tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16793213893385475632024-02-20T18:33:45.037-05:00I feel relieved to let repetition save me.Shanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10341987190234696921noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1679321389338547563.post-58647149641085521752011-10-25T11:24:00.001-04:002011-10-25T11:24:55.977-04:00dark night of the soul.<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">why do you believe in God?<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">within one instant I had to face the questions I never had cause to worry about before, because I never really believed in God – only the idea, the idea of something greater than myself but nothing more than a shallow notion that I was willing to cast aside whenever the time presented itself. the time came. I cast it aside and was shocked to discover that all my worth was nascent within the kernel of belief that I flippantly gave no more than half of a thought from time to time. It was all connected: the community I craved the love I sought the justification I lacked was in that which I felt was easy to live without; yet it was all called away in an instant and I discovered that perhaps it was more than a passing phase or a means to an end, but now it was lost and perhaps I didn’t want it back anyways because I didn’t really believe because how could this happen why could this happen why why why I won’t believe your lies because I am more than that, this means more than that; bring me more pain because in it I find my identity and my self-worth: I am justified. what is community but a false Idea that is but temporary and what is keeping it from being called away in an instant just like everything else?<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">I left home and moved downtown on my own in a condition ready to bring more pain upon myself because now I would be completely separated from the life I once had, which now became associated with nothing other than that which I had lost – or never really had. Somehow I still continued to go to a fellowship group on campus, because I probably still wanted to keep up appearances or perhaps I wished to seek out others on which I could give my burden in return for the power I could possess over them through the pity I could so easily invoke. It was disgusting, but I preserved my identity and my justification.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">Though these people I met, this community I found, was different than the last. I felt accepted like I had never felt before: which was what I really sought above all else, I would soon discover. The power-play no longer had any purpose to serve because I wasn’t necessary, I was a part of something greater than self and external to me. I developed a kinship and bond with two in particular, among others, with whom I shared all from the beginning and they shared in return. This was a relationship with another human being I never thought possible. It seemed to transcend mere conventions and appearances and was all about the inward state and trying to make sense of life. I craved this kind of understanding with a hearty passion, and from them I learned much. I learned not so much from what they said as much as who they were: I looked to them as role models.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">here there is an interesting twist, do you see? I shifted my focus away from myself onto those around me and now it became them in which I sought my salvation. I fashioned an idol out of the worth I wished to derive from my relations to others: why is this so bad? I am no longer being selfish and self-involved right? Isn’t that how things are supposed to be? Yet, why do I still feel so alone and isolated? towards the end of a few truly blissful months in which I felt happier than I had ever been in my life, I felt the doubts return that had so plagued me just a season earlier. this time, however, I did not have God to blame because I knew that he was no longer at fault: I believed that he was truly responsible for the joy I now felt and that it could not have come from any other. This left only one other culprit: myself me I. I was the one responsible. I was unhappy once more and now this time only I was to blame. The intensity of isolation increased because I could not blame God any longer, nor others because they are others, this inner struggle could have no other author. I now had an added sense of guilt on top of everything else because I was to blame I was to blame I was to blame do you understand? no one else was at fault.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">When the new year arrived, my support fell out from under me once again. Only this time it was different, however, because I had something more substantial to lose. I had experienced true happiness for once in my life and now I had that snatched away and I could not understand why <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">why why why</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">please give me an answer</i> Do you know how it feels to be unhappy and know that only you are to blame? I had lost all hope. The despair was intensified because now I could compare this sorrow to a happier time in my life not a few months earlier. What had happened? What had changed?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">I did not love these people. They were no real community to me because I sought in them the same justification I sought in them through the power by which I could usurp their pity from them: a false sincerity. I could see myself as an actor, a liar and O how well I could play the part. I could see the grave intentions I had and believed I could see the same false character in everyone else and so doubted truth and love, because what is love without truth? where is our bond? All was lost and the element of loss was something new to me because I don’t believe I ever had so much to lose before. I saw that I had squandered much of my childhood, or perhaps never really lived it too occupied with that which didn’t matter, drowning myself in my own apathy and indifference. I never really lived my childhood and I was never affected by it before now. What is my life? <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">there was only a past I never lived and a future I was too dead to experience</i> What am I doing? What have I done? <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">why do you believe in God<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">I saw the idols I had created lose their hope along with me. Everyone around me was unhappy,<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>and the only reason I could see for it was that perhaps we had be living in an illusion that was only bound disappear before us soon enough. Were we just poor quixotic souls fighting enemies that weren’t really there? Was it all a dream from which we had now waked? <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">I do not want to wake: if I am dreaming let me sleep</i> Yet life demanded everything from me, from us, and we had to give it over because we were powerless to stop it. This time it was not God’s fault, but our own. We had replaced God with the idol of our comfort and security and sought our worth in it; we were ready to sacrifice all to the idol and then when God came to ask the same of us, we hesitated. It is that hesitation which held us back with trembling idle hands as chains that bound us to the earth. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">wretched man that I am, who will save me from this body of death<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">You ask me: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">why do you believe in God?</i> The only answer I can give you is my experience. I think we live under the misconception that we claim to only believe that which we can empirically observe, yet reject all truth based on subjectivity: as though that has nothing to do with experience. I have learned more from my relations to others and from the notebooks and diaries of authors than any book or theology. Though I do not doubt their importance, it is different to witness the truth of life in person. I am changed and those I love have changed as well: I see God in them, and thus I believe. When community is understood properly, we have the ability to see God for ourselves. Those who wish to deny that this is true, I would argue have not experienced what it means to love fully and more importantly what it means to lose everything only to gain everything in its place. I have lived it and for whatever it is worth I tell you that I believe in God because I have seen its proof with my very eyes. I still have unanswered questions, but I have also learned that no matter how often I study, they are answers I will only find in living my life. I will live the questions and in such a way find my answers. I have no doubts, for what reason have I to doubt?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">This is only the understanding I have reached on this day in my life and I know it may be subject to revision or perhaps all will be taken from me in an instant again. How will I respond? I tell you I have no fear, come what may: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">I believe.</i> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">This blog at best serves to glorify myself and my problems and for that I apologize and regret that you have read it and that I have published it. I write it out only so that I may have something to look back upon as I return to living these questions and problems and history.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Shanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10341987190234696921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1679321389338547563.post-42612885983875590392011-08-18T17:07:00.000-04:002011-08-18T17:08:56.484-04:00understanding don quixote.<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">“the mockery that underlies the career of Don Quixote is what we must endeavor to discover” – Miguel de Unamuno<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">Upon finishing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Don Quixote</i>, I find myself questioning what it is that I have learned through my long adventure side by side with our hero and his squire Sancho Pança. It occurs to me that one doesn’t really understand what the novel is attempting to accomplish until one has finished it and seen Quixote on his death-bed ‘repenting of his madness’. It is here that he receives an awakening that brings him to his senses, yet instead of joy at his recovery, we feel the deepest pang of sorrow and cruelty at the poor wretch he is upon the realization that his whole life has been a jest and a mockery. We find that even the ones responsible for his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">cure</i> are the very ones at the end of his life trying to convince him to continue in his madness and ride out once more; however, their regretful pleas arrive too late to the Don’s fragile state. Not even the encouragement of his companion Sancho can convince him otherwise and thus he meets his death reflecting upon the absurd comedy his life has been.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">“At length he waked and with a loud voice, ‘Blessed be the Almighty’, cried he, ‘for this great benefit he has vouchsafed to do me! Infinite are his mercies; they are greater, and more in number than the sins of men.’ The niece hearkening very attentively to these words of her uncle, and finding more Sense in them than there was in his usual talk, at least since he had fallen ill; ‘What do you say, sir, has anything extraordinary happened?’ ‘Mercies’, answered he, ‘that Heaven has this moment vouchsafed to show me, in spite of all my iniquities. My judgment is returned clear and undisturbed, and that cloud of ignorance is now removed, which the continual reading of those damnable Books of Knight-Errantry had cast over my Understanding. I now perceive their nonsense and impertinence, and am only sorry the discovery happens so late, when I want time to make amends by those studies that should enlighten my soul, and prepare me for futurity’” –Don Quixote<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">Perhaps I should begin by discovering what it is that Don Quixote learned at the end of his life. He claims to have had a revelation from Heaven exposing his madness to himself, but is it as simple as that? It requires one to examine why the revelation had to happen to him when it did, or why it even happened at all.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">Don Quixote del la Mancha, after filling his head to the point of madness with books of Chivalry and Knight-Errantry, set out on his quest for eternal glory and fame; he procured for himself his trusty steed <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Rozinante</i>, a sickly mare that barely traveled faster that a trot; he also found himself a squire in Sancho Pança and a mistress in the fair Dulcinea del Toboso (whom he had never actually met, only heard of her beauty through the praise of others). He promised Sancho that once his fame was achieved, he would allow him to govern some island or kingdom of his own as reward for being the squire of so gallant a Knight-Errant. It is then that the adventures begin and the foolishness of Quixote manifests itself before the eye of the public. Once he had left his home, his niece and family friends immediately set about procuring ways of getting him to come home and have his right senses returned to him. Yet, Don Quixote’s particular brand of madness makes this difficult for them to make any successful attempt at getting him to return. All things to Don Quixote are able to be explained as serving his purpose in his perspective. When things appear to him different than they should seem, he blames his misfortune on enchantment or sorcery, for that was how it happened in his books of Knight-Errantry. Thus, every fortune and misfortune is explained and given its particular purpose towards Don Quixote’s end. Until at long last, the grand design of Don Quixote’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">friends</i> succeeds and a hired man in armor challenges the Don to a fight, under the condition that if he loses he must return home for one year and not practice any Knight-Errantry nor partake in any adventures of any kind. They found this to be a well-crafted plan because they knew that Quixote, being a man of honor, would follow through on the conditions and with that they hoped to rid his mind of madness and return his senses to him. The challenge is made and the knights ride at each other when – Quixote falls from his horse. He lost. This puts Don Quixote in such a despair that some of his sense returns and he begins to curse his misfortune and the continual upturning of all his plans hitherto. The walk home was one of great suffering because he and Sancho were robbed and beaten more than once before they reached their homes. This time, however, they did not have their shining star of glory to provide them comfort and consolation in the midst of their pain; since he had lost, all became dark and oppressive to Quixote. His return to his senses was one of pain and great suffering. He was forced to admit and his whole life’s purpose and goal was meaningless and all a mockery. What has the Don learned?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">My brief and wholly incomplete summary of the events that led to his final exclamation on his death-bed repenting of his madness, is meant to give an idea of the overall idea of the novel as I see it. Are we to triumph at the return of Don Quixote’s senses? It is probably clear that I am one who shall never find joy that Don Quixote had his senses restored. With this restoration, his life lost all of its meaning and we are left with just another poor, ordinary man. What man was discovered in this process? Which man was the real man? This is my question.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">Miguel de Unamuno, a philosopher I love, has much to say on the subject of Don Quixote and what he represents for modern Spain and modernity in general. Don Quixote brings us to ourselves, but not in the way the novel represents, Unamuno argues. His return to his senses is seen as a self denial to Unamuno:</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">“The philosophy in the soul of my people appears to me as the expression of an inward tragedy analogous to the tragedy of Don Quixote, as the expression of a conflict between what the world is as scientific reason shows it to be, and what we wish that it might be, as our religious faith affirms it to be…no, Don Quixote does not resign himself either to the world, or to science or logic, or to art or esthetics, or to morality or ethics.” –Miguel de Unamuno ‘Tragic Sense of Life’<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">The final exclamation of Don Quixote is when the Don gives up his desire and struggle for life <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>and resigns to his rationality. For what else is it that he gives up if not his belief in something greater than himself? No, the persuading and mischievousness of his niece and company, set out to rid him from this belief because it is not grounded in the senses or upon reason. In the world of rationality, is it any wonder why a man like Don Quixote, a man of strong conviction and belief, should be made out to be a madman? His adventures harmed no one (other than themselves, especially poor Sancho) and at most occasionally caused passers-by some inconvenience by his antics. He was no criminal, only a strong believer in what he felt to be the noblest of causes, Chivalry. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">Even though virtually none of his adventures worked out, that does not make him any less of a believer in his cause. His life was ordered, meaningful and with purpose. No misfortune could hold him back for long because he was a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">doer </i>and he was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">living</i> what he believed in. The ones who restored him to his senses did not have such a conviction. They want him to return to his senses and.. then what? Simply be like them? Was it because they were jealous of his determination? Why? I do not understand. It seems that they wanted this restoration simply because that was what was<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"> normal </i><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">appropriate</i> behavior; they wanted him to be just as confused and lost in life as they were, is that so?