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For the First Time in Human History the Opportunity to Evolve Beyond their Enslaved Past Has Been Accepted!
If your thing is paradise, it may be hard to obtain, but worth keeping. I believe that the whole future of human culture depends upon our solving the problem of how to introduce into education processes the essence of the preventive and curative methods to avoid poverty and crime. Education will be preventive in the sense that it will limit and guide the fateful dichotomy which occurs early in life between conscious and preconscious processes on the one hand, and the inaccessible unconscious on the other. It will have to be curative as well, because we cannot expect prevention ever to work perfectly. Consequently we shall always have to build into the concepts and techniques of education certain types of therapeutic experiences, both for groups and for individuals, which will be designed to reintegrate unconscious with conscious and precious processes. Even to attempt this will require that we overcome not only the individual resistances and prejudices to which are floating about in society, but also the entrenched opposition of many existing social, cultural, religious, and educational institutions. This is no small order: and I would hesitate to offer the challenge, if I did not have so deep a conviction that all of our vaunted culture and education, as we have known them in the past, have failed humankind completely. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
Some may feel these views to be unduly pessimistic. Yet I believe that these criticisms of our educational processes are rooted in optimism, and pursue an optimistic ideal. If our purpose in studying our failures is to learn how not to fail in the future, it is not pessimism to face the fact of past failure. It was neither pessimism nor a morbid fascination with death which led medicine to the autopsy table, but rather courage, optimism, spiritual humility, and a determination to avoid the endless repetition of past error. Humankind’s reward is scientific medicine; and we must now face the failure of education with the same combination of humility and determination. Because education has failed humankind in the past, it does not follow that it must necessarily continue to fail, unless we cling obstinately and defensively to methods which have already been tried without success. Yet the tendency to prescribe more of the old medicines is deep in us. For instance, when I read that a new college president declares that what we need in education is a greater emphasis on religion, I confess that my heart feels joy. Much like when someone says we need more humanities. Or when professors call for more of the great books by greater thinkers out of the past, or when a classicist calls for more of the classics, or a mathematician for more mathematics or a chemist for more chemistry. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
When in the face of our general culture failure each cultural specialist cries out for larger doses of one’s own specific remedy, it is not a pretty spectacle, nor a reassuring measure of the maturity of the educators. However, at least they can recognize that the human mind needs more cultivation and are speaking up because we cannot have an education system that is producing people with little wisdom or maturity. It is important to understand that scientists, including psychiatrists, are not immune to these frailties; and that they are equally true for all of those who carry the banners of culture. It is an old story of youthful idealism, of young confidence that the way to the good life is in their hands, then of a gradual disillusionment which usually is masked by a paradoxical defensiveness and a refusal to face the limitations of existing methods, turning instead in their anger against anyone who is honest and sceptical enough to challenge one’s particular road to salvation. All of us want to go on educating as we have in the past, making at most only trivial curricular changes. However, what humankind actually needs is a cultural stride of far grander dimensions. A little more or less general knowledge and more in-depth information. General information does not give power to train and grow. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
General information without knowing how to think, apply it, nor build will create novice who are not able to process information correctly because they have not studied long enough to see how trends and supply shocks may impact the future, and they may not know how to accurately forecast and avert disasters. After having devoted a lifetime to having honestly mastering some erudite discipline, and having thereby become a pew-holder in a towering cathedral with a limited seating capacity, it is indeed understandable to see why one would believe that their technique which they have mastered at such great costs is just enough. We can see why a doctor might say, “Give the patient more of my medicine. More of the same is what he needs. Pour it down his throat. It is just a maintenance dose we are slowly introducing and will increase overtime before we move to something stronger because it will surely get him in remission in the future.” We have to teach people more and give them more art, writing, history, science, theology so they can become more cultured and expand their minds and increase their attention spans and learn to see the truths. Those who represent the World of the mind and of the spirit must acquire the humility which leads doctors and law enforcement to prevent people from lying on the autopsy table. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
What then must education achieve? It must make it possible for human beings to change. That is the necessary goal of education. America is a city on a hill, a holy experiment, whose success would prove that God’s plan for His churches could be successfully realized in the American wilderness. This is why militant Protestants work diligently to promote the prosperity of the church. Uniformity of religion must exist in any given society. This conviction rests on the belief tat there is one true religion and that it is the duty of the civil authorities to impose it, forcibly if necessary, in the interest of saving the souls of its citizens. Religion will liberate the savages from their inhumane ways. It is a way to control the sinful, Worldly people. It also allows for authority figures to worship closely with the people and monitor and help them keep their Godly ways through counseling and education. This is a unique moment in human culture. And as we do this, let us stop to remind ourselves that when a patient dies, the doctor does not blame the patient, unless he or she was not following medical orders, otherwise the doctor feels it was his or her fault. However, when humanity fails, people do not blame themselves. They do not turn their pitiless scrutiny on themselves, their beliefs, and their techniques. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
Our culture is supposed to be revered as though it were a creative and moving force in the Divine Kingdom. An education not only gives humans sophistication, tastes, historical perspective, manners, erudite parlor conversation, and knowledge of how to use and control the forces of nature on the human spirit, it teaches you to appreciate life. We see it is the uneducated and students, who have failed humankind, not humankind which has failed us. Science and art and philosophy and religion and learning have succeeded; just as it is medicine which as succeeded when it keeps a patient alive, and prevents them from becoming a corpse. The next goal of education is a progressive freeing of humans—not merely from external tyrannies of nature and of others humans, but from internal enslavement by their own unconscious automatic mechanisms. Therefore, all of education and all of art and culture must contribute to this. It has been long recognized that in spite of technological process, and in spite of art, literature, religion, and scholarly learning, the heart of humans has not changed. This is basically a challenge and a rebuke to the TV News Media culture and its devastating commentary on culture. It is possible to break through the sonic barrier between conscious and unconscious processes, and thereby to bring to humans for the first time in human history the opportunity to evolve beyond their enslaved pass. That is why this thesis can claim for itself a realistic spiritual optimism. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
Just as the battle for political freedom must be won over and over again, so too in every life the battle for internal psychological freedom must be fought and won again and again, if humans are to achieve and retain freedom from the tyranny of their own unconscious processes, the freedom to understand the forces which determine their thoughts, feelings, purposes, goals, and behaviour. This freedom is the fifth and ultimate human freedom; and like every other freedom, it demands eternal vigilance. Without this dedicated to truth and honour, education will sell humanity own the river—back into slavery. And this will continue to be true until we rescue humans from their present oblivion this forgotten human of education. Self-knowledge in depth is not all there is to wisdom, but that is what makes maturity and understanding possible; and what is even more important, it frees us from the tyranny of those rigid compulsive mechanisms which have made impossible our psychological evolution. Without self-knowledge in depth, we can have dreams but not art, we can have the neurotic raw material of literature, but not mature literature. Without it we have no adults, but only aging deviants armed with words, paints, clay, and atomic weapons, none of which they understand. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
It is aging, uneducated deviants which makes a mockery of the illustrious claims of education, or religion, of the arts, and science. Self-knowledge is the Forgotten Human of our entire educational system and indeed of human culture in general. Without self-knowledge it is possible to be erudite, but never wise. My challenge to all of us is to have the humility to face this failure, and the determination to do something effective about it before it is too late. We have to relate to each other as people, trusting each other, and sharing the energy of our lives in meaningful, honest ways. In the milieu of trust and openness we create, I think we all discover more capacities in ourselves and in each other than we had thought possible. This will allow spontaneity, courage, and integrity of the people to emerge. The spirit of self-determination, freedom, and growth (like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) lives on in people like the Sun on a Summer in California with a light of trust, understanding, compassion, and awareness shining on the land of the free and the home of the brave. It is an attitude embodying a respect for the integrity and worth of persons; it is a way of seeing and relating to the World and others. This is the experience of responsible freedom. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
The way to utilize power is when dealing with people, trust the, have no desire to control or manipulate them, and have it be a shared responsibility. We want to foster an environment of mutual trust, openness, sharing, excitement, creative and self-responsible actions. Cooperation will replace competition. Self-discipline takes the place of external discipline. Each person will be able to experience and freely utilize one’s own power. We have all experienced the smarting hurt, the feeling of being blow away, exterminated, by the injustice of the action of oppression. It gives us a tiny view of the destruction of self that has been felt by millions of persons who have been the object of the crushing force of impersonal, arbitrary, blind power. However, the politics of power and control can be devastating, even when exercised by those who are only trying to protect and care for the young. Leadership, creativity, imagination spring up everywhere as individuals resist the encroachment of their rights as persons. There are also tremendous advantages for growth, support, and community in our present relationships. If anyone gets depressed, there are others to give one support. Though so many of us have been through so many changes in the past year—from ecstasy to terror—we have to accept each day as it comes. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
Feel good about your present life-style. Many of us could not imagine ourselves living a closed, possessive, and jealous existence. It is a blessing to have the freedom to be who one is; to explore the many facets of one’s personality with many people without fear of being caught or criticized. It is nice to meet people who are gentle, loving—caring. People want others in their lives who balance them. Others who share their past as well as present life; both the sad and happy times. Thanksgiving Day has always been a warm, beautiful day, a day of happiness among all Americans. It makes people glad to be alive to know that people can be happy, relating freely without jealousy and possessiveness. People can communicate with their loved ones freely, and express loving and joyful feelings. The growth that families are encouraged to experience is continuously infused back into their loved ones, keeping them strong and alive—a process rather than a fixed entity. However, we must also learn to recognize interpersonal abuse and crippling coming from the avoidance of jealousy or the experience of it. In addition to the Angels of faith, hope, charity, wisdom, and loving, are also the Angels of doubt, despair, need, passion, and hate. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
The morbid Angels are part of us all, I believe. However, many of the people in our community come across as pre-Raphaelite saints, there are no characteristics of evil in them. In our environment, jealousy, greed, competitiveness, and anger are equated with being imperfect. To not allow oneself or others the right to both feel and express emotions is to hold the person in an emotional strait jacket. When emotions are allowed to be legitimate and valued part of interaction, difficulties can be dealt with more flexibly and more humanely than when they are suppressed. From my understanding, for many people, along with the intense pain of jealousy, comes a shame at having the feeling at all. People, instead of experiencing and owning their jealousy, often try to find other rationalizations for their pain as a way of making sense of their feelings. I guess they can make sense of their jealousy; it comes from a place deeper in them than “sense” goes. Indeed it has its own sense, and their minds have little understanding of it. Perhaps one learns to be jealous, and in many cultures that seems to be an approved lesson. One can also learn not to be jealous. People just have to understand to what extent do they feel fraudulent in their personal life? #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
One has to know those feelings of jealousy are wrong, so unbelievable, so shameful. What exactly is love? It is will to good or “Bene-volence.” We love something or someone when we promote its good for its own sake. Love’s contrary is malice, and its simple absence is indifference. Its normal accompaniment is delight, but a twisted soul may delight in evil and take no pleasure in good. Love is not the same thing as desire, for I may desire something without even wishing it well, much less willing its good. I might desire a vanilla ice cream cone, for example. However, I do not wish it well; I wish to eat it. This is the difference between lust (mere desire) and love, as between two intimate partners. Desire and love are of course, compatible when desire is ruled by love; but most people today would, unfortunately, not even know the difference between them. Hence, in our World, love constantly falls prey to lust. That is a major part of the deep sickness of contemporary life. By contrast, what characterizes the deepest essence of God is love—that is, will to good. His very creation of the World is an expression of will to good, and it is then to be expected that His World would be found by Him to “very good,” reports Genesis 1.31. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
God’s love and goodwill towards humans is, therefore, not an add on to a nature that is fundamentally careless or even hostile. It is another expression—one of the more important ones, of course—of what He always and in every respect is. It is not hard for God to love, but it is impossible, given His nature, for Him not to love. Our human World as we find it is not like God, though it was intended to be. We have already expanded on this in the past, but must take note of it again here. Love is not natural in our World, though desire or lust certainly is. “The lust of the flesh, the lust f the eyes and the pride of life,” the apostle said, is “all that is in the World,” 1 John 2.16. Pride is defined by desire, not by love. It is, above all, the presumption that my desires should be fulfilled and that it is an injustice, a crying shame, and an injury if they are not. Lust and pride all around us inevitably result in a World of fear. For they bring us into a World of little dictators; and the most likely thing is that each person will be used and abused by others, possibly destroyed, and at least not helped and cared for. Our families, which should be a refuge from such a World, often turn out to be places where victimization is at its worst. “The dark places of the land are full of the habitations of violence,” reports Psalm74.20. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
The tender young are initiated into an adult World hardened in evil. Some babies are not even safe from people in their mother’s womb. “And one who turns aside from evil makes oneself a prey,” reports Isaiah 59.15. Injury brings pain and loss, then fear and anger, which mingle with resentment and contempt and settle into postures of coldness and malice, with brutal feelings that drain the body of health and strength and shatter social well-being. “And now it came to pass that Samuel, the Lamanite, did prophesy a great many more things which cannot be written. And behold, he said unto them; Behold, I give unto you’re a sign; for five years more cometh, and behold, then cometh the Son of God to redeem all those who shall believe on his name. And behold, this will I give unto you for a sign at the time of his coming; for behold, there shall be great light in Heaven, insomuch that in the night before he cometh there shall be no darkness, insomuch that it shall appear unto humans as if it was day. Therefore, there shall be one day and a night and a day, as if it were one day and there were no night; and this shall be unto you for a sign; for ye shall know of the rising of the Sun and also of its setting; therefore they shall know of a surety that there shall be two days and a night; nevertheless that night shall not be darkened; and it shall be night before he is born. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
“And behold, there shall a new star arise, such and one as ye never have beheld; and this also shall be a sign unto you. And be this is not all, there shall be many signs and wonders in Heaven. And it shall come to pass that ye shall all be amazed, and wonder, insomuch that ye shall fall to the Earth. And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall believe on the Son of God, the same shall have everlasting life. And behold, thus hath the Lord commanded me, by his angel, that I should come and tell this thing unto you; yea; he hath commanded that I should prophesy these things unto you; yea, he hath said unto me: Cry unto this people, repent and prepare the ways of the Lord. And now, because I am a Lamanite, and have spoken unto you the words which the Lord hath commanded me, and because it was hard against you, ye are angry with me and do seek to destroy me, and have cast me out from among you. And ye shall hear my words, for this intent have I come up upon the walls of this city, that ye might hear and know of the judgment of God which do await you because of your iniquities, and also that ye might know the conditions of repentance; and also that ye might know of the coming of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of Heaven and of Earth, the Creator of all things from the beginning; and that ye might know of the signs of his coming of the intent that ye might believe on his name. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19
“And if ye believe on his name ye will repent of all your sins, that thereby ye may have a remission of them though his merits. And behold, again, another sign I give unto you, yea, a sign of his death. For behold, he surely must die that salvation may come; yea, it benooveth him and becometh expedient that he dieth, to bring to pass the resurrection of the dead, that thereby humans may be brought int the presence of the Lord. Yea, behold, this death bringeth to pass the resurrection, and redeemth all humankind from the first death—that spiritual death; for all humankind, by the Fall of Adam being cut off from the presence of the Lord, are considered as dead, both as to things temporal and to things spiritual. However, behold, the resurrection of Christ redeemth humankind, yea, even all humankind, and bringeth to pass the condition of repentance, that whosoever repentance the same is not hewn down and cast into the fire; and there cometh upon them again a spiritual death, yea, a second death, for they are cut off again as to things pertaining to righteousness. Therefore repent ye, repent ye, lest by knowing these things and not doing them ye shall suffer yourselves to come under condemnation, and ye are brought down unto this second death. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
“However, behold, as I said unto you concerning another sign, a sign of his death, behold, in that day that he shall suffer death the Sun shall be darkened and refuse to give his light upon the face of this land, even from the time that one shall suffer death, for he space of three days, to the time that he shall rise again from the dead. Yea, at the same time that he shall yield up the ghost there shall be thunderings and lightnings for the space of many hours, and the Earth shall shake and tremble; and the rocks which are upon the face of this Earth, which are both above the Earth and beneath, which ye know at this time are solid, or the more par of it is one solid mass, shall be broken up; yea, they shall be rent in twain, and shall ever after be found in seams and in cracks, and in broken fragments upon the face of the whole Earth, yea, both above the Earth and beneath. And behold, there shall be great tempests, and there shall be many mountains laid low, like unto a valley, and there shall be many places which are now called valleys which shall become mountains, whose height is great. And many highways shall be broken up, and many cities shall become desolate. And many graves shall be opened, and shall yield up many of their dead; and many saints shall appear unto many. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
“And behold, thus hath the angel spoken unto me; for he said unto me that there should be thunderings and lightnings for the space of many hours. And he said unto me that while the thunder and the lightning lasted, and the tempest, that these things should be, and that darkness should cover the face of the whole Earth for three days. And the angel said unto me that many shall see greater things than these, to the intent that they might believe that these signs and these wonders should come to pass upon all the face of this land, to the intent that there should be no cause for unbelief among the children of humans—and this to the intent that whosoever will believe might be saved, and that whosoever will not believe, a righteous judgment might come upon them; and also if they are condemned thy bring upon themselves their own condemnation. And now remember, remember, my brethren, that whosoever perisheth, perisheth unto oneself; and whosoever doeth iniquity, doeth it unto oneself; for behold, ye are free; ye are permitted to act for yourselves; for behold, God hath given unto you a knowledge and he hath made your freed. He hath given unto you that ye might know good from evil, and hath given unto you that ye might choose life or death. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
“And ye can do good and be restored unto that which is good, or have that which is good restored unto you; or ye can do evil, and have that which is evil restored to you,” reports Helman 14.1-31. Come, Holy God, and please bless this Thanksgiving food that will feed my body, though the actions of which you are daily made manifest in the World. O Lord, open Thou my lips and my mouth shall declare Thy praise. Praised art Thou, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob, mighty, revered and exalted God. Thou bestowest lovingkindness and possessest all things. Mindful of the patriarchs’ love for Thee, Thou wilt in Thy love bring a redeemer to their children’s children for the sake of Thy name. O King, Thou Helper, Redeemer and Shield, by Thou praised, O Lord, Shield of Abraham. Thou, O Lord, art mighty forever. Thou callest the dead to immortal life for Thou art mighty in deliverance. This Thanksgiving dinner is the work of many made palpable. Before eating, it is right to acknowledge their labour. We thank all these people and all their protective spirits. I send my prayers to God. Holy Ones, please accept my invitation. Please be honoured by it, by life’s true sacrifice. The food we eat is a gift from you and how grateful we are to have family and a beautiful home and safe Ultimate Driving Machines and a wonderful education. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
Residence One at Mills Station holds 1,932 square feet of single story living. The open concept design includes three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a two car garage. Each home includes a Home Hub located at the front of the home which can be used as a study, playroom or sitting room.
The kitchen comes fully equipped with a large eat-in island, stainless steel appliances, and quartz counters. The great room is spacious and full of natural light with a covered patio! The Owner’s suite is nestled in the rear of the home separate from the secondary bedrooms, providing maximum privacy. Enjoy a spa like experience in the Owner’s bathroom with a large walk in shower, dual vanities, and makeup counter.
This home is designed with Universal Design concepts meaning that its well equipped for life’s transitions and aging in place. Learn more about this unique feature by speaking with a sales associate today!
Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Google Mini to help connect everything together! https://cresleigh.com/mills-station/move-in-ready-home-site-77/
Thank you, Holy Ooe: please share my good fortune. I praise you, Holy One: please share my friendship. How wonderful! How marvelous! This home is the gift from the Earth which it grew. #CresleighHomes
You Cannot Run Away from Your Weakness–Promises and Pie Crust are Made to be Broken!
