I Once Thought

I once thought life was about “The Arrival” rather than “The Process.” I now know how wrong I was. I once was a dreamer, seeing success as the realization of all I had hoped for, now dreams are replaced with sentences that have no conclusion or ending. I once thought God was leading me to a particular end, a desired goal but He is not.

People have a hard time understanding life between here and there. We as humans want to find success in getting answers. In God’s Kingdom, success is found in the process. I wonder that life isn’t really much easier than we make it out to be? I wonder that our preplanning and positioning is more about avoidance than preparation?

Oswald Chambers says this; we must never put our dreams of success as God’s purpose for us; His purpose may be exactly the opposite. We have an idea that God is leading us to a particular end, a desired goal; He is not. The question of getting to a particular end is a mere incident. What we call the process, God calls the end.

3 Comments

• 
  Ben Woolley July 29, 2009 at 10:34 am

  The desire for a self-selected end is what makes us human. To change the conditions to alter the process itself is the ultimate expression of humanity. We seek to understand the general human condition to design special conditions to change the process to suit ourselves. Hence our focus on shelter.

  In that way, the arrival is only an end oriented toward control of the process itself. This aesthetic approach is an acknowledgement of the reciprocal nature of the arrival-process dichotomy, as is any dichotomy of perspectives. Each perspective augments the other because they are reformulations of the same thing.

  The statement “What we call the process, God calls the end.” itself reveals the reciprocal nature. Life is about the arrival. It just also happens to be about the process. The bias toward the process is merely a tool to help those who have ignored that perspective to acknowledge it again. Yet it sets up an overcompensation by devaluing the other perspective rather than just adding a new perspective.

  The problem is that we think that there is only one true perspective, and so we go from one to another. There is no concept of self-integrity: integrating each new perspective with the others. We judge per system, forgetting that all systems are arbitrary, rather than reformulating each system into our own senses so that we can judge per our own conditions.

  We think like Plato, that sense is opinion, and only pure, systematic thoughts can be knowledge. That is the argument for duty: integrity with some arbitrary system, like a republic or church. But the opposite is true: all thought is opinion, and all we know to be true is what we see. The failures of what we see are interpretations assuming an arbitrary system. This is the argument for self-integrity. As Nietzsche says: duty is the opposite of moral integrity.

  The Trial and Death of Socrates is the ultimate expression of duty as anti-life. Plato's writing adopted the teaching of the repulsive Socrates as a parody against the Spartan way of life. The value of Plato is in setting up a system to be overcome. All of the great philosophers overcame Plato. The rest were mere theologians too concerned with the soul to acknowledge spirit, as I say:
  

  It is not soul that lives forever: it is spirit! Although the soul is eternal, it never actually lives. This is the first step to overcoming Plato. Spirituality is not about ideals. It is about evaluation. It is about action.
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  zach August 17, 2009 at 12:45 pm

  Lighthouses are good. When I talk with you it is like the help a lighthouse provides. Navigation, inspiration, and help trying to see the bigger picture. Yes, the same big picture I did not even know was there most of my life. I am trying to get a few Eugene city clubbers together to brainstorm some potential fixes to make the group better. If you know anyone who might have a few ideas about that send them over. It is not a official meeting and they need not be a member. I expect nobody will actually show up but I thought I would try at least. High Street Cafe (backyard) at 6pm on August 27th.
• 
  zach August 17, 2009 at 2:45 pm

  Lighthouses are good. When I talk with you it is like the help a lighthouse provides. Navigation, inspiration, and help trying to see the bigger picture. Yes, the same big picture I did not even know was there most of my life. I am trying to get a few Eugene city clubbers together to brainstorm some potential fixes to make the group better. If you know anyone who might have a few ideas about that send them over. It is not a official meeting and they need not be a member. I expect nobody will actually show up but I thought I would try at least. High Street Cafe (backyard) at 6pm on August 27th.