I’ve spent the past two days discussing the tendency of those that feel wrong to try and tear down those that seem right. The reason for this is that the very existence of the holy is a testament against the impure. The holy prove that moral living is possible, and that it is better, which means that the immoral are worse and deserving of blame.
This pattern is nothing new. To his friends Jesus foretold, “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you.If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you,” (John 15:18-19).
To his enemies Jesus said, “Ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning,” (John 8:37, 44).
The children of the devil seek to destroy Jesus and also hate those he has chosen. Thus, the impulse of the wicked to destroy the righteous is nothing more than an extension of the devil’s desire to destroy God.
Woven Through All)
This animosity isn’t just political, and it isn’t isolated to one instance. What we see in our private lives is but a fractal strand of a war that is cosmic and universal. There are branches of this struggle that are relatively low stakes, such as when the awkward child tries to tear down his more successful peer, but it is the same spirit behind it that would murder a God.
The immoral want to destroy the moral because evil wants to destroy good. Meanwhile the good, if they are truly good, emulate the God at their root and seek to redeem the wicked.
Just as these cosmic, eternal forces have fractal strands woven into our society, so too, there are strands woven into our own selves as well. There is an agent of evil within us that seeks to tear down our good parts, because those good parts remind us that there is a better version of us inside, and that we are not meeting our full potential. And there is that agent of good in us that seeks to redeem the evil part and raise it to its holy potential. As we learn to find the right solution within ourselves, we will learn how to find it in our society, and our society will join God in His solution for the entire universe.
We are all part of one cosmic ritual or another, and the outcome that we support in the eternities is echoed in the outcome we seek in ourselves.
I recently concluded a study related to false moral dilemmas, where I sought to dispel the notion that there might ever be a time where we have to make a morally compromising choice. I asserted that there are always the options for finding an outside-the-box moral solution, or the ability to refused to engage with the situation entirely and still keep one’s conscience intact.
As I did this study, I started to notice something else, something that I was going to write about then and there, but I realized it warranted a study all its own. It is a theme that is even larger and broader, something that false moral dilemmas is but a subset of. What I have noticed is that our Western culture and media seem to be preparing us to give up on our ideals when certain triggers are met. Not only the false moral dilemmas that I already explored, but any time that there is a threat of torture or harm to a loved one.
Usually when either of these occur in our modern stories, the victim gives in to what the villains want. Obviously, it serves a narrative purpose to have a way for the villains to obtain their desire at certain points of the story, but the fact that it so commonly comes as a result of these specific methods is very interesting. We may view these sorts of stories passively, but each time we see the pattern repeated it is as if our minds are rehearsing that trigger and response, training itself to make the same surrender if we ever face the same sort of opposition.
In my next post I will examine these movie tropes of how the hero is forced to surrender his ideals, and what the long-term effects of repeated exposure to this pattern might spell for us. I’ll see you there.
I mentioned in the first post of this series that there is a pattern of possessing knowledge of a first order, putting that knowledge into practice, then obtaining knowledge of a second order. Put in theological terms, there is first knowledge that gives man faith. It isn’t perfect, but it is enough to make him step out and take some sort of action. He does what he feels God requires of him. When he does, he sees the hand of God delivering the victory, and now his incomplete knowledge is replaced with a sure testimony, which is knowledge of the second order.
This pattern repeats over and over throughout the scriptures. Let us look at just a few examples of it.
An Honest Father)
In the gospels, there is the story of a father who brought to Jesus his son that was under the cruel control of an evil spirit. The man pleaded with Jesus to heal his son, to which Christ replied, “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.” The man, in pure honesty replied, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief” (Mark 9:24).
Clearly this man had knowledge or faith, of a type, but it wasn’t perfect, and he knew it. Still, it was enough to lead him to act, to seek out Jesus, and next we read how Jesus did, in fact, heal the man’s son, presumably also fulfilling the man’s request to “help his unbelief” and replace it with something surer. Because the man acted on partial knowledge, a miracle occurred, and fuller knowledge took its place.
Peter’s First Steps)
We also have the example of one of Peter’s defining moments. The story begins with the apostles in a boat, seeing Jesus approaching them, walking upon the water. As a witness to this miracle, Peter is filled with the confidence to ask Jesus if he may come join him on the water. Jesus’s one word response was “Come,” and Peter stepped out onto the water. Miraculously, even though Peter was not the Son of God, the water held him up, just as it did for Jesus.