To expect truth to come from thinking signifies that we mistake the need to think with the urge to know. Undeserved inequalities call for redress; and since inequalities of birth and natural endowment are undeserved, these inequalities are to be somehow compensated for. Thus the principle holds that in order to treat all persons equally, to provide genuine equality of opportunity, society must give more attention to those with fewer native assets and to those born into less favourable social positions. The idea is to redress the bias of contingencies in the direction of equality. In pursuit of this principle greater resources might be spent on the education of the less rather than more intelligent, at least over a certain time of life, say the earlier years of school. Now the principle of redress has not to my knowledge been proposed as the sole criterion of justice, as the single aim of the social order. It is plausible as most such principles are only as a prima facie principle, one that is to be weighed in the balance with others. For example, we are to weigh it against the principle to improve the average standard of life, or to advance the common good. However, whatever other principles we hold, the claims of redress are to be taken into account. It is thought to represent one of the elements in our conception of justice. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Now the difference principle is not of course the principle of redress. It does not require society to try to even out inherent limitations as if all were expected to compete on a fair basis in the same race. However, the difference principle would allocate resources in education, say, so as to improve the long-term expectation of the least favoured. If this end is attained by giving more attention to the better endowed, it is permissible; otherwise not. And in making this decision, the value of education should not be assessed solely in terms of economic efficiency and social welfare. Equally if not more important is the role of education in enabling a person to enjoy the culture of one’s society and to take part in its affairs, and in this way to provide for each individual a secure sense of one’s own worth. Thus although the difference principle is not the same as that of redress, it does achieve some of the intent of the latter principle. It transforms the aims of the basic structure so that the total scheme of institutions no longer emphasizes social efficiency and technocratic values. We see then that the difference principle represents, in effect, an agreement to regard the distribution of natural talents as a common asset and to share in the benefits of this distribution whatever it turns out to be. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
Those who have been favoured by nature, whoever they are, may gain from their good fortune only on terms that improve the situation of those who have lost out. The naturally advantaged are not to gain merely because they are more gifted, but only to cover the costs of training and education and for using their endowments in way that help the less fortunate as well. No one deserves one’s greater natural capacity nor merits a more favourable starting place in society. However, it does not follow that one should eliminate these distinctions. There is another way to deal with them. The basic structure can be arranged so that these contingencies work for the good of the least fortunate. Thus we are led to the difference principle if we wish to set up the social system so that no one gains or loses from one’s arbitrary place in the distribution of natural assets or one’s initial position in society without giving or receiving compensating advantages in return. In view of these remarks we may reject the contention that ordering of institutions is always defective because the distribution of natural talents and the contingencies of social circumstance are unjust, and this injustice must inevitably carry over to human arrangements. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
Occasionally this reflection is offered as an excuse for ignoring injustice, as if the refusal to acquiesce in injustice is on a par with being unable to accept death. The natural distribution is neither just nor unjust; nor is it unjust that persons are born into society at some particular position. These are simply natural facts. What is just and unjust is the way that institutions deal with these facts. Aristocratic and caste societies are unjust because they make these contingencies the ascriptive basis for belonging to more or less enclosed and privileged social classes. The basic structure of these societies incorporates the arbitrariness found in nature. However, there is no necessity for humans to resign themselves to these contingencies. The social system is not an unchangeable order beyond human control but a pattern of human action. In justice as fairness humans agree to share one another’s fate. In designing institutions, only when doing so is for the common benefit, they undertake to avail themselves of the accidents of nature and social circumstance. The two principles are a fair way of meeting the arbitrariness of fortune; and while no doubt imperfect in other ways, the institutions which satisfy these principles are unjust. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
A further point is that the difference principle expresses a conception or reciprocity. It is a principle of mutual benefit. We have seen that, at least when chain connection holds, each representative human can accept the basic structure as designed to advance one’s interests. The social order can be justified to everyone and in particular to those who are least favoured; and in this sense it is egalitarian. However, it seems necessary to consider in an intuitive way how the condition of mutual benefit is satisfied. Consider any two representative humans A and B, and let B be the one who is less favoured. Actually, since we are most interested in the comparison with the least favoured human, let us assume that B is this individual. Now B can accept A’s being better off since A’s advantages have been gained in ways that improve B’s prospects. If A were not allowed one’s better position, B would be even worse off than one is. The difficulty is to show that A has no grounds for complaint. Perhaps one is required to have less than one might since one’s having more would result in some loss to B. Now what can be said to the more favoured human? To being with, it is clear that the well-being of each depends on a scheme of social cooperation without which no one could have a satisfactory life. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
Secondly, we can ask for the willing cooperation of everyone only if the terms of the scheme are reasonable. The difference principle, then, seems to be a fair basis on which those better endowed, or more fortunate in their social circumstances, could expect others to collaborate with them when some workable arrangement is a necessary condition of the good of all. There is a natural inclination to object that those better situated deserve their greater advantages whether or not they are to the benefit of others. At this point it is necessary to be clear about the notion of desert. It is perfectly true that given a just system of cooperation as a scheme of public rules and the expectations set up by it, those who, with the prospect of improving their condition, have done what the system announces that it will reward are entitled to their advantages. In this sense the more fortunate have a claim to their better situation; their claims are legitimate expectations established by social institutions, and the community is obligated to meet them. However, this sense of desert presupposes the existence of the cooperative scheme; it is irrelevant to the question whether in the first place the scheme is to be designed in accordance with the difference principle. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
Perhaps some will think that the person with greater natural endowments deserves those assets and the superior character that made their development possible. Because one is more worthy in this sense, one deserves the greater advantages that one could achieve with them. This view, however, is surely incorrect. It seems to be one of fixed point of our considered judgments that no one deserves one’s place in the distribution of native endowments, any more than one deserves one’s initial starting place in society. The assertion that a human deserves one’s initial starting place in society. The assertion that a human deserves the superior character that enables one to make the effort to cultivate one’s abilities is equally problematic; for one’s character depends in large part upon fortunate family and social circumstances for which one can claim no credit. The notion of desert seems not to apply to these cases. Thus the more advantaged representative human cannot day that one deserves and therefore has a right to a scheme of cooperation in which one is permitted to acquire benefits in ways that do not contribute to the welfare of others. There is no basis for one’s making this claim. From the standpoint of common sense, then, the difference principle appears to be acceptable both to the more advantaged and to the less advantaged individual. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
Of course, none of this is strictly speaking an argument for the principle, since in a contract theory argument are made from the point of view of the original position. However, these intuitive considerations help to clarify the nature of the principle and the sense in which it is egalitarian. Nonetheless, relatively marginalized groups need jobs or equal pay or civil rights or educational opportunities. Still, when we let people face these problem situations in their own way, that is how true self-initiated learning takes place. Gradually they become fully aware of their World and its problems. Then they begin to seek answers. The issues which have come from the people return to them—not as content to be deposited, but as problems to be solved. Some people regard themselves as lazy, unfit, worthless, les free than an animal. Because of this they feel attracted to the oppressors and their way of life, and their highest dream is to be like the tyrant, and oppress others. However, gradually the self-concept and the goal change. Less affluent (and sometimes the rich are victims of oppression) makes such statements as these: “I now realize I am human, an educated person.” “We were blind, now our eyes have been opened.” “Now we will no longer be a dead weight on the cooperative farm.” “I work, and working I transform the World.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
People who have been oppressed change their goals and they eventually no longer want to be like the oppressor, but they envision a new type of social system, more human. Then they begin to take considered steps to change the terrible conditions under which they live. The important thing is for people to come to feel like masters of their thinking and views of the World explicitly or implicitly manifest in their own suggestions and those of their comrades. However, sometimes their anger at professionals, at the ack of health services, at the lack of any voice in their own health care becomes so strong that some of the professionals are frightened, while others are self-righteously angry in response. Still some people get upset when communication starts because they think, “See, what you are accomplishing is better, less angry communication! You are destroying the possibility of revolutionary change! You are defusing the hatred and bitterness which alone can spark any real change for the oppressed!” Are we fiddling while Rome burns? What possible difference can a new approach to family or to psychotherapy make when our very planet is threatened with dissolution? We have to subordinate these ancient quarrels and launch a global partnership. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
The discrepancy in wealth and income between the “haves” and “have-nots” of the World is laying a basis for present as well as future hatreds. Groups roam the World, wreaking violence on totally innocent people. There seems no end to the list of undying feuds between races, cultures, and nations. Does a person-centered approach in psychotherapy have anything useful to offer in solving these immense and dangerous global issues? We must attempt to establish a sense of common cause among the vastly disparate and competing nations of the World. It requires that a nation moves beyond self-interest defined in terms of power and concentration on the common interests defined in terms of realizing a human’s fullest potentialities. There is also a desire for citizens to develop their potentialities and that goal is one of the few items on which most of the nations of the World might agree. And it is precisely at this point that experience with a person-centered approach may have something to offer. Ina time of major social change, people become acutely aware of the problem and frustrated by the superficial attempts at correction. Then, sometime suddenly, the public as a whole sees the problem clearly, looks more deeply for solutions, and discovers that the answers on a small scale, are already at hand. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
There develops a clear public will to deal with the problem, and enormous forces are set in motion. This does not mean that a miraculous solution is quickly reached, because most social problems—and technological problems too—are highly complex, and many unforeseen difficulties arise. However, once the corner has been turned, once that amorphous creature “the public” has made a decision to attack the problem, there is a great deal of forward movement. The telephone, the Internet, the radio, the automobile all went through a slow gestation period before the public realized the value of each, and demanded their rapid development. For generations different groups in American were denied the right to vote and could not hope to receive equal justice before the law. However, changes are beginning to occur, sometimes they happen with surprising speed, sometimes with tragic slowness. Yet, they are being made. Just when it seems too late, the great social collective mind grasps the seriousness of a problem and begins to move dramatically ahead. Because the collective decision is so late, the outcome is always in doubt—the World may still be drowned by overpopulation, we may still die of pollution, we may still see violent racial and gender strife—but at least we are making massive efforts to deal with those issues. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
It is this knowledge of the past that gives me courage to propose methods for dealing with intercultural, interracial, interpersonal, and international tensions. I believe that if the public becomes truly aware that present-day policies are targeted directly toward the destruction of all of us, then they may decide to look for alternatives. And the person-centered approach offers just such an alternative. Conflict within the individual is the most basic of all feuds and tensions. Some people seen outwardly like reasonably acceptable people, but they are lying to themselves. Inwardly they feel they are frauds, worthless, incompetent, full of bad impulses and evil intentions. There is an irreconcilable discrepancy between what they seem to be and what they really are. If people knew them as they are, they would reject them. Here is a power struggle within the person. In order to get by, people must keep up their façade, yet this fraudulent front is continually undermined by who they really are. No matter whichever might win out, life will be dissatisfying or frightening, or both. Individuals must realize that they can work openly for approval of others and can strive for recognition, but they can also resist control by others. Some of the conflicts that create rifts between people are marital conflict, sibling rivalry, athletic or academic cutthroat competition, and racial, gender, and educational differences. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
However, the only thing in a person’s life that makes one different is the thoughts in one’s mind that you know and no one else does. No matter how rich or poor, the person’s skin colour or gender, when someone opens up to you it is like a formula that grants access to their soul. You may learn you are closer to this person than you ever thought possible. Why? Because it is in our humanness—the shared conflicts, and feelings, learnings, perplexities, “experiences”—that we can come together, in spite of lives that in their externals probably have nothing in common, except that we were both born and have lived. One of our greatest difficulties in any dispute is to recognize or, even more difficult, to accept that the certitude we feel about our own rightness and goodness is equaled by the certitude of the opposing individual or group abut their rightness and goodness. If tension is to be reduced, it is this pattern that must somehow be dissolved. Here is where a person-centered approach is at its most powerful. When people can listen to their own feelings of hurt and distrust, the conflict over “principles” becomes completely redefined. It is now a question of the feelings, the needs, the fears of each person. New channels of communication are opened up. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
The politics of a head-on confrontation over decision-making changes completely when each person is empowered to be all of oneself—feelings, fears, ideas, hopes, distrusts. A decision is then reached on a human basis, not as a result of a political clash. Listening is important. It provides a germinal took for radical self-experience, interaction, and group process. When we listen to others, coming from a rich, as yet untapped, understanding of and access to the locus of power in the individuals, we can also relearn what it means to be ourselves. Furthermore, gratitude is a handmaiden of contentment. An ever-growing attitude of gratitude will certainly make us more content since we will be focusing more on what we do have, both spiritually and materially, than on what we do not have. However, contentment is more than focusing on what we have. It is focusing on the fact that all we do have, we have by the grace of God. We do not deserve anything we have, materially or spiritually. It is all by God’s grace. Discontent usually arises when we think we are not getting what we deserve, or when we think we are not getting as much as someone else. We have already seen the corrosive effect of discontent in the attitude of those who worked all day in the vineyard. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
They were discontent and consequently unhappy, because they felt they had earned more than the workers who were hired at the eleventh hour. How different from their attitude was Paul’s who regarded himself not only as “the least of the apostles” but even as “less than the least of all God’s people” (1 Corinthians 15.9, Ephesians 3.8). Paul truly regarded himself as an “eleventh hour” worker in God’s vineyard, as one who was receiving a full say’s wages, and more, for one hour’s work. Discontent is a sign that we are living by works, that we think we deserve more than we are getting, that in some way God is not being fair to us. One of the more helpful passages of Scripture on this subject is Luke 17.7-10: “Supposed one of you had a servant plowing or looking after sheep. Would one say to the servant when one comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? Would one not rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? Would one thank the servant because one did what one was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’” #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
I am sure this passage of Scripture offends many people’s sense of fairness just as much as does the parable of the workers in the vineyard. The master of the servant seems completely selfish and callous to needs of his servant. However, Jesus was not commending the master, He was simply describing conditions as they existed. The issue was, given the culture of the day, who had a right to have expectations of whom? Clearly, the servant, when he had fulfilled his duties, had no right to expect either gratitude or consideration. He had simply done what he was supposed to do. God is no selfish and callous like the master in Jesus’s story. He is the generous and gracious landowner we saw described in the parable of the workers in the vineyard. However, we are the servants of Luke 17.7-10. When we have done everything we were told to do—and who of us has come anywhere close to that standard?—we should still say, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty. If we want to live by what we deserve, God could say, “All right, let us first add up your debits, and ten we will think about your credits.” Our problem is, we do not recognize our debits. We do not recognize how far, far short we come every day in doing what we are supposed to do. And because of that, we tend to live by works instead of by grace in our daily relationship with God. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
Paul said, “Godliness with contentment is great gain,” reports 1 Timothy 6.6. All the wealth and prestige in the World with discontentment results in poverty of spirit. However, contentment arising in our souls from living by grace—that is, from realizing we have not received what we actually deserved, but daily receive what we do not deserve—bring great wealth of spirit, even if we are living in poverty and obscurity. I commend to you for meditation in respect to contentment Luke 17.10, which sums up Jesus’ teaching in that story. “Behold, now it came to pass in the sixty and ninth year of the reign of the judges over the people of the Nephites, that Nephi, the son of Helaman, returned to the land of Zarahemla from the land northward. For he had been forth among the people who were in the land northward, and did preach the word of God unto them, and did prophesy many things unto them. And they did reject all his words, insomuch that he could not stay among them, but returned again unto the land of his nativity. And seeing the people in a state of such awful wickedness, and those Gadianton robbers filling the judgment-seats—having usurped the power and authority of the land; laying aside the commandments of God, and not in the least aright before him; doing no justice unto the children of humans. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Condemning the righteous because of their righteousness; letting the guilty and the wicked go unpunished because of their money; and moreover to be held in office at the head of government, to rule and do according to their wills, that they might get gain and glory of the World, and, moreover, that they might the more easily commit adultery, and steal, and skill, and do according to their own wills—now this great iniquity had come upon the Nephites, in the space of not many years; and when Nephi saw it, his heart was swollen with sorrow within his breast; and he did exclaim in the agony of his soul: Oh, that I could have had my days in the days when my father Nephi first came out of the land of Jerusalem, that I could have joyed with him in the promised land; then were his people easy to ne entreated, firm to keep the commandments of God, and slow to be led to do iniquity; and they were quick to hearken unto the words of the Lord—yea, if my days could have been in those days, then would my soul have had joy in the righteousness of my brethren. However, behold, I am cosigned that these are my days, and that my soul shall be filled with sorrow because of this wickedness of my brethren. And behold, now it came to pass that it was upon a tower, which was in the garden of Nephi, which was by the highway which led to the chief market, which was in the city of Zarahemla. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
“Therefore, Nephi had bowed himself upon the tower which was in his garden, which tower was also near unto the garden gate by which led the highway. And it came to pass that there were certain people passing by and saw Nephi as he was pouring out his soul unto God upon the tower; and they ran and told the people what they had seen, and the people came together in multitudes that they might know the cause of so great mourning for the wickedness of the people. And now, when Nephi arose he beheld the multitudes of people who had gathered together. And it cam to pass that he opened his mouth and said unto them: Behold, why have ye gathered yourselves together? That I may tell you of your iniquities? Yea, because I have got upon my tower that I might pour out my soul unto my God, because of the exceeding sorrow of my heart, which is because of your iniquities! And because of my mourning and lamentation ye have gathered yourselves together, and do marvel; yea, and ye have great need because ye are given away that the devil had got so great hold upon your hearts. Yea, how could you have given way to the enticing of him who is seeking to hurl away your souls down to everlasting misery and endless wo? O repent ye, repent ye! Why will ye die? Turn ye, turn ye unto the Lord your God. Why has he forsaken you? #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
“It is because you have hardened your hearts; yea, ye will not hearken unto the voice of the good shepherd; yea, ye have provoked him to anger against you. And behold, instead of gathering you, except ye will repent, behold, he shall scatter you forth that ye shall become meat for dogs and wild beasts. O, how could you have forgotten your God in the very day that he has delivered you? However, behold, it is to get gain, to be praised of humans, yes, and that ye might get gold and silver. And ye have set your hearts upon the riches and the vain things of this World, for the which ye do murder, and plunder, and steal, and bear false witness against your neighbour, and do all manner of iniquity. And for this cause wo shall come unto you except ye shall repent. For if ye will not repent, behold, this great city, and also all those great cities which are round about, which are in the land of our possession, shall be taken away that ye shall have no place in them; for behold, the Lord will not grant unto you strength, as he has hitherto done, to withstand against your enemies. For behold, thus saith the Lord: I will not you unto the wicked of my strength, to one more then the other, save it be unto those who repent of their sins, and hearken unto my words. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
“Now therefore, I would that ye should behold, my brethren, that is shall be better for the Lamanites than for you except ye shall repent. For behold, they are more righteous than you, for they have not sinned against that great knowledge which ye have received; therefore the Lord will be merciful unto them; yea, he will lengthen out their days and increase their seed, even when thou shalt be utterly destroyed except thou shalt repent. Yea, wo be unto you because of that great abomination which has come among you; and ye have united yourselves unto it, yea, to that secret band which was established by Gadianton! Yea, wo shall come unto you because of that pride which ye have suffered to enter your hearts, which has lifted you up beyond that which is good because of your exceedingly great riches! Yea, wo be unto you because of your wickedness and abominations! And except ye repent ye shall perish; yea, even your lands shall be taken from you, and ye shall be destroyed from off the face of the Earth. Behold now, I do not say that these things shall be, of myself because it is not of myself that I know these things; but behold, I know that these things are true because the Lord God has made them known unto me, therefore I testify that they shall be,” reports Helaman 7.1-29. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
Awaken me, God, waler on the edge, Lord of beautiful music, God of wild longings. My shield and my protector, God, be. God, rescue me please. Great King, please guide and protect me. My guide is God as I ride through life. Life’s soft fluid, gently welling, source and gift to all who live, please be my protector. Defeat my foes with flashing flame, with thunder and lightning, Almighty God. Please empower me, Most High, I ask to write the truth on the tablet of life. God of beauty, please grant my desire. God, you give us so much. The entire World is a gift from You. You keep it running, and this should be acknowledged. O inscribe all the children of Thy covenant for a happy life. May all the living do homage unto Thee forever and praise Thy name in truth, O God, who art our salvation and our help. Blessed by Thou, O Lord, Beneficent One, unto whom our thanks is due. Please grant lasting peace unto Israel Thy people, for Thou art the Sovereign Lord of peace; and may it be good in Thy sight to bless Thy people Israel at all times with Thy peace. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who blesset Thy people Israel with peace. In the book of life, blessing, peace and ample sustenance, may we, together with all Thy people, the house of Israel, be remembered and inscribed before Thee for a happy life and for peace. Blessed art Thou, o Lord, who establishes peace. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
Cresleigh Homes
What is a butler’s pantry? Everything you need to know about the luxury home feature. There are some old-house features we sorely miss in today’s construction—transom windows, stained glass, vestibules, and turrets to name a few.
One Victorian England feature we are lucky enough to see making a comeback is the butler’s pantry. A butler’s pantry is a kitchen within your kitchen and it is ideal for homes that love to host parties and entertain. It is often a buffer zone between the kitchen and dining room.
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I Hold it True, what’er Befall; I feel it when I Sorrow Most; ‘Tis Better to Have Loved and Lost!
Youth is not chronological age but the state of growing, learning, and changing. All people must be helped to regain the condition of youth. The two principles of justice: The first guarantees the equal basic rights and liberties needed to secure the fundamental interests of free and equal citizens and to pursue a wide range of conceptions of the good. The second principle provides fair equality of educational and employment opportunities enabling all to fairly compete for powers and positions of office; and it secures for all a guaranteed minimum of the all-purpose means (including income and wealth) that individuals need to pursue their interests and to maintain their self-respect as free and equal persons. In applying the two principles of justice to the basic structure of society one takes the position of certain representative individuals and considers how the social system looks to them. The difference, for example, requires that the higher expectations of the more advantaged contribute to the prospects of the least advantaged. Or as I sometime say more lightly, social and economic inequalities must by in the interests of the representative people in all relevant social positions. The perspective of those in these situations defines a suitably general point of view. #RandolphHarris 1 of 26
However, certainly not all social positions are relevant. For not only are there farmers, say, but dairy farmers, wheat farmers, farmers working on large tracts of land, and so on for other occupations and groups indefinitely. If we must take such a multiplicity of positions into account, we cannot have a coherent and manageable theory. Therefore we need to identify certain positions as more basic than the others and as providing an appropriate standpoint for judging the social system. Thus the choice of these positions becomes part of the theory of justice. On what principle, though, are they to be identified? We must keep in mind the fundamental problem of justice and the manner in which the two principles cope with it. The primary subject of justice, is the basic structure of society. The reason for this is that its effects are so profound and pervasive, and present from birth. This structure favours some starting places over others in the division of the benefits of social cooperation. It is these inequalities which the two principles are to regulate. Once these principles are satisfied, other inequalities are allowed to arise from human’s voluntary actions in accordance with the principle of free association. #RandolphHarris 2 of 26
Thus the relevant social positions are, so to speak, the starting places properly generalized and aggregated. By choosing these positions to specify the general point of view one follows the idea that the two principles attempt to mitigate the arbitrariness of natural contingency and social fortune. I suppose, then, that for the most part each person holds two relevant positions: that of equal citizenship and that defined by one’s place in the distribution of income and wealth. The relevant representative humans, therefore and the representative citizens and those who stand for the various levels of well-being. Since I assume that in general other positions are entered into voluntarily, we need not consider the point of view of humans in these positions in judging the basic structure. Indeed, we are to adjust the whole scheme to suit the preferences of those in the so-called starting places. In judging the social system we are to disregard our more specific interest and associations and look at our situation from the standpoint of these representative humans. Now as far as possible the basis structure should be appraised from the position of equal citizenship. This position is defined by the right and liberties required by principle of equal liberty and the principle of fair equality of opportunity. #RandolphHarris 3 of 26
When the two principles are satisfied, all are equal citizens, and so everyone holds this position. In this sense, equal citizenship defines a general point of view. The problems of adjudicating among the fundamental liberties are settled by reference to it. Many questions of social policy can also be considered from this position. For there are matters which concern the interests of everyone and in regard to which distributive effects are immaterial or irrelevant. In these cases the principle of the common interest can be applied. According to this principle institutions are ranked by how effectively they guarantee the conditions necessary for all equally to further their sims, or by how efficiently they advance shared ends that will similarly benefit everyone. Thus reasonable regulations to maintain public order ad security, or efficient measures for public health and safety, promote the common interest in this sense. So do collective efforts for national defense in a just war. It may be suggested that maintaining public health and safety, promote the common interest in this since. So do collective efforts for national defense in a just war. It may be suggested that maintaining public health and safety or achieving victory in a just war have distributive effects: the affluent benefit more than the less affluent since the have more to lose. #RandolphHarris 4 of 26
However, if social and economic inequalities are just, these effects may be left aside and the principle of the common interest applied. The standpoint of equal citizenship is the appropriate one. The definition of representative humans for judging social and economic inequalities is less satisfactory. For one thing, taking these individuals as specified by the levels of income and wealth, I assumed of power and authority to avoid an index problem. That is, I suppose that those with greater political authority, say, or those higher in institutional forms, are in general better off in other respects. On the whole, this assumption seems safe enough for our purposes. There is also a question about how many such representative humans to single out, but this is not crucial because the difference principle selects one representative for a special role. The serious difficulty is how to define the least fortunate group. Here is seems impossible to avoid certain arbitrariness. One possibility is to choose particular social position, say that of the unskilled worker, and then to count as the least advantaged all those with the average income and wealth of this group, or less. The expectation of the lowest representative human is defined as the average taken over this whole class. #RandolphHarris 5 of 26
Another alternative is a definition solely in terms of relative income and wealth with no reference to social position. Thus all persons with less than half of the median income and wealth may be taken as the least advantaged segment. This definition depends only upon the lower half of the distribution and has the merit of focusing attention on the social distance between those who have least and the average citizen. Surely this gap is an essential feature of the situation of the least favoured members of society. I suppose that either of these definitions or some combination of them, will serve well enough. In any case we are to aggregate to some degree over the expectations of the worst off, and the figure selected on which to base these computations is to a certain extent ad hoc. Yet we are entitled at some point to plead practical considerations in formulating the difference principle. Sooner or later the capacity of philosophical or other arguments to make finer discriminations is bound to run out. I assume therefore that the persons in the original position understand the difference principle to be defined in one of these ways. They interpret it from the first as a limited aggregative principle and assess it as such in comparison with other standards. #RandolphHarris 6 of 26
