Monday, June 3, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Earl and Mooch and the rest of us
His divine power has bestowed on us everything that makes for life and devotion, through the knowledge of him who called us. He has bestowed on us his precious and very great promises.
Mooch the Cat looks up at Earl the Dog.
“What’s on our list today, Earl?”
1. Eat
2. Drink
3. Be Merry
Mooch the Cat’s eyes grow wide.
“Do NOT lose THAT list.”
And below the dog and cat, the words of a Yogi: “Life finds its purpose and fulfillment in the expansion of happiness.” But bigger words require bigger definitions, which inevitably result in bigger debate. I’ll stick with Earl and Mooch. And also with Peter:
Make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with devotion, devotion with mutual affection, mutual affection with love.
There’s a domino-like list here: supplement your faith with virtue, knowledge, self-control, endurance, devotion, mutual affection, and love. I think of another domino list – Dr. Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs: physical health, safety, love and belonging, self-respect/self-care/self-esteem, and self-actualization (morality, creativity, spontaneity, acceptance).
But neither Earl and Mooch nor the Yogi nor Dr. Maslow have much to say here about faith, the foundation of it all. Peter does, and he doesn’t mean faith in myself or in my bedpost, only faith in the Almighty, the Creator, Yahweh, God in Three Persons.
That faith in that God. In God we trust, which continues to be printed on US currency, coins and quite a few license plates.
Say to the Lord, “You are my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”
My settled-in faith in that God offers me a substantial place to stand and grow – simultaneously in self-respect and gratitude, along with respect for others and generosity. These are the bone and marrow of the good life (which does also, by the way, include eating, drinking and being merry). In Plough Magazine Johannes Hartl writes “In Defense of Humanity.”
Are humans actually something magnificent or we a plague? There are times when you are completely uncertain – especially when relating to people.
We humans are obviously designed to cooperate, and yet sometimes the case is completely the opposite.
In a fire, neighbors saved Johannes’ parents’ lives, as they risked their own bodies and safety.
But then there are politics and war, untended famine and an over-heated globe. “How can people do such things?” Feet in the mud, head in the stars.
Power corrupts. No question in my mind.
Hartl refers to “one of Immanuel Kant’s most important sections on ethics, found in Critique of Pure Reason:
Persons are beings that not only have value, but also dignity. While we can use things, we must never use or treat people merely as means to an end. When this occurs (and it does) the essence of a person is completely denied …
Each of us is an animated body, a unity of consciousness and body. We are each inhabitants of an ethical and meaningful world from the beginning of our lives.
We incredible creatures live together on one planet. This continues to be true even when we can easily replace eye-to-eye, word-to-word connection with virtual alternatives. Used to be “nose in a book,” now it’s “nose in a phone.” Not much “nose to nose” left.
This mysterious interweaving is the source of our dignity and our greatest vulnerability. Human beings caught and embraced by community are infinitely vulnerable to evil. We are capable of evil, oh yes we are, unlike lions, who will never have to answer in a court of law for eating gazelle.
Humans, thanks be to God, hold themselves to a different standard.
This is the only reason why we have jurisdiction and laws, precisely because we see ourselves as having certain rights and therefore also certain responsibilities … Human beings also belong to a different order of being, that of the spirit. Where biology must remain silent, religious interpretation begins.
I have plenty of experience, knowing how easy it is to be disgusted by my own or others’ choices at critical moments in our lives. But that will never mean I have the right to reject and give up on myself or others, though many of us, cemented into certainty of our own righteousness and the mistaken choices of others (even our friends) have done just that.
In times like these, says Hartl, it is important to speak anew of the dignity of homo sapiens. Humanity must be defended against its despisers.
In God we trust.
Jesus Christ, you are the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead; you have loved us and freed us from our sins by your blood. Alleluia, alleluia!
(2 Peter 1, Psalm 91, Revelation 1, Mark 12)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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