So, Peter was a witness to something that gave him faith, and that faith led him to act, and that act would have removed all doubt in his mind that all things were possible through their Lord and Master, even mastery of the elements.
Gideon’s Army)
Going back to the Old Testament, there was a time where the Israelites had given themselves over to idolatry and were grave danger from an approaching army of the Midianites. God spoke to a faithful man of Manasseh, Gideon, calling on him to restore the people to their former obedience and liberty. Gideon believed God’s message, but like the father in our first story, there was clearly also a part of him that still held to unbelief. He laid out an offering before the Lord, and after it was consumed by a miraculous fire, he gained the confidence to go and tear down the false idols of his people.
But that wasn’t the end of it. The Midianite army was still approaching, an innumerable host, and Gideon still needed to take his small band of warriors to fight them. Once again, Gideon asked for two signs, laying out a fleece of wool, and one day asking that God would put dew upon the wool and not any of the ground, and then the next night asking that God would put dew on the ground but not any on the wool. After the Lord obliged to both requests, Gideon took his army, whittled it down according to God’s commands, and miraculously confused the Midianite army into destroying themselves.
So, Gideon was given one sign, providing him enough faith to carry out one bold deed. Then the confidence of that deed, combined with two more signs, gave him the faith to carry out an even bolder deed for the Lord. Knowledge led to action, action led to greater knowledge, greater knowledge led to greater action, and we can clearly see a cyclical pattern.
How the Lord Works)
Think also of Abraham being given a son in his old age, providing him the confidence to then give that son up on the altar. Also, in the Book of Mormon, the Brother of Jared gained knowledge of God’s power through multiple miracles before the Lord tasked him with finding a divine solution of his own, the fulfillment of which resulted in seeing the finger of the Lord.
There are many examples of this pattern of knowledge-action-greater knowledge, so many that it seems that there is a fundamental principle in it, a template for how the Lord works with people to lead them to greater and greater things. First, He gives us a sign, providing just enough knowledge of Him and His ways to be emboldened to action. Then, when we do act, even in our imperfect knowledge, the surer testimony replaces the weaker knowledge, and the cycle continues. Thus, knowledge and action go hand-in-hand in the plans of the Lord. We are not meant to be led by just one or the other, we must iterate across both to become the spiritual giants we were born to be.
Throughout this study I have shared different snapshots of my life, showing that I have personally experienced all the stages of moral development. I have been in sharp decline, dramatic rise, extended periods of maintenance, and gradual deterioration. I have explained some patterns I have seen along the way and admitted that there are still things that I am figuring out. Thus, I have only clues and snippets to offer, not the completed solution.
Those realizations, which I have discussed already in this study, can be summarized as follows:
The initial moment of great spiritual improvement comes from a truly redemptive experience, where one is aware of the guilt of their soul, but feels the miracle of God’s forgiveness and is awoken to a new manner of life.
Subsequent surges of spiritual improvement can be experienced by releasing a fundamental spiritual misconception or restoring part of the proper order in one’s core hierarchy.
In between moments of spiritual epiphany and dramatic improvement, we can maintain the progress already made through the use of daily, renewing ritual.
These do not necessarily capture all ways in which one can make dramatic improvements and maintain quality of character, but these are the ones that I have observed so far in my own life.
Deterioration and Decline)
Of course, if these are principles for maintaining and improving one’s moral character, then their inverse shows us how moral deterioration and freefall occurs. We must all be guarded against the sudden loss of our souls, and also of the gradual decline of our character.
In this study I briefly mentioned the inverse of the principles of progression mentioned above as three principles of digression. Note that these transpire in reverse order of the original states of progression.
If we fall into extended periods of complacency, then moral deterioration is inevitable. We may feel a little guilt about the compromises but may also absolve ourselves as having not done anything “too bad.”
Deterioration leads to temptation and delusion, where we do something deeply compromising or accept a lie of the world. These moments malform our core beliefs or cause us to place lower things in our core hierarchy, like pleasure, above higher things, like virtue.
Our orientation towards moral decline is fully set as we now face a truly damning experience. Having once experienced grace and forgiveness, we now feel that we rejected it for sin or for compatibility with the world.