It is not as if they agreed to think of the least advantaged as literally the worst off individual and then in order to make this criterion work adopted in practice some form of averaging. Rather, it is the practicable criterion itself that is to be evaluated from the perspective of the original position. It may turn out that a more exact definition of the least favoured proves unnecessary. As far as possible, then, justice as fairness appraises the social system from the position of equal citizenship and the various levels of income and wealth. Sometimes, however, other positions may need to be taken into account. If, for example, there are unequal basic rights founded on fixed natural characteristics, these inequalities will single out relevant positions. Since these characteristics cannot be changed, the position they define count as starting places in the basic structure. Distinctions based on gender are of this type, and so are those depending upon race and culture. Thus is, say, humans are favoured in the assignment of basic rights, this inequality is justified by the difference principle (in the general interpretation) only if it is to the advantage of women and acceptable from their standpoint. And the analogous condition applies to the justification of caste systems, or racial and ethic inequalities. #RandolphHarris 7 of 26
Such inequalities multiply relevant positions and complicate the application of the two principles. On the other hand, these inequalities are seldom, if ever, to the advantage of the less favoured, and therefore in a just society the smaller number of relevant positions should be ordinarily suffice. Now it is essential that the judgments made from the perspective of the relevant positions override the claims that we are prone to make in more particular situations. If we think of ourselves in terms of our more specific positions, not everyone always benefits by what the two principle require. And unless the viewpoint of the relevant position has priority, one still has a chaos of competing claims. Thus the two principles express, in effect, an understanding to order our interests by giving certain of them a special weight. For example, persons engaged in a particular industry often find that free trade is contrary to their interests. Perhaps the industry cannot remain prosperous without tariffs or other restrictions. However, if free trade is desirable from the point of view of equal citizens or of the least advantaged, it is justified even though more specific interests suffer. For we are to agree in advance to the principles of justice and their consistent application from the standpoint of certain positions. #RandolphHarris 8 of 26
There is no way to guarantee the protection of everyone’s interests over each period of time once the situation of representative humans is defined more narrowly. Having acknowledged certain principles and a certain way of applying them, we are bound to accept the consequences. This does not mean, of course, that the rigors of free trade should be allowed to go unchecked. However, the arrangements for softening them are to be considered from an appropriately general perspective. The relevant social positions specify, then, the general point of view from which the two principles of justice are to be applied to the basic structure. In this way everyone’s interests are taken into account, for each person is an equal citizen and all have a place in the distribution of income and wealth or in the range of fixed natural characteristics upon which distinctions are based. Some selections of relevant positions is necessary for a coherent theory of social justice and the ones chosen should accord with its first principles. By selecting the so-called starting places one follows out the idea of mitigating the effects of natural accident and social circumstance. No one is o benefit from these contingencies except in ways that redound to the well-being of others. #RandolphHarris 9 of 26
The very first character trait that should flow out of experiencing God’s grace is gratitude to Him. Everything we are and everything we do that is of any value, we owe to the grace of God. This, of course begins with our salvation. The longer I live the Christian life, the more grateful I am for the salvation God gave to me when I was an eighteen-year-old college student. Years ago I memorized Mark 8.36-37: “For what shall it profit a human, if one shall gain the whole World, and lose one’s own soul? Or what shall a human give in exchange for one’s soul?” Initially, I memorized that passage to take the gospel offer seriously. However, in recent years I have begun t mediate on those verses for my own benefit to help me realize what an infinitely priceless gift I have received in God’s gracious gift of eternal life. As I think of the message of those verses, I visualize a balance scale with all the treasures of the entire World on one tray and eternal life on the other tray. The two rays are not balanced. Rather the scale is bottomed out on the side of eternal life. In the gift of eternal life, God has given us greater treasure than all the accumulated wealthy of the whole World. Are we sufficiently grateful for this priceless gift? Do we take time to actually give thanks to God for the gift that cost Him so much? #RandolphHarris 10 of 26
Are we as grateful today as we were the day we initially experienced the forgiveness of our sins and peace with God? If we are truly living by the transforming grace of God in our daily lives, gratitude for God’s gif of eternal life through Jesus Christ will be a growing experience. We should have a greater sense of gratitude, and be more desirous of expressing that attitude to God, today than the day we were brought out of the kingdom of sin into the Kingdom of grace. God has, of course, given us so much else in Christ. Have we grown in the Christian life so that we are a bit more mature today than we were a year ago? Are we perhaps more loving and gentler today than we were a year ago? If so, where did this growth come from? It did not come from ourselves, because as Paul said, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature,” reports Romans 7.18. There are only two moral forces within us: our sinful nature and the Holy Spirit empowering our new nature. If we are more Christlike today than a year ago, it is because of the work of the Holy Spirit within us, and this is by the grace of God. Certainly, we must clothe ourselves with Christlike virtues, but these same virtues are also called the fruit of the Spirit—that is, the result of His work in us. #RandolphHarris 11 of 26
One great paradox of the Christian life is that we are fully responsible for our Christian growth and at the same tie fully dependent upon the Holy Spirit to give us both the desire to grow and the ability to do it. God’s grace does not negate the need for responsible action on our part, but rather makes it possible. What about ministry? Have we accomplished some specific work for God? As we have already seen, we must admit to God, “All that we have accomplished you have done for us,” reports Isaiah 26.12. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, we are or we have done that is worthwhile, that is not the result of God’s Spirit working in us and through us. I fear that often we Christians begin to think our spiritual growth and “success” in ministry is due, at least in large measures, to our own goodness and hard work. The irony is, the more committed and diligent we are, the more susceptible we are to that temptation. We face the same temptation in a spiritual sense that Israel faced in a material way when God warned them they would be prone to say, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me,” reports Deuteronomy 8.17. Let us go on to the temporal blessings of life. Are we comfortably situated in a nice home with plenty of food in the cupboard and the refrigerator? #RandolphHarris 12 of 26
Do we enjoy a reasonable degree of health? Do we have our own personal copy of the Bible (aside from the half dozen or so different translations some of us have)? Are we able to gather with other believers for worship and study of the Scriptures without fear of religious persecution? All of these blessings come to us by God’s grace, and all of them are occasions for gratitude and giving thanks to Him. It is interesting that some people use the expression “saying grace,” for the prayer of thanksgiving at meal time. I have no idea of that expression’s origin, but I suspect it was born out of a recognition that the food on the table was not only from God, but that it was there by His grace. We actually ought to “say grace” continually throughout the day for the temporal and spiritual blessings that come our way so abundantly. I know many of us are going through some difficult times, and it is tough to have a grateful spirit. However, if we stop and consider, we will recognize that we are still recipients every day of the amazing grace of God. If we are truly growing in grace, gratitude—and its expression in actually giving thanks to God—will be an ever-growing characteristic in our lives. Many adult learners have a deep sense of insecurity about their own mental abilities. #RandolphHarris 13 of 26
Defensiveness and a false sense of pride can arise to protect one from feeling embarrassed about not knowing something. Intellectual embarrassment is one of the worst forms of humiliation—no one wants to come off as stupid or uninformed. I think our adult Sunday school classes have unintentionally contributed to this false sense of pride. I have spoken in hundreds of churches and have regularly observed Sunday school classes which divine into small groups to reflect on a passage or discuss an idea. Later, when the groups recombine to share their observations with the entire class, group feedback is almost always affirming no matter how inaccurate or poorly reasoned the point is. Over the years, this creates a feeling of safety in the class but at the price of generating both a false sense of pride and the mistaken notion that all opinions are equal, whether spontaneous and quickly conceived or the result of detailed study prior to class time. It also keeps adults from learning how to receive criticism for their ideas in the interest of truth and stifles growth in the ability to respond nondefensively. If we do not work on this in the safety of the company of our own brothers and sisters, we will come off as small, reactionary, and inarticulate in the public square. #RandolphHarris 14 of 26
We need to give one another permission to express inadequately thought-out points to each other and create the expectation that we can learn to argue with one another, critique and defend ideas, or leave class with more work to do on a subject. All of this is in the interest of learning to reason carefully to get to the truth of what we study together. This may be a bit threatening at first, but over the long haul it will produce a church filled with people who are more secure about what they believe and why. The very forms that define our periods of study together often institutionalize false pride and a lack of intellectual growth. There is absolutely nothing wrong with admitting you do not know something or that you are currently inadequately equipped to think a topic through. What is unacceptable, however, is running from this fact and thereby giving up on intellectual and spiritual growth in the interest of avoiding embarrassment or possible rejection. We all need help in this area, and we should care enough about truth and reason to give that help. Even if we agree with one another’s conclusions, we need to dedicate ourselves for Christ’s sake to refusing to allow each other to reach those conclusions with poor argumentation and sloppy treatment of data. #RandolphHarris 15 of 26
Another form of inferiority comes from the simple fact that we are evangelicals. For some time now, our culture had told us that conservative Christians are intellectually inferior, that the Christian faith is irrational, and so forth. And we constantly watch our view caricatured as the news media, hostile university professors, and others regularly build straw humans out of Christians positions and proceed to destroy those straw humans. When a community is repeatedly told that it is ignorant, it will come to believe that message whether or not it is true. Asking them to leave: What should we do about this problem? I think we need to work harder at holding forth and celebrating our past and contemporary Christian thinkers. We need to know who they are. Do you know who the top Christian intellectuals are today in various fields? Are these people and their work placed before our children as examples to be emulated? We do this for Christian sports heroes, missionaries, and public speakers, so why not do it for our intellectuals? The effect of identifying and celebrating our Christian intellectuals before one another cannot be overestimated. Even though the early church was a minority movement that faced intellectual and cultural ridicule and marginalization, it maintained internal cohesion and a courageous witness thanks in no small measure to the powerful role in the broader Christian community of Christian intellectuals and apologist. #RandolphHarris 16 of 26
The early church knew who her intellectuals and apologists were, and this gave them confidence and a feeling of strength. In the same way, we must identify, celebrate, utilize, and make role models out of our Christian thinkers. And we need to celebrate the absolutely unequaled history of the intellectual life in the Christian church. If an alternative community of atheists, or anything else can rival the rich culture and intellectual leadership in church history, let someone come forth and demonstrate it. The intellectual life is our heritage as Christians, and it is time to remind ourselves of this. However, if one becomes so dependent that every problem as it arises is at once put before the teacher for solution, the consequence will eventually be an utter helplessness before all problems. The capacities for independent judgment, for taking the initiative, for showing creativeness and forming decisions, will decay and even disappear. Becoming a satellite and revolving around a guru may be beneficial to a human. However, when this revolution become a permanent one, the harm beings, and one will never again be able to move into a fresh orbit and fulfill the evolutionary intention secreted within one’s own being. It is absolutely indispensable for the disciples to learn how to live their own lives. #RandolphHarris 17 of 26
The guide must not only be competent to do what one proposes to do, but the disciple also must be qualified to take advantage of it. Rare is the true disciple. It is better to have a few earnest students who willingly work hard for their self-improvement than a mass of students who do nothing more than read books and talk amongst themselves. The kind of student one likes to see, but unfortunately rarely does see, blends a fine moral character with good intelligence and sound practicality, all topped by profound mystical intuition and a proper sense of reverence. Such a one is thoroughly dependable and reliable, one’s words are not mere froth of emotion to be quickly forgotten. When a seeker’s determination to follow the quest become tough enough not to be deviated by adversity or by luxury, one is ready for a teacher. “And it came to pass that when the sixty and second year of the reign of the judges had ended, all these things had happened and the Lamanites had become, the more part of them, a righteous people, insomuch that their righteousness did exceed that of the Nephites, because of their firmness and their steadiness in the faith. For behold, there were many of the Nephites who had become hardened and impenitent and grossly wicked, insomuch that they did reject the word of God and all the preaching and prophesying which did come among them. #RandolphHarris 18 of 26
“Nevertheless, the people of the church did have great joy because of the conversation of the Lamanites, yea, because of the church of God, which had been established among them. And they did fellowship one with another, and did rejoice one with another, and did have great joy. And it came to pass that many of the Lamanites did come down into the land of Zarahemla, and did declare unto the people f the Nephites the manner of their conversation, and did exhort them to faith and repentance. Yea, and many did preach with exceedingly great power and authority, unto the brining down many of them into the depths of humility, to be the humble followers of Go and the Lamb. And it came to pass that many of the Lamanites did go into the land northward; and also Nephi and Lehi went into the land northward, to preach unto the people. And thus ended the sixty and third year. And behold, there was peace in all the land, insomuch that the Nephites did go into whatsoever part of the land they would, whether among the Nephites or the Lamanites. And it came to pas that the Lamanites did also go whithersoever they would, whether it were among the Lamanites or among the Nephites; and thus they did have free intercourse one with another, to buy and sell, and to get gain according to their desire. #RandolphHarris 19 of 26
“And it came to pass that they became exceedingly rich, both the Lamanites and the Nephites; and they did have an exceedingly plenty of gold, and of silver, and of all manner of precious metals, both in the land south and in the land north. Now the land south was called Lehi, and the land north was called Mulek, which was after the son of Zedekiah; for the Lord did bring Mulek into the land north, and Lehi into the land south. And behold, there was all manner of gold in both these lands, and of silver, and of precious ore of every kind; and there were also curious workmen, who did work all kinds f ore and did refine it; and thus they did become rich. They did raise grain in abundance, both in the north and in the south; and they did flourish exceedingly, both in the north and in the south. And they did multiply and wax exceedingly strong in the land. And they did raise many flocks and herds, yea, many fatlings. Behold their women did toil and spin, and did make all manner of cloth, of fine-twined linen and cloth of every kind, to clothe their nakedness. And thus the sixty and fourth year did pass away in peace. And in the sixty and fifth year they did also have great joy and peace, yea, much preaching and many prophecies concerning that which was to come. And thus passed away the sixty and fifth year. #RandolphHarris 20 of 26
“And it came to pass that in the sixty and sixth year of the reign of the judges, behold, Cezoram was murdered by an unknown hand as he sat upon the judgment-sea. And it came to pass that in the same year, that his son, who had been appointed by the people in his stead, was also murdered. And thus ended the sixty and sixth year. And in the commencement of the sixty and seventh years the people began to grow exceedingly wicked again. For behold, the Lord had blessed them so long with the riches of the World that they had not been stirred up to anger, to wars, nor to bloodshed; therefore they began to set their hearts upon their riches; yea, they began to seek to get gain that they might be lifted up one above another; therefore they began to commit secret murders, and to rob and to plunder, that they might get gain. And now behold, those murderers and plunderers were a band who had been formed by Kishkumen and Gadianton. And now it had come to pass that there were many even among the Nephites, of Gadianton’s band. However, behold, they were more numerous among the more wicked part of the Lamanites. And they were called Gadianton’s robbers and murderers. And it was they who did murder the chief judge Cezoram, and his son, while in the judgment-seat; and behold, they were not found. #RandolphHarris 21 of 26
“And now it came to pass that when the Lamanites found that there were robbers among them they were exceedingly sorrowful; and they did use every means in their power to destroy them off the face of the Earth. However, behold, Satan did stir up the hearts of the more part of the Nephites, insomuch that they did unite with those bands of robbers, and did enter into their covenants and their oaths, that they would protect and preserve one another in whatsoever difficult circumstances they should be places, that they should not suffer for their murders, and their plunderings, and their stealings. And it came to pass that they did have their signs, yea, their secret signs, and their secret words; and this that they might distinguish a brother who had entered int the covenant, that whatsoever wickedness his brother should do he should not be injured by his brother, nor by those who did belong to his band, who had taken this covenant. And thus they might murder, and plunder, and steal, and commit whoredoms and all manner of wickedness, contrary to the laws of their country and also the laws of their God. And whosoever of those who belonged to their band should reveal unto the World of their wickedness and their abominations, should be tried, not according to the laws of their country, but according to the laws of their wickedness, which had been given by Gadiation and Kishkumen. #RandolphHarris 22 of 26
“Now behold, it is these secret oaths and covenants which Alma commanded his son should not go forth unto the World, least they should be a means of bringing down the people unto destruction. Now behold, those secret oaths and covenants did not come forth unto Gadiaton from the records which were delivered unto Helaman; but behold, they were put into the heart of Gadianton by that same being who did entice our first parents to partake of the forbidden fruit—yea, that same being who did plot with Cain, that if he would murder his brother Abel it should not be known unto the World. And he did plot with Cain and his followers from that time forth. And also it is that same being who put it into the hearts of the people to build a tower sufficiently high that they might get to Heaven. And it was that same being who led on the people who came from that tower into this land; who spread the works of darkness and abominations over all the face of the land, until he dragged the people down to an entire destruction, and to an everlasting hell. Yea, it is that same being who put it into the heart of Gadianton to still carry on the work of darkness, and of secret murder; and he has brought it forth from the beginning of humans even down to this time. #RandolphHarris 23 of 26
“And behold, it is he who is the author of all sin. And behold, he doth carry on his works of darkness and secret murder, and doth hand down their plots, and their oath, and their covenants, and their plans of awful wickedness, from generation to generation according as he can get hold upon the hearts of the children of humans. And now behold, he had got great hold upon the hearts of the Nephites; yea, insomuch that they had become exceedingly wicked; yea, the more part of them had turned out of the way of righteousness, and did trample under their feet the commandments of God, and did turn unto their own ways, and did build up unto themselves idols of their gold and their silver. And it came to pass that all these iniquities did come unto them in the space of not many years, insomuch that a more part of it had come unto them in the sixty and seventh year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And they did grow in their iniquities in the sixty and eight year also, to the great sorrow and lamentation of the righteous. And thus we see that the Nephites did begin to dwindle in unbelief, and grow in wickedness and abominations, while the Lamanites began to grow exceedingly in the knowledge of their God; yea, they did begin to keep his statutes and commandments, and to walk in truth and uprightness before him. #RandolphHarris 24 of 26
“And thus we see that the Spirit of the Lord began to withdraw from the Nephites, because of the wickedness and the hardness of their hearts. And thus we see that the Lord began to pour out his Spirit upon the Lamanites, because of their easiness and willingness to believe in his words. And it came to pass that the Lamanites did hunt the band of robbers of Gadianton; and they did preach the word of God among the more wicked part of them, insomuch that this band of robbers was utterly destroyed from among the Lamanites. And it came to pass on the other hand, that the Nephites did build them up and support them, beginning at the more wicked part of them, until they had overspread all the land of the Nephites, and had seduced the more part of the righteous until they had come down to believe in their works and partake of their spoils, and to join with them in their secret murders and combinations. And thus they did obtain the sole management of the government, insomuch that they did trample under their feet and smite and rend and turn their backs upon the poor and the meek, and the humble followers of God. And thus we see that they were in an awful state, and ripening for everlasting destruction. And it came to pass that thus ended the sixty and eighty year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi,” reports Helaman 6.1-41. #RandolphHarris 25 of 26
Almighty God and Jesus Christ, over the deeply sounding sea please carry me safely. Part the mists and guide me through. End the chaos, mighty Lord. Protect y people with sword upraised by at my side. All seeing God, may I be just. Lord, father, friend, please keep my feet clearly on the path of the right. King of Heaven, bless my home. Lord, endow me with wisdom. We thank Thee also for the miraculous and mighty deeds of liberation wrought by Thee, and for Thy victories in the battles our forefathers fought in days of old, at this season of the year. In the days f the High Priest Mattathias, son of Johanan, of the Hasmonean family, a tyrannical power rose up against Thy people of Israel to compel them to forsake Thy Torah, and to force them to transgress Thy commandments. In Thine abundant mercy Thou didst stand by them in time of distress. Thou didst rise to their defense and didst vindicate their cause. Thou didst bring retribution upon the evil doers, delivering the strong into the hands of the weak the many into the hands of the few, the wicked into the hands of the just, and the arrogant into the hands of those devoted to Thy Torah. Thou didst thus make Thy greatness and holiness known in Thy World, and didst bring great deliverance to Israel. Then Thy children came into Thy dwelling place, cleansed the Temple, purified the Sanctuary, kindled lights in Thy sacred courts, and they designated these eight days of Hanukkah for giving thanks and praise unto Thy great name. #RandolphHarris 26 of 26
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We need this person of action, this person of accomplishment, this person of experience, this person of courage; we need this person of faith in America….who has brought us to the threshold of peace. The youth culture derived its immense power precisely from its capacity to transcend social and ideological boundaries that Americans had long taken for granted, and that transcendence was made possible by the huge young demographic and a completely apolitical marketing machines eager to meet every desire of those under the magical mark of thirty. Youth preference in fashion, movies, digital streaming, car design, television programs, poetry (remember Rod McKuen?), and, above all, music became indistinguishable from popular culture as a whole. Music and art are a whole spiritual World in Russian. When people go to a concert, they do not go to it as an attraction, as an entertainment, but to feel life. For them art is bread. That may be something people in Russian and in the United States of America have in common. Musical performances and fashion concerts tend to be full of life and very exciting. Another thing Russia and America have in common is they take academics very seriously. Many parents are requesting the primary schools, secondary colleges and centers of higher learning beef up their science, English, history and mathematics departments to ensure that America will remain a top competitor in the World. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
The culture of celebrity, defined by the media’s circular capacity to create stars who shine not because of specific deeds but mainly because they are objects of media attention is why Paris Hilton became famous. People respect famous people—they are automatically interested in what they have to say. Imagine how powerful it would be to get a star to endorse education. For the past is a chaos of events and personalities into which we cannot penetrate. It is beyond retrieval and it is beyond reconstruction. All historians know this in their souls. Conceptions of the past are far from stable, and when new urgencies arise in our own times and lives, the historian’s spotlight shifts, probing now into the shadows, throwing into sharp relief things that were always there but that earlier historians had carelessly excised from the collective memory. Abandonment to feeling, allowing oneself to be “carried away” by feeling, is actually sought by many, and a regular basis. That is a testimony to our epidemic deadness of soul. People want to feel, and to feel strongly, and in the very nature of life they need to do so. The opposite of peace is really not war, but deadness. The “dead soul” is one waiting to explode or fall apart, and one that will seek out trouble for reasons it cannot understand. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
In its desolate life away from God, there is no drama to provide constructive feeling tones that would keep life from being a burden. Such persons really have no hope. This is the key to those “lives of quiet desperation” Thoreau attributed to “most humans.” Feeling will then be sought for its own sake, and satisfaction in feeling alone always in turn demands stronger feeling. It cannot limit itself. This simple point is what explains the powerful grip of addiction to praise. Addiction is a feeling phenomenon. The addict is one who, in one way or another, has given in to feeling of one kind or another and has placed it in the position of ultimate value in one’s life. Of course addicts may also hold other things to be very valuable, and their life may be (usually will be) torn and even tragic because of conflicts. However, they nevertheless have inwardly conceded the final word to some feeling—emotion, sensation, or desire. It may be that they have come to fear or even hate that feeling and that in their present condition their mind is blinded and they see no way out. At this point suicide sometimes occurs. However, in their heart of hearts they have accepted the rule of the feeling and have conceded its right to satisfaction. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
An aspect of the Christian work ethic, very close to energy and enthusiasm, but nevertheless bearing a distinctive and important nuance, is wholeheartedness: “Slaves, obey your Earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favour when their eye is on you, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not humans, because you know that the Lord will reward everyone for whatever good one does, whether one is slave or free,” reports Ephesians 6.5-8. If you have ever observed a gym class doing push-ups, you will understand the sense of this verse. The coach orders everyone down and begins to intone “up-down, up-down,” and all are following until he looks to the right, because in that moment the half on the left go on “hold,” until one’s gaze begins to move back to the left, whereupon they begin to do proper push-ups again, and those on the right go on “hold.” There are employees who are all action when their boss is around, but otherwise loll around the Jura S8 Automatic Coffee Machine. Out of one’s eye there is no energy, no enthusiasm, no heart. The cheerful wholeheartedness recommended here comes, as before, when one’s work is done for the Lord. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
Humans, we are to work as we did as children when we knew our father was watching, because He is always! Our work must be done with an eye to excellence. Many Churches in our time have forgotten that the secular vocation is sacred. Forgotten that a building must be good architecture before it can be a good church; that a painting must be well painted before it can be a good sacred picture; that work must be good work before it can call itself God’s work. Work that is truly Christian is work well done. Genesis 1 logs God’s commitment to excellence when it says, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good,” reports Genesis 1.31. Christians should always do good work. Christians ought to be the best workers wherever they are. They ought to have the best attitude, the best integrity, and be the best in dependability. If what the pollsters tell us is true—that there is little difference in the work ethics of Christians and non-Christians—we have cause for alarm. If there is no difference, then large numbers of God’s children have succumbed to the extremes of laziness and overwork which characterize today’s work force. It also means that vast numbers of Christian lives are spiritually dysfunctional, for it is impossible to dedicate over half of one’s waking hours (some 80- to 100,000 hours in an average lifetime) to a sub-Biblical work ethic and not suffer immense spiritual trauma. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
We must recover the Biblical truth—the Reformation truth—that our vocation, be it ever so humble, is a divine calling and thus be liberated to do it for the glory of God. This alone will take the Church out into the World. Humans, if you sense your deficient, you need to do three things. First, take an honest assessment of your life, using the Scriptures as a standard as you answer the questions: Do I do my work for the glory of God? Do I honestly work hard? Do I work with enthusiasm? Do I work wholeheartedly? Do I do excellent work? Second, after honest evaluation confess your sins. And, thirdly, commit your work life to the glory of God alone. Will you do this? “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth. Thus the Heavens and the Earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work,” reports Genesis 1.1 and Genesis 2.1-2. What do we learn about the example God sets as a worker? How should what you see there be applied to your working life? “To Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, You must not eat of it,’ Cursed is the ground because of your; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
“By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return,” reports Genesis 3.17-19. What does Genesis 3.17-19 tell us about the current nature of work? Does this mean it is useless to seek fulfillment or usefulness or success in our business, family, and church labours? If not, why not? “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do,” reports Ephesians 2.10. What is the origin of this work? Its purpose? What must you do to experience this work in your life? Do you agree with Martin Luther that “Your work is a very sacred matter”? What can you do to remind yourself that your work matters to God? What is the relation between a healthy work ethic and wholeheartedness? “And masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Do not threaten them, since you know that one who is both their Master and yours is in Heaven, and there is no favoritism with Him,” reports Ephesians 6.9. It is difficult for us to see God’s hand of love in the adversities and heartaches of life because we persist in thinking, as the World does, that happiness is the greatest good. Thus we tend to evaluate all our circumstances in terms of whether or not they produce happiness. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
Holiness, however, is a greater good than happiness, so God arranges ad orchestrated circumstances to produce holiness before happiness. He is more concerned about our eternal than our temporal welfare and more concerned about our spiritual than our material welfare. So all the trials and difficulties, all the heartaches, disappointments, and humiliations come from His loving hand to make us partakers of His holiness. John Newton expressed this intent of God in our trials and afflictions in his hymn “Prayer Answered by Crosses”: I asked the Lord that I might grow in faith and love and every grace, might more of his salvation know, and seek more earnestly his face. ‘Twas he who taught me thus to pray; and he, I trust, has answered prayer; but it has been in such a way as almost drove me to despair. I hoped that, in some favoured hour, at once he would answer my request, and by his love’s constraining power subdue my sins, and give me rest. Instead of this, he made me feel the hidden evils of my heart, and let the angry powers of hell assault my soul in every part. Yea, more, with his own hand he seemed intent to aggravate my woe, crossed all the fair designs I schemed, blasted my gourds, and laid me low. Lord, why is this? I trembling cried; wilt thou pursue this worm to death? #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
