day no. 17,120: eat or be eaten

“There are only two ‘ways,’ two fundamental religions in the world. One of them feeds people, and the other one eats people.” — Douglas Wilson, Virgins and Volcanoes

Oneism is the false belief that everything is unified. In that world, for one to eat, another must go hungry, or worse, he must be eaten. It is a zero sum existence. God is just another object inside the system. He may be the largest and strongest, but He exists inside the same circle as everything else. For Him to gain is for us to lose. For us to gain, He must forfeit.

Twoism, however, is the true doctrine that God is altogether unlike the created order. He is not just another creature inside the system, He is entirely other and outside the system entirely, an uncreated eternal. He is substantive and everything else is derivative. He exists on His own in His circle. He created a second circle in which all other things, that is things created, exist. He made the second circle without diminishing Himself. He did not lose anything in order to make it. He overflows. He radiates. He can make the second circle larger to accommodate larger slices of the same pie because He made it from nothing in the first place.

God is not a billiard ball knocking into and displacing other billiard balls. He is not on the table. He is above it and playing the game. He hovers over it, like the Spirit did the waters in the beginning.

"There were many other differences between a saint and a dragon. But the essential difference was simply this: that the Dragon did want to eat St. George; whereas St. George would have felt a strong distaste for eating the Dragon. In most of the stories he killed the Dragon. In many of the stories he not only spared, but baptised it. But in neither case did the Christian have any appetite for cold dragon. The Dragon, however, really has an appetite for cold Christian—and especially for cold Christianity. This blind intention to absorb, to change the shape of everything and digest it in the darkness of a dragon's stomach; this is what is really meant by the Pantheism and Cosmic Unity of the East. The Cosmos as such is cannibal; as old Time ate his children. The Eastern saints were saints because they wanted to be swallowed up. The Western saint, like St. George, was sainted by the Western Church precisely because he refused to be swallowed." — G.K. Chesterton, A Miscellany of Men

The wisdom of the world is eat or be eaten. It is be at the table or be on the menu. The Christian man refuses to be swallowed. He does not allow himself to be digested by the lie of oneism. He resists the temptation to reduce his mission to eat or be eaten. He refuses to fall for dog eat dog.

"The justice of Hell is purely realistic, and concerned only with results. Bring us back food, or be food yourself." ― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Hell is consumed by hunger. It reduces the world to predator and prey. It insists on a forced choice situation: bite or get bit.

Galatians 5:15

But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.

Biting is only one step away from chewing. Once you have grown accustomed to biting, you keep going and find yourself gnawing which gradually turns into chewing which ultimately ends in eating. All that to say, if you allow yourself to be snippy, you are in danger of becoming a cannibal. But this is not of God. Jesus gave us His body and His blood so that we would no longer develop a taste for each other.

“We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

There are only two religions. There is the fear and frenzy of famine where everyone eats to avoid being eaten and there is the faith and satisfaction of feasting where everyone eats to avoid becoming a backbiter.