In the end, perhaps there is little that is new here. In essence, we have described the well-known process by which people give in to temptation by degrees. It is perhaps unique that we approached it in reverse by first recognizing patterns for spiritual progression, then inverting it to get the familiar pattern of spiritual decline.
This is not surprising. When we investigate a new thread of theological inquiry it is not uncommon to find that it leads to a new expression of an already-familiar idea. This tendency reinforces the universal truth of these ideas, showing that they permeate through all reality, manifesting themselves in many ways.
I hope that this study has been a helpful examination of the different movements that we make in regard to moral character, and the different events that might catalyze those changes. I can say that it has been useful for me on a personal level to look at the matter more closely.
Thus far I have shared from my story how I appeared to be on a spiritual plateau to any outside onlooker, but that in reality I was in a sharp moral decline with a secret addiction, how this came to an abrupt end when I had a truly redemptive experience which made making spiritual changes and progression natural and full of joy. However, that isn’t the end of my journey either.
After the time of spiritual awakening and rapid improvement, I must confess that the passion waned within me. I truly wanted to keep that passion alive, and did many things to try and prolong it, but it was like trying to hold water in my hands, and in the end it trickled away.
That isn’t to say that I went back to a place of steep moral decline, however. Nor is it to say that I never experienced spiritual passion again afterwards. Rather, I entered a cycle of occasional bursts of passion, followed by long periods of quiet ritual.
Bursts of Passion)
The bursts of passion most often seem to come when I have some sort of breakthrough, a key paradigm shift that alters my entire view of life and myself. As it turns out, there are a number of misconceptions and misalignments that I have held, most often learned subliminally from my culture, which have had to be corrected one-at-a-time to unlock higher levels of connection with God.
One example of this has been correcting my views on marriage. Even though I always knew that the world’s view of marriage was improper and disparaging, even though I always knew that the union was truly sacred, I was still being skewed in my heart by the deluge of worldly messages that marriage was transactional, that the concerns of the individual were superior to those of the marriage itself, and that the bond was flimsier than those to a child or even a friend.
When I recognized these flawed paradigms within me, and by the help of God corrected them, my connection and commitment to the Lord surged forward again, and ever since I have realized that identifying and correcting these misalignments is one of the surest ways to natural improvement. Finding and fixing them is one of the greatest quests of my life now, perhaps the greatest of them all.
Quiet Ritual)
It must be acknowledged that epiphanies are rare, though. Would that every day could have a new one, but that has not been my experience. I wonder if it is not according to God’s plan that we both have the capacity for moments of spiritual epiphany and also the tendency to fall back into complacency. Perhaps he meant for us to learn how to make the best use of both.
The best way to use moments of passion and epiphany, so far as I can tell, is to establish lasting changes and begin good habits. The best way to handle the longer stretches of cooler temperament, so far as I can tell, is to turn those habits into daily ritual, leaning on them to keep us consistent with the truths we learned in our passion.
1 And the Lord spake unto Moses, Go unto Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Let my people go, that they may serve me.
Now begins the back-and-forth exchange between God and Pharaoh. There is a basic pattern that these discussions will follow:
God demands that Pharaoh let the Israelites go serve Him
Pharaoh refuses
God sends a plague upon the land
Pharaoh begs Moses to take the curse away, promising to let the Israelites go
Moses beseeches the Lord and the curse is removed
Pharaoh reneges on his promise
There might be some variations on that pattern here and there, but that’s generally how it will continue until Pharaoh finally relents. And this, of course, is the pattern that we so often see in our own lives. God calls us to live a better life, but we turn down those impulses to maintain our hedonistic pleasure or quiet complacency. Something goes wrong in our lives and we ask God to take it away, in the moment dedicating ourselves to Him, body and soul. God shows us grace, and we are grateful…but we don’t make good on our promise to better serve Him. We go back to our old ways and so it repeats. Our instinct might be to shake our heads at the strange actions of Pharaoh, but he is a representation of our own faithlessness.
Yesterday I spoke about how trying to overcome one addiction might simply cause it to shift to another area. Recognizing this tendency is important if we want to live an actually healthy life, not just a life that is unhealthy in a different way.
