Aphorism of the Day 03-02-16

The profundity of the essential difference between men and women is proportional to the intensity of sexual attraction.

Aphorism of the day

Having clarity of thought is the child of having depth of thought

The Gospel and it's Competitors

Jesus clarified the gospel against the Pharisees and the Anti-Roman agitators of his day.  Paul clarified the gospel against the Judaizers in the church.  The Protestant Reformers clarified the gospel against the Catholic Church of the 15^th century.

The gospel must be clarified against the unique competitor idea that arises in each generation to compete with it.  If you teach and preach the gospel only as it was clarified against a competing idea of a past generation, your preaching will be sufficient to save but not be fully effective to disciple.

Aphorism

As a culture moves forward in time it simultaneously moves both forward and backward in moral progress.  It is foolish to pine for a more morally pure past. So too is it foolish to believe that the passage of time has accrued only moral progress. 

A Theology on the Genesis of Knowledge

When God made Man in His Image, He, being beyond space and time, did not give Man His full omniscience, but He did give Man, a being in space and time, a partial endowment of His omniscience – that of omniscient pre-knowledge, such that when Man saw something he had never seen before, a part of him could nonetheless recognize it and have the authority to name it.   Having been so endowed, Man would be driven to consummate his pre-knowledge with full knowledge, and find delight each time a new piece of full knowledge was brought into perceivable space and time.  Earth would be the stage for this process, and it was Man’s endowment of pre-knowledge and the built-in drive to consummate it with full knowledge that would be the driving engine for Man to take dominion over the earth.  By doing so, Man would delight in and better know the Creator as the Author of all that there was to know. 

More Aphorisms

-- We are designed to find joy in the perception of order and in the pursuit of order.

-- Both the artist and the scientist are engaged in a journey of discovery. The only difference between them is the type of laboratory the operate in.

-- Behind every law is a moral idea, and behind every moral idea is a moral universe.

-- A mediocre teacher presents facts. A great teacher imparts joy.

--To be stated and restated and restated in slightly different words each time in perpetuity ... is the rhythm of truth breathing.

-- To be ethical in your fame is to give back something of value to the culture worthy of the attention that you are taking from it. To be unethical in your fame is to take attention from the culture out of proportion to the value you add to it.  Example of ethical fame: Capt. Sully Sullenberger after US Airways flight 1549 miracle on the Hudson.  Example of unethical fame: Kim Kardashian.

-- In romantic relationships, the physical intimacy should be in proportion to the commitment, knowing that marriage is the ultimate commitment, and sex is the ultimate physical act.

Aphorisms 2011 to 2015

Here is a collection aphorisms that I have posted on Facebook spanning 2011 to 2015:

·      -- Masculinity is like fire:  submitted to God it can be an instrument of light, protection, provision and warmth.  It is dangerous if it rages uncontrolled and but is also dangerous if it is quenched.

·      -- It is not necessarily a good thing that someone is "standing up" for what they believe.  Standing up for what you believe is like entering the boxing ring.  If you are trained and prepared you stand the chance of representing yourself and your cause well.  If you are not, you risk damaging yourself and your cause.

·      -- Accept the world you are in, but not the world as it is.

·      -- To fear the Lord is the alpha of wisdom.  To enjoy the Lord is the omega of wisdom.

·      -- Arrogance is to assume that what you don’t see isn’t there. Humility is to assume there is more there than what you see.

·       -- Leadership is the ability to help others connect the small picture with the big picture.

·       -- Attention to detail is love.

·       -- Empathy is the soul of wisdom.

·        -- "Cutting the rock with water" is the act of applying continual,           persistent low impact pressure to solve a hard problem, wearing it           down until it cracks and breaks.

·        -- Solving a problem with art is superior to solving it with force.

·         -- A wise man is slow to offer advice on how to run the place when he's newly arrived.

