I have multiple bookshelves full of books I've read and I have to wonder to what purpose? How do I bring about some conjunction of knowledge and understanding and do more than hoard it quietly to myself? There is so much I have learned and continue to learn, so much I've been shown and so very much that I enjoy added to so much that concerns me, it's impossible to consider just being "silent."
There was a biography of John Lennon on a PBS station tonight. His enlightenment ended with himself. A song he wrote and recorded states that he doesn't believe in a succession of things, Jesus and the Beatles included. They fell away as myths to him and what he was left with was himself alone. If that is so, then death is final. That's not good enough. There's more. I felt sorry that he was his own god because at the business end of a bullet, his god had no power to save him. In order to be plucked free of evil, there has to be something over and above it to wrench us from harm's influence.
It takes a big shrug to conclude there's nothing ultimately loving or sustaining with the power to overriding the tragedies that strike us all. The worst onslaught is death itself. Death is an enemy. It's universally a "bad thing," along with pain and suffering.
There has to be a universally good thing to counter it.
Balance ... justice ... joy ... where do they originate? Only in the imagination?
No. And there IS no such thing as justice if death is all there is to end our time here. Death is the wrong team winning after all. That's not how it is.
My books on philosophy, history, theology and biography all bring me closer to truths I'd prefer to share in a life informed by even something more, something that communicates inside out. I'm most frustrated by institutions and individuals, "enemies within the camp," that counterfeit the truth in order to obtain some shadow form of power or profit. I think if you deal in lies, profit is a temporal and elusive term. One might seem to prosper when the "gifts" are rolling in, but the life taken in context won't really succeed over time. A person pays for the character they choose to assume. Mr. Televangelist with a Rolex and a 10 minute Infommercial begging for money with each broadcast isn't doing the work of a Universal Diety; he's pitching for himself period.
So I'll start with the Didache which instructed early apostles to have a trade and support themselves. The ministry wasn't something one did as a career. How revolutionary a notion is THAT in today's Theoconomy? We shouldn't be selling the message or the service. We give, as we are given to. WE being those who stand alongside Christ, following his teachings and trusting his Word.
Check out the text: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/didache-roberts.html
VERY interesting. --K
No comments:
Post a Comment