24 Hours After Hiroshima 2/3
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Augustine's World
By Robert D. Kaplan, Foreign Policy, December 4, 2013
The Pax Romana was a period of relative peace and stability throughout the Greater Mediterranean. But history is often a matter of convulsions. In 200 A.D., the Roman Empire still existed in the shadow of the recently deceased emperor Marcus Aurelius—at a time when, according to Princeton University historian Peter Brown, “a charmed circle of unquestioning conservatives” gave order to the world. Over the next 500 years, however, everything changed.
By 700 A.D., the Roman Empire had disappeared from the map of the West, the Sassanid Persian Empire had vanished from the Near East, Europe had become Christian, and the Near East and most of North Africa had become Muslim. Gothic tribes ravaged Europe, and Asia Minor was on the brink of an epic conflict between Christians who venerated icons and other holy images and those who glorified their destruction. Brown, in the course of a lifetime of scholarly work, gave a name to this pungent epoch in which the world gradually turned upside down: Late Antiquity.
Late Antiquity was dominated by vast civilizational changes, though many were not marked at the time. Writing about the Middle Ages that followed, the now-deceased Oxford University historian R.W. Southern noted, “This silence in the great changes of history is something which meets us everywhere.” Late Antiquity appears full of drama only because we know its beginning and end. But on any given day during that half-millennium, the Mediterranean world might not have seemed dramatic at all, and few could have said in what direction events were moving.
Of course, the historical clock moves a great deal faster today. But can we really discern any better than the denizens of Late Antiquity in what direction events are moving?
The erosion of America’s role as an organizing power, which heretofore relied on public acquiescence and the inability of anyone else to challenge the status quo, has disoriented elites in Washington and New York whose own professional well-being is intimately connected with America’s proactive involvement abroad. And few developments have been more evocative regarding the sentiment of splendid isolation creeping once again through the American citizenry, or more integral to understanding the weakening of the United States, than Syria.
Syria is the Levant, the geographical core of Late Antiquity. And its disintegration, like the crumbling of Libya, Yemen, and Iraq, along with the chronic unrest in Tunisia and Egypt, signifies not the birth of freedom but the collapse of central authority. Rome could not save North Africa, and the United States will not save the Near East—for as the opinion polls demonstrate, Americans have had enough of foreign military entanglements. Anarchy, perhaps followed by new forms of hegemony, will be the result.
If the life of any individual encapsulates Late Antiquity, it is that of St. Augustine, a Berber born in 354 in Thagaste, just over the border from Tunisia inside Algeria. In converting from pagan philosophy to Christianity, which he subjected to the logic of Plato and Cicero, St. Augustine straddled the worlds of classical Rome and the Middle Ages. He died at age 76 in 430, in the midst of the assault of Genseric’s Vandals on Africa Proconsularis, Rome’s first African colony. His great work, The City of God, writes scholar Garry Wills, sought to console Christians who were disoriented by the loss of Rome as the organizing principle of the known world. Rome, St. Augustine wrote, could never satisfy human hearts: Only the City of God could do that. Thus, as Rome weakened, religiosity intensified.
We are at the dawn of a new epoch that may well be as chaotic as that one and that may come upon us more quickly because of the way the electronic and communications revolutions, combined with a population boom, have compressed history.
Consider that, in 1989, at the end of the Cold War, the United States was the unipolar military and economic colossus. Since then, the European Union has expanded throughout Central and Eastern Europe, promising an end to the furies of the continent’s past. Of course, the Middle East, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian subcontinent, was benighted and illiberal through the first years of the 21st century. But at least it was quiescent, if only by its own dismal standards.
Then the world broke apart. An attack on the American homeland by Muslim extremists led to two large U.S. ground invasions in the Middle East, which, in turn, helped set the region in motion. Decadent autocracies later crumbled and conservative monarchies were forced to make unprecedented concessions, even if President George W. Bush’s Freedom Agenda did not turn out as intended. North Africa has since devolved into a borderless world of gangs, militias, tribes, transnational terrorists, anti-terrorist expeditionary forces, and weak regimes gripped in stasis. The adjacent Levant erupted into protracted low-intensity war, with only two strong legal entities left between the easternmost edge of the Mediterranean and the Central Asian plateau: a Jewish state and a Persian one.