“This is the way, the Lord replied I answer prayer for grace and faith. These inward trials I now employ from self and pride to set three free, and break they schemes of Earthly joy, that thou may’st seek thy all in me.” However, it is not enough to see God’s mighty hand behind the immediate causes of all our adversities, nor to see it as the hand of a loving Father discipling His children. I have seen the doctrine of the sovereignty of God in the Scriptures for so many years that I instinctively see his hand behind every circumstance. And I have come to the place where I acknowledge, almost reluctantly sometimes, that all hardship is God’s discipline, either corrective or remedial. The rub comes in submitting to it. Sometimes we resist it. However, if we are to appropriate God’s grace in our trial, we must first submit to His hand, which brought the trial. God gives grace only to the humble, to those who are not only humble toward other people, but are humble, or submissive, under His mighty hand. John Lillie expressed this idea so well. He said, “’Humble yourselves, therefore,’ receiving in silent, meek submission whatever humiliation it [God’s hand] may now lay upon you. For this is your time of trial, and, when paternal rod meets thus with the child-like spirit, will be surely followed by another time of healing and joy.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
Then Dr. Lillie added an important word of exhortation: “See that you do not frustrate the gracious purpose of God and lose the blessing of sorrow. Rather make that purpose yours also.” Lord, I am willing to receive what You give, to lack what You withhold, to relinquish what You take, to suffer what You inflict, to be what You require. We must have that spirit if we are to humble ourselves under God’s mighty hand and receive the grace He has promised to give. However, there is still one more essential element in this exercise of humbling ourselves under His mighty hand. We must not only submit, we must also do so in faith that He will lift us up in due time. The “due time,” is when the adversity has accomplished its purpose. As the prophet Jeremiah said, “For humans are not cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love,” reports Lamentations 3.31-32. God will not leave His heavy hand of adversity on us one moment more than is necessary to accomplish His purpose: “For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of humans,” Lamentations 3.33. The empty self is filled up with consumer goods, calories, experiences, politicians, romantic partners, and empathetic therapist. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
The empty self experiences a significant absence of community, tradition, and shared meaning, a lack of personal conviction and worth, and it embodies the absences as a chronic, undifferentiated emotional hunger. Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering. In their uncompromising determination to proclaim truth, Christians must avoid the intellectual flabbiness of the larger society. They must rally against the prevailing distrust of reason and the exaltation of the irrational. Emotional self-indulgence and irrationalities have always been the enemies of the gospel, and the apostles warned their followers against them. If we spend all of our time trying to look directly at ourselves, our lives dart around, become unstable, and get drastically out of focus. However, if we deny ourselves daily for Christ’s sake (Matthew 16.24)—that is, if we gaze past ourselves and stare at Him with dedication and affection—as a byproduct we come into focus and stabilize in the foreground. This sort of self-denial actually requires a strong, integrated self. An immature, fragmented, narcissistic person cannot bring oneself to live with this sort of focus and discipline. The intellectual life requires the same sort of self-denial and dedication to be part of a larger life of spiritual power and productivity for the kingdom of God. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
For Christians, the intellectual life of cultivating the mind and valuing rationality makes sense and receives its proper motivation and balance when seen as part of an overall view of what life is all about. The purpose of life is to bring honour to God, to know, love, and obey Hum, to become like Him, and to live for His purposes in this World as I prepare to live in the next one. A life that is intentionally lived for this purpose will be characterized by certain attitudes and action. For one thing, if I am to progress in this sort of life, I must regularly live for a larger whole. I must live for the kingdom of God and be involved aggressively in the war between that kingdom and the kingdom of darkness. Further, while self-interest and personal joy are important components of Christian motivation, they are not adequate in and of themselves to carry the weight of a skillful Christian life. I must also seek to live for others. Among other things, this means that I need to discover my vocation, my overall calling in life, composed of my talents, spiritual gifts, historical circumstances, and so forth. And I should passionately seek to occupy my vocational place for the good of believers and unbelievers alike. This would be my understanding of the good life. Make no mistake. Such a life is not easy. It involves discipline, hard work, suffering, patience, and endurance in forming habits conducive to and characteristic of this kind of life. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
It requires taking a long-haul view of my life and learning to defer intellectual and moral virtues and habits before I can become fully skilled at living this way. Unfortunately, the intellectual life, the life of intentional, habitual cultivation of my mind under Christ’s lordship, can be valued and entered into only as a part of the overall approach to life just described, and this approach runs contrary to the conditions that define our modern lifestyles. Many people today, including many Christians, simply do not read of think deeply at all. And when believers do read, they tend to browse self-help books or other literature that is not intellectually engaging. I once wrote a piece for what is most likely the top Christian periodical of the last thirty years, and I was warned to keep my prose to about an eighth-grade level. How far we have come since the time of Joseph Butler (1692-17520 when, as one historian put it, the church could still out-think her critics. Butler was an Anglican minster at Rolls Chapel in England. His fifteen-part sermon series on ethics is regarded as one of the finest pieces of moral reasoning in the history of philosophy and has, in the words of philosopher Stephen L. Darwall, “influenced moral philosophy ever since.” The mind is like a muscle. If it is not exercised regularly and strenuously, it loses some of its capacities and strength. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
We modern evangelicals often feel small and without influence in the public square. If we are to present to our brothers and sisters, our children, and post-Christian culture a version of Christianity rich and deep enough to challenge the dehumanizing structures and habits of thought of society gone mad, we must recapture our intellectual heritage. To do this, we must change our reading habits; indeed, we must alter our entire approach to the life of the mind as part of Christian discipleship. “And now it came to pass that when Moroni has received this epistle his heart did take courage, and was filled with exceedingly great joy because of the faithfulness of Pahoran, that he was not also a traitor to the freedom and cause of his country. However, he did also mourn exceedingly because of the iniquity of those who had driven Pahoran from the judgment-seat, yea, in fine because of those who had rebelled against their country and also their Gd. And it came to pass that Moroni took a small number of humans, according to the desire of Pahoran, and gave Lehi and Teancum command over the remainder of his army, and took his march towards the land of Gideon. And he did raise the standard of liberty in whatsoever place he did enter, and gained whatsoever force he could in all his march towards the land of Gideon. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
“And it came to pass that thousands did flock unto his standard, and did take up their swords in the defence of their freedom, that they might not come into bondage. And thus, when Moroni had gathered together whatsoever men he could in all his march, he came to the land of Gideon; and uniting his forces with those of Pahoran they became exceedingly strong, even stronger than the men of Pachus, who was the king of those dissenters who had driven the free humans out of the land of Zarahemla and had taken possession of the land. And it came to pass that Moroni and Pahoran went down with their armies into the land of Zarahemla, and went forth against the city, and did meet the men of Pachus, insomuch that they did come to battle. And behold, Pachus was slain and his men were taken prisoners, and Pahoran was restored to his judgment-seat. And the humans of Pachus received their trial, according to the law; yea, those humans of Pachus and those king-men, whosoever would not take up arms in the defence of their country, but would fight against it, were put to death. And thus it became expedient that this law should be strictly observed for the safety of their country; yea, and whosever was found denying their freedom was speedingly executed according to the law. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
“And thus ended the thirtieth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi; Moroni and Pahoran having restored peace to the land of Zarahemla, among their own people, having inflicted death upon all those who were not true to the cause of freedom. And it came to pass in the commencement of the thirty and first year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi, Moroni immediately caused that provisions should be sent, and also an army of six thousand humans should be sent unto Helaman, to assist him in preserving that part of the land. And he also caused that an army of six thousand humans, with a sufficient quantity of food, should be sent to the armies of Lehi and Teancum. And it came to pass that this was done to fortify the land against the Lamanites. And it came to pass that Moroni and Pahoran, leaving a large body of humans in the land of Zarahemla, took their march with a large body of men towards the land of Nephihah, being determined to overthrow the Lamanites in that city. And it came to pass that as they were marching towards the land, they took a large body of men of the Lamanites, and slew many of them, and took their provisions and their weapons of war. And it came to pass after they had taken them, they caused them to enter into a covenant that they would no more take up their weapons of war against the Nephites. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
“And when they had entered into this covenant they sent them to dwell with the people of Ammon, and they were in number about four thousand who had not been slain. And it came to pass that when they had sent them away they pursued their march towards the and of Nephihah, they did pitch their tents in the plains of Nephihah, which is near the city of Nephihah. Now Moroni was desirous that the Lamanites should come out to battle against them, upon the plains; but the Lamanites, knowing of their exceedingly great courage, and beholding the greatness of their numbers, therefore they durst not come out against them; therefore they did not come to battle in that day. And when the night came, Moroni went forth in the darkness of the night, and came upon the top of the wall to spy out in what part of the city the Lamanites did camp with their army. And it came to pass that they were on the east, by the entrance; and they were all asleep. And now Moroni returned to his army, and caused that they should prepare in haste strong cords and ladders, to be let down from the top of the wall into the inner part of the wall. And it came to pass that Moroni caused that his men should march forth and come up the top of the wall, and let themselves down into that part of the city, yea, even on the west, where the Lamanites did not camp with their armies. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
“And it came to pass that they were all let down into the city by night, by the means of their strong cords and their ladders; thus when the morning came they were all within the walls of the city. And now, when the Lamanites awoke and saw that the armies of Moroni were within the walls, they were affrighted exceedingly, insomuch that they did flee out by the pass. And now when Moroni saw that they were fleeing before him, he did cause that his men should march forth against them, and slew many, and surrounded many others, and took them prisoners; and the remainder of them fled into the land of Moroni, which was in the borders by the seashore. Thus had Moroni and Pahoran obtained the possession of the city of Nephihah without the loss of one soul; and there were many of the Lamanites who were slain. Now it came to pass that many of the Lamanites that were prisoners were desirous to join the people of Ammon and become a free people. And it came to pass that as were desirous, unto them it was granted according to their desires. Therefore, all the prisoners of the Lamanites did join the people of Ammon, and did begin to labour exceedingly, tilling the ground, raising all manner of grain, and flocks and herds of every kind; and thus were the Nephites relieved from a great burden; yea, insomuch that they were relieved from all the prisoners of the Lamanites. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
“Now it came to pass that Moroni after he had obtained possession of the city of Nephihan, have taken many prisoners, which did reduce the armies of the Lamanites exceedingly, and having regained many of the Nephites who had been taken prisoners, which did strengthen the army of Moroni exceedingly; therefore Moroni went forth from the land of Nephihah to the land of Lehi. And it came to pass that when the Lamanites saw that Moron was coming against them, they were again frightened and fled before the army of Moroni. And it came to pass that when the Lamanites saw that Moroni was coming against them, they were again frightened and fled before the army of Moroni. And it came to pass that Moroni and his army did pursue them from city to city, until they were met by Lehi and Teancum; and the Lamanites fled from Lehi and Teancum, even down upon the borders by the seashore, until they came to the land of Moroni. And the armies of the Lamanites were all gathered together, insomuch that they were all in one body in the land of Moroni. And the armies of the Lamanites were all gathered together, insomuch that they were all in one Ammoron, the king of the Lamanites, was also with them. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
“And it came to pass that Moroni and Lehi and Teancum did encamp with their armies round about in the borders of the land of Moroni, insomuch that the Lamanites were encircled about in the borders by the wilderness on the south, and in the borders by the wilderness on the east. And thus they did encamp for the night. For behold, the Nephites and the Lamanites also were weary because of the greatness of the march; therefore they did not resolve upon any stratagem in the night-time, save it were Teancum; for he was exceedingly angry with Ammoron, insomuch that he considered that Ammoron, and Amalickiah his brother, had been the cause of this great and lasting war between them and the Lamanites, which had been the cause of so much war and bloodshed, yea, and so much famine. And it came to pass that Teancum in his anger did go forth into the camp of the Lamanites, and did let himself down over the walls of the city. And he went forth with a cord, from place to place, insomuch that he did cast a javelin at him, which did pierce him near the heart. However, behold, the king did awaken his servants before he died, insomuch that they did pursue Teancum, and slew him. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
“Now it came to pass that when Lehi and Moroni knew that Teancum was dead they were exceedingly sorrowful; for behold, he had been a man who had fought valiantly for his country, yea, a true friend to liberty; and he had suffered very many exceedingly sore afflictions. However, behold, he was dead, and had gone the way of all the Earth. Now it came to pass that Moroni marched forth on the morrow, and came upon the Lamanites, insomuch that they did slay them with a great slaughter; and they did drive them out of the land; and they did flee, even that they did not return at that time against the Nephites. And thus ended the thirty and first year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi; and this they had had wars, and bloodsheds, and famine, and affliction, for the space of many years. And there had been murders, and contentions, and dissensions, and all manner of iniquity among the people of Nephi; nevertheless for the righteous’ sake, yea, because of the prayers of the righteous, they were spared. However, behold, because of the exceedingly great length of the war between the Nephites and the Lamanites many had become hardened, because of the exceedingly great length of the war; and many were softened because of their afflictions, insomuch that they did humble themselves before God, even in the depth of humility. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
“And it came to pass that after Moroni had fortified those parts of the land which were most exposed to the Lamanites, until they were sufficiently strong, he returned to the city of Zarahemla; and also Helaman returned to the place of his inheritance; and there was once more peace established among the people of Nephi. And Moroni yielded up the command of his armies into the hands of his son, whose name was Moronihah; and he retired to his own house that he might spend the remainder of his days in peace. And Pahroan did return to his judgement-seat; and Helaman did take upon him again to preach unto the people the word of God; for because of so many wars and contentions it had become expedient that a regulation should be made again in the church. Therefore, Helaman and his brethren went forth, and did declare the word of God with much power unto the convincing of many people of their wickedness, which did cause them to repent of their sins and to be baptized unto the Lord their God. And it came to pass that they did establish again the church of God, throughout all the land. Yea, and regulations were made concerning the law. And their judges, and their chief judges were chosen. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
“And the people of Nephi began to prosper again in the land, and began to multiply and to wax exceedingly strong again in the land. And they began to grow exceedingly rich. However, notwithstanding their riches, or their strength, or their prosperity, they were not lifted up in the pride of their eyes; neither were they slow to remember the Lord their God; but they did humble themselves exceedingly before him. Yes, they did remember how great things the Lord had done for them, that he had delivered them from death, and from bonds, and from prisons, and from all manner of afflictions, and he had delivered them out of the hands of their enemies. And they did pray unto the Lord their God continually, insomuch that the Lord did bless them, according to his word, so that they did wax strong and prosper in the land. And it came to pass that all these things were done. And Helaman died, in the thirty and fifth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi,” reports Alma 62.1-51. God is the One who sits in protection over the World, who spreads His wings over us as a shield: King God, You are the One I praise! He is the one who is the throne of Kings, who established governments and maintains them in power: King God, you are the One I praise! #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
God is the One who rises from the sea in glory, who rocks the cradle with his own hand: King God, you are the one I praise! God is the one who is King of the Universe, who created the World. God, You are the one I praise. True and certain it is that there is one God, and there is none like unto Him. It is He who redeemed us from the might of tyrants, and executed judgment upon all our oppressors. Great are the things that God hath done; His wonders are without number. He causes us to triumph over our enemies, and raises up our glory above our foes. Wondrously He visited judgment upon Pharaoh, performing signs and wonders in the land of Egypt. He brought forth the children of Israel from bondage, and delivered them from slavery unto freedom. In every age the Lord hath been our hope; He rescued us from enemies who sought to destroy us. May He continue His protecting care over the Universe and beyond, and guard all His children from disaster. When the children of Earth beheld the might of the Lord, they gave thanks unto Him and praised His name. They accepted His Sovereignty willingly, and sang a song unto Him. Moses and the Children of Israel exultingly proclaimed: Who is like unto Thee, O Lord, among the mighty? Who is like unto Thee, glorious in holiness, revered in praises, doing wonders? #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
When Thou didst rescue Israel at the Red Sea, Thy children beheld Thy supreme power. This is my God! they exclaimed, and said: The Lord shall reign for ever and ever. As Thou didst deliver Israel from a power mightier than he, so mayest Thou redeem all Thy children from oppression. Blessed art Thou, O Lord Redeemer of the Universe and beyond! Cause us, O Lord our God, to lie down in peace, and rise us up again, O our King, unto life. Please spread over us They tabernacle of peace. Direct us aright through Thine own good counsel. Save us for Thy name’s sake. Be Thou a shield about us. Please remove from us every enemy, pestilence, sword, famine and sorrow. Please help us, O Lord, to resist temptation. Please shelter us with Thy protecting love for Thou art our guardian and deliverer. Yea, Thou God and King art gracious and compassionate. Guard our going out and our coming in unto life and peace, henceforth and forevermore. Yea, do Thou spread over us the tabernacle of Thy peace. Blessed be Thou, O Lord, who spreadest the tabernacle of peace over us, over Earth and the Universe and Beyond. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last,” reports Revelation of St. John 22.13. If a teacher must put into finite phrases every communication from one’s inner being to a pupil, if one must use material means for every transmission of one’s own thought, then the being yet ready to be a disciple. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
Cresleigh Homes
The kitchen comes fully equipped with a large island, stainless steel appliances, and quartz counters with a butler’s pantry to provide easy access to the dining room. The great room is spacious and its open floor plan allows all parts of the home to flow. The Owner’s suite nestled away from the secondary bedrooms allowing for maximum privacy, yet still accessible.
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It is Not Unusual for the Inventive Genius to Claim the Voice of God as the Only Authority!
No one on Earth is more ingenious than an addict out to score. Protestant fundamentalists built a kindergarten-through-college network of Christian schools whose graduates would become warriors in the army of the religious right. Even as students were attacking the authority of secular universities, fundamentalist proselytizers were brining millions of other young people into their fold. Parents do not want their families and children and homes and businesses being destroyed by the demonic decade. The scripts goes something like this: Once upon a time, there was both order and freedom in American cultural life, especially in the universities that served as citadels of learning and beacons to the rest of society. Yes, a few professors were thought to be unpatriotic, but anyone who saw something wrong with American society was acting like a baby. The veterans who took advantage of the GI Bill were profoundly grateful for the chance to go to college because a diploma was their passport to a white-collar job, and their children regarded higher education as a birthright and assumed that jobs would be there when they were ready to take on adult responsibilities. For the most part, students and professors pursed truth with little interference from the Worlds of gross commercialism and gross politics. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
Think Periclean Athens, the University of Heidelberg in the nineteenth century, Oxford and Cambridge before the Great War, and that is the higher learning Americans enjoyed—except in much larger numbers than had ever been the case in human history. Then the barbarians stormed the gates—no, the barbarians were already inside the gates. Instead of studying for their exams and listening to their teachers, students began to fancy themselves liberators of Americans. Much of the great tradition was still ere, but then decay or collapse started to set in. In the guise of students, an alien cultural started to attack. They were on the warpath against all forms of authority, including the educational authority of the universities and the pieties of middlebrow culture. The American university that was a glorious center of higher learning, was now spewing out nonsense about how awful McMansions where, what an atrocious symbol Germans automobile were, and how middle managers were glorified baby sitters and how they rich deserve nothing. The sentimental falsehoods in public and private institutions poisoned the core curriculum and infected the minds of vulnerable youth for it told them that no matter how hard they work, they should feel guilty about success, and that they do not deserve what they earn. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
All the anti-intellectuals were doing was filling Americans with shame so they could strip away the American Dream. And then the flags were removed from the class rooms, students were no longer allowed to pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. The pinkos wanted to replace McMansions with high rise apartment buildings with paper thin walls so they could monitor you. They wanted to popularize Korean cars instead of Germany luxury automobiles, and instead of people reading books and studying to become doctors, lawyers, nurses, and engineers, they would watch countless hours of TV and become experts on celebrity popular culture. However, many Americans believed that university presidents and college chancellors were captains of erudition. Veterans were thankful that the GI Bill made is possible for millions of working-class people who served their country to become the first members of their families to attend college. Even women attended college and earned a bachelor’s degree to become educated, well-rounded mothers so they would be better equipped to educate their children. So, the Ivy Tower on the Hill—the place where committed scholars search for truth in a World that desperately needs help is one of the best institutions in the World, no matter what critics say. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
A college education is the best aspect of the civil rights movement in the World. It allows our youth to learn and use their minds, to obtain job so they do not have to sit around being poor and bitter. It is still possible to get a first-rate education in any number of American colleges. Some institutions have more rigorous requirements than others, and, in any event, it is always possible for self-selected lovers of learning to learn. High culture can never be obliterated as long as the species continues to produce extraordinary individuals with the inclination and fortitude to pursue their interests and talents against the grain and the mass culture surrounding them. However, because of the erosion of core studies, it is now possible at many institutions of so-called higher learning for students to receive a degree in psychology without having taken mid-level biology courses; for a cultural studies major to graduate without reading the basic texts of American history, Economic, or studying the Enlightenment; and for business majors to graduate without having studied any literature after one’s freshman year. And all of these college graduates, should they choose to become teachers at any level of the educational system, will pass on their narrowness and ignorance to the next generation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
During the past ten years, many institutions have moved to restore a stronger core curriculum (as they also did in the late seventies), but this grudging, formulaic trend is higher education’s equivalent of the frantic emphasis on standardized testing in elementary and secondary schools: it as everything to do with politics—both academic politic and, in the case of public universities, the politics of getting financial support from state legislatures. When university officials start talking about a return to “the basics,” it is a sure bet that some prominent state legislator or governor or President Trump has zeroed in on the academic shortcoming of State U. and that no one is referring to the unquantifiable and more genuine learning whose importance within a society cannot be measured by test scores and can only be mourned in its absence. The Whole World is Watching, and that is true. Parents want their kids to think of college as a safe and accepting place, where people who have been sheltered from crime and chaos can go and see the trees, drink mochas and lattes, espresso and cappuccinos with the other kids, eat cobb salads and avocado toast, filet mignon and foie gras, read Shakespeare, invest in a McMansion with roommates as a form of student housing, and once in the spring the boys can go to a dance with the girls. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
This image of peaceful, privileged youth is what the intellectuals who are presumably running the colleges want—and they want to run the goodly, so parents can be happy about writing tuition checks. They want to being back clubs like the Campus Crusade, which is a powerful Christian right-wing youth movement that is really popular in the Bible Belt. Evangelists are trying to save the nation by appealing to young men and women, many who are disillusioned with drugs and the revolution involving pleasures of the flesh, by providing students with a way to remake their lives. These groups even enhance their appeal by their deliberate adoption and adaption of popular fashion trends and language, minus obscenities and showing too much skin, for the purpose of preaching old-time religion. They even have fashionable hairstyles and look just like other college students. Some organizations have names like the Christian World Liberation Front and the Jesus Christ Light and Power Company and open shelters for young people who are burnt out from Worldly ways, which may not even be their fault because they do not know better or just got caught up. Whatever the case, accepting God has been proven to help depression and can put youth in contact with important members of the community who may offer them careers or internships upon graduation. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
Conservatives want people to celebrate the old American Dream of love and education and Jesus Christ as our Saviour. One might even say that it is a revival and reformation of the Christian American Dream, which is embedded in everyday life society and still manages to dominate attitudes and even behavior within certain limited spheres. Christianity is a ritual of purification and cleansing, a celebration of the capacity of feeling to triumph over Worldly patterns. And it is important that human feelings should occasionally win—as important as occasional epiphanies and miracles are for religion. In our society this issue is a matter of life and death (of society, if not the individual). I also have come to a better understand of what people are saying about injustice in society. They want more funding for adequate programs like education, legal assistance, public defenders, child care, and government investigators who actually will help them because that will prevent people from being arrested. As it stands, these government agencies do not have the ability or skill, time or desire to help people. Then problems fester until it becomes a police matter and people are arrested. At that point, prosecutors will spend countless hours and millions of dollars to prosecute individuals even for minor crimes that would have been avoided if the resources were provided to help these people with ongoing problems. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
As it stands, the media likes to play it off like there is some major mental health crisis in America, but the fact is that no one helps people when they are facing problems. Now, there may be a mental health issue with some of these people in the news media, politicians, and some people running businesses. However, when people are doing wrong to individuals, even if it is a problem that there is clear cut discrimination, harassment or some kind of other crime a person is a victim of, it is ignored and that is why people end up in police custody. The government is not willing to put ethical people in place to help them and maybe spend $10,000.00 on an investigation, but they are willing to spend millions of dollars prosecuting a person. So these people are not saying defend the police, they are saying there are ways to use resources that will save money and keep these matters from becoming police problems. As it stands, society is abusing the police because all of these problems, and many of them are really petty, get kicked over to law enforcement and then law enforcement is expected to be a lawyer, psychologist doctor or guardian when that is not even their job because other government agencies are not handling their mandated responsibilities. RandolphHarris 8 of 24
The youth assume that their elders are attempting to deceive them with this talk of proper channels—that is deliberate obstruction, since the elders know that “proper channels” are designed to negate rather than to facilitate change. Their reactions are then a horror of social uproar that many people cannot comprehend because they have never experienced what these people are going through. The elders’ notion that radical leaders are “just trying to get their names in the papers” has been replaced by calling the people liars and saying they are crazy. Parents believe that is it their responsibility to make their child into the most all-around perfect adult possible, which means paying a great deal of attention to their inner states and latent characteristics. The child no longer has a private sphere, but one’s entire being is involved with parental aspirations, and it really hurts when you invest so much love, time, money, and energy into a being for society to rip that individual apart, while people sit back watching and laughing. Our children do not even take their own personalities for granted, and it really hurts them to have their dreams crushed by racism and injustice. Parents believe they are required not just to put in the time but to make their children motivated. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
However, some parents are willing to throw their children to the dogs for something so trivial as etiquette and it makes a deep impression. So, yeah, some of these problems are not just with government institutions, but within the house. Some children are too young to know their parents do not wish them well and want to see them fail. Since these children cannot see anything so important as to justify this betrayal, all social situations seem to have a dishonest quality. However, parents who are good Christians, absorbed with the goal of molding their child’s total character, are much less inclined to sacrifice the child to the etiquette concerns of strangers. The artist working on one’s masterpiece does not let guests use it to wipe their feet on. As a result, their children have grown up to feel that human needs have some validity of their own, ad their careful socialization to upper-middle-class values has well prepared them to accept the responsibility of becoming a gainfully employed, good citizen. Because of the parents know that there is a deep need for economic and status security, they want their children to face reality (by which they mean social reality). “My money is not your money. I am paying all the major bills and providing you with a place to stay, nice clothes, hot meals, and even an Ultimate Driving Machine. Because of this, life seems easy, but it is not.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
