jlp@faust.UUCP (05/03/85)
It's Psalm 22, and it's in Matthew and Mark. Jerryl Payne ...!ihnp4!inmet!faust!jlp
jimc@haddock.UUCP (08/24/85)
It is hard to respond to this without sounding patronizing, but
man, oh, man, do I ever feel sorry for the author of this note.
What an enormous toll life has taken on his personality! I
certainly hope that one day his world-view will be more hopeful.
There are many people to whom many terrible things have happened,
yet they have maintained faith in a beneficent God. On the other
side, there are those who have no faith, but cheerful, hopeful
dispositions nonetheless. It is difficult for me to imagine what
chain of events would have inspired such an attitude as
enunciated by the author of this note; perhaps a tragedy
recently, or tragedy in the past which still weighs heavily on
his consciousness.
Yes, life is full of tragedy, and destruction. However, admitting
this does not necessarily exclude the reality of a loving,
caring God, who is the author of all destiny. There has certainly
been much written about the "problem of evil" or, in rough terms,
"why bad things happen to good people." One theory (I am not
certain of its origin) is that the human literally starts from
nothing and with nothing. There is a date at which we are born;
before this date, we have no existence, inside the universe or
outside the universe. We are nothing; less than nothing.
Then birth comes, and the miracle has occurred. We are something
now. However, we are certainly not in birth everything we are
to be in life. Life itself is one long process of going from
very little to very much. It is in this period, our stay on
earth, that we are taught the fundamentals of existence. There
is an objective reality, and we can do nothing to it. If
existence were always pleasant, or always worked a way we wanted
it to, objective truth would have no meaning at all. If our minds
could dictate our environment, the only reality would be our own
minds; all else would be irrlevant.
In this great Education, as it would seem, we deal with things
beyond our control. No amount of reasoning, mental tricks,
rationalizations, or rhetoric can help a starving child overcome
hunger. Food must be given, or the child will continue to starve.
That is the end of the subject; there is no more to be said.
We thus learn, through a harsh and destructive reality, that life
is not all of our own. We begin to see ourselves in perspective
against the Universe, against God, against others. We are small,
very small, and it takes very little to harm us -- take away
water for a week, and we are reduced to lifeless masses of organic
compounds.
Of course, death has the final word on all human life. Again, another
circumstance far out of our control; no amount of medical progress
will ever conquer it entirely. All life must end some day. We die,
and leave others behind to grieve, bitterly. Again, however,
this objective reality of earth is a testament to the fact that
all reality is not contained in the apparent universe, that other
worlds reach into ours and take away their inhabitants. And what
can be said of death itself, but as a certain end to the suffering
of earth, and if we believe what we are told of it, an instrument
of Satan that Christ stole away and turned into a gift that God
gives everyone; an entry to a reality no less objective than
our present but certainly more fundamentally complete, more as
it always should be, more satisfying to the human spirit?
I have said a lot. I, too, as a Catholic, have gone through
many occasions where my faith has been tested to its limits;
to the point where I question the very existence of God or His
nature. However, these periods have ended for me, and though
never expelled forever, they never return in as strong a way
as they were before. And the pain we see in the base note
will also end, and its author will be lifted from it. It will
happen.
Jim Campbell
..!{ihnp4,allegra,harvard}!ima!haddock!jimcjlp@faust.UUCP (08/26/85)
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This can be sung to the tune "More about Jesus"
Jerryl Payne
...!ihnp4!inmet!faust!jlpjlp@faust.UUCP (10/28/85)
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Did your research turn up anything on a group called the Habiru?
I'd be interested in your findings.
Jerryl Payne
...!ihnp4!inmet!faust!jlp