Renewal

He is risen.

The story of Christ, for me, is not a literal statement that Jesus was the Son of God. Which, I admit, is blasphemy for Christians. Not for me, since I'm not a "Christian." I was raised a Christian, and when it came to the moment when I needed to recite the Disciples' Creed, came up short.

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
the Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ,
His only Son, our Lord:
Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended into hell.
The third day He arose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven
and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.
Amen.

The principle of Christianity was different for me. Not through the Catechism, nor through the dogma of the Church. My affinity to Christ was based upon His belief that knowing Him was a recognition that He was sent to us at a time when we needed a Christ. He worked hard to live His life according to His views of what was important for us to believe. He set about creating a new set of laws that transcended the laws, and the legitimacy of those previous and subsequent laws, that shifted the entire legal and religious structures of the World.

What Christ did was recognize that within us, God created a Man who had all the skills, perceptions and knowledge that was necessary for Man to go about his business on the Earth without the need for an authority imposed upon us, here on Earth.

From Webster's International Dictionary, Second Edition,come the definition of "demagogue":

1. A leader or orator popular with or identified with the people. Chiefly Hist.2. One skilled in arousing the prejudices and passions of the populace by rhetoric, sensational charges, specious arguments, catchwords, cajolery, etc:, a political speaker or leader who seeks thus to make capital of social discontent and incite the populace, usually in the name of some popular cause, in order to gain political influence or office.

Was Christ a demagogue? In my understanding of the word, at the time Christ lived he was not a demagogue. He live in apposition to the prevalent opinion of His time. You may have lived in Israel, or any other country, but your life didn't belong to the regent of you country. You were a part of the state within which you lived, but your life didn't depend upon the country of your birth, origin or nationality. Your life was greater than that. Your knowledge extended beyond your border. Your ability to perceive existed beyond the "mere" political restraints that you found were imposed upon you.

Yet, He admitted that there was a role for the political state to play in your life.

Where does this take place? At what point must you accede to the demands placed upon you to the state within which you exist? I used to wonder about this point. If we are truly free of the constraints that are demanded by our nation, then, what are the constraints that are imposed upon us by our existence within that state that we must accept? Can we actually be free of state constraints? Or, are there certain types, classes, of restraint (or constraint) that we must agree upon must exist for us to live within a certain country or society?

For most of the following text I give, unabashedly, credit to John Locke. It has been years since I've read Locke, so if I err, forgive. Please.

The political state is any state where more than one person comes into contact with another. How they end up treating each other is what is referred to as the Social Compact. We agree not to kill each other. Social Compact. We agree to help each other when our barn is burning down. Social Compact.. When a body of people come to rape our women, kidnap our children and steal our belongings, if we work together to resist this effort, this again is the product of this Social Contract.

The Social Contract is an important devise. It itself is derived from a construct, much like the perfect triangle, that the rules under which man finds himself are naturally imposed by the Creator. Reading the Bible, one finds certain natural rules. When Cain kills Able, the results of this murder are given as consequent to an action. Not planned, simply consequent. What we find is, that God wishes us not to murder. Murder as different from killing. It is important to examine those situations when killing another is not only deferred to as an action, but called upon as an action. Human life is the most important thing that exists in our world. Again, let us take a brief moment; when someone comes to rape our women, kidnap our children and steal our belongings, there is only one class of being that rises to a level that we can share, that will help us resist this effort. It will not be the fish in the river, or the birds of the sky. It will be others like us, men and women.

But, what is the Social Contract in the State of Nature?

During the years following the West's discovery of the New World, a lot of guys spent time wondering what the world view of the inhabitants of this New World would be. Derived from their experience, the idea of the "savage" was an important idea. The West was sophisticated, given the opulence of cities like Paris, London and Venice. The West, given the accounts of the explorers, was inhabited by naked savages. Which was more or less, true. The technology of the New World was limited. Compared to the technology of the West. The advantage given the New World had been a stochastic difference. In many ways, the West had had the time to employ a certain number of monkeys.

