theblackdostoyevsky

Once upon a time, my father-in-law taught me a math lesson I’ve never since forgotten and, I pray, never will forget. I was making a point and said flippantly, I’m sure, “Like, one plus one equals,” and as I continued my argument, but looked askance in such a way that I paused. “What’s that look?” I asked.  

            “Well, son,” he began, “Who taught you that?”

            “Taught me what?”

            “That one and one makes two?”

            “It’s common sense,” I said, eager to continue.

            “I understand that’s what you’ve been taught, son. I wouldn’t say, now, that it’s common sense.”

            I’m a bit annoyed at this point; I’ve lost my point. But I greatly respect and fear my father-in-law. He’s the greatest example of a man I’ve ever met. He’s been playing the piano since he was a child and, for over 50 years has been serving the Lord with his gift, whether on the road touring, or as a minister of music, whether the choir had eighty members or eight. He can build a car from scratch, is an accomplished carpenter, smokes the best BBQ in Garland, TX, and grows his own produce in his backyard. We’ve eaten watermelons from his garden. He’s got a tool for every task. A couple of months ago, he told me to scout a spot in our backyard for the apple tree he’s going to give us, once it matures. He didn’t graduate college but crawled around in attics and basements for a large telephone company for thirty years before retiring over a decade ago. Now he piddles about with his landscaping company and remodeling the home he’s lived in for the past forty years. He’s one of those men who even the most educated men envy for his wisdom and practical understanding. I’m a pretty well-educated man, by societal measures; I feel a fool in front of my father-in-law. When he speaks, I listen.

            “Okay, dad. What do you mean?”

            He pointed to the eight-foot fence bordering his yard. I don’t remember what we were doing, but anytime I’m over there we’re either working or resting from working.

            “You see that fence,” he said. I nodded. “Now, what do you see?”

            “Wood? Poles?”

            “Okay, sure. Wood and poles. That’s two things. One and one, right?”

            “Right. Two things.”

            “Well,” he said, “What about the fence?”

            “What about it?” I asked.

            “But is the fence wood or poles?”

            I laughed. “Yes, it’s wood and poles.”

            “No, son,” he said, a gentle correction in his tone. “It’s a fence. So how many different, how would you call it? How many ones are there now?”

            “I don’t get it.”

            “Okay. You said one plus one is two, right? So if I got wood and I got poles, that’s two things. Now when I do what I do them with them to make them a fence, that makes three. A third thing is made from the two, from the one and the one, the wood and the poles. So then, one and one makes three, right? The wood, the poles, and now, the fence that done come from ‘em.”

            “So one and one makes three?” I asked.

            He diverted his eyes back to his task. “It can, son,” he replied. “You’ve only been taught that that one and one makes two.”

            Agreement, for better or worse, is the glue that holds any society together. Without it we cannot coexist. Our external differences, alone, are vast and diverse enough to plunge us all back into tribalism, except for the power of it. Let alone the conflicts that would be generated and regenerated by our myriad internal differences, driven by the multitude of experiences, interactions, traumas, and psychologies that we operate within. Then, complicate matters further by conflating the external diversities against the internal ones and it is a wonder that we have human society at all. Even the divorce rate belies the near impossibility of long-term communion between even two intimate and consenting, prayerfully mature, adults. Let us alone, then, at the attempt at communion amongst millions of hardly cordial strangers.

How, then, is community achieved? How has America managed to survive long enough to celebrate a 250^th birthday? And when compared with the countries of the world and how long their organizations have held “intact” through wars and famines and plagues and corruptions, America is but a toddler in the birth order of the nations. How else, but by agreement? We consent to agree to laws, sacrificing freedoms we might otherwise enjoy, so that the whole can exist. We do this because we perceive value in the contributions of others. I might be a talented cobbler, but I can’t cut hair. So you give me a haircut and I make sure that the shoes you’re standing in eight hours a day are in good repair. We agree, at least as long as there is mutual benefit, to cooperate.

