Monday, February 6, 2012
274 - He's Got the Whole World ...
Spirituality Column #274
February 7, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)
He’s Got the Whole World …
By Bob Walters
Is there anything anywhere that is not – somehow – attached to God?
For believers, the answer is easy: “No.” Everything was created by God, is attached to God, is finally answerable to God, and ultimately (if only in eternity) glorifies God. God is in and around everything, whether we understand it or not.
Believers’ identifying quote: “Praise God!”
For modernists, the answer is complex. Modernists – the philosopher modernists, we mean; the existentialists (“thought begins with man”) and secular humanists (rights of man) – generally allow for the existence of God but draw subjective lines of opinion and confinement around what is and is not in God’s purview.
Modernism presumes mankind and creation are capable of generating thought and things independently from God, making mankind responsible for truth, justice, and judging right and wrong. Modernists – the Enlightenment crowd, Darwinists, Evolutionists, etc. – cast a wary, often intellectually pitying eye on those poor dumb annoying believers. For man to be big, modernism insists God be made small.
Identifying quote: “God is a matter of opinion.”
For postmodernists, the answer is irrelevant because the question is invalid: God is merely an indefinable myth for the weak minded. Everyone worships something, and postmodernists seem to worship experiential, demonstrable, situational expedience filtered through power and money yielding an unprovable version of operable truth and reality in the here and now. There is no “good” or “right or wrong” or even “proof,” there is only “what is” and “whatever.” That’s it. Absent a more appropriate subspecies identifier, most of these folks typically are identified – hailed, really – as “intellectuals.”
Identifying quote: “Don’t tell me what to think.”
I’m comfortable that all intelligence, wisdom, truth, morality, judgment, the good, the bad, the ugly – all of it – goes back to God. This is not to knock human intelligence or intellectuals, but to recognize and celebrate God’s uniquely prospering and challenging gift to man – the brain in our head.
An old theological joke recounts how God, playing hide and seek with man, hid in the human heart figuring it would be the last place man would look. People the world over yearn to worship something, but use their “wisdom” to keep the real God at bay.
Jesus says we are to seek God (Matthew 6:33, “But first seek His Kingdom”), and that the greatest commandment is to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30). We may first feel God - sense Him - in our hearts, but it takes an engaged mind to appreciate that God is attached to every part of our lives.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com, www.commonchristianity.blogspot.com ) knows lots of smart people but doesn’t pray for their wisdom, he prays for God’s … with mixed results.
February 7, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)
He’s Got the Whole World …
By Bob Walters
Is there anything anywhere that is not – somehow – attached to God?
For believers, the answer is easy: “No.” Everything was created by God, is attached to God, is finally answerable to God, and ultimately (if only in eternity) glorifies God. God is in and around everything, whether we understand it or not.
Believers’ identifying quote: “Praise God!”
For modernists, the answer is complex. Modernists – the philosopher modernists, we mean; the existentialists (“thought begins with man”) and secular humanists (rights of man) – generally allow for the existence of God but draw subjective lines of opinion and confinement around what is and is not in God’s purview.
Modernism presumes mankind and creation are capable of generating thought and things independently from God, making mankind responsible for truth, justice, and judging right and wrong. Modernists – the Enlightenment crowd, Darwinists, Evolutionists, etc. – cast a wary, often intellectually pitying eye on those poor dumb annoying believers. For man to be big, modernism insists God be made small.
Identifying quote: “God is a matter of opinion.”
For postmodernists, the answer is irrelevant because the question is invalid: God is merely an indefinable myth for the weak minded. Everyone worships something, and postmodernists seem to worship experiential, demonstrable, situational expedience filtered through power and money yielding an unprovable version of operable truth and reality in the here and now. There is no “good” or “right or wrong” or even “proof,” there is only “what is” and “whatever.” That’s it. Absent a more appropriate subspecies identifier, most of these folks typically are identified – hailed, really – as “intellectuals.”
Identifying quote: “Don’t tell me what to think.”
I’m comfortable that all intelligence, wisdom, truth, morality, judgment, the good, the bad, the ugly – all of it – goes back to God. This is not to knock human intelligence or intellectuals, but to recognize and celebrate God’s uniquely prospering and challenging gift to man – the brain in our head.
An old theological joke recounts how God, playing hide and seek with man, hid in the human heart figuring it would be the last place man would look. People the world over yearn to worship something, but use their “wisdom” to keep the real God at bay.
Jesus says we are to seek God (Matthew 6:33, “But first seek His Kingdom”), and that the greatest commandment is to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30). We may first feel God - sense Him - in our hearts, but it takes an engaged mind to appreciate that God is attached to every part of our lives.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com, www.commonchristianity.blogspot.com ) knows lots of smart people but doesn’t pray for their wisdom, he prays for God’s … with mixed results.
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