While this has happened, the European Union has begun to seriously stagger. A debt crisis, negative growth, and unseemly levels of unemployment have persisted for years as the welfare state—that signature moral accomplishment of postwar Europe’s politicians—becomes in large measure unaffordable. The result is that the European Union itself, so dominant in the first two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, has lost some of its geopolitical force in Central and Eastern Europe, just as Russia has re-emerged as authoritarian and powerful, thanks to hydrocarbon revenues. The map of Europe is changing from one uniform color back to divergent shades, with national identities—once presumed to be in retreat—undergoing a resurgence.
As for China—that demographic and geographical behemoth that has become the engine of world trade—after almost a third of a century of unprecedented growth, its economy is finally slowing down. China’s economy and military are still growing massively in absolute terms, but the future of the Middle Kingdom is less certain than it was just a decade ago. With ethnic minorities and Han Chinese both pining for more freedom amid fewer opportunities, it is possible that China might one day face a variation on the Soviet Union’s fate.
Authority, once so secure and conveniently apportioned across the globe, seems in the process of disintegrating into small bits, with sects and heresies—Salafists, cybercriminals, and so on—entering from the side doors. The United States still reigns supreme economically and militarily, with immense stores of natural resources. Nevertheless, American power is increasingly stymied by these new and unpredictable forces. Sheer might—tanks and jet fighters, nuclear bombs and aircraft carriers—seem increasingly like products of an ever-receding Industrial Age. Yet the postmodern version of Late Antiquity has just begun.
Amid this panorama of global unraveling and new forms of sovereignty (a phenomenon that St. Augustine experienced 1,600 years ago), a curious observation has been made in the interstices: Tribes suddenly matter. Yes, tribes. They were the solution to checking the violence and undermining the extremists in Iraq. They have been the dominating reality in Afghanistan, a world of clans and khels (what the Pashtuns call subclans). And when those reptilian regimes in North Africa and the Near East foundered, it was not democracies that immediately emerged, but tribes. This was particularly the case in Yemen, Libya, and Mali, but it was also true to a surprising degree in more developed societies like Syria, where beneath the carapace of sectarianism lay a grand guignol of tribes and clans, too many of which were infused with the spirit of holy war.
In St. Augustine’s world of imperial collapse, these ancient ties offered some respite from disorder because within the tribe there was hierarchy and organization in abundance. But modernity was supposed to free us from these cloistered shackles of kinship. Indeed, modernity, wrote Ernest Gellner, the late British-Czech social anthropologist, means the rise of centralized authority and the consequent decline of tribalism. But the opposite is presently occurring: The crumbling of central authority throughout much of North Africa and the Near East (as well as the rebirth of nationalism in parts of Europe) indicates that modernity is but a passing phase. Today, tribes with four-wheel-drive vehicles, satellite phones, plastic explosives, and shoulder-fired missiles help close the distance between Late Antiquity and the early 21st century.
St. Augustine’s North Africa, now with its degraded urban conurbations of cracked brick and sheet metal, will see its population increase from 208 million to 316 million by 2050, putting severe pressure on both natural and man-made resources, from water to government. As these millions move to the cities in search of jobs and connections, the political order will assuredly shift. Whatever arises by then may not be the states as they appear on today’s map. Indeed, what we consider modernity itself may already be behind us. The headlines between now and then will be loud and hysterical—as they are today in Syria—even as the fundamental shifts will at first be obscure. For history is not only about convulsions, but about the ground shifting slowly under our feet.
