Quote search – Religion August 27, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Religion.Tags: Judaism
3 comments
I’m asking for your help — the help of anyone reading this. I would like for you to share some of your favorite quotes. Let me explain.
I’m trying to do something that may seem a bit over the top. I’m trying to outline what I believe about this and that, about everything from Spirituality to War, from Angels to Psychology. You get the picture.
I’m 52 years old, and I can see more clearly that there is an end to all of this material world living. For some ridiculous reason, I would like my children to be able to find out what Dad thought about some of the big issues of life and some of the not-so-big ones, as well.
Here’s how I’m doing it: If you have read this blog before, you know I like to quote people. I figure if someone else said something really well, why do I need to try to say it really average. So I have decided to start organizing quotes with which I agree — emphasis on “agree.” For example: here’s entries to this point under Religion:
“Religion points us to the last things, framing the final direction that informs our decisions about life, both personal and public. The chief service of religion, then, is to teach us that the first things are the last things.” (Editors, “Putting First Things First,” First Things, Mach 2000, p. 12)
“[G]reat religions in their crusading youth spread through the nations the peace of Heaven and the sword of the Lord.” (Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, 1925, p. 1)
“Judaism and Christianity—unlike Buddhism, Islam, and other traditions—understand creation and redemption in historical continuity; the accent of hope is not on salvation from the world but on the salvation of the world.” (Richard John Neuhaus, “The Public Square: A Pope of the First Millennium at the Threshold of the Third,” First Things, January 1995, No. 49, p. 84)
You get the idea. (By the way, I’m a Christian, but I think truth is revealed in other faiths, as well.) Now, I would like to expand on each of those thoughts, but right now I’m just collecting and organizing.
So here’s how I would like your help: Share with me your favorite quotes about Religion. It may be really profound or really funny or really sad; most importantly, it should be something you think is true about religion in general.
The violence of freedom April 1, 2007
Posted by Alien Drums in Buddhism, Jesus, Movies, Violence, War.add a comment
My wife and I finally saw “300″ the other night. Well, I didn’t see all of it; I hid my eyes. Peeked a couple of times and saw stuff I didn’t want to see — often seemed to be heads flying assunder from their bodies.
Bloody, bloody, bloody; but beautiful, too. It’s odd to see a film that is both visually alluring and disgustingly violent, and it was not the violence that was alluring. The visual was a frame for the disgusting.
Why did I close my eyes? Afraid? Yes. Not of being grossed out, though I was, but of what that violence does to one’s brain and spirit.
I listened recently to an audio book titled Living Buddha, Living Jesus, by Thich Nhat Hanh. He talked about Buddhism as teaching that a person should only bring good into his or her body. Food and drugs, of course, fit into that; but Hanh also spoke of bringing violence into our minds through the things we watch, reach and see. I kept thinking of that book as I watched “300″. I felt polluted, that I was allowing a crafty filmmaker to pour evil into my soul.
Of course, the basic point of the movie is good — freedom is worth the sacrifice of one’s life. At least that’s what we in the West or the United States believe. So maybe in order to sustain a culture of freedom we must continuously be reminded that our liberty required deaths in the past and will require more.
One thing I like about today’s war movies, like “300″ and ”Saving Private Ryan”, is that they do not make war seem only to be a heroic affair. They show it to be grossly vicious, unbelievably dehumanizing, even animalistic behavior.
Freedom requires war and death because there are those who fear freedom or want power or harbor ethnic prejudices.
I don’t know how to completely hormonize freedom’s need for defensive war with Jesus’ turn the other cheek. Jesus, I’m convinced, points us to a heavenly world that is not this one; but I think He’s given us insight to begin creating shades of the heavenly even now.
Summation: War is terrible. Freedom is good. Jesus, and Buddha, would want freedom and not war. It’s a shame that some people want only war or freedom, but I’m afraid you cannot have freedom without war when you live in a fallen, sinful world. This is not heaven, “300″ reminds us; but I hate the violence of it.
