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The Condition Upon which God Hath Given Liberty to Humans is Eternal Vigilance!
An individual’s self-concept is the core of one’s personality. It affects every aspect of human behaviour: the ability to learn, the capacity to grow and change, the choice of friends, mates, and careers. It is no exaggeration to say that a strong beneficial self-image is the best possible preparation for success in life. The Master has one’s shortcomings or frailties just as we all have, but one also had what few of us have—a direct contact with God. Where is the person who is wise enough to give everyone else spiritual guidance, personal advice, marital counsel, and prediction of future? Who with a single look knows all about you as one already knows all about God and the Universe? Let us not look for fantasies of wishful thinking but see humans as humans. Let one not expect to find perfection in any mortal. Let one be satisfied to find someone who has so developed one’s spirituality that one is worthy to lead those who are still much in the rear. There is no being without one’s defects: it is a dreamer’s notion that the perfect human being exists on our planet. Hence the disciples who servilely copy their guru in all things may copy one’s defects too! Where is such a master, such a faultless paragon of virtue wisdom strength and pity, to be found? #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Look where we will, every person falls short of the ideal, shows an imperfection or betrays a weakness. The ideal self-actualized person portrayed in philosophical (as distinct from mystical) books, has not come to life in our times however much one may have done so in ancient times. Behind the majestic phrases of most of these spiritual teachers, we usually find in the end of a searching investigation based on living with them or on the historic fact of their lives, that there stand for frail mortals. Hence those few who emerge as being one with, and not inferior to, their teachings stand out all the more truly as great beings. It is misleading to put such a person forward, as so many people put one forward, as being faultless. One’s consciousness of God may be perfect, but one’s conduct as a human being may be not. Is there anywhere a faultless person? One may be wise but one may not be wise all the time. For history shows lapses of judgment, impulsive actions, and other regrettable happenings due to karmic pressures even where least expected. There are many ways to undermine the student-professor relationship: if the guru is put upon an unreachable pedestal, if one is turned into a god and one’s humanness is denied, or if the guru is believed to be perfection itself. The possibility for perfection in any person is a debatable point. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
When considering fame it can be useful and convenient to consider ill-famed or infamy, this arising when there is a circle of persons who know ill of an individual without having met one personally. The obvious function of ill-fame is social control, of which two distinct possibilities must be mentioned: Formal social control is the first. There are functionaries, and circles of functionaries, employed to scan various publics for the presence of identifiable individuals whose record and reputation have made them suspect, or even “wanted” for arrest. For example, during a mental hospital study, I knew a patient who had “town parole” and also a record of having harassed some youths. On entering any of the neighbouring movies houses he was likely to be spotted by the manager and made to leave. He was, in short, too ill-famed to attend movies in the neighbourhood. Well-known “hoods” have had the same problem, but a scale larger than could be effected by theater managers. It is here that one deals with further examples of the occupation of making persona identifications. Floorwalkers in stores, for example, sometimes have extensive records of the appearance of professional shoplifters along with that identity peg called the modus operandi. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
The production of personal identification may in fact be accorded a social occasion of its own, as in the police line-up. Dickens, in describing the social mixing of prisoners and visitors in a London jail, provides another example, called “sitting for one’s portrait,” whereby a new prisoner was obliged to sit in a chair while the guards gathered and looked at the individual, fixing one’s image in their kinds so as to be able to spot the individual later. Functionaries whose job is to check up on the possible presence of the ill-reputed may operate in the public at large; and this time the famed can be seen to be in much the same position as the ill-famed. It is possible for the circle of those who know of an individual (but are not known by one) to include the public at large, not merely those employed to make identifications. (In fact the terms “fame” and “ill-famed” imply that the citizenry at large must possess an image of the individual.) No doubt the mass media play the central role here, making it possible for a “private” person to be transformed into a “public” figure. Now it seems the case that the public image of an individual, that is, the image of one available to those who do not know one personally, will necessarily be somewhat different from the image one projects through direct dealings with those who know one personally. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
Where an individual has a public image, it seems to be constituted from a small selection of acts which may be true of one, which facts are inflated into a dramatic and newsworthy appearance, and then used as a full picture of one. In consequence a special type of stigmatization can occur. The figure the individual cuts in daily life before those with whom know has routine dealings is likely to be dwarfed and spoiled by virtual demands (whether favourable or unfavourable) created by one’s public image. This seems especially to occur when the individual is no longer engaged in newsworthy larger events and must everywhere face being received as someone who no longer is what one once was; it seems also likely to occur when notoriety is acquired due to a brief and uncharacteristic, accidental event which exposes the individual to public identification without providing one any compensating claim to desired attributes. In law, efforts of an individual to remain a private citizen or regain that status have come to form part of the question of privacy. People have the right to be let alone. An implication of these comments is that the famous and the infamous ay have more in common than either has with what headwaiters and gossip columnists call “nobodies,” for whether a crowd wants to show love of hate for an individual, the same disruption of one’s ordinary movement can occur. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
This type of lack of anonymity is to be contrasted to the type based on social identity, as when an individual with a physical imperfection feels he or she is constantly stared at. Infamous hangmen and famous actors have both found it expedient to board a train at an unanticipated station or to wear a disguise; individuals may even find themselves using stratagems to escape hostile public attention that they also used at an earlier time in their story to escape adulatory attention. In any case, readily accessible information about the management of personal identity is t be found in the biographies and autobiographies of famous and infamous people. An individual, then, may be seen as the central point in a distribution of persons who either merely know about one or know one personally, all of whom may have somewhat different amounts of information concerning one. Let me repeat that although the individual’s daily round will routinely bring one into contact with individuals who know one differently, these differences will ordinarily be incompatible; in fact, some kind of single biographical structure will be sustained. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
A person’s relationship to one’s boss and one’s relationship to one’s child may be vastly different, so that one cannot easily play the part of employee while playing the part of father, but should the person, while walking with one’s child, meet one’s boss, a greeting and introduction will be possible without either the child or the boss radically reorganizing their personal identification of the person—both having known of the existence and role of the other. He well-established etiquette of the “curtesy introduction,” in fact, assumes that the person we have a role relation to quite properly has other kinds of relationships to other kinds of person. I assume, then, that the apparently haphazard contacts of everyday life may still constitute some kind of structure holding the individual to one biography, and this in spite of the multiplicity of selves that role and audience segregation allow one. We have now begun to look at a characteristic whose development markedly distinguishes the human from other animal–’our greater ability to steer behaviour in a particular direction. The potential for this is to come extent built in; that is why it was worth while studying in such detail the process of learning to recognize a triangle. That process is the prototype for all direction-giving processes. