Philippians 2:12-26 Humility

The threat of AI. Depersonalisation in the technological age.

If there is a defining characteristic of the contemporary socio-cultural epoch, it is very likely to reside in the obsession of the western world with the power of the ‘digital revolution’ possesses to transform and control the world. Our modern western world demonstrates an over-reliance reliance upon computechnology and its various modes of communication (eg. mobile phones, video games, internet transaction, etc). This has become ever more embedded, and taken for granted, and thus socially ubiquitous, without reflection on its consequences. Does our commitment to computer-based learning serve to unwittingly devalue the qualitative experience of people in education by increasingly substituting face to face interchanges with mechanically informational transmissions characterized primarily by the processing of data? Is it not worth considering that the more time we encourage schoolchildren to spend in the isolated context of the computer screen, the less time they spend actually interacting with their teachers and the less time they spend learning how to interact with others to form bonds of trust and loyalty. Should we not be concerned that the promised Utopia of the computer may in the end serve inadvertently to propagate contexts for depersonalisation not only in schools, but in both the workplace and the wider community? (Laura & Marchant, 2002: 95).

The depersonalization of human relationships and the dehumanization which follows from it are an inevitable consequence of universalising the highly mechanised modes of communication which characterise computechnology.

'Technological Isolationism'. It is well worth noting that to date insufficient attention has been paid to the deleterious physical and mental effects of these new forms of social isolation.

Because we spend progressively more time communicating through or working in isolation at our computers, we tend not to notice that we are spending less time, and certainly less quality time with each other. In particular within such technologically structured contexts of learning the potential for creating deep and bonding relationships is decidedly diminished.

Loyal friendships and loving relationships depend upon bonds of understanding, trust and intimacy, few, if any of which can be satisfactorily provided digitally.

Given western society's commitment to electronic technology, it all too frequently goes unnoticed that we have come to rely increasingly less upon face-to-face contact. Because we are able to converse over the telephone, we often choose not to meet people in person, even when we can. Text messaging is preferred even to personal relational communication by phone.

The distance we create, encourage or tolerate represents a form of depersonalisation and dehumanisation which gives rise to personal alienation and social isolation. "Whilst the internal workings of a child's mind remains shrouded in some mystery, it is palpably clear that protracted periods of social isolation do little to encourage a child's overall development" (Laura & Marchant, 2002: 113).

Why has this depersonalization spread so rapidly in the Western World?

Alarming Islamic terrorism within Australia, and world-wide, has forced a realisation that secularism lacks of itself the moral strength to provide an alternative belief system.

And, out of step with the predictions of sociologists and philosophers alike, the world is not ‘an increasingly secular place;’ it is full of very different forms of religious life, many of which are expanding rather than contracting. “Once the world was filled with the sacred – in thought, practice, and institutional form. After the Reformation and the Renaissance, the forces of modernisation swept across the globe and secularisation, a corollary historical process, loosened the dominance of the sacred. In due course, the sacred shall disappear altogether except, possibly, in the private realm.” Thus wrote the sociologist C.W. Mills (1959) summarising, in the heyday of secularisation theory, the conventional understanding in social sciences regarding the role of religion in modern societies, an understanding that had its antecedents in the works of 19th century thinkers such as Marx, Comte, Freud, Weber, Durkheim and Spencer. However, since the 1990s, the resurgence of religious thinking and spirituality in the world has induced scholars to question the validity of the theory. Today the world is “as furiously religious as it ever was.” Peter Berger (1967), once a strenuous proponent of secularisation theory has admitted that secularisation theory has failed and that levels of religiosity had not declined as forecast. “This means that a whole body of literature by historians and social scientists loosely labelled ‘secularisation theory’ is essentially mistaken. In my early work I contributed to this literature. I was in good company – most sociologists of religion had similar views, and we had good reasons for holding them… That idea is simple: Modernization necessarily leads to a decline in religion, both in society and in the minds of individuals. And it is precisely this key idea that has turned out to be wrong.”

It was thought that secularism was the outcome of technological advances; the dominance of rationalism and empiricism over other worldviews. This has led to a strong faith in scientism, and humanities ability to work out scientific solutions to its own problems. The greatest example of this is Artificial Intelligence replacing human intellect, particularly in the workplace. 

