Preaching to the Faithless
Pope Benedict XVI is once again elucidating the condition of humankind pointing out that those without spiritual faith may be responsible on a scale larger than they may realize for the failure of humanity to progress. For, he asserts, atheism has led to some of the "greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice". As though religion has not had its distinguished past of cruelty and violations of justice.The simple fact he appears to overlook here - either because it's an inconvenience to be ignored, or because he truly is not aware that humankind is of a kind in this discussion - is that atheism and religion aside, it is in human nature to be dispassionately cruel, as it is also in human nature to be passionately kind. Inherent in our gifts from nature are those proclivities and we have the choice as thinking creatures to decide which will more adequately express our natures.
Adherence to religion and its strictures does not guarantee reasonable accommodation, any more than the embrace of atheism as a realistic choice for those who eschew the existence of a man-made construct of a concerned and concerning God would. We are all capable of a type of spirituality, for we are all endowed with a soul in this natural world. Which some would have is our mind, our intelligence, our discernment.
We are capable of living up to our potential as human beings, or down to the collapse of our failures as human beings through our choices, given through free will. Yet as Pope Benedict would have it, without a belief in the Almighty, the world is without hope. This speaks mightily to his flock, anddemeaningly to dissenters. But then, that is what religious do; they support their adherents, admonishing them to ever greater faith, while dunning all others.
Without God's intervention, he claims, humanity is incapable of producing out of itself the best possible outcome. Which, presumably, is to achieve peace on earth. God, on the other hand, is capable of ensuring that such a condition might come to pass, but is obviously disinterested in lifting His mighty hand to make it reality. We are given the emotional tools by God to make the best of our situation, but in denying such opportunities we deny our salvation.
The idea of man having created the great personage of a Heavenly Spirit to guide us through the shoals of disaster awaiting us at every turn has, he claims, led to injustice and untold grief. Those who insist in their benighted lack of vision and faith that mankind must aspire to save itself from itself, to claim for ourselves that which only God can produce, are arrogant, presumptuous and false.
"A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope", he warns us. Faith in ourselves, in our ability to transmit to one another the faith of trust and respect is false, without the mediating presence of God. Faith in our own progress is illusory. We are only capable of evil possibilities; man's progress is a terrifying progress in evil, he claims.
He's right in many respects. We are our own worst enemies. We are capable of producing situations of unbelievable horror through the simple expedient of creating the illusion of others being humanly deficient, lesser creatures whose anguish and torment is animal in nature, and unfeeling, quite unlike that of true humans. And then they become easy fodder for cruel ambitions.
So where is God in all this? God, presumably, looks down upon the deeds done in His name as well as those done in the name of humankind sans-God, shrugs metaphoric shoulders and turns away. "We can free our life and the world from the poisons andcontaminations that could destroy the present and the future", claims the Pope, holding out Christian hope - Roman Catholic in particular - as salvation.
"We can uncover the sources of Creation and keep them unsullied, and in this way we can make a right use of creation, which comes to us as a gift" he has also said. And to this who might not agree, in that nature has created us, granted us the supreme gift of life and of personal choices. To be responsible for ourselves, and responsive to the needs of those around us. In perpetuity? who knows, after all nothing is assured.
The great adventure in purple prose embarked upon by this godly emissary, that "Eternity was not an unending succession of days in the calendar, but rather looks toward an encounter after death with God's chosen son, "like plunging into an ocean of infinite love, a moment in which time, the before and after no longer exists", certainly plays to the ecstatic mind of pure, unadulterated faith in the Divine.
It is we, in our humility and our kindness to one another in whom the divine spark of life has been lit singly and collectively, by the vast resources of nature. It is also we, in our willingness to let our better natures be overcome by the least resourceful of our emotions and desires, who must take responsibility for the ill we do.
Until God demonstrates otherwise, unequivocally, and in a manner that is no longer open to debate. Show us, in three dimensions - in living colour, please.
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, December 02, 2007
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