Holiness and Reward

Holiness is its own reward. Holiness is the reward. Holiness is not merely a goal as if one day you can decide, I will be holy and the story ends. Yes, there is a choice in the matter. But there is also a receiving factor that is separate from the choice to be. There is a choice we must make to receive holiness and retain it. The reception of holiness is the rejection of sin for holiness sake. The comparison of holiness with sin for benefit cannot be used as a valid argument in the pursuit of holiness. In fact it is a deception that can keep one bound to sin because there is always a benefit that one can construe from sin. Of course there is struggle. The end of the struggle seems to be triumph through surrender, triumph through reception which results in action. It is not a triumph of will or action by will. It is interesting when considering Jesus’ battle against temptation. His actions were based not on an immediate benefit but on something else. It is this something else that we encounter in the reception of holiness. It is this something else we embody when we receive holiness.

Remember and Use

This is a foundational principle to education. We need to remember what we have learned. We need to use what we have learned. To remember is not enough for in the end action is what builds relationship and habit. We need to use what we have learned in a corrective manner.

Of course in doing anything we have used what we have learned. But there are instances where we remember one thing, but use something else, when the one thing was the right thing. Remember and use. What is it that I want to remember? The fundamental truths that build character, relationship, and independence from the trappings of this world.

When I remember these things I then need to use them. I need to remember to see how they apply to my everyday life to the actions that we all take every day: going to work, talking to people, reacting to our emotions. I see that many of the missed opportunities in my life were due to not using the truths. Missed opportunities were related to not using or even in some cases not even knowing how to use the truths.

Only I can remember for myself. And only I can “use” for myself. In educating myself and those around me, I must remember and use. I learning from others, I must remember and use. I must do this to the point where I see remember and use as the foundation and starting point for the realization of a bigger dream. They are skeletal concepts upon which I can build that which I have been given to build.

On Liberty

I came across this site http://religiousliberty.tv/ and thought it was a good idea. Then it dawned on me that we are almost always free to choose God once we see him. I was reminded that the religious freedom offered by the culture has nothing to do with the freedom He offers us for the asking. I am not making light of the issue of freedom. I am just pointing out that our liberty in God is not limited by the culture. It is us who must be liberated from the culture that we might choose God: in the culture, not of the culture. No one can offer me more than what God has already offered.

Answering So What…

We look for patterns. Predictable patterns can offer us control. Control offers opportunity to meet desire.

We look for patterns. Predictable patterns can offer us control. Control allows us to create new desires.

The patterns that you see govern what you do. The patterns that you see govern your options. Failure to see deeper patterns relegates one to a life controlled by those that do see them. Ones complaint is less likely to be heard where one has failed to take advantage of the opportunity to search for a pattern.

How To Find Your Way

Struggle with the radical nature of the Gospel until the Spirit speaks, then do what you hear in the context of a community of people who truly share your struggle. Do not settle on the preacher’s words alone because there are thousands of preachers. Do not be afraid of the hard questions and if you’re in a community that does not recognize the hard questions as valid, find a new community.

Mathematics and Childlike Faith

In thinking about how calculus works, I realize that there is an element of faith involved. Evidence points to the fact that something is, but can never exactly say that it is. This is not to say that it is not, it is to say that we can never really verify that it is. Motion is peculiar and in a very real sense unexplainable. This is where childlike faith comes in. There is no need for explanations with childlike faith. We are simply taken in by what is and enjoy it deeply in those moments. This is how babies and children do it. I am not advocating ignorance concerning mathematical truths. What I am advocating is that there is always a deeper truth that mathematics and any of its derivatives cannot touch and that mathematics plainly acquiesces to these truths as it requires logic outside of itself for its strength and application.

When One Is Denied Helping Others

Poverty and the related mentality often prohibit one from getting the help that one needs to learn a different way of helping. The mentality often prevents one from seeing that there is help when it is available. Those that see have a responsibility to help those that don’t. Those that see and do not show others perpetuate poverty and the related mentality.

World of Words

Each word creates a world. Every world is built on words. “So what” is often a sign of ignorance and perpetuates a world of ignorance. Crack the words and you crack the world it represents and simultaneously replace it with a new one. Only what you see is your world.

On Impressing Yourself

The end of impressing yourself is emptiness. You will find that there is nothing there after having made the effort to impress yourself. If you do find something there, you may end up alone or a tool in someone else’s hand. Humility is a habit that looks out for another and there will always be someone to help.

Blinded By Desire

What we want colors what we see. Desire uncontrolled is an airborne virus that silently eats away at your senses until the world becomes callous and empty and desire itself becomes undesirable. We do not know what we might see if we suspend our desires and faith is too often alone in the battle. Yet we must press on giving away that which we control so that faith may grow.

The Perfectionist Dilemma

Anything big can be broken down in to something smaller. There is no bottom. Anything small can be seen as part of something bigger. There is no top. Anything that can be considered as purpose can be reduced to meaninglessness. Why is there no bottom? Why is there no top? Can there really be meaninglessness? Any perfectionist position cannot be supported without answers to these questions. I gave up being a perfectionist long ago.

On Connecting With People

On my desire to connect.

I now see my desire to connect as God reaching out through me to give both me and the persons I reach out to an experience of Him. So yes, there is always an agenda. That agenda is to create an experience of Him that we can take with us and share again with someone else.

I can remember in high school wanting to reach out to people, but never accepted in a way that I thought was reasonable. Of course this had all sorts of negative effects. And of course, no one knew. To be accepted I matched my perceived non-acceptance and the vicious cycle was started.

This cycle was first broken by my religious experience and began a LONG repair process. Reaching out, in light of the extremely complicated nature of life and living, I can no longer rightfully see as self centered. If there is a higher purpose or force than that force/purpose is playing a part whatever is happening. If there is a direction in history, than what I am doing somehow plays a part in that direction. For me, that force/purpose is the living God of the Bible.

I am learning how to do this still and do not always succeed in reaching out as I should, but the based desire to do so is there and draws me closer every day.

Paradox of limitation

The paradox of limitation.

People seem to have unlimited potential. We tell children, you can be anything that you want to be. But can a child be anything? There are limitations. Yet at the same time there are no limitations. Even the direction of the limitation can’t be determined. Simultaneously we are bound by our perception of limitation in some tangible way. This is the real struggle of educational values. “I can” thinking is necessary to achieve that which is desired against the opposition. “I can” is not a panacea for world hunger. This is a difficult issue that must be wrestled with if we are to be balanced in our approach to possibility. The heart must be a guide that puts the correct boundaries on us because we cannot do it all and we cannot do it alone. The heart must seek out that path of peace that cannot be disturbed by anything that happens and yet remains true to the path. Herein is one answer to the paradox of limitation.

Capture Young Minds

Why older people want to capture the minds of the young.

Older people want to capture the minds of the young for a variety of reasons some of which seem to violate a smooth transition of power. To capture the mind of a young person is insure the continuation of ideas and meanings that drive the hunter. The best of them realize that it is not about themselves but that it about the idea that has an effect in the world and are driven by the desire to see that idea continue. The young then, by their very malleable meaning making structures, become targets for the subversive old people with agendas. Now that was a lot of loaded language!

We often have kids because we want them to have better ideas and meaning about the world than we had when we grew up. But industry has kids because of the agendas that focus more on what to wear over why are you wearing it. Instead of viewing youth as time where there is a need for intense training coupled with freeing exploration, we view it as a time of prime consumership since they have nothing better to do.

I know I have some clarifying to do with these thoughts, but the notion of capturing the young seems so powerful to me that I can’t just let it go. Giving people what they want is a form of bondage, especially when the giver knows what they want is not good for them and does not use the giving to bring them up.

Meaning Making 1

I am starting to get more of this meaning making nature of humanity.

We make meaning even when there are no facts to support a conclusion. Exploration requires no justification. Exploration however is driven by a desire for meaning, a desire for things to make sense. In fact at some level, if things do not make sense, they cannot be. This is an interesting observation. Wherever there is a boundary there is a reason that can explain the boundary. We act on the premise that there is at least a reason that can be found if it is not known. This is a part of all of us. It is a connecting feature that generates culture, art, science, and every other human endeavor. When it is so easy to generate differences between people, we forget, or at least I forget, about what connects us. When there is no shared meaning we are connected by meaning making that invents a shared meaning, even if there is agreement that there is no shared meaning.

While these ideas are not new, I would propose they are underutilized. What is the implication for the education with regard to our meaning making? What are the implications on religion and religious life?

Our meaning making is like nature, where there is a void, we will fill it. There is always an implication for our filling. And the implications are always more than simple cause and effect. There are always multiple systems happening and changing at once.

Meaning making reflects the reason why hide and seek is such a fun game in all of its versions. We see something or a possibility. We create a meaning about that thing. We then want to see if the meaning we created was right. If it was right, we are encouraged to do it again. So not only is meaning making part of the make up but an underlying desire for verification. The verification process is not just a desire to be right, but to feel what that something or possibility incited in us. In other words we create and recreate meaning to create and recreate emotions, which then drive what we do.

So this is a meaning making model in the rough. I think however our own personal struggles with these topics will help us get it. And when you get it, you realize that the world you were living in was bound up in all sorts of limitations that no one can tell you are not there. At least not until there is a realization that, yes, there is something more out there.

Obama as President Elect

There is no doubt that last night was an historic evening. There is no doubt that something amazing happened last night with respect to the racial divide in this country. As a professing Christian, not perfect though daily seeking that perfection, I sense the reality of the great divide that the Bible creates between its true followers and those that walk their own way.

There is a greater loneliness in me now, despite the positive feelings due to the crossing of a racial barrier. Increasingly, I do not share values with those in power. I am further separated from the mainstream with each passing moment. Of course I am not alone in my opinion, but I am in a shrinking minority. My voice for God cannot be heard amidst the shouts for change. Something inside me tells me that this is how it has always been. What I feel as shrinkage is not really shrinkage at all, but it is simply a clearer awareness of what always was.

God…his name, in this context, raises many, many questions, primary of which is do we consider this a move of God or do we consider it as the spirit of man at work? My heart tells me this is the spirit of man at work. The ZeitGeist is at work. God will use it, of course, as grace is. And God has the heart of the king in his hand. I think I would be a fool to call it with finality.

To imply what God may be doing is bold enough. God has seen fit to allow Obama to be the 44th President of the United States of America. This does not change my stance on what I believe is right and my willingness to live it and fight for it. It does make me keenly aware that I need to find ways to relate to those with whom, in spirit, I share less and less.