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hellohellohi -> RE: Why did you choose your belief? (7/28/2008 10:50:14 AM)
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quote:
You wrote, "So all people have to do is merely confess their sins and
seek God's forgiveness for them. That's all they have to do."
I think this is the way for a confused soul to realize that they are included in
the ones that are called by Jesus: All who are weak and weary. Only the
unhappily restless person seeks rest. Such is too trivial to imply the primacy
of the will, I say.
This is a great question abraxas -- one that I have asked and probably continue
to ask. I feel like if it is a choice, I sure hope I make it.
However, I feel like my will is only capable of chaotic things. That's a pretty
good way to put it. What can I choose? Lots of things. Can I choose
Christianity? Sure, but in a chaotic way, and it wouldn't necessarily entail
the trivial and profound sense of becoming oneself, of becoming alive, of
becoming real, and all the other too-profound or obscure sounding
phraseologies. (What does it have to do with "the self" -- it has as much to
do with dying to the self as finding the self, right, so what am I saying?)
I am just talking about not being a liar in life.
You see, anyone could very easily get away with not being "themselves"
throughout their life, of playing a game with life. It has been said, one is
bound to notice the loss of something infinitely less important, five dollars,
etc., but the misplacing of one's life can be passed off without alarm. Perhaps that is the only way to pass it off: to ignore the alarms.
I guess it makes sense when one considers all action to be "speech" as well; and
thus all of life can either be construed either as a lie or as a confession, as
a non-ironic disclosure. If there happens to be something interior to us which
is entirely contingent on our willingness (in that we possess sufficiency to
ESTOP the disclosure) but entirely non-contingent on us since our attempts at
disclosure before other people are always ambiguous and suspicious, it seems we
have a situation in which the will is important but it has come upon something
that it cannot surmount.
Can a freedom will for itself necessity? How about sufficiency? If a freedom is perfect, doesn't that mean that it bows to no sufficiency? And if such is perfection, isn't it also indistinguishable from an utter disarray?
I hope you will agree that my views are not apparently different from those others expressed in this thread. No one has said, speaking for themselves, that their choice is primary in their relationship to God. However, it is also interesting to consider whether or why the language of Christianity sometimes implies otherwise.
In sum: I believe and it seems others believe that human will and choice has the power (which is not a really a power since it leads to chaos) or, perhaps more aptly, freedom, to do. Our actions are contingent -- really, contingent on nothing since they are "contingent on freedom." However, if it is found that something within a person seems to come from without this freedom and we find that that is the sort of thing we would prefer to will, rather than chaos, but then we find that we are not capable -- then we have undergone the following concise process:
Our first act of free will is to believe in it, and our second and last (second in the sense that all intervening are not based on self-exertion but rather on chaos or arbitary criteria or ambiguous ones) act -- an impossible one, for us -- is to lay that freedom down in favor of sufficiency.
Luckily for us, we are not asked to trust that every believer is running around enacting the will of God. Christianity, instead, arises out of the mess that it is our freedom confronted by opportunity cost; it arises out of the freedom that exists between interiority and exteriority: whether to disclose (confess) and the apparent continual refusal to do so. Again, I can only repeat, if it is up to my choice to respond to God repentantly, I hope I do it. If, however, it is inevitable that I would come to hunger for rest amidst the restiveness which I continually exert, "as the deer hungers for the water," then I must express my gratitude that God would not only impose this thirst on me but would simultaneously offer means of its satisfaction.
Otherwise, what are my choices? What do they amount to? What is preferable about what I have willed versus other criteria I could have adopted? What happened to that person who seemed to have definite place in life rather than an infinitely contingent one (the one of freedom)? I can't definitely recall such a person existing, but the idea seems there.
I can confirm it only by the apprehension of love. In love, I seem necessary. Without, not at all. This is what seems to connect the momentary, mutable, and superfluous, with the momentous, the eternal, and the sufficient.
How does one choose love? What criteria can be employed? Isn't love that which refuses all reasons for itself? Isn't it less love to the extent that we justify it and furnish it with various sensibilities and exigencies -- becoming increasingly more like reciprocity, self-love, or utility?
Perhaps you will have some things to tell me. I feel it is not true that you have only questions and I only answers. I think you will probably have some answers for me, and me some earnest questions.
And why are we asking questions if it is true that we all know the answers anyway? Couldn't there still be a value in this as it serves either as a reminder or an occasion to confess such truth? However, is the case that you believe in the possibility of lying? Or is any statement trivially true via relativity and the arbitration of sincerity?
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