1. - SELF-ESTRANGEMENT - The modern person is no longer a unity but a confused bundle of complexes and nerves. He is so dissociated, so alienated from himself, that he sees himself less as a personality than as a battlefield where a civil war rages between a thousand and one conflicting loyalties. There is no single overall purpose in his life. His soul is comparable to a menagerie in which a number of beasts, each seeking its own prey, turn one upon the other. Or he may be likened to a radio that is tuned in to several stations; instead of getting anyone clearly, there is received only an annoying static.

If the frustrated soul is educated, it has a smattering of uncorrelated bits of information with no unifying philosophy. Then the frustrated soul may say to itself: "I sometimes think there are two of me - a living soul and a Ph.D." Such a person projects his own mental confusion to the outside world and concludes that since he knows no truth, nobody can know it. His own skepticism (which he universalizes into a philosophy of life) throws him back more and more upon those powers lurking in the dark, dank caverns of his unconsciousness. He changes his philosophy as he changes his consciousness. He changes his philosophy as he changes his clothes.

On Monday, he lays down the tracks of materialism; on Tuesday, he reads a best seller, pull up the old tracks and lays the new tracks of an idealist; on Wednesday, his new roadway is Communistic; on Thursday, the new rails of Liberalism are laid; on Friday, he hears a broadcast and decides to travel on Freudian tracks; on Saturday, he takes a long drink to forget his railroading and, on Sunday ponders why people are so foolish as to go to Church. Each day he has a new idol, each week a new mood. His authority is public opinion; when that shifts, his frustrated soul shifts with it. There is no fixed ideal, no great passion but only a cold indifference to the rest of the world. Living in a continual state of self-reference, his conversational "I's" come closer and closer, as he finds all neighbours increasingly boring if they insist on talking about themselves instead of about him.

2. - ISOLATION FROM OTHERS - This characteristic is revealed not only by two world wars in twenty-one years and a constant threat of a third, not only by the growth of class conflict and selfishness wherein everybody seeks their own; but also by one's break with tradition and the accumulated heritage of the centuries. The revolt of the modern child against his parents is a miniature of the revolt of the modern world against the memory of 1900 years of Christian culture and the great Hebrew, Grecian and Roman cultures that preceded them.

Any respect for that tradition is called "reactionary," with the result that judges yesterday by today, and today by tomorrow. Nothing is more tragic in an individual who once was wise than to lose his memory and nothing is more tragic to a civilization than the loss of its tradition. The modern soul that cannot live with itself cannot live with others. A person who is not at peace with himself will not be at peace with his fellow human beings. World wars are nothing but macro cosmic signs of the psychic was waging inside microcosmic muddled souls. If there had not already been battles in millions of hearts, there would be none on the battlefields of the world.

Given a soul alienated from self, lawlessness follows. A soul with a fight inside itself will soon have a fight outside itself with others. Once a person ceases to be of service to neighbors, he or she begins to be burden to them; it is only a step from refusing to live with others to refusing to live for others. When Adam sinned, he accursed Eve, and when Cain murdered Abel, he asked the antisocial question, "Am I my brother keeper?" - Gen. 4:9 - When Saint Peter sinned, he went out alone and wept bitterly. Babel's sin of pride ended in a confusion of tongues that made it impossible to maintain fellowship.

Our personal self-hatred always becomes hatred of neighbor. Perhaps this [was] one of the reasons for the basic appeal of Communism, with its philosophy of class struggle: Communism [had] a special affinity for souls that [were] already undergoing a struggle inside of themselves. Associated with this inner conflict is a tendency to become hypercritical: Unhappy souls almost always blame everyone but themselves for their miseries. Shut up within themselves, they are necessarily shut off from all others except to criticize them.

Since the essence of sin is opposition to God's will, it follows that the sin of one individual is bound to oppose any other individual whose will is in harmony with God's will. This resulting estrangement from one's fellow humans is intensified when one begins to live solely for this world; then the possessions of the neighbor are regarded as something unjustly taken from oneself. Once the material becomes the goal of life, a society of conflicts is born. As Shelley said: "The accumulations of the materials of external life exceed the quantity of power of assimilating them to the internal laws of our nature."

Matter divides, as spirit unites. Divide an apple into four parts and it is always possible to quarrel as to who has the biggest part; but if four persons learn a prayer, no one deprives the others of possessing it - the prayer becomes the basis of their unity. When the goal of civilization consists, not in union with the Heavenly Father but in the acquisition of envy, greed, and war. Divided people then seek a dictator to bring them together, not in the unity of love but in the false unity of the three p's - POWER, POLICE and POLITICS.

3. - ESTRANGEMENT FROM GOD - Alienation from self and from...................

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -