Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Urgency for religions to intervene in the current disintegration of individual and societies




Christianity:



Love, as Jesus Christ had meant it, was an unknown emotion in the contemporary world. Today it is being preached in the churches as a moral obligation, or even a moral burden for man and the world, whereas Christ had taught it to be the all engrossing glue that should unite man with man, and man with God. He was very specific in his 10 commandments, that all of them would find its culmination in just two prime laws; ie. Loving God with all the might, and loving one’s neighbour with the equal intensity.

But Church and mankind is yet to understand LOVE in his given meaning and relevance. This philosophic attempt here is to throw light on Love, as Christ had wanted it to be.

The very theme of Christ, a revolutionary one, was to alter the social-system and the man-to-man relation that world hitherto had been following, the ‘eye-for-an-eye, and ear-for-an-ear’ social-justice system that Hammurabi had introduced.

This vital shift of the way of the world had not only happened till today, and the Church that was established after death of Christ, did not take any step so far that would directly or indirectly usher-in such a society and world Christ had envisioned, and given-up his life for ! In this sense, the revolutionary religious founder’s very purpose stands unfulfilled or failed !

 Today, mankind is keeping Darwin’ s survival of the fittest law as the law of nature as well as that of God, that determines the relation between man to man. His law has been accepted by science also as the law of nature. Without any doubt, extreme awareness of this law has resulted in a perpetual anxiety among men to safe-guard one’s self and everything he owns from its being grabbed by others around him ! This fear has gripped human societies and nations as well as a natural phenomenon. 

Darwin’s law, when adopted by Science, provided it a firm legitimacy to the principle of ‘survival of the fittest, and the law of ‘Natural selection. It has become a dangerous social value. It has caused base anxiety about one’s own survival, and extreme fear of the other person, other community, and other nation.


I wish to share more details of this dangerous fate of the modern man with you, at my blog links: http://leadingdogmasthatruletheworld.blogspot.in/

While the 1st blog depicts the gripping influence of Darwin’s law on mankind, the 2nd blog touches on the crucial relevance of realizing LOVE as the LAW of nature that should replace the damaging law of Darwin.

Role of Church: Recent media survey revealed that almost 90% of youngsters in India are religious. It is an extremely good sign, but it does not get translated into reformed behavior towards the fellow being. It only has got translated into more attendance in the church, temples, mosques, and Gurudwaras. Man has no knowledge of God’s law for the world, where he has to spend 60 to 70 years of life: an inevitable phase of self-existence.


Understanding Love in an existential, and spiritual meaning

The revolutionary teaching of Jesus Christ, whose coming had marked the end of the reign of old laws, and the beginning of the sole law of LOVE, is still unknown as a social ideology among scholars within Church, and laymen in the mainstream human society. I introduced this subject at the beginning of this paper. This fact, despite existence of His Church for more than 2000 years on earth, and the Christian population of the world remains majority in the world,its lack of understanding as the prime creative and existential EMOTION should be a matter of serious concern !

It needs no super intelligence to realize that the concept of Love He had taught was the natural law of human societies, for sustainable peace. The dire need of this age is to understand LOVE in its most simplified and logical essence and meaning; as that of VALUING THE OTHER PERSON AS HE VALUES HIMSELF. If we simply look at the great emotion a bit closely, it would be easily revealed that LOVING is in essence VALUING the person you love ! Valuing encompasses every essential features of love. Understanding loving as Valuing, thus makes  a lot of difference.

The existing understanding of love merely as a moral burden for man, must come to and end. Love as existential cause and glue, in a truly scientific sense, must replace Darwin’s dangerously materialistic law of the ‘survival of the fittest’, and that of ‘natural selection’.

Christians must admit that, Love is the most less understood emotion in the world, despite it being the centre of our religious life for two millenniums ! Love as meant by Jesus was nothing but this VALUING the other person. The Godly emotion behind creation of the world was nothing but His all engrossing emotion of LOVE ! The motivational energy and emotion that made God to create the world and life was this VALUING OF everything he has created ! He simply shared this PRIME EMOTION with man, and set it as the norm and law between man and God, as well as man and man ! We can not ever find a better definition and understanding of LOVE other than that of VALUING the other ! Loving God for man means VALUING Him more than anything else, and LOVING one’s neighbour means valuing him too, the way he VALUES God ! This valuing is nothing but valuing life, and valuing everything God has created !

  
Why LOVE was the PRIME emotion behind creation ?

