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I Might Lose Myself in Bottomless Abysses of Ignorance—Cleanse the Horrible Darknesses of Our Mind!
The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved…the ones who…are passionate, compassionate, enthusiastic. In order to seize hold of the fantasies, I frequently imagined a steep descent. I even made several attempts to get to the very bottom. The very first time I reached, as it were, a depth of about a thousand feet; the next time I found myself at the edge of a cosmic abyss. It was like a voyage to the mon, or a descent into empty space. First came the image of a crater, and I had the feeling that I was in the land of the dead. The atmosphere was that of the other World. Near the steep slope of a rock I caught sight of two figures, an old mand with a white beard and a beautiful young lady. I summoned up my courage and approached them as though they were real people, and listened attentively to what they told me. The old man explained that he was Elijah, and that gave me a shock. However, the young lady staggered me even more, for she called herself Salome! She was blind. What a strange couple: Salome and Elijah. However, Elijah assured me that he and Salome had belonged together from all eternity, which completely astounded me. They have a black serpent living with them which displayed an unmistakable fondness for me. #RandolphHarris 1 of 27
I stuck close to Elijah because he seemed to be the most reasonable of the three, and to have a clear intelligence. Of Salome I was distinctly suspicious. Elijah and I had a long conversation which, however, I did not understand. Naturally I tried to find a plausible explanation for the appearance of Biblical figures in my fantasy by reminding myself that my father had been a clergyman. However, that really explained nothing at all. For what did the old man signify? What did Salome signify? Why were they together? Only man years later, when I knew a great deal more then I knew then, did the connection between the old man and the young lady appear perfectly natural to me. In such dream wanderings one frequently encounters an old man who is accompanied by a young girl, and examples of such couples are to be found in many mythic tales. Thus, according to Gnostic tradition, Simon Magus went about with a young lady whom he had picked up in a brothel. Her name was Helen, and she was regarded as the reincarnation of the Trojan Helen. Klingsor and Kundry, Lao-tzu and the dancing girl, likewise belong to this category. I have mentioned that there was a third figure in my fantasy besides Elijah and Salome: the large black snake. #RandolphHarris 2 of 27
In myths the snake is frequently counterpart of the hero. There are numerous accounts of their affinity. For example, the hero has eyes like a snake, or after his death he is changed into a snake and revered as such, or the snake is his mother, et cetera. In my fantasy, therefore, the presence of the snake was an indication of a hero-myth. Salome is an anima figure. She is blind because she does not see the meaning of things. Elijah is the figure of the wise old prophet and represents the factor of intelligence and knowledge; Salome, the erotic element. One might say that the two figures are personifications of Logos and Eros. However, such a definition would be excessively intellectual. It is more meaningful to let the figures be what they were for me at the time—videlicet, events and experiences. Soon after this fantasy another figure rose out of the unconscious. He developed out of the Elijah figure. I called him Philemon. Philemon was a pagan and brought with him an Egypto-Hellenistic atmosphere with a Gnostic colouration. His figure first appeared to me in the following dream. #RandolphHarris 3 of 27
The sky was blue, like the sea, covered not by clouds but by flat brown clods of Earth. It looked as if the clods were breaking apart and the blue water of the sea were becoming visible between them. However, the water was blue sky. Suddenly there appeared from the right a winged being sailing across the sky. I saw that it was an old man with the horns of a bull. He held a bunch of four keys, one of which he clutched as if here were about to open a lock. He had the winds of the kingfisher with it characteristic colours. Since I did not understand this dream-image, I painted it in order to impress it upon my memory. During the days when I was occupied with the painting, I found in my garden, by the lake shore, a dead kingfisher! I was thunderstruck, for kingfishers are quite rare in the vicinity of Zurich and I have never since found a dead one. The body was recently dead—at the most, two or three days—and showed no external injuries. Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life. Philemon represented a force which was not myself. #RandolphHarris 4 of 27
In my fantasies I held conversations with him, and he said things which I had not consciously thought. For I observed clearly that it was he who spoke, not I. He said I treated thoughts as if I generated them myself, but in his view thoughts were like animals in the forest, or people in a room, or birds in the air, and added, “If you should see people in a room, you would not think that you had made those people, or that you were responsible for them.” It was he who taught me psychic objectivity, the reality of the psyche. Through hum the distinction was clarified between myself and the object of my thought. He confronted me in an objective manner, and I understood that there is something in me which can say things that I do not know and do not intend, things which may even be directed against me. Psychologically, Philemon represented superior insight. He was a mysterious figure to me. As if here were a living personality, at times, he seemed to me quite real. I went walking up and down the garden with him, and to me he was what the Indians called a guru. Whenever the outlines of a new personification appeared, I felt it almost as a personal defeat. It meant: “Here is something else you did not know until now!” #RandolphHarris 5 of 27
Fear crept over me that the succession of such figures might be endless, that I might lose myself in the bottomless abysses of ignorance. My ego felt devalued—although the success I had been having in Worldly affairs might have reassured me. In my darknesses (horridas nostrae mentis purge tenebras— “cleanse the horrible darkness out of our mind” – the Aurora Consurgens* says) I could have wished for nothing better than a real, live guru, someone possessing superior knowledge and ability, who would have disentangled for me the involuntary creations of my imagination. This task was undertaken by the figure of Philemon, whom in this respect I had willy-nilly to recognize as my psychagogue. And the fact was the he conveyed to me many an illuminating idea. More than fifteen years later a highly cultivated elderly Indian visited me, a friend of Gandhi’s, and we talked about Indian education—in particular, about the relationship between guru and chela. I hesitantly asked him whether he could tell me anything about the person and character of one’s own guru, whereupon he replied in a matter-of-fact tone, “Oh yes, he was Shankaracharya.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 27
“You do not mean the commentor on the Vedas who died centuries ago?” I asked.
“Yes, I mean him,” he said, to my amazement.
“Then you are referring to a spirit?” I asked.
“Of course it was his spirit,” he agreed.
At that moment I thought of Philemon.
“There are ghostly gurus too,” he added. “Most people have living gurus. However, there are always some who have a spirit for teacher.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 27
This information was both illuminating and reassuring to me. Evidently, then, I had not plummeted right out of the human World, but had only experienced the sort of thing that could happen to others who made similar efforts. Later, Philemon became relativized by the emergence of yet another figure, whom I called Ka. In ancient Egypt the “king’s ka” was his Earthly form, the embodied soul. In my fantasy, as if out of a deep shaft, the ka-soul came from below, out of the Earth. I did a painting of him, showing him in his Earth-bound form, as a herm with base of stone and upper part of bronze. High up in the painting appears a kingfisher’s wing, and between it and the head of Ka floats a round, glowing nebula of stars. Ka’s expression has something demonic about it—one might also say, Mephistophelian. In one had he holds something like a coloured pagoda, or a reliquary, and in the other a stylus with which he was working on the reliquary. He is saying, “I am he who buries the gods in gold and gems.” Philemon had a lame foot, but was a winged spirit, where as Ka represented a kind of Earth demon or mental demon. Philemon was the spiritual aspects, or “meaning.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 27
Ka, on the other hand, was a spirit like the Anthroparion of Greek alchemy—with which at the time I was still unfamiliar. [The Anthroparion is a tiny man, a kind of homunculus. He is found, for example, in the visions of Zosimos of Panopolis, an important alchemist of the third century. To the group which includes the Anthroparion belong the gnomes, the Dactyls of classical antiquity, and the homunculi of the alchemists. As the spirit of quicksilver, the alchemical Mercurius was also an Anthroparion.] Ka was he who made everything real, but who also obscured the halcyon spirit, Meaning, or replaced it by beauty, the “eternal reflection.” In time I was able to integrate both figures through the study of alchemy. The archetype of the wise old man, also called the “Mana-personality,” tend to be projected upon human beings who set themselves up as leaders, secular or spiritual. This may have disastrous results, as when religious sects or political movements are led by charlatans or madmen. Alternatively, the subject may identify oneself with the archetype, believing that one oneself has superior wisdom. Analysts and priests, as well as politicians, sometimes succumb to this danger, referred to as “inflation.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 27
I have frequently considered, what could possibly be the reason, why all humankind, though they have ever, without hesitation, acknowledged the necessity, in their whole practice and reasoning, have yet discovered such a reluctance to acknowledge it in words, and have rather shown a propensity, in all ages, to profess the contrary opinion. The matter, I think, may be accounted for, after the following manner. If we examine the operations of body, and the production of effects from their causes, we shall find, that all our faculties can never carry us farther in our knowledge of this relation, than barely to observe, that particular objects are constantly transition, from the appearance of one to the belief of the other. However, though this conclusions concerning human ignorance be the result of the strictest scrutiny of this subject, human still entertain a strong propensity to believe, that they penetrate farther into the powers of nature, and perceive something like a necessary connexion between the cause and the effect. When again they turn their reflections towards the operations of their own minds, and feel no such connexion of the motive and the action; they are thence apt to suppose, that there is a difference between the effects, which result from material force, and those which arise from thought and intelligence. #RandolphHarris 10 of 27
However, being once convinced, that we know nothing father of causation of any kind, than merely the constant conjunction of objects, and the consequent inference of the mind from one to another, and finding, that these two circumstances are universally allowed to have a place in voluntary actions; we may be more easily led to own the same necessity common to all causes. And though this reasoning may contradict the systems of many philosophers, in ascribing necessity to the determination of the will, we shall find, upon reflection, that they dissent from it in words only, not in their real sentiment. Necessity, according to the sense, in which it is here taken, has never yet been rejected, nor can ever, I think, be rejected by any philosopher. It may only, perhaps, be pretended, that the mind can perceive, in the operations of matter, some farther connexion between the cause and effect; and a connexion that has not place in the voluntary actions of intelligent beings. Now whether it be so or not, can only appear upon examination; and it is incumbent on these philosophers to make good their assertion, by defining or describing that necessity, and pointing it out to us in the operations of material causes. #RandolphHarris 11 of 27
When they enter upon it by examining the faculties of the soul, the influence of the understanding, and operations of the will, it would seem, indeed, that humans begin at the wrong end of this question concerning liberty and necessity. Let them first discuss a more simple question, namely, the operations of body and of brute unintelligent matter; and try whether they can there form any idea of causation and necessity, except that of a constant conjunction of objects, and subsequent inference of the mind from one to another. If these circumstances form, in reality, the whole of that necessity, which we conceive in matter, and if these circumstances be also universally acknowledged to take place in the operations of the mind, the dispute is at an end; at least, must be owned to be thenceforth merely verbal. However, as long as we will rashly suppose, that we have some farther idea of necessity and causation in the operations of external objects; at the same time, that we can find nothing farther, in the voluntary actions of the mind; there is no possibility of bringing the question to any determinate issues, while we proceed upon so erroneous a supposition. #RandolphHarris 12 of 27
The only method of undeceiving us, is, to mount up higher; to examine the narrow extent of science when applied to material causes; and to convince ourselves, that all we know of them, is, the constant conjunction and inference above mentioned. We may, perhaps, find, that it is with difficulty we are induced to fix such narrow limits to human understanding: But we can afterwards find no difficulty when we come to apply this doctrine to the actions of the will. For as it is evident, that these have a regular conjunction with motives and circumstances and character, and as we always draw inferences from one to the other, we must be obliged to acknowledge in words, that necessity, which we have already avowed, in every deliberation of our lives, and in every step of our conduct and behaviour. The prevalence of the doctrine of liberty may be accounted for, from another cause, namely, a false sensation or seeming experience which we have, or may have, of liberty or indifference, in may of our actions. The necessity of any action, whether of matter or of mind, is not, properly speaking, a quality in the agent, but in any thinking or intelligent being, who many consider the action. #RandolphHarris 13 of 27
And it consists chiefly in the determination of one’s thoughts to infer the existence of that action from some preceding objects; as liberty, when opposed to necessity, is nothing but the want of that determination, and a certain looseness or indifference, which we feel, in passing, or not passing, from the idea of one object to that of any succeeding one. Now we may observe, that, though, in reflecting on human actions, we seldom feel such a looseness or indifference, but are commonly able to infer them with considerable certainty from their motives, and from the dispositions of the agent; yet if frequently happens, that, in performing the actions themselves, we are sensible of something like it: And as all resembling objects are readily taken for each other, this has been employed as a demonstrative and even intuitive proof of human liberty. We feel, that our actions are subject to our will, on most occasions; and imagine we feel, that the will itself is subject to nothing, because, when by a denial of it we are provoked to try, we feel, that it moves easily every way, and produces an image of itself (or a Velleity, as it is called in the schools) even n that side, on which it did not settle. #RandolphHarris 14 of 27
This image, of faint motion, we persuade ourselves, could, at that time, have been completed into the things itself; because, should that be denied, we find, upon a second trial, that, at present, it can. We consider not, that the fantastical desire of showing liberty, is here the motive of our actions. And it seems certain, that, however we may imagine we feel a liberty within ourselves, a spectator can commonly infer our actions from our motives and character; and even where one cannot, one concludes in general, that one might, were one perfectly acquainted with every circumstance of our situation and temper, and the most secret springs of our complexion and disposition. Now this is the very essence of necessity, according to the foregoing doctrine. However, to proceed in this reconciling project with regard to the question of liberty and necessity; the most contentious question, of metaphysics, the most contentious science; it will not require many words to prove, that all humankind have ever agreed in the doctrine of liberty as well as in that of necessity, and that the whole dispute, in this respect also, have been hitherto merely verbal. For, when applied to voluntary actions, what is meant by liberty? #RandolphHarris 15 of 27
We cannot surely mean, that actions have so little connexion with motives, inclinations, and circumstances, that one does not follow with a certain degree of uniformity from the other, and that one affords no inference by which we can conclude the existence of the other. For these are plain and acknowledged matters of fact. By liberty, then we can only mean a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will; that is, if we choose to remain at rest, we may; if we choose to move, we also may. Now this hypothetical liberty is universally allowed to belong to every one, who is not a prisoner and in chains. Here then is no subject of dispute. Whatever definition we may give of liberty, we should be careful to observe two requisite circumstances; first, that it be consistent with plain matter of fact; secondly, that it be consistent with itself. If we observe these circumstances, and render our definition intelligible, I am persuaded that all humankind will be found of one opinion with regard to it. It is universally allowed, that nothing exists without a cause of its existence, and that chance, when strictly examined, is a mere negative word, and means not any real power, which has any where, a being in nature. #RandolphHarris 16 of 27
However, it is pretended, that some causes are necessary, some not necessary. Here then is the advantage of definitions. Let any one define a cause, without comprehending, as a part of the definition, a necessary connexin with its effect; and let one show distinctly the origin of the idea, expressed by the definition; and I shall readily give up the whole controversy. However, if the foregoing explication f the matter be received, this must be absolutely impracticable. Had not objects regular conjunction with each other, we should never have entertained any notion of cause and effect; and this regular conjunction produces that inference of the understanding, which is the only connexion, that we can have any comprehension of. Whoever attempts a definition of cause, exclusive of these circumstances, will be obliged, either to employ unintelligible terms, or such as are synonymous to the term, which one endeavours to define. Thus, if a cause be defined, that which produces any thing; it is easy to observe, that producing is synonymous to causing. In like manner, if a cause be defined, that by which anything exists; this is liable to the same objection. For what is meant by these words by which? #RandolphHarris 17 of 27
Had it been said that a cause is that after which anything constantly exists; we should have understood the terms. For this is, indeed, all we know of the matter. And this constancy forms the very essence of necessity, nor have we any other idea of it. And if the definition above mentioned by admitted; liberty, when opposed to necessity, not to constraint, is the same thing with chance; which is universally allowed to have no existence. “And it came to pass that the thirty and fourth year passed away, and also the thirty and fifth, and behold the disciples of Jesus had formed a church of Christ in all the lands round about. And as many as did come unto them, and did truly repent of their sins, were baptized in the name of Jesus; and they did also receive the Holy Ghost. And it came to pass in the thirty and sixth year, the people were all converted unto the Lord, upon all the face of the land, both Nephites and Lamanites, and there were no contentions and disputations among them, and every human did deal justly one with another. And they had all things common among them; therefore there were not rich and poor, bond and free, but they were all made free, and partakers of the heavenly gift. And it came to pass that the thirty and seventh year passed away also, and there still continued to be peace in the land. #RandolphHarris 18 of 27
“And there were great and marvelous works wrought by the disciples of Jesus, insomuch that they did heal the sick, and raise the dead, and cause the lame to walk, and the blind to receive their sight, and the deaf to hear; and all manner of miracles did they work among the children of men; and in nothing did they work miracles save it were in the name of Jesus. And thus did the thirty and eighth year pass away, and also the thirty and ninth, and forty and first, and the forty and second, yea, even until forty and nine years had passed away, and also the fifty and first, and the fifty and second; year, and even until fifty and nine year has passed away. And the Lord did prosper them exceedingly in the land; yea, insomuch that they did build cities again where there had been cities burned. Yea, even that great city of Zarahemla did they cause to be built again. However, there were many cities which had been sunk, and waters came up in the stead thereof; therefore these cities could not be renewed. And now, behold, it came to pass that the people of Nephi did wax strong, and did multiply exceedingly fast, and become an exceedingly fair and delightsome people. And they were married, and given in marriage, and were blessed according to the multitude of the promises which the Lord had made unto them. #RandolphHarris 19 of 27
“And they did not walk any more after the performances and ordinances of the law of Moses; but they did walk after the commandments which they had received from their Lord and their God, continuing in fasting and prayer, and in meeting together oft both to pray and to hear the word of the Lord. And it came to pass that there was no contention among all the people, in all the land; but there were mighty miracles wrought among the disciples of Jesus. And it came to pass that the seventy and first year passed away, and also the seventy and second year, yea, and in fine, till the seventy and ninth year had passes away; yea, even an hundred years had passed away, and the disciples of Jesus, whom he had chosen, had all gone to the paradise of God, save it were the three who should tarry; and there were other disciples ordained in their stead; and also many of that generation had passed away. And it came to pass that there was no contention in the land, because of the love of God which did dwell in the hearts of the people. And there were no envyings, nor strifes, nor tumults, nor whoredoms, nor lyings, nor murders, nor any manner of lasciviousness; and surely there could not be a happier people among al the people who has been created by the hand of God. #RandolphHarris 20 of 27
“There were no robbers, nor murderers, neither were there Lamanites, nor any manner of -ites; but there were in one, the children of Christ, and heirs to the kingdom of God. And how blessed were they! For the Lord did bless them in all their doings; yea, even they were blessed and prospered until an hundred and ten years had passed away; and the first generation from Christ had passes away, and there was no contention in all the land. And it came to pass that Nephi, he that kept this last record, (and he kept it upon the plates of Nephi) died, and his son Amon kept it in his stead; and he kept it upon the plates of Nephi also. And he kept it eighty and four years, and there was still peace in the land, save it were a small part of the people who had revolted from the church and taken upon them the name of Lamanites; therefore there began to be Lamanites again in the land. And it came to pass that Amos died also, (and it was an hundred and ninety and four years from the coming of Christ) and his son Amos kept the record in his stead; and he also kept it upon the plates of Nephi; and it was also written in he book of Nephi, which is this book. And it came to pass that two hundred years had passed away; and the second generation had all passed away save it were a few. #RandolphHarris 21 of 27
“And now I, Mormon, would that ye should know that the people had multiplied, insomuch that they were spread upon all the face of the land, and that they had become exceedingly rich, because of their prosperity in Christ. And now, in this two hundred and first year there began to be among them those who were lifted up in pride, such as the wearing of costly apparel, and all manner of fine pearls, and of the fine things of the World. And from that time forth they did have their goods and their substance no more common among them. And they began to be divided into classes; and they began to build up churches unto themselves to get gain, and began to deny the true church of Christ. And it came to pass that when two hundred and ten years had passes away there were many churches in the land; yea, there were many churches which professed to know the Christ, and yet they did deny the more parts of his gospel, insomuch that they did receive all manner of wickedness, and did administer that which was sacred unto him to whim it had been forbidden because of unworthiness. And this church did multiply exceedingly because of iniquity, and because of the power of Satan who did get hold upon their hearts. #RandolphHarris 22 of 27
“And again, there was another church of Christ, because of their humility and their belief in Christ; and they did despise them because of the many miracles which were wrought among them. Therefore they did exercise power and authority over the disciples of Jesus who did tarry with them, and they did cast them into prison; but by the power of the word of God, which was in them, the prisoners were rent in twain, and they went forth doing mighty miracles among them. Nevertheless, and notwithstanding all these miracles, the people did harden their hearts, and did seek to kill them, even as the Jews at Jerusalem sought to kill Jesus, according to his word. And they did cast them into furnaces of fire, and they came forth receiving no harm. And they also cast them into dens of wild beasts, and they did play with the wild beasts even as a child with a lamb; and they did come forth from among them, receiving no harm. Nevertheless, the people did harden their hearts, for they were led by many priests and false prophets to build up many churches, and to do all manners of iniquity. And they did smite upon the people of Jesus; but the people of Jesus did not smite again. And they thus did dwindle in unbelief and wickedness from year to year, even until two hundred and thirty years had passed away. #RandolphHarris 23 of 27
“And now it came to pass in this year, yea, in the two hundred and thirty and first year, there was a great division among the people. And it came to pass that in this year there arose a people who were called the Nephites, and they were true believers in Christ; and among them there were those who were called by the Lamanites—Jacobites, and Josephites, and Zoramites; therefore the true believers in Christ, and the true worshipers of Christ, (among whom were the three disciples of Jesus who should tarry) were called Nephites, and Jacobites, and Josephites, and Zoramites. And it came to pass that they who rejected the gospel were called Lamanites, and Lemuelites, and Ishmaelites; and they did not dwindle in unbelief, but they did willfully rebel against the gospel of Christ; and they did teach their children that they should not believe, even as their fathers, from the beginning, did dwindle. And it was because of the wickedness and abomination of their fathers, even as it was in the beginning. And they were taught to hate the children of God, even as the Lamanites were taught to hate the children of Nephi from the beginning. #RandolphHarris 24 of 27
“And it came to pass that two hundred and forty and four years had passed away, and thus were the affairs of the people. And the more wicked part of the people did wax strong, and became exceedingly more numerous than were the people of God. And they did still continue to build up churches unto themselves, and adorn them with all manner of precious things. And thus did two hundred and fifty years pass away, and also two hundred and sixty years. And it came to pass that the wicked part of the people began again to build up the secret oaths and combinations of Gadianton. And also the people who were called the people of Nephi began to be proud in their hearts, because of their exceeding riches, and become vain like unto their brethren, the Lamanites. And from this time the disciples began to sorrow for the sins of the World. And it came to pass that when three hundred years had passes away, both the people of Nephi and the Lamanites had become exceedingly wicked one like unto another. And it came to pass that the robbers of Gadinaton did spread over all the face of the land; and there were none that were righteous save it were the disciples of Jesus. And gold and silver did they lay up in store in abundance, and did traffic in all manner of traffic. #RandolphHarris 25 of 27
“And it came to pass that after three hundred and five years had passed away, (and the people did still remain in wickedness) Amos died; and his brother, Ammaron, did keep the record in his stead. And it came to pass that when three hundred and twenty years had passed away, Ammaron, being constrained by the Holy Ghost, did hide up the records which were sacred—yea, even all the sacred records which had been handed down from generation to generation, which were sacred—even until the three hundred and twentieth year from the coming of Christ. And he did hide them up unto the Lord, that they might come again unto the remnant of the house of Jacob, according to the prophecies and the promises of the Lord. And thus is the end of the record of Ammaron,” reports 4 Nephi 1.1-49. Night is called the first of all things because of the common belief that the World came out of darkness. In part, this reflects the obvious truth that before something there was nothing, and that “nothing” is equated with darkness. The connection between these two is not so subtle, however. For, after all, if light (and everything else) was born out of darkness be thought of as nothing? It is a creative force in itself. #RandolphHarris 26 of 27
Thus, among the Celts and Germans, the day began with night, and the year with Winter. To this day, our day begins in the middle of night and our year in the middle of Winter. The World rests beneath night’s blanket and I sit quietly, finally myself at rest. All day, I have been the one talking; my time for silence has arrived. Speak to me, Holy Ones, and I will listen. Here I am, waiting to hear your words. Lord of the World, the King supreme, ere aught was formed, He reigned alone. When by His will all things were wrought, then was His sovereign name made known. And when in time all things shall cease, He still shall reign in majesty. He was, He is, He shall remain all-glorious eternally. Incomparable, unique is He, no other can His Oneness share. Without beginning, without end, Dominion’s might is His to bear. He is my living God who saves, my Rock when grief or trials befall, my Banner and my Refuge strong, my bounteous Portion when I call. My soul I give unto His care, asleep, awake, for He is near, and with my soul, my body, too; God is with me, I have no fear. #RandolphHarris 27 of 27
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Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears a Crown for He Hath Eaten Me Out of House and Home!
