Exchange Value

The 19th century saw a new wave of pro-revolutionary, modernistic, athiestic writers. Many advocated the abrupt end of traditional forms of government, marriage, history, and philosophy.

Although these writers moved away from God, many of them had a great deal to say about the human spirit and refered to themselves as spiritual beings. I direct anyone who would say otherwise to examine Nietchze's Geneology of Morals.

Perhaps the most peculiar examples of this tendancy were among the communist writers. One needn't look further than the writings of Karl Marx.

Before Karl Marx started writing manifestos and grand political ideologies he was a romantic poet. One searches in vain to understand how one could derive a multi-national materialist plan out of romantic poetry.

Hard as it may be to believe, these romantic, subjective notions continued into his later writings.

The opening line of his Communist Manifesto declares that 'a spectre' (a spirit) has descended on the land, which he later describes as the spirit of communism.

Unfortunately a spirit has no place in a materialist ideology, so he describes the spirit as having to leave because it is a spirit of the communist system. Neither Communism nor a System can support a spirit. This bizarre doubleness has been criticized by many including Derrida.

Marx claimed the enemy of Communism was (what he called) 'subjective idealism'. The vagueries and elusivities of religion and spirituality were criminal opiates in this way of thinking.

And so he placed his dicotomies: communism versus capitalism, system vs. spirit, subjective idealism vs. objective materialism.

Another dicotomy he used to explain his system was a difference between 'use value' and 'exchange value'.

'Use value' can be defined as the value a thing has in terms of its utility.

A shovel can be used to move so much dirt in such an amount of time. A bulldozer can be used to move a great deal more dirt in the same time. A bulldozer therefore has more use value than a shovel.

Use value is objective. Everyone can witness a bulldozer move more dirt than a shovel, and, according to Marx, everyone ('the public' or 'society') can share in the prosperity.

By contrast Marx considered 'exchange value' to be an elusive, subjective criteria which is the basis of religion and subjectivity. A little boy goes to the store and decides to 'exchange' his allowance to buy a birthday present for his brother instead of candy.

In Marx's way of thinking, the (hidden and indirect) love of the little boy is a nice, warm thing, but of no use in constructing a political system.

Such a choice of the boy implies that he has the possibility of neglecting his brother's birthday (if it is really a choice). If all boys have the right to receive birthday gifts for their birthday, then there should be laws making sure all boys get the same birthday presents for their birthday.

And if those gifts are not the same, they should have the same 'use value'.

The aspect of 'it was his choice and he acted in love' is trivial and unreliable to Marx. In his view gifts of love should be replaced with redistribution to the point of equality for all.

Many atrocities have been commited with reference to this attitude.

As the citizens of Russia and China (both many years after Marx) came to accept these views they shared a commonality: millions upon millions of dead people.

During World War II the red state of Russia decided that if millions of its citizens were killed outright in purges, gulags, and semi-suicidal military campaigns it would be more "useful" to the country than avoiding these acts.

Stalin himself claimed that if one person died it was a tragedy. If a million people died it was a statistic.

The Russian state had no notion of what a single, innocent citizen could be 'exchanged' for. It had no interest in such a question. Exchange value was an elusive, spiritual, descretional thing which had no immediate benefit for the government.

The exchange worth of the individual was replaced with speculative, socialistic notions of what was best for so-called society.

Although there seems to be something mad, and truly wicked in accepting the purely objective Communist view of human worth it seems easier to accept than the paradoxical alternative: Christianity.

Christ prefers to leave the ninety-nine sheep -who do not need to be saved- so he can rescue the single sheep who has wandered off.

No human government -from the origin of man on earth to the present day- has ever rejoiced over a criminal who decides to obey the law. Government interest is more concerned with generalities: 'how bad is the crime in this country, generally?'

But Christ's priorities are completely different from every government, every social interest, every directly-understandable system. To this extent heaven rejoices over the single sinner that repents far more than the many who do not need to repent.

The paradox of the Bible, as Kierkegaard (the defender of subjectivity) noted, is that in Christianity the single individual is more important than the group.

The Bible also makes extensive use of the 'exchange value' question:

Do you want to be like Esau who exchanged his birthright for a bowl of soup? Do you want to be like Judas who exchanged his loyalty to Christ for money? Would you exchange the entire world for the possession of your soul?

The system asks choices of no one. It recognizes only the commonality, the group, the imaginary vagueness called the 'public'.

