Ignorance is bliss, or is it? The utility of the withdrawal or absence of attention (the act of ignoring) is self-evident and embedded in the very mechanism of human perception and cognition. Stated positively, the power to focus attention (which requires the withdrawal of attention from everything else but the object / issue of focus) is at the heart of our ability to know anything at all. So whether we wish to admit it or not, anything we choose to know in any given moment is at the direct expense of all else we equally choose to ignore.
This curious conundrum explains the drive for all human relationship and why the human being is a social animal. At an unconscious level, we are all seeking to cover our blind spots. It explains not only social harmony but also social dysfunction. Both our congruencies and our conflicts reflect this desire to escape the limitations of our own perspective.
Recently in Platforms without Pulpits I highlighted the Peterson / Harris conversation on Theism during which, both offered interesting reflections on the theme of sacrifice and its transformative power, the concept at the heart of both Christianity and witchcraft. Generally speaking, stories are more compelling than ideas, but what is an idea but a story of the possible future or purported past?
For all my respect for the excellent dispositions displayed during that conversation, the reason for my highlighting it in my blog post, a fulsome conversation requires consideration of both ideas and stories, and the most compelling stories are those within the immediate experience of the tellers. Granted, stories such as Abraham’s encounter with Jireh on Mount Moriah, Jesus’ crucifixion at Golgotha and the story of Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, however iconic, are sufficiently removed in time as to cross the threshold from fact to legend.
As compelling however, if not more, are the contemporary stories of those who have come to believe those stories implicitly and the undeniably transformative power displayed as a result. But how can one appreciate stories like the reconciliation of the Doe and the Johnson clans without a thorough appreciation of the atrocities of the recent Liberian civil war, a human tragedy on par with Hitler’s genocide save only in scale, but certainly in substance.
Conversations purporting to pronounce on the power, place and moral potentials of sacrifice in human experience cannot be complete without considering the absolutely remarkable testimonies of a General Butt Naked and TB Joshua, contemporary human personas through whom these ancient dramas and ideas are reenacted, only with increased intensity, time magnifying rather than diminishing their reverberation, fulfilling Jesus’ ‘greater works’ prophecy.
But alas, the contemporary western mind is distracted and misdirected to much less significant dramas, narratives and personalities whose only claim to fame is their much inflated self-importance and empty pride. Small wonder the Jesus idea seems increasingly irrelevant in the West – it is largely associated with irrelevancies.
YeKengalé 