Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Stages of Faith James Fowler



Stages of Faith

Stage I Intuitive-Projective faith is the fantasy-filled, imitative phase in which the child can be powerfully and permanently influenced by examples, moods, actions and stories of the visible faith of primally related adults.

The stage most typical of the child of three to seven, it is marked by a relative fluidity of thought patterns. The child is continually encountering novelties for which no stable operations of knowing have been formed. The imaginative processes underlying fantasy are unrestrained and uninhibited by logical thought. In league with forms of knowing dominated by perception, imagination in this stage is extremely productive of long-lasting images and feelings (positive and negative) that later, more stable and self-reflective valuing and thinking will have to order and sort out. This is the stage of first self-awareness. The "self-aware" child is egocentric as regards the perspectives of others. Here we find first awarenesses of death and sex and of the strong taboos by which cultures and families insulate those powerful areas.

The gift or emergent strength of this stage is the birth of imagination, the ability to unify and grasp the experience-world in powerful images and as presented in stories that register the child's intuitive understandings and feelings toward the ultimate conditions of existence.

The dangers in this stage arise from the possible "possession" of the child's imagination by unrestrained images of terror and destructiveness, or from the witting or unwitting exploitation of her or his imagination in the reinforcement of taboos and moral or doctrinal expectations.

The main factor precipitating transition to the next stage is the emergence of concrete operational thinking. Affectively, the resolution of Oedipal issues or their submersion in latency are important accompanying factors. At the heart of the transition is the child's growing concern to know how things are and to clarify for him- or herself the bases of distinctions between what is real and what only seems to be.

Stage 2 Mythic-Literal faith is the stage in which the person begins to take on for him- or herself the stories, beliefs and observances that symbolize belonging to his or her community. Beliefs are appropriated with literal interpretations, as are moral rules and attitudes. Symbols are taken as one-dimensional and literal in meaning. In this stage the rise of concrete operations leads to the curbing and ordering of the previous stage's imaginative composing of the world. The episodic quality of Intuitive-Projective faith gives way to a more linear, narrative construction of coherence and meaning. Story becomes the major way of giving unity and value to experience. This is the faith stage of the school child (though we sometimes find the structures dominant in adolescents and in adults). Marked by increased accuracy in taking the perspective of other persons, those in Stage 2 compose a world based on reciprocal fairness and an immanent justice based on reciprocity. The actors in their cosmic stories are anthropomorphic. They can be affected deeply and powerfully by symbolic and dramatic materials and can describe in endlessly detailed narrative what has occurred. They do not, however, step back from the flow of stories to formulate reflective, conceptual meanings. For this stage the meaning is both carried and "trapped" in the narrative.

The new capacity or strength in this stage is the rise of narrative and the emergence of story, drama and myth as ways of finding and giving coherence to experience.

The limitations of literalness and an excessive reliance upon reciprocity as a principle for constructing an ultimate environment can result either in an overcontrolling, stilted perfectionism or "works righteousness" or in their opposite, an abasing sense of badness embraced because of mistreatment, neglect or the apparent disfavor of significant others.

A factor initiating transition to Stage 3 is the implicit clash or contradictions in stories that leads to reflection on meanings. The transition to formal operational thought makes such reflection possible and necessary. Previous literalism breaks down; new "cognitive conceit" (Elkind) leads to disillusionment with previous teachers and teachings. Conflicts between authoritative stories (Genesis on creation versus evolutionary theory) must be faced. The emergence of mutual interpersonal perspective taking ("I see you seeing me; I see me as you see me; I see you seeing me seeing you.") creates the need for a more personal relationship with the unifying power of the ultimate environment.

In Stage 3 Synthetic-Conventional faith, a person's experience of the world now extends beyond the family. A number of spheres demand attention: family, school or work, peers, street society and media, and perhaps religion. Faith must provide a coherent orientation in the midst of that more complex and diverse range of involvements. Faith must synthesize values and information; it must provide a basis for identity and outlook.

