However, this phrase is currently being used in some Christian circles in a way that's disturbing to me. I'm essentially hearing "If you believe and you get others to believe - you're done." You don't have to care about anything else, like motivating your children to live out their passions or helping to solve the earth's everyday problems.
Despite the fact that the Meclazine I'm taking for vertigo sometimes makes me want to behave like the Ya Ya Sisterhood, whose motto was "Smoke, Drink and Never Think," I'm still of the mind that,
If I fully believe and accept the life, teachings, death and resurrection of Christ - Everything else matters!
And this week I stumbled on the writing of the great French idealist philosopher and Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who rejected our pious tendency to deny that our achievements are spiritual. He says this:
...to be intelligently, bravely, imaginatively at work and play in the world, fully exerting our powers, is to give glory to the Creator God and to realize ourselves. Science, technology, poetry, architecture, literature, philosophy, engineering, diplomacy, sports, government, genteel conversation, wit - all of the flowers of civilization - are praiseworthy, humanizing and sacred.
In other words, everything else matters.
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