Considering the current state of
affairs, there are many people who have asked or have suggested
or have wondered how it is exactly that you can be a
conservative rebel or a rebel in a time when a system is becoming
tyrannical. And so I thought that we could look at how
exactly you can do that. And the best way to look at that
question is, of course, to look at the story of King David. In
the story of King David we will find some very surprising
imagery, some very surprising use of symbolism that will help
us understand when it is that we have to be something like the
snake that avoids being caught or something like the person who
is dancing around the tyrannical system. So in the story of King David,
King Saul represents very much the tyrannical king. And you can
see that he represents the tyrannical king because the
reason why God has displeased with him is because King Saul
tries to take the sacrifice upon himself. That is, he tries to
act as the spiritual authority, to take away the power from the
spiritual authority and sacrifice before the prophet
arrives, who's the one who's supposed to do the sacrifice.
The other place where King Saul disappoints is when he does not
obey the rule that God gives. Now, that rule is a very, very
dark and extreme rule that he receives from God. And one day
we'll look at what that is talking about. But for now, it's
mostly important to understand that in the story, the reason
why he's seen as a tyrannical king is that he wants to
concentrate power in himself, take it away from the prophet,
and ultimately you could say, even, let's say, think that he
can decide instead of God. And so because Saul is a
tyrannical king, then the prophet Samuel will anoint
David, God will tell Samuel to anointed David to be the
replacement of King Saul. Now, at the outset, King David is
hidden. It is not public, that he is the future king. At the
moment, he is hidden, he is the secret king. And as the secret
King, it will become necessary for him to actually resist the
tyranny of King Saul. Now, what's really interesting is to
notice to what extent King David takes on the role, takes on
images of all that is dark, all that is shifty, all that is
strange, all that is insane. He takes on all that symbolism, in
the moment when he is resisting King Saul. And so it really is a
perspective, from the point of view of someone who wants to
resist the system and in order to do so, must take the role of
that on which the system is trying to rule or that which is
the kind of bubbling chaos, which is at the bottom of the
world. Now. This starts with the very image of the fact that the
way that David was inserted into King Saul's court was that he
was asked to come sing for King Saul. Now, if you read my
brother's book, you will see that the fact that you have the
king standing there, and then you have King David who is
playing music, trying to calm down the king's ardour, trying
to soothe him. And you'll see that at first he does soothe
him. At the outset, King David plays music for the king and
soothes the character. So you can actually see interestingly
enough, King David playing the role of the jester, the
entertainer, the moment when work stops, entertainment, all
of that in order to act as a counterpoint to the excess of
the tyrannical king. But then once King Saul is going to start
to be jealous of King David, because you have that moment
when King David kills Goliath. And so, King Saul becomes
jealous of David and so now starts to look out for him. And
this is where you're going to see some very interesting
symbolism. Now, once again, David is
standing there and he's playing music for King Saul. And so he
represents all that is related to time. For example, in
Matthieu's book, all that is related to the informal, to the,
let's say, unnamed or something which is not fixed, something
which is moving, something which is rhythmic. And what does King
Saul try to do? He tries to jab David with his lance, and tries,
by that, to pin him to the wall. That's what it says in
Scripture. And so you can understand that King Saul's
desire to jab David, right, to pierce him with a lance, is akin
to something like, you know, pinning an insect down into a
display case. He's trying to fix him. He's trying to stop him
from playing music. He's trying to stop him from being that
shifty character. He wants to name him. And now in this image,
we see the negative aspect of naming. That is that there is an
aspect of naming which, if we're not careful about naming, can
utterly fix something, can prevent it from having its
malleability, its idiosyncrasy, right, too much light, too much
identity can be a very dangerous thing, because it can freeze
something, can freeze it into death. And you can see that with
people who are, you know, too obsessed with naming, too
obsessed with control, is that if you exercise too much control
over a system, then you can actually cripple it into
immobility. You can kill it by piercing it. And so, it's very
fascinating to see that King Saul wants to jab David, and
that this is related to fixing him, to, you could say something
like, stopping him from moving, totally identifying him, totally
capturing David, you know, like, as if he was a wild animal. As
if he was something that he's hunting, right, to hunt him
down, to find him, to fix him. And this is now an image of the
tyrannical state or the tyrannical king then wants to
fully master. And in that mastery try to kill it. It has
something to do with, I've talked about the notion of the
system of the beast or the the excess of naming, which comes in
all that imagery of 666 symbolism and the idea of
marking something. Marking it in a manner that is complete, so
that there is no remainder, trying to make it so that there
is absolutely no remainder, that everything is captured by the
system. Now, of course, in our case,
this can be completely related to technocratic societies, to
societies of surveillance, societies of tracking. And we
can see how right now this is being very much accelerated by