But the Bible is continually asking questions of its readers. Will you choose this day whom you will serve? Will you serve the flesh or the spirit? Will you bow to Ceasar or will you confess Christ?

Like the Communist system, it seems easier to give in. It seems easier to take the bowl of soup. It seems easier to take the money. It seems easier to gain the world.

The only drawback is a vague, inner notion that something is terribly wrong. And the Bible compares this to death.

From the perspective of exchange value: the meaning a man can find in life is to learn what matters to him and sticking to it.

Few people understand this.

But remember the world, the public, and the imaginary concept of society do not care a wooden nickel about what is important to a single person. The world demands everyone pursue its values, its system, its gimmicks, and its deceitfulness.

Or at least pretend to.

The one who recognizes the spiritual alternative to the system also realizes that apart from our ability to excerise personal descretion we are no more than mere robots carrying out the orders of an imaginary other.

The difference between such a living and true life is simply a matter of inwardness, obedience to the unseeable God, and mere devotion.

May God deliver us from such temptation, may He keep us from living a life of empty routine, may He continually teach and instruct his chosen ones of the wonder and mystery of His love as it works inside us.

A Prodigous Resignation

I have a friend from college who lives in Hawaii. He works for a small engineering company.

Apparently the company has been having trouble making ends meet and has started laying off some of their employees.

My friend tells me the workers are obsessed about keeping their jobs. There has also been a lot of back-room hostility against some of the company leadership.

Anyway, one of the employees who was laid off sent out a company-wide goodbye email which I thought was worth posting here. I contacted the man to ask to reproduce it. He heartily agreed after requiring me to omit his name.

I sensed the tone of the letter was merely the tip of an iceberg.

To my fellow workers,
Aloha,


After graduating college I had no earthly chance of getting this job.

Still I heard an absurd voice in the back of my head -telling me to apply for it. I was afraid of getting let down, but the voice said, "Even if you lose this job, you will be taken care of."

And so I believed -not by earthly means- but by virtue of the absurd.

Many things have changed while I have worked at this site. One thing has never changed: I was in good hands when I worked here, and I will be in good hands when I leave.

Death has a strange way of removing masks. For this reason, people are usually taken at their word when they are in their final moments of life. As best I can tell, I am not about to die, but I will leave you soon and I hardly tempted to wear a facade before people I am not likely to see again. To this extent I swear by neither heaven nor earth.

If you believe I speak truly, then also believe that behind my business-like movements, my professional-sounding words, my casual-appearing glances was someone who believed in you just the way you were, who identified with your weaknesses and follies, and who suspected that good intentions were at work in you.

My time here has been amicable with most of you. Some I have loved as close friends, some as aquaintances, and others I have loved as enemies. Whether your relation to me was as friend or foe, I now confess the truth: that I have dearly loved you and prayed for you and your welfare under heaven.

I hope each of you comes to the place where you can personally see your job here as a chance to support your nation, your homes, and your neighbor. If you succeed in this effort, you will not find your job to be a sad burden or an unjust cost of living.

Tragedies may happen with or without your consent. If you are unable to succeed in seeing your job in such benevolent terms, I challenge you to remember this one thing:

The smallest act of kindness is greater than all the achievements of science, business, and academic understanding.

As I part ways, I ask only one thing for myself if you think of me.

When you work with someone here who seems lost, incompetent, hot-headed, a worker who means little to anyone, please extend to this man or woman the same kindness and generousity that you have extended to me.

I have made many mistakes here: technical, mathmatical, interpersonal, and others.

Perhaps one of my worst mistakes has been to look at our senior staff, our geniuses, and our leadership and say to myself, "These unsung heroes are the true causes of our success here as a business!"

They are heroes, yes, and too often they go uncredited.

But the true cause of our success (if any recognition belongs to any human here, and perhaps it does not) is that single employee who hides himself away in his closet and earnestly asks heaven for its blessing.

Whether such a worker is an engineer, a manager, a janitor, or a secretary, you should know, my friends, that such requests never fall upon deaf ears.

This reminds me of something a project manager once told me: that the best resource for any project was divine intervention.

He said it to me in such a way that I could not tell if he was making a joke about how unpredictable everything seems to be -or if he was betraying something elusive and in a perfectly serious attitude.

Thank you for the time you have shared with me. How undeserving of it I was!

May you always trust, may you always hope, may you always perserve, even to the extent that love never fails.