The rules seem to be these: if you have written a successful novel, everyone invites you to write short stories. If you have written some good short stories, everyone wants you to write a novel. However, nobody wants anything until you have already proved yourself by being published somewhere else. Western civilization is for the first time in its history in danger of dying. The reason is spiritual. It is losing its life, its soul; that soul is the Christian faith. If the means used to achieve it ultimately contribute to the marginalization of the church and her message, the Devil will allow short-term success in evangelism and church growth. By eschewing the role of reason in evangelism, and substituting in its place an overemphasis on a simple gospel appeal directed at felt needs, short-term gains are to be expected in a culture of empty selves. However, who can deny that while our numbers have grown, our impact has not been proportionate to our numbers? There is too much at stake for this situation to continue. What is needed is a rethinking of the very nature of evangelism, more specifically, of the role of reasoning and argument in the way we do evangelism. First Peter 3.15 commands us to be ready to give a reasoned defense to someone who asks us for a credible reason why we believe what we do. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Jude 1.3 admonished us to “contend earnestly” for the faith. “Contend earnestly” carries with it the idea of engaging in a contest, a struggle, a conflict, or a debate by the pious in the heroic struggle for religious truth, justice, and virtue. The term clearly includes the idea of an intellectual struggle, an idea also expressed by Paul when he said spiritual warfare involves “destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ,” reports 2 Corinthians 10.5. Spiritual warfare is a struggle with persons, demonic and human, and the primary way persons influence other persons is through the ideas they get other to accept. Thus, intellectual tools and reasoning are an important part, though not the whole of spiritual warfare. The other primary components are spiritual preparedness, discernment, courage, and wisdom. We see examples of apologetics everywhere in the Scriptures. In Acts, Paul argued, reasoned, presented evidence, and tried rationally to persuade others to become Christians. “People, why are you doing this? We too are only human, human like you. We are brining you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made Heaven and Earth and sea and everything in them. In the past, he let all nations go their own way. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
“Yet, he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from Heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy,” reports Acts 14.15-17. “As his custom was, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead. ‘This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ,’ he said. Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and not a few prominent women,” reports Acts 17.2-4. “They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household,” reports Acts 16.31. “Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade the Jews and Greeks,” reports Acts 18.4. “Paul entered the synagogue and spoke boldly there for three months, arguing persuasively about the kingdom of God. However, some of them became obstinate; they refused to believe and publicly maligned the Way. So Paul left them. He took the disciples with him and has discussions daily in the lecture hall of Tyrannus. This went on for two years, so that all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord. God did extraordinary miracles through Paul,” reports Acts 19.8-11. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
Paul brought to center stage the truth and reasonableness of the gospel, not the fact that it addresses felt needs. Though both are important, there is a clear Pauline emphasis placed on the former. Jesus Christ Himself regularly engaged in logical debate and rational augment with false, destructive ideologies in His culture, and on several occasions He told people to believe in Him, not simply on the basis of His words, but because of the evidence of His miracles. In this way, Jesus and Paul were continuing a style of persuasion peppered throughout the Old Testament prophets. Regularly, the prophets appealed to evidence to justify belief in the Biblical God or in the divine authority of their inspired message: fulfilled prophecy, the historical fact of miracle, the inadequacy of finite pagan deities to be a cause of such a large, well-ordered Universe compared to God of the Bible, and so forth. They did not say, “God said it, that settles it, you should believe it!” They provided a rational defense for their claims. It is sometimes said that Genesis does not try to “prove” the existence of God, it merely assumes it. However, this is inaccurate. True, Genesis does not argue against atheism because atheism was not a major ideology among the pagan nations surrounding Moses and Israel. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
However, those nations did believe in fickle, finite, immoral deities. In fact, a widespread pagan belief was the idea that each spring the gods copulated, their seed fell to the ground, and that was why crops sprouted and grew each year. Based on that belief, yearly pagan rituals included frenzied orgies to induce the gods to copulate and insure a new season of crops. Genesis takes this view to task and presents a testable claim: The God of Israel delegated to living things the intrinsic power to reproduce after their own kinds, an odd and foreign idea to the nations of the ancient Mideast. However, this claim carried with it a test. If the pagans ceased their orgies, then no crops would grow if their view were correct and the gods needed inducement to copulate. However, if the biblical view were correct, crops would continue to arise. The secret to the peace of God, as great apprentices of Jesus have long known, being abandoned to God, the person who is heartily abandoned to God knows that all shall be well because God is in charge of one’s life. My peace is the greatness of God. Because He, who not only loves me but is Love, is so great, I live beyond harm in His hands; and there is nothing that can happen to me that will not turn out to my good. Nothing. That is what Romans 8.28 really means. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
Because of this, “Thu wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee,” the ancient texts read in Isaiah 26.3. It makes supreme sense, therefore, that I should accept Paul’s instruction to “be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus,” reports Philippians 4.6-7. The greatness and love of Gd forms my peace, and at the same time, my love and joy. Job had many worrisome questions in the midst of his troubled life. However, when he beheld God, they simply did not matter and no longer seemed to need answering. He did not raise a single one of the questions he earlier had wanted to press upon God. “I know that you can do all things; no plans of your can be thwarted. You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’ My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes,” reports Job 42.2-6. Job was not bullied into silence by God coming to him, but really saw the all-sufficiency of God to his life and his soul. And this brought love, joy, and peace to him at one stoke. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
The original position is a central feature of John Rawl’s social contract account of justice. The original position is designed to be a fair and impartial point of view that is to be adopted in our reasoning about fundamental principles of justice. In taking up this point of view, we are to imagine ourselves in the position of free and equal persons who jointly agree upon and commit themselves to principles of social and political justice. The main distinguishing feature of the original position is “the veil of ignorance”: to insure impartiality of judgment, the parties are deprived of all knowledge of their personal characteristics and social and historical circumstances. They do know of certain fundamental interests they all have, plus general fact about psychology, economics, biology, and others social and natural sciences. The parties in the original position are presented with a list of the main conceptions of justice drawn from the tradition of social and political philosophy, and are assigned the task of choosing from among these alternatives the best conception of justice that best advances their interests in establishing conditions that enable them to effectively pursue their final ends and fundamental interests. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
The only particular facts which the parities know is that their society is subject to the circumstances of justice and whatever this implies. It is taken for granted, however, that they know the general facts about human society. They understand political affairs and the principles of economic theory; they know the basis of social organization and the laws of human psychology. Indeed, the parties are presumed to know whatever general facts affect the choice of the principles of justice. There are no limitations on general information, that is, on general laws and theories, since conception of justice must be adjusted to the characteristics of the system of social cooperation which they are to regulate, and there is no reason to rule out these facts. Given the principles of moral learning, humans develop a desire to act in accordance with its principles. In this case a conception of justice is stable. The veil of ignorance insures not only that the information available is relevant, but that it is at all times the same. We can, to make the circumstances more vivid, imagine that the parties are required to communicate with each other through a referee as intermediary, and that one is to announce which alternatives have been suggested and the reasons offered in their support. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
One forbids the attempt to form coalitions, and one informs the parties when they have come to an understanding. However, such a referee is actually superfluous, assuming that the deliberations of the parties must be similar. Justice between generations is resolved by altering the motivation assumptions. However, with this adjustment no one is able to formulate principles especially designed to advance one’s own cause. Whatever one’s temporal position, each is forced to choose for everyone. The right course of action is characterized as that which best advanced social aims as these would be formulated by reflective agreement given that the parties have full knowledge of the circumstances and are moved by a benevolent concern for one another’s interest. No effort s made, however, to specify in any precise way the possible outcomes of this sort of agreement. I do not wish here to criticize others; rather, I want to explain the necessity for what may seem at times like so many irrelevant details. If the original position is to yield agreements that are just, the parties must be fairly situated and treated equally as moral persons. The arbitrariness of the World must be corrected by adjusting the circumstances of the initial contractual situation. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
A conception of justice based on unanimity in these circumstances would indeed be weak and trivial. However, once knowledge is excluded, the requirement of unanimity is not out of place and the fact that it can be satisfied is of great importance. It enables us to say of the preferred conception of justice that it represents a genuine reconciliation of interests. We created the problem of independent learning by the way we taught and trained people to the social roles awaiting them in social structure that resists change. Pedagogues, parents, people in general, invalidated the experience of learners and shut down their capacity to experience wonder and fascination. We created the problem, and it haunts us because, not because “behavioral scientists have expanded our conceptions of human potential by recasting the image of human beings; no, the problem haunts us because we find ourselves at the end of our tether. We are running in circles at its limit. The tether is firmly fixed to a peculiar debasement of once magnificent image—the American Way of Life. Originally revolutionary and dynamic in conception, the American Way of Life is now a design for living that more and more Americans cannot live, without the assistance of tranquilizers and the threats of the ubiquitous commissars. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
Yet, all the time, we advertise this way of life abroad, and try to sell it as we sell bathroom hygiene paper and Buicks, with hidden persuaders. What is independent learning? No authoritative definitions are available. However, what an observer might call independent learning—learning for oneself—the learning experiences as fascinations with some aspect of the Word, envisioned in the mode of possibility, that is in imagination. Independent learning is the embodiment and implementation of imaginative fascination. Some aspect of the World discloses itself to a person. One flips from the experiential mode of perception to an imaginative consciousness; and one experiences oneself as beckoned, challenged, invited, fascinated, by the possibility. The transmutation of this possibility into an actuality then becomes the dominant project of one’s life. One lives it, and one lives for it. The person in who fascination has been turned on, or awakened, suffers a divine discontent, a magnificent obsession. If others live the individual alone, one will wallow in one’s obsession. One will forget to eat, sleep, play, socialize, or do anything else until one has brough one’s image of possibility into actuality, or lies nurturing the wounds from one’s fumbling, awaiting recovery to renew the onslaught. Then, one may again show an interest in other kinds doing. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
However, in the midst of one’s learning rampage, one is far from being well-rounded, socially adjusted; in fact one departs hugely from current images of how people should be. Indeed, the turned-on learner needs to be protected from other people, from self-consciousness, from the need to conform to images, from distractions, and from serious self-destructions as one contemplates and absorbs oneself in the encounter with one’s fetish—they mystery or the missing skill. When one is thus turned on, no badly-written text, no stuttering teacher can be an obstacle or a deterrent, so long as they embody some of the knowledge that has become the life quest just then. “This book or that teacher has something I want just now. I will get it out of them somehow!” Independent learning arises when our present existence has reached an impasse, when our experience has gone stale. The project of “staying the same” has lost its meaning, and so the person seeks “a new interest in life.” If one finds one, and one lets oneself be addressed by it, one become possessed of the divine madness. The burden and dilemma that were one’s existence have now been thrown off. One’s existence is now the quest. One is turned on. One will not be diverted. One may appear ruthless as one pursues one’s quest. One cannot be bored by it though one may bore others by one’s talk of it. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
This state of being, of being involved, of experiencing new possibilities of meaning of one’s life, of being engaged in their fulfillment—this is what I am construing as independent learning. It entails transcending the past—past involvements and interests, social pressure; in short, it is a matter of detachment and liberation from the momentum and inertia of previous ways of being, behaving, and experiencing. The fascinated questing of which I speak can be evoked in a number of ways. It may occur of itself in someone who is desperate enough, whose life has been enlightened. It seems to occur spontaneously in young children before they have been socialized. More commonly, when it does occur, it happens through a relationship between and entrapped person and some other who functions as one’s guru and exemplar—someone who offers a pseudo psychedelic encounter. Indeed, the guru may assist the process of liberation from previous attachments by helping the person experience more keenly the degree to which one feels trapped. The capacity to become fascinated may be impossible until some level of disengagement from usual concerns, ways, and commitments has been reached. Or, the one who is to be the guru may function as a tempter—one’s way of life may excite envy and admiration. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
One’s serenity or one’s enthusiasm may evoke curiosity. One may appear to be having more fun, living more fully, experiencing more. Or one may disclose images of possibility that attract the attention of the bored, unfulfilled seeker, who them becomes fascinated and subsequently experiences one’s previous involvements as obstacles to one’s pursuit of new meaning and experience. Whatever the occasion for being thus turned on, it is this fascinated engagement with an image of possibility that I define as independent learning. We might call it awakening or inspiration, but it is always intentional—that is, it is always related to something in the World; it is always awakening to something, being inspirited by and for something, fascinated with something. And it is embodied; that is, the person lives and acts one’s experience of awakening. In principle, the turned-on state, which is experienced by the person as different from one’s usual, repetitive experience, should appear different to the other person. We thus have the possibility of a psychology, a physiology, even an epidemiology and sociology, of being turned on. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
It is to part of this possibility, an exploration or relationships between personality factors and being turned on. Too many disciples commit the fault of being too demanding and too possessive in their attitude towards the teacher. In the end they become a burden, a liability, or even a nuisance to one. They ought to give one devotion, yes; they ought to think often of one for inspiration and guidance; but they ought not to turn themselves into emotional parasites who are unable to live on their own vitality at all. The eagerness to surrender every responsibility, every decision, every care to a spiritual guide—which is so prominent in the Old World—is only praiseworthy in some cases. In others, it is neurotic and infantile, an attempt to secure indulgent pity, protection, and gregarious support despite the fact that childhood has been physically outgrown. To take it as a sign of advancement, and to use it as an excuse to evade pressing work of self-reform and self-discipline, is deplorable. A calm trust in the human’s leadership is one thing, but a hysterical clinging devotion to one’s personality is another. So it is good for people to be independent learners. For one who turns oneself into a burden to one’s teacher by shrinking one’s own responsibilities and throwing them on one’s teacher, is being selfish as well as weak. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Whoever does not understand that the guide must lead one to where one will seek one’s own way, will go on endlessly looking for teachers, one after the other, or else become a spiritual hypochondriac, a semi-invalid needing the guru-doctor to dance constantly in attendance on one’s ego-centered symptoms. It may be that the effort to imitate one’s master will enable the disciple to excel oneself. If one is willing to accept the gift of Grace, which a true teacher is forever bearing, through your prior willingness to give one your faith and devotion, and to give it not because one want it or anything else for oneself but because one is a purified channel for God’s power, then you may expect to see the past wiped out as sins are forgiven and the future made brighter as new energies are born in you. “And now it came to pass that the people of the Nephites did all return to their own lands in the twenty and sixth year, every human, with one’s family, one’s flocks, and one’s herds, one’s horses, and one’s cattle, and all things whatsoever did belong unto them. And it came to pass that they had not eaten up all their provisions; therefore they did take with them all that they had not devoured, of all their grain of every kind, and their gold, and their sliver, and all their precious things, and they did return to their own lands and their possessions, both on the north and on the south, both on the land northward and on the land southward. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
“And they granted unto those robbers who had entered into a covenant to keep the peace of the land, who were desirous to remain Lamanites, lands, according to their numbers, that they might have, with their labours, wherewith to subsist upon; and thus they did establish peace in all the land. And they began again to prosper and to wax great; and the twenty and sixth and seventh years passed away, and there was great order in the land; and they had formed their laws according to equity and justice. And now there was nothing in all the land to hinder the people from prospering continually, except they should fall into transgression. And now it was Gidigiddoni, and the judge, Lachoneus, and those who had been appointed leaders, who has established this great peace in the land. And it came to pass that there were many cities built anew, and there were many old cities repaired. And there were many highways cast up, and many roads made which led from city to city, and from land to land, and from place to place. And thus passes away the twenty and eight year, and the people had continual peace. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
“However, it came to pass in the twenty and nineth year there began to be some disputings among the people’ and some were lifted up unto pride and boastings because of their exceedingly great riches, yea, even unto great persecutions; for there were many merchants in the land, and also many lawyers, and many officers. And the people began to be distinguished by ranks, according to their riches and their chances for learning; yea, some were ignorant because of their poverty, and others did receive great learning because of their riches. Some were lifted up in pride, and others were exceedingly humble; some did return railings for railing, while others would receive railing and persecution and all manner of afflictions, and would not turn and revile again, but were humble and penitent before God. And thus there became a great inequality in all the land, insomuch that the church began to be broken up; yea, insomuch that in the thirtieth year the church was broken up in all the land save it were among a few of the Lamanites who were converted unto the true faith; and they would not depart from it, for immovable, willing with all diligence to keep the commandments of the Lord. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
“Now the cause of this iniquity of the people was this—Satan had great power, unto the stirring up of the people to do all manner of iniquity, and to the puffing them up with pride, tempting them to seek for power, and authority, and riches, and the vain things of the World. And thus Satan did lead away the hearts of the people to do all manner of iniquity; therefore they had enjoyed peace but a few years. And thus, in the commencement of the thirtieth year—the people having been delivered up for the space of a long time to be carried about by the temptations of the devil whithersoever he desired to carry them and to do whatsoever iniquity he desired they should—and thus in the commencement of this, the thirtieth year, they were in a state of awful wickedness. Now they did not sin ignorantly, for they knew the will of God concerning them, for it had been taught unto them; therefore they did willfully rebel against God. And now it was in the days of Lachoneus, the son of Lachoneus, for Lachoneus did fill the seat of his father and did govern the people that year. And there began to be humans inspired from Heaven and sent forth standing among the people in all the land, preaching and testifying boldly of the sins and iniquities of the people. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
“And they were testifying unto them concerning the redemption which the Lord would make for his people, or in other words, the resurrection of Christ; and they did testify boldly of his death and sufferings. Now there were many of the people who were exceedingly angry because of those who testified of these things; and those wo were angry were chiefly the chief judges, and they who had been high priests and lawyers; yea, all those who were lawyers were angry with those who testified of these things. Now there was no lawyer nor judge nor high priest that could have power to condemn any one to death save their condemnation was signed by the governor of the land. Now there were many of those who testified of the things pertaining to Christ who testified boldly, who were taken and put to death secretly by the judges, that the knowledge of their death came not unto the governor of the land until after death. Now behold, this was contrast to the laws of the land, that any human should be put to death except they had a power from the governor of the land. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
“Therefore a complaint came up unto the land of Zarahemla, to the governor of the land, against these judges who had condemned the prophets of the Lord unto death, not according to the law. Now it came to pass that those judges had many friends and kindreds; and the remainder, yea, even almost all the lawyers and the high priests, did gather themselves together, and unite with the kindreds of those judges who were to be tried according to the law. And they did enter into a covenant one with another, yea, even into that covenant which was given by them of old, which covenant was given and administered by the devil, to combine against all righteousness. Therefore they did combine against the people of the Lord, and enter int a covenant to destroy them, and to deliver those who were guilty of murder from the grasp of justice, which was about to be administered according to the law. And they did set at defiance the law and the rights of their country; and they did covenant one with another to destroy the governor, and to establish a king over the land, that the land should no more be at liberty but should be subject unto the kings,” reports 3 Nephi 6.1-30. Dear Lord in Heaven, you have retuned the Sun, as I knew you would, for this is your part in the ways of things. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
God, you have your role, and you play it well. I ask that you please inspire me to do the same: to know the right thing to do and to do it with passion and joy and honour. Bless, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy whole Clergy, that they may handle Thy holy things with holiness, and be pleasing to Thee Whoa art our Priest for ever. O Lord, without Whom our labour is but lost, and with Whom Thy little ones go forth as the mighty; please be present to all works in Thy Church which are undertaken according to Thy will, (especially in Sacramento, California USA), and please grant to Thy labourers a pure intention, patient faith, sufficient success upon Earth, and the bliss of serving Thee in Heaven; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord Jesus Christ, our sympathizing Saviour, Who for humans didst bear that Agony and the Cross; please draw Thou near to Thy suffering servant, in their pain of body or trouble of mind (especially in Sacramento, California USA) please hallow all their crosses in this life, and crown them hereafter where all tears are wiped away; where with the Father we can sing praises. Merciful and faithful Most Priest, Who didst deign for us to be tempted of Satan; please make speed to assist Thy servants who are assaulted by manifold temptations; and as Thou knowest their several infirmities, let each one to find Thee mighty to save, Who livest, as a young God, a young warrior. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
God, please rise into the sky as into a battle, dispelling the darkness that has covered the World, putting to flight the fears of the night. Have mercy, O compassionate Father, on all who are hardened through the deceitfulness of sin; vouchsafe them grace to come to themselves, the will and power to return to Thee, and the loving welcome of Thy forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Almighty and everliving God, Who hast given us the Christian Faith of Christ for a light to our feet amid the darkness of this World; please have pity upon all who, by doubting or denying it, are gone astray from the path of safety; please bring home the Truth to their hearts, and grant them to receive it as little children; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. God has given birth to you again; again you climb the sky, again you reach for your glory, again I stand here to praise you. The sacred path is fulfilled, things are as they should be. Jesus Christ, herald of the right way, I praise you! Amazing! Wonderful! Every morning, again and again You make life amazing! Wonderful! #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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Stand a Little Less Between Me and the Sun for this is the Movement of Redeeming Love!
