I don't want to be affiliated with a religion. Religion is about politics. About stereotypes and connotations. When one identifies oneself as a Christian, it implies that they are conservative, republican, pro-life, teetotalling, anti-hippie, self-righteous, and a whole slough of things that may or may not be true about the person in question, but have very little to do with the actual meaning of the word "Christian". I don't remember if I've said this before, but I don't call myself a Christian anymore for that very reason. Christianity, purely as a word, is no longer about Christ. I am a bond-slave of the Messiah, to use Paul's words. I am a Follower of Christ. I am a servant of Yahweh, the one true God.
Wow. You know how when you read a word over and over it stops even looking like a word, and you keep thinking you misspelled it? I've reached that point with the word "Christianity." It seems like it has too many consonants at the beginning, doesn't it?
Political correctness is overrated. The whole idea behind it is not to offend anyone, not to say anything that might possibly be taken the wrong way. That's fine as far as it goes, but there's a point at which it just becomes absurd. Don't get me wrong, I'm as much a fan of equal rights and all that jazz as anyone, but when it comes to beliefs, we Followers of Christ are kind of left out in the cold. More or less every other belief has in its roots a sort of "Well, we can still be friends. We believe almost the same thing," which really just doesn't jive with Jesus's whole "The way, the truth and the life" mantra. He really didn't leave any room for negotiation or compromises. He's not a way. He is the exclusive truth. Any other kind of truth isn't much of a truth at all, comparitively speaking. It's undiluted and uncompromising, like strong black coffee, but beautiful instead of mildly revolting when it gets cold. That's why we bond-slaves of the Messiah are always left out theologically. Socially, it's because of the connotations Christianity has earned itself over the centuries.
I haven't posted in some time since I have been trying to articulate a complex thought about the nature of evil. If I can figure out how to get it past the "glimmer of an idea" stage and into the "fully formed thought and articulated part of my philosophy" stage, you'll probably see something about it before too much longer.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Monday, November 06, 2006
Paradox
I am not going to talk about myself in this post. We'll just get that out of the way right off the bat.
Logic is sometimes deceptive. It is logically possible to prove that God exists, but it is also possible to logically prove that nothing exists. Logic, in its ever-definitive way, often contradicts itself, creating a paradox. Despite the falleability of pure reasoning, we as human beings hold onto it as one of the few differences between us and other creatures. (The word creatures is beautiful to me. Its connotations of being created by God is a good reminder that they were.) Our ability to reason is the basis of all our self-confidence in humankind. Since the ancient Greeks, every civilization has reached a point where the mind was considered supreme in its power, and all things that were not logical ought to be cast aside in the face of this new enlightenment. With every wave, this tendancy gets stronger.
Sometimes, we need to be able to embrace impossibilities. Clearly, things exist outside of logic. Things that cannot be proven, or that can be proven false despite their obvious truth. Maybe we need to learn to accept paradox. Three does not equal one, but the Trinity is three entities that are one entity. Rather than taking it as evidence that it is impossible, and therefore false, we should see it as a glimpse of something beyond our understanding. Logic cannot explain it. Our minds don't fit around the concept. It's beautiful because it cannot be quantified. The idea of infinity and of eternity, of cannot be truly understood. No matter how far you go, you never arrive. You never even get any closer to the end, since the end does not exist. We cannot understand the idea of something without a beginning, since everything we can ever be or touch or taste or see or feel did not exist at some point, and there was a quantifiable moment when it came into being, and there will be another when it ceases to exist as what we know it to be. We are born. We die. We see others go through the same process, like mice in a plastic tube that can only move one way. Every so often we get to poke our whiskers out a hole and see an outside universe that is not constrained the way we are used to and never questioned as the only reality. Rather than explaining it away, shouldn't we accept is as something greater than and beyond our experience?
It's mathmatical, and it's poetic in its rebellion from our known universe. Unfolding infinitely, coming forth from itself but never diminishing. God never ceases to amaze and dazzle. Meaning is layered throughout our human experience, waiting to be probed and explored. We live in an eternal metaphor.
Logic is sometimes deceptive. It is logically possible to prove that God exists, but it is also possible to logically prove that nothing exists. Logic, in its ever-definitive way, often contradicts itself, creating a paradox. Despite the falleability of pure reasoning, we as human beings hold onto it as one of the few differences between us and other creatures. (The word creatures is beautiful to me. Its connotations of being created by God is a good reminder that they were.) Our ability to reason is the basis of all our self-confidence in humankind. Since the ancient Greeks, every civilization has reached a point where the mind was considered supreme in its power, and all things that were not logical ought to be cast aside in the face of this new enlightenment. With every wave, this tendancy gets stronger.
Sometimes, we need to be able to embrace impossibilities. Clearly, things exist outside of logic. Things that cannot be proven, or that can be proven false despite their obvious truth. Maybe we need to learn to accept paradox. Three does not equal one, but the Trinity is three entities that are one entity. Rather than taking it as evidence that it is impossible, and therefore false, we should see it as a glimpse of something beyond our understanding. Logic cannot explain it. Our minds don't fit around the concept. It's beautiful because it cannot be quantified. The idea of infinity and of eternity, of cannot be truly understood. No matter how far you go, you never arrive. You never even get any closer to the end, since the end does not exist. We cannot understand the idea of something without a beginning, since everything we can ever be or touch or taste or see or feel did not exist at some point, and there was a quantifiable moment when it came into being, and there will be another when it ceases to exist as what we know it to be. We are born. We die. We see others go through the same process, like mice in a plastic tube that can only move one way. Every so often we get to poke our whiskers out a hole and see an outside universe that is not constrained the way we are used to and never questioned as the only reality. Rather than explaining it away, shouldn't we accept is as something greater than and beyond our experience?
It's mathmatical, and it's poetic in its rebellion from our known universe. Unfolding infinitely, coming forth from itself but never diminishing. God never ceases to amaze and dazzle. Meaning is layered throughout our human experience, waiting to be probed and explored. We live in an eternal metaphor.
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