Photo: Colors of Death

People don't usually associate death with beauty, but it's there sometimes anyway, if we can bear to look.

Foreign Crisis

We take our ease while madmen stalk
Our peaceful people down like cats do doves.
We cannot live for long on love,
For every country loves its own,
And none will seek our safety like ourselves,
If we can only teach ourselves to seek.

Copyright 2006 by M. David Orr

Bible Quotes and Parallels from Pagans (Used Non-Pejoratively

The Apostle Paul quotes the Cretan poet Epimenides in Acts and Titus. The line from Epimenides is "In thee (referring to Zeus) we live and move and have our being.” In Acts 17:26-28, Paul addressing the Athenians and referring to the Cretan poet, says, "From one single stock he not only created the whole human race so they could occupy the whole earth.... And he did this so that all nations might seek the deity, and by feeling their way toward him, succeed in finding him. Yet in fact he is not far from any of us, since it is in him that we live and move, and exist (have our being - KJV), as indeed some of your own writers have said: "We are all his children."

Having established some rapport with the Athenians by quoting their own poets, Paul then goes on to tell them that idols were OK when men were still ignorant, but now God wants everyone to know He has ordained a Judgment Day and a Judge (Jesus), which He proved by raising Jesus from the dead.

I think this passage hints at how Eastern and Western thinking about God might be reconciled somewhat. "In him we live and move and have our being"--we are made of god stuff. The kingdom of god is within (among) us. Don't we know that we are gods.

However, we still manage to miss the mark (sin) because we are imperfect and do wrong, and are ignorant sometimes. The gospel is the "good news" that god loves us anyway and gave us his son to die for our missing the mark. I think since he made us, and we are god stuff ourselves, it's a great idea. Also, since he allowed evil to exist, he identifies with us by sharing in suffering evil through crucifixion. I think this is why the cross is so powerful--God identifying with us, sharing our suffering. I think suffering people can more easily see Jesus on the cross.

Eastern religions tend to assert that life is suffering brought on by desire--I want things to be a certain way; when they are not, I suffer. In other words, I judge that certain things are good and bad when they happen to me. I suffer more from what I judge to be bad.

I don't think this is inconsistent with Christian doctrine. Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil (in other words, in allegorical terms, they started making judgments about good and evil, like "I hid because am naked (implied bad).") This action caused them to be thrown out of paradise.

Jesus said, Judge not that ye be not judged." Now, one way to take this is that God will Judge us by the same standards we use to judge others. I believe this. Another way is more internal and is more like natural law, if I judge someone else it is because I hate a part of myself that is like that person; so I'm, in effect, judging a part of myself. If someone really aggravates me, it's because I'm like them in some way. For example, I get aggravated at prideful, arrogant people. Duh! Guess what that says about me.

At this point we have gone from Greek poets, through Pauline Christianity, and arrived at psychology, specifically the phenomenon of projection. If I hate it when, say, I'm lustful, and perhaps try to suppress or repress altogether that I am lustful, it's very easy to see a projection of myself in other people who openly lust and hate them (me) for it.

But if I believe that God loves me because I am his own flesh, his brother, his child, then I can be patient with the unruly parts of myself that miss the mark, and those parts in other people. All this applies to unbelief too. If I am a believer and I get aggravated because of the unbelief of unbelievers, surely it's because I fear and hate the unbelief in myself.