This, for me, is a big and urgent question. I know (pretty much) what is wrong with the prevalent and socially-inculcated 'materialist' world view; and how I want to 'know' the world; but making the necessary transformation to it? Well, that is another matter!
I find it is so easy to get caught at the level of psychology, of feelings - that is, monitoring and trying to change my feelings about the world - by sheer willpower! Not only is this ineffective, it is the wrong idea entirely! After all, feelings (to the extent they can be manipulated) are only loosely and indirectly a consequence of metaphysical assumptions.
Yet, the objective is to know the world in a different way, through a different 'framework'.
If this was attained, then presumably feelings would follow - but a change of feelings won't lead to metaphysical change. Depth transformation necessarily changes the surface, but surface change leaves the depths untouched.
The problem is a variant of the dissociation between (on the one hand) the relatively attainable objective of becoming a Christin and living a Christian life (which is a matter of willpower and a suitable environment)...
And (on the other hand) the nigh-impossibility actually being a Christian, of becoming a New Man who understands life and the world through a Christian 'lens'; who actually becoming a better Man - such that whatever the environment, and however feeble our willpower happens to be at any particular moment - we will still be in a 'Christian-relationship' with the world.
One difficulty is that the Christian lifestyle can be attained incrementally, a bit at a time. Whereas a Christian metaphysics seems to be all-or-nothing: if it is not 'complete' then it doesn't really work - the remnant wrong-elements ensure that we just revert to the socially-dominant ways of thinking of the world as dead and determined.
I don't have any lasting answer to this - and perhaps none is possible (at least for me); but I have at times and briefly been able to attain the desired metaphysical transformation; and I think this was by a kind of empathic, intuitive - and indeed loving - identification with some other person or Being who has the desired mind-set.
A matter of thinking in the same way as another; of relating to the world as they do...
It strikes me that this may be a hint as to how following Jesus Christ is the way (the only way) we can attain to resurrected eternal life.
Perhaps if we are loving the living-Jesus, then we can identify with Him - mind-to-mind, thinking-to-thinking, metaphysics-to-metaphysics...
And this shared-identity of our personal relation with God and creation, linked with that of Jesus, is what enables us to undergo the transformation that is resurrection?
My understanding is that records and stories have been preserved for the very purpose of establishing (once again) the correct/ complete metaphysics or framework of reality. Until these stories come we wander a bit in the dark. I am not sure whether they come in our lifetimes or sometime later, so part of the game is waiting and doing the best we can in the situations we find ourselves in.
ReplyDeleteConsequently, to my mind the better analogy is not Jesus' resurrection, but his baptism, as I think that is what these stories will essentially offer.