THE Paradox!!

So yesterday I wrote of a new "different " book I was reading, coming from a Philosophical rather than a Theological viewpoint. Have really not read that far yet but this guy Becker seems to be a good writer and certainly is seemingly in line with my journey so far. This of course makes him a very together kind of thinker as well as being a good writer :) Before going further today thought I'd paste a scripture quote I picked up from the "Sojourners" e-blurb I get daily. Just struck me that it is a really good example to show the ultimate paradox which is Jesus.

There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise.
- Galatians 3:28-29

Makes me happy to call myself a Christian! In the purest sense of the term.

So the name of the book is "The Denial of Death" by Ernest Becker. The forward, written by Sam Keen, is actually pretty keen. Sorry about that! He states "In the years since his death (1974),Becker has been widely recognized as one of the great spiritual cartographers of our age and a wise physician of the soul....the bitter medicine he prescribes--contemplation of the horror of our inevitable death--is, paradoxically (there's that word again), the tincture that adds sweetness to mortality." "Society provides the second line of defense against our natural impotence by creating a Hero system that allows us to believe that we transcend death by participating in something of lasting worth." and"There are signs-- the acceptance of Becker's work being one--that some individuals are awakening from the long, dark night of tribalism and nationalism and developing what Tillich called a transmoral conscience, an ethic that is universal rather than ethnic."

One of the earlier philosophers which Becker uses a lot is Otto Rank. He quotes Rank at the start of his preface, and I couldn't agree more, but it doesn't seem to be stopping me from my own writing. He quotes "for the time being I give up writing--there is already too much truth in the world--an overproduction which apparently cannot be consumed!" and then Becker goes on to write "...knowledge is in a state of useless overproduction...it is strewn all over the place, spoken in a thousand competitive voices...There is no throbbing vital center...There has to be revealed the harmony that unites many different positions, so that the "sterile and ignorant polemics" can be abated." and "I have had the growing realization aver the past few years that the problem of man's knowledge is not to oppose and demolish opposing views, but to include them in a larger theoretical structure...The problem is to find the truth underneath the exaggeration, to cut away the excess elaboration or distortion and include that truth where it fits." Sound anything like what Rohr has been saying? Have a simply Christic Day! RV