from journal entry, 6.4月
Luther understood: no matter how diligently, how strenuously your fight for goodness and purity (at least their less popular forms) might be, there is no salvation by these deeds alone. Try as I might, I cannot fight -- and certainly cannot win -- every battle for a mindful earth-society. Purity is not only beyond our reach: it is not even in our field of vision
Instead, it is invisibly inherent to the manner of our reaching. In being so caught up in trying to become pure (in the more popular sense), we lose our insight to how. How do we make our children smile? We give them chocolate Easter eggs, over which they laugh, and embrace you, and become the star feature for Nestle's advertisement. Is it important for us to know that that chocolate was processed from cocoa beans imported from a country that employs children with little or no choice to work under brutal and inhumane conditions (that they cannot get adults to work under!) to gather them? The moment we become aware of this, the purity of the popular (simultaneously, of the ignorant) vanishes from their smiles, for the systemic violence that purported such purity is smeared across their mouths and between their teeth -- dark and vile.
No -- a purity of ends (which has not even an ontology per individual) cannot justify our means. We cannot truly expect to enter the Kingdom if our eyes are cast only to the clouds. Furthermore, we cannot call ourselves true Christians (as in those who follow Christ, in thought and action) if we believe that by our deeds alone we are saved. We must purify our intentions. By this, one cannot say, 'I had only meant to make my child happy in giving her chocolate,' if we do not further intend to stop or to invest in only organic sweets. Good intention can only beget good intention. If we mean to do good, we must carry it out to the furthest extents of our awareness and beyond the conventional understanding of what is pure and impure.
And by what are we saved? It is only by good intention that we can truly create good results. As it is, this intention requires the totality of one's awareness and consequent compassion. And such awareness is beget only by and event of grace. Indeed, it is only by God's grace that we can be saved. Let us never stop reaching.
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and there continues to be the opportunity for 'christians' to learn from 'non-christians' -- beyond the conventional understanding of faith being personally significant (if it all possible) without affirmative experience: "The Buddhist point of view is that we do not have to believe in anything we cannot experience for ourselves. When asked, 'How do we know whose teachings to believe?' Buddha replied, 'Do not believe something to be true just because it is spread by word of mouth, practiced as a tradition or sensationally spread far and wide. [...]'" (more, click on 'Believer Profile' toward the bottom)
2 comments:
Awareness is such an exhausting task, though. To know which chocolate companies are clean and which are not takes a lot of research, which is time that could be spent with the child, or at least researching better child-rearing tactics than to give your child chocolate to make him happy.
Also, organic chocolate is expensive, and not necessarily a flavor most children would enjoy. Maybe that money should be spent elsewhere?
it's wonderful to hear from you, zabe.
awareness isn't always even a task. we engage in matters of awareness all the time: a simple phone call from your mother or visit from your friend may alert you to happenings at home or news events you hadn't heard yet. they may have even received that information in the same passive way as yourself.
where awareness entices curiosity or concern, however, is where it seems to become more of an activity. by passionate motivation, we are moved to do anything -- there must be some bit of it for us to even get up in the morning. when i discover, for example, that the USDA has been careless in (or paid off against) being thorough in their organic goods criteria and approval, i am enticed to figure out a better way of measuring certainty (where there is any) of the quality of what i'm buying. and i'm not alone: whether for one's own personal health benefit or in concern for the economic degradation of less fortunate societies (or a more frequent integration of both), millions in this country are becoming aware of the food-quality/economy-quality dilemma. they aren't majoritarian by any measure, but their growing, which directly affects the big business economy.
now, the business of the christian, at least in the religion's more intense denominations, such as calvinism or lutheranism, concerns a more extensive dose of duty than most things secular. by secular law, donations (except in the form of taxes) are considered charity; but the Christian finds such work to be required of us for the sake of Goodness, i.e. God, whether by divine command or some other sort of inference. duty can be exhausting, for it is known to demand us to be active beyond the incentives of our passions.
thus the secular christian must recognize what role duty has in her or his conduct, and thereby, in her or his awareness. ideally, one is motivated to the degree of becoming the Redeemer without duty; that is, the passions motivate one so completely that duty (or what paul has regarded as those unnecessary laws) is redundant and indeed unnecessary. in (modern capitalist democratic) law, duty regards what is minimal of the individual for the governing and governed body to function. to the Christian, the 'non-believer' doesn't recognize that duty must include what is beyond the minimum limit (hence, no such thing as charity), collaborating with an 'artificial passions' to motivate the soul to carry out deeds beyond what it may normally think should be fulfilled. thus, unless the passions already embrace a non-minimalist 'selflessness,' the soul, according to the Christian, must remain attentive to its duties.
whether or not a toy passions, in place of the real thing, can motivate one well and long enough (through a spiritual conditioning) to eventually grow into a more bona fide form, it certainly encourages the 75%+ claimed christian populace to perform benefits beyond their own. my notes for that day implied that there should as well be a duty of awareness if there is to be a system of duties at all. truth be told, i often wish that it were the case that more people felt passionate about political and economical justice for the oppressed (let alone matters beyond themselves at all) such that the need for duty here too would seem superfluous. i know better than to think it is the case (or could be the case soon), but i think there is, among several, a point of observation that may trigger a realization for those people of this matter's significance: i am never bored, as is true for anyone who is impassioned.
i agree with you: if you think your money is better spent on developmental psychology courses or the like, do it. i believe, though, that there is a careful balance, at least for myself. time with my (hypothetical) children is important; time spent researching and promoting is also (for me) important if it means that i might be aiding or (God forbid) saving someone else's children from the injustices of an ignorant, bigger society
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