Editorial 

Year 11 - N° 517 - May 21, 2017

Our light must shine

"We depart from the deity and we will return to it." (Guaraci de Lima Silveira, author of the special "In the glory of the Lord", one of the highlights of this edition)

Poetic art produces ineffable effects on the reader. And poetic license promotes the sublimation of terms far beyond their primitive senses. But there is to be careful with the denotative and connotative contents so as not to lose control of the doctrinal content. In this step, certain pantheism haunts the reader.

"Jesus told us that we should shine our light. Emmanuel tells us that 'the lesson of Jesus must be applied in all conditions, every day' "(Guaraci de Lima Silveira, in the article cited).

"You are the light of the world. (...) This is how your light should shine before men, that they may see good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven." (Matthew 5:14-16).

Light manifests itself through good works. And good works are able to convert many, so that they glorify God. It is understood that the acts are the true builders. It is not the words, except the comforters; It is not the propaganda, the divulgation, except those that touch the heart.

"Then the act of evangelizing passes through theological, philosophical and scientific principles. Theological by a necessity that the creature feels at a certain moment of its evolution to connect definitively to the Creator hence the effort of change. Philosophical because it needs to acquire knowledge to operate this change in itself and scientific as an empirical element necessary for the consolidation of the experience." (Guaraci de Lima Silveira)

The education of the bad inclinations is a process of evangelization, in which changes of behavior seeking the sublimation of the feelings. The effort to educate is necessarily through neural reproducibility, creating pathways of reprogramming the brain.

The brain structure is plastic and subject to change, as the author says. It is no longer a rigid structure, as the older scientists thought. It is subject to sensitive reprocessing. The force of the will is able to modify the cerebral configurations. In this way, the effort to change the course of what we have been has an effective reality, and results in the desired sublimation.

"We change our brains and organisms according to what we want. It is always good that we remember the words of Jesus when he told us that God is just and gives each one according to his works." (Guaraci de Lima Silveira)

The wishes! These are determining forces of our mental economy. We are what we want, and the discoveries of neuroscience reaffirm this, demonstrating that brain plastic is determined by the desiring structure. Thus, we must recognize that, far beyond the factual reality, other facts remain as real, although underlying to the reality of brain chemistry.

"Jesus: 'I and the Father are One." (John 10:30)

As much as we have the pleasure and respect for the Johannine readings, and we are astonished by its mysticism, we must separate the tares from the wheat. This assertion attributed to Jesus differs from the whole content of the "Son of Man." It is responsible for the dogma of the trinity, a characteristic formulation of John, and deserves to be considered, but not sanctioned by the simplicity of the Spiritist doctrine.

In fact, the "we are one" passage in John's phrase can only be understood as the expression that Jesus and the Creator thought in the same way and maintained an absolute affinity for what they said and did, since no one is to ignore that, at another time, Jesus told one of his interlocutors:
 

"Why do you call me good? There is none good but one, which is God. If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments." (Matthew 19:17, Luke 18:19 and Mark 10:18)

 

Translation:

Francine Prado - francine.cassia@hotmail.com

 

 

 

     
     

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 Revista Semanal de Divulgação Espírita