When I worked at a coffee shop I observed a man in line make a rude comment and a woman who did not know him said, “There are ladies present.” He said, “Where?” She then spent the rest of her time in line explaining her lady-ness to him. Then she sat at his table. It blew my mind. I later learned from conversation with a co-worker to whom I explained this event that this is a flirting device known as “the neg.”
This isn’t an argument against Calvinism.
Nevertheless, a doctor friend once told me that the reason he couldn’t be a calvinist any more was that it stole his hope. He could, he reasoned, have no certainty that God wasn’t simply giving somebody the apparent gift of faith specifically in order to make them apostasize and have greater punishment in hell.
I think that the internal gymnatistic you have to go through in order to have positive hope as a Calvinist must be difficult. When I was still a Calvinist I just sort of puritanitcally thought, “Well, if God did that, I suppose it would be ok.”
Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins. Do not take to heart all the things that people say, lest you hear your servant cursing you. Your heart knows that many times you yourself have cursed others. (Ecc 7:20-22)How can you deal with people who speak ill of you?
The Bible is clear that death and life are in the power of the tongue and that those who understand it will reap the fruits thereof.
In the lives of those who are trying to help others and or trying to be successful there is a sort of unspoken debate about yes and no.
Here’s what I mean:
More anon.
"So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets." (Mat 7:12)In brief, I think the answer is yes.
If, on the basis of this command, you decide that every day at work you will make people excited to work with you because of your efficiency, kindness, humor, and knowledge, then in general your work experience will improve.
Pro 3:1-5 My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments, (2) for length of days and years of life and peace they will add to you. (3) Let not steadfast love and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart. (4) So you will find favor and good success in the sight of God and man. (5) Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.I've written about this passage before asking whether or not it was promoting a form on non-deliberative mysticism.
Another question to ask is this: is the author saying that the young man, “my son,” should never lean on his own understanding?
This week I managed to deadlift 325 and 335. That’s good pos operative progress. The 335 lift was at the end of grueling back workout so my forearms and all my back muscles were exhausted. This tells me that I have significant progress to come on dead lift.
Also, this week I starting thinking about how economic principles could easily be used to make predictions about ecology. Biologists have already known this. So have mathematicians. For all I know, somebody told me about it and it just popped into my head.
Evagrios of Pontus wrote these instructions for Christian meditation. I think it’s important to utilize the imagination and the feelings in meditation just as much as thoughts and concepts. As humans we are deeply susceptible to hypnotism and rhetoric. This is important because we often can find ourselves convinced of truths upon which we do not act because they do not affect our feelings enough to goad our will into action. And other times we might act without reference to the truth because we’ve been emotionally persuaded into a habit or action. When we meditation upon truths received in the way Evagrios instructs us, those truths can make it further into our lives.
Gen 12:1-3 Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. (2) And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. (3) I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."Gen 24:1 Now Abraham was old, well advanced in years. And the LORD had blessed Abraham in all things.
“The world is nothing but change. Our life is only perception. (bk IV ch 3)”
A great deal of our life is based on fiction which we mistake for reality.
We worry about this disaster in the future or we bother over this memory of the past.
The fact is that our memory of the event is transfigured by its repeatedly being brought before our minds with all of the negative feelings we associate with it.