Education is learning what you did not even know you did not know. We spoke several times about distributive justice, a concept taken from Aristotle, who distinguishes it from retributive justice. In order to discuss this distinction we must see it within the larger context in which the different levels of justice appear. The basis of justice is the intrinsic claim for justice of everything that has being. The intrinsic claim of a tree is different from the intrinsic claim of a person. The claim for justice based on different forms in which the power of being actualizes itself are different. However, if they are adequate to the power of being on which they are based, they are just claims. Justice is first of all a claim raised silently or vocally by a being on the basis of its power of being. It is an intrinsic claim, expressing the form in which a thing or a person is actualized. If this claim is uttered by one who makes it, it may be adequate to one’s intrinsic claim or it may not be. Whether oneself or others give voice to one’s intrinsic clam for justice, the voice can be just and it can be unjust. One of the injustices in the transformation of the intrinsic claim for justice into practical judgements is the suppression of the dynamic element in the actualization of being. The opposite injustice is the denial of the static structure within which the dynamic element can be effective. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
The second form of justice is the tributive or proportional justice. It appears as distributive, attributive, retributive justice, giving to everything proportionally to what it deserves, positively or negatively. It is a calculating justice, measuring the power of being of all things in terms of what shall be given to them or of what shall be withheld from them. I have called this form of justice tributive because it decides about the tribute a thing or a person ought to receive according to one’s special powers of being. Tribute is given by conquered nations to the rulers of the victorious nations. It is given to outstanding persons or groups by grateful adherents. It is given to representatives of power as a symbol of the acknowledgement of their function by those who are subject to their power. Attributive justice attributes to beings what they are and claim to be. Distributive justice gives to any being the proportion of goods which is due to one; retributive justice does the same, but in negative terms, in terms of deprivation of goods or active punishment. This latter consideration makes it clear that there is no essential difference between distributive and retributive justice. Both of them are proportional and can be measured in quantitative terms. In the realm of law and law-enforcement the tributive form of justice is the norm. However, there are some exceptions, and they point to a third of form of justice. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
I suggest that this third form be called transforming or creative justice. It is based on the fact to which I have already referred that the intrinsic justice is dynamic. As such it cannot be defined in definite terms, and therefore the tributive justice is never adequate to it because it calculates in fixed proportions. One never knows a priori what the outcome of an encounter of power with power will be. If one judges such an encounter and its outcome according to previous power proportions, one is necessarily unjust, even if one is legally right. Examples of this situation are a matter of daily experience. They include all trespasses of the positive law in the name of a superior law which is not yet formulated and valid. They include struggles for power which are in conflict with indefinite or obsolete rules, and the outcome of which is an increase in the power of being in both the victor and the conquered. They include all those events in which justice demands the resignation of justice, and act without which no human relation and no human group could last. More exactly one should speak of the resignation of proportional justice for the sake of creative justice. What is the criterion of creative justice? In order to answer this question one must ask which is the ultimate intrinsic claim for just in a being? #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
The answer is: Fulfilment within the unity of universal fulfilment. The religious symbol for this is the kingdom of God. The classical expression of the third form of justice is given in the Biblical literature of both Testaments. It is not quite right to say that justice in the Bible is the negation of proportional justice. There are innumerable places in both Testaments where the symbol of the judge is applied to God or the Christ; and there are other places where the injustice of human judges is exposed and more seriously condemned than almost any other sin. Nevetheless, the main emphasis goes in another direction. The zadikim, the just ones, are those who subject themselves to the divine orders according to which everything in nature and history is created and moves. However, this subjection is not the acceptance of the commandments as such, but it is the loving obedience to one who is the source of the law. Therefore, the concept of the zadik unites subjection to the law with piety towards one who gives the law. Under the personalistic terminology of the Old Testament a profound awareness of the ontological character of the law is hidden. In later Judaism it came into the open and helped to prepare the ontological interpretation of Christ as the Logos in the early Church. As in its application to humans, so in its application to God justice means more than proportional justice. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