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Simplifying grossly, we may say that because of the way the eye is constructed, its attention travels between angles until the structure “triangle” is registered. When this happened very often, a more permanent structure is established: the concept of t for triangle. Once this has happened, the concept “triangle” sometimes comes to mind when angles are perceived. We begin sometimes to think “triangle” before we have counted the corners. Here is a kind of system where the perception of two angles (or sometimes just one) can call forth the concept “triangle,” and where the concept of “triangle” calls forth the activity of looking for angles. “Looking for” (formally called expectancy) is a direction- giving process, closely related to attention-giving. Referring to the reciprocal facilitations which operate when looking at the triangle. Attention is the central reinforcement of a sensory process. But the same process is called expectancy when the sensory reinforcement is delayed. I shall usually call this process “expectation.” Seeing an angle, the eye is drawn along a line to the adjacent angle. This is the influence of the past. It can however become the influence of the future. Because the eye is drawn along, there is an element of action. A neural organization can come into being, which involves both an expectation of what will happen next, and an impulse to do the next thing. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Structural changes produce enduring concepts, and perhaps quite elaborate structures of ideas and feelings which give meaning to much that happens. One consequence of such structures is to make it possible for us to expect events to happen which have not happened yet. Expectations can cause a message to get organized in a more powerful way than the message would warrant if the structures had not already become established, and in a more powerful way than other messages coming in at the same time. Expectations give meaning to current events. So much so that expectation is often the same as meaning. If the central “steps” assembly reverberates easily and is a relatively enduring structure, than a great variety of messages about height can evoke a sense of danger—height will come to stand for sanger; height will bring with it the expectation that something dangerous is about to happen. This sense of danger will have come from the person’s anticipation that he or she is about to remember a painful experience associated with the upstairs room. This anticipation is called signal anxiety: the present situation is a signal (symbol) that something else will happen next, in this case, something undesirable. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
The central process which lead to expectancy and meaning can also act selectively so that certain stimuli are sought for—“selected.” Insofar as people’s lives in society, as one of many creaturely beings, as one of many individuals, one is influenced by one’s environment. One also constantly abuts against one’s intrinsic limits. Being justified by grace, simul peccator et justs, one runs the permanent risk of negating one of the two poles of one’s existence, sin or justice. Thus one does not live in a comfortably peaceful region, but rather on a spiritual boundary line between the demonic—or the realm of idolatry, of misinterpretation—and justice by grace. Ultimately this situation, which is psychologically translated as an awareness of sin, stems from the “spiritual cleavage” between essence and existence, between Eden and the World. It is the drama and also the privilege of modern humans that one is more conscious than one’s forerunners were of this “boundary situation.” Hence the existential questions that crop up in one concerning the means of being, of existence and of life, to which one finds no ultimate answer in oneself. No answer does not mean that a person is not ultimately concerned regarding the dilemmas of existence. Far from it, an analysis of one’s situation shows that humans are away of something that calls for unconditional allegiance. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Beyond the contradictions of the dialectic of existence one senses, however dimly, a sort of undercurrent to being, a ground of being where contradictions would be resolved and dilemmas uncoil themselves if one could reach so far. The great religions and their philosophical or political substitutes have tried to give it a name and to elaborate means of allegiance to it. The Christian faith knows that this unconditional concern has been revealed to us in Jesus as the Christ. The ultimate ground of being in one other than God. The method of apologetics, therefore, would consist in witnessing to the New Being in Jesus as Christ at the moment when humans reach awareness of the Unconditional in oneself. To be efficient today, the theological norm must be apprehended ad an answer to human’s situation, as the name for the ultimate ground of being. This is why we follow a method of correlation wherein an existential analysis, a transcendent realism, lays bare human’s ultimate concern and proceeds to show that the New Being in Jesus as the Christ is the God-given answer to human’s questions, the unfolding of one’s situation, the justification by grace of one’s existence. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
When a person is ultimately concerned, when one has reached the bottom of being and has given oneself to it, even thought in doubt and with hesitancy—for these belong to one’s situation as human—then one is indeed justified by faith. Whether one knows it or not, whether one has heard of Christ or not, one is then grasped by the New Being. For this is the Protestant protest: to assert God in the midst of the demonic, the Unconditional amidst the conditioned. This is justification by grace alone: to be take hold of by the Christ now, not doctrinally but existentially, not in theory but in fact. Every unconditional concern stamps a person as having been reached by the New Being in Christ, by a reality in which the self-estrangement of our existence is overcome, a reality of reconciliation and reunion, of creativity, meaning and hope. Adhesion to the Unconditional resolves the contradictions of the conditions of existence. Then the New Being re-establishes the courage to be, which is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt. Then humans are justified by grace alone. We must bring light to the unconditional concern of humans and show the identity of the Unconditional, with which humans are concerned, with the New Being manifested in Jesus Christ. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Hence the norm is best expressed thus: The material norm of systematic theology today is the New Being in Jesus as the Christ as our ultimate concern. Theology is interested in this ultimate or unconditional concern in itself. In the Christian faith it is equated with Christ himself as the revealer of the New Being. Theology today has to show people Christ as the Revelation of the Unconditional. The Eye of Providence or the all-seeing eye is a symbol showing an eye surrounded by rays of light or glory, and usually enclosed by a triangle. It is sometimes interpreted as representing the eye of God keeping watch on humankind. In 1782 the Eye of Providence was adopted as part of the symbolism on the reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States of America. On the seal, the Eye is surrounded by the words “Annuit Coeptis,” meaning “He approves (or has approved) our undertakings,” “Novus Ordo Seclorum,” meaning “New Order of the Ages,” and the lowest level of the pyramid showing the years 1776 in Roman numerals. The Eye is positioned above an unfinished pyramid with thirteen steps, representing the original thirteen states and the future growth of the country—Manifest Destiny. The combined implication is that the Eye, or God favours the prosperity of the United States of America. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
It is written: “The grace of God is life everlasting,” reports Romans 6.23. However, life everlasting consists in the vision of the Divine essence, according to the words: “This is eternal life, that they may know Thee the only true God,” excreta reports John 17.3. Therefore to see the essence of God is possible to the created intellect by grace, and not by nature. Knowledge is regulated according as the thing known is the knower. However, the thing known is in the knower according to the mode of the knower. Hence the knowledge of every knower is ruled according to its own nature. If therefore the mode of anything’s being exceeds the mode of the knower, it must result that the knowledge of the object is above the nature of the knower. Now the mode of being of things is manifold. For some things have being only in this one individual matter; as all bodies. However, others are subsisting natures, not residing in matter at all, which, however, are not their own existence, but receive it; and these are the incorporeal beings, called Angels. However, to God alone does it belong to His own subsistent being. Therefore what exists only in individual matter we know naturally, forasmuch as our soul, whereby we know, is the form of certain matter. Now our soul possesses two cognitive powers; one is the act of a corporeal organ, which naturally knows things existing in individual matter; hence sense knows only the singular. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