Now this leads to a complication, but it is a complication that has been solved by modern economy, to preserve the spirit of agreement. Who is to say how many haircuts equal how many shoe repairs? There is potential for disagreement here, and if there is disagreement the cooperation will cease and begin the breakdown of the communion. We will go our separate ways. I will grow a shag and beard and you will barber on your bare feet. Money was invented, for this reason, as a medium of exchange and ever since the gold standard ended and money began to be backed by interest rates set by a board of governors in order to control its supply and velocity, the only thing that makes a dollar worth a dollar is our agreement. If, to me, what you call a twenty-dollar bill were no more than a green sheet of cotton and linen, the same size and quality as the one dollar note, but with a larger integer stain printed upon it, you would not be able to convince me to give you nineteen additional eggs for it. I must, first, agree that the denominations on this greenback will retain its printed value when I seek to trade it for goods or services elsewhere.

Therein lies the seed of the glue that holds our society together. Whether money, or the eight to five shift, or the line at the drivers’ license office, or keeping our eyes to the shelves in the grocery store, or paying traffic tickets, or parking within the demarcated lines of a public space, or whispering in the library, or speaking words that can be understood to carry a message, or having sex behind walls and shuttered windows, or filing taxes, or slow traffic moving to the right lane, or signing up for socials with your actual name, DOB and photo, or saying excuse me when you fart inside of an elevator, or tipping your server when you dine-in, or not returning money you have borrowed, or minding your own business, society stands or falls upon the adherence or lack of adherence to these and countless other agreements.

What’s most impressive and also most unnerving, then, is the fact that the vast majority of these agreements are tacit. More impressive even than this is the fact that these silent agreements, when broken, are often met with greater hostility and derision than the expressed ones. Salary secrecy comes to mind. Or the public discussion of politics or religion. More recently, and most ironically, the attempt at actual discourse in the field of education. We’ve ever developed a phrase, these days, to trigger those who have broken one of these silent agreements. We tell them to, “Read the room.”

We can perceive, then, that cooperation, organization, nation, is only possible if all in the community agree to particular explicit and implicit rules, governance, manners, economics, social mores, cultural expressions, etc. This is the reason America is considered the greatest country in the world, though I’m not sure Americans actually realize or value America for this reason: It’s ability to absorb and assimilate diversity into agreement. The agreement is almost purely economic. In America, we agree on the money. “Get it how you live and spend it how you will,” we say, “but step in between me and mine, and it’s your life on the line.” And even then, there’s a level of capitalistic agreement on how to destroy a competitor: “It’s not personal; it’s just business.”

Even the world of the spirit works and depends upon agreement. On the light side, agreement with John 3:16 and the atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross, dying for the sins of the world, requires your agreement in order for you to be born again into the Kingdom of God. On the dark side, witchcraft and sorcery require covens to agree to perform rituals that sacrifice innocent blood in order to conjure demons. Both are modes of prayer, which signify a mortal being coming into agreement with an immortal being. If you want heaven on earth and hereafter, agree with Jesus. If you want hell, agree with satan. Though diametrically opposed, either way, agreement is agreement.

Look at our societal programming. The realm of entertainment has provided a ubiquitous and representative test case for the development, decentralization, disintegration and reconstitution of agreement in our modern society. From FDR’s Fireside Chats, to the advent of cable television, to live internet streaming, at the same time agreement in public programming is crumbling, agreement in private programming is congealing into a macabre and sinister voyeurism that, though primarily consumed in solitude today, rather than in community, and though the camera is trained out from the screen, today, rather than within it, and though the entertainment is interactive instead of enter passive, our engagement with it, nonetheless sanctions the behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs that we project and ingest from it, both of which constitute agreement.  We have become what we have agreed to consume. “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” We have loosed much production in wickedness and lasciviousness and, today, our universal societal sin is that we all, secretly, shamelessly, and guiltily look on in agreement at things we used to feel too ashamed to witness.

