TC95 on Nostr: Personally, I think what you say at the end is correct. When a text presents itself ...
Personally, I think what you say at the end is correct. When a text presents itself as perplexing and an effort is made toward positioning oneself so as to allow it to disclose its meaning, the success of that process should result, I think, in further, deeper, more insightful questions. If such a development were to terminate, the desire and motivation for something spiritual and meaningful would go with it.
Something I find interesting about what you have to say, and about biblical passages more generally, is the anthropomorphic verbs, adjectives, nouns, etc., used to speak about God. I think they will always fail to disclose insight when taken literally. Their meaning has to lie in suggestion and metaphor. When attributing wrath to God, its an error to then begin picturing some infinite being who is literally angry, who feels a wrath on account of the ways human beings have been conducting themselves, and who will inflict punishment to rectify the situation for the sake of some eternal justice. Rather, the more appropriate interpretive strategy, I believe, is to locate this notion of wrath in the ways human beings live. It’s suggesting something about how there’s a true way such creatures should comport themselves that corresponds to an inner nature and reality that is being obstructed, frustrated, and subverted by other capacities that are bent toward injustice, inequality, unfairness, self-absorption, heartlessness, and so forth. I see the Divine as having more to do with the way of things, their process and nature, where the task is to align oneself with it through virtue, than as something relating to literal stories about characters in a drama who play specific roles that are dictated by some higher, anthropomorphic being.
Something I find interesting about what you have to say, and about biblical passages more generally, is the anthropomorphic verbs, adjectives, nouns, etc., used to speak about God. I think they will always fail to disclose insight when taken literally. Their meaning has to lie in suggestion and metaphor. When attributing wrath to God, its an error to then begin picturing some infinite being who is literally angry, who feels a wrath on account of the ways human beings have been conducting themselves, and who will inflict punishment to rectify the situation for the sake of some eternal justice. Rather, the more appropriate interpretive strategy, I believe, is to locate this notion of wrath in the ways human beings live. It’s suggesting something about how there’s a true way such creatures should comport themselves that corresponds to an inner nature and reality that is being obstructed, frustrated, and subverted by other capacities that are bent toward injustice, inequality, unfairness, self-absorption, heartlessness, and so forth. I see the Divine as having more to do with the way of things, their process and nature, where the task is to align oneself with it through virtue, than as something relating to literal stories about characters in a drama who play specific roles that are dictated by some higher, anthropomorphic being.