·          --   A person who has “class” has it as a byproduct of being excellent in the right things, of  having the right character. A person who is pre-occupied with “having class” only succeeds in being a snob.

·  

more aphorisms

Fashionable skepticism is a species of gullibility

Giving good advice and good council is a high art. For those who meet the challenge of that art, their council will be received by others as music. For those who do not meet the challenge, their council will be received as clanging gongs.

Common Sense

There are two competing ideas of "common sense". The first idea of "common sense" is an understanding that is commonly held by most people. The second idea of "common sense" is an understanding that does not require special/difficult/esoteric knowledge for one to hold, regardless of whether most people hold it. The latter may be better described as "commonly available sense".

aphorism

The one engaged in strenuous thought is creating the future before it is revealed.

Aphorism on clothing

The clothing that I appreciate on others the most is the clothing I notice the least.

A word to dog owners

I don’t fear dogs or dislike them, but I am cautious around them. I have vivid memories of being a kid of going into another kid’s back yard for the first time and standing there happy to meet Scotty, their Scottish Terrier, just as it ran up to me and bit my ankle. I don’t mind a dog wanting to be petted but I don’t like a dog putting paws on me uninvited. I enjoy taking walks around my neighborhood from time to time. One of the unpleasant aspects of the walk is when I am occasionally confronted by random aggressive behavior by various dogs.

It is an unpleasant experience to know that the only thing between you and an aggressive dog is a fence or an owner’s leash. There is an added element to this unpleasant experience when the owner witnesses the aggressive behavior and reacts in a nonchalant or even patronizing manner, and says "Sorry" as if to say “Aw don’t worry about fluffy”.

There are times when a dog owner has seen concern on my face and I see a patronizing smile or smirk from the owner – as a parent might give a child who is fearful of an animal behind a cage in the zoo, or one machismo man’s contempt for another man’s fear. If you are a dog owner, be reminded that not everyone loves your dog as “fluffy” and it is narcissistic to expect that every passing stranger will have all of your same affections towards your dog. Your cute little fluffy still is part wolf with the capacity to be a strange aggressive beast to an undeserving stranger.

Akin to the human to human narcissism of many dog owners is the human to dog narcissism of those who chastize their dog in English as they would a child, saying “No fluffy, stop that!”. Certainly the owner would be chastised if someone said “No, (owner’s name) stop that!” therefore their dog must be the same.

Your dog’s behavior is a reflection on the quality of you the owner, and whether you have invested any time or thought to how to properly train your dog. At a minimum it is inconsiderate you for you to allow your dog to be aggressive and to willfully neglect to train your dog to where those displays of aggressive do not occur. Beyond it being anti-social it is a safety hazard and a potential liability if the only thing stopping your dog from biting someone is your fence or your leash.

Another aphorism

A wise man knows when he is ignorant. A fool does not.

blog comments

This is directed to whomever is leaving blog comments in a foreign language. This blog is in English and that must be respected. If I nor other readers of English can understand the comment you want to post it will be rejected.

The problem with “name it and claim it”

There are many ways to broach this topic. The bottom line is that a “name it and claim it” approach to faith will leave one intellectually and spiritually unequipped to fully invest in the continual quest for godly wisdom.

To begin, I need to define some terms that will take greater elaborating on in later essays. What I call God’s perfect intent are the general goals and intentions of God that are clear from Scripture: basically put, that we operate in sinless and perfect trust and enjoyment of God in relationship and that we love and bless each other. From there God’s perfect intent is that all people are healed, all good desires are met. God’s ultimate intent is the realization of God’s perfect intent which is promised at the end of history.

What I call God’s existential intent is much trickier and works upward from the failings of gritty human reality on earth. The question of God’s existential intent in general form is: “What does God intend from one point in history to the next as He works within the confines of free will, sin and fallen humanity”. As a personal prayer, God’s existential intent can be stated as follows: “What does God want for me right now, what should I dwell on and what pitfalls should I avoid in regard to my own sin, the sin of others and the danger of life.”

