The Natural and the Supernatural

I don't know if we're both talking about the same movie. The one I remember stared Alan Arkin as this deaf mute guy who moved into this town to be near his deaf mute friend who had been institutionalized there. He helps a bunch of people who are experiencing one crisis or another until his friend in the institution dies, and then he commits suicide. I thought it was a pretty good movie, but I couldn't see what the title had to do with the plot. I thought the title was more appropriate for our blog than it was for the movie, but that's just my opinion.

When I quote the Bible, it's because it's an important part of our literary heritage, I don't attach any mystical importance to it. It's like the way people quote Shakespeare when it seems relevant to the discussion. Both sources have a lot to say about the human condition, but I am more familiar with the Bible than I am with Shakespeare, so I quote it more often.

I think you're right that more bad things come from stupidity than from evil intent, well, both ignorance and stupidity. (In the Beaglesonian Dictionary, ignorance means you don't know any better, while stupidity means that you know better but you do it anyway.) Our conceptions of good and evil mostly come from our culture, or somebody else's culture that we may prefer to the one we were born into. Then again, what is culture but the collective thoughts and actions of a group of individual people? People make the rules and people break the rules, then they feel guilty about it and seek redemption. Seems like it would be easier to not break the rules in the first place or, if you don't like one of the rules, lobby to change it. If you can't muster up enough support to change a rule, you have two choices: either shut up and do what you're told, or abandon the culture. That's not what people do, however. They claim to support the rules, then they break the rules, then they want somebody to forgive them.

When you say "something not of this world", it sounds like you are referring to the supernatural. I don't know if I believe in the supernatural anymore. A lot of things that people used to believe were supernatural have since come to be considered natural, like thunder and lightning for instance. The gods used to live on mountain tops, then they got kicked up to the sky, then to outer space. Now that all those domains have become accessible to us, those who believe in God will tell you that He is not of this world. I kind of like the Hindu take on it: God is not the creator of the Universe, God is the Universe. Of course this is all speculation, but I speculate that the meaning you are looking for is indeed of this world, it's just a part of this world that we haven't yet figured out how to access. I understand the feeling that you can almost touch it, but not quite. It is likely this feeling that motivates people to seek God through religion. I used to do that but, at some point, it occurred to me that God can find me easier than I can find Him. The fact that He hasn't yet made contact suggests that maybe He doesn't want to be found right now. I can respect that. If anybody deserves the right to privacy, it's God.