This unique power that parents have—to give their children attributes they do not themselves possess—is perhaps the unconscious determinant of an otherwise incomprehensible theme that appears so often in fairy tales: that of the impoverished old parent or helper who gives the hero magic gifts that could have made the giver oneself wealthy and powerful but apparently did not. However, upper-middle-class Americans parents relate to their children in a somewhat vampiresque way. They feed on the child’s accomplishments, sucking sustenance for their pale lives from vicarious enjoyment of one’s development. In a sense this sucking is appropriate since the parents give so much—lavish so much care, love, thoughtfulness, and self-sacrifice on their blook bank. However, this is little comfort for the child, who at some point must rise above one’s guilt and live one’s own life—the culture demands it of one. And after all, a vampire is a vampire. Basically, parents want their children to become mannikins which their fathers can display his influence to his friends. The crosses many youth wear around their necks are actually necessary to ward off the elders, whose vampiresque involvement who has been insufficiently exorcized. It is not that they are offended by the elders, but their hope is to magically neutralize their symbiotic relationship. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
Many youths are asked to take note of their hostile reaction towards older adults in the society, because it is bad to consider any one as being “unnecessary” and their rude reactions are in “bad taste.” One day, we will all be elders and will want our due respect. No one likes to admit that they have spent their lives in a foolish, evil, or crazy manner. That is why God tells us to humble ourselves and respect our elders. Furthermore, youth do not realize that elders are taught to lie about their feelings. They are not likely to say: “You frighten and depress us. We are afraid we have spent our lives on nurturing an ungrateful family, who brutalizes their neighbours, purses useless electronic devices and creates a joyless environment. It always seemed that right thing to do, to try to raise up a family in the way of the Lord, with Christian values, but now we are a little unsure, and if we had known how you would behave so wretchedly, we would have bought a smaller home and took more vacations instead of having children.” Instead, they suppress their doubts and fears about themselves by refusing to perceive the meaning of the stimulus. When their children cry for peace of social justice they says, “Do not talk dirty,” or “Go read the ‘Good Book.’” This is a way of saying, “There is nothing important or disturbing going on here—this is just my child who is mischievous or careless at times—it is just a family affair.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
It is a desperate attempt for them to enjoy their lives and want you to enjoy the fact that you are privileged enough to not have to endure injustice and hearing about it makes them feel like failures. They view the World as unchanging—to convert the deep social unrest of the day into the blank torpor of lace curtain suburban life. This philosophy also speaks to a much larger social phenomenon. How, for example, can matters so intrinsically important, such as politics, government positions, new broadcasting be trusted to be handled by people who present themselves as not the most sane, unstable, and ineffective members of our society? The answer is two incompatible processes are taking place at once: politicians are supposed to be philanthropists, they are not supposed to be getting paid to help society, while pretending that the people do not exist. It has become a self-serving job, where many people become wealthy, while citizens and corporation feel it is taxation without representation, and not providing for the general welfare of the people. Assuming the framework of institutions required by equal liberty and fair equality of opportunity, the higher expectations of those better situated are just if and only if they work as part of a scheme which improves the expectations of the least advantaged members of society. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
The intuitive idea is that the social order is not to establish and secure the more attractive prospects of those better off unless doing so is to the advantage of those less fortunate. A strongly egalitarian conception in the sense of distribution is that unless it makes both persons better off (limiting ourselves to the two-person case for simplicity), an equal distribution is to be preferred. Also, nothing is lost if an accurate interpersonal comparison of benefits is impossible. It suffices that the least favoured person can be identified and one’s rational preference determined. Also, if each person gains relative to the other, further benefits to one become less valuable from a social point of view. If art helps us to define the absolute, so madness brings us to a closer understanding of the relative. For whereas we sometimes can accept the aesthetic, the immediacy of the work of art, we fight acceptance of the products of the deluded and call it madness. We say no to the possessions, the compulsions, the hallucinations. We deny their uniqueness, their absoluteness and immediacy, and place them in relation to something that can be accepted. We say these are the products of diseased minds, of sick brains and glands, of distorting heat waves, of propaganda and suggestion, or drugs and poisons, of the experience of frustration, conflict, and trauma. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
For these other categories are acceptable. The unacceptable is thus related to the sick organism, to the false culture, to the disproportionate environment: we feel safe once again. And we may be at that, sometimes. For in the relational dimension there is mobility, change, and the chance to choose. One is not captivated entirely; one can compare, discriminate, and select. It is possible to move from or toward, increase or decrease one over the other. Then there is the chance to get out of trouble or into still more. There is freedom to the n—1 absolutes available within the perspective allowed. One has gone from the principle of pleasure to the principle of reality; but when no choice continuum is offered, when there are no degrees of freedom, then one is frustrated in that dimension. We may try to fight as long as there is some dimly sensed hope, but when that too disappears that dimension is dead for us and we are left just a little less alive. Of course for one who is “adjusted” to one’s madness, who accepts one’s mission, who no longer questions one’s lost, the same epiphanous structure of experience is evident as in the case of the experience called aesthetic. There is no need to distinguish between abnormality in the absolute dimension of experience. The mad person like the priest accepts one’s calling. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
In fact it is not unusual for the inventive genius to claim the voice of God as the only authority. For the new absolute is not derivative, has no ultimate sanction beyond its being, its epiphany. Each individual, including the reader, must refer to one’s own insight for an ostensive definition. To some extent experience in madness and aesthetic experience differ only as a matter of taste. There is no difference that cannot be questioned. Each may be accepted for itself and that is the point. It is only in so far as we see that each leads to consequences of different value to us that any distinction between the two may be noticed. Madness too frequently is self-limiting, and as such defeats its protective function by ultimately removing or devaluating that which it would protect. The question which madness does not answer or answers but poorly is: “Madness, then what?” In fact any inability to answer the questions: “Then what?” is revealing of madness; to the degree that the answer evades this question, to that degree there is madness. That is the only test of the abnormal. The normal epiphany of experience is, like most science and art, open ended. Growth may still occur, selection take place, change be accepted with grace and interest. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
Life can expand in depth and scope, in richness of action and experience. The completion of one leads to the opening of the next, not to boredom, self-destruction, or fear. Theoretically, if the paths chosen were completely normal, there should be no termination to life. Even at present there is usually continuity of life on into the future somewhere of some species. And that life can be called normal, the healthy life. No, it is not in the absolute dimension that the difference between normal and abnormal lies. It is only in the relative dimension that such a consideration gains significance. Then why do we continue to make the mistake of judging the absolute as good and bad, healthy and diseased, normal and abnormal? I do not know entirely the probable answer to this but the fact is that we do confuse these and I would like to point to a few crucial areas where this confusion causes no end of needless suffering to those so misinformed. This includes all of us. Job and Joseph are examples of those who saw the hand of God in their circumstances. In one day the Sabeans stole Job’s oxen, and the Chaldeans carried off his camels and ended the lives of his servants. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
Lightning burned up his sheep, and a mighty wind struck the house of his oldest son, ending the lives of all his children. Later Job himself was afflicted with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Job’s response at the loss of his children and his possessions was, “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away,” reports Job 1.21. And with respect to his own afflictions he said, “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble,” reports Job 2.10. Quite apart from Job’s humble reaction toward God, we should note first that he ascribed his sufferings to the hand of God. We must learn to see beyond the actions of evil people and the disasters of nature to the sovereign God who controlled these events. And the inspired writer who recorded the trials of Job, at the close of his account, said, “They [his relatives and friends] comforted and consoled him [Job] over all the trouble the LORD had brought upon him,” reports Job 42.11. Even though the writer had himself reported the malicious activity of Satan in Job’s life at the beginning of the narrative, he still ultimately ascribed Job’s troubles to the Lord. Joseph, when he finally revealed his identity to his wicked brothers who had sold him into slavery, saw beyond their evil acts and said, “So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God,” reports Genesis 45.8. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
Joseph recognized that God in His sovereignty used even the heinous sins of his brothers to accomplish His purpose. So, you and I, if we are to appropriate God’s grace in our times of need, must see His sovereignty ultimately ruling in all the circumstances of our lives. And when those circumstances are difficult, or disappointing, or humiliating, we must humble ourselves under His mighty hand. Not only must we see God’s mighty hand behind our circumstances, we must also see it as the hand of the loving Father discipling His children. We lose a lot of comfort in times of trials because we tend to view them as evidences of God’s desertion of us rather than evidences of His Fatherly discipline and care. Endure all hardships—all of it—as God’s discipline. You may be sure that whatever hardship comes into your life from whatever immediate source, God is in sovereign control of it and is using it as an instrument of discipline in your life. Discipline is a proof of God’s love, “because the Lord disciplines those He loves,” Hebrews 12.6. This is not a word of warning, but a word of encouragement. The purpose of God’s discipline is that so we may share in His holiness, that we may be conformed in our character to His character. Discipline may be either corrective or remedial. It may be sent for the purpose of correcting some sinful attitude or action, or to remedy some lack of our character. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
In either case, discipline is administered by our Heavenly Father in love, not wrath. Jesus has already borne the wrath of God in our place, so all adversities that come to us, come because God loves us and designs to conform us to the likeness of His Son. God has thoughts of love in all He does to His people. The ground of His dealings is love, and the purpose of His dealings is love. He has regard, in all, to our good here, to make us partakers of His holiness, and to our glory hereafter, to make us partakers of His glory. From the Light of God that I am. From the Love of God that I am. From the Power of God that I am. From the Heart of God that I am. I decree—I dwell in the midst of Infinite Abundance. The Abundance of God is my Infinite Source. The River of Life never stops flowing and it flows through me with lavish expression. Good comes to me through unexpected avenues and God works in a myriad of ways to bless me. I now open my mind to receive my good. Nothing is too good to be true. Nothing is too wonderful to happen With God as my Source nothing amazes me. I am not burdened by thoughts of past or future. One is gone. The other is yet to come. By the power of my belief, couped with my purposeful fearless actions and my deep rapport with God, my future is created and my abundance made manifest. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
I ask and accept that I am lifted in this and every moment into Higher Truth. My mind is quiet. From this day forward I give freely and fearlessly into Life and Life gives back to me with a fabulous increase. Blessings come in expected and unexpected ways. God provides for me in wondrous ways for the work that I do. I AM indeed grateful. And so it is. Join me in a POWERFUL ABUNDANCE MASTERCLASS. Set your intentions for the goodness and abundance of all and you will indeed be blessed. “Behold, now it came to pass that soon after Moroni had sent his epistle unto the chief governor, he received an epistle from Pahoran the chief governor. And these are the words which he received: I, Pahoran, who am the chief governor of this land, do send these words unto Moroni, the chief captain over the army. Behold, I say unto you, Moroni, that I do not joy in your great afflictions, yea, insomuch that they have risen up in rebellion against me, and also those of my people who are free humans, yea, and those who have risen up are exceedingly numerous. And it is those who have sought to take away the judgment-seat from me that have been the cause of this great iniquity; for they have used great flattery, and they have led away the hearts of many people, which will be the cause of sore affliction among us; they have withheld our provisions, and have daunted our free people that they have not come unto you. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
“And behold, they have driven me out before them, and I have fled to the land of Gideon, with as many humans as it were possible that I could get. And behold, I have sent a proclamation throughout this part of the land; and behold, they are flocking to us daily, to their arms, in the defence of their country and their freedom, and to avenge our wrongs. And they have come unto us, insomuch that those who have risen up in rebellion against us are set at defiance, yea, insomuch that they do fear us and durst not come out against us to battle. They have got possession of the land, or the city, of Zarahemla; they have appointed a king over them, and he hath written unto the king of the Lamanites, in the which he hath joined them an alliance with him; in the which alliance he hath agreed to maintain the city of Zarahemla, which maintenance he supposeth will enable the Lamanites to conquer the remainder of the land, and he shall be placed king over this people when they shall be conquered under the Lamanites. And now, in your epistle you have censured me, but it mattereth not; I am not angry, but do rejoice in the greatness of your heart. I, Pahoran, do not seek for power, save only to retain my judgment-seat that I may preserve the rights and the liberty of my people. My soul standeth fast in that liberty in the which God hath made us free. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
“And now, behold, we will resist wickedness even unto bloodshed. If they would stay in their own land, we would not shed the blood of the Lamanites. If they would not rise up in rebellion and take the sword against us, we would not shed the blood of our brethren. If it were requisite with the justice of God, or if He should command us so to do, we would subject ourselves to the yoke of bondage. However, behold he doth not command us that we shall subject ourselves to our enemies, but that we should put our trust in Him, and He will deliver us. Therefore, my beloved brother, Moroni, let us resist evil, and whatsoever evil we cannot resist with our words, yea, such as rebellions and dissensions, let us resist them with our swords, that we may retain our freedom, that we may rejoice in the great privilege of our church, and in the cause of our Redeemer and our God. Therefore, come unto me speedily with a few of your men, and leave the remainder in the charge of Lehi and Teancum; give unto them power to conduct the war in that part of the land, according to the Spirit of God, which is also the spirit of freedom which is in them. Behold I have sent a few provisions unto them, that they may not perish until ye can come unto me. Gather together whatsoever force ye can upon your march hither, and we will go speedily against those dissenters, in the strength of our God according to the faith which is in us. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
“And we will take possession of the city of Zarahemla, that we may obtain more food to send forth unto Lehi and Teancum; yea, we will go forth against them in the strength of the Lord, and we will put an end to this great iniquity. And now, Moroni, I do joy in receiving your epistle, for I was somewhat worried concerning what we should do, whether it should be just in us to go against our brethren. However, ye have aid, except they repent the Lord hath commanded you that ye should go against them. See that ye strengthen Lehi and Teancum in the Lord; tell them to fear not, for God will deliver them, yea, and also all those who stand fast in that liberty wherewith God hath made them free. And now I close mine epistle to my beloved brother, Moroni,” reports Alma 61.1-21. Wheat for you, Father of Grain. Barley for you, Father of Grain. Corn for you, Father of Grain. I scatter them for you, Father of Grain: a tribute to your well-famed generosity. God, you are worthy of worship: please hear me. I remember you every moment of the day. I pray to the one whose arrows bring health, to God the beautiful one. From your lyre come tunes of harmonious enchantment, and I listen entrapped, sweet-singing God. We will look to all commandments of the Lord, and do them; Lord bless us that we not follow our own heart and own eyes, but fortify us in your will. We will be holy to the Lord our God. #Randolphharris 24 of 24
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I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
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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But Love is Blind, and Lovers Cannot See the Pretty Follies that themselves Commit
My total conscious search in life has been for a new seeing, a new image, a new insight. This search not only includes the object, but the in-between place. The dogma of Chalcedon is that in Jesus as the Christ, the human nature and the divine nature co-existed, and the human nature, soul and body, was actuated by the divine Person, the Word of God. Thus there was a real unity between the two natures of Christ while they both remained distinct, the one being merely human, undergoing all the tragedies of existence, sin excepted, the other being purely God. This dogma was required as a safeguard against pagan distortions that would have seen Christ as a half-god: Christ had to be affirmed as fully divine. And it was also needed to counteract Monophysite tendencies, which would not have made Christ fully human. These are two dangers that a Christology must avoid, and the two elements that is must protect. An attempt to express the mystery of Christ conceptually can lead to an actual denial of the Christ-character of Jesus as the Christ or it can lead to an actual denial of the Jesus-character of Jesus as the Christ. Christology must always find its way on the ridge between these two chasms. The Christ-character of Christ refers to his divine dimensions; the Jesus-character to his human finitude. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
The dogma of Nicaea had begun solving the Christological dilemma of the divine nature of God the Son and his relationship to God the father by identifying the Christ-character of Jesus with the eternal Logos. The dogmas of Chalcedon continued in the same line: it described Jesus as having two natures, the human nature and the nature of the eternal Logos, expressed in the formula: two natures, human and divine in ne divine Persona of the Logos. This dogma was necessary and saved the Church. It has substantial truth and historical significance. Nevertheless, Nicene and Chalcedonia formulations ended in inescapable definitive failure. The dogmas of Chalcedon have substantial truth because in it both the Christ-character and the Jesus-character of the event of Jesus as the Christ were preserved. Yet it failed to formulate a definitive dogma, a dogma that would permanently protect the Church from error, because it used very inadequate conceptual tools. The basic inadequacy lies in the term nature. More specifically, the term human nature is ambiguous and the term divine nature is wholly inadequate. Human nature refers to three elements in a human. It refers to human’s essence, to one’s estranged existence, or to the ambiguous unity of the two. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
As regards the Christ, the first and the third notions apply: Jesus was man, and he was involved in the tragic ambiguities of life for which the Cross stands as a symbol. As for the second notion, one must qualify Christ’s participation in estrangement: He had human’s existential nature as a real possibility, but in such a way that temptation, which is the possibility, is always taken into the unity with God. When applied to the Christ, the word nature should therefore be qualified: it cannot be used without distinctions and corrections. Under these circumstances it is imperative to dismiss altogether the term human nature in relation to the Christ and replace it by a description of the dynamics of life. As to the expression “divine nature,” it cannot be applied to the Christ in any meaningful way; for the Christ (who is Jesus of Nazareth) is not beyond essence and existence. The divine nature is, by definition, beyond essence and existence. If this is the nature of Christ, then Christ could not be a personal life living in a limited period of time, having been born and having to die, being finite, tempted, and tragically involved in existence. What in Christ is not beyond essence and existence is the human element, the divine element remaining, by definition, beyond essence and existence. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
The two natures in Christ remain unexplained. The two nature lie beside each other like blocks and their unity cannot be understood at all, unless one pays attention to the hupostasis or persona. The two natures are joined in what is called a hypostatical union by later theology. These two natures, then, are united, namely, in one person and one subsistence, not partitioned or divided in two persons, but in the one and self-same Son and only-born of God, the Logos, the Lord Jesus Christ. The two nature are no longer seen as blocks, but they are animated by one and the same centre of divine life, the Word of God. The person of the Word, in which the two natures of Christ subsist, is itself a relational concept. The Word is a substantial relation to the Father. The Word also contains in oneself the divine picture of all being. Created beings exist, precisely because they are related to their being-thought-by-God, that is, to the Word. In the case of Jesus, his created relation to the Word is, as it were, duplicated by the immediate presence of the Uncreated Relation to the Father, which is the eternal Logos. Jesus is perfectly human, and also perfectly the Logos. Thus the Chalcedonian formula provides a basis for a relational understanding of Jesus as the Christ, but still conflicts with our development of a relational Christology! #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
There we can consider Christ an eternal God-man-unity or eternal Godmanhood, this is a Trinitarian theology. The Christ is not God. He may be called divine because what he manifests is the eternal ground of being. The event of Jesus as the Christ remains unique. It is made possible by what it reveals, namely that there is an eternal unity of God and humans within the divine life. For most humans, this unity is a potentiality; it is in our life, actualized through finite freedom and therefore ambiguously. On the contrary, in Jesus, the unity of God and humans was actualized against existential disruption in a triumph over ambiguity. The Christ submitted to, and conquered, the tragedy of existence. He thus manifested the New Being for which humankind had been longing. In terms of doctrine, what we can say of this unity of God and human in Christ is limited. Abstract definitions of the nature of this unity are as impossible as psychological investigations into its character. One can only say that it is a community between God and the centre of a personal life which determines all utterances of the life and resists the attempts within existential estrangement to disrupt it. In other words, one can describe Jesus as the Christ: one cannot explain him. The victory belongs to faith, to perceiving the revelatory power of the Christ, not to philosophy or rational theology. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
To the question, What is the Christ? one can answer: He is the New Being, eternal Godmanhood manifested in existence. However, to the question, Who is the Christ? there is no answer. The Christ of history is hidden by two thousand years of piety and research. The Christ of faith is beyond historical or psychological investigation. “Then I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth; for the first Heaven and the first Earth had passed away. And I say the holy city, the New Jerusalem, coming down and I heard a great voice from the throne saying: Behold, the dwelling of God is with humans, he will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more, for the former things have passed away. Behold, I make all things new,” reports Revelations 21.1-5. Let us mediate on the old and the new, in ourselves and in our World. In these Biblical texts the new is contrasted with the old: the old is rejected, and there is stated, in passionate words, expectations of the new. Even the Preacher, who denies the possibility of anything really new on Earth, does not hide one’s longing for the new, and his disappointment in not being able to find it. Why do these writers feel and speak in this way? Why do they prefer the new to the old, and why do they believe that God is the God of the new? Why do they demand and expect the new birth, the new heart, the new human, the new covenant, the New Jerusalem, the new Heaven and the new Earth? #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
They do not announce the new because they believe what many people of the last decades have believed: that the later things are better than the former things simply because they are later; that new developments are more divine than old ones, because they are nearer to a final perfection; that God guarantees a perpetual progress, and that for this reason He is the God the new. Against such illustrations the disappointed words of the Preacher are true for all history. And certainly such illusions are not the content of the prophetic and apostolic preaching concerning the new. What is the content of their expectation? What do they mean when they warn us not to consider the things of old? What are those old things, and what are the new things which they ask us to see and to accept? “Old” sometimes means that which lasts through all times, that which is today as it was in the past and as it shall be in all the future. There is something that does not age, something that is always old and always new and at the same time, because it is eternal. God is sometimes called the “ancient of days” or the “Redeemer of old.” The wisdom of old and the law of God, which are as old as the foundations of the Earth, are praised just because they are old; nothing new is set against them as no new God is set against the God of old. “Old” as it is used here means “everlasting,” pointing to that which is no subject to change. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
However, in the texts we have read from the words of the unknown prophet of the exile, in the 43rd chapter of Isaiah, “old” means just the opposite. It means that which passes away and all shall not be remembered any more—the destiny of everything created, of the stars as well as of the grass in the field, of humans as well as of animals, of nations as well as of the Earth. They all become old and pass away. What does it mean to say that somebody or something becomes old? All life grows; it desires and strives to grown, and it lives as long as it grows. Humans always have been fascinated by the law of growth. They have called that which helps growth good, an they have called that which hinders it evil. However, let us look more deeply into the law of growth of a living cell or of a human soul or of a historical period, we see that growth is gain and loss at the same time; it is both fulfillment and sacrifice. Whatever grows must sacrifice many possible developments for one through which it chooses to grow. One who wants to grow as a scientist many have to sacrifice poetic or political possibilities which one would like to develop. One has to pay a price. One cannot grow equally in all directions. The cells of the body lose the lower to adapt themselves to other functions. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
Periods of history which are determined by one idea suppress the truth of others possible ideas. Every decision excludes possibilities and makes our life narrower. Every decision makes us older and more mature. Youth is openness. However, every decision closes doors. And that cannot be avoided; it is an inescapable destiny. Life makes decisions in every moment; life closes doors in every moment. We proceed from the first minute of our lives to the las minute, because we are growing. The law of growth lends us greatness, and therefore tragedy. For the excluded possibilities belong to us; they have right of their own. Therefore, they take their vengeance upon our lives which have excluded them. They may die; and with them, great powers of life and large resources of creativity. For life, as it grows, becomes a restricted power, more rigid and inflexible, less able to adapt itself to new situations and new demands. Or, on the other hand, the excluded possibilities may not die. They may remain within us, repressed, hidden, and dangerous, prepared to break into the life process, not as a creative resource, but as a destructive disease. Those are the two ways in which the aging life drives toward its own end: the way of self-limitation, and the way of self-destruction. Often the two ways merge, carrying death into all realms of life. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Many of the phenomena we have discussed can also be linked to a compulsive American tendency to avoid confrontation of chronic social problems. This avoiding tendency often comes as a surprise to international travelers, who tend to think as Americans as pragmatic and down-to-Earth. However, while trying to solve long-range social problems with short-run “hardware” solutions produces a lot of hardware—a down-to-Earth result, surely—it can hardly be considered practical when it aggravates the problems, as it almost always does. American pragmatism is deeply irrational in this respect, and in our hearts we have always know it. One of the favourite themes of American cartoonists is the man who paints himself into a corner, saws off the limb he is sitting on, or runs out of space on he sign he is printing. The scientist of science-fiction and horror films, whose experimentation leads to disastrously unforeseen consequences, is a more anxious representation of this same awareness that the most future-oriented nation in the World shows a deep incapacity to plan ahead. We are, as a people, perturbed by our inability to anticipate the consequences of our acts, but we still wait optimistically for some magic telegram, informing us that the tangled skein of misery and self-deception into which we have woven ourselves has vanished in the night. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
Each month popular magazines regale their readers with such telegrams: announcing that our transportation crisis will be solved by a bigger plane or a wider road, mental illness with a pill, poverty with a law, slums with a bulldozer, urban conflict with gas, racism with a goodwill gesture. Perhaps the most grotesque of all these telegrams was an article in Life showing a group of suburbanites participating in a “Clean-Up Day” in an urban slum. When Americans exhibit this kind of naivete and/or cynicism about social problems, international community members are surprised, but their surprise is inappropriate. Whatever realism we may display in technical areas, our approach to social issues inevitably falls back on cinematic tradition, in which social problems are resolved by gesture. Deeply embedded in the somnolent social consciousness of the broom wielding suburbanites is a series of climactic movie scenes in which a long column of once surly natives, marching in solemn silence and as one man, framed by the setting Sun, turn in their weapons to the chief who has done them a good turn, or menace the adventurer’s enemy (who turns pale at the sight), or rebuild the missionary’s church, destroyed by fire. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
When a social problem persists (as they tend to do) longer than a few days, those who call attention to its continued presence are viewed as “going too far” and “causing the pendulum to swing the other way.” We can make war on poverty but shrink from the extensive readjustments required to stop breeding it. Once a law is passed, a commission set up, a study made, a report written, the problem is expected to have been “wiped out” or “mopped up.” Bombs abroad are matched by “crash programs” at home—the terminological similarity reveals a psychological one. Our approach to transportation problems has had the effect, as many people have observed, of making it easier to travel to more and more paces that have become less and less worth driving to. Asking us to consider the manifold consequences of chopping down a forest, draining a swamp, spraying field with poison, making it easier to drive into an already crowded city, or selling deadly weapons to everyone who wants them arouses in us the same impatience as a chess problem would in a hyperactive six-year-old. The avoiding tendency lies at the very root of American character. This nation was settled and continuously repopulated by people who were not personally successful in confronting the social conditions obtaining in their mother country, but fled these conditions in the hope of a better life. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
This series of choices (reproduced in the westward movement) provided a complex selection process—populating America disproportionately with a certain kind of person. In the past we have always, explicitly or implicitly, stressed the beneficial side of this selection, implying that America thereby found itself blessed with an unusual number of energetic, mobile, ambitions, daring, and optimistic persons. Now there is no reason to deny that a number of traits must have helped to differentiate those who chose to come from those who chose to stay, nor that these differences must have generated social institutions and habits of mind that tended to preserve and reproduce these characteristics. However, very little attention has been paid to the more negative aspects of the selection. If we gained the energetic and daring we also gained the lion’s share of the rootless, the unscrupulous, those who value money over relationships, and those who put self-aggrandizement ahead of love and loyalty And most of all, we gained a critically undue proportion of persons, when faced with a difficult situation, tended to chuck the whole thing and flee to a new environment. Escaping, evading, and avoiding are responses which lie at the base of much that is peculiarly American—the suburb, the automobile, the self-service store, and so on. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
