Thursday, March 12, 2009
Welfare State
From Hillman's Hyperlinked and Searchable CHAMBERS' BOOK OF DAYS
http://www.thebookofdays.com/months/march/12.htm
on Gregory the Great:
Almsgiving, in such Protestant countries as England, is denounced as not so much a lessening of human suffering as a means of engendering and extending pauperism. Gregory had no such fears to stay his bountiful hand. With him to relieve the poor was the first of Christian graces. He devoted a large proportion of his revenue and a vast amount of personal care to this object.
I am particularly impressed that Western - possibly Christian - culture can debate topics for hundreds of years and never resolve them.
I think it says something about the poor somewhere in some brainy book of biblical proportions. I can't recall the name.
BUT it dawns on me that if a society can debate helping the poor for hundreds of years and it continues the debate forever, then there must be some focus that provides a stable signpost for wanderers.
Hence, religion. Q.E.D.
Now, the fact that religion is often used for nasty things is a comment on our society, not on the nature of religion.
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2 comments:
There's something peculiarly proprietary and exclusive, however, about the monotheistic religions. I suppose we could arm wrestle about whether that's part of their "nature." It's beyond debate, as you point out, that practitioners of religion are sometimes its worst champions. But thus it was ever so.
Agree.
I find the proprietary urge sort of basic to our type of consciousness - our consciousness emphasizes the "apartness" of the individual areas of consciousness rather than the "community" of Creation in which the individual consciousnesses come to exist.
And it is in the nature of religions, since they are a product of human consciousness - notwithstanding fundamentalists who claim the word is that of God.
AND when I talk of religion, I don't mean the weak, treacly drivel we see here in the USA nowadays.
Religion is changing now - along with everything else.
This is the reason I have said that people expecting the end of the world are correct........only the script will be substantially edited from the simple-minded hogwash they expect from their Bible reading classes!
What is important is the sense of despair - not how it works out.
What is important is the sense of love and devotion - not how it works out.
The emotion of despair - awaiting the end of the world: that is the truth. Whetehr it comes by fire or water, or we are "left behind" or not is totally immaterial to consciousness such as ours.
The emotion of love and devotion and honor - being righteous and just: that is all that matters, not whether it works out to be that so-and-so was right, or that I become rich - or not.
O.K.
I forget where I'm going with this. It is taking on a life of its own.
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