Stage 3 typically has its rise and ascendancy in adolescence, but for many adults it becomes a permanent place of equilibrium. It structures the ultimate environment in interpersonal terms. Its images of unifying value and power derive from the extension of qualities experienced in personal relationships. It is a "conformist" stage in the sense that it is acutely tuned to the expectations and judgments of significant others and as yet does not have a sure enough grasp on its own identity and autonomous judgment to construct and maintain an independent perspective. While beliefs and values are deeply felt, they typically are tacitly held-the person "dwells" in them and in the meaning world they mediate. But there has not been occasion to step outside them to reflect on or examine them explicitly or systematically. At Stage 3 a person has an "ideology," a more or less consistent clustering of values and beliefs, but he or she has not objectified it for examination and in a sense is unaware of having it. Differences of outlook with others are experienced as differences in "kind" of person. Authority is located in the incumbents of traditional authority roles (if perceived as personally worthy) or in the consensus of a valued, face-to-face group.

The emergent capacity of this stage is the forming of a personal myth-the myth of one's own becoming in identity and faith, incorporating one's past and anticipated future in an image of the ultimate environment unified by characteristics of personality.

The dangers or deficiencies in this stage are twofold. The expectations and evaluations of others can be so compellingly internalized (and sacralized) that later autonomy of judgment and action can be jeopardized; or interpersonal betrayals can give rise either to nihilistic despair about a personal principle of ultimate being or to a compensatory intimacy with God unrelated to mundane relations
Factors contributing to the breakdown of Stage 3 and to readiness for transition may include: serious clashes or contradictions between valued authority sources; marked changes, by officially sanctioned leaders, or policies or practices previously deemed sacred and unbreachable (for example, in the Catholic church changing the mass from Latin to the vernacular, or no longer requiring abstinence from meat on Friday); the encounter with experiences or perspectives that lead to critical reflection on how one's beliefs and values have formed and changed, and on how "relative" they are to one's particular group or background. Frequently the experience of "leaving home"--emotionally or physically, or both--precipitates the kind of examination of self, background, and lifeguiding values that gives rise to stage transition at this point.

The movement from Stage 3 to Stage 4 Individuative-Reflective faith is particularly critical for it is in this transition that the late adolescent or adult must begin to take seriously the burden of responsibility for his or her own commitments, lifestyle, beliefs and attitudes. Where genuine movement toward stage 4 is underway the person must face certain unavoidable tensions: individuality versus being defined by a group or group membership; subjectivity and the power of one's strongly felt but unexamined feelings versus objectivity and the requirement of critical reflection; self-fulfillment or self-actualization as a primary concern versus service to and being for others; the question of being committed to the relative versus struggle with the possibility of an absolute.

Stage 4 most appropriately takes form in young adulthood (but let us remember that many adults do not construct it and that for a significant group it emerges only in the mid-thirties or forties). This stage is marked by a double development. The self, previously sustained in its identity and faith compositions by an interpersonal circle of significant others, now claims an identity no longer defined by the composite of one's roles or meanings to others. To sustain that new identity it composes a meaning frame conscious of its own boundaries and inner connections and aware of itself as a "world view." Self (identity) and outlook (world view) are differentiated from those of others and become acknowledged factors in the reactions, interpretations and judgments one makes on the actions of the self and others. It expresses its intuitions of coherence in an ultimate environment in terms of an explicit system of meanings. Stage 4 typically translates symbols into conceptual meanings. This is a "demythologizing" stage. It is likely to attend minimally to unconscious factors influencing its judgments and behavior.

Stage 4's ascendant strength has to do with its capacity for critical reflection on identity (self) and outlook (ideology). Its dangers inhere in its strengths: an excessive confidence in the conscious mind and in critical thought and a kind of second narcissism in which the now clearly bounded, reflective self overassimilates "reality" and the perspectives of others into its own world view.
Restless with the self-images and outlook maintained by Stage 4, the person ready for transition finds him- or herself attending to what may feel like anarchic and disturbing inner voices. Elements from a childish past, images and energies from a deeper self, a gnawing sense of the sterility and flatness of the meanings one serves any or all of these may signal readiness for something new. Stories, symbols, myths and paradoxes from one's own or other traditions may insist on breaking in upon the neatness of the previous faith. Disillusionment with one's compromises and recognition that life is more complex than Stage 4's logic of clear distinctions and abstract concepts can comprehend, press one toward a more dialectical and multileveled approach to life truth.

