… beyond eastrod: True or False: "Jesus thrown everything off balance."
I certainly had to ponder it before I posted this. The third question seems to me the least important, actually, since it is a counterfactual conditional. (As Umberto Eco has pointed out, the conclusion derived from a counterfactual conditional proposition is always true precisely because the premise is false. If I had not just writ tent that sentence, I would have … you can just fill in the blanks.)The first two are something else. In her prayer journal, Flannery O'Connor notes that "even in praying it is [God] who" prays in us. The Christian commitment must be unconditional. My own Christianity is a chronicle failure, of holding back. In that, I don't think I'm much different from most people. Only the true saints do better. So Jesus can often make us feel upset, as He made many people when He walked among us. The Misfit saw Him right, but through the distorted lens of his crippled mind.
Counterfactual conditionals are logically flawed. Yes. But are they not now and then provocative thought experiments. And what if history and the choices people make throughout history are based on false narratives. I think The Misfit somehow wonders about this possibility. Do not get me wrong. I am not denying God, Jesus, or Christianity. I am pondering The Misfit's dilemma.
ReplyDeleteWhen you say "true saints" -- do you mean then that there are "false saints"? That must create problems.
ReplyDeleteOh, I think we all act at times in a more or less saintly manner, but the true saints are those who manage somehow to live that way. Happily, the principal qualification for admission to the church is that you are a sinner. I definitely qualify.
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