to your own moral improvement and stop throwing rocks at women. Which, you know, it seems pretty obvious at this point. Maybe don't stone women to death, but rather instead look at your own moral improvement.
[35:30] And then he said to the woman, go and sin no more. Look to your own moral improvement.
[35:38] Obviously, I don't know anything factual about Jesus' thinking, but what I would imagine in great humility and probably in error, but what I would imagine is that sometimes the most essential sin is the sin of despair. So sometimes a woman who wants to die will commit adultery and be caught so that she can be killed. That sometimes the greatest sin is despair, or the most foundational element of despair, which is the desire for death. That sometimes the sin is despair, and by killing the woman who committed adultery, you are committing the grave sin of not dealing with her despair, and in fact you are fulfilling her sin of despair by killing her because she wants to die. And I've said this before and I'll say it again, do not underestimate the number of people who want to die.
[36:40] Do not underestimate, please, do not underestimate the number of people who want to die, whose conscience has become so toxic that they can find no peace in this life. The dissatisfaction, the anger, the tension, the stress, the rage, the discomfort, the burned out adrenals, the exhausted fight-or-fly mechanism. They live in hell. And certainly, this has been my general position. People who want fascism, they want socialism, they want communism, and so on, there's just a death impulse there. I mean, particularly now, right, when you look at, you know, 100 million killed by communism in the 20th century alone, or people who are sort of very pro-state and the government should do everything, I mean, they know that governments, you're a democide, right? A quarter of a million people killed by their own governments outside of war just in the 20th century. The democide, right?
[37:30] Who just want more and more government, want less and less life. It is the sin of despair, which is they've hit the tipping point where a good conscience can no longer be recovered because they have acted to use their conscience not to raise empathy, but to harm others. In other words, somebody says something to Bob that provokes his bad conscience, and Bob then attacks that person in order to, because he views any discomfort to himself, as an unjust attack from others. So if you say something to Bob that makes him feel bad because of his conscience, he will view that as an attack upon himself, and then he will attack you in, quote, self-defense, which means you have no, as I said before, no functional access to Bob's conscience. And in fact, if you try to get him to act better, he will only act worse. And once you're in a situation where if you try to get someone to act better, they only act worse, your only option is to disconnect. At least that's been my experience. Like when I was talking to family members and when I tried to get them to act better, they ended up escalating and becoming worse. I'm like, okay, so I don't want you to keep gaining weight, but every time I talk to you about your weight and try and help, you...
[38:41] And get more unhealthy and fatter, it's like, okay, well, then I'm just going to have to withdraw because I can't do anything here. I can't help you because every time I try and help you, you get worse. Every time I try and ask you for empathy, you respond with more cruelty and escalation and gaslighting it, right? So then you just have to disconnect and hope that, you know, cross your fingers at a reasonable, safe distance and say, oh, I hope that you improve, but I will not participate in causing you to act badly, right? So with regards to my mother, when I started to ask for basic empathy and connection and apologies, and she started to escalate and act even worse and be more aggressive and violent. I'm like, okay, well, I cannot in good conscience participate in you becoming an even worse person. In other words, if me trying to get you to have empathy with me causes you to escalate your cruelty and aggression, then I am now morally responsible for making you a worse person by talking to you. I'm not going to participate in that. You know, I care about my mother enough to not provoke her into worse behavior that further seals her in the bitter tomb of her own bad conscience. No, thank you. So this is very powerful stuff. And I hope that I'm doing some scant and faint justice to the power of what is going on in John 8. And of course, it's a long chapter. I won't go into it like 59 verses. So I won't go into it in more detail, perhaps another time.
[39:57] But I really did want to share my thoughts about this most powerful inflection or transition point in the morality of the world, and in a particular of the West, the suspicion that those who are morally violent and hysterical and aggressive are covering up their own bad conscience and committing a sin based on some other motivation, such as lust and envy, has sunk into our consciousness, and it has given us a great weapon against the moralizers who attack in order to avoid their own bad conscience. And Jesus, absolutely. I won't say nails it. That's a bad, bad phrase to use with Jesus, but he's bang on as far as this goes. And I hope that this helps you. If you find these conversations to be of value, I would really humbly and gratefully accept your support at freedomman.com slash donate. Thanks so much, my friends. Have a great day. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
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