responding to Muggeridge
From here on in I’ll respond to Muggeridge more directly.
It seems to me, mate, that you don’t know your temperament too well at all. Like Lear, you’ve ever but little known yourself. Nowhere do you state your set against what this world offers more clearly than in the title essay, ‘Jesus rediscovered’, when you write: ‘The only ultimate disaster that can befall us, I have come to realise, is to feel ourselves to be at home here on earth. As long as we are aliens we cannot forget our true homeland, which is that other kingdom You proclaimed.’ Now, if I were myself a more sympathetic, less hard-hearted person, I might feel a certain pity and sadness for someone who thinks this way, but I’m not and I don’t. Basically, I see this as a frightening and horrific piece of rhetoric, reflecting a very insular attitude (it shows up how Judao-Christianity is a regional religion - like all religions - that has become too big for its boots), which is as potentially damaging to the future of life on this planet, our only home, which we share with every other species, as even the most crassly short-term exploitative attitude. No wonder so many environmentalists have blamed Christianity and some of its teaching for our abuse of the earth.
Such claims need also to be looked at from the perspective of coherence. You’re saying that we shouldn’t get too comfy-cosy here because God wants us to focus on another world (clearly not one with any material existence) which he has set up for us after we die. Presumably you’re suggesting that this earth is merely a proving-ground for life in this other extra-material world. This raises the question of how we can prove ourselves here for a world that’s so different from this as not even to have material existence? It also raises the question of how we can prove ourselves here when we’re asked (by you, though perhaps not by a god) not to feel at home, in fact to consider ourselves as aliens? And if this isn’t our home, whose is it? Should we consider ourselves as honoured guests or unwanted intruders? Finally, what sort of god is it who creates a universe as infinitely complex as this, with dynamics and dimensions we’ve really only just begun to tap into, and who provides us with the awesome gift of life and consciousness in order to inform us (presumably through you, Malcolm Muggeridge) that this life and world ain’t worth shit compared to the next one, where the real action is? There’s no coherence to this at all.
Eaten: four small pancakes for breakfast, with honey. Can’t remember if I had muesli. Lunch, ham and cheese and lots of it on delicious sunflower seed bread. Dinner at John and Debra’s (auction held for tsunami victims), a spoonful of mango salad, two sausages, more salad and a delicious slice of aubergine bake.
Reading: only found time to read a few more pages of Muggeridge, the foreword and some pages of ‘Jesus rediscovered’.
It seems to me, mate, that you don’t know your temperament too well at all. Like Lear, you’ve ever but little known yourself. Nowhere do you state your set against what this world offers more clearly than in the title essay, ‘Jesus rediscovered’, when you write: ‘The only ultimate disaster that can befall us, I have come to realise, is to feel ourselves to be at home here on earth. As long as we are aliens we cannot forget our true homeland, which is that other kingdom You proclaimed.’ Now, if I were myself a more sympathetic, less hard-hearted person, I might feel a certain pity and sadness for someone who thinks this way, but I’m not and I don’t. Basically, I see this as a frightening and horrific piece of rhetoric, reflecting a very insular attitude (it shows up how Judao-Christianity is a regional religion - like all religions - that has become too big for its boots), which is as potentially damaging to the future of life on this planet, our only home, which we share with every other species, as even the most crassly short-term exploitative attitude. No wonder so many environmentalists have blamed Christianity and some of its teaching for our abuse of the earth.
Such claims need also to be looked at from the perspective of coherence. You’re saying that we shouldn’t get too comfy-cosy here because God wants us to focus on another world (clearly not one with any material existence) which he has set up for us after we die. Presumably you’re suggesting that this earth is merely a proving-ground for life in this other extra-material world. This raises the question of how we can prove ourselves here for a world that’s so different from this as not even to have material existence? It also raises the question of how we can prove ourselves here when we’re asked (by you, though perhaps not by a god) not to feel at home, in fact to consider ourselves as aliens? And if this isn’t our home, whose is it? Should we consider ourselves as honoured guests or unwanted intruders? Finally, what sort of god is it who creates a universe as infinitely complex as this, with dynamics and dimensions we’ve really only just begun to tap into, and who provides us with the awesome gift of life and consciousness in order to inform us (presumably through you, Malcolm Muggeridge) that this life and world ain’t worth shit compared to the next one, where the real action is? There’s no coherence to this at all.
Eaten: four small pancakes for breakfast, with honey. Can’t remember if I had muesli. Lunch, ham and cheese and lots of it on delicious sunflower seed bread. Dinner at John and Debra’s (auction held for tsunami victims), a spoonful of mango salad, two sausages, more salad and a delicious slice of aubergine bake.
Reading: only found time to read a few more pages of Muggeridge, the foreword and some pages of ‘Jesus rediscovered’.
posted by Stewart at 5:47 pm
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