If you watch a game, it is fun. If you play it, it is recreation. If you work at it, it is golf. We become live as we take, knowingly, full responsibility for our own life and as we stop blaming circumstance. Freedom for most people of the World means “freedom from” the absence of malice or pain or suppression. However, the freedom that God means when He deals with us goes one step further. God means “freedom to”—the freedom to act in the dignity of our own choice. What then does it mean to be free? Freedom means to have matured to the full knowledge of our dangerously many responsibilities as a human being. We have learned that everything we do, and even say or think, has consequences. We realize that too long we have believed that we were the victims of circumstances. In the Gospel of John, 8.32 it reports the following, “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” As we open our hearts to the message of God’s truth, as it was restored in our time, we begin to understand why there was, and still is, so much misery, pain, suffering, and even starvation. Our nation’s future direction now hangs in the balance; we are living in a time of crucial choices—both conscious and unconscious—that will determine our fate. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
The rights to freedom of thought and speech, the right to advocate any point of view which one believe—these freedoms are not highly regarded today. Even universities, where these freedoms are of the essence, often refuse to permit speakers to appear because their views are opposed by some influential group. And it is not only administrators who limit these freedoms, but faculty and students as well. Lies, deceit, criminal invasion of privacy, flouting of the law, surveillance and imprisonment of dissenters—all these have been tools used to control the populace and to hold power over persons. We have to be careful because incarcerating the young will keep them out of the adult World. High office now goes preponderantly to humans of wealth so that of our one hundred senators, supposedly representing the people, 50 percent of them are millionaires. To make people obey the law, it is important for them to feel they are a par of an ongoing, purposeful process. People are more likely to obey the law when they understand that each individual has an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We cannot allow “Dysamerica,” to become popular since it is utterly opposed to the goals, ideals, and political structure embodied in the Constitution. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Youth must also be taught not only to be loving, but also to be proud to be Americans so they do not become “Dysamerican.” Many social historians, economists, and forecasters agree that the disillusionment with democracy is growing, and they see it coming to fruition in the future that a controlled society is inevitable. Belief in the worth of the free person is not something that can be extinguished even by all the modern technological devices—bugging of conversations, use of “mental hospitals” to recondition behaviour, and all the rest. Nothing can extinguish the human organism’s drive to be itself—to actualize itself in individual and creative ways. Trust and courage are standards to emulate. Equality and justice are inviolable concepts. Authority should be guided by reason and tempered by fairness. There is a realization that if we are to live in a human context, there must be an ability to establish intimate, communicative, personal bonds with others in a very short space of time. They must be able to leave these close relationships behind, without excessive conflict or mourning. Every social revolution is preceded by, or brings with it, a change in the perception of the World or a change in the perception of the possible or both. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
In the same dimension as we are learning to accept the revealed truth in our own life, our faith in the living Son of God will grow, and therefore we will receive spiritual gifts of heretofore unknown capacity. We will learn that nothing is impossible for those who believe in Jesus Christ. False bondages will be loosened. Narrow thinking born in tragedies of false traditions will disappear. The more our understanding of the vastness and the completeness of the plan of salvation is developing, the more we see ourselves in smallness, in our incompleteness. And seeing ourselves in that humility, with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, will let us understand and finally accept this most sacred covenant with our Heavenly Father. Freedom means that we have the potential of making wrong choices. Wrong choices have their merciless consequences, and when they are not stopped and corrected they lead us into misery and pain. Wrong choices, if not corrected, will lead us to the ultimate possible disaster in each person’s life: to become separated from our Heavenly Father in the World to come. When we have received this life-enabling message, we begin to understand that in our earlier life we were like a football player standing in the middle of the field, totally depressed because we did not know the purpose of the game. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
We did not know which team we belong to, and we did not even know who was our coach. Only in the awareness of the restored gospel, our game plan become clear, and we comprehend that Jesus Christ and His restored Church and priesthood are the only way for us to succeed in our Earthly experience. Jesus Christ wants to empower our lives, according to our own righteous choices, to that dimension that, through our faith and our doings, the circumstances whose prisoners we were in the past will eventually change. Love, if it is truly love, implies that in any problem or dilemma we shall be led by a spiritual instinct. For, where love is, there is the Holy Spirit, who knows all, and who guides us in the strait path. Love is able to rise above the law; it does not follow, but lead, the law. The conscience of the mystics, enlightened by God’s illuminations, may be called a transmoral conscience. It does not need to be told what law is. For consciously or not, it fulfills the law. For in the concrete situation of the Christian who is totally committed to God, love never contradicts the law: it fulfills it. Love invents the law if the law is not explicitly known, and what it invents always corresponds to the law, because both have the Holy Spirit as their inspirer. The morel law of nature or of revelation cannot contradict the true love of God. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
The true love of God always desires to follow the moral law. However, every teacher knows that correct behaviour does not come spontaneously. Even love has to be taught. Even when one really loves them, one must learn to respect and understand others. Even for one who is totally dedicated to another, it is not east to respect the secret of that person. When it stated that “the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom,” The Old Testament agree with common sense. Christ did not abolish the law; he fulfilled it. Love likewise does not seek to be freed from laws, but to fulfill them. Love soars above the law only to subject itself to the law again. Love is free, and it freely longs for obedience. As soon as we speak of obedience, we must ask, Obedience to what? In the realm of ethics, obedience can only be to objective standards, that is, to laws. The law is not strange to man. It is natural law. It represents his true nature from which he is estranged. Every ethical commandment is an expression of man’s essential relation to himself, to others and to the Universe. Undeserved grace of God has raised to full spiritual freedom. Most of us are theonomous only at times, when we rise above our average. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
Our ethics, then, is a mixture: heteronomy, when we obey the law for no other reason than that is it’s the law; autonomy, when we escape the law and go on our own, experimenting with temptation and sin; theonomy, when we perceive that there is a higher realm, to which we obscurely aspire. In this World, theonomy can only be achieved by way of obedience. To behave ethically, in this view, is to be ultimately concerned about the connection of our actions with essential Godmanhood. The Christ is eternal Godmanhood, the essence of man paradoxically appearing under the conditions of existence. All humans have aspired to this revelation; they have longed for an escape from the dilemma of an existence which is never adequate to its essence. Their religions have attempted to find a way out of the human labyrinth. The Messiah, the Christ, the Servant of Yahweh, the Prophet to come, the Son of Man, the Son of God, are some of the representations of this ideal messenger of salvation. The Christian faith consists in believing that this messenger has come, Christ is eternal Godmanhood, is in Jesus Christ the man; and that Jesus was the manifestation of the Christ. The coming of Jesus the Christ is a totally gratuitous event, unanticipated by the human mind and irreducible to general categories. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
Our goodness is not ours, it is God’s. Christ is perfect goodness, and so he is perfectly God. We are good because God lives in us by grace; and Jesus was perfect goodness because God was perfectly in him, so perfectly that Jesus was God. Wherever the New Bing appears, salvation is achieved. The coming of the Christ is such a breakthrough of the New Bing. Other can be thought of or hoped for. This particular manifestation of the New Bing is the norm of Christianity because it is the greatest manifestation that has ever been perceived. Of all the messianic titles, Jesus claimed the title of the Man more definitely than any other. In 1 Corinthians 15.45-47, in Romans 5.12, and in Philippians 2.5-11, St Paul developed the idea of the Man and identified “the Heavenly Man,” “the second Adam,” “the second Man,” with the concrete man Jesus. The Man is from Heaven. He is spiritual, as contrasted with the first Adam, who was Earthly. He appeared on Earth as Jesus of Nazareth. These, and other texts of the New Testament, impose the following conclusion: The early Church initiated a Christology in which Jesus was considered to be the incarnation of preexisting celestial Man. Christology is built on the concept “Man.” The Man, the “celestial Man,” is equal with God. Christology takes this as a scriptural basis and describes the Thee Persons as the Father, the Man, the Spirit. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
In examining the meaning of “the Man,” it might follow the patristic line of thought according to which man’s essence is to be the image, the eikon, of God. The second Person, the Man-God, is the perfect Image of the Father, of whom he is eternally born. It is precisely that which makes him the preexistent Man. To be a man on Earth consists in being destined to imitate this Man, in being created an image of God. All men are types of this eternal Archetype, of the Image of the Father, of the Man. The two natures, divine and human, of Christ can also be called the two humanities of Jesus: the divine Humanity, which is God himself, the Exemplar of all images of God; and the creaturely humanity, in whose shape the divine Humanity appeared on Earth at a given moment in history. These two are one—one “person” in the Chalcedonian language—by way of exemplarity: the creaturely humanity of Jesus is the perfect created likeness of the divine Man. We should not speak of Jesus as two men, but as two humanities—divine and human—in one man, the pre-existent divine Man. The integrity of the creaturely humanity assumed by the eternal Man, in all things like his brethren. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
The Exemplar itself is, eternally so, divine and yet human the divine Man. Eternal Godmanhood is made possible by the Scriptures themselves and by the early tradition of the Church. It may be achieved in complete fidelity to the normative Councils of the early Church. Jesus is the divine Man and appeared in the midst of creaturely mankind, a brother among brothers. Jesus the Christ is the Saviour. Jesus the Christ is the mediator in all things. The Son of God, to whom alone belong the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory. “If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us,” reports 1 John 4.12. The first great commandment makes it possible to fulfill the commandment: love of neighbour as oneself. And loving others under God will ensure that we are loved by others. For to the others in our community of love, we are the “other” who they love because they love and are loved by God. The fellowship of Christ’s apprentices in kingdom living is a community of love. “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all humans will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another,” reports John 13.34-35. This is the movement in the process of redeeming love. Christ chose his twelve apostles not only because they were naturally and extremely religious men but also because they were loyal enough and brave enough to live and die for their master. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Here, then, is the full accounts of the movements of love in our lives: We are loved by God who is love, and in turn we love him, and others through him, who in turn love us through him. Thus is love made perfect or complete. And “perfect love casts out fear,” reports 1 John 4.18. That is, those who live in the fulfillment of God’s redemptive love in human life will no longer experience fear. “Fear involves torment,” John notes, and torment is incompatible with living in the full cycle of love (1 John 4.18). We live in the community of goodwill from a competent God. Now, as St Augustine saw long ago, the opposite of love is pride. Love eliminates pride because its will for the god of the other nullifies our arrogant presumption hat we should get our way. We are concerned for the good of others and assured that our good is take care of without self-will. Thus pride and fear and their dreadful offspring no longer rules our life as long becomes complete in us. This eagerness to become a disciple and learn truth is the first necessary qualification. Without it nothing can be done; with it everything will come naturally in automatic response from God. One must supply faith and loyalty, obedience and practice, along with the aspiration which brings us closer to the Lord. If we hear the master’s words with joy, that is one indication that we are ready. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
When we entrust ourselves to the Lord’s care, we should cultivate patience and not seek immediate results. However, it is not necessary to display frenzied fervour in order to be a devoted disciple. If we feel personally humiliated or become hysterically tearful because God did not respond when we expected, we are not only suffering needlessly, but will remain long puzzled. Our humility will always be met by kindness and our frankness by equal frankness. The seeker who has found the path proper and are in affinity with God’s commandments should waste no more time in the experimental investigations of other paths, other teachings, and other teachers. If one is to get full benefit of our fellowship, we must remain absolutely loyal. As one’s tender, newly regenerated soul begins to grow close to Christ, one will begin to care deeply about ideas in these areas. Preserve and clear away some of the cobwebs that cover vast regions of one’s mental attic. Nothing that is worth doing id pleasurable or easy in the early stages of learning how to do it. However, through regular practice, patient endurance, and proper mentoring, skills emerge and habits are formed that enable a good person to be good at the activity in focus. This is clearly the case in learning to play gold, hit a baseball, or read in completely new areas of study. It is n less true of becoming a deep, careful thinker in general. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
If we are to love God adequately with the mind, then the mind must be exercised regularly, trained to acquire certain habits of thought, and filled with an increasingly rich set of distinctions and categories. There is n simple way to do this, and it would be presumptuous to attempt to describe fully how to develop a mature mind in one essay. A mature person has a tightly integrated, well-ordered soul. A carefully developed mind is a crucial part of a well-ordered soul. A mind that is learning to function well is both part of and made possible by an overall life that is skillfully lived. You cannot learn to use your mind well for Christ’s sake by just reading a logic book or taking more adult education courses. You must order your general lifestyle in such a way that a maturing intellect emerges as part of that lifestyle. If you want to develop a Christian mind, you must intend to order your overall form of life to make this possible. You cannot just read a book or two and add this to a lifestyle otherwise indifferent to the intellect. Moreover, learning to be a careful Christian thinker results in an entire way of being present in the World. What a person spends time learning will affect the way that person sees, hears, thinks, and behaves. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
A trained lawyer actually hears things on the evening news, see things in the newspaper, and approaches conversations with others in ways that would be unavailable to one if one had gone into psychology or business. A person with a well-developed lawyer-type mind will have a distinctive way of being present in the World. This is also true of a person who is cultivating a careful Christian mind. That person will be present to the World in a distinctively Christian intellectual way. One will notice certain things others miss, read things (for example, theology, church history) others eschew, and so forth. To develop a Christian mind skillfully, one must want to be a certain sort of person badly enough that one is willing to pay the price for ordering one’s lifestyle appropriately. Of course, some Christians are called to a vocation of being a Christian intellectual in one way or another—a Christian philosopher or New Testament scholar, for example. This requires a more intense, focused ordering of one’s life than is needed for those without this calling. However, every believer, regardless of vocational calling, needs to cultivate a Christian mind. A life so ordered to facilitate intellectual growth is characterized by a certain set of virtues that makes such growth possible. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
A virtue is a skill, a habit, an ingrained disposition to act, think, or feel in certain way. Virtues are those good parts of one’s character that make a person excellent at life in general. As with any skill (for example, learning to swing a golf club), a virtue become ingrained in my personality, and thus a part of my very nature, through repetition, practice, and training. If I want to develop the virtue of compassion, I must regularly practice acts of mercy, self-sacrifice, and kindness. Knowing what these virtues are will give one something specific at which to aim in one’s efforts to cultivate one’s mind. Certain virtues are especially relevant to the development of an intellectual life. Moreover, these virtues are not isolated from each other. They are deeply interrelated. Growth in one virtue can assist maturity in another skill and vice versa. If one wants a maturing Christian mind, one will need to cultivate these virtues through regular practice. If in the beginning one is to cast one’s net so widely as to search for truth in every corner, in the middle of one’s course one is to narrow one’s World until one has no ear for anyone else but the voice of God. Only so can concentration be achieved. In the beginning, width; in the middle, depth. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
Virtue of wisdom contains truth seeking, honesty, and wisdom. Even if it is not the truth we want to hear, the Christian mind is committed to seeking and finding the truth. The Christian seeks to know and do the truth. In fact, in a certain sense the believer’s commitment to the truth is even more basic than one’s dedication to the Christian faith in general or some doctrinal position in particular: If one came to believe that Christianity or some doctrinal belief were false, then one would ought to give up the belief in question. By way of application, even if we do not like the way they express their views, we should earn to listen to what our critics say about us. Even if it was expressed angrily and inappropriately, a wife or husband should try to get at the truth of a spouse’s criticisms. Practice this in all areas of your life to cultivate the habit of wanting the truth. Few are ready to pay the entrance fee of lifelong loyalty and steadfast service which are demanded, for this payment must be made in actual practice and not in lip movements alone. Even when understanding cannot keep pace, we must be able to trust and walk unwaveringly at our spouses’ side, and our fine loyalty should shine out like Sirius in the sky. Loyalty is the quality which will endear one most to a loved one. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
The Quest will become inseparable from the happiness one seeks, so devotion to God will become inseparable from the salvation upon which happiness depends. Why should this be so is one of the mysterious workings of Destiny which can only be illuminate when and if it be possible to illuminate the Earth sacred covenant. In this freedom that we have received in our time, through our understanding of God’s divine plan for us, we stand in our full responsibility. Let us always stay close to the loving, caring hand of our Redeemer, and our Saviour to find safety and joy. I say this in deep humility. “And now, it came to pass that there were many who heard the words of Samuel, the Lamanite, which he spake upon the walls of the city. And as many as believed on his word went forth and sought for Nephi; and when they had come forth and found him they confessed unto him their sins and denied not, desiring that they might be baptized unto the Lord. However, as many as there were who did not believe in the words of Samuel were angry with him; and they cast stones at him upon the wall, and also many short arrows at him as he stood upon the wall; but the Spirit of the Lord was with him, insomuch that they could not hit him with their stones neither with their arrows. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
“Now when they saw that they could not hit him, there were many more who did believe on his words, insomuch that they went away unto Nephi to be baptized. For behold, Nephi was baptizing, and prophesying, and preaching, crying repentance unto the people, showing signs of wonders, working miracles among the people, that they might know that the Christ must shortly come—telling them of the things which must shortly come, that that might know and remember at the time of their coming that they had been made known unto them beforehand, to the intent that they might believe; therefore as many as believed on the word of Samuel went forth unto him to be baptized, for they came repenting and confessing their sins. However, they more part of them did not believe in the words of Samuel; therefore when they saw that they could not hit him with their stone and their arrows, they cried unto their captains, saying: Take this fellow and bind him, for behold he hath a devil; and because of the power of the devil which is in him we cannot hit him with our stones and our arrows; therefore take him and bind hi, and away with him. And as they went forth to lay their hands on him, behold, he did cast himself down from the wall, and did flee out of their lands, yea, even unto his own country, and began to preach and to prophesy among his own people. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
“And behold, he was never heard of more among the Nephites; and thus were the affairs of the people. And thus ended the eighty and sixth year of the judges over the people of Nephi. And thus ended also the eighty and seventh year of the reign of the judges, the more part of the people remaining in their pride and wickedness, and the lesser part walking more circumspectly before God. And these were the conditions also, in the eighty and eighth year of the reign of the judges. And there was but a little alteration in the affairs of the people, save it were the people began to be more hardened in iniquity, and do more and more of that which was contrary to the commandments of God, in the eighty and ninth year of the reign of the judges. However, it came to pass in the ninetieth year of the reign of the judges, there were great signs given unto the people, and wonders; and the words of the prophets began to be fulfilled. And Angels did appear unto men, wise men, and did declare unto them glad tidings of great joy; thus in this year the scriptures began to be fulfilled. Nevertheless, the people began to harden their hearts, all save it were the most believing part of them, both of the Nephites and also of the Lamanites, and began to depend upon their own strength and upon their own wisdom saying: #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
“Some thing they may have guessed right, among so many; but behold, we know that all these great and marvelous works cannot come to pass, of which have been spoken. And they began to reason and to contend among themselves, saying: That it is not reasonable that such a being as a Christ shall come; if so, and he be the Son of God, the Father of Heaven and of Earth, as it has been spoken, why will he not show himself unto us as well as unto them who shall be at Jerusalem? Yea, why will he not show himself in this land as well as in the land of Jerusalem? However, behold, we know that this is a wicked tradition, which has been handed down unto us by our fathers, to cause us that we should believe in some great and marvelous thing which should come to pass, but not among us, but in a land which is far distant, a long which we know not; therefore they can keep us in ignorance, for we cannot witness without own eyes that they are true. And they will, by the cunning and the mysterious arts of the evil one, work some great mystery which we cannot understand, which will keep us down to be servants to their words, and also servants unto them, for we depend upon them to teach us the word; and thus will they keep us in ignorance if we will yield ourselves unto them, all the days of our lives. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
“And many more thing did the people imagine up in their hearts, which were foolish and vain; and they were much disturbed, for Satan did stir them up to do iniquity continually; yea, he did go about spreading rumors and contentions upon the face of the land, that he might harden the hearts of the people against that which should come. And notwithstanding the signs and the wonders which were wrought among the people of the Lord, and the many miracles which they did, Satan did get great hold upon the hearts of the people upon all the face of the land. And thus ended the ninetieth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And thus ended the book of Helaman, according to the record of Helaman and his sons,” reports Helaman 16.1-25. Come, spirits of the Lord, and bless my life. We will live our lives together from now on, you living in me. God, please guide our ways and balance opposites. May we use the blessings you have given us well for your purposes. O Almighty God, from Whom every good prayer cometh, and Who pourest out on all who desire it the Spirit of grace and supplications; please deliver us, when we draw nigh to Thee, from coldness of heart and wanderings of mind; that with steadfast thoughts and kindled affections we may worship Thee in spirit and in truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
O God, Who makest us glad with the weekly remembrance of the glorious Resurrection of Thy Son our Lord; please vouchsafe us this day such a blessing though Thy worship, that the days which follow it may be spent in Thy favour; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. O Lord, Who by triumphing over the powers of darkness, didst prepare our place in the New Jerusalem; please grant us, who have this say given thanks for Thy resurrection, to praise Thee in that City whereof Thou art the Light; where with the Father we are taken into His heart and profit by lessons of the past and remain resolutely devoted to Him. Our inner affinity with God is so personal, so intimate, so deeply felt, that no one else can take the place of the Lord. We seek not counsel from anyone other than God. O Lord Jesus Christ, Who art the Truth Incarnate and the Teacher of the faithful; please let Thy Spirit overshadow us in reading Thy Word, and conform our thoughts to Thy Revelation; that learning of Thee with honest heart, we may be rooted and built up in Thee who livest genuinely and teachers us reverence and obedience, love and respect. There is none higher than God, He guides humans out of illusion into reality. It is not wrong therefore to give His office great reverence and Himself great devotion. Our spiritual debt to God is unpayable. This is because that which directs us is more important in the end than anything else. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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We ought to be grateful and respectful to all those great lights of the race who brought it truth. Yet at the same time we ought to be specially grateful and specially respectful to the particular one who brought us to see the truth more than any other did.
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Who Would Respect Someone who Voted in a Jury Trial or Decided which House to Buy with No Regard to the Evidence Relevant to the Decisions?
