Saturday, February 28, 2015
The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For Truth and The Meaning of Human Life: The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For T...
The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For Truth and The Meaning of Human Life: The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For T...: The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For Truth and The Meaning of Human Life: LEE STROBEL The Case for a Creator Full documenta...
Friday, February 27, 2015
Why Philosophy (2)(2) Philosophy is the Love of Wisdom! www.dpl21.com
Why Philosophy?
A quite popular book now, written by V. E. Frankl, bears the
title: Man’s Search for Meaning. In this book the author relates his life
in Nazi concentration camps and
summarizes his observations of men and women in those most brutal and hellish
camps ever designed by man for man’s victims. The basic message and conclusion of Frankl’s life is
that the search for
meaning, the need to have some meaning, is the most central and absolutely
first and basic need in every human being. Perhaps the best description of man
is > a searcher for meaning <. Give some meaning to human life and men
will gladly give their lives for it, but take away this assurance of meaning of
man’s existence and man must commit suicide, go insane, degenerate slowly and die anyway. This is
true for every human life. Anything we do or suffer is done or suffered because
it is somehow meaningful or seems to contain meaning for us. Without this
belief in meaning of our lives there is no real human existence. This quest for
meaning can be expressed in many ways but all of them can be reduced to the
search for worth, importance, value of life.
Philosophy is the love of wisdom.
Its object is search for truth.
Wisdom is the art of happiness
and
TRUTH is the way to it.
A quite popular book now, written by V. E. Frankl, bears the
title: Man’s Search for Meaning. In this book the author relates his life
in Nazi concentration camps and
summarizes his observations of men and women in those most brutal and hellish
camps ever designed by man for man’s victims. The basic message and conclusion of Frankl’s life is
that the search for
meaning, the need to have some meaning, is the most central and absolutely
first and basic need in every human being. Perhaps the best description of man
is > a searcher for meaning <. Give some meaning to human life and men
will gladly give their lives for it, but take away this assurance of meaning of
man’s existence and man must commit suicide, go insane, degenerate slowly and die anyway. This is
true for every human life. Anything we do or suffer is done or suffered because
it is somehow meaningful or seems to contain meaning for us. Without this
belief in meaning of our lives there is no real human existence. This quest for
meaning can be expressed in many ways but all of them can be reduced to the
search for worth, importance, value of life.
“Is life worth living? What is the end of it
all?” Without meaning man cannot survive and conversely, he will endure almost
anything including torture,
sufferings, humiliation and death as long as he sees some meaning in it.
“To lose one’s life is a little thing and
I shall have the courage to do so if it is necessary, but to see the meaning of
this life dissipated, to see our reason for existing disappear, that is what is unbearable.
One cannot live without meaning.”
Albert Camus
The absolute demand for meaning in life is so
basic and strong that those who experience an existential vacuum, that is blindness
to meaning of life, can think of only one thing: suicide. The awareness that life should be
without meaning cannot be accepted seriously.
Leo Tolstoy when he was fifty and at the top of his literary fame, experienced
a deep anguish that
life actually may have no meaning at all. This deep anxiety ruined completely his desire for
living.
“The force which drew me away from life was stronger,
fuller and more general than wishing. It was a force like the former striving
for life, only in an inverse sense. I tended with all my strength away from
life. The thought of suicide came as naturally to me as had come before the
ideas of improving life. …All that happened to me when I was on every side
surrounded by what is envisioned to be complete happiness.
…I could not ascribe any sensible meaning to a single act, or to my whole life.
… The terror of the darkness was too great, and I wanted as quickly as possible to free Leo Tolstoy, myself from it by means of a noose or a bullet…”
…I could not ascribe any sensible meaning to a single act, or to my whole life.
… The terror of the darkness was too great, and I wanted as quickly as possible to free Leo Tolstoy, myself from it by means of a noose or a bullet…”
My Confessions.
Tolstoy is only example. Each human being,
because he or she is human, has this imperative hunger for meaning in the very center of his
consciousness.
