Guideline

In Volume 3 of these Pages we reviewed some of the teaching method of the peripatetic philosopher, Socrates – teaching while walking around.  Jesus held some parallels with Socrates.  We know Jesus could read – skilled to find what he wanted to recite in an age before chapters and verses were formed.  He did not write except for a few words or signs, perhaps doodles, in the sand, as prehistoric persons did on stones.  His teachings were taught to his students, called disciples and later Apostles, and church Fathers after, accounting for introduction of variants and emphases of the Jesus message of mankind and theology.  The history of Socratic teachings (humanistic) and Jesus teachings (theistic) becomes something of a light to moderns that we are aided in the search for life truth and sometimes misdirected as well.  We find our ways in our emotions, our personal orientations, our childhood influences, our driving inclinations, our sense of right and wrong (values), our perceptions of our talents and gifts, our physical experiences to the point of active formation to impact our life context.  What we become is likely less influenced by our conscious use of mental orientation than in the mystery of personhood that drives our emphases in life.  The teaching of Jesus made a vital emphasis missed in the secular philosophers, the place of faith in the comprehension of man and God that covers the mysteries.  While we contemplate the mysteries of who we are under God, and what is happening to us, God permits us to cut and go to the finish line in faith so to be comforted in faith that holy God will take us to blessed conclusion.  Christian faith offers a biblical hope.

What then should we be seeking and looking for?  We need to go as far as we can go in the understanding of life, of which intellectual progression plays an important part, but is only a part.  We need to adjust to our being competencies – personal, social, physical, emotional, spiritual, contextual, and whatever else there may be that makes every person a unique being, real to self, others and God.  With all our similarities with other human beings there appear differences that make each person an individual factor in the whole band of humankind.  It is this unique pattern that God uses to treat each person as an individual – as though the person is the only one to be considered for his attention.  Christianity focuses first on the individual, and then moves into the practical matter of living in a world of communities of individuals.  It needs to be understood that God (creator) is the only one in our universe who can treat adequately the one and the many.  Mankind can’t manage it so falls to warfare, crime, infection, abuse, jealousy, and the list grows long.  If we respected the individuality of God with mankind, and mankind with God, we would do significantly better in the multiple (social/personal) lives of families, communities, and cultures other than our own.

The whole of the human condition begins with the individual.  That individual does not have to have any greater intellectual or physical competence than any other person.  Before God all persons begin alone, asked of nothing more than is available to that individual, resting self in Christ, who represents God to every person.  In that context every person is free to self.  Humanism substitutes for the factors like freedom, but is conflicted in the inability to deliver on the ideals. We want to find personal rest that can be supported and fulfilled.  That rest is verified in obedience to the belief (faith) and conduct (righteous) consequences of the redemptive process.  The differentials offered to Adam varied from those given to Eve so accenting the individual.  This follows all along the way as with Abraham and Sarah, Joseph with his brothers, Ruth and Orpah with Naomi, even the individuality of the disciples with Jesus – a great range between John and Judas.  In Scripture, prayer, and in faithful Christian church and fellowship context we learn of God and service.  We also learn about ourselves and what we can become in life fulfillment.  The variety of proposals to find that rest seems almost endless.  Do we find it in meditation, in achievement, in aroma therapy, in altruism, even in humanistic religion?  If we follow Scripture and the confession of biblical Christians we find it in a unique faith identified most simply as Christ in you, the hope of glory.  We are given the indwelling Christ to maintain the reality of God, by spiritual action administered by the Holy Spirit, offering to the person spiritual life – forevermore. Scripture, prayer and faith practice mature that life.