In The City of God, St. Augustine revealed that it is the devout—those in search of grace—who have no reason to fear the future. And as the tribes of old now slowly come undone in the unstoppable meat grinder of developing-world urbanization, religion will be more necessary than ever as a replacement. Late Antiquity is useful to the degree that it makes us humble about what awaits us. But whatever comes next, the charmed circle of Western elites is decidedly not in control.
The Pax Romana was a period of relative peace and stability throughout the Greater Mediterranean. But history is often a matter of convulsions. In 200 A.D., the Roman Empire still existed in the shadow of the recently deceased emperor Marcus Aurelius—at a time when, according to Princeton University historian Peter Brown, “a charmed circle of unquestioning conservatives” gave order to the world. Over the next 500 years, however, everything changed.
By 700 A.D., the Roman Empire had disappeared from the map of the West, the Sassanid Persian Empire had vanished from the Near East, Europe had become Christian, and the Near East and most of North Africa had become Muslim. Gothic tribes ravaged Europe, and Asia Minor was on the brink of an epic conflict between Christians who venerated icons and other holy images and those who glorified their destruction. Brown, in the course of a lifetime of scholarly work, gave a name to this pungent epoch in which the world gradually turned upside down: Late Antiquity.
Late Antiquity was dominated by vast civilizational changes, though many were not marked at the time. Writing about the Middle Ages that followed, the now-deceased Oxford University historian R.W. Southern noted, “This silence in the great changes of history is something which meets us everywhere.” Late Antiquity appears full of drama only because we know its beginning and end. But on any given day during that half-millennium, the Mediterranean world might not have seemed dramatic at all, and few could have said in what direction events were moving.
Of course, the historical clock moves a great deal faster today. But can we really discern any better than the denizens of Late Antiquity in what direction events are moving?
The erosion of America’s role as an organizing power, which heretofore relied on public acquiescence and the inability of anyone else to challenge the status quo, has disoriented elites in Washington and New York whose own professional well-being is intimately connected with America’s proactive involvement abroad. And few developments have been more evocative regarding the sentiment of splendid isolation creeping once again through the American citizenry, or more integral to understanding the weakening of the United States, than Syria.
Syria is the Levant, the geographical core of Late Antiquity. And its disintegration, like the crumbling of Libya, Yemen, and Iraq, along with the chronic unrest in Tunisia and Egypt, signifies not the birth of freedom but the collapse of central authority. Rome could not save North Africa, and the United States will not save the Near East—for as the opinion polls demonstrate, Americans have had enough of foreign military entanglements. Anarchy, perhaps followed by new forms of hegemony, will be the result.
If the life of any individual encapsulates Late Antiquity, it is that of St. Augustine, a Berber born in 354 in Thagaste, just over the border from Tunisia inside Algeria. In converting from pagan philosophy to Christianity, which he subjected to the logic of Plato and Cicero, St. Augustine straddled the worlds of classical Rome and the Middle Ages. He died at age 76 in 430, in the midst of the assault of Genseric’s Vandals on Africa Proconsularis, Rome’s first African colony. His great work, The City of God, writes scholar Garry Wills, sought to console Christians who were disoriented by the loss of Rome as the organizing principle of the known world. Rome, St. Augustine wrote, could never satisfy human hearts: Only the City of God could do that. Thus, as Rome weakened, religiosity intensified.
We are at the dawn of a new epoch that may well be as chaotic as that one and that may come upon us more quickly because of the way the electronic and communications revolutions, combined with a population boom, have compressed history.
Consider that, in 1989, at the end of the Cold War, the United States was the unipolar military and economic colossus. Since then, the European Union has expanded throughout Central and Eastern Europe, promising an end to the furies of the continent’s past. Of course, the Middle East, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian subcontinent, was benighted and illiberal through the first years of the 21st century. But at least it was quiescent, if only by its own dismal standards.