Millions are now reading AI.  It provides instant knowledge. It has immediate all consuming attention, similar to the attraction that the tree of knowledge of good and evil has for Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Genesis 3:4-7 Then the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die.5 For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.

And yet AI cannot fulfill our deepest human needs.

Archbishop of Sydney, Kanishka wrote a startling piece at Christmas this year. “Holly Walters, an anthropologist with Wellesley College in the United States, says, "These robotic deities talk and move... for many, it's God".

By way of contrast, the Christmas story of the Word becoming flesh — God becoming human — is not about the human quest for spiritual wisdom, but God revealing himself to us, in the most kind and accessible way. As one of us.  The opening verses of the letter to the Hebrews are just one sentence in the original language setting forth the magnificence of the glory of Jesus who makes God known.

In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son Hebrews 1:1-2a

The writer is not talking about spiritual principles, he's talking about history. Religion is the human attempt to find God and get his attention, and AI promises instant access 24/7. But Christianity proclaims that it is God who speaks to us, God who approaches us, God who makes himself known in history, speaking by his prophets.

We are not searching for God, we are spoken to by God.”

 

The problem of our current day is the same problem of the Garden of Eden: the pride of human knowledge. This same pride is found in all our human relationships and undermines those relationships in the most destructive ways.

Fifty years ago, in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, a pioneer missionary confronted me with a problem: Why are there so many problems on the mission field?

The problems are not with the nationals, the native people themselves.  The problem is between missionaries and mission families.  It is always about pride and preeminence.  Two missionaries against a third. It was such a problem that most missions decided to not send three mission families to the same area.  It almost always led to a break down in relationships.

AI the pride of human (and now machine) knowledge.

The mission field problem reveals that it is not contention with the people, it is contention among the missionaries that is the problem.  Where there are three families, it always winds up as two against one.

And as Archbishop Kanishka has reminded us, the answer to this rising depersonalization, and the confrontations with other increasingly aggressive and volatile religious worldviews is found in the incarnation of God in human flesh, His voluntary humiliation at the cross, and His overwhelming exaltation as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords in our personal human experience.

Follow through the argument that the apostle Paul presents in the second chapter of Philippians.

The Problem of Contention

Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself.4 Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.

For all seek their own, not the things which are of Christ Jesus.

 

We all struggle to have others understand us. And our own worldview always seems to us to be the most logical and the most morally viable and binding, not only upon ourselves but also upon others. “Knowledge puffs up but love builds up” the apostle wrote (1 Corinthians 8:1).  Knowledge has an appeal to our pride. The first temptation in the Garden of Eden was that through the knowledge of good and evil people may become as God. And pride, to be maintained, often appeals to power to maintain that position.

We now live in a “post-secular age,” as Habermas (2009) so rightly notes. Modern communications are alerting us to competing religious claims within the global village. Migration is progressively bringing pluralistic mindsets into every home. If multicultural societies are to avert the outright factional warfare that exists in other countries, “the development of new skills of dialogue and negotiation in the public arena are required.”

Yet even within our own social groups there is a lack of cohesion; an envy that causes us as Christians to be combative with one another, to “become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.” (Galatians 6::26).

 

Paul draws us back to the experience of God in Christ entering our world.

“The God-experience is the cause of our dissatisfaction with life, for nothing measures up to that which rests at our deepest center. The immense longing speaks to us, even if at times only in a whisper: this or that finite thing is ultimately not where we have set our hearts.”

I am convinced that such an immediacy between God and the human person… is of greater significance today than ever before. All the societal supports of religion are collapsing and dying out in this secularised and pluralistic society. If, nonetheless, there is to be real Christian spirituality, it cannot be kept alive and healthy by external helps, not even those which the Church offers, even of a sacramental kind…but only through an ultimate, immediate encounter of the individual with God.” Karl Rahner.

Humility is difficult to describe and almost impossible to define. Even the dictionary definitions seem inadequate to me. Our English word “humble” is related to the word “humus”, which is the word for dirt. The idea is that to be humble is to have a low perspective that looks up at other people. Actually, humility is better demonstrated than talked about. Humility is being under-impressed with ourselves and over-impressed with others. It is building up other people rather than building up ourselves. In truth, humility is not thinking less of ourselves; it is hardly thinking of ourselves at all.

