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Aaron Blumberg's avatar

I was raised secular Jewish and always regarded Christianity as the enemy. The cross was ugly to me and I would get chills when we drove past a church. All my best friends were Jewish and I was uneasy around my Christian friends.

In college I studied theoretical physics to learn the fundamental truth of physical reality, but I lost my mind. It didn’t connect with me or make me a better person. I thought, “Are we not made for truth?”

So I switched to studying spiritual truth via Peterson and then Jung. Years of thinking and reading went by and I finally read the gospels. And in Christ I found the fundamental truth of spiritual reality that did connect to me and united me to my fellow man.

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Zzzmdf's avatar

I so enjoy these essays because they give me a chance to reflect on my faith and relationship to others. They call me to try to be a better husband, father, and neighbor. A few sentences always strike me in each essay. The first one here was “tension between faith and works”. This has long been a favorite passage of mine (I know, I have quite a few, but that is how it is with truth). I have reflected on faith and works. Neither one itself is sufficient, as James pointed out. I’m not sure they are in tension, except for those who believe one or the other will be sufficient. You might as well ask whether inhaling or exhaling was sufficient. You simply cannot have one without the other and have life within you. The Catholic Church and various Protestant denominations came to an understanding years ago and identified Grace as the central focus, not faith or works alone, but by grace do we have both and demonstrate both.

The second was the discussion of loving one’s neighbor. The present age has attempted to bring everything down to emotions. Love is an emotion, but it is also a theological virtue. An emotion is a feeling, and cannot be forced and is difficult to direct, although hatred seems to thrive on nurturing. However, virtue can be practiced and improved, when understood as desiring a good for another as if it were for your own good. When directed outward, focused on another, not directed inward, not on what I feel, but on what I can do for another, is the virtue of Love truly expressed. There’s that pesky “works” again. Why would I do such a thing if I did not have faith, however? I’m not that nice a guy that I go around randomly doing good things, but that it brings me closer to God. Would that I was.

Thank you Klavans Elder and Younger, and keep it flowing.

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