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?”...

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 for...

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 e...

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...