Big Picture people like us. Or do they?

Here is the promised excerpt from the New Yorker, from an article about the widely differing intellectual responses to the Islam of today.

"Lamenting many similar flights of the intellectuals in the long 20th century -- their noisy ideological identifications and terrible choices -- the late Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski once pointed out that, "However much intellectuals yearn to be both 'prophets and heralds of reason', those roles cannot be reconciled. The common human qualities of vanity and greed for power are particularly dangerous among intellectuals," he observed,"and the longing to identify with political causes often results in 'an almost unbelievable loss of critical reasoning.' "

"But, in these volatile times, intellectuals would do well to reacquaint themselves with what Kolakowski described as "the history of many deceitful hopes" -- the crimes of ideological passion in which even liberals have been complicit." -- from "Islamism", by Pankaj Mishra, TNY, 6/7/10

Yes there is that. This however is but the tip of the iceberg. I think that the author gave it all away with the phrase, "even liberals." What is this "even" business? It is a very strange way to end the article, tipping the audience to your personal bias; obviously the author is preaching repentance to his own crowd and trying not to be excessively harsh and end up alienating its audience. This would be then an Epistle to the Sadducces. The other side of the coin is the William Buckley/Pharisee response, "Oh no! It should be especially liberals!"

For all the talk about seeing things in shades of gray, this then becomes again a very black and white matter; humanly speaking that is.

Jack Nicholson in the movie "A Few Good Men," shouts his famous line, "You can't handle the truth!" This is a rather striking line especially considering the probable personal views of the actor who spoke them. But both types of bicameral side-takers noted above do exactly this when they conveniently proclaim that the other side is made up of conniving liars. There cannot be anything such as a liar unless there is reality/truth involved.

It is inevitable that Whole Truth is going to be unpleasant and offensive to literally everyone. So much so that literally all parties, and even two people from out of his own disciples, did indeed conspire actively and eventually openly against Jesus Christ. That is the reason that His Name is such an effective swear word, far beyond the word, "God." We simply do not have the breadth of mind or spirit be able to comprehend or get our minds around this Singular Person. We are not even able to evaluate ourselves, much less God, much less grace, and far much less the Trinity, which no single Christian has ever been able to adequately present; hence the faith factor becomes logically and inevitably necessary; and I have visited this in previous blogs in various ways.

Paul is quite clear in second Corinthians 4: "but if our gospel is hidden, it is hidden to them that are lost: whom the god of this world has blinded...." Elsewhere the Bible talks about a veil which is compared to the heavy curtains around the Ark of the Covenant, which were split apart when Jesus died. The world far less cognizant of the pervasive and worldwide veil than it is of the structure of the Temple which perished in 70 A.D. but lives on in the collective Jewish memory. This split curtain "in the heavenlies" as well as here now in Spirit is however, an opportunity to openly confer with the Creator; and yet very few people take full advantage of this openness; again, because we cannot handle the Truth and would rather drag in our opinions, points of view, and the classic Greek broken record, the "your truth my truth" which is obviously nonsense in the big picture.(Calvin accurately said, "Nobody likes us Big Picture people.", In yet another excuse/evasion to get away from Miss Wormwood's inconvenient queries and to get back ASAP to Planet Zarkon!!!)

Therefore I would, if I were writing the above article, would leave off the last phrase, especially the word, "especially", and even the word "even"! The opposition to "True Truth", which comes naturally to all of us; and which fulfills the edict of Camus about democracy, i.e.the really total and universal rejection and intolerance of Reality,puts us all in the same very crowded and about-to-sink boat. If anyone can think of a better ending, please share it!!!---