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">This, I feel, is why the ending of the novel is so powerful because all those who restored him to his senses immediately were filled with regret at this poor hopeless man that they knew they had turned him into. They had stripped his life of its meaning and you find them at the end pleading with him to take up his madness again. How strange! What is it the others discovered in this? It appears that they discovered their own meaninglessness as well in this conversion. Here they saw before them a casualty of Reason (capital R), their guiding star, and they were forced to question their own motives. All parties present at the Don’s death found themselves guilty and responsible for their actions. Quixote saw his madness as a sin and the others saw their deprivation of the Don to be a sin. Thus the novel concludes with everyone brought before themselves in the most difficult self-recognition possible: the acknowledgement of their own sin. Yet, what was Quixote’s real sin? In his madness, he believed, like in the epics of Homer and Virgil that God was present in his actions and Providence was guiding him and bestowing fortune and misfortune to him according to God’s will. Perhaps he was not aware of himself as an acting agent with his own responsibilities before God, but at the same time I feel that he was. He was not believing all this blindly or just on the surface: he believed it all with every fiber of his being. To deny this conviction would be akin to death for Don Quixote, which proved to be true in the end. So I do not see the sin at least in proportion to the sin recognized by the others, and perhaps I have not lived enough to understand the sin yet, which is very possible. Now, it seems to be that the others were very much in the wrong and stripped the innocent Don Quixote of his purpose for living. It is no surprise that his final loss was followed almost immediately by his death, for how could he live on after all he believed his whole life was proven to be a sham?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">In Nietzsche’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">On The Genealogy of Morality</i>, he describes human beings as fundamentally meaning-seeking creatures and one of the biggest problems we encounter in our lives is the issue of suffering. How is one to account for the suffering in the world? If it has no intrinsic meaning that we can discover, then what is the point of our participating in anything in the world if we face misfortune and loss without any reason? Nietzsche concludes that humans would rather “will nothingness, than not will”. By this, he is making a claim, I argue, about our ontology that we <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">necessarily</i> create for ourselves a meaning for our sufferings, even if there may be no real evidence for them. What else is Don Quixote’s folly? He has given a purpose for his life that provides a meaning for his suffering and his joys alike. One is reminded of Kierkegaard’s portrayal of the Tax-Collector in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Fear and Trembling. </i>He finds joy in all things, even in the ugly; fortune and happiness even in the misfortunate and the sorrowful. No matter what befell Don Quixote and Sancho Pança in their adventures, Providence was always guiding them and that was his belief. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">To believe, or not to believe? That is the question. Unamuno pushes that we must become quixotically ridiculous to others and more importantly ourselves. This does not mean that there is no room for true Belief however. Yet, why is it that if a true Don Quixote were to appear to us today we would immediately dismiss him as a madman (even we Christians) and go about our business. Have we no strength to believe as Don Quixote? Have we not the courage to live and do as Don Quixote? Perhaps we have lost our admiration for that which is greater than ourselves and have settled for something much less; we have lost the desire for the great and the wonderful and resigned it all for the ordinary and the plain. Are we so weak and cowardly?</p>Shanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10341987190234696921noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1679321389338547563.post-21624749030630284142011-01-17T23:19:00.000-05:002011-01-17T23:20:46.289-05:00on self-examination<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? You are a human being. Though you are a person that has been born into this world with specific personality traits, etc., <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>you are not really <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">who</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">you are</i>, not yet at least. There is a sort of pre-condition to your being in the world: we are all sinners and therefore naturally imperfect. Yes, this is the great equalizer. There was a temptation to sin in the garden, our venerable mother and father failed the test and we are presently inheritors of that consequence. Once they sinned they were humiliated and longed to hide from God and from each other in their shame. This shame we also inherit at our birth. This is the precondition of our existence, such that when we live in the world we have problems from the very start; shame, guilt, sorrow, anxiety, etc – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">sin</i> – sin is our point of departure into existence. This is the wall that we will continually hit our head against throughout our lives, repeatedly, over and over again. We (those who actually even notice the problem) can’t help but feel that we cannot escape this condition we are in. We are tempted to resign: “What’s the use?”, you may say to yourself in despair, clutching for meaning and purpose when all that you do just never seems to work out and you feel trapped within your own fragile frame searching for a way to escape. Only, the world cannot provide that escape for you, can it? No, all of your attempts have failed. You just want to be happy and content, but even this is denied you. The sorrow of it all is that it is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">you who has denied yourself</i>, and you are aware of this but cannot do anything about it; the wall is always there mocking you and your pitiful attempts to break through its thick skin. You have failed yourself in the sense that what prevented your attempts was your own weakness or inability. What is it you do next then, dear sufferer? Where have you left to go when the problem is you and you cannot escape yourself?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">Inclosing reserve [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">det Indesluttede</i>] is an existential term Kierkegaard uses throughout his works for this poor spiritual condition of suffering over one’s existence. You in your awareness of your personal weaknesses and imperfections turn inward and magnify them. In fact, it is these negative facts about yourself that are brought to the forefront at all occasions. Perhaps you stutter when you get nervous around others, or you make a stupid comment or remark without thinking and thus introduce imagined spiteful glances upon yourself, and any time this happens you immediately recognize this fault and for hours and even days or weeks afterwards, screaming at yourself for your stupidity (all inwardly, let’s remember). Nothing can be done to change what happened and so you torment yourself mockingly for what you did and swear that it will never happen again as long as you shall live, but what should happen next…you do it again, perhaps that very night! In your inner anguish, you no longer seek the company of others and you reserve yourself away from everything else; you become reserved for the main purpose of examining yourself all the more closely without distraction. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">Perhaps you are a Christian. Yes, of course you are: you’ve been attending church every Sunday of your life, haven’t you? You might even be looked upon as an authority in your church; people look up to you and you even fancy them saying about you: “Now <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">that</i> is how a Christian should act”. – Yet, only you know the truth. You’ve been so long in your reserve that you’ve even perfected a way to make your external appearance an acceptable character to others. So you use that character you’ve created to the best of your abilities, because as long as the outer is properly displayed no one would even bother with the inner. So much you thought to yourself, and you would even in your reserve work and perfect upon your character that it has given you a sort of spiteful pleasure in making your mask so cunningly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">normal</i> and acceptable. You still are examining yourself on a regular basis; constantly aware of what your faults are and that you are hopeless to change them. You meet a person, a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">fellow Christian</i>, and perhaps she seems to understand you. “This is a problem”, you say to yourself when you watch her reactions to what you say and you do: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">she doesn’t believe you. </i>This is just more torment for you, so you go back over every minute detail of everything you have said or done in her presence, yet you cannot find a satisfactory answer as to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">how she knows</i>. You performed flawlessly, yet it does not change the fact that she is the one who has seen right through you. “What am I to do about this?” you say to yourself in frustration. You resolve to reserve yourself again, for it is not safe out there anymore. Only you soon see that she will not let you alone; you see that she still comes to you provoking emotions unlike you’ve ever felt from anyone else before, at least not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">truthfully</i>; she still comes to you with questions that you don’t want to answer, because to answer would ruin the whole act: to answer would leave you utterly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">exposed. </i>So you lie to her, she doesn’t believe you; you run away, she finds you; you push her away, yet she still comes as before. “How can I make this end?”, you think as you submit to giving her just a little, “I say as much just to appease her enough so she will let me alone once and for all”. So she comes. You tell her a little of your personal issues and history, only surface details, for you are a good actor after all so you can make that enough, can’t you?…only she wants more. “How can she expect so much from me!”, you say to yourself in frustration. Let’s say that this time your fuse runs to its end. You lay it all out there in the open, you tell her <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">everything</i>; you tell her everything out of pure spite, for you want her to feel your pain in full and you want her to suffer what you have suffered. You hold nothing back as you lay scorn upon scorn: “Do you know what it feels like to live with this every day?”, you’ll scream at her, “…to live with the unbearable torture of your own self being the problem, the root of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">all </i>your problems? I can do nothing to change it! Have you ever punished yourself for something that wasn’t even your fault, yet you had convinced yourself that it was you who had failed and that it could not be otherwise? You torment yourself simply out of contempt for yourself because you feel that it is what you deserve. I have a demon over my shoulder mocking me every second ‘you don’t believe in God or love, you are only lying to yourself.’ Do you know what it is like to have this darkness breathing down your neck, poking at your every weakness and magnifying it to an unbearable size that you cannot help but collapse under its weight? Do you? <span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color:black;mso-themecolor:text1">Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?</span></span><span style="color:black;mso-themecolor:text1">”</span> You say all this and more to her, holding nothing back. You expect the worst and prepare to return to your hole and close yourself all over again – but something different happens this time. She smiles at you, a sweet smile of innocence; she smiles at you in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">love</i>. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Love, do you understand?</i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">This is the beauty of Christian love. The task is to love your neighbor as yourself, without distinction, even in their sin and imperfection. Our reserved individual is suffering from pride, or self-love in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">wrong way</i>. You may ask how that is so, but is it not pride after all that would place such importance on one’s weaknesses? The pride results from one not being able to feel pride in their weaknesses; the despair results from not being able to feel prideful about oneself. This is an interesting dialectical twist, isn’t it? What once was considered weakness has been turned into pride. Isn’t that the goal of the clever masks we create for ourselves? We are able to create an external self that can replace what we perceive our weaknesses to be with attributes that we can in turn be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">proud </i>of. So, attention is now drawn to the consequences of the mask and defenses we put up around others. We are essentially being inauthentic selves and denying who we really are for this lesser copy. We are afraid of people finding out who we really are so we hide away, does this sound familiar? Yes, do not be fooled, we have come no further than the garden. That is our precondition so if one is still hiding behind the mask <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">he has not fully become who he really is yet, his eternal self</i>. Therefore, one cannot love nor experience real love, Christian love, yet because he has not recognized himself eternally. Christian love is an eternal love, an infinite love. In order to give this love to others, one must possess it himself, but in order to possess it himself he must be in the right condition to receive it from God, because all love comes from God who himself is love. So you see how our natural self-love must turn into self-love <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">in the right way. </i>Yet, as is clear from the start, Love can only come from God. We are all sinners, let us never forget this, so we can only receive love from God’s hand and not on our own. Only once we have received this love from God can we give it to others; and we can give it freely to all, as we shall do, because the love comes from an eternal source. It is in love that the infinite and the finite meet and through love one is able to be one with his spirit and rest transparently in his Creator. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">This love requires <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">transparency</i>. You cannot hide before God and all is made open before him. This is terrifying because we naturally are shameful and anxious about being so completely exposed. So we fear God’s presence and try to get as far away as possible, only this is not possible and at one time or another we are put before God. Inclosing reserve is an example of this hiding, only here you are even hiding before others. Yet, we are called to bear one another’s burdens and this is an act of love for one another. The young girl saved the man because instead of turning from him, she accepted his outpourings in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">love </i>and was willing to bear his burdens so he did not have to carry it any longer. This is love, unselfish love: Christian Love. An important aspect of this love is its eternal nature. Love, being eternal, is a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">becoming</i>. In this sense, one is never complete because the source is eternal: one gains more and more each day. This removes any semblance of presumption because we are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">all</i> a becoming in this Love. None of us is higher than the other. Look at the gravestones! Their lives have ended and yet after their final moments all the worldly distinctions their lives were dedicated to establishing fade away into eternity in an instant; all that is left to show of their time on earth is a stone with a name: just like their brothers. This is not meant to discourage, but to prove that worldly distinction is meaningless when compared with eternity; we have a task and our time is short to complete it. Yet, it is not a race but a becoming, don’t you see? It is not about who wins but about how you came to win at all. Love is how we accomplish the task and the task requires selflessness, so everything becomes about the other and helping one another along in their faith. You may be further along than your brother, your job is to help and love him so that he may receive the joy that you also have. Only remember that you only have that joy because of your relation to God, which is what this all turns on. Those without this relation are missing out on the most important thing of all – salvation in eternity. This is only accomplishable through <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">love.