The Pulpit is not a throne, nor a courthouse, nor a theatre.  Will the sermon be Scolding Or Christ Today?

The Power of the Cross

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus,6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God,7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men.8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.

The Presence of The King

9 Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name,10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth,11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners by John Bunyan

“Thus I went on for the space of two years, crying out against men's sins, and their fearful state because of them. After which, the Lord came in upon my own soul, with some staid peace and comfort through Christ; for He did give me many sweet discoveries of His blessed grace through Him; wherefore now I altered in my preaching (for still I preached what I saw and felt); now therefore I did much labour to hold forth Jesus Christ in all His offices, relations, and benefits unto the world. For I have been in my preaching, especially when I have been engaged in the doctrine of life by Christ, without works, as if an angel of God had stood by at my back to encourage me: Oh! it hath been with such power and heavenly evidence upon my own soul, while I have been labouring to unfold it, to demonstrate it, and to fasten it upon the conscience of others;”     

Hold Thou Thy cross Before my closing eyes

Shine through the gloom and Point me to the skies

Heaven’s morning breaks And earth’s vain shadows flee

In life in death O Lord Abide with me  

 

In John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan explains his experience of grace in a profound couplet:

He that is down need fear no fall, he that is low no pride,

He that is humble ever shall have God to be his guide.

But how does this work out in your human experience?

The Continuing Work Of Humility

12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;13 for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.

Do all things without complaining and disputing,15 that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world,

 

Work it in, then work it out, and only God can change your heart to make that happen.

As you work into your heart the amazing grace of God in sending His Son Jesus into our world as the Saviour from our sins, so there will be a change in our hearts away from pride based conceitedness towards self forgetful kindness and love towards others.

 

You Will Become Harmless     

You Will Become Faultless  

You Will Become Evangelistic

 

Bunyan  I never cared to meddle with things that were controverted, and in dispute among the saints, especially things of the lowest nature; yet it pleased me much to contend with great earnestness for the word of faith, and the remission of sins by the death and sufferings of Jesus: but I say, as to other things, I should let them alone, because I saw they engendered strife; and because that they neither in doing, nor in leaving undone, did commend us to God to be His:

The Compelling Witness

among whom you shine as lights in the world,16 holding fast the word of life, so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain. 17Yes, and if I am being poured out as a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all.18 For the same reason you also be glad and rejoice with me.

Aristotle’s Rhetoric

Ethos  -Character  Pathos -Emotion  Logos -Logic

Boreham  Entertainment   Education   Evangelism

Holding forth the word of life!

 

The Empathetic Connectivity.          

19 But I trust in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you shortly, that I also may be encouraged when I know your state.20 For I have no one like-minded, who will sincerely care for your state…. 22 But you know his proven character, that as a son with his father he served with me in the gospel.

As Laura and Smith (2008) so well explain “When the concept of educational knowledge is motivated by our faith in the virtue of connectivity as the ultimate form of security within nature, our interactions with each other will reflect a participatory mode of personal interchange which cannot be reduced to mechanistic substitutions for it. The measure of security is shifted in epistemic terms from how well we know how to dominate and control each other to how well we know how to connect with each other. This shift of epistemic vision encourages a transition from doing battle with each other to being in empathetic partnership with each other (Laura, & Cotton, 19991019).” Self-actualisation that is understood as isolated self-fulfillment and competition over others may not improve self-actualisation as understood as empathetic connectivity and participative consciousness. When empathetic knowledge of participatory consciousness displaces egocentricism as the prevailing and dominant personal motif, then the real work of cultivating human relationships through intimacy of face-to-face exchange can begin (Laura, & Cotton, 1999). Appreciation of the need for empathetic connectivity with each other provides a new sense of the domain of our relationships and civic responsibilities. There is mounting concern, nevertheless, about the consequences of lifestyles that focus on materialism, technology and individualism, and which ignore social cohesion while marginalizing natural systems.

 

 

Faithful Service   Yet I considered it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother, fellow worker, and fellow soldier, but your messenger and the one who ministered to my need; … and hold such men in esteem;30 because for the work of Christ he came close to death, not regarding his life, to supply what was lacking in your service toward me.