Then the world broke apart. An attack on the American homeland by Muslim extremists led to two large U.S. ground invasions in the Middle East, which, in turn, helped set the region in motion. Decadent autocracies later crumbled and conservative monarchies were forced to make unprecedented concessions, even if President George W. Bush’s Freedom Agenda did not turn out as intended. North Africa has since devolved into a borderless world of gangs, militias, tribes, transnational terrorists, anti-terrorist expeditionary forces, and weak regimes gripped in stasis. The adjacent Levant erupted into protracted low-intensity war, with only two strong legal entities left between the easternmost edge of the Mediterranean and the Central Asian plateau: a Jewish state and a Persian one.
While this has happened, the European Union has begun to seriously stagger. A debt crisis, negative growth, and unseemly levels of unemployment have persisted for years as the welfare state—that signature moral accomplishment of postwar Europe’s politicians—becomes in large measure unaffordable. The result is that the European Union itself, so dominant in the first two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, has lost some of its geopolitical force in Central and Eastern Europe, just as Russia has re-emerged as authoritarian and powerful, thanks to hydrocarbon revenues. The map of Europe is changing from one uniform color back to divergent shades, with national identities—once presumed to be in retreat—undergoing a resurgence.
As for China—that demographic and geographical behemoth that has become the engine of world trade—after almost a third of a century of unprecedented growth, its economy is finally slowing down. China’s economy and military are still growing massively in absolute terms, but the future of the Middle Kingdom is less certain than it was just a decade ago. With ethnic minorities and Han Chinese both pining for more freedom amid fewer opportunities, it is possible that China might one day face a variation on the Soviet Union’s fate.
Authority, once so secure and conveniently apportioned across the globe, seems in the process of disintegrating into small bits, with sects and heresies—Salafists, cybercriminals, and so on—entering from the side doors. The United States still reigns supreme economically and militarily, with immense stores of natural resources. Nevertheless, American power is increasingly stymied by these new and unpredictable forces. Sheer might—tanks and jet fighters, nuclear bombs and aircraft carriers—seem increasingly like products of an ever-receding Industrial Age. Yet the postmodern version of Late Antiquity has just begun.
Amid this panorama of global unraveling and new forms of sovereignty (a phenomenon that St. Augustine experienced 1,600 years ago), a curious observation has been made in the interstices: Tribes suddenly matter. Yes, tribes. They were the solution to checking the violence and undermining the extremists in Iraq. They have been the dominating reality in Afghanistan, a world of clans and khels (what the Pashtuns call subclans). And when those reptilian regimes in North Africa and the Near East foundered, it was not democracies that immediately emerged, but tribes. This was particularly the case in Yemen, Libya, and Mali, but it was also true to a surprising degree in more developed societies like Syria, where beneath the carapace of sectarianism lay a grand guignol of tribes and clans, too many of which were infused with the spirit of holy war.
In St. Augustine’s world of imperial collapse, these ancient ties offered some respite from disorder because within the tribe there was hierarchy and organization in abundance. But modernity was supposed to free us from these cloistered shackles of kinship. Indeed, modernity, wrote Ernest Gellner, the late British-Czech social anthropologist, means the rise of centralized authority and the consequent decline of tribalism. But the opposite is presently occurring: The crumbling of central authority throughout much of North Africa and the Near East (as well as the rebirth of nationalism in parts of Europe) indicates that modernity is but a passing phase. Today, tribes with four-wheel-drive vehicles, satellite phones, plastic explosives, and shoulder-fired missiles help close the distance between Late Antiquity and the early 21st century.
St. Augustine’s North Africa, now with its degraded urban conurbations of cracked brick and sheet metal, will see its population increase from 208 million to 316 million by 2050, putting severe pressure on both natural and man-made resources, from water to government. As these millions move to the cities in search of jobs and connections, the political order will assuredly shift. Whatever arises by then may not be the states as they appear on today’s map. Indeed, what we consider modernity itself may already be behind us. The headlines between now and then will be loud and hysterical—as they are today in Syria—even as the fundamental shifts will at first be obscure. For history is not only about convulsions, but about the ground shifting slowly under our feet.