Just because you like my stuff does not mean I owe you anything. Those who generally deny or ignore their World of private and subjective experience during wakefulness seem to recall fewer dreams than those who accept and exploit this dimension of experience. Emotional problems often take advantage of the dreaming state and a skilled psychoanalyst can use dream content therapeutically. Replacing the notion that dream last only a few seconds was the finding that EEG-monitored Rapid Eye Movement (REM) stages of sleep are rarely less than 10 minutes long and may last for an hour or more. During your sleep, the body repairs and regrows tissues, builds bone and muscle, and strengthens the immune system. There is an average of four of five REM stages in the course of a typical night’s sleep. The average young adult subject spends about 20 percent of one’s sleep time in the REM state. During infancy and childhood the proportion is much higher, while during old age it is somewhat lower. REM sleep is usually a deep sleep and if someone woke you, you would likely feel disoriented. It is interesting that the larger animals with a longer lifespan and a lower metabolic rate tend to have longer sleep-dream cycles. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
The average length of time from the beginning of one REM (Rapid Eye Movement) stage to the next varies from four minutes in the Mus musculus to 90 minutes in the adult man. It has been suggested that cyclical dreaming evolved because this arrangement gave the organism an opportunity to come to a state of near waking readiness and “sample” the environment for danger. REM sleep is basically a process for “programming” the brain; this programming system is homeostatic, organizing and storing memories [perceptual, cognitive, and behavioural programs]. Thus, lower or “fixed program” forms of life do not need much or any REM time while newborn high life forms should have more REM time than adults to develop the central nervous system. It is also possible that the fetus spends almost all of time in the REM state. If the REM sate serves a developmental function, one might be able to detect a disturbed or atypical sleep-dream cycle among individuals with central nervous dysfunction. If this dysfunction responds to therapy, one might expect to see a reflection of this change in the sleep-dream cycle. Dreaming serves to integrate new information into existing past information stores and leads to improvement of speech production and comprehension (exempli gratia, “reprograming”) would alter the sleep dream cycle of aphasics. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
Artemidorous Daldianus, a professional diviner, in the second century A.D., produced the first systematic interpretation of dreams. He asserted that truth exists within dream symbols—as when Joseph interpreted Pharaoh’s dream of the seven fat and seven lean cattle as seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. Rather than serving as evidence of communication with God, Artemidorous looked upon Pharaoh’s dream as an indication of human intuition. Jeffery David Ullman, an American computer scientist and the Stanford W. Ascherman Professor of Engineering, also concerned himself with the roles that dreams play in a particular culture. He notes that dreams of preliterate people reflect the prevailing mythology and that dreams often act as a channel for a person’s idiosyncratic modes of viewing the cultural myths. Dr. Ullman conceded that the end-product could be banal or ecstatic but noted it is an act of creation to have the dream in the first place. An idea may sleep for decades in the unconscious mind and then suddenly return to consciousness. In primitive and ancient societies, dreams were typically thought to be the work of supernatural entities, appearing to mortals with messages of hope or despair. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
Some peoples believed that the soul left the physical body in sleep and wandered in a spirit World. It was generally believed that dreams could provide a glimpse of the future, reveal events happening at a distance, or indicate the thoughts of another person. Our normal waking consciousness is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go throughout life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness. No account of the Universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. Individuals who make a persistent, conscientious, disciplined attempt to cope with internal events typically report that the quest has assisted their capacity to perceive and understand the various levels of reality, to accept and enjoy the self, to behave spontaneously, to appreciate art and nature, to develop close interpersonal relationships, to work creatively—in other words, to become a more fully realized human being. The current interest in dreams and other forms of altered consciousness is a promising development for humanistically oriented psychology, psychiatry, religion, education, and other fields. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
The goal is to produce superhumans who are fully functional. As a larger number of professionals and noneprofessional become involved in the inner life, the possibility grows that there is a new consciousness emerging in our time—a consciousness geared toward self-actualization and the full development of the human potential. If you could hear that a flying saucer from another planet had landed on Earth one hundred years ago, you would want to know how the space ship was constructed and what kind of power propelled it, but most of all you would want to know about the people who navigated it and the society from which they came. If they lived in a World without crime and war and destructive conflict, and if they were comparatively free from chronic mental and physical ailments, you would want to know about their methods of healing and education, and whether these methods would work as well with the inhabitants of Earth. If you heard further that the navigators of the ship had found a group of 12,000 people living as an isolated community among the mountains, and had demonstrated that these preliterate people would utilize their methods of healing and education, and reproduce the society from which the celestial navigators came, you would probably be curious about these psychological and social methods that conquered space inside the individual, than you would about the mechanics of the ship which conquered outside space. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
These people lived in long community houses, skillfully constructed. They maintained themselves by practicing dry-land, shifting agriculture, and by hunting and fishing. Study of their political and social organization indicated that the political authority in their communities was originally in the hands of the elder members of the patrilineal clans. Because of their psychological knowledge of strangers in their territory, they could very easily devise means of scaring them off. They did not black magic, but allowed the nomadic hill-folk surrounding them to think that they did if strangers invaded their territory. However, the absence of violent crime, armed conflict, and mental and physical diseases in their own society can only be explained on the basic of institutions which produce a high state of psychological integration and emotional maturity, along with social skills and attitudes which promote creative, rather than destructive, interpersonal relationships. They are, perhaps, the most democratic group reported in anthropological literature. In the realms of family, economics, and politics, their society operates smoothly on the principle of contract, agreement and democratic consensus, with no need of police force, jail, or psychiatric hospital to reinforce the agreements or to confine those who are not willing or able to reach consensus. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Study of their society seems to indicate that they have arrived at this high state of social and physical cooperation and integration through the system of psychology which they have discovered, invented and developed, and that the principles of this system of psychology are understandable in terms of Wester scientific thinking. They have built a system of interpersonal relations which, in the field of psychology, is perhaps on a level with our attainments in such areas as television and nuclear physics. Humans create features or images on the outside World in their own mind as a part of the adaptive process. Some of these features are in conflict with them and with each other. Once internalized, these hostile images turn humans against themselves and their fellows. In their unconscious minds, humans have the power to see these facets of their psyche, which have been disguised in external forms, associated with their own fearful emotions, and turned against them and the internal images of other people. If the individual does not receive social assistance through education and therapy, these hostile images, built up by human’s normal receptiveness to the outside World, get tied together and associated with one another in a way which makes one physically, socially and psychologically abnormal. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Unassisted, these unconscious ideas, which humans create to reproduce inside oneself the external sociophysical environment, tend to remain against one the ways the environment was against one, or to become disassociated from one’s major personality and tied up in wasteful psychic, organic, and muscular tensions. With the help of a trained professional, these psychological replicas of the socio-physical environment can be redirected and reorganized and again become useful to the major personality. Any human being, with the assistance of one’s fellows, can outface, master, and actually utilize all beings and forces in the unconscious universe. Humans discover their deepest self and reveals their greatest creative power at times when one’s psychic processes are most free from immediate involvement with the environment and most under the control of one’s indwelling balancing or homeostatic power. The freest type of psychic play occurs in our unconscious minds, and the social acceptance of our deepest repressed thoughts and idea, therefore, constitute the deepest possible acceptance of the individual. Evil is neutralized by enforcing desirable behaviour. Modern civilization may be sick because people have sloughed off, or failed to develop, half their power to think. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
People rely too much on the news, often as their only source of information about the World. However, the news is a vision someone wants to present to you, and it is to generate revenue. Much of the news is entertainment, and if you want to be entertained, then watch a movie, read a book, listen to music, get some exercise. Western society is rife with war, crime, and wasteful economic conflict, insanity, neurosis and chronic psychogenic physical ills because people are more willing to watch the news than they are to go to church and learn about God and His laws. Through religion and a focus on intellectual and social interests, we can solve the problem of violent crime and destructive economic conflict, and largely eliminate insanity, neurosis and psychogenic illness. Instead of sitting down for half an hour to watch the evening news, go for a walk or to the gym with a friend. Play sports. Do something to be active. Notice that children have about two hours of activity in a school day, physical education and lunch, well adults need to be active as well and it will improve your health and mind. Now, the realm of feelings may appear on first approach to be an area of total chaos. However, this is not so. There is also order among feelings, and it is a much simpler one than most people think. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
When we properly cultivate with divine assistance those feelings that should be prominent in our lives, the remainder will fall into place. What then are the feelings that will dominate in a life that has been inwardly transformed to be like Christ’s? They are the feelings associated with love, joy, and peace. For the sake of simplicity we shall simply call them love, joy, and peace, though, as we have noted, love, joy, and peace are not mere feelings but conditions of the whole person that are accompanied by characteristic beneficial feelings. Love, joy, and peace are, we recall, the three fundamental dimensions of the fruit (note the singular) of the Spirit. They mutually interpenetrate and inform one another and naturally express themselves in the remainder of that one fruit: “patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control,” reports Galatians 5.22-23. Faith (confidence) and hope are also very important in properly structuring the feeling dimension of the mind and self. However, they play their role in that regard in subordination to love, joy, and peace—that is, because of their relationship to them. The three primary dimensions of “the fruit” (love, joy, and peace) are in fact not separable from the three things “that remain” of 1 Corinthians 13.13 (faith, hope, and love) and of course are partially identical with them. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
Love, joy, peace, faith, hope, and love are all focused on goodness and what is good, and all are strength-giving and pleasant even in the midst of pain or suffering. That is not what we see them for, or something we try to make of them. It is, simply, their nature. I once told my children that if they ever got to the point where they thought it was unreasonable to believe that Christianity was true, then they should abandon the faith. Does that sound risky? It is, but what is the alternative? Should we tell our children to set their minds aside totally and accept the Christian faith without using their intelligence? It can be risky to encourage people to develop their minds and allow reason to help them decide what they believe and why. No one can predict where such an approach will lead in a specific individual’s life. It is easy to lose control of the outcome. If your church is Reformed, charismatic, or whatever, and if your church actually equips people to think widely and deeply about their own theological beliefs, there is no guarantee that they will all come down where the church leaders are on a specific topic. For some, this can create an uncomfortable heterogeneity; it forces us to work harder at drawing lines between what sort of theological diversity a church will or will not tolerate within its membership. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
Commitment to truth and reason: The fears just mentioned are easy to understand. However, we cannot let our fears dictate to us our approach to Christian growth and ministry. We need to keep two things firmly planted in the center of our mines. First, we simply must reaffirm our commitment to truth and right reason and be confident that our Christian beliefs both warrant that commitment and will flourish in light of it. Any commitment, it seems, depends on two distinct elements. It presupposes certain beliefs [to be true] and it also involves a personal dedication to the actions implied by them. We are committed to Christianity in general, or some doctrinal position. And we are committed to the importance of our God-given faculty of mind to assist us in assessing what is true. Second, we need to remember the consequences of abandoning a fundamental commitment to truth and reason. A people that does not care about these will be easily led to behave in certain ways by rhetoric, image, narcissistic self-infatuation, and so on. This is extremely dangerous. Further, if our allegiance to Christianity is not based on the conviction that it is true and reasonable, then we are treating the faith as a mere means to some self-serving pragmatic end, and that demeans the faith. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
To further highlight the illustration, if we are more concerned with practical application from the Bible than with having a good reason for thinking we have correctly interpreted it, then our bottom line will be that the Bible exists as a tool to make us a success, and we do not exist to place ourselves under what it really says. In medicine, we all know what a placebo is. It is an innocuous substance that does not really do anything to help an illness. However, the patient’s false belief that it works brings some mental relief. Unfortunately, a placebo works due to the naïve, unenlightened, false belief on the part of the patient, but that also shows you the power of the mind to heal the body. Many people have Worldview placebos—false, naïve, misinformed beliefs that allow them to live in a safe fantasy World of their own mental creation. Often, life is a struggle. We grow sick, lose our jobs, experience fragmented relationships with others, and eventually go to Heaven. We want to know if there is anything real upon which to base our lives. Is there really a God and what is He actually like? What does God believe about the things that matter most? Is there any purpose to life and, if so, what is it? Why was I thrust into this World? Are the values objective and real, or arbitrary and invented? #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
Is there life after death? In what ways can I really count on God, and are there any true, effective ways to get close to Him? When we ask these questions, we do not just want answers that help us merely because we believe them. We want to be comforted because our answers to these questions are really true. For the wise person of virtue, a life well lived is based on the truth, not on a placebo. However, if truth really matters after all, then it follows that rationality also is crucial to a life well lived. Why? Because if we want a life built on truth, we want to be sure that our Worldview consists of the highest percentage of true beliefs and the lowest percentage of false ones. The only way available to us for making sure this is the case with our own belief system is through the careful use of faculty of reason. In ordinary decisions of daily life, we try to base our beliefs and actions on the best evidence we can get. From sitting on a jury to buying a new house, we try to base our decisions on a careful assessment of all the relevant evidence we can get. Who would respect someone who voted in a jury trial or a decided which house to buy with no regard to the evidence relevant to these decisions? #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
If someone used blind faith and bought the first house one saw with a For Sale sign in front of it, but made no effort to get information about the house and neighbourhood, we would consider that person foolish. Why? Because when we use our reason and base decisions on the best assessment of the evidence we can make, we increase our chances that our decisions are based on true beliefs. Now if this is the case for day-to-day issues why should we suddenly abandon the importance of reason and evidence when it comes to religion? We should not. Any religious belief worthy of the name should be accepted because we take the best exercise of our mental faculties we can muster. In the long run, it is better to risk losing control, face our doubts, be patient, and do the best job we can of using our minds to get at the truth. Not only is the Christian faith secure enough to withstand such an approach, but the faith actually encourages it. If we are going to make progress in our Christian lives, then we must defeat the empty self and take back what insecurity and fear of losing control have taken from us. This is the first step toward making progress in cultivating the Christian mind as part of an overall spiritual journey pleasing to God and good for others and ourselves. However, just exactly how does one develop a more careful intellect? #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
How can a person learn to think better and be more assured that one’s belief are, in fact, true? Christ wants a child’s heart, but a grown-up’s mind. “And it came to pass that there arose a division among the people, insomuch that they divided hither and thither and went their ways, leaving Nephi alone, as he was standing in the midst of them. And it came to pass that Nephi went his way towards his own house, pondering upon the things which the Lord had shown unto him. And it came to pass as he was thus pondering—being much cast down because of the wickedness of the people of the Nephites, their secret works of darkness, and their murderings, and their plunderings, and all manner of iniquities—and it came to pass as he was thus pondering in his heart, behold, a voice came unto him saying: Blessed art thou, Nephi, for those things which thou hast done; for I have beheld how thou hast with unwearyingness declared the word, which I have given unto thee, unto this people. And thou hast not feared them, and hast not sought thine own life, but hast sought my will, and to keep my commandments. And now, because thou hast done this with such unwearyingness, behold, I will bless thee forever; and I will make thee mighty in word and in deed, in faith and in works; yea, even that all things shall be done unto thee according to thy word, for thou shalt not ask that which is contrary to my will. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
“Behold, thou art Nephi, and I am God. Behold, I declare it unto thee in the presence of mine angels, that ye shall have power over this people, and shall smite the Earth with famine, and with pestilence, and destruction, according to the wickedness of this people. Behold, I give unto you power, that whatsoever ye shall seal on Earth shall be sealed in Heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on Earth shall be loosed in Heaven; and thus shall ye have power among this people. And thus, if ye shall say unto this temple it shall be rent in twain, it shall be done. And if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou cast down and become smooth, it shall be done. And behold, if ye shall say that God shall smite this people, it shall come to pass. And now behold, I command you, that ye shall go and declare unto this people, that thus saith the Lord God, who is the Almighty: Except ye repent ye shall be smitten, even unto destruction. And behold, now it came to pass that when the Lord had spoken these words unto Nephi, he did stop and did not go unto his own house, but did return unto the multitudes who were scattered about upon the face of the land, and began to declare unto them the word of the Lord which had spoken unto him, concerning their destruction if they did not repent. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
“Now behold, notwithstanding that great miracle which Nephi had done in telling them concerning the death of the chief judge, they did harden their hearts and did not hearken unto the words of the Lord. Therefore Nephi did declare unto them the word of the Lord, saying: Except ye repent, thus saith the Lord, ye shall be smitten even unto destruction. And it came to pass that when Nephi had declared unto them the word, behold, they did still harden their hearts and would not hearken unto his words; therefore they did revile against him, and did seek to lay their hands upon him that they might cast him into prison. However, behold, the power of God was with him, and they could not take him to cast him into prison, for he was taken by the Spirit and conveyed away out of the midst of them. And it came to pass that thus he did go forth in the Spirit, from multitude to multitude, declaring the word of God, even until he had declared it unto them all, or sent it forth among all the people. And it came to pass that they would not hearken unto his words; and there began to slay one another with the sword. And thus ended the seventy and first year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi,” reports Helaman 10.1-19. From you have flowed freely many gifts, given with no conditions, offered with open hands. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
Continually you have renewed the World with your largesse; continually you have brought new wonders into being. I come before you, then, with unnecessary gratitude; no matter what my actions are, yours will not change. What you do is in perfect accord with your nature. I wish to be more like you, to take you as my model, and, though my gifts may be unnecessary for you, they are all too vital for me. I hold them out to you, then, generous ones. See—I am generous too. Our fathers’ shield, God’s word has ever been; he giveth life eternal to the dead. Holy is He; no other can compare with Him who giveth rest each Sabbath day unto His people whom He loves. With veneration and with awe we serve Him; we praise Him every day and bless His name. To God all thanks are due, the Lord of peace, He halloweth the Sabbath and doth bless the seventh day; He giveth rest unto a people knowing its delight, in remembrance of creation. The circle turns, it turns around, carrying me with it, and I turn too. These wonderful things that came from God are being returned to Him, to keep the turning going. The balance is kept: I do not only take, I also know how to give. God has given birth to another wonder in this marvelous life of mine. I will thank Him daily for the gift of life and for all He distributes from His free and open hands. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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Memory is More Incredible than Ink for it is a Wise Father who Knows His Own Child!