The Participative Consciousness.   

so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain. 17 Yes, and if I am being poured out as a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all.18 For the same reason you also be glad and rejoice with me.  

27 For indeed he was sick almost unto death; but God had mercy on him, and not only on him but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow.28 Therefore I sent him the more eagerly, that when you see him again you may rejoice, and I may be less sorrowful.29 Receive him therefore in the Lord with all gladness, and hold such men in esteem;30 because for the work of Christ he came close to death, not regarding his life, to supply what was lacking in your service toward me.

I am glad and rejoice with you all. 18 For the same reason you also be glad and rejoice with me.

“God is wont to show His presence in many devout souls in diverse ways, in refreshment, joy and gladness.” Wrote St. John of the Cross.

Rahner noted that “Every authentic religious epiphany or encounter, every true experience of God in whatever form, makes a person less insular, less complacent, and less isolated – and more restless, more inspired and more engaged with the world and humanity.”

Connectedness with others is not satisfactorily sustained through social networking in a technologized world that promises connectedness but delivers only distance and cyber or physical bullying. Close relationships “in the flesh”, — that truly develop friendships that are connective, fulfilling and self-sacrificial — are not experienced on a computer screen, ipad or cell phone. Rather, by this physically isolated communication the tendency to self-centredness is accelerated.

The Greco-Roman world of the first century may not unfairly be described as ‘Skin over cracks.’ The ‘skin’ was the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire expanded its rule over new territories by dominating native populations through military might. They did not seek to absorb the tribal people into a full Roman identity. They tended to utilize existing governmental structures and different kinds of local supervision and control. The ‘skin’ of military dominance, law and some institutions, the network of roads, a common language (koine Greek) and a religious veneer of the Emperor cult covering a religious pluralism, did not make the Roman Empire a melting pot, but rather a mosaic of multiculturalism. There was a diversity of ethnicity, language, race and culture, over the top of which was imposed a ‘skin’ called the Roman Empire. Bruce Milne notes that it was in this climate that Christianity thrived and finally brought more than a ‘skin over cracks’ approach; the heart of the New Testament is relationship with Jesus Christ who makes a new quality of human relationship possible (called koinonia). The apostle Paul in the letter to the Ephesians claims that Christians are a new kind of people, part of a new community: a 'new humanity’ in Christ (Ephesians 2:15) who no longer exist in isolated homogenized cultural pockets of race, culture, gender, generation, ethnicity, colour, socio-economics and language, but may experience a transcending relationship with God and with one another. Milne contends that all Christian congregations everywhere are called to be bridging places and centres of reconciliation, where the major diversities separating human beings are overcome through the presence of God's Holy Spirit. Our tremendously diversified Australian culture reflects an exploding multiculturalism that must find a ‘skin of unity’ in our fragile world.

Ron Laura emphasises that Empathetic Connectivity should culminate in Participative Consciousness; a consciousness of unity with the created order, and other people. Charles Taylor spoke of the necessity of fulfilment being achieved as people move away from a self-centred consciousness to a self-denying, — or rather, a self- forgetful — consciousness of others. The Lord Jesus Christ spoke of a new commandment.  This commandment was not really new, but enclosed within the revelation of God in creation,  expressed in recognition of other minds, expressed in the commandments of the Law of Moses. The newness of the commandment is found in the new experience of being loved by God. It is new in that this experience of unconditional love from God produces a self-denying, self-forgetful love towards others.

John 13: 34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

1 John 2: 7 Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. 8 At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. 9 Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. 10 Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him2 there is no cause for stumbling. 11 But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.  Genesis 4:9 am I my brother's keeper?” Genesis 9:6  “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.

Matthew 22: 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Romans 13: 9 For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.

John 12:23-26 23 And Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.

1 John 3: 16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17 But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. 19 By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him;

In John’s Gospel, Jesus affirms a deep (inward) level of connectedness between himself and God: “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” He spoke of an awareness of unity between himself, the Father and His disciples, in every age.

John 14: 23 Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.

John 17: 20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.  

Peace is not the same as the absence of discord or strife. Both in the Old Testament (shalom) and the New Testament (eirene) peace means living fully within all the basic relationships of God's creation and doing so with joy. Nicholas Wolterstorff (1983) gives a beautiful summary of peace:

• Shalom in the first place incorporates right, harmonious relationships to God and delight in his service.

