Between Reason And Revelation

Author : Leslie Terebessy
Publisher : Independently Published
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 162 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (992 download)

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Download or read book Between Reason and Revelation written by Leslie Terebessy and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2021-10-18 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I grew up under communism, where equality was valued above freedom. I was educated in the West, where freedom trumps equality. I found faith in Malaysia. With the emergence of rationalism, faith took refuge in the domain of privacy. Europe became "scientific." Among the biggest issues with the Reformation is the perception that we attain redemption by faith without praiseworthy acts. Another problem was the legalization of usury. Under the impact of relativism, the West became disoriented. We could no longer be "judgmental," and perceive aberrant practices, for example usury, as aberration. We became permissive, liberal, and easygoing. There is truth in this. However, there is a deeper reason for the demoralization of the West. A deeper reason for the dispiritedness of humanity is alienation from God. This estrangement is fostered excessive reliance on reason, at the expense of alternative ways of perception, particularly "the heart." In different words, the problem is alienation from faith is the problem, not the alienation from the factors of production. At the root of the paralysis of the West is a deficit of knowledge of good and evil. It was an illusion to think that morality is sustainable without faith. By comparison, Asia remains "traditional" in a few ways. Here, rich spirituality is encountered. We find a diversity of traditional ways of life in Asia. Asia has values that present alternatives to Western values. Nietzsche was the enfant terrible of Western philosophy. His writing was a tantrum against all things traditional. But his work is overrated. A few of his remarks, for example about fasting, reveal a remarkable superficiality of his "thought." Instead of rejecting faith, however, what is required is an examination of the understanding of faith. Hegel was wiser than Nietzsche. Hegel did not "throw out the baby with the bathwater." He attempted to retrieve the teaching of Jesus from a plethora of "unwarranted accretions," to free it of its "positive" elements. The marginalisation of revelation had important ramifications. Man became demoralized. The "burnout" of the West is palpable. Regeneration requires a retrieval of revelation. Revelation did not receive a fair trial from the Enlightenment. The disorientation inflicted by Nietzsche's thought on America has been highlighted by Allan Bloom, in his Closing of the American Mind. Revelation receded as an alternative worldview. Thus, it is necessary to resist European "thought" and its corroding effects. For while it presented itself as "emancipation," it brought a "closing of the mind." The heart of Europe became closed to faith. Disillusioned persons keep "dropping out" from the West. They work as expats, or they run businesses in diverse parts of the "emerging world." A few become "digital nomads." The present writer had a comparable experience. The nagging feeling that the knowledge I possessed was incomplete was there all along. I just could not ascertain what the problem was. I drifted from the University of Toronto, despite the rigor of its thinkers. After graduating, I worked in a few establishments in Toronto, at the matriculation level. I taught economics, geography, and Canadian as well as European history. After that, I went to Malaysia. I thought that after Malaysia, I would buy a fishing boat and sail it to America, preferably with a few trusted mates. Well, I never got to traverse the Pacific in a fishing boat. However, I did manage to traverse a different expanse, perhaps bigger than the Pacific. This is the distance between different faiths in the world and a re-discovery - in Islam - of the heritage that was veiled by the waves of "modernity," the different "isms," in particular liberalism, capitalism, egalitarianism and fascism. These worldviews invariably present themselves as "universal." However, an examination reveals that they are in fact limited and problematic.