[1]Human existence,
yours and mine and everybody else’s, is problematic. For the human mind
literally everything is a problem:
everything is a question mark. All questions human beings ever asked
from the very appearance of the thinking man in the universe, are related to the question of the
meaning of existence. Without meaning we cannot live and anything that can give
meaning to my existence, to human existence is extremely worthwhile and
extremely important. Since my experience of existence is a mystery, a problem,
and since I am a human being, I must think and search for meaning. There is no
escape from this under the penalty of not being authentically human. If I do
not decipher meaning for my existence I perish, and after my mental suicide I
shall fall beneath the level of human life. But this search for meaning is
exactly philosophy.
Everyone therefore is a philosopher simply because he is human. Philosophy is
simply: man thinking. This
philosophizing is a mode of living.
[2] Philosophy is a
thing that must be done. It is as necessary as life itself. By the very fact
that I am “thrown into” existence and live this existence as a human being I
must philosophize, since, as
Socrates remarked “An unexamined life is not worth living.” Each one of
us wants necessarily to make life as meaningful as possible. This was true, is
true and will be true about every human being and mankind as a whole. Each
generation and each individual must go through this quest for meaning by himself or his life
will appear a wasted, absurd tragedy leading nowhere. William James remarked very much to the
point when he said, “Probably to almost everyone here, every one of us, the
most adverse life would seem well worth living, if we only could be certain
that our bravery and patience with it were germinating and eventuating and
bearing fruit somewhere… (William
James: Is Life Worth Living?).”
Each one of us has one existence only. This
life which is given to me I must live myself. I myself must also make my life
meaningful. The quest for my personal meaning is therefore a lonely search,
which must be done by me, and only by me, alone. Since life without meaning I
cannot bear – I must fill it with my personal meaning. I must live my life, not
somebody else’s, and therefore the meaning of my life is unique to me, as I am
a unique person. Philosophy is a personal attitude towards life as a whole, and the universe
(all that exists) as I see it, and live it. It is a constant growth in
developing my vision of me, the world in which I exist, and the meaning, which
I try to realize and accomplish. This reflective-living-thinking is a heroic
attempt to gain the vision of the whole experience of my adventure of existence as
a human being. To live, we must think or perish, and therefore everyone is a philosopher by the very
fact that he lives.
“Philosophy is first of all,
philosophizing, and philosophizing is undoubtedly a way of living – as is
running, falling in love, playing golf, growing indignant in politics and being
a lady in society.”[3]
(Ortega y Gasset, What is Philosophy?)
I said that everyone is a philosopher simply
because he lives as a human being. As Ortega remarks, philosophizing is a way
of living. Everything we do in our lives has some conscious or subconscious motive, a reason why we
do it, a reason why
we believe something. A reason why we feel this way, a reason why we are what
we are. This is our philosophy. There is no life without it. Not a human life
at any rate. Our life and our thinking, feeling and believing, our ways of
behaving do not grow out of nothing. We are born into a definite – fated – environment. The childhood period is the
time when we are molded almost entirely by the immediate world, and people
closest to us. Those influences, and their name is legion, are all powerful.
They make us what we are in the most true meaning of the word. As children, we
imitate, and we believe, what the people in our immediate environment tell us.
We do not have enough power of though and reflection
to make the choice yet. Without criticism we accept the ways of living and acting in the small and
narrow little world of our childhood. Our psyche, our behavior, our reactions, our beliefs are all taken
in good faith from this small world of our birth and early upbringing. It must be this way.
There is no other possibility open to us at this stage of our life.
But gradually we grow up: little by little. Our
horizon of
experience widens. We see more of the world, we meet different and new people. We learn
that people live and think in very many different ways, and that our own way is
not the only one possible. We start to compare, criticize, evaluate and very
often we have to go through disillusionment, pains and doubts.
We realize that truth is not something that is
ready made, waiting for us.
