Some of the World’s greatest feats were accomplished by people who did not know they were impossible. During Christmas, a time of giving and receiving, one young man knew he should have a feeling of happiness and love. However, for him, it was a time of anger, bitterness, and somberness for he felt like life was closing in on him. He responded by hating—hating not only the ritual of Christmas but also the pseudo-feeling that was attached to it. Christmas heighted his feelings of anger about all the things that he failed to do during the year. Instead of viewing the new year with optimism, he remained disenchanted and angry. All in all, the Christmas season must present a catharsis for him because he never vented his feeling more than at that particular time of the year. If we cannot manage to enjoy or feel grateful, we may at least manage to feel guilty for not enjoying what another has given. Guilt or worry may function as a promissory note. Guilt uphold feeling rules from inside: it is an internal acknowledgment of an unpaid psychological debt. Even “I should feel guilty” is a nod in the direction of guilt, a weaker confirmation of what is confirmation of what is owed. We are commonly aware of pretending to feel something when we want to be polite. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

Pretending is a statement of deference to the other, and offering. However, we are preparing for temple blessings and other opportunities we will have as true followers of the Saviour. And we are helping to prepare the World for the Second Coming, inviting all to come unto Christ and receive the blessings of His Atonement. We are connected with Heaven. We will face challenges, but so does every generation. These are our days, and we need to be faithful, no faithless. The Lord knows about our challenges, and He is preparing us to meet them. To feign a feeling is to offer another person behavioural evidence of what we want one to believe we are thinking and feeling. In bad acting, what the other sees is the effort of acting itself—which remains a gesture of homage, through perhaps one of the slightest. Finally, we may offer a tribute so generous that it actually transforms our mood and our thoughts to match what others would like to see. Display and emotion work are not matters of chance. They come into play, back and forth. They come to mean payment or nonpayment of latent dues. “Inappropriate emotion” may be constructed as a nonpayment or mispayment of what is due, an indication that we are not seeing tings in the right light. Moments without their appropriate feelings are moments of unmade bows from the heart. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

There are many things people do for each other to maintain reciprocity, quite apart from psychological bowing. Psychological bowing, in turn, may be a means of expressing deeper and more pervasive bonds. Marriage, for example, usually involves some external services: I usually fix the Ultimate Driving Machine, mow the lawn, and do the laundry; you shop, give me backrubs, and cook the fancy cuisine. However, marriage partners clearly exchange more latent favours. “If you overlook I am above average weight, I will overlook your distress at large gatherings; if you will help me stop testing my limits, I will help you calm your fear of adventure.” Exchanges that are even more latent may border on fusion. “If you will me my steadiness, I will be your warmth.” The deeper the bond, the more central and latent the gifts exchanged, and the more often a person compensates in one arena for what is lacking in another. One way that such compensations are achieved is through the medium of emotional gift exchange. The exchange between people of equal status in a stable relationship is normally even. We return a worked-up cheerfulness, a pretended interest, or a suppressed frustration for something else that we both consider equivalent over the long haul. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

Overtime, the debtor makes up the debt or send promissory notes persuading the other to join in imagining a future time of repayment. However, when one person has a higher status than another, it becomes acceptable to both parties for the subordinate to contribute more. Indeed, to have a higher status is to have a stronger claim to rewards, including emotional rewards. It is also to have greater access to the means of enforcing claims. The deferential behaviour of underrepresented individuals—the encouraging smiles, the attentive listening, the appreciative laugher, the comments of affirmation, admiration, or concern—comes to seem normal, even built into personality rather than inherent in the kinds of exchange that marginalized groups commonly enter into. Yet, when understood as an expression of machismo (an assumptive attitude that virility, courage, strength, and entitlement to dominate are attributes or concomitants of masculinity), the absence of smiling, of appreciative laughter, of statements of admiration or concern are thought attractive. Complementarity is a common mask for inequality in what is presumed to be owing between people, both in display and in the deep acts that sustain it. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

Emotion is a sense that tells about the self-relevance of reality. We infer from it what we must have wanted or expected or how we must have been perceiving the World. Emotion is one way to discover a buried perspective on matters. Especially when other ways of locating ourselves are in bad repair, emotion becomes important. We put emotion to private use. Through deep acting we share it and offer it in exchange. We continually try to put together things that threaten to pull apart—the situation, an appropriate way to see and feel about it, and our own real thoughts and feelings. Rules are to the type, intensity, duration, timing, and placing of feelings are society’s guidelines, the promptings of an unseen director. The stage, the props, and fellow members of the cast help us internally assemble the gifts that we freely exchange. In private life, we are free to question the going rate of exchange and free to negotiate a new one. If we are no satisfied, we can leave; many friendships and marriages die of inequality. Private gender relations have a floorboard, which is the prevailing arrangement between the sexes in the larger society. An equalitarian couple in a society that as a whole subordinates women, cannot, at the basic level of emotion exchanges be equal. For example, a lawyer who is a woman and earns as much money and respect as her husband, and whose husband accept these facts about her, may sill find that she owes him gratitude for his liberal views and his equal participation in housework. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

