be not forgetful to entertain strangers
for thereby some have entertained angels
unawares this is a commentary from
Matthew Henry who is a nonconformist
minister and author cheerful and
obliging manners in showing kindness are
great ornaments to piety though our
condescending lord vouchsafe has not
personal visits to us yet still by his
spirit he stands at the door knocks when
we're inclined to open he deigns to
enter by his gracious consolations he
provides a rich feast of which we
partake with him this is from
revelations 3:20 behold I stand at the
door and knock and if any man hear my
voice and opened the door I will come in
to him and will sup with him and he with
me well a hyperlink nature of those
quotes is quite obvious there's 10 or 15
things being said at the same time right
one is a reference to the idea that if
you ask for something it will be given
to you right it was a very strange idea
but I like that idea a lot and I believe
my in my experience that has been true
if it was that I wanted what I was
asking for because that's the real issue
right because the question is if you
want something what does it mean to want
it and what it means is to sacrifice
whatever is necessary to get it because
otherwise you don't want it and so
there's an equation here and I'm not
claiming it's ultimate accuracy but the
equation is something like you don't
want it unless you're willing to
sacrifice for it and if you don't want
it you're not going to get it because
you're scattered but if you do want it
and you make the proper sacrifices then
god only knows what might happen and
that's a see one of the things I really
like about the existential philosophers
is their emphasis on personal
responsibility you know that many of
them had an emphasis on the role that
people had in shaping their own destiny
the exist for the existentialist and I
think this was a consequence of the
religious sub structure of philosophical
thinking it was self-evident that life
was tragic and bed
but and then fair enough but that isn't
where it ended the the next issue was
well there are better in ways better and
worse ways of dealing with that and the
better way of dealing with the fact that
life is tragic and better is to pause it
the self you could be and live
authentically in relationship to that
and then the next issue and something is
something Kierkegaard talked about
particularly when he talked about the
necessity of being a knight of faith is
that the thing is and this is I think
part of the light part of life that's
the intractable adventure no one can
take the adventure of life away from you
that that they can't deal with good
advice for example because no one can
demonstrate to you that if you
straighten yourself out an aim at what
you want and make the proper sacrifices
that your life will turn out in the
manner that you might want it to turn
out
it isn't in anyone elses purview to make
that judgment the only person that can
possibly figure that out is you it's
something that can't be stolen from you
I would say it's your destiny it's a
destiny that cannot be stolen from you
and you can forego it you can say well
I'm not willing to put in the effort
because what if I fail well first of all
if you don't put in the effort you will
fail because life is hard and it takes
everything out of you to do it properly
so you will fail and if you make the
proper sacrifices you might fail that's
why I like the ambiguity in the story of
Cain and Abel because we're never really
told why God rejects Cain's offerings
there's hints that Cain maybe isn't
doing as good a job as he should and he
certainly gets bitter about it but
there's no smoking pistol it doesn't say
well Cain is a bad guy he made terrible
sacrifices so God rejected him you never
know Cain might have been working pretty
damn hard and things still didn't work
out for him and I think that ambiguity
is appropriate in the story because that
ambiguity ambiguity is in life if you do
be a fool to say that everything always
works out for everyone if they just do
things right I mean I think that's a
very that's a very careless thing to say
given how much tragedy and catastrophe
there is in the world and how much of it
seems to be undeserved but that still
has very little bearing
think on on on your own individual
adventure and the necessity for the
necessity for opening the door to who
you could be and the necessity to do
that seriously and I do believe and I
think I think that's why this most
impossible of versus you know knock and
the door will open
why that's believable is that I have
never met anyone who couldn't
hypothesize a better them in some manner
all they had to do was ask it's like
well how could you be better I think
well here's three ways it's like it's no
problem right you can think about that
no time cloud maybe it's small ways but
you can almost always at least think of
something stupid that you're doing that
you could quit and so that means that
you do have this it's a strange thing in
people that we have this built-in
capacity to pause it a higher self and
then to move towards it and maybe maybe
that's part of where the religious
instinct really came from speaking like
really reductionistic ly like as a
materialist as an evolutionary
psychologist we we have this notion of
the transcendent ideal right that seems
to be pervasive across cultures well
maybe that's the ultimate manifestation
of the human proclivity to be able to
posit an ideal at all and to move
forward you pause an ideal okay that you
need that to move forward well if you
can posit an ideal why can't you pause
it the ultimate ideal well if you can
then instantly you've got a religious
sensibility instantly and so maybe
that's the kind of puzzle like as a
biologist what the hell is the basis of
the religious instinct because the idea
that it's mere superstition like we can
just dispense with that that's wrong
it's a human Universal you can evoke
religious experiences all sorts of ways
so we're not going to play that game
there's there's some reason that that
instinct exists and the first thing to
do with it is to try to reduce it to
something that's biological and leave it
at that not to mess with the metaphysics
but it certainly could be the case that
it's the ultimate extension of our
capacity to posit an ideal and we also
might say well that's good enough
because
well the ideal moves you forward it
fills your life with meaning there's no
doubt about that because it is in the
movement towards your ideal that life's
meaning is to be attained and then the
question is well how much meaning is
there in moving forward towards an
ultimate ideal well more meaning even
though it's more difficult how much well
that's the open question