Pride's Untruthful Nature

There are so many causes that give rise to unhealthy pride and my goal is not to cast judgment on people who have it, but show how pride is not truth. This might speak to their reason and illuminate error that has been isolated through introspection (self-examination) and not by my own words in this article.

I see pride as self-glorifying in untruth—filthy, fake, and fruitless. The reason why it is untrue is because it is an unintended use of a good gift. A gift is any characteristic feature, such as life itself, talents, race, intelligence, beauty, health, religion, social status, wealth, geographic location, tribe membership, pain threshold, level of risk aversion, personality, happiness, etc. etc. These gifts are provided to a soul (a human person) without his/her choice, without merit, and without knowing why they (gifts) were given*. These gifts cannot be owned by the soul, if ownership assumes an inherent self-determination, self-realization, and self-actualization, but rather it is cooperation between the agent (soul) receiving the gift and the One giving that validates the self and authorizes fulfillment of these gifts. Outside of this the gift is counterfeit.

*NOTE: Even though it can be argued that biological determinism can be attributed to gifting a child with many of the parents’ talents. I believe the child’s soul precedes the body, and only upon conception does God fill that vessel with gift-potential—a vessel equipped with different capabilities, capacities, and perhaps faults and limitations, all of them to blossom according to different timelines and purpose within the life of the developing human. So it is how a soul uses the resources at his/her disposal (i.e., by intention) that determine the true meaning of those gifts. Truth in proper usage; untruth in selfish usage.

No one can claim ownership of a human being. A human is by essence a free and moral agent, intrinsically untethered to any property claim—a life born to another life (a gift wrapped in a gift, so to speak). And by extension, what ground is there for a one to claim ownership of a good gift? It is only on condition that it be received for what it is, and used for its intended purpose. It would be untruth if the recipient were to say to the gift giver, “Here now I own your gift and use it for my own gain, even against you who gave it to me!” A thing that has been given in good faith to another is not the same thing as owning it for one’s own gain to the exclusion of the gift-giver’s plan. I receive a sharp and sturdy set of steak knives, because my giver sees a fine use of a keen-edged implement to help carve cubes out of cutlets, and not to find me cutting into her leather sofa; that would be an abuse of the gift.

Groundless pride is devoid of any objective reason—a delusion visualized by person standing on top of a balloon pumping it with air ever larger and ever higher. All of it groundless and contrary to reason; a perversion of truth by concentrating God-given talent and resources into a burgeoning storehouse on a dead-end street; never giving back to his neighbor and always taking more and more—like an over fed goldfish. Ultimately the storehouse will be plundered and the corpulent goldfish dead from self-indulgence (knowingly or unknowingly).

Concerning healthy pride I refer to scripture: “…Let not a wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD who exercises loving kindness, justice and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things,” declares the LORD.” (Jer. 9:23-24 KJV)

In Defiance of Necessity

Take a look around and notice that forces of necessity control the entire universe. These are imperatives, or constraints to which all that exist must inexorably yield. Examples might include, the laws of physics, intrinsic characteristics (such as atomic weight), etc.

All of matter bumps, batters, buckles, boils, and burns in a causal stew without any choice, without concern for itself, and without end. Yet in defiance of these phenomena one thing stands up against all odds, like a marvelously constructed break-water impervious to unrelenting waves of predetermined rules of physical change: namely human freedom.

The human is a maestro of this microcosm using his awareness of himself and comprehending the rules and behavior of reality inside and outside of himself in order to exercise—by choice—an alternate path of his choosing.

Although the human is material (except his life-essence and soul) and relies upon (and must submit to) the same mechanical processes dictated by forces of necessity, and is furthermore subjected to the disintegration of contingent biologic life force (aging), yet for a time he is conductor of his orchestra.

Some songs he is given to play without a full knowledge of the score yet discovers symmetry even more beautiful than could have been composed on his own (becoming fully alive and fully human). Others he decides to play cooperating with others in unison to produce unheard of music (sublime) impossible without symmetry (spiritual communion), and a few he messes up by either breaking the instruments—using them for a purpose not intended to create music (abuse of the gifts), or interrupting the designed symmetry (corrupting influence).

Humanity is a truly precious gift of a golden scale, on the one hand there are:

• existence
• life
• awareness
• morality;

on the other hand there are:

• space-time (reality)
• contingency
• knowledge
• choice;

...with God holding the scales.

A Pervasive Silence Yet Unheard

So overpowering is the noise of the modern world so as to nearly hide God’s subtle voice from the ordinary (natural) person. The mystery to me is how God can quiet this noise and speak to a person and inspire of his existence without disturbing human liberty.

The power of this invisible force (sound) is remarkable as evidenced by its multifarious uses within our world. From a human point of view, it is used to notify us of something or alert us of danger: a clap of thunder, a rushing avalanche, a shaking building, collapsing rubble, mortar explosion, a falling tree, a roaring bear, schemey footsteps, etc.; or to communicate: like a nasty diatribe, panicked gasps, an inflected voice, a call for help, a crying infant, or (more purposefully) as a voice speaking truth, a teacher teaching (knowledge transfer), or even laughter, moans of joy, etc., etc.

