This quote from Lao Tzu is getting at some of what I was scratching at in my earlier diatribe about Abraham and Moses below.
"People through finding something beautiful
Think something else unbeautiful,
Through finding one man fit
Judge another unfit.
Life and death, though stemming from each other,
Seem to conflict as stages of change,
Difficult and easy as phases of achievement,
Long and short as measures of contrast,
High and low as degrees of relation;
But, since the varying of tones gives music to a voice
And what is, is the was of what shall be,
The sanest man
Sets up no deed,
Lays down no law,
Takes everything that happens as it comes,
As something to animate, not to appropriate,
To earn, not to own,
To accept naturally without self-importance:
If you never assume importance
You never lose it."
--Lao Tzu
"Be ye as wise as serpents and as mild as lambs," also comes to mind and indeed the extraordinary example of the life of Christ wherein He who had the power, did not use it as we would have used it, allowed the devolved to revile and crucify Him.
Only those very sure of foot can walk such a path and who but God could guide them?
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> Jews rejected Jesus was they were smart enough to know that what he
> was talking about meant a rejection to their claim as the only people
> of God. Even though much of what I have poked fun at is
> tongue-in-cheek, it is this claim of exclusivity that plagues most of
> the main line religions in one form or another. If you have the
> exclusive brand that can only mean that the other guy’s brand is
> inferior. Some of you may well be saying, “well duh” and of course
> that is part of the problem of falsehood and evil in general;
> legitimacy is obfuscated.
>
> Now I happen to believe that we do have the exclusive brand but I’m
> suggesting that playing the “whooz got the truth” game ultimately goes
> around in circles. At some point the truth has to be demonstrated by
> people who live it. Most good Catholics do this to some degree but
> they lead with their heads, instead of with their faith, and like
> bulls, they lock horns. When Jesus was questioned by both Pilate and
> Herod he did not use arguments to defend himself. (If I recall
> correctly, even Christ called Herod a fox.) At some point, arguments
> have to stop and something larger has to take its place. This to my
> mind is that multi-dimensional modality that we call faith. No longer
> do we simply reside within the arguments of four dimensional space but
> we have an extra dimension that allows us access the Divine more
> directly when intellectual tools cease to work.
>
> Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son is a marvelous example of
> and testament to his faith but as far as the exclusive covenant with
> God, it is precisely on this point that Christ decisively rejects the
> Old Covenant. NO ONE PEOPLE IS GOD’S PEOPLE ONLY THOSE WHO DO THE WILL
> OF THEIR HEAVENLY FATHER. There is a curious Democracy injected into
> our relationship with God by Jesus. Everybody now has access through
> the new system that Christ sets up but the key to the system is faith.
> The system (the Church) is designed to support the development of
> faith but what has happened to my incredulous eye is that faith has
> been hijacked to support the system. We don’t have faith in the West,
> what we have is a process that incorporates faith into a system and
> essentially minimizes it through a kind of legal calculus. This is no
> argument for Protestantism, nor is it even Theology, it is simply an
> anthropological* observation if you will. (I have this marvelous
> distinction courtesy of Fr. Gruber. All this time I was an
> anthropologist and I didn’t know it. J)
>
> Jesus laments: “When the Son of Man comes again, do you think he will
> find faith?” I for one cannot answer this question with certainty and
> therein, perhaps, lays my concern.
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