This author was into deep meditation for long, prompted by his extreme inner urge to probe into answering the much enigmatic ‘WHY” question of  human existence. He attempted to answer this question in one of his blog-posts at Link : http://thewhyquestionofexistenceanswered.blogspot.com/  This idea of LOVE has been detailed in every possible, logically convincing way and sense in the above blog-post


The purpose behind this deliberation

The purpose behind this deliberation is to seek the active involvement of Christian-authorities in propagating the theme of LOVE as the natural law of human relations, human societies, as well as the THEME of existence itself.

It is indeed a great task, but God had the original urge to convey this message to mankind to SAVE them from the peril of life without love. This was the very purpose and message of Christ. He discarded all the old books, knowledge and laws of the Jews, and gave mankind the NEW, simple law of LOVE, declaring that, it will replace all other previous laws.

In reality, this era of the new Book, and the new law of Love, is yet to be known by people at large in the world ! The institution and the infrastructure of Church has grown much in disproportion to the above PRINCIPLE for which it was intended for !

Time has come now for the world to reverse the trend. Church, fortunately has the required status, infrastructure and man-power at her disposal, that she should put to use to spread the Prime message;the singular law of Christ, LOVE !

This step from Church’s end is a historical need and responsibility; the ever dwindling number of church goers in the world, especially Europe and USA, reiterates the need of such a proactive step !

It can keep a secular face while spreading this vital-social justice revolution. It is teaching human societies its natural law of co-existence as set by God, or existence ! 

The hurdle of the state in the way of Love:  To value the other person, one should have his self esteem in place. Dignity of self should replace fundamental fear. Democracy was intended to provide this central existential need of man. But it is today a name sake of its true substance and meaning. Elected representatives are trying to act like the old masters of the world, the KINGS and MONARCHS whom they had replaced. The neurotic catch of the ‘ruler’ image is irresistible for these peoples representatives !

The great ideal of Democracy has become the prime tool for ordinary individuals as well as political leaders to fulfill these primordial urge. Hence, the above said primary need of man still remains an unaccomplished dream. Man on the road is the most disdained and neglected item in the state, and in the game of politics.

Man should be capable of loving himself first, for doing it for the other. This would be possible only when democracy reinvents itself in its originally intended form, and accomplish its first duty of ensuring DIGNITY OF SELF of all citizens. We urge the Church to help the respective states to reinvent the system of rule, ie. DEMOCRACY, as a first step to work on the central theme of LOVE. When state recognize the base need of providing citizen his feeling of individual dignity, and provide it to him in the act of governance, mankind can said to have achieved a major step in the path of moving ahead further in the ladder of civilization. I would like to share a blog post, depicting the dire need of this theme : http://direneedofreinventingdemocracy.blogspot.com/


What stops Church authorities in spreading the message of LOVE with all force ?

This author realizes that Vatican, in principle, is against the intervention of Church in the active social  problems of societies as per its clearly notified policies in the Compendum document.  It prefers to remain only in the spiritual domain of the believers. In Vatican’s ‘ Compendum of Catholic Church : Doctrine of social responsibility ’ , at item No. 68, She says:

The Church does not assume responsibility for every aspect of life in society, but speaks with the competence that is hers, which is that of proclaiming Christ the Redeemer[91]: “Christ did not bequeath to the Church a mission in the political, economic or social order; the purpose he assigned to her was a religious one. But this religious mission can be the source of commitment, direction and vigour to establish and consolidate the community of men according to the law of God”[92]. This means that the Church does not intervene in technical questions with her social doctrine, nor does she propose or establish systems or models of social organization[93]. This is not part of the mission entrusted to her by Christ. The Church's competence comes from the Gospel: from the message that sets man free, the message proclaimed and borne witness to by the Son of God made man.’


But it is not a matter of any dispute that world is more in darkness than it was during Christ’s time. So, Church must review her above resolution, and decide to come-forward to full-fill the vision and purpose of her founder. Her present head, Pope Francis, fortunately has the will and desire to see the world altered, judging from his enthusiasm shown in the field of climate-change etc.

No other agency exists in the world to accomplish this task: The political-Media-Business nexus is complete, to have supremacy over human institutions and establishments. This author’s various blogs in the above referred blog-spot have many posts depicting this sad calamity.

Political leaders or Media can never take-up this task of leading mankind to enlightenment and spiritual freedom. They have own agendas and priorities, leaving man totally orphaned in the world! Here comes the great responsibility of the Church as well as other great religions. The purpose of every religion indeed was to have a sane and mutually loving world, not for having different and distinct RITUAL-PROCEEDINGS. Such overt difference sharpens the difference between religions, and the divisions get defined excessively on such overt features and cultural peculiarities their believers follow. Every one knows the extreme mutual fear, hatred and violence on the basic of such superficial differences modern world encounter now. The simple and direct unity of all religions on the mater of LOVE and mutual-valuing of others should have kept the world at peace and tranquillity.