There is another kind of cognitive power in the soul, called the intellect; and this is not the act of any corporeal organ. Wherefore the intellect naturally knows natures which exist only in individual matter; not as they are in such individual matter, but according as they are abstracted therefore by the considering act of the intellect; hence it follows that through the intellect we can understand these objects as Universal; and this is beyond power of the sense. Now the angelic intellect naturally knows natures that are not in matter; but this is beyond the power of the intellect of our soul in the state of its present life, untied as it is to the body. It follows therefore that to know self-subsistent being is natural to the divine intellect alone; and this is beyond the natural power of any created intellect; for no creature is its own existence, forasmuch as its existence is participated. Therefore the created intellect cannot see the essence of God, unless God by His grace united Himself to the created intellect, as an object made intelligible to it. This mode of knowing God is natural to an Angel—namely, to know Him by His own likeness refulgent in the Angel oneself. However, to know God by any created similitude is not to know the essence of God, as was shown above. Hence is does not follow that an Angel can know the essence of God by one’s own power. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
The general pattern of personal transformation, which also applies to spiritual formation in the Christian tradition, should now be clear. Indeed, this is the pattern of al human accomplishment, even that which—like spiritual formation can only occur at the initiative and through the constant direction and upholding of God, or through grace. To keep the general pattern in mind, we will use the little acronym “VIM,” as in the phrase “vim and vigour.” Vision, Intention, Means. “Vim” is a derivative of the Latin term “vis,” meaning direction, strength, force, vigour, power, energy, or virtue; and sometimes meaning sense, import, nature, or essence. Spiritual formation in Christlikeness is all of this to human existence. It is the path by which we can truly, as Paul told the Ephesians, “be empowered in the Lord and in the energy of his might,” as reported in Ephesians 6.10 and “become mighty with his energy through his Spirit entering into the inward person,” reports Ephesians 3.16. If we are to be spiritually formed in Christ, we must have and must implement the appropriate vision, intention, and means. Not just any path we take will do. If this VIM pattern is not in place properly and held there, Christ simply will not be formed in us. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Larger segments, especially classic texts, are tailor-made for meditation. The Ten Commandments, with the first four Godward commands, and the six manward injunction following, should be regularly murmured in reverent self-examination (cf. Exodus 20.1-17 and Deuteronomy 5.1-22). There are eight Beatitudes which consecutively considered poverty of spirit, mouring over sin, gentleness, spiritual hunger, mercy, purity, peacemaking, and persecution. The Lord’s Prayer begins with the foundational awareness “Our Father, who art in Heaven” and then presents three upward petitions and three horizontal petitions—a perfect pattern for prayer and meditation. There are endless possibilities, including he so-called kenosis passage, Philippians 2.5-11, which begins, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus.” Other food for meditation includes Jesus’ parables, the Psalms, and the epigrams of James. Both practical and esoteric passages can provide divine substance for reverent soul chatter. The effect of meditation are supernal, bringing: Revival—“The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul,” reports Psalm 19.7. Wisdom—“The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple,” reports Psalm 19.7; “Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long. Your commands make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever with me,” reports Psalm 119.97, 98. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Increases in our Faith—“Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ,” reports Romans 10.17. We may be challenged, convicted, and exhilarated with the call to meditation. The question is, how is this to be done? The Scriptures say it should be continual, telling us we ought to mediate “day and night” reports Psalm 1.2; cf. 119.97), and even while we lie awake at night reports Psalm 63.6; 119:148. Ideally, we are to make meditation part of our regular devotion, giving hidden time to reverently muttering God’s Word. However, even our bust schedules can be punctuated with Scriptural meditation—in the car, at lunch break, or waiting for a bus. Select a choice text, write in on a card, and slip it into your pocket. Pull it out on those spare moments. Murmur it. Memorize it. Pray it. Say it. Share it. The discipline of meditation is a must. Moses told Israel as he finished the “Songs of Moses”: “Take to heart all the words I have solemnly declared to you this day. They are not just idle words for you—they are your life,” reports Deuteronomy 32.46,47. “Then he said, ‘Here I am, I have come to do your will.’ And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all,” reports Hebrews 10.9-10. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
The great mistake made by most of the Lord’s people is in hoping to discover in themselves that which is to be found in Christ alone. Most of us have a tendency to seek within ourselves what is to be found in Christ alone. O Merciful God, that we who by violating the Divine precepts fell away from the happiness of Paradise, may by the keeping of Thy commandments regain the access to eternal bliss; through Jesus Christ our Lord. No person is obliged to accuse oneself. A covenant to accuse oneself, without assurance of pardon, is likewise invalid. For in the condition of nature, where every person is judge, there is no place for accusation: and in the civil state, the accusation is followed with punishment; which being force, a person is not obliged not to resist. The same is also true, of the accusation of those, by whose condemnation a person falls into misery; as of a father, wife, or benefactor. For the testimony of such an accuser, if it be not willingly given, is presumed to be corrupted by nature; and therefore not to be received: and where a person’s testimony is not to be credited, one is not bound to give it. Also accusations upon torture, are not to be reputed as testimonies. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
For torture is to be used but as means of conjecture, and light, in the further examination, and search of truth; and what is in that case confessed, tends to ease of one that is tortured; not to the informing of the torturers: and therefore ought not to have the credit of a sufficient testimony: for whether one deliver oneself by true, or false accusation, one does it by right of preserving one’s own life. Lehi’s sons return to Jerusalem to obtain the plates of brass—Laban refuses to give the plates up—Nephi exhorts and encourages his brethren—Laban steals their property and attempts to slay them (sliving)—Laman and Lemuel smite Nephi and Sam and are reproved by an Angel. About 600-592 Before Christ. “And it came to pass that I, Nephi, returned from speaking with the Lord, to the tent of my father. And it came to pass that he spake unto me, saying: Behold I have a dreamed a dream, in the which the Lord hath commanded me that thou and thy brethren shall return to Jerusalem. For behold, Laban hat the record of the Jews and also a genealogy of my forefathers, and they are engraven upon plates of brass. Wherefore, the Lord hath commanded me that thou and thy brothers should go unto the house of Laban, and seek the records, and being them down hither into the wilderness. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
“And now, behold thy brothers murmur, saying it is a hard thing which I have required of them; but behold I have not required it of them, but it is a commandment of the Lord. Therefore go, my son, and thou shalt be favoured of the Lord, because thou has not murmured,” reports 1 Nephi 3.1-6. O Lord, help me to approach thee with becoming conception of Thy nature, relations and designs. Thou inhabitest eternity, and my life is nothing before thee; Thou dwellest in the highest Heaven and this cannot contain Thee; I live in a house of clay. Thy power is almighty; I am crushed before the moth. Thy understanding is infinite; I know nothing as I ought to know. Thou canst not behold evil; I am vile. In my ignorance, weakness, fears, depression, may Thy Spirit help my infirmities with supplies of wisdom, strength and comfort. Let me faithfully study my character, be willing to bring it to light, observe myself in my trials, judge the reality and degree of my grace, consider how I have been ensnared or overcome. Grant that I may never trust my heart, depend upon any present resolutions, but be strong in the grace of Jesus: that I may know how to obtain relief from a guilty conscience without feeling reconciled to my imperfections. Sustain me under my trials and improve them to me; give me grace to rest in thee, and assure me of deliverance. May I always combine they majesty with thy mercy, and connect Thy goodness with Thy greatness. Then shall my heart always rejoice in praises to thee. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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When You Become Weary and Feel Like Quitting, Wait on the Lord and He Will Renew Your Strength!
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Distinguish Between Duty and Anxiety, and May our Character and Not Our Circumstance Chiefly Engage Us!
