the church are full of perverts.

The pervert claims direct access to some figure of the big Other (from God or history to the desire of his partner), so that, dispelling all the ambiguity of language, he is able to act directly as the instrument of the big Other’s will. In this sense, both Osama bin Laden and President Bush, although politically opponents, share a pervert structure: they both act upon the presupposition that their acts are directly ordered and guided by the divine will. – Zizek

“Can you discover God’s hidden secrets” – Job

“the power bearing those towers suddenly lost all energy, all resilience: as though that arrogant power gave way under the pressure of too intense an effort: the effort to always be the unique world model” – Baudrillard (on the Twin Towers)

in the obscene wake of Wiki-leaks and the current media-crazed arena centering around Murdoch and the corruption he himself is entangled in represent something about where we are as a society. we don’t like secrets. in fact, we would rather know. and yet, think to when you were a child and one of the favorite things you might have loved was being a part of some secret club.

remember the feeling of being part of something that no one else knew about? that sense of belonging was power. although we wouldn’t have called it that then. and it wasn’t even necessarily the content of the secret that even mattered, but it was that we were a part of the creation of such a powerful entity called ‘the secret’.

it was the sense of status and responsibility and even identity that erupted out of such a responsibility that became the chemical high that drew us in deeper. it was an aphrodisiac. oh, not in the traditional sense of the word. but it was a perverse form of seduction that enticed us into deeper truths. and somehow the knowledge of this content known as ‘the secret’ gave us power of others. a sense of superiority, because we knew something nobody else did. or so we thought. and so we rested in the knowledge that the fantasy we defended was something of utmost importance. the importance of the content, and not the knowledge of the content, is what made keeping the secret so important and our role within the safeguarding of the all too-important secret.

and when someone discovers the secret, either through espionage or is ‘let in’ by another member of the group, there is a sense of betrayal that forms and a sense of vulnerability and weakness that begins to appear out of the ‘knowing’. we feel as if a form of terrorism has been enacted upon us. because ‘someone else now knows what we know’. our jugular is exposed. we are no longer defenders of the secret, we are now defenders of fall-out.

what do we next? what happens then?

because if we no longer have a secret to keep, then it means everyone else now knows. secrets only know how to keep the status quo, and when that is shattered so is the reality the secret promises to protect.

and if everyone else now knows and it falls in the arena of ‘common knowledge’ then my role as safeguarding secret keeper is dissolved, then somehow all the power, knowledge and experience of this secret somehow gets cheapened and so does my role. my identity used to be bound up in this feature of constituted reality. i helped create the secret and then, over time, the secret helped to shape the very essence of who i am. and so quite bluntly, it feels like a part of you has died with the secret. for, at one time, you and the secret were one. and all you have now is vulnerability. and in a world that praises the god of war, vulnerability and weakness are the last things you should be.

in the case of julian assange what has occurred is a part of the government has been exposed. a weakness has appeared. and the government does not know how to handle pubic exposure. yes, pubic exposure. have you ever had one of those dreams where you ended up naked somewhere – in public? what feelings erupted? embarrassment? maybe the feeling that ‘you have been found out?’ yep, this is what’s happening when a liberator like assange enters the scene and reminds us that secrets were for juvenile clubs in our pre-teens. that shared knowledge isn’t always bad.

i am not naive enough to think that certain information must be protected for the well-being of the community, but when a government who promises to be ‘for the people, by the people’ ends up defending secrets that only preserve their own reputation, then we have nothing more than a self-serving government that is for the government, by the government. secrets are a form of reverse voyeurism; secrets present us with the reality that we are simply not comfortable with vulnerability. that we would rather not be known and that safety will most of the time be our default. imagine if the secret was a person peering in on you? what would it think about you, what would it say and what secrets about you would it hold back? whatever the response might be would be the truth of what is hiding behind the secrets we defend.

some ancient jews defined ‘taking god’s name in vein’ not as uttering the exclamation: “god-damn!” but something even more sinister, being sure that god said or did something. the claim followed in the phrase “god said….this” or “god told me to tell you this” and etc. it was someone who was sure beyond a shadow of a doubt that god spoke and that there was no possibility of error. even the idea behind commandments are another representation of what lacan calls perversion. which was that the commandment was meant to be a direct access pass to god. but even when we go to concerts, the backstage pass is simply a pass to see the person not to get to know them. seeing and knowing are quite different ideas. this is the same with god.

there is this point at the end of matthew, where jesus is recorded as instructing his disciples to ‘go into all of the world’. which is the assumption that within this message of jesus, a first-century rabbi there is a universal nature to the message that must be heard. not ‘universal’ in the sense of what historical christian missionaries have perpetuated (i.e., the jesuits, the witch hunts, constantine and etc.) but rather that the message itself is already universal. that it is already true of everyone. it is not that anyone need to work at being christ, because ‘the kingdom of god is (near) – within’.

and to encourage the lie that one must perform certain acts or to participate in a specific defense of ideas or else is perversion. and as Zizek specifies above, a pervert is someone who assumes they have some sort of knowledge that they have access to. when the christian message is peddled along as something that others must do or become a part of it denies the (to use a traditional phrase) ‘power of the gospel’. but, what do i mean? i do not mean ‘power’ in the traditional ‘top-down’ model sense of the world or in any a subordinate philosophy centered around oppressive behaviour.

but, what if power was more about the inherent influence within the message itself, something we did not need to make happen? we tend to think of power almost in the same sense of secret. someone who has the ability to do something we either we cannot or that they can do better. so, maybe the word power needs to be scrapped altogether, because the social meaning and implications behind it can only lead to war (metaphorical or literal).

in hebrew, one of the many meanings of the word for power is ‘substance’, but not in the traditional: ‘what are you made of?’ in the sense of proverbial strength, but rather the dna of being. and so when we speak of the power of the gospel it is not to imply that somehow our ‘understanding’ (secret?) of this gospel is any better than anyone else’s but rather that the substance of this message is made up of what we know. and so what we claim is to share a knowledge of the gospel rather than THE knowledge of a gospel. And what of the gospel? In Aramaic, the word means hope. Hope is universal. People want and need hope. We desire because we are driven by a hope of some kind or other that those desires will be met. we make purchases because in making such a purchase we hope we might be fulfilled in that product or experience.

hope is made of its own substance.

and when we create rules and secrets around it, it stops becoming hope and becomes something else entirely, a message by the system, for the system. and systems naturally oppress. and so, in turn, but presenting the gospel as something other than itself, we perpetuate oppression. we join in the perversion. when we claim to have direct access to god, we are perverts. this is what is so interesting about the mystics, because even though they craved authentic union with god and some claimed to experience this momentarily, they always came back to love. love being the union between man and god.

but what is love (greek: agape, self sacrificial) – love is death.

and if love is union between man and god, than rather defending secrets or making religion into a secret, we have to die to that aspect of secrecy. secrets are simply the upholding of what is simulated or not true. ultimately, and simply, the defense of a secret or the creation of a secret is the defense of the simulation (or lie). if we continue to treat the universal message as a secret message, then we do nothing more than defend a lie, because the nature of the message itself is already universal…