We realize that people differ profoundly
|
in ways of living
in ways of understanding the meaning of life in their beliefs about themselves, the world, meaning of their lives. |
It seems that there is hardly one truth to
which everybody could agree. Examples are
many:
1. Knowledge
– Human knowledge is open to infinite progress.
|
1. Human
knowledge is an illusion. A person really cannot have any certain knowledge
at all.
|
2. Man
– Man is the crown of all reality. He is destined to eternal bliss.
|
2. Man
is an accidental byproduct of the blind forces of matter.
|
3. Meaning –
All life is meaningful.
|
3. The appearance of
humans is ultimately meaningless. Life
is absurd.
|
4. God – There is
an Infinite Divine
Creator.
|
4. There is no God.
|
5. Immortality – Death is only a transition to a fuller and better
existence.
|
5. Death is the
ultimate end of human existence, the inevitable absurd ending of an absurd
life. There is no afterlife.
|
Views, beliefs, visions of reality change in
history and along individual lifetimes… It seems that truly everything is
flowing, as Heraclitus
taught.
Different traditions, customs, powers and institutions claim
our allegiance and try to win us for their own causes. Our childhood’s naïve
safety-feeling vanishes. We are awakening to reality , to ourselves. We cannot live someone
else’s lives or take someone else’s beliefs and values uncritically. But we
also realize that amid this confusion many people do not even truly try to
examine their lives. They live sometimes their lives through without truly
evaluating, examining themselves. They never grow up to authentic, reflective maturity. They lack the
courage to think for themselves. We are tempted to join them. It is risky and
frightful and painful to decide to be fully oneself, to truly start searching for one’s own
personal meaning, one’s own personal philosophy. Why is this so? Because every
growth is painful. The basic conditions here are:
(a) Determination for disciplined reflection
(b) Passion for
truth
(c) Courage; the capacity to face the unknown and to risk yourself, your
so-called “security” of the “now”.
There is no way out. The very fact of our being
alive in the world forces us to find our place in it, to decide what we shall
believe, and what we will do with our lives. We said before that everyone is a
philosopher simply because he is human and he lives. Each one of us however, is
exposed to the temptation
of an un-authentic living.
This un-authentic life happens whenever we do
not decide at some point of our life to start truly the search, the personal
search for our own meaning for own philosophy of life. It is extremely easy to
fall into the trap
of un-authentic existence. It happens
automatically, unconsciously to us. Although we know that an unexamined
life is not worth living, we may for irrational motives evade the facing of the
basic problems of our existence. False concepts of security, emotional ties to unexamined values, and beliefs,
ingrained prejudices, sloth of mind, lack of courage,
to be fully oneself – all those factors are tremendous obstacles in our development towards our
own philosophical life. Thus many people drift along as slaves of customs, fads and prejudices of
their times, and are carried by time to their graves. The “common man” or the “faceless man”
sells his time, his labor, his soul to powers and institutions and ideologies or mythologies which he
really does not know. Nor does he care to know. This selling of himself
provides him with false feelings of security, with false meaning of life. It is
false because it has never been examined in depth. It has never been faced in
an honest effort towards a true vision of the totality of the human experience
of existence. Ultimately, it is something alien, imposed from outside.
An unexamined life is not worth living because
it is a living in quasi-authenticity.
Such a life ultimately leads to disillusionment, meaninglessness and tragic frustration. It cannot lead anywhere
else.
To exist in the world as a human being means
constant risking of oneself, constant deciding what we are, what we believe,
what we do. There’s no escape since even if we evade making a decision we make
a decision. We decide not to decide and that is a decision. Everyone is
responsible at least to himself for his existence.
Since philosophy is essentially thinking and
searching for the meaning of our lives, it must be done by everyone for
himself, for the way we think determines the way we act and live and die.
To philosophize
is to explore life.
It means breaking free
to ask questions.
It means resisting easy answers.
To philosophize
is to seek in oneself
the courage to ask
painful questions.
is to explore life.
It means breaking free
to ask questions.
It means resisting easy answers.
To philosophize
is to seek in oneself
the courage to ask
painful questions.
J. Christian
“The end of philosophy is not that we may
know what men have thought, but what the TRUTH of things is.”
