How You Hear - Commentary From the Margins - October 9, 2011

October 9, 2011 ©Homer Kizer

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Commentary — From the Margins

How You Hear

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And when a great crowd was gathering and people from town after town came to him, he said in a parable: "A sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell along the path and was trampled underfoot, and the birds of the air devoured it. And some fell on the rock, and as it grew up, it withered away, because it had no moisture. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up with it and choked it. And some fell into good soil and grew and yielded a hundredfold." As he said these things, he called out, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." And when his disciples asked him what this parable meant, he said, "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others they are in parables, so that 'seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.' Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. The ones along the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away. And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience. No one after lighting a lamp covers it with a jar or puts it under a bed, but puts it on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light. Take care then how you hear, for to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away."

Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. And he was told, "Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, desiring to see you." But he answered them, "My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it." (Luke 4—21 emphasis added)

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Take care how you hear … for he who has ears to hear, let him hear—

Luke wrote without comments: he recorded what Jesus’ mother Mary knew, saw and heard, what he saw and heard, what he knew other reliable witnesses saw and heard. Thus, allegories and parables are presented as factual [mnemonic] narratives; figurative speech is presented as factual speech. And the Greek love of equivocation—of changing meanings for a word [a linguistic icon] within a sentence or a paragraph—is missed by all who expect a straightforward assignment of objects to icons, or signifieds to signifiers.

In his famous essay, An Apology for Poetry (1579 CE), Sir Philip Sidney argued that fiction in its then used forms taught the lessons learned from history, the lessons learned by humanity, the lessons learned via philosophy better than did mnemonic narratives, an argument based upon fiction combining the liveliness of history with the ethical virtues of philosophy. And in his lengthy essay, Sir Philip made a case for readers being able to discern fact from fiction; for no one entering the theater and seeing a sign over the stage reading Thebes truly believes that the stage has become ancient Thebes. Rather, the audience willingly suspends disbelief and accepts for a while that the action occurring on the stage occurs in ancient Thebes. The audience plays along with the playwright and actors, with the poet or more-recently, the novelist to see if what’s being presented rings true … for Greeks, truth was the negation of concealment, and the mere use of language conceals as much or more than the language used reveals; for upon hearing a familiar word, a person’s mind instantly supplies a meaning, selecting one meaning and excluding all others thereby hiding in those meanings [those signifieds] that have been excluded what was plainly revealed by the selected word. Hence Greeks did what Romans hated: they used one signifier within a discourse for several signifieds, such as “heads” of grain being called ears so that the seed sown that brings forth a harvest of a hundred-fold ears has many more ears on his or her head with which to hear the words of Jesus than does the person who brings forth only a thirty-fold increase. So a Christian is to take care how he or she hears the words of Jesus, with the difference between <hears> and <ears> being nothing more that rough breathing [vocalized aspiration] elsewhere is used to indicate receipt of the Holy Spirit [B<,Ø:" ž(@< — pneuma holy or breath holy].

The Christian who hears the words of Jesus has <ears> plus the Holy Spirit or breath holy, represented by the letter <H> in the Tetragrammaton YHWH and by <ah> in Yah and in Eloah. Hence, the Christian not yet born of God through receipt of a second breath of life, the breath of God [B<,Ø:" 1,@Ø] in the breath of Christ [B<,Ø:" OD4FJ@Ø], with breath/B<,Ø:" used metonymically to represent all that is involved in the receipt of life—the Christian not yet born of God cannot hear the words of Jesus, regardless of how badly this Christian wants to hear them …

The word <Christian> has become a signifier with two or more signifieds, the first being a person whom the Father has drawn from this world and given the earnest of eternal life, and the second being a person of this world [a spiritual Gentile] who has professed that Jesus is Lord and who believes in his or her heart that the father raised Jesus from death, but who has not yet been born of God through receipt of a second breath of life.

