Come live with me, and be my love, and we will some new pleasures prove of golden sands and crystal brooks with silken lines, and silver hooks. Laughter causes the lungs to pump out carbon dioxide, the eyes to cleanse themselves with tears, the muscles to relax, the flow of adrenaline to increase, and the cardiovascular system to be exercised. Perhaps most important for those in schools, endorphins, the chemicals produced by the brain to relieve pain, are released into the bloodstream when a person laughs. Clearly, laughter is good for schools and for those who inhabit them. As we know God is just and holy. He judges sin and disciplines His children. However, God is also the God of all grace. No one knew better than the apostle Peter. Peter had a history of error, even before the nigh when he denied Jesus. Simon Peter did not exactly get started on the right foot with Jesus. One day Jesus was teaching, and the people were crowding around Him on the shore of a lake. Because of the press of the crowd, Jesus got into Peter’s boat and from it He taught the people. Afterward He said to Simon Peter, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.” “Simon answered, ‘Master, we have worked hard all night and have not caught anything. However, because you say so, I will let down the nets.’ When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break,” reports Luke 5.4-6. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

Can you hear the doubt, skepticism, and reluctance in Peter’s response? In effect he said, “Master, You do not realize we have just fished all night, but if You say so, we will do this to humor You.” Not exactly an auspicious beginning of their relationship, is it? Then there was the day Peter miraculously walked on water only to find himself sinking and having to cry out for help (Matthew 14.29-30). With their competitive spirits, the other disciples probably watched with envious awe as Peter walked on the water (they even argued on the eve of Christ’s betrayal over which of hem was considered to be the greatest, reported in Luke 22.24). However, their awe no doubt changed to derision as Peter began to sink beneath the waves. I suspect they did not let him forget that incident very quickly. Another time Peter, in loyalty, protested Jesus’ prediction of His coming death, only to be put down with the severe rebuke, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of humans,” reports Matthew 16.23. Again, on the night of Christ’s betrayal, Peter rushed to defend his Lord with the sword, only to be rebuked, Peter rushed to defend his Lord with the sword, only to be rebuked by Him (John 18.10-11). Then, of course, there is Peter’s oft-retold denial of Jesus coming right on the heels of his vehement protest, “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you,” reports Matthew 26.35. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

Undoubtedly Peter’s bitter grief at denying his Lord was aggravated by the reminder of his own proud and foolish boast reported in Matthew 26.69-75. It begins to look as if Peter could not do anything right, does it not? Even today he is held up in sermons as the ultimate example of someone who was proud, impetuous, and boastful; someone who, to use a colloquial expression, was always “sticking his foot in his mouth.” However, whom did God select to be the primary spokes person for the apostles on the day of Pentecost? Who has the privilege of preaching that first sermon when three thousand people were saved? It is Peter, who could not seem to do or say anything right, reported in Acts 2.14-41. Whom did God choose to be the preacher when He opened wide the door of salvation to the Gentiles? It was Peter at the house of Cornelius, reported in Acts 10.34-44. Who made the decisive statement at the council of Jerusalem that turned the tide against the Pharisee believers who were demanding that the new Gentile believers be circumcised and obey the law of Moses? It was Peter, reported in Acts 15.6-11. It seems as if Peter’s failures and foibles are all behind him, does it not? However, they are not. Some time later, Peter is found to be in error again. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

At Antioch Peter compromised himself in fear of the circumcision group and played the hypocrite, thereby gaining a justified public rebuke by the apostle Paul, reported in Galatians 2.11-14. The man who could do nothing right, who had seemingly become the man who could do no wrong, falls flat on his face again. However, the story does not end there. God chooses Peter to be the inspired writer of two books of the New Testament. Is it any wonder Peter refers to God as “the God of all grace,” reported in 1 Peter 5.10? Is it any wonder his last word of instruction is to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” reports 2 Peter 3.18? Peter had personally experienced what Paul described: “But where sin increased, grace increased all the more,” reports Romans 5.20. The translation “increased all the more” probably does no capture completely the contrast Paul was seeking to convey between the results of sin and the effects of grace. The term superabounding describes the riches of God’s grace as Paul represented it in Romans 5.20. So, a good translation would be, “However, where sin abounded, grace superabounded.” Let me illustrate. A few drops of a dark-coloured ink in a glass of water will turn the water dark. However, put the glass under a kitchen faucet and turn on the water full force, and the pressure of the water will soon flush out all the dark color, leaving a glass full of clear water. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

