Daily pages of reflection...for knowledge, understanding, to wisdom
Section of The Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci Section of The Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci

Normality/Abnormality

June 4, 2019
Year 4, Day 155 | No Comments
Section of Noli me Tangere by Hans Holbein the Younger

There are varied ways to interpret and manage our lives.  The main ones are what we term in generality as natural and supernatural in some combination of concepts.  Some persons accept one and not the other, to the denial or disparagement of the other.  Even some religions do not include God, but advance high ethical context for life, even using substitutes for parallels with those persons holding faith in the divine – such as advocating meditation that incorporates amended characteristics of prayer and worship.  Some simple faiths are built on a reverse philosophy so to attract worship of spirits that may be identified as evil.  The logic for these persons hold that God is good so will not hurt us… Read more

Words, Words, Words

June 3, 2019
Year 4, Day 154 | No Comments
Section of Adoration of the Magi, artist unknown

Among serious influences for young lives, for good or ill, is youth itself.  Youths yearn to be adults, so not to be responsible to another adult in a family.  This is so to be one’s own person.  In this fuzzy shove and pull of the teen-aged person there is considerable play acting.  This may be done in experimentations, in dallying with sex, smoking a few cigarettes or joints, in driving dad’s car down the driveway, or even on the street, and so the story goes and grows  One of the factors in the scenarios is language.  The four letter words are used as one of the first evidences that the child is trying to break out of childhood into the… Read more

Love Invisible

June 2, 2019
Year 4, Day 153 | No Comments
Section of Noli me Tangere by Hans Holbein the Younger

Love is the number one desire in all human cultures.  In love’s many layers and boundaries we find out who we are, our best motivations, and ongoing energy for survival, hope, care, sacrifice and life to death.  Those living in love have a significantly different life than those who diminish its meaning for both the good life and the balanced person he or she ought to become in the biblical pattern ordered of God.  The accent of the Apostle John, both in the Gospel and a letter bearing his name, carries the meaning of love and relate love, even human love, in the context of God’s love.  It is through love that the Apostle makes the case for the place… Read more

Personal Ministry

June 1, 2019
Year 4, Day 152 | No Comments

Erasmus had great influence upon the religious world of his time and after, especially through his classic writing, In Praise of Folly.  Why did Erasmus take his direction, and Luther take another to achieve similar purpose?  Erasmus was cultivated through the ideas and mentoring of John Colet so decided to take the route of the intellectual rather than the activist.  Luther chose activism.  Luther was inspired by the Apostle Paul, as the Apostle was perceived through Augustine.  Erasmus was inspired by the Apostle Paul and Jerome – through Colet.  The prism of a mentor can mean a wide difference in results, even in relating to the Apostle Paul and his ideas.  (A modern illustration is found in the liberal viewpoint… Read more

Compound Knowledge

May 30, 2019
Year 4, Day 150 | No Comments
Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

On this day, during the four years of days for these Pages, the accent has been on knowledge (natural and supernatural); on learning (experience and intellect/emotion); and, education (formal and informal).  Included in this mix are references to the enemies (with special interest in skepticism) of the processes of the intellectual and conduct development of persons.  It is assumed that the vast majority of persons have some interest in Solomon’s equation of wisdom: knowledge (truth), understanding (application), leading to wisdom (context for life and problem solving).  Education for the humanist accents nature as sovereign guide, so moves along with demonstrable facts.  Education for the Christian accepts and communicates the facts of nature, but adds the dimension of faith in God,… Read more

Human Morality

May 29, 2019
Year 4, Day 149 | No Comments
Section of Noli me Tangere by Hans Holbein the Younger

Even humanist analysts deplore the conduct of mankind.  Michael Lewis wrote of it in his book: Flash Boys.  Philip Broughton referred to it in his review about: The New Barbarians. And wrote that their lies [are] nostalgia for a . . . Wall Street of trust and plain dealing, which is a total mirage.  In The Interrogator: An Education, Glenn L. Carle told the story of the coercive methods of interrogation used by the American authorities in trying to extract information from suspected terrorists.  They even covered evidence of the process, and tried to shame persons objecting to torture systems.  Gordon Mathews in his: Ghetto at the Center of the World, reviewed the way, low-end globalists eke out profits from… Read more

Suffering

May 28, 2019
Year 4, Day 148 | No Comments
Section of The Infant Jesus and St. John the Baptist, Guido Reni, n.d.

During my more than seventy years of experience related to Christian ministry and human life interests – those taken and understood in Christian context, there have been questions raised, brought forward and faded while others arose to take their place.  They keep coming back.  There were many questions in earlier years about poverty and God during the years of the Great Depression, of warfare and brutality in the 1940s, of family decay and the rise of power brokers, of the decline in wholesomeness in life and culture, in decades following – and the list grows long.  There has been some repetitive concern about suffering in persons, families, cultures and the world – suffering from anything – from terrorism on various… Read more

Christianity’s Trinity

May 27, 2019
Year 4, Day 147 | No Comments
Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

There are two large contexts in which we may experience Christian life.  The first is basically understood in the context of what we may identify as the child (immature) Christian, and the other as the adult (maturing) Christian.  The first must precede the second: the second grows from the first.  The first relates to the fundamentals (irreducible requirements) for God’s acceptance of the penitent without denying himself in the perfect mercy and love of God.  Jesus hints of this status in his remarks to Nicodemus: that persons gaining acceptance with God must be born again.  Nicodemus pursues the matter so to understand it, and discovers that Jesus is using the human experience and applying it to the spiritual so to… Read more

Memorials

May 26, 2019
Year 4, Day 146 | No Comments
Section of The Taking of Christ, Caravaggio, 1602

This date in our annual series continues accents on memorials for improved conduct.  The meaning of memorials is to remember something good for mankind in general; identified with a person or persons, a movement, a sacrifice, an ideal, an event, and meant to retain memory for the context to stimulate future human performance for sacrifice, progress, growth, and affirmation of ideals in areas represented in the memorials.  The greatest memorial related to the history of mankind to a person is the physical church, a living memorial to the meaning of Jesus Christ whose ministry of a thousand days is now recalled for human thought, faith and conduct. It is an institution that is verified in both membership and attendees by… Read more

Imperfection

May 25, 2019
Year 4, Day 145 | No Comments
Section of The Crucifixion, Pedro Orrente, ca. 1625–30

That human beings are imperfect is admitted and obvious.  If we could only leave it at that admission we might proceed in life with an acceptable humility, mutual understanding so to adapt appropriately, and get on with search for the good life.  In Christian theology this imperfection is known as depravity (a condition of human nature identified as sin) which denies free access to God without a prescribed intercession (a spiritual advocate for the defense and an acceptance by God of an adequate penalty paid).  Guilty mankind, unable to be both the guilty party and incompetent to meet the evaluation of the court of God, must rely on the compassion of the judge met in the empathy of Christ’s offering…. Read more

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