It is quite disturbing that even Christian management schools are yet to device and introduce special syllabus to teach the Christ-taught management style, ie. being leader of men by becoming their servant ! He stood for the management principle that ‘I am your leader and King, because you can torture me and kill me if that would make you happy’ !

Unfortunately, this kind of teaching is considered an anti-thesis today including by  Church. But reality is that, there is no other way in the world for achieving lasting peace other than the simple most principle he had taught ! It is the final law for man for bringing Kingdom of God on earth. New testament of Christians teaches this singular principle only ! It is indeed the essence of New testament !

Love was the emotion that God was filled with to the brim when he had decided to CREATE, as once stated above. It is the same emotion that sustains creation today, moment to moment on earth ! It is the missing energy link that unites all other energies of Physics, the missing link of physical energy system that scientists have been searching for long.

Mind is not the organ for knowing God. It is only for dealing with physical objects in the world. It can know God only as one of its imaginary (phenomenal) entities. It is the mind’s way of acquiring knowledge. It creates subjective images of everything it knows, and then store it in the memory. But we have blogged about a possible other organ of knowing, beyond the phenomenal world, at Link: http://philosopherskorner.blogspot.com/ .I have a self-published small book also
( Amazon.com link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008NOEE9I) that introduces REASON as a sense organ that provides mysterious knowledge beyond his external sense organs, including knowledge about God, or at least sensing His existential emotion of LOVE .


The said book and blog present faculty of reason of man as a SENSE ORGAN that detects existential ORDER. If realized and well accepted by world, this would be a game changer for mankind - -it should open up the eyes of man towards the fact that how near is the Kingdom of God from man ! Above blog depicts that Reason indeed is man’s God destined sense organ for knowing Him ! It is an ever open door that connects man with Him every moment. When mankind becomes aware of this door, the need to create models of ‘faith’ ceases. It would then be living with God every moment. It is our usual mind organ, our tool for living in the world, is the only hurdle that acts as a wall from our knowing God the above way ! ( Refer our latest blog: http://anatomyofrealities.blogspot.in/ on TRUTH and REALITY explains this elaborately)  

The sphere of knowledge of the proposed ‘new organ’ is the abode of FAITH for man. Knowledge, when reached the level of this new sense organ, is called faith, whereas what he gathers through other external sense organs form his knowledge. I feel, this special organ was lying hidden in man for the exclusive sake of knowing God !
I earnestly request you all to initiate special theological evaluation of my proposition, and my full thesis on the subject matter.


It would be interesting to notice that, biblical fathers such as Abraham, Jacob, David etc, and the various prophets in the old Testament used to remain in the world with their Reason organ active and alive, wherein they remained always in touch with God. We notice constant, direct interaction of these old fathers with God, taking directions from Him in day to day course of life. When the category of the ‘world’ has submerged man, this organ might have diminished its function, and become dysfunctional in due course! 

Seeing the other person as the reflection of one’s own self is ultimately man’s remaining as the ‘spirit of God’ as specifically mentioned by St. Paul, the chief propagator of Christian faith after Christ’s death. He was a Roman-soldier entrusted with the duty of crushing Christians and their religions, but got transformed into a pillar behind building-up of the future Church.

Man’s identity as his ego, as a member of the society and world is a direct product of his mind organ. It is this mind organ that makes the worldly entity of man-his ego- not the other way around ( that ego creates the world) as we usually infer.

Church has the first responsibility to lead and guide man to these future developments. Its theological wing has to toil hard  to incorporate these possibilities into Church’s existing bundle of knowledge, and then the communication wings of the church has to spread the gained light through-out the world.   

Leaving her vision to Christianize the entire world population, a vision that every other major world-religions shares with Christianity, and a major issue of intense-politics and division in modern world, Church  could attempt to convince the world that LOVE is the natural social law. it would be then equal to establishing God’s Kingdom on earth !

When the Church succeed in Leading every man to value himself and value his neighbour also in the same degree, it is equal to getting Christ’s wish fulfilled, and his mission accomplished and complete.

To get acceptability for the above theme of love in a secular way, the best way is to sell it to the world in the above explained ‘scientific’ ( natural law) wrapping.


Abraham J. Palakudy

He is a seeker and researcher in areas like Mind,Reason, Spirituality,Metaphysics, and Polity

Contact him at: ajoseph1@rediffmail.com

Twitter: Voice of Philosophy@jopan1
His profile and other blogs at:https://www.blogger.com/profile/14249415589712707293





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