Thomas Aquinas
Philosophy is the love of wisdom.Its object is search for truth.
Wisdom is the art of happiness
and
TRUTH is the way to it.
The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For Truth and The Meaning of Human Life: Why Philosophy? (1) (2) Philosophy is the Love of ...
The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For Truth and The Meaning of Human Life: Why Philosophy? (1) (2) Philosophy is the Love of ...: WHY PHILOSOPHY? The Human Situation – The necessity of meaning in life – the problematic nature of human existence – a thing th...
Why Philosophy? (1) (2) Philosophy is the Love of Wisdom .www.dpl21.com
WHY PHILOSOPHY?
The Human Situation – The necessity of meaning
in life – the problematic nature of human existence – a thing that must be done by everyone
– to have a human life we must philosophize. To live is to find meaning in this
world and to decide what we shall be, what we shall believe, what we shall do with
the life given us.
“To sensitive spirits of all ages life is
filled with cruel contradictions and bitter ironies. Human experience is
capricious and our finite minds are not able to see enough of life at one time
for us to know for sure what is going on. We see only fragments of life and
never the whole … Just under the surface
of the active human enterprise implicit in all we think and do there lies the
eternal question: What is the meaning of existence?”
J. S. Christian
Our life is a perennial surprise. The very fact that you and I exist
at all is a continual surprise. But there is more to it. This life we are
given, or are thrown into, is full of cruel contradictions and it does not lack
the element of tragedy.
Only a complete fool can live or rather vegetate and not see that we are
appearing on the scene together with a host of other beings of all sorts: the universe, completely
unprepared. We are not told beforehand that we are going to live. Nobody asks us
whether we want it or not. Thus we are ‘thrown into existence’ willy nilly to
be always puzzled by this “thrownness
“and finally merge into the mystery
of death. Mystery
is our origin, mystery is our life and mystery is our death.
From the Unknown we emerge, in an unknown we
exist, and we go into an unknown. We are given few moments of surprised
existing only to disappear into another sea of the mysterious past… Very soon
we realize that we are imprisoned in many ways. We are ‘boxed in’ for
few moments of time which is given to us – our lifespan. It is short and there is no escape from this prison of time. We
are also imprisoned in space,
because we are body – whatever this means – and every body is imprisoned in
space. This spells our limitations: very
little time in little space. We cannot do anything about it. We are doomed to
be carried towards an end and we do not even know when this end will come. As Heidegger would say, we
are “beings unto
death.” Our experiences are so short and limited that it seems to be ridiculous
to try to know, what is going on really. Then there are the contradictions we
face: our absolute desire for “happiness” and the cruel
disappointments,
the frustrations. We realize that the brief moments of satisfaction leave us
only thirstier, more dissatisfied. All our dearest strivings are often smashed
against the inexorable wall of
suffering, misunderstandings, cruelty of life and its transitoriness.
Everything moves fast in-between our fingers: we cannot catch any moment of our
existence. It will pass. So will we. The desire for more experience is denied.
I have only this: my few moments of my existence and no more. I live now at
this time, in this
country, in this spot of the world. All this is given to me only once. I do not
have much to say here. This is the element of fate in my existence.
My awareness is limited, my mind is limited, my knowledge is painfully
small, and my whole existence
seems to be a brief awakening to mystery without enough time or possibility to get a closer look…
This is the riddle of my life. The basic fact of my thrownness
and brief co-existence with the world. The world will not let me rest for a while. I am
someone who sees and loves,
hates and desires this world. I
move within it, I suffer it, I fight it… My life is given to me. It is finding
myself in the world for a little surprised awareness. I am carried by this mysterious passing,
which we call time, towards the unknown…
This wonderful surprise of my bare and puzzling existence.
This is my life. I am in it, I am it. I am my life. This is my human situation. It is exciting
and mysterious, it is painful and sweet, it is comical and also tragic. It is
wonderful, that is full of
wonder! For yours and mine basic experience is wonder and surprise! Everything is a
problem for a human being.
