Geoff's Miscellany

This seems trivial, but it is important. In high school, especially with the advent of social media, the pleasure centers of our brains are so easily stimulated by easy access to people who ‘like,’ ‘favorite,’ respond angrily, or throw flattery our way that we can become addicted to the constant influx of digital love. This same inability to be alone has always existed, but it is not always good. We are a part of the human race, of our family, of our neighborhood, sports teams, classrooms, churches and nation, it is true. But we are also individuals. If we never take time to sit with our thoughts (no music, no people, no media, no book in hand), then it is difficult to recognize our faults, our victories, or even our own soul amidst the noise of the world around us. Learning to sit in silence for a few minutes a day with no agenda but contemplation, prayer, or simply listening to the sounds around you without feeling antsy, lonely, or bored is supremely needed in our era. Learn this in high school, because if you’re media addicted in college and it hurts your grades it will cost you money. And if you’re over social but do not know yourself well enough to make true friends, it will cost you even more.

The Best Skill: Studying

There are thousands of techniques for good study, but only a few simple principles:

1. Personal Study Space
2. Regularity
3. Comprehensiveness
4. Orderliness

Personal Study Space

1. Comfortable enough to sit for extended periods
2. Uncomfortable enough to keep you awake
3. You need to have the right amount of noise (some people need silence to study, others need background noise), so the space should shield you/others from noise (headphones/ear plugs are your friends).
4. It needs to be private enough to protect you from distractions.
5. It needs to be public enough to help you feel embarrassed if you're caught wasting your time.

Important Items include:

1. A desk (I recommend Origami's Folding Desk)
2. An office chair (unless you opt for a standing desk, in which case you want a recliner/rocker for times when you’re reading and wish to sit down)
3. A small filing cabinet for paper work, completed assignments, useful hand outs, and extra supplies
4. A small white board for working out math problems w/out using paper
5. A small book shelf
6. Encouraging artwork or sayings to motivate you.

Regularity

1. You have to repeat things in order to remember them in the short term.
2. You have to remember to repeat things so that you do not lose them in the long term.

To study regularly, I recommend writing your school schedule every Sunday evening so that you will know what time you mean to study for which subjects on which days. Get your parents’ permission for doing this sort of thing (how could they object?) because their permission also means that you have their understanding. This is important because you should never deviate from your study schedule except for emergencies. One of the most awkward binds to be in is when a chore you could do at any time comes up when you planned on studying and because your parents were not alerted in advance and because of this, they feel like you’re avoiding work.

The Girl with a Dragon Fly Tattoo has a good post about growing in the face of struggle and depression.

Here is a snippet:

I value learning the truth, gaining peace about the events that have happened in my life, and I’m sure people who take longer to heal crave this as well.  But why do they take so long?

It isn’t fair (but then again, life isn’t fair).  But why do some people heal from emotional wounds so easily, while others take so much time… or never do?  Why do some reject truth or solutions to their problems, continue to live in depression or denial, or keep high-walled barriers around their anxiety or loss of purpose?

In recent history there have been several attempts to claim that “introverts make better leaders,” “women make better leaders,*” or “millennials make better leaders.” That last one is a joke. But the fact of the matter is that one cannot be wise about a leadership choice based upon demographics. Even if the statistics were to show that 80% of female leaders are good and only 45% of males are good, it would still be stupid to jump on the bandwagon because the person you choose to become a leader would probably be new to it. In a fist fight, you assume the person is right handed until the fight like a lefty. But in a board meeting to decide who moved upward, one cannot simply say, “I like this person’s self-identification.”  Anyway, an article titled ‘Sex in the Boardroom’ gets things right when it concludes:

1. Learn what needs to happen.
2. Stare confusedly at the screen.
3. Learn individual classes while wishing for robust and unnecessary comments to help noobs.
4. Write first piece of code meant to contribute to a serious project.
5. Realize that one particular piece of it requires you to be familiar with scripting languages you do not know.
6. Start again at step 2.

One of the most important philosophers to read for your personal development is Aristotle. Also, read the book of Proverbs. It has hints for becoming charismatic, managing your money, flirting, being happy, and even going to heaven.

