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patrice

(47,992 posts)
2. That's the way it used to be taught in the late '60s, because we were dealing with
Tue Nov 6, 2012, 03:16 PM
Nov 2012

our peers and others who had gone to the Vietnam War and there was also the example of Civil Disobedience being set by MLK et al in their struggle for Civil Rights.

Thanks very much for the cite. I thought there was something in Aquinas about this. I will go read the original source.

This is, after all, the example we see in the life of Christ and we hear how taking that PERSONAL gamble for the truth/what-is-right is of the essence to Christianity in Jesus' own words on the cross, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani". Whether we recognize it or not, truth is its OWN reward, not something we purchase complete with the guaranteed quid pro quos, or "salvation", or rewards of any kind. We're supposed to stake every second of our lives on our own responsibility to get it right, our own best autonomous effort, for nothing other than that and without actually knowing whether we are right or not. All we have is our best effort and hope and even when that doesn't work out, there are no alternatives.

There's a beautiful figure for this situation in the movie The Mission, before Robert de Niro enters the story there is a vignette of a jungle missionary priest whom the natives have injured and tied to a cross and they set him afloat in a huge river. The last we see of the priest is a long shot with that wooden cross going over the vast edge of enormous waterfalls that fill the entire screen. Amid an absolutely overwhelming roar, the cross, with the unconscious priest still tied to it, plunges straight down into huge billowing clouds of misting waters and disappears, then the story begins.

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