The World

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:1

Something which has always bothered me about my religion (I am Protestant) is that we are expected, no, required, to disdain, if not actually hate, the world in which we live. It is all evil, there is very little good within our everyday existence.

Really?

Go back up and read that first line again.

Got it?

I stumbled upon the following at, of all places, Wikipedia -

Comparing "Catholic imagination" to "Protestant imagination"

This terminology was popularized by the Roman Catholic priest Andrew Greeley who wrote:

The central symbol (of religion) is God. One's "picture" of God is in fact a metaphorical narrative of God's relationship with the world and the self as part of the world. ...The Catholic "classics" assume a God who is present in the world, disclosing Himself in and through creation. The world and all its events, objects, and people tend to be somewhat like God. The Protestant classics, on the other hand, assume a God who is radically absent from the world, and who discloses (Himself) only on rare occasions (especially in Jesus Christ and Him crucified). The world and all its events, objects, and people tend to be radically different from God.

Runar Eldebo, a Swedish seminary instructor and correspondent for Pietisten (an online ecumenical newsletter), provided a Lutheran slant on Greeley's distinction between Catholic imagination and Protestant imagination. Invoking Karl Barth, Eldebo wrote:

Protestant imagination is dialectic and makes people pilgrims. It is deep in conflict and antagonistic to the ingredients of a common, human life. Catholic imagination is analogical. It is founded in creation itself and views creation as God in disguise. According to Catholic imagination, God lurks everywhere. According to Protestant imagination, Karl Barth for example, God is hidden everywhere but found only in the revelation of Jesus Christ. Therefore, according to Greeley, Protestants are never at home on earth, they are pilgrims on their way. Catholics, meanwhile, like to dwell on earth. They enjoy life and are not in a hurry to get to heaven because God lurks everywhere, especially where you do not expect her to be.

American Catholic writer Flannery O'Connor illustrated the sacramental understanding of the world in her work "Novelist and Believer":

St. Augustine wrote that the things of the world pour forth from God in a double way: intellectually into the minds of the angels and physically into the world of things. To the person who believes this – as the western world did up until a few centuries ago – this physical, sensible world is good because it proceeds from a divine source ... When [Joseph] Conrad said that his aim as an artist was to render the highest possible justice to the visible universe, he was speaking with the novelist's surest instinct. The artist penetrates the concrete world in order to find at its depths the image of its source, the image of ultimate reality.

God created the Earth and everything in it. Some would argue that there is no evil in Nature, it is only Man who is capable of evil. If we are separate from the rest of Nature, and Genesis 1:26 - 29 gives me the feeling that we were indeed created to be above Nature...

26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

27    So God created mankind in his own image,
        in the image of God he created them;
        male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.

...then this "hate the world" thing might be wrong. There are days when it feels wrong.

So I'm kinda thinking that I have a bit of that "Catholic imagination" thing going on. Perhaps it's genetic, as near as I can tell a large chunk of my ancestors were Catholic. My paternal great-grandfather (French-Canadian roots) converted from Catholicism in order to marry my grandmother. One of his sons (my Uncle Charlie) converted to Catholicism to marry my aunt.

The WSO became Catholic at her husband's wish, he wanted his children raised in the Catholic faith, as he and his brother were. When my opinion was solicited I indicated that if God had no problem with it, why should I? At least the grandkids would be attending church, that's not a bad thing, trust me.

Not all of the world is as beautiful, nor as delightful, as our own little corners may be. There are places where we humans have turned it into an open cesspool, or worse. Poverty drives a lot of that, stupidity and greed a lot more. There are people who want what others have, and that right there is evil, especially if they act upon that impulse.

The world is what we make it. Yes, there is great evil in the world, most of it is due to greed, nothing more, a bit more due to government stupidity. (A good example of the latter is here, that story stunned me it did. I'll never drive that section of highway again without thinking of that man. It's not far from where I grew up.)

Do what you can to make the world a better place, a good place to start is being nice to those around you. Kindness and courtesy go a long way.

In truth, love is all you need.