Culture Of Youth

May 31, 2018

Year 3, Day 151 | No Comments

Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

We remember that orientation and context are vital to focusing on meaning, motives, understanding and conduct in life. There are, for each of us, special nuances that press in on our thoughts, our conducts, convictions and procedures. These nuances may force interpretations. For example, a former special student, of more than fifty years ago, with whom I exchange ideas and mutual interests in faith, culture and discussion, raised the matter of equality of women with me. She wondered if one of my statements implied that the growth in the equality of women in society was negative – when I noted the decline in the male percentages in education and leadership. I felt no negative implication about women, and I am… Read more

Compound Knowledge

May 30, 2018

Year 3, Day 150 | No Comments

Section of The Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci

The mark of the firm scientific person is to live and believe by verifiable evidence, holding a healthy skepticism about life meaning. Healthy skepticism creates motivation for further investigation, and gives the seeker an appropriate humility in what he/she communicates. The skepticism about all else is not always held in healthy context, but that issue is for another Page. We stay for now seeking right and constructive context for all persons. The point, to live by the evidence, suggests sound evaluation criteria, offering objectivity and fairness, providing margins to contain the results of the search for truth as base for progress in investigating the material world. All implications are that truth (reality) is salutary to life. The strength/weakness in the… Read more

Depravity and Sin

May 29, 2018

Year 3, Day 149 | No Comments

Section of Christ and the Adulteress, Lucas Cranach the Younger and Workshop, ca. 1545–50

It is difficult to use nature’s evidence to prove depravity as a universal concept relative to mankind, and rather easy to prove that persons humanly sin in the course of their lives. Even in this agreement we like to believe there are mild sins (venial, perhaps seen as faults, or even, on special occasions a benefit) that are or can be acknowledged but are rather easily forgivable and probably exact penalty during an individual’s natural lifetime. Important is the concept of venial sins in the Catholic Church, some of which are presumably met in purgatory from which the guilty person may be moved along in prayer to forgiveness and final preparation for heaven. Mortal sins are seen as severe to… Read more

Divine Mysteries

May 28, 2018

Year 3, Day 148 | No Comments

Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

For illness and health, there are false representations as there are for nearly everything else with which we have to do. There are false problems, false cures, even real problems confounded or cured by false or contradicting procedures. Medical research often includes placebos in testing the efficacy of whatever medication they are trying to prove effective for purpose. These are sometimes called sugar pills (placebos), even when they may have no sweetener in them. The researcher is aware that a percentage of his research subjects will do just as well, and sometimes better, with a medication that means nothing to the disease that is under study related to the sample participants. Laypersons may be less perplexed by all this than… Read more

Secularization

May 27, 2018

Year 3, Day 147 | No Comments

Section of Adoration of the Magi, artist unknown

There is strong belief, in the new millennium beginning the twenty first century, that the peoples of the world, the nations, are more and more turning to secularism. The reasons for the humanistic growth are many, as recited in numerous publications, including S.J.D. Green’s book on: The Passing of Protestant England. Green makes references to the United States and other countries, both in reviewing large negative movements and unexplained exceptions to negative forces impacting the Church. Dallas, Texas is an illustration of offering negative forces, like distracting leisure entertainments (secular/humanistic), but is seen as a force for Christian evangelicalism (spiritual/theistic). The reasons run through a list from boredom with the church, to the victory of the youth culture, to the… Read more

Memorials

May 26, 2018

Year 3, Day 146 | No Comments

Section of The Taking of Christ, Caravaggio, 1602

This is being written during the days that the world is mourning the death of Nelson Mandela, the man said to be most responsible for breaking apartheid in South Africa. Apartheid imposed by the Caucasian race that had made the nation into a double standard society through law that denied freedom and equality to the black race, persons who were in majority. The consequence was that the white citizens controlled the government, owned the best lands, and directed the economy. The black race in Africa holds the memory of Mandela as the greatest of heroes, and will be remembered in their history as Washington and Lincoln are remembered in the American context. He is deserving of the honors afforded him… Read more

Atheism/Agnosticism

May 25, 2018

Year 3, Day 145 | No Comments

Unbelief and ignorance are ancient, but they continue in modern contexts. Belief and knowledge are ancient, not modern, but they continue in modern contexts. They all function in the contexts mankind creates, prefers, inherits, and seeks to cultivate in current generations. It is clear that whatever we seek in our own context we feel we create or find. We tend to interpret our lives in the ways we prefer, without stern objectivity, and then move into the future with the baggage we take on. We may simply follow our feelings, from the way we comb our hair, to the sexual orientation we follow, to the management of mystery – and the list extends to everything affecting our lives. When the… Read more

Different World

May 24, 2018

Year 3, Day 144 | No Comments

Human beings change. God does not. There is a simple logic to the differential. Mankind is imperfect and knows it, so searches for ways to better the human situation, sometimes addressing the condition but inadequately. This effort presumes change. The imperfection of the human race means that even in the desire for a rising slope to improved persons and contexts the changes will sometimes be beneficial and sometimes detrimental. Desire for improvement provides no assurance of it. Some theorists believed that it could be done during the late nineteenth century, but the horrors of the problems of the twentieth century ended the hope. It seems impossible to gain adequacy for steady improvement without aid from some intelligence outside nature’s orbit…. Read more

Buildings

May 23, 2018

Year 3, Day 143 | No Comments

Section of Noli me Tangere by Hans Holbein the Younger

We must learn and remember that the structures we build have influence in our lives, sometimes decisive influence. They represent us, our thoughts and values, our wealth and poverty, our perceptions and art, our everyday confidence in our life existence and purpose. We are informed that the peasantry of the middle ages was lifted by the massive cathedrals, their beauty, sense of heaven, the lift of color in the windows, the suggestion of equality among the people who worshipped there. From the ruins of old buildings, the archaeologists reconstruct lives of people who lived there centuries ago. Athens and Rome gained something of an advanced society with its structures – as on the Acropolis. We can almost see the perceptive… Read more

Who Is Left

May 22, 2018

Year 3, Day 142 | No Comments

After decades as a student of Scripture, accented since my retirement from active public ministry, I have sometimes privately disagreed with the interpretation of the text by the good minister of the morning at the church I attended. One of the passages, Hebrews 4:12, I addressed in the first volume of Pages. There are others, both in text and theology. For example, several ministers have asserted that without the message of redemption in Christ the Christian has nothing to say to the world. That is a large issue in that I believe strongly in common grace and divine grace. If one does not want to hear the redemptive message, there is common grace remaining. Alone, mankind seems unable to solve… Read more

Monthly Archives: May 2018