These responses also contribute to the appalling discrepancy between our material resources and our treatment of those who cannot adequately care for themselves. This is not argument against institutionalization: American society is not geared to handle these problems in any other way, and this is in fact the point I wish to make. If everything else is left the same, one cannot successfully alter one facet of a social system, for the patterns are interdependent and reinforce one another. In a cooperative, stable society the aged, infirm, or psychotic person can be absorbed by the local community, which knows and understands one. One presents a difficulty which is familiar and which can be confronted daily and directly. This condition cannot be reproduced in our society today—the burden must be carried by a small, isolated, mobile family unit that is not really equipped for it. However, understanding the forces that require us to incarcerate those who cannot function independently in our society does not gives us license to ignore the significance of doing so. The institutions we provide for those who cannot care for themselves are human garbage heaps—they result from and reinforce our tendency to avoid confronting social and interpersonal problems. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
They make life “easier” for the rest of society, just as does the automobile. And just as we find ourselves having to devise ridiculous exercises to counteract the harmful effects of our dependence upon the automobile, so the “ease” of our nonconfronting social technology makes us bored, flabby, and interpersonally insensitive, and our lives empty and mechanical. There is a Christian view of work which makes God the center of the equation. To be sure, God does not remove the curse and its painful, sweaty toil, but He does replace the meaninglessness. Those who have been saved by faith fall heir to this grand declaration: “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do,” reports Ephesians 2.10. Being His workmanship, his work of art, his masterpiece—we are the pinnacle of God’s creation because, above every other created thing (even angels!), we are made in His image. This has mind-boggling possibilities. Beyond his, we have been regenerated—created in Chris Jesus—thus undergoing an even greater second creation. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5.17, “If anyone is in Christ, one is a new creation.” God’s most stupendous creation is made alive in Christ. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
The spiritual life which is reached in work of conversation, is a far greater and more glorious effect than mere being and life. As subjects of Christ’s two creations, we are His ultimate workmanship! As His masterworks, we have been created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Each of us has an eternally designed work assignment which incudes the task, the ability, and a place to serve. Whatever the task to which He has called you, you will be equipped for it as surely as a bird is made for flight. And in doing the works He has called you to do, you will be both more and more His workmanship and more and more your true self. The practical implications of this are stupendous. There is no secular/sacred distinction, for all honest work done for the Lord is sacred. Historians agree that Luther’s understanding of this revolutionized his life, and indeed the World of his day. He wrote: “Your work is a very sacred matter. God delights in it, and through it He wants to bestow His blessings on you. This praise of work should be inscribed on all tools, on the forehead and the faces that sweat from toiling.” There are no first-class and second-class Christians because of their varying jobs. All work is sacramental in nature, be it checking groceries, selling futures, cleaning teeth, driving a street sweeper, teaching, or painting trim. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Everything we do ought to be one to the glory of God. Listen to God’s call to serve Him: “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God,” reports 1 Corinthians 10.31. “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him,” reports Colossians 3.17. “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for humans, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving,” reports Colossians 3.23, 24. You may feel you are in a “nothing job.” Because of the Curse, your job may involve painful toil and yield little job satisfaction. However, you can glorify God where you are by your heart attitude. You may fee your occupation is not holy, but it is if you see it so and do it for God’s glory. You are God’s masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God planned in advance for you. Humans, everything about your work must be directed toward Him—your attitudes, your integrity, your intensity, and your skill. What is this experience like? It is a primary feeling—it feels like receiving the deed to my house. It is the experience of my own aliveness no caring whether it turns out to be an ion or just a wave. It is like when a very young child I once reached the core of a peace and cracked the pit, not knowing what I would find and then feeling the wonder of finding the inner seed, good to eat in its bitter sweetness. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
Knowing that the work I do is for God because I am his masterpiece is like a sailboat in the harbour being given an anchor so that, being made out of Earthly things, it can by means of its anchor get in touch again with the Earth, the ground from which its wood grew; it can lift its anchor to sail but always at times it can cast its anchor to weather the storm or rest a little. It is my saying to Descartes, “I AM, therefore I think, I feel, I do.” It is like an axiom in geometry—never experiencing it would be like going through a geometry course not knowing the firs axiom. It is like going into my very own Garden of Eden where I a beyond good and evil and all other human concepts because my works if for God. It is like the experience of the poets of the intuitive World, the mystics, except that instead of the pure feeling of and union with God it is the finding of and the union with my own being It is like owning Cinderella’s shoe and looking all over the World for the foot it will fit and realizing all of the sudden that one’s own foot is the only one it will fit. It is a “Matter of Fact’ in the etymological sense of the expression. It is like a globe before the mountains and oceans and continents have been drawn on it. It is like a child in grammar finding the subject of the verb in a sentence—in this case the subject would be one’s work and own life span. It is ceasing to feel a theory towards one’s self. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
God has stated that the quintessence of divinity is the power to be. “And it came to pass that they did set guards over the prisoners of the Lamanites, and did compel them to go forth and bury their dead, yea, and also the dead of the Nephites who were slain; and Moroni placed humans over them to guard them while they should perform their labours. And Moroni went to the city of Mulek with Lehi, and took command of the city and gave it unto Lehi. Now behold, this Lehi was a man who had been with Moroni in the more part of all his battles; and he was a man like unto Moroni, and they rejoiced in each other’s safety; yea, they were beloved by each other, and also by all the people of Nephi. And it came to pass that after the Lamanites had finished burying their dead and also the dead of the Nephite, they were marched back into the land of the Nephites, they were marched back into the land Bountiful; and Teancum, by the orders of Moroni, caused that they should commence labouring in digging a ditch round about the land, or the city, Bountiful. And he caused that they should build a breastwork of timbers upon the inner bank of ditch; and they cast up dirt out of the ditch against the breastwork of timbers; and thus they did cause the Lamanites to labour until they had encircled the city of Bountiful round about with a strong wall of timbers and Earth, to an exceeding height. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
“And this city became an exceeding stronghold ever after; and in this city they did guard the prisoners of the Lamanites; yea, even within a wall which they had caused them to build with their own hands. Now Moroni was compelled to cause the Lamanites to labour, because it was easy to guard them while at their labour; and he desired all his forces when he should make an attack upon the Lamanites. And it came to pass that Moroni had thus gained a victory over one of the greatest of the armies of the Lamanites, and had obtained possession of the city of Mulek which was one of the strongest holds of the Lamanites in the land of Nephi; and thus he had also built a stronghold to retain his prisoners. And it came to pass that the did no more attempt a battle with the Lamanites in that year, but he did employ his men in preparing for war, yea, and in making fortifications to guard against the Lamanites, yea, and also delivering their women and their children from famine and affliction, and providing food for their armies. And now it came to pass that the armies of the Lamanites, on the west sea, south, while in the absence of Moroni on account of some intrigue amongst the Nephites, which caused dissensions among them, had gained some ground over the Nephite, which caused dissensions amongst them, had gained some ground over the Nephites, yea, insomuch that they had obtained possession of a number of their cities in that part of the land. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
And thus because of iniquity amongst themselves, yea, because of dissensions and intrigue among themselves they were placed in the most dangerous circumstances. And now behold, I have somewhat to say concerning the people of Ammon, who, in the beginning, were Lamanites; but by Ammon and his brethren, or rather by the power and word of God, they have been converted unto the Lord; and they had been brought down into the land of Zarahemla, and had ever since been protected by the Nephites. And because of their oath they had been kept from taking up arms against their brethren; for they had taken an oath that they never would shed blood more; and according to their oath they would have perished; yea, they would have suffered themselves to have fallen into the hands of their brethren, had it not been for the pity and the exceeding love which Ammon and his brethren had had for them. And for this cause they were brought down into the land of Zarahemla; and they ever had been protected by the Nephites. However, it came to pass that when they saw the danger, and the many afflictions and tribulations which the Nephites bore for them, they were moved with compassion and were desirous to take up arms in the defence of their country. However, behold, as they were about to take their weapons of war, they were overpowered by the persuasions of Helaman and his brethren for they were about to break the oath which they had made. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
“And Helaman feared lest by so doing they should lose their souls; therefore all those who had entered into this covenant were compelled to behold their brethren wade through their afflictions, in their dangerous circumstances at this time. However, behold, it came to pass they had many sons, who had not entered into a covenant that they would not take their weapons of war to defend themselves against their enemies; therefore they did assemble themselves together at this time, as many as were able to take u arms, and they called themselves Nephites. And they entered into a covenant to fight for the liberty of the Nephites, yes, to protect the land unto the laying down of their lives; yea, even they covenanted that they never would give up their liberty, but they would fight in all cases to protect the Nephites and themselves from bondage. Now behold, there were two thousand of those young men, who entered into this covenant and took their weapons of war to defend their country. And now behold, as they never had hitherto been a disadvantage to the Nephites, they became now at this period of time also a great support; for they took their weapons of war, and they would that Helaman should be their leader. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
“And they were all young men, and they were exceedingly valiant for courage, and also for strength and activity; but behold, this was not all—they were men who were true at all times in whatsoever thing they were entrusted. Yea, they were men of truth and soberness, for they have been taught to keep the commandments of God and to walk uprightly before him. And now it came to pass that Helaman did march at the head of his two thousand stripling soldiers, to the support of the people in the borders of the land on the south by the west side. And thus ended the twenty and eight year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi,” reports Alma 53.1-23. I speak of He who is beyond comparison, the greatest of Fathers who created all wonders. To us, you are Father, and to everything else. The Father of Friends and the Father of blessings. You do not distinguish between your children, but spread your love freely without judgment or preference. Sabbath, to welcome thee, joyous we haste; fountain of blessing from ever thou wast—first in God’s planning, though fashioned the last, Crown of His handiwork, chiefest of days. City of holiness, filled are the years; up from thine overthrow! Forth from thy fears! Log hast thou dwelt in the valley of tears, now shall God’s tenderness shepherd thy ways. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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You Always Hold Your Loved One in Your Heart, but You Must Let Go of Your Grief!
We have probed the Earth, excavated it, burned it, ripped things from it, buried things in it….That does not fit my definition of a good tenant. If we were here on a month-to-moth bases, we would have been evicted long ago, and perhaps that is what is going on with COVID-19. Perhaps the Earth is tired of being abused. After 96 percent of wildfires are caused by humans. Reentering America, one is struck first of all by the grim monotony of American facial expressions—hard, surly, and bitter—and by the aura of deprivation that informs them. One goes abroad forewarned against exploitation by grasping foreigners, but nothing is done to prepare the returning traveler for the fanatical acquisitiveness of one’s compatriots. It is difficult to become reaccustomed to seeing people already weighted down with possession acting as if every object they did not own were bread withheld from a hungry mouth. These perceptions are heightened by the contrast between the sullen faces of real people and the vision of happiness television offers: men and women ecstatically engaged in stereotyped symbols of fun—running through fields, strolling on beaches, dancing and singing. Smiling faces with chronically open mouths express their gratification with the manifold bounties offered by the culture. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
One begins to feel there is a sever gap between the fantasies Americans life by and the realities they live in. Americans know from an early age how they are supposed to look when happy and what they are supposed to do or buy to be happy. However, for some reason their fantasies are unrealizable and leave them disappointed and embittered. The traveler’s antennae disappear after a time. These impressions fade, and reentry process is gradually effected. American once again seem familiar, comfortable, ordinary. Yet some uneasiness lingers on, for the society seems troubled and self-preoccupied—as if suddenly large numbers of America were scrutinizing their own society with the doubtful eyes of a traveler. One of the functions of a society is to make its inhabitants feel safe, and American devote more of their collective resources to security than to any other need. They build McMansions in gated communities, have cameras inside and outside the home, every member of the family has a mobile phone and every kind of insure you can dream of. Some people even go as far as buying armored (bullet proof) Ultimate Driving Machines. Yet American still think they need more safety because of shotguns in the close, nuclear bombers patrolling overhead, and the fiction the passes as news. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
With each decade we seem to accumulate more fears, and most of these fears seem to be about each other. In the fifties we were afraid of native Communists, and although we now feel sheepish about that moment of panic, today we express the same kind of fears about the mainstream media and the political party; and in our reactions to all of these fears we have created some very real dangers. Our intense fears make many people believe their race, way of life, religion, wealth, family, home and country are in danger of total extinction. During this COVID-19 crisis, many people have seriously become fearful of a World War III. Given this lack of concern for an overwhelming threat, how can we account for the exaggerated fear of climate change? From Dr. Freud we learned long ago to suspect, when a fear seems out of proportion, that is has been bloated by a wish; and this seems particularly likely when the danger is defined as a psychological one—an evil influence. The truth about climate change is if we want to save the World, we need to stop destroying forests and rain forests. We fear storms and wild beasts, but we do not censor them. If we must guard ourselves against evil influences we there by admit to their seductive appeal. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
Thus the McCarthy era reached its peak after the discovery that a few Americans has responded to “brainwashing” efforts, and the fear of conversion to Communism was quite explicit in public statements and popular surveys. One survey respondent, for example, made the revealing statement that “so many people in America are eager like those soldiers of ours in Korea to fall into the traps set by Communist propaganda.” The anticommunism of that period and its institutional residues have served as a kind of political fig leaf. The same emphasis surrounds of fears of radicalism today. The political party, peace demonstrations, militance, dens, and student protests are disturbing not only because they provide a serious physical danger (say the equivalent of walking through a street gang wearing the wrong colour), but also because we fear having our secret doubts about the viability of our social system voiced aloud. It is not what happens abroad that generates hysteria, but rather what appears to be happening within ourselves. This is why force must be used against the expression of certain ideas—if the ideas pluck a responsive chord counterarguments are difficult to remember, and one must fall back on clubs and tear gas. However, what is the nature of the attraction exerted by radical ideas on unwilling conservatives? #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
We know something about the hopes that tige the old maid’s search for a ravisher under her bed, but we need to understand better the seductive impact that informs our enraged fascination with the revolutionary currents of American society. Since the very form of this question rests on certain assumptions about culture and personality, however, let me first makes these explicit. The emotional repertory of human beings is limited and standard. When caressed, we are built to feel warm, happy, and content, when frustrated feel angry, when attacked feel frightened, when insulted feel offended, when excluded jealous, and so on. However, every culture holds some of these human reactions to be unacceptable and attempts to warp its participants int some peculiar specialization. Since human beings are malleable within limits, the warping is for the most part successfully achieved, so that some learn not to laugh, some not to cry, some not to love, and some not to hate in situations in which these reactions might appropriately be expressed. This cultural warping of human emotionality is eased by compartmentalization: there are special times and places and situations where the disparaged responses are permitted, or classes of people who can provide vicarious satisfaction through conspicuous performance of some kind. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
Yet there are always a few of these responses with which every society and every individual has trouble. They must be shouted down continually, although they are usually visible to the outsider. Thus although the Germans, for example, have always placed great stress on order, precision, and obedience to authority, they periodically explode into revolutionary chaos and are driven by romantic Gotterdammerung fantasies. In the same way there is a cooperative underside to competitive America, a rich spoofing tradition in ceremonious England, an elaborate pornography in all prudish societies, and so on. Rather than saying Germans are obedient or Anglo-Saxon societies stuffy or puritanical, it is more correct to day that Germans are preoccupied with issues of authority, Anglo-Saxons with the control of emotional and pleasures of the flesh expression, and so forth. Those issues about which members of a given society seem to feel strongly all reveal a conflict one side of which is strongly emphasized, the other side as strongly (but not quite successfully) suppressed. These opposing forces are much more equally balanced than the society’s participants like to recognize—were this not true there would be no need for suppression. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
Life would indeed be much less frantic if we were all able to recognize the diversity of responses and feelings within ourselves, and could abandon our somewhat futile efforts to present a monolithic self-portrait to the World. Probably some exaggeration of uniformity is necessary, however, in order for us to act at all, or at least with enough consistency to permit smooth social functioning. On the individual level the delicate balance reveals itself though conversion. An individual who “converts” from one orientation to its exact opposite appears to oneself and others to have made a gross change, but actually it involves only a very small shift in the balance of a focal and persistent conflict. Just as only one percent of the voting population is needed to reserves the results of an American election, so only one percent of an individual’s internal “constituencies” need shift in order to transform one from voluptuary to ascetic, from police officer to criminal, from Communist to anticommunist, or whatever. The opposite sides are as evenly matched before, and the apparent change merely represents the desperate efforts made by the internal “majority” to consolidate its shaky position of dominance. The individual must expend just as much energy shouting down the new “minority” as one did the old; some of the most dedicated witch hunters of the 1950’s, for example, were ex-Communist. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
So the reason there is so much division in America right now is because the majority is now becoming the minority, as the demographics change. On the society levels there are more outlets from the expression of “minority” themes and sentiments, and reversals of emphasis involve more overlap between the opposing trends. The United States of America, for example, traditionally one of the most prudish societies in the World, has long displayed, in a somewhat warped and mechanical way, the greatest profusion of stimuli involving pleasures of the flesh. These considerations suggest that the fear of radical movements in America derives much of its intensity from the attraction that such movements have for their opponents—an attraction that must be stifled. However, what is it? What is so severely lacking in our society that the assertion of an alternative life style throws so many Americans into panic and rage? I would like to suggest three human desires that are deeply and uniquely frustrated by American culture: The desire for community—the wish to live in trust and fraternal cooperation with one’s fellows in a total and visible collective eternity. The desire for engagement—the wish to come directly to grips with social and interpersonal problems and to confront on equal terms an environment which is not composed of ego extensions is another human desire that is deeply and uniquely frustrated by American culture. #RandolphHarris 8 of 24
The third is the desire for dependence—the wish to share responsibility for the control of one’s impulses and the direction of one’s life. When I say that these three desires are frustrated by American culture, this need not conjure up romantic images of individual struggling against society. In every case it is fair to say that we participate eagerly in producing the frustration we endure—it is not something merely done t us. For these desires are in each case subordinate to their opposites in that vague entity called the American Character. Americans have voluntarily created and voluntarily maintained a society which increasingly frustrates and aggravate these secondary yearnings, to the point where they threaten to become primary. Groups that in any way personify this threat are therefore feared in an exaggerated way, and will be until Americans as a group are able to recognize and accept those needs within themselves. “Thus says the Lord Who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters. Remember not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing, even now it is springing to light. Do you not perceive it? A way will I make in the wilderness and rivers in the desert!” (Isaiah 43.16, 18-19.) #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
Most of the conditions we commonly speak of as feelings are really not feelings at all; but the feeling tones or sensations that accompany those conditions are so powerful that the conditions themselves become identified with the associated sensations. This is true love and hatred or contempt, for example, but also with hurry and peace and with self-esteem and discouragement. Now, there are some extremely serious dangers here. When we confuse the condition with the accompanying feeling—peace, for example, with the feeling of peacefulness—we very likely will try to manage the feelings and disregard or deny the reality of the conditions. That way lie such things as “falling in love with love” and most of all the well-known addictions. The person who primarily wants the feeling of being loved or being “in love” will be incapable of sustaining loving relationships, whether with God or with other humans. And the person who wants the feeling of peacefulness will be unable to do the things that make for peace—especially, doing what is right and confronting evil. So, as far as our planning for spiritual formation is concerned, we must choose and act with regard to the condition, good or bad, and allow the feelings to take care of themselves, as they certainly will. #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
In particular, we must never directly cherish, protect, or manipulate feelings, whether in ourselves or others. When negative feelings have themselves become so overwhelming that they threaten to take over our lives, this is the only exception to this rule. Then we must take steps to remove the negative feeling (grief or pain, for example). Prayer or even medication for such feelings is then wise. However, even so, the focus on the feeling must not be allowed to prevent our dealing, when and as we can, with the conditions from which that feelings arises. A well-known minister, after his wife passed away, said he had learned that there is a difference between turning loose your loved one and turning loose your grief. You always hold your loved one in your heart, but you must let go of your grief. So far as possible, we must always away from painful and destructive feelings. Simply that. Walk away. “Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. Not like the covenant which I made with their fathers. On the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, so that I had to reject them. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
However, this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them and write it in their hearts; and I will be their God and they shall be my people for I will forgive their guilt and I will remember their sins no more,” reports Jeremiah 31.31-34. Charles Darwin. Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) has offered a model of emotion for various other theorists and researchers. Darwin focuses on emotive expressions—that is, on visible gestures—and not on the subjective meanings associated with them. These gestures, he posits, were acquired during a prehistoric period and have survived as “serviceable associated habits.” Originally linked to actions these emotive gestures become actions manque. The emotion of love, for example, is the vestige of what was once a direct act of copulation. The baring of teeth in rage is a vestige of the once immediate act of biting. The expression of disgust is the vestige of what was once the immediate act of regurgitating a noxious thing. For Darwin, there is no emotion without gesture although there may be gesture without action. (The says the Lord God: ) “I will give them a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within them. I will remove their heart of stone and will give them a heart of flesh,” reports Ezekiel 11.19. #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
Darwin’s theory of emotion, then, is a theory of gesture. The question for later students thus became: are emotive gestures universal or are they culturally specific? Darwin’s own general conclusion was that they were universal. Darwin distinguished between facial expressions of emotion that are innate and universal and facial gestures (not necessarily of emotion) that are learned and thus culturally variable. He devised a sixteen-item questionnaire and sent it to thirty-six missionaries and others who had lived in non-Western societies. One question was: “Can a dogged or obstinate expression be recognized, which is chiefly shown by the mouth being firmly closed, a lowering brow, and a slight frown?” Based on his returned questionnaires, Darwin concluded that “the chief expressive actions” of human beings were innate and therefore universal. Despite his generally universalist interpretations, however, Darwin concluded that some nonverbal behaviours (such as weeping, kissing, nodding, and shaking the head in affirmation and negation) were not universal but culture-specific and “learned like the words of a language.” However, the debate has been carried forward by those who argue that emotional expressions are probably innate, and those who argue that they are modeled on language and therefore culturally variable. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
What is missing from both sides of this debate is what was missing in Darwin’s theory from the beginning: a conception of emotion as subjective experience and a more subtle and complex notion of how social factor impinge. Humans compete with each other for control of the ritual apparatus, which is a powerful tool for commanding people by controlling their emotions. The ego is a mediator between the id (drive) and conscious expression. Affects are seen as signals of impending danger (from inside or outside) and as an impetus to action. The ego is assigned the capacity to postpone id drives, to neutralize or bind them. One emotion—anxiety—is the model for all others because it is more important due to the unpleasantness of anxiety which leads to the development of various ego defenses against unpleasantness. As analysts we recognize that anxiety occupies a special position in mental life. It is the motive for defense. Defenses serve the purpose of minimizing, or, if possible, preventing the development of anxiety. Anxiety was initially defined in a way that bypasses the ego: anxiety is the reaction to an influx of stimuli which is too great for the mental apparatus to master or discharge. (Thus says the Lord God: ) “I ignore the troubles of the past. I shut mine eyes to them. For, behold, I create new Heavens and a new Earth. The past shall be forgotten and never come to mind. Humans shall rejoice forever in what I now create,” reports Isaiah 65.16, 17. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
So we see that God is a worker and that humans, created in God’s image, is a worker and that work is good. However, then come the Fall and the Curse. “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return,” Genesis 3.17-19. The Curse made nature uncooperative, so that work became painful toil and humans had to sweat for a living. Today our working conditions vary. Some sweat more than others. We may be in a better position than some. However, the norm for the World is “painful toil.” Even more, the normal experience of humankind is one’s labour is a malaise of futility. The writer of Ecclesiastes gave this universal expression as he bemoaned his plight from the perspective of one who leaves God out of his life. In 2.4-10 he describes his professional success in acquiring vineyards and gardens and parks and enslaved humans and flocks and treasures. He was greater than all his contemporaries. He was denied nothing his eyes desired. However, he concluded in verse 11, “Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing gained under the Sun.” #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
And he reiterates in verse 17, “So I hated life, because the work that is done under the Sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the win.” Humans and others, this is as far as work will take you apart from God. You will engaged in it because, though fallen, you are in the image of God and because work is part of the natural order, and it will produce its benefits and satisfactions—but it will also be toil, and its joys will be ephemeral. Studs Terkel has revealed what has always been true under the Sun when God is left out. “And now it came to pass that Moroni did not stop making preparations for war, or to defend his people against the Lamanites; for he caused that his armies should commence in the commencement of the twentieth year of the reign of the judges, that they should commence in digging up heaps of Earth round about all the cities, throughout all the land which was possessed by the Nephites. And upon the top of these ridges of Earth he caused that there should be timers, yea, works of timbers built up to the height of a human, round about the cities. And he caused that upon those works of timbers there should be a frame of pickets built upon the timbers round about; and they were strong and high. And he caused towers to be erected that overlooked those works of pickets, and he caused places of security to be built upon those towers, that the stones and the arrows of the Lamanites could not hurt them. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
“And they were prepared that they could cast stones from the top thereof, according to their pleasure and their strength, and slay one who should attempt to approach near he walls of the city. Thus Moroni did prepare strongholds against the coming of their enemies, round about every city in all the land. And it came to pass that Moroni caused that his armies should go forth into the east wilderness; yea, and they went forth and drove all he Lamanites who were in the east wilderness into their own lands, which were south of the land of Zarahemla. And the land of Nephi did run in a straight course from the east sea to the west. And it came to pass that when Moroni had driven all the Lamanites out of the east wilderness which was north of the lands of their own possessions, he caused that the inhabitants who were in the land of Zarahemla and in the land round about should go forth into the east wilderness, even to the borders by the seashore, and possess the land. And he also placed armies on the south, in the borders of their possessions, and caused them to erect fortifications that they might secure their armies and their people from the hands of their enemies. And thus he cut off all the strongholds of the Lamanites in the East wilderness, yea, and also on the west, fortifying the line between the land of Zarahemla and the land of Nephi, from the west sea, running by the head of the river of Sidon—the Nephites possessing all the land northward, yea, even all the land which was northward of the land Bountiful according to their pleasure. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
