Mystery

October 26, 2018

Year 3, Day 299 | No Comments

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

The most ordinary person is visited with mystery, both natural and supernatural. Many pass by the supernatural by simply dropping off the concept of anything personal in the divine, or simply ignore its exploration. Others take it on, even if denial threatens them in the engagement. On the human side, the factor seems to visit many human beings, and becomes a gift or a curse as the individual may manage it. This becomes clear to readers of biography. How in the world could some of the experiences happen? Why do some persons manage the ups and downs, the occurrences and tensions, the insecurities and the rewards? The way to dreams, for many persons, is paved with barbed wire, high barriers,… Read more

Beginning Again

October 24, 2018

Year 3, Day 297 | No Comments

It is clear from Scripture that there was tension between faith and science contexts long before modern scientific theories and consequent conclusions became central in the pursuit of knowledge. Sophisticated ancients tended to believe in both special mankind and divine gods. The gods were somewhat humanized except for their miracle-working powers. Gods were formed like nature-persons rather than mankind striving to be like god-persons. God-related messages were formed from the idealism of leaders, but the concept of revelation informing mankind of what God is like emerged with the patriarchs of Israel, and given form on first written revelation in the work of Moses. Revelation replaced tradition for authority. God appears to have managed the changes well. (Acts 17:30) The growth… Read more

Paradise

October 11, 2018

Year 3, Day 284 | No Comments

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

In science the dominating biological concept of mankind, at this point in history, is that we have evolved from simple life to complex over a span of millions of years. A basic presumption in the process is that it is unguided except for whatever influences grew out of a big bang that set the process into action and provided whatever potential would survive to develop the resources. That the process could develop without a guiding intelligence, related to God, is unattractive for me to believe. The meaning of mankind in sight, hearing, feeling, smelling, believing, reflecting, and reproducing in kind is beyond any current evidence related to the large or small forces of neuter nature. The concepts of God or… Read more

Space Mystery

September 22, 2018

Year 3, Day 265 | No Comments

Section of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Benedetto Luti, 1715-20

We return to the theme of space, galaxies, supernova, dark energy, time – and theories. Theories vary widely in some contexts, until emerging evidence moves them in proper directions. About the time there is agreement, new evidence replaces old evidence. The old remains in some way, but newly discovered evidence move circumstances along in another function or meaning. For some decades it was felt that the expanding universe was slowing down. Further, the supply of matter thins out. Like a balloon, the universe can take only so much expansion and the usable air is lost, perhaps by explosion or contamination. The newer telescopes, developed in my lifetime, are informing the scholars that instead of slowing down, or even holding, the… Read more

Prayer Logic

September 15, 2018

Year 3, Day 258 | No Comments

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

We are almost always at our best in the way we feel about ourselves when we contribute to the context of mature life and experience. Persons who provide for themselves in this or that factor feel better about circumstances and the matter at hand than those who learn to work a system in which their only contribution is to wangle a privilege, or a product, or a position. My son and his wife owned a four-unit building in which I lived. The negative in the ownership was that, from time to time, a renter did not pay the rent, at first late, then dropping back a month, then two months. Ultimately they were asked to move. The cost of their… Read more

Future Assumptions

September 14, 2018

Year 3, Day 257 | No Comments

Section of The Descent from the Cross, Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435

For years I have given considerable time to analyzing substantive newspapers, magazines, and other communications for faith meaning. For this page I will limit notes from mostly one day’s source, but concepts might be easily traced in current materials published by respected authors/publishers/analysts. On Monday, December 9, 2013, I went through the Sunday paper of the day before – then repeated the venture. It would be impossible to cover everything on one Page, but I launch. Article #1: Singing the Sunday Blues. Once the day of rest, Sunday has devolved into a day of stress. Article #2: Mental Illness: Want to talk about it? The anti-stigma movement has married itself to a drug-industry script that mental illnesses are diseases like… Read more

Cynical Religion

September 11, 2018

Year 3, Day 254 | No Comments

There are many genuine skeptics in the world. A healthy dimension of skepticism is good in a wise person. Skeptic, like so many words in language, has so many nuances of meaning that we tend to believe that connotation and denotation that fit our preset contextual meaning for it. The matter of interpretation may be helped or hindered by our constructions of various ephemeral factors in our experience. Prejudice, which is unsupported belief, without adequate reason, plays a part. The matter of context, when it is badly formed in us, can become ugly. The stronger we feel about our ideas the greater is the danger of attaching pride to them, rather than humility, so to distort truth. Students, even scholars,… Read more

Church and Style

September 5, 2018

Year 3, Day 248 | No Comments

Section of Adoration of the Magi, artist unknown

It is clear from Scripture that the institutional church is to serve as a center for Christian ministry. That ministry is broad in its assignments that include evangelism and worship as primary factors. Whatever advances those factors in the context of biblical instructions, ought to be engaged as church meaning. In that meaning style becomes an important factor. In acceptable styles the church is to function actively to cultivate growth in the number of persons accepting the redemptive personal gospel of Jesus Christ. In this gospel the necessary order for the acceptance of any human being is advanced through penitence and faith related to the forgiveness of God by which the individual is justified by God and accepted to immortality. … Read more

Meekness

August 31, 2018

Year 3, Day 243 | No Comments

Section of Noli me Tangere by Hans Holbein the Younger

To be persons of understanding we need to have a fair and honest share of acceptance, patience and humility that point to openness strong enough to hold convictions and life directions while honestly offering goodwill to those in opposition to our beliefs and actions. This pattern is well illustrated in Moses, straightforward with Pharaoh, in a civil exchange, and waiting out the program of God that would free the people. Moses, brought up in a royal household, never lost the fact he was a son of Israel. At an appropriate time he wanted to address the matter of the slavery and suffering of his first people. He did what he set out to do gaining support even of lay Egyptians…. Read more

Good Life/Good Death

August 17, 2018

Year 3, Day 229 | No Comments

On Sunday, April 27, 2014, the highly regarded TV program, Sunday Morning, declared a special edition of the secular program with the theme of Life and Death. As a secular program it was presumed to be a special approach in public media, incorporating advertisements of secular business, which focused on the multi-cultural society, to discuss life ending with death, a program that would invariably make reference to God. It would certainly involve claims of overlap between the natural and the supernatural – denials and affirmations, on doubts and probabilities. I reviewed the last half of the program to which the following paragraphs relate, but believe it catches the meaning the program meant to convey. During the first half of the… Read more

Category Archive: Faith