Geoff's Miscellany

Some advice for anxiety is literally non-advice. Are there concrete steps for dealing with anxiety? 

An article at a famous news outlet recently stated: 

If you worry about the fact that you worry so much, take a deep breath: We have some good news. Researchers have found that people with anxiety often have higher intelligence.

I appreciate journalistic attempts to draw attention to new research, but the why this article is written seems to be designed to encourage unhappy people to think they are stuck that way. The attitude that this rhetoric can feed into is one of learned helplessness or the pride associated with being overly clever.

Main Points

1. Common definitions of God’s grace are true, but incomplete.
2. Peter’s command to grow in God’s grace makes more sense when grace is seen as a patron-client/gift-loyalty relationship.
3. Peter’s understanding of growth in grace appears to be explained in 2 Peter 1:3-11.
4. Dallas Willard’s aspects of the human person and V-I-M pattern can help us think about growth in grace in specific terms.

Introduction

17 Therefore, beloved, having been made aware, you should guard yourselves so that you will not lose your security by means of being carried away by the error of unprincipled folk, 18 but instead, you should grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (1 Peter 3:17-18). ^[1]

Definitions matter. A good definition can control a debate, clarify an argument, or protect you from making bad decisions. The situation in contemporary evangelical culture has granted us a common definition of grace that is limited to: “unmerited forgiveness.” Along with this definition of grace, we have a commonly expressed definition of faith, “believing Jesus is my savior who gives me forgiveness.” What I fear is that definitions like these have lead many (myself included in my younger years), to think that “I’m saved by grace through faith” means that “I am saved by God’s unmerited forgiveness, simply by believing that I am saved by God’s unmerited forgiveness.” Our definition of faith has literally nothing to do with loyalty to or trust in the person of Jesus Christ or his Father, who raised him from the dead.

A lot of people cringe at the thought of confrontation. I think that this is why sports and revenge movies are so popular, they allow people to vicariously stand up to obstacles from which they would shrink away in real life. What habits can help us to intentionally take risks without being coward or making senseless risks?

Cleverness, sarcasm, and smug retorts are the order of the day. But what if you want more out of life? The title is a quote from Fight Club, but it’s an important question. How is it working out for you?

Many people could never imagine having courage because they don’t even have confidence. What can you do to gain some confidence?

Few of us will face death in the ways necessary to make fortitude (with regard to death itself) a virtue in our lives. But the virtues connected to it and supportive of it, such as confidence (the habit of assurance and hopefulness concerning great deeds) can be developed every day.

Nobody wants to be a coward. But to quit cowardice we have to know the opposite. 

When you narrate your life, how do you write yourself? Personally, I have a long history of narrating myself as a loser, failure, or unfortunate person. If this is your struggle I found a helpful tool for you.

I often speculated that this was so and indeed wondered why I’d never heard or read it. But alas, it is a hypothesis that has popped up in various places. Stanley Porter, in a lecture attempting to answer this question, referred to this passage in Weiss and so I began to read (I had not read it, to my shame) and I found this:

For myself I feel bound to say, whether others support my views or not, that this mode of treating the problem seems entirely unsatisfactory and unconvincing. I lay no stress upon the historical difficulty, that the struggle with the Nazarene churches can hardly have left Paul with time or inclination to gather detailed knowledge of Jesus’ life or with leisure to assimilate it (Gal. 1:22). There is a more important point to consider. I must adhere to the statement that the vision on the road to Damascus is only intelligible on the supposition that Paul recognised Jesus in the heavenly vision. He may have heard a personal description of Jesus from the first disciples or from casual observers; but could such a description have enabled him to recognise Jesus? If we seriously consider the meaning of this vision, we are forced to conclude that the features of the earthly Jesus must have been known to him, seeing that the vision showed him the glorified Jesus. And I cannot but wonder how the whole school of modern theology has been able so readily to reject the best and most natural explanation of these difficulties, namely the assumption that Paul had seen Jesus personally, and that the sight had made an indelible impression upon him, perhaps unconsciously or even against his will. “We need not consider the possibility that Paul the Pharisee may have known the Galilæan prophet in person. The possibility naturally exists, but that it was ever realised there is no certain evidence in our sources of information.” Thus Kölbing (p. 109). One indication, at least, we have in the considerations above detailed, which show that a literal interpretation of the vision presupposes Paul’s personal knowledge of Jesus. But the problem may be more directly attacked by an opposite line of argument. Where is there a single syllable to show that Paul had not seen Jesus in person? The words of the exalted One, “I am Jesus, Whom thou persecutest,” given in the three accounts of the conversion to be found in the Acts (9:5; 21:7; 26:14) are no proof that Paul then saw Jesus for the first time; they were spoken because Paul saw no figure, but only heard the voice. It would have been an obvious course, both for the author of the Acts and for Paul, to declare the very surprising fact that Paul had never seen face to face the Lord, Whom he so zealously served. Yet we find no trace of any remark to this effect. -Johannes Weiss, Paul and Jesus, trans. H. J. Chaytor, Harper’s Library of Living Thought (London; New York: Harper & Brothers, 1909), 39–41.

Many feel as though they could become wise if they only could remember things more exactly. But how? The ancients wondered the same thing.

One of the fundamental questions we should ask ourselves is this, “How can I get wisdom?” Wisdom can lead to riches, happiness, success, friendships, a good name, and so-on. Who wouldn’t want the riches of wisdom in their life? Few know this, but in more ancient times, the elements of wisdom were essentially agreed upon. If wisdom is a puzzle, the completion of which would make your life less anxious, wouldn’t you want to know what the pieces were?