"A chance transformed into destiny by a continuous choice": my Christianity...
A chance: from birth and more broadly from a cultural heritage. sometimes I have replied to the question: "If you were Chinese, there is little chance you'd be Christian." To be sure, but you are speaking of another me. I cannot choose my ancestors, or my contemporaries. There is, in my origins, a chance element, if I look at things from the outside, and an irreducible situational fact, if I consider them from within. So I am, by birth and heritage. And I accept this.'
---P. Ricoeur.
~~~
In the faith of the fundamentalists there is no room for doubt but you have to remind yourself that in the best traditions there has always been ample space for uncertainty. Laughter, trust in the unknown, too, are not unrelated to such attitudes, perhaps? To which the question might be pushed back one stage: at what level is there doubt and why this desire to move it back all the way to the origins? Isn't that just bad faith? Doubt love, one's senses, one's common sense, the world as it is, the mind's capacity to know (why does this even become a question?), then what is left? And why is this a starting point in the first place?
If to be human is to be finite, limited, then is it a superhuman capacity or effort to accept one's limits? In this light Rumi says: "He who knows himself knows his Lord" (to which there's an added commentary: to know the finite is to know something of the infinite). Of course, "knowing the finite" is only a limit.
~~~
I think as one grows older one understands less-or at least understands that one doesn't understand that much and probably never will. You also grow more confident in leaving the crutches of books to one side (I read that somewhere).
To accept the "chance element" in one's life? To do so one already has to have faith, some kind of faith. You can't imagine an acceptance of all chance elements being a truly human response.
I sometimes pray: "please God, don't make me religious". To be religious is to be questioned.
~~~
Academics often get stuck on "perhaps" and "maybe", and have a tendency to say "yes & no". Given the certainties of so many other people this is a good thing. But surely there's a time to say: No. Yes. No?
A chance: from birth and more broadly from a cultural heritage. sometimes I have replied to the question: "If you were Chinese, there is little chance you'd be Christian." To be sure, but you are speaking of another me. I cannot choose my ancestors, or my contemporaries. There is, in my origins, a chance element, if I look at things from the outside, and an irreducible situational fact, if I consider them from within. So I am, by birth and heritage. And I accept this.'
---P. Ricoeur.
~~~
In the faith of the fundamentalists there is no room for doubt but you have to remind yourself that in the best traditions there has always been ample space for uncertainty. Laughter, trust in the unknown, too, are not unrelated to such attitudes, perhaps? To which the question might be pushed back one stage: at what level is there doubt and why this desire to move it back all the way to the origins? Isn't that just bad faith? Doubt love, one's senses, one's common sense, the world as it is, the mind's capacity to know (why does this even become a question?), then what is left? And why is this a starting point in the first place?
If to be human is to be finite, limited, then is it a superhuman capacity or effort to accept one's limits? In this light Rumi says: "He who knows himself knows his Lord" (to which there's an added commentary: to know the finite is to know something of the infinite). Of course, "knowing the finite" is only a limit.
~~~
I think as one grows older one understands less-or at least understands that one doesn't understand that much and probably never will. You also grow more confident in leaving the crutches of books to one side (I read that somewhere).
To accept the "chance element" in one's life? To do so one already has to have faith, some kind of faith. You can't imagine an acceptance of all chance elements being a truly human response.
I sometimes pray: "please God, don't make me religious". To be religious is to be questioned.
~~~
Academics often get stuck on "perhaps" and "maybe", and have a tendency to say "yes & no". Given the certainties of so many other people this is a good thing. But surely there's a time to say: No. Yes. No?
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