“Cogito, ergo sum”

In 1637, René Descartes, a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist published his Discourse on Method. I haven’t read this discourse, and reading it is not on my bucket list.  There is something unpalatable about reading a 381-year-old work of a Frenchman who wrote in Latin and later translated into English. The words forming the title of this blog come from this writing.  In this discourse, Descartes coined a philosophical proposition usually translated into English as “I think, therefore I am”.

The fact that the phrase has hung around this long is a good sign that a lot of people think he was right.  I can’t discern if this starting place or the conclusion of his philosophical thinking.  Maybe it’s both the beginning and the end.  Philosophy is natured this way.

I am bringing this phrase to your attention because it comes to my mind when contemplating my experience in living as a human being among a bunch of human beings in these perplexing times.  It is my philosophical proposition that Descartes’s phrase has been altered.  As I listen to the high voltage wrangling of politicians and social activists and even religious proponents of my own faith, it appears to me the phrase has been altered to read, “I think, therefore I am right.”

This is how the rhetoric of our nation and world feels to me; “If what I think is logical to me, it is right. If accepted by my friends and mentors, I am proven to be right.  Anyone who disagrees with my reasoning is wrong, a fool, and a bigot.”

It is my opinion; we have confused Thomas Jefferson’s inspiring words found in our Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” with “human rights”. There is a difference for me between “certain unalienable rights” and “human rights.”  For me, “unalienable rights” have a divine origin from the Creator Himself and “human rights” are of a human origin. If humans were to take up the cause to seek out and apply the truths established by their Creator, we would find all our ‘human rights’ are protected.  I believe the Creator, self-revealed in Holy Scripture, planned and has the power to bring peace to humanity.  I believe it is His great desire to see His great climax of creation, humans, live in peace.  I believe He told us the origin of our dividing rancor in the story of Adam and Eve.  Adam and Eve chose to reason for themselves what was good, better, best, and bad. They piloted through life guided by how life felt to them at the moment rather than to reflect on the Life breathed into them by their Creator.

What I “feel” does not matter.  What God “reveals” does.  A lot of ‘fundamentalist” of the faith would agree with me thus far.  I do not get to withhold compassion, mercy, and grace from anyone.  If God gives a person or His people compassion, mercy, and grace, He will do it with His Holy Spirit through His people.  This way of loving cost God the life of His Son, Jesus.  It will likely cost those who follow Jesus the same.  

Jesus is how God started out demonstrating His love to His rebellious creation; and, it is also how He continues to do so.  What he started in, and with, His Son, Jesus Christ; he continues in, and with, the Body of Christ.  You and I are not distributors of moral judgment; we are the demonstration of Godly Righteousness.

I believe the greatest hope for peace in this world is in God working through the devotion of His re-creation, and the loving obedience of those who surrender all personal rights to serve Jesus, who is the Christ.

Here is something to ponder; “God thinks, therefore He is, and so are we.”  If He ever stops thinking of us, He will be no less God but we won’t be at all.

The photograph was taken by George F. Baldwin.  Glacier National Park, July 2019