God forbade...must reading!

William James




  The concepts of God’s moral attributes do make a difference in a man’s life and possess positive experienceable operations for the believer. They stand on different footing. They determine fear and hope and expectation and are foundations for the saintly life. The concept of God’s holiness, that being holy; god can will nothing but the good. Likewise, his omnipotence signifies he can secure the triumph of the good.



   Being omniscient, he can see us in the dark. Being just, he can punish us for what he sees. Being loving, he can pardon, too. Being unalterable, we can count on him securely. These qualities enter into connection with our life. Its highly important that we should be informed concerning them.



    If we look at a man’s life as it exists, on the life of men that lies in them apart from their learning and science, and that they inwardly and privately follow, we have to confess the part rationalism can give an account is relatively superficial. It’s the part that, undoubtedly, has the prestige, the talkativeness, it can challenge you for proofs, chop logic and put you down with words. But it will fail to convince or convert you all the same, if your dumb intuitions are opposed to its conclusions.



    A so-called truth is tested by its success in getting the thinker into fruitful relationships with various parts of reality. Verification, which is the truth of an idea, consists in the agreeable leading of the thinker into reality. True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot.



   Philosophy, to produce good results, must be approached with freshness of outlook; while the philosophical achievements of the past should not be ignored, neither should they lead one to give up on all attempts at original thinking in one’s own day. Instead of being overawed by existing official answers or technical apparatus, remember, your experiences are the greatest of source books. Each generation should attack things as if there were no official answer preoccupying the field. But, unfortunately, as James observed, “We work with one eye on the problem and the other on the consequences to our enemy or to our lawgiver. They both result in mediocrity.”



   The proposed solution, which is most familiar, most promising, if it can be won, and most difficult to be won, is the solution which consists in asserting and in showing, if possible, in life, that what is most vital to religion is not practice apart from faith, nor faith apart from practice, but a complete spiritual reaction of the entire man- a reaction which, if possible, shall unite a right belief in the unseen world of faith with the inner perfection and blessedness that ought to result from the indwelling of the truth in the soul. And with that power to do good works and to conform to the external religious requirements which is to be expected from one whose soul is at peace and lives in the light.


    William James has observed people’s identities include, not only things that are unambiguously part of them; mental states and body health, but correlated aspects of life like family, friends, ancestors, possessions, jobs, accomplishments, reputations and bank accounts.