What would you have done if you were Solomon, faced with a dead child, a living child, and two women both claiming to be the mother of the living baby? What policy would guide you?
The baby question is fascinating to me, and touched the heart of one of my key frustrations with many (meaning the vast majority) Christian friends and acquaintances in my life. Making moral decisions is hard. You have to have to live with the consequences, and even more so knowing God will judge you. And many Christians have the conceit to use the Bible as a shield, protecting them from having to make difficult decisions, by pretending the Bible has a black and white answer on everything (see: their interpretation) and therefore no more thinking need be done. And if I draw their attention further down the road of their decisions, they cry „so you think the end justifies the means?“.
The buck stops at whatever the Christian thinks is the ‚right thing to do‘, and no further thinking need be done.
Great discussion. I wonder if this wisdom idea gets a whole new dimension with the Holy Spirit in dwelling us believers. When Christ told his disciples to not worry about what they would say to the authorities or when persecution came, but they would know what to say in the moment. Wrote about this as well on Twitter, about us moderns being so captivated by the frame we are in, that we can’t see truth in stories. We want them to be positivist scientific accounts of history or science and I suspect we are mad at God for not just laying out simple facts of life or how old the earth is. Great discussion again. Work adjacent to machine learning in complex natural systems and he was spot on.
Yes. One of the major functions of the indwelling of the Spirit is to connect us to the wisdom of God. This is precisely what Paul is talking about in the first two chapters of 1 Corinthians.
The first three we did in Twitter spaces, but it was hard to get people in the group together because it is live, and being live you want to do it during time windows when people are listening. That makes it hard to gather people for a discussion. Doing it this way, we can plan around the participants better who often have flex time in the day, but not the evening because of families. In this case, Johann lives in Europe, Duncan in South Africa and me in North America. We recorded in the middle of the afternoon for them, but it was 7:00 AM EST for me. I don't know how many are up for a 7:00 AM Twitter Space. I am sure we will do them again because there is an immediacy and accessibility to spaces, but for now the pre-recorded podcast format is working the best for us.
Meanwhile every possible idea, opinion and point-of-view ever made about the nature of existence in all times and places is now freely available on the internet - from the most degraded to the most sublimely beautiful. And everybody is now face-to-face, even instantaneously.
Which is to point out that everyone is now obliged to critically example all of it with informed discriminative intelligence, especially the self-serving presumptions of their own inherited "religious" pronvincialism.
But how does anyone even begin to do so!
Never mind too that two thirds of the worlds human population are not Christian. And a hugely enormous majority of Christians do not share your self-righteous point-of-view, justifications.
So how are you three commissars going to enforce your minutest of minute limited mis-understanding of the nature of Reality on the more than seven and half billion human beings who, quite rightly disagree with you.
Which is exactly why there is a crisis of authority. The modernist frame might be very good at splitting the atom but it cannot tell you what to in the moment, how to act rightly, or give meaning for your life.
The only thing or phenomenon that makes or keeps any religious or Spiritual tradition alive is the periodic appearance of now-time living Saints, Yogis ,Mystics and Sages who have to one degree or another Realized something remarkable (and paradoxical) about the nature of existence and thus broken out of the collective trance-state or mind created trap of the culture in which they, as if out of nowhere, spontaneously appeared.
Their very presence creates a subtle "vibe" which to one degree or another purifies the collective trance-state/trap. Their success depends on other human beings responding in kind. Unfortunately Westerners whether secular or so called religious in their persuasion have no understanding or appreciation of the appearance of such Living Realizers.
Such a Realized being (male or female) has not appeared in the Western (Protestant & "catholic") world for many centuries now (500 years or more). In this time and place when both the now world dominant paradigm of left-brained scientism (or scientific materialism, and the self-serving left-brained religiosity of institutional religion have effectively conspired to enforce a gross-level order upon all human beings.
And of course sinners, who are by self-definition and always dramatized action entirely Godless always create hell on earth.
Had a great time, thanks for having us
My pleasure. We will have to do this again soon.
Agreed!
The baby question is fascinating to me, and touched the heart of one of my key frustrations with many (meaning the vast majority) Christian friends and acquaintances in my life. Making moral decisions is hard. You have to have to live with the consequences, and even more so knowing God will judge you. And many Christians have the conceit to use the Bible as a shield, protecting them from having to make difficult decisions, by pretending the Bible has a black and white answer on everything (see: their interpretation) and therefore no more thinking need be done. And if I draw their attention further down the road of their decisions, they cry „so you think the end justifies the means?“.
