My thoughts have increasingly been about the question: “How ought we to live?” It has become for me the most basic of questions. The answer is disarmingly simple. “We ought to love.” The simplicity masks a complexity that is beyond explanation or comprehension. It is far more like art than science.
Today, I want to work away at one aspect of the answer. To love is to live toward perfection.
In Jewish and Christian traditions the idea of perfection is very prominent. It is always important to remember that being an informal Jewish rabbi, Jesus’ thought forms and expressions were Jewish too. Both the Torah and Jesus’ moral teaching look to the perfect as that toward which we ought to live. In the Torah it is clear: “Be holy, as I am holy.” G-d is the perfect one. That perfection is described as holiness. To live well is to live with that holiness as vision and direction. In Jesus’ teaching it is: “Love . . . so you may be children of you Father-Mother . . . Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father-Mother is perfect.”
The injunction is very straightforward. Perfection draws us toward itself.
A few thoughts.
Our tradition is teleological. Telos is the Greek word for the goal toward which something moves. The Greek philosopher Aristotle was the first to suggest this. Everything, for Aristotle, has a natural telos. When something lives according to its telos, its goal, its perfection, then that something lives well. In the Jewish and Christian traditions, G-d is the perfect and G-d is the telos. Humanity came from G-d, made in G-d’s image and will go back to G-d. People live well when then live in the light of that telos.
So simple; yet, so complex! How do we know what the perfect looks like? If we are to have it as vision and direction, what is it that must fill our vision?
In Jewish tradition, perfection is revealed through the Torah. Here, G-d makes practical what holiness looks like. In practice, it looks like caring for the poor, being free from acquisitiveness that leads to lying, stealing and cheating to get what you want; it looks like caring for those who have disabilities, not hating any but loving neighbors.
In the Jesus tradition, it is much the same but taken perhaps a little further. It looks not merely like the negative injunctions not to cheat and steal, but more positively to give to those who have need; it looks not only like loving neighbors but also loving enemies.
Yet, the direction is very much the same. How ought we to live? We live in the light of the perfect. The perfect draws us toward itself.
However, if we make those injunctions a set of rules to be kept, we will most likely miss the telos. For when those example from Torah and Jesus become rules we lose the perfect in the imperfect. I think that was the mistake of those the gospels calls Pharisees. Jesus critique was that they had replaced the inner quest for the perfect with an outer keeping of rules. They mistook the rules for the perfect itself. In the Buddhist tradition, it would be say the rules are merely a finger pointing to the moon. If you focus on the finger you miss the moon.
How we ought to live has more in common with aesthetics, with art, that with fact, with science (in the popular sense).
The perfect is known through moral reflection, through contemplation. It is deeply inward, deeply personal. To love is to learn gradually and progressively what love means in experience and through trial and failure. It is to change understandings of love as love deepens. To love involves imagination; to imagine the perfect; to contemplate the beautiful.
+Ab. Andy
Today, I want to work away at one aspect of the answer. To love is to live toward perfection.
In Jewish and Christian traditions the idea of perfection is very prominent. It is always important to remember that being an informal Jewish rabbi, Jesus’ thought forms and expressions were Jewish too. Both the Torah and Jesus’ moral teaching look to the perfect as that toward which we ought to live. In the Torah it is clear: “Be holy, as I am holy.” G-d is the perfect one. That perfection is described as holiness. To live well is to live with that holiness as vision and direction. In Jesus’ teaching it is: “Love . . . so you may be children of you Father-Mother . . . Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father-Mother is perfect.”
The injunction is very straightforward. Perfection draws us toward itself.
A few thoughts.
Our tradition is teleological. Telos is the Greek word for the goal toward which something moves. The Greek philosopher Aristotle was the first to suggest this. Everything, for Aristotle, has a natural telos. When something lives according to its telos, its goal, its perfection, then that something lives well. In the Jewish and Christian traditions, G-d is the perfect and G-d is the telos. Humanity came from G-d, made in G-d’s image and will go back to G-d. People live well when then live in the light of that telos.
So simple; yet, so complex! How do we know what the perfect looks like? If we are to have it as vision and direction, what is it that must fill our vision?
In Jewish tradition, perfection is revealed through the Torah. Here, G-d makes practical what holiness looks like. In practice, it looks like caring for the poor, being free from acquisitiveness that leads to lying, stealing and cheating to get what you want; it looks like caring for those who have disabilities, not hating any but loving neighbors.
In the Jesus tradition, it is much the same but taken perhaps a little further. It looks not merely like the negative injunctions not to cheat and steal, but more positively to give to those who have need; it looks not only like loving neighbors but also loving enemies.
Yet, the direction is very much the same. How ought we to live? We live in the light of the perfect. The perfect draws us toward itself.
However, if we make those injunctions a set of rules to be kept, we will most likely miss the telos. For when those example from Torah and Jesus become rules we lose the perfect in the imperfect. I think that was the mistake of those the gospels calls Pharisees. Jesus critique was that they had replaced the inner quest for the perfect with an outer keeping of rules. They mistook the rules for the perfect itself. In the Buddhist tradition, it would be say the rules are merely a finger pointing to the moon. If you focus on the finger you miss the moon.
How we ought to live has more in common with aesthetics, with art, that with fact, with science (in the popular sense).
The perfect is known through moral reflection, through contemplation. It is deeply inward, deeply personal. To love is to learn gradually and progressively what love means in experience and through trial and failure. It is to change understandings of love as love deepens. To love involves imagination; to imagine the perfect; to contemplate the beautiful.
+Ab. Andy