Stage 5 Conjunctive faith involves the integration into self and outlook of much that was suppressed or unrecognized in the interest of Stage 4's self-certainty and conscious cognitive and affective adaptation to reality. This stage develops a "second naivete'' (Ricoeur) in which symbolic power is reunited with conceptual meanings. Here there must also be a new reclaiming and reworking of one's past. There must be an opening to the voices of one's "deeper self." Importantly, this involves a critical recognition of one's social unconscious-the myths, ideal images and prejudices built deeply into the self-system by virtue of one's nurture within a particular social class, religious tradition, ethnic group or the like.

Unusual before mid-life, Stage 5 knows the sacrament of defeat and the reality of irrevocable commitments and acts. What the previous stage struggled to clarify, in terms of the boundaries of self and outlook, this stage now makes porous and permeable. Alive to paradox and the truth in apparent contradictions, this stage strives to unify opposites in mind and experience. It generates and maintains vulnerability to the strange truths of those who are "other." Ready for closeness to that which is different and threatening to self and outlook (including new depths of experience in spirituality and religious revelation), this stage's commitment to justice is freed from the confines of tribe, class, religious community or nation. And with the seriousness that can arise when life is more than half over, this stage is ready to spend and be spent for the cause of conserving and cultivating the possibility of others' generating identity and meaning.

The new strength of this stage comes in the rise of the ironic imagination-a capacity to see and be in one's or one's group's most powerful meanings, while simultaneously recognizing that they are relative, partial and inevitably distorting apprehensions of transcendent reality. Its danger lies in the direction of a paralyzing passivity or inaction, giving rise to complacency or cynical withdrawal, due to its paradoxical understanding of truth.
Stage 5 can appreciate symbols, myths and rituals (its own and others') because it has been grasped, in some measure, by the depth of reality to which they refer. It also sees the divisions of the human family vividly because it has been apprehended by the possibility (and imperative) of an inclusive community of being. But this stage remains divided. It lives and acts between an untransformed world and a transforming vision and loyalties. In some few cases this division yields to the call of the radical actualization that we call Stage 6.

Stage 6 is exceedingly rare. The persons best described by it have generated faith compositions in which their felt sense of an ultimate environment is inclusive of all being. They have become incarnators and actualizers of the spirit of an inclusive and fulfilled human community.
 
They are "contagious" in the sense that they create zones of liberation from the social, political, economic and ideological shackles we place and endure on human futurity. Living with felt participation in a power that unifies and transforms the world, Universalizers are often experienced as subversive of the structures (including religious structures) by which we sustain our individual and corporate survival, security and significance. Many persons in this stage die at the hands of those whom they hope to change. Universalizers are often more honored and revered after death than during their lives. The rare persons who may be described by this stage have a special grace that makes them seem more lucid, more simple, and yet somehow more fully human than the rest of us. Their community is universal in extent. Particularities are cherished because they are vessels of the universal, and thereby valuable apart from any utilitarian considerations. Life is both loved and held to loosely. Such persons are ready for fellowship with persons at any of the other stages and from any other faith tradition.

James Fowler

From Joann Wolski Conn (ed.), Women’s Spirituality: Resources for Christian Development. (Paulist, 1986), pp. 226-232.

http://faculty.plts.edu/gpence/html/fowler.htm, 09-16-2011

Friday, September 16, 2011

On Fear of Global Calamity







“Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.” (Matthew 24: 4-8 NIV)


Things are going to get bad, really bad, before they get better. And when conditions worsen, “See to it that you are not alarmed” (v. 6 NIV). Jesus chose a stout term for alarmed that he used on no other occasion. It means “to wail, to cry aloud,” as if Jesus counseled the disciples, “Don’t freak out when bad stuff happens.”
Jesus equipped his followers with farsighted courage. He listed the typhoons of life and then pointed them “to the end.” Trust in ultimate victory gives ultimate courage. Author Jim Collins makes reference to this outlook in his book Good to Great. Collins tells the story of Admiral James Stockdale, who was a prisoner of war for eight years during the Vietnam War. After Stockdale’s release Collins asked him how in the world he survived eight years in a prisoner-of-war camp.