As I suggested yesterday, slipping into our vices one way or another will always be easier than being healthy. Just as gravity is a constant downward force in the physical world, there is also a constant downward force in the spiritual world, making it easier and simpler for us to fall than to rise. And like gravity, this evil force can pull at us from all directions.
Fortunately, from the times when I have been the most sincere in my recovery, I have discovered some things that can help a great deal. Today I’ll be taking a look at them.
Emptying the Cup)
If I were to ask you to empty all of the air out of a cup, how would you do it? Obviously tipping the cup upside down wouldn’t suffice. You could suck the air out with a straw, but of course other air would flow right back in to take its place. You could make a seal on the top of the cup and then suck out all of the air, creating a vacuum, but this would likely cause the cup to collapse inward and destroy itself.
However, there is one, simple and non-destructive way that the task can be done. Instead of only trying to get the air out, you can simultaneously put something different in. If you pour water into the cup, for example, then the air will naturally be replaced, thus fulfilling the task.
So, too, with getting out a vice. That vice took up a certain amount of your time and energy, and if you just try to scoop it out of your day you have now created an emptiness that will be filled with something else. If you don’t give any thought to what will make use of that time and energy, then it’s probably going to be some other vice because, as I stated above, vice is easier than virtue. If you try to take the vice out and then seal off that freed-up time, not allowing anything to make use of it, you will eventually collapse under the pressures of boredom and frustration.
So, for every evil thing you want to take out of your life, you’re going to need to replace it with an equal measure of good. You need to deliberately start doing something new, something that carries the same expense of time and energy that you were using for the vice.
For me, that led to starting this blog and writing stories. These were very large undertakings, but that was appropriate, because they were replacing a large addiction. It definitely took some work to get my writing going, but once it became a regular practice then going back to the addiction wasn’t even an option, because now it would have to displace the writing that had taken its place and I just couldn’t accept that.
Preserve What You Have)
But if you are going to start a new practice, then consistency is absolutely key. Have you ever found yourself rotating between life-changes that you want to make, shoring up one, just to see the others slip back out of control? I might go on a rotation between things like exercising, getting to bed on time, and saying meaningful prayers. I’ll make a real effort to start exercising, and I’ll make progress there, only to realize that my bedtimes have been slipping later and later into the night. So I’ll focus on when I get to bed, while trying to maintain my exercising, but then I realize I’ve totally forgotten about having a meaningful prayer in the morning. So I focus on that, only to lose my grip on exercise.
In some cases, this is a result of trying to do too much. Yes, a healthy, well-rounded life requires balance, but you only have so many hours in a day and so much of a reserve of willpower. By pouring it all into one area at the start of the day, you may not have enough resolve remaining for all the later tasks. And this cyclical pattern of restarting and abandoning practices only serves to ensure that none of them become a part of regular habit.
So as I’ve already said, one needs to fill their day with deliberate, good things, but they also need to not overfill it. One must put together their core practices with judgment and care, and perhaps their first plan doesn’t work perfectly, and needs to be revised over time.
A Work in Progress)
This is still an area that I am working on myself. I think I have learned and understand some important principles, but the knowledge alone is not enough to make me a perfect practitioner. I am, at least, aware of my shortcomings, and committed to fixing them. I’ll continue to check in from time-to-time, keeping you apprised of my progress. In future series I will also detail more of how I am creating a schedule of healthy tasks to replace the vices in my life, and some of the challenges I have faced while implementing it. For now, though, I’ll move on to another topic for tomorrow. I’ll see you there.
I have been discussing ways that we can find the willpower to fight temptation, even when our brains have been damaged by our addictions. I have covered doing all that we can to avoid even encountering our temptations, but sooner or later they will find us even so, and then we must suddenly find strength and mental reasoning that we are incapable of providing for ourselves.
This immediately suggests that we must have a strength that is beyond our own. An external strength and reasoning that will slay the dragons that we fail to overcome by ourselves.
For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. - Matthew 18:20
I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me - Philippians 4:13
These verses provide us a pattern for accessing just such an outer strength, a pattern that I have found most effective. In the first verse we are promised by Christ himself that when we gather together in his name, he will dwell among us. In the second verse we are told by Paul that Christ strengthens him to be able to do all things. Thus, gathering together invites Christ’s spirit, and Christ’s spirit lifts us to be able to do what we could not do on our own. This is a pattern that I have been able to make use of in my own life and I have come to value it greatly.