Being what we are, we want to know. All men by nature desire to know,
said Aristotle many
centuries ago. To be human means to ask. A stone does not ask questions. It
exists without knowing that it exists. In a way of speaking it exists only for
me, but not for itself.
It is radically different with humans. Enclosed
in everything we do, suffer or experience in any way whatever – at the very roots of each moment of
my existence – consciously or subconsciously there is the eternal question of
all humankind : What is the meaning of
existence?
The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For Truth and The Meaning of Human Life: Finality and Intelligence. Is the Universe Designe...
The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For Truth and The Meaning of Human Life: Finality and Intelligence. Is the Universe Designe...: F i n a l i t y a n d I n t e l l i g e n c e. Is the Universe Designed? By Leszek Figurski The end of philosop...
The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For Truth and The Meaning of Human Life: The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For T...
The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For Truth and The Meaning of Human Life: The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For T...: The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For Truth and The Meaning of Human Life: The Existence of Good God Part (1) (3) L.Figurski... ...
Thursday, February 26, 2015
The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For Truth and The Meaning of Human Life: The Existence of Good God Part (1) (3) L.Figurski...
The Courage to Think For Yourself The Search For Truth and The Meaning of Human Life: The Existence of Good God Part (1) (3) L.Figurski...: There is no question that the most ancient and the greatest obstacle to belief in God is the existence of evi...
The Existence of Good God Part (1) (3) L.Figurski
Rabbi Harold Kushner in his book: “ When Bad Things Happen to Good People” gives a vivid illustration of possible reaction to evil when it is experienced on personal level. Although it is impossible to agree with his conclusion , one must acknowledge the fact that abstract analysis of evil, it’s existence and concrete personal experience are two different ways of approaching the question. When unexpected tragedy strikes in personal life humans simply lose their balance and accuse God of extreme cruelty and unnecessary evil which seems to be absolutely incomprehensible. This is how people become atheists usually for personal emotional reasons.
This attitude is a dogmatic and unproved assumption of those who do not bother to justify it in any way and accept the views of atheism even if it violates and neglects the most fundamental principles of logic and experience.
The problem of the existence of evil is only a serious problem for a believer in God. Not only of any god like the pantheistic god, or the deistic god or even a god who is on the same level as the evil god like the Persian notions of Ahriman and Ormuzd. The God of Judeo Christian theism is radically different from any other. This is why the theist faces the obvious seemingly unsolvable situation, as below:
1.
God exists .
2.
God is all good and omnipotent.
3. But evil
both natural and man-made exists too.
Conclusion:
(a) God cannot exist.
(b)
Either He cannot abolish evil, then He
is not omnipotent, or
(c)
He does not want to abolish evil then He
is evil too.
Our
knowledge of God begins with the
surprise that something exists. It
is the Leibnizian question : why is there anything at all rather than
nothing. The existence of any being must be somehow intelligible to the human mind. From analysis of a finite being the mind moves to the idea of
contingency and causality. There must be
one being which is self-existing that is
existence is it’s very essence .
This way the mind arrives at the existence of
the Prime Mover , the First Cause, and Designer of the Universe. This is the philosophical notion of God. The problem
of God’s existence must be
separated from the problem of the existence of evil in the world. Those
are two separate questions. Quite
often the distinction is not
acknowledged . People say “… if evil exists God does not exist…” The
idea is the following: An all good and Omnipotent God cannot allow any evil whatsoever to exist.
This conclusion does not follow at all.
God is Omnipotent, immaterial absolutely transcendent and perfect. In Himself
God is completely infinitely happy and
therefore He did not create the universe, for any other reason, but only
to share in some form his
goodness with His creatures. Being good is
always the very root of any perfection and value of any kind. Nothingness does not exist
therefore cannot be known or created in
any way. Even the minimum degree of any perfection or value must be good and the product of good. Therefore God being
infinite is infinitely good and His
creation must be good. This is
why St. Augustine expressed the question very simply: “…If God does not exist why so much good, and if God exists
why so much evil?...” God’s
perfection and His Omnipotence enable
God to create all finite beings “… out of nothing…” This expression however
must be properly understood. It
means that nothing existed, but God the creator alone. The power of His
creative word was enough to let
existence be given to what was not
existing. God is completely happy in Himself and in
absolute independence and freedom . It follows that God did not have to create a universe. He did
not need to call non existent entities
into being . Ultimately there is only one reason why God called the universe into
existence: to share in some way
His happiness with His creatures. The personal God let persons be. God being good cannot intent directly evil in any form.