Unlike the Dark Continent, the New World offered a lot of fodder to an idea that had begun it's brewing centuries before. When you view the life of Luther, without understanding his ascension on his knees to the Scala Santa, his recognition of his life as independent from the requirements of faith imposed from above, are meaningless. When Newton discovered gravity, it wasn't Newton discovering gravity. It was a recognition that faith, imposed from above, was meaningless. When
René Descartes brought together the argument that independent thought with reason was the basis of Rational Thought, the world escaped, for the second time (?) the irrational arguments that had been imposed upon it for years, within recent memory.

The Time of Christ is an important epoch for evaluation. It has been, for the time challenged, a time of several eras. And I would offer you, that the era of Christ is far from over.

One of the advantages that the Time of Christ has over other previous eras is simply the devices we have at hand to carry on the story of Christ. Christ is known all over the Earth. Even if those who would eradicate Christ from the Earth were in the main successful, there is too much of art and literature that requires an amendment from the Christ story to be meaningful, that a total removal of Christ from art and literature would be impossible. (Although it is the aim of some intellectuals to reduce this influence from anything more than a useable metaphor.)

But you cannot reduce the role of Christ in literature. There is no more sense in reading "The Sun Also Rises," than reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich."

Or Barth's "The End of the Road."

There is no meaning in literature or art, which expunges the effect of religion upon Man. I cannot imagine the Pieta without reference to Christ. What would it mean?

Solzhenitsyn's view of Christ is different than yours. It's probably different than mine. But the truth of Christ is unriven. Here was a man who stood for something beyond Himself. He is one of the most sublime characters in human history. He taught us to love our enemies, He taught us not to call those with whom we disagree names, He taught us that truth was the enemy of evil.

I cannot know God. I cannot know God because I don't have either the ability, the conscience, the intellect, the probity or the invisibility of God. I am simply a man. For me to begin to offer you the essence or character of God is so beyond my pay-scale, the the humorous attempt to describe Him is laughable from the start. I look at the sky and ask if I can ken the immense proportions of the Universe. I cannot. That which is without definition remains, a priori, without limit. There is no person that I know of that can reduce this for me. I certainly can't reduce it for myself.

I do believe that Christ envisioned for Himself a role of Son of God. I know that He was a great Teacher. I believe that He came to this world to help us understand ourselves in ways that are simple.

"'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and great commandment. A second likewise is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments."

This is radical thought. Loving God. Loving your neighbor. No place for the demagogue. No place for the hater. There is a place for the human side of negotiating the social contract. But, we cannot forget our priors. Love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend upon these two commandments.

Renewal. It comes from re-thinking how we got there. As much as we want to be different from those who preceded us, the older, and better read, we become, we begin to realize that the stories we tell each other still have the same punchlines. There is nothing new under the Sun. Just as there is nothing new under the Son.

¹ The words of David's son, Qoheleth, king in Jerusalem:

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² Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth, vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!

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³ What profit has man from all the labor which he toils at under the sun?

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One generation passes and another comes, but the world forever stays.

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The sun rises and the sun goes down; then it presses on to the place where it rises.

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Blowing now toward the south, then toward the north, the wind turns again and again, resuming its rounds.

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All rivers go to the sea, yet never does the sea become full. To the place where they go, the rivers keep on going.

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⁴ All speech is labored; there is nothing man can say. The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor is the ear filled with hearing.

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What has been, that will be; what has been done, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun.

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Even the thing of which we say, "See, this is new!" has already existed in the ages that preceded us.

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⁵ There is no remembrance of the men of old; nor of those to come will there be any remembrance among those who come after them.

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I, Qoheleth, was king over Israel in Jerusalem,

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and I applied my mind to search and investigate in wisdom all things that are done under the sun. A thankless task God has appointed for men to be busied about.