“Thus Moroni, with his armies, which did increase daily because of the assurance of protection which his works did bring forth unto them, did seek to cut off the strength and the power of the Lamanites from off the lands of their possession, that they should have no power upon the lands of their possession. And it came to pass that the Nephites began the foundation of a city, and they called the nae of the city Moroni; and it was by the east sea; and it was on the south by the line of the possessions of the Lamanites. And they also began a foundation for a city between the city of Moroni and the city of Aaron, joining he borders of Aaron and Moroni; and they called the name of the city, or the land, Nephihah. And they also began in that same year to build many cities on the north, one in a particular manner which they called Lehi, which was in the north by the borders of the seashore. And thus ended the twentieth year. And in these prosperous circumstances were the people of Nephi in the commencement of the twenty and first year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And they did prosper exceedingly, and they became exceedingly rich; yea, and they did multiply and wax strong in the land. And thus we see how merciful and jus are all the dealings of the Lord, to the fulfilling of all his words unto the children of humans; yea, we can behold that his words are verified, even at this time, which he spake unto Lehi, saying: #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
“Blessed art thou and thy children; and they shall be blessed, inasmuch as they shall keep my commandments they shall prosper in the land. However, remember, inasmuch as they will not keep my commandments they shall prosper in the land. However, remember, inasmuch as they will not keep my commandments they shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord. And we see that these promises have been verified to the people of Nephi; for it has been their quarrelings and their contentions, yea, their murderings, and their plunderings, their idolatry, their whoredoms, and their abominations, which were among themselves, which brought them their wars and their destructions. And those who were faithful in keeping the commandments of the Lord were delivered at all times, whilst thousands of their wicked brethren have been consigned to bondage, or to perish by the sword, or to dwindle in unbelief, and mingle with the Lamanites. However, behold, there was never a happier time among the people of Nephi, since the days of Nephi, than in the days of Moroni, yea, even at this time, in the twenty and first year of the reign of the judges. And it came to pass that the twenty and second year of the reign of the judges also ended in peace; yea, and also the twenty and third year. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
“And it came to pass that in the commencement of the twenty and fourth year of the reign of the judges, there would also have been peace among the people of Nephi had it not been for a contention which took place among them concerning the land of Lehi, and the land of Morianton, which joined upon the borders of Lehi; both of which were on the borders by the seashore. For behold, the people who possessed the land of Morianton did claim a part of the land of Lehi; therefore there began to be a warm contention between them, insomuch that the people of Morianton took up arms against their brethren, and they were determined by the sword to slay them. However, behold, the people who possessed the land of Lehi fled to the camp of Moroni, and appealed unto him for assistance; for behold they were not in the wrong. And it came to pass that when the people of Morianton, who were led by a man whose name was Morianton, found that the people of Lehi had fled to the camp of Moroni they were exceedingly fearful lest the army of Moroni should come upon them and destroy them. Therefore, Morianton put it into their hearts that they should flee to the land which was northward, which was covered with large bodies of water, and take possession of the land which was northward. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
“And behold, they would have carried this plan into effect, (which would have been a cause to have been lamented) but behold, Morianton being a man of much passion, therefore he was angry with one of his maid servants, and he fell upon her and beat her much. And it came to pass that she fled, and came over to the camp of Moroni, and told Moroni all things concerning the matter, and also concerning their intentions to flee into the land northward. Now behold, the people who were in the land Bountiful, or rather Moroni, feared that they would hearken to the words of Morianton and unite with his people, and thus he would obtain possession of those parts of the land, which would lay a foundation for serious consequences among the people of Nephi, yea, which consequences would lead to the overthrow of their liberty. Therefore Moroni sent an army, with their camp, to head the people of Morianton, to stop their flight into the land northward. And it came to pass that they did not head them until they had come to the borders of the land Desolation; and there they did head them, by the narrow pass which led by the sea into the land northward, yea, by the sea, on the west and on the east. And it came to pass that the army which was sent by Moroni, which was led by a man whose name was Teancum did meet the people of Morianton. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
And when Teancu met the people of Morianton, so stubborn were the people of Morianton, (being inspired by wickedness and his flattering words) that a battle commenced between them, in which Teancum did slay Morianton and defeat his army, and took them prisoners, and returned to the camp of Moroni. And thus ended the twenty and fourth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And thus were the people of Morianton brought back. And upon their covenanting to keep the peace they were restored to the land of Morianton, and a union took place between them and the people of Lehi; and they were also restored to their lands. And it came to pass that in the same year that the people of Nephi had peace restored unto them, that Nephihah, the second chief judge, died, having filled the judgment seat with perfect uprightness before God. Nevertheless, he had refused Alma to take possession of those records and those things which were esteemed by Alma and his fathers to be most sacred; therefore Alma had conferred them upon his son, Helaman. Behold, it came to pass that the son of Nephihah, Pahoran, was appointed to fill the judgment-seat, in the stead of his father; yea, he was appointed chief judge and governor over the people, with an oath and sacred ordinance to judge righteously, and to keep the peace and the freedom of the people. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
Pahoran also had the power to grant unto them their sacred privileges to worship the Lord their God, yea, to support and maintain the cause of God all his days, and to bring the wicked to justice according to their crime. And Pahoran did fill the seat of his father, and did commence his reign in the end of the twenty and fourth year, over the people of Nephi,” Alma 50.1-40. Wonder and awe, as I sit in your presence, you who sit in the gateway, in this World and in the other, mediating the power that shines through, letting pass what I need, and what I can use, holding back in mercy what I cannot. Seen against the brightness, your dark silhouette is still and sharp and clear. Sitting fiercely, with perfect intent, pure in your purpose, source of terror and comfort. A roaring fire, you sit in my heart’s center. A rampaging bull, you tear through my soul. A searing bolt, you cut through my life. A skirring arrow, you slice me in two. A standing stone, you are my anchor. The Lord reigneth while the people stand in awe; He is enthroned upon His judgment seat, while the Earth trembles. The Lord is mighty in Zion; He is exalted over all peoples. They praise His name: “God is great and revered, is holy.” Mighty King who loveth justice, Thou hast established equity; Justice and righteousness hast Thou wrought in Jacob. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
A tall-standing cypress tree is our God, supporting the Worlds on his limbs, each World ordered according to the spreading of His branches. Into each World, His twigs extend, bearing the leaves and birds that are our lives. From what source is the tree nourished? Where do its roots extend? Deep within the void they reach and are fed there from the substance of the Goddess. He makes known her will, giving it form, from which we might know it and live according to its pattern. Shaper and essence, open my eyes, open my ears, open my heart, that I might perceive the sacred pattern and conform my life to it. The goddess is the one who is Lady of all, and she is the one of whom I would speak, the one who gives birth and the one who brings death, beginning and end of the course of our lives. God is the Lord Almighty. Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at His footstool, declaring: “Holy is He!” Moses and Aaron were among His priests; Samuel was among those that called upon His name, calling upon the Lord and being answered. He would speak unto them out of a pillar of cloud; they kept His testimonies and the laws He gave them. Thou, O Lord, didst answer them; Thou wast a forgiving God unto them, through punishing them for their evil. Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at His holy mountain; for the Lord our God is holy. #RandolphHarris 24 of 24
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Lives Have Been Elevated and Lives Have Been Cast Down by Human Speech!
Life is an answered question, but let us believe in the dignity and importance of the question. All laws being founded on rewards and punishments, it is supposed as a fundamental principle, that these motives have a regular and uniform influence on the mind, and both produce the god and prevent the evil actions. We may give to this influence what name we please; but, as it is usually conjoined with the action, it must be esteemed a cause, and be looked upon as an instance of that necessity, which we would here establish. The only proper object of hatred or vengeance, is a person or creature, endowed with thought and consciousness; and when any criminal or injurious actions excite that passion, it is only by their relation to the person, or connexion with one. Actions are, by their very nature, temporary and perishing; and where they proceed not from some case in the character and disposition of the person who performed them, they can neither redound to one’s honour, if good; nor infamy, if evil. The actions themselves may be blameable; they may be contrary to all the rules of morality and religion: However, the person is not answerable for them; and as they proceeded from nothing in one, that is durable and constant, and leave nothing of that nature behind them, it is impossible one can, upon their account, become the object of punishment or vengeance. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
According to the principle, therefore, which denies necessity, and consequently causes, a human is as pure and untainted, after having committed the most horrid crime, as at the first moment of one’s birth, nor is one’s character any wise concerned in one’s actions; since they are not derived from it, and the wickedness of the one can never be used as a proof of the depravity of the other. Humans are not blamed for such actions, as they perform ignorantly and casually, whatever may be the consequences. Why? but because the principles of these actions are only momentary, and terminate in them alone. Humans are less blamed for such actions as they perform hastily and unpremeditatly, than for such as proceed from deliberation. For what reason? but because a hasty temper, though a constant cause of principle in the mind, operates only by intervals, and infects not the whole character. Again, repentance wipes off every crime, if attended with a reformation of life and manners. How is this to be accounted for? but by asserting, that actions render a person criminal, merely as they are proofs of criminal principles in the mind; and when, by an alteration of these principles, they cease to be just proofs, they likewise cease to be criminal. However, expect upon the doctrine of necessity, they never were just proofs, and consequently never were criminal. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
When any opinion leads to absurdities, it is certainly false; but it is not certain than an opinion is false, because it is of dangerous consequence. 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. We believe that our actions are subject to our own will, on most occasions; and imagine we believe, that the will itself is subject to nothing, because, when by a denial of it we are provoked to try, we believe, that it moves easily every way, and produces an image of itself, even on that side, on which it did not settle. This image, or faint motion, we persuade ourselves, could, at that time, have been completed into the thing 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. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
It seems a proposition, which will not admit of much dispute, that all our ideas are nothing but copies of our impressions, or, in other words, that it is impossible for us to think of anything, which we have not antecedently felt, either by our external or internal senses. I have endeavoured to explain and prove this proposition, and have expressed my hopes, that, by a proper application of it, humans many reach a greater clearness and precision in philosophical reasoning, than that they have hitherto been able to attain. Complex ideas may, perhaps, be well known by definition, which is nothing but an enumeration of those parts or simple ideas, that compose them. However, when we have pushed up definitions to the most simple ideas, and find still some ambiguity and obscurity; what resources are we then possessed of? By what invention can we throw light upon these ideas, and render them altogether precise and determinate to our intellectual view? Procedure the impressions or original, sentiments, from which these ideas are copied. These impressions are all strong and sensible. They admit not of ambiguity. They are not only places in a full light themselves, but many throws light on their correspondent ideas, which lie in obscurity. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
And by this means, we may, perhaps, attain a new microscope or species of optics, by which, in the moral sciences, the most minute, and most simple ideas may be so enlarged as to fall readily under our apprehension, and be equally known with the grossest and most sensible ideas, that can be the object of our enquiry. To be fully acquainted, therefore, with the idea of power of necessary connexion, let us examine its impression; and in order to find the impression with greater certainty, let us search for it in all the courses, from which it may possible be derived. It may be said, that we are every moment conscious of internal power; while we feel, that, by the simple command of our will, we can move the organs of our body, or direct the faculties of our mind. An act of volition produces motion in our limbs, or raises a new idea in our imagination. This influence of the will we know by consciousness. Hence we acquire the idea of power or energy; and are certain, that we ourselves and all other intelligent beings are possessed of power. This idea, then, is an idea of reflection, since it arises from reflecting on the operations of our own mind, and on the command which is exercised by will, both over the organs of the body and faculties of the soul. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
This influence, we may observe, is a fact, which, like all other natural events, can be known only by experience, and can never be foreseen from any apparent energy or power in the cause, which connects it with the effect, and renders the one an infallible consequence of the other. The motion f our body follows upon the command of our will. Of this we are every moment conscious. However, the means, by which this effected; the energy, by which the will performs so extraordinary an operation; of this we are so far from being immediately conscious, that it must for ever escape our most diligent enquiry. For first; is there any principle in all nature more mysterious than the union of soul with body; by which a supposed spiritual substance acquires such an influence over a material one, that the most refined thought is able to actuate the grossest matter? Were we empowered, by a secret wish, to remove mountains, or control the planets in their orbit; this extensive authority would not be more extraordinary, nor more beyond our comprehension. However, if by conscious we perceived any power or energy in the will, we must know the secret union of the soul and body, and the nature of both these substances; by which the one is able to operate, in so many instances, upon the other. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
However, consciousness never deceives. Consequently, we are ever conscious any power. We learn the influence of our will from experience alone. And experience only teaches us, how one event constantly follows another; without instructing us in the secret connexion, which binds them together, and renders them inseparable. Interest in the truth is at the heart of our conversation. Our word “conversation” derives from the same Latin root as “conversion” does, and the possibility of a conversation, of a “turning around,” is always inherent in any true conversation, for when we converse we take part in a game in which exchange, not victory, is the goal, an intellectual game in which no one stars and everyone wins. So much for the preliminaries. We are witnessing the quiet demise of the art of letter writing. Can we still rescue the art of conversation? I fear we cannot, and I find that—to put it mildly—a great pity. I would even go a step further and call it a dreadful shame, for it is symptomatic of a defect in our culture that is no only regrettable but may also prove lethal. Perhaps I can put what I mean this way: We find ourselves giving more and more of our time and energy to things that have a point, that produce results. And when all is said and done, what are those results? Money, perhaps, or fame or a promotion. We hardly ever consider doing something any more that has no purpose. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
We have forgotten that it is possible, even desirable and, above all, pleasurable to do something without a specific goal in mind. One of life’s greatest pleasures is to make use of our powers not to attain a goal but for the sake of an activity itself. Take love, for example. Love has no purpose, though many people might say: Of course it does! It is love, they say, that enables us to satisfy our pleasures of the flesh, marry, have children, and live a normal, middle-class or upper middle-class life. That is the purpose of love. And that is why love is so rare these days, love without goals, love in which the only thing of importance is that act of loving itself. In this kind of love it is being and not consuming that plays the key role. It is human self-expression, the full play of our human capacities. However, in a culture like ours, which is exclusively oriented to external goals like success, production, and consumption, we can easily lose sight of that kind of love. It fades so far into the distance that we can hardly even imagine it as a reality any more. Conversation has become either a commodity or a way of doing battle If the conversational battle takes place in the presence of a large audience, then it assumes the quality of a gladiatorial contest. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
The participants go for each other’s throats, and each one tries to destroy the other. Or they converse merely to show how clever or superior they are. Or they converse to prove to themselves that they are in the right once again. Conversation is a way of demonstrating to themselves that what they happen to think is indeed correct. They go into conversation determined not to admit any new thoughts into their minds. They have their opinion. Each knows what the other will say. Let me give you a little example of what I mean. Suppose two people are on their way home together, two colleagues of mine, two psychoanalysts, and one of them says, “I am kind of tired.” And the other replies, “Me, too.” Now that many sound like a rather banal exchange, but it is not necessarily, for if these two people do the same kind of work, then they know just what the other’s tiredness is like, and so they have engaged in genuine, human communication: “We are both tired, and we have each let the other know how tired we are.” That is much more of a conversation than when two intellectuals start throwing big words around in a discussion of the latest theory about this or that. They are simply holding two separate monologues and do not touch each other at all. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
The art of conversation and joy in conversation (conversation in the sense of being open, being together, usually takes verbal form, but it can also take the form of movement in dancing; there are many ways to converse)—these things will become possible again only if major changes take place in our culture, that is, only if we can rid ourselves of our monomaniacal, goal-oriented way of life. We need to cultivate attitudes that recognize the expression and full realization of human potential as the only worthwhile goals in life. To put it in the simplest possible terms: What matters is being as opposed to having, to just using and consuming and getting ahead. We have much more free time than we used to have (in many cases, as a society people have more leisure time, but a minority of the people have no free time at all), and therefore more opportunity for conversation. However, the more the external circumstances of our lives encourage it, the less internal inclination toward it we seem to have. There is too much that interferes with that being together that keeps a community sane and healthy; there are too many gadgets and Facebook and machines that get in our way. It seems that a very specific and pervasive attitude prevents us from engaging in what we have been calling “conversation” here. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
And now with COVID-19, people are afraid to talk to each other, they will not hug each other nor shake hands, they are prohibited by law from going to church or the hair salon, and schools. Many people can no longer gather in large groups, even in their own homes, so society is becoming anti-social out of fear and the fear is being enforced by state and local governments in the forms of fines, jail time, and other penalties. However, even before COVID-19 was instilling fear in society, I think we could even say that many people (probably the great majority) are afraid of being left alone with each other without some plan of action, without a radio, or Smart TV, without a subject to discuss, without an agenda. They are afraid and feel totally lost. They have no idea what to say to each other. I do not know if this is holds true in Germany or Japan or China, but in the United States of America it is customary never to invite a single individual or just one other couple to your home. You always have to have more guests, because it can be embarrassing if you are only four. In a small company you have to work hard to keep things from being boring, unless you plan to play all your old Motown records. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
If you have a party of six, you still will not have any real conversation, but you will at least avoid painful lulls in the chatter. Somebody will always have something to say. When one person runs out of subjects, someone else can step in. It is a kind of double concert. The music never stops, but no real conversation takes. Place. Victorian times where different, houses were sectioned off into many rooms and often times had a front parlor, near the foyer, to great guest, and another parlor in the back of the house for family. People also had intimate and meaning conversations because traveling was more complicated and communication in general was. So the Victorians enjoyed their intimate gathers and their conversations were as deep as diary entries. In modern times, homes are built for entertainment. The many of the homes have an open concept, which allows for connection of the main living areas and there is even an upstairs lobby in many of the new homes where people can gather out in the open. Many of the new homes made by Cresleigh are designed for entertainment, multi-generational living, spaces where people can come together and communicate in groups. However, in modern times, I suspect a lot of people think that if a form of entertainment does not cost anything it cannot be very satisfying. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Industry propaganda has trained us all to think that happiness comes from objects that we can buy, and very few of us are ready to believe any more that we can live and live very happily without all that stuff. That is a great change from the last, as we have discussed. One hundred and fifty years ago people bought very few things for their entertainment, even people with comfortable middle-class incomes. There was no radio, or Smart TV; there were no cars and no Facebook. However, there was conversation. People even built séance rooms to converse with “spirits.” Of course, if you look upon conversation as a means of “diversion,” hen your conversation will be mere twaddle. Real conversation does not “divert.” It requires concentration, a gather of our powers, not a scattering of them. If a person is not alive within oneself, then one’s conversation cannot be very lively either. However, if they were not afraid to step out of themselves, to show who they really are, to cast off the crutches they think they need to keep from tumbling down to nothingness, if they were not afraid to be alone with themselves and others, there are many people who could be much livelier. The power or energy by which this is effected, like that in other natural events, is unknown and inconceivable. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
We are conscious of a power or energy in our own minds, when, by an act or command of our will, we raise up a new idea, fix the mind to the contemplation of it, turn it on all sides, and at last dismiss I for some other idea, when we think that we have surveyed it with sufficient accuracy. When we know a power, we know that very circumstance in the cause, by which it is enabled to produce the effect: For these are supposed to be synonymous. We must, therefore, know both the cause and effect, and the relation between them. However, we do not pretend to be acquitted with the nature of the human soul and the nature of an idea, or the aptitude of the one to produce the other. This is a real creation; a production of something out of nothing; Which implies a power so great, that may seem, at first sight, beyond the reach of any being, less than infinite. At least it must be owned, that such a power is not felt, nor known, nor even conceivable by the mind. We only feel the event, namely, the existence of an idea, consequent to a command of the will: But the manner, in which this operation is performed; the power, by which it is produced; is entirely beyond our comprehension. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
The command of the mind over itself is limited, as well as its command over the body; and these limits are not known by reason, or any acquaintance with the nature of cause and effect; but only experience and observation, as in all other natural events and in the operation of external objects. Our authority over our sentiments and passions is much weaker than that over our ideas; and even the latter authority is circumscribed within very narrow boundaries. Will any one pretend to assign the ultimate reason of these boundaries, or show why the power is deficient in one case not in another. This self-command is very different at different ties. A human in health possesses more of it, than one languishing with sickness. We are more master of our thought in the morning than in the evening: Fasting, than after a full meal. Can we give any reason for these variations, except experience? Where then is the power, of which we pretend to be conscious? Is there not here, either in a spiritual or material substance, or both, some secret mechanism or structure of parts, upon which the effect depends, and which, being entirely unknown to us, renders the power or energy of the will equally unknown and incomprehensible? #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Volition is surely an act of the mind, with which we are sufficiently acquainted. Reflect upon it. Consider it on all sides. Do you find anything in it like this creative power, by which it raises from nothing a new idea, and with a kind of FIAT, imitates the omnipotence of its Maker, if I may be allowed so to speak, who called forth into existence all the various scenes of nature? So far from being conscious of this energy in the will, it requires as certain experience, as that of which we are possessed, to convince us, that such extraordinary effects do ever result from a simple act of volition. The tongue, so tiny, is immensely powerful. Four reporters, good old body, having a few beers in a Denver bar in 1899, provided the specious spark that ignited the infamous Boxer Rebellion. The tongue is indeed mightier than generals and their armies. It can fuel our lives so they become fiery furnaces, or it can cool our lives with the soothing wind of the Spirit. It can be forged by Hell, or it can be a tool of Heaven. Offered to God on the altar, the tongue has awesome power for god. It can proclaim the life-changing message of salvation: “And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who good news!’” reports Romans 10.14-15. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
The tongue has power for sanctification as we share God’s Word: “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth,” reports John 17.17. It has power for healing: “For when we came into Macedonia, this body of ours had no rest, but we were harassed at every turn—conflict on the outside, fears within. However, God, who comforts the downcast, comforts us by the coming of Titus, and not only by his coming but also by the comfort you had given him. He told us about your longing for me, your deep sorrow, your ardent concern for me, so that my joy was greater than ever,” reports 2 Corinthians 7.5-7. The tongue has power for worship: “Though Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that confess his name,” reports Hebrews 13.15. Humans, it is up to us. No sweat, no sanctification! First, we must ask God t cauterize our lips, confessing as Isaiah did, “Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty” reports Isaiah 6.5. Then we need to submit to the cleansing touch: “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘who shall I send? And who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me,’” reports Isaiah 6.8. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Isaiah’s outline as a spiritual exercise, performed with all one’s heart, will work wonders in our lives. Let us all do this today! In conjunction, there must also be an ongoing prayerfulness regarding the use of our tongues—regular, detailed prayer. This, coupled with the first step, will work a spiritual miracle. We must also resolve to discipline ourselves regarding the use of the tongue, making solemn resolutions such as the following: to perpetually and loving speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4.15). To refrain from being party to or a conduit for gossip (Proverbs 16.28; 17.9; 26.20). To refrain from insincere flatter (Proverbs 26.28). To refrain from running down another (James 4.11). To refrain from degrading humour (Ephesians 5.4). To refrain from sarcasm (Proverbs 26.24-25). To memorize Scriptures which teacher the proper use of the tongue (speech). Human, discipline your tongue for the purpose of Godliness! “Who keeps the tongue doth keep one’s soul.” A flaming spear out of the chaos Dear Lord in Heaven, come to your people and be a skillful hand against the chaos. God, please come to your people and be a mind keenly ordered amidst the chaos. God, please come to your people as a faithful protector through all the chaos. God, please come to your people as we are lost in the expanse of limitless space containing infinite numbers of stars but filled with emptiness. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
We cast ourselves into your measureless darkness, confident that you will come if only we wait. Though the night may be long, we will still wait for you, God, offering our patience in sacrifice to win your presence. “And now, my son, I have somewhat to say concerning the restoration of which has been spoken; for behold, some have wrestled the scriptures, and have gone far astray because of this thing. And I perceive that thy mind has been worried also concerning this thing. However, behold, I will explain it unto thee. I say unto thee, my son, that the plan of restoration is requisite with the justice of God; for it is requisite that all things should be restored to their proper order. Behold, it is requisite and just, according to the power and resurrection of Christ, that the soul of humans should be restored to its body, and that every part of the body should be restored to itself. And it is requisite with the justice of God that humans should be judged according to their works; and if their works were good in this life, and the desires of their hearts were good, that they should also, at the last day, be restored unto that which is good. And if their works are evil they shall be restored unto them for evil. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
Therefore, all things shall be restored to their proper order, every thing to its natural frame—mortality raised to immortality, corruption to incorruption—raised to endless happiness to inherit the kingdom of God, or to endless misery to inherit the kingdom of the devil, the one on one hand, the other on the other—the one raised to happiness according to one’s desires of happiness, or good according to one’s desires of good; and the other to evil according to one’s desires of evil; for as one has desired to do evil all the day long even so shall one have one’s reward of evil when the night cometh. And so it is on the other hand. If one hath repented of one’s sins, and desired righteousness until the end of one’s days, even so one shall be rewarded unto righteousness. These are they that are redeemed of the Lord; yea, these are they that are taken out, that are delivered from that endless night of darkness; and thus they stand or fall; for behold, they are their own judges, whether to do good or do evil. Now, the decrees of God are unalterable; therefore, the way is prepared that whosoever will may walk therein and be saved. And now behold, my son, do not risk one more offense against your God upon those points of doctrine, which ye have hitherto risked to commit sin. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
“Do not suppose, because it has been spoken concerning restoration, that ye shall be restored from sin to happiness. Behold, I say unto you, wickedness never was happiness. And now, my son, all humans that are, in a carnal state, are in he gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity; they are without God in the World, and they have gone contrary to the nature of God; therefore, they are in a state contrary to the nature of happiness. And now behold, is the meaning of the word restoration to take a thing of a natural state and place it in an unnatural state, or to place it in a state opposite to its nature? O, my son, this is not the case; but the meaning of the word restoration is to bring back again evil for evil, or carnal for carnal, or devilish for devilish—good for that which is righteous; just for that which is just; merciful for that which is merciful. Therefore, my son, see that you are merciful unto your brethren; deal justly, judge righteously, and do good continually; and if ye do all these things then shall ye receive your reward; yea, ye shall have mercy restored unto you again; ye shall have justice restored unto you again; ye shall have a righteous judgment restored unto you again; and you shall have good rewarded unto you again. For that which ye do send out shall return unto you again, and be restored; therefore, the word restoration more fully condemneth the sinner, and justifieth one not at all,” reports Alma 41.1-15. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Cresleigh Homes
Time to explore more #CresleighHomes! Our blog today takes a look at #Bluffs, the cul-de-sac community located at #PlumasRanch! Click the link in our bio to give it a read. 👍 https://cresleigh.com/blog/
On the edge of sight I can see a wonder: The Lord in all His glory. If I send swift thoughts racing after Him, I cannot overtake Him; His careful steps keep ahead of my impetuous racing. I call out to God: “Father, for the sake of the one who loves you, I beg you to stop.” He comes to a halt and I can approach. God says, “If you had done that first, it would have been better.” I remember, and call to God in love, and wait for Him to stop for me. May God, who pressed out, is life, is power, may God whose roaring calls us to the ritual, to drink, may God, granting gifts, filling us with immortality, may God, King of the Universe, be praised in His prayer. May God, hear me, come to join me in this rite. May my words draw God hither.