• Secondly, shalom incorporates right, harmonious relationships to other human beings and delight in human community.

• Thirdly, shalom incorporates right, harmonious relationships to nature and delight in our physical surroundings.

In summary, “the right relationships that lie at a basis of Shalom involve more than right relationships to other human beings. They involve right relationships to God, to nature, and to oneself as well.”

 

“Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities” [Ecclesiastes 1:2]; all is breath and vapor and wind. The Preacher, the author of the book of Ecclesiastes, lists some pursuits that bring meaninglessness, futility and barren unfruitfulness. Our secular age suffers from a “malaise of immanence”, the feeling of emptiness, flatness, loss of meaning, or lack of deeper resonance that people can experience.  All of the items he lists are good things, but of themselves, in the search for meaningful satisfaction, are fruitless.

The Hebrew term hebel, translated vanity or vain, refers concretely to a ‘mist,’ ‘vapor,’ or ‘mere breath,’ and metaphorically to something that is fleeting or elusive. Perhaps it is comparable to the Rolling Stones song: “I can’t get no satisfaction, though I try and I try and I try, but, I can’t get no satisfaction.”

Learning can be a trivial pursuit. Ecclesiastes 1: 12-18.

Laughter can be a trivial pursuit Ecclesiastes 2:1-3.

Labour can be a trivial pursuit Ecclesiastes 2: 4-8.

Luxury and Fame can be a trivial pursuit Ecclesiastes 2:9.

Lust can be a trivial pursuit Ecclesiastes 2: 10.

Life itself can be a trivial pursuit Ecclesiastes 2: 11-26.  

But fulfillment is not found in consumer culture; the cardboard quality of bright supermarkets, or the tight, neat, repetitive boxes of new housing in our cities.

 

The Joy of Fulfillment

Phil 2: 14 Do all things without complaining and disputing,15 that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world,16 holding fast the word of life, so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain.

17 Yes, and if I am being poured out as a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all.18 For the same reason you also be glad and rejoice with me.

Taylor defines fullness by reminding his readers of momentary experiences of fullness, where the common individual experiences cause us to feel ourselves to have arrived momentarily at a significant moment, a “peak experience” (Maslow 1964), a “liminal experience” (van Gennep 1905 and Turner 1967), a moment accompanied by a euphoric mental state often achieved by self-actualizing individuals, “rare, exciting, oceanic, deeply moving, exhilarating, elevating experiences that generate an advanced form of perceiving reality, and are even mystic and magical in their effect upon the experimenter.”

Václav Havel describes such an experience. Havel writes:

“...all at once, I seemed to rise above all the coordinates of my momentary existence in the world into a kind of state outside time in which all the beautiful things I have ever seen and experienced existed in a total “co-present”; I felt a sense of reconciliation; indeed of an almost gentle assent to the inevitable course of events as revealed to me now, and this combined with a carefree determination to face what has to be faced. A profound amazement at the sovereignty of Being became a dizzy sensation of tumbling endlessly into the abyss of its mystery; an unbounded joy at being alive, at having been given the chance to live through all I have lived through, and at the fact that everything has a deep and obvious meaning – this joy formed a strange alliance in me with a horror at the inapprehensibility of everything I was so close to in that moment, standing at the very “edge of the infinite;” I was flooded with a sense of ultimate happiness and harmony with the world and with myself, with that moment, with all the moments I could call up, and with everything invisible that lies behind it and has meaning. I would even say that I was somehow “struck by love”, though I don’t know precisely for whom or what.”

From an evangelical Christian perspective, Alister McGrath describes his experience of conversion in similar terms: “At Oxford — to my surprise — I discovered Christianity. It was the intellectually most exhilarating and spiritually stimulating thing I could ever hope to describe — better than chemistry, a wonderful subject that I had thought to be the love of my life and my future career. I went on to gain a doctorate for research in molecular biophysics from Oxford, and found that immensely exciting and satisfying. But I knew I had found something better — like the pearl of great price that Jesus talks about in the Gospel, which is so beautiful and precious that it overshadows everything. It was intellectually satisfying, imaginatively engaging, and aesthetically exciting.”

