Our monument in Dunedin to the thousands of young, local men whose lives were spent in the futile and pointless pursuit of wrong headed notions of power.
In 2019 the human race spent $US1917 billion dollars on defence. And a fat lot of good that did to any of us during the pandemic. And a fat lot of good that is doing in combating the biggest threat to us all: rampant climate change.What is guaranteed is that this year that figure will have increased, demonstrating that yet again we spend more and more money on weaponry and feel less and less secure
On a global scale we have developed what would be called, in an individual, an attachment. An attachment is a false belief system. It works like this:
1. we identify within ourselves a sense of dis-ease;
2. we ask ourselves what is causing this dis-ease;
3. we imagine a remedy;
4. we go about acquiring that remedy;
5. when the remedy fails to bring us relief from our dis-ease we fail to see that our analysis of causes in step 2 may have been inaccurate;
6. we imagine instead, that as the remedy demonstrably didn't work, we (obviously!) need to acquire MORE of the remedy.
7. we go back to step 4 and continue the process again and again and again, until, individually we are enslaved to money or shopping or food or possessions or pornography, or globally, we are spending $US1917 billion a year, and rising, on weapons.
Jesus continually challenged his disciples about their faulty step 2-4 analyses. When they imagined that their personal senses of inadequacy might be helped by their possession of large thrones placed next to their lord's, or when they thought that their social standing might be lowered if children or other low status persons came too close to the the centre of things Jesus presented them with a koan. He said that if you want to save your life you must lose it. He said that if you wish to be truly great you must become a servant. He said that you won't get anywhere unless you become like a child.
The common thread in these paradoxical statements is kenosis, which means self emptying. Give up your false ideas about what you need to be secure or valued or powerful. Give up the schemes -which cannot ever possibly work - for making yourself happy. In the person of Jesus we have the best picture we are ever going to get of the immense power which called the universe and everything in it into being. That power is characterised by self giving, self emptying love. That power is ours. It's there for the taking. If only we can give up our misconceptions about what power is and how we may acquire it.
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