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Michael19682
Guest
I am intrigued by Thinking Sapien’s application of the statistical method to an understanding of God. Psycholinguistically, he is correct. In fact, there are as many definitions of ‘psycholinguist’ itself as there are psycholinguists qua people. That rule of thumb holds true for nearly every word. Bird, plane, train–all have different mental images, so we believe, that are as unique as the individuals harboring them. What is also intriguing is the twofold fact that not only do these words and others have unique variance in their personal ‘meanings’ [admittedly a deeper concept than ‘images’], but the question as to whether there even exists a quintessential generic bird, plane, or train is highly debatable; for if it exists at all we need the creator of the generic to confirm our personal, relative meaningful conformity to it [the generic meaning]. One might go so far as to say that generic meanings and the variance they imply are altogether moot insofar as meaning itself is intangible and not all all generic. The practical problem with this view is that it makes of all conversation a moot, variable, non reliable, and irrelevant endeavor, whilst simultaneously espousing the dilemma of to-deviate-is-anathema. Where is the happy medium? Some philosophies call it a middle way. Those people failed to convince me because I found them to mean by middle way “Meet us half way from your point, and our fundamentally immovable position of all-in-the-mind.” The result is that if you take a step in their direction, now the half way point is redefined, and so on, like a computer performing a binary search until it reaches its target value. Zeno’s paradox is another way of looking at the situation. Paul’s description of preaching as folly and weakness take us deeper into the mystery of meaning because we encounter the ultimate means of our instruction to them, the sign of the cross.
So no matter what you mean by God, how is it that people all across the globe will converge and despite their disagreements on many words and concepts, all volunteer to ‘accept’ a piece of bread into their mouth and derive great peace from it–a Peace so great that they come back week after week, even day after day, and, upon acceptance of this gift, each time walk away with their questions and their disagreements answered and annulled, respectively? So what if this ‘main effect’ is temporary, fleeting, or transient? It’s always available the next day or week, as the individual may choose.
Does this mean that ‘understanding’ is itself the nature of God? I think not. It is called wisdom. God is Love. Particularly the Love of Christ for us. Love is that which points to the meaning of God who loves us. When we love someone, we have a shared understanding of meaning. We sacrifice our beliefs and change them totally and effortlessly if necessary, and, sometimes, even if this is an unhealthy thing to do. Jesus says that when two or three are gathered in his name, he himself is there amidst them. True, this assertion relies upon scripture for its foundation, but the scripture is Love in its purest, highest form, viz. God’s love for us all. When people think of the Son of God, it is his death which surpasses all other accompanying thoughts. Some may profess “no no no it’s the resurrection.” These people are likely engaged in an experiment doomed to personal failure in this regard: no one save Christ has ever lived to tell bodily of death. Either way, this death-resurrection Paschal rhythm effectively truncates the variance amongst images and mysteriously produces conformity at that level [of image]: of meaning the truncation is even further: Love. Miracles, parables, healing, loving looks, raising Lazarus [let the reader understand who], chasing after lost sheep, defending his disciples from bodily harm, forgiving all sinners—it’s all Love.
Yet we are programmed to bicker and disagree about so many irrelevant things because we are conditioned by the Devil to believe that this trail of tight associations is what leads us to God and love. Amidst this imbecile doctrine of the devil you can practically predict secular or professional affiliation by pronunciation of words or by conceptual or theoretical orientation that were not and never shall be of the native tongue of any of us. And some of these people eschew their brothers and sisters because of a lisp!