In The City of God, St. Augustine revealed that it is the devout—those in search of grace—who have no reason to fear the future. And as the tribes of old now slowly come undone in the unstoppable meat grinder of developing-world urbanization, religion will be more necessary than ever as a replacement. Late Antiquity is useful to the degree that it makes us humble about what awaits us. But whatever comes next, the charmed circle of Western elites is decidedly not in control.
Health and Diet
by Peter Amsterdam
I had a complete physical at the beginning of last year, which I remarked on in the “Personal Reflections” article. It had been a few years since I’d had one and the doctor had cautioned me that, being older, it was better to have them yearly. A week after all the poking and prodding, the taking of blood, and all that getting a physical entails, I went back for the results. The doctor, a very nice woman who Maria and I are getting to know better, went over all the test results with me. I was so relieved when she told me I was doing very well. The only thing that needed adjustment was the ratio between my good and bad cholesterol. She said that she would prescribe some medication for it.
While I’m willing to take medication when it’s really necessary, I preferred not to take the medication she was suggesting. So I asked if I could change my cholesterol numbers in some other way. She said I could, if I took action regarding what I was eating. She didn’t express much hope, however, as I’m sure many patients over the years have asked her the same question, but didn’t have the discipline to keep up with the changes, and in the end needed to take the meds. She suggested I come back in three months to see if there was any change, and if not, then I’d need to take the medication. I agreed.
The doctor emphasized that I not only needed to cut back on the food that produced negative results, but also to focus on eating foods that help create positive results. I made some changes in my diet according to her suggestions, even though it meant cutting out some of my favorite foods (like cheese, butter, and sour cream) and eating others that weren’t part of my diet before (such as changing my breakfast to granola with a few nuts and rice milk). At the three-month mark, after another blood test, I went to the doctor to hear the verdict. She studied the test results and then looked at me with some amazement and said, “Congratulations! You did it!” My two cholesterol levels had changed places, with the good now having the higher place and the bad the lower. She complimented me over and over, explaining that hardly any of her patients have been able to avoid the medication. While a simple change of diet may not work for everyone, it did for me. I was really happy about the results, and I made a commitment to keep up my newly acquired eating habits.
To improve my cholesterol count, I needed to not only avoid what was negative but also advance in embracing the positive. I gave some thought to how this was an interesting parallel to what we all know is true for maintaining a healthy relationship with the Lord. To keep that relationship strong requires a certain amount of avoidance of negative things, and equally calls for a focus on positive actions such as prayer, praise, and regularly reading God’s Word.
I had a complete physical at the beginning of last year, which I remarked on in the “Personal Reflections” article. It had been a few years since I’d had one and the doctor had cautioned me that, being older, it was better to have them yearly. A week after all the poking and prodding, the taking of blood, and all that getting a physical entails, I went back for the results. The doctor, a very nice woman who Maria and I are getting to know better, went over all the test results with me. I was so relieved when she told me I was doing very well. The only thing that needed adjustment was the ratio between my good and bad cholesterol. She said that she would prescribe some medication for it.
While I’m willing to take medication when it’s really necessary, I preferred not to take the medication she was suggesting. So I asked if I could change my cholesterol numbers in some other way. She said I could, if I took action regarding what I was eating. She didn’t express much hope, however, as I’m sure many patients over the years have asked her the same question, but didn’t have the discipline to keep up with the changes, and in the end needed to take the meds. She suggested I come back in three months to see if there was any change, and if not, then I’d need to take the medication. I agreed.
The doctor emphasized that I not only needed to cut back on the food that produced negative results, but also to focus on eating foods that help create positive results. I made some changes in my diet according to her suggestions, even though it meant cutting out some of my favorite foods (like cheese, butter, and sour cream) and eating others that weren’t part of my diet before (such as changing my breakfast to granola with a few nuts and rice milk). At the three-month mark, after another blood test, I went to the doctor to hear the verdict. She studied the test results and then looked at me with some amazement and said, “Congratulations! You did it!” My two cholesterol levels had changed places, with the good now having the higher place and the bad the lower. She complimented me over and over, explaining that hardly any of her patients have been able to avoid the medication. While a simple change of diet may not work for everyone, it did for me. I was really happy about the results, and I made a commitment to keep up my newly acquired eating habits.