Mahalo,

Albert Anonymous

The Storm And The Fall

"Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.

The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock.

And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand.

The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell-- and great was its fall!"

Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.

Matthew 7:24-29

My wife and I were talking about depression tonight.

When does it come upon a person? What can they do to avoid it?

She mentioned a certain woman who died from diabetes. Her husband became greatly depressed, talked about taking his life, and eventually did take his own life.

Of course there would be no way for us to go inside the man and see his sorrow, but his final act does shed some light on it. Consider the possibilities.

Either:

1) The man was full of joy, but this changed when he lost his wife. He became so sad at her passing that his sadness became unbearable, and so he decided to end this burden by taking his own life.

Or:

2) The man had ceased to live long ago. His wife brought him drama, desire, and distraction. He eventually forgot he already had a foot in the grave. When he lost his wife he lost his ability to forget he was already dead, and so he took his own life.

Let us say the first possibility is the case. If this man had meaning in life only to lose it when his wife left then it follows that meaning in life is a matter of external consequence.

It would follow that the best way to find meaning in life is to learn every means of hanging onto the things one finds valuable as long as possible. Research diabetes. Start government programs to assure oneself that diabetes will almost never take anyone's spouse.

And what kind of certainty can one have of happiness in such a life? If such a grand effort could make such a difference, it would still be a risk. The rest is just a matter of how long it lasted.

Maybe one could enjoy meaning in life for a short while, or perhaps for a longer while.

And what of the certainty of death? Suppose this man was reflectively aware that his wife gave him meaning in life. Would he be unable to realize that she would one day be separated from him, as we all are, in death?

Perhaps he had hoped to hang on to his meaning in life as long as he could. Then when she was taken from him in death he could look back and say, "Surely I have no meaning left in life, but there was a time when it did have meaning. I can go on living because I still remember when my life did have meaning."

Or perhaps he would exit as abruptly as a film watcher who had only hoped to see a certain scene in a movie. Could you see him rising suddenly and walking out in the middle of the movie?

Suppose an employee approached him before he left the building. "But sir, this is the only showing you are permitted to see with this ticket! This is a great insult to the director who gave you this ticket."

"That was the only scene I wanted to see." Perhaps he could have walked right out of the theater. Maybe he could even smile as he did it. But how far down could such a smile go?


The other explanation also remains.

The man may have said to himself (though perhaps in a secretive way): "I hate all this, and myself. The choices that follow, the events, the circumstances, why even fate itself means nothing. I might as well get married, I do not care."

Or he could have said it differently:

"My life means nothing to me. The Bible says that, 'He who findeth a wife findeth a good thing'. I should at least be compensated for having this life that means nothing to me."

Or he could have said it another way:

"I have this intense longing. What I long for I do not know, it escapes me. When I find it I will look at myself in the mirror and say, 'Now my life has importance to me.' Until I find such a thing I might as well get married."

In such a view a person may pursue all kinds of successes and distractions, but the real despair has nothing to do with the success or failure of such efforts. It was there all along.

Consider the one Jesus identifies as the foolish man:

And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand.

The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell-- and great was its fall!

In this parable we hear about a foolish man who built his house on the sand. He was too foolish to avoid building his house upon a rock.

Suppose there were more foolish people afterwords who said, "How sad! This man had an excellent house! The only problem was the outer circumstance: the storm blew it down!"

Christ calls all such talk folly.

The difference between the wise and the foolish man had nothing to do with the ferocity or the mildness of the storm.

The house of the wise man faced the storm and it stood firmly.

The difference between the two houses was not their surroundings. The difference was in that secret place that no one could see. The difference was that hidden thing holding up the house.

The foolish man did not have such a foundation, and so much the worse for every person who looks longingly in life and says, "If only I had a career so that people would respect me," Or, "If only I had a fetching wife who met my desires."

Suppose such a person finds and keeps a career or a wife. Everything seems to hold together, just as the house of the foolish man seemed to hold together.

But then suppose their final day comes. Suppose they look back on their lives and remember, "Ah, yes, there was really nothing more to my career, or to my spouse... my ticket has come up, and I feel I have won nothing."

On the other hand, this conscious realization is sometimes avoided. People die suddenly without recalling anything. Has such a person escaped justice?

I wonder if a person were to build a house on the shore, and, let us say imaginatively that he was able to avoid remembering his foundation through rigorous mental training, if he could enjoy his time living there?