With that quick introduction to a theology of God’s intent, here is what a person with a “name it and claim it” theology of faith believes: “If I have a specific desire that is generally consistent with God’s will, God will back it up and see it through to realization if I A) commit that intent into words and B) hold on firmly to the belief that what I have committed to words in God’s name will come to pass. My faith is to be certain that this specific thing will happen even as it does not appear that it will happen by natural or human means. Anything that stands in the way of that specific goal is the adversity of the devil and of human faithlessness. In the face of adversity I must cast out the devil and confess my sins so that there will not be a sin in my heart that gives the devil permission to thwart my desire.”

Depending on one’s maturity and experience in listening to and following God, this is more often than not an immature, juvenile approach to faith. The central problem is that while God’s perfect intent is clear, God’s existential intent is much more complex and mysterious. We know generally what to pray for but not specifically. We must be ever more knitted into the heart and mind of the Spirit to know exactly what to pray for and how from one moment to the next.

A correct understanding of faith in God’s promises is as follows: God has given us the following promise that is largely unequivocal and a guaranteed endowment of grace: that we will grow in deeper knowledge, enjoyment and love of God. The following promises to us from God flow directly from this central promise: A) the wisdom to follow God in a dangerous world, B) deeper and richer human relationships, C) using us to advance his Kingdom in the lives of others and D) provision of our needs as God sees our needs and not necessarily as we see our needs. I will refer to these as first tier promises.

Nothing else – not, wealth, fecundity, health, career success, long life, and not even good specific ministry intentions – are promised to us with any of the same certainty as the first tier promises. Beyond what God promises to us as first tier promises, we are generally unwise and do not even know what to specific thing to pray for / think about from one moment to the next and need the guidance of the Spirit. Generally speaking, God does intend to reward us with the specific desires of our hearts, but they need to be treated as a “second tier desires”, not having the same gaurantee as first tier promises.

This does not mean that a good and godly desire in our heart won’t come to pass or that God has not invited us into a special vision of his will, but the desire must be treated with different spiritual gloves. Our first and foremost act of faith is listening to God continually to orient our heart and mind to gain wisdom from God. In doing so we put our specific intents – however godly we think they are – on the altar and let God either crucify them or give them back to us. We are to hold onto them with the right grip that is neither too loose nor too tight. Learning to be supple in our grip on our desires is a life long process. The greater maturity we have in our faith the more accurately we are able to interpret the meaning of the desires God has placed in our hearts.

God often uses us to advance his kingdom in ways far more mysterious and creative than any our specific intentions, no matter how godly they may be. God’s work in our lives and the use of lives to advance his kingdom is often more visible more on the look back than the look forward. God’s breath of a new vision of His Kingdom into our minds often arrives as an unexpected turn of a corner.

The immature Christian arrives at his understanding of faith by proof-texting certain Scriptures, knitting them together into a name it and claim it approach to faith at the expense of other Scriptures (dealing with all of the Scriptural specifics would require more detail later). The immature Christian believes that a good or even godly desire is every bit as certain to come to pass as God’s first tier promises. The immature Christian will often lack the wisdom to see his needs in exactly the same way as how God sees his needs, and may mistake his “want” for a “need”. Inevitably, the immature Christian is more invested in the realization of a concrete second tier desire than a more difficult and abstract first tier promise, and treats his faith as persevering in an expectation of a particular outcome in his life rather than the premise that he is unwise and requires Gods wisdom which God promises to give.

By properly seeking wisdom, we are able to better execute those “second tier” desires when it becomes God’s appointed time. When we are properly illumined by the Spirit in the internal quest of our personal discipleship— we are able to be properly illumined in performing our God ordained external goals and objectives. As we are properly on track gaining wisdom continually from God, the same wisdom enables us to be shrewd and interpret people, dangerous situations correctly. As we operate with the right leaning on God’s continual direction we are able to navigate around life’s pitfalls in prayer, thought and godly action, all of which all different expressions of the same fundamental act of following the leading of the Spirit.

