Lettre à un ami Lockwoodien

karlguilbeau — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:20:05 +0000

Bien cher Nicolas,

Samedi, je me suis retrouvé à la librairie et quelle ne fut pas ma surprise de voir présenter sur l’étalage un nouveau livre de Pierre-André Taguieff, ce colosse graphomane. Tu le sais, ce professeur noie son lectorat sous la tonne de papiers qu’il produit, laissant devant lui deux cent ans d’exégèse à venir. C’est certainement pour cette raison qu’on parle assez peu de l’impétrant, lui qui avait des visions sur l’antiracisme avant tout le monde, je n’ai moi-même pas encore terminé son livre sur la bioéthique que j’ai mis dans ma besace, Julien Freund au cœur du politique, et que je ne pourrais lire certainement pas avant les quelques livres entamées et que ma désespérante lenteur de lecture entasse sur la table. J’ai parcouru le docteur Jivago, j’ai entrepris Méphisto de Klaus Mann dans la foulée d’une représentation théâtrale et je m’entête pourtant à lancer des commandes sur les librairies en-ligne. J’ai pensé au livre qui a suscité l’émoi de pétitionnaires, Aristote au Mont-St-Michel. Je n’ai pas assez de ma carrière de lecteur. Si je dois te recommander quelques raccourcis, le docteur Jivago se lit bien, on sent de-ci de-là des pointes poétiques, le paysage est étendu, la vie des héros parfois triste et déplaisante comme lorsque je lisais d’un œil les histoires de faillite chez Balzac, hanté que j’étais par le désastre, la chute soudaine, le déclin, Méphisto ne brille pas par son style, mais par la force du témoignage, je ne suis pas sûr que tu y verrais un intérêt et les grands cimetières sous la lune, de Bernanos, eux, ne se déparent pas d’une certaine confusion, mais j'ai toujours un faible pour son lyrisme tambourinant. Il n’est pas une nuit, cher ami, où je ne pense abandonner mon travail pour être si sûrement un homme de grande lecture.

bien à toi,

votre dévoué

La Bioéthique ou le juste milieu. Une quête de sens à l'âge du nihilisme technicien, Paris, Fayard, « Essais », 2007

Computer Game Analogy

jon — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 07:33:25 +0000

Everyone here heard of the computer game Lemmings? The one where you, as a third party, had to help these bunch of incredibly stupid yet adorable green-haired, pale-skinned beings escape from one scene into another by using a myriad of abilities such as stopping movement, digging holes or paths, etc? I remember playing that game in my youth (which honestly wasn’t so long ago) and i remember being extremely exasperated at the immense stupidity of how they would walk directly into a hole in the ground (thus killing themselves, and me having to repeat the level) if i didn’t place someone to stop their movement in time.

Having grown older (but not by much, seeing as i still play the game), i realize it’s very much like the world we live in, and sad to say, the Church.

This was highlighted to me when a friend complained about the bidding scheme in NUS, that we actually had to bid for modules! Apparently she wanted all her modules mapped out for her. Though i didn’t say anything to her on the spot, i had a thought, that sometimes the Church behaves like that too - we just get fed with whatever our pastors speak. I thought it would be appropriate to cover this as we begin EpiOnline, that people will be reading. We do not profess to give the answers to everything, but i believe our purpose is to make our readers think.

It can be dangerous - too often we have heard stories (though none will be named here) about pastors who preach things that are explicitly deviant from the Bible. For the sake of legal concerns i will not mention any, but the core of the matter is not them, it is this:

Everything that we do must be supported by the Bible.

This is the danger that we’ve come up with - in the world today where scholarships lead you to a career path and plan your future out for you and is seen to be the best option available because you don’t have to think about anything, people who think are rare. Nobody weighs the words of someone in authority anymore, and the mentality is accentuated by those who went through army - don’t think, just listen to orders. It never occurs to them that their superiors could be wrong, and that the higher up in the food chain they are, the more thinking must be done because the cost is higher.

Everything, everything, must be based on proper authority, and the only unfailing one is God. What better way to base our decisions than to turn to the Bible?

Think, people, think. You don’t want to walk right into that hole that leads to hell, just because those above you in hierarchy didn’t place another lemming in front of the hole to stop you. It’s rather apt that Ravi Zacharias names his Podcast “Let My People Think”. Go google for him and check them out.

I leave you with this quote:

Beware the day when the Great God places a thinker upon this earth -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Now, why do you think he said that?

epistole « WordPress.com Tag Feed

Lettre à un ami Lockwoodien

Computer Game Analogy