Would he not have an unnameable fear, a sweat on the back of his neck, following him along and stealing the delight of his every achievement? Would he not exchange his awareness of a conscious, terrible disaster for a worse dred of something vague and devastating?

The Apostle clearly states that a man reaps what he sows.


Another possibility: if a man were able to die unconscious of his already being dead, would it be possible to die in consciousness of still living?

Suppose the suicidal man had taken the fatal poison and said to himself -in spite of his earlier speculations- "You know what? I do believe God still loves me! This love is totally unsearchable and yet I see it so exactly!" Would it be too late for the man who had forgotten he was already dead to find himself oddly alive?

The question is of decisive importance for all.

Certainly we have not all put ourselves in a place where we will all die immediately, but neither is anyone able to say how long it will be before they die.

And it is not too late for anyone now alive to hear Christ's words and put them into practice, to believe on the one sent by God, to forgive one's enemies, to ask earnestly -as the thief did- to be remembered by Christ in His kingdom!

Life has its storms, it is too true, and we are right to weep over them. At the same time it is also true that every house has a foundation, either one that can be shaken or one that cannot be shaken.

A person would do well to ask, "What foundation is my life resting on? Have I heard the words of Christ and put them into practice?"

Understanding Abraham

The story about Abraham is remarkable in that it is always glorious no matter how poorly it is understood, but here again it is a matter of whether or not we are willing to work and be burdened.

But we are unwilling to work, and yet we want to understand the story.

We glorify Abraham, but how? We recite the whole story in cliches: "The great thing was that he loved God in such a way that he was willing to offer him the best." This is very true, but "the best" is a vague term.

Mentally and orally we homologize Isaac and the best, and the contemplator can very well smoke his pipe while cogitating, and the listener may very well stretch out his legs comfortably.

If that rich young man whom Jesus met along the way had sold all his possessions and given the money to the poor, we would praise him as we praise every great deed, even if we could not understand him without working, but he still would not become an Abraham, even though he sacrificed the best.

What is omitted from Abraham's story is the anxiety, because to money I have no ethical obligation, but to the son the father has the highest and holiest.

We forget it and yet want to talk about Abraham.

So we talk and in the process of talking interchange the two terms, Isaac and the best, and everything goes fine.

But just suppose that someone listening is a man who suffers from sleeplessness- then the most terrifying, the most profound, tragic, and comic misunderstanding is very close at hand.

He goes home, he wants to do just as Abraham did, for the son, after all, is the best. If the preacher found out about it, he perhaps would go to the man, he would muster all his ecclesiastical dignity and shout, "You despicable man, you scum of society, what devil has so possessed you that you want to murder your son."

And the pastor, who had not noticed any heat or perspiration when preaching about Abraham, would be surprised at himself, at the wrathful earnestness with which he thunders at the poor man. He would be pleased with himself, for he had never spoken with such emphasis and emotion.

He would say to himself and his wife, "I am an orator-what was lacking was the occasion. When I spoke about Abraham on Sunday, I did not feel gripped at all."

If the same speaker had a little superfluity of understanding to spare, I am sure he would have lost it if the sinner had calmly and with dignity answered: "But, after all, that was what you yourself preached about on Sunday."

How could the preacher ever get such a thing in his head, and yet it was so, and his only mistake was that he did not know what he was saying.

And to think that there is no poet who could bring himself to prefer situations such as this to the nonsense and trumpery with which comedies and novels are stuffed!

Fear and Trembling, p. 28

Fear and Trembling

As a child my mom would read me Bible stories.

She read them out of a book with large pictures. I didn't know how to read the text, so I did what I could to read the faces in the pictures.

We always read from the Old Testament, and the pictures usually depicted weeping of some kind. The shepherd boy, David, at least seemed at peace playing his harp.

The story of Abraham and Isaac had a very unusual picture.


The first time I saw the picture it seemed as though there was an old man who had tied up a beautiful, young woman and was about to stab her with a knife.

The image terrified me.

I had no idea what a beautiful woman was 'supposed to' look like. The only one I had ever seen at the time (I was three or four) was probably my mom. The painting probably dated to the renaissance, which had a way of portraying men in womanly ways.

I remember thinking to myself something like, 'There's only a couple beautiful women in the world, and this old man is killing one of them! How terrible!'.

I asked my mom about the story because the image made me tremble. I thought she would have a ready explanation for what was happening -perhaps the old man was about to cut the woman loose, or he was going to fight a snake with the knife, or something.

