| Pocket Theology |
[Apr. 15th, 2009|07:40 pm] |
I still love Neil Gaiman dearly for his role in my creative and artistic development, but damned if his influence didn't nearly cause lasting harm on my conception of spiritual realities. That was a close one. Not to say that he hasn't learned me some pretty good life lessons over the years, wholly independent of any sought-after objective metaphysical truth.
For instance, I've had cause to ponder something he shared with me in the story with the gypsy fortune teller and her wares: value is in the eye of the buyer.
I'm still at Ezekiel, so I haven't gotten to come across Paul's teaching that humanity has been bought at a steep price, but I'm still at least familiar with the concept... and it's made me wonder just what sort of value humanity has been given as a result.
When a buyer purchases something at what he feels to be a fair price, there is almost always a range of deviation in the exchange between what was paid and the actual objective value of the item acquired. That is why someone who pays much of his wages for something that is worthless is thought a fool, and someone who pays very little for a pearl of great price is thought blessed.
Sometimes, the act of buying in itself imputes some value to the item; that affirmative act of bestowing value on something which did not have it before is commonplace in the buying and selling of items with a certain flexibility in subjective value, such as art or currency. And yet, the buyer of bad art is still thought a fool, because sometimes, no matter how many millions was spent to buy it, a toilet seat is still a toilet seat. Neither the buyer nor the act of buying can gift it with actual objective value.
... but what if the buyer was the creator of actual objective value? Actual objective reality? Not only would the act of buying attribute a subjective value, but if there was a discrepancy between the price and the item, such a purchase by a divine Buyer would impart the value of the price onto the Bought, essentially recreating it.
What is the price discrepancy between the God-Man and the men He came to buy with His blood? No wonder He makes all things new.
I walk about life nowadays with the air of someone who has been given a great gift and responsibility, but unsure whether he can live up to it.
Trials and tribulations have a way of forcing one to shed the immaterial things in life and forces one to change perspective and hang on to what really matters, if only as a way to make it through; it becomes possible to be satisfied, or even happy with less. In an almost inverse manner, great blessing and great fortune have a way of making those with grateful hearts keenly aware of how undeserving they are of such gifts, especially in the midst of what seems to be so much misery and suffering. Certain children think nothing of being given something they have dreamed of all their lives; certain others, upon receiving, immediately think, "Oh, darn it, now I'm expected to live up to this. Now I have to earn what I have been freely given."
But a gift freely given, by definition, can never be earned. When presented with a happiness the heart cannot contain, it can either blanch and retreat, try to take in too much at once and burst, or float along idly, satisfied only with what it can hold... but it can also expand.
I'm... I'm trying to expand. Sometimes despite myself. I have been given great gifts, and I'm finding that this means I must unclench my fingers to receive them, must let go of the things of this world that I have held on to for so long, and which are really just so much dust in comparison.
I can't do it on my own. But I'm not alone anymore. And that's another gift I have to live up to for the rest of my life.
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Have you never paid a high price for something that others might consider worthless, simply because you love it?
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/81479400/454174) | From: ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) mads
2009-04-17 12:53 am (UTC)
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Several times, but always recognizing that I am paying for the value it represents to myself, and to no one else. | |