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">We are also dealing with a love that looks past the finite externalities of man and looks instead at the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">eternal within</i>. See, Christianity is not concerned with the external, because the external is not your true self, it is the inner. In your inwardness is where Christianity rests. Our love for our neighbor should be a love that is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">unconditional</i> and not determinant on what they do so much, because they are sinners, as we all are. It is our <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">expectation</i> of others that leads us to pass judgment and thus we create barriers for ourselves that prevent us from loving one another in truth. Our neighbor is human, as you also are, and therefore subject to be a disappointment to our expectations. But, is the failed expectation just the other not being who <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">you</i> would like them to be? What is it that disappoints you – is it not their relation to how they affect <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">you</i>? The barrier to you loving them in truth is you yourself in your self-love. No! Christianity demands selflessness and requires that you love your neighbor as yourself, without distinction, even in their sin and imperfection. The sin in others should not be a barrier for you, because to judge others because of their sin is to claim that you who judges is without sin; thus, you become a hypocrite. You have not right to judge another. We are all guilty before God and before all. Yes, we are guilty before one another as brothers, bearing each other’s burdens and helping one another along on their walk in faith. Dostoevsky speaks of this love: a love that loves all without distinction; a love that loves the sin in man, because that is ‘divine love’ and the ‘summit of all love on earth’. Is this not a beautiful representation of what it means to love one another? We are to cast off all prejudices and become guilty before all, no one greater than the other. Jesus says that we are to hater our mother and father, brother and sister, etc., and this represents our <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">absolute</i> duty to God. We are to love our neighbor without distinction, and yet we have barriers to this love as well. We construct hierarchies of love and we love each only according to their due. This is how we often love our neighbors. We love them according to how they affect us. But Christianity presents a challenge that offends reason as it demands that we love the unlovable. Loving those whom we have placed higher up on our hierarchies is no task. No! The task is to love those whom we rank low on our list or who do not rank at all. Jesus even says that we should love our enemies. Does this not offend your reason as it doesn’t make sense at all? But, ask yourself why it doesn’t make sense to you. Is it not because there is no advantage in loving the unlovable? With our highly ranked persons, we receive things and love from them in return, but with these others we do not receive anything; we are forced to love selflessly and this affronts our nature as we would rather not give our love to someone who may not even give it in return. Do not forget though that your love is not a love that will run out if you give it away to someone who doesn’t return it; your love is endless if it has its root in the eternal. To love and love without expectation of reward or reciprocation is the task. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">Perhaps we should examine ourselves and our love for others as to whether we are loving one another in truth. I have the ability to say all this here to you, but to act it out in truth is an entirely different matter altogether. Christian Love has thus become something far more difficult than we think of it daily. This offense is necessary to our growth in faith, because the struggle is our becoming that is testament to our learning what it means to live the Christian life. What you are fighting is that wall we fought against earlier, only now we have a better understanding of what it is we are up against and we now have the eternal on our side. Without this inner struggle we would have no inner peace; if you are not struggling, then you are not growing. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="apple-style-span"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="color:black;mso-themecolor:text1">Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.</span> </i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"></i><span style="color:black;mso-themecolor:text1">–I John 3:18</span><span style="color:black;mso-themecolor:text1"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Shanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10341987190234696921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1679321389338547563.post-5074283623509938212011-01-03T19:38:00.002-05:002011-01-03T19:53:02.089-05:00your crystal palace is falling'...<i>for we are all divorced from life, we are all cripples, every one of us, more or less. We are so divorced from it that we feel at once a sort of loathing for real life, and so cannot bear to be reminded of it. Why, we have come almost to looking upon real life as an effort, almost as hard work, and we are all privately agreed that it is better in books. And why do we fuss and fume sometimes? Why are we perverse and ask for something else? We don't know what ourselves. It would be the worse for us if our petulant prayers were answered. Come, try, give any one of us a little more independence, untie our hands, widen the spheres of our activity, relax the control and we ... yes, I assure you ... we should be begging to be under control again at once. I know that you will very likely be angry with me for that, and will begin shouting and stamping. Speak for yourself, you will say, and for your miseries in your underground holes, and don't dare to say all of us - excuse me, gentlemen, I am not justifying myself with that 'all of us'. As for what concerns me in particular I have only in my life carried to an extreme what you have not dared to carry half-way, and what's more, you have taken your cowardice for good sense, and have found comfort in deceiving yourselves. So that perhaps, after all, there is more life in me than in you. Look into it more carefully! Why, we don't even know what living means now, what it is, and what is it called? Leave us alone without books and we shall be lost and in confusion at once. We shall not know what to join on to, what to cling to, what to love and what to hate, what to respect and what to despise. We are oppressed at being humans, humans with </i>our own<i> real bodies and blood; we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace, and we keep trying to be some sort of fairy-tale universal beings. We are stillborn, and for generations past have been begotten, not by living fathers, and that suits us better and better. We are developing a taste for it. Soon we shall contrive to be born somehow from an idea. But enough; I don't want to write anymore from <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Underground.</span></i><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"></span>-</i>underground man<i> </i></div>Shanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10341987190234696921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1679321389338547563.post-25578438924317450312011-01-02T13:41:00.003-05:002011-01-02T13:45:20.241-05:00post-nothing<p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(48, 48, 48); font-family:Verdana, Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><i>Things don't seem to be as easy<br />As they used to be<br />It's getting harder every day<br />To think of better things to say<br />About what's going on around you<br />And what's happening inside you<br />When it's time to change you won't know how<br />It won't matter years from now<br /><br />No matter what you think or do or say<br />Everything turns grey<br /><br />This is it, the darkest hour<br />Isn't it depressing how our<br />Minds create an atmosphere<br />That won't happen here<br />Unless we make some new demands<br />To grasp the future in our hands<br />You know I wish I could but it's too late<br />For senseless minds that love to hate<br /><br /></i></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(48, 48, 48); font-family:Verdana, Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><i>No matter what they think or do or say<br />Everything turns grey</i></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(48, 48, 48); "><i></i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(48, 48, 48); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><b>agent orange - "everything turns grey"</b></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal">This is a song I’ve always enjoyed. I rediscovered it recently and remembered just how much I love this song. I was impressed by this lyric, especially such a lyric coming from a punk band in the early-80s. One is struck immediately by the cynicism of his words as he tells of a world that is falling into a state of confusion where everything is turning grey each moment and nothing seems to matter. The second verse leads you into a possible solution, but no ‘it is too late’, he says, ‘for senseless minds that love to hate’; and once again everything turns grey. These are scathing words aimed at the indifference and busyness of the present age. The lyric proclaims a lamentation of the way things stand, and laments further that the problem can be fixed if only it wasn’t already too late.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal">Is it too late? This is the question, isn’t it? Welcome to the present age. The immense cacophony of noise that floods through the media per second is absolutely overwhelming; every advertisement, every form of media is aimed at <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">you</i>: not the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">you</i> that you are, but the you they have created for you to be; everything is directed at you, telling you who to be and who not to be; yet, there is no standard or cohesion among the mass and so every voice is a contradiction demanding something of you – this is the present age. Where are the individuals? I see only the masses. One is encouraged not to be who they are in truth, but to be their other self, their public self. The noise directed at you is there to help you construct your mask and costume; the media will even be so nice as to tell you what does not work as well as what does – even tell you when you have gone out of style and must put on the new costume. So seductive they are! No one is free of their clutches: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">no one. <o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal">I’m sitting here critiquing them, but am I not a product of my age? Have I not been raised in the post-modern tradition of science over belief, of speculation over choice? Am I not wearing the clothing they have chosen for me? Yes, call me a hypocrite if you will – I will not deny it. Yet, more and more I feel as though I am being awakened. Christianity is perfect for this awakening; it is designed specifically for that purpose. In Christianity, only there can you be who <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">you really are.</i> The mask is ripped from your face as you are thrown and humbled before God, in full consciousness of your sin and guilt before Him. Yes, here is your safe haven – if only you could escape there. But you cannot do that because you are forced to live in the world; you are forced to live in the midst of the noise and confusion and still attempt to live the Christian life. Who has the strength for this? the courage? Yet, this is the task.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal">The 20<sup>th</sup> century has left us in an awkward position, philosophically speaking. With the immortal proclamation that ‘God is dead’ at the turn of the century, it sent us all scrambling for meaning. Post-modernity brought us face-to-face with the absurd, in the negative sense, and we cowered in fear before it. We saw the horrors that man is capable of and we failed in all attempts to govern ourselves and our lives. So either one lived in defiance towards the absurd (Camus, Sartre, etc) or one withdrew completely (Beckett, etc). So here we are now. We have inherited this tradition of meaningless and unfortunately it has become so deeply rooted in ourselves and in what we hear that we are ever skeptical of that which proposes to give life an eternal meaning. Yes, we great scientists have speculated and doubted ourselves into oblivion and now we live in fear of commitment to anything, especially if the commitment is to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">one</i> thing. No, we are much too busy to commit to only one thing; we have so many options available, why choose only one when you can have all? This is the mentality. The noise comes from everywhere, it is inescapable. With such a wealth of information it’s any wonder there is boredom or apathy in the world, for surely one could never be bored when so many options are available. Yet, this is not the case. This is because every part of our lives is filled with empty nothingness, and this is what we cannot escape. All of that noise is meaninglessness. Everything has become so meaningful, so equally important that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">nothing is important and all has become meaningless. </i>Is it any wonder why so many are depressed, why we have to medicate all our teenagers for their endless number of problems? The mid-life crisis have become a common staple especially in our present age. People are finding out all too late that their lives have been devoid of meaning for so long, and now they set out to correct their mistakes in attempt to re-live those moments they wasted in indecisiveness and disconsolation – yet, if only it wasn’t too late. Everything has turned grey. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal">So what is the role of the Christian in all of this? Where are we even to begin? I hesitate to find a safe-footing to make that first step; yet, this is the task. We are to be lights in a world of darkness, unstained by the world, to love your neighbor as yourself without distinction and even in their sin – and ‘blessed is he who is not offended by Me.’ Because this is your reward, isn’t it? You defiantly reject their materialism and noise for mild comfort and silence. Your non-conformity is received as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">offense</i>. Christianity looks at the individual, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">you </i>in particular and rejects the mass; for God only has interest in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">you</i>. It is for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">you</i> not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">them</i> that Christ came to save you. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">You </i>are not a Christian through the mass, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">you </i>are a Christian through your own personal relation to God and through no one else. The best anyone else can do for your salvation is guide you, because the choice is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">yours alone</i> – either to have faith or to be offended; either to love God or to hate Him (for there is no going in-between in these matters). With this choice, you are rejecting the many for the singular, for “one cannot serve two masters”, only the one who has created you. This singularity of choice, the world does not accept. This is not how the public thinks, for if this was how they thought, the public would not exist since the public is concerned with the many. Christianity demands authenticity from you: this is only achieved through God’s grace. To be authentic is to separate yourself from the rest of the world; to quit banging your head against the wall of the present age where everything is meaningless; to be yourself, your eternal self before God in total guilt-consciousness of one’s sin. Though everything may be ‘turning grey’ around you, you have the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Father of Lights</i> on your side who will not change due to any shadow or variation. This is the Christian’s hope in life. The Christian can and must live in the world because we are called to love our neighbor as ourselves and it is only through this love that we can be saved from the noise around us and be in that eternal peace and silence of being before God. Only in love, that is living as a Christian in the world (for as a Christian we <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">shall</i> love the neighbor as ourselves), are we free from the slavery of the world; only then are we our <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">true selves</i> and no longer the mask or the costume. </p><p></p>Shanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10341987190234696921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1679321389338547563.post-4157979002494566412010-12-12T16:15:00.001-05:002010-12-12T16:15:58.262-05:00what we learn from remembering one dead<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in;line-height:normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Perhaps there is only worldly equality in death. -</i> Isn’t it so? Once we have passed on, the distinctions that place one above another fade away into eternity and we are all equal at last. Walk amongst the gravestones and look at how each is given their own plot, no one bigger than the other. You may notice that one has a larger headstone or is perhaps placed near a tree or on a hill, but these only serve as mockeries because they illuminate the meaningless of worldly distinction. <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>It is in the graveyard that one is able to see the true equality of humankind; one is able to see that in spirit, we are all equal before God. How foolish we are to place such weight on how we are perceived in the world! What are all the riches and statuses one gains in the world but larger headstones on the graves of those dead and gone? And what is poverty if we are all in the end buried six feet beneath the earth, no one different from the other? </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in;line-height:normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Perhaps we can only love unselfishly in regards to remembering one who is dead. - </i>How do you remember one who is dead? In that relationship, one must love unselfishly because you love without any hope of return. You are not loving their physical self, but their psychical self; their <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">spirit</i>. There is no physical self to distract one from loving unconditionally and unselfishly. How freeing it is! No conditions are placed on the love because it is given from one freely without any expectation of return. If you have forgotten the dead or ceased in loving them, it is not that they changed or became more selfish, as is often the case in worldly relationships; no, there is no changing when one is dead – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">only you have changed! </i>There are no excuses here. You are held accountable for your love as it must be given freely and unselfishly. The dead demand nothing of you, yet we are to love them as our neighbor. Simply because they are dead does not mean they have ceased to exist. