On one of the rare occasions Jesus is associated with people rejection, he declared his particular displeasure with lukewarm. He clearly likes his people either cold or hot. One can argue that that metaphor was clearly coined before climate change. With extremes of temperature setting continental fires on the one hand and on the other snowstorms freezing everything but the Corona virus, I’m sure He agrees with me that the times call for progressive revelation.
And truly, our people are reflecting the climatic conditions. Where common decency once prevailed even when human affection failed, now the uprising masses burning and looting in the streets, not just in the USA but in over 90 countries according to media reports, prove just how much the hearts of many have waxed cold waiting for change as the gulf between rich and poor becomes an everlasting chasm.
One thing I appreciate about the British for all the imperialist arrogance appropriately attributed them, that their modern politics has been incapable of producing a character like Trump says something about their generally sanguine national character. (If you can excuse, forgive or ignore their occasional descent into the naked barbarity for which their German cousins are more well known, in incidences like the Kenyan massacres, the forced Indian famine before being checked by Ghandi, the brutishness of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and the carving up of Africa, none of which, to date they deny or publicly regret, but unlike Trump, they have at least the common decency to try to hide their worst demons, rather than publicly celebrate them.
That sanguinity, so very appreciated by me who in this season finds myself spewing out of my mouth so much of the common hot and cold that typifies the times, whenever I come across COOL, it’s almost like paradise.
For those interested in one of the central conversations shaping the mindset of the future, this one between Sheldrake, Ellis, Thomasson and Moderator (not really an appropriate descriptor for his role) Ladyman; fairly sums up the issues I have been blogging about on the showdown between philosophical materialism and its ideological nemesis….it may be too early to give it an appropriate name, so for want of a better one, let’s just say whatever name future generations replace ‘Theism’ with.
Theism, our present understanding of it, may not have much time left, if present thought leaders continue to increase their influence. I noted in a previous blog that in what could be dubbed the God debate of the century, where the question was being considered, “Does God have a future?” no one bothered to ask a single theist to present their now considered passé perspective. The bill appeared to be Atheism vs Deism, the only alternate future the panelists believe god has left.
For all of the heat generated in that conversation, I much prefer the temperature of the conversation where Eternity and Evolution contended. The intellectual champions in the ring: Ellis, co-author of Stephen Hawking’s last book and Sheldrake, the upsetter who would capsize not only Science but Spiritual traditions as well by putting God squarely on the evolutionary side of the equation, leaving eternity to the Mathematicians. With Thomasson, the philosopher as referee, and ‘moderator’ Ladyman being thoroughly confused over his role… as are we, the conversation for all its apparent pedantry is a pretty cool reflection on what we all take for granted – existence.
One might characterize the conversation Much ado about ‘Nothing’ unless one appreciates the revolutionary ideas in contention and the utterly diametric paths opened up therein for human development beyond what continues to present itself as a very bleak moment in the history of the human species right now; although as always, there are universes of thought and intention behind the familiar chaotic scenes incubating what eye has not yet seen nor ear heard.
We need. as Marley said, to ‘come in from the cold’ and ‘simmer down’. Control your temperature this new wave of Covid. The best is yet to come.
YeKengalé 