The more I learned about the details, the more dredful the story seemed to me.

The old man, whose name was Abraham, was told by God to kill his own son, Isaac. Isaac was not a young woman Abraham had been attracted to. Isaac was the promised son Abraham had waited many, many years to receive.

...

When my wife and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary we stayed at a beautiful resort hotel -her choice. The next morning was Sunday and she asked me to pick a chapter in the Bible to read.

I turned to Genesis 22 and started reading.

The chapter starts off dramatically with God telling Abraham:

Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.

Which Isaac was God referring to? The Isaac whom Abraham loved. This was the only qualification God made in referring the sacrifice to Abraham. No further description was needed. One can almost imagine Abraham thinking to himself: 'That Isaac. I know exactly who you are referring to.'

At times God has been known to allow people to face difficulties. My wife's father, whom she loved, was killed in a terrible automobile accident. It was very sad for her and her family, although though no one had been instructed to kill her father.

Was Abraham tempted to disobey God?

The chapter opens saying that, "God tested Abraham". But I don't think Abraham was tempted in the same way we might have been tempted.

I don't think Abraham thought to himself, "Maybe I should just go to bed, forget the whole thing ever happened. It was probably just the spicey roast beef dinner anyway."

Abraham's temptation was probably more along the lines of:

'Is this the God I worship? Is this who He is? Is this what he considers good? To require me to kill my own son, who I have waited to behold for so long for?'

As unusual as the story maybe, I do not find bitterness against God to be very rare. I can think of a time -only a month ago- where I had a bitter attitude against God over breaking open the vinyl floor while pushing my new washing machine into its closet.

If my attitude was not truly bitterness against God, it was something a lot like it. On the other hand, tearing up the floor on accident is very different from intentionally drawing a knife on your own son.

Was Abraham bitter against God?

In the book of Hebrews we learn that Abraham was not only taking his son, his servants, and some supplies with him to the mountain in Moriah. He also brought something else with him.

Faith.

Like God, no one could really see Abraham's faith, except perhaps indirectly.

When Isaac asked his father, "Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" Abraham answered in faith, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son."


How easily one comes to tremble in the details of this story.

After I read the story with my wife on our anniversary my wife told me that she became afraid as soon as I started reading the story, and that it was very difficult for her to listen to. I told her it was exactly that way for me as well.

How sad the way many people try to escape from this fear!

In junior high I asked my teacher about the story, about how one should respond if they hear God asking them to kill someone they loved.

And my teacher, who I consider to this day to be wise in many ways, told me that this story took place before God provided the ten commandments saying not to murder.

'So we don't have to be afraid because God would not ask this of any of us.'

Or so she seemed to suggest.

In a way it is like saying that at one time God was Someone to be feared. He laid armies to waste, killed the first-borns, and even destroyed the entire earth and all the people (Noah's family excepting) in a flood, but today? Today, He always behaves in a way that society can approve and accept immediately.

I tried to find consolation in her words, but I never could. Something seemed to linger in the story that terrified me, and it seemed like I was just overlooking it.

One time while discussing the story with a local pastor, he said to me, "But it's not like Abraham killed his son. God intervened at the last second."

He could have just as easily said, 'Look we're making spaghetti tonight, but, come on, it's not like we going to get it all over our white shirts. We can keep it in these bowls the whole time.'

And I feel like so much of my life has been a continual striving to do exactly this: to draw these imaginary lines and say, "God would never allow this to happen...".

But He does allow it to happen. And in this story He commands it of Abraham.

Abraham believed that God could bring Isaac back from the dead. He did not know God was going to do that. And he certainly didn't know God was going to intervene.

To consider only the end of the story and say, 'Well, that worked out pretty good,' Is to overlook the entirety of the obedience that God approved of.

Looking back on it, I suppose my pastor and my teacher were trying to do the same thing with their explanations: they were both trying to take all the fear out of the story.

According to the account, however, it was the fear which God commended Abraham for:

Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.

The strange thing about this story -and the many times I tried to grasp it- is that I probably understood it better when I was a child. Before I tried to explain the scary things away.

Faith can be scary, and because of it most refuse to have it. If you believe something good will happen to you, you can become very disappointed.

Faith says, 'I can accept disappointment. Yes, I can have it all taken from me, but I believe I know the One in charge, and I dare say that He has good things in store for me.'