Prior to the birth of web-speak, it would have been impossible for me to express my philosophy of life in such terse and concise language: "Time is our Frenemy."
Consider how our mortality actually charges our life with meaning! I remember first coming across this issue in an issue of the Amazing X-Men back in the late 80s. Reflecting on the Beyonder's childlike and naive curiosity toward humanity, culminating in his inability to appreciate their struggles, one member of the team (I believe it was Shadowcat, Kitty Pride) commented on how mortality gave their actions meaning. At the time, I was still too young to fully appreciate the significance of her comment, but as life wore on, and as my Time in this world flared in its finitude, I turned my attention more directly toward this basic condition of human life, that in order to understand and act on a meaningful life, one had to appreciate the limited resource of Time with which one had to compose it. And because Time is directly responsible for this ever-diminishing resource (which is Time Itself!), Time has a certain two-faced character, it is both friend and enemy: Time giveth, and Time taketh away.
The resultant course of thinking takes us along the way of a theology which is grounded in temporality, contra Platonic formalizing. If Time is absolute, then the means of the good is also the means of the bad, and God becomes visible only through an idea of Time which takes care not to prefer the Eternal to what is temporary. Yet, as Nietzsche so eloquently points out, to fully embrace the good of this world is also to embrace its every ill. As such, one cannot reduce Time to a benevolent or malevolent deity, but remains caught between these double faces.
God, in this case, is also the Devil.
Consider how our mortality actually charges our life with meaning! I remember first coming across this issue in an issue of the Amazing X-Men back in the late 80s. Reflecting on the Beyonder's childlike and naive curiosity toward humanity, culminating in his inability to appreciate their struggles, one member of the team (I believe it was Shadowcat, Kitty Pride) commented on how mortality gave their actions meaning. At the time, I was still too young to fully appreciate the significance of her comment, but as life wore on, and as my Time in this world flared in its finitude, I turned my attention more directly toward this basic condition of human life, that in order to understand and act on a meaningful life, one had to appreciate the limited resource of Time with which one had to compose it. And because Time is directly responsible for this ever-diminishing resource (which is Time Itself!), Time has a certain two-faced character, it is both friend and enemy: Time giveth, and Time taketh away.
The resultant course of thinking takes us along the way of a theology which is grounded in temporality, contra Platonic formalizing. If Time is absolute, then the means of the good is also the means of the bad, and God becomes visible only through an idea of Time which takes care not to prefer the Eternal to what is temporary. Yet, as Nietzsche so eloquently points out, to fully embrace the good of this world is also to embrace its every ill. As such, one cannot reduce Time to a benevolent or malevolent deity, but remains caught between these double faces.
God, in this case, is also the Devil.
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