Note: I intend to spend Saturday and Sunday reading two books. No posts for those two days, I think. I will be back Monday with a vengeance.
The Current Crisis
Plato moved on from Socrates to teach the Pure Spirit and the Good in Itself. Epicurus hated Plato and moved to Death as material, not Good. Zeno wanted to take his Stoics back to Spiritual Good and so majored on courage and justice.
Immanuel Kant, the philosophical great grandparent of billions made all things relative. Truth, he posited, is merely information gleaned through one’s own personal needs and cognitive abilities. Locke agreed, but felt freer than Kant, and mostly did away with God. Hume did not disagree.
Then, Nietzche. Nietzche is pilloried because a Central European dictator in the 20th century misinterpreted Nietzche’s appeal to genius as indicative of a Master Race. Nietzche was arguing for a special place for genius, which he rightly considered himself to be and so created a status for genius the “rare for the rare.” He did not argue for mass murder. Genius is one thing. Genocide is something else altogether.
All these men were ardent pursuers of Truth. They missed the mark only in their ignorance of the One, True God (Plato, Socrates. Epicurus and Zeno) or their hatred of an overarching ecclesiastical body (Kant, Hume Locke, Nietzche) intent on holding Truth in thrall (that is, the Church imitated the world, married the state and sullied its priestly robes. Each man wanted Truth, they just missed its actual source.
We ought to thank each of them. Their work enables us to compare and contrast well meaning human thought to the greatest of philosophies, the theology of the purest man (and greatest thinker) Jesus the Christ.
Philosophers for the ages searched for Truth as a suitor for a lovely woman. They came close more than once. Each one sees her lovely form. Each one hears her lilting voice. All of them long to understand her as his own. Sadly, there the Ideal ends, with the usual results of unrequited love; the broken heart, the lonely days and empty nights.
Perhaps we could gentle our current generational schism if we could agree on this one thing; we all want the Truth. Understand, if we can get both sides to accept a search for The Truth, we have already won, for that puts an end to each of us seeking his/her individualistic truth with a small “t.”
Truth, you see, is no longer verifiable. This is ironic because we live in a “scientistic” era, which insists on the end of Philosophy and the humiliation of Theology. At the same time the Scientism of our day offers its own unverified philosophy, a dark and dismal one where altruism is deterministic and the world is hurtling toward its own certain end. Much science seems to be for sale and, worse yet, the call for verification in an uncertain realm demeans Truth to be only one’s own identification, rather than reality. What we would have called hypocrisy decades ago is now just “your truth.
What to do?
Enter Jesus.
The late philosopher Dallas Willard (the C. S. Lewis of our time; Lewis and Muggeridge rolled into one mind) wrote the first people who followed Jesus followed Him and continued to follow Him because He offered information they could not get elsewhere.
What did Jesus teach that was so good?
Organized religion is helpful but corruptible. For its greater good, organized religion must stay a step away from its earthly brother, government.
Organized religion is not for the synagogue, temple or church. For the greater good of its surroundings, religion must inhabit the home, the habits and the heart,
Organized religion, of itself, can only instruct, never can it save. Religion of the Church can amass and assimilate believers to Truth but the Church is not the source of the Truth.
Organized religion too closely paired with earthly influences imperils alll it touches.
God loves humankind. God intends our good.
God, who is offended by our wrong doing (all wrong doing is against God) pays the redemptive price for the offender(s).
Jesus death demonstrates the length to which God will go to redeem humanity.
Jesus teaches Truth, lasting, real, eternal Truth, Truth for the ages, because Jesus embodies divine Truth. All morality (ethics, oughtness) is based in spiritual reality. Morality is more than effective affection for morality must have consequences, for good or ill.
Jesus is the greatest of teachers. We ignore His teaching at great risk.
The Church is an empty place without God. We ought to go to great length to include ourselves in what God does. We cannot do that while we ignore Jesus.
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