August 06, 2010
Singing in the Rain
During worship I love to stand in the same vicinity as someone who is a gifted singer. Not only can I follow their lead, but somehow it emboldens me to sing out stronger. I’m sure they are thinking, ‘If she can’t sing that well, why on earth is she singing so loudly?’ I’ve recently discovered that when a few weaker vocalist band together we sound pretty good…and we cover over a multitude of vocal sins. “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” (1 Peter 4:8 NIV)
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Your analogy lies too close to another point for me to resist the temptation to discuss. The different viewpoints of liberalism and conservatism in political, social, and religious issues confuses many. But seeing the two original philosophies of the eighteenth century which have both extended down through time to our conflicts between these divisions today has dispelled much of the confusion for me. And your entire example of singing together illustrates them both very well.
-----At the heart of liberalism is the unconstrained viewpoint of man and nature. This is a viewpoint of potential that sees man as having the possibility of perfecting himself socially and politically (for those who are not religious) and spiritually as well (for those who acknowledge the Lord.) They do not view man’s ultimate and actual ability or situation as constrained by sin, error, and failure. They believe we can and must reach a state of relative perfection through individually using articulated rationality for finding and applying solutions to our problems. (Maybe oversimplified, articulated rationality concerning something is a clearly defined and expressed explanation of it that also corresponds to other explanations of other things.) For just as man is perfectible through use of his own reasoning, so also the difficulties of survival are perfectible in the same way. But it is one thing to think and envision solutions to such ills of our existence as are disparities of wealth and income, atrocities of crime and war, and imbalances of justice and equality. It is quite another to turn those visions into reality. And for the liberal mind, it is imperative to do so. So, what turning the vision into reality requires is for all of humanity to interrelate in such a way that those individuals with less articulated reason humble themselves in submission to those with greater articulated reason, so that articulated reason will then guard and provide for everyone. It is system into which each individual will place himself to first benefit his neighbor. This is like the mindset of your accomplished singer wondering why the less skilled singer beside him is singing so loudly, and in which the less skilled would not sing loudly.
-----The opposite vision, the constrained vision, understands that man can improve himself and his lot, but not perfectly. It understands that there will always be sin, error, and failure on both the individual and societal levels. So then, concentrating power and control within a few less than perfect individuals will result in the very real hubris of even these moral elitists endangering the fabric of society through the submission of the masses to that hubris in spite of their submission to the elitist genius as well. Ultimate solutions to problems through articulated rationality, then, can not be the goal. Rather, trade-offs found individually amongst the people will make possibilities available for anyone to better his own lot, making life better in general for all, but not perfect in particular for anyone. There will always be poor and rich, crime and war, inequality and injustice, but where individuals are given freedom to articulate their own lives first for their own well being, institutions and traditional rules of conduct will emerge from social struggles throughout the generations to constrain hubris. Then by individual submission to institutions and traditional rules, society and individuals better themselves. It is like the less skilled singer feeling freer to sing louder beside the better singer, and maybe learning more about the art of song, too.
-----What continues to dismay me are the available points of very natural synchronization between these two social philosophies, yet such synchronization never emerges instead of political and religious rancor and struggle.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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