Who is "worthy" to be "loved"?

Hello my dear reader.

The following is from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander by Thomas Merton. While this was published  back in 1968, it is amazing to me how much of it is still relevant.
I hope you are having a good day.

Peace,
Mario

A basic temptation: the flatly unchristian refusal to love those whom we consider, for some reason or other, unworthy of love. And, on top of that, to consider others unworthy of love for even very trivial reasons. Not that we hate them of course: but we just refuse to accept them in our hearts, to treat them without inner reservations. In a word, we reject those who do not please us. We are of course "charitable toward them". An interesting use of the word "charity" to cover and to justify a certain coldness, suspicion, and even disdain. But this is punished by another inexorable refusal: we are bound by the logic of this defensive rejection to reject any form of happiness that even implies acceptance of those we have have decided to reject. This certainly complicates life, and if one is sufficiently intolerant, it ends by making all happiness impossible.


This means that we have to get along without constantly applying the yardstick of "worthiness" (who is worthy to be loved, and who is not). And it almost means, by implication, that we cease to ask even indirect questions about who is "justified," who is worthy of acceptance, who can be tolerated by the believer! What a preposterous idea that would be! And yet the world is full of "believers" who find themselves entirely surrounded by people they can hard,y be expected to "tolerate," such as Jews, Negroes, unbelievers, heretics, Communists, pagans, fanatics, and so on.


God is asking of me, the unworthy, to forget my unworthiness and that of all my brothers, and dare to advance in the love which has redeemed and renewed us all in God's likeness. And to laugh, after all, at all preposterous ideas of "worthiness".

"Transforming the Conversation" and the Purdue LGTBQ community

Hello my dear reader.

Back in April 5th, I asked myself How will I respond to this letter by a Christian about Purdue's LGTBQ community?  The now infamous letter by Harlan VanderMeer created a lot of controversy and I probably wrote 20 to 30 drafts of my response to that letter but every time I felt like something was missing; I felt that perhaps it was not the right time to respond.

As I was meditating on this I came to the following conclusion: I will respond next week. 'Why next week' you may be asking. Because tomorrow I will be attending the Transforming The Conversation at Purdue Day 1 event at Purdue University.

Transforming the Conversation is a new pilot program for college campuses, developed with the support of Christians and LGBTs to create better dialogue between the two sides of the homosexuality debate—without asking people to violate their most deeply-held values.

This will take place at 6:30 pm, Tuesday, April 17th, 2012 in Room EE 117 (Electrical Engineering Building).

It is very possible that the controversy caused by the letter will be discussed and I would like to be part of the conversation on this. I also believe that other issues will be discussed during the event. Then, I will take a few hours here and there to think of what I heard during the event and I believe I will be better prepared at that time to write a response.

It may be not the a great response, but hey who knows...it may be alright. If you are in the Purdue area tomorrow evening I hope you can come. If you do say hello to me. :)

peace,

Mario

Enter the Word...or Logos?

Hello my dear reader.  :)

An icon of St John the Evangelist

As some of you already know, I lead a bible study group at the Wesley Foundation called "Holy Heretics". We look not only at "heresies" and people that have been called "heretics" in the history of the Church, but we also look at some of the documents/books that some of these thinkers/movements used to either transmit their ideas or to support them. For our next meeting, my research is focusing in coming up with a comparison between the canonical Gospel according to St. John and the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas. I started to reread both gospels to find similarities and differences. As I picked up the first gospel, I once again read the first verse that I have read so many times I have lost count. Some of you probably know this verse as well:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 
(John 1:1 NRSV)

While this is a familiar translation of this verse, I found out years ago (and to some of you this is old news) that "Word" is not quite the exact English translation for the particular Greek term that is translated as such; the same goes for the Spanish translation to "Palabra".

Here is the same verse with the original Greek term:

In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God.

When I was younger, I would hear "Logos" and think of the funny drawing on my shoes or the half bitten apple of a certain computer company, and there is a heavy metal band that uses this name. But the word "Logos" refers to something else in both Christianity and Philosophy and depending on who (and the 'when') you talk to, it means something different. And this is another occasion when the theology/philosophy geek in me gets excited.

What is the Logos?
What does it mean?
Where does it come from?
Is this an original Christian concept or was it taken from somewhere else?
Why did the writers of the Gospel according to St. John use this Greek term?

With the help a few friends, along with what  I have learned so far during classes, reading, more reading, asking questions, and hours of thinking and staring at nothing in particular (or the coffee-shop wall) I will be sharing with you some of my views and thoughts on the Logos.

Stay tuned...

peace,

--Mario