3This
brings the analysis to the important
question : what is evil?
Thomas Aquinas defined evil
as lack of perfection which ought to belong to some being. For
example a stone has no vision because
the stone has no power to see and therefore it is
not evil but absence of vision in a human
is evil because normally vision belongs to the human nature. Being is first in existence and
evil is parasitic on a being which is in
itself good, but limited and deprived of some perfection. It follows that God by creating
finite beings did not intend evil,
however by creating humans, He indirectly
allowed the possibility of abuse of
freedom given to man. Freedom of
choice is the expression of the nature
of man created as a person capable
of own choices.
Without free choice humans
simply would not be human beings.
They would be manipulated things only. As
such there would not exist any moral
value or responsibility of any kind .
Freedom of choice gives man independence and self-determination. Man can reject
God’s offer and ignore God’s directions.
This is the essence of sin and spiritual decay. It is a positive rebellion and rejection of
God. In the first Chapter of Genesis there is the story of the
rebellion against God. Sin and evil became part of man’s existence destroying his relationship to
God, to other people and also making man
a slave of sin. Evil seems to be more attractive , more effective and far better in practice than the
directions given by God. Evil becomes
all pervasive and omnipresent.
This is visible in all aspects of human
existence , all social systems , even
within the closest human relationships in families. As mentioned above evil is parasitic on the good. It destroys man himself and brings death, moral corruption.
Moral evil
can be compared to leprosy. It attacks
the spiritual life of man and
deprives the person of the ability to recognize the difference between
moral evil and moral good. Man recognizes clearly the difference between moral
evil and moral good but with time
and repeated silencing his
conscience he loses the ability to feel the difference of moral activities
and he continues to live quite often in complete blindness to the obvious evil in which and with which
he habitually lives day by day. Moral values simply become unimportant and considered nonexistent.
What remains is self-centeredness , self-interest
and the competition by all means
in the fight for survival and material gain.
Once
this happens man is practically enslaved
by the power of evil and becomes accustomed to it. Evil becomes normal way of
living. It is now a habitual way of thinking and decision making and creating temporal
idols in human life. Man loses the
ability and desire for change because change requires an awakening to
evil governing one’s life. It requires strong and deliberate decision to begin
a new life in freedom and according to the plan of God. But that is exactly what man does not want because he does not want to surrender to God’s will. Freedom of choice is
like double edged sword. It can cut both ways. However it is the greatest
gift given to human’s by the Creator.
Man is an image of God.
God
cannot create evil in any way .
God is goodness itself . By giving man freedom of choice God
created the possibility of manmade evil . This is why human beings are afraid of their own great calling: to be eternal participants of divine life as chosen children of God who is Omnipotent Love.
Summary of the above points: 1.God did not create evil
but only good. 2.Man as a creature of an
all good God was created also good
because he is called the image of
God. 3. Human freedom of
choice is necessary condition of being a person. 4.Freedom of choice
involves the possibility of choosing evil. This is the very condition of
true freedom. 5. Man rebelled against the will of God, chose disobedience, and
became infected with evil,
hostile to God, and to other
humans losing the clarity of vision of his own nature and
destiny . 6.
Evil and sin
multiplied and became man’s habitual way of living. The image of God became disfigured, tarnished and
poisoned, infected towards
sickness unto death.(S. Kierkegaard) 7. Only God can liberate
man from the deadly slavery of sin. 8. God is the God of freedom and liberty and He
respects the freedom of man, even if man
turns against Him and can opt for
eternal loneliness without God. 9. God
desires the salvation of all men from enslavement to evil.