The execution of our godly desires requires the full investment of our minds pressing into God to gain God’s problem solving insight into matters. Lacking a discipleship of continually seeking and gaining wisdom and lacking a theology of faith that pre-disposes him to this quest, the immature Christian will often have a tendency to “punt to the Holy Spirit” – expecting God to solve problems for him that actually require the investment of his own mind in problem solving. This Christian gets the “be innocent as a doves” but neglects the “and as shrewd as snakes” teaching of Jesus and ends up using his understanding of Christian faith to arrive at what I call “Pollyanity”, which is the abdication of the responsibility to be shrewd in the name of faith.

The immature Christian will put an almost magical faith in the power of his words, which is another part of his failure to fully invest himself to be ever more knitted to the mind and heart of God. It is not the fact that we have committed something into human words per se that matters, though putting something into words is an important way in which make shape our intentions for our own minds and for others. What actually matters is the intensity and clarity of our intent before God which may or may not always be expressed by words. The first orientation our intensity must be to seek God’s will so that it can be shaped into godly wisdom. If not our words will not necessarily have any meaning or backing from God.

The immature Christian is not equipped to properly interpret the true meaning the adversity lying in the way of the realization of his second tier desires. Any crisis on earth is not first and foremost the adversity of the devil, though there may be very well be spiritual forces involved in our obstacles. What is of greatest importance to our walk with God is that adversity is first and foremost a crisis of our own wisdom.

God is plenty big enough to deal with any obstacle when it is the appointed time and place for an obstacle to be removed from our path. Until then, our primary pre-occupation should not be with the size and power of the spiritual forces against us but with seeking the vision and will of God. There may be wisdom encoded into the adversity we are experiencing – that God is allowing the adversity so that we must loosen our grip on a second tier desire so that God can advance to use a first tier promise of His grace in a new way.

a poem

We used to know each other by name
now I see you sitting there
in the café as I walk in
almost a complete stranger
perhaps it would be social of me
to rekindle our acquaintance
and rescue my memory of you
from its fading twilight
or perhaps that would obligate each of us
into forced pleasantries
momentarily popping each of us out
of our minds grooves
like an old vinyl record player
for better or worse
I let your face fade into oblivion
and let the sun set on our acquaintance.

A couple more aphorisms

When you treat a social reality as having a simple moral problem with a simple fix, you often ignore other moral realities that exist in the true complexity of the matter. When that happens the cure you created for the one problem becomes the poison that causes other problems.


To those who say "There's talk and there's action!" I say this: Serious talk is a form of action and is often necessary before any other constructive action can begin.

You can be "you"

I’ve seen more billboard ads than I can count the past couple of years that use the word “you” or some overt target of the first or second person --- “the you wide web” “It’s all about you” … “the bank of me” … and on and on. I think that as Americans (or Usonians if you prefer) we have a tradition of valuing individualism. In our films we celebrate the individualist individual who breaks out to do it his own way, whatever “it” is. In the drama of film we enjoy watching this person make the painful choices to go it alone and subvert/fight against the bad guys and wet blankets. We watch them cut through the gristle come out on top in the end and cheer.

In the actual function of most Americans daily lives, most are not individuals in this way in any real heroic sense. To actually become an individual requires that one be willing to walk in a valley of aloneness, which is often a long valley. To even begin the journey one needs a compulsion to begin it and then one needs a vision to guide one along the way.

I think most Americans live in the tension that they are not true individuals and for better or worse and aren’t on any real hard or productive path to becoming one. Americans live in a culture that lionizes the successful individual in myth but that is hard on true individualism in practice. Most Americans for all truly important matters in life stick as close to the ideas and modes of their chosen peer group with whom they identify -- this is true no matter what age. So many an American harbors an angst that he/she wants to feel like a truly special individual but knows deep down that he/she is not all that terribly special. Even if you get the most radical tattoos you are only an “individual” when you are alone in the company of non-radically tattooed people.