The ink “abounds” in its effect on the water, turning in dark. However, the clean water from the faucet superabounds. It flows so abundantly and with such force, it erases all the effects of the ink. That is what Peter experienced. His failures and his sins abounded. There is no question about that. But however much his sin increased, God’s grace increased all the more. It superabounded. God blessed Peter, not in spite of his sins, but without regard to his sins. That is the way His grace operates. It looks not to our sins or even to our good deeds but only to the merit of Christ. What is the point of all this discussion about Peter and his failures and his experience of the grace of God? It is this: Most of us can identify with Peter. Regardless of how outwardly “successful” in the Christian life we may appear to others, in our hearts we know the truth. We know that in one way or another we are like Peter. We have acted in error and fallen on our spiritual faces too many times. Just like Peter, we need to be convinced in our hearts that God is the God of all grace, that He is going to bless us and use us, not according to our deserts, but as Samuel Storms said “according to [His] infinite goodness and sovereign purpose.” In order systematically to consider the situation of the discreditable person and one’s problem of concealment and disclosure, it is necessary to first examine the character of social information and of visibility. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

Before proceeding it is necessary to consider, and at considerable length, still another factor, that of identification—in the criminological and not the phycological sense. So far, the analysis of social interaction between the stigmatized and the normal has not required that those involved in the mixed contact know one another “personally” before the interaction begins. This seems reasonable. Stigma management is an offshoot of something basic in society, the stereotyping or “profiling” of our normative expectations regarding conduct and character; stereotyping is classically reserved for customers, international people, and motorists, that is, persons who fall into very broad categories and who may be passing strangers to us. There is a popular notion that although impersonal contacts between strangers are particularly subject to stereotypical responses, as persons come to be on closer terms with each other this categoric approach recedes and gradually sympathy, understanding, and a realistic assessment of personal qualities take its place. While a blemish such as a facial disfigurement might put off a stranger, intimates presumably would not be put off by such matters. The area of stigma management, then, might be seen as something that pertains mainly to public life, to contact between strangers or mere acquaintances, to one end of a continuum whose other pole is intimacy. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

The idea of such a continuum no doubt has some validity. For example, it has been shown that in addition to techniques for handling strangers, the physically disabled may develop special techniques for moving past the initial tactfulness and distance they are likely to receive; they may attempt to move on to a more “personal” plane where in fact their perceived deficit will cease to be a crucial factor—an arduous process called “breaking through.” Further, those with a bodily stigma report that, within certain limits, normals with whom they have repeated dealings will gradually come to be less put off by the disability, so that something like a daily round of normalization may hopefully develop. A person with a visual impairment cited: “There are now barbershops where I am received with some of the calmness of old, of course, and hotels, restaurants, and public buildings which I can enter without engendering a feeling that something is going to happen; a few trolly motormen and bus drivers now merely wish me ‘Good Morning,’ when I get on with my dog, and a few waiters I know serve me with traditional unconcern. Naturally, the immediate circle of my family has long since ceased doing any unnecessary worrying about me, and so have most of my intimate friends. To that extent I have made a dent in the education of the World.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

The same sheltering can presumably occur in regard to whole categories of the stigmatized: the service shops which are sometimes found in the immediate neighborhood of mental hospitals may become places with high tolerance for psychotic behaviour; the neighborhoods around some medical hospitals develop a capacity for calm treatment of those with visible disabilities; the town in which a seeing-eye school is located learns to countenance blind students engaged in the act of holding a harness attached to a human instructor all the while offering one periodic words of canine encouragement. In spite of this evidence for everyday belief about stigma and familiarity, one must go on to see that familiarity need not reduce contempt. For example, normals who live adjacent to settlements of the tribally stigmatized often manage quite handily to sustain their prejudices. It is more important here, however, to see that the various consequences of making a whole array of virtual assumptions about an individual are clearly present in our dealings wit person with whom we have had a longstanding, intimate, exclusive relationship. In our society, to speak of a woman as one’s wife is to place this person in a category of which there can be only one current member, yet a category is nonetheless involved, and she is merely a member of it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

Unique, historically entangled features are likely to tint the edges of our relation to this person; still, at the center is a full array of socially standardized anticipations that we have regarding her conduct and nature as an instance of the category “wife,” for example, that she will look after the house, entertain our friends, and be able to bear children. She will be a good or a bad wife, and be this relative to standard expectations, ones that other husbands in our group have about their wives too. (Surely it is scandalous to speak of a marriage as a particularistic relationship.) This, whether we interact with strangers or intimates, we will find that the finger tips of society have reached bluntly into the contact, even here putting us in our place. There are sure to be cases where those who are not required to share the individual’s stigma or spend much time exerting tact and care in regard to it may find it easier to accept one, just because of this, than do those who are obliged to be in fulltime contact with one. When one moves from a consideration of discredited persons to discreditable ones, much additional evidence is found that the individual’s intimates as well as one’s strangers will be put off by one’s stigma. For one thing, the individual’s intimates can become just the persons from whom one is most concerned with concealing something they perceive as shameful; some people who are interested in members of the same sex try to hide their desire, even though it is not a disease. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

