Had I realized we were discussion the Kempis piece as an item of religio-historical interest, my reaction would have been different. I would have felt it to be quite captivating, even up to and including the final paragraph, since I would see it solely as offering a kindly comfort to the necessarily lost. I don't eschew words of comfort, espistemologically dubious or not, if that is all that can be offer to assuage suffering.
But the Kempis meditation was posted to me not in the 14th century; that happened on February 10, 2001, and I perhaps mistakenly took the implication that the words of this prayer, including the last paragraph, were being offered as counsel for today.
Today the agonies of overpopulation are an example of suffering that we are not so, to borrow your words, "medically helpless" to alleviate as were the compassionate when witnessing the agonies of the Black Plague.
I wonder what Thomas a Kempis's reaction would be today about Bush's first act in office, given his compassion for the poor and suffering (and the tolerant attitude toward abortion before "quickening" that prevailed in the church at the time he lived.)
Message 15333405
WWKD?
The answer to that question tells me whether the man was a religious humanitarian hampered by the realities of his time, or simply an intellectual metaphysician. I have little patience for the latter category. It's too late. There are too many starving orphans, too many seven year old prostitutes, too many Christians coming on all Darwinian about dying Africans. |