the state trying to jab us and trying to jab us in a way that
fixes us, and makes us participate in a system of
naming in which there should not be any remainder. And this is
why there's so much obsession with making sure everybody is
part of the system, you know, and so this is what is happening
around us. So it's interesting to see the manner in which David
resists this. Now, this is some of the craziest symbolism that
you'll ever see. Because once David, who is the future king,
the king in hiding becomes a, let's say, becomes a target for
the tyrannical system, then David will take on all the
symbolism of the opposite, all the symbolism of the strange, of
the enemy and of madness. And this of course, interestingly
enough, starts with a moment where King David's isn't sure
whether or not Saul is really angry with him and whether or
not Saul still wants to kill him. So after David runs away,
you know, when Saul tries to pin him to the wall, he comes back,
and then he speaks to his friend Jonathan. And he asks Jonathan
like, you know, what's the situation and Jonathan is
telling him, "I'm going to go back to see my father, and you
stay here. And so if my father asks for you, that is, if he
asked for you in an angry way, that is, if he wants to know
where you are. If he wants to make sure he knows where you
are, that you've been properly tracked, then it means that
you're in danger. If he's angry that you're not there that he
wants you to be in his court, then you'll know that you're in
danger. But if it doesn't bother him that you're not fully in his
court, that you're not there at this moment, then we'll know
that you're not in danger. So Jonathan goes back and then
realises that King Saul gets very angry because David is not
there. But what's interesting is the sign that Jonathan gives to
David. So he says, "When I come back, you're going to hide next
to a target and then I'm going to shoot an arrow, right, I'm
going to miss the target. And the manner in which I miss the
target is going to be a symbol, it's going to be an image of
what you need to do, whether you should come back or whether you
should go away." Now this is extremely interesting if you
understand the notion of transgression. If you understand
the notion of sin, that here in this situation, missing the
target, not hitting the mark, is the manner in which the shifty
character that David now represents, you know, the kind
of wild character that he's becoming, is to know what to do.
And so you can understand what's going on that things are really,
David is really representing now, in a very strange way,
something like the dragon that is avoiding to be pierced by
Saint Michael, but here in this case, it's of course David which
is the good. We'll see why he is the good in this case, and why
he's not the same type of dragon that you see in the icon of
Saint Michael and the dragon, but the imagery is the same,
right. Saint Michael is trying to pierce the dragon, is trying
to fix the dragon. And it's funny, because a lot of people
have pointed out to me that the image of Saint Michael, you
know, smashing his lance in the dragon's mouth looks like the
COVID test, looks like you're receiving a COVID test. And
there's something about that, there's something intuitive
about the idea of being penetrated by the state, in a
manner in which they want to do that in order to make sure that
you're part of their system, and to kind of make you understand
your position
vis-à-vis the state, you know. And so you can
see that, if you think that that's stretching it, there are
some governments, for example, the Chinese government, which
allegedly were using other types of penetrations in order to know
whether or not you had COVID, which is obviously not necessary
at all, but it can help you understand what it is that's
going on. That is there is something which is even
sometimes beyond the people that are implementing it, that they
don't necessarily - I'm not saying this is planned to be
this way, but it's still manifesting a pattern of
penetrating, related to identity and fixing. It's just there. So what is King David do? Now
King David obviously has to now run away, and in his running
away, it is so fascinating what happens. First of all, he has to
hide inside the temple, and in hiding inside the temple, the
priest ends up giving him the bread that is in the holy place,
the bread that is for the priest. And so, you'd say what
is going on? Like what is happening? And so the priests
are giving him the bread, he is not taking it for himself.
That's very important. And maybe say that that's the difference
between him and King Saul, which is that in a manner David is now
engaging in a form of transgression. Right, but this
transgression, there's something innocent about the
transgression. And this is where we're going to start to see the
difference. There's something innocent in his transgression,
but it's not only that, what does David receive when he goes
into the temple? He receives Goliath's his sword. Now
receiving Goliath's sword will be compounded by the fact that
David will then go and associate himself with the Philistines,
will actually go to the city from which Goliath comes from,
and will place himself under the guardianship of the kings and
the people responsible for the Philistines. And he pretends to fight for the
enemy. This is very interesting, but there are other scenes where
he also pretends to be crazy. He feigns madness. And then in the
wilderness, he assembles in a cave with a band of debtors and
a band of, you know, shady people. And so, these gestures
are all gestures about, you know, moving into the margin,
going down into the cave, going into death, aligning yourself
with the stranger, aligning yourself with your enemy. All of
these things in a way that I've warned you about that happens on
the periphery. Now this is what David is doing. And so what is
the difference between David and just a traitor? What's the
difference between David and a regular thief and a regular
debtor? And the answer is something like his intention.