When a person is homosexual, if one consults anyone at all, it is more likely to be a doctor than anyone else. However, it is not likely to be one’s own family doctor. Most of the contacts were anxious to keep their sexual preference hidden from their family. Even some of those who behave fairly openly in public are most careful to avoid arousing suspicious in the family circle. Further, while one parent in a family many share a shadowy secret about, and with, the other, the children of the house may be considered not only unsafe receptacles for the information but also of such tender nature as to be seriously damaged by the knowledge. The case of the mentally hospitalized parent is an example: In interpreting the father’s illness to younger children, almost all the mothers attempt to follow a course of concealment. The child is told either that his father is in a hospital (without further explanation) or that he is in the hospital suffering from a physical ailment (he has a toothache, or trouble with his leg, or a tummy ache, or a headache). [Wife of mental patient] “I live in horror—a perfect horror—that some people will make a crack about it to Ryan (child).” One may add that there are some stigmas that are so easily concealed that they figure very little in the individual’s relation to strangers and mere acquaintances, having their effect chiefly upon intimates—frigidity, importance, and sterility being good examples. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

This, in trying to account of the fact that alcoholism does not seem to disqualify a being from embarking upon marriage, one students suggests that: “It is also possible that the circumstances of courtship or the pattern of drinking may so lower the visibility of alcoholism that it is not a factor in mate selection. The more intimate interaction of marriage may then bring out the problem in a form recognizable to the spouse.” Moreover, intimates can come to play a special role in the discreditable person’s management of social situations, so that even where their acceptance of one is not influenced by one’s stigma, their duties will be. Instead, then, of thinking of a continuum of relationships, with categoric and concealing treatment at one end and particularistic , open treatment at the other, it might be better to think of various structures in which contact occurs and is stabilized—public streets and their strangers, perfunctory service relations, the workplace, the neighborhood, the domestic scene—and to see that in each case characteristic discrepancies are likely to occur between virtual and actual social identity, and characteristic efforts are made to manage the situation. And yet, the whole problem of managing stigma is influenced by the issue of whether or not the stigmatized person is known to us personally. However, all of this, the only sane and sound basis for human life, is precisely what is absent from the ruined heart. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

In Romans I, Paul described he progressive departure from God that leads to life as we know and see it all around us—and, sadly, within us if we have not been thoroughly transformed by Christ. As we might expect from the passages already referred to, the slide into pervasive soul corruption begins with the heart (or will) deflecting the mind from God. Human beings have always known there is a God and have had some degree of understanding of who he is and what he is like, as reported in Romans 1.19-20. Actually, they still do. However, they were not pleased that he should have the place in the Universe that he does have merely because he is who he is. And this is the key to understanding humanity’s present condition. The first of the Ten Commandments deals with this inclination away from God, as reports in Exodus 20.2-3. As Augustine saw clearly, God being God offends human pride. If God is running the Universe and has first claim on our lives, guess who is not running the Universe and does not get to have things as they please. This historian of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) titled his work Not-God because, he said, that stands as the most important hurdle an addicted person must surmount: to acknowledge, deep in the soul, not being God. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

No mastery of manipulation and control, at which alcoholics excel, can overcome the root problem; rather, the alcoholic must recognize individual helplessness and fall back in the arms of the Higher Power. “First of all, we had to quite playing God,” concluded the founders of AA; and then allow God himself to “play God” in the addict’s life, which involves daily, even moment-by-moment, surrender. However, in taking oneself in practice (or humanity taking itself in practice) as God, the great World-historical force of denial comes into play. It is this that accounts for the perpetual human blindness to the obvious. We can never understand human affairs at any level without taking it into account. It alone explains why “the rules of this sage” (1 Corinthians 2.8) do and are permitted to do the things they do—up to the crucifixion of “the Lord of glory” himself. Denial of reality is a capacity inseparable from the human will as we know it, and it has its greatest power when it operates without being recognized as such. (Of course by “denial” we mean to include not only rejection of what is the case, but also affirmation of what is not the case.) If life is to proceed in a World apart from God, the power of denial is absolutely essential. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

The will or spirit cannot—psychologically cannot—sustain itself for any length of time in the face of what it clearly acknowledges to be the case. Therefore it must deny and evade and delude itself. Paul’s brilliant and inspired insight into the root of human evil—“There is no fear of God before their eyes”—must never be forgotten by those who would understand spiritual formation and would themselves be transformed into Christlikeness, or by those who simply want to be responsible leaders among humanity. Now when the light of the fundamental truth and reality, God, is put out in the heart and the soul, the intellectual becomes dysfunctional, trying to devise a “truth” that will be compatible with the basic falsehood that man is God and the affections (feelings, emotions, even sensations) soon follow along on the path to chaos. “They become futile in their speculations,” Paul continued “and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools.” They pretended God was an animal—usually a monstrous animal or a human-like being—of some kind (Romans 1.21-23). However, remember, the mind is now uprooted from reality. It is committed to the truth of a falsehood. “Garbage in, garbage out” is an old story, and then the strong desires, or “lusts) (epithumiais), plunge right into the garbage along with thought. “For behold, my brethren, it is given unto you to judge, that ye may know good from evil; and the way to judge is as plain, that ye may know with a perfect knowledge, as the daylight from the dark of night,” reports Moroni 7.15. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