All that Can be Said is, that Two People Happened to Hit on the Same Thought!
When the satisfaction or the security of another person becomes as significant to one as one’s own satisfaction or security, then the state of love exists. Under no other circumstances is a state of love present, regardless of the popular usage of the word. Now, when you think about the power of feeling, one thing quickly becomes clear. No one can succeed in mastering feeling in one’s life who tries to simply take them directly; without hesitation and resist or redirect them by “willpower” in the moment of choice. To adopt that strategy is to radically misunderstand how life and the human will work, or—more likely—it is to have actually decided, deep down, to lose the battle and give in. This is one of the major areas of self-deception in the human heart. The very “giving in” can be among the most exhilarating feelings know to humans, though it can also be one of complete despair and defeat. Those who continue to be mastered by their feelings—whether it is anger, fear, pleasures of the flesh, desire for food or “looking god,” the residues of woundedness, or whatever—are typically persons who in their heart of hearts believe that their feelings must be satisfied. They have long chosen the strategy of selectively resisting their feelings instead of that of not having them—of simply changing or replacing them. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
Of course this is just another way of describing the ruined person, the one who makes oneself “god” in one’s World. To such persons, the idea that they should not honour their feelings is an insult. “Their god is their belly,” it will be recalled. They are enslaved to their feelings—hence “human bondage”—and have no place to stand in dealing with them. Jesus was referring to this situation when he said that “everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin,” reports John 8.34. By contrast, the person who happily let God be God does have a place to stand in dealing with feelings—even in extreme cases such as despair over loved ones or excruciating pain or voluptuous pleasure. They have the resources to do what they do not want to do and do what they want. They know and deeply accept the fact that their feelings, of whatever kind, do not have to be fulfilled. They send little time grieving over non-fulfillment. And with respect to feelings that are inherently injurious and wrong, their strategy is not one of resisting them in the moment of choice but of living in such a way that they do not have such feelings at all, or at least do not have them in a degree that makes it hard to decide against the when appropriate. Those who let God be God get off the conveyer belt of emotion and desire when it starts to move toward the buzz saw of sin. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
As one lets God be God, one does not wait until the conveyer belt is moving so fast toward sin that they cannot get office of it. Their aim is not to avoid sin, but to avoid temptation—the inclination to sin. They plan their path accordingly. In the presence of the facilitative attitude created by staff and by many participants, individuals gradually begin to hear one another, and then slowly to understand and to respect. The atmosphere becomes a working atmosphere, both in the large and the small groups, as people begin to delve into themselves and their relationships. As this working process goes more deeply, it can bring great personal pain and distress. Nearly always, the pain has to do with insights into self, or with the fright caused by a change in the self-concept, or with distress over changing relationships. The same woman who ,at the end of the workshop, was able to write poetically of her growth, wrote this while involved in the process: “Clutching, crawling, frightened crying deeply now, my hurting, bleeding hands, are scaling down the walls of jagged, deadly fear, into some scary put, descending steeper, down in search of someone lost, whose life I value most, and plunging, need to save.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
Another passage, taken from a participant’s diary, reflect the gradual, painful discover of an understanding which relieves the tension. “I feel so torn. Part of me is proud for handling the situation this morning with Lillian and Billy in what I think was a good way, yet I am annoyed with myself for allowing it to tear me apart. I am scared, too, because it all seems so unfinished. My whole body aches with unbearable tension as tears stream down my face. I rush down the hall to the room where our group meeting is held. I barge in and tell the group why I am late, of emotional overload that I feel, of the exhaustion. ‘I am not even recuperated from yesterday and already today has been heavy. I can truly appreciate the toll it must take on you who do counseling full time!’ Then Dallas says, ‘You must learn to take care of your own needs, Jessica. A sense of peace floods over me as I hear his words. How gentle and healing. That is all I really need to hear at this time.” So there are, in the group, experiences of frustration, distrust, anger, envy and despair. In the individual there are the personal experiences of suffering though change, of being unable to cope with ambiguity, of fear, of loneliness, of self-depreciation. The pain of leaving those you grow to love is only the prelude to an understanding of yourself and others. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
However, both the group and the individual experience these sufferings as part of a process in which they are involved and in which they somehow trust—even if they could, at the moment, give no rational reason for doing so. As the workshop proceeds, there is a shift in the basis of value choices made by participants. Values that are based on authority, that derive from sources external to the person, end to be diminished. Values hat are experiences tend to be enhanced. What the person has experienced tend to be enhanced. What the person has been told is good and valuable, whether by parents, church, state, or political party, tends to be questioned. Those behaviours or ways of being that are experienced as satisfying and meaningful tend to be reinforced. The criteria for making value judgments come more and more to lie in the person, not in a book, a teacher, or a set of dogmas. The locus of evaluation is in the person, not outside. Thus, the individual comes to live increasingly by a set of standards that have an internal, personal basis. Because one is aware that these standards are based on ever changing experience, they are held more tentatively, less rigidly. They are not carved in stone, but written by the human heart. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
Life in today’s World can be at times so complicated and the challenges so overwhelming as to be beyond our individual capacity to resolve them. We all need help from the Lord. Yet there are many individuals who do not know how to receive their help. They feel their urgent pleas for help have often gone unattended. How can that be when He Himself has said, “Ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you”? reports Doctrines and Covenants 4.7. It is evident that the Lord intends that we do our part. However, what specifically, are we to do? No one would expect to receive a result from physical law without obeying it. Spiritual law is the same. As much as we want help, we must expect to follow the spiritual law that controls that help. Spiritual law is not mysterious. It is something that we can understand. The scriptures define it in significant detail. “Do ye not remember the things which the Lord hath said?—If ye will not harden your hearts, and ask me in faith, believing that ye shall receive, with diligence in keeping my commandments, surely these things shall be make know unto you,” reports 1 Nephi 15.11. The Lord has the power to bless us at any time. Yet we see that to count on His help, we must consistently obey His commandments. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Our churches speak of Him day after day, Sunday after Sunday or Saturday after Saturday, some more in terms of the Heavenly king of glory. They call Him Jesus Christ, forgetting, and making us forget, what it means to say: Jesus is the Christ. The most incredible and humanly impossible event—a wandering Jewish Rabbi is the Christ—has become natural to us. Let us at least sometimes remind ourselves and our people that Jesus Christ means Jesus Who is said to be the Christ. Let us ask ourselves and others from time to time whether we can seriously agree with Peter’s ecstatic exclamation, whether we are likewise overwhelmed by the mystery of this Man. And if we cannot answer affirmatively should we not least be silent, in order to preserve the mystery of the words, instead of destroying their meaning by our common talk? And He proceeded to teach them that the Son of Humans must endure much suffering, must be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, must be killed, and after three days rise again. He spoke of this quite freely. The moment in which Peter called Him the Christ, Jesus prophesied His suffering and death. He began to reveal the mystery of His Messianic destiny. It was contrary to everything that the people expected, that the visionaries dreamt, and that the disciples hoped for. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
He was to be rejected by the political authorities of the nation, whose king the Christ was supposed to be. He was to be rejected by the religious authorities of selected people whose leader the Christ was supposed to become. He was supposed to be rejected by the cultural authorities of that tradition which was supposed to overcome all pagan tradition through the Christ. He was to suffer—He Who was expected to transform all suffering into blessedness. He was to die—He Who was supposed to appear in divine glory. Jesus did not deny His Messianic vocation. In the symbolic words concerning the “rising after three days,” He indicated that His rejection and His death would not be a defeat, but rather the necessary steps to His becoming the Christ. He was to be the Christ only as a suffering and dying Christ. Only such is He the Christ, or, as He called Himself more mysteriously, the Son of Humans. Peter took Him and began to reprove Him for His words. However, Jesus turned to him, ad looking at His disciples, rebuked Peter, saying, “Get behind me, you Satan. Your outlook is not God’s but human’s.” Nobody in Jesus’ time would have doubted the fact that God sent suffering and martyrdom even to the righteous. The Old Testament proved that on every page. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
Therefore, it was not that fact which has made the history of the Passion the most important part of the whole Gospel. It was not the value of suffering and the value of an heroic death, which have given the power to the picture of the Crucified. There have been many pictures of creative suffering and of heroic death in human history. However, none of them can be compared with the picture of Jesus’ death. Something unique happened in His suffering and death. It was, and is, a divine mystery, humanly unintelligible, divinely necessary. Therefore, when Peter, shocked and overwhelmed by sorrow and love, tried to prevent Him from going to Jerusalem, Jesus considered his pleading a satanic temptation. It would have destroyed His Messianic character. As the Christ, He would have to suffer and die. The real Christ was not in power and glory. The Christ had to suffer and die, because whenever the Divine appears in all Its depth, It cannot be endured by humans. It must be pushed away by the political powers, the religious authorities, and the bearers of cultural tradition. In the picture of the Crucified, we look at the rejection of the Divine by humanity. We see that, in this rejection, not the lowest, but the highest representatives of humankind are judged. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Whenever the Divine appears, It is a radical attack on everything that is good in humans, and therefore humans must repel It, must push It away, must crucify It. Whenever the Divine manifests Itself as the new reality, It must be rejected by the representatives of the old reality. For the Divine does not complete the human; It revolts against the human. Because of that, the human must defend itself against It, must reject It, and must try to destroy It. Yet the Divine is rejected, It takes the rejection upon Itself. It accepts our crucifixion, our pushing away, the defence of ourselves against It. It accepts our refusal to accept, and thus conquers us. That is the center of the mystery of the Christ Who would not die, and Who would come in glory to impose upon us His power, His wisdom, His morality, and His piety. He would be able to break our resistance by His strength, by His wonderful government, by His infallible wisdom, and by His irresistible perfection. However, He would not be able to win our hearts. He would bring a new law, and would impose it upon us by His all-powerful and all-perfect Personality. His power would break our freedom; His glory would overwhelm us like a burning blinding Sun; our very humanity would be swallowed in His Divinity. One of Luther’s most profound insights was that God made Himself small for us in Christ. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
In becoming the Christ, He left us our freedom and our humanity. He showed us His Heart, so that our heats could be won. When we look at the misery of our World, its evil and its sin, especially in these days which see to mark the end of a World period, we long for divine interference, so that the World and its daemonic rulers might be overcome. We long for a king of peace within history, or for a king of glory above history. We long for a Christ of power. Yet if He were to come and transform us and our World, we should have to pay the one price which we could not pay: we would have to lose our freedom, our humanity, and our spiritual dignity. Perhaps we should be happier; but we should also be lower beings, our present misery, struggle, and despair notwithstanding. We should be more like blessed animals than humans made in the image of God. Those who dream of a better life and try to avoid the Cross as a way, and those who hope for a Christ and attempt to exclude the Crucified, have no knowledge of the mystery of God and of humans. They are the ones who must expect others with a greater power to transform the World, others with a greater wisdom to change our hearts. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
However, even the greatest in power and wisdom could not more fully reveal the Heart of God and the heart of humans than the Crucified has done already. Those things have been revealed once for all. “It is finished.” In the face of the Crucified all the “more” and all the “less,” all progress and all approximation, are meaningless. Therefore, we can say of Him alone: He is the new reality; He is the end; He is the Messiah. To the Crucified alone we can say: “Thou art the Christ.” The Saviour taught: “Remember that without faith you can do nothing; therefore ask in faith. Trifle not with these things; do not ask for that which you ought not,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 8.10. There is another reason why the mind warrants special emphasis. Of all the soul’s faculties, the mind is the one that ponders, contains, and judges truth and falsity. The mind places me in contact with the external World, and when functioning properly it conforms itself to the name of the object of thought itself. The ingrained habits of thought that are formed will conform to the order of the thing being studied. What we study determines what kind of habits are to be formed. That is why Paul urged us to center on things that are true, honourable, just, pure, lovely and gracious. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
To understand this, let us consider two features of the mind: intentionality and internal structure. The intentionality of the mind. Intentionality refers to the “of-ness” or “about-ness” of our mental states. We have a thought of God, a hope for a new Ultimate Driving Machine, a belief about the media. The mind points beyond itself to the objects we use our minds to contemplate Because of intentionality, thought puts us in contact with the external World. For example, if I am in Tokyo, Japan, I can be in direct contact with London by thinking about it. My mind is directed on London, and it makes contact with this object of thought. After all, I am not thinking about the word “London” (unless someone asks me to spell it) or something else; I am thinking about London itself. The internal structure of the mind—when we come to understand something, the mind develops a conceptualization of the thing so understood. If I come to understand the workings of an Ultimate Driving Machine, my mind will possess a conceptualization of those workings. If my understanding is accurate, the conceptualization in my mind will conform to the Ultimate Driving Machine itself. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
If my mind develops a conceptualization of morality, then there will be an order in my mind that locates the role of virtue and character in the overall moral life. If accurate, this conception of the role of virtue will conform to the nature of true morality that actually exists outside my mind. If my conceptualizations are false, I will fail to grasp the object as it really is. However, if my mind conforms to the nature of the object itself, I will not only grasp it truly but also gain a certain power that comes from a correct understanding of reality. Just as electricity was real but its power unavailable to us until Ben Franklin’s discovery opened our minds to grasp the true nature of electricity, so the power of the spiritual life is real but unavailable to us if we do not understand the true nature of prayer, fasting, and so forth. This is why truth is so powerful. It allows us to cooperate with reality, whether spiritual or physical, and tap into its power. As we learn to think correctly about God, specific scriptural teachings, the soul, or other important aspects of a Christian Worldview, we are placed in touch with God and those realities. And we thereby gain access to the power available to us to live in the kingdom of God. The blessing resolves those things which are beyond our own capacity to influence either personally or with the help of others. Yet we must do our part for the blessing to be realized. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
We must strive to be worthy and to exercise the requisite faith to do what we are able. Where it is intended that others help, we must use that hep also. It is through the combination of our doing what is within our power to accomplish and the power of the Lord that the blessing is realized. The B-values are not the same as our personal attitudes toward these values, nor our emotional reactions to them. The B-values induce in us a kind of “requiredness feeling” and also a feeling of unworthiness. The B-vales had better be differentiated from our human attitudes toward these B-values, at least to the extent that it is possible for so difficult a task. A listing of such attitudes toward ultimate values (or reality) included: love, awe, adoration, humility, reverence, unworthiness, wonder, amazement, marveling, exaltation, gratitude, fear, joy, et cetera. These are clearly emotional-cognitive reasons within a person witnessing something not the same as oneself, or at least verbally separable. Of course, the more the person fuses with the World in great peak or mystic experiences, the less of these intra-self reactions there would be and the more the self would be lost as a separable entity. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
Ideas are types existing in the Divine Mind. However, God has the proper types of all things that He knows; and therefore He has ideas of all things known by Him. As ideas are principles of the knowledge of things and of their generation, an idea has this twofold office, as it exists in the mind of God. So far as the idea is the principle of the making of things, it may be called an “exemplar,” and belongs to practical knowledge. However, so far as it is a principle of knowledge, it is properly called a “type,” and may belong to speculative knowledge also. As an exemplar, therefore, it has respect to everything made by God in any period of time; whereas as a principle of knowledge it has respect to all things known by God, even thought they never come to be in time; and to all things that He knowns according to their proper type, in so far as they are known by Him in a speculative manner. Evil is known by God not through its own type, but through a type of good. Evil, therefore, has no idea in God, either in so far as an idea is an “exemplar” nor as a “type.” God has no practical knowledge, except virtually, of things which neither are, nor will be, nor have been. Hence, with respect to these there is no idea in God in so far as idea signifies an “exemplar” but only in so far as it denotes “type.” #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
We hold matter to be created by God, though not apart from form, matter has its idea in God; but not apart from the idea of the composite; for matter in itself can neither exist nor be known. “And now, my son, I have somewhat more to say unto thee than what to said unto your brother; for behold, have ye not observed the steadiness of thy brother, his faithfulness, and his diligence in keeping the commandments of God? Behold, has he not set a good example for thee? For thou didst not give so much heed unto my words as did thy brother, among the people of Zoramites. Now this is what I have against thee; thou didst go on unto boasting in thy strength and thy wisdom. And this is not all, my son. Thou didst do that which was grievous unto me; for thou didst forsake the ministry, and did go over into the land of Siron among the borders of the Lamanites, after the harlot Isabel. Yes, she did steal away the hearts of many; but this was no excuse for thee, my son. Thou shouldest have tended to the ministry wherewith thou wast entrusted. Know ye not, my son, that these things are an abomination in the sight of the Lord; yea, most abominable above all sins save it be the shedding of innocent blood or denying the Holy Ghost. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
“For behold, if ye deny the Holy Ghost when it once has had place in you, and ye know that ye deny it, behold, this is a sin which is unpardonable; yea, and whosoever murdereth against the light and knowledge of God, it is not easy for one to obtain forgiveness; yea, I say unto you, my son, that it is not easy for one to obtain forgiveness. And now, my son, I would to God that ye had not been guilty of so great a crime. I would not dwell upon your crimes, to harrow up your soul, if it were not for your good. However, behold, ye cannot hide your crimes from God; and expect ye repent they will stand as a testimony against you at the last day. Now my son, I would that ye should repent and forsake your sins, and go no more after the lusts of your eyes, but cross yourself in all these things; for except ye do this ye can in nowise inherit the kingdom of God. Oh, remember, and take it upon you, and cross yourself in these things. And I command you to take it upon you to counsel with your elder brothers in your undertakings; for behold, thou art in thy youth, and ye stand in need to be nourished by your brothers. And give heed to their counsel. Suffer not yourself to be led away by any vain or foolish thing; suffer not the devil to lead away your heart again after those wicked harlots. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
“Behold, O my son, how great iniquity ye brought upon the Zoramites; for when they say your conduct they would not believe in my words. And now the Spirit of the Lord doth say unto me: Command thy children to do good, lest they lead away the hearts of many people to destruction; therefore I command you, my son, in the fear of God, that ye refrain from your iniquities; that ye turn to the Lord with all your mind, might, and strength, that ye lead away the hearts of no more to do wickedly; but rather return unto them, and acknowledge your faults and that wrong which ye have done. Seek not after riches nor the vain things of this World; for behold, you cannot carry them with you. And now, my son, I would say somewhat unto you concerning the coming of Christ. Behold, I say unto you, that it is he that surely shall come to take away the sins of the World; yea, he cometh to declare glad tidings of salvation unto his people. And now, my son, this was the ministry unto which ye were called, to declare these glad tidings unto this people, to prepare their minds; or rather that salvation might come unto them, that they may prepare the minds of their children to hear the word at the time of his coming. And now I will ease your mind somewhat on this subject. Behold, you marvel why these things should be know so long beforehand. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“Behold, I say unto you, is not a soul at this time as precious unto God as a soul will be at the time of this coming? It is not as necessary that the plan of redemption should be made known unto this people as well as unto their children? It is not as easy at this time for the Lord to send his angel to declare these glad tidings unto us as unto our children, or as after the time of his coming,” reports Alma 39.1-19. If the Master had no patience with his disciples, he and they would soon part. If he had no belief in their eventual evolution, he and they would never join. If a human hitched the Ultimate Driving Machine of one’s spiritual effort to the star of a competent and worthy spiritual guide, it is nonsensical to object that one surrenders one’s freedom whenever one surrenders one’s own personal judgment to the guide’s or even whenever one obeys a command from the guide. For who chose the guide? One, oneself. By the exercise of what faculty did one make such a choice? By the exercise of free will. Therefore the initial act was a free choice. It was also the most important one because it was causal, all one’s other acts as a disciple being merely its effects, however long be the chain which extends from it. It is because one respects the larger wisdom of the guide and trusts one’s disinterestedness that the disciple follows one in thought and practice, not because one has become a puppet. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
The aspirant who believe that one can come to a master for a few days or works and glean the teaching will glean only a sample of it. It will take one all one’s life not only to receive what a master knows but to be adjured worthy of and ready for it. If one lacks this patience and humility, one will fall into self-deception. It requires long continued communication between pupil and teacher in joint purist of the object they are seeking to understand, and then suddenly, just as light flashes forth when a fire is kindled, this wisdom is born in the mind and henceforth nourishes itself. Two such individuals as Master and student are linked together by ancient ties. Much many remain to be done in the future as it was in the past. If, in a previous incarnation, the student attained a higher phase of development than at present, this must again be achieved before results can appear in consciousness. In such a case one should work especially hard to make progress. God, I speak your name, Emptier of cauldrons, your child calls you: into the past through the mists over the border between our Worlds my words go flying straight to you. God, I speak your name, Maker of borders, your child calls you: out of the past through the mists over the border between our Worlds travel the trackway, straight to me. God, hear my words and receive my gift. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
Cresleigh Homes
When your canvas is as beautiful as this one, inspiration isn’t hard to find! 🤩
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Lord, God of the Heavens, inhabiting spirit of good will, please bring joy to those who come together there. Please bind us together in the spirit of Godliness. You who fill your devotees with ecstasy pouring yourself unreservedly through their hearts, I ask you for your presence here today that our gathering might be properly blessed. #CresleighHomes
Randolph Harris II International Institute 