Does this mean you believe in God? Where do you see yourself on the orthopraxy/orthodoxy boundary? I won't call it a line because i think it's much more fractal.
Does this mean you believe in God? Where do you see yourself on the orthopraxy/orthodoxy boundary? I won't call it a line because i think it's much more fractal.
I was a Christian once. Now I am not. For a long time I said to myself: "I don't/can't believe the claims of all that. It's not even a possibility anymore." But in between I learned something important. First, from living my life badly and dishonestly at times. And then, a few years ago, from the lectures of a wise and serious public figure who had seriously considered the Jewish tradition and its stories.
What I learned was that this question - about "belief" - is, in the inescapable form it can only adopt five hundred years into the age of reason, a mostly sophistic distraction. I won't tire you with my thinking on the subject except to say I have little interest anymore in what people say to themselves about what they believe. I don't even have an interest in what I say to myself about what I believe. I just pay attention to how I live my life, and how people live theirs. The only answer that matters to the question "Do you believe in God?" lives there.
You'll address the question however you do, if you do. Knowing the richness and beauty of your writing it will probably be amazing to read. It always is. I just want to suggest another option: don't answer it at all. There's something to be said for stepping back from a conversation that, in its typical lack of sophistication and humility, so easily trivializes the depth, mystery and vastness of its subject.
Does this mean you believe in God? Where do you see yourself on the orthopraxy/orthodoxy boundary? I won't call it a line because i think it's much more fractal.
Yeah, the 'God question' I should probably address in a second post. I get it a lot.
I was a Christian once. Now I am not. For a long time I said to myself: "I don't/can't believe the claims of all that. It's not even a possibility anymore." But in between I learned something important. First, from living my life badly and dishonestly at times. And then, a few years ago, from the lectures of a wise and serious public figure who had seriously considered the Jewish tradition and its stories.
What I learned was that this question - about "belief" - is, in the inescapable form it can only adopt five hundred years into the age of reason, a mostly sophistic distraction. I won't tire you with my thinking on the subject except to say I have little interest anymore in what people say to themselves about what they believe. I don't even have an interest in what I say to myself about what I believe. I just pay attention to how I live my life, and how people live theirs. The only answer that matters to the question "Do you believe in God?" lives there.
You'll address the question however you do, if you do. Knowing the richness and beauty of your writing it will probably be amazing to read. It always is. I just want to suggest another option: don't answer it at all. There's something to be said for stepping back from a conversation that, in its typical lack of sophistication and humility, so easily trivializes the depth, mystery and vastness of its subject.