What is his intention? And how does that intention play itself
out during the story? Now, this might seem like it's a trick, or
might seem like it's something off. But you can see if you look
at the story carefully, you'll notice for example, when David
is working with the Philistines, he makes the Philistines, the
enemies - I forget now if it's the Philistines, but one of the
enemy tribes of the Israelites - he pretends that he's fighting
for them, that he's actually fighting the Israelites, but in
secret he is defending them and he is doing other things, he's
attacking other tribes while they think that he's with the
enemy. When he acts crazy he's actually pretending to be crazy
in order to get away from his enemy. And then when he comes at
a moment, dark, deep down in the cave where he's hiding, and then
King Saul comes down in the cave, and King Saul - This is
one of the most powerful images of understanding what's going on
in the story. So King Saul goes down into the cave where David
is hiding. And King Saul doesn't know David's there. And King
Saul goes there to do his business. You know, it says to
"cover his feet", you know, and while he is down there doing his
business, David sneaks up behind him while he's going about and
he cuts off the fringe of his vestment. And then when he
leaves the camp, when Saul leaves the cave, King David
brandishes the fringe of the vestment of Saul, as a guarantee
that he is not there to kill the king, that he has the fringe,
but that he has no intention of killing the king. So this is
really the difference between David and a revolutionary. It's
the difference between an Antifa protest and the trucker convoy.
Look at the differences between the two. And so, one of them,
let's say, the Antifa protest, wants to usurp the government,
wants to destroy the power of the state, wants to hate
anything about the nation, is hiding their faces, you know, is
destructive, attacks federal buildings, does all that. You
saw that in 2020, we saw that during the Floyd protests.
Antifa attacked federal buildings in the US for months
on end. If you look at the trucker convoy protests, what
you have are people waving the flag of their country, you know,
hundreds of Canadian flags and hundreds of Quebec flags. And
people basically being extremely respectful to police, you know,
going up there fist bumping the police and I've seen them
myself, I was there in Ottawa. The truckers are extremely
respectful of authority, extremely respectful of police,
but are saying, "We know this is edgy, like we know that what
we're doing is maybe illegitimate in its practice,
but that the intent is we want to restore the rule of law, we
want to restore the identity of our nation." Now you can argue
with them whether or not this is what ultimately it'll do or not.
And you can argue with them whether or not you think they're
misguided or that they're in error, but you can still see the
difference between something like a conservative rebel, who
is acting in a rebellious manner, he is acting in a
technically sinful manner, that is he's willing to miss the mark
or to avoid the mark in order to not propagate a tyranny, but
rather point their own country, their own higher identity
towards a higher purpose. And so you see that of course
also in the same situation where King David walks into the camp
while Saul is sleeping, and then he find a lance. I think he
actually finds Saul's lance. So you have a sense in which he
could take that lance and could now do the same to Saul, that
Saul tried to do to him; to pin him to the ground, to stop him
in his tracks, to fix him, but instead he plants the lance
above Saul's head, and therefore spares him, and also shows you
exactly what's going on. That is, that's the difference. Where
are you looking? If you resist the system you have to be doing
it in a way that's looking above the system, that's looking
towards a higher point, a higher point of attention. You can
resist the system when a system becomes corrupt as long as you
have your attention towards what is right and what is virtuous.
And of course, in a certain manner, you could say history
will judge you and maybe... there's a manner in which it's a
tricky position to be in, because it to a certain extent
you can understand the criticism of those that do that. But we
see that example in the story of the church constantly, right. My
own patron saint St. Maximus is a wonderful example of that,
where St. Maximus thought that the emperor was wrong in his
theological pronouncements. And he said, "No." And the emperor
said, "Look around us. Everybody agrees with me, the Patriarch of
Constantinople agrees with me, you know, everybody agrees with
me. Why won't you agree with me?" And so Maximus said, "No, I
cannot agree with you, I will not go along with your system."
Because he was looking above he was looking higher. And he could
see that there was error in the way that the emperor was acting
and that the patriarch was acting. And so like I said, it's
a tricky position to be because of a certain extent you also
kind of have to accept the consequences of doing that, you
have to accept the consequences that if you're going to want to
avoid a tyrannical system, if you're going to want to point to
a higher meaning. That means that you will become the victim
of the system, you know, and that's the position we're in
right now. You know, I've mentioned this before, but right
now in our province in Quebec they are demanding people use
vaccine passports in order to go to church, and to me that is a
problem of hierarchy. And so at that point, when these things
start to happen then there is no choice but to position yourself
as someone who is resisting an illegitimate tyranny, a tyranny
which is excessive in its grasp, which is trying to take the
powers of God for themselves. An authority which is trying to
name without exception, which refuses to leave a fringe. And
sometimes it becomes the role of actually the conservative person
who actually believes in hierarchy, to raise up that
fringe, and show it back to the authority and remind them,
remind them of the fringe and the need to leave an exception,
that you cannot encompass everything, that you are not
God, and trying to encompass everything is going to lead to
massive chaos and a massive breakdown. And so I hope this was helpful.
I hope it's helping you understand some of the things
that I've been saying in the past few weeks, some of the
things that I've been doing on social media, but it's just
starting, because this is happening now. And so thanks for
your support everybody, thanks for your attention. And you
might have noticed there are maybe a few less videos as usual
these days. But hopefully, as my attention starts to focus back
again, then we will have more of that coming very soon.