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All We Ask is to be Let Alone—God Made this Country and Humans Made this Town!
We do not lose our sense of humour when we get older—we get older when we lose our sense of humour. It is great to be great, but it is greater to be human. “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove,” reports St. Matthew 17.20. Today I want to consider the question of how we—as individuals, as groups, as a culture—will live in, will respond to, will adapt to, this brave new World. What stance will we take in the face of these new developments? Deny and Ignore—one attitude which we can take is to deny that these scientific advances are taking place, and simply take the view that there can be no study of human behaviour which is truly scientific. We can hold that the human being cannot possibly take an objective attitude toward oneself, and that therefore no real science of behaviour can exist. We can say that humans are always a free agent, in some sense that makes scientific study of one’s behaviour impossible. Not long ago, at a conference on the social sciences, curiously enough, I heard a well known economist take just this view. And one of this country’s most noted theologians writes, “In any event, no scientific investigation of past behaviour can become the basis of predictions of future behaviour.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 17
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My Heart is a Lonely Hunter that Hunts on a Lonely Hill!
The workers have nothing to lose but their chairs. They have a World to gain. Worrying is like a rocking chair—it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere. “Take therefore no thought for the morrow for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself,” reports St. Matthew 6.34. There are many insights laid out by Paul which asks of the Christian that they be watchful. He strong being is strong only if one watches one’s strength, aware of the fact that there is weakness in one’s strength. There is a non-Christian in every Christian. There is a weak being in every strong one. There is cowardice in every courage, and unbelief in every faith, and hostility in every love. Watchfulness means that the Christian never can rest on one’s being a Christian, that one who is strong can never rely on one’s strength. One can be strong by subjecting oneself to a strong discipline. By suppressing much in oneself one may become powerful in relation to others. It is often this type that is called a strong personality. And, certainly, strength without the ability to direct oneself is no strength. However, those who have this ability and are admired as strong personalities should be watchful: they should watch whether their strength has weakness at its basis, whether it excludes elements of life that constitute the richness and the glory of life. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
If they do not watch their hidden weakness, it may flow forth as hatred for those who affirm the abundance of life. This abundance they cannot endure, because it reveals the weakness on which their strength is built. In order to reassure themselves, they force upon others the same restrictions they have imposed on their life. Their domineering strength creates weakness in others. There is a profound ambiguity about the strong Christian personality: Christianity could not live, society could not go on, without them. However, many other Christians, many persons, who perhaps could have become strong themselves, are destroyed or reduced to mental weakness and often illness by them. They are the bearers of Christianity and society; but their victims among Christians and non-Christians, beginning with their children, their wives or their husbands, are numerous. Be watchful when you are considered, or consider yourself, strong. Be watchful, and do not demand of those around you to be what you are, and what they are not. You will destroy them by your strength. Those who are considered strong usually have a strong conviction. They seem to do what Paul asks them to—namely, to “stand in the faith.” Everybody needs place to stand upon. Without a foundation no strength is possible. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
In the physical Universe it is a place on the well-grounded Earth, as the Greeks said; no experience seems more disturbing, even for the strongest mins, than the shaking of the ground in an Earthquake. In the social Universe it is the home—the home town country on which we stand; and from earliest times those who lost their homeland were considered weakest and most unprotected. What about the spiritual Universe? Language is the place we stand on in the spiritual Universe. For out of the word by which we grasp our World and our own being all other spiritual creations grow: knowledge and the arts, social traditions and philosophical beliefs. The word gives beings the strength to build a World above the given World. It makes one the ruler of nature, as in the paradise story: one becomes the ruler over other living beings by giving them names. One who is strong in the spiritual Universe is strong in the power of the word. A profound insight into human strength and human weakness is expressed in the story of the tower of Babel. Humankind was strong as long as it was united in one language. Its strength impelled it to enter the Heavenly sphere. However, when God wanted to destroy human’s self-elevation and reveal one’s weakness, one confused the one language so that people no longer understood each other. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
We are in a similar situation today. Our period is weak, because we can no longer speak to each other. Each one has one’s own language, and the word has lost its power. It has become shallow and confused. We have experienced Earthquake and exile in the spiritual World. Paul asks the Corinthians to stand on something that is deeper than the physical and social and spiritual Universe, something that cannot be shaken, because all levels of the Universe rest upon it, their divine Ground. To stand on this Ground is, in Paul’s words, to stand in the faith. One, of course, thinks of the faith in the form in which one has brought it to the Corinthians. However, in this faith, faith itself is present—namely, the standing on the ultimate Ground below any shaking and changing ground. Breaking the way to this Ground is the meaning of the appearance of the Christ. “Stand firm in your faith” means—do not give up that faith that alone can make your ultimately strong, because it gives you the ultimate Ground on which to stand. Standing firm in one’s faith does not mean adhering to a set of beliefs; it does not require us to suppress doubts about Christian or other doctrines, but points to something which is possessed beyond doubt in the depth in which human’s being and all being is rooted. To be aware of this Ground, to live in it and out of it is ultimate strength. “Be strong” and “stand in the faith” are one and the same command. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
However, remembering now the word “be,” some may reply—“Then the demand to be strong is not for us, because we do not stand in any faith. Doubt or unbelief is our destiny, not faith. We know you are right, there is no strength where there is no faith. However, we have neither. And if there is some strength in us, it is the strength of honesty, the unwillingness to submit to a faith that is not ours, either for conventional reasons, or because of our longing for strength, or because of being taken in by our contemporary emotion-arousing evangelists. Our strength is to resist and to reject strength that is born of dishonesty. Some of the best minds of our time would speak thus. To them I answer—Your honesty proves your faith and therefore your honesty is your strength! You may not believe in anything that can be stated in doctrines or symbols. However, you stand on the ultimate Ground, you stand firm in your faith as long as you sand in honesty and take your doubt and your unbelief seriously without restriction. Become aware of the faith that you have, and you will find words for it, perhaps even Christian words. However, with or without words, be strong; for you are strong. Strength, according to Paul’s words, includes courage. For human strength is built on human anxiety. Insecurity takes many forms. One of the most dangerous is the experience of being split within ourselves. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
One who is united with oneself is invincibly strong. However, who is? We are all dominated by forces that conquer parts of our being and split our personality. We have not merely lost the power of the word; we also have lost the strength that is given with a united, centered personality. We are disrupted by compulsions, known formerly as demonic powers. And who can command a split personality—“Be strong!” To which side of the personality can such a command be addressed? Yet, there is the possibility of something else. Healing power, coming ultimately from the Ground on which we stand in the faith, can enter the personality and unite it in an act of courage. It is the courage that takes upon itself the anxiety of our disruptions. This courage is the innermost center of faith. It dares to affirm our being, while simultaneously rejecting it. Out of this courage the greatest strength emerges. It is the strength that overcomes the powers splitting World and soul. Be courageous! Say Yes to yourselves in spite of the anxiety of the No. So Paul finishes his description of the strong personality: a courageous, watchful hero, firm in faith, worthy of great praise. However, that is just what Paul has in mind is based on something beyond courage and faith and watchfulness. It is not the strength of a hero. It is the strength of one who surrenders the praise one could receive as a hero to the humility of love. They may be friendly and be willing to help. This they demand of themselves. #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