The buck stops at whatever the Christian thinks is the ‚right thing to do‘, and no further thinking need be done.
Great discussion. I wonder if this wisdom idea gets a whole new dimension with the Holy Spirit in dwelling us believers. When Christ told his disciples to not worry about what they would say to the authorities or when persecution came, but they would know what to say in the moment. Wrote about this as well on Twitter, about us moderns being so captivated by the frame we are in, that we can’t see truth in stories. We want them to be positivist scientific accounts of history or science and I suspect we are mad at God for not just laying out simple facts of life or how old the earth is. Great discussion again. Work adjacent to machine learning in complex natural systems and he was spot on.
Yes. One of the major functions of the indwelling of the Spirit is to connect us to the wisdom of God. This is precisely what Paul is talking about in the first two chapters of 1 Corinthians.
would you do these in twitter spaces so that other people could also engage in these discusdions?
The first three we did in Twitter spaces, but it was hard to get people in the group together because it is live, and being live you want to do it during time windows when people are listening. That makes it hard to gather people for a discussion. Doing it this way, we can plan around the participants better who often have flex time in the day, but not the evening because of families. In this case, Johann lives in Europe, Duncan in South Africa and me in North America. We recorded in the middle of the afternoon for them, but it was 7:00 AM EST for me. I don't know how many are up for a 7:00 AM Twitter Space. I am sure we will do them again because there is an immediacy and accessibility to spaces, but for now the pre-recorded podcast format is working the best for us.
This is basically the idea of 'Conservative Revolution', attecking modernity from both premodern and postmodern points of view
Something like that, a non-revolutionary revolution.
Meanwhile every possible idea, opinion and point-of-view ever made about the nature of existence in all times and places is now freely available on the internet - from the most degraded to the most sublimely beautiful. And everybody is now face-to-face, even instantaneously.
Which is to point out that everyone is now obliged to critically example all of it with informed discriminative intelligence, especially the self-serving presumptions of their own inherited "religious" pronvincialism.
But how does anyone even begin to do so!
Never mind too that two thirds of the worlds human population are not Christian. And a hugely enormous majority of Christians do not share your self-righteous point-of-view, justifications.
So how are you three commissars going to enforce your minutest of minute limited mis-understanding of the nature of Reality on the more than seven and half billion human beings who, quite rightly disagree with you.
Which is exactly why there is a crisis of authority. The modernist frame might be very good at splitting the atom but it cannot tell you what to in the moment, how to act rightly, or give meaning for your life.
The only thing or phenomenon that makes or keeps any religious or Spiritual tradition alive is the periodic appearance of now-time living Saints, Yogis ,Mystics and Sages who have to one degree or another Realized something remarkable (and paradoxical) about the nature of existence and thus broken out of the collective trance-state or mind created trap of the culture in which they, as if out of nowhere, spontaneously appeared.
Their very presence creates a subtle "vibe" which to one degree or another purifies the collective trance-state/trap. Their success depends on other human beings responding in kind. Unfortunately Westerners whether secular or so called religious in their persuasion have no understanding or appreciation of the appearance of such Living Realizers.
Such a Realized being (male or female) has not appeared in the Western (Protestant & "catholic") world for many centuries now (500 years or more). In this time and place when both the now world dominant paradigm of left-brained scientism (or scientific materialism, and the self-serving left-brained religiosity of institutional religion have effectively conspired to enforce a gross-level order upon all human beings.
And of course sinners, who are by self-definition and always dramatized action entirely Godless always create hell on earth.
Nice! Many words, but not too many...hmmm, that reaminds me;
(high frequencies can look like attention deficit, btw, not defensive, lol)
~
Theoretically,
-
If you bumped into a
Random Capitolizing,
Zen Buddhist,
Unbaptized,
Barbarian,
Renegade Catholic Monk,
patiently awaiting news
of the Dali Lama’s self-immolation,
as his just reward for falling to pedophilia,
would you wisely flee,
or feign blindness?
I think not.
~
Do I feel a famillar courage in this room?
A courage others would label foolish?
But let me not presume.
~
For any reason,
or none,
you see,
I don’t find imposition fun,
ask me to disappear,
and it will easily
be done.
~
Simply said;
I find so much truth here
it makes me want to play.
There is something to that. We are often like children wanting a certainty that the world does not give us.