He replied, “I never lost faith in the end of the story. I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”


Collins then asked, “Who didn’t make it out?” Admiral Stockdale replied, “Oh, that’s easy. The optimists. . . . they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.”
Real courage embraces the twin realities of current difficulty and ultimate triumph. Yes, life stinks. But it won’t forever. As one of my friends likes to say, “Everything will work out in the end. If it’s not working out, it’s not the end.”


Though the church is winnowed down like Gideon’s army, though God’s earth is buffeted by climate changes and bloodied by misfortune, though creation itself seems stranded on the Arctic seas, don’t overreact. “Be still in the presence of the Lord, and wait patiently for him to act. Don’t worry about evil people who prosper or fret about their wicked schemes” (Ps. 37:7 NLT).



From Fearless
Copyright (Thomas Nelson, 2009) Max Lucado



Tuesday, September 13, 2011

On choosing Norman or Anglo-Sazon





Cavil Creek School, West Virginia


To those who would cavil,
my penchant to be sesquipedalian?

Get a grip!






Thursday, September 8, 2011

on facing ones mortality

at his execution






Camp Cameron, March 13th, 1877. 

Morning clear, still and pleasant. The guard, George Tracy, Informs me that Col. Nelson and Judge Howard have gone. Since my confinement here, I have reflected much over my sentence, and as the time of my execution is drawing near, I feel composed, and as calm as the summer morning. I hope to meet my fate with manly courage. I declare my innocence. I have done nothing designedly wrong in that unfortunate and lamentable affair with which I have been implicated. I used my utmost endeavors to save them from their sad fate. I freely would have given worlds, were they at my command, to have averted that evil. I wept and mourned over them before and after, but words will not help them, now it is done. My blood cannot help them, neither can it make that atonement required. Death to me has no terror. It is but a struggle, and all is over. I much regret to part with my loved ones here, especially under that odium of disgrace that will follow my name; that I cannot help.

I know that I have a reward in Heaven, and my conscience does not accuse me. This to me is a great consolation. I place more value upon it than I would upon an eulogy without merit. If my work is done here on earth, I ask my God in Heaven, in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, to receive my spirit, and allow me to meet my loved ones who have gone behind the vail. The bride of my youth and her faithful mother, my devoted friend and companion, N. A., also my dearly beloved children, all of whom I parted from with sorrow, but shall meet them with joy—I bid you all an affectionate farewell. I have been treacherously betrayed and sacrificed in the most cowardly manner by those who should have been my friends, and whose will I have diligently striven to make my pleasure, for the last thirty years at least. In return for my faithfulness and fidelity to him and his cause, he has sacrificed me in a most shameful and cruel way*. I leave them in the hands of the Lord to deal with them according to the merits of their crimes, in the final restitution of all things. 

TO THE MOTHERS OF MY CHILDREN.

I beg of you to teach them better things than to ever allow themselves to be let down so low as to be steeped in the vice, corruption and villainy that would allow them to sacrifice the meanest wretch on earth, much less a neighbor and a friend, as their father has been. Be kind and true to each other. Do not contend about my property. You know my mind concerning it . Live faithful and humble before God, that we may meet again in the mansions of bliss that God has prepared for His faithful servants. Remember the last words of your most true and devoted friend on earth, and let them sink deep into your tender aching hearts; many of you I may never see in this world again, but I leave my blessing with you. Farewell.

