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God’s Infinite Liberality Will Always Exceed All Our Wishes and Our Thoughts—God is Always Giving!

March 16, 