I suspect that many people assume that some clear doctrine of creation underlies all religions: that in Paganism the gods, or one of the gods, usually created the world; even that religions normally begin by answering the question, “Who made the world?” In reality, creation, in any unambiguous sense, seems to be a surprisingly rare doctrine; and
when stories about it occur in paganism they are often religiously unimportant, not in the least central to the religions in which we find them. They are on the fringe where religion tails off into what was perhaps felt, even at the time, to be more like fairy-tale.
Go
As we have seen, even in the creation-myths, gods have beginnings. Most
of them have fathers and mothers; often we know their birthplaces.
There is no question of self-existence or the timeless Being is imposed
upon them, as upon us, by preceding causes. They are, like us,
creatures or products; though they are luckier than we in being
stronger, more beautiful, and exempt from death. They are, like us,
actors in the cosmic drama, not its authors. Plato fully understood
this. His God creates the gods and preserves them from death by His own
power; they have no inherent immortality. In other words, the
difference between believing in God and in many gods is not one of
arithmetic. As someone has said "gods" is not really the plural of God;
God has no plural.
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Our hunger for Jesus is a signal of who we are and why we are here, and
it also is the basis of our humanity's enduring response to Jesus.
For he always takes individual human beings as seriously as their
shredded dignity demands, and he has the resources to carry through
with his high estimate of them.
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This interpretation (of the Sermon on the Mount) naively assumes what
all of history disproves, that we broken bricks can constitute an
unbroken building if only we have an unbroken blueprint. Malcolm
Muggeridge says, more realistically, that the most unpopular of all
Christian dogmas is the one that is most empirically verifiable, the
dogma of Original Sin.
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Now we need to understand that what simply occupies our mind very
largely governs what we do. It sets the emotional tone out of which our
actions flow, and it projects the possible courses of action available
to us. Also the mind, though of little power on its own, is the place
of our widest and most basic freedom. This is true in both a direct and
an indirect sense. Of all the things we do, we have more freedom with
respect to what we will think of, where we will place our mind, than
anything else. And the freedom of thinking is a direct order to
exercise it. We simply turn our mind to whatever it is we choose to
think of. The deepest revelation of our character is what we choose to
dwell on in thought, what constantly occupies our mind, as well as
what we can or cannot even think of.
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Recently cultural observers have noted the overwhelming rise in the use
of filthy language, especially among young people. Curiously, few have
been able to find any grounds for condemning it other than personal
taste. How strange! Can it be that they actually find contempt
acceptable, or are unable to recognize it? Filthy language and name
calling is always an expression of contempt. The current swarm of
filthy language floats upon the sea of contempt in which our society is
now adrift.
We [must] listen carefully to those we teach. We encourage every question, and we make it clear that dealing honestly with questions that come up is the only path to a robust and healthy faith. We will
never “pooh-pooh” difficulties, or take any problem with anything less than utter seriousness, or direct the slightest reproach or shame on anyone for having questions and doubts. When we don’t honestly know what to say at the time, we will just say so. We will go away and find an answer through study, conversation, and prayer.