The real question is the co-existence of evil and God . Usually the problem
is formulated as follows:
1.If
God exists evil cannot exist.
2.
Evil does exist.
3.
Therefore God does not exist.
Existence of God is
evidently proved by the nature of the universe and
the demand of the First Cause , the Intelligent
Designer of the universe and the First Mover of the
dynamism observable in the world. Those proofs
are metaphysically certain on their own , independently on other problems. Therefore the problem of God’s existence is
separate from the fact of the existence of evil. The real question is
whether God and evil can co-exist. The answer to this problem of co-existence of God and evil is in the affirmative, yes God exists and
evil exists too. Why is this so?
God being all good cannot directly
create evil but since He wanted to have free and
responsible persons He opened the possibility of choosing evil. This explains
why evil and God co-exist. So the first
part of the syllogism : if evil exists
God does not exist is false.
It
can be asked why
did God create the universe and
human beings at all. The answer seems clear: God did not have to create the universe at
all because being God, He is perfectly
happy and did not have any need to create. The motive for creation can only be love.
God wanted to share His own happiness with conscious , responsible free persons capable of
loving answer to his love and
participating in some way in His divine nature even for eternity . Man’s
personality and his free choices
are the necessary conditions for fulfilling the vocation
to be a living image of God. Man
is a responsible creator of his destiny because it depends on the way he responds to God. This is the burden of responsibility for one’s
own free decisions. Responsibility is understood as real burden and everyone must try to grow up
towards being responsible for his own decisions and actions. By decision and action humans shape their own character . Sadly
enough history of humanity shows
the depth of man’s depravity. One
would not exaggerate by saying that it is written in blood and horror. The depth of human depravity makes man far worse than other animals. The saying of Thomas
Hobbes ”homo homini lupus” – man is the wolf to the other man remains painfully
true.
The concept that this life here and now is destined for human happiness is a misunderstanding. The problem of coexistence of God and evil has it’s roots in
If looked upon in the above described way the world
seems to be a very difficult place to be born into and there are those who accuse God of
cruelty and unloving despotism and hostility to man. In Dostoyevsky’s book “The
Brothers Karamazov,” Ivan , the brother of Alyosha says the following: “If in this world which you think God made
even one small child suffers and
cries then the world is not worth living
and I myself give the ticket back.” There is
seemingly too much pain and
disappointment in this world and
many people lose their faith in a
loving and good God . When suffering and pain become overwhelming some commit
suicide. As discussed before, God is all good and God cannot directly create
evil , and He did not . Evil originated
in the hostility and rebellion of man
against the plan and commandments of God.
The Will of God seems to be an intrusion, and a burden from outside. It seems
to suffocate man and his imaginary independence Briefly speaking God is
not wanted. For many people God has no place nor meaning in their lives ,
they live as if God does not exist, and they do not bother even to know anything about God , His existence and His
plans for humanity . The fascination
of pleasures of this life and
their successes in this or that
area and the constant hunger for entertainment of all
sorts does not leave much time for
deeper reflection and search for truth.
Man becomes deeper and deeper alienated from God and other people and does not even question
the fundamental issues of
existence. The evil perpetrated by humans
in history is beyond any description. But man does not want to accept
the obvious fact of
the evil done by man and the responsibility for it . Man blames always either God other people , the circumstances of his
life or anything else but himself. The Grand Inquisitor in his accusations against Christ whom he recognized in the streets and
ordered to be arrested for creating a tumult gests more and more excited and finally he
completely dumbfounded by Christ silently kissing him shouts: Go away ,go away and never come back,
never! The Grand Inquisitor could
not forgive Christ that He gave freedom
of conscious to men.God respects human freedom. Man is endowed with immortal soul and destined for eternal
life.
God’s plan cannot be frustrated by human evil . God did not give up on humanity and revealed His will and plan for humans.