Fullness Is A Meaningful Life

Ikigai (生き甲斐]) is a Japanese concept meaning “a reason for being.” Everyone, according to the Japanese, has an ikigai. Finding it requires a deep and often lengthy search of self.

Meaning is found primarily in our relationships; this fullness is relational. This fullness has a vertical relationship to it, towards God, and horizontal relationships, towards others who vary in significance from acquaintances, friends and close friends and spouses.

Pascal, observing the restlessness of humanity empathetically, wrote, “Being unable to cure death, wretchedness and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things.” With the range of new technologies by means of which the “silence of eternity” can be shattered and rational thought and reflection rendered impossible, “Modern man is drinking or drugging himself out of awareness, or he spends his time shopping, which is the same thing.”

Psalm 81:16  And with honey from the rock I would have satisfied you."

The Joy of Fellowship

17 Yes, and if I am being poured out as a drink offering on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all.18 For the same reason you also be glad and rejoice with me.

25 Yet I considered it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother, fellow worker, and fellow soldier, but your messenger and the one who ministered to my need;26 since he was longing for you all, and was distressed because you had heard that he was sick.27 For indeed he was sick almost unto death; but God had mercy on him, and not only on him but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow.28 Therefore I sent him the more eagerly, that when you see him again you may rejoice, and I may be less sorrowful.29 Receive him therefore in the Lord with all gladness, and hold such men in esteem

Turner noted that people experienced intense feelings of social togetherness and belonging, often in connection with transitional rites and rituals, which he termed “communitas;” expressing the idea of a sense of being together; what Professor Ron Laura would express as “Participative Consciousness.”

Turner noted that in communitas, people stand together “outside” society, often against society, or against oppression within the society, and that sense of standing together was itself a value laden activity, reinforcing the new value of the group “against the world.” It is sort of like the old spiritual song “Though none go with me still I will follow,” reinforcing the convictions of the small group against the general malaise of the larger group in the community.

Alan Hirsch summarises the sense of “you and me against the world:”“Communitas ... is a community infused with a grand sense of purpose: a purpose that lies outside of its current reality and constitution... It involves movement and it describes the experience of togetherness that only really happens among a group engaging in a mission outside itself.”

Once the knowledge-as-power paradigm is shifted from its position of epistemic priority, however, and substituted by an empathetic knowledge of participatory consciousness, then the real work of cultivating human relationships through intimacy of face–to–face exchange can begin. A move from the knowledge-as-power paradigm to a paradigm of empathetic connectivity — according to Laura and Buchanan — requires a voluntary, conscious shift in the mind of the individual from a paradigm of power to empathetic knowledge of participatory consciousness through a growing appreciation of the latter’s epistemic priority.

We cannot live unaffected by love. We are most alive when we find it, most devastated when we lose it, most empty when we give up on it, most inhumane when we betray it, and most passionate when we are pursuing it. Love is the fuel of the human spirit.”

Victor Frankl (1959) observes that:  “Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualised but yet ought to be actualised. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualise these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.”

Could the ability of the individual to love be both a goal and a means of human maturity? Frankl (1959) testified of his experiences in a Nazi death camp: “For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.”

Martin Luther King reflected shortly before his assassination on what he would like said at his funeral. “I’d like somebody to mention that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr tried to give his life serving others. I’d like for somebody to say that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr tried to love somebody. … I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. …And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won’t have any money to leave behind. I won’t have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind.”

A committed life is one of voluntary, sacrificial, decisive, acted-upon, agape-love.

The Joy of Fruitfulness

Connectivity can be driven by employer requirements, where the personhood of the other is replaced by the commodification of relationships.  The simple “Will you have fries with that?” of the McDonald’s employee is a market-driven interest in the consumer, rather than an empathetic connection to them.

We need something more.  We need a life of fruitfulness.  The very concept of fruitfulness has an other-driven component.  Fruit is for someone else. It isn’t for the fruit itself. It is to satisfy and help someone else. It is self forgetful.

As the Lord Jesus said, John 12: But Jesus answered them, saying, "The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified.24 Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.25 He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.26 If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor.

What will your life amount to?

How will you know if you have lived a good life?

I just want to leave a committed life behind.

What is your legacy?