Thank you for a well-reasoned treatise. I think there is a lot of “gray” between the two major political parties that we all could agree on. As you astutely pointed out, it is in the implementation where we most disagree. How can we come together for the good of our nation?
Unfortunately, we are living in a world where every viewpoint sits on a sliding scale and each one of us reads through the filter of our own developed understandings. Living in Australia, which for most of my life has become an increasingly secular nation, its ideas of God have been shaped by 'flogging Parsons' and Catholic Church scandals, and a strict Victorian Private school system of corporal punishment combined with a inherited rebellious streak toward the Mother country, because of our Convict history. As such, it has developed a rather hostile view of organized religion. Much more so than my native Canada. If counties were beer, Australia would be a full strength IPA while Canada a mid strength Pilsener... All this is to say that while I agree with all you wrote, it is how the hearing listens to the words. Values that were culturally mainstream and held with a easy gentleness, can be considered far right ideaologies now. Try supporting male headship in the home without being brandished a patriarchal tyrant these days. While it was understood to mean that a man's responsibility was to place the welfare of the family as his top priority, when I was young (I'm just shy of 67), I rarely saw a home where within those walls, that 'Mum's" words were allowed to be disobeyed. Of course, nothing has ever been uniformly consistent across society and as a child of the 60s, some things needed to be challenged, but so much got tossed out in the desire to be progressive, then liberated, then politically correct and then woke and whatever comes next. Why must the pendulums swing so erratically, and ever more so in this algorithmic world?.. I believe Left and Right were first coined during the French Revolution, where those who wanted to conserve the system, while moderating it, sat on the Right, and those who wanted the Revolution to reach its ultimate conclusion were to sit on the Left. Robespierre and the Jacobites won the day but unfortunately released the Terror... 'I will seek your good"... to do that we need humility in dialoguing with our opponents. Maybe we should 'love our enemies"... now there's a novel idea.
I wonder what David’s ‘Song of Ascent’ might sound like from a Post-Resurrectional frame of reference (?)
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Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
“May those who love you be secure.
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May there be peace within your walls
and security within your citadels.”
How about -
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Pray for the Peace of the World and Beyond:
“May those who love you, and even those who do not, find security in your Love.
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May your Peace tear down the walls that separate us and may All find security within the citadel of your Eternal Love.”
Thank you for a well-reasoned treatise. I think there is a lot of “gray” between the two major political parties that we all could agree on. As you astutely pointed out, it is in the implementation where we most disagree. How can we come together for the good of our nation?
Unfortunately, we are living in a world where every viewpoint sits on a sliding scale and each one of us reads through the filter of our own developed understandings. Living in Australia, which for most of my life has become an increasingly secular nation, its ideas of God have been shaped by 'flogging Parsons' and Catholic Church scandals, and a strict Victorian Private school system of corporal punishment combined with a inherited rebellious streak toward the Mother country, because of our Convict history. As such, it has developed a rather hostile view of organized religion. Much more so than my native Canada. If counties were beer, Australia would be a full strength IPA while Canada a mid strength Pilsener... All this is to say that while I agree with all you wrote, it is how the hearing listens to the words. Values that were culturally mainstream and held with a easy gentleness, can be considered far right ideaologies now. Try supporting male headship in the home without being brandished a patriarchal tyrant these days. While it was understood to mean that a man's responsibility was to place the welfare of the family as his top priority, when I was young (I'm just shy of 67), I rarely saw a home where within those walls, that 'Mum's" words were allowed to be disobeyed. Of course, nothing has ever been uniformly consistent across society and as a child of the 60s, some things needed to be challenged, but so much got tossed out in the desire to be progressive, then liberated, then politically correct and then woke and whatever comes next. Why must the pendulums swing so erratically, and ever more so in this algorithmic world?.. I believe Left and Right were first coined during the French Revolution, where those who wanted to conserve the system, while moderating it, sat on the Right, and those who wanted the Revolution to reach its ultimate conclusion were to sit on the Left. Robespierre and the Jacobites won the day but unfortunately released the Terror... 'I will seek your good"... to do that we need humility in dialoguing with our opponents. Maybe we should 'love our enemies"... now there's a novel idea.