Successful authors are often asked, “How do you come up with your ideas?,” to which they usually reply, “I get tidbits here and there from the news, books I read, daily events…” and so on. How dull. I am not a successful author, not in the Best Seller sense anyway, and I have a much better explanation: I am given my basic ideas from God or my guardian angel or from the collective unconscious, which are then super-imposed on news, books I read, daily events and so on. The first part is a gift. The second part is a lot of work.
Some work is harder than others, and I feel like Calvin from “Calvin and Hobbes” when he is pretending to be a super genius mad scientist who has just invented something like the transmorgrophier. In his mind, his head swells to alien proportions, and he uses Latin-based words when English would do just fine to show his genius. In the end, though, even with his swollen head and two-dollar words, he still can’t really make a transmorgrophier.
Me, I deal in things a little less challenging than machines that can change people into insects, but still I am forced to struggle. Today, for instance, I was given two ideas that must be molded - transmorgrophied – into one greater, more complete and deeper meaning. Here I am pulling open the curtain. A grown child, me, must now not only pretend to make something bigger and more meaningful, but actually do it. Too bad I don’t have a stuffed tiger (Hobbes) to help me.
Here are those ideas, taken separately. The first came from nearly daily arguments – I mean discussions – about certain political notions that I will not mention here. At the root of them was the dualistic understanding that one is either a victim or victimize. If one is the former, it is supposed that one should hang one’s head in shame in deference to the latter. After going round and round the mulberry bush on this basic idea, it hit me: we are not trapped in a one- or- another world, but really have our feet in several of them at the same time. For instance, we all understand that if one possesses more than what is necessary, then one has a moral obligation to help those who have less. However, in this we miss the idea that if one is poor, one also is a person with a full soul who also has moral obligations. Unless it is a matter of life or death, one should not steal, and if one must, one must only do so to survive. One must not also do things like sell drugs or his children or murder for hire, among many other immoral acts. The poor person is, then, just as obligated to live the moral life as anyone else. In that obligation, he is also responsible to relieve himself of his poverty as best he can through honest means.
This changes everything. Violent crime is then not solely the fault of society rather than the individual, illegal transgressions of borders are then not solely the fault of Wester hegemony, and so on, and to think otherwise is to rob the so-called victim of his human-ness.
Idea # Two: While reading the book of Judges in the Old Testament these last several days, I could not help but see how unbelievably primitive these people were. One, for instance, would kill all of his 70 brothers to attain the role of supreme leader – these 70 brothers made possible by harems that numbered women in the hundreds like cattle – while another would slaughter an entire tribe, men women and children, for an offense from hundreds of years earlier. On top of that, the people of Israel would revert to the worship of pagan gods with their orgies and child blood sacrifice again and again despite the blessings and victories given them by the one true God of their people. It is simply hard to believe what barbarians they were. In comparison, we can see how much we as a human race have improved.
Here comes the big idea that puts the other two together: the improvements that we think we see would be laughable if a fool acting as a murderer is funny. In the first example, we can see how wrong we have been in assuming that one person or group fits either into one simple category or another. If we believe in the essential Christian thought that all is divinely made for a purpose, we can never insulate anyone from their rights and obligations before God. These rights include the privilege of eternal life and those obligations, the acts (and suppression of wrong acts) that will bring them, us and anyone to realize eternal salvation.
This thought expands into the next: if we are fundamentally wrong about this supposed dichotomy, in what else are we fundamentally wrong? Should we even attempt to count the ways? Let’s start with this: if a society’s vision was wise and expansive, we would expect to see a society in overall peace, where most were in agreement over the most fundamental aspects of their communal arrangements and moral foundations (I did not say ALL because that would mean that we all knew everything and that we all operated from benign impulses - but still, most). Yet instead, we have fundamental disagreements about the most basic principles. This includes thought #one, where one’s temporary status on one issue is seen to be the full portrait, but there are many others. Abortion, for instance. Could the protection of the foundations of human life be more essential? And yet people of good will have fought and continue to fight over this one issue. It might even decide this year’s presidential election. Where is the wisdom?
Crime, for instance. Here, we can expand on thought #one again: should a characteristic or circumstance determine one’s responsibility for moral behavior? Should someone’s race or ethnicity or residential status determine whether or not they will be prosecuted for crimes? Or, war for instance: when should we proceed with war, the most fundamentally destructive behavior a nation can engage in? Do we have anything even close to a consensus on that? Are we in fundamental agreement on Ukraine and Israel, even as billions are spent and thousands are killed?
Or marriage and sex and families, for instance. I hate to even proceed with this because it is so basic and so fraught with contention. Should we have gay marriage, should homosexuality be normalized in schools, should kids be allowed to “transgender,” should divorce be made easy, should the pill be available to children. Or drugs (for instance): should one or some or all be legalized? What penalties should be applied, if any? And why, oh why, do so many get caught up in taking them, to the point of addiction, sickness, poverty, and death? Why have we, in our wisdom that is so much greater than the old Jews, not figured our way out of this one deadly disaster?