The woman’s claims are seen as unusually high, his as unusually low. The larger market in alternate partners offers one free household larbour, which it does not offer her. In light of the larger social context, she is lucky to have him. And it is usually more her burden to manage indignation at having to feel grateful. However, in the public World of work, it is often part of an individual’s job to accept uneven exchanges, to be treated with disrespect or anger by a client, all the while closeting into fantasy the anger one would like to respond with. Where the customer is king, unequal exchanges are normal, and from the beginning customer and client assume different rights to feeling and display. The ledger is supposedly evened by a wage. However, life is “about faith—faith that this is God’s World and we are God’s children. How could it not be about faith? I think if one truly loves God with all one’s heart, then one has to love everybody else. It is not a choice. And you do not love them because it scores you points with God. You love them because you are trying to see them and embrace them as God sees and embraces them. You are loving them because they are alive. I see God in the little kindness people do for one another. I see God in the eyes of the worst down-and-out derelicts I deal with,” (pages 110 and 111 of The Midwinter Wolves by Anne Rice). #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

As far as basic principles of behaviour are concerned the OT [Old Testament] and the NT [New Testament] are in broad agreement. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. You shall love your neighbour as yourself,” reports Mark 12.20-31; Deuteronomy 6.5; Leviticus 19.18. With the double quotation from Deuteronomy and Leviticus, Jesus drew out the quintessence of OT law and gave it his own seal of approval. Then ten commandments are often quoted by the NT. Peter quotes the Levitical injunction to holiness as reported in 1 Peter 1.16. The examples could be multiplied to show that the NT advocates the same standard of personal morality as the OT. This is to be expected, since the God of the OT is the God of the NT. The people of God are supposed to be imitate God. If Leviticus summons people to “be holy, for I am holy,” our Lord urges us: “You, therefore, must be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect,” reported by Matthew 5.48. It is evident that the personal ethics of both testaments are similar. The principles underlying the OT are valid and authoritative for the Christian, but the particular applications found in the OT may not be. The moral principles are the same today, but insofar as our situations often differs from the OT setting, the application of the principles in our society may well be different too. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

One of the examples is Deuteronomy 22.8: “When you build a new house, make a parapet around your roof so that you may not bring the guilt of bloodshed on your house if someone falls from the roof.” A parapet is a low, protective wall or rail along the edge of a roof. In an area where flat roofed houses were common, it was obviously intended to keep people from falling off the roof. The underlying principle shows that safety measures are more than just a good idea, they are the will of God. This should help us respond in a Christian way to the proliferation of occupational safety and product liability laws. Whole some aspects of those laws seem to go too far in addressing safety problems, they are—although unintentional on the part of their authors—applications of the safety principle God set forth in Deuteronomy 22.8. Therefore, out of love to God and to our neighbour, we should make our work places and our products as safe as possible. The apostle Paul used this method of applying principles from the Old Testament law in 1 Corinthians 9.9-10: “For it is written in the Law of Moses: ‘Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.’ Is it about oxen that God is concerned? Surely he says this for us, does he not? Yes, this was written for us, because when the plowman plows and the threshers threshes, they ought to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

The specific application Paul made to ministers of the gospel was far removed from the Old Testament agricultural economy. Yet, it is as applicable today as it was in Paul’s day, not only to the ministry but to all employment situations. In this sense, then, the law of God as expressed in the Old Testament has not been abolished. The matter, or subject of a covenant, is always something that falls under deliberation; (for to covenant, is an act of the Will; that is to say an act, and the last act, of deliberation;) and is therefore always understood to be something to come; and which is judged possible for one that covenanted, to perform. And therefore, to promise that which is known to be impossible, is no covenant. However, if that prove impossible afterwards, which before was thought possible, the covenant is valid, and binding, (though performing as much as is possible; for to more no person can be obliged. People are freed of their covenants two ways; by performing; or by being forgiven. For performance, is the natural end of obligation; and forgiveness, the restitution of liberty as being transferring of the right, in which the obligation consisted. Meditation begins with the devotional exercise of listening to the Word. Psalm 40.6 contains a brilliant metaphor in the original Hebrew text which graphically teaches the necessity of listening. It literally says, “ears you have dug for me.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

