November 14, 2013
The Heart of the Matter
The Associated Press is reporting that America
is following in the steps of Great Britain and establishing atheist
mega-churches, supposedly for those folks who consider themselves spiritual, but
not religious. One of the co-founders, Sanderson Jones, said the idea stemmed
from a Christmas carol concert he attended six years ago. Apparently Jones
loved everything about the concert, “…but it’s a shame because at the heart of
it, it’s something I don’t believe in.” Apparently Jones and his fellow
atheists think they can replicate a spiritual feeling in their fellowship without
the Spirit in attendance. My first thought is to be indignant, but the truth is
that these folks are no different than some of our churches today who try to
enhance their services by borrowing elements of entertainment from secular
concerts. The real danger I see here is the atheist trying to hijack
spirituality – painting themselves as being spiritual and labeling believers being ‘religious’.
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Don’t worry about the atheists hijacking spirituality. They have spirituality just as we do. Realizing this truth is no different than realizing the truth that they have physicality just as we do. Atheists live in this world through a physical body, too. We all in this world are spiritually involved with even our physical natures.
-----Realize two concepts, “abstract” and “concrete”. The concrete exists outside the mind in physical substance - matter, that is, electrons, protons, neutrons, atoms, molecules, and all their varied combinations which make things. We can not change them, annihilate them, or call them into existence by merely thinking (unless the Lord grants it.) But that’s not why we call it “concrete”. Fall off the roof onto some of it. That’s why we call it “concrete”! It is particularly there precisely in the way it is.
-----This doesn't mean the abstract is what we can effect merely with our own minds. Oh, certainly, your own emotions and thoughts and imaginations and volitions and such are yours to shape. But not the processes and elements of logic. True definitions of things and meanings of systemic relationships are not alterable by the mind, either. Nor are the constructs logic makes of all these. Some say they are, but that harkens back to imagination, now, doesn’t it?
-----So, is spirituality the abstract while concrete is the physical? Not in my book. Spirituality is meaning, and meaning is interrelationship. Yes, logic is a trail through interrelationships. But spirituality is the meaning of that and all of those trails. There is a first, basic, physical principle: anything in and of itself and everything all together is precisely and exactly what it is. That is the identity principle of physics. It but it is just called “The Identity Principle,” by atheists meaning it is identity of physics alone. Yet well it should be just called that, but for its extension beyond physics into that which the human mind can seek yet is denied to grasp. (Eccl 3:11) Our dear atheist friends believe themselves so smart for their ability to truck with an identity principle on one lobe of the brain, while trucking with themselves on the other, that they can deny the beyond. So their interrelationship is not between the universal identity principle and their self. Discerning interrelationship, learning it, understanding it, drawing from it insights forming into either wisdom or foolishness is spirituality. But foolishness is theirs.
-----Ours is wisdom. Because the process which for us more precisely patterns the placement of particular insights amongst them all is humility, rather than the arrogance which jams and pokes insights together as the self sees they should fit. Arrogance and humility are interrelationship patterns, that is, they are flip sides of spirituality. Humility allows the identity principle to extend to whom it came from, as it expressed Himself to Moses when he asked whom he should tell the people of Israel sent him, “I AM WHO I AM.” We humbly allow our minds to deal with the logical truth beyond the touch of concrete, and thus our mental soils become properly turned and prepared to receive the seed of Truth which will grow the Way of Life in us. For spirituality is relationship. Our relationship is with life through clinging to Christ who freed us. They also have relationship. Theirs is with death through their selves clinging to a physical limitation.
-----Don’t fret, then, the ownership of spirituality. We all own it, we the living Spirit, they the dead one.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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