Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Monday, March 30, 2015
Sunday, March 29, 2015
Saturday, March 28, 2015
Friday, March 27, 2015
Thursday, March 26, 2015
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Monday, March 23, 2015
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Saturday, March 21, 2015
Friday, March 20, 2015
Thursday, March 19, 2015
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Monday, March 16, 2015
Sunday, March 15, 2015
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.
More pondering of Law
Since ancient times, people have behaved in very inhumane ways to other people. This obviously continues in our time. One hopeful promise of the Venus Project is a social situation where resources are utilized to house, feed, educate, and stimulate the creative core of many people who are now marginalized and oppressed. In this understanding of the fulfillment of the Law secular humanists and Christians are in harmony. For Christians “supernatural” Law contains Natural Law. At AST, David Dean (https://youtu.be/Hi4W5a8-wP4 ) has expressed the idea that today the “real” has been reduced to the material. When we depend on solely on human motivation and resolve to bring “heaven”, history shows us that greed, power, privilege and pride distort and ultimately destroy our utopias. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has written extensively on the false division of religion and reason.
Stoics believed that everything was composed of matter.... They believed that this divine "fire," or God, generated the universe and would one day take the universe back into itself through a great conflagration. This cycle of creation and conflagration is repeated eternally.Stoicism was thus deterministic. Things are the way they are and can't be changed. To find true happiness, they believed one should understand the course of nature through reason and simply accept things the way they are. In contrast to the Stoics, Paul taught that God is personal and not a part of this universe. He also taught that there would be a judgment to come, not a giant conflagration leading to another cycle.(1)
Paul determined that the Law was not sufficient. It limited our relationship to the Divine and the extent to which we could be formed as disciples of Christ who would seek freedom, Love, inclusion, mercy and forgiveness for and between all people. Stoic thinking rests on Law and is confined to the orderly, finite and material. Christ invites living in the messy, infinite and mystical which are the characteristics of humanity that are in the image of God. Heaven is lived now in the struggle for freedom from greed, power, pride and privilege which too often brings human utopia to a real end.
(1) The World of the Apostle Paul - Leadership University. Retrieved March 14, 2015, from http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/apospaul.html.
Friday, March 13, 2015
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Monday, March 9, 2015
Sunday, March 8, 2015
Saturday, March 7, 2015
Friday, March 6, 2015
Thursday, March 5, 2015
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
Monday, March 2, 2015
Sunday, March 1, 2015
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)