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

Morality vs Morality

October 7, 2018
Year 3, Day 280 | No Comments
Section of Adoration of the Magi, artist unknown

We are often faced with the choice of this morality or that.  Some of our decisions will be identified as moral for one group and immoral for another.  I presume that a Christian going to war in defense of country and family, sent to the front, and demonstrating skill in gunnery, kills soldiers in the army of the reputed enemy.  He or she is not perceived as being a murderer, so is accepted of God and honored by buddies and country.  For me to kill another person would be an immoral act, but may be a private decision in violation of the meaning of government and citizenship.  There is paradox or contradiction related to the matter and I must be… Read more

Life Patterns

October 6, 2018
Year 3, Day 279 | No Comments
Section of The Taking of Christ, Caravaggio, 1602

Issues of human tragedy represent common patterns mankind faces daily.  We may not form adequate perspective on the larger context pressing on society.  Life includes more extensive tragedies than the immediate dramatic ones.  We tend to lose perspective.  The witch trials of the American colonists are turned into great evidence for anti-religion.  The affected few were badly treated, but the rage was not extensive,  The good people who mismanaged the whole context apologized and made clear the biblical direction they wanted to follow.  In a month or so the good people of society kill as many Americans on the highways as were lost at Ground Zero in 2001.  Grief and cost are much greater for those who live tenacious daily… Read more

Odd Of God

October 5, 2018
Year 3, Day 278 | No Comments
Section of The Descent from the Cross, Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1435

In thinking about God and the creation, incorporating mankind, we wrestle with thoughts about God related to the way life matters have emerged for us.  Beginning this line of thought long ago, I tended to find excuses for God.  Scripture makes it clear that he doesn’t need any excuses, and he doesn’t slink away from taking responsibility.  This last eases the burden of theology, but adds problems for the person trying to put God in the best light that human beings can design for him.  In the oddities of man’s contexts for life and thought, we find paradoxes and contradictions.  (This frustration is often referred to in these Pages.) Why, in the planning of God, would he choose a people… Read more

Future And Change

October 4, 2018
Year 3, Day 277 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Adulteress, Lucas Cranach the Younger and Workshop, ca. 1545–50

My life has spanned what may be identified as a revolution in cultural context.  It has been uncomfortable and limited, but a revolution nonetheless, and must be both understood and adapted to if the individual is to be at peace and successful in the world of personal/social culture: life (person/family/relationships) work (occupation/funding), society (government/groups) and change (adaptation/education) forming contexts. My own life has spanned contexts that were not greatly progressed from that which the poor in George Washington’s day might experience.  Even so we thought we were modern. Modernization tends to arrive in increments throughout history.  Time periods for the increments grow shorter and the population growth spreads fresh additions into wider swaths of influence.  The start-up period took centuries… Read more

Spiritual Genetics

October 3, 2018
Year 3, Day 276 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, Benedetto Luti, 1715-20

There must never be lost in Christian theology that all persons must resolve the imperfection in the human self that creates a barrier between the individual person and God.  That imperfection is identified as depravity and found in human nature that creates separation between the person and God.  Depravity does not mean the person will certainly be bad, but that a condition exists between every individual and God that must be addressed if he or she is to gain personal spiritual relationship with God that gains acceptance into the family of God.  Depravity creates a drive in the individual that may be so severe that he or she will think and/or act in ways that are offensive to greater or… Read more

Ending To Begin

October 2, 2018
Year 3, Day 275 | No Comments

The motto of a class of mine was: We End to Begin.  The concept was that the experience of graduation was an ending, but also a beginning of a new context of life for the students.  Under God, the end of the present earth is to begin a new earth.  It is likely that most persons have not tangled with the mystery.  I would not remark on it, if it were not introduced in Scripture.  It appears that God will not be thwarted from his original plan, to have a perfect earth.  What God had in mind in the arrival of the first Adam/Eve, by whatever process he used to get them to the Garden, that purpose will be achieved… Read more

Nations And Greatness

October 1, 2018
Year 3, Day 274 | No Comments
Section of Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michaelangelo, 1508-1512

We return on this date to an important factor of life – citizenship.  I am a citizen of the United States of America.  I live in Minnesota, but have lived in states from coast to coast, from north to south.  I feel I have a fair knowledge of the differences in Americans relative to culture, attitudes, and the various factors that define daily life.  There are differences.  I was born in Akron, Ohio. I met my wife in New York, during college days.  Our first date was in Carnegie Hall on 57th Street in New York City.  Although we were engaged in New York, I slipped the engagement ring on her finger in Omaha, when I picked her up at… Read more

Saints And Sinners

September 30, 2018
Year 3, Day 273 | No Comments
Section of Christ and the Adulteress, Lucas Cranach the Younger and Workshop, ca. 1545–50

Mankind is interested, significantly, in status.  Status can be used to advantage or disadvantage as persons and society choose.  The Untouchables of India have had a much harder row to hoe than the ordinary citizen, and an impossible one related to the Brahman class.  As the president of a college I hired as a professor a scientist with a documented doctoral degree, a man originally from India.  When he earned his graduation, he had to sit separately from the general audience, was called and received his degree, and returned to his seat outside the main body, and walked home barefoot in the mud.  He had overcome to become a highly respected member of our faculty, and after our move to… Read more

Continuity

September 29, 2018
Year 3, Day 272 | No Comments
Section of Noli me Tangere by Hans Holbein the Younger

Persons ought to have a collection of habits that characterize their lives.  In the present society there are so many persons dominated by bad habits that we have begun to give, perhaps have already given, the word habit a bad connotation, even bad denotation.  The problem may be ancient.  In both 2 Thessalonians 3:6 (idle habits) and 2 Peter 2:7 (dissolute habits) in the New English Bible, the word is used in negative context.  The King James translates the word as disorderly in the first instance and filthy conversation in the second.  From the various words used in relevant passages the negative concept holds that the reference is to that related to unsatisfactory and repeated behavior.  Translations appear to prefer… Read more

Friendship

September 28, 2018
Year 3, Day 271 | No Comments
Section of Noli me Tangere by Hans Holbein the Younger

I just received a letter and a notification from the eldest son of a friend informing me of the death of my friend a few days ago.  I had received a Christmas letter from Mel a week or so before he died, and I sensed that he was in serious concern about his health.  He had not told me about his bout with prostate cancer in earlier letters.  The only time he ever revealed any serious concern about health was when I saw him several years ago during a professional stopover when I was in Phoenix, where he lived.  He was then recovering from a medical procedure which kept manifesting itself in some dysfunction, but he insisted that he was… Read more

← Newer posts
Older posts →