Godding

April 4, 2018

Year 3, Day 94 | No Comments

Section of Noli me Tangere by Hans Holbein the Younger

By godding I mean the individual plays god to self and others. (Note other Pages for this date.) We assume that virtually everyone has a god of sorts, an authority influence that seems greater than oneself. Perhaps the secular scientist is consistent in honoring nature to the extent that nature (conscience) becomes god. One tends to give honor to that thing which seems greater than the individual and holds the final truth/judgment even to guide what is done in life course. Nature (especially the Sun) has been a god of the past, and is often perceived as superstition, unrelated to personality. It appears in uncontrollable forms. There is pseudo-worship. We find it in various ways. Common ones relate to beauty,… Read more

Value Rationalizations

April 1, 2018

Year 3, Day 91 | No Comments

Section of Adoration of the Magi, artist unknown

It is common to read about hypocrisy in nearly any human activity, but the embarrassment is particularly heavy on religious persons and their institutions. With the orientations of the humanist, the naturalist, the neutralist, if they are sincere in their beliefs about God, the hypocrisy of religious folks should not be quite as accented as it is made to be by the media. But it is made important, and the stories, sometimes lurid and sometimes sad, can appear for weeks, long after other more important news for the public has faded. The stories of hypocrites do not offer support or denial for faith based persons. No group should accept evaluation of its meaning and value based on hypocritical conduct. If… Read more

Life

March 26, 2018

Year 3, Day 85 | No Comments

Section of The Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci

In semi-retirement, I continued some of the context of what I had done professionally, some in emeritus roles but with new added factors. I was part of business interests with others, including a period of interim ministries at churches with building and expansion interests that involved a church construction company. In addition I launched several writing projects and remain as busy as ever without institutional obligations. I am in the tenth decade of my life, and when engaged in both spiritual and professional interests related to secular and spiritual contexts in churches and colleges, I found that those interests contributed to my life and health in such a way that I have no doubt that my lengthened years are related… Read more

World Christians

March 15, 2018

Year 3, Day 74 | No Comments

One of the reasons God designed a faith context for human-beings, may have been that the large physical/spiritual context for mankind is too complex for us to understand fully, and well beyond mortal ability to confine it to many languages/cultures. I have long believed this to be true, but it accented even further my belief in reading the annual letter of Ken Myers, sent to the subscribers of his Mars Hill Audio at Christmas, 2013. The Mars Hill interviews and written materials are excellent, addressing a large variety of themes of interest to Christian listeners and readers. My alert is that they may be too sophisticated for general readers. This observation applies for much of the literature that addresses vital… Read more

Seeking in Mystery

March 7, 2018

Year 3, Day 66 | No Comments

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

We wrestle endlessly with the mysteries of human life and nature. Why would we not also wrestle with concepts and realities of spiritual life? Human life and the environment of nature offer some evidence that is verifiable about life and meaning. We honor it partly because it is inherently verifiable, providing confidence, in our perceptions of the laws of nature, education for future benefit. Even so, there remains considerable natural mystery. Spiritual life introduces a different context, beyond physical and natural evidence so to be approached differently, grasped in a different context of knowing. It is helpful to us in the process to give some attention to philosophy related to humankind. Philosophy is the theology (incorporating concepts beyond nature) of… Read more

God Communicates

February 22, 2018

Year 3, Day 53 | No Comments

Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

I have been through four sets of hearing aids during the last decades with varied results. My problems are mixed in with my spirit in that the devices have been partly successful but troublesome in matters like high cost, phone conversations, and noisy contexts. They have been costly, and in my view should have been more durable. Some of the problems have been my own in that I have put those aids in places where they were damaged so that two (one of each of two pairs) I have purchased over the years were crushed in my neglect. The first pair simply quit after a couple of years and I was sold a new pair that needed rather early repair,… Read more

One and Many

February 21, 2018

Year 3, Day 52 | No Comments

Section of The Taking of Christ, Caravaggio, 1602

Do some persons of Christian faith make wrong statements about nature, science focus, and practical education? They surely do. They may even make extraordinary statements about faith that embarrass persons of more careful (biblically interpreted) faith. The only comfort one may find in this is that some persons of non-faith make similar statements about their own beliefs, perhaps adding in misunderstandings about faith-based contexts. Errors and prejudices appear to belong to all persons, with greater or lesser emphases on this or that factor in the mix. We ought to use proper means to lessen the distortions, but as a child follows dangerous conduct on occasion, rightly addressed by parents, who achieve uneven results in their efforts – so will societies… Read more

Rationalizations

February 18, 2018

Year 3, Day 49 | No Comments

There is strong motivation among Christians engaged in education and research projects to make the Christian belief in God as rational as possible. There is a strong underlying feeling among intellectuals drawn to the support of physical evidence for the establishment of truth credentials that whatever is true can, sooner or later, meet the requirements of the human mind to verify itself. This is presupposition that is imposed on Christians by secular society, even in theistic society for nature. If achieved it is presumed that there would be more persons numbered in the Christian context of society than there appears to be – even though believers represent a massive number of world citizens. The actual number would relate to definition… Read more

Faith Partners

February 4, 2018

Year 3, Day 35 | No Comments

Faith continues as our theme for this date, with the sub-theme of the problem of faith in a natural world that is unfriendly to presumed blind faith. Any faith not founded on a creative constitution is blind. In this context, faith is blinded by demands of nature in the human experience. Christian faith is not blind, nor is it a guarantee that all is well, or expected to be, in the natural environment. In a book review, Sam Sacks quoted from the short stories of Don DeLillo about the dangers of earth. For DeLillo, astronauts are looking out of the hatch of their spaceship in outer space at the end of World War III. Horrorstruck, one says to the other… Read more

Know Thyself

February 3, 2018

Year 3, Day 34 | No Comments

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

The statement of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians is reflective of several factors that pertain to anyone among his readers – humility, imperfection, ignorance, and mystery in addition to the implications about the nature of God to supply whatever is needed and missing in Christian life. Our attention here will relate to the mystery of affirmation. Christians are called to the ministry of affirmation, and even that has a mystery that we can perceive only in part. There may be Christians called to the public place to battle for faith, God, righteousness, and their inclusions, as observed in John the Baptist or the Apostle Paul, but the vast number of persons are to live a peaceful life of affirmation… Read more

Category Archive: Faith