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">This sickness is not unto death</i>, Jesus tells us (John 11:4), instead in death we have <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">life</i>. The physical may have passed away, but the psychical still remains. Do not forget that our task is to love the eternal in man, which is precisely that which does not pass in death. If you have forgotten one who is dead, only you are responsible, not he, for he demands nothing of you. How easy it is to cease loving when we feel we are not demanded to do so, yet this is precisely the problem. Love should flow naturally from a pure heart, given from God who himself is love. The task is to be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">written on one’s heart</i> (I cannot find the verse at the moment – sorry! Jesus says it.. somewhere..) in such a way that one loves without expectation of reward, because no worldly reward compares to the reward of eternity. This one can learn from remembering one who is dead.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in;line-height:normal">So, how does this affect our relationships with the living? If our task is to love our neighbor as ourselves, all men, without distinction, even in their sin and imperfection; it follows that we are to love equally and unselfishly. This we can learn from remembering one who has passed. Worldly distinctions serve as barriers to us loving one another in truth, but when the love is given freely and unselfishly, there are no barriers because the worldly is not what is being loved: one is loving the eternal in man, his spirit. I am simply reiterating here what I said in my previous entry and thus I will not talk at length about it, but I feel it is a very important issue and is one that I struggle with very often. I think that a lesson is to be learned from loving one who has passed on. May God provide us with the patience, courage and strength to love our neighbor with unselfishness and without worldly distinctions; may He calm our impatience and make us <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger </i>(James 1:19) so that we are able to love one another deeply and in truth.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in;line-height:normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">therefore, if you will test whether or not you love faithfully, note sometime how you relate yourself to one who is dead. </i>-Kierkegaard in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Works of Love</i> <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p>Shanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10341987190234696921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1679321389338547563.post-20872323478742542362010-12-02T11:04:00.002-05:002010-12-02T11:16:02.872-05:00dear mother, heart of my heart<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Mother listened and shook her head: “My dear, it’s your illness that makes you talk like that.” “Mama, my joy,” he said, “it’s not possible for there to be no masters and servants, but let me also be the servant of my servant of my servants, the same as they are to me. And I shall also tell you, dear mother, that each of us is guilty in everything before everyone, and I most of all.” At that mother even smiled, she wept and smiled: “How can it be,” she said, “that you are the most guilty before everyone? There are murderers and robbers, and how have you managed to sin so that you should accuse yourself most of all?” “Dear mother, heart of my heart,” he said (he had begun saying such unexpected, endearing words), “heart of my heart, my joyful one, you must know that verily each of us is guilty before everyone, for everyone and everything. I do not know how to explain it to you, but I feel it so strongly that it pains me… “You take too many sins upon yourself,” mother would weep. “Dear mother, my joy, I am weeping from gladness, not from grief; I want to be guilty before them, only I cannot explain it to you, for I do not even know how to love them. Let me be sinful before everyone, but so that everyone will forgive me, and that is paradise. Am I not in paradise now?” –</i>Fyodor Dostoevsky in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Brothers Karamazov<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">above all, love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins – </i>I Peter 4:8</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">for to be able to love a man in spite of his weaknesses and errors and imperfections is not perfect love; it is rather to be able to find him lovable in spite of and together with his weakness and errors and imperfections - </i>S<span class="apple-style-span"><span style=" mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;color:black;">øren Kierkegaard in ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Works of Love’<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in;line-height:normal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style=" mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;color:black;">This is probably the most difficult aspect of the task and yet this is also perhaps the highest expression of love one could give to another. The task of Christian love is to love your neighbor as yourself, all men, without distinction, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">even in their sin and imperfection.</i></span></span> We’ve already seen how difficult this task has turned out to be for the existing individual and now it has become even harder, at least for myself. We are all sinners. We are, everyone of us, totally equal before God. No one is better than anyone else in the world, because before God we all become nothing and worldly distinctions fade away. This is a truth that we do not readily accept because it is just so contrary to how we naturally think. We have barriers that we have built in ourselves that we must tear down before we are able to love in truth. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in;line-height:normal">We have a self-love (a self-love in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">wrong</i> way) that is an impediment to us understanding our fundamental equality as human beings; it is a self-love that wants to assert our worth above others; it is a self-love that thinks we deserve credit for our actions before God. This is a misunderstanding of the God-relationship. It is not a mutual benefit relationship: we deserve nothing, yet God provides. The temptation is to think of the God-relationship in worldly terms and this is a misunderstanding. Christianity calls for the individual to become nothing before God, because that is his true self; all else is an evasion, a lie. This is a terrifying thought because it demands transparency and complete openness. Before God, your worldly distinctions, your mask that you have worked so long to create and to perpetuate before others: these distinctions have no merit before God, because we are all equal before Him. Your status in the world all that you have is meaningless because as God has given He can take away from you. He can demand all from you in an instant: how would you respond? Your self-love responds in anger because you feel that you deserve better or that God was unjust or unfair in the lot that you have been given in life. But the truth is that you are worthy of nothing, yet God provides. A man sins against you. In your self-love you judge that person for their sin. A man is trapped by a sin and this is revealed to you. In your self-love you judge his imperfection. But who are you judging? Is it not yourself that you are judging? Who are you to decry the sins of others when you yourself are in sin? You are doing nothing but compounding sin upon sin and falling further away. The God-relationship is not the only place that suffers. In your relationships to others, if your view towards them is one clouded by self-love, then you are not loving in truth. Others become ways for you to build yourself up or to gain some advantage from the relationship. You are attempting to place yourself above others but we are all equal before God. Who is it that you are really loving? Is it not yourself then? Relationships to others are only understood in relation to how you are affected by them. They become wholly conditional and dry up as soon as the well of esteem and prestige from others dries up. Your commitment is to a source that is finite and subject to change. Others will always in one way or another disappoint you; they will fail to follow through for you; they will fail to build you up in the way you would like them to: and therefore you live in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">despair</i>. Your stock is placed in a conditional ‘love’ that is subject to change at any moment, for God can demand all from you in an instant.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in;line-height:normal">The masks we create for ourselves also prevent us from loving one another in truth. The demand is openness and transparency before God, yet we don’t want to give up these masks because with it on we do not feel the threat of eternity. We pride ourselves in our ability to fool those around us, even thinking God is fooled, but we are only fooling ourselves. One becomes inauthentic. You are only evading your true self and making excuses so you don’t have to take responsibility for yourself. You fool yourself thinking you can hide, but there is no where you can run to. An account for your actions will be demanded from you: will you deny yourself? Because isn’t that the defense, to deny that you are the choices and experiences that have created you? The task then becomes to resist the urge to flee from yourself and to face the truth, no matter the difficulty. You cannot run forever and eventually an account will be demanded of you: are you using your time and life experience wisely? The mask leads us to believe that we have hidden ourselves from everyone else, like Adam in the Garden. But God’s interest is in the individual and He can pick you out from your hiding and before Him there is no mask clever enough that can cover you. We create personas for ourselves and create parts to play so that we can be who we think others want us to be. In the world, you are judged by how great of an actor you are before men; if no one suspects anything, then you have won. Before God it is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">reversed</i>: being an actor puts you further from God, where acknowledging yourself as a sinner and imperfect brings you closer. There is no love for the other when the mask is involved. The mask pervades through all relationships and prevents authenticity. You are just suffering from more self-love. You don’t give enough of yourself away, only just the amount so that the mask still stays intact; however, you think you fooled the other into thinking the mask has fallen. Yes, that is how good you are at keeping the mask in place. You know the limits and just how to exploit them. When you think others think you are being open and true, you think you have won; yet, before God there is only the truth. One is terrified of this thought, one may even think that God is being unjust, but it is we who are mistaken in this thought. You have nothing to lose (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">because you have and are nothing</i>) and only the world to gain through the God-relationship, because He has overcome the world. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in;line-height:normal">So we see how self-love, in its many forms, is a barrier to loving others in truth. Dostoevsky writes that we are to become guilty before all and take the sins of others upon ourselves out of love and compassion. Isn’t this a beautiful thought? We are all sinners and we are all equal before God. In love, let us share the burden of sin amongst one another so that we become as equals and are able, in strength, to bear the burden of sin as a body of believers in Christ. Worldly distinctions call us away from this equality, but in distinction there is no true love. True love is only in equality before God, who is Himself love.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in;line-height:normal">Our love for others must not be a conditional love: it must be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">unconditional. </i>The barrier of self-love teaches us that we love others to our advantage, but this is a conditional love and it is subject to change or variation. Love in truth, however, is unconditional because it is resting in an eternal source. Loving another in their sin and imperfection does not occur if the love is dependent on external characteristics of the individual, because we are all sinners and humans, so there will be disappointment if our source of love is solely in the conditional, for no one will be able to live up to our expectations. In conditional love, we are only loving the mask. Instead, love them in spirit for their inwardness, see beyond the mask and play-acting, love them for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">who they are</i> in truth. This is Christian love. It is our mutual brokenness that bonds us together as we become guilty before all and bear one another’s burdens. We are all equal before God and there is no mask. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in;line-height:normal">This is not easy, for we naturally base our love on the appearance of the mask. We are unwilling to look beyond it, nor is the other so readily willing to remove the mask before you, and this is the condition in which we find ourselves. Loving becomes a difficult enterprise that demands much of us if we are unwilling to completely remove the mask be who we are in truth before God and others. Only Christian love loves the neighbor in truth, because it is an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">eternal</i> love not rooted in the conditional, but the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">unconditional</i>. One can only take part in this joy once he has the blessings of eternity within himself first. Only through experiencing the eternal love and forgiveness of God’s love in our own lives are we able to love one another in truth. This is the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">as yourself</i> of the task. But this is self-love in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">right</i> way, in the way God intends. The self-love comes from becoming nothing before God and others and becoming guilty for all and before all. All other self-love is pride and vanity; self-love in truth is acknowledging the other and the mutual condition of sinfulness between you as equals before God. This is where the beauty of friendship is so important, at least in my opinion. Friendship is not false superficiality, true friendship is mutual openness before one another and expressing love unconditionally no matter the sins or faults that we may perceive in the other. You have no right to judge for you are no better than the other. The mutual brokenness is humbling but also a source of great comfort. You understand that you are not alone in the world, that there are others that face the same problems as you, even though it may be in a different form. The other is also one before whom you must be held accountable. You can only bear the burdens of others if you and the other are willing to remove the mask before one another, because true love does not love the mask, it loves the spirit. You have a partner is your walk with Christ; you learn from one another, especially the mistakes of one another; you learn that the burden of life is much easier to bear when you have an other that shares it with you. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring them back, remember this: whoever turns the sinner away from error will save them from death and cover a multitude of sins – </i>James 5:20</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in;line-height:normal">We are all no different. We are all sinners. I say all these words to you, but I admit I fail at this in practice, for I am a sinner after all. I have been slowly learning the importance of being open and transparent before myself, God and others. I have been noticing my defense mechanisms and my natural inclination to hide behind the mask. Luckily, God has provided (and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">is providing</i>) with a wealth of friends before whom I can remove the mask at long last and be accepted for who I am. I am the sum of my choices and life-experiences. This very existentialist idea has truth behind it. Us not accepting these aspects of ourselves is an evasion; we become inauthentic. Authenticity demands responsibility and acceptance of who we are in truth before God, for God has given us this life and provided us these experiences for a purpose. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">every good and perfect gift is from above. </i>Our denial of ourselves essentially means we deny that God gives good and perfect gifts, which is a misunderstanding. Do not hide from yourself any longer (and as I speak to you, I speak to myself first of all) become who you are in truth, remove the mask, and humble yourself before God and others. Only in this is love and equality among men possible.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Shanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10341987190234696921noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1679321389338547563.post-22676441014294354122010-11-28T20:38:00.000-05:002010-11-28T20:39:51.783-05:00action action action<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">‘precisely because existence will test </i>you,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"> test </i>your <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">love or whether there is love in you, for this very reason with the help of the understanding it presents you with truth and deception as two equal possibilities in contrast to each other, so that there must be a revelation of what is in you since </i>you <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">judge, that is, since in judging you </i>choose.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"> Alas, many think that judgment is something reserved for the far side of the grave, and so it is. But one forgets that judgment lies much closer, that it takes place every moment, because existence judges you every moment you live, inasmuch as to live is to judge oneself, to become open’ –</i>S<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color:black;mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">øren Kierkegaard in ‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Works of Love’<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color:black; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">We are confronted with an epistemological problem when we are speaking of the existing individual. How does knowledge relate to how one lives one’s life? Clearly there is a difference between knowledge and action, but one must consider where that line meets and how the two interact with each other. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Concluding Unscientific Postscript</i>, Johannes Climacus (one of Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms) argues the claim that ‘truth is subjectivity and subjectivity is inwardness’. This is made in reference to the issue of Christianity and how an objective, world-historical event i.e. such as Jesus, God being on earth, is related to how we live our daily lives. In this case something external (and in ancient history) has internal, present effects and consequences. This doesn’t makes sense right away, nor should it because this is a paradox of faith and Christianity. So how does this happen? This depends, for example, on one’s relation to the utterance of: Christ was fully God and fully man, died for the forgiveness of sins and thus through Him I receive salvation and eternal life. The utterance itself means nothing, they are just words; the meaning comes from how you stand in relation to the utterance. If you are a Christian, this statement has plenty of meaning because it pertains to you specifically, right now and how you are living your life. The relation comes about by a choice given to us by our Christian freedom in Christ. The words are presented to us, so what do we do with the information? This is where the decisive leap to faith comes in; where the paradox has its purpose. According to Climacus, the paradox of faith results in our experiencing passion in our inner being. Essentially, the passion derives from our choosing, on the strength of the absurd, the paradox and entering into a subjective relation to it. He also gives us a definition of truth, according to subjectivity: “An objective uncertainty, held fast through appropriation with the most passionate inwardness, is the truth, the highest truth there is for an existing person.” By objective uncertainty, he explains that our knowledge of history is essentially only an approximation because, on the one hand, the facts aren’t all in and there are still volumes and volumes of information to be gathered about events in history that truth ends up only being an approximation. This uncertainty is precisely where the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">choice</i> comes in. It isn’t a matter of just receiving knowledge. No, it is us taking that knowledge and applying to our existing selves. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span style="color:black;mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">the definition of truth stated above is a paraphrasing of faith. without risk, no faith. faith is the contradiction between the infinite passion of inwardness and the objective uncertainty. If I am able to apprehend God objectively, I do not have faith; but because I cannot do this, I must have faith. If I want to keep myself in faith, I must continually see to it that I hold fast to the objective uncertainty, see to it that in the objective uncertainty I am ‘out on 70,000 fathoms of water’ and still have faith’ -</span></i></span> S<span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color:black;mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">øren Kierkegaard in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">‘Concluding Unscientific Postscript’<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color:black; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">Jesus spoke to the people in parables for the reason that, instead of the knowledge he was imparting them becoming just more facts to be disputed, judged or approximated, he spoke to them in such a way that the truth would come to them through applying what they learned in the lesson to their daily lives. In this way, one’s only relation to Jesus’ lessons are essentially through application or ‘appropriation’ because they apply specifically to the existing individual and his walk in faith. An either/or is implicit in each of Jesus’ parables: either you follow their instruction or you don’t; or, either you follow God or you don’t. The inward passion results in the choice, in the expression of one’s freedom. You are choosing for yourself and you are choosing the Good, thus this is your expression of faith. In choosing the Good, you are proving that you have entered into the right relation to God, because you could only have chosen the Good if the condition was provided to you first by your relation to God. Thus, you have a standard of judging and a right and wrong answer available to you: either you choose right or you choose wrong; or, either you follow God or you don’t. In this way, faith is less a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">belief</i>, so to speak, but more of an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">action</i>. A belief implies that you simply believe that something is true or that something is false. But an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">action</i> involves choice, it involves doing one thing instead of another; it involves an either/or. Living in faith isn’t just living in belief of something, it means to live by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">acting according to </i>faith.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal"><span style="color:black;mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. do what it says. those who listen to the word but do not do what it says are like people who look at their faces in a mirror and, after looking at themselves, go away and immediately forget what they look like. but those who look intently into the perfect law</span></i><span style="color:black;mso-bidi-font-weight:bold"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">that gives freedom, and continue in it – not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it – they will be blessed in what they do – James 1:22-25<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color:black; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">Just saying the words, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">I am a Christian,</i> do not make you a Christian, it takes the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">action </i>that the statement implies. If you have salvation and eternal life and are in faith, this should be part of your life-view and perception of events in the world. So Christianity is a matter of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">inwardness</i> (as we decided above) and is also a matter of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">action</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color:black; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">Martin Luther wanted to remove James from the Bible because he felt that James put too much emphasis on the ‘works’ of Christianity and less on the ‘faith alone’ aspect. I see his argument, but what does living by ‘faith alone’ really mean? The phrase does seem to imply anything about the existing individual, only sounds like a type of knowledge. Perhaps I am just misunderstanding what is meant by ‘faith alone’, but ‘faith alone’ seems useless unless there is action or some type of inward relation accompanied to the phrase. James 2:14-24 says straight out that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">faith alone, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead </i>(James 2:17). Faith needs works, it needs action – or it is dead. These are strong apostolic words: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">is dead</i>. If our task is to love one’s neighbor, without distinction, even in their sin and imperfection, then our faith must be expressed through action, namely: through <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">love.</i> <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color:black; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">Yes, love is a ‘good and perfect gift from above’ and it is an action that necessarily follows faith. Without faith, no love. Love is an action that results from choice. Our choice of faith and our relation to God has certain active, existential consequences. Loving one’s neighbor results from first loving ourselves – loving ourselves by entering into a subjective, inward relation to God and by making the movement of faith. From this results: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">love. </i>Yet, the same still applies here to love, that saying that you must love one’s neighbor is a different matter than <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">actually </i>loving one’s neighbor. This is true only true when faith is chosen in freedom and one rests transparently in the Creator and humbly at His feet; only true when the command becomes an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">appropriation</i> and becomes a daily <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">action </i>for the existing individual. Without action, faith is dead.</span></span><span style="color:black;mso-bidi-font-weight:bold"><o:p></o:p></span></p>Shanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10341987190234696921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1679321389338547563.post-89235355163631989422010-11-26T13:58:00.005-05:002010-11-26T15:33:18.855-05:00the unburdening of transparency<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in;line-height:normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">I don’t think I can do it.</i> I find it easy to type up the tasks that Christianity is demanding of me and explain them in a way I can understand, etc. But it is an entirely different matter to live them in actuality. Isn’t this the issue with modern day Christianity? I am immediately reminded of the chapter in Dostoevsky’s <span class="apple-style-span"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="color:black;">Братья Карамазовы</span> </i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"></i><span style="color:black;">entitled “The Grand Inquisitor”, which if you haven’t read it yet, you simply must because it is one of the most powerful and beautiful things I have ever read. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in;line-height:normal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color:black;">Ivan Karamazov, an intellectual, is having lunch with his brother Alyosha, a devout Russian Orthodox monk and they are discussing spiritual matters, specifically the goodness of God. Ivan argues that God is not an all good God because suffering children exist in the world. A God that allows children to suffer is not a God he will accept. Even though he claims to believe in God, he says he faithfully “returns him the ticket” and will not abide by His creation. Ivan goes on to say that he does have “faith like a child that all will be made up for” in the end and that in eternity we will see the contradictions and human atrocities that have been committed on Earth in reality <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">did</i> serve as good and perfect gifts from above, but at the same time, he is not satisfied with everything being solved in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">eternity</i> and demands an explanation for the present time and since one is not offered he simply refuses God on these terms.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in;line-height:normal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color:black;">This is not the curious part however. Alyosha claims his brother is in rebellion and that if he is looking for one who would have the right to forgive for all the injustice in the world, there is one: Christ and He gave his innocent blood for everything. At the mention of Christ, Ivan proposes that he has a story to tell, the story of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The Grand Inquisitor</i>. The setting Seville, Spain during the Spanish Inquisition in the 15<sup>th</sup> century and Jesus has returned, unannounced and only for a moment, and even though he made no declaration of his presence, everyone at once knew who was walking among them. He began performing small miracles in the streets, even bringing a small child back from the dead. At the sight of this man performing miracles, the Grand Inquisitor, who saw everything and knew at once who he was, had him arrested. The questioning begins and the Inquisitor asks repeatedly, “Why have you come here now?” claiming that they had everything under control and didn’t need him to return because they have taken care of everything. What he was afraid of was the freedom of faith that Jesus would return to his people. The Inquisitor claims that that freedom wouldn’t be necessary because no man wants that burden and gladly would give that burden over to them. Passages from Matthew 4, where Jesus is tested in the wilderness by Satan, are cited and explained in reference to the issue of human freedom. He discusses the three tests, but I’m mostly concerned with the first test.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span class="apple-style-span"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="color:black;">after fasting forty days and forty nights, he [Jesus] was hungry. the tempter came to him and said, ‘if you are the son of God, tell these stones to become bread’. Jesus answered, ‘It is written: ‘people do not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God (Deuteronomy 8:3)’ – Matthew 4:2-4<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in;line-height:normal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color:black;">Here Jesus is denying earthly bread for heavenly bread. How often is that the case where a person, existing, will deny an earthly reward or pleasure for the pleasures and rewards of heaven? Isn’t it just too difficult? Yet, that is precisely how we must act: we are to reject the earthly bread for what is higher, as Jesus did. The Inquisitor states that he is relieving man of this terrible burden and they are humbly placing that burden at their feet. They, the Inquisitors, are the providers of earthly bread and make sure that when man has laid that burden at their feet, they are ultimately unaware of the consequences and still they continue to think themselves free. Yet, they have become nothing but mere slaves to the world. But this is no easy task. Imagine fasting for forty days and then denying bread when it is offered to you. This takes strength of will and severe patience, yet because Christ overcame such a test, we too have the ability to overcome this same test. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in;line-height:normal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color:black;">We repeatedly give away our gift of freedom to the world because it scares us to know that we are responsible and accountable to ourselves and before God. We would rather give that burden away and make excuses that attempt to justify our weaknesses and we accept the earthly bread without a second thought. Isn’t it so much easier to blame our shortcomings on our births, our heritage, our age, our circumstances? When in fact we have this beautiful gift of freedom that allows us to take this responsibility and thus enter into a relation to God by accepting this gift and blessing. We begin to have a better understanding of ourselves and our relation to God and others once we have understood that we are responsible and accountable for ourselves and that we do have a guide that goes with us so we are not alone in our freedom. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in;line-height:normal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color:black;">Freedom is a burden, but it is a beautiful burden because we no longer need to make excuses for anything because we are who we are in truth, in the present, and no longer hiding away from ourselves. That is the case isn’t it? We give up our freedom because we wish to hide from ourselves, our true selves. We would rather assume this persona, this mask, because it is much easier that way and we are relieved of the fear of openness and transparency. Because that is what we are afraid of the most, isn’t it? Our freedom forces us to be transparent and no longer concealed and that terrifies us to our core. We would prefer to cover ourselves with leaves and hideaway in the garden from God’s presence. But as Adam and Eve soon learned: there is no hiding from God. Sooner or later, transparency is demanded of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">you</i>, of every one of us. When that time comes, I ask you, which bread are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">you</i> accepting? Are you really free?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span class="apple-style-span"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span style="color:black;">it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. stand firm, then, do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery – Galatians 5:1<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in;line-height:normal"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color:black;">Notice how Paul says that the burden is not freedom but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">one’s giving up of one’s freedom</i>. Though the task of transparency before yourself and God is a fearful one, its reward is eternal and its significance for you as an existing individual in the world a necessary for the life of faith. One who is not responsible for himself and lives as if he is a third party observing his actions at a distance is not really living. He is only a shadow of a person. So, one can even see the temporal benefit of freedom, because only in acceptance of one’s freedom are we truly living. The either/ors of existence, our <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">choices</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">ability to choose</i>, give us a passion for living because through <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">action</i> we are living out our gift and blessing from God, our freedom, which, as all things, is a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">good and perfect gift from above</i>. So now the difficulty of Christianity presents itself: living it in truth.