To improve my cholesterol count, I needed to not only avoid what was negative but also advance in embracing the positive. I gave some thought to how this was an interesting parallel to what we all know is true for maintaining a healthy relationship with the Lord. To keep that relationship strong requires a certain amount of avoidance of negative things, and equally calls for a focus on positive actions such as prayer, praise, and regularly reading God’s Word.
Ano Novo, Novos Compromissos
by Peter Amsterdam
O inÃcio de um novo ano é um tempo tão interessante —eu vejo isso como o encontro entre o passado e o futuro. É quando, muitas vezes, pensamos em nossas experiências do ano que está acabando e vislumbrando o que o ano novo vai nos trazer. Pode ser encorajador ver os desafios superados, as vitórias conquistadas, os progressos conseguidos, os compromissos cumpridos e as bênçãos que tivemos ao longo do ano. É também um bom momento para avaliar áreas em que esperávamos avançar, mas não atingimos completamente nossas aspirações. Talvez houve tempos difÃceis e dificuldades, ou até falhas grosseiras, que vivenciamos e com as quais aprendemos.
Louvor e relaxamento
Antes de a porta no ano passado se fechar, parei para olhar para o que o ano tinha trazido para minha vida. Como expliquei em meados do ano passado, no artigo “Reflexões Pessoais sobre o Primeiro Semestre de 2013“, comecei a manter um diário de louvor — um registro das orações respondidas e das vezes em que o Senhor trouxe coisas boas e bênçãos no meu caminho. Mantive o diário nos últimos nove meses e estou tão feliz que o fiz, pois ler no fim do ano o que nele escrevi me fez lembrar de alguns momentos muito especiais que vivenciei, assim como as inúmeras pequenas “coincidências” que tornaram minha vida mais agradável e produtiva. Isso me fez louvar o Senhor mais uma vez pelas maravilhosas respostas à oração, pelas manifestações de Seu amor por mim, por Maria, Suas bênçãos sobre nós e sobre os outros durante todo o ano passado.
Esses registros me lembraram de acontecimentos que, se não os tivesse anotado, certamente os teria esquecido. O compromisso de manter o diário foi um investimento de tempo e esforço que trouxe importantes retornos, como a felicidade de lembrar quanto e quantas vezes o Senhor se envolveu tão obviamente na minha vida no ano passado, principalmente em pequenas coisas, sÃmbolos do Seu amor que me trouxeram alegria e fizeram a diferença no tipo de ano que tive. Manter o esses registros foi valioso.
Perto do meio do ano passado, o Senhor me lembrou da importância de “cheirar as rosas”, isto é, intencionalmente fazer coisas que combatem o estresse. Ensinou-me mais uma vez como é importante pôr de lado as preocupações, inquietações e as urgências do trabalho, para desfrutar o lugar em que vivo —relaxar de vez em quando sem me sentir culpado por isso. Por isso, em que algumas das viagens que fiz no segundo semestre de 2013, fiz questão de passar um dia ou dois, depois das reuniões das quais participei, para desfrutar o fato de eu estar em um lugar diferente, sorver um pouco da atmosfera local, suas imagens, sons e sabores. Aproveitar a oportunidade de passar um dia ou dois visitando lugares com velhos amigos ou fazendo amizades me proporcionou experiências refrescantes e enriquecedoras que alimentaram-me a alma.