It means creative justice and is expressed in the divine grace which forgives in order to reunite. God is not bound to the given proportion between merit and tribute. He can creatively change the proportion, and does it in order to fulfil those who according to proportional justice would be excluded from fulfilment. Therefore, the divine justice can appear as plain in justice. In the paradox of the “justification by grace through faith,” as stated by Paul, the divine justice is manifest in the divine act which justifies one who is unjust. This, like every act of forgiveness, can only be understood though the idea of creative justice. And creative justice is the form of reuniting love. No Worldly advantage can tempt the self-actualized into desertion of one’s sacred task of serving humanity, nor can any egoism lead one into betrayal of those who trust one. The goodwill which one shows to all people is devoid of any self-seeking motive, is a natural expression of the love which one finds in the innermost chambers of one’s soul. The World play is but an illusion of the mind, but the integral vision of the self-actualized enables one to act one’s part perfectly in the very heart of the World’s tumult. The knowledge that all action is ultimately illusory does not prevent one bring dynamically active. Supreme calm and silence reigns in one’s center, but one’s harmony with Nature is such that one joins the World-movement spontaneously. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
If one holds before the aspirant a prophetic picture of human’s higher possibilities, and ideal that transcends the commonplace trivialities of everyday, one’s service is sufficient. However, in actuality one does very much more than that. There are two way in which an enlightened person may help humanity. The first is individual, therefore one becomes a teacher and accepts disciples. The second is general and may be entirely inward as in meditation, or quite outward, affecting the welfare of groups—whether small in number or as large as an entire nation. In rare cases this generalized help may even extend internationally. A sense of group identity, as is offered by some schools of therapy may have values, but some wonder will it not be difficult for a student to transcend one’s school theories and techniques? If the student in one’s postgraduate work-setting does not grow, the blame lies with the settings, one’s teachers, or the new practitioner oneself. A teacher of some art presents beginning know-how to one’s students. However, one knows that this is by no means the final answer to producing desires outcomes. The responsible teacher has two tasks. First, one must guide the pupil in the ways of basic discipline. However then, one must not be satisfied until one sees one’s pupil is ready, responsibly, to surpass one’s training in any responsible way that seems relevant in that moment to accomplish some therapeutic objective. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
I mentioned, the last time I was here, an occasion when I got down on the floor and competed with a patient in doing push-ups. At that point in our dialogue, it became very relevant for me to do five more push-ups than the patient did, because he was an out-of-conditioned “slob.” It was important for this patient to do something physical. He asked me if I could do push-ups, and I said I could. He said, to prove he was in shape, “I will match you push-up for push-up.” He could not. That is not very Rogerian, and I was not doing it for the sake of doing it. It was an “emergent” from the relationship as it existed at that moment. A moment may come when the thing for a therapist to do is to hold one’s patient’s hand, when one sits there in absolute despair. One may feel oneself called upon just to establish contact. One’s impulse is to reach out and hold one’s hand, but one’s discipline and one’s training say, “There must be no body contact. To touch a patient is irresponsible acting-out. The patient may be a psychopath. You will get into a lawsuit and be sued for seduction or sexual assault, and God knows what all.” So one does not do it. Possibly, all those reasons for not holding your patient’s hand are sound. However, they may not be, at least not in all cases. The taboo on touching is one of those rules for conduct people seek. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