In his rhetorical manual, Aristotle observes this (just read the bold to get the main point):

But since rhetoric exists to affect the giving of decisions—the hearers decide between one political speaker and another, and a legal verdict is a decision—the orator must not only try to make the argument of his speech demonstrative and worthy of belief; he must also make his own character look right and put his hearers, who are to decide, into the right frame of mind. Particularly in political oratory, but [25] also in lawsuits, it adds much to an orator’s influence that his own character should look right and that he should be thought to entertain the right feelings towards his hearers; and also that his hearers themselves should be in just the right frame of mind. That the orator’s own character should look right is particularly important in political [30] speaking: that the audience should be in the right frame of mind, in lawsuits. When people are feeling friendly and placable, they think one sort of thing; when they are feeling angry or hostile, they think either something totally [1378a] different or the same thing with a different intensity: when they feel friendly to the man who comes before them for judgement, they regard him as having done little wrong, if any; when they feel hostile, they take the opposite view. Again, if they are eager for, and have good hopes of, a thing that will be pleasant if it happens, they think that it certainly will happen and be good for them: whereas if [5] they are indifferent or annoyed, they do not think so.

W. Rhys Roberts, “RHETORICA,” in The Works of Aristotle, ed. W. D. Ross, trans. W. Rhys Roberts, E. S. Forster, and Ingram Bywater, vol. 11 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1924).

Now, this post could be controversial, but that’s okay.

Three things:

1. God's love for the world (thus for all of humanity) is unconditional and precedes the sending of Jesus (John 3:16). So when people say things like, "God would hate you if it weren't for Jesus' work on the cross," they are literally being ridiculous. Even if they refer to statements concerning God's hatred for people and so-on, John's gospel makes the claim that God's way with humanity is more exactly described by its exposition of Jesus than the Old Testament's exposition of Moses (John 1:1-18).
2. Nevertheless, it is false to say that every form of love God shows to human beings is unconditional. For instance, John 3:16 says that God loves the world in such a way that he sent his only son, so that whosoever believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life." So, God's love is for the whole world, but the results of said love are conditioned upon ones response to Jesus Christ. One might say, "But, what about universalism? If God saves everybody, then God's love is still unconditional." Though I'm not a universalist, it would still be the case that God's receiving everlasting life as a quality of life now, is conditional upon faith. Indeed, in John 17:1-3, everlasting life is described as living life with a knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ.
3. There are other passages which make it clear that God's love in sending Christ and initiating the redemption of humanity is not the same as God's reciprocal love for believers.
   1. Joh 14:23  Jesus answered him, "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.
   2. Rom 1:7  To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
   3. 1Jn 2:4-6  Whoever says "I know him" but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him,  (5)  but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him:  (6)  whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

In conclusion, God’s love for the world is unconditional. God’s love for his saints is conditioned upon becoming a saint. God’s love perfected in the saint is conditioned upon the keeping of Christ’s commandments.

Though not a main or even the main point of Sunday school last week we discussed 1 John 5:19:

1Jn 5:19 ESV We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.

It is not that there are not philosophical issues that run deeper than this particular piece of the Christian faith (why would God allow ’the evil one’ to exist, do miracles really happen, and so-on?). But for those who accept such propositions as true, the argument from evil seems so childish. It sounds like somebody saying, “See, the owner of your apartment complex isn’t real because the manager is doing a bad job.”

Two incidents over the last couple years that are actually insignificant were blown out of all proportion.

1. A famous man who used to be considered the greatest athlete in the world was surgically shaped to look like a skinny woman and spent loads of money and time to do it and people laud him as a hero and champion of the human form.
2. A non-famous woman with a fitness blog lost weight after her pregnancy (presumably via hard work) and challenged other women to care for their bodies and large numbers of people shamed her for challenging other women to exercise and for "endangering her baby" by exercising through her pregnancy.

I think that we live in bizarroworld.

Often, I have heard Proverbs 3:5-7 brought up in discussions about decision making. Before I move any further, have a read:

Pro 3:5-7 ESV Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.  (6)  In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.  (7)  Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil.

What is the evidence in the text itself? Here is all of Proverbs 3: