Emotion versus Reason

 Emotion versus Reason

Stimulated by some words in Meeting on Sunday, I recalled that I preferred sorting disputes by recourse to reason, rather than emotion. This strong preference of mine emerged during the period around the break-up of my marriage. In many soliloquies I had silently verbalised my preference thus: suppose one party wants this and the other party wants that, how can they  negotiate, short of 'giving-in'? How can they each know the strength of the other's wanting? It seemed to me that the best way forward was to seek reasons and arguments; talk, therefore, in terms of money, time, resources, where numbers could be put on the strengths of each case. I suspect I still feel that reason is my preferred way out of an emotional conflict. 

However, as I made my way home from Meeting, two further realisations flooded over me.
[1] I have been on a number of training courses on 'Conciliation'. I understand the nub of the technique to be that each party is brought to see very clearly the emotional impact of the problem at issue on the other party. Thus, with the two contestants (A & B) and the conciliator (C) in a protected ('safe') arena, A and then B each explain to C their case, and how they feel. Conflicts that matter are conflicts of emotions. (Conflicts over facts are easily resolved, as Father showed us children: you can force it to an issue by offering a 6-penny bet on your favoured outcome, then you 'look-up' the answer.)
[2] It occurred to me that I was essentially admitting an inability to assess either my own emotions, or those of other people with whom I interact; or of both parties. This is close to admitting to  'Asperger's Syndrome', which I understand as a deficit in the ability to read the emotional significance of the observable actions of other people. It is very hard to know, as I had always assumed myself to be 'standard'. But perhaps I am deficient! 

I can certainly see the observable actions (or think I can). Nor do I think of myself as lacking emotions; the opposite rather, for I weep with joy when I see kindness, and I feel contaminated when protagonists in a drama tell a lie. But I might be suppressing my emotions, shuffling them out of (conscious) sight, precisely because they are too painful. 

How can I test that possibility?  Any such attempt sounds like a recipe for noise and stress. Perhaps I shall continue with my present strategies. 

Life after Death

 Life after Death

I think there is some truth in claiming that Christianity's great success, the feature that allowed it to become the world's 'biggest religion, was by promising 'Life after Death'. (A feature it shares with Islam, the 'second biggest religion'.) The idea that something, (the soul or core or essence of a person) could survive death seems to be basic to the human psyche and was well known in the Middle East long before Jesus.  It is certain that the idea of bodily survival after death was not the message that Jesus was trying to teach. Indeed, he explicitly scoffed at it (Matth 22:23 ).  But the idea proved enormously popular and, over the centuries, the idea of bodily survival was grafted onto the teaching of Jesus, and has brought many hopeful converts to Christianity. 

Did the initial disciples of Jesus, by emphasising the empty tomb and the resurrection of Jesus, perpetrate a scam? Or were they honestly describing their experience? By 325 CE, when the bishops met at Nicea, politics seem to have dominated the discussion. For the Nicene Creed quite explicitly promises the resurrection of the dead [See References below].  

Does Christianity (by which I mean, not the teaching of Jesus, but the more-or-less unified teaching of the Christian bishops in 325 CE) deliver any sort of 'Life after Death'? Yes, if you are inspired by the belief. No, if you cannot so believe. And many cannot. 

By distinguishing between the teaching of Jesus and that of the Christian bishops I have opened up the question -- was Jesus a Christian? I mean, could he have subscribed to the Nicene or any other 'Christian' creed on the question of Life after Death; does the explicitly quoted teaching of Jesus promise anything like that which Christian Bishops have promised in his name? If not, we may ask whether the explicit teaching of Jesus (such as we have) do better at delivering on its promises?

Jesus is reported to have said that "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." (Matth 22:32).  He is also reported as saying that the idea of meeting up with your spouse after death shows a misconception of Heaven; "Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. " (Matth 22:29 ).  Heaven is (he suggested) more like when a king prepares a wedding feast for his son, and sends out invitations, but the invitees do not come (Matth 22:3 ).   So he sends out invitations to all and any. (Matth 22: 9).  They come, but those that come to the party in the wrong frame of mind get nothing out of it. (Matth 22: 12).

