Think for yourself

THE LITTLE MONK: But I would mention other reasons. Let me speak for a moment of myself. I grew up as a son of peasants in the Campagna. They were simple people. They knew all about olive-tress, but very little else. While observing the phases of Venus, I can see my parents, sitting by the hearth with my sister, eating their cheese[…] They are no rich but in their misfortune there lies concealed a certain invisible order of things[…] They call up the strength to sweat up the stony paths with their baskets, to bear children, yes, even to eat, from the feeling of continuity and necessity which is given them by the sight of die soil, of the trees springing with new green foliage every year, of the little church, and by listening every Sunday to the Bible texts[…] What would my people say if they learned from me that they were really on a little bit of rock that ceaselessly revolves in empty space round another star, one among very many, a comparatively unimportant one?[…] So do you understand that in that decree of the Holy Congregation I perceive true maternal compassion, great goodness of soul?

GALILEO: Goodness of soul! What you probably mean is there’s nothing there, the wine’s drunk up, their lips are parched, so let them kiss the cassock! And why is nothing there? Why is the orderliness in this country merely the order of an empty cupboard, and the necessity merely that of working oneself to death? Among bursting vineyards, beside the ripening cornfields! Your Campagna peasants are paying for the wars which the representative of gentle Jesus is waging in Spain and Germany. Why does he put the earth at the hub of the universe? So that the throne of Saint Peter can stand at the hub of the earth. That’s why! You are right: it’s nothing to do with the planets, it’s to do with the peasants in the Campagna.

I encourage anyone to read this marvellous play: Life of Galileo, by Bertolt Brecht. You can read a shortest version here: http://www.vidyaonline.org/arvindgupta/lifeofgalileo.pdf. I have recently come across Part 7, entitled: A Conversation (you can read a small section in this message). It’s worth reading. It addresses some of the questions that I have made myself more than once. And the conclusion of Galileo sounds about right to me: if you don’t care about the truth, others will. Thinking for yourself, tiring and dangerous as it might be, at least allows you to decide what kind of life you want to live, instead of living the life other people expect you to. Some people say: blindness is bliss, or faith is blind and ignorance is bliss. I suspect that all those who invent these sentences are not as blind and ignorant as they proclaim we all should be.

Christian suggestion

There are many leaders in the world today that use this very method to manipulate our thoughts and actions. Watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7s6yklp80Q

We are gullible and easy to cheat. We need to learn to think for ourselves and question the authority figures that control our lives. Socrates said once: 'An unexamined life is not worth living'. This is self-evident since you are not really living your own life as long as you are being manipulated.

There is one thing that should characterize Christianity: the capacity of believers to think and analyze for themselves the different statements and affirmations that are being proclaimed. Jesus never said: 'Follow me, but leave your brain at home'.

The humans are dead

You need to see this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGoi1MSGu64

Really good!

Random coincidences

Amid the action and reaction of so dense a swarm of humanity, every possible combination of events may be expected to take place, and many a little problem will be presented which may be striking and bizarre

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle

It is the law of the large numbers.

It is ironic that the very existence of random possibilities in the complex world in which we live may provide one of the basis for the prayer life of many religious people. It is ironic considering the war that many christians have against the existence of such random events.

Acceptance

Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: 'You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later; do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!'. If that happens to us, we experience grace. We may not be better than before, and we may not believe more than before. But everything is transformed. In that moment, grace conquers sin, and reconciliation bridges the gulf of estrangement. And nothing is demanded of this experience, no religious or moral or intellectual presupposition, nothing but acceptance.

Paul Tillich, The Essential Tillich, p.201

I would like to think that God's grace is similar to this kind of grace, an unconditional acceptance that doesn't look at your wrong-ness or right-ness but rather accepts, simply. And if this is true, if this is God, then Christians should try to find this kind of grace within themselves, and let it grow and go out towards the rest of us. It doesn't often happen this way: perhaps there are not so many Christians out there after all...

The frog and the ox, by Aesop

“OH Father,” said a little Frog to the big one sitting by the side of a pool, “I have seen such a terrible monster! It was as big as a mountain, with horns on its head, and a long tail, and it had hoofs divided in two.”

“Tush, child, tush,” said the old Frog, “that was only Farmer White’s Ox. It isn’t so big either; he may be a little bit taller than I, but I could easily make myself quite as broad; just you see.” So he blew himself out, and blew himself out, and blew himself out. “Was he as big as that?” asked he.

“Oh, much bigger than that,” said the young Frog.

Again the old one blew himself out, and asked the young one if the Ox was as big as that.

“Bigger, father, bigger,” was the reply.

So the Frog took a deep breath, and blew and blew and blew, and swelled and swelled and swelled. And then he said: “I’m sure the Ox is not as big as—” But at this moment he burst.

“SELF-CONCEIT MAY LEAD TO SELF-DESTRUCTION.”

People keep thinking that faith in faith, or faith for faith's sake, is what is all about. They keep thinking that that's enough. Is it? Shouldn't faith have something to do with Truth as well, even when Truth can only be approached but never possessed?

Only words

Respect for the word is the first commandment in the discipline by which a man can be educated to maturity - intellectual, emotional and moral.

Respect for the word - to employ it with scrupulous care and an incorruptable heart-felt love of truth - is essential if there is to be any growth in a society or in the human race.

To misuse the word is to show the contempt for man. It undermines the bridges and poisons the wells. It causes Man to regress down the long path of his evolution.

Dag Hammarskjold, Markings, p.101

They never are 'only words' when these words help us to find a way towards Truth. But it's a pity that many people still use them to walk the opposite way, to conceal Truth, that Truth which is so scary and uncomfortable.