You know people are always looking for an absolute rule that will relieve them of the responsibility of evaluating each situation on its own unique merits, and then risking an action. Well, I think training should teach you rules, but then your trainer should encourage you or prod you to go beyond the rules in response to the call of the immediate therapeutic situation. This is where masters of the Zen way can teach psychotherapists and teachers of psychotherapy something. A Zen master presumably is an expert at getting someone to master some techniques and then tricking one, bulldozing one, so one will forget technique and respond unself-consciously and spontaneously. The response is most likely then to be relevant and appropriate, with head and heart in congruence. This seems to apply to painting, archery, tea-ceremonial; and I do not see why it does not apply in psychotherapy. Some people wonder is psychotherapist are supposed to be “accepting” people. They want to know if I accept my patients as they are? I do not accept or reject a patient as one now is, because “acceptance” implies approval, and that is not relevant. What I do is acknowledge to myself and to one that I confirm one as the person one is, and I invite the individual to take the freedom to reveal and be whoever and whatever one is—what one thinks, what one feels, and so on. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
I also grant myself the same freedom to be and to respond, to be this very person. What does this mean? It means I try to provide one with what I hope is a free milieu within which one can dare to express and disclose more of one’s being. This being that one disclosed does not vanish into a swamp or quagmire; nor does it hit a mirror, then to bounce back. Rather, it is received by a real person—me—and responded to by a real person—me. I feel that an environment in which people can grow is one where both parties have the freedom, the responsibility, to be and to respond one to the other. I think Rogers, who is responsible for this formulation about providing the atmosphere is responsible for this formulation about providing the atmosphere in which a person can grow, has oneself discovered an is reporting that it is not enough just to be a wonderfully permissive and “reflecting” individual. Most of the time a person wants some response from you besides “clarification” or a confirming “reflection.” You can only clarify and confirm so long; then, the patient gets the idea you understand him or her. To go on beyond this point is redundant even boring and ridiculous. There is more a therapist can say besides, “You feel….” #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
Every faith may be seen from two angles. As existential commitment, unconditional or ultimate concern, all faith coincide; they are faith. Insofar as they try to identify the Unconditional, they differ. The two standpoints should be carefully distinguished. For a faith which interprets the Unconditional, even if it distorts its own interior dynamics, is valid insofar as it is a total commitment. With this total commitment we are not concerned. If we do not complete the statement by answering the questions: “commitment to what?” to speak of commitment makes no sense. It infuriates some readers when we speak of things like: total commitment, unconditional concern, infinite passion without being told what one is committed to, what the concern is about, and what the passion aims at. And it is little wonder: systematic shunning of the objective questions (commitment to what?) leaves a bewildering after-states of word-juggling. Once the great words Unconditioned, Ultimate, Absolute, and the like, have been spoken, there are those who sick back and admire. As you know, there is no faith without a content toward which it is directed. However, classical theology, whether Catholic or Protestant, would next proceed to identify this object, or content, of faith would be distinct from the human act of assent or acceptance. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Even when theology insists that faith is “infused,” as a free gift from God, it distinguishes the content, or object, of faith from that infusion. In the words of St. Paul, “faith comes by hearing.” In scholasticism, faith comes from God’s intervention, though its object is perceived through the Church’s ministration. In classical Protestantism, faith likewise remains distinct from its object, salvation by Christ. Striking on a new path, the distinction between subject and object in faith disappears in theology. The dichotomy between the believer and the Revelation shrinks. In terms like ultimate, unconditional, infinite, absolute, the difference because subjectivity and objectivity is overcome. The ultimate of the act of faith, and the ultimate that is meant is the act of faith are one and the same. There takes place a disappearance of the ordinary subject-object scheme in the experience of the Ultimate, the Unconditional. In the act of faith that which is the source of this act is present beyond the cleavage of subject and object. It is present as both and beyond both. This at least is clear, the act of faith is both subject and object. We have faith that we have faith: if this is believed unconditionally, if we are to surrender totally to this experience of having fait in faith, of believing belief, then we truly have faith. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