I wish my wife Rachel^  to take a copy of the above, and all my family to have a copy of the original. My worthy attorney, W. W. Bishop, will please insert it in my record or history, should I not be able to write up my history to the proper place, to speak of my worthy friend Win. H. Hooper. Please exonerate him from all blame or censure of buying the stock of that unfortunate company, as there is no truth in the accusation whatever. He is a noble, high-minded gentleman. And let it appear also of Bishop John Sharp, honorably, for the nobleness of the man who advanced me money in the time of trouble, and if my history meet with the favor of the public, pay those two gentlemen. My friends Hoge and Foster, as well as yourself and Spicer, some. 

You understood our agreement.

John D. Lee.

THE CONFESSION OF JOHN D. LEE.

Written in prison at Fort Cameron, near Beaver City, Utah Territory. Delivered to Hon. Sumner Howard by John D. Lee, on the field of execution, just before the sentence of death was carried into effect.

Forwarded to Wm. W. Bishop, by Hon. Sumner Howard,
according to the last request of John D. Lee.


*I Believe this a reference to Brigham Young,  who used him as scapegoat to preserve the church.
^This is the wife he had with him in his final days in the territoral Prison.


Wednesday, August 17, 2011

for he shall save his people from their sins. — Matthew i. 21.



I WOULD help some to understand what Jesus came from the home of our Father to be to us 
      and do for us.  ...

Everything in the world is more or less misunderstood at first: 

  • we have to learn what it is, 
  • and come at length to see that it must be so, 
  • that it could not be otherwise. 

Then we know it; 
     and we never know a thing really until we know it thus.

(George Macdonald, Hope of the Gospel, p.1)

Saturday, August 6, 2011

... redneck humor, vulgar notions, or being cockney




I believe firmly in the value of all vulgar notions, especially of vulgar jokes. When once you have got hold of a vulgar joke, you may be certain that you have got hold of a subtle and spiritual idea. The men who made the joke saw something deep which they could not express except by something silly and emphatic. They saw something delicate which they could only express by something indelicate.  ..... In order to understand vulgar humour it is not enough to be humorous. One must also be vulgar, as I am.

(G.K. Chesterton, All Things Considered, P.11)

vul·gar
adjective /vəlgər/
   1. Lacking sophistication or good taste; unrefined
          * - the vulgar trappings of wealth
   2. Making explicit and offensive reference to sex or bodily functions; coarse and rude
          * - a vulgar joke
   3. Characteristic of or belonging to the masses
(Google, dictionary)

Friday, July 29, 2011

On a sense of Milton's Humour


Excess Learning without understanding may induce brain farts. 



Of knowledge within bounds; beyond abstain [ 120 ]
……
Anough is left besides to search and know. [ 125 ]
But Knowledge is as food, and needs no less
Her Temperance over Appetite, to know
In measure what the mind may well contain,
Oppresses else with Surfet, and soon turns
Wisdom to Folly, as Nourishment to Winde. [ 130 ]

(Paradise Lost, John Milton, Book VII)

The Archangel Raphael advising Adam that continuous learning without seeking understanding is like unto  continuous  eating without digestion.  This is often the cause of indigestion. This may cause one to produce methane from the bowels, commonly referred to as farting. .....



(It seams even John Milton has a sense of humour.)





http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl/book_7/index.shtml


Surfet > Surfeit;
Excess; specifically (and now usually), excess in eating and drinking; a gluttonous meal by which the stomach is overloaded and the digestion deranged.
 

Thursday, July 21, 2011

In response to an email from Bridgette


From: “Bridgette”
To: “Staff”   Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2011 8:58 AM 

It is none of your business what others think about you....Just be the best YOU that You can be!!!  SMILES

------------------------------

From: "Steven Bassett"
To: "Bridgette " Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2011 10:35:55 AM
Subject: just a return thought

Not only is it none of my business, there is little I can do to confirm their changed opinion.

I had an electronics instructor who worked for Bill Lear, Bill is the creator of the "Lear Jet".  Bill loved to adjust the autopilot setting mid flight.  This really frightened his co-pilots.  One year for Christmas, his mechanics gave him a screwdriver with a ball bearing in the handle.
  1. Adjusting your autopilot mid-flight based on subjective criteria can only lead to disaster.  
  2. Autopilots need to be adjusted prior to takeoff based on objective trusted data.  
  3. Set you autopilot before the flight and trust it, and be the best you can be.

