(0621)(0711)

 

The narrow gate

The human mind, esp. the libertarian human mind, is given to reacting obstinately, as I know I do … if a crowd is going that way … I’ll go this. Often that means trying to rejoin the broad way later once I realise I was headed up cul-de-sacs, dead ends.

For example, there was a youtube and yes, it turned out to be propaganda. It was a girl (in the mid 20s sense) and she was saying that Protestants are wrong … that’s how it opens. She’d always believed the bible was the scriptures but it couldn’t have been because the bible was not written before the “later era”. Where the hell had she got that from?

To say to her that scholarly dating puts many epistles, books, close enough to the AD 0050s and very much concerns the early church, the apostles, the apostles of the apostles and so on … that the later era was about which works to include, which not to … the search has always been by scholars to find authenticity … but here was the trap her mouthpiece was leading to.

She said that we err on our own, therefore we need a human leader or father to lead us the right way, true up to a point … the trap here though is that we then only see what the self-appointed Cabal of Eminents want us to. Leave bibles chained to pulpits, do not allow people access because only the Serene Cabal of Priests could possibly ever understand, through much learning. You plebs must do as the human priest orders. There’s a mix of truths and errors swirling around on this point of the Priest.

Who does he think he is?

“I’m God’s chosen teacher.”

“Well I didn’t vote for you.”

“You don’t vote for Priests.” (The Priestly Caste.)

I’m the first to say that that girl is being drawn into a cult … dead easy getting girls into it:

Behold the holy gourd, the holy sandal, the holy handgrenade of Antioch. By the same token though, it does take someone who’s longer in the tooth, has made this journey … and is still unsure himself, is still learning, even in his final years. Same with science:

There is certainly truth in the need for wise men but what if there’s an ancient Greek like space where people go along, maybe a Hyde Park corner and to complete the metaphor … there’s a table of ideas there, constantly being evaluated. Do you see how a blog fits in here? And the admin is no wiseman, no guru, no swami, rabbi nor mullah … he’s just a fellow traveller who’s found things and wants to keep finding. The setting up of the meeting place is a piece of cake for his techie mate, trickier for him but it’s still possible.

But people stopping in are still going to take one of the ways after that. Another youtube was all about the narrow gate and the steep path following it. Fine but he continually had the “good” way leading up to the left and the broad road to hell curving down to the right.

Nope, no way. Left means sinister, right means correct, plus a physical direction. Though all of this is symbolism, I’d still prefer the accompanying graphic flipped horizontally back to how it was before the inversion.

Then come the false prophets at each and every gate. I don’t buy this Hebrew guy in the youtube, nor that girl suddenly following the way of the Priest, font of all learning, with his ritual, regalia, pomp and circumstance … the Priestly Caste.

Yet the wisdom of ages is found within those pages, maybe in the Dead Sea scrolls, maybe in archaeological artifacts … and that requires wisdom … in fact, even the community of the inquisitive develops wisdom over time, if they allow it. No one more obstinate than an older person or a donkey.

Here endeth the sermon, as I need brekky. My latest brilliant piece of wisdom is to open with coffee, move to black tea, then green tea, then to mineral water in the evening.