Much to our loss, no English translation preserves the metaphor, preferring to variously paraphrase it with phrases like the RSV’s “thou hast given me an open ear.” Nevertheless, the Hebrew verb retains the metaphorical nugget “dug,” which suggests, a part from God’s work, a human head without any ears—“A blockhead. Eyes, nose and mouth, but no ears.” This remarkable metaphor, “ears you have dug for me,” occurs in the context of a busy religious performance which is deaf to the voice of God—“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require.” The problem was that the Psalmist’s religious colleagues had read about how to do the rituals of sacrifice, but had missed the message. God had spoken, but they did not hear. So what does God do? He takes a pick and shovel and mines through the sides of the “cranial granite,” making openings through which His Word can pass to the mind and heart. The result is hearing, and the hearer responds, “Then I said, ‘Here I am, I have come—it is written about me in the scroll. To do your will, O my God, is my desire; your law is within my heart’” (vv.7,8). The words of Scripture are not merely to be read but to be heard. They are meant to go to the hearts. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

The importance of having our ears dug open comes to us from the lips of Jesus: “One who has an ear, let one hear,” (Revelations 2.7,11, 17, 29; 3.6, 13, 22). We need to read God’s Word, but we must also pray that He will blast through our granite-block heads so we truly hear His Words. Because we are active participants in the process and what we do or do not do makes a huge difference, our efforts must be based on understanding. The degree of success in such efforts will essentially depend upon the degree to which this general pattern is understood and intentionally conformed to. When people see how the Word of God will clearly improve their lives, the vision of salvation becomes clear and strong, and it will very likely pull everything else required along with it; and the Word of God will be learned, even in difficult and distracting circumstances. Still, more than vision is required, and especially there is required an intention. Projects of personal transformation rarely if ever succeed by accident, drift, or imposition. Indeed, where accident, drift, and imposition dominate—as they usually do, quite frankly, in the lives of professing Christians—very little of any human values transpired. Effective action has to involve order, subordination, and progression, developing from the inside of the personality. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

It is, in other words, a spiritual matter, a matter of meaning and will, for we are spiritual beings. Conscious involvement with order, subordination, and progression, developing from the inside of the personality is how life becomes our life—how we get a life, as is now said. The will (spirit) is mysterious from the point of view of the physical and social World, for there it is causes, not choices, that dominate. However, one can never get a grip on one’s own life—or that of others—from the causal point of view. It is choice that matters. Imagine a person wondering day after day if one is going to learn the buy a house or get married to a certain person—just waiting, to see whether it would happen. That would be laughable. However, many people actually seem to live in this way with respect to major issues involving them, and with a deplorable outcome. That explains a lot of why lives go as they do. However, to learn the Word of God and other important concerns of life, if it is to be realized, we must intend the vision. That is, we must initiate, bring into being those factors that would bring the vision to reality. And that, of course, brings us to the final element in the general pattern, that of means or instrumentalities. It is challenging and worthwhile to penetrate to the source of basic immaturity. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

No representative of the church should criticize them carelessly, as if speaking with the possession of maturity to those who are immature. Nor should a church representative criticize the secular World before having subjected the church to the same serious scrutiny. And if one cannot do this in both directions with love, one should refrain from doing it altogether. It is for this reason that I prefer not to refute the attacks of the secular mind on the church. The self-criticism of the church, as sown before, goes deeper than could any such attack. Also, I do not want to criticize any of the creative activities of the secular mind, the sciences, the arts, social relations, technical activities, and politics. These disciplines have their own criteria and their leaders apply these criteria with severity, honest and self-criticism. In all this the secular mind is mature and religion should never interfere with it, as mature science would never interfere with religious symbols, since they lie in another dimension of experience and reality. To discuss the existence of God as being alongside other beings betrays the utter immaturity on both sides. It betrays complete ignorance about the meaning and power of the divine. The secular mind, however, encounters a basic impediment to reaching maturity in thinking. It turns away from the divine foolishness in the ground of wisdom, and makes its wisdom, however successful in conquering the World, humanly foolish. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

“Be mature in thinking,” is said to the great scholar as urgently as to the ordinary member of the congregation. For possessing a perfect brain does not ensure maturity, nor does having a creative mind mean that one is mature. There is no maturity where the awareness of the divine foolishness is lacking. So then, what is meant by this apparent paradox? It is born out of an experience that cuts through all other experiences, shaking them, turning them to a new direction, and raising them beyond themselves. It is the experience of something ultimate, inexhaustible in meaning, unapproachable in being, unconquerable in power. We may call it the holy, the eternal, the divine. It is beyond every name because it is present in everything that has a name, in you and in me. If we try to utter it, we speak of the unspeakable; yet we must speak of it. For it is nearer to us than our own self, and yet it is more removed from us than the farthest galaxies. Such experience is the most human of all experiences. One can cover it up, one can repress it, but never totally. It is effective in the restlessness of the heart, in the anxious question of one’s own value, in the fear of losing the meaning of one’s life, in the anxiety of emptiness, guilt, and having to die. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

