May 19, 2009 @ 9:34 am | Category: existential questions, spirituality/religion
Stanley Fish is continuing his observations in the New York Times on the belief in the unattached mind most often promoted by those hostile to religion. Fish is preceptive in clarifying why a mind uncommitted to any pre-conceived notions can not think at all. He argues that those who would belittle religion usually have a distorted view of what religious people actually believe. Fish’s arguement suggest that instead of religious people being “pie in the sky” types who refuse to face reality, they may actually have greater realism regarding the human condition.
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May 4, 2009 @ 8:09 am | Category: existential questions
In the New York Times Stanley Fish reviews Reason, Faith and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate by British cultural critic Terry Eagleton. In the battle of the gods, old and new, it has become fashionable to regard religion as a throw back and reactionary impulse that stands in the way of progress. Eagleton challenges the “superstition” of progress which in the end can not answer some of the most profound questions regarding the human experience. On the other hand, Eagleton sees the problems associated with the instituionalization of faith. Fish’s review is tantalizing enough for me to want to read this one. One more book for the stack.
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April 16, 2008 @ 9:03 am | Category: Pot Luck, existential questions
Here is a New York Times article about how some people are growing up on prescribed mood altering drugs. This is creating a whole generation of people who don’t know who they are without them. The article doesn’t seem to understand the pervasiveness of this beyond those who “really need it.” Modern society has convinced us that we have a right to feel upbeat all the time. What gets lost is the understanding that emotional struggle is part of being a human being. We have no sense that emotions are value judgments that can serve us well, and maybe even save our lives. Grief lasting more than a few days is considered excessive. This of course doesn’t negate the fact that there are people who suffer from severe long term mental disorders. We and the medical establishment seem not to be able to tell the difference between the blues, which may be good for us, and destructive mental disorders.
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January 1, 2008 @ 9:53 pm | Category: existential questions, spirituality/religion
To start the new year fresh we need the gift of forgetting. We all know that it’s hard to go on if you keep reliving the past. The admonishment to forget contradicts every thing else we are told. We are reminded to remember where we came from, to remember those fallen in battle, and to remember the holocaust. We set aside special days just to remember. You have heard it a million times. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Middle-aged people worry that they are forgetting too much, too soon, and seek memory enhancing solutions. Even God instructed Israel to remember their deliverance from Egypt through a ritual feast. Jesus instructed his disciples to remember him perpetually in the holy meal. There is no doubt that remembering and memory play an important role in our lives.
This New Year’s morning I woke up to discouraging global news, which reminded me that most of the world’s troubles are due to our inability to forgive, much less forget. Regional conflicts are plagued by decades, if not centuries, of wrongs done and relived. Recognizing the importance of memory, we need to understand the value of forgetting. Imagine if you remembered every pain and sorrow you have ever experienced. You would be overwhelmed with grief. Thank God for the gift of forgetting. However, God has gone further. God has promised, not only to forgive our sins, failures, and foibles, but to forget them. That also means he is willing to forgive those who have wronged us. The promise of the future is that God will wipe away the tears and finally make all things new. The world’s pain, mourning, and sorrow cast into the sea of forgetfulness forever. Only then will we have a truly fresh beginning with our selves and with each other.
To read more about healing memories and forgetting, check out Miroslav Volf’s The End of Memory:Remembering Rightly in a Violent World.
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September 16, 2007 @ 10:47 am | Category: existential questions
Here is an article from the The New York Times on the social influence philosopher Ayn Rand has had on American business. If you, like me, had written off Ayn Rand as an ineffective philosopher and an even worse novelist, think again. Sometimes simple ideas are the ones that survive. Rand advocated for an individual’s responsibility to pursue their own interest with abandon. Her everybody-else-be-dammed attitude has survived, and her book Atlas Shrugged remains a best seller. Perhaps her ideas have stuck in the American mind because they’re shrouded in the idea of hard work, excellence, and personal merit. Rand’s ideas are an impressive combination of the Puritan work ethic and secularism devoid of that other Puritan idea– grace. Of course, if you believe in God’s unmerited favor, it’s hard to maintain the position that you are self-made, and therefore unaccountable.
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August 26, 2007 @ 8:26 pm | Category: existential questions, spirituality/religion
Read the cover story in this week’s Time Magazine about Mother Teresa’s crisis of faith. A dark night of the soul that lasted 50 years. The article is based on a new book, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (Doubleday), consisting primarily of correspondence between Teresa and her confessors and superiors over a period of 66 years. According to Time:
“The letters, many of them preserved against her wishes (she had requested that they be destroyed but was overruled by her church), reveal that for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever — or, as the book’s compiler and editor, the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, writes, “neither in her heart or in the eucharist.”
The story provides plenty of fodder for reflection on the meaning of Christian happiness. The questions are endless. What is Christian joy? How do our feelings feed or hamper our faith? Can doubt ever be a strength? How narrow (and painful) is the door into the Kingdom of Heaven that Jesus talked about? For a society use to the gospel of prosperity, where material success and emotional fulfillment are considered signs of grace, these questions are worth wrestling with.
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July 3, 2007 @ 9:28 pm | Category: existential questions
Is the universe a giant computer? If so, who programed it? If who is too loaded a question, what made the difference? See this story.
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