"The one real test of spiritual truth is faith over time. I may have only thought I loved your mother once, but after forty-five years, believing is seeing. Now I’m sure. If we replace Jungian unknowing with faith, over time we learn to see what all the world and our own flesh are showing us. Not an abstract hybrid of cones and polygons. A living God, in whose image we are made."
As highbrow as philosophy is, as grandiose as it sounds, it offers me (or anyone else) nothing in the long run. Unless headaches count. If my reality is nothingness, if nothing begets nothing than where does this chronic pain, I encounter each day exist? In nothingness? If so, I’m worse off than I thought (can I even think?) If my pain isn’t real though I suffer it, if my imaginary mind cannot control it (I’ve tried) than whence cometh my help? Of course, it cometh from the Lord. I prefer the imagery of King David to Jung. For only in my looking up, my prayers to my very real Creator, in whose image I am wrought, do I find peace. In my unashamed crying out to Him, a Him that fills the universe and indwells me, who sits beside me in my messy existence do I find comfort and salvation. That for today, and a bright hope for tomorrow. No more weeping, no more pain and no more talk of nothingness. Thanks be to God.
I can't put it together eloquently, but this brought to mind a sermon by Campbell Morgan, which I read in the middle of the night recently when my brain was wracked with the reality I was both seeing and experiencing. He spoke about Psalm 27 and explained a pause before the last verse that has been interpreted many ways "I would have fainted," was the going interpretation at that time. Morgan described it as a gasp at the horror of reality, like a desperation for air gasp. "Unless I had seen the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living." ...... It might seem easier to disassociate the soul from the body when reality is so harsh. And yet to be in this created body, to see everything as it is, allows us to find the Goodness of the LORD and learn, like children, to trust a Father that rather than nothingness beyond it, there is so much more. There is His goodness. Sometimes I can't wait to see the more, the reality my eyes aren't ready to see.
‘He showed you by a trick what our inwards would look like if they were visible. That is, he showed you something that is not, but something that would be if the world were made all other than it is. But in the real world our inwards are invisible. They are not coloured shapes at all, they are feelings. The warmth in your limbs at this moment, the sweetness of your breath as you draw it in, the comfort in your belly because we breakfasted well, and your hunger for the next meal—these are the reality: all the sponges and tubes that you saw in the dungeon are the lie.’ ‘But if I cut a man open I should see them in him.’ ‘A man cut open is, so far, not a man: and if you did not sew him up speedily you would be seeing not organs, but death. I am not denying that death is ugly: but the giant made you believe that life is ugly.’ - CS Lewis - a pilgrims regress
I just reread this book, so was shocked to see the title of this post! In this book, which was one of Lewis’s earliest works and which he thought was one of his worst - we nonetheless find many of the seeds of his later thought - and his character called the Spirit of the Age has x-ray eyes that make everyone see through everything - and the character of Reason must assure the protagonist that, as you have so well pointed out, this is a lie!
Are the cones & polygons the stand in’s for the shapes & shadows on someone’s certain cave wall ? This species you speak of seems afraid of looking at the truth directly . I’m assuming repentance would take up to much time “so let’s just skip it”
Perhaps that’s why we hang on to old guys in politics is because the old guard are afraid they didn't bring up the new guard in enough faith & wisdom ? One must have faith in the next generation , as that’s who are going to be shaping a probabilistic universe of the future not the deterministic universe of the past we are leaving behind.
P.S. God is in quantum physics. Let’s face our species certainly couldn’t come up with that crazy idea on its own ?
"The one real test of spiritual truth is faith over time. I may have only thought I loved your mother once, but after forty-five years, believing is seeing. Now I’m sure. If we replace Jungian unknowing with faith, over time we learn to see what all the world and our own flesh are showing us. Not an abstract hybrid of cones and polygons. A living God, in whose image we are made."
BINGO...We Have A Winner!
Ditto
As highbrow as philosophy is, as grandiose as it sounds, it offers me (or anyone else) nothing in the long run. Unless headaches count. If my reality is nothingness, if nothing begets nothing than where does this chronic pain, I encounter each day exist? In nothingness? If so, I’m worse off than I thought (can I even think?) If my pain isn’t real though I suffer it, if my imaginary mind cannot control it (I’ve tried) than whence cometh my help? Of course, it cometh from the Lord. I prefer the imagery of King David to Jung. For only in my looking up, my prayers to my very real Creator, in whose image I am wrought, do I find peace. In my unashamed crying out to Him, a Him that fills the universe and indwells me, who sits beside me in my messy existence do I find comfort and salvation. That for today, and a bright hope for tomorrow. No more weeping, no more pain and no more talk of nothingness. Thanks be to God.
I can't put it together eloquently, but this brought to mind a sermon by Campbell Morgan, which I read in the middle of the night recently when my brain was wracked with the reality I was both seeing and experiencing. He spoke about Psalm 27 and explained a pause before the last verse that has been interpreted many ways "I would have fainted," was the going interpretation at that time. Morgan described it as a gasp at the horror of reality, like a desperation for air gasp. "Unless I had seen the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living." ...... It might seem easier to disassociate the soul from the body when reality is so harsh. And yet to be in this created body, to see everything as it is, allows us to find the Goodness of the LORD and learn, like children, to trust a Father that rather than nothingness beyond it, there is so much more. There is His goodness. Sometimes I can't wait to see the more, the reality my eyes aren't ready to see.
‘He showed you by a trick what our inwards would look like if they were visible. That is, he showed you something that is not, but something that would be if the world were made all other than it is. But in the real world our inwards are invisible. They are not coloured shapes at all, they are feelings. The warmth in your limbs at this moment, the sweetness of your breath as you draw it in, the comfort in your belly because we breakfasted well, and your hunger for the next meal—these are the reality: all the sponges and tubes that you saw in the dungeon are the lie.’ ‘But if I cut a man open I should see them in him.’ ‘A man cut open is, so far, not a man: and if you did not sew him up speedily you would be seeing not organs, but death. I am not denying that death is ugly: but the giant made you believe that life is ugly.’ - CS Lewis - a pilgrims regress
I just reread this book, so was shocked to see the title of this post! In this book, which was one of Lewis’s earliest works and which he thought was one of his worst - we nonetheless find many of the seeds of his later thought - and his character called the Spirit of the Age has x-ray eyes that make everyone see through everything - and the character of Reason must assure the protagonist that, as you have so well pointed out, this is a lie!
Amen!
This conversation becomes more and more moving.
Are the cones & polygons the stand in’s for the shapes & shadows on someone’s certain cave wall ? This species you speak of seems afraid of looking at the truth directly . I’m assuming repentance would take up to much time “so let’s just skip it”
Perhaps that’s why we hang on to old guys in politics is because the old guard are afraid they didn't bring up the new guard in enough faith & wisdom ? One must have faith in the next generation , as that’s who are going to be shaping a probabilistic universe of the future not the deterministic universe of the past we are leaving behind.
P.S. God is in quantum physics. Let’s face our species certainly couldn’t come up with that crazy idea on its own ?