3 posts tagged “plato”

Tonight is one of the craziest nights of my life.  It doesn't seem like it would be.  It seems like an incredibly ordinary Sunday night that I stayed up way too late reading all sorts of things on the internets and talking to people on the all so time consuming AIM.  But tonight is different... 

For a while now I have honestly been falling away from my faith.  My opinions on things have started to change and things have become much more complicated.  My thoughts have become much more complicated.  I have been challenging, rethinking, everything I have ever believed and it is an incredibly terrifying and daunting task.  The thing is though, even though from the outside, and even sometimes from the inside, it looks like everything is just falling apart, I felt like somehow things were leading in the direction that they needed to be lead.  That somehow all of this falling apart and breaking down was necessary for me to learn something and even rethink my foundation so that it could be built back up better. 

I have been having questions and thinking thoughts for a long time that have given me issues with a lot of things that are a part of my faith.  Reading authors like Donald Miller and Brian McLaren, I saw that I wasn't the only one asking questions.  The book "A New Kind of Christian" did a number on me as to rethinking my faith.  Books like McLaren's got me interested in Philosophy.  Philosophy initially to me, as an engineer, seems like a lot of thinking without a lot of productivity.  But tonight I think it (Philosophy) was honestly the kick-start to a whole lot of productivity which will be gradually rebuilding my faith with an understanding of Christ and Love as I have never had before.  I believe that things happen for a reason and that God leads us through this life.  I feel like i float through it like a boy on an inner tube with no control over where I am going or even which direction I am facing sometimes.  Maybe a better simile is like a hot air balloon because it definitely entails (at least) three dimensions. 

The last book I read was Plato's Republic.  I decided with the good advice of a good friend to delve into the realm of "strait up" philosophy.  I did not think I was really ready for it but...I loved it.  The Republic was a phenomenal book and honestly I think i can say that it (along with a lot of other things of course) changed my life.   It is part of a 100 things that are going on right now in my life that is shaping who I am and who I will be.  100 things that I think are shaping me into who I really do want to be. 

The Republic introduced me to the idea of forms.  I will not even begin to attempt to describe/explain forms in this blog but if you know anything about them I will state my opinion.  I could care less about the form of a table, or a bed... Honestly in what I have read from Plato so far (which is undeniably small) I feel that he probably just talked about the form of a table or bed as a way to explain what forms themselves were, how they worked, and our relationship to/perception of them.  What I care about and believe to truly exist are the forms of the virtues.   I believe that all of virtue was created and is fully part of God.  I also believe that Jesus Christ was the embodiment of all of the virtues a man can possess.  This is the essence of being perfect.  (Something we now have a model for and should strive for but should admit we will never completely reach in this lifetime or on our own)

Initially all of my many ideas, pursuits, readings, conversations with friends, and experiences have seemed to be going in all different directions, but finally I think I am just starting to bring them together and they are converging and overlapping and illuminating each other so I can "start to make sense of it all." (thanks b&s)  Some of the individual parts of the different things I am learning that seemed to have no relation to each other are starting to become essential elements that fit together like keys into locks that are opening my mind to the real issues and real truth. 

My big realization tonight was that I still really didn't have a good idea of how great love is.  How big and powerful and real a force it is.  My pride keeps me thinking that I have certain things figured out but really I don't (none of us do).  I really am so small and I have so much to learn in so little years.   Love is the central message and single most important thing in Christianity.   God himself said, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."  I had a conversation with a friend tonight that helped me to realize my ideas of love were not as pure as they could be.  That they were only shadows on a wall from a light that wasn't even the sun itself.  Maybe now I am seeing something more like an image in a hazy mirror but an image of that which truly is and not just of a replica.  It helps me realize how much Christ really did destroy the old temple and build a new one.  It helps me understand so much more what he meant when he came down here saying... look you are missing the point...listen to me...Love!  Stop being like the pharisees!  Look around you!  Look how you are acting!  Look how you are treating people!  Look at yourselves! 

