What is it to become 'human' as a follower of Christ? Life's diversity in conjunction with an understanding that God has created diversity demands that I consider life in its totality of relationships with all races, cultures, and systems of thought. Why have I limited my life-span of experience to a culture, and even more narrow, a Christian sub-culture, which changes with the seasons? Do I really want to look back on my life and see how disgusting is my loyalty to my immediate social constructs? I do not speak this way because I have pent-up frustration or because I have been wronged by my subculture, rather I speak this way because in my encountering life, I have happened upon wise and tempered dissenters who have challenged me to look beyond my particular temporal cultural setting and see my experience as a world-corporate experience. This brings me to my first problem.
One issue I must sincerely address is the role of experience in my development of thought on life and godliness. Being that our culture and ultimately my thought still finds remnants of enlightenment rationalism and scientific empiricism packed away in its assumptions, I cannot escape the fact that I have to rationalize my understanding of experience before I feel like I have dealt with the issue; so I ask questions pertaining to continuity, analysis, and verification whose basic framework is all assumed under the umbrella of 'so-called' objective observation. I want to escape the over-rationalization of FAITH! I cannot encounter personally what I do not believe has any significance other than observatory characteristics i.e. God in a petri dish. However as we are creatures of extremes, I must fully understand that under-rationalization leads to superstitions and hysterias of divers sorts. As dialectics would have it, then, the coalition of body and soul must be found somewhere in the middle of these divergent paradigms. Philosophical frameworks aside, how can I develop a concept of the spiritual life that contextualizes my specific situation in the world, both body and soul, yet is not limited, in perspective, to my sphere of existence? Essentially I have envisioned living a life enraptured in mobilization rather than fixation. Fixation implies constants, which are for the most part static, whereas mobilization implies dynamics, that is the necessity of considering various contingencies and circumstances.
One issue I must sincerely address is the role of experience in my development of thought on life and godliness. Being that our culture and ultimately my thought still finds remnants of enlightenment rationalism and scientific empiricism packed away in its assumptions, I cannot escape the fact that I have to rationalize my understanding of experience before I feel like I have dealt with the issue; so I ask questions pertaining to continuity, analysis, and verification whose basic framework is all assumed under the umbrella of 'so-called' objective observation. I want to escape the over-rationalization of FAITH! I cannot encounter personally what I do not believe has any significance other than observatory characteristics i.e. God in a petri dish. However as we are creatures of extremes, I must fully understand that under-rationalization leads to superstitions and hysterias of divers sorts. As dialectics would have it, then, the coalition of body and soul must be found somewhere in the middle of these divergent paradigms. Philosophical frameworks aside, how can I develop a concept of the spiritual life that contextualizes my specific situation in the world, both body and soul, yet is not limited, in perspective, to my sphere of existence? Essentially I have envisioned living a life enraptured in mobilization rather than fixation. Fixation implies constants, which are for the most part static, whereas mobilization implies dynamics, that is the necessity of considering various contingencies and circumstances.