Only-Begotten Son of God, Who didst willingly shed Thy Blood for us, whereby Thou reconciledst Earth and Heaven; grant us so to venerate the mystery of our redemption and Thy Resurrection, that we may be enabled to live perpetually in that peace which Thou Thyself art. O God the Father Almighty, Who didst love the World with so great a love, that Thou willedst Thine Only-begotten Son to be crucified for its redemption; makes us, who are redeemed with His precious Blood, to be so fruitful in works of love, that we may have our part in the first Resurrection, and not fear the power of the second death. O my forgetful soul, awake from thy wandering dream; turn from chasing vanities, look inward, forward, upward, view thyself, reflect upon thyself, who and what thou art, why here, what thou must soon be. Thou art a creature of God, formed and furnished by him, lodged in a body like a shepherd in his tent; dost thou not desire to know God’s ways? O God, Thou injured, neglected, provoked Benefactor when I think upon thy greatness and thy goodness I am ashamed at my insensibility, I blush to life up my face, for I have foolishly erred. Shall I go on neglecting thee, when every one of thy rational creatures should love thee, and take every care to please thee? I confess that thou hast not been in all my thoughts, that the knowledge of thyself as the end of my being has been strangely overlooked, that I have never seriously considered my heart-need. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

However, although my mind is perplexed and divided, my nature perverse, yet my secret disposition still desire thee. Let me not delay to come to thee; break the fatal enchantment that binds my evil affections, and being me to a happy mind that rests in thee, for thou hast made me and canst not forget me. Let thy Spirit teach me the vital lessons of Christ, for I am slow to learn; and hear thou my broken cries. The same lofty realization which brings the self-actualized down to serve their fellow humans, isolates them from humanity at the same time. There is a wall between the self-actualizes and their detractors. They built it. They themselves must remove it. Nobody can do this for them, not even one. They must undo their self-perpetrated wrongs. One is among the great solitary spirits of humankind, yet one can never be called lonely for in oneself one is always sufficient. One is forced to live among people who are mostly several hundred Earth-lives younger than one, and consequently quite “unsympathetic” (in the European-Continental meaning of the term). Whether one keeps in touch with human affairs or keeps away from them is a matter which is entirely personal in one’s view and dependent on time, place, circumstance, and need. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

One is not strict about it, whether for oneself or others, and would certainly not quarrel with them over it. One has no need to acquaint others with the exalted nature of one’s insight, much less publicize it to the World at large. Just quietly being what one is will be enough. This will screen one from those who sneer, criticize, or attack: but the sensitive will appreciate one.  Almighty God and Father, Who hast redeemed us with the precious Blood of Thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ, suffer not those who believe in Thee to be plunged into the abyss of eternal punishment; but grant that by confessing our sins we may be admitted into Thy presence, by Him on Whom Thou hast laid the iniquity of us all; that as we have been healed by His stripes, we may be defended by His unceasing protection. We confess, O Lord Jesus, that Thou hast died unto sin which was not Thine, but ours; and therefore, because having once died for the ungodly, Thou livest unto God, make us so to die unto sin once, that rising again to receive our crown, we may ever rejoice in Thine eternal gifts. Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that we who have gone through the Paschal festival, may by Thy bounty still keep it in our conduct and life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God,” reports St. Matthew 5.8. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Near the top of most lists has to be criticism. Every year when our family decorates our Christmas tree and I place a tiny Tiffany’s stained-glass Angel at the top of the tree, I think of the little boy who gave it to me when I coached soccer. His sarcastic, demeaning father would run up and down the field belittling his boy with words like “chicken” and “buddy.” He was the only parent I ever told to be quiet or leave the field. I wonder sometimes how that boy, now a man, has fared. Winston Churchill had such a father in Lord Randolph Churchill. He did not like the looks of Winston, he did not like his voice, he did not like to be in the same room with his son. He never complimented him—only criticized him. His biographers excerpt young Winston’s letter begging both parents of his father’s attention: “I would rather have been apprenticed as a bricklayer’s mate…it would have been natural…and I should have got to know my father.” Fathers who criticize their children often bring them to discouragement. The parallel version of this “do not” in Colossians 3.21 indicates that children embittered by nagging and deriding “lose heart”—like a horse that has had its spirit broken. You can see it in the way a horse moves, and you can see it in the eyes and the posture of a disheartened child. Criticism comes in many ways besides overt words. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

