Tempus Fugit, Requiem
Indian politicians who died mysteriously
Infographic: Nehru family tree
Instances when India could have faced military coup
Famous encounter specialists of India
Actors turned politicians who made it big
Time flies, they say. It is not altogether certain whether we pass through time, time passes through us, or both but I often return to a quote from Soren Kierkegaard: "Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."
It is in just such an understanding-backwards-while-living-forwards state of mind that I find myself this morning contemplating my life and it's apparent brevity. I have been recently devoting numerous hours of the valuable fleeting moments of my life to listening (out of philosophical and historical interest) to lectures on the history of Christian Theology. It all comes across as something of a hodgepodge and complicated mess. Theologians argue over the finer points of whether or not the bread consumed in the Eucharist is actually the body of Christ, whether one may have predestined Salvation, the nature of the Trinity, Mortal sin and ten thousand other finer points of scriptural and doctrinal contention.
It seems a little like a waste of time, to me - the disheveled infidel unbeliever. It is perhaps precisely because of (or at least in part due to) this vast bureaucratic and administrative complexity surrounding (what must surely be quite simple) concepts of God and Salvation which alienates the curious agnostic and may lead them to pure atheism if only from a sense of frustration at the intricate state of affairs. To an observer external to the concerns of Faith, it may even appear that all of this theological hypothesising has more to do with perpetuating the social importance of the roles of various religious figures and academics. A message of Love and Salvation can not surely be so complex as to require so many thousands of interpretations and instantiations.
Life is really very simple. When vast complexity and intricate doctrinal justifications for various theological stances are elaborated, fought over and vigorously defended - people may begin to feel that it has little do with them and that what's for dinner tonight or what they are doing on the weekend is of much more significance than contemplating that their appreciation of an attractive person's body may lead them to sin and damnation.
If God is, then surely no man can speak of this ultimate being's intentions or plans for the world. It seems that it is only man attempting to become as a God who would do so.
I find the history interesting, but the application and argument is a little less than compelling. What is perhaps the most interesting feature of a study of Christian Theology is that of all the Christians I know - very few know anything at all about the history of their faith and just how it is that their "eternal and unchanging" truth has actually evolved and developed over two thousand years.
I really do hope that there is a God somewhere - if only to make the directionless chaos of life seem to have some deeper reason or teleology. My own life is passing rapidly and I feel that I would do better to come close to a Divinity through taking a walk in nature than I would to slavishly adhering to a text or concept that many men have created over two thousand years through elaborate power-plays and apparent ego-trips which only serve to alienate me from their interpretation of the spiritual in life.
