When things are coming to a point - there is In Reality no neutral ground.
One is either For or Against God, the Good and Divine Creation.
And (because things have come to a point) if one is not obviously For, then one is, as a matter of fact, Against.
(Therefore all the people about whom one is 'not sure' - or who seem ambivalent/ ambiguous - are actually on the wrong side. Of course everybody has some Good in them - I am talking about which side a person serves in the spiritual war of this mortal world. Remember: There are only two sides, and they are getting further separated.)
You're right of course. The thing with JBP is that I think he still has all that sort of programming of the "intellectual", that he needs to stand outside of religion to judge it, which of course implies that he is in a position to judge accurately from that standpoint. I suspect his greatest argument against personally embracing religion (and in spite of experiencing what may have been an actual miracle where a hotel bible opened to John 3:16 when he left the room) is more like "all that sort of thing couldn't possibly be true".
ReplyDeleteBinary / digital views seem to me to be too simplistic to deal with the nuance, ambiguity, and complexity that is the human experience. If everything falls into a one or a zero, a white or a black, then the capacity to honestly engage results in a fragile fragmentation that is essentially disruptive and dissociative. I prefer an analog view where there is a continuum that is in motion between many influences that shape who we are and are becoming. This may be a strictly aesthetic preference on my part, but it feels less disjoint and more in keeping with the metastable state of being, where different elasticities exist within us with regard to the who we are at any particular moment. Yes, there are aspects of self which are relatively fixed, and there is also a dynamic morphology at the periphery which brings creativity to the fore. A native artist from Canada - Norman Knott - always had two ring symbols on his work. Each ring had thread attached which indicated the influences that changed how the ring was both stable and changing. One ring had a yellow centre which indicated that the person was alive and at home, and the other was empty to indicate that even in death the ring - of memory in the minds of others and the history of our actions - had a persistence and that it was still bound to influences, albeit no longer in the self which was no longer present inside the ring.
ReplyDeleteI, for example, do not know what things will engage with me this day, but be they subtle or grand, they will shape who I am becoming, and I happen to like that. It means that there are possibilities of discovery that are continuously presenting themselves, and which are shaping my experience of life.
@Nicholas - It is a false analogy. There is God, the Good and creation; and there are those who are against them. We either choose Heaven, or choose not. By your metaphysical assumptions, expressed in previous comments, I know that you cannot see this reality, and that you believe in the possibility of neutrality in the spiritual war. But if someone genuinely wanted to opt-out from Heaven, and revert to unconscious Nirvana, he would simply remain silent. By expressing your views in public discourse to persuade others, you have (at present - you could repent) de facto chosen to fight on the side against God/ Good and creation - against Heaven.
ReplyDelete