However, everything they demand of themselves they also demand of others. They use the word “be” without hesitation. They become tyrants through personal strength. Without love one who is strong becomes a law for the weak. And the law makes those who are weak even weaker. It drives them into despair, or rebellion, or indifference. Strength without love destroys, first others, then itself. For love is not something that may or may not be added to strength in its fullest sense; it is an element of strength. One cannot be strong without love. For love is not an irrelevant emotion; it is the blood of life, the power of reunion of the separated. Strength without love leads to separation, to judgment, to control of the weak. Love reunites what is separated; it accepts what is judged; it participates in what is weak, as God participates in our weakness and gives us strength by His participation. “When he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in Heaven about the space of half an hour,” reports Revelations of St. John. If you are a thoughtful and observant person you will probably recognize in this description the usual course of human affairs—thank God for any exceptions there may be! And if you find yourself substantially exempted from this picture, you can say thankfully, “There, but for the grace of God, go I. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
Paul, at least, was not hopeful that things would get better as human history moved along. He was not a believer in “progress” as it has been humanly understood. In what seems to have been his last letter, perhaps the very last thing he wrote, he warned Timothy that “in the last days difficult times will come. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; holding to a form of Godliness, although they have denied its power,” reports 2 Timothy 3.1-5. One could be forgiven for thinking that this certainly looks like “now.” Who does not recognize in these words the prevailing tone and texture of contemporary life? Who does not know that such behaviour, if not approved outright, is excused or even justified by clever psychological, legal, and moral maneuvers, often reciting elevated “principles.” In fact this has been the end stage f every successful human society that has arisen on Earth. Invariably, such a society begins to believe it is responsible for its success and prosperity and begins to worship itself and rebel against the understandings and practices that allowed it, under God, to be successful in the first place. “Jeshurun grew fat and kicked,” the prophetic analysis states Deuteronomy 32.15. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
The human decline into what was expressed in the words of Paul to Timothy is inevitable. However, underneath it all is the radical evil of the human heart—a heart that would make me God in place of God. The prophetic clarity still stands for all to read and test. Our human “righteousness” is like “filthy rags” reports Isaiah 64.6. And over against this we hear intoned: “I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, even to given to each being according to one’s ways, according to the results of one’s deeds,” reports Jeremiah 17.10. Some fathers exasperate their children by being overly strict and controlling. They need to remember that rearing children is like holding a wet bar of soap—too firm a grasp and it shoots from your hand, too loose a grip and it slides away. A gentle but firm hold keeps you in control. We cannot begin to estimate the ravages of overstrictness on the evangelical Christian community over the years. I have had occasions in my ministry to bury people who lived virtually all of their seventy years in reaction to the harsh legalism of their upbringing—lost bars no one could manage to pick up. Others were not so tragic. They came to renounce legalism Biblically and theologically, but still wrestled with it emotionally for the rest of their lives. Why are some fathers overly strict? Many because they are trying to protect their children from an increasingly Philistine culture—and smothering rules seem the best way to accomplish that. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
Others are simply controlling personalities who use rules, money, friendship, or clout to rule their children’s lives. The Bible, read through their controlling grid, becomes a license to own and dominate. Still others wrongly understand their faith in terms of Law rather than grace. Some men are overly strict because they are concerned about what others will think. “If my child goes to this place or wears this clothing, or is heard listening to that music, what will they think?” Not a few preacher’s kids have been catapulted into rebellion because their fathers squeezed their lives to fit their parishioners’ expectations. What a massive sin against one’s children! Rather, we ought to begin our fatherhood by holding the tiny helpless bar snugly, but as it grows, gradually and wisely loosen our grip. As conscientious fathers we have to say “no” to many things. Thus we should try to say “yes” to as much as possible, and save our no’s for the really important situations. We must be Biblical in regard to our no’s—and as our children grow, be prepared to discuss the rules Biblically and principally. We must learn to trust God with our children, realizing they must learn to make decision for themselves. Fathers, do not exasperate your children by being overly strict. Learn to hold their lives with God’s pressure and to mold it with His love. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
Seeking the Master: Great possibilities attach themselves to the first interview between the student earnestly seeking direction, needing guidance, or requesting counsel, and the illuminate who has established communion with God. These possibilities do not depend upon the length of time it takes nor upon what is said during the actual conversation itself. They depend upon the attitude which a student silently brings with one and upon the power which the illuminate silently expresses. In other words, they depend upon invisible and telepathic factors. Only when one is finally ready for a master will one find a true one. However, to be ready the aspirant must bring his character to its highest possibility. When that is done then even at the first meeting the power of attraction will speak silently yet eloquently. Both will know, before that first meeting ends, that the other is the right one; there will be no doubts, no hesitations; they can exist only when judgement is wrong. One will know an affinity of soul that can and has previously been experienced with no one else. Affinity has its own clear language. It will put both people at perfect ease. When a sensitive heart, a receptive mind, and a strong yearning for spiritual perfection meet a being who embodies such perfection to a large degree, there is or should be some recognition, some brief purification, some intellectual clarification, some emotional exaltation, amounting in all to a miniature mystical experience. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
When the predestined disciple meets the master for the first time, one may feel either that one has known the individual before or else that one has known one always. Sometimes we have the feeling on meeting a stranger for the first time, one may feel either that one has known one before or else that one has known one always. Sometimes we have the feeling on meeting a stranger for the first time, that we have known one long and known one well. The feeling on first meeting the destined master is much the same but greatly expanded and deeply intensified. The feeling which is aroused on this contact—whether affinity or antipathy—must be one’s first guide to the choice of a master. One may feel the force of a real attraction when first meeting one’s master, in most cases, but it is just possible one may not. The human in whose presence your character rises to its best and your faith to its highest, is the being who can help you spiritually. Without this inward affinity it is of not much use to attach yourself to a guide, however reputed one may be. “And now, my brethren, how is it possible that ye can lay hold upon every good thing? And now I come to that faith, of which I said I would speak; and I will tell you the way whereby ye may lay hold on every good thing. For behold, God knowing all things, being from everlasting to everlasting, behold, he sent Angels to minister unto the children of humans, to make manifest concerning the coming of Christ; and in Christ there should come every good thing,” reports Moroni 7.20-22. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that the splendour of Thy brightness may shine upon us, and the light of Thy Light confirm with the illumination of the Holy Spirit the hearts of those who have been born again through Thy grace: for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that we who celebrate the solemnity of the gift of the Holy Ghost, may be kindled with Heavenly desires, and thirst for the fountain of life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Everlasting Creator-Father, I have destroyed myself, my nature is defiled, the powers of my soul are degraded; I am vile, miserable, strengthless, but my hope is in thee. If ever I am saved it will be by goodness undeserved and astonishing not by mercy alone but by abundant mercy, not by grace but by exceeding riches of grace; and such thou hast revealed, promised, exemplified in thoughts of peace, not of evil. Thou hast devised means to rescue me from sin’s perdition, to restore me to happiness, honour, safety. I bless thee for the everlasting covenant, for the appointment of a mediator. I rejoice that he failed not, nor was discouraged, but accomplished the work thou gavest him to do; and said on the cross, “It is finished.” I exult in the thought that thy justice is satisfied, thy trust established, thy la magnified, and a foundation is laid for my hope. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
