Tag Archives: Faith

Fight for It!!

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There is this common delusional image of a utopian world where there is no pain, no suffering, and no tears. Sounds good, right? Nonsense!! It would only take a few moments to realize how banal and boring such a state would be. It wouldn’t offer anything meaningful to life. No. Meaning in life is about challenge, failure, courage, success, and then moving on to new challenges. This is so obvious from the evolutionary history of life on this planet. Stagnation of abhorrent. The cosmos drives toward change, and change that reflects the constant, eternal creation of love, beauty, and meaning. Could there really be an end to such a quest?

Life isn’t easy, and that’s the way God created and lives it in the Divine Life. The glories and tragedies of life are intertwined at the deepest level. There is a yin/yang deeply embedded in how reality comes about moment by moment and proceeds.

The great theologian Paul Tillich said:

This leads to a fundamental assertion: The Divine Life is the eternal conquest of the negative; this is its blessedness. Eternal blessedness is not a state of immovable perfection — the philosophers of becoming are right in rejecting such a concept. But the Divine Life is blessedness through fight and victory.” Systematic Theology, Vol 3, p. 405

We need to get over this notion that the problem of evil is a deal-breaker for theism. It’s not! In fact, it points to the very essence of why this life, as it is, is as it is supposed to be. The presence of opposites (good/evil, creation/destruction, being/non-being) is part of the glory of life. Without the evils in the world, virtue would not be possible. All the virtues we admire have their opposite. Courage/Cowardice, Love/Hate, Persistence/Resignation, Creation/Destruction, Humility/Pride, Generosity/Greed, and so on.

The evils in the world are real and often catastrophic. No denying it. But this is a profound call. It is a call to action, a call to put virtue into action. To make a difference. To fight for beauty, love, and meaning even in the midst of life’s challenges.

Who is not moved by those who are willing to sacrifice themselves for some higher principle? This has happened throughout history. They represent the highest nobility of the human spirit. They call us to be the same in moments of paramount importance.

Thankfully, this fight is not without its pauses. There will be times of respite and calm. We should relish and appreciate those times. They offer a glimpse of what can be the case in ever-expanding time frames. There will never be a utopia, but there can be progress and growth. Things can and do get better. Persistence, hope, and faith are eternal and efficacious.

So, the call is to fight and then rest. To rise to the occasion when necessary and then enjoy and appreciate the fruits of the struggle. Such is the blessedness of life.

Get Rid of It!! — The Idea of Salvation

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We should completely get rid of the idea of salvation. Salvation is a BAD idea. I’ve written about this before. Here’s a clip from that post:

Salvation is a bad idea because:
1. It’s based on a naïve and sentimental view about how life should be.
2. It says that humanity and the world are intrinsically flawed and need fixing.
3. It has requirements that must be met, or salvation won’t be attained. This creates the fear of losing out or even suffering negative consequences. In some situations, this can be personally damaging.
4. It can lead to unwavering dogmatism and denigration of those who have it wrong.
5. It provides the opportunity for religious institutions (and cults) to exert control over their adherents.
6. It can create a fatalism about this world that thwarts full engagement in making it a better place.
7. It creates an elite class of those who get the requirements right.
8. It casts a negative light on ultimate reality as the source of this reality and makes any fruits of that reality suspect. Theologically, God messed up.  Non-theologically, whatever is the source of this reality is either indifferent, evil, or incompetent.

So, if we get rid of the idea of salvation, then what? Then we can focus on what really matters – how we live. What’s ultimately important is how we treat ourselves, each other, other creatures, and our world. That’s it.

Does that mean that worldviews don’t matter? Absolutely not. Worldviews orient us in the grand scheme of things. They give us a sense of who and what we are, our place in the cosmos, and help us determine how we should live. In other words, they ground our sense of what it means to live a good life. Now, in that sense, if we get rid of the idea of salvation, then the conversations about worldviews can be helpful. If we can agree that how we live is what is ultimately important, then those dialogues can be constructive toward a better world.

Now, I don’t presume that getting rid of the idea of salvation will be easy. It won’t. There are deep existential concerns in play, and serious, profound problems to be addressed. But if we can just agree that this world is fundamentally a beneficent place and that whatever happens after life will also be beneficent, then perhaps that is enough. God chose to live finite lives (through kenosis) and experience life in all its dimensions, including the great joys and beauty as well as the great tragedies. All this is what makes life meaningful both for God-as-transcendent and God-as-living (God’s incarnations) as us and all other creatures. If we can accept that life has great value in all its dimensions, then we can see that this reality is not a mistake in need of a fix and instead get on with the hard work of living the best we can and shaping this world for the good of all.