I was going to copy and paste some of the conversation that I had tonight in which I made all of these connections and started put some things together, but i have decided it wouldn't make any sense.  That conversation was what I needed in that time because of all the experiences that I have had recently and things i have read and though that lead me to that point.  Each person has to come to their own realizations though whichever way they are being lead through this life and whenever they are ready for it.  On that note I will leave you with this... 

Think about your concept of love.  Do you limit it at all?  Do you add extra criteria to it to "supe"  it up and make it more presentable.  If you had perfect love for someone do you think that it truly would cover all errs and flaws so you would not even notice them?  Or do you think that because love is just a "commitment" that you would look over them, with your own effort, because you "love" them.  Are they not even there anymore?  Would you limit love if it didn't make sense?  "I love you, but its just not practical?"  Do you have to believe/agree on all the same things as an "addendum" to your love? Or make sure you are "compatible" first?  Or wouldn't true love cross all boundaries, overcome every obstacle, travel any distance, and break every chain whether it made sense or not?  I think if we ever experience true love that we will get it.  We will understand that nothing else matters.  That really that is all that there is, and all of our other worries and thoughts will drop.  Our differences will melt and love will hopefully (for what else can/should we do than show and give the most pure and true love to each other) bring us to a mutual understanding of the Truth and an agreement and harmony in all things.  

Think about it...  

So I am reading Plato's Republic...  I just finished book I which is mainly about Justice.  I never thought I would be so intrigued by a justice argument because I guess honestly I didn't think it was all that confusing.

I of course believe that justice is a good thing and that it makes a person happy to have justice.  And I also believe (along with Jesus) that in order to be a good and just person, we should be just to our friends as well as our enemies.  So I guess the hang up occurs because somehow even though we believe these things, we also believe that justice is an eye for an eye and giving each person what they are "owed".  But if a person wrongs us does it become just to harm them?  I don't think that is justice, because justice is good, and a just person seeks not to harm anyone.  It is the function of an unjust person to harm someone, and in addition harming a person would only cause that person to become more unjust.  (I kind of lost where I was going with the end of that Plato does it a lot better obviously and i am just trying to summarize)  My conclusion is that I agree with what Plato concludes... if justice is not an eye for an eye than what is justice?  Maybe he will get more into that later...I have no idea where the book goes from here but so far I like it...

On another note if justice is eye for an eye and God is just which I don't think anyone would deny.  How would God be just and at the same time look over all of our sins.  Obviously most Christian's response would be because Christ covers up our sins to present us whole and blameless before God.  Which on this note I can't really disagree too much.  This actually supports that justice is an eye for an eye and just Christ took the place of the "eye" we deserved to lose.  But this is counter to what Christ preached and lived which was to turn the other cheek.  To be spit on and not spit back.  Does this mean that God the father should be just but we as humans and even Christ should be unjust?  For if Christ was just, and justice was an eye for an eye, then Christ would not have turned the other cheek but would have hit back.  Now I hardly think that is the truth.  And I hardly think Christ was unjust.  If justice is a virtue and Christ embodied the way we should live as humans then he was the most virtuous person that ever lived and therefore the most just.  On this note maybe we should rethink our idea of justice and what it really means for Christ to die for our sins.  I see a hole brewing and its this: maybe it is not our job to serve justice but that of God and it sounds like a southern baptist argument for fire and brimstone.  But once again... does this mean that we are to be unjust while we wait for God to serve justice?  I think not.  I think really our idea of justice is just flawed.  I think seriously flawed, because it is something completly different than our understanding.  The only thing is... I don't know what it is.  Seems to me (at least so far and I may be just ignorant because I haven't finshed the book yet) but neither did Plato at the end of Book 1 of the Republic. 

So lastly, since I do live in Virginia, how about the death penalty.  Is that Justice?