There are times when I "feel" secure in my walk. There are also times when I'm full of doubt; confidence has fled. In most cases, doubts are mind-games I indulge and are the result of compromising behavior -- repentance puts me back on the "high road." The wonder of it all is that I have any "sense" of the truth at all. When Jesus asked his disciples "Whom do they say I am" ... the fellows recited a list of hypothesis they were hearing from the world around them. When the question was posed to them directly, it was Peter who mustered his faith: Before I came to Jesus ... the only equipment I had for deciding "what to do or say" existed in Isolation. All I had was me, and the modes I knew were reciprocal.
If you've read thus far, you no-doubt agree:
How can we know anything at all? Since we live in the world, it is external to us. Senses interpret the world for us. Something is "hot", or "smells bad" or is "ugly" ... one notices the reciprocal infinitive of relativism and how it's derivation leads inexorably to an agnostic final result. Natural thinking leads to self-oriented confinement: "...it is what it is to me." Even intellectual artifacts are self-created. We know that 1+1=2 because of rules we were taught. And later we can question even the existence of this knowledge.
So how did Peter "know" his answer? Jesus quantifies the influx of conviction as having come to him supernaturally. What's that all about!! Can looking deeper "inside ourselves" lead to actual wisdom? (Eastern Religions are famously introspective and experientially oriented in this way... claiming deep teaching comes though meditation, astral travel and by conversation with ephemeral "spirit guides." See those reciprocal rules above. How do we punch a hole in the dark airless bag of self? Is there a stream of real wisdom, a pure truth that we can tap? What's in the gap between what I know in myself and the perfect absolute knowledge that is "out there?' It's been rigorously shown by many -- self-examination leads ultimately to self-doubt. Real truth then, knowledge which actually exists -- is outside ourselves can only be revealed to us. This may seem to violate #2 above. In the absence of a self to form opinions or accept those of others, what exists?
Seriously? Awake in nothingness? Jean-Paul Sartre in his Existential tome "Being and nothingness" feasts deeply on that malarky. What's it mean: to be unconscious of nothingness? Profound contradictions, even on the face. Can we step back from the self-inflicted fallacy of intellectual delusion?
What I want is a state of complete fullness! Knowledge of belonging; otherness within a fellowship of others. |
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