Here to fill the emotional void of this American angst are products, courtesy of corporations, that you can buy. With these products you can medicate your need to feel kinda sorta like an individual by buying a certain product or flavor of product. That way you can be a sorta kinda individual without any real path into loneliness. Even better, if you may feel that if you buy a cool product before it is super popular then you can even be a bit cool and edgy and therefore be kinda sorta like a leader among men. If you believe that then I know a brand of whiskey that’s looking for you.

If you don’t know or care that it is fake and you are not living in the conscious management of your deep down American angst, then I suppose there is a certain bliss to being ignorant and/or oblivious. If any of you really feel that “you can be you” by your choice of which ring tone or bank then you are in a sense blessed by not having the angst that I often feel. When I see those ads I’m offended. I’m offended that someone out there thinks that I’m such a nincompoop that I would find one scintilla of my emotional needs for individuality from my choice of a bank, car or cellphone. I’m also sad for the state of our country that there are people for whom this advertising actually works – there have to be lots of those people since there’s lots of that kind of advertising.

I say if you’re going to be an individual then do it the hard way or not at all. If you are not then be honest with yourself. Not everyone is meant to be a trailblazing individual. Getting your individuality from buy-decisions without walking through the valley of aloneness will get you as close to individuality as playing guitar hero will get you close to playing guitar.

Fighting a hacker

These past few days if you’ve come to my blog here you will have noticed occasional spam and even porn blog posts. I’ve been having a problem with my blog being hacked into by some posting these “articles” that look like I posted them. I have deleted these articles of course and reported this problem to Blogger. The problem continued even after I changed my Blogger password twice.

I even set my Blogger to account to send me an email alert when “I” have posted a blog article. When the spam hacker posts these articles my e-mail recognizes them as spam. So I've needed to check my spam box to see when my blog has been hacked into!

When I posted this problem on their Blogger help someone who asked me whether someone was merely posted comments vs. posting a blog article. When I did a key word search of this problem in the help forum I found that other people have posted this same problem and not have gotten any serious response from Blogger.

So today, Monday 10-12-09, when I found that my blog had been hacked into again in the morning, I promptly deleted the blog article and then googled “blogger hacking” and finally found an article that got me closer to the real problem. It turns out that there is a Blogger e-mail address for every blog that follows this default pattern: (your blogger name).(the first word of your blog title)@blogger.com. These e-mail accounts are created automatically by blogger whereby one can post a blog article through email.

If you use this feature you can be hacked if you have listed the Blogger e-mail addresses in your e-mail address book and someone hacks into your e-mail. I have never used this feature and these addresses are no where on my computer, but somehow these addresses were hacked and someone has been using them to post spam messages. I think in my case it's possible that the hackers know that the Blogger e-mail addresses follow enough of a pattern that they can successfully guess your blogger e-mail address if you don't manually change the address to something other than the first word of your blog title. Since the default setting is to have the feature enabled for automatic instant e-mail posting, the hackers can go to your blog site, find your public user name, the first word of your blog title and get lucky.

Later I found a link in a reponse that was posted to my Blogger help question that explained more about the problem of spammers guessing your Blogger e-mail address.

For now I have disabled this automatic instant e-mail posting feature. Let’s hope that works!

Even more aphorisms

Beware the offhand remark -- it is the serious point that one feels no need to defend. It is a window into a subterranean world of pressure to conform to the belief system that assigns truth and value to what is being offhandedly said.

Beware one who makes a serious point/argument wrapped up in jokey talk. If you challenge his point he will try to shame you for being humorless.

Beware the national leader who attempts to charm you out of your desire for specifics on a topic of national interest.