If our surrender is not total, then our faith is false, our commitment hypocritical. This borders on the absurd. However, we should remember that language is always inadequate to express the Unconditioned. Faith is unconditional surrender, and as such it can only be expressed paradoxically, or symbolically. The paradox is that faith is its own object. The symbol says that we believe in God, meaning that what we believe is a newly discovered dimension of self, a trans-self, the eternal ground of self. Here subject and object are no longer distinct. If this is faith, there must be an element in humans which faith has unveiled; hence this impression of assenting to something new, of Revelation. Because it looks new, it assumes the function of an object towards which we reach. It conveys a mysterious sense of the holy. In this context faith is ecstatic, hungering after the ecstatic attraction and fascination of everything in which ultimacy is manifested. Because they had this experience the prophets of the Old Testament described God as the creative ground of everything and in everything, who is always present, always creating and destroying, always experienced as nearer to ourselves than we ourselves are, always unapproachable, holy, fascinating, terrifying, the ground and meaning of everything. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
This is the living God, dynamic in himself, life as the ground of life. Yet, let us not be mistaken. An experience of the holy is not an experience of otherness. The holy is not outside of us. Faith does not tie us to some extrinsic deity above and beyond us. The holy was there before we discovered it. It belongs to the structure of our existence. The Pharisees were desperately determined to not break the laws of God. Consequently they devised a system to keep them from even coming close to angering God. They contrived a “fence” of Pharisaic rules that, if humans would keep them, would keep them, would guarantee a safe distance between oneself the laws of God. The “fence” or “hedge” laws accumulated into hundreds over the years and were passed around orally. Soon it became apparent that they were far from optional. These laws became every inch as important as the scriptural laws in and in some instance far more crucial. We still practice this today. We build fences to keep ourselves from committing certain sins. Soon these fences—instead of the sins they were designed to guard against—become the issue. We elevate our rules to the level of God’s commandments. When my children were barely teenagers, our family went on vacation to a different part of the country to enjoy the beach and the ocean. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Since my Navy days, I have had a fascination for the ocean and its waves, so I was eager to take the family to the beach. When we got there, however, I discovered the beach was swarming with scantily clad young women. (I am not talking about ordinary swimsuits. When I say scanty, I mean scanty.) Now like Job, I had “made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young lady” (Job 31.1). I know I have not been as diligent as Job to stay faithful to that covenant, but at least I work at it. After about twenty minutes of continuously diverting my eyes, I said to my wife, “You and the kids stay as long as you like. I am going to the car.” Why did I do that? Because I knew myself well enough to know that after a while my commitment to visual purity would wear thin. I knew that—given the continual temptations passing before me—in due time, I would succumb to the temptation to indulge a lustful look “just once” (which, of course, it never is.) So I built a “fence” for myself that day. I left the beach. Now suppose, because of my experience, I concluded that going to the beach would always lead to sin. I could have said to my son, “You are not to go to the beach anymore.” I could have begun to look down my religious nose at others who went to the beach. I would have built a permanent fence: “Thou shalt not go to the beach.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
In due time that fence would have had almost the same force in my thinking as the Ten Commandments, especially as I would use it to judge or influence others. That is the way a lot of human-made “do’s” and “do nots” originate. They begin as a sincere effort to deal with real sin issues. However, very often we begin to focus on the fence we have built instead of the sin it was designed to guard against. We fight our battles in the wrong places; we deal with externals instead of the heart. If I had said to my son, “You may not go to the beach,” I would have failed him. He could have concluded that it was a sin to go to the beach (though he would not understand why), and nothing would have been said about looking lustfully at the young ladies at school, or a dozen other places for that matter. Now that fence I could have built for my son (though I am happy I did not) may sound ridiculous to you, but I have seen almost the same fence built with the exact same neglect of the real issue. Incidentally, the next time my wife and I went to the beach it was in another part of the country. We stayed almost a week and had a thoroughly enjoyable time. So please do not draw the conclusion: “Thou shalt not go to the beach.” Now, Christian spiritual formation is inescapably a matter of recognizing in ourselves the idea system (or systems) of evil that governs the present age and the respective culture (or various cultures) that constitute life away from God. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