Whereas in the 1^st-Century CE, before many false prophets went forth to do their work of soiling the Body of Christ, no person would profess that Jesus was Lord without being truly called by Christ and drawn from this world by the Father. But this is not the case in the 21^st-Century … as the 21^st-Century is not the 1^st-Century, but with the signifier <21^st-Century> containing the complete signifier <1^st-Century>, those things that occurred in the 1^st-Century must be repeated in the 21^st-Century. Why? Because as the body of Christ died in the 1^st-Century and was brought back to life after three days of being buried in the heart of the earth, the Body of Christ died in the 2^nd-Century and must be brought back to life after the third day of the Genesis “P” creation account in a form of equivocation that has the <body of Christ> becoming the <Body of Christ> and with the signifier <1^st-Century> being doubled in the signifier <21^st-Century>.

Is the above justification “logical” from the perspective of Latin rhetoric? No! But it is extremely clever from the perspective of Greek philosophy—and Christianity was and remains primarily a Greek philosophy that incorporates double-voiced discourse in its core ideology.

The Christian must take care how he or she hears the words of Jesus; for the Christian who better hears [who had more ears and more of the spirit of God] more will be given, with this more being growth in grace and knowledge.

Seven years ago, someone posted some of my writing to an on-line Sabbatarian Christian forum, and the most interesting comment the posting received was that I had a Greco-Roman mindset … with a name like Homer Kizer [with Kizer being an Anglicized form of Keyser, the Low German form of Caesar, pronounced kai-sahr in Classical Latin], how could I not have a Greco-Roman mindset; for with God, names are given for a reason.

If God is not involved in the naming of a person, a name is simply an identifying signifier that has been humanly assigned to the individual, but if God is involved at a level not humanly discernable—as tribal elders were once and sometimes still are involved in naming Amerindian children, giving to these children names that reflect the child’s characteristics—His servants’ names reflect characteristics. And in times past, with God names were changed when a person began to serve God … even Christ Jesus has a new name that no one today knows, a name that no one but Himself will know until He comes as King of kings and Lord of lords (Rev 19:12).

The name Caesar/Keyser/Kaiser that has come to represent the emperor in a nation-state probably began as the Latin signifier representing hairy, a meaning that I find interesting since my father, also named Homer Kizer, and my younger brother Ken Kizer had/have heavily haired bodies, not to the extent that Esau was hairy but much more so than I am.

Now, does any of the above mean anything, the question that must be asked: perhaps not. However, in double-voiced discourse, a more appropriate rendering of the figurative signifier <:VP"4D"< *\FJ@:@<> (from Heb 4:12) than is a two-lipped sword, the narrator of the discourse tells a story in which a secondary narrator tells a story, with William Faulkner’s novel Absalom, Absalom! being the modern classical example of such a work.

The Bible is double-voiced discourse; for linguistic icons/signifiers that are used to name the things of this world cannot directly name the things of heaven, things that are not physical, things that lack mass. The words of this world can only metaphorically represent the things of heaven as the sky overhead that is called heaven can only serve as a metaphor for the third heaven, where stars are angels and light comes from the Most High God.

Christians, and especially Sabbatarian Christians who already believe they possess all truth, must take care how they hear the words of Jesus; for they do not today hear as they ought to hear. Almost without exception, they lack the indwelling of Christ Jesus, a fact in evidence because they can fall away from whatever amount of truth that they find, thus revealing that they were never truly born of God.

As a poet, as a fiction writer, and now as one called from on-high to reread prophecy, I marvel at how little understanding of Scripture exists in the Sabbatarian Churches of God, with the capitalization of <Churches> disclosing meaning not found in the lower case <churches>. … In double-voiced discourse, attention must be paid to what is present and what is not present that could have been present; for what has been excluded reveals almost as much knowledge as what has been presented. And with virtually no exceptions, Sabbatarian Christians have read Scripture literally even though Jesus told His disciples,

I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech but will tell you plainly about the Father. In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father. (John 16:25–28)

It wasn’t possible for Jesus’ disciples—prior to when the spirit was given—to understand that the figures of speech in which Jesus spoke [in the metaphors Jesus used], Jesus was merely functioning as the secondary narrator in double-voiced discourse, with God the Father forming the narrator relating what was written in the heavenly Book of Life, the book in which the lives of disciples form epistles (see 2 Cor 3:3).

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