I look to a present and personal interest in Christ and say, surely he has borne my griefs, carried my sorrows, won my peace, healed my soul. Justified by his blood I am saved by his life, glorying in his cross I bow to his scepter, having his Spirit I possess his mind. Lord, grant that my religion may not be occasional and partial, but Universal, influential, effective, and may I always continue in thy words as well as thy works, so that I may reach my end in peace. Almighty and everlasting God, Who in the fulness of this day’s mystery hast completed the secret work of the Paschal solemnity; grant, we beseech Thee, that we who have been made Thine adopted sons may obtain that peace which our Lord Jesus Christ left unto us when He came to Thee; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, let the Holy Spirit prepare our minds by Divine mysteries, forasmuch as He Himself is the remission of all sins; through Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, let the power of the Holy Spirit be present with us, that it may both mercifully cleanse our hearts, and protect us from all adversities; through our Lord Jesus Christ. O God, Who by the mystery of this day’s festival dost sanctify Thy Universal Church in every race and nation, shed abroad throughout the whole World the gift of the Holy Spirit; that the work wrought by Divine goodness at the first preaching of the Gospel may now also be extended among believing hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
With these sobering vistas of the human heart and soul before us, we need now to rethink for our time what it means to be lost. For a ruined soul is a lost sou. What is a lost soul? Just someone God is mad at? When is a person lost? And is anyone lost today? Considerable confusion on this topic has resulted from trying to think of being lost in terms of its outcome. Theologically, that outcome is Hell—a most uncomfortable notion. Certainly, if you are lost in any sense there is a little likelihood of your arriving where you want to be. However, the condition of lostness is not the same as the outcome to which it leads. We are not lost because we are going to wind up in the wrong place. We are going to wind up in the wrong place because we are lost. TO be lost means to be out of place, to be omitted. “Gehenna,” the term often used in the New Testament for the place of the lost, may usefully be thought of as the cosmic dumb for the irretrievably useless. Think of what it would mean to find you have become irretrievably useless. Something that is lost is something that is not where it is supposed to be, and therefore it is not integrated into the life of the one to whom it belongs and to who it is lost. Think of what it means when the keys to your house or are lost. They are useless to you, no matter how much you need them and desire to have them and no matter what fine keys they may be. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
And when we are lost to God, we are not where we are supposed to be in his World and hence are not caught up into his life. We are not “partakers of the divine nature,” have not “escaped the corruption that is in the World” through lust reports 2 Peter 1.4. We are our own god, and our god does not amount to much. When we are lost to God, we are also lost to ourselves: we do not know where we are or how to get where we want to go. We may know we are lost or we may not. Many a driver is lost long before one knows one his—though rarely before one’s wife knows it. Many are lost before God but do not know it. They sincerely believe that they know where they are, where they are going, and how to get there; but in fact they do not, and they often find out too late. Disorientation to moral, personal, and divine reality, as well as to the physical, sometimes leads us across lines that cannot be recrossed. This is part of the tragic meaning of human time and action. Almighty and everlasting God, Who in the fulness of this day’s mystery hast completed the secret work of the Paschal solemnity; grant, we beseech Thee, that we who have been made Thine adopted sons may obtain that peace which our Lord Jesus Christ left unto us when He came to Thee; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, let the Holy Spirit prepare our minds by Divine mysteries, forasmuch as He Himself is the remission of all sins; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
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Come to Me and You Will Find Rest in Your Souls–I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End!
We often worry about what we will be tomorrow, but do not take into account that we are somebody today. Life should be a place of learning suffused with excitement, engagement, passion, challenge, creativity, and joy. When we are in the minority, that is when the test of courage comes; when we are in the majority is when the test of acceptance comes. It is our destiny and the destiny of everything in the World that we must come to an end. Very end that we experience in nature and humankind speaks to us with a loud voice: you also will come to an end! It may reveal itself in the farewell to a place where we have lived for a long time, the separation from the fellowship of intimate associates, the death of someone near to us. Or it may become apparent to us in the failure of a work that gave meaning to us, the end of a whole period of life, the approach of old age, or even in the melancholy side of nature visible in autumn. All this tells us: you will also come to an end. Whenever we are shaken by this voice reminding us of our end, we ask anxiously—what does it mean that we have a beginning and an end, that we come from the darkness of the not yet, and rush ahead towards the darkness of the no more? When Augustine asked this question, he began his attempt to answer it with a prayer. And it is right to do so, because praying means elevating oneself to the eternal. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16
In fact, there is no other way of judging time than to see it in the light of the eternal. In order to judge something, one must be partly within it, partly out of it. If we were totally within time, we would not be able to elevate ourselves in prayer, meditation and thought, to the eternal. We would be children of time like all other creatures and could not ask the question of the meaning of time. However, as human beings we are aware of the eternal to which we belong and from which we are estranged by the bondage of time. We speak of time in three ways or modes—the past, present, and future. Every child is aware of them, but no wise being has ever penetrated their mystery. We become aware of them when we hear a voice telling us: you also will come to an end. It is the future that awakens us to the mystery of time. Time runs from the beginning to the end, but our awareness of times goes in the opposite direction. It starts with the anxious anticipation of the end. In the light of the future we see the past and present. So let us first consider our going into the future and towards the end that is the last point that we can anticipate in out future. The image of the future produces contrasting feelings in beings. The expectation of the future gives one a feeling of joy. We may even learn to recapture the will to laugh and the art of laughing at will. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16
It is a great thing to have a future in which one can actualize one’s possibilities, in which one can experience the abundance of life, in which one can create something new—be it new work, a new way of life, or the regeneration of one’s own being. Courageously one goes ahead towards the new, especially in the earlier part of one’s own life. However, this feeling struggles with other ones: the anxiety about what is hidden in the future, the ambiguity of everything it will bring us, the shortness of its duration that decreases with every year of our life and becomes shorter the nearer we come to the unavoidable end. And finally the end itself, with its impenetrable darkness and the threat that one’s whole existence in time will be judged as a failure. Therefore, it may be a good idea to think before one speaks, and read before one thinks. This may give one something to think about that we did not make up ourselves—a wise move at any age, but most especially at seventeen, when one is at the greatest danger of coming to annoying conclusions. We want to be in the pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in the pursuit of us. The goal is to fully realize the wealth of sympathy, kindness, and generosity hidden in our souls. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16