The big idea, the one from God or the angels, gets ever bigger. We can, and perhaps must, quote from scripture at this point:
He has made everything appropriate for its time,
and has put the timeless in their hearts,
without man’s ever discovering,
from beginning to end, the work which God has done. (Eccl 3:11)
We are more than the flowers and the trees and the rocks, for the timeless is in our hearts, but we do not – cannot – understand in this world the full intentions of God in the timelessness of his creation. We are more than ants, and have our obligations and our eternal reward, but our understanding of who we are and where we are is as if we were ants in the cosmic scheme. On the scale of one to eternity, whether we are at number 10 or number 1 million hardly matters – we are still that far from the end. In the Christian Bible, an era was ended with the Old Testament and a new one begun with Christ, but this did not include attaining perfection in this world, at least not until the Apocalypse. Instead, the great leap forward that defines the New Testament was in obtaining Christ as a bridge so that we might cross an uncross-able chasm to God. We have learned tidbits here and there, especially from the Bible (whether one is a believer or not) that has helped end such things as slavery and female servitude, but still, we fall far short.
How, then, do we proceed, or is this only an intellectual enterprise?
In one sense, it is easy – that is, if one has faith. Although we are fastened to the world in our daily thoughts and so cannot even begin to understand the “work that God has done,” we have this very same Bible that tells us of the end to this world and how to rise to the other, the eternal. We then have the basic blueprint for how we should live and for what we should live for.
On the other hand, it is impossibly hard and truly only an intellectual enterprise IF we proceed to understand the world from the viewpoint of the world, that is, without faith in the cosmic designer and his Holy Spirit. If I were to write from this vantage point, I could only say what the famous authors say about their ideas – that they come from a patchwork of daily events and little more. Life, and life’s stories, would only be a source of amusement or of pain or pleasure, but never a story that proceeds from, and points to, greatness.
And that is how we all must see our own stories. We are but tiny incidences in this vastness, but we come from and are bound for greatness. If we were to truly understand the power and glory that is in our midst, our society would evolve to such a height that it would be pointless to compare it to those of the past. Instead, as members we would move in awe throughout our lives, praising the blessings of our very being with every holy minute.
.
Successful authors are often asked, “How do you come up with your ideas?,” to which they usually reply, “I get tidbits here and there from the news, books I read, daily events…” and so on. How dull. I am not a successful author, not in the Best Seller sense anyway, and I have a much better explanation: I am given my basic ideas from God or my guardian angel or from the collective unconscious, which are then super-imposed on news, books I read, daily events and so on. The first part is a gift. The second part is a lot of work.
Some work is harder than others, and I feel like Calvin from “Calvin and Hobbes” when he is pretending to be a super genius mad scientist who has just invented something like the transmorgrophier. In his mind, his head swells to alien proportions, and he uses Latin-based words when English would do just fine to show his genius. In the end, though, even with his swollen head and two-dollar words, he still can’t really make a transmorgrophier.
Me, I deal in things a little less challenging than machines that can change people into insects, but still I am forced to struggle. Today, for instance, I was given two ideas that must be molded - transmorgrophied – into one greater, more complete and deeper meaning. Here I am pulling open the curtain. A grown child, me, must now not only pretend to make something bigger and more meaningful, but actually do it. Too bad I don’t have a stuffed tiger (Hobbes) to help me.
Here are those ideas, taken separately. The first came from nearly daily arguments – I mean discussions – about certain political notions that I will not mention here. At the root of them was the dualistic understanding that one is either a victim or victimize. If one is the former, it is supposed that one should hang one’s head in shame in deference to the latter. After going round and round the mulberry bush on this basic idea, it hit me: we are not trapped in a one- or- another world, but really have our feet in several of them at the same time. For instance, we all understand that if one possesses more than what is necessary, then one has a moral obligation to help those who have less. However, in this we miss the idea that if one is poor, one also is a person with a full soul who also has moral obligations. Unless it is a matter of life or death, one should not steal, and if one must, one must only do so to survive. One must not also do things like sell drugs or his children or murder for hire, among many other immoral acts. The poor person is, then, just as obligated to live the moral life as anyone else. In that obligation, he is also responsible to relieve himself of his poverty as best he can through honest means.
This changes everything. Violent crime is then not solely the fault of society rather than the individual, illegal transgressions of borders are then not solely the fault of Wester hegemony, and so on, and to think otherwise is to rob the so-called victim of his human-ness.