The generation gap is just another way of saying that the younger generation makes overt what is covert in the older generation; the child expresses openly what the parents represses. The mass media with the use of television ( “The Most Effective Devil in America,” is telling you a vision) has flooded out local boundaries and forced the total society into a dim awareness of what it is like to live in fear. It is not so much the increase in violence that upsets middle-class Americans as the democratization of violence: the less affluent and underrepresented have become less willing to serve as specialized victims of violence from a political agenda (“legally”) and each other (illegally). The same point can be made about crimes against property, given the well-known class bias in our legal system. Since the ways in which the affluent steal from the less affluent are rarely defined as crimes (when executives of a major corporation were jailed for a few days some years ago for stealing millions of dollars from the public through antitrust violations many people were shocked that respectable humans could be treated in such a rude fashion) rising property crimes rates may only reflect an increase in the democratization of larceny, a result attributable in part to the success of the mass media in convincing the less affluent that only the possession of various products can satisfy their various social, pleasures of the flesh, and moral requirements. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
Leaving aside these more likely to be considered violent when they have political overtones. Our nation has never known a time without serious urban riots—usually about some kind of economic or social injustice—but it was only when they began to have a political thrust and to attack business districts that the concerns about the rioting began to grow. The same relationship holds true for the college campus. It is not violence as such but its political aims that arouse concern. The same people who assail the violence of campus radicals are quite happy to regale listeners with tales of their own (apolitical) childhood pranks—pranks that would bring a jail sentence if committed today. College students on many campuses have rioted annually for generations, and the injuries and vandalism resulting from such riots have often far exceeded that produced by protests. Yet these apolitical riots have always been considered venial. The difference is that student pranks and riots in the past attacked authority but accepted it. The protests of today confront authority and question it. Thus although no violence at all may occur, those toward whom the protest is directed may feel that violence has been done to them. The disruption of ordinary daily patterns and assumptions are experienced as a kind of psychological violence. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
Consider what happens when a defective traffic light fails to change from red to green. The line of cars grows and restlessness increases. At some point someone decides that the symbol of order is in fact in disorder and either goes through the red light or begins to honk one’s hor. As soon as one goes through, the others all follow suit. The initiator in this situation is engaging in a kind of civil disobedience. One is challenging the specific rule about red lights in terms of a broader understanding which says that the purpose of traffic laws is to regulate traffic not to disrupt it. Yet because the situation has no real political significance the incidence carries no threat or violent connotation. We live in a society in which cruelties inflicted upon humanity can be exposed in every living room through mass media or on Facebook and Twitter. We discuss and debate constantly the appearance of any instance anywhere in the World of inhumane treatment of one person by another, but we still do not always get the full story. Nonetheless, we stress that every human life, even corporations, are beings of value. We live, in short, in modern, secure, civilized World, in which a single isolated act of violence is a calamity, an outrage. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
Yet, innocent people still have their characters and beings terminated by the most barbarous means possible and shows no qualms about it. These techniques are a bit reminiscent of the dunking stool used in earlier centuries to test potential witches: if the person was not a witch the individual would drown—if one did not drown thus proved one was a witch and one was burned to death. The energy required to avoid even the most obvious forms of exploitation by commercial enterprises in our society would not permit the individual to lead a normal active life. Like Looking-glass Country, it takes all the running one can do to stay in the same place. Powerlessness has always been the common lot of most of humankind. However, the more we attempt to solve problems through increased autonomy the more we find ourselves at the mercy of these mysterious, impersonal, and remote mechanisms that we have ourselves created. Their indifference is a reflection of our own. All societies, optimally, must allow for both change and stability since: effective adaptation to the environment requires both modification and consolidation of existing reposes; social integration depends both upon the preservation and upon the periodic dissolution of existing structural differentiation; and personal happiness rest upon both familiarity and novelty in everyday life. Every society evolves patterns for attempting to realize these mutually incompatible needs. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
We talk of technology as the servant of humans, but it is a servant that now dominates the households, too powerful to fire, upon whom everyone is helplessly dependent. We tiptoe about and speculate upon his mood. What will be the effects of such-and-such an invention? How will it change our daily lives? We never ask, do we want this, is it worth it? (We did not ask ourselves, for example, if the major conveniences offered by social media could really offset the calamitous disruption and depersonalization of our lives that it brought about.) We simply say, “You cannot stop progress,” and shuffle back inside. We pride ourselves on being a “democracy” but we are in fact slaves. We submit to an absolute ruler who governs our state or city whose edicts and whims we never question. We watch that individual carefully, hang on to one’s every word; for technology is a harsh and capricious king, demanding prompt and absolute obedience. We laugh at the old lady who holds off the highway bulldozers with a Winchester Rifle, but we laugh because we are Uncle Toms. We try to outdo each other in singing the praises of the oppressor, although in fact the value of technology in terms of human satisfaction remains at best undemonstrated. For when evaluating its effects we always adopt the basic assumptions and perspective of technology itself, and never examine it in terms of the totality of human experience. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
We say this or that invention is valuable because it generates other inventions—because it is a means to some other means—not because it achieves an ultimate end. We play down the “side effects” that so often become the main effects and completely negate any alleged benefits. The much-vaunted “freedom” of American life is thus an illusion, one which underlies the sense of spuriousness so many Americans feel about their basic institutions. We are free to do only what we are told, and we are “told” not by a human master but by a mechanical construction. However, how can we be the salves of technology—is not technology merely an extension of, a creation of, ourselves? This is only metaphorically true. The forces to which we submit so abjectly were not generated by ourselves but by our ancestors—what we create will in turn rule our progeny. It takes a certain amount of time for the social effects of technological change to make their appearance, by which time a generation has usually passed. Science-fiction writers have long been fascinated with the notion of being able to create material objects just by imagining them, and have built novels, stories, and films around the idea. Actually, it is merely an exaggeration of what normally takes place. Technology is materialized fantasy. We are ruled today by the material manifestations of the fantasies of previous generations. #RanolphHarris 6 of 25
We treat technology as if it were a fierce patriarch—we are deferential, submissive, and alert to its demands. Perhaps, that is why men dominate the Silicon Valley in San Jose, California USA, and in Shenzhen, a city in south China’s Guangdong province known as the “Silicon Valley of China.” (The Silicon Valley of China has gradually become a global hardware center and hub for scientific and technological advances, where skyscrapers appear commonplace and the population has surged past 13 million.) We feel spasms of hatred toward technology, and continually make fun of it but we do little to challenge the rule. People who develop technology, like Wolfgang Egger who is a World-famous Germany car designer, reports, “to have this opportunity to create something like this [an electric car] from nothing is a big challenge that I need.” That is the main reason why he joined the Chinese car manufacturer BYD three years ago. Technology has inherited the fantasy of the authoritarian father. Furthermore, since the technological environment that rules, frustrates, and manipulates us is a materialization of the wished of our forefathers, it is quite reasonable to say that technology is the authoritarian father in our society. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
The American father can be a good-natured humble man in the home precisely because he is so ruthless toward the nonhuman environment, leveling, uprooting, filling in, building up, tearing down, blowing up, tunneling under. This ruthlessness affects his children only indirectly, as the deranged environment afflicts the eyes, ears, nose, and nervous system of the next generation. However, it affects them nonetheless. Through this impersonal intermediary we inflict our will upon our children, and punish them for our generous indulgence—our child-oriented, self-sacrificing behaviour. It I small wonder that the myth of the punitive patriarch stays alive. From this viewpoint, then, delegating to technology the role of punitive patriarch is another example of the first process we described: the tendency to avoid interpersonal conflict by compartmentalization and a false illusion of autonomy—to place impersonal mechanisms between and around people and imagine that we have created a self-governing paradise. It is a kind of savage joke in its parental form. We say: “Look, I am an easy-going, good-natured, affectionate father. I behave in a democratic manner and treat you like a person, never pulling rank. As to all those roads and wires and social media and clones and machines and bombs and complex bureaucratic institutions out there, do not concern yourself about them—this is my department.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
However, when the child grows up one discovers the fraud. One learns that one is a slave to his father’s unconscious and unplanned whims—that the area of withheld power was crucial. The child becomes angry and rebels, saying, “You were not what you pretended, and I cannot be what you encouraged me to be.” The child attacks “the system” and authority everywhere, trying to find the source of the deception, and using techniques that reflect one’s commitment to what one’s father deceived one into thinking one was—a person. However, by this time one has also learned the system of avoiding conflict through impersonal mechanism and is ready to inflict the same deception on one’s own children. We love and indulge our children, and would never dream of hurting them. If they are poisoned, bombed, gassed, burned, or whatever, it is surely not our fault, since we do not even know how to manipulate those objects. The danger comes from outside. Perhaps long ago we did something to deliver them into these impersonal hands, but we have forgotten, and in any case it is not our responsibility. Technology, in other words, is our plains sorcerer. Because Americans have submitted so passively to the havoc wreaked by technological change, they have had to convince themselves that their obsequiousness is right and good and appropriate. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
Any challenge to the technological-over-social priority threatens to expose the fact that Americans has lost their adulthood and their capacity to control their environment. So long as the priority is unchallenged and unmentioned, the human surrender involved need not be confronted. However, youth is increasingly saying: “What about the people? Why have you abdicated your birthright to hardware?” It is a humiliating question, and humiliating questions tend to be answered with blows. Furthermore, the social changes wrought by technological change are so vast and shattering and we are kept so off-balance by them that the desire for independent social change (that is, change produced by human needs rather than technology) appears not as a solution and the assumption of control, but as still another disruptive force. It is like the inhabitants of an occupied country, who say to their militants, “do not fight the enemy, it will just bring more massive retaliation down upon us. Attack your own family.” The predominant feeling is that there is more change than anybody can tolerate already, so how can anyone ever consider a radical reevaluation of the whole system. I felt sure that it was just a public-relations problem that only needed a public-relations solution. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
I do not give a damn how it is done; do whatever has to be done to stop these leaks and prevent further lies and unauthorized disclosures. I do not want excuses. I want results…whatever the cost. It became necessary for Americans to express themselves on a middle plane between vaporous idealism and self-interested practicality. The association of highbrow culture with vaporous idealism and lowbrow culture with self-interested practicality exemplified the widespread acceptance, by intellectuals as well as noneintellectuals, of the idea that devotion to the life of the mind must somehow be opposed to a decent regard for the exigencies of everyday life. The distinctive feature of American middlebrow culture was its embodiment of the old civic credo that anyone willing to invest time and energy in self-education might better oneself. Many uneducated people cherished middlebrow values: the millions of sets of encyclopedias sold door to door from the 1920s well into the 1980s were often purchased through an installment plan by parents who had never owned a book but were willing to sacrifice to provide their children with information about the World that had been absent from their own upbringing. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
Remnants of earnest middlebrows striving today among various communities, but the larger edifice of middlebrow culture, which once encompassed Americans of many social classes as well as ethnic and racial backgrounds, has collapsed. The disintegration and denigration of the middlebrow are closely linked to the political and class polarization that distinguishes the current wave of anti-intellectualism from the popular suspicion of highbrows and eggheads that have always, to a greater or lesser degree, been a part of the American psyche. What has been lost is an alterative to mass popular culture, imbibed unconsciously and effortlessly through the audio and video portals that surround us all. What has been lost is the culture of effort. Middlebrow culture was, above all, a reading culture. In the 1950s, to be raised in a middlebrow family meant that there were books, magazines, newspapers in the house and that everyone old enough to read had a library card. Some schools in Sacramento, California would even pause for fifteen minutes a day for reading time, where students could read whatever they wanted, as long as it was a book, it was appropriate, and educational. If much of the reading material was scorned by highbrow intellectuals, the books certainly provided ample room for growth. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
People had books clubs, much like Reese Witherspoon has popularized, where people select a book each month, read it and talk about. And people who live in segregated communities were taught to learn to appreciate masterpieces like The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, and many more, and to make sure that no one could segregate one’s mind. Still, 25 percent of American high school biology teachers still believe that dinosaurs and humans coexisted. American ideal of self-education is a distinct era of self-help, and people placed far more emphasis on improving personality and public image and the mind like never before. However, “civilized” is still defined by the gatekeeps of greatness on the installment plan. Many people want to make it into the “Fat Man’s” class which was dubbed that for the size of their pocketbooks. We want everything to be cheap and high quality, but do not look at the value and utility it provides, and then complain about how little we get paid. Our parents, grandparents, and maybe for some of you, great grandparents had it a lot harder than we do today. We hear about how inexpensive everything used to be, but do not take inflation into account. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
In 1952, a great book cost $249.95, in 2020 dollars that is $2,470.21. Imagine what a luxury a book was back then. In fact, reading books was a status symbol because the proved to the World that one was the sort of person who did read and who could afford the price of a book. People like Reese Witherspoon is doing an excellent job trying to get Americans back into reading books. When a celebrity is seen doing anything, it becomes a trend and what could be a more productive trend than getting people to expand their minds. The possession of certain kinds of knowledge, and the ability to recalls facts before an audience of millions, could provide both fame and fortune. When being smart become a trend, imagine how much better off our society will be, how much productive our children will be. They will learn the root of what it takes to have fun and know they have to study and work hard to earn the money it takes to have fun. Because, as one gets older, fun gets more expensive. Getting a day off from school and watching TV is no longer fun, but having the ability to legally buy new cars and houses and take vacations and decorate your own private home is fun. Having privacy and dignity in your own environment is fun. Being able to relocate or explore the World when you want to is fun. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
An aspect of the Christian work ethic is enthusiasm. “Whatever you do,” Paul told the Colossians, “work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for humans,” reports Colossians 3.23. To the Romans Pail admonished, “Never be lacking in seal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord,” reports Romans 12.11. It is natural—actually quite easy—to be enthusiastic if your work is prominent, but less natural the more hidden it is, as the conductor of a great symphony orchestra once reveled when asked which was the most difficult instrument to play. “Second violin,” he answered. “We can get plenty of first violinists. However, to get someone who will play second violin with enthusiasm—that is a problem!” And so it is. However, actually, doing one’s work with enthusiasm, even if hidden, plays for an audience far greater than that of the most famous symphony orchestras or World champion sports teams! If we could be really see this, our enthusiasm would never flag. However, it can still be hard to reason with some people. Their very mind has been taken over by one or more feelings and is made to defend and serve those feelings at all costs. It is a fearful condition from which some people never escape. We have noted how thoughts generate feelings. If we allow certain negative thoughts to obsess us, then their associated feelings can enslave and blind us—that is, take over our ability to think and perceive. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
As humans, we can unknowingly become slaves to technology, or feelings and so man other things. Here, for example, is a woman (it could have just as well have been a man) who has taken in the thought that she has been treated unfairly for years in her marriage and her job. Rather than sensibly addressing the circumstances or just turning her mind away from this thought, she receives it and broods over it—for years—developing a tremendous sense of injustice and outrage, which she also welcomes and cultivates with the assistance of sympathetic friends. The “root of bitterness” (Hebrews 12.15) gradually spreads over her whole personality, seeping deeply into her body and soul. It becomes something you can see in her bodily motions and actions and hear oozing through the language she uses. It affects her capacity to see what is actually going on around her, to realize what she is actually doing, and to think thoroughly and consistently. She is in the prison of resentment, though she thinks she is perhaps for the first time acting freely. Beyond the individual level, poisonous emotions and sensations often take over entire social groups, blinding them and impelling them on terrible courses of destruction. This is nearly always what has happened in cases where repression of ethnic groups or genocide occurs. Thus, to the onlooker the participants (the tyrants) seem to be deaf, blind, and insane—which, in a sense, they are. They, too, are imprisoned. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
Feelings can be successfully reasoned with, can be corrected by reality, only in those (whether oneself or others) who have the habit and are given the grace of listening to reason even when they are expressing violent feelings or are in the grip of them. A feeling of sufficient strength may blot out all else and will invariably do so in one who has not trained oneself, or been trained, to identify, to be critical of, and to have some distance from one’s own feelings. Combined with a sense of righteousness, strong feeling becomes impervious to fact and reason. I beseech ye brethren, by the bowels of Christ, believe ye may be wrong! One’s feelings of righteousness does not mean one is right and actually should alert one to be very cautious and humble. Those who are wise will, accordingly, never allow themselves, if they can help it, to get in a position where they feel too deeply about any human matter. They will never willingly choose to allow feeling to govern them. They will carefully keep the pathway open to the house of reason and go there regularly to listen. If we are to appropriate God’s grace, we must humble ourselves, we must submit to His providential working in our lives. To do this we must first see His mighty hand behind all the immediate causes of our adversities and heartaches. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
We must believe the biblical teaching that God is in sovereign control of all our circumstances, and whatever or whoever is the immediate cause of our circumstances, God is behind them all. “And it came to pass that he wrote again to the governor of the land, who was Pahoran, and these are the words which he wrote saying: Behold, I direct mine epistle to Pahoran, in the city of Zarahemla, who is the chief judge and the governor over the land, and also to all those who have been chosen by this people to govern and manage the affairs of this war. For behold, I have somewhat to say unto them by the way of condemnation; for behold, ye yourselves know that we have been appointed to gather together humans, and arm them with swords, and with cimeters, and all manner of weapons of war of every kind, and send forth against the Lamanites, in whatsoever part they should come into out land. And now behold, I say unto you that myself, and also my men, and also Helaman and his men, have suffered exceedingly great sufferings; yea, even hunger, thirst, and fatigue, and all manner of afflictions of every kind. However, behold, were this all we had suffered we would not murmur nor complain. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
“However, behold, great has been the slaughter among our people; yea, thousands have fallen by the sword, while it might have otherwise been if ye had rendered unto our armies sufficient strength and succor for them. Yea, great has been your neglect towards us. And now behold, we desire to know the cause of this exceedingly great neglect; yea, we desire to know the cause of your thoughtless state. Can you think to sit upon your thrones in a state of thoughtless stupor, while your enemies are spreading the work of death around you? Yea, while they are murdering thousands of your brethren—yea, even they who have looked up to you for protection, yea, have placed you in a situation that ye might have sent armies unto them, to have strengthened them, and have saved thousands of them from falling by the sword. However, behold, this is not all—ye have withheld your provisions from them, insomuch that many have fought and bled out their lives because of their great desires which they had for the welfare of this people; yea, and this they have done when they were abut to perish with hunger, because of your exceedingly great neglect towards them. And now, my beloved brethren—for ye ought to have stirred yourselves more diligently for the welfare and the freedom of this people. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
“However, behold, ye have neglected them insomuch that the blood of thousands shall come upon your heads for vengeance; yea, for known unto God were all their cries, and all their sufferings—behold, could ye suppose that ye could sit upon your thrones, and because of the exceeding goodness of God ye could do nothing and he would deliver you? Behold, if ye have supposed this ye have supposed in vain. Do ye suppose this ye have supposed in vain. Do ye suppose that, because so many of your brethren have been killed it is because of their wickedness? I say unto you, if ye have supposed in vain; for I say unto you, there are many who have fallen by the sword; and behold it is to your condemnation; for the Lord suffereth the righteous to be slain that his justice and judgment may come upon the wicked; therefore ye need not suppose that the righteous are lost because they are slain; but behold, they do enter into the rest of the Lord their God. And now behold, I say unto you, I fear exceedingly that the judgments of God will come upon this people, because of their exceeding slothfulness, yea, even the slothfulness of our government, and their exceedingly great neglect towards their brethren, yea, towards those who have been slain. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
“For were it not for the wickedness which first commenced at our hear, we could have withstood our enemies that they could have withstood our enemies that they could have gained no power over us. Yea, had it not been for the war which broken out among ourselves; yea, were it not for these king-men, who caused so much bloodshed among ourselves; yea, at the time we were contending among ourselves, if we had united our strength as we hitherto have done; yea, had it not been for the desire of power and authority which those king-men had over us; had they been true to the cause of our freedom, and untied with us, and gone forth against our enemies, instead of taking up their swords against us, which was the cause of so much bloodshed among ourselves; yea, if we had gone forth against them in the strength of the Lord, we should have dispersed our enemies, for it would have been done, according to the fulfilling of his word. However, behold, now the Lamanites are coming upon us, taking possession of our lands, and they are murdering our people with the sword, yea, our women and our children, and also carrying them away captive, causing them that they should suffer all manner of afflictions, and this because of the great wickedness of those who are seeking for power and authority, yea, even those king-men. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
However, why should I say much concerning this matter? For we know not but what ye yourselves are seeking for authority. We know not but what ye are also traitors to your country. Or is it that ye have neglected us because ye are in the heart of our country and ye are surrounded by security, that ye do not cause food to be sent unto us, and also humans to strengthen our armies? Have ye forgotten in the commandments of the Lord your God? Yea, have ye forgotten the captivity of our fathers? Have ye forgotten the many times we have been delivered out of the hands of our enemies? Or do ye supposed that the Lord will still deliver us, while we sit upon our thrones and do not make us of the means which the Lord has provided for us? Yea, will ye sit in idleness while ye are surrounded with thousands of those, yea, and tens of thousands, who do also sit in idleness, while there are thousands round about in the borders of the land who are falling by the sword, yea, wounded and bleeding? Do ye supposed that God will look upon you as guiltless while ye sit still and behold these things? Behold I say unto you, Nay. Now I would that ye should remember that God has said that the inward vessel shall be cleansed first, and then shall the outer vessel be cleansed also. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
“And now, expect ye do repent of that which ye have done, and begin to be up and doing, and send forth food and humans unto us, and also unto Helaman, that he may support those parts of our country which he had regained, and that we may also recover the remainder of our possession in these parts, behold it will be expedient that we contend no more with the Lamanites until we have first cleansed our inward vessel, yea, even the great head of our government. And expect ye grant mine epistle, and come out and show unto me a true spirit of freedom, and stive to strengthen and fortify our armies, and great unto them food a part of my freemen to maintain this part of our land, and I will leave the strength and the blessings of God upon them, that none other power can operate against them—and this because of their exceeding faith, and their patience in their tribulation—and I will come unto you, and if there be any among you that has a desire for freedom, yes, if there be even a spark of freedom remaining, behold I will stir up insurrections among you, even until those who have desires to usurp power and authority shall become extinct. Yea, behold I do not fear your power nor your authority, but it is my God whom I fear; and it is according to his commandments that I do take my sword to defend the cause of my country, and it is because of your iniquity that we have suffered much loss. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
“Behold, I wait for assistance from your; and except ye do administer unto our relief, behold, I come unto you, even in the land of Zarahemla, and smite you with the sword, insomuch that ye can have no more power to impede the progress of this people in the cause of our freedom. For behold, the Lord will not suffer that ye shall live and wax strong in your iniquities to destroy his righteous people. Behold, can you suppose that the Lord will spare you and come out in judgment against the Lamanites, when it is the tradition of their fathers that has caused their hatred, yea, and it has been redoubled by those who have dissented from us, while your iniquity is for the cause of your love of glory and the vain things of the World? Ye know that ye do transgress the laws of God, and ye do know that ye do trample them under your feet. Behold, the Lord saith unto me: If those whom ye have appointed your governors do not repent of their sins and iniquities, ye shall go up to battle against them. And now behold, I, Moroni, am constrained, according to the covenant which I have made to keep the commandments of my God; therefore I would that ye should adhere to the word of God, and send speedily unto me of your provisions and of your men, and also to Helaman. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
“And behold, if ye will not do this I come unto you speedily; for behold, God will not suffer that we should perish with hunger; therefore he will give unto us of your food, even if it must be by the sword. Now see that ye fulfill the word of God. Behold, I am Moroni, your chief captain. I seek not for power, but to pull it down. I seek not for honour of the World, but for the glory of my God, and the freedom and welfare of my country. And thus I close mine epistle,” reports Alma 60.1-36. A lion protecting His young, you rage when aroused. Nothing stands before You, no troubles can resist You, no enemies defeat You. A roaring in the distance announces your arrival, scattering the dealers of cares. You shake the Earth beneath their feet, upsetting all the plans. “Therefore shall ye lay up these My words in your heart and in your soul; and ye shall bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they shall be for frontless between your eyes. And ye shall teach them to your children, talking of them, when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt write them upon the doorpost of thy house, and upon thy gates; that your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, upon the land which the Lord promised unto your fathers to give them, as the days of the Heavens above the Earth,” reports Deuteronomy 11.16-21. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat—God Moves in a Mysterious Way, Survival of the Fittest!