Was not Jesus saying something like: God is for the living, and Heaven is for the living, not for the dead. That we are invited to join him, in Heaven; so should we not attend? And if we accept the invitation, and go to the party, it surely behoves us to attend in the right frame of mind; count our blessings and feel glad to be there. 

I feel the same way. I feel that to love creation with all one's heart, and with all one's mind (Matth.22:37), and to love and treat your neighbour as you treat yourself (Matth.22:39), creates a better world, an acceptable world, a world in which to be glad, in which to be grateful, and for which to wear festive clothes.  Even if plenty problems remain. In that sense I find that Jesus delivers.

The part that dies and the part that lives on.

To get anywhere in discussing the question of Life-after-Death, it is essential to be quite clear about the concepts of material reality and ideal thought. (The term 'Spirit' is undefined and is therefore avoided.) It is also essential to seek the truth, and embrace it.  

Life, as far as I understand it, requires a flow of oxygen to the heart, and to the brain; without that flow, life and thought is impossible. 

I attended a Quaker funeral at Whitley Bay Crematorium in 2008. One Quaker read a poem of Betty Walters about a leaf, containing the consoling idea that it, the leaf (i.e. the poet), might be reabsorbed back into 'God'. So I refrained from reading the poem of Francis Thompson that my mother had quoted as she prepared herself for death, though I think it excellently appropriate, and making a slightly different point – that birth implies death and death implies birth; "Nothing dies but something lives". 

Instead, I found myself developing a thought I had started earlier in the day – that there are two parts to a person: a part that dies and a part that does not. What we love about a person is not a kilogram of cardiac muscle, or mushy liver. That, of course, is the part that dies. What we love is the husband, father, grandfather, the earner, the musician, the student, a smile, an anecdote; in fact more the idea of a person than the reality of a person. And that is the part that does not die, but lingers in the memories of the still-living. So, in effect, I have reached the conclusion that, to our emotions, a person (alive or dead) is more important as an 'idea' than as a 'thing'.

I am not able to believe in Life Everlasting 'in the flesh', so get no comfort from the Christian promise. But I do find some value in the undeniable fact that ideas about the good points of bygone people linger in the minds of the living; and may linger for a generation in most cases, and for two millennia in outstanding cases. In thus lingering, these memories support us in our endeavour 'to find heaven on earth'. 

References:

Several Christian Creeds

 (https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/courses/43801/creeds.pdf )

[1] "We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come". (Nicene Creed, CE 325)

[2] "I believe in .... the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting." (Apostle's creed, c. CE 500, Wikipedia)

[3]  "41. At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies;

 42.  and shall give account of their own works.

 43. And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting and they that have done evil into everlasting fire.
         44. This is the catholic faith, which except a man believe faithfully he cannot be saved." (Athanasian creed, c. CE 500, Wikipedia) 

Palestine could lease land to Israel

Palestine could lease land to Israel.

Israeli settlements in the West Bank are deemed illegal. 

(The Palestinian West Bank is land taken by Israel by force in the war of 1967, and the Israeli presence is thus against International law. )

Israel covets that land.

(There are many Israelis who want to live in Arab land with such a fierce craving that they break the laws of normal civilised life in attempts to oust the Arab residents. The political majority in Israel condones that barbaric behaviour, thus showing itself not competent to govern the area.) 

Land purchases between states have been agreed in the past.

(Admittedly with mixed success. Florida was acquired off Spain in 1819 for $5million of settled citizen claims. In 1848, by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the USA paid Mexico $15million plus $3million in claims for 1,360,000 square km of land, i.e. Arizona, California, western Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah. The USA, in 1867, purchased Alaska off Russia at a fair price; $7.2million for 1.5million square km of land. Neither side particularly wanted the land.)

Could Israel occupy and enjoy Arab land legally? 

(Perhaps Israel could buy some land. But, if Palestine did not want to sell, perhaps they could agree to let out the land for an annual rent. Or negotiate a 99 year lease, as the British did with Hong Kong.)

Or are we living in a more barbaric, Post-Enlightenment, age?