How do beings, how do you, react to this image of the future with its hope and threat and inescapable end? Probably most of us react by looking at the immediate future, anticipating it, working for it, hoping for it, being anxious about it, while cutting off from our awareness the future which is farther away, and above all, by cutting off from our consciousness the end, the last moment of our future. Perhaps we could not live without doing so most of our time. However, perhaps we will not be able to die if we always do so. And if one is not able to die, is one really about to live? How do we react if we become aware of the inescapable end contained in our future? Are we able to bear it, to take its anxiety into a courage that faces ultimate darkness? Or are we thrown into utter hopelessness? Do we hope against hope, or do we repress our awareness of the end because we cannot stand it? Repressing the consciousness of our end expresses itself in several ways. Many try to do so by putting the expectation of a long life between now and the end. For them it is decisive that the end be delayed. Even old people who are near the end do this, for they cannot endure the fact that the end will not be delayed much longer. Many people realize this deception and hope for a continuation of this life after death. They expect an endless future in which they may achieve or possess what has been denied them in this life. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16
This attitude that we will achieve our hearts desires in the after life is a prevalent attitude about the future, and also a very simple one. It denies that there is an end. It refuses to accept that we are creatures, that we come from the eternal ground of time and return to the eternal ground of time and have received a limited span of time as our time. It replaces eternity by endless future. However, endless future is without a final aim; it repeats itself and could well be described as an image of hell. This is not the Christian way of dealing with the end. The Christian message says the eternal stands above past and future. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.” The Christian message acknowledges that time runs towards an end, and that we move towards the end of that time which is our time. Many people—but not the Bible—speak loosely of the “hereafter” or the “life after death.” Even in our liturgies eternity is translated by “World without end.” However, the World, by its very nature, is that which comes to an end. If we want to speak in truth without foolish, wishful thinking, we should speak about the eternal that is neither timelessness nor endless time. The mystery of the future is answered in the eternal of which we may speak in images taken from time. However, if we forget that the images are images, we fall into absurdities and self-deceptions. There is no time after time, but there is eternity above time. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16
Time is like a jigsaw puzzle. Each edge piece of a puzzle interlocks with two others to form the puzzle’s framework and give structure and support to the puzzle as a whole. Each piece has a unique design and cut that ensures just the right place to fit within the puzzle. Each morning, people from the edge pieces that interlock to create a safe environment and give support to one another and the whole. Each morning, they provide just the right place for every individual to fit safely and securely. The community members are strength and stability, and like the edge pieces, they do not stand alone in this responsibility. There are always others to support and assist, ensuring that every person has a place. The spirits temper the movements of bodily parts. Some infectious diseases are chiefly in the spirits, and not so much in the humours. We have complex and contradictory feelings toward the freedom and independence and self-determination of the individuals and countries: we desire these and are proud of the past support we have given to such tendencies, and yet we are often frightened by what they may mean. We tend to value and respect the dignity and worth of each individual, yet when we are frightened, we move away from this direction. Suppose we presented ourselves in some such fashion, openly and transparently, in our foreign relations. We would be attempting to be the nation which we truly are, in all our complexity and even contradictoriness. What would be the result? #RandolphHarris 6 of 16
If we, as a country, were more open and transparent in our foreign relations, it seems the results would be similar to the experiences of a client when one is more truly that which he or she is. Let us look at some of the probable outcomes. We would be much more comfortable, because we would have nothing to hide. We could focus on the problem at hand, rather than spending our energies to prove that we are moral or consistent. We could use all of our creative imagination in solving the problem, rather than in defending ourselves. We could openly advance both our selfish interests, and our sympathetic concern for others, and let these conflicting desires find the balance which is acceptable to us as a people. We could freely change and grow in our leadership position, because we would not be bound by rigid concepts of what we have been, must, ought to be. We would find that we were much less feared, because others would be less inclined to suspect what lies behind the façade. We would, by our own openness, tend to bring forth openness and realism on the part of others. We would tend to work out the solutions of World problems on the basis of the real issues involved, rather than in terms of the facades being worn by the negotiating parties. In short what I am suggesting by this fantasied example is that nations and organizations might discover, as have individuals, that it is a richly rewarding experience to be what one deeply is. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16
I am suggesting that this view contains the seeds of a philosophical approach to all of life, that it is more than a trend observed in the experience of clients. Feeling rules are what guide emotion work by establishing the sense of entitlement or obligation that governs emotional exchanges. This emotion system works privately, often free of observation. It is a vital aspect of deep private bonds and also affords a way of talking about them. It is a way of describing how—as parents and children, wives and husbands, friends and lovers—we intervene in feelings in order to shape them. What are feeling rules? How do we know they exist? How do they bear on deep acting? We may address these questions by focusing on the pinch between “what I do feel” and “what I should feel,” for at this spot we get our best view of emotional convention. Now, when we take a closer look at the whole person, we find that there are six basic aspects in our lives as individual human beings—six things inseparable from every human life. These together and in interplay make up human nature. Thought (images, concepts, judgments, inferences), feeling (sensation, emotion), choice (will, decision, character), body (action, interaction with the physical World), social context (personal and structural relations to others), and soul (the factor that integrates all of the above to form one life. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16
Simply put, every human being thinks (has a thought life), feels, chooses, interacts with one’s body and its social context, and (more of less) integrates all of the foregoing as parts of one life. These are the essential factors in a human being, and nothing essential to human life falls outside of them. The ideal of the spiritual life in the Christian understanding is one where all of the essential parts of the human self are effectively organized around Go, as they are restored and sustained by him. Spiritual formation in Christ is the process leading to that ideal end, and its result is love of God with all of the hearts, soul, mind, and strength, and of the neighbor as oneself. The human self is then fully integrated under God. The salvation or deliverance of the believer in Christ is essentially holistic or whole-life. David the psalmist, speaking of his own experience but prophetically expressing the understanding of Jesus the Messiah, said, “I bless the LORD who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me. I keep the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices; my body also rests secure,” reports Psalm 16.7-9. Note how many aspects of the self are explicitly involved in this passage: the mind, the will, the feeling, the soul, and the body. #RandolphHarris 9 of 16
A major part of understanding spiritual formation in the Christian traditions is to follow closely the way the biblical writings repeatedly and emphatically focus on the various essential dimensions of the human being and their role in life as a whole. We will draw from spiritual understanding the incentive to keep on with our quest and the courage to set higher goals. To learn from God in this total-life immersion is ow we seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. The outcome is that we increasingly are able to do all things, speaking or acting, as I Christ were doing them. As apprentices of Christ we are not learning how to do some special religious activity, but how to live every moment of our live from the reality of God’s kingdom. I am learning how to live my actual life as Jesus would if He were me. No matter what my profession is, I am in full-time Christian service no less than someone who earns his or her living in a specifically religious role. Jesus stands beside me and teaches me in all I do to live in God’s World. He shows me how, in every circumstance, to reside in His word and thus be a genuine apprentice of His—His disciple indeed. This enables me to find the reality of God’s World everywhere I may be, and thereby to escape from enslavement to sin and evil. We become able to do what we know to be good and right, even when it is humanly impossible. Our lives and words become constant testimony of the reality of God. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16
