Psalm 11:4
a screaming demon, or maybe just a cat
May the Lord destroy all deceitful lips, and the tongue that speaketh proud things. (Psalm 11:4 DR)
In this world we often find that the wicked work themselves into positions of power and influence. Indeed, it sadly is almost a prerequisite that to attain some measure of stature in the present day entails massive amounts of corruption, avarice, deceit and the like. To be sure, this is the regrettable history of our race, yet seems magnified to such an extent today simply because of the greater means of wielding these things and how much more granular they can be. Kings and tyrants in the past may have been wicked and ruled unjustly, but the limitations of technology and such precluded them from the sort of overreach that we almost take for granted today among those who rule us, whether “officially” or otherwise.
True virtue, thus, is generally not a means of advancement in this world, and will more likely than not result in marginalization and ridicule. This is compounded by the modernist heresy which essentially absolutizes relative values (such as equality, diversity, inclusion, etc.) and relativizes absolute values (such as love, charity, goodness, etc.). Virtue signaling, as it is known, thus is a way of attaining “virtue” not by any moral effort or self-mastery or seeking after the good, true and beautiful, but rather by parroting the relative values as absolute that the current zeitgeist proclaims. And since this changes from day to day, the way to obtain virtue in this paradigm is not to have particular principles and put them into practice but rather to be as in sync with the spirit of the age as possible.
There is a fascinating inversion of Christian virtue here. For within the Christian paradigm the end of virtue is to have one’s will aligned completely with God’s will, to desire what He desires and to seek after that end with all of one’s effort. The worldly virtue of the present age doesn’t even have the manliness of the old pagan natural virtues such as searching after glory, honor, justice and the, like even if subordinated to one’s will. In this manner we are not even in a new paganism. We are rather in an inversion of Christendom, for the devotees of the zeitgeist subordinate their wills not to God but to the zeitgeist, they offer their lives as an oblation of sorts.
But this alignment and surrender of will is not to grow in actual virtue and communion with God. Unlike the Christian faith where virtue is infused by the Holy Spirit into the soul, the Spirit of the Age imputes “virtue” to its supplicants, by which they can view themselves as justified. The inversion is complete as sanctification is accomplished by an increasing and vociferous adherence to the zeitgeist.
The Psalmist looks in his own time at those with deceitful lips and wonders at their seeming prominence and stature in the world. As he seeks justice and righteousness he feels the standards raised against him, and as we have seen in previous verses, this pursuit of actual virtue can be a lonely endeavor.
Yet he is not deterred in his pursuit, foreshadowing the words of our Lord:
Blessed are ye when they shall revile you, and persecute you, and speak all that is evil against you, untruly, for my sake. Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is very great in heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets that were before you. (Matthew 5:11-12 DR)
In this world we must seek after justice, but it is not our part to right all wrongs. Rather, the Psalmist seeks not for vengeance on his own accord but leaves it to God. Importantly, he is not a doormat who allows the wicked to trample him without complaint. His prayer is that God will destroy all deceitful lips—he leaves vengeance to the Lord, as the Scriptures say:
Revenge is mine, and I will repay them in due time, that their foot may slide: the day of destruction is at hand, and the time makes haste to come. (Deuteronomy 32:35 DR)
St. Paul reiterates Moses’ words and shows the fulfillment of the Law in the virtue of charity that coexists with God’s vengeance:
Revenge not yourselves, my dearly beloved; but give place unto wrath, for it is written: Revenge is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord. But if thy enemy be hungry, give him to eat; if he thirst, give him to drink. For, doing this, thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head. Be not overcome by evil, but overcome evil by good. (Romans 12:19-21 DR)
In this dark world we are constantly beset by trouble, and increasingly often as a “reward” for virtue in cultures that call good evil and evil good. But our hope is not in this world which passes away, but rather we wait for and hope in God’s justice, leaving room for His wrath which will be revealed in due time and in which all accounts will be set right. While we are to do good to all—even our enemies—the alignment of our wills must not be deceived by the deceitful tongues of the zeigeist and its promise of easy virtue. Instead we must always submit our wills to the God who will judge evil and bring it to not, unto whom true virtue leads as to its end, in which the fullness of goodness is found forevermore.
As I was thinking about this verse, I brought to mind the ways in which those who promote the zeitgeist and its values are often very vocal about it. We’ve all seen the screaming memes and such which are characteristic of this mindset, and so I wanted to capture that somewhat.
I started by searching for images of people screaming and found many, but as I wanted to kind of make a caricature of it. As such I found this cat hissing/screaming and thought it was perfect. As I consider it now the whole inversion of good and evil and of virtue and vice is the apotheosis of irrationality, and thus while I don’t think I was thinking this when I made it, to have an irrational animal illustrating this seems apropos.
I found an old polaroid photo and cut it out in Photoshop. I added the cat image and precomped it and thenmasked it to the polaroid then precomped both of those into another precomp. I applied some light pixel sorting to the cat image just to give it a bit of an off-kilter feel.
I added a hold wiggle to the position and rotation of the polaroid. I also composited in some masking tape images to “hold” the polaroid in place. I guess it doesn’t really do that, but I’m going to go ahead and say that was intentional with some sort of meaning behind it. Or maybe it just looked cool.
I then added one more tape piece and put the text on top of it and added some position hold to the tape. A little bit of texture in the background and the animation was complete.
Is it unfair to compare screaming cats to the zeitgeist and the inversion of virtue?
Um, no. It’s not.
Enjoy.
May the Lord destroy all deceitful lips, and the tongue that speaketh proud things.
(Psalm 11:4 DR)
View a higher quality version of this gif here: