Jan
24
2012
In a society where children are viewed as a burden, something to be avoided at all costs, it is strange to read in the Old Testament about the ancients actually praying to God for decades that He would allow them to have children. This was the case with Isaac in Genesis 25:19-28. Isaac married at the not-so-young age of forty and then his wife Rebecca was barren until he was sixty; they waited 20 years for the fulfillment of God’s promise that he would award them with children. God heard Isaac’s prayers and granted him twin boys Jacob and Esua, presenting them as if they were some highly anticipated gift.
Now, we live in a world where children are killed by the millions every year, and where governments must bribe people to have children.
Dec
25
2011
I didn’t realize that every human struggles mightily in this world, myself included. I thought I lived a charmed life: no Kidnapping, Kancer, or Kutting (the 3 Ks). But even without these ugly spores, our lives are all tragical in their own unique ways. I finally realize that I’m climbing a mountain just the same as everybody else on the planet. This is the start of self-acceptance.
Self-acceptance is not about excuses; it is about no longer disowning significant parts of the self. My fears and profound feelings of inadequacy are important to acknowledge, but they are not my whole being. They are my mountain to climb. We all have a mountain. It is easier to climb once you accept that you had no head start in the race of character development, no jump start on the human condition of perennial fear. The only advantage I have over many others is the massive comfort afforded by capitalism’s material progress — which may actually hinder my character development if it has any effect at all.
Thank God for Christmas, the birth of Christ allows you to view the world in the most powerful way. Try this: While driving your car, look at the stop light as a signal from the Almighty: the green light indicates Divine acceptance, allowing you to pass through without trial; the red light represents the blood of the slain Christ, the only reason the light ever turns green for you in the first place.
Climb your mountain, and celebrate the green lights along your path.
Dec
16
2011
Ayn Rand gave us the injunction: “Check your premises.” Whenever you are running into a contradiction in reality, the most likely problem is that one of your premises is false. If you are a man who views himself as the best husband a woman could find, but she is talking about leaving you, check your premises. Or the idea that insider trading is incompatible with a free market and yet is commonly found among free market investors. Perhaps one of the premises is off.
Nov
11
2011
“If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the universe against me.” – Emerson
The demon of self-doubt destroys your inner world, which destroys and your outer world. Never lose faith in your ability to achieve values in the real world. As long as you have confidence in your abilities to actualize your cherished goals, nothing can get you down. Darkness seeks to destroy your confidence indirectly, through promoting pseudo-confidence: by enticing you to pretend you control the universe. Once you learn that you are not God, you can start to build true confidence in your ability to discover worth goals based on Truth, and have confidence that the universe will align with your goals.
Nov
9
2011
“Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is nobody else who is you-er than you.”
“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go…”
Oct
29
2011
How is God’s authority printed on the pages of scripture? By the prophetic element.
A.T. Pierson (1837-1911) preached at Charles Spurgeon’s Metropolitan Tabernacle for several months during Spurgeon’s illness just before his death. Pierson wrote a book called “The Prophetic Element,” in which he observed:
(The prophetic element) is one of the seven elements which together constitute the whole body of the Word of God, namely, History, Biography, Prophecy, Ethics, Devotion, Messianic Revelation, and Spiritual Guidance. This prophetic element pervades all the rest. It is the eye of Scripture, with supernatural vision – backsight, insight, and foresight, or power to see into the past, present, and future. It is, therefore, the miracle of utterance, as other miracles are wonders of power, and evinces omniscience, as they do omnipotence, thus reflecting the image of God.
Oct
12
2011
The medium of television blinds us from the rich and detailed history of the last few thousand years. It focuses our limited attention on those events and ideas which have been captured on the television screen in just the last few decades.
What do we know about Reality if our notions of Nature come from National Geographic specials; what kind of Faith do we have if we get our theology and religious experience from televangelists; what kind of families will we create if we follow the scripts of situation comedies?
The God on the TV ministries is a small “God” indeed. We have gone from “God the Creator” to “God the Favorer.”
Rather than inspiring us to action, television has the effect of numbing our nihilism for just one more day.
No wonder we are disconnected with reality and incapable of Truth, Goodness and Beauty.
Disconnecting Ourselves From Reality.
Oct
11
2011
Steve Jobs was bored. That’s why he created the devices that monopolize our attention – he was bored. Thinking back on his long, boring summers as a youth, Jobs said, “I’m a big believer in boredom … out of curiosity comes everything.”
Great practical advice for everyday life. But what does this say about the philosophy of modern technology?
Sep
11
2011
Hope is great. I want to be hopeful about my future in this life and the life after. But false hope is not great; false hope is evil.
(Don’t read this post if you have blissful hope in human progress and the inexorable continuation of life).
Consider these three laws of energy:
1. The Law of Conservation, that nothing could be added, and nothing lost, in the sum of energy.
2. The Law of Dissipation, that nothing could be added, but that Intensity must always be lost.
3. The Law of Elevation, that Vital Energy could be added, and raised indefinitely in potential, without the smallest apparent compensation.
If Darwin could believe in this Vital Energy because it gave him meaning, then so be it. But I don’t have enough faith in it to contradict the Law of Dissipation.
Why would Darwin believe in Vital Energy? Doesn’t it seem a bit ad hoc-ish?
Yes, but Darwin was not a physicist or mathematician. He wasn’t as cognizant of the laws of energy as a physicist would be. That’s why Darwin could add this Vital Energy just at the moment his universe needed it. Darwin’s Law of Elevation is a contradiction to the Law of Degradation. But who was behind that?
William Thomson (1824-1907), aka Lord Kelvin, was the guy behind the Law of Dissipation/Degradation (second law). He was, of course, a physicist and a mathematician. His paper on “A universal tendency in Nature to the Dissipation of Energy” was published in 1852 (28 yrs old!). But, forget his credentials if you are a pudgy modern who cares less for the truth than your smug intellectual arrogance. Just go on believing you have meaning. Go on trusting that the Law of Degradation doesn’t wipe out anything you ever do in your meaningless existence. Go on. Forget Lord Kelvin’s credentials and solid logic. And forget the fact that physicists follow the first two laws of energy. And forget the fact that Darwin’s third law of energy (the law of elevation) is a direct contradiction of the first two. Just go on with your false hope.
Transcendental Realism
But just in case your not a brain-dead dystopian dinosaur, then listen to the pessimistic reaction of the transcendentalist realist Eduard von Hartmann:
“If the social consciousness (read vital energy) of today rebels so strongly against the thought that vital processes will come to an end in the world, the chief reason is because society has indeed absorbed the first principle of thermodynamics,—the conservation of energy,—but not the second, the progressive degradation of energy by dissipation and leveling of intensities; and, in consequence, has erroneously interpreted the first law as though it contained an eternal guaranty of the endlessness of vital processes. . . In reality, the only question is whether, in the actual result, the world-process will work itself out slowly in prodigious lapse of time, according to purely physical laws; or whether it will find its end by means of some metaphysical resource when it has reached its culminating point. Only in the last case would its end coincide with the fulfillment of a purpose or object; in the first case, a long period of purposeless existence would follow after the culmination of life.” (Ausgewahlte Werke, vin, pp. 572-573. Leipzig, 1904.)
Oh, but why don’t you just bury your head and pretend that the world will go on forever.
Sep
6
2011
“For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” (Matthew 5:18). – Jesus
The “Jot” is actually the 10th letter in the Hebrew alphabet, the “Yodh.” It is the smallest letter in the Hebrew alphabet. The “tittle” is the little point on the upper edge of the yodh.
Every atom of Scripture is significant: the phrases, word-choice, grammatical forms. God instructed his prophets to verbalize Divine communications in a precise manner. “Every word of God is pure” (Proverbs 30:5).