Half of the reporters in town are looking on you as a Pulitzer Prize waiting to be won. The word norm means an authoritative standard, and correspondingly, normal means abiding by such a standard. It follows that a normal personality is one whose conduct conforms to an authoritative standard, and an abnormal personality is one whose conduct does not do so. However, having said this much we immediately discover that there are two entirely different kinds of standards that may be applied to divide the normal from the abnormal: the one statistical, the other ethical. The one pertains to the average or usual, and the other to the desirable or valuable. These two standards are not only different, but in many ways they stand in flat contradiction to one another. It is, for example, usual for people to have some noxious trends in their natures, some pathology of tissues or organs, some evidences of nervousness and some self-defeating habits; but though usual or avege, such trends are not healthy. Or again, society’s authoritative standard for a wholesome love life may be achieved by only a minority of American males. Here too the usual is not the desirable; what is normal in one sense is not normal in the other sense. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
Certainly, unless they are taught what is legal, ethical, moral and Godly, no system of ethics in the civilized World holds up as a model for its children becoming productive members of society. It is not the actualities, but rather the potentialities, of human nature that somehow provide us with a standard for a sound and healthy personality. One hundred years ago this double meaning of norm and normal did not trouble psychology so much as it does today. In those days psychology was deeply involved in discovering average norms for every conceivable type of mental function. Means, modes, and sigmas were in the saddle, and differential psychology was riding high. Intoxicated with the new-found beauty of the normal distribution curve, psychologists were content to declare its slender tails as the one and only sensible measure of “abnormality.” Departures from the means were abnormal and for this reason slightly unsavory. In this era there grew up the concept of mental adjustment, and this concept held sway well into the decade of the 1920s. While not all psychologists adjustment with average behaviour, this implication was pretty generally present. It was, for example, frequently pointed out that an animal who does not adjust to the norm for one’s species usually dies. It was not yet pointed out that a human being who does so adjust is a bore and a mediocrity. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
Now time have changed. Our concern for the improvement of average human behaviour is deep, for we now seriously doubt that the merely mediocre human can survive. As social anomie spreads, as society itself becomes more and more sick, we doubt that the mediocre human will escape mental disease and delinquency, or that one will keep oneself out of the clutch of dictators or succeed in preventing atomic or biological warfare. The normal distribution curve, we see, holds out no hope of salvation. We need citizens who are in a more beneficial and optimistic sense of normal, healthy and sound. And the World needs them more urgently than it ever did before. It is for this reason, I think, that psychologists are now seeking a fresh definition of what is normal and what is abnormal. They are asking questions concerning the valuable, the right, and the good as they have never asked them before. At the same time psychologists know that in seeking for a criterion of normality in this new sense they are trespassing on the traditional domain of moral philosophy. They also know that, by and large, philosophers have failed to establish authoritative standards for what constitutes the sound life—the life that educators, parents, and therapist should seek to mold. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
And so psychologist, for the most part, wish to pursue the search in a fresh way and if they can, avoid the traditional traps of axiology. During the past few months two proposals have been published that merit serious attention. Both are by social scientists, one a psychologist in the United States of America, the other a sociologist in England. Their aim is to derive a concept of normality (in the value sense) from the condition of humans (in the naturalistic sense). Both seek their ethical imperatives from biology and psychology, not from value-theory directly. In short, they boldly seek the ought (the goal to which teachers, counsellors, therapists should strive) from the is of human nature. Many philosophers tell us that this is an impossible undertaking. However, before we pass judgment let us see what success they have had. Humans are expected to maximize those attributes that are distinctively human. The first is human’s capacity for the use of propositional language (symbolization). From this particular superiority over animals derives several specific guidelines for normality. With the assistance of symbolic language, for example, humans can delay their gratifications, holding in mind a distant goal, a remote reward, an objective to be reached perhaps only at the end of one’s life or perhaps never. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
With the assistance of symbolic language, one can imagine a future for oneself that is far better than the present. One can also develop an intricate system of social concepts that leads one to all manner of possible relations with other human beings, far exceeding the rigid symbiotic rituals of, say, the social insects. A second distinctive human quality is related to the prolonged childhood in the human species. Dependence, basic trust, sympathy and altruism are absolutely essential to human survival, in a sense and to a degree that is maybe not always true for animals. The conception of normality has to do with a model of integrative adjustment. It follows that a sense of personal responsibility marks the normal human, for responsibility is a distinctive capacity derived from holding in mind a symbolic image of the future, delaying gratification, and being able to strive in accordance with one’s conception of the best principles of conduct for oneself. Similarly social responsibility is normal; for all these symbolic capacities can interact with the unique factor of trust or altruism. Closely related is the criterion of democratic social interest which derives from both symbolization and trust. Similarly, the possession of ideals and the necessity for self–control follow from the same naturalistic analysis. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
A sense of guilt is an inevitable consequence of human’s failure to live according to the distinctive human pattern, and so in our concept of normality we must include both guilt and devices for expiation. Every psychologist who wishes to make minimum assumptions and who wishes to keep close to empirical evidence, and who inclines toward the naturalism of biological science prefers fact-based evidence that has not been manipulated. Manipulated and prejudice science is worthless junk. It is must like fake news and has no value other than propaganda. Nonetheless, our philosopher friends will arise to confound us with some uncomfortable questions. Is it not a distinctively human capacity, they will ask, for a possessive mother to keep her child permanently tied to her apron strings? Does any lower animal engage in this destructive behaviour? Likewise, is it not distinctively human to develop fierce in-group loyalties that lead to prejudice, contempt, and war? Is it not possible that the burden of symbolization, social responsibility, and guilt may lead a person to depression and suicide? Suicide, along with all the other destructive patterns I have mentioned, is distinctly human. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
A philosopher who raises these questions would conclude, “No, you cannot derive the ought from the is of human nature. What is distinctively human is not necessarily distinctively good.” What are the minimum conditions for survival? When we know these minimum conditions we can declare that any situations falling below this level will lead to abnormality, and tend toward death and destruction, which COVID-19 could be symbolic of—humanity falling below minimum conditions needed to sustain a developing nation like America, and others around the World. This criterion is called the abnorm and we can define it, even if we cannot define normality, because people in general agree more readily on what is bad for humans than on what is good for them. They agree on the bad because all mortals are subject to the basic imperative of survival. The need for survival is connected to our need for growth and the need for social cohesion. These two principles are the universal conditions of all life, not merely of human life. Growth means autonomy and the process of individuation. Cohesion is the basic fact of social interdependence, involving, at least for human beings, initial trust, heteronomy, mating and the founding of family. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
By taking an inventory of conditions deleterious to growth and cohesion we may establish the “abnorm.” As a start, the first and foremost disorders of child training is the continued or repeated interruption of physical proximity between mother and child and emotional rejection of the child by the mother are conditions that harm survival of the individual and the group. In the first criterion of abnormality lies in a rupture in the transmutation of cohesion into love. Most of what is abnormal can be traced to failures in the principle of cohesion, so that the child becomes excessively demanding and compulsive. It is abnormal (inimical to survival) if repetition of conduct occurs irrespective of the situation and unmodified by its consequences; also when one’s accomplishments constantly fall short of one’s potentialities; likewise when one’s psychosexual frustrations prevent both growth and cohesion. Normality requires a balance between individuation and socialization, between autonomy and heteronomy. When an individual identifies oneself to an extreme degree with a group, the effect is that one loses one’s value. On the other hand, a complete inability to identify has the effect that the environment loses its value for the individual. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
In both extreme cases the dynamic relationship between individual and environment is distorted. An individual behaving in such a way is called neurotic. In a normal group each member preserves one’s individuality but accepts one’s role as participator also. While there is much agreement that the normal personality must strike a serviceable balance between growth as an individual and cohesion with society, we do not yet have a clear criterion for determining when these factors are in serviceable balance and when they are not. However, Philosophers, I fear, would shake their heads at us and ask us, “How do you know that survival is a good thing?” Further, “Why should all people enjoy equal rights to the benefits of growth and cohesion?” And, “How are we to define the optimum balance between cohesion and growth within the single personality?” We also have to worry about the relationship between abnormality and creativity. It was Nietzsche who declared, “I say unto you: a human must have chaos yet within one to be able to give birth to a dancing star.” Have not many meritorious works of music, literature, and even of science draw their inspiration not from balance but from some kind of psychic chaos? In effect that creativity and normality are not identical values. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
On the whole the normal person will be creative, but if valuable creations come likewise from people who are slipping away from the norm of survival, this fact can only be accepted and valued on the scale of creativity, but not properly on the scale of normality. In this day of existentialism I sense that psychologist are becoming less and less content with the concept of adjustment, and correspondingly with the concepts of tension reduction, restoration of equilibrium, and homeostasis. We wonder if a human who enjoys these beatific conditions is truly human. Growth we know is not due to homeostasis but to a kind of “transiistasis.” And cohesion is a matter of keeping our human relationships moving and not in mere stationary equilibrium. Stability cannot be a criterion of normality since stability brings evolution to a standstill, negating both growth and cohesion. Dr. Freud once wrote to Dr. Fliess that he finds “moderate misery necessary for intensive work.” When people have a zero correlation between self and ideal self, it is too low for normality; it leads to such anguish that the sufferer seeks therapy. At the same time normal people are by no means perfectly adjusted to themselves. There is always a wholesome gap between self and ideal self, between present existence and aspiration. On the other hand, too high a satisfaction indicates pathology. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
When individuals reach an extremely high coefficient for self-satisfaction, it is clear that one is pathological. Perfect correlations we might expect only from smug psychotics, particularly paranoid schizophrenics. And whatever our definition of normality turns out to be it must allow for serviceable imbalances within personality, and between person and society. There is an approach dear to the psychologist’s heart. The established criterion of normality or otherwise known as soundness, leads us to identify people who are “sound.” Teachers of graduate students in the University of California nominated a large number of people whom they considered sound, and some of the opposite trend. In testing and experimenting with these two groups, whose identities were unknow to the investigators, certain significant difference appeared. For one thing the sounder human had more realistic perceptions; they were not thrown off by distortions or by surrounding context in the sensory field. Further, on adjective check-lists they stood high on such traits as integrated pursuit of goals, persistence, adaptability, good nature. On the Minnesota Personality Inventory they were high in equanimity, self-confidence, objectivity and virility. Their self-insight was superior, as was their physical health. Finally, they came from homes where there was little or not affective rupture. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
A healthy person will be able to “love” and to “work.” On the schedule of other qualities a healthy person possesses include among others: efficient perception of reality, philosophical humour, spontaneity, detachment, and acceptance of self and others. A normal person has a strong ego, an abnormal person has a weak ego. Whether one is normal or abnormal depends on the degree to which one can manage one’s relationships successfully. Furthermore, the earlier enthusiasm of psychologist for the normal distribution curve helps to entrench the theory of continuum. Extreme withdrawal and escape constitute psychosis. However, you may ask, do no we all do some escaping? Yes, we do, and what is more, escapism may provide not only recreation but may sometimes have a certain constructive utility, as it has in mild daydreaming. Only if the dominant process is confrontation, the process of escape can still be harmless. Left to itself escapism spells disaster. In the psychotic this process has the upper hand; in the normal person, on the contrary, confrontation has the upper hand. Following this line of reasoning we can list other processes that intrinsically generate abnormality, and those that generate normality. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
The first list deals with catabolic (energy used to break down) functions. I would mention: Escape or withdrawal (including fantasy), repression or dissociation, other “ego defences,” including rationalization, reaction formation, projection, displacement, impulsivity (uncontrolled), restriction of thinking to concrete level, fixation of personality at a juvenile level, all forms of rigidification. The list is not complete, but the process in question, I submit, are intrinsically catabolic. They are as much so as are the disease mechanisms responsible for diabetes, tuberculosis, hyperthyroidism, or cancer. A person suffering only a small dose of these mechanisms may appear to be normal, but only if anabolic (requires energy to grow and build) mechanisms predominate. Among the latter I would list: Confrontation (or, if you prefer, reality testing) availability of knowledge to consciousness, self-insight, with its attendant humour, integrative action of the nervous system, ability to think abstractly, continuous individuation (without arrested or fixated development), functional autonomy of motives, frustration of tolerance. I realize that what I have called processes, or mechanisms, are not in all cases logically parallel. However, they serve to make my point, that normality depends on the dominance of one set of principles, abnormality upon the dominance of another. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
The fact that all normal people are occasionally afflicted with catabolic processes does not alter the point. The normal life is marked by a preponderance of the anabolic functions; the abnormal by a preponderance of the catabolic. Investigations have told us much concerning the nature of human needs and motives, both conscious and unconscious. Much is known concerning the pathologies that result from frustration and imbalance of these needs. We know much about childhood conditions that predispose toward delinquency, prejudice, and mental disorder. A moralist might do well to cast one’s imperatives in terms of standards for child training. I can suggest, for example, that the abstract imperative “respect for persons” should be tested and formulated from the point of view for child training. The distinction between the anabolic and catabolic processes in the formation of personality represents a fact of importance. Instead of judging merely the end-product of action, perhaps the moralist would do well to focus one’s attention upon the process by which various ends are achieved. Conceivably, the moral law could be written in terms of strengthening anabolic functions in oneself and in others whilst fighting against catabolic functions. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
Apriorism, belief in a priori principles or reasoning specifically: the doctrine that knowledge rests upon principles that are self-evident to reason or are presupposed by experience in general, is a legitimate tool of philosophy. Up to now this method as yielded a wide array of moral imperatives, including the following: so act that maxim of thy action can become a universal law; be a respecter of persons; seek to reduce your desires; harmonize your interests with the interest of others; thou art nothing, thy folk is everything; thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind…and thy neighbour as thyself. Psychologists who in their teaching and counselling follow the lines now laid down will not go far wrong in guiding personalities toward normality. “Do not speak evil against one another, brethren,” reports James 4.11. God forbids any speech (whether true or false) which runs down another person. Certainly no Christian should ever be a party to slander—making false charges against another’s reputation. Yet some do. However, even more penetrating is the challenge to refrain from any speech intends to run down someone else, even if it is totally true. Personally I can think of few commands that go against commonly accepted conventions more than this, for most people think it is okay to convey negative information if it is true. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
Some people have had to defend themselves because no one else would. Still, no innocent person should be physically attacked and terrorized by a violent mob and forced to defend themselves. We understand that lying is immoral. However, is passing along damaging truth immoral? It seems almost a moral responsibility! By such reasoning, criticism behind another’s back is thought to be all right as long as it is based on fact. Likewise, denigrating gossip (of course it is never called gossip!) is seen as okay if the information is true. Thus many believers use truth as a license to righteously diminish others’ reputations. Related to this, some reject running down another behind one’s back, but believe it is okay if done face to face. These persons are driven by a “moral” compulsion to make others aware of their shortcomings. Fault-finding is, to them, a spiritual gift – a license to conduct spiritual search-and-destroy missions. What people like this do not know is that most people are painfully aware of their own faults – and would like to overcome them – and are trying very hard to do so. Then someone mercilessly assaults them believing they are doing their spiritual duty – and, oh, the hurt! This destructive speaking down against others can also manifest itself in the subtle art of minimizing another’s virtues, and accomplishments. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
After being with such people, your mental abilities, athletic accomplishments, musical skills, and domestic virtues seem not to be quite as good as they were a few minutes earlier. Some of this feeling came perhaps from their words about your Ultimate Driving Machine—“what a nice little BMW”—or from surprised exclamations about what you did not know. It was also the tone of the voice, the cast of the eye, and the surgical silences. There are many sinful reasons why humans in Christ talk down to one another. Revenge over some slight, real or imagined, may be the motivation of “Christian” slander. Others imagine that their spirituality and sensitivity equips them to pull others from their ivory towers and unmask their hypocrisies. Gideon once rightly cried, “A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!” (Judges 7.20), and we may do the same, but in our case it is too often a sword of self-righteousness. Condescending words and actions may also come from the need to elevate oneself – like the Pharisee who thanked God he was not like other sinners “or even like this tax collector” (Luke 18.11). We thus enjoy the dubious elevation of walking on the bruised head of others, and coming down on innocent heads. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
Sometimes this diminishing of others simply comes from too much empty talk. People do not have much to talk about, so they fuel the fires of conversation with the flesh of others. The abilities and motivations of the Body of Christ to run itself down could fill a library. We are all skillful in rationalizing such talk, but God’s Word still speaks: “Christians do not speak against one another.” Verbal cyanide comes in many forms. Gossip, innuendo, flattery, criticism, diminishment, are only a few of the venoms with which Christians inject each other. And the results are universal: toxic gastric juices a Devil’s feast – the swill of souls. Dear Lord in Heaven, please eat what is offered to you and transform it, as food is transformed, into blessings for me, and for all my household. The fire that burns on my hearth is the very heart of my Cresleigh Home. By feeding the fire with wood and with air, I am feeding my Cresleigh Home with what it needs most. I give you these things, fire on my hearth and more gifts will follow as we live our lives together. I light a fire on my family’s hearth and praise the God of our home. I pray to the Most High and praise the Ancestors. Hear my words, see me as I perform the rites, receive the gifts I offer you. Threshold Spirit, guardian and protector of my Cresleigh Home’s entrance, I honour you as I pass through the beautiful door. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
God of doorways, bless my goings out, bless my comings in. Lord of the threshold, of doors and gates Lord, place where inside and outside meet: God is my threshold. Please Guard my doors, God, keeper of the keys. Watch it with care, please keep my Cresleigh Homes safe. May the blessings of God guard this door. God it is who guards our doors. The Lord commands Ammon to lead the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi to safety—upon meeting Alma, Ammon’s joy exhausts his strength—the Nephites give the Anti-Nephi-Lehies the land of Jershon—they are called the people of Amon. About 90-77 Before Christ. “Now it came to pass that when those Lamanites who had gone to war against the Nephites had found, after their many struggles to destroy them, that it was in vain to seek their destruction, they returned again to the land of Nephi. And it came to pass that the Amalekites, because of their loss, were exceedingly angry. And when they saw that they could not seek revenge from the Nephites, they began to stir up the people in anger against their brethren, the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi; therefore they began again to destroy them. Now this people again refused to take their arms, and they suffered themselves to be slain according to the desires of their enemies. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
“Now when Amon and his brethren saw this work of destruction among those whom they so dearly beloved, and among those who had so dearly beloved them—for hey were treated as though they were angels sent from God to save them from everlasting destruction—therefore, when Amon and his brethren saw this great work of destruction, they were moved with compassion, and they said unto the king: Let us gather together this people of the Lord, and let us go down to the land of Zarahemla to our brethren the Nephites, and flee out of the hands of our enemies, that we be not destroyed. However, the king said unto them: Behold, the Nephites will destroy us, because of the many murders and sins we have committed against them. And Ammon said: I will go and inquire of the Lord, and if he say unto us, go down unto our brethren, will ye go? And the king said unto him: Yea, if the Lord saith unto us go, we will go down unto our brethren, and we will be any slaves among them; therefore let us go down and rely upon the mercies of our brethren. However, the king said unto him: Inquire of the Lord, and if he saith unto us go, we will go; otherwise we will perish in the land. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
“And it came to pass that Ammon went and inquired of the Lord and the Lord aid unto him: Get this people out of this land, that they perish not; for Satan has great hold on the hearts of the Amalekites, who do stir up the Lamanites to anger against their brethren to slay them; therefore get thee out of this land; and blessed are this people in this generation, for I will preserve them. And now it came to pass that Ammon went and told the king all the words which the Lord had said unto him. And they gathered together all their people, yea, all the people of the Lord, and did gather together all their flocks and herds, and departed out of the land, and came into the wilderness which divided the land of Nephi from the land of Zarahemla, and came over near the borders of the land. And it came to pass that Ammon said unto them: Behold, I and my brethren will go forth into the land of Zarahemla, and ye shall remain here until we return; and we will try the hearts of our brethren, whether they will that ye shall come into their land. And it came to pass that as Ammon was going forth into the land, that he and his brethren met Alma, over in the place of which has been spoken; and behold, this was a joyful meeting. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
“Now the joy of Ammon was so great even that he was full; yea, he was swallowed up in the joy of his God, even to the exhausting of his strength; and he fell again to the Earth. Now was not this exceeding joy? Behold, this is joy which none receiveth save it be the truly penitent and humble seeker of happiness. Now the joy of Alma in meeting his brethren was truly great, and also the joy of Aaron, of Omner, and Himni; but behold their joy was not that to exceed their strength. And now it came to pass that Alma conducted his brethren back to the land of Zarahemla; even to his own house. And they went and told the chief judge all the things that that happened unto them in the land of Nephi, among their brethren, the Lamanites. And it came to pass that the chief judge sent a proclamation throughout all the land, desiring the voice of the people concerning the admitting their brethren, who were the people of Anti-Nephi-Lehi. And it came to pass that the voice of the people came, saying: Behold, we will give up the land of Jershon, which is on the east by the sea, which joins the land Bountiful, which is on the south of the land Bountiful; and this land Jershon is the land which we will give unto our brethren for an inheritance. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
“And behold, we will set our armies between the land Jershon and the land Nephi, that we may protect our brethren in the land of Jershon; and this we do for our brethren lest they should commit sin; and this their great fear came because of their sore repentance which they had, on account of their many murders and their awful wickedness. And now behold, this will we do unto our brethren, that they may inherit the land Jershon; and we will guard them from their enemies with our armies, on condition that they will give us a portion of their substance to assist us that we may maintain our armies. Now, it came to pass that when Ammon had heard this, he returned to the people of Anti0Nephi-Lehi, and also Alma with him, into the wilderness, where they had pitched their tents, and made known unto them all these things. And Alma also related unto them his conversion, with Ammon and Aaron, and his brethren. And it came to pass that it did cause great joy among them. And they went down into the land of Jershon, and took possession of the land of Jershon; and they were called by the Nephites the people of Ammon; therefore they were distinguished by that name ever after. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
“And they were among the people of Nephi, and also numbered among the people who were of the church of God. And they were also distinguished for their zeal towards God, and also towards humans; for they were perfectly honest and upright in all things; and they were firm in the faith of Christ, even unto the end. And they did look upon shedding the blood of their brethren with the greatest abhorrence; and they never could be prevailed upon to take up arms against their brethren; and they never did look upon death with any degree of terror, for their hope and views of Christ and the resurrection; therefore, death was swallowed up to them by the victory of Christ over it. Therefore, they would suffer death in the most aggravating and distressing manner which could be inflicted by their brethren, before they would take the sword or cimeter to smite them. And thus they were a zealous and beloved people, a highly favoured people of the Lord,” reports Alma 27.1-30. O God, Whose will it runs down the order of all the ages; come to me, please look favorably on your servant’s sake. I try to live up to the order of Godly people and promote the messages in the scripture. You are the one and only God, and I approve of dedicating my service to you, Lord. Thank you for your gifts and take pity of me. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
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Look down from Heaven, O Christ, on Thy flock and lambs, and bless their bodies and souls. Grant those who have received Thy sign, O Christ, on their foreheads, to be Thine own in the day of judgment.
May the Angel of Peace Come in—One’s Over-Great Hat to Repay an Obligation is a Kind of Ingratitude!
It is very peaceful to be able to live for your work alone. The self-denial, the sacrifices that our work demands are all compensated for by that lovely serenity of giving yourself up to dance. People also need to understand their existential freedom and their responsibility in exercising that freedom. One must develop the chance to experience one’s self as an entity separate from one’s environment, with the capacity to respond to one’s own initiative rather than merely reacting. Does emotion have a presence r identity independent of the person it is “in”? We talk as if it did. We commonly speak of expression, storing, getting in touch with, or even spreading and emotion. We speak of guilt as something that haunts us, or fear as something the grips, strikes, betrays, paralyzes, or overwhelms us. Fear, as we talk about is, is something that can lurk, hide, creep, look up, or attack. Love is something we fall into or out of. Anger is something that overtakes or overwhelms us. In this way of talking we use the fiction of some independent, outside agency in order to describe a contrasting inner state. It is important for a person to understand the sociohistorical precedence for the present attitudes one felt victim to. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lord!