Group Strength)
The founders of Alcoholics Anonymous discovered that there was a special power when addicts came together as a group to lay down their burdens and encourage one another. A room full of individual failures could somehow churn out mass success. Ever since that realization, groups have sprung up all across the world and for all manner of different addiction recoveries. I, myself, regularly participate in a twelve-step group for pornography addiction, and I can attest that there really is a secret strength in numbers.
Mathematically, it doesn’t seem to make sense. As an analogy, imagine if our addiction was our debt and our resolve was our assets. Then an addict, by definition, is someone whose debt outweighs his assets, someone who is at a net negative. Now if you have ten such men, all with a net negative, and you combine them all together, what would you expect? Net negative of course! A negative plus a negative plus a negative plus a negative–and so on–can only result in a greater negative.
But, counter-intuitively, that’s just not how it works in practice. The men in my group bring all of their problems with them to the recovery group, yet somehow the group doesn’t feel weighed down by the shared burden. Instead, weight is collectively lifted up by the group and tossed aside.
The only conclusion that I can come to is that the scriptures cited above are true. When we gather together to do the holy work of refining our souls, Christ is there in our midst. We come with all our collective debts, but he has a wealth of assets, enough to compensate for all our shortcomings and more.
A Phone Call Away)
And this same strength can be called upon in moments of duress as well. We addicts have learned that we can recreate the spirit of the group with a simple phone call to another brother, right when we’re being faced by our temptation.
We might feel powerless in the face of the temptation when on our own. We might feel that we are doomed to give in. But if in that moment we can work up just enough resolve to make a phone call, then as soon as we start sharing our burden with a brother, that same unseen power starts rising within, enabling us to do the very thing we couldn’t just a few moments before.
In fact, we don’t even need to have decided to overcome our temptation when we first make the call. We can simply make the call without any commitment whether we will remain sober after we hang up or not. We only need to have the strength to dial the number, and then the strength to go the rest of the way will follow. If I can’t decide to be sober on my own, I can still decide to step out and get help. And when I chose to step out and get help, then I can decide to be sober, too.
The power that comes from reaching out to a fellow addict in the moment of temptation is twofold. On the one hand, we are currently having our mental willpower, our brain’s prefrontal cortex, overrun by our powerful temptation. Our mind isn’t working how it should, but in the fellow addict that we call there is still a properly functioning mind. Their prefrontal cortex isn’t currently being overrun like ours is. Thus, they are able to bring the higher reasoning and persuasion that our own mind cannot provide. Later, when they are the one being overrun by temptation and we are back to sure footing, then we are able to provide the same benefit to them.
The second power is, of course, the light of Christ that I have already been discussing. For when a brother reaches out to me to help, I really do feel that it is more than my own mental faculty that I am able to bring to bear on the matter. I have felt an external love and wisdom flow into me, helping me to say and share the things that will speak directly to the soul of my brother. And I have felt the exact same divine presence shared with me when I have called for help, too.
Growing Ranks)
I don’t know why the power of Christ comes to us in this way, but it just does. I have tried many times to pray in isolation for his power and I have been very disappointed in the results. On the other hand, I have never gone to a recovery group meeting without feeling Christ’s power overflowing me. I have never reached out to a brother in recovery without feeling the strength to do what I couldn’t before. It seems to me that this is just how he wants it. He wants me to reach out to others, and he gave his instructions in the verse from Matthew so that I would know that I needed to do it.
At this point I’ve discussed how we can find self-control through preventative measures, and how we can access the strength of Christ and a larger group. I have also explained how exercising our willpower in daily tasks can increase our resolve over time. This brings me to the end of all the techniques that I wanted to share with you. Tomorrow, we’ll review them all together. I’ll see you there.
For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. - Romans 7:19
The universal paradox that every addict faces is the notion that they must stop acting out, but they can’t. They have tried to stop so many times before only to repeatedly let themselves down. They are overcome with a terrible sense of powerlessness, a belief that they are forever destined to do the very things that they cannot accept.
And what makes this situation even more frustrating is that part of them still insists that they really could stop. Certainly they possess the physical capability to not do the troubling behavior. None of us are physically required to do any of the things that we wish we didn’t do. It’s just that we can’t work up the self-will to control ourselves.
