There's this idea in Christianity that we've discussed briefly
that the judge and the redeemer are the same figure.
Now, you know in the book of Revelation, you may know this or you may not,
Christ comes back as a judge and he has a sword coming-
It's a revelatory vision, that book, it's a very strange
It's the last thing you'd expect conservative Christians to believe,
and believe me, it's such a visionary hallucination, the book of Revelation.
But Christ comes back with a sword coming out of his mouth and he comes back as a judge.
And he divides the damned from the redeemed
and most are damned and some are redeemed. It's very very harsh.
Jung believed that the figure of Christ in the gospels was too agreeable, too merciful,
too tilted towards mercy and that that called out for a counter position.
And that was the counter position of judgment - very interesting hypothesis.
But then there's this melding of the two ideas
that the judge and the redeemer are the same thing.
Okay, now...
This young man told me that his life lacked
purpose and direction and meaning and that he was nihilistic,
until he started- he read "Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance",
which is a book I actually like quite a bit
I've read it three times at different decades of my life.
And one of the things that's very interesting about that book is that
it's an examination of the idea of quality, of the idea that there are
qualitative distinctions between things and that we have an instinct to make qualitative distinctions.
And so a qualitative distinction is simply "this is better than that",
which is a judgment.
Okay, now what Ratzinger is hypothesizing is that
the person in-
You know, how that modern idea is that you're supposed to accept yourself.
I think that's an insane idea by the way.
Really, I can't think of a more nihilistic idea than that "you're already okay"!
It's like no, you're not!
And the reason that you're not is that you could be way more than you are!
So what do you want to be?
Do you want to be okay as you are or do you want to strive towards what's better?
And this young man, this australian, he said that the reason that "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
had such an impact on him was because he wasn't happy with his current mode of being.
Right, he didn't consider the manner in which he conducted himself sufficient.
And the fact that
the author of "Zen", who was Pirsig, laid out the notion that you could make qualitative distinctions
and there really was a difference between good things and bad things or great things and evil things.
It gives you direction.
It gives you the possibility of moving upward.
And Ratzinger is pointing out at least to some degree that
human beings are insufficient in and of themselves and need the movement upward.
And so they need to conceptualize something like the highest good and then to strive for that.
And the thing is that there isn't any difference between conceptualizing the good and being judged,
because if you're going to conceptualize the good and move towards it,
what you have to do is separate from yourself all those things that
aren't good and leave them behind.
And that's why the redeemer and the judge are the same thing.
And one of the things that's really appalling,
I think, about our modern world is that we're rejecting the notion of qualitative distinctions.
You say, "Well, we don't want to hurt anybody's feelings by saying that one thing is better than another!"
It's like okay, fair enough, it's not fun to be cast off with the damned, that's for sure.
But if people are in fact insufficient in their present condition,
which seems to be the case, we try finding someone who isn't,
then if you deny the possibility of qualitative distinction because you want to promote a radical egalitarianism,
then you remove the possibility of redemption because there's no movement towards the good.
And it seems to me that it's a catastrophe to sacrifice the good for-
Well, it's a catastrophe to sacrifice the good for the equal
because for us to be equal would be mean as far as I can
tell that we would all be equally unredeemed and miserable.
And so...
[applause]