When bad people combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. People who live for the next miracle cream do not realize that beauty comes from a secret happiness and equilibrium within themselves. Today I learned something about the house into which she disappeared. It belongs to a widow with three lovely daughters. Information in abundance is to be had there—that is, provided they have any. The only difficulty is to understand these details raised to the third power, for they are three speak at once. Her name is Cordelia Wahl, and she is the daughter of an officer in the Royal Navy. He has been dead for some years—the mother, too. He was a very severe and strict man. She now lives with her aunt, her father’s sister, who is supposed to be like her brother but otherwise is a very respectable woman. Now that is all very fine, but in other respects they know nothing about this household; they never visit there, but Cordelia visits them frequently. She and the two other young ladies take a course in the royal kitchen. Therefore, she generally visits there early in the afternoon, sometimes in the morning, never in the evening. They keep very much to themselves. So this is the end of the story; it is appear that there is no bridge over which I can steal into Cordelia’s house. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Consequently, she does have a conception of the pains in life, of the dark side. Who would have said this to her. Yet these recollections probably belong to an earlier period; this is a horizon under which she has lived without really being aware of it. That is fine—it has saved her femininity; she is not warped. On the other hand, it will also have significance in elevating her, if one really knows how to call it forth. All such things usually teach pride, provided they do not break one, and she is far from being broken. She lives near the embankment; they locality is not the best, no neighbours whose acquaintance one could make, no public places where one can make observations unnoticed. The embankment itself is not very suitable; one is too visible. If one walk below on the street, one cannot very well walk on the side next to the embankment, because no one walks there, and it would be too conspicuous, or one would have to walk close to the houses, and then one can see nothing. It is a corner house. Since the house has no neighbouring house, the widows to the courtyard are also visible from the street. Presumably her bedroom is there. No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. What therefore God hath joined together, let not humans put asunder. Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
When people are working out, they tend to get lost in the own thoughts. More than once, I have waited for a circuit machine to free up, only to watch Mr. Oblivious finish with a set and just sit there, hogging he machine. He could easily have alternated sets with me—but he simply was not aware of what was happening around him or he just did not care. In either case, he failed to realize the reality that in a public setting like a fitness center, you are not alone. You are in a group setting that requires being aware at all times of how your actions affect others. Here are some of the most common fitness club flubs that men make: Leaving a pool of sweat. Mr. Buff is really pushing his physical limits on an exercise bike. Finally the session ends, and he steps off the bike, still totally focused on his effort, and walk away. Behind him, the handles glisten with his manly perspiration, and the seat has a small pool of sweat on it, waiting for the next lucky exerciser to climb on—maybe even that certain someone he has been trying to impress. It is not that Mr. Buff refused to clean the machine on purpose—he just did not think of it. His mind was far, far, away, in an endorphin haze. Which brings us back to the central premise of the fitness center etiquette: Be conscious of the people around you. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Imagine this scenario instead: When Mr. Buffy steps off, he turns to the next person and says cheerfully, “Just a second—let me clean this off for you.” A handy bottle of cleanser and a towel are nearby. He squirts the towel and then wipes the bike down. This is called being considerate. It is also a great way to make the right kind of impression on your fellow fitness center member. So gross! “They do not wipe down their machines and weights when they are done. So gross!” Over and over women spoke loudly and clearly about the failure of men to wipe down the equipment after using it. It takes just a minute. Fitness centers keep pray bottles and wipe-down rags nearby. A quick spray and wipe will do more to ingratiate you with your fellow fitness buffs than any other thing you can do at the gym. By the way, it is not just women who are frustrated by this gross behaviour. Twenty-nine percent of the respondents who brought up this issue were men and, by a wide margin, this was the biggest complaint about the fitness center in a 2019 survey. The unwanted stare. This one is a toughie. Those close-fitting sports bras and shorts do not always leave much to the imagination. And then there is all that uncovered skin—sometimes lots of it—not to mention the occasional tattoo. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
Somehow I have always thought of a tattoo as an invitation to look: After all, why else is it there but to be noticed? The other day, for example, a woman on the tennis court next to mine took off her jacket to reveal what looked like a tiny fairy tattoo of one of the fairies from William Blake’s painting Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing, circa 1786, one of the great works of modern art, on her back. I had to consciously work at not staring at her. I would have loved to really study that tattoo, but I limited myself to a few discreet looks when her back was turned toward me. The point is there is a difference between a look and a stare. Here is the distinction: When you look around you are you work out, your gaze falls naturally on another person but your focus is on what you are doing. When you stare, you focus on the object of your staring rather than on what you are doing. The bottom line: Women know when you are staring at them, especially when you are staring at their chest (“and I have a normal-sized bustline,” fumed one respondent). They do not like it. Do you want to impress a woman? Then look, do not stare. And look in her eyes, not at her assets. You will impress her most by showing that you are a man who knows how to respect a woman, tattooed, voluptuous, or otherwise. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Grunting—“In through the nose, out through the mouth. Exhale!” Dana, my trainer, exhorts me. And then I realize I can hear myself. I wonder if other people are hearing me, too. Now, there is a difference between an exhale—whooooosh—and a decibel shattering grunt. When your woosh becomes a grunt you have crossed a line, and when you do, men and women are equally irritated. You do not have to grunt to exhale and when you do grunt, as one respondent put it so eloquently, “You are just showing off.” Now it is time to pretend we are on an episode of Family Feud with Steve Harvey. Survey says: What Women Really Think About Macho Men. Here is what the women in our surveys had to say about men who are fitness center show-offs: Acts like Homey D. Clown trying to impress attractive women. Acts like The Rock when he is really In Living Color’s— Men On Films II, and deserves the new and improved, “Two snaps and a twist and a kiss. Pilot to Co-Pilot, we goin’ down in flames!” Admires himself excessively in the surrounding mirrors. Flexes constantly. Grunts and groans excessively. Lifts more weight than he can handle. Shows off his form in a spandex suit when he is overweight and his belly is popping out the shirt. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Nonetheless, in the realm of human destiny, the depth of a human’s questioning is more important than one’s answers. Our society is set up so that most women lose their identities when their husbands die…It is wrenching enough to lose the man who is your beloved, your companion, your best friend, the father of your children, without losing yourself as well. This is why some are bothered by the, “I am more important than you are” syndrome. I was on a Love Boat cruise ship recently where the line of jogging machines all face out the top deck windows, providing a fabulous view of the ocean as you work out. The sign-up system for these machines was pretty strict, I was told, for a good reason: It seems a woman had overstayed her time limit on one of the machines a while back, and the guy, who looked like Tattoo, waiting took a swing at her when she did not get off. Of course, she did not help matters by refusing to get off the machine when her time was up. Both individuals had fitness goals and needed to find a compromise. Otherwise it may seem they maybe guilty of the all-too-prevalent “I am more important than you are” syndrome, which seems to be a hazard of working out. The best way to deal with difficult people, and to avoid getting labeled as one yourself, is to respect the fitness center’s rules: Follow the schedules for all machines—start on time and end on time. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
Do not monopolize the machines. Do not use the as spare seats, and do not stand around them whole talking with your buddies. If a conflict does arise, do not take it upon yourself to be the “twelve” or SWAT of the club. Instead, kindly point out the issue to the staff, and let them take care of it. In the event that you are the culprit, admit your mistake forthrightly and make a conscious effort to change your habits. Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but, unlike charity, it should end there. Flirting with women in midworkout may not be a good idea. Do you ever read those relationship advice columns in Men’s Health? They are full of guidance on how to meet women, and one of the places they often recommend is the fitness center. You have got to wonder if any of these writers has ever actually been to a fitness center. However, I do love the trend they started with the bright neon shoes of any color with matching shorts. I admit, the idea of meeting the love of your life at the fitness center sound great in theory: After all, it is a place where a lot of fit, attractive people are gathered to pursue a common interest. So what exactly is the appropriate application for getting a woman’s attention that you are interested in doing a Richard Simmons Sweatin’ to the 80s on the Stairmaster, or straining to complete the Suzanne Somers thighmaster with? #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Well, since the days of the Jane Fonda workout tapes, there has not been one. Most women like to look like Farrah Fawcett, Aaliyah, or Viola Davis at the gym, but they do not want some beef cake like Brad Pitt, or hunk David Hasselhoff, or a tall cup of hot chocolate like Billy D. Williams in their face, breaking their concentration while they are trying to get their body like Beyonce. What they want is to be left alone so they can do their routine. The bottom line: Even if you look like Davey Fisher, back off. Do your workout and let her finish hers. On your way out of the club, after you have showered and dressed (and are looking and smelling great), you can try striking up a conversation by treating her to The Donna, a soy, caramel latte with a double shot and whipped cream, and a homemade, semi-sweet chocolate chip cookie, with a dollop of butterscotch, and pistachios at your local coffee shop, where you can strike up a conversation. At that point she may be as interested in talking to you as Rachel Zane was at getting into Harvard Law. Life is an unanswered question, but let us believe in the dignity and importance of the question. Also, when at the fitness center, remember your personal trainer is a person. My brother called me the other day. “Where are you?” he asked. “You were not at your workout with Dana, and she was surprised because she said you always call or text her if you are going to miss an appointment.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
I thought I had arranged with my wife that she would take my appointment and I would take hers, but we got our signals crossed and neither of us showed up. In five years of working with Dana, our personal trainer, I have heard over and over from her how frustrating it is to have an appointment not show up. She loses with the person who is skipped and she has a vacancy in her schedule someone else could have used, so from Dana’s point of view she loses twice. Personal trainers are like your best friend and confident like officer Poncherello and officer Jonathan from CHiPs. So it is natural to assume that when you happen to see him or her at the gym you can stop by for a chat. Unfortunately for your trainer and the client he or she is working with, your interruption takes away from the client’s time with the trainer. These sessions are as serious as doctor’s appointments. While a quick “Hello” is totally acceptable, it is better to save longer conversations for breaks between clients. Conversing with your trainer is a fun part of your workout (sometime the only fun part), but be careful about gossiping. Sure, your trainer is like a confidant, but do not say anything to one you would not want posted on a bulletin board for anyone to read. Even if your trainer is the most discreet person in the World, others working out nearby can overhear your conversation. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Also, class courtesy is very important. You can get a great workout from taking one of the many classes fitness centers offer members. Just be careful not to overdo it, and respect the other class participants as well. Cleanliness matters—weight training class had started when Mike Ross waltzed in and set up right next to me. Unfortunately, I almost had to leave class. He brought his Betty Crocker Tuna Salad Sandwiches with him. I felt awkward moving to another location so I had to bear it. Just because you are in a hurry to the gym does not mean you should bring your lunch with you. Hygiene and personal habits matter. Maybe consider buying lunch at the café. Therefore, leave your lunch at home. And always do your fellow fitness buffs a courtesy: Wash your clothes, wash your body, brush your teeth, and use a deodorant. Even more so, know your limitations. Do not try to poses or push yourself beyond your body’s limits. I have seen to many people exit a class and not be able to come back for weeks just because they pushed the limits and ended up straining their backs or a muscle. If you do want to try a new position or exercise, do not rock the boat, talk with the instructor ahead of time and get his or her help in making sure you can do so safely. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
If you are at a more advanced level than the class, it is respectful to ask if you can execute a more advanced move, say, a handstand instead of a headstand, before just going ahead and doing it. If you have preexisting conditions take that into consideration. Before you start a class, give the instructor a heads up about any injuries you may currently be dealing with. That was he or she knows the limitations you have and will not inadvertently push you beyond your current capabilities. In the silence of night I have often wished for just a few words of wisdom from one person, rather than unsolicited advice from thousands of people. Success means never having to admit you are unhappy. If you cannot make a class, call. Weight training and tennis classes are very popular at my fitness center, and there are often more people who want to attend them than there are open slots. When someone blows off a class without calling, these folks get very upset and with good reason. There are plenty of people on the waiting list who would have enthusiastically taken the spot, and even at four in the morning they would have showed up religiously. The final thoughts: If you cannot make a class you have signed up for, be like Harvey or Jessica and call the center well in advance and let them know you will not be there. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
The soul is a very complicated thing with an intricate internal structure that we need to understand if we are to appreciate the mind’s role in spiritual transformation. In order to understand that structure, we need to grasp two important issues: the different types of states within the soul and the notion of a faculty of the sou. The soul is a substantial, unified reality that informs its body. The soul is to the body what God is to space—it is fully “present” at each point within the body. Further, the soul and the body relate to each other in a cause-effect way. For example, if I worry in my soul, my brain chemistry will change; if I exercise my will to raise my arm in my soul, the arm goes up. If I experience brain cell damage, this can cause me to lose the ability to remember certain things in my soul. And so forth. The soul also contains various mental states within it—for example, sensations, thoughts, beliefs, desires, and acts of will. This is not as complicated as it sounds. Water can be in a cold or a hot state. Likewise, the soul can be in a feeling or thinking state. The soul contains several states. There is a belief that sounds have this kind of power. The awareness of God and your soul may percolate in your unconscious for some time; then, all of the sudden, you have an epiphany and a flash of insight comes to you, seemingly from out of nowhere. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
O God, the Protector of the faithful, and constant Visitor of souls obedient unto Thee; may it please Thee to be present, with Thy favour, to Thy servants who dwell in this house; that while we visit them with human solicitude, Thou mayest guard them with Divine favour; through our Lord. “Now, as Ammon was thus teaching the people of Lamoni continually, we will return to the account of Aaron and his brethren; for after he departed from the land of Middoni he was led by the Spirit to the land of Nephi, even to the house of the king which was over all the land save it were the land of Ishmael; and he was the father of Lamoni. And it came to pass that he went in unto him into the king’s palace, with his brethren, and bowed himself before the king, and said unto him: Behold, O king, we are the brethren of Ammon, whom thou hast delivered out of prison. And now, O king, if thou wilt spare our lives, we will be thy servants. And the king said unto them: Arise, for I will grant unto you your lives, and I will not suffer that ye shall be my servants; but I will insist that ye shall administer unto me; for I have been somewhat troubled in mind because of the generosity and the greatness of the words of thy brother Ammon; and I desire to know the cause why he has not come up out of Middoni with thee. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
“And Aaron said unto the king: Behold, the Spirit of the Lord has called him another way; he has called him another way; he has gone to the land of Ishmael, to teach the people of Lamoni. Now the king said unto them: What is this that ye have said concerning the Spirit of the Lord? Behold, this is the thing which doth trouble me. And also, what is this that Ammon said—if ye will not repent, ye shall be cast off at the last day? And Aaron answered him and said unto them: Believest thou that there is a God? And the king said: I know that the Amalekites say that there is a God, and I have granted unto them that they may assemble themselves together to worship him. And if now thou sayest there is a God, behold I will believe. And now when Aaron heard this, his heart began to rejoice, and he said: Behold, assuredly as thou livest, O king, there is a God. And the kind said: Is God that Great Spirit that brought our fathers out of the land of Jerusalem? And Aaron said unto him: Yea, he is that Great Spirit, and he created all things both in Heaven and in Earth. Believest thou this? And he said: Yea, I believe that the Great Spirit created all things, and I desire that ye should tell me concerning all these things, and I will believe thy words. And it came to pass that when Aaron saw that the king would believe his words, he began from the creation of Adam, reading the scriptures unto the king—how God created humans after his own image, and that God gave him commandments, and that because of transgression, humans had fallen. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
“And Aaron did expound unto him the scriptures from the creation of Adam, laying the fall of human before him, and their carnal state and also the plan of redemption, which was prepared from the foundation of the World, through Christ, for all whosoever would believe on his name. And since the human had fallen he could not merit anything of himself; but the sufferings and death of Christ atone for their sins, through faith and repentance, and so forth; and that he breaketh the bands of death, that the grace shall have no victory, and that the sting of death should be swallowed up in the hopes of glory; and Aaron did expound all these things unto the king. And it came to pass that after Aaron had expounded these things unto him, the king said: What shall I do that I may have this eternal life of which thou hast spoken? Yea, what shall I do that I may be born of God, having this wicked spirit rooted out of my heart, and receive his Spirit, that I may be filled with joy, that I may not be cast off at the last day? Behold, said he, I will give up all that I possess, yea, I will forsake my kingdom, that I may receive this great joy. However, Aaron said unto him: If thou desirest this thing, if thou wilt bow down before God, yea, if thou wilt repent of all thy sins, and will bow down before God, and call on his name in faith, believing that ye shall receive, then shalt thou receive he hope which thou desirest. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
“And it came to pass that when Aaron has said these words, the king did bow down before the Lord, upon his knees; yea, even he did prostrate himself upon the Earth, and cried mightily, saying: O God, Aaron hath told me that there is a God; and if there is a God, and if thou art God, wilt thou make thyself known unto me, and I will give away all my sins to know thee, and that I may be raised from the dead, and be saved at the last day. And now when the king had said these words, he was struck as if he were dead. And it came to pass that his servants ran and told the queen all that had happened unto the king. And she same in unto the king; and when she saw him lay as if he were dead, and also Aaron and his brethren standing as though they had been the cause of his fall, she was angry with them, and commanded that her servants, or the servants of the king, should take them and lay them. Now the servants had seen the cause of the king’s fall, therefore they durst not lay their hands on Aaron and his brethren; and they pled with the queen saying: Why commandest thou that we should slay these men, when behold one of them is mightier than us all? Therefore we shall fall before them. Now when the queen saw the fear of the servants she also began to fear exceedingly, lest there should some evil some upon her. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
“And she commanded her servants that they should go and call the people, that hey might slay Aaron and his brethren. And when Aaron saw the determination of the queen, he, also knowing the hardness of their hearts of the people, feared lest that a multitude should assemble themselves together, and should be a great contention and a disturbance among them; therefore he put forth his hand and raised the king from the Earth, and said unto him: Stand. And he stood upon his feet, receiving his strength. Now this was done in the presence of the queen and many of the servants. And when they saw it they greatly marveled, and began to fear. And the king stood forth, and began to minister unto them. And he did minister unto them, insomuch that his whole household were converted unto the Lord. Now there was a multitude gathered together because of the commandment of the queen, and there began to be great murmurings among them because of Aaron and his brethren. However, the king stood forth among them and administered unto them. And they were pacified towards Aaron and those who were with him. And it came to pass that when the king saw that the people were pacified, he caused that Aaron and his brethren should stand forth in the midst of the multitude, and that they should preach the word unto them. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
“And it came to pass that the kind sent a proclamation throughout all the land, amongst all his people who were in all his land, who were in all the regions round about, which was bordering even o the sea, on the east and on the west, and which was divided from the land of Zarahemla by a narrow strip of wilderness, which ran from the sea east even to the sea west, and round about on the borders of the seashore, and the borders of the wilderness which was on the north by the land of Zarahemla, through the borders of Manti, by the head of the river Sidon, running from the east towards the west—and thus were the Lamanites and the Nephites divided. Now, the more idle part of the Lamanites lived in the wilderness, and dwelt in tents; and they were spread through the wilderness on the west, in the land of Nephi; yea, and also on the west of the land of Zarahemla, in the borders by the seashore, and on the west in the land of Nephi, in the place of their fathers’ first inheritance, and thus bordering along by the seashore. And also there were many Lamanites on the east by the seashores, whither the Nephites had driven them. And thus the Nephites were nearly surrounded by the Lamanites; nevertheless the Nephites had taken possession of all the northern parts of the land bordering on the wilderness, at the head of the west, round about on the wilderness side; on the north, even until they came to then land which they called Bountiful. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“And it bordered upon the land which they called Desolation, it being so far northward that it came into the land which had been peopled and been destroyed, of whose bones we have spoken, which was discovered by the people of Zarahemla, it being the place of their first landing. And they came from there up into the south wilderness. Thus the land on the northward was called Desolation, and the land on the southward was called Bountiful, it being the wilderness which is filled with all manner of wild animals of every kind, a part of which had come from the land northward for food. And now, it was only the distance of a day and a half’s journey for a Nephite, on the line Bountiful and the land Desolation, for the east to the west sea; and thus the land of Nephi and the land of Zarahemla were nearly surrounded by water, there being a small neck of land between the land northward and the land southward. And it came to pass that the Nephites had inhabited the land Bountiful, even from the east unto the west sea, and thus the Nephites in their wisdom, with their guards and their armies, had hemmed in the Lamanites on the south, that thereby they should have no more possession on the north, that they might not overrun the land northward. Therefore the Lamanites could have no more possessions only the land of Nephi, and the wilderness round about. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
“Now this was wisdom in the Nephites—as the Lamanites were an enemy to them, they would not suffer their afflictions on every hand, and also that they might have a country whither they might flee, according to their desires. And now I, after having said this, return again to the account of Ammon and Aaron, Omner and Himni, and their brethren,” reports Alma 22.1-35. Bless, O Lord, this house and all who dwell in it, as Thou wast pleased to bless the house of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that within these walls may dwell an Angel of light, and that those who dwell together in it may receive the abundant dew of Heavenly blessing, and though Thy tenderness rejoice in peace and quiet; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Although the supreme cause is necessary, the effect may be contingent by reason of the proximate contingent cause; just as the germination of a plant is contingent by reason of the proximate contingent cause, although the movement of the Sun which is the first cause, is necessary. So likewise things known by God are contingent on account of their proximate cases, while the knowledge of God, which is the first cause is necessary. “I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear. Racism is still with us. But it is up to us to prepare our children for what they have to meet, and, hopefully, we shall overcome,” reports Mrs. Rosa Parks. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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God is the protector of the faithful, the God of, all and in subjection to them in your mind reminding you to celebrate, be merciful to the inhabitants of Thy servants. Thou wouldst live in this house; so that those whom enter, the human visitors form care, and promise to protect you, as you are the power of the divine.
There are inexorable laws, not of one’s making, which govern the opening of spiritual relation between a self-actualized teacher and a would-be pupil, however, much of one’s devotion and loyalty are appreciated. The chance remains open to one on a probation only, which is necessarily of a limited number of years. If during that period, (and we all are on mortal probation and if we pass, we will live in Heaven with God) they are able to make personal contact, it will be helpful for the pupil’s progress in understanding the teaching, and one can profit by it to clear up misconceptions and filter out faults.
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God is in His Heaven—All is Right with the World! Grow Old with Me Because the Best if Yet to Be!
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In early 1948, Emanuel D’amico rented a brownstone storefront at number 309 Court Street in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Carroll Gardens. Emanuel, a sea merchant from Palermo, Sicily, left his home some twenty years prior — one of the over 4 million Italians who immigrated to America seeking their fortune in the New World. He’d lost all he had in a failed Pasta Company endeavor and New York seemed his last chance to make things right. For a number of years he worked odd jobs and began a number of side ventures, but none were too successful. A number of years later, after sending for his wife under a U.S. sponsored amnesty program, the two reunited in Brooklyn and shortly after opened the doors to D’amico Foods.
D’amico Foods originally set their sights on coffee. In 1948, there were few cafes and most coffee consumed was mass produced, undrinkable swill. With an AJ Deer Royal Roaster, Emanuel became one of the first small batch, roast to order Brooklyn roasters. The max capacity of the machine was a mere 10 pounds, ensuring that all coffee which left D’amico Foods was fresh. He was revolutionary in his approach and developed quite a following amongst the Italian immigrant population in Carroll Gardens. With each batch Emanuel pulled, the rich aroma of fresh roasted coffee spilled out into the neighborhood.
It is Still an Ill Wind that Blows When You Leave the Hairdresser, Guilty of Spiritual Arson!