What I find interesting about sound is how rare it is within the universe. Actually without a medium to reverberate through there is no sound possible, and interstellar space is truly silent (sound can’t travel within a vacuum), which is a striking contrast to our world that is filled with a limitless variety of sound. It is not so much the quantity of sound in the universe, I’m sure the surface of each of the trillions of stars is insanely loud. What I’m talking about is its sheer plenitude, with careful syntactical nuance bearing information appropriate to its listener.

But what is sound without ears to hear and reverberation without sense to feel? It is not for the sake of sound that sound organs (like ears) exist. Consider the noise of a rock falling from a cliff clicking and clacking down the mountainside. Who knows that it is falling, if that sound falls on deaf ears? Say nothing of the exceedingly complex nature of human speech—which is experienced (perceived) by children and effortlessly assimilated into their minds. Quickly they synthesize their own words, picked from their own quiver and released from their mouths like arrows.

Perhaps we can deduce from this a truth about sound, about its scarcity, its power, and (at the risk of sounding airy) its sanctity. This sanctity is important to emphasize from the point of view of people. The most powerful method of communication (practical)—in my view—is voice (an extension of sound). People practice (use) it for every possible human circumstance tracking a continuum of emotion from incoherent guttural croaking (utter anger) to incoherent moaning (pain or ecstasy) and everything in between.

It can be said; therefore, that life cannot exist without sound nor sound without life (sine qua non).

Life in the physical: the heaving sound of my lungs filling with air, the sound of blood beating through my heart.

Life in the spiritual: the wisdom of God speaking to me (with ineffable utterances), the words of life (λόγοῦ ζωὴ) filling my soul (ψυχή) and becoming the light that enlightens my life (φῶς).

Stuck in the Middle with Thee

AFTER GOD BEGAN TO CREATE all things from nothing at some point in time past, a large amount of this creative work had already occurred, but we cannot say for sure that it is yet complete. Actually, we are not qualified to declare that the creation is complete, because from our standpoint in time-history we don’t know all of the parameters of this event or its ultimate end. From our point of view the creation is always changing and we are stuck in the middle of it.

With eyes our human ancestors looked through the clear night sky and saw a great expansive vista of moving lights (stars and planets), and these ancient peoples visualized casts of gods, so increasing the size of the cosmic community. Later, the distances and structures were clarified (and likely demystified) using optical instruments, mathematics, and physics; the size of the universe changed again. The perceived mass of the universe again increased with the discovery of the big bang, and with the support of dark matter (or some super planar force) and thus the size of the universe changed infinitely.

Humans play a permanent role as co-creators and spectators of the universe.

As creators we decide the outcome of the future through a sort of language expressed as voluntary (willful) communication with reality (using learned techniques). A voluntary act typically is born from the understanding and manifested into reality through a positive or neutral movement. Positive if it acted to create or change something; neutral by failure to act. The probability of an outcome changes permanently if a phenomenon is being actively observed (quantum mechanics and the collapsing wave hypothesis).

Oddly enough we also exist as spectators, i.e., those who are not in control of the outcome. And humans are not in control as evidenced by the fact that the universe predates mankind—how can one who comes from the greater One declare that all regressive parameters are understood innately? We don’t even qualify to know what is our ultimate fate, because mankind is unlikely to survive after the sun goes nova (all things considered as they are currently).

If we cannot take hold of the beginning nor peer under the tent to see the end, then we are stuck in the middle with Thee.

But the work of creation continues with every passing moment as present time transforms to past time, and past events form the building blocks of future ones. There is smooth and seamless travel of present time to past time, and bringing future to the present, as any standard timepiece on the Earth would relate (no matter where on Earth it is located). I see the present as passing-time handing off the torch as it were to present time, because without a memory of the moment just passing, the present would loose its foundation and the future would be baseless. A good way to express this creation is with the grammatical construct of durative present—a tense that is active, continuing and on-going).

Could it be interpreted that the seeming permanence of material forms that surround us, e.g., elemental gold, the Moon, diamonds, etc. could reflect a form of memory? Memory holding a declared existence (fiat)—never being forgotten. Even if matter is transitioned from one state to another there requires a memory of what it once was in order to become what it is now, e.g., placing a cube of sugar into water causes the sugar cube to dissolve mixing into the water, but it is the fact that the sugar existed a priori the immersion into the water that one can say that the water now contains dissolved sugar. Thus existence is a form of divine memory that is unfailing and permanent, yet dynamic. If matter equals energy as the theory maintains, then that energy is harnessed and fixed in its proper boundaries. What are boundaries except another expression for rules, and God is the one who sets the rules and never forgets them.

Human memory—however potentially fleeting it might be—is given a freedom to imagine and create. Experientially we have a freedom to create new memories; our memories, built on a ground of faded ones. Yet even if those faded memories have become the wisdom needed to form new ones, how can we become a new creation unless we forget the person we were previously and lean on God's wisdom (insight)? He creates within us a true reality (purpose) that existed before matter was created. The mystery is that this creation is not out of necessity (not irresistable) but through a cooperation between the living soul (ζωῆς) and God's spirit. A new reality is created that shines as type of light—through the Spirit of God—to give real meaning to the human (one who was created out of nothing--and is nothing of himself).