Thần Tốc 2016 - 2017: Hóa Học tải về miễn phí cuốn sách

Esteban Garcia esteban_garcia — Some of my favorite quotes: page 86. Yet did not Jesus constantly insist that his followers acknowledge his divine status-almost as a condition of discipleship? in the gospels we continualy hear him beraing his disciples for their lack of "faith" and praising the "faith" of gentiles, who seem to understand him better than his fellow Jews. those who beg him for healing are required to have "faith" before he canwork a miracle, and some pray" "Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief." We do not find this precupation with "belief" in the ohter major traditions. Why did Jesus set such store by it? The simple answer is that he did not. the word translated as "faith" in the New Testament is the Greek pistis/pisteuo which means "trust; loyalty; engagement; commitment." Jesus was not asking people to "believe" in his divinity, because he was making no such claim. he was asking for commitment. He wanted disciples who would engage with his mission, give all they had to the poor, feed the hungry, refuse to be hampered by famil ties, abondon their pride, lay asid e their self-importaqnce and sense of entitlement, live like the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, and trust in the God who was their father. page 98. Theodore, bishop of Mopsuestia in Cilicia from 392 to 428, explained before his catechumens: When you say "pisteuo" ["I engage myself"] before god, you show that you will remian steadfastly with him, that you will never separate yourself from him and that you will think it higher than anything else to be and to live with him and conduct yourself in a way that is in harmony with his commandments. "Beliefe" in our modern sense did not come into it. Even though Theordore was a leading proponent of the literal exegisis practiced in Antioch, he did not require his candidates to "believe" and "mysterious" doctrines. Faith was purely a matter of commitment ad practical living. page 318. religion's task, closely allied to that of art, was to help us to live creatively peacefully, and even joyously with realities for which were no easy explanantions and problems that we could not solve; mortality, pain, grief, despair, and outrage at the injustice and cruelty of life. page 326 religion [is not] something that we think, rather [it's] something that we do. page 327. We may have to go into ... the dark night of the sould or the cloud of unknowing. this will not easy for people used to getting information at the click of mouse. but the novelty and strangeness of this negative capability could surprise us into awerness that stringent ratiocination is the nothe only means of acquiring knowledge. it is not only a poet like keats who must, while wating for new inspirations, learn to be "capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, and without any irritable reaching after fact & reason." page 238. There is no dramatic "born-again" conversion but a slow, incremental, and imperceptible transformation. Above all, the habitual practice of compassion and the golden rule "all day and evry day" demands perpetual kenosis. The constant "stepping outside" of our own preferencesk, convictions, and prejudices is an ekstasis that is not a glamorous rapture but, as confucious's pupil Yan Hui explained, is itself the transcendence we seek. The effect of these practices cannot five us concrete information about God; it is certainly not a scientific "proof'. But something indefinable happens to people who involve themsleves in the disciplines with commitment and talent. This "something" ramains opaque to theose who do not undergo these disciplines, however, just as the Eleusinian "myster" sounded trivial and absurd to somebody who remained obstinately outside the cult hall and refused to undergo the initiation. page 239. From almost the very beginning, men and women have reatedly engaged in strenuous and committed religious actvity. They evolved mythologies, rituals, and ethical disciplines that brought them intimatinos of holiness that seemed in some indescribable way to enhance and fulfill their humanity. they were not reliious simply because their myths and doctrines were scientifically or historically sound, because they sought information about the origins of the cosmos, or merely because they wanted a better life in the hereafter. They were not bludgeoned inot faith by power-hungry priests or kings; indeed, religion oftern hlped peopled to oppose tyranny and oppression of this kind. The point of religion was to live intensely and richly here and now. Truly religious people are ambitious. they want lives overflowing with significance. they have always desired to intigrate with their daily lives the moments of rapture and insight that came to them in dreams, in their contemplation of nature, and in their intercourse wiht one anohther and the animal world. Instead of being crushed and embittered by the sorrow of life, they sought to retain their peace and serenity in the midst of their pain. they yearned for the courage to overcome their terror mortality; instead of being grasping and mean-spiirited, they aspired to live geerously, large heartdly, and justly, and to inhabit every single part of their humanity. Instead of being a mere workaday cup, they wanted, as confucious suggested, to transform themsleves inot a beatufil ritual vessel brimmful of the sactity that they wre learning to see in life. They tried to homor the ineffable mystery they sensed in each human being adn create societies that protected and wolecomed the stranger, the alien, the poor, and the oppressed. LOf course, they ofter failed, somtimes abysmally. But voverall they found that the discipoes of religion helped them to do all this. those who appliesd themselves most assidously shoed that is was possible for mortalmen and women to live on a highter, dvine, or godlike plane and thus wake up to their selves. Buddha explained that he had simpley realed a new potential in human nature. it was possible to live in the hies world of conflict and pain at peace and in hormony with one's fellow creatures. There was no point in merely believing it; you would dicsover its truth only if you practiced his mehtod, systematically cutting oegotism at the root. You would then live at the peak of your capacity, activiate parts of the psyche that normally live dormant, and you wold become a fully enlighted human being.