Cordelia, then, is her name! Cordelia! It is a beautiful name, and that, too, is important, since it can often be very disturbing to have an ugly name together with the most tender adjectives. I already recognized her a log way off; she was walking with two other girls on her left. The movement of their walking seemed to indicate that they were about to stop. I stood on the corner and read the posters, while I continually kept my eye on my strangers. They parted. The two presumably had gone a little out of their way, for they went in a different direction. She came along toward my corner. When she had walked a few steps, one of the young ladies came running after her and cried loudly enough for me to hear it: Cordelia! Cordelia! Then the third one joined them; they put their heads together for a privy council meeting whose secrets I futilely strained my ears to hear. Thereupon they all three laughed and hurried away at a somewhat quicker pace in the direction the two had taken. I followed them. They entered a house on Stranden. I waited for a while, since there was a strong probability that Cordelia would soon come back alone. However, that did not happen. Cordelia! That is really a splendid name—indeed, the same name as that of King Lear’s third daughter, that remarkable girl whose heart did no dwell on her lips, whose lips were mute when her heart was full. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
So also with my Cordelia. She resembles her, of that I am certain. However, in another sense her heart does dwell on her lips, not in the form of words but in more heartfelt way in the form of a kiss. How ripe with health her lips! I have never seen lips more beautiful. That I actually am in love I can tell partly by the secrecy with which I treat this matter, almost even with myself. All love is secretive, even the faithless kind, if it has the appropriate esthetic element within it. It has never occurred to me to wish for confidants or to boast of my adventures. Thus is almost makes me happy that I did not come to know where she lives but the place where she frequently visits. Perhaps I thereby may also have come even closer to my goal. I can make my observations without arousing her attention, and from this firmly established point it will be difficult for me to gain admission into her family. However, should this situation turn out to be a difficulty—eh bien [well, now]!—then I will put up with the difficulty alone. Everything I do I do con amore [with love] and o I also love con amore. In the realm of human destiny, the depth of human’s questioning is more important than one’s answers. Most of God’s children are, in fact, barely presentable. The most common error made in matters of appearance is the belief that one should disdain the superficial and let the true beauty of one’s soul shine through. If there are places on your body where this is a possibility, you are no attractive—you are leaking. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
James, the Lord’s brother, understood this as well as any man in history, and through the use of graphic analogies he has given us the most penetrating exposition of the tongue anywhere in literature, sacred or secular: “When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts,” reports James 3.3-5. The horse is an incredibly powerful animal. Takes 550 pounds (as much as puffing Olympic heavyweight lifter can hoist overhead), set it on a horse’s back, and it will barely snort as it stands breathing easily under the burden. The same horse, unburdened, can sprint a quarter-mile in about twenty-five seconds. A horse is half a ton of raw power! Yet, place a bridle and bit in its mouth and a 100-pound woman on its back who knows what she is doing and the animal can literally be made to dance. James observed the same phenomenon in ancient ships, as ships small and large were steered by an amazingly small rudder. Today it is still the same, where it be an acrobatic ski boat or the USS Enterprise. One who controls the rudder controls the ship. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
So it is with the mighty togue, that “movable muscular structure attached to the floor of the mouth” (Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary). “The tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts,” says James (v. 5). Or as Phillips has helpfully paraphrased it, “the human tongue is physically small, but what tremendous effects it can boast of.” Though it weighs only two ounces, it can legitimately boast of its disproportioned power to determine human destiny. This lives of Adolph Hitler and Winston Churchill bear eloquent testimony to the dark and bright sides of the to the dark and bright sides of the tongue’s power. The Fuhrer on one side of the Channel harangued a vast multitude with his hypnotic cadences. On the other side, the Prime Minister’s brilliant, measured utterances pulled a faltering nation together for its “finest hour.” However, we need not to look the drama of nations to see the truth of James’ words. Our own lives are evidence enough. Never doubt the power of the tiny tongue—and never underestimate it. James’ principal concern is with the destructive power of the tongue, and this produces a most provocative statement: “Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a World of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell,” (vv. 5,6). #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
The tongue has awesome potential for harm, as the forest fire analogy suggests. At 9.00 one Sunday evening, October 8, 1871, poor Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over the lantern as she was being milked, starting the great Chicago Fire. That disaster blackened three and one half miles of the city, destroying over 17,000 buildings before it was checked by gunpowder explosions on the south line of fire. The fire lasted two days and cost over 250 lives. However, ironically that was not the greatest inferno in the Midwest that year. Historians tell us that one the same day that dry autumn a spark ignited a raging fire in the North Woods of Wisconsin, a blasé which burned for an entire month, taking more lives than the Chicago Fire. A veritable firestorm destroyed billions of yards of precious timber—all from one spark! The tongue has that scope of inflammatory power in human relationships, and James is saying that those who misuse the tongue are guilty of spiritual arson. A mere spark from an ill-spoken word can produce a firestorm that annihilates everyone it touches. Furthermore, because the tongue is a “World of evil,” it contains and conveys all the World system’s wickedness. It is party to every evil there is and actively intrudes its evil into our lives. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
What is the effect of the tongue’s cosmic wickedness? “It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire” (v.6). “Course of life” is literally “the wheel of our genesis,” “genesis” referring to our human life or existence. What an apt description of human experience! About nine-tenths of the flames we experience in our lives come from the tongue. Having grabbed our imaginations with his graphic language, James adds the final touch: “and is itself set on fire by hell.” Here the language means continually set on fire. James used the same word for Hell that his brother Jesus used—“Gehenna”—derived from the perpetually burning garbage dump outside Jerusalem, a place of fire and filth where, as Jesus said, “their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9.48). Can anyone miss the point? The uncontrolled tongue has a direct pipeline to Hell! Fueled by Hell, it burns our lives with its filthy fires. However, it also, as Calvin says, an “instrument for catching, encouraging, and increasing the fires of hell.” Taking James’ word seriously, we recognize that the tongue has more destructive power than a hydrogen bomb, for the bomb’s power is physical and temporal, whereas the tongue is spiritual and eternal. The female spider is often a widow for embarrassing reasons—she regularly eats those who come her way. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Lonely suitors and visitors alike quickly become corpses, and her dining room is a morgue. A visiting fly, having become captive, will appear to be whole, but the spider has drunk his insides so that he becomes his own hollow casket. Not a pleasant thought, especially if you have a touch of arachnophobia, as I do! The reason for this macabre procedure is that she has no stomach and so is incapable of digesting anything with her. Through tiny punctures she injects her digestive juices into a fly so that his insides are broken down and turned into warm soup. This soup she swills, even as most of us swill souls of one another after having cooked them in various enzymes: guilt, humiliations, subjectivities, cruel love—there are a number of fine, acidic mixes. And some among us are so skilled with the hypodermic word that our dear ones continue to sit up and to smile, quite as though they were still alive. This is a gruesome but effective metaphor to describe the destructive power of evilly intended words. Words do not dissolve mere organs and nerves but souls! This World is populated by walking human caskets because countless lives have been dissolved and sucked empty by another’s words. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Significantly, James does not tell us how the tongue’s destructive power is manifested in human speech. He knows that the spiritual mind, informed by the Scriptures, will have no problem in making the connections. This is also the same message Mrs. Winchester left behind in her spider web, art glass, and Shakespearean windows. It is also why Mrs. Winchester did not tolerate gossip and would let an employee go in a heartbeat for violating her will. The tongue’s destructive power in gossip lead the list, of course. A neighbour was jealous of Mrs. Winchester’s house and she fell victim to disgruntled town’s folks, who tried to ruin her professionally through rumor, and almost did. Several years later the gossiper had a change of heart and wrote Mrs. Winchester asking for her forgiveness, and she forgave her. However, there was no way the story could be erased. As Solomon wisely observed, “The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; they go down into a human’s inmost parts,” Proverbs 18.8. Gossip is greedily picked up and stored away by the hearers like tasty tidbits of filet mignon en croute au foie gras. Vigorous denial would only bring more suspicion—“So and so protests too much!” The damage was done. Hereafter the innocent Mrs. Winchester would always look into certain eyes and wonder if they had heard the story—and if they believed it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Gossip often veils itself in acceptable conventions such as “Have you hear?” or “Did you know?” or “They tell me…” or “Keep this to yourself, but…” or “I do not believe it is true, but I heard that…” or “I would not such rationalization in Christian circles is, “I am telling you this so you can pray.” This seems so pious, but the heart that feeds on hearing evil reports is a tool of Hell, and it leaves flaming fires and dead bodies in its wake. Oh, the heartache that comes from the tongue. A cousin of gossip is innuendo. Consider the ship’s first mate who after a drunken binge was written up by the captain on the ship’s log: “mate drunk off some Amsterdam and Hennessy today.” The mate’s revenge? Some months later he surreptitiously wrote on his own entry, “Captain sober today.” So it goes with the word unsaid, the awkward silence, the raised eyebrows, the quizzical look—all freighted with the misery of Hell. Gossip involves saying behind a person’s back what you would never say to one’s face. Flattery means saying to a person’s face what you would never say behind one’s back. The Scriptures warn us repeatedly against flatterers, for they are destructive people who carry a legion of unwholesome motives: “Whoever flatters one’s neighbour is spreading a net for one’s feet,” reports Proverbs 29.5. “A lying togue hates those it hurts, and a flattering mouth works ruin,” reports Proverbs 26.28. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Fault-finding seems endemic to the Christian Church. Perhaps this is because a taste of righteousness can be easily perverted into an overweening sense of self-righteousness and judgmentalism. Once while William Wirt Winchester was preaching, he noticed a lady in the audience who was known for her critical attitude. All through the service she sat and stared at his new tie. When the meeting ended, she same up to him and said very sharply, “Mr. Winchester, the strings on your tie are much too long. It is an offense to me!” He asked if any of the ladies present happened to have a pair of scissors in their purse. When the scissors were handed to him, he gave them to his critic and asked her to trim the streamers to her liking. After she clipped them off near the collar, he said, “Are you sure they are all right now?” “Yes, that is much better.” “Then let me have those shears a moment,” said Mr. Winchester. “I am sure you would not mind if I also gave you a bit of correction. I must tell you, madam, that your tongue is an offense to me—it is too long! Please stick it out…I would like to take some off.” On another occasion someone said to Mr. Winchester, “My talent is to speak my mind.” Mr. Winchester replied, “That is one talent God would not care a bit if you buried!” This is good advice for all Christians. “May the Lord cut off all flattering lips and every boastful tongue that says, ‘We will triumph with our tongues…’” reports Psalm 12.3, 4. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the scarifies imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many. Therefore in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the right secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests. The only thing that permits us to acquiesce in an erroneous theory is the lack of a better one; analogously, an injustice is tolerable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice. Being first virtues of human activities, truth and justice are uncompromising. These propositions seem to express our intuitive conviction of the primacy of justice. No doubt they are expressed too strongly. In any event I wish to inquire whether these contentions or others similar to them are sound, and if so how they can be accounted for. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
To this end it is necessary to work out a theory of justice in the light of which these assertions can be interpreted and assessed. I shall begin by considering the role of the principles of justice. Let us assume, to fix ideas, that a society is a more or less self-sufficient association of persons who in the relations to one another recognize certain rules of conduct as binding and who for the most part act in accordance with them. Supposed further that these rules specify a system of cooperation designed to advance the good of those taking part in it. Then, although a society is a cooperative venture for mutual advantage, it is typically marked by a conflict as well as by an identity of interests. There is an identity of interests since social cooperation makes possible a better life for all than any would have if each were to live solely by one’s own efforts. There is a conflict of interests since persons are not indifferent as to how the greater benefits produced by their collaboration are distributed, for in order to pursue their ends they each prefer a larger to a lesser share. A set of principles is required for choosing among the various social arrangements which determine this division of advantages for underwriting an agreement on the proper distributive shares. These principles are he principles of social justice: they provide a way of assigning right and duties in the basic institutions of society and they define the appropriate distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Now let us say that a society is well-ordered when it is not only designed advance the good of its members but when it is also effectively regulated by a public conception of justice. That is, it is a society in which (1) everyone accepts and knows that the others accept the same principles of justice, and (2) the basic social institutions generally satisfy and are generally known to satisfy these principles. In this case while human may put forth excessive demands on one another, they nevertheless acknowledge a common point of view from which their claims may be adjudicated. If human’s inclination to self-interest makes their valiance against one another necessary, their public sense of justice makes their secure association together possible. Among individuals with disparate aims and purposes a shared conception of justice establishes the bonds of civic friendship; the general desire for justice limits the pursuit of other ends. One may think of a public conception of justice as constituting the fundamental character of a well-ordered human association. Existing societies are of course seldom well-ordered in this sense, for what is just and unjust is usually in dispute. Humans disagree about which principles should define the basis terms of their association. Yet we may still, despite this disagreement, that they each have a conception of justice. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
That is, they understand the need for, and they are prepared to affirm, a characteristic set of principles for assigning basic rights and duties and for determining what they take to be the proper distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation. Thus it seems natural to think the conception of justice as distinct from the various conceptions of justice and as being specified by the role which these different sets of principles, these different conceptions, have in common. Those who hold different conceptions of justice can, then, still agree that institutions are just when no arbitrary distinctions are made between persons in the assigning of basic rights and duties and when the rules determine a proper balance between competing claims to the advantages of social life. Humans can agree to this description of just institutions since the notions of an arbitrary distinction and of a proper balance, which are included in the concept of justice, are left open for each to interpret according to the principles of justice that one accepts. These principles single out which similarities and differences among persons are relevant in determining rights and duties and they specify which division of advantages is appropriate. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Clearly this distinction between the concept and the various conceptions of justice settles no important questions. It simply helps to identify the role of the principles of social justice. Some measures of agreement in conceptions of justice is, however, not the only prerequisite for a viable human community. There are other fundamental social problems, in particular those of coordination, efficiency, and stability. Thus the plans of individuals need to be fitted together so that their activities are compatible with one another and they can all be carried through without anyone’s legitimate expectations being severely disappointed. Moreover, the execution of these plans should lead to the achievement of social ends in ways that are efficient and consistent with justice. And final, the scheme of social cooperation must be stable: it must be more or less regularly complied with and its basic rules willingly acted upon; and when infractions occur, stabilizing forces should exist that prevent further violations and tend to restore the arrangement. Now it is evident that these three problems are connected with that of justice. In the absence of a certain measure of agreement on what is just and unjust, it is clearly more difficult for individuals to coordinate their plans efficiently in order to ensure that mutually beneficial arraignments are maintained. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Distrust and resentment corrode the ties of civility, and suspicion and hostility tempt humans to acts in ways they would otherwise avoid. So while the distinctive role of conceptions of justice is to specify basic rights and duties and to determine the appropriate distributive shares, the way in which a conception does this is bound to affect the problems of efficiency, coordination, and stability. We cannot, in general, assess a conception of justice by its distributive role alone, however useful this role may be in identifying the concept of justice. We must take into account its wider connections; for even though justice has a certain priority, being the most important virtue of institutions, it is still true that, other things equal, one conception of justice is preferable to another when its broader consequences are more desirable. Recognizing God helps you define the Universe as you see it. I who stand before you, I who come into your presence, I who am your worshipper, call out to you, Dear God in Heaven. You are unlimited, and are vastly greater than we are. Sweet-songed God, hear me. I come before you, Lord of the Bow, whose arrows bring healing. I ask that you help me, please heal the wounded in this planet, as their wounds vary from spiritual, financial, physical and/or mental. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
King Lamont supposes that Ammon is the Great Spirit—Ammon teaches the king about the Creation, God’s dealings with humans, and the redemption that comes through Christ—Lamoni believes and falls to the Earth as if dead. About 90 years Before Christ. “And it came to pass that king Lamoni caused that his servants should stand forth and testified to the things which they had seen, and he had learned of the faithfulness of Ammon in preserving his flocks, and also of his great power in contending against those who sought to slay him, he was astonished exceedingly, and said: Surely, this is more than a man. Behold, is not this the Great Spirit who doth send such great punishments upon this people, because of their murders? And they answered the king, and said: Whether he be the Great Spirit or a man, we know not; but this much we do know, that he cannot be slain by the enemies of the king; neither can they scatter the king’s flocks when he is with us, because of his expertness and great strength; therefore, we know that he is a friend to the king. And now, O king, we do not believe that a human has such great power, for we know cannot be slain. And now, when the king heard these words, he said unto them; Now I know that it is the Great Spirit; and he has come down at this time to preserve you lives, that I might be your brethren. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
“Now, this is the Great Spirit of whom our father have spoken. Now this was the tradition of Lamoni, which he had received from his father, that there was a Great Spirit. Notwithstanding they believed in a Great Spirit, they suppose that whatsoever they did was right; nevertheless, Lamont began to fear exceedingly, with fear lest he had some wrong in slaying his servants; for he had slain many of them because their brethren had scattered their flocks at the place of water; and thus, because they had had their flocks scattered they were slain. Now it was the practices of these Lamanites to stand by the waters of Sebus to scatter the flocks of the people, that thereby they might drive away many that were scattered unto their own land, it being a practice of plunder among them. And it came to pass that king Lamoni inquired of his servants, saying: Where is this man that has such great power? And they said unto him: Behold, he is feeding they horses. Now the king has commanded his servants, previous to the time of the watering of their flocks, that they should prepare his horses and chariots, and conduct him forth to the land of Nephi; for there had been a great feast appointed at the land of Nephi, by the father of Lamoni, who was king over all the land. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
“Now when king Lamoni heard that Ammon was preparing his horses and his chariots he was more astonished, because of the faithfulness of Ammon, saying: Surely there has not been any servant among all my servants that has been so faithful as this man; for even he doth remember all my commandments to execute them. Now I surely know that this is the Great Spirit, and I would desire him that he come in unto me, but I durst not. And it came to pass that when Ammon had made ready the horses and the chariots for the king and his servants, he went in no the king, and he saw that the countenance of the king was changed; therefore he was about to return out of his presence. And one of the king’s servants said unto him, Rabbanah, which is, being interpreted, powerful or great king, considering their kings to be powerful; and thus he said unto him: Rabbanah, the king desireth thee to stay. Therefore Ammon turned himself unto the king, and said unto him: What wilt thou that I should do for thee, O king? And the king answered him not for the space of an hour, according to their time for he knew no what he should say unto him. And it came to pass that Ammon said unto him again: What desirest thou of me? But the king answered not. And it came to pass that Ammon, being filled with the Spirit of God, therefore he perceived the thoughts of the king. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
“And he said unto him: Is it because thou hast heard that I defended thy servants and thy flocks, and slew seven of their brethren with the sling and with the sword, and smote off the arms of others, in order to defend thy flocks and thy servants; behold, is it this that causeth thy marvelings? I say unto you, what is it, that they marvelings are so great? Behold, I am a man, and am thy servant; therefore, whatsoever thou desirest which is right, that will I do. Now when the king had heard these words, he marveled again, for he behold that Ammon could discern his thoughts; but notwithstanding this, king Lamoni did open his mouth, and said unto him: Who art thou? Art thou that Great Spirit, who knows all things? Ammon answered and said unto him: I am not. And the king said: How knowest thou the thoughts of my heart? Thou mayest speak boldly, and tell me concerning these things; and also tell me by what power ye slew and smote off the arms of my brethren that scattered my flocks—and now, if thou wilt tell me concerning these things, whatsoever thou desirest I will give unto thee: and if it were needed, I would guard thee with my armies; but I know that thou art more powerful than all they; nevertheless, whatsoever thou desirest of me I will grant it unto thee. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
“Now Ammon being wise, yet harmless, he said unto Lamoni: Wilt thou hearken unto my words, if I tell thee by what power I do these things? And this is the thing that I desire of thee. And the king answered him, and said: Yea, I will believe all thy words. And thus he was caught with guile. And Ammon began to speak unto him with boldness, and said unto him: Believest thou that there is a God? And he answered, and said unto him: I do no know what the meaneth. And then Ammon said: Believest thou that there is a Great Spirit? And he said, Yea. And Ammon said: This is God. And Ammon said unto him again: Believest thou that this Great Spirit, who is God, created all things which are in Heaven and in the Earth? And he said: Yea, I believe that he created all things which are in the Earth; but I do not know the Heavens. And Ammon said unto him: The Heavens is a place where God dwells and all his holy angels. And king Lamoni said: Is it above the Earth? And Ammon said: Yea, and he looked down upon all the children of humans; and he knows all the thoughts and intents of the heart; for by his hand were they all created from the beginning. And king Lamoni said; I believe all these things which thou hast spoken. Art thou sent from God? Ammon said to him: I am a man; and man in the beginning was created after the image of God, and I am called by his Holy Spirit to teach these things unto this people, that they may be brought to a knowledge of that which is just and true. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
“And a portion of that Spirit dwelleth in me, which giveth me knowledge, and also power according to my faith and desires which are in God. Now when Ammon had said these words, he began at the creation of the World, and also the creation of Adam, and told him all the things concerning the fall of man, and rehearsed and laid before him the records and the holy scriptures of the people, which had been spoken by the prophets, even down to the time that their father, Lehi, left Jerusalem. And he also rehearsed unto them (for it was unto the king and to his servants) al the journeyings of their fathers in the wilderness, and all their sufferings with hunger and thirst, and their travail, and so forth. And he also rehearsed unto them concerning the rebellions of Laman and Lemuel, and the sons of Ishmael, yea, all their rebellions did he relate unto them; and he expounded unto them all the records and scriptures from the time that Lehi left Jerusalem down to the present time. However, this is not all; for he expounded unto them the plan of redemption, which was prepared from the foundation of the World; and he also made known unto them concerning the coming of Christ, and all the work of the Lord did he make known unto them. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
“And it came to pass that after he had said all these things, and expounded them to the king, that the king believed all his words. And he began to cry unto the Lord, saying: O Lord, have mercy; according to thy abundant mercy which thou hast had upon the people of Nephi, have upon me, and my people. And now, when he had said this, he fell unto the Earth, as if he were dead. And it came to pass that his servant took him and carried him in unto his wife, and laid him upon a bed; and he lay as if he were dead for the space of two days and two nights; and his wife, and his sons, and his daughters mourned over him, after the manner of the Lamenting his loss,” reports Alma 18.1-43. Look down from Heaven, O Christ, on Thy flock and lambs, and bless their bodies and souls. Please grant those who have received Thy sign, O Christ, on their foreheads, to be Thine own in the day of judgment. A Desto, Domine, supplicationibus nostris; et me, qui etiam misericordia Tua primus indigeo, clementer exaudi; et quem non election emeriti, sed dono gratiae Tuae, constituisti hujus operis ministrum, da fiduciam Tui muneris exsequendia, et Ispse in nostro ministerio quod Tuae pietatis est operare. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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MOVE IN READY: HOME SITE 74
4 Bedrooms – 3.5 Bathrooms – 3,501 sq. ft. – $621,740
Home Site 74 at Brighton Station is a beautiful Residence Four and one of the largest homes available in the market! At 3,501 square feet we are sure you’ll have enough room for the entire family here! The open concept design includes four bedrooms, three and one half bathrooms and a three car garage. Enjoy a spacious back yard with California Room included!
When entering this expansive home, take note of the two story ceiling height at the entry. There is a bedroom on the first floor, located off the entry, with its own bathroom making it ideal for a guest suite or multigenerational living.
The formal dining room provides ample space for entertaining and has convenient access to the kitchen via Butler’s Pantry.
The kitchen comes fully equipped with our gleaming extended kitchen island, perfect for family gatherings and an entertainer’s dream! White cabinets and undercabinet lighting with stainless steel appliances, quartz counters and tile backsplash complete this stunning kitchen.
Upstairs you will find the Owner’s retreat, two bedrooms, and the loft perfect for a game room or TV lounge. The Owner’s retreat is spacious and inviting with a large bedroom and spa like bathroom featuring a free-standing soaking tub, walk-in shower, dual vanities, and two walk-in closets. https://cresleigh.com/brighton-station/move-in-ready-home-site-74/
Randolph Harris II International Institute 