I wonder if we could or should hand people, a mythical screwdriver with ball bearings, or even a clutch, in the handle, when they attempt to adjust our autopilot in flight.
 
Just a thought.

Thursday, June 30, 2011

On playing in the orchestra

Over 25 years ago,  I played my last performance with an orchestra.  My orchestra experience's, like fine wine,  grown more valuable with age. 

I first played in sixth grade.  I choose the string bass because I could rent one for 12 dollars a year.  The was more affordable then rent for a violin or viola.  I was given a music aptitude test in fifth grade; I did not receive an invitation to join the orchestra.  In sixth grade an open invitation was extended for all to join.  


Grade School was a trying time for me.  In about 1st grade,  I stopped communicating with my peers.  I can remember sitting on the basement stairs of the school; feeling lonely and separated. To this day, I cannot step on the grade school grounds without a wave of strong emotions cascading over me.  

I was selected last to play most games.  I never learned to catch or throw a ball.  When I practiced my skills did not improve.  I kept my eye on the ball, but I still dropped it.  I shot a ball at the basket and nearly always missed.   I now understand my inability to catch was related to poor vision in one eye.  I have limited depth perception.  This inhibits my ability to determine how fast an object is coming towards me.

I lived in a self imposed invisible box.  Peer interactions baffled me.  I often found myself saying things at inappropriate times or in inappropriate places.  I missed many subtle clues.  With my peers I was socially impaired.  

I can remember being obsessed with patterns in the floor tiles.  In a 9 pattern square is it 5 blacks with four whites in the middle or is it four whites with 5 blacks on the outside.  If I bumped some part of my body, I need to touch the other side of my body to maintain balance.  I started eating sandwiches in 16 bites, four bits per row, sometimes even alternating the directions of the rows, to this day it remains an obsession with me.  If my body rests on something, I feel a compulsion to count the contacts and insure that they divisible by two.  

I related well with adults; there rules seamed easier to understand.  I felt acceptance in their world.   Part of this acceptance came from the fact I learned to read early and very well.  I was reading biographies in third grade and science fiction in fourth grade. 

I was a member of an orchestra for eight years; five of them were with one conductor.  Six of them were with the same core group of orchestra members.  Consistent social interactions with this group helped me learn to relate to my peers.  At times I ventured forth from my self imposed box. Many members of the orchestra overlooked my inappropriate responses and actions. The orchestra members gave me the courage to look beyond that box.  I felt the freedom to explore and to improve.  I learned the world was a good a safe place.    That I was loved for who I am and what I could accomplish.  These explorations become more frequent and lasted for greater periods of time as I learned to trust my interactions with my peers.  I look back fondly on those years.  These memories balance out the ones from grade school.  I will always cherish their friendships. My friends helped shape me into the man I am today.


Logan High School Symphony Orchestra 1983

By the way, that last concert was played as a member of the Weber State Symphony Orchestra.  I was attending Weber State on a full tuition scholarship.  I earned the scholarship while attending Utah All State Orchestra in my Senior Year at Logan High.  Not bad for a kid who failed his music aptitude test.     
 

Michael Card, source of our creativity


“Creativity does not truly come from the popularized image of the tormented artist, struggling with the muse.  True creativity is born in community as men and women of God listen to each other and to him; as we seek to understand each other’s woundedness  and strengths. 

Michael Card “Scribbling in the Sand”

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

"Cats in a Cradle", a childs response


"Underneath the Door."