Some parents never praise their children on principle—“My praise will mean something when I give it”—only they never give it. Then there is faint praise, backhanded praise like that given to the boy who had just scored a soccer goal: “That was okay, son; now next week do better.” Often it is not the words—it is the tone of voice or the distracted eyes which say it all. Why are father’s critical? Perhaps that is the way their fathers treated them. Perhaps they are simply critical people who mask it well in public, but cannot restrain themselves in the heat of domestic relationships. To such fathers, God’s Word comes like an arrow headed for the bull’s-eye: do not exasperate your children with criticism. If the self-actualized prefer not to live with or near people, there are goo and sufficient reasons for it. If their homes are exclusive, their contacts restricted, if they avoid familiarity, it is because their attainment has been paid for by their sensitivity. Truly has it been said that the gulf between the bad person and the good person is not so wide as the gulf between the good man and the adept. Is there a moral obligation on one to share one’s knowledge with others? In a sense there is. However, one sees that their moral limitations and spiritual apathy restricts and cramps any activity in this direction. Also one leans that being oneself is one’s best activity. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

Cresleigh Homes

The #HomeHub is your space to do whatever you would like. We think an art studio is such a great idea with all those windows! 🎨🖌

The homes we choose are always reflections of us.  This home has some much charm and everything in it is wonderful of its kind. How would you decorate your #MillsStation home? 🤔

Come live with me, and be my love, and we will some new pleasures prove of golden sands and crystal brooks with silken lines, and silver hooks. Laughter causes the lungs to pump out carbon dioxide, the eyes to cleanse themselves with tears, the muscles to relax, the flow of adrenaline to increase, and the cardiovascular system to be exercised. Perhaps most important for those in schools, endorphins, the chemicals produced by the brain to relieve pain, are released into the bloodstream when a person laughs. Clearly, laughter is good for schools and for those who inhabit them. As we know God is just and holy. He judges sin and disciplines His children. However, God is also the God of all grace. No one knew better than the apostle Peter. Peter had a history of error, even before the nigh when he denied Jesus. Simon Peter did not exactly get started on the right foot with Jesus. One day Jesus was teaching, and the people were crowding around Him on the shore of a lake. Because of the press of the crowd, Jesus got into Peter’s boat and from it He taught the people. Afterward He said to Simon Peter, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.” “Simon answered, ‘Master, we have worked hard all night and have not caught anything. However, because you say so, I will let down the nets.’ When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break,” reports Luke 5.4-6. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

Can you hear the doubt, skepticism, and reluctance in Peter’s response? In effect he said, “Master, You do not realize we have just fished all night, but if You say so, we will do this to humor You.” Not exactly an auspicious beginning of their relationship, is it? Then there was the day Peter miraculously walked on water only to find himself sinking and having to cry out for help (Matthew 14.29-30). With their competitive spirits, the other disciples probably watched with envious awe as Peter walked on the water (they even argued on the eve of Christ’s betrayal over which of hem was considered to be the greatest, reported in Luke 22.24). However, their awe no doubt changed to derision as Peter began to sink beneath the waves. I suspect they did not let him forget that incident very quickly. Another time Peter, in loyalty, protested Jesus’ prediction of His coming death, only to be put down with the severe rebuke, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of humans,” reports Matthew 16.23. Again, on the night of Christ’s betrayal, Peter rushed to defend his Lord with the sword, only to be rebuked, Peter rushed to defend his Lord with the sword, only to be rebuked by Him (John 18.10-11). Then, of course, there is Peter’s oft-retold denial of Jesus coming right on the heels of his vehement protest, “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you,” reports Matthew 26.35. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

Undoubtedly Peter’s bitter grief at denying his Lord was aggravated by the reminder of his own proud and foolish boast reported in Matthew 26.69-75. It begins to look as if Peter could not do anything right, does it not? Even today he is held up in sermons as the ultimate example of someone who was proud, impetuous, and boastful; someone who, to use a colloquial expression, was always “sticking his foot in his mouth.” However, whom did God select to be the primary spokes person for the apostles on the day of Pentecost? Who has the privilege of preaching that first sermon when three thousand people were saved? It is Peter, who could not seem to do or say anything right, reported in Acts 2.14-41. Whom did God choose to be the preacher when He opened wide the door of salvation to the Gentiles? It was Peter at the house of Cornelius, reported in Acts 10.34-44. Who made the decisive statement at the council of Jerusalem that turned the tide against the Pharisee believers who were demanding that the new Gentile believers be circumcised and obey the law of Moses? It was Peter, reported in Acts 15.6-11. It seems as if Peter’s failures and foibles are all behind him, does it not? However, they are not. Some time later, Peter is found to be in error again. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