            Remember wholesome, family-friendly television? Me neither, unless I binge a sitcom I grew up watching thirty-five years ago. I remember being able to watch most, if not all, of what was broadcast on television without needing my mother’s permission. There wasn’t much to be worried about unless I had an HBO or Showtime subscription or was up late enough waiting for channel 99 to unscramble on the chance I’d see something sexy. That was all, and we never could afford HBO. Everything “inappropriate” I ever saw could only come from one of two places: a magazine or a VHS tape. Everything on television was safe: Nick@Nite, Saturday morning cartoons, aggressively edited box office hits, late night talk shows, TGIF, home shopping infomercials, court tv, Oprah. And whatever I wanted to watch, I had to wait for it. The TV Guide dictated what and when we watched, and when we wanted to watch the same show, we watched it together on the “big TV” in the living room. Televisions weren’t so cheap that every child could watch whatever they wanted in full HD in the privacy of their own bedrooms. Nor would such a thing have been tolerated. Family viewership was encouraged, and major networks organized their programming around hours long blocks of shows, back-to-back, to encourage binge-viewing as a family. I remember Friday nights on the couch with my family watching Step by Step, For Your Love, Hanging with Mr. Cooper, The Steve Harvey Show, The Jamie Foxx Show, Family Matters, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Full House, The Simpsons. Good Lord, don’t even get me started on the cartoons. I could go on for hours. It was all in the family.

“Thooose were the daaaaaays.”

It ain’t like that no more. We went from scripted shows that closed with soft sax music and a life lesson to edgy comedies. From edgy comedies to risqué talk shows. From risqué talk shows to violent ones. From Violent talk shows to controversial series. From controversial series to scandalous dramas. From scandalous dramas to binge-worthy thrillers. From binge-worthy thrillers to heart-pounding horrors. I remember when Tales from the Crypt and Unsolved Mysteries were the most unsettling programs you could find on television. Now we’ve got Lucifer and Nosferatu and John Wick and Squid Game being piped into every home in the world that’s got a wi-Fi connection. How’d we get from The Flintstones to Keeping up with the Kardashians? How’d we get from Charles in Charge to the Bad Girls Club? How’d we get from I Love Lucy to Temptation Island? How’d we get from Saved by the Bell to Euphoria?

Give the people what they want. Scripted shows weren’t enough for us. We craved more than a life lesson and a laugh track. Enter live sports and late-night talk shows. Too risky, so we added tape delays as a layer of protection. That wasn’t enough. We cut music videos with witchcraft symbolism and played them on repeat. Made a soundtrack for the drama. It wasn’t enough. Enter Reality TV. Fifteen young adults go away to college and consent to being filmed while living in the same house. Drama. Shirtless and bikini pool fights with production crew interference. Drama. We brought in the sketch shows to parody them and make light of the drama. It wasn’t enough. Now bring fifteen adults into a more luxurious house and make a game out of it. Add deception to the drama. Create alliances and cliques. Encourage gossip and slander with private confessions. Install night vision cameras in the bedrooms. Drama. Kick the weak off of the island. Vote the disagreeable off of the show. Aggravate rejection and survival of the fittest. Social Darwinism and evolutionary theory acted out onscreen, the losers forgotten and ostracized, not only by those in the fictional house but by anyone in reality who recognizes them from the show. Drama. Take fifteen more adults and put them in a mansion and offer them money to fall in love with each other. Liquor and skin at every gathering. Competition. Heartbreak. Violence. Drama. Take fifteen more adults and put them on a remote island half naked and offer them money to see how long they can remain sexless. Pressure them to marry in the finale. Watch them divorce months later in the tabloids. Drama. It wasn’t enough. We keep watching, keep agreeing, keep nodding our heads, saying, “More.”

