Tenrikyo Dynamic Mission - Illness and Trouble "Pondering The Truths of My Civilization" pg.3
Calm your mind and ponder over them.
The worldly common topic of the physical and
supernatural causes of good and evil is then huge. Everybody at all times
and places would like to insure happiness and have the evil of illness and trouble removed and
blocked from their experience of life. For many, if not most, the idea of
having a great doctor or a supernatural champion in the person of a God or
Gods, spirits, angels and saints available to remove obstacles from their
good health, happiness and prosperity is highly attractive. Also, if such is
a part of our world view, it would be nice to have on our side, some
supernatural power that is able to erase our sins, punish our enemies,
reward us with wealth and prosperity and vanquish the source of evil in our
life, at least on a per problem basis. Such desires taken together provide the foundation for the very
strong worldly common truth of a personal God or Gods for each of us. That
is the truth that there exists a God or Gods, saints and spirits that can be
appealed to and who will either miraculously alter causality ("innen") on our
individual behalf in this or in some other world or life or conversely
personally judge us and direct causality to punish us in this life or in
some other world or life.
Generally speaking the truths that determine the way
in which we view our relationship to higher supernatural powers are determined for us by our parents at our
birth. It is rare that we get the opportunity to choose our own totally
unique truths of the world.
In
my own case the truths that captured the imaginations of the civilization
that I was born into were chosen by the Roman Emperor Constantine who needed
a new God that would help him to win a civil war fought in the
distant past. His choice of a God for his subjects was then carried down through the
generations to my parents - it is noteworthy that my parents were raised in
slightly different true traditions that were built upon even older true traditions of
the same source - and then to me. Generations of school children
were taught the wonder of the "Sign of the Cross" as it appeared to
Constantine and God's promise to him of victory in the battle fought at the Milvian
Bridge outside of Rome. The appearance of a Cross in the sky was a marvel
that provided a proven truth of divine favor such that from that time on the
truth of the banner of Hercules, though having endured for centuries, was in
fact no long true and was out of fashion while the truth of the sign of the miracle of
the Cross was in. The fundamental truth that to the victor belongs the spoils did not
however change and over the centuries both the Roman Christian and other
Christian projects have had some
limited success in softening the blow of the truths of unchecked selfishness and greed as
those truths have been played out in both the Christian world and the world
at large.
As we look all over the world and through all ages we find that there have always been true Gods and spirits that have been responsible for good or bad weather, crop success or failure, numerous miraculous cures, military victories or defeats, prosperity and poverty and the outcome of individual life paths in this and future lives. As such those powers represent the best efforts of sincere worldly common self-centered reasoning to craft truths of the world that can be used to make sense of the human self-centered experience as it is acted out in detail in all times and places.
As it happened, the true Christian God that was chosen for me by Constantine the Great is not only a war God that can bring victories but also a jealous and angry God that can both heal and harm. This is encapsulated in the teaching "the Lord gives and the Lord takes away". Throughout the history of my civilization the contrast between the true fundamental God of an older tradition and the newer true God of love and compassion has sown significant contrast and confusion in western civilization. Like Constantine the great, rulers and warlords tended to assume the role of stand-in for the true God of the older tradition and enjoyed ruling by "divine right". While on the other hand people on the bottom of the social structure tended to be comforted and encouraged by a true God of love and compassion in relation to their own sufferings. Even though it has never worked out, history has shown that in the attempt to satisfy perceived shared self-centered worldly common aims and desires human self centered imaginations can still be captured and rather easily rallied to the true war Gods of the older traditional truths.
In the Civilization of my birth the determining feature of the way in which human self-centered imaginations are meant to interact with the supernatural is through one true God instead of the many true Gods and spirits that it is intended to replace. This interaction is intended to be based on the way in which a person performs according to a divine contract and moral and ethical interpretations of Ten Commandments that were carried over from an earlier tradition of truth. For some, again depending upon point of view, the contract is tribal and limited to members of a select culture while for others still another set of truths is placed on top of that historic moral and ethical foundation - and functioning in apparent contradiction - is a God of love, kindness and mercy. Depending upon the degree to which various self-centered imaginations subscribe to what can be called Judeo-Christian Western Civilization both true traditions taken either singly or in combination are available for use in creating a complex set of self-centered worldly common truths of the world. Of course both traditions are based on true foundations of numerous incidents of spectacular true miracles and wonders that to this day remain beyond compare in the human imagination.
As we look all over the world and through all ages we can see that the concepts and truth of both good and evil have often been applied to the same worldly circumstance and that our self centered imaginations, depending upon the worldly common truths that have accumulated in them, don't have any problem with the logical contradictions that can occupy even a single mind. Human self images then have the capacity to manifest and embrace true contradictions. Indeed human self-centered imaginations are capable of holding onto conflicting truths of the world to explain the causes of illness and trouble at pretty much at the same time.
That imaginative power to create truths is a natural advantage that gives us the ability to project and evaluate alternative survival strategies as authentic truths which provide us with the confidence to act in all matters. When internalized as identity however, as self image, that same power can unfortunately make us blind to the kinds of serious contradictions that can accumulate and which may distort our ability to reason clearly and ultimately drain or steal the joy from life.
but their minds are all as if in a haze.