Natalie Martin


My father was a doctor who would come home late at night
With a soul so bruised and bleeding from his unending faithful fight
To keep a hold of kindness in a world that isn't kind
To hold out the hope of healing to his hurting human kind

And he'd flee back to his study to his bookish, quiet place
With notes and books and journals to wall in his special space
And then He's lock the door on things that cannot be locked out
And his yongest son would starve for what he would always do without


But it was meant to make me who I am and for all these many years
Still the little boy down on his knees full of hope, and full of fear
Calling underneath the door, this is me, it's who I am
For we love the best by listening when we try to understand

Desperate, stuby fingers pushing pictures 'neath the door
And longing to be listened to by the man that I adored
Inside someone who needed me just as much as I did him
Still unable to unlock the door that stayed closed inside of him


And it's strange the way we tend to flee from what we need the most
That a father would lock out his son when his heart would hold him close
But out wounds are part of who we are and there is nothing left to chance
And pains the pen that writes the songs and they call us forth to dance


Michael Card on his live album

Friday, June 24, 2011

The nature of sin and its deliverance

However absurd the statement may appear to one 

who has not yet discovered the fact for himself,

the ....cause of every man's discomfort is evil,

moral evil—

first of all, evil in himself, ...
     his own sin,
          his own wrongness,
          his own unrightness;

and then,

evil in those he loves: ......

the only way to get rid of it, is for the man to get rid of his own sin.

No special sin may be recognizable as having caused this or that special physical discomfort ......

but evil in ourselves is the cause of its continuance,
the source of its necessity,
.......
Foolish is the man, 
     and there are many such men,
who would rid himself or his fellows of discomfort 
     by setting the world right, 
     by waging war on the evils around him, 
                   while he neglects that integral part of the world where lies his business, 
                   his first business—
                        namely, 
                        his own character and conduct. 
.......
There is no way of making three men right but by making right each one of the three; 
     but a cure in one man who repents and turns, 
     is a beginning of the cure of the whole human race.

……..

“The one cure for any organism, is to be set right —
to have all its parts brought into harmony with each other;
the one comfort is to know this cure in process.

Rightness alone is cure.  
The return of the organism to its true self,
is its only possible ease. …..”

(George Macdonald, Hope of the Gospel p. 3)

Monday, June 13, 2011

a new take Plato's "The Allegory of the Cave"

The Cave People

He came to the world that was his own, but his own people did not accept him.
John 1:11

LONG AGO, OR maybe not so long ago, there was a tribe in a dark, cold cavern.

The cave dwellers would huddle together and cry against the chill. Loud and long they wailed. It was all they did. It was all they knew to do. The sounds in the cave were mournful, but the people didn't know it, for they had never known joy. The spirit in the cave was death, but the people didn't know it, for they had never known life.

But then, one day, they heard a different voice. "I have heard your cries," it announced. "I have felt your chill and seen your darkness. I have come to help."

The cave people grew quiet. They had never heard this voice. Hope sounded strange to their ears.
"How can we know you have come to help?"

"Trust me," he answered. "I have what you need."

The cave people peered through the darkness at the figure of the stranger. He was stacking something, then stooping and stacking more.

"What are you doing?" one cried, nervous.
The stranger didn't answer.
"What are you making?" one shouted even louder.
Still no response.
"Tell us!" demanded a third.

The visitor stood and spoke in the direction of the voices. "I have what you need." With that he turned to the pile at his feet and lit it. Wood ignited, flames erupted, and light filled the cavern.
The cave people turned away in fear. "Put it out!" they cried. "It hurts to see it."
"Light always hurts before it helps," he answered. "Step closer. The pain will soon pass."

"Not I," declared a voice.
"Nor I," agreed a second.
"Only a fool would risk exposing his eyes to such light."

The stranger stood next to the fire. "Would you prefer the darkness? Would you prefer the cold? Don't consult your fears. Take a step of faith."

For a long time no one spoke. The people hovered in groups covering their eyes. The fire builder stood next to the fire. "It's warm here," he invited.

"He's right," one from behind him announced. "It's warmer." The stranger turned and saw a figure slowly stepping toward the fire. "I can open my eyes now," she proclaimed. "I can see."

"Come closer," invited the fire builder.

She did. She stepped into the ring of light. "It's so warm!" She extended her hands and sighed as her chill began to pass.

"Come, everyone! Feel the warmth," she invited.

"Silence, woman!" cried one of the cave dwellers. "Dare you lead us into your folly? Leave us. Leave us and take your light with you."

She turned to the stranger. "Why won't they come?"

