I have been listening to Kansas' THE WALL, and it reminds me so much of something one of my old religion professors taught me:
Often times religious people are characatured as being irrational. But the truth is that the best among the religious are highly rational. When you think of Thomas Aquinas or Maimonides, one can't help but be struck by the power of their intellects and reasoning. These were not the sort to be anti-intellecual and irrational--rather they took reason as far as it could go. They danced with reason. They serenaded it. They walked with reason as far as it would go, until they hit the wall past which reason could no longer go.
At the wall, a choice must be made. Will we stay in the world of reason alone? Many have done so. But as the existentialists such as Sarte or Camus have painted it, it is a world devoid of meaning, empty and vain. But not everyone stops at the wall. There are those willing to step through in faith, to be willing to venture out, as Kierkegaard puts it "upon the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms of water."
And though it's always been with me, I must tear down the wall and let it be. All I am, and all that I was ever meant be, in harmony, shining through, and smiling back at all who wait to cross, "There is no loss!"
[video=youtube;SBMsulQMqm8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBMsulQMqm8[/video]
Often times religious people are characatured as being irrational. But the truth is that the best among the religious are highly rational. When you think of Thomas Aquinas or Maimonides, one can't help but be struck by the power of their intellects and reasoning. These were not the sort to be anti-intellecual and irrational--rather they took reason as far as it could go. They danced with reason. They serenaded it. They walked with reason as far as it would go, until they hit the wall past which reason could no longer go.
At the wall, a choice must be made. Will we stay in the world of reason alone? Many have done so. But as the existentialists such as Sarte or Camus have painted it, it is a world devoid of meaning, empty and vain. But not everyone stops at the wall. There are those willing to step through in faith, to be willing to venture out, as Kierkegaard puts it "upon the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms of water."
And though it's always been with me, I must tear down the wall and let it be. All I am, and all that I was ever meant be, in harmony, shining through, and smiling back at all who wait to cross, "There is no loss!"
[video=youtube;SBMsulQMqm8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBMsulQMqm8[/video]