At Antioch Peter compromised himself in fear of the circumcision group and played the hypocrite, thereby gaining a justified public rebuke by the apostle Paul, reported in Galatians 2.11-14. The man who could do nothing right, who had seemingly become the man who could do no wrong, falls flat on his face again. However, the story does not end there. God chooses Peter to be the inspired writer of two books of the New Testament. Is it any wonder Peter refers to God as “the God of all grace,” reported in 1 Peter 5.10? Is it any wonder his last word of instruction is to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” reports 2 Peter 3.18? Peter had personally experienced what Paul described: “But where sin increased, grace increased all the more,” reports Romans 5.20. The translation “increased all the more” probably does no capture completely the contrast Paul was seeking to convey between the results of sin and the effects of grace. The term superabounding describes the riches of God’s grace as Paul represented it in Romans 5.20. So, a good translation would be, “However, where sin abounded, grace superabounded.” Let me illustrate. A few drops of a dark-coloured ink in a glass of water will turn the water dark. However, put the glass under a kitchen faucet and turn on the water full force, and the pressure of the water will soon flush out all the dark color, leaving a glass full of clear water. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

The ink “abounds” in its effect on the water, turning in dark. However, the clean water from the faucet superabounds. It flows so abundantly and with such force, it erases all the effects of the ink. That is what Peter experienced. His failures and his sins abounded. There is no question about that. But however much his sin increased, God’s grace increased all the more. It superabounded. God blessed Peter, not in spite of his sins, but without regard to his sins. That is the way His grace operates. It looks not to our sins or even to our good deeds but only to the merit of Christ. What is the point of all this discussion about Peter and his failures and his experience of the grace of God? It is this: Most of us can identify with Peter. Regardless of how outwardly “successful” in the Christian life we may appear to others, in our hearts we know the truth. We know that in one way or another we are like Peter. We have acted in error and fallen on our spiritual faces too many times. Just like Peter, we need to be convinced in our hearts that God is the God of all grace, that He is going to bless us and use us, not according to our deserts, but as Samuel Storms said “according to [His] infinite goodness and sovereign purpose.” In order systematically to consider the situation of the discreditable person and one’s problem of concealment and disclosure, it is necessary to first examine the character of social information and of visibility. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

Before proceeding it is necessary to consider, and at considerable length, still another factor, that of identification—in the criminological and not the phycological sense. So far, the analysis of social interaction between the stigmatized and the normal has not required that those involved in the mixed contact know one another “personally” before the interaction begins. This seems reasonable. Stigma management is an offshoot of something basic in society, the stereotyping or “profiling” of our normative expectations regarding conduct and character; stereotyping is classically reserved for customers, international people, and motorists, that is, persons who fall into very broad categories and who may be passing strangers to us. There is a popular notion that although impersonal contacts between strangers are particularly subject to stereotypical responses, as persons come to be on closer terms with each other this categoric approach recedes and gradually sympathy, understanding, and a realistic assessment of personal qualities take its place. While a blemish such as a facial disfigurement might put off a stranger, intimates presumably would not be put off by such matters. The area of stigma management, then, might be seen as something that pertains mainly to public life, to contact between strangers or mere acquaintances, to one end of a continuum whose other pole is intimacy. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

The idea of such a continuum no doubt has some validity. For example, it has been shown that in addition to techniques for handling strangers, the physically disabled may develop special techniques for moving past the initial tactfulness and distance they are likely to receive; they may attempt to move on to a more “personal” plane where in fact their perceived deficit will cease to be a crucial factor—an arduous process called “breaking through.” Further, those with a bodily stigma report that, within certain limits, normals with whom they have repeated dealings will gradually come to be less put off by the disability, so that something like a daily round of normalization may hopefully develop. A person with a visual impairment cited: “There are now barbershops where I am received with some of the calmness of old, of course, and hotels, restaurants, and public buildings which I can enter without engendering a feeling that something is going to happen; a few trolly motormen and bus drivers now merely wish me ‘Good Morning,’ when I get on with my dog, and a few waiters I know serve me with traditional unconcern. Naturally, the immediate circle of my family has long since ceased doing any unnecessary worrying about me, and so have most of my intimate friends. To that extent I have made a dent in the education of the World.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

The same sheltering can presumably occur in regard to whole categories of the stigmatized: the service shops which are sometimes found in the immediate neighborhood of mental hospitals may become places with high tolerance for psychotic behaviour; the neighborhoods around some medical hospitals develop a capacity for calm treatment of those with visible disabilities; the town in which a seeing-eye school is located learns to countenance blind students engaged in the act of holding a harness attached to a human instructor all the while offering one periodic words of canine encouragement. In spite of this evidence for everyday belief about stigma and familiarity, one must go on to see that familiarity need not reduce contempt. For example, normals who live adjacent to settlements of the tribally stigmatized often manage quite handily to sustain their prejudices. It is more important here, however, to see that the various consequences of making a whole array of virtual assumptions about an individual are clearly present in our dealings wit person with whom we have had a longstanding, intimate, exclusive relationship. In our society, to speak of a woman as one’s wife is to place this person in a category of which there can be only one current member, yet a category is nonetheless involved, and she is merely a member of it. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