"They choose the chill, for though it's cold, it's what they know. They'd rather be cold than change."

"And live in the dark?"

"And live in the dark."

The now-warm woman stood silent. Looking first at the dark, then at the man.

"Will you leave the fire?" he asked.

She paused, then answered, "I cannot. I cannot bear the cold." Then she spoke again. "But nor can I bear the thought of my people in darkness."

"You don't have to," he responded, reaching into the fire and removing a stick. "Carry this to your people. Tell them the light is here, and the light is warm. Tell them the light is for all who desire it."

And so she took the small flame and stepped into the shadows.

From A Gentle Thunder
Copyright (Thomas Nelson, 1995) Max Lucado

see also Archbishop Thomas Cranmers "Preface to the Great Bible"
http://www.bible-researcher.com/cranmer.html

Saturday, June 11, 2011

C.S. Lewis, on forgivess

But though natural likings should normally be encouraged, it would be quite wrong to think that the way to become charitable is to sit trying to manufacture affectionate feelings. Some people are 'cold' by temperament; that may be a misfortune for them, but it is no more a sin than having a bad digestion is a sin; and it does not cut them out from the chance, or excuse them from the duty, of learning charity. ……………………….

.....The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. ………………………..

Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor; ……….. …………………………………………………………….act as if you did.  .....

When you are behaving as if you loved someone, …………….. …………
.....................................……………………. you will presently come to love him. ....

If you injure someone you dislike, ……………
…………………………… you will find yourself disliking him more. ..........

If you do him a good turn, ……………
…………………………………you will find yourself disliking him less. ...........

….. There is, indeed, one exception. ……..

If you do him a good turn, ………………………………….…….
……………...…………….. not to please God and obey the law of charity,................
..............................................but to show him what a fine forgiving chap you are, ………… …………………...................and to put him in your debt, ….. …………
...............................………….and then sit down to wait for his 'gratitude', ………………
......................................................…………..you will probably be disappointed. …

....(People are not fools: they have a very quick eye for anything like showing off, or patronage.)...

......But whenever we do good to another self, just because it is a self, made (like us) by God, and desiring its own happiness as we desire ours, we shall have learned to love it a little more or, at least, to dislike it less.

(C.S. Lewis, Mere Chrisianity, Book 3, 7. )

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

on free will , or predestination

"Thus to his onely Son foreseeing spake.

Onely begotten Son, seest thou what rage [ 80 ]
Transports our adversarie, .....
............................whom no bounds
Prescrib'd, no barrs of Hell, ....
.............................nor all the chains
Heapt on him there, nor yet the main Abyss
Wide interrupt can hold; ...
.........................so bent he seems
On desparate reveng, that shall redound [ 85 ]
Upon his own rebellious head. ....
...............................And now
Through all restraint broke loose he wings his way
Not farr off Heav'n, in the Precincts of light,
Directly towards the new created World,

And Man there plac't, with purpose to assay [ 90 ]
If him by force he can destroy, or worse,
By some false guile pervert; ....
...............................and shall pervert
For man will heark'n to his glozing lyes,
And easily transgress the sole Command,
Sole pledge of his obedience: ......

...............................So will fall, [ 95 ]
Hee and his faithless Progenie:.....
................................ whose fault?
Whose but his own? ingrate, he had of mee
All he could have; ......
...................I made him just and right,
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.

Such I created all th' Ethereal Powers [ 100 ]
And Spirits, both them who stood and them who faild;

Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.

Not free, what proof could they have givn sincere
Of true allegiance, constant Faith or Love,

Where onely what they needs must do, appeard, [ 105 ]
Not what they would? ..........
.....................what praise could they receive?
What pleasure I from such obedience paid,"

(John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book III)

Friday, June 3, 2011

further thoughts on eternal damnation, a choice (see May 3, 2011 post)

That with reiterated crimes he might
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought
Evil to others, and enrag'd might see
How all his malice serv'd but to bring forth
Infinite goodness, grace and mercy shewn
On Man by him seduc't, but on himself
Treble confusion, wrath and vengeance pour'd.
(John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I, lines 214-220)