The Second

Moral relativism versus moral absolutes has been a hot topic among Christians for all of my lifetime, meaning at least 40 years.  But relevant writings go back at least 100 years, Dostoevsky, for example.  The key concept is that morality has a firm basis in something firm, not in a person’s opinions or feelings, and not even in the current trends of a society.  Because the monotheistic religions have a God who both created and gave moral imperatives, it’s obvious that people of these religions do believe in moral absolutes. So, indeed, from Roman Catholic teaching we find a classification for the two sources of moral absolutes, Revelation and Natural Law, where the first refers to things revealed by the Creator, and the second to things that all human beings can know from lived experience.  This second idea of Natural Law, although intuitively appealing, resists analysis.  Discussion invariably winds up in the riddle, “How do you know what you say you know?”  The only way the riddle

Some exercises in poetry.  I thank my friend for the idea seed. -------------------------------------- REMEMBER THE SABBATH DAY Do you remember when the elder told you not to run? Did all such laws of thou shalt not deprive young days of fun? And from those days do you retain a sense that good is lack? But see instead the light and breath; see life when you look back. Look back to the beginning when from naught was made the sun. Remember Him who called all good from dust to Adam’s wife. Find rest in all that God said: overflowing life. -------------------------------------- REDEEMING TIME As He did in the beginning, God dividing day and night, So the Word (from the beginning) To the nighted world brought light. Dust became what God created; Mankind, now, would He put on. “Let it be as you have stated,” Mary birthed the Promised One. Made and Maker thus united, Truth to multitudes He taught. Sick, He healed them; blind made sighted; To the damned forgive

For scores of years a truism has set in and reached the status of proverb, at least in the popular sense.  Specifically:  “Learn to love yourself so that you can love others.”  As a child I remember hearing various pastors say that this is what Jesus meant by “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  Both as a young boy and now as a grown man the obvious discrepancy has not been reconciled.  The objects of the commanded actions are distinctly different:  Love yourself Love others The claimed reconciliation says that by doing #1 you necessarily end up with #2.  But that is rubbish, because when pressed even a little, those who make the claim back peddle with something like, “it doesn't mean being self absorbed or self centered.”  And more could be said, but the net result remains.  Those two statements are not equivalent until the words are tinkered with. It has taken me far too long—experience is a sure but slow teacher—to discover the element of truth that resonates with both

Efficiency.  That is an important word in our times.  You can’t avoid it.  Surely you have heard about “Cyber Monday”.  Where “Black Friday” had become a byword of a consumerist culture, “Cyber Monday” is a byword of the now culture, which is consumerism on steroids!  Further convenience is not merely a want but an expectation, an assumed reality.  But convenience comes at a price, which is paid in the efforts for efficiency.  What are examples of these efforts, and what the price? To be efficient, one must always be concerned about time and the quantity of production.  So Cyber Monday is by far an improvement on Black Friday if for no other reason than a greater mass of goods can be purchased in a shorter amount of time.  But the conservation of time, as a concept, as an instinct, shows up in unexpected ways.  When the hourly who reports to you has an issue and grabs  your attention as you’re passing through, do you stop and give your full attention?  Have you noticed that for the 2

The standard image of teenagers, or young adults, has been essentially the same since I was a teenager in the 80s.  This image is deeply contradictory, but it persists. First the young person himself is characterized like this:      •  Smart, Bold, Insecure, Hormonal, Irresponsible And expectations of him sound like this:      •  Sex obsessed, Driven by big ideas, High potential In some ways the young person is viewed like an unbroken stallion, wild, strong, and could be amazing of only he could be tamed!  Songs and movies capitalize on the conundrums and emotional confusion that relate to this way of viewing and of being viewed.  A couple dated examples:       I'm in the middle without any plans / I'm a boy and I'm a man          – Alice Cooper, Eighteen      He’s old enough to know what’s right, but young enough not to choose it          – Rush, New World Man These expressions and many later variants are honest and accurate, simply describing the experience

The last time I heard the word "husbandry" was about 20 years ago when asking my fellow sandwich maker at the university restaurant what he was studying.  He said, "Animal Husbandry."  My wonder at the coupling of "husband" with "animal" has not ceased, primarily by having planted an extremely important verb into my mind: "to husband" That idea alone blossomed into a rich image only slightly grasped in the following etymology given by the free on-line dictionary:     from Old Norse húsbóndi ‘master of a house,’     from hús ‘house’ + bóndi ‘occupier and tiller of the soil.’     The original sense of the verb was ‘till, cultivate.’ Granted, the verb “to husband” is never used.  Nevertheless this original concept of cultivating seems to be the key missing idea from today’s noun.  I can only speculate how this verb also happens to associate with marriage, but it would seem to be an ancient idea.  And this seeming can be reconstruc

Power in human relationship, what IS this thing?  We hear phrases like "speak truth to power," and "the rich and powerful," and "an abuse of power."  Such phrases show an attitude of fear, subservience, enmity, moral superiority.  Power, it would seem, is by nature a force with great destructive potential, and inherently bad, morally speaking.  "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely."  I can think of no better synopsis of the Ring in Tolkien's famous stories, in which the best choice was NOT to use that power, but rather to destroy it.  As a born-and-bred American, I completely resonate to this view of power:  "Government is best which governs least," that blessed Jeffersonian maxim! But as I have aged and observed a wider variety of power sources, I have seen a strange paradox.  A power vacuum, or a FAILURE to exercise legitimate power, is at least as destructive as an abuse of power.  What does THAT say about those

While hiking I "saw" an analogy between statistics and morality.  All (and more) of what follows occurred to me in a moment, and it made me chuckle.  God is truly amazing; the things of Life are remarkably simple in a way that is terribly complicated to explain. Both settings, hypothesis testing and moral behavior, contain evaluations that appear to involve opposites that are not strict opposites. Hypothesis testing looks at the quality of a decision, being concerned with whether a decision was correct or not.  The two commonly discussed error types are these: Accepting as “good” what isn't Rejecting as “bad” what isn't Because good and bad are direct opposites (complements) these two error types appear to be opposites, but they are not.  In fact, I can take actions to reduce my chances of making the first mistake which at the same time increase my chances of making the second.  I can take actions that reduce chances of BOTH mistakes.  So, while they are r

Well, well, Here I am again (again).  My last blog entry was in 2016 ( www.theo-fan.blogspot.com ), and from that last entry, I'm glad I took a hiatus. I had reached a point where I had said THE THING I needed to say.  I write best when I am simply working to give form to something that has fixed in my mind as needing to get out.  In my case such a thing is not a collection of things, but a view on creation that has settled in, and has held up through time, time and again. It took 5 years to work through that last THING.  What do I have to say now?  Well, that will be the task going forward, to SAY IT.  If I am to give it a few tags, in advance, these work well enough: Simple, Solid, Full, Jesus, Life, Deep, Plus The title of this blog, I hope, will unfold through the entries to come.  The Second is a simple word, but full of meaning in many dimensions, angles, and settings. May the Lord of Life bless the words I write, and may His message come through.  For I am but a c