The needed transformation is very largely a matter of replacing in ourselves those idea systems of evil (and their corresponding cultures) with the idea system that Jesus Christ embodied and taught and with a culture of the kingdom of God. This is truly a passage from darkness to light. Isaiah sees the latter-day temple, gathering of Israel, and millennial judgment and peace—the proud and wicked will be brought low at the Second Coming—compare Isaiah 2. About 559—545 Before Christ. “The word that Isaiah, the son of Amoz, saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem: And it shall come to pass in the last days, when the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths; for our of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plow-shares, and their spears into pruning-hooks—nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
“O house of Jacob, come ye and let us walk in the light of the Lord; yea, come, for ye have all gone astray, every one to one’s wicked ways. Therefore, O Lord, thou hast forsaken Thy people, the house of Jacob, because they be replenished from the east, and hearken unto soothsayers like the Philistines, and they please themselves in the children of strangers. Their land also is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures; their land is also full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots. Their land is also full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made. And the mean man boweth not down, and the great man humbleth himself not, therefore, forgive him not. O ye wicked ones, enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for the fear of the Lord and the glory of his majesty shall smite thee. And it shall come to pass that the lofty looks of humans shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of humans shall be bowed down, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. For the day of the Lord of Hosts soon cometh upon all nations, yea, upon every one; yea, upon the proud and lofty, and upon every one who is lifted up, and they shall be brought low. Yea, and the day of the Lord shall come upon all the cedars of Lebanon, for they are high and lifted up; and upon all the oaks of Bashan; #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
“And upon all the high mountains, and upon all the hills, and upon all the nations which are lifted up, and upon every people; and upon every high tower, and upon every fenced wall; and upon al the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures. And the loftiness of humans shall be bowed downed, and the haughtiness of humans be made low; and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day. And the idols he shall utterly abolish. And they shall go into the holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the Earth, for the fear of the Lord shall come upon them and the glory of his majesty shall smite them, when he ariseth to shake terribly the Earth. In that day a person shall cast one’s idols of silver, and one’s idols of gold, which one hath made for oneself to worship, to the moles and to the bats; to go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the tops of the ragged rock, for the fear of the Lord shall come upon them and the majesty of one’s glory shall smite them, when one ariseth to shake terribly the Earth. Cease ye from humans, whose breath is in one’s nostrils’ for wherein is one to be accounted of?” reports 2 Nephi 12.1-22. Grant, O Lord, to those who have lost the grace of the Font, that they may again be adorned with the gifts of faithful repentance; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Thou Great I Am, I acknowledge and confess that all things come of thee—life, breath, happiness, advancement, sight, touch, hearing, goodness, truth, beauty—all that makes existence amiable. In the spiritual World also I am dependent entirely Upon Thee. Give me grace to know more of my need of grace; show me my sinfulness that I may willingly confess it; reveal to me my weakness that I may know my strength in Thee. I thank Thee for any sign of penitence; give more of it; my sins are morbid and deep, and rise from a stony, proud, self0righteous heart; help me to confess them with mouring, regret, self-loathing, with no pretence to merit or excuse; I need healing; Good Physician, here is scope for Tee, come and manifest Thy power; I need faith; Thou who hast given it me, maintain, strengthen, increase it; center it upon the Saviour’s work, upon the majesty of the Father, upon the operations of the Spirit; work it in me now that I may never doubt Thee as the truthful, mighty, faithful God. Then I can bring my heart to Thee full of love, gratitude, hope, joy. May I lay at Thy feet these fruits grown in Thy garden, love Thee with a passion that can never cool, believe in Thee with a confidence that never staggers, hope in Thee with an expectation that can never be dim, delight in Thee with a rejoicing that cannot be stifled, glorify Thee with the highest of my powers, burning, blazing, glowing, radiating, as from Thy own glory. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
BRIGHTON STATION AT CRESLEIGH RANCH
Rancho Cordova, CA |
Now Selling!
NOW SELLING! Brighton Station at Cresleigh Ranch is Rancho Cordova’s newest home community! This charming neighborhood offers an array of home types with eye catching architecture styles such as Mid-Century Modern, California Modern, Prairie, and Contemporary Farmhouse.
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