Thursday, October 16, 2008

Some random thoughts

Re the word - it's not what it means that matters, it's what it does in you and what you do in it.

Re the image of "setting a blind man free into the forest and asking him to find his way home" - wrong image - it's more like the one who sees and is at home being released in a forest of the blind.

2 comments:

scott gray said...

but how the word affects one begins in meaning. beyond meaning is value. beyond value is action.

bob, how have you been? what fun and interesting things are you thinking about these days?

scott

Bob MacDonald said...

I suppose it must 'mean' something - but when we say we 'understand the meaning' we intend this as 'we have power over the word' but it should be that we are 'standing under' the word. It is in the doing i.e. the obedience - the action - that understanding happens - not just in the thinking about it.

Today I prepare for a funeral of my sister in Toronto - long flight this weekend. I have had some fun in the Sunday School classes - see the St Barnabas blog

I also will visit my Ottawa office and see how things are there with respect to their forecasts and marketing activities as well as coach a new support person who is in training.

Tonight I am attending a third session with the scientist and theologian Sir John Polkinghorne.

I will miss this lecture next Tuesday: The differing descriptions of science and theology about the nature of reality must bear some complementary relationship to each other. There must, therefore, be a degree of mutual consonance in what they have to say on certain matters. This is illustrated in considerations of how physical cosmology relates to a doctrine of creation; how science’s account of the causal nexus of the world relates to claims of divine providential action; and how the deep-seated inter-relationality of the physical world, evident in such phenomena as quantum entanglement, might be viewed in the light of Trinitarian theology.

It is as I had expected that there is no conflict between faith and science - how could there be? The only conflicts we have are in our own desire to be 'on top of things' rather than recognizing that this is not completely feasible.