Thursday,
March 8, 2012
What to read for
today.
Chapter 13:The Moral Theology of the Devil
Questions for your
personal reflection.
Did you think that Merton was talking about you in this
chapter or about someone else?
Sharing with others:
What caught your attention or provoked your thinking today?
When I re-read this chapter I saw a profound
warning for us as individuals and as a society. Or maybe the chapter acts as a mirror reflecting our present
condition: It was too easy to find examples of what Merton calls the devil’s
theology in our city, country and wider world: a theology of “punishment,
hatred and revenge”; the use of God as a means to an end; “actively punishing
someone who is different from ourselves”, and the “exaggeration of distinctions
[into] irreducible divisions”.
I found myself wondering what difference one individual can make, and
feeling very powerless.
Posted by Genevieve
Posted by Second Thoughts
ReplyDeleteOn a first read I would describe this chapter as opaque. A bit of a rant like William said about other chapters. Plus it was very easy to see how Merton was talking about other people, e.g. I wrote the name of a certain Canadian politician in the margin.
On my second read, I got beyond the rant and all the devil talk and thought he was making a good point about how people use prayer like some kind of magic. Pray for a nice sunny day. Pray for peace. Pray for social justice or whatever. We do that every Sunday. Merton had a good turn of phrase for this kind of praying -- supereffective wishing.
What I'm left wondering about is what is Merton's opinion of intercessory prayer then?
I was troubled by the fact that even after a couple of readings -th e devil was coming across like a being- a person- I had real difficulty with that and it may have distorted my view of the type of evil Merton was talking about
ReplyDeletepost by william
Given what we've seen of Merton, I don't think he considered the devil to really be a person.I think he was using it as a figure of speech. Wasn't he saying that we get all caught up in taboos and absolute rules and even prayers that we think make a difference when really we are losing sight of what should be at the centre of our lives?
ReplyDeleteGenevieve