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>Shanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10341987190234696921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1679321389338547563.post-53863839090214569382010-11-24T23:01:00.001-05:002010-11-24T23:01:45.537-05:00the cost of discipleship<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">‘whoever comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. whoever does not carry my cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. for which of you intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? otherwise, when he has laid the foundation and is unable to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying: ‘this fellow began to build but was not able to finish’… Luke 14:26-30<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><o:p> </o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in;line-height:normal">Who has heard these words and yet did not fear the command that they imply? Such harsh words, such dreadful words to the ear of the humble Christ-follower. Must we leave our homes like this? <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">How could God demand this of us</i>, I hear some of you cry. Truly, this is a commandment that, in itself, could take a lifetime to fulfill. But this is the demand of Christianity. Are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">you</i> ready?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in;line-height:normal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">but wait, </i>you ask. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">I thought the task was to love one’s neighbor?</i> Yes, so what is this about hating one’s father and mother? Doesn’t it seem to contradict the commandment ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself? Only look closer: the parable reveals what we have missed. Notice, the tower-builder has the foundation but cannot complete his project. He has overlooked something… Ah, this is turning out much like my previous entry. Our man has forgotten something vital in his relation to God; they have missed the same step (but don’t we all?), but for a different reason. He has laid the foundation but cannot build further because he lacks the necessary materials. We discussed previously that before love to others could take place we must first fulfill the necessary <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">as yourself</i> of the commandment. This is only completed by resting transparently in the Creator and humbling yourself before God and accepting his love and blessing, because He is love. Once you have accepted true love and true blessing from God, who is love, you have learned what it means to have true Christian self-love because you are no longer residing in despair but resting in relation to God, who Himself is love. We also concluded that this is a very difficult, yet certainly not impossible, task for every human being. It requires true openness and ability to see beyond distinction and reach into the infinite, eternal side of man as well as reconciling the temporal and finite side of man. This is how true self-hood is achieved, according to Anti-Climacus.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in;line-height:normal">So now with acquiring the materials for building. Before becoming a true self, there is the double-movement that leads to faith. The movement of resignation is where the finite world is reconciled away in place of the infinite, then followed by the movement of faith under the guidance of God where, on the strength of the absurd, the finite is reclaimed and we can live in the world as a new being in Christ. The first movement of resignation cannot be skipped over and is a necessary step in the Christian’s journey. He must become reconciled to existence before he can truly live in the world. So if this step cannot be skipped, then we must obey the demands it presses on us. Jesus tells us here that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">whoever comes to me and does not hate his father and mother…cannot be my disciple</i> meaning that in order to be a disciple of Christ we must hate our father and mother. But who can do such a thing? Yet, this is the demand. Again I hear you ringing: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">how could God demand this of us?</i> </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in;line-height:normal">The task is to love your neighbor, which is all men, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">without distinction</i>, even in their sin and imperfection. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">without distinction.</i> This task is just as difficult as the first; easily a task that could fulfill a lifetime of work. This is not how we usually perceive our love of others. We often love those we are closest to more than the common individual we see; there are those we hold closer to our hearts than others. This presents a problem for us loving all men equally. Moreover, this present a problem for us loving God with our full attention. Our beloved, our parents, our friends, all these are potential temptations for us. Now, before I go further, let me clarify: what I mean is that we are not to love these until we are able <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">to love them in the right way</i>. As it stands, we do not love them in the right way, at least it is that way for me. It begins with the God-relationship because before you can love another you need to receive love and blessings from God. This helped us to love all the men we see and it is now the same love we are able to use in loving others without distinction. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in;line-height:normal">In as sense, we must <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">earn</i> the ability to have our beloveds or to love our friends or our parents because we must understand that the God-relationship comes first and we must devote an infinite passion to that relationship. Worldly relationships are bound to disappointment, and it is only through the step of faith that worldly disappointment is reconciled away because you then are resting in God where ‘every good and every perfect gift is from above’ (James 1:17). You are no longer disappointed by your relationships in the world. The fear of loving but not being loved in return or being loved less than you are loving an individual often leads one to not giving his full love to anyone but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">those he chooses</i>. This is not loving in the right way; this is not loving <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">without distinction</i>. Through the God-relationship we have the love of the eternal and the infinite capacity it has to love all men, without distinction, even in their sin and imperfection. So, now you are able to love your beloved, your friend and your parents in the right way, because you have understood true Christian self-love and fulfilled the law as Jesus commanded and can now love your neighbor in truth. But none of this happens if we continue to not<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>hate our mother and father and beloved. Until we have made this step and received the love and blessings individually from God, we cannot possess true, genuine love for that is reserved only for those who first receive it from God, who is love.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in;line-height:normal">Perhaps these words aren’t so dreadful after all. In reality, they help you to love your loved ones better than you ever could alone, for now you have the strength of the eternal on your side. You are really doing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">them</i> a favor by this because you are now loving them in truth, without distinction, even in their sin and imperfection.</p>Shanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10341987190234696921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1679321389338547563.post-7887653959118389222010-11-19T17:32:00.000-05:002010-11-19T17:33:42.412-05:00let us love in truth and action<p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. and by this we know that we are of the truth and shall assure our hearts before him. for if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart and knows all things. beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God. and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do what is pleasing in His sight. and this is His commandment: that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as he gave us commandment. now he who keeps His commandments abides in Him and He in him. and by this we know that He abides in us, by the spirit whom He has given us. –I John 3:18-24<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">So this is the task. We must love one another in truth and action. Who could accomplish this? Where does one even begin? We are to love our neighbor as ourselves, Scripture tells us; we are to love our neighbor, all men, without distinction, even in their sin and imperfection. Ask yourself if you are capable of such a love. Is this not one of the most difficult of tasks for a human being? Yet, this is what we are called to do for Love is the fulfillment of the law. Love in truth also calls us to bear the burdens of our neighbors (Galatians 6:2). We are to help each other along in life by sharing the load and weight of our sin and suffering between ourselves. Dare I say we are even to become responsible for the sins of all men, in a sense, because in that way we show true equality among every man. So this is the task. Who could accomplish this in truth?</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">A young man sets out to perform this task. He professes his love for every man that he sees; he feels within him that this is a true feeling. He believes he is expressing love for his neighbor as he should. How long would you say this man could keep up this enthusiasm? One would be mistaken if he were to say that this is something he could maintain for the rest of his life. It is inhuman, he might say. Who is so strong that he sees all men without distinction and can love them, even in their sin and imperfection? He laments his inability to perform the task efficiently and so he contents himself with showing Christian brotherly love only on occasion, or when the opportunity so presents itself. I ask you though, is he any longer performing the task? The answer is no. Yes, he is right to lament, for no human alone can accomplish so strenuous a feat. The young man has missed a vital step. Man is a finite creature, bound by necessity and temporality; he is prone to worldly wants and often places absolute value in relative, finite ends. This is his condition: despair. Yet, this despair is not a condition that man is incapable of escaping from. He has only one true escape: relation to God. Yes, so the code has been cracked. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">I give up the finite world and all its disappointments</i>, the man says. He chooses only God and lives with his focus entirely on eternity and the infinite of God’s nature and power. Though I say still that he has not changed his condition; he is still in despair. What? How could this be possible? Dear one, you have devoted yourself to the infinite and the eternal, but you are forgetting the most important thing: you are a finite, temporal being. No matter how long you try to escape into the infinite, the finite will always be there, demanding from you that you return to its grasp. Now, what is the man to do? The finite world has been resigned away to infinity, and yet not even infinity alone can provide him the eternal happiness he seeks. You are so close, friend, do you not see the answer?</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">Perhaps, he cannot see the answer because it is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">absurd.</i> A human being is a spirit; he is a synthesis of the infinite <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">and </i>the finite, the temporal <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">and </i>eternal. This is why you have failed for so long, friend. You have not understood the reality of your condition. You have made the step of infinity and resigned the finite world away and chosen the infinite, but you cannot exist there: you must return to the finite eventually. He is where the difficulty lies: after resigning away the finite, you take it back. This is the paradox of faith, as Kierkegaard calls it. What? <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">That is just ludicrous!</i> Yet, this is the task. Death to immediacy and worldly desires, no doubt, causes suffering within us but this suffering is precisely the Christian’s strength. You are a finite being with the eternal abiding in you and you are called to love your neighbor as yourself. Do you see now the step you missed? This <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">as yourself</i> is an implication that must precede the action of loving one’s neighbor. Too often have people not grasped the power of this statement; too often have they forgotten the first step that must be taken.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">Jesus says in Matthew 6:33 that we must <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">seek first God’s kingdom and His righteousness</i> before we can become like the bird of the air or the lily of the field; before we can truly live as a Christian ought to live. Furthermore, Philippians 2:1-16 details that we must first receive blessings like love, freedom, purpose and consolation from God before we can ever experience them in our own lives or spread them to others. In other words, we cannot love in truth until we have entered into a relationship with God. The paradox of faith is the infinite passion with which we are able to love our neighbor in full and it will be an eternal love, a divine love; first, we must experience the inwardness of faith before we can love another in truth. This task you thought was so easy at first has now just become the most difficult task a human being can undertake – but also the most rewarding. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">In expressing true love for our neighbor, we must, in truth, become a neighbor ourselves. By becoming a neighbor ourselves we see the need for brotherly love. It teaches us to be compassionate towards our fellow man. Yes, indeed another paradox has come up in this discussion: we must become servants of one another to gain true freedom. Only in loving one’s neighbor do we achieve Christian freedom. We are also given equality. The irony is that the world, in not professing love for one’s neighbor on the account that it makes one unable to do what he wishes, there is more disunity and slavery because their absolute relation is to a relative ends. This is not so for the Christian. His task is eternal, for his neighbor is always before him and his love is an infinite love. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .25in">Dostoevsky writes: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Love man also in his sin, for this likeness of God’s love is the height of love on Earth.</i> So this is the task. Who could accomplish it? The answer to this question is that everyone has the ability to do so; specifically <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">you</i>. This is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">your </i>calling and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">your</i> task as an individual in relation to God. He loved you in your sin and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">you</i> shall, in the likeness of Christ, love every man, without distinction, even in their sin and imperfection. The task has been set: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">you </i>know what <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">you</i> must do.</p>Shanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10341987190234696921noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1679321389338547563.post-42122648537901686122010-09-07T15:41:00.000-04:002010-09-07T15:42:32.527-04:00the unhappiest one.<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in">He [the unhappiest one] enjoys the honor of being regarded as being in his right mind, and yet he knows that if he were to explain himself to anyone how it really is with him, he would be declared insane. This is enough to drive one mad, and yet this does not happen, and this is precisely his trouble. His calamity is that he came into the world too early and therefore continually comes too late. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in">He is continually very close to the goal, and at the same moment he is far from it; he then discovers that what is making him unhappy now, because he has it or because he is this way, is precisely what would have made him happy a few years ago if he had had it, whereas he became unhappy because he did not have it.[…]</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in">His life knows no repose and has no content. He is not present to himself in the moment, nor is he present to himself in the future, for the future has been experienced, nor in past time, for the past has not yet come.[…]</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in">Abandoned to himself, he stands alone in the wide world; he has no contemporaries to attach himself to, no past he can long for because the past has not yet come, no future he can hope for, because his future is already past. All alone. he faces the whole world as the ‘you’ with whom he is on conflict, for the rest of the world is for him only one person, and this person, this inseparable bothersome friend, is misunderstanding. He cannot grow old, for he has never been young; he cannot become young, for he has already grown old in a sense, he cannot die, for indeed he has not lived; in a sense he cannot live, for he is already dead.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in">He cannot love, for love is always present tense, and he has no present time, no future, no past, and yet he has a sympathetic nature, and he hates the world only because he loves it; he has no passion, not because he lacks it, but because at the same moment he has the opposite passion; he does not have time for anything, not because his time is filled with something else, but because he has no time at all; he is powerless, not because he lacks energy, but because his own energy makes him powerless.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: .5in">-soren kierkegaard </p>Shanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10341987190234696921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1679321389338547563.post-42083522719753836332010-08-18T02:37:00.000-04:002010-08-18T23:09:31.378-04:00hairdresser on fire.