When, for example, an architect facing a difficult architectural job, one must know how to integrate it into the kingdom of God as much as someone attempting to win another to Christ or preparing a lesson for a congregation. Until we are clear on this, we will have missed Jesus’ connection between life and God and will automatically exclude most of our everyday lives from the domain of faith and discipleship. Jesus lived most of His life on Earth as a blue-collar worker, someone we might describe today as an independent contractor. In His vocation He practiced everything He later taught about in life in the kingdom. It is important to move away from derogatory language against others, calling them twits, jerks, or idiots, and increasingly mesh with the respect and endearment for persons that naturally flows from God’s way. This in turn transforms all of my dealings with others into tenderness and makes the usual coldness and brutality of human relations, which lays a natural foundation for unspeakable actions, simply unthinkable. Our mind and heart will keep coming back to God’s grace. The grace of God is so inexhaustible and at times overwhelming. “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever more! Amen,” reports 2 Peter 3.18. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16
Growing in the grace of God allows one to become acquainted with elements of our experience which have in the past been denied to awareness as too threatening, too damaging to the structure of the self. One finds one’s experiencing these feelings fully, completely, in the relationship, so that for the moment one is one’s fear, or one’s anger, or one’s tenderness, or one’s strength. And as one lives these widely varied feelings, in all their degrees of intensity, one discovers that one has experienced oneself, that one is all these feelings. One finds that one’s behavior changing in constructive fashion in accordance with one’s newly experienced self. One approaches the realization that one no longer needs to fear what experience may hold, but can welcome it freely as a part of one’s changing and developing self. However, it seems to me that the good life is not any fixed state. It is not, in my estimation, a state of virtue, or contentment, or nirvana, or happiness. It is not a condition in which the individual is adjusted, or fulfilled, or actualized. It is not a state of drive-reduction, or tension-reduction, or homeostasis. I believe that all of these terms have been used in ways which imply that if one or several of these states is achieved, then the goal of life have been achieved. Certainly, for many people happiness, or adjustment, are seen as states of being which are synonymous with the good life. #RandolphHarris 12 of 16
Social scientists have frequently spoken of the reduction of tension, or the achievement of homeostasis or equilibrium as if these states constituted the goal of the process of living. So it is with a certain amount of surprise and concern that I realize that my experience supports none of these definitions. If I focus on the experience of those individuals who seem to have evidenced the greatest degree of movement during the spiritual and therapeutic relationship, and who, in the years following this relationship, appear to have made and to be making real progress toward the good life, then it seems to me that they are not adequately described at all by any of these terms which refer to fixed states of being. I believe they would consider themselves insulted if they were described as adjusted, and they would regard it as false if they were described as happy or contented or even actualized. As I have known them I would regard it as most inaccurate to say that all their dive tensions have been reduced, or that they are in a state of homeostasis. So I am forced to ask myself whether there is any way in which I can generalize about their situation, any definition which I can give of the good life which would seem to fit the facts as I have observed them. I find this not at all easy, and what follows is stated very tentatively. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16
The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination. The direction which constitutes the good life is that which is selected by the total organism, when there is psychological freedom to move in any direction. This organismically selected direction seems to have certain discernible general qualities which appear to be the same in a wide variety of unique individuals. The good life, from the point of view of my experience, is the process of movement in a direction which the human organism selects when it is inwardly free to move in any direction, and the general qualities of this selected direction appear to have a certain universality. Many people, however, seem to be morally bankrupt—completely devoid of any decent moral qualities. And it is just about the worst thing you can say about a person. A lot of people are also spiritually bankrupt. Spiritual bankruptcy is a most absolute state. It means we have nothing to give to God. Salvation is a gift from God; it is entirely by grace through faith—not by works. People living the good life are righteous and the process seems to involve an increasing openness to the experience. It is the polar opposite of defensiveness. Defensiveness is an organism’s response to experiences which are perceived or anticipated as threatening, as incongruent with the individual’s existing picture of oneself, or of oneself in relationship to the World. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16
These threatening experiences are temporarily rendered harmless by being distorted in awareness, or being denied to awareness. I quite literally cannot see, with accuracy, those experiences, feelings, reactions in myself which are significantly at variance with the picture of myself which I already possess. A large part of the process of therapy is the continuing discovery by the client that one is experiencing feelings and attitudes which heretofore one has not been able to be aware of, which one has not been able to own as being a part of oneself. If a person could be fully open to one’s experience, however, every stimulus—whether originating within the organism or in the environment—would be freely relayed through the nervous system without being distorted by any defensive mechanism. There would be no need of the mechanism of subception whereby the organism is forewarned of any experience threatening to the self. On the contrary, whether the stimulus was the impact of a configuration of form, color, or sound in the environment on the sensory nerves, or a memory trace from the past, or visceral sensation of fear or pleasure or disgust, the person would be living it, would have it completely available to awareness. Thus, one aspect of this process which I am naming the good life appears to be a movement away from the pole of defensiveness toward the pole of openness to experience. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16
The individual living the good life is becoming more able to listen to oneself, to experience what is going on within oneself. One is more open to one’s feelings of fear and discouragement and pain. One is also more open to one’s feelings of courage, and tenderness, and awe. One is free to live one’s feelings subjectively, as they exist in one, and also free to be aware of these feelings. One is more able fully to live the experiences of one’s organism rather than shutting them off. Almighty and everlasting God, Who hast made known the Incarnation of Thy Word by the testimony of a glorious star, which when the wise men be held, they adored Thy Majesty with gifts; grant that the star of Thy righteousness may always appear in our hearts, and our treasure consist in giving thanks to Thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, the Enlightener of all nations, grant Thy people to enjoy perpetual peace; and pour into our hearts that radiant light which Thou didst shed into the minds of the wise men; thought Jesus Christ Our Lord. “Behold, O Lord, thou hast smitten us because of our iniquity, and hast driven us forth, and for these many years we have been in the wilderness; nevertheless, thou hast been merciful unto us. O Lord, look upon me in pity, and turn away thine anger from this thy people, and suffer not that they shall go forth across this raging deep in darkness; but behold these things which I have molten out of rock,” reports Ether 3.3. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16
CRESLEIGH MEADOWS AT PLUMAS RANCH
Plumas Lake, CA | from the mid $300’s
Coming Soon!
Cresleigh homes gives emphasis to detail and authenticity in their designs, remaining true to a style architecturally, while updating floor plans to create a modern, comfortable home. This combination of classic architectural style and easy livability add up to solid, long-lasting value. Today, there is a return to traditionalism and pure styles. People want the look and feel of an older home with the amenities and comforts of modern floor planning. Elaborate master bedroom suites, cozy country kitchens, libraries, media centers, and great rooms are all part of what makes a plan livable.
Cresleigh Meadows is coming soon! Found just north of Feather River Boulevard, Cresleigh Meadows is home of the largest neighborhood in Plumas Ranch as well as the popular Bear River Park. With four floor plans available, ranging from approximately 2,000 – 3,500 square feet offering, three to five bedrooms, we are certain you will find the home that fits your needs and lifestyle. Popular design elements include open floor plans, large kitchen islands, and flex spaces are staples in Cresleigh homes. Multi-generational living options also available in select homes. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-meadows-at-plumas-ranch/
Randolph Harris II International Institute 