Saúde e dieta
Fiz um exame fÃsico completo no inÃcio do ano passado, como comentei no artigo “Reflexões pessoais“. Passaram-se alguns anos desde o último quando o médico me advertira que, por causa da minha idade, era melhor fazer esses exames anualmente. Depois de uma semana de todos me mandando ir ao médico, coleta de sangue para exame e a tudo que envolve um exame completo, fui buscar os resultados. A médica, uma mulher muito bonita que Maria e eu estamos conhecendo melhor, analisou todos os resultados do teste comigo. Fiquei muito aliviado quando ela me disse que eu estava indo muito bem, que a única coisa que eu precisava era um ajuste na relação entre o colesterol bom e o ruim, e que prescreveria uma medicação para isso.
Não me importo de tomar remédios quando é mesmo necessário, mas preferia não tomar a medicação que ela estava sugerindo. Perguntei se eu poderia mudar minhas taxas de colesterol de alguma outra forma. Ela disse que sim, se mudasse meus hábitos alimentares, mas não demonstrou muita esperança, pois, tenho certeza, ao longo dos anos, muitos pacientes lhe fizeram a mesma pergunta, mas não tiveram a disciplina para efetivar as mudanças e, no final, tiveram de tomar os remédios. Ela sugeriu que eu voltasse em três meses para ver se houve progresso ou se eu precisaria tomar a medicação. Concordei.
A médica enfatizou que eu precisava não apenas reduzir o consumo de alimentos que produzem resultados negativos, mas também passar a comer mais os alimentos que ajudam a criar resultados positivos. Fiz algumas alterações na minha dieta de acordo com suas sugestões, apesar de isso significar tirar do meu cardápio algumas das minhas comidas favoritas (como queijo, manteiga e creme de leite), e incluir outras, que até então não faziam parte da minha dieta (como passar a comer granola com algumas nozes e leite de arroz, no café da manhã). À marca de três meses, depois outro exame de sangue, fui à médica para ouvir o veredicto. Analisou os resultados, olhou para mim e, um tanto surpresa, anunciou: “Parabéns! Você conseguiu!” Meus dois nÃveis de colesterol tinham mudado, o bom agora estava mais alto e o mal, mais baixo. Ela me elogiou várias vezes, explicando que quase nenhum de seus pacientes conseguira evitar a medicação. Uma simples mudança de dieta pode não funcionar para todos, mas funcionou para mim. Fiquei muito feliz com os resultados e fiz o compromisso de manter meus novos hábitos alimentares.
Para melhorar minhas taxas de colesterol, não bastou evitar o negativo, mas tive de adotar o positivo. Parei para pensar no interessante paralelo com o que precisamos fazer para manter um relacionamento saudável com o Senhor. Um relacionamento forte requer que se evitem coisas negativas e, ao mesmo tempo, exige que nos dediquemos às positivas, tais como oração, louvor e a leitura regular da Palavra de Deus.
Compromissos espirituais
Em consonância com o conceito de buscar ações espirituais positivas, em breve será publicada no Espaço dos Diretores uma nova série de artigos sobre Disciplina Espiritual. Oro que essas publicações os ajudem em sua caminhada com o Senhor e acredito que é isso o que acontecerá, se você se comprometerem a algumas das práticas sugeridas nesses artigos.
O ano-novo é, afinal, um momento para fazermos resoluções, ou compromissos para o próximo ano. Comprometer-se em experimentar alguns desses hábitos espirituais, manter um diário de louvor e ajustar minha dieta por causa da minha saúde tem me ajudado a ter mais convicção para fazer e manter compromissos que trarão progressos e melhorias à minha vida.
Recentemente, estive pensando e orando sobre compromissos quero assumir para o novo ano. Cheguei à conclusão de que devem ser mais especÃficos no que diz respeito sobre minha relação com o Senhor, minha fé, meu discipulado e a incumbência de levá-lO aos outros.
Parece que com o corre-corre da vida, a necessidade de fazer tudo que tem de ser feito, é muito fácil deixar nosso relacionamento com o Senhor relegado a uma posição de menor importância, a menos que nos comprometamos a manter Deus em primeiro lugar. Tudo que é importante na vida requer tempo e recursos, e quando nossas vidas se tornam tão ocupadas, o tempo e recursos que dedicamos à nossa fé, ao Senhor e à missão podem facilmente diminuir. Quando vemos, estamos orando muito pouco e lendo Sua palavra ainda menos. Devido à escassez de tempo para fazer todas as coisas que precisam ser feitas, é fácil colocar o relacionamento com Deus em um nÃvel de menor importância.
