https://pataconi.com/thinking-of-god/ Musings and Mumblings of Metomorphosis Mon, 26 Aug 2013 05:45:54 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.0 https://pataconi.com/thinking-of-god/#comment-52 Mon, 26 Aug 2013 05:45:54 +0000 https://pataconi.com/?p=84#comment-52 Whether we’re Christian or not, we’ve all been taught the Golden Rule: “do unto others as you would have others do to you”. Jesus said it , in a positive restatement of something already in the Jewish oral tradition. When you mentally see yourself in place of those you act upon, the picture becomes clearer. Think like that, and you won’t be so eager to do in your main rival at work . We often pull up short when we feel in our own back the knife which we just started to twist into someone else’s. This is a good place to start: it’s something for us to measure up to. Yet there are some things the matter with the Golden Rule. There is, of course, the sado-masochist twist — someone doing unto others the torture he so craves from them. A more important problem, though, is that the Golden Rule keeps you in the center of it. No matter how many lessons you learn from trading places, they’re still your lessons, and it’s still your human capacity to love. This capacity is more like a dinner plate than a deep well, quite shallow when compared with the task at hand of living a loving and holy life.

]]> https://pataconi.com/thinking-of-god/#comment-26 Wed, 05 Jun 2013 02:04:51 +0000 https://pataconi.com/?p=84#comment-26 What can we say if once the hidden forces of sympathy and love have been roused in us?

]]>