If actions speak louder than
words, then our deeds must have a better voice for others to regard us
with than what we say. Beliefs consist of words by which we proclaim to
others what we think, but by our actions we proclaim what we truly
believe.
You
know, in the core of your being, whenever a new idea confronts you,
whether you harden your heart to resist it offhand, or choose to study it,
learn how to understand it, and then use it to enhance what you already
know. The biblical directive to study, too often chosen to defend one's
self as a victim rather than as an aggressive student, is thus used as an
excuse to curtail one's own efforts to show himself as being approved of
by God.
If
people can recognize our true characters by the attitudes we present to
them, an all-knowing God must certainly also possess that capability in
abundance. If so, then it seems obvious He would recognize our strategies
and disavow us as His, however hard we might defend our beliefs. Have I
misquoted the verse?—well, pay attention and see what happens when I get
it right!
It seems
too easy to feel overwhelmed in a world where an overabundance of new
ideas beg for our attention, and too easy to simply shrug them off as
offensive, perverted, meaningless, or as simply someone else's opinions.
The effort required to resist the onslaught of new knowledge, especially
when that knowledge brings with it new conditions and lifestyles, and the
resultant impositions, too often becomes exceeded only by that required
for learning to understand it. The simple things of modern technology have
become mind-boggling to those who practiced, even for a little while, the
turning of their backs upon the knowledge which produced it. Cosmological
and atomic realms seem irrelevant, even while we watch the fruits of such
knowledge displayed on our television screens to show us the daily events
occurring in our current efforts to vanquish some enemy in our macro
realm.
Each of
us, regardless of our beliefs and aspirations, cherishes some small,
perhaps covert, element of our existence. We often wish we could improve
the ways we are allowed to enjoy it or, in many cases, even that we could
be allowed. Those of us who care enough about a part of our lives that
seems lacking to make a public issue of it, too often fail to see how it
likely fits into a blemished larger picture which must, itself, be
corrected before our little piece of it can expect to be worthy of
consideration.
Portions
of a picture are not greater or lesser, nor better or worse, than the
picture they belong to—but that greater picture too often becomes regarded
as a distraction away from the little portion that holds our interest.
More often than not, we fail to recognize that the bigger picture
exists!—let alone see its relevance to our own little chip out of it.
Oftener yet than that, we feel threatened by the presence of the overall
picture, and blame it as the cause of all our problems because we cannot
make ourselves acknowledge it as pertinent to our small causes.
By
limiting our studies to only those areas approved by our causes, we
disavow knowledge which would alert us to any growth and increased
prevalence of those factors which serve to erode our personal freedoms,
which we claim to be the most valuable assets Americans possess, and which
we allege to cherish and hold dear enough to die for. If we declare to
believe in God, it is we who defend our little niches while acting as
though He must need our approval, and thus, by our actions, show how we
disavow a need to be approved by Him.
Other
causes than our religious beliefs may be what interests us in the fashion
discussed here. We may feel ourselves being hampered by other interests
which distract from our own, or which seem in conflict with it. Our
interests would be better served by learning where, in the overall scheme,
our limited interests best fit, than in allowing ourselves to disavow the
worth or relevance, or even the existence, of that overall picture. It may
possibly be nonexistent only because we have not allowed—or
caused—ourselves to become aware of it. That learning can only be
accomplished by a heightening of our interest in those areas outside our
own by which ours seem affected or similar in nature, all the elements of
our general area within the overall picture, and exactly where we'll find
ourselves located within that schema.
American
freedoms are great and varied, and subject to erosion. The greatest
freedom of them all may be that which allows us to study so we can learn
how and why our freedoms can be increased, and then to seek that increase
even while we defend ourselves against those determined to encroach upon
us.
The
covert methods we use to resist new ideas were bared September 11, 2001,
when hard-headed outsiders allegedly killed themselves in a show of their
hatred for American ideals, which they saw as encroaching into their
sacred domains. We should be warned by their actions about more than the
vulnerability of our boundaries, but also that when we practice their
intolerance we become like them in the eyes of tolerant people who have
learned how it is far better to study, learn to understand, and to apply
that knowledge. To study and learn to understand others' ideas is far less
dangerous to ourselves and to others, than it is to resist learning, and
show ourselves to be disapproved unto God, and to our fellow human beings.
Freedom
does not occur for those with unbending attitudes, whose only concerns do
not include freedom for others, but only for the rigid dogmas they profess
and would impose upon a world they'd swaddle with their innocence of
studied tolerance. Freedom does occur only for those enlightened students
whose studies have shown them how the rules of Nature are like the rungs
of a ladder upon which they can climb out of strictured confinement into
freedom they can teach others how to achieve and dare to claim as their
right.
