We should maintain that if an interpretation of any word in any religion leads to disharmony and does not positively further the welfare of the many, then such an interpretation is to be regarded as wrong; that is, against the will of God, or as the working of Satan or Mara.

Buddhadasa Bikkhu, a Thai Buddhist Monk


Wednesday, October 31, 2012

On That Day

Human life is complex.  It involves a good number of living, moving pieces.  When all of these pieces are working well together, we are healthy in all of the dimensions of life.  Because we are complex, we can picture health in a variety of ways, but one helpful way is to focus on the relationship between feeling and thinking.  We are created to feel, and when we are healthy our emotional life is runs deep.  We are also created to think, and when we are healthy our cognitive life runs deep.

When God breathed Spirit into us and set us on the course of evolution, God built into us the potential to feel and to think.  In the real world, we all too often fail to balance the two, but the direction we're headed in suggests that One Day, if we remain true to the path we are on, we will learn that balance.  We will learn to feel with our minds and think with our hearts.  In fact, it may be better not to speak of "balance" at all because balance implies a scale while the direction of evolution is taking us toward a deep unity between feeling and thinking that, paradoxically, also maintains the separate integrity of each while blurring the boundaries between them into insignificance.  We will learn to think with our heart and feel with our mind.

On That Day, the ongoing battle among Protestants between those who lead with their hearts and those who lead with their heads will finally come to an end—not in a truce, but in a profound marriage of mind and heart.  On That Day, our churches will read the deepest theologies with enthusiasm and worship with thoughtful joy.  We will learn passionate patience.  Our hearts will sing in harmonious silence.  We will mock neither the revivalist nor the scholar nor will we honor one at the expense of the other.  Indeed, On That Day, our scholars will lead the revival and our revivalists will call us to sit down and think.  On That Day, we will celebrate the end of absolutes and the demise of relativism and live in thoughtful-joyful worship of the One God who is Beyond all and Present in all.  On That Day.