Enormous Mirror of Wonders ~

If there is a God he would be better described as an Enormous Mirror. The dumber the people, the dumber the god. This notion has been continuously reinforced my entire life. Some of my professors have such a transcendent unparalleled God that they claim no concrete knowledge, per say, about him. or Barth’s concept of Divine Freedom – no human restrictions can be placed on God. none.

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now people of this world – try to figure out a God who has no restrictions, no borders, no limits… it will quickly become apparent that nothing is True (big T). everything is humanly derived – provisional articulations of truth (small t) – and must therefore be revised constantly- as history indicates.

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People need to stop claiming that they know what the big puzzle-picture looks like… when 93% of the pieces do not exist (or have been drawn in). 

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All we ARE is our heart, our spirit. the rest is detail that results from an array of erratic situations thrown at our spirit. These situations are more than often outside of our control. Some call it testing, this is crap. it’s not testing. If this testing is God’s doing then he cannot-be-omniscient. what? – he needs to check what he already knows?!… this is nonsense. now think of how much situation influences a person:

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Salvation cannot be determined by matters of geographical, historical and therefore conditional contingency – what is left then apart from the heart? once all the detail is removed – the heart is all that remains and all that matters. please don’t suggest that cognition (knowing this or or knowing that… or believing this or believing that) is of relevance. for if you do, you must correlate salvation with an ATTAINMENT of X-adeptness, Y-knowledge, and Z-comprehension. and what is the difference between attainment (a.k.a. achievement) and work (a.k.a. meriting)?? 

The HEART: the only thing that is True.

Selah, a potential leader of this particular Bedouin tribe explained to me, “Allah will only care about whether you were a good man or not. If you are a Muslim and but not a good person, why would Allah accept you? If you are not a Muslim but you are a good man, why would Allah not accept you?” My response was a smile accompanied by a nod – I have talked to many different types of Muslims in my life, from pakistan, to Afghanistan, to Morocco, to Iran, to the Emirates, to American, to Tunisian, Jordan, Syria etc…  

There is something different about the way this man thinks. He was born Israeli-Bedouin (along with many others of his era) – as the Sinai belonged to them for a decade or so during his time of birth. (The Sinai went back to Egypt in 1981).

In St. Catherine there are orthodox monks, a constant flow of Christian and Jewish tourists, and 2 mosques that resound 5 times a day across the entire valley. Jewsand Christians bring money to this Muslim community… there isn’t animosity between the differences in beliefs – that i have noticed. To them, whites are christians, browns are muslims (slightly simplified, but my point remains) and there isn’t much more to it. I have often heard bedouins talk about the heart of a person… I like this notion.

I recently talked to a tunisian Muslim in Cairo who explained that there were 5 things a man had to do in order to be a ‘real’ Muslim. None of them had to do with the heart… just duties to fulfill. He told me that praying was like kissing your father, where obviously the child who kisses the father the most Loves him the most. A direct connection between quantity of prayers/kisses and amount of Love.

I thought this was similar to a situation where i saw 5 young men stand up when an old man came to greet them. He was slightly gauche as he walked funny and seemed to have a cataract. At first i liked the respect they showed this elderly man, but then i quickly realized that despite dutifully standing as a sign of respect for the man, they were mocking him amongst each other. The standing up is nothing in itself – it is a Sign of something True within… if it isn’t true within, then the sign isn’t a sign anymore… it is nothing but foulness masked in piety. The heart matters, and i think the Bedouins realize that more strongly because they meet so many people of various faiths – and there isn’t a group that stands out. they see good and bad people in every religion, even their own. So maybe they realize something that more people need to come to understand… once the religions are stripped away, what are you? – A Good person? – A Godly person?

Absolutes: the real fall of humankind…

Being in Jerusalem was an interesting experience for several reasons. i was hoping to get a feeling, to be moved by the historical reality of where i was standing. My entire life has been Christianity – taking it to the point of graduate studies. But since the age of 20 or so, i have been reacting to/against my up-bringing and to this day, much of what i read and study is reactionary… maybe some of you will understand this.

Today i don’t see an answer, i don’t believe in earthly Truth but i do believe in earthly Faith. The Truth is only in that other realm, the one in which Christians and muslims hope to spend an eternity. This earth, for lack of secular wording, is fallen – therefore Truth has taken many ‘fruity’ shapes. The tree in itself is irrelevant – the Ripeness (a.k.a. Taste) of the fruit, according to Jesus, determines the state of the Tree, not the TYPE of fruit – there are many kinds of fruit bearing plants in the world, from bushes to large trees, and many of them bear good fruit (true goodness can only be of God). So maybe we should stop worrying about the Type of Tree AND the Type of Fruit and divert our attention to the amazing array of wonderful/exotic flavors revealed around the world… He is boundless, perhaps this attribute needs to be believed before being so easily spoken…?

What about…

In regards to WHO CAN BE SAVED, theologically. Are humans truly in control of their eternity/salvation, or is God’s grace actually as great as we think it is, as boundless and loving as we claim it to be? “It will see man carried, like an obstinate child in the arms of its mother, by what God has determined and done for his salvation in spite of his own opposition. In detail, it will neither praise nor reproach him. It will understand his situation – understand it even in the dark and terrifying perplexity of it – not because it can see any meaning in the situation as such but because it acquires a meaning from outside, from Jesus Christ.”Church Dogmatics, Karl Barth

Saved without Faith

“If, on the one hand, we conceive salvation as something specifically Christian, if there is no salvation apart from Christ, if according to Catholic teaching the supernatural divinization of man can never be replaced merely by good will on the part of man but is necessary as something itself given in this earthly life; and if, on the other hand, God has really, truly and seriously intended this salvation for all men – then these two aspects cannot be reconciled in any other way then by stating that every human being is really and truly exposed to the influence of divine, supernatural grace which offers an interior union with God and by means of which God communicates himself whether the individual takes up an attitude of acceptance or of refusal towards this grace.”

Theological investigations Vol 5, Karl Rahner