Man in his rebellion against God is enslaved in his own evil and is inclined to
worship human made idols which
temporarily may fascinate him only to
lead to final frustration. The concept that this life here and now is destined for human happiness is a misunderstanding. The problem of coexistence of God and evil has it’s roots in
the
fundamental vision of life, the nature
of the universe and the meaning and destiny of human life. The
adequate solution of the problem is given in the context of Christianity in a
very special way. Human life can be understood adequately within the Christian
dogma. The basic errors and distortions
enter when life
is conceived as the
time from conception to the moment of
physical death. In such view that is all man is given. It is all of his existence . Eternity existed
before man’s birth, he lives for a short
time without any direction or meaning of his life and he
dies forever. This creates the
anxiety and the fear which
dominates his life. Man is not certain practically of anything at all. He does not know what the others will do to him and
subconsciously as Thomas Hobbes
said, …man considers everyone else as potential enemy against whom he must arm himself and he is not even certain how much time is
left for him before the inevitable death. Man does not put his hope in God but in whatever
he can accumulate of material
values , popularity , power over others and
climbing the social ladder . In everything he does
he wants to be first and he would eliminate anyone in the fierce fight for survival. Objective moral values in
such
existence are obstacles to his success. They would limit
his self-adoration and pride. Consequently man creates his own values which make it easier for him to dominate others. The
language of such people becomes completely devoid of any moral good or evil . Instead words are used completely morally neutral such
as like productive, effective progressive, scientific and so forth. Man greedily acquires many
things not because he really needs them but to impress others with his possessions
and show that his material goods are far better
and more valuable than those of others. For example he would buy an
expensive new car not because he needs one, but to feed his vanity. Life
becomes a constant competitive effort to
outshine others. It is deprived of honest , true human relationships and it becomes selfish , short and finally ending
in death.
This is the evil created by man himself in his
falsely understood nature of life
which becomes one dimensional ,
horizontal and ultimately frustrating . The evil described above is not only situated in the very soul and
spirit of man , but according to the Bible, nature itself, that is the world in
which man lives is also affected by the fall and hostility. According to the
words of St. Paul: It is yearning for liberation. The universe follows it’s own
ways of development from the beginning
and becomes also a dangerous
place to live in : diseases, old age,
all kinds of suffering and the inevitability of death are all part of the human
experience.
If looked upon in the above described way the world
seems to be a very difficult place to be born into and there are those who accuse God of
cruelty and unloving despotism and hostility to man. In Dostoyevsky’s book “The
Brothers Karamazov,” Ivan , the brother of Alyosha says the following: “If in this world which you think God made
even one small child suffers and
cries then the world is not worth living
and I myself give the ticket back.” There is
seemingly too much pain and
disappointment in this world and
many people lose their faith in a
loving and good God . When suffering and pain become overwhelming some commit
suicide. As discussed before, God is all good and God cannot directly create
evil , and He did not . Evil originated
in the hostility and rebellion of man
against the plan and commandments of God.
The Will of God seems to be an intrusion, and a burden from outside. It seems
to suffocate man and his imaginary independence Briefly speaking God is
not wanted. For many people God has no place nor meaning in their lives ,
they live as if God does not exist, and they do not bother even to know anything about God , His existence and His
plans for humanity . The fascination
of pleasures of this life and
their successes in this or that
area and the constant hunger for entertainment of all
sorts does not leave much time for
deeper reflection and search for truth.
Man becomes deeper and deeper alienated from God and other people and does not even question
the fundamental issues of
existence. The evil perpetrated by humans
in history is beyond any description. But man does not want to accept
the obvious fact of
the evil done by man and the responsibility for it . Man blames always either God other people , the circumstances of his
life or anything else but himself. The Grand Inquisitor in his accusations against Christ whom he recognized in the streets and
ordered to be arrested for creating a tumult gests more and more excited and finally he
completely dumbfounded by Christ silently kissing him shouts: Go away ,go away and never come back,
never! The Grand Inquisitor could
not forgive Christ that He gave freedom
of conscious to men.God respects human freedom. Man is endowed with immortal soul and destined for eternal
life.
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