Myth, poetry, and the philosophy of humankind everywhere expressed the experience. They witness to thing that are deeply buried in the human heart and in the depth of our World. However, sometimes they break through the surface with eruptive power. No artist, philosopher, or scientist is mature who have never questioned oneself and one’s experience as an artist, as a philosopher, or as a scientist. No mature scholar is humanly mature who has not asked the question of the meaning of one’s existence. A scholar who rightly takes nothing for granted in one’s scholarly work, but who takes one being as a scholar and one’s being as a human for granted is immature. However, if one is pressed hard by the question of one’s existence so that one cannot push it aside, one is ready to be grasped by divine foolishness. Even more, one is already grasped by it. One is driven out of the safe reasonableness of one’s daily life. One must face a depth in oneself of which one was not aware before, a depth of dangers and promises, of darkness and expectations. And what one finds in oneself one sees reflected in the World, a depth that was hidden to one before one found it oneself. Now one has become aware of it in others, in everything alive, in the whole Universe. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

And if one receives answers to the questions awakened in one, one can listen to them, even if their grammar and their style sounds ecstatic and paradoxical, measured by the language of daily life. Such answers, received, are what faith means. They sound like sacred foolishness, but are armed with the power of truth. If, however, they are brought to the level of ordinary reasonableness and attacked or defended on this level, they sound untrue, meaningless, absurd, whether accepted or rejected. The name of the language of divine foolishness, and of the life that is created by it, is love. Love is life under the power of divine foolishness. It is ecstatic and paradoxical. It cuts through the ordinary ways of life, elevating them to a higher level. However, if love is brought down to the level of moral reasonableness, and is attached or defended on this basis, it become sentimental, utopian, and unreal. The divine foolishness of thought and the divine foolishness of life are untied in the symbol of Christmas: God in the infant, God as infant, anticipating and preparing the symbol of Good Friday—God in the condemned enslaved person, God as the condemned slave. This certainly is ecstatic and paradoxical, and it should not be brought down to the level of a divine-human chemistry. However, it should be understood and experienced as an expression of the divine foolishness that is the source of wisdom and the power of maturity. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

Be mature in thinking. Be mature in love! This is not mysterious. If the vision is clear and strong, and the employment of the means thoughtful and persistent, then the outcome will be ensured and, basically, adequate to the vision of thinking. “And it came to pass that when he had traveled three days in the wilderness, he pitched his tent in a valley by the side of a river of water. And it came to pass that he built an altar of stones, and made an offering unto the Lord, and gave thanks unto the Lord our God. And it came to pass that he called the name of the river, Laman, and it emptied into the Red Sea; and the valley was in the borders near the mouth thereof. And when my father saw that the water of the river emptied into the fountain of the Red Sea, he spake unto Laman, saying: that thou mightiest be like unto this river, continually running into the fountain of all righteousness! And he also spake unto Lemuel: O that thou mightiest be like unto this valley, firm and steadfast, and immovable in keeping the commandments of the Lord,” reports 1 Nephi 2.6-10. O God, Who hast forbidden us to be anxious about supplies for this life; grant, we beseech Thee, that we may devotedly follow after what belongeth to Thee, and that all things salutary may be granted to us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

O Divine Lawgiver, I take shame to myself for open violations to Thy law, for my secret faults, my unprofitable attendance upon means of grace, my carnality in worshipping thee, and all he sins of my holy things. My iniquities are increased over by head: my trespasses are known in the Heavens, and there Christ is gone also, my Advocate with the Father, my propitiation for sins, and I hear His word of peace. At present it is a day of small things with me, I have light enough to see my darkness, sensibility enough to feel the hardness of my heart, spirituality enough to mourn my want of a heavenly mind; but I might have had more, I have never been straitened in Thee, Thou has always placed before me an infinite fullness, and I have not taken it. I confess and bewail my deficiencies and backslidings: I mourn my numberless failures, my incorrigibility under rebukes, my want of profiting under ordinances of mercy, my neglect of opportunities for usefulness. It is not with me as in month past; O recall me to thyself, and enable me to feel my first love. May my improvements correspond with my privileges, may my will accept the decisions of my judgment, my choice be that which conscious approves, and my I never condemn myself in the things I allow! #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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