Unique, historically entangled features are likely to tint the edges of our relation to this person; still, at the center is a full array of socially standardized anticipations that we have regarding her conduct and nature as an instance of the category “wife,” for example, that she will look after the house, entertain our friends, and be able to bear children. She will be a good or a bad wife, and be this relative to standard expectations, ones that other husbands in our group have about their wives too. (Surely it is scandalous to speak of a marriage as a particularistic relationship.) This, whether we interact with strangers or intimates, we will find that the finger tips of society have reached bluntly into the contact, even here putting us in our place. There are sure to be cases where those who are not required to share the individual’s stigma or spend much time exerting tact and care in regard to it may find it easier to accept one, just because of this, than do those who are obliged to be in fulltime contact with one. When one moves from a consideration of discredited persons to discreditable ones, much additional evidence is found that the individual’s intimates as well as one’s strangers will be put off by one’s stigma. For one thing, the individual’s intimates can become just the persons from whom one is most concerned with concealing something they perceive as shameful; some people who are interested in members of the same sex try to hide their desire, even though it is not a disease. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

When a person is homosexual, if one consults anyone at all, it is more likely to be a doctor than anyone else. However, it is not likely to be one’s own family doctor. Most of the contacts were anxious to keep their sexual preference hidden from their family. Even some of those who behave fairly openly in public are most careful to avoid arousing suspicious in the family circle. Further, while one parent in a family many share a shadowy secret about, and with, the other, the children of the house may be considered not only unsafe receptacles for the information but also of such tender nature as to be seriously damaged by the knowledge. The case of the mentally hospitalized parent is an example: In interpreting the father’s illness to younger children, almost all the mothers attempt to follow a course of concealment. The child is told either that his father is in a hospital (without further explanation) or that he is in the hospital suffering from a physical ailment (he has a toothache, or trouble with his leg, or a tummy ache, or a headache). [Wife of mental patient] “I live in horror—a perfect horror—that some people will make a crack about it to Ryan (child).” One may add that there are some stigmas that are so easily concealed that they figure very little in the individual’s relation to strangers and mere acquaintances, having their effect chiefly upon intimates—frigidity, importance, and sterility being good examples. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

This, in trying to account of the fact that alcoholism does not seem to disqualify a being from embarking upon marriage, one students suggests that: “It is also possible that the circumstances of courtship or the pattern of drinking may so lower the visibility of alcoholism that it is not a factor in mate selection. The more intimate interaction of marriage may then bring out the problem in a form recognizable to the spouse.” Moreover, intimates can come to play a special role in the discreditable person’s management of social situations, so that even where their acceptance of one is not influenced by one’s stigma, their duties will be. Instead, then, of thinking of a continuum of relationships, with categoric and concealing treatment at one end and particularistic , open treatment at the other, it might be better to think of various structures in which contact occurs and is stabilized—public streets and their strangers, perfunctory service relations, the workplace, the neighborhood, the domestic scene—and to see that in each case characteristic discrepancies are likely to occur between virtual and actual social identity, and characteristic efforts are made to manage the situation. And yet, the whole problem of managing stigma is influenced by the issue of whether or not the stigmatized person is known to us personally. However, all of this, the only sane and sound basis for human life, is precisely what is absent from the ruined heart. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

In Romans I, Paul described he progressive departure from God that leads to life as we know and see it all around us—and, sadly, within us if we have not been thoroughly transformed by Christ. As we might expect from the passages already referred to, the slide into pervasive soul corruption begins with the heart (or will) deflecting the mind from God. Human beings have always known there is a God and have had some degree of understanding of who he is and what he is like, as reported in Romans 1.19-20. Actually, they still do. However, they were not pleased that he should have the place in the Universe that he does have merely because he is who he is. And this is the key to understanding humanity’s present condition. The first of the Ten Commandments deals with this inclination away from God, as reports in Exodus 20.2-3. As Augustine saw clearly, God being God offends human pride. If God is running the Universe and has first claim on our lives, guess who is not running the Universe and does not get to have things as they please. This historian of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) titled his work Not-God because, he said, that stands as the most important hurdle an addicted person must surmount: to acknowledge, deep in the soul, not being God. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

No mastery of manipulation and control, at which alcoholics excel, can overcome the root problem; rather, the alcoholic must recognize individual helplessness and fall back in the arms of the Higher Power. “Frist of all, we had to quite playing God,” concluded the founders of AA; and then allow God himself to “play God” in the addict’s life, which involves daily, even moment-by-moment, surrender. However, in taking oneself in practice (or humanity taking itself in practice) as God, the great World-historical force of denial comes into play. It is this that accounts for the perpetual human blindness to the obvious. We can never understand human affairs at any level without taking it into account. It alone explains why “the rules of this sage” (1 Corinthians 2.8) do and are permitted to do the things they do—up to the crucifixion of “the Lord of glory” himself. Denial of reality is a capacity inseparable from the human will as we know it, and it has its greatest power when it operates without being recognized as such. (Of course by “denial” we mean to include not only rejection of what is the case, but also affirmation of what is not the case.) If life is to proceed in a World apart from God, the power of denial is absolutely essential. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

The will or spirit cannot—psychologically cannot—sustain itself for any length of time in the face of what it clearly acknowledges to be the case. Therefore it must deny and evade and delude itself. Paul’s brilliant and inspired insight into the root of human evil—“There is no fear of God before their eyes”—must never be forgotten by those who would understand spiritual formation and would themselves be transformed into Christlikeness, or by those who simply want to be responsible leaders among humanity. Now when the light of the fundamental truth and reality, God, is put out in the heart and the soul, the intellectual becomes dysfunctional, trying to devise a “truth” that will be compatible with the basic falsehood that man is God and the affections (feelings, emotions, even sensations) soon follow along on the path to chaos. “They become futile in their speculations,” Paul continued “and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools.” They pretended God was an animal—usually a monstrous animal or a human-like being—of some kind (Romans 1.21-23). However, remember, the mind is now uprooted from reality. It is committed to the truth of a falsehood. “Garbage in, garbage out” is an old story, and then the strong desires, or “lusts) (epithumiais), plunge right into the garbage along with thought. “For behold, my brethren, it is given unto you to judge, that ye may know good from evil; and the way to judge is as plain, that ye may know with a perfect knowledge, as the daylight from the dark of night,” reports Moroni 7.15. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

Only-Begotten Son of God, Who didst willingly shed Thy Blood for us, whereby Thou reconciledst Earth and Heaven; grant us so to venerate the mystery of our redemption and Thy Resurrection, that we may be enabled to live perpetually in that peace which Thou Thyself art. O God the Father Almighty, Who didst love the World with so great a love, that Thou willedst Thine Only-begotten Son to be crucified for its redemption; makes us, who are redeemed with His precious Blood, to be so fruitful in works of love, that we may have our part in the first Resurrection, and not fear the power of the second death. O my forgetful soul, awake from thy wandering dream; turn from chasing vanities, look inward, forward, upward, view thyself, reflect upon thyself, who and what thou art, why here, what thou must soon be. Thou art a creature of God, formed and furnished by him, lodged in a body like a shepherd in his tent; dost thou not desire to know God’s ways? O God, Thou injured, neglected, provoked Benefactor when I think upon thy greatness and thy goodness I am ashamed at my insensibility, I blush to life up my face, for I have foolishly erred. Shall I go on neglecting thee, when every one of thy rational creatures should love thee, and take every care to please thee? I confess that thou hast not been in all my thoughts, that the knowledge of thyself as the end of my being has been strangely overlooked, that I have never seriously considered my heart-need. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

However, although my mind is perplexed and divided, my nature perverse, yet my secret disposition still desire thee. Let me not delay to come to thee; break the fatal enchantment that binds my evil affections, and being me to a happy mind that rests in thee, for thou hast made me and canst not forget me. Let thy Spirit teach me the vital lessons of Christ, for I am slow to learn; and hear thou my broken cries. The same lofty realization which brings the self-actualized down to serve their fellow humans, isolates them from humanity at the same time. There is a wall between the self-actualizes and their detractors. They built it. They themselves must remove it. Nobody can do this for them, not even one. They must undo their self-perpetrated wrongs. One is among the great solitary spirits of humankind, yet one can never be called lonely for in oneself one is always sufficient. One is forced to live among people who are mostly several hundred Earth-lives younger than one, and consequently quite “unsympathetic” (in the European-Continental meaning of the term). Whether one keeps in touch with human affairs or keeps away from them is a matter which is entirely personal in one’s view and dependent on time, place, circumstance, and need. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

 One is not strict about it, whether for oneself or others, and would certainly not quarrel with them over it. One has no need to acquaint others with the exalted nature of one’s insight, much less publicize it to the World at large. Just quietly being what one is will be enough. This will screen one from those who sneer, criticize, or attack: but the sensitive will appreciate one.  Almighty God and Father, Who hast redeemed us with the precious Blood of Thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ, suffer not those who believe in Thee to be plunged into the abyss of eternal punishment; but grant that by confessing our sins we may be admitted into Thy presence, by Him on Whom Thou hast laid the iniquity of us all; that as we have been healed by His stripes, we may be defended by His unceasing protection. We confess, O Lord Jesus, that Thou hast died unto sin which was not Thine, but ours; and therefore, because having once died for the ungodly, Thou livest unto God, make us so to die unto sin once, that rising again to receive our crown, we may ever rejoice in Thine eternal gifts. Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that we who have gone through the Paschal festival, may by Thy bounty still keep it in our conduct and life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God,” reports St. Matthew 5.8. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

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