While cable networks were producing these shows, a concurrent stream was running alongside it through the internet. Cell phones with cameras and fiber gave us all production quality cameras at production quality speeds. Every high school graduate was gifted a laptop with a single user license of the Microsoft Office Suite, then bought Photoshop and downloaded Limewire. We downloaded so many torrents of pornography our first computers were terminal with viruses and passed away before we got our Bachelors’. YouTube comes on the scene and aggravates a society-wide lust for fame and recognition that has created more junkies worldwide, in 2026, than caffeine. YouTube has become the new programming tool and social media is the 21^st century magazine rack, where we binge on the commentary. Whatever gets views gets proliferated. In other words, whatever gets the most agreement gets rewarded. Everyone’s a player, now, and everything is possible. From trick shots to ridiculousness. From airbrushed filters to OnlyFans, we keep pushing the envelope for views. How many eyes can we get? How many likes? How many subscribers? We research what draw eyes? We produce lies to get click. We track app openings and engagement time. We are addicted, not to dopamine, to agreement. Dopamine is the only the refuse, the residue of anti-matter, the scum at the bottom of the barrel, like the feeling of satisfaction after a meal. Agreement is the meal.

With the decentralization of viewership from scripted programming to livestreaming, and the devolution of fandom from information and indoctrination to thirst traps to rage-bait, we’ve rounded the corner to creating hell on earth: wrath-viewing. Livestreaming is a scourge. Nobody’s tuning into a livestream to hear good news. They use Facetime for that. Livestreams are for gossip, pornography and violence. These are the days of love grown cold. Our pleasure is frozen. Too much dopamine. Now, only the horrific will suffice to satiate our lust and desperation for euphoria. Human beings greatest problem is the same as what we all have most in common: sin. It is, if we are unscrupulous and narcissistic and debased and ignorant and sociopathic, the lowest hanging fruit of our agreement. We can all relate to sin, for we all were born into it through our fallen father, Adam. Never mind that the second Adam, Jesus, has come and gone, who opened Himself as the door for us to die to sin and be free to live to God, for that road is narrow and few find it. Not much agreement on the narrow road. But on the broad, there is great profit to be made trafficking in the desperate, doped up souls of men. Today we agree in secret; there is a silent agreement towards illicit stimulus, both for the producers and the consumers of all this smut and hatred. “The godless in heart cherish anger; they do not cry for help when he binds them.”

How else did we get to the point of housewives consenting to sell adultery to lonely and perverted men? How else did we get to baby mothers being murdered on camera, or else asking likes to murder the undesired children of their fornication? How else did we get to Perez Hilton thinking it profitable to livestream his own self-mutilation? How is this not the work of satan that we have slowly, imperceptibly agreed to? You know, Melanie McDonald wrote an article on the Perez Hilton situation and asked the question, “What is it doing to us?” All this livestreaming, this wicked voyeurism, what impact is it having, has it had, on us? On you? I keep asking myself, in the fifteen minutes the police were outside questioning his sister about the mental state of the victim, in the fifteen minutes they say it took moderators to take the livestream down, how many eyes did Hilton get? How much agreement? How many text message went out, “Yo, log on right now!” How many more eyes tuned in, after they realized what they were witnessing?

There’s this general assumption and socially ingrained expectation that we should stay with the wounded until help arrives. But in times past, that wounded was in front of us and our presence served a purpose in that we put pressure on the wound to stay the bleeding, or we administered CPR, or called out for a doctor or nurse, or at least for someone to go and fetch the first aid kit or an AED. But what is the impact of that responsibility when the helper’s presence is no longer a help? When, in fact, the helper is helpless and can do nothing? Are they still obligated to stay? And if yes, for what purpose? Moral support? Encouragement? And if so, what am I supporting with my presence, with my agreement to be here? When a man is purposely cutting himself in front of me while I plead with him to stop, but I am powerless to grab either his wrists or the knife because he is 1,500 miles away? Should it have even been possible for me to be present for this at all? His sister testified in an article written about ten days after the tragedy that, after she’d forced open the door to his room and saw Hilton naked in the bathroom, covered in blood, he smiled at her. There is only one help in that moment: In the name of Jesus, cast out the devil.

