Reaching For Enlightenment: Anthony J. DeBlasi

In keeping with the theme in yesterday's post, I have another, also from the American Thinker entitled Reaching For Enlightenment by Anthony J. DeBlasi. DeBlasi makes the point that we can only go so far with reason, and the intellectual pursuits. While that may seem a vast territory, in the end, a leap of faith is required to attain true enlightenment. The limits of science are well known, in that science can not explain how or why the universe exists. Oh, they have theories, but that is all they are. We are, as DeBlasi says, just guessing.

Compensating for that spiritual blindness with brain-powered “enlightenment” requires an impossible act: the substitution of self for God, an act that mostly leads to misery, not progress. For it feeds an egomania, especially among scientists, social reformers, even theologians who, unlike honest artists and music makers – to bring up a sharp contrast – are too proud to admit that the products of their thought and designs have no more real substance than Rembrandt’s lighting or Ravel’s orchestral color. At best their facts fit together as well as the tile-bits in a Byzantine façade and their constructs encompass life as well, tone-wise, as a Brahms symphony.

Admit it or not, at root level, everyone is guessing – a truism missed entirely by those who have no use for truth, including the value of human life, yet insist on lording over people and controlling their lives, divested of even a shred of humility. This skipping over what it means to be human and mortal while reaching for what is best for human life closes the mind to the nature of reality and predictably leads to an endless return to Square One.

The emphasis is mine.

 A pastor I knew once said to me that all sin (sin is a word for missing the mark. An archer aims for his arrow to penetrate the center of the bulls eye on the target. But if he misses, his arrow goes somewhere other than the bulls eye This missing of the target is the concept of sin.) can be found in the First Commandment from Exodus Chapter 20 (NKJV)

20 And God spoke all these words, saying:

2 “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of [a]bondage.

3 “You shall have no other gods before Me. 4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; 5 you shall not bow down to them nor [b]serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting[c] the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6 but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.

The Pastors main idea was that if we as people got the First Commandment right, all the other Commandments would be superfluous. But we can not get even that right.

In the book of Exodus, the Lord literally brought the people of Israel out of bondage in Egypt. Good for the Israelites, but what does it have to say to us today? The truth is that if you let him, he wants to bring each of us out of bondage to the many idols we set up for ourselves. Money is important, but if we let it rule our lives, it becomes an idol. We ourselves can become an idol if we fail to recognize that He is the ultimate truth. And as Admiral Byrd wrote in his book "Alone":

“approaching the final enlightenment, how little one really has to know or feel sure about...”

In Genesis, the story of Adam, Eve, and the Garden of Eden is a story about people assuming the role of God. But we are not God. In the physical world, we do not have the intimate insights that God has. Too often we miscalculate, and miss the mark in all sorts of ways. We need to remember:

For mortals, the answer to the question – Which is the true reality? – is far less important than the lessons to be drawn from circling the truth. Taking Lesson One, that we are guessing, and Lesson Two, that we are agents in a pliant world – contending with the evil of heartless men and women, it must quickly be added – we can proceed to move in life as though it is a divine journey, guided by time-tested tenets that transcend every generation and are madness to discard. History provides ample evidence that people cannot be their own gods and shows that there are really no supermen or superwomen to take the place of our Creator.

To cut to the quick: when we know that we don’t know, we can see that because every system of thought and action begins with a belief, a leap of faith, we may start by abiding in God without the mental gyrations of “proof” deemed necessary. For they who don’t believe can dismantle every “proof” and those who believe need no “proof.” We may opt for the the goodness of Creation that we form a part of, since all that is left in the way is not a body of data, a set of theories, a political inclination, not even the facts of suffering and the fear of death that attend being mortal in an uncertain world but, as with rebellious children, a foolishly stubborn will.

As always, read the whole article, and ponder. And really, read Genesis, and then read Dennis Prager's book The Rational Bible: Genesis. Believe, or don't, but do not dismiss it without first investigating it.