I woke up early this morning. When that happens, if I cannot sleep, I get out of bed, and read or think about life until the day begins. This habit of waking early has been reinforced by the occasional need to wake up at 4:30 AM to make an early 6:30 AM call time for an acting job.
Today I was reading selections from the book “The Great
Ideas, A Syntopicon II, Man to World”
published by the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1952. This was the second volume in the series of
books “Great Books of the Western World”
I had just finished reading the section 92 on Theology. This is to me a very disturbing product of
the human mind. The fundamental base of
Theology seems to be irrational belief that, defies logic, refutes logic, and
refuses logical analysis. At the same
time, Theology uses the tools of logic to build arguments and prove concepts
that seem to be fabrications of the human mind; utterly unrelated to almost any
aspect of the external “real” world that I can see. It is exasperating to try to understand a
doctrine that holds blind unthinking obedience to be the highest virtue and
logical analysis, or doubt, to be a crime.
Curiously, Theology exists in most all different Religions of man.
Then I turn to section 94 on Truth. The discussion starts with a short
clarification on the difference between moral truth, which is speaking your
mind and honestly reporting your thoughts; and physical truth which is the narrative of actual
events that occur in the world.
I turn the page and am
surprised by a piece of paper sticking out of the book in the next page. This is strange that I did not notice it
before. It is a sheet of old yellowed stationary and
there are a few sentences written in a neat feminine handwriting on one side. The paper is torn in half at the bottom of
the written text.
And this is what is
written, “It is simpler and less demanding to have a closed mind than an open
one. One can long to be free and yet,
when freedom is imminent, have it loom as a fearful burden. Suddenly there are too many choices, there is
too little structure.”
copyright(c)2014 Wm Schaeffer
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