The idea that an individual can find God is terribly self-centered. It is like a wave thinking it can find the sea.
Interpretation
The quote critiques the notion of individualism in spirituality, suggesting that true understanding is communal and universal.
John Templeton's quote emphasizes the inherent interconnectedness of all existence, suggesting that the search for God as a solitary pursuit is misguided. Just as a wave is fundamentally part of the ocean, individuals are part of a larger spiritual reality, and the quest for understanding should transcend self-centered desires for personal enlightenment.
In practice
During a discussion on spirituality at a community gathering.
The correct description is that we try every day to become more humble when we talk about divinity, we try to realize how little we know and how open minded we should be. It's self centered to think that human beings, as limited as we are, can describe divinity.
Life is made up not necessarily of great sacrifices or high-level duties but of little things. The smiles, the kindnesses, the commitments and obligations and responsibilities that are given habitually and lovingly are the blessings that win and preserve the heart and bring comfort to one's self as we as to others. This is the ministry of service performed by every useful life.
The correct description is that we try every day to become more humble when we talk about divinity, we try to realize how little we know and how open minded we should be.
The objective of our religious foundations is to teach people that they are hurting themselves when they say they believe something. What we should realize is we know almost nothing about God and therefore we should be eager to search and to learn.
Three of my children are medical doctors; they know at least a hundred times as much about your body as my grandfather knew, but they don't know much more about soul than he did.
I focus on spiritual wealth now, and I'm busier, more enthusiastic, and more joyful than I have ever been.
The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
Persons of genius are, ex vi termini, more individual than any other people - less capable, consequently, of fitting themselves, without hurtful compression, into any of the small number of moulds which society provides in order to save its members the trouble of forming their character.
[Whenever] you get near the human race, there's layers and layers of nonsense.
But thus I counsel you, my friends: Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. They are people of a low sort and stock; the hangmen and the bloodhound look out of their faces. Mistrust all who talk much of their justice! Verily, their souls lack more than honey. And when they call themselves the good and the just, do not forget that they would be pharisees, if only they had-power.
A God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but fate and nature.
The City is an addictive machine from which there is no escape
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