"We have, he writes on one occasion, 'lost the awareness of the close bond that links the knowing of truth to the condition of purity.' That is, in order to know the truth we must become persons of a certain sort."
In order to know the truth we must become persons of a certain sort. This is profound and rubs against most current understanding of knowledge. Knowledge is only knowledge when it is lived. You can know something, but you only know it as much as it affects the way you live or informs the way you live. Truth of this sort places a demand on us and if we say "no" to the demand with our actions we can't claim to know the truth at all.
Heschel says it this way: "Deed and thought are bound into one ... Spiritual aspirations are doomed to failure when we try to cultivate deeds at the expense of thoughts or thoughts at the expense of deeds." Then he asks a question to further make his point "Is it the artist's inner vision or his wrestling with the stone that brings about a work of sculputre?" The art is not disconnected from the artist's mental vision, but it also will never be art if the mental vision isn't brought forth through a physical medium. "Right living is like a work of art, the product of a vision and of a wrestling with concrete situations."
This is it.
Merton's prayer for us: "Untie my hands and deliver my heart from sloth. Set me free from the laziness that goes about disguised as activity when activity is not required of me, and from the cowardice that does what is not demanded, in order to escape sacrifice."
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3 comments:
Good post, Jason. Socrates, in Plato's writing, challenges the idea that we can ever act in a way that is contrary to what we believe or judge to be the best course of action. The Greeks called this "akrasia" (weakness of the will). He says that it is impossible to act against our best judgment and that poor decisions are only a result of our own ignorance about any given situation. We always do what we judge to be best. We don't commonly think this way, and philosophers and theologians ever since have been trying to explain weakness of the will, but it is quite a puzzle. Clearly, we often act in ways that are contrary to what we believe, but Socrates presents quite a challenge: If we say one thing is best, and then act in a way that is different, what do we really believe?
Mark
Yep. Socrates was on to something. I think that is huge. Pieper has another book called The Concept of Sin where he takes "sin" on philosophically. He basically goes through a lot of argument that sin is contrary to God, nature, and reason and builds up to a big question: "So why do we sin?" and it all comes back to pride. Its because we think we know better than God, nature and reason ... that ultimately "I" know what's best and so I choose to go against everything objective and see what happens.
Its a pretty powerful argument ... the book is only 90 pages, but I had to read it all in two days because the argument is so logical.
What a great topic. So many different thoughts and ideas are brought to mind, this feels like somewhat of a tangent, but nonetheless:
Three particulat scriptures came to mind:
Romans 12:1,2 where Paul encourages us to offer our bodies as sacrifices that are pleasing to God, not necessarily pleasing to us.
Hosea 4 where the Lord speaks about the lack of faithfulness, love and acknowledgement of God in the land. "My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge."
John 2 "Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit."
All of these things seem to somehow come together in my mind when I think of painting. In a discussion a friend and I once concluded that we often struggle in our attempts to create something masterpieces: using judgement more than passion. More often than not, we found our maserpieces were created when we let go and let flow out of from inside of us what had already been created.
I believe there is a struggle that results from lack of knowledge (ironically many of us don't realize it exists), and in gaining knowledge we are more able to let go of the desires of our flesh and allow ourselves to be transformed by the Spirit. The thought completes for me back in Paul's writing where directs us to realize we are LIVING sacrifices. LIVING. Not dead. Living is daily, the daily struggle to let go of what our judgement says is right and letting flow out from within us the light, the truth, that is on the inside. Christ is the truth and the Spirit living inside us, truth leads to right living, giving yourself over to the truth would then be the goal. Giving yourself over to Christ, the Spirit, dying to the flesh.
It all seems to work together somehow.
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