> Anyway, long story short, I think I see your point, which -- unless I have just projected a whole ton of additional meanings -- would be to emphasize Faith.
Yes. Structure can turn an animal into a man, but only faith can elevate him above that.
I do not much like the word faith, as it evokes in me the image of the "Christian faithful" all praying on their knees, hoping for a better future if they follow everything the two-faced priest says. Ultimately it achieves nothing, as blind structure following without feeling for anything deeper than that within yourself is a soulless activity. If you couldn't tell from those last two sentences, I'm not actually Christian. I have rather strong feelings towards them, since I have seen them pull the greatest trick of all: convincing the masses that religion is extrinsically rather than intrinsically motivated. "Faith" nowadays is orthopraxy.
The world is much more complicated than that, of course, and it is not the Christians who did it, or anyone in particular in my opinion. Religion is as much spiritualism as culture, and Western faith before them was explicitly orthopractic. But I feel much more at home criticizing a religion I have experienced, rather than far off ones.
As to my Matthew quote: it has a lot of meaning to me. It is the expression of a universal truth, that true faith (or true will, or spirit, the alchemist's gold and so on and so forth) is the power to change oneself, and thus change the world. Admittedly, the full story (Jesus heals the boy, who does nothing) does not reflect that, which ties back into my hatred of Christianity as a religion that teaches the masses to be powerless and seek their spiritual salvation in others, when it is readily available to them.
(I quote Bible passages with a perverse enjoyment, though)
Yes. Structure can turn an animal into a man, but only faith can elevate him above that.
I do not much like the word faith, as it evokes in me the image of the "Christian faithful" all praying on their knees, hoping for a better future if they follow everything the two-faced priest says. Ultimately it achieves nothing, as blind structure following without feeling for anything deeper than that within yourself is a soulless activity. If you couldn't tell from those last two sentences, I'm not actually Christian. I have rather strong feelings towards them, since I have seen them pull the greatest trick of all: convincing the masses that religion is extrinsically rather than intrinsically motivated. "Faith" nowadays is orthopraxy.
The world is much more complicated than that, of course, and it is not the Christians who did it, or anyone in particular in my opinion. Religion is as much spiritualism as culture, and Western faith before them was explicitly orthopractic. But I feel much more at home criticizing a religion I have experienced, rather than far off ones.
As to my Matthew quote: it has a lot of meaning to me. It is the expression of a universal truth, that true faith (or true will, or spirit, the alchemist's gold and so on and so forth) is the power to change oneself, and thus change the world. Admittedly, the full story (Jesus heals the boy, who does nothing) does not reflect that, which ties back into my hatred of Christianity as a religion that teaches the masses to be powerless and seek their spiritual salvation in others, when it is readily available to them.
(I quote Bible passages with a perverse enjoyment, though)