I've said elsewhere on this blog that we each need a purpose for this mortal life; and that for Christians (followers of Jesus Christ) our individual purpose in this mortal life should be "framed" by the confident expectation of resurrection into Heaven.
That still leaves-open the question of what we are supposed to be doing on this side of death; given that we would not be sustained alive by God unless there were reasons that were good for us - meaning eternally good for our immortal souls.
I have expressed what we should do using the term "learning" - learning now for a "pay off" in post-mortal life; and this can be further expanded by the concepts of understanding and awareness.
(This presumes that God, by the continual action of creation, "engineers" the kind of learning-experiences that we each need, or could benefit from.)
It seems to me evident that Christianity includes a great deal of emphasis on the positive value (and perhaps even essential nature) of understanding and awareness.
So, it is not enough (or at least it is sub-optimal) for Men simply to experience mortal life unconsciously, passively, and without reflection - because that is unfree: such an "automatic" life does not entail the needful positive decision to align with God and work in harmony with divine creation.
What is required then is a kind of learning that has risen to some level of understanding of what has been learned; and this understanding of what has been learned should rise to a level of awareness.
This is what enables freedom to have its vital role.
(And such freedom can most profoundly be understood as a bringing to bear of our own divinely creative selves - such that God's creation is expanded and enriched by the creativity of individual beings in voluntary alignment with God's aims and methods.)
With respect to the need for understanding; it would, of course, be unrealistic (if not impossible) to suppose that we can attain anything much like a final and comprehensive understanding of this world - not least because the reality is of a world massively causally-interlinked; such that any specific understanding is bound to be deficient and distorted to some degree.
Nonetheless, I think many will know by experience a kind of understanding that might be called an epiphany, an insight-into or showing-forth-of reality; a creative moment underpinned and endorsed by intuition.
This seems to be close to the kind of thing we most need.
Now, it is also essential to realize that the constraints of this mortal incarnation mean that - at least in our physical and material manifestation - this kind of epiphanic insight can be misremembered or completely forgotten in a bodily sense; we might suffer all kinds of accidents, sickness or degenerative disease.
It would (after all) be pretty worthless if our needful spiritual learning/ understanding/ awareness depended on such fragile things as the functionality of human brain and body.
Therefore, we must assume that true knowledge is never forgotten in a spiritual sense; that our intuitive epiphanic insights are permanently stored as part of our spiritual-person, our immortal soul.
A further constraint that needs acknowledging is that most actual people most of the time, are "victims of" (in thrall to) their innate personality, abilities and circumstances. Such that they (we) will mostly be making bad choices and leading lives that are not just un-virtuous - but considerably more sin-full than they "ideally" might be.
The message I get from the Fourth Gospel and other confirmations; is that this does not matter ultimately; and that a Christian life is possible for everyone capable of love, who value love most highly and who desire above all to follow Jesus to Heaven.
Ultimately, it need not matter how weak, mean and corrupt such a person might be, or what terrible kind of life he leads. Jesus came to save (even) sinners - not perfect, nor even better-than-average Men*.
It is crucial to note and absorb that Any bad circumstance of this world, including the self-inflicted, can be (and actually is) overcome by faith - sustained by hope and driven by love.
But although all manner of spiritual guidance and support are available when needed; none of this happens automatically, nor can it be achieved by any external power. We cannot be "made" to live in a worthwhile way; just as we cannot be compelled to salvation.
The crucial aspect is always in our-selves, in our freedom (properly understood as the creative agency of our real self, in chosen-alignment with the divine); and the basis of freedom includes learning, understanding, awareness.
There is always something eternally-valuable to be learned from any person's actual life here-and-now; and/but this learning always requires to be driven primarily by the free spiritual life of each person...
Indeed by the free spiritual life of each being of any kind; since Heaven is populated by those Beings of all kinds who - after their mortal deaths - commit eternally to live primarily by Love.
*It is not really relevant here - but I suppose that I need to comment on the fact that none of this is meant as an excuse for being selfish, sadistic, spiteful - doing evil. But the usual problem with those who do evil is that they deny that what they are doing is evil, or (nowadays, invertedly) say that the evil they are and do is good. The take home message is not that utter impossibility that we should cease from sinning, nor that "real Christians" are better (more ethical) people than others on average, nor that becoming a (real) Christians entails becoming a "better person" -- but that Christians need to acknowledge and repent the evil that they (we) inevitably do; and that (in principle) nobody is so bad in their behaviour that they cannot become a Christian. What excludes so many modern people from salvation is not that they are worse than past people in their behaviours; but that modern people Do Not Want Salvation.
No comments:
Post a Comment