The above author was a Jewish atheist philosopher (if those first two terms can be used together) who convinced many thinkers that immediate experience and intuition are more significant than rationalism and science for understanding reality. I watched an episode of “Perception” last night whose theme centered on this particular quote and no doubt took any truth encompassed by it to an extreme. Who among us, though, hasn’t at one time or another stared directly at someone or something right in front of us and failed to capture the picture in its entirety? My own mind turns to incidents involving driving, i.e. checking the oncoming traffic before margining into it and not registering the guy on the motorcycle at all because cars have my complete attention. Worse yet, how often has the old man, while on the road, been lost in thought and, looking up, discovered he doesn’t remember a portion of the distance behind him? The question becomes, however: Is such illusion limited to that physical connection between our eyes and our brain, or is there also just as much potential for us to “lose the obvious” in our reasoning? Is there a spiritual side to this that’s comparable, our grey matter collecting data, but our heart and our will refusing to accept a truth solidly set before us? The inner man is a strange commodity, an identity forged out of genetics as well as history and environment, individual each time it is packaged, yet judged, at least to some degree, by all others who co-inhabit this space we refer to as “life”. Even with God’s anchor-line reconnected, the mind of Christ alive within us, humanity is prone to error; and progress requires regular “check-ups”, adjustments made through a daily commitment to prayer. “Thy rod and Thy staff,” penned the Psalmist, “they comfort me.” So I believe……
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