Читать книгу Meditation & Morality: Praying for a Better Way - Art Toalston - Страница 5

3. Multitude of meditations

Opportunities for meditation abound, no matter how severe a person’s affliction with immorality.

A person’s meditative experience may be fleeting, such as a few thoughts about a troublesome facet of his or her life, or it may be intense, spanning ten to fifteen minutes of inner assessment or turmoil to an hour or several hours, perhaps day after day.

A person who succumbs to pornography, for example, may meditate on past encounters with nameless faces, the yearning for more encounters, and, yet, an abiding sorrow that the pornography industry fuels the horrors of sex trafficking, of women and children enslaved, raped, and rendered hopeless, if not murdered, by evildoers in our country and throughout the world.

The use of pornography, however, does not prevent a person from also meditating on Jesus’ words, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”

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A person who is inclined to use marijuana or other drugs as part of his or her “recreational” activities may meditate on past, present, or future escapades into this self-focused form of euphoria. Sadly, their meditation may not stretch toward ruthless drug cartels and gangs who murder and maim in order to amass illicit fortunes through the delivery and sale of drugs to distant users oblivious to the mayhem.

Sad, too, is the stunted meditation that drug use is relatively harmless, dismissive of research showing that medical harm from marijuana can be similar to cigarette smoking or research demonstrating the toll marijuana-impaired driving can take, akin to drunk driving, on innocent victims killed or injured by a drug user’s thoughtlessness.

Nevertheless, the use of drugs, like the use of pornography, does not rule out brief moments of meditation drawn from Jesus, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”

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A person who is greedy, who has no charity in his or her heart, may meditate on bank accounts, the stock market, anyone who might be used for financial gain, and anyone who poses a threat to his/her pursuit of wealth. The meditation may be as simple as the cash in one’s wallet or purse, potential discounts at a local retail outlet, or coupons to reduce the expense of goods and services.

Immorality is not solely a matter of loose sexuality or drug abuse.

All immorality flows from the common human struggle with self-centeredness and its consequent lack of concern for other people.

Morality, meanwhile, lifts us, if only in tiny increments, to meditate on what is best for our souls as well as the souls of others.

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Other forms of immorality may include unfaithfulness to one’s spouse; seeking to ensnare another person into a sexual encounter against his or her will or better judgment, often leaving emotional scars on the person; experimenting with same-sex relationships and opening oneself to a lifestyle at variance with Scripture. Apart from sexuality, immorality can manifest itself as racial bigotry; unforgiveness, revenge, and unbridled anger; vulgar speech; slander and gossip; and overeating or other behaviors that abuse the body, which is described in Scripture as created in God’s image.

You may feel that your manner of immorality is “just the way it is.” You may be happy in it, or somewhat happy, or terribly burdened. You may wonder, “Who is this Jesus? How can a dead man, or even one who ‘rose from the dead,’ speak to me about anything?” Or you may wonder, even in times of fleeting meditation, “Who is this Jesus? Can he help even me?”