God and Humanity

It is well that we remind ourselves from time to time that when we have outlined the broad factors (contexts) of anything we haven’t said the last word, or made all the contributions (with amendments) to better understanding and application of them.  We may need to meet with others to fill out the scenario, and to test our own thinking and models.  One purpose of these Pages is to introduce ideas, experiences, and concepts that we might share, so to flesh out factors of daily life through discussion and trial, with other searching persons.  Factors may be small, sometimes even appearing frivolous, when measured by the expanse of the context of life, but each person plays a part, sometimes a vital part even if small.  We are reminded in Scripture that it is the combination of the small things (elements) that make the big things (compounds) that gain the publicity and gain the attention for evaluation to praise or condemnation.  In general, we are more violated by the little foxes entering our lives through a small hole in the privacy fence of our lives than by the removal of the fences so providing openness, even risk, to larger experience.

We are slow to gain insight.  When asked the secret of winning and losing a baseball game, a manager rightly replied that nearly all games are won or lost on one or two plays in a lengthy game, or a small rally here, perhaps an error there.  About eight innings of a nine innings game can be well recited in advance.  It is one or two incidents related to the game that makes the difference between winning and losing in most of them.  The secret is to gain by flawless play, and benefit to advantage from errors in the opponent’s play.

Most complaints of children against parents relate to rather small things, and vice-verse.  Mom made me clean my room.  Dad never hugged me.  The kid mumbles, so I don’t talk to him.  She is so taken with a style of dress that I avoid her.  One young girl said to me in the presence of her parents, I prefer my horse to mom or dad because the horse doesn’t talk back to me.  These statements reveal that a great many little things were disregarded so that the parties were now seeking serious guidance for problems that were breaking love quotients and challenging family solidarity.  The attitudes, formed from many little things were so entrenched with some of the counselees that no solutions were accepted for resolution.

Let us jump to a massive consideration – human differences between secularists and theists that have sometimes led to warfare.  I acknowledge my faith as a Christian as the most important factor of my life.  My life is occupied with both private life (one), and that related to others (few or many).  My private life is related to God in the righteousness revealed for me to understand and apply as outlined in Scripture.  It is presumed that no other human being controls or exceeds that relationship.  (Matthew 10:37; Luke 14:26) (Other relationships are made more genuine and faithful because of the primacy of God for me.)  My social contacts are guided by the concepts of freedom (acceptance), good will (love), righteousness (rights to their benefit that include moral context), peace (non-threatening in any way), and cooperative (except in projections that violate primary moral concepts held in my personal faith as it is descriptive in Scripture).  This is summarized by Christ and Scripture as servanthood.  God holds the Christian to prescribed righteousness related to his graces, and to prove its genuineness by applying it socially in servanthood to others.  It is simply stated here, but in many ways difficult to live out because of both the claims of the nature of humanity (frailty/sin), and the resistance of the barriers of society in contexts created by the same human characteristics that pertain to private lives of individuals. We can’t win on our own. We need others. The humanist believing that nature includes all that relates to life and meaning is called upon in freedom to develop the effective social context that the Christian also wants to develop.  There is formed in the context of nature the same objectives for all persons.  So it is that the best representatives of humanism tend to argue for the same social conducts that Christians seek – except for the matter of personal relationship with God.  This is a major reason for the accent of Scripture that Christianity is first and most importantly recognized as a personal matter.  That vital perception makes the social differences between caring Christians and caring humanists narrower, but only God can join them to effectiveness in unity.