<b>things that ruined my summer:</b><div><br /></div><div>john calvin & the five points of calvinism</div><div>soren kierkegaard - <i>the seducer's diary</i></div><div>distance</div><div>various '-isms'</div><div>mitral valve prolapse(<a href="http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/tc/mitral-valve-prolapse-overview">mvp</a>)</div><div>anxiety</div><div>depression</div><div>insomnia</div><div>skull-crushing migraines</div><div>c.s. lewis - <i>the screwtape letters</i>(an issue of bad timing)</div><div>mitral valve prolapse, again</div><div>chronic writers-block</div><div>myself</div><div><br /></div><div><b>things that saved my summer:</b></div><div><br /></div><div>fyodor dostoevsky - <i>the brothers karamazov</i></div><div>katelyn carter(<a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bff">bff</a>)</div><div>two weeks in iowa with girl and landscape</div><div>weekend trip to TVR with sofia cantrill</div><div>friends, essentially</div><div>soren kierkegaard - <i>either/or </i>(minus <i>the seducer's diary</i> chapter) &<i> fear and trembling</i></div><div><i>dexter</i></div><div>prospect of the next semester beginning again soon</div><div>secret cover songs</div><div><i>annie hall</i></div><div>goethe -<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> <i>faust</i></span></div><div>ella fitzgerald</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>does the one outweigh the other?.. I wonder..</div><div><br /></div><div>This has been a long summer: an arduous journey to metaphorical hell and back, yet mixed with some of the best fun of my life. Too exhausting. I would have never imagined that doing mostly nothing would have been like this. I've had enough of it. The summer has ended and the next semester begins now. Friends are returning and my best friend will be joining as I soon move myself downtown. I have high hopes for this coming semester. Don't let me down CofC. You've done well so far..</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Shanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10341987190234696921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1679321389338547563.post-65419020125981932372010-07-30T17:32:00.002-04:002010-07-30T17:42:18.640-04:00the moment.<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">“It dissipates day,</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">It shows men the thin images of appearance,</i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">It robs men of the possibility of amusment.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">It is hard as stone,<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Formless stone, <o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The stone of movement and sight,<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">And its brilliance deforms all armor, all masks.<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">What the hand has taken does not deign to take the shape of a hand,<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">What has been understood no longer exists,<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The bird was confused with the wind,<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">The sky with its truth, <o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Man with his reality.”<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">-</i>“The Mirror of a Moment” Paul Éluard</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">---</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><o:p> </o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">it is too hot. how are we expected to breathe in this way? how can we live? suppressed, as if under a cloud of haze, our movements slow; words become dull and redundant. <o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Have you ever considered the question of the importance in our being born when we are, this generation? To think, centuries lie behind us with countless lives lived and gone. Now it has come to us; you and I. We are the next generation to be on the earth, now. What does this mean? What is the significance of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">this moment</i>?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">So, life is like a person standing on the ledge of a tall building, hovering at a mid-point in indecision. Imagine the anxiety, the dread, that fills him as he contemplates his next move. Either he jumps, or he steps down. Is there any other option? Or must he stay stuck in that mid-point never committing to make the choice? No, he must choose. Feel that unexplainable, irresistible desire to jump. The possibility of actuality. How terrifying. Contemplate further, see how it begins to fill your thoughts. What must he do next?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">He doesn’t jump: he steps back off the ledge. Perhaps he takes a moment to stare at the ledge and envision the possibility of what could have happened, else he should forget such a fateful moment in his life. Let us follow him and see what happens next. In choosing to step down, he has, in effect, decided the next stages of his life. His choice follows him wherever he goes, that eternal stepping-backward. He struggles to move forward and reverse this fate of his. But his forward movement always brings him back to the ledge. The paragon illuminating his choice not to act, but to step back in cowardice. Again, he cannot make the movement. Forever passes-still he cannot make movement. Once or twice, as if toying with his fate, he steps a foot on the ledge. Possibility fills him. Feel that power, that burden being placed on him. He closes his eyes and tries to picture what would happen if he were to take that step into the unknown. Yet he cannot. He senses that only one who has made the movement knows what lies beyond. At this moment, the dread creeps back in; the uncertainty. He jumps back in fear and instantly feels the regret and the sorrow of once again not being able to make the movement.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">He does jump: forward he walks off the ledge into the unknown. This step, the man soon realizes, cannot be undone. He has made his choice and now that the possibility has been realized, there is no turning back. Perhaps all this man does is continually fall further and further down. This leap, however, has its consequences as well. This choice too will follow him and influence his every action. Only, don’t you feel the power he now holds? He made the bold choice and did not step back. He chose. He chose himself, for what else could he possibly choose if not himself? Now his self is confronted with the eternity in which he falls forever. Humbled, he does not regret his decision to jump. For only now has he become fully realized as an individual. He understands his self and his relation to the eternal. He is free from the sorrow and despair of being stuck behind, as with one who did not choose to jump or still waiting to make the movement. He is his own master, answering only to God and himself. He is not tied down by the sins of his father or society. He has made the choice. A positive choice of the will and only now is he able to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">live</i>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">What <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">really</i> happens with the man who has chosen to jump, I cannot say with certainty. I have not made that step; I can only speculate. Perhaps I am on the ledge. Yes, I feel the air around me, feel the anxiety of the possibility of actuality. My choices are therefore filled with indecision and uncertainty. To no either/or have I committed. I rest in between, in that moment. The eternal moment. I must either jump, or step backward. Oh, how terrifying and important everything becomes! </p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">-choose now. what are you waiting for?<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Perhaps that voice within me would rather I didn’t jump. Then I would become its slave further. With the choice I would master that ‘demon’ on my shoulder. I would be free of his torment. I would become myself and begin understand my relation to God. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Or maybe I have already made the choice: the choice to step back. I feel the redundancy, don't I? Perhaps I merely just walk up to the ledge on occasion and like the man, I eventually step back; I always step back.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">NO.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The power of the choice lies within me. I must jump. I will jump. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">jump jump jump…<o:p></o:p></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">-have you made the movement yet?... <span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span>hello? …</i></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Shanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10341987190234696921noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1679321389338547563.post-16138228632509016002010-06-07T08:55:00.006-04:002010-06-07T10:43:17.826-04:00What do I believe? pt. I<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I recently had a discussion at lunch with some friends and we went through the five points of Calvinism. This was essentially our conclusion:</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">1. Total Depravity: essentially the idea of original sin. Because of the Fall, man is sinful by nature and is helpless without God. There isn't much I can really say about this doctrine (I will expand more on this later). Some may try to blame Adam for essentially damning us all because of his action in the Garden. But, would you have acted any different? No, our nature is sinful and we must, only through the Holy Spirit, choose to follow God in faith. Without the guidance of God, man is eternally helpless.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">2. Unconditional Election: God, before eternity, chose some to be saved and some not; not based on any merit, choice or sin. Man, due to his depraved state, cannot choose his salvation. God holds all the power to give mercy to those he elects. The Calvinist conception of this predestination is used to show the power and grace of God's love:</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">"Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according to His eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of His will, hath chosen in Christ, unto everlasting glory, out of His mere grace and love, without any foresight of faith or good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the creature, as conditions, or causes moving Him thereunto; and all to the praise of His glorious grace." -</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">reformed doctrine of predestination</span></span><a href="http://www.ccel.org/ccel/boettner/predest.iv.iii.i.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[1]</span></span></a></span></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> But what about the others? Funny, I can find almost no information on them other than phrases like: "passed by", "judged justly", "reprobation", etc.. Scripture itself is also lacking in this respect. The best I could get was a sentence from the Westminster Confession of Faith:</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">"The rest of mankind, God was pleased, according to the inscrutable counsel of His own will, whereby He extendeth or withholdeth mercy as He pleaseth, for the glory of His sovereign power over His creatures, to pass by, and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of His glorious justice."</span></span></i><a href="http://www.ccel.org/ccel/boettner/predest.iv.iii.i.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[2]</span></span></a></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> "To ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin". Let's look at this statement. We can almost immediately throw out the latter statement of "wrath for their sin." Didn't we just say before that man is not judged based on sin or merit? And doesn't this statement imply that man is being judged by their sin? What sin exactly? It's not like they chose of any free decision of theirs to sin or be eternally damned. I think this statement isn't a very good description of the fate of the reprobates because it seems to be to be too contradictory. </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> To 'ordain them to dishonor' implies that God decreed them to be reprobates. So, from eternity past, God created a section of the human race to be helplessly lost in sin without any hope of salvation; since we can do nothing to achieve salvation ourselves. Let me ask you this then: "What is their purpose?" The reprobates are essentially damned before their birth. Are we to say then that God simply created a bunch of useless people? If they lack any kind of free will or choice in the matter of salvation, then living becomes quite useless in my opinion. Part of what keeps me living day to day is my ability to make decisions and to continually hope for something better in life. I'm not saying that I do this all on my own. I have guidance and support from the Holy Spirit in my daily life. It is the Holy Spirit that allows me the ability to choose to follow God in faith and obedience. In my natural state, I am sinful and unable to choose God because 'every inclination of my thoughts and my heart are only evil continually.'</span></span><a href="http://bible.cc/genesis/6-5.htm"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[3]</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> The inclusion of the Holy Spirit into my life gives me a freedom from this depraved state and provides me with a choice between following God and not following God. </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> Choice. It is all about the choice. Faith could not exist without man's free will decisions. What makes those great stories of faith so significant, such as Abraham and Isaac, is his decision to be obedient and faithful to God. It comes down to the choice. What makes faith and obedience so important is the fact that we, through help of the Holy Spirit, choose faith over ignoring it. Do you see? There is no faith otherwise. If our faith is only dependent at our birth, whether we are elect or not, and our actions are determined, then what is faith? You would be acting without really acting. It would almost as if you had no other choice. I am reminded of the character of Alex in </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">A Clockwork Orange</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">. He was a psychopathic criminal who was brainwashed through behavioral psychology to be a 'good citizen'. His treatment included watching, with his eyelids forced continually open, horrible crimes and rapes while being injected with a serum that makes him very nauseous. From that point on, any criminal inclination would be followed by an intense feeling of sickness. The question then becomes: "Is he good?" How would we define goodness in that circumstance? What makes 'good' actions good ones is the fact that we chose them over 'bad' ones. </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> Some claim that this view of human choice brings God 'down to our level' or diminishes His power. I believe that it raises God to a new high. God gave us the gift of free will and to exercise it is to utilize our gift. By using our gift to follow God in faith rather than turn away or deny Him seems to me to be an unparalleled act of devotion and worship to God's greatness. Also, God's ability to 'limit' His unlimited power to give us the power of choice is an even greater testament to His ultimate power. Note, I did not say that God's power is limited, only that He chooses of His own Divine free will to limit His power. In no way does this bring God down at all. I am not undermining God's abilities in any way. To say that God limits his salvation only to an elect view seems to bring God to a lower level in my opinion. Is His love not sufficient for all?</span></span><a href="http://bible.cc/2_corinthians/12-9.htm"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[4]</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> This also makes punishment for the 'reprobates' just. Rather than being punished for crimes they never committed (or haven't committed yet), they are punished for their rejection of the Holy Spirit and Christ's redemption. This is in fact the 'sickness unto death' after all.</span></span><a href="http://bible.cc/john/11-4.htm"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[5]</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> The sickness that does not lead to death is the acceptance of Christ's redemption on the cross. One we choose of our free will under guidance and through the power of the Holy Spirit. Through Christ, all are granted the ability to receive the gift of salvation, though not everyone does accept this gift. In this way there is a kind of 'elect' and 'reprobated' group, but the division is over one's willingness to accept Christ's sacrifice and live a life of faith. While we are on the topic of Christ's sacrifice...</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">3. Limited Atonement: this doctrine states that Jesus died on the cross only for the elect. He came to redeem those from Hell that God has chosen before eternity to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. This doctrine was completely shocking to me when I first read it. I was unaware that theories like this even existed. Not only does it challenge all that I ever believed in, but it also makes God sound even more unjust than unconditional election did.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> So, Jesus died on the cross only for the elect few? Again, I say: "what about the others?" It seems they are denied salvation </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">again</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">! Not only were they excluded before time began, but yet again when Jesus came to redeem man of the sins of his nature and provide him with salvation.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> The Calvinists, in response, claim that Jesus' redemption was not insufficient. It was infinite but only applied to the elect</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">. Where is the justice here? Where is the loving God? I do not believe this doctrine because I believe in a loving God. Isn't God love, after all?</span></span><a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+John+4%3A8&version=NIV"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[6]</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> This limited scope of God's salvation seems to contradict the view of God being love. He loves his elect and...what, hates the reprobates? I refuse to believe that. God loved all mankind and sent His only Son our Lord to die on the cross for our sins.