vox populi vox dei
Copied from my Myspace:
"Why are we, as a people, so unhappy during these modern times?"
Freud in Civilization and Its Discontents:
"…we simply are not happy with our new, godlike powers."
Foundational shifts: Not just that morality has had it's boundaries have been altered: the line between right and wrong blurred. Not that we're being asked to erase the lines, but being demanded to celebrate the triumphantly try of those who have shaken off these restrictions that religions have imposed for centuries. Not just accept but celebrate those very issues that are aberrant to Christian perspective. [emphasis added]
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No such thing as an absolute out there. No sublime out there. Absolutes – right and wrong – don't exist in an objective point of view. They are purely constructs of our culture. Within those constructs those feelings do not describe something out there…but something in there:
Math is real, therefore, my head is real; food is real, therefore, my stomach is real; absolute moral order isn't out there, it's purely in here [morality/feelings only exist within us]. This will produce a generation of men with brains, men with stomachs, and men with no hearts – men without chests.
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We don't trust our time because we have made our times, and we don't trust ourselves: we played the heroes part, mastered the machines, and accomplished laborers. We have become ghosts because deep inside, we know what we really are.
-- Ravi Zacharias
Nietzsche:
Because of the "death of God" in the 19th century, the 20th century would become the bloodiest century in history and a sort of universal madness would break out.
GK Chesterton:
"Meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain; meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure. When you have exhausted that last dream, and you find that it has left you barren or empty."
Malcolm Muggeridge:
It is difficult to resist the conclusion that 20th century-man has decided to abolish himself, tired of the struggle to be himself, he has created boredom out of his own affluence, impotence out of his own erotomania, vulnerability out of his own strength; he himself blows the trumpet that brings the walls of his own city crashing down until at last educating himself into imbecility, having drugged and polluted himself into stupefaction, he keels over a weary, battered, old brontosaurus and becomes extinct.
Greed – takes that which is material and defines it as essentially spiritual. The problem is not when the boat is in the water, but when the water starts coming in the boat. It wasn't that Lot's wife lived in Sodom, but when Sodom began to live in her.
-Ravi Zacharias
Intense is the agony when the eye begins to see, when the ear begins to hear, when the pulse begins to throb, when the heart begins to pound, when the soul feels its flesh, and when the flesh feels its chains"
-somebody talking about being a slave to sin
CS Lewis – "Good philosophy if for no other reason exists because bad philosophy needs to be answered"
We extol action over contemplation, doing over being, analysis over intuition, problems over mysteries, success over contentment, conquering over nurturing, the quick fix over life time commitment, the prostitute over the mother.
– Carl Stern
John Wesley's Mom: What is sin?
Whatever weakens your reasoning, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes away your relish for spiritual things, in short, if anything exceeds the authority and the power of the flesh over the spirit, that to you becomes sin however it is good in itself.
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh:
"Shut up and grow up! You can destroy freedom as much by abusing it as you can by taking it away."
In an age of "anything goes", virtue is a revolutionary thing. In an age of rebellion, authority is the radical idea. In an age of pell-mell "progress" to annihilation, tradition is the hero on the white horse.
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Modernist or liberal Christians in all churches and denominations essentially reduce religion to morality. This is why they specialize in morality. Christianity to them is essentially an ethic, a way of living in this world rather than a way of attaining the next. Christ becomes essentially our human teacher and example rather than God our Savior. (He is both, of course; modernist Christianity is half-Christianity, not non-Christianity.) Ethics thus becomes supremely important for the modernist. It's his "thing", all he has left.
n Peter Kreeft: A Civilization at Risk: Whatever Became of Virtue?
"Science today has given us improved means to attain some of our damnable ends. That's not true of all science, that's not true of all of the means so do not take that as an extreme; but it is true that some of our technologies have made us more sophisticated in our evil.
Ravi Zacharias
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We don't trust our time because we have made our times, and we don't trust ourselves: we played the heroes part, mastered the machines, and accomplished laborers. We have become ghosts because deep inside, we know what we really are.
-- Ravi Zacharias
Nietzsche:
Because of the "death of God" in the 19th century, the 20th century would become the bloodiest century in history and a sort of universal madness would break out.
GK Chesterton:
"Meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain; meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure. When you have exhausted that last dream, and you find that it has left you barren or empty."
Malcolm Muggeridge:
It is difficult to resist the conclusion that 20th century-man has decided to abolish himself, tired of the struggle to be himself, he has created boredom out of his own affluence, impotence out of his own erotomania, vulnerability out of his own strength; he himself blows the trumpet that brings the walls of his own city crashing down until at last educating himself into imbecility, having drugged and polluted himself into stupefaction, he keels over a weary, battered, old brontosaurus and becomes extinct.
Greed – takes that which is material and defines it as essentially spiritual. The problem is not when the boat is in the water, but when the water starts coming in the boat. It wasn't that Lot's wife lived in Sodom, but when Sodom began to live in her.
-Ravi Zacharias
Intense is the agony when the eye begins to see, when the ear begins to hear, when the pulse begins to throb, when the heart begins to pound, when the soul feels its flesh, and when the flesh feels its chains"
-somebody talking about being a slave to sin
CS Lewis – "Good philosophy if for no other reason exists because bad philosophy needs to be answered"
We extol action over contemplation, doing over being, analysis over intuition, problems over mysteries, success over contentment, conquering over nurturing, the quick fix over life time commitment, the prostitute over the mother.
– Carl Stern
John Wesley's Mom: What is sin?
Whatever weakens your reasoning, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes away your relish for spiritual things, in short, if anything exceeds the authority and the power of the flesh over the spirit, that to you becomes sin however it is good in itself.
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh:
"Shut up and grow up! You can destroy freedom as much by abusing it as you can by taking it away."
In an age of "anything goes", virtue is a revolutionary thing. In an age of rebellion, authority is the radical idea. In an age of pell-mell "progress" to annihilation, tradition is the hero on the white horse.
………………………………………………………………………………
Modernist or liberal Christians in all churches and denominations essentially reduce religion to morality. This is why they specialize in morality. Christianity to them is essentially an ethic, a way of living in this world rather than a way of attaining the next. Christ becomes essentially our human teacher and example rather than God our Savior. (He is both, of course; modernist Christianity is half-Christianity, not non-Christianity.) Ethics thus becomes supremely important for the modernist. It's his "thing", all he has left.
n Peter Kreeft: A Civilization at Risk: Whatever Became of Virtue?
"Science today has given us improved means to attain some of our damnable ends. That's not true of all science, that's not true of all of the means so do not take that as an extreme; but it is true that some of our technologies have made us more sophisticated in our evil.
Ravi Zacharias
posted by Just a Jabbott or two @ 11:09 PM
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