There is much confusion on help today. We are living in a time of most excessive control over material goods. We do not know at this point how permanent such control is because we do not know how permanent the resource is that we are employing to generate the material goods. The excess in material …
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A Phenomenology of Effort Through Time
There is beginning, middle and end to anything and everything on this old clod. And we might as well mediate on that for a moment. A moment? It has beginning, middle and end. Plato says that this realm is the realm of “coming to be” and “passing away”. Do not let it escape you. It …
“Ask and You Shall Receive”, an interpretation
There are at least three components repeated in the Gospels. First, there is the straightforward claim that asking, seeking and knocking will be received, found and opened. Second, there is the “in my name” condition. Third, there is the “really mean it and don’t doubt” condition. First, that we will always and unavoidably get what …
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Helping Others
Help, as an intended act, is complex, and difficult. First, help requires clarity of sight in the helper. Clarity of sight is a combination of good character and prudence (practical wisdom). The good character (temperance, fortitude, justice, magnanimity) of the helper and the practical wisdom necessary are correlated. Development in the one is not possible …
Jesus’ great analogy and the irrelevance of scripture.
Paul famously says it in Romans 1: 20-21. The essence of the invisible divine has been obvious since the beginning of creation. Jesus affirms the truth in the countless ways he looks to the obvious and immediate around him for evidence of that which cannot be easily seen by rational animals (men). If Jesus is …
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Your Faith Has Made You Well
What did Jesus mean when he said these words to those he healed–“Your faith has made you well”? There is a tendency in some circles to interpret such a statement by Jesus as a recognition of some kind of faith worthy of salvation. Somehow the reader of Jesus’ words gets it in his head that …
The Moment of Turning (Repentance)
Repentance (turning toward the good) is everything prior to development involving approaching the good. Dealing with the moment prior to repentance is at best Socratic. The condition of most of Socrates’ interlocutors was NOT knowing they had unhealthy souls (read need of repentance). The self-knowledge of ones own condition is everything, and Socrates sought, in …
Marriage vs. Singleness: the rock and hard place at least.
I am often around the young just coming out of their condition of complete dependency. From that position their vision is so unclear of what the decades of relative independence will be like, what the cost and benefits structures are like relative to choice, how much hard work or play is involved, how easy or …
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CS Lewis and the famous argument for Jesus debunked
The famous passage from MERE CHRISTIANITY: “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with a man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the devil of hell. You …
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Luke 16:1-13 interpretation, and the application of a principle
There is something difficult about Luke 16:1-13. Jesus uses a “shrewd”, read deceitful at least, manager to invite the “sons of light”, read good guys, to consider shrewdness as something they should go in for. To my mind the difficulties culminate and then resolve with 13:9, “And I say to you, make friends for yourselves …
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