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⁶ I have seen all things that are done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a chase after wind.

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What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is missing cannot be supplied.

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Though I said to myself, "Behold, I have become great and stored up wisdom beyond all who were before me in Jerusalem, and my mind has broad experience of wisdom and knowledge";

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yet when I applied my mind to know wisdom and knowledge, madness and folly, I learned that this also is a chase after wind.

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For in much wisdom there is much sorrow, and he who stores up knowledge stores up grief.

And in counter-poise, is Isaiah:
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Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God.

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¹ Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her service is at an end, her guilt is expiated; Indeed, she has received from the hand of the LORD double for all her sins.

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² A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the LORD! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!

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Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low; The rugged land shall be made a plain, the rough country, a broad valley.

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Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all mankind shall see it together; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

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A voice says, "Cry out!" I answer, "What shall I cry out?" "All mankind is grass, and all their glory like the flower of the field.

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The grass withers, the flower wilts, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it. (So then, the people is the grass.)

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Though the grass withers and the flower wilts, the word of our God stands forever."

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Go up onto a high mountain, Zion, herald of glad tidings; Cry out at the top of your voice, Jerusalem, herald of good news! Fear not to cry out and say to the cities of Judah: Here is your God!

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Here comes with power the Lord GOD, who rules by his strong arm; Here is his reward with him, his recompense before him.

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Like a shepherd he feeds his flock; in his arms he gathers the lambs, Carrying them in his bosom, and leading the ewes with care.

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³ Who has cupped in his hand the waters of the sea, and marked off the heavens with a span? Who has held in a measure the dust of the earth, weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?

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Who has directed the spirit of the LORD, or has instructed him as his counselor?

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Whom did he consult to gain knowledge? Who taught him the path of judgment, or showed him the way of understanding?

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Behold, the nations count as a drop in the bucket, as dust on the scales; the coastlands weigh no more than powder.

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⁴ Lebanon would not suffice for fuel, nor its animals be enough for holocausts.

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Before him all the nations are as nought, as nothing and void he accounts them.

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To whom can you liken God? With what equal can you confront him?

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An idol, cast by a craftsman, which the smith plates with gold and fits with silver chains?

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Mulberry wood, the choice portion which a skilled craftsman picks out for himself, Choosing timber that will not rot, to set up an idol that will not be unsteady?

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⁵ One man helps another, one says to the other, "Keep on!"

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The craftsman encourages the goldsmith, the one who beats with the hammer, him who strikes on the anvil; He says the soldering is good, and he fastens it with nails to steady it.

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Do you not know? Have you not heard? Was it not foretold you from the beginning? Have you not understood? Since the earth was founded

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He sits enthroned above the vault of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; He stretches out the heavens like a veil, spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.

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He brings princes to nought and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.

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Scarcely are they planted or sown, scarcely is their stem rooted in the earth, When he breathes upon them and they wither, and the stormwind carries them away like straw.

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To whom can you liken me as an equal? says the Holy One.

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⁶ Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these: He leads out their army and numbers them, calling them all by name. By his great might and the strength of his power not one of them is missing!

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⁷ Why, O Jacob, do you say, and declare, O Israel, "My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God"?

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Do you not know or have you not heard? The LORD is the eternal God, creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint nor grow weary, and his knowledge is beyond scrutiny.

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He gives strength to the fainting; for the weak he makes vigor abound.

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Though young men faint and grow weary, and youths stagger and fall,

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They that hope in the LORD will renew their strength, they will soar as with eagles' wings; They will run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint.

To whom can you liken God?

We are not like God. We never will be. We were made in His image. But we'll never be God. Just the image of God. "An idol, cast by a craftsman, which the smith plates with gold and fits with silver chains?"

We are not godlike. Not even in our worst illusions. Why try to be something that is outside of your nature? I don't try to be a god. I can't tell you what will be. What I ask for is simple.

Spring.

New shoots. New faith. New life.

Renewal.

Peace be with you.