"Aim for Perfection"

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!  We do!!! But in all the wrong places!!! Not to mention the wrong times and about the wrong things!

In Paul's final words to those in Corinth, we find admonishments that sound very foreign to our ears, why?  Is it because of the proximity to Christ--in Spirit? Or in our contrasting eras with Christ's actual influence waning over the centuries, as He predicted? 
"But when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth? (Maybe not--but He'll find plenty of "unjust judges.")

I think it is because we want our pie and eat it too.  Love without testing.  Peace by taking no trouble about it. (Maybe we can just buy off our enemies on ebay...)

I often recall a cartoon called "Pontius' Puddle" in which Pontius--a sort of ill formed Christian amoeba-was speaking to a friend and said:"I asked God why he wasn't doing anything about all the suffering and injustice in the world; and He asked me the same thing."  Ah, so!

In other words, God (of the Bible I'm talking here) allows all the trouble we create, and have continuously created since we were Created.  Overt Acts have consequences too, not just Ideas. Stewardship means taking some trouble to ameliorate at least our carelessness, infantile selfishness, and wayward spending with which we reward ourselves with our own comforts well outside the Will of The Comforter.

CSL once wrote that we are all contaminated by what he called "mountain apple," meaning original sin that was love of the world at first bite. With large dollops of suffering on top or to follow.  If we are contaminated--I would say closer to  immersed in such fruit--then it is true that, "Without Me you can do nothing." And I would add, worse than nothing. We are baked into Western Mountain Apple Pie.  "And when the pie was opened..."


There's a very fine article in Touchstone magazine in regards to the general  Western cultural change from Aristotelian logic, in which each thing and person has an "essence" and intrinsic worth and existence;unto, thanks to Hume and Kant, "symbolic logic"  which is what I would call either sensate logic or the logic of the market place, or the logic of slavery.  In which anything and everything has no value except for what people will pay for it.  That might be money...or just attention. I am quite sure our hospital has made this cultural shift, and as an employee and no longer in private practice, I feel this everyday in the push for quantity as opposed to the desire for quality.  This struggle is ongoing of course because you can't really ignore the quality issue--but why? Because if you do, you might get sued?  But that is still Market Place Reasoning, not doing something for its own intrinsic or inherent worth, right?

Is the East taking over because they have a sense of the intrinsic worth of a human person? Not at all...it's still a very impersonal philosophical place--but certain concepts are held by some to have intrinsic worth; for instance Robert Pirsig in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence."  "Quality" is his mantra, even though it rather hangs in thin air with no "ratio"  ; thus joining the ranks of the absurd.

This is altogether different from this perfectness which Paul mentions among other admonitions; but in which perfection is balanced by mercy and grace, which he also displayed to the wayward Corinthians. If one wants an example of Eastern striving, read, "Death of a Guru," or give another viewing to "My Dinner With  Andre."  Both one-sided and dualistic strivings are "right out," (see my son's book on Auden and Augustine when it comes out next year--I have a copy of his thesis) which is why I am more of a Trinitarian every day; and less of a polytheist, which is just a mess. But without a mess, no Messiah?

For some, an "ah-so" moment...heh...