Saturday, March 14, 2015
Comment on pursuit of the needs of our own house
I agree with your comment that “the warning Luke gives here is to suggest that if we only pursue those needs of our own house, the only option is to allow the door open to divide us against our neighbor. This is a warning that is as true today as it was then”. The challenge that comes from our history, back to Jeremiah and more, is that the prevention of hostility between families does not appear to be humanly possible. Our secular culture is one that Dr David Dean suggests has reduced the real to the material. Our best choice to defeat division is to seek communion with Divine Love which is inclusion, mercy, forgiveness and compassion for all people. The ancient understanding of reality which includes Presence of God and mystical faith in the supernatural is the missing link in secular rational utopia which depend on humans to free themselves from greed, power, privilege and pride.
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Jacque gives an example of a man walking through the woods on a beaten path towards the lake. This path winds around up and down and is walked by several people who need to access the lake for fishing and water. The man one day walking along the path notices that if only one tree were moved, the windy long route to the lake could be "shunted" and his travel time to and fro could be substantially lessened and therefore made more efficient. The same happens in our minds when we learn a more efficient way of doing something. We "shunt" the old pathway in our mind, but we don't forget about it. As long as the shunted path remains easier and more efficient, it will be the path the man takes to the lake without and the old path can be made to return to nature without the use of democratic consensus, paper proclamations or laws, or policing of any kind. So when we appeal to history as a reason why a new pathway cannot be formed without the aid of God, we ironically limit his ability to help us to "shunt" the old path. To believe in one God as the creator of the universe is to understand implicitly that He is the writer of the laws which govern its operation. Science helps us to discover those laws, his laws and science is not a respecter of history or tradition.
ReplyDeleteDavid Dean suggests our secular culture has been "REDUCED" to the real and material? No. I cannot accept this as a reduction in quality for our society. By understanding real and material phenomena we are able to cure diseases, explore new regions of science, build infrastructure to join the global community together, end poverty, war, hunger, famine, and reclaim the biosphere of the Earth for our generations to follow.
We can say things like "seek communion with Divine Love" but we don't have a handbook of instructions which will allow us to do that in a scientific way. The holy texts were great thousands of years ago, but their meanings remain interpretational. The language they use to try to describe the method by which we bring about the communion with Divine Love needs to be updated.
The issue with "through Him with Him in Him" is that I want to know HOW and I'm sorry but we've run out of time for reverence and thoughtful reflection on establishing our relationships with God in order to bring about the method we desire. We need not invoke the help of God yet. Not for the problems that we have. You said yourself, "Don't ask God to help you get a good mark on your test. Study."