Idea # Two: While reading the book of Judges in the Old Testament these last several days, I could not help but see how unbelievably primitive these people were. One, for instance, would kill all of his 70 brothers to attain the role of supreme leader – these 70 brothers made possible by harems that numbered women in the hundreds like cattle – while another would slaughter an entire tribe, men women and children, for an offense from hundreds of years earlier. On top of that, the people of Israel would revert to the worship of pagan gods with their orgies and child blood sacrifice again and again despite the blessings and victories given them by the one true God of their people. It is simply hard to believe what barbarians they were. In comparison, we can see how much we as a human race have improved.
Here comes the big idea that puts the other two together: the improvements that we think we see would be laughable if a fool acting as a murderer is funny. In the first example, we can see how wrong we have been in assuming that one person or group fits either into one simple category or another. If we believe in the essential Christian thought that all is divinely made for a purpose, we can never insulate anyone from their rights and obligations before God. These rights include the privilege of eternal life and those obligations, the acts (and suppression of wrong acts) that will bring them, us and anyone to realize eternal salvation.
This thought expands into the next: if we are fundamentally wrong about this supposed dichotomy, in what else are we fundamentally wrong? Should we even attempt to count the ways? Let’s start with this: if a society’s vision was wise and expansive, we would expect to see a society in overall peace, where most were in agreement over the most fundamental aspects of their communal arrangements and moral foundations (I did not say ALL because that would mean that we all knew everything and that we all operated from benign impulses - but still, most). Yet instead, we have fundamental disagreements about the most basic principles. This includes thought #one, where one’s temporary status on one issue is seen to be the full portrait, but there are many others. Abortion, for instance. Could the protection of the foundations of human life be more essential? And yet people of good will have fought and continue to fight over this one issue. It might even decide this year’s presidential election. Where is the wisdom?
Crime, for instance. Here, we can expand on thought #one again: should a characteristic or circumstance determine one’s responsibility for moral behavior? Should someone’s race or ethnicity or residential status determine whether or not they will be prosecuted for crimes? Or, war for instance: when should we proceed with war, the most fundamentally destructive behavior a nation can engage in? Do we have anything even close to a consensus on that? Are we in fundamental agreement on Ukraine and Israel, even as billions are spent and thousands are killed?
Or marriage and sex and families, for instance. I hate to even proceed with this because it is so basic and so fraught with contention. Should we have gay marriage, should homosexuality be normalized in schools, should kids be allowed to “transgender,” should divorce be made easy, should the pill be available to children. Or drugs (for instance): should one or some or all be legalized? What penalties should be applied, if any? And why, oh why, do so many get caught up in taking them, to the point of addiction, sickness, poverty, and death? Why have we, in our wisdom that is so much greater than the old Jews, not figured our way out of this one deadly disaster?
The big idea, the one from God or the angels, gets ever bigger. We can, and perhaps must, quote from scripture at this point:
He has made everything appropriate for its time,
and has put the timeless in their hearts,
without man’s ever discovering,
from beginning to end, the work which God has done. (Eccl 3:11)
We are more than the flowers and the trees and the rocks, for the timeless is in our hearts, but we do not – cannot – understand in this world the full intentions of God in the timelessness of his creation. We are more than ants, and have our obligations and our eternal reward, but our understanding of who we are and where we are is as if we were ants in the cosmic scheme. On the scale of one to eternity, whether we are at number 10 or number 1 million hardly matters – we are still that far from the end. In the Christian Bible, an era was ended with the Old Testament and a new one begun with Christ, but this did not include attaining perfection in this world, at least not until the Apocalypse. Instead, the great leap forward that defines the New Testament was in obtaining Christ as a bridge so that we might cross an uncross-able chasm to God. We have learned tidbits here and there, especially from the Bible (whether one is a believer or not) that has helped end such things as slavery and female servitude, but still, we fall far short.
How, then, do we proceed, or is this only an intellectual enterprise?
In one sense, it is easy – that is, if one has faith. Although we are fastened to the world in our daily thoughts and so cannot even begin to understand the “work that God has done,” we have this very same Bible that tells us of the end to this world and how to rise to the other, the eternal. We then have the basic blueprint for how we should live and for what we should live for.
On the other hand, it is impossibly hard and truly only an intellectual enterprise IF we proceed to understand the world from the viewpoint of the world, that is, without faith in the cosmic designer and his Holy Spirit. If I were to write from this vantage point, I could only say what the famous authors say about their ideas – that they come from a patchwork of daily events and little more. Life, and life’s stories, would only be a source of amusement or of pain or pleasure, but never a story that proceeds from, and points to, greatness.
And that is how we all must see our own stories. We are but tiny incidences in this vastness, but we come from and are bound for greatness. If we were to truly understand the power and glory that is in our midst, our society would evolve to such a height that it would be pointless to compare it to those of the past. Instead, as members we would move in awe throughout our lives, praising the blessings of our very being with every holy minute.
.
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