Today we had an interesting exercise where we tried focusing on the glory of God for a few minutes. I had difficulty concentrating, but I figured imagining living things could work, because the glory of God is in all (or at least most) living things. I wish I could have this perspective more often, because often I get frustrated or bored with people, classes, books, etc.
We also talked about a two dichotomies - obedience vs. autism and loving vs. putting others second. It's interesting how we move through the different hemispheres in the learning process - capture (lecture learning) is obedience, a trust in the teacher and an opening of the mind to what s/he has to offer. Expansion is more autistic, in the sense that it is done independently, without having to obey a teacher to learn. The problem with assigned homework is that it makes the process of expansion a factor of obedience as well as autism/independence. Teaching requires love, and evaluation... would you say that evaluation requires some sort of egocentricity? Evaluation itself requires some criticism, but some would say that someone who really loves you will discipline you (various verses in Proverbs, don't know them off the top of my head). This is also called the "Medicine Wheel" in Cheyenne tradition.
The idea that really stood out to me about this lecture though, was our professor talking about his son. We'll call the son Nate. Nate was the successful perfectionist in high school - taking 10 AP classes one year and graduating with a 4.0, remaining wildly successful and popular throughout his years (I imagine). But our professor worried that he was "too good" - that, having so much success, he would be unable to empathize with those who weren't as fortunate, that "a person that has failed a few times in life is a lot richer than one who has not." This struck me, because while I'm not quite that successful, I do face the danger of being hard-hearted to those who don't deserve contempt.
Another idea was that sin comes from the Greek "hamartia," which means "to miss the mark." Therefore, repenting of a sin is to get back on the mark - to turn back to the light (this goes against the idea that sin is like a scar that sticks around forever). I like this idea. Also amusing was, "Many people in our culture think it's a sin to have a sin." I think it's meant to be funny, and to help us/me realize that we all sin, and that by sinning/making mistakes, we learn and grow. Yeah, sounds trite, but that's the message.
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About Me
- Rachel Helps
- Indie videogame writer and Wikipedian-in-Residence at the BYU Library. You are probably wrong about something, and so am I.
2 comments:
I've had a few children who took as many AP classes as they could and got 5s in all of them, had a 4.0 grade average, had friends, were Laurel class presidents, and participated in extracurricula activities. They weren't the perfectionist type, however. I never worried about them being too good.
I guess one child has a little hidden contempt for those that just "don't get it," but another acts as though she is no better or smarter than anyone else. She has moved on to college with all the fear and trepidation you would expect of any freshman. My children just have a desire to do their best, not to do better than another person.
At work I have seen the unfortunate result of many people who did very well in school, but never learned the lessons of those who fail. They don't know how to apply themselves to difficult tasks. Sometimes they think they are entitled to success regardless of their effort. Sometimes having been a big fish in a small pond makes them think they are big fish.
Concerning sin as missing the mark, I understand the number 7 is associated with perfection. 6, because it misses the mark of 7, is the symbol of imperfection. 666 would be imperfection to the third or highest degree. Does sin equal imperfection, or is imperfection a sin? If you change your teachers remark to "Many people in our culture think it is a sin to have an imperfection," I think that is profound. And God gives us imperfections that we might grow and be strong (is it Ether chapter 12?)
Of course, sin is a spiritual concept. So natural imperfections would not be sins. If one were to assume that homosexuality is contrary to Divine order, then sin cannot be imputed to a homosexual who is that way as a result of genes, an incorrect flood of hormones during gestation, or other similar causes. There must be another way that a loving God deals with homosexuals.
No sin is a natural imperfection. While some may think that someone must have sinned, or must be destined for hell, because they have an imperfect life (maybe are a Down's syndrome child), Swedenborg says that this is not so. Rather, if the person has not had the opportunity to freely choose their loves (say, because they are mentally retarded), they cannot be held accountable for their actions (well, they do not hold themselves accountable), and in the spiritual world, they are brought into a state in which they are mentally at death, and instructed from there and permitted to freely choose their loves and destiny.
So, universally, physical imperfections have no bearing on whether a person can become "good" or "evil". Also, one's religious heritage cannot have a bearing on whether one ends up in Heaven or Hell. Swedenborg shows over and over that sinning is not absolute, but in the eye of the doer -- one's intentions matter.
In one part of his work Conjugial Love (or True Marriage Love), he discusses polygamy, something we all are prone to believe is a sin:
"Polygamy is not a sin among people for whom it is in accordance with their religion. Everything that is contrary to a person's religion is believed to be a sin because it is contrary to God; and conversely, everything that accords with religion is believed to be not a sin because it accords with God. So, because polygamy among the children of Israel was in accordance with their religion, and similarly today among Muslims, it could not and cannot be imputed to them as sin. Moreover, to keep it from being a sin with them, they remain natural and do not become spiritual. And the natural man cannot see anything sinful in such things as are matters of the accepted religion. That is something only the spiritual man sees. It is for this reason that although Muslims in accordance with the Koran acknowledge our Lord as the Son of God, still they do not go to Him but to Muhammad. And as long as they do that, they remain natural, and consequently do not know that there is anything evil, not even anything lecherous, in polygamy. The Lord even says:
'If you were blind, you would have no sin. But now you say that you see; therefore your sin remains.' (John 9:41)
"Since polygamy cannot indict them of sin, therefore they have their own heavens after death; and they experience joys there in accordance with their life."
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