</span></span><a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+1%3A29&version=NIV"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[7]</span></span></a><a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+3%3A16-17&version=NIV"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[8]</span></span></a><a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Titus+2%3A11-14&version=NIV"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">[9]</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> (I could probably quote a hundred more Bible verses to back me up) Titus 2:11-14 pretty much sums it all up:</span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><sup class="versenum" id="en-NIV-29904" style="line-height: normal; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: text-top; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-weight: normal; line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">"</span></span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">11</span></span></i></sup><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. </span></span></i><sup class="versenum" id="en-NIV-29905" style="line-height: normal; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: text-top; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">12</span></span></i></sup><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, </span></span></i><sup class="versenum" id="en-NIV-29906" style="line-height: normal; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: text-top; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">13</span></span></i></sup><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, </span></span></i><sup class="versenum" id="en-NIV-29907" style="line-height: normal; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: text-top; "><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">14</span></span></i></sup><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good."</span></span></i></div><div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></i></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> This fits right with what I have been saying. With the help of the Holy Spirit we can say 'no' to our sin and live lives of righteousness through Christ.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">I leave off the last two points: "Irresistible Grace" and "The Perseverance of the Saints" because I feel they can be reconciled and are more or less true. Once you are saved, you are always saved and cannot be un-saved. If you believe yourself to be saved but do not live a life of righteousness then perhaps you were not saved to begin with.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">So, now where are we? What if I am a reprobate? What am I if not saved truly? There is no way I can know. I must live the Christian life and act accordingly. I have faith in God and I believe in the power and sufficiency of His will. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">There are some more specific details that I omitted due to a)the length already, b)laziness, c)I aimed to just get the general points. We can discuss this together sometime if you would like. I always love a good philosophical discussion among friends.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></span></i></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; line-height: 15px;font-size:medium;"><i><br /></i></span></div>Shanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10341987190234696921noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1679321389338547563.post-69817565649636743892010-06-04T15:27:00.007-04:002010-06-05T08:38:11.076-04:00Antinomy of Human Reason<i>"God decreed the free acts of man, but also that man is nonetheless free and responsible for his acts." -</i>westminster confession of faith<div><br /></div><div>I am taking a presbyterian theology course this summer. I anticipated that I would have problems with Calvinist doctrine before the class began, but I didn't realize I would have an issue this early. I cannot sleep because my mind is racing. So I provide my thoughts.</div><div><br /></div><div>At first glance, it would appear that the above statement from the westminster confession of faith was a contradiction. If God decreed the free acts of man from before time, then how are man's actions free? By definition, God's eternal decree implies no deviation or mistakes. Also, to say that all man's acts are free without determination would undermine the eternal power of God's decree and make Him more of a spectator rather than an active influence; this is something I am not willing to commit to. If only it could be so easy as a contradiction. But no, the statement is actually something much worse: it is an <i>antinomy.</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>I can hear your gasping. It is an antimony because neither option can be fully proven or disproven with satisfaction. Either way you run into problems but it is also true to a certain extent. What is to be done? Let us examine each statement.</div><div><br /></div><div>How can free will exist if God has decreed the 'free acts of man'? We may begin by first examining the definition of what we call 'freedom'. If we follow the existentialist view of freedom held by guys like Sartre, we quickly find that it cannot work. Freedom as Sartre defines it is a free power of choice with no restraints whatsoever. A kind of ultimate free will. This completely rules out the possibility of a decree or plan from God. In this sense we would say that God would be uncertain or unaware of future events because the kind of spontaneous free action that is evoked by this existentialism could not be calculated, by the mere definition of spontaneity. I thought through some other conceptions of free will that I have studied and one that comes to mind that seems likely is Hume's definition. He defines ('liberty' as he calls it) freedom as essentially a freedom from constraint. The fact that I have the ability to type on my computer or rise from my chair are examples of this kind of freedom. But can we really call this free will? I say not. Even Hume rejected that this is free will as other conceive it. He argued that we are in fact determined through causality. All of our actions are determined by factors such as past actions, habits, and patterns of thought. So, even my typing or rising from my chair is even less of a free will decision than I thought. Maybe those examples were picked because I've either used them before or Hume used them. In that case, I did not really pick those examples from a free decision, but rather due to habit or a pattern of thought. I digress. As you can see, not only did we not prove anything at all but things may have been made even more confusing. This is starting to sound like an antinomy to me.</div><div><br /></div><div>How can man be responsible for his acts if God decreed them before his birth? This takes us back to the Fall. Adam fell from grace when he ate of the fruit in the garden, as we surely all know. The question is whether he acted freely in his decision or not. If God decreed that Adam was going to sin, then doesn't that mean God played a role in sin entering the world? I don't accept this. If God were the 'author' of sin, then how can we be justly punished? But, to say that Adam fell because of his own free choice without God's knowledge calls into question the omniscience and all-knowing-ness of God. I don't want to admit this either. So now what? Yet again we cannot prove or disprove either statement. And again we are back to square one with only more confusion and no conclusions.</div><div><br /></div><div>This was basically the lesson that Kant taught us when discussing free will. This is where reason gets us. Two pretty good answers that cannot coexist nor be disproven. The best answer I can come up with is that God has not chosen to reveal to us a clear answer. This would explain the odd nature of the confusion, but unfortunately does not appease my philosophical mind.</div><div><br /></div><div>I have no answer. I have consulted people and various literature and I cannot reach a conclusion. If you have thoughts or solutions for me, I would love to hear them. I have SO many more issues, but that will be saved for later. Now it is bedtime. 12:08am. My BFF is graduating tomorrow morning so I must get to sleep soon. I go to bed in confusion and frustration.</div><div><br /></div><div>Goodnight.</div>Shanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10341987190234696921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1679321389338547563.post-56293266898257874262010-06-03T18:28:00.002-04:002010-06-03T18:36:07.993-04:00On Parables<i>" Many complain that the words of the wise are always merely parables and of no use in daily life, which is the only life we have. When a sage says: 'Go over', he does not mean that we should cross to some actual place, which we could do anyhow if the labor were worth it; he means some fabulous yonder, something unknown to us, something he cannot designate more precisely either, and therefore cannot help us here in the very least. All these parables really set out to say merely that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already. But the cares we have to struggle with every day: that is a different matter.</i><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>Concerning this a man once said: Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that rid of all your daily cares.</i></div><div><i> Another said: I bet that is also a parable.</i></div><div><i> The first said: You have won.</i></div><div><i> The second said: But unfortunately only in parable.</i></div><div><i> The first said: No, in reality: in parable you have lost. "</i></div><div><br /></div><div>-franz kafka</div>Shanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10341987190234696921noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1679321389338547563.post-64228601384244581962010-05-29T09:13:00.002-04:002010-05-29T09:19:06.735-04:00Sleep TightI have had a long couple of days. I feel unwell.<div><br /></div><div>I feel like Quentin Compson, trapped in a world which no future exists for me, only a cold indifferent past. While the present, lasting only a mere moment, fades quickly into a dream.</div><div><br /></div><div>I haven't been sleeping well. I haven't been eating. I guess the realization of one's own mediocrity and unimportance is never pleasant.</div><div><br /></div><div>Luckily, Steinbeck has been saving me. Everyone was right. 'East of Eden' is fantastic.</div>Shanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10341987190234696921noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1679321389338547563.post-88828233536108956012010-05-25T14:44:00.000-04:002010-05-25T15:58:10.754-04:00On Schopenhauer and Existence<i>"The scenes of our life resemble pictures in a rough mosaic; they are ineffective from close up, and have to be viewed from a distance if they are to seem beautiful. This is why to attain something desired is to discover how vain it is; and why, though we live all our lives in expectation of better things, we often at the same time long regretfully for what is past. The present, on the other hand, is regarded as something quite transient and serving only as the road to our goal. That is why most men discover when they look back on their life that they have the whole time been living </i>ad interim <i>(in or for the meantime; temporarily), and are surprised to see that which they let go by so unregarded and unenjoyed was precisely their life, was precisely that in expectation of which they lived"</i><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>"In our early youth we sit before the life that lies ahead of us like children sitting before the curtain in a theatre, in happy and tense anticipation of whatever is going to appear. Luckily we do not know what really will appear. For to him who does know, children can sometimes seem like innocent delinquents, sentenced not to death but to life, who have not yet discovered what their punishment will consist of. Nonetheless, everyone desires to achieve old age, that is to say a condition in which one can say: 'Today it is bad, and day by day it will get worse - until at last the worst of all arrives.'"</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>Today, using the birthday money I received, I bought a book: Arthur Schopenhauer's <i>Essays and Aphorisms</i>. I throughly enjoy this man. Considered a 'proto-existentialist', he helped establish the philosophical movement that guys like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche would later take up. </div><div><br /></div><div>I read his master work <i>The World as Will and Idea</i>, which was essentially a response to Kant's conception of the things-as-appearances and the things-in-themselves. Kant claimed that we have no access to things-in-themselves, and so we only perceive the world as things-as-appearances. Essentially, the world is a construct of our perceptions that are ordered by the natural laws of space, time, and causality. We have no free will because all appearances (any <i>things</i> we can have access to) are subject to the laws of cause and effect. I am not actually touching the desk or computer in-themselves, but only the mere appearance of them. </div><div><br /></div><div>This paints existence in a very negative light. We have no free will and nothing is actually real; well, we can't have access to anything 'real', only it's appearance. This is one of the premises (there are many) that Schopenhauer's pessimism is founded on. Yet, he felt that something was missing from Kant's conclusions and set out to fix the problem. Kant alludes to this thing-in-itself very mysteriously and never commits to a real answer, only that we cannot access the thing-in-itself through our perceptions. There is one specific reference he makes<i> </i>to the nature of this mysterious 'thing' in the opening of <i>The Critique of Pure Reason:</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><i>"...so the principle of causality applies to things only in the first sense (things-as-appearances), insofar as they are objects of experience, but that these same objects are not subject to that principle when taken in the second sense (things-in-themselves). On these suppositions, no contradiction arises when we think the same will in both these ways: in its appearance, as conforming necessarily to natural law and as to that extent </i>not free<i>; yet on the other hand, </i>qua<i> belonging to a thing-in-itself, as not subject to that law, and hence </i>free."</div><div><br /></div><div>So there. Kant seems to have begun to solve this riddle...only he <i>never</i> mentions any of this again. So Schopenhauer takes up the argument. He paints the 'world as idea' in the same way as Kant - all our perceptions are like 'phantom dreams'. He goes further and claims that there exists another world, a 'world as will'. Schopenhauer uses <i>will</i> to refer to the things-in-themselves. The will is present in all things. The body is the will, objectified. Because we, according to Schopenhauer, have this double knowledge of our body as idea and our body as we understand its movements and desires more than any other being in existence, the body is essentially the will objectified. All beings have a specific grade of the objectification of the will, with man being the highest grade. Yet, even through all this, we are still subject to the world as idea and cannot help but be trapped by the perceptions of space, time and causality. So, we are still not free in the strictest sense. Our will is free but we are not entirely will, so we have restrictions .We cannot <i>not</i> view the world in terms of space, time, and causality. Kant said that it is this very order of perceptions that makes perceiving possible in the first place. </div><div><br /></div><div>A consequence of the will is it's continuous striving. The will strives and desires what it cannot have, and once it possesses it, it soon grows tired or bored and so wants something new. Is this not true for us? We want what we cannot have and once we have it we no longer want it. This constant unfulfillment is the primary cause of most of our sufferings, according to Schopenhauer. (There are many quotes in <i>The World as Will and Idea</i> that I could back this up with, but Katelyn Carter is borrowing it currently :) ) -- But there are some in this other book too:</div><div><br /></div><div>"<i>The vanity of existence is revealed in the whole form existence assumes: in the infiniteness of time and space contrasted with the finiteness of the individual in both; in the fleeting present as the sole form in which actuality exists; in the continual desire without satisfaction; in the continual frustration of striving of which life consists. </i>Time <i>and that </i>perishability <i>of all things existing in time, that time itself brings about is simply the form under which the will to live, reveals to itself the vanity of its striving. Time is that by virtue of which everything becomes nothingness in our hands and loses all real value."</i></div><div><br /></div><div>Depressing, but oh so wise. Do you not agree? </div><div><br /></div><div>These are the thoughts that have been plaguing my mind. This summer so far has been most interesting. Though I have had high points to speak of, they only lasted for certain evenings and for periods far too short. I am, through a daily progression, losing my sanity. Time is persecuting me as I fill out endless job applications, read hundreds of pages of books a day and wait patiently for something to happen. I have been forced to become very introspective lately and it is driving me up a wall. I need a job. I need money. I have neither. I cannot escape the continual pounding of failure as I keep applying only to wait in vain for a reply. Close to a hundred job applications resulting in <i>nil. </i>Is something wrong with me? Somedays I wonder if 'all is vanity' and if I shouldn't just hide away for the rest of my life. Or (as Sofia Cantrill and I decided) rob some banks, gather some close friends, and create and live on a commune for ourselves in the country air of Greece, provided their infrastructure doesn't collapse. So, if you have a special skill and are sick of jobs and school, then join us. We leave soon.</div>Shanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10341987190234696921noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1679321389338547563.post-20745438051093931092010-05-25T09:52:00.001-04:002010-05-25T09:54:01.195-04:00пост номер одинHello.<div><br /></div><div>I have decided to blog now. Everyone seems to be doing it, so why not? </div><div><br /></div><div>More soon.</div>Shanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10341987190234696921noreply@blogger.com0