Também é fácil nos desculparmos por negligenciar a missão. “A vida é ocupada demais” “Estou me concentrando nos meus estudos, no meu trabalho, nos meus filhos, na minha vida.” Esta manhã, eu estava lendo o Evangelho segundo Lucas e me chamou a atenção o versÃculo Lucas 10:2: “Grande é, em verdade, a seara, mas os obreiros são poucos. Rogai, pois, ao Senhor da seara que envie obreiros para a sua seara.”
Em suma, o versÃculo nos fala que existem muitas pessoas que precisam de salvação e que a receberiam, mas não há suficientes trabalhadores para falar com todas. Somos instruÃdos a pedir a Deus que envie mais trabalhadores. Não só devemos orar por isso, mas devemos traduzir essas orações em ações, comprometendo-nos a participar em qualquer medida possÃvel para fazer a diferença na vida de quem o Senhor trouxer em nosso caminho. Mas é claro, para isso, é necessário que assumamos um compromisso.
Abriu-se a porta do ano novo. Enquanto você pensa nas resoluções ou compromissos que vai fazer para o ano, certamente vai considerar e oração a respeito dos compromissos que deve fazer no que diz respeito ao seu relacionamento com Jesus, sua participação na missão, sua vida de oração, seu serviço e as doações financeiras que deve fazer. Estes provavelmente não serão os únicos compromissos que você fará, mas é possÃvel que sejam os mais importantes. Sustentar nossas famÃlias, criar e educar filhos e cuidar de nossas necessidades diárias são responsabilidades vitais e fazem parte do que constrói um futuro e um mundo melhor. Ainda somos lembrados do que Jesus disse a seus seguidores: “Buscai primeiro o seu reino e a sua justiça, e todas estas coisas vos serão acrescentadas.”[1]
Comprometermo-nos com nosso relacionamento com Deus, com a missão e com viver nossos valores centrais fundamentados em Seus ensinamentos pode e vai fazer a diferença no nosso dia-a-dia nesta vida e na outra também. Os resultados desses compromissos vão nos tornar mais semelhantes a Cristo em nossas interações com os outros e uma bênção maior para as nossas famÃlias, amigos e entes queridos — indivÃduos melhores, seres humanos mais saudáveis espiritualmente. E esse é um compromisso que vale a pena!
Maria e eu oramos para que você tenha um novo ano abençoado e próspero
[1] Mateus 6:33.
Monday, January 13, 2014
Albert Einstein on Jesus of Nazareth
Albert Einstein’s mental prowess made him an icon for the disciplines of Science. As a Jew, Einstein had distinct views on Jesus, the New Testament, and the Church. Below is a clip of an interview from the Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1929: “
To what extent are you influenced by Christianity?
"As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene."
Have you read Emil Ludwig’s book on Jesus?
"Emil Ludwig’s Jesus is shallow. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot [a witty remark]."
You accept the historical existence of Jesus?
"Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life...No man can deny the fact that Jesus existed and that his sayings are beautiful.”
In a letter to the Episcopal Bishop Edward R. Wells in 1945, Einstein wrote concerning the behavior of the Christian Church during the Holocaust.
“Being a lover of freedom… I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks. Only the church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth. I never had any special interest in the church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly”~BaltimoreEvening Sun, April 13, 1979.
This is one Jew’s view of Jesus. I am aware there are many views of Jesus in the Jewish world. Some despise Him, some admire Him from a far, some secretly believe, and some radically follow Him.
It seems that Einstein was “almost persuaded” to believe in Jesus as King Agrippa in the book of Acts. Maybe he was a secret believer of sorts, accepting the message of the New Testament without accepting formal Christian Churchianity.
