Making Sense of Religion
-
Christian Liberty 1
Since Libertarianism has been the topic of the last couple of days, I thought a discussion about "liberty" from the Christian angle might balance things out a little. As I wrote in my earlier essay, Politics and Religion, I think Libertarian principles should rule in the cultural sphere–government has no business legislating morality, but it's
-
Faith & Truthiness
Everyone shall be remembered, but everyone became great in proportion to his expectancy. One became great by expecting the possible, another by expecting the eternal; but he who expected the impossible became the greatest of all. —Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and
-
Building Jerusalem from the Inside Out
The Self is a problematic word and my use of it in my "Subjects and Objects" post the other day needs more elaboration. As RP asks, how is what I'm saying different from what Ayn Rand is saying? And it's a good question. There are a couple of angles I want to take in an
-
Why Religion?
It's the first Sunday in Lent, and so I think I'm going to stay away from the political stuff for awhile and focus, instead, on some themes that give us hope. So this morning I was thinking about the difference between religion and faith, and it reminded me of this letter I wrote my son
-
Religion & Politics
I've found it useful to think about any society as having three separate but interpenetrating spheres–cultural, political, and economic. Long-time readers of this blog are familiar with my use of the terms, but I thought they might be worth revisiting because I want to use them later as a way of talking about pluralism and
-
Faith & Knowledge
A Sunday thought for the day: By "faith" is understood not the upholding of one's own–much less other people's–ideas as true, but the grasping of a growing reality of the supersensible world, and making it the concern of one's own will. That which is already there can be either known or not known–but that which
-
Cosmogenesis I
I mentioned the other day that I was reading Wink's The Powers that Be in which he talks about the Myth of Redemptive Violence, which he traces back to the primal, viciously violent battle between Marduk and Tiamat in the Enuma Elish, the Mesopotamian cosmogonic myth. And at some point I want to come back
-
Believing II
Earlier this week I tried to make the case that "believing" is what we all do when we give value, meaning, and purpose to our experience and to our work in the world. Believing is fundamentally an irrational act. It draws upon resources that transcend what the brain/sense system can give us with certainty. The
-
Believing I
We take for granted the solidity of world around us, and yet we also understand, even if only abstractly, that the way we experience it is profoundly shaped by our acculturation. The world we see is a social construction, and while this doesn’t mean that the world is arbitrary, it does mean that it is