Except for when we do. I was once speaking to a man who received a powerful insight from his therapist. The addict had been bemoaning that he kept returning to pornography because he had no power to resist. The therapist then asked him what would happen if he was viewing pornography in his room and heard the footsteps of someone coming down the hall. Well, in that case, all of a sudden, this “powerless” man would suddenly find untold reserves of willpower as he frantically ALT-TABBED away from the offensive window! Thus, it was clear that the man could exercise the willpower to turn from his addiction, at least when sufficiently motivated by the fear of being found out!
Can’t vs Won’t)
So, what is it? We seem to be going back-and-forth as to whether the addict can suddenly stop his problematic behavior or not. After some time, I have concluded that the seeming paradox goes away just as soon as we change one, little word. Instead of saying that the addict “can’t” stop their behavior, it is far more truthful to say that they “won’t.”
Now I don’t mean “won’t” in the sense that the addict will defiantly refuse, only that the addict has presented copious amounts of evidence that when subjected to certain situations and triggers they will act out and they will not stop themself, even though they otherwise possess the desire and physical capability to reject the behavior. This is an observable, consistent pattern which we all need to come to terms with sooner or later.
The first truth that every addict must accept is that “if I am alone, by myself, under these particular circumstances…I am going to act out.” That doesn’t mean that you don’t want to resist, or that you won’t try to resist, or that you’re faking your efforts to be sober. Indeed, the defining trait of the addict is that he really, truly, sincerely does want to stop himself…but he just won’t.
The only logical conclusion is that part of the addict is holding the rest of himself as a slave. There is the part that would live soberly, but there is the other part that won’t let him.
Surrender)
This is a simple concept, but it is extremely difficult to accept. We are loathe to admit that we are not as in control of our own selves as we pretend. We say that we aren’t beholden to anyone or anything, that we are our own master, that all it takes for us to do something is to choose to do it.
But that is demonstrably false. That we are the masters of our own fate is a motivating and happy thought, but it is a complete lie. And living a lie is to remain living a pattern of life that simply cannot work. So long as you insist on this mentality of being your own master you’re going to keep living as a slave to your lusts, insisting through it all that you’re a free man.
I would like to tell you that waving the white flag and admitting that you are a slave to your appetites isn’t necessary. I have tried to find my way around this surrender myself. I have tried to deny my fundamental powerlessness. I have tried to find the external evils that forced me to do wrong against my self will.
But the simple fact of the matter is that if I live the same patterns of life that I have lived before, I will give in to my temptations again and again. Not because anyone or anything external forced me, not because I wanted to, but because I am enslaved to a tyrant of my own making. And I have to accept that fact, and then accept it again and again, anytime my ego starts to think that I can fully trust myself in the driver’s seat, only to be proven wrong yet again.
Now I do have more to say on the matter, including more hopeful messages for the addict, but first and foremost we have to come to accept this sense of powerlessness. This is the first step of any twelve-step program, to finally accept that we willnot do what we wish we would do under every circumstance. Let’s let this notion settle in for today, and then move on to next things tomorrow. I’ll see you then.
30 And Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, Ye have troubled me to make me to stink among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites: and I being few in number, they shall gather themselves together against me, and slay me; and I shall be destroyed, I and my house.
31 And they said, Should he deal with our sister as with an harlot?
Jacob was none too pleased that Simeon and Levi had slain all the males in the city. He pointed out that killing tends to lead to more killing, and that now he was in a dangerous situation with the other inhabitants of the land. Let us remember that Shechem, the man who raped Dinah, was the founder of the city by which they resided. They had killed a powerful man, his father, and all those under his protection.
As it turns out, though, Jacob and his family were not destroyed, but his words ended up being prophetic. The future of the Israelites in this land would be defined by the many wars that they have with all of their neighbors. The Israelites will be one nation with virtually no allies but hundreds of enemies, and eventually they would be overrun and carried away by those foes.
Simeon and Levi’s response, though, makes clear that they could not see their sister disgraced and not retaliate. Certainly, God was displeased with what had happened to Dinah, but that does not mean he approved of how Simeon and Levi responded. At this point it doesn’t matter, though. What was done was done, and the pattern of the Israelites being a peculiar people who slay the unclean had been established.
Spiritual Wanderings 