This is the age of digital discipleship, and voyeurism is the sin of the 21^st century. It’s not a matter of individual feelings or impulses for tuning in, it’s simply tuning in that creates the agreement, supports it, and causes it to gain legs and proliferate. Screenshots, shares, likes or dislikes, uploads, retweets, all in the name of awareness or compassion simply builds greater agreement, greater faith, greater profits for horror, for blood, for despair, for violence, for death and for a sordid and implicit desire, a responsibility, even, to bear witness to another’s shame. But riches do not profit in the day or wrath. It is the coward’s sin, for it refuses to commit. It only wants to look on. It only wants to know who else will be at the party. It wants to know how many likes before it will engage. It wants to know how many subscribers before it will support. It doesn’t want to partake; it only wants to cuckold the madness. But it doesn’t want to be the only one. We are moths; sin is the flame; agreement is the force that draws.

The spirit of death has been poured out upon us, and we, through agreement are consenting en masse to be baptized into it. Murder. Suicide. Blood-letting. We’ve become a cult of pitiful, sadistic voyeurs, taking pleasure in the abominations we’ve clamored to see. We all nurse a quiet hatred of others in our hearts and lie about it, desiring to see them punished without incurring guilt to ourselves. But Jesus said, whoever is angry with his brother without cause is as guilty of murder as the murderer. How many, after reading the description, still clicked the shared link of Daniel Pearl’s beheading? How many, after they knew the ending, tuned in to see George Floyd suffocated to death? How many are addicted to doom-scrolling and mounting death tolls? How many thumbs only tap to be enraged? How many, right now, are sitting rapturously, phone in hand, scrolling without end, searching out the next scandalous titillation to arrest and corrupt their attention? How many look on, while the world and the people waste away, laughing at their reflections in a black mirror? Is it not all of us? And how many more are contemplating joining the circus? How many more are googling the annual earnings of the top streamers? How many more are quitting their jobs to start a blog, or a podcast, or a page, longing to compete with the insanity? How many more are looking to build a gallows for their own indignation? How many more are envious to profit and prosper from this dystopia? Is it not all of us? Truly, “wrath is cruel, anger is overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?”

Satan’s nature is one of wanton wrath and destruction. He is a lion roaring and devouring. He accomplishes this through the agreement of men and women who agree to his wretched suggestions, putting his anger and wrath on display through themselves, being born slaves to sin.

But there is hope: Thus says the Lord God Alimighty, whose words are pure words, as silver tried in a furnace seven times,

“Say to them, as I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel? And you, son of man, say to your people, the righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him when he transgresses, and as for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall by it when he turns from his wickedness, and the righteous shall not be able to live by his righteousness when he sins. Though I say to the righteous that he shall surely live, yet if he trusts in his righteousness and does injustice, none of his righteous deeds shall be remembered, but in his injustice that he has done he shall die. Again, though I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ yet if he turns from his sin and does what is just and right, if the wicked restores the pledge, gives back what he has taken by robbery, and walks in the statutes of life, not doing injustice, he shall surely live; he shall not die. None of the sins that he has committed shall be remembered against him. He has done what is just and right; he shall surely live,” (Ezekiel 33:11-16)

So then, what is just and right for us to do, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God?” “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law . . . the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe . . . being justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.”

Repent of your sins, as I repent of mine. Believe on Jesus Christ for the salvation of your soul and receive new life in Him, everlastingly, walking in the light of God, empowered by His Holy Spirit. I am persuaded, in spirit and truth, that Jesus is the only way to life and, that life, abundantly.  May you find Him now.