Miscellaneous Rambling
I've been thinking a lot about this passage from Phillipians 4: "Have no anxiety about anything . . .". It really struck me a few weeks ago and I keep coming back to it. It's not a cliche or counsel from Bobby McFerrin. It's a command . . . from God, making neglect of it a sin. That doesn't bode well for me, but I'm working on it.
John of the Cross feast day tomorrow. There are a handful of writers that a person could read exclusively for the rest of his life and do well. He's one of them.
In case you missed it last month, the Oxford Dictionary named "post-truth" as the Word of the Year. "Post-truth," as in, "We at Oxford Dictionary, with the rest of the West's elites, know what truth is but the rabble doesn't so they vote for Brexit and Trump. We live in a "post-truth" age where people with the knowledge don't get the power the world needs to make it a better place." This is Gnosticism, pure and simple.
I promised to write more about Gnosticism, and I still intend to, even though the last ramble was my first. It dawned on me that we need a working definition of the term. I searched for a pithy definition but found nothing that satisfied me, so I'm going to resort to the definitive six-point explanation offered by Eric Voegelin in his little classic, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism. I have shortened (and paraphrased parts of) it and posted it at the "TDE Annex" for future reference.
If the definition at the TDE Annex isn't succinct enough, try this one: The gnostic is a person who rejects original sin and the idea of post-death salvation. Because he nonetheless craves perfection (the transcendental yearning doesn't cease just because a person rejects it any more than the sun stops shining because some people are blind), he strives for heaven on earth. He believes that he, and others of his superior kind, are the ones to bring it about through their application of knowledge (gnosis).
And if that isn't succinct enough, try this one: the gnostic is an elitist ass. (Broken down: "gnostic" because of his faith in knowledge; "elitist" because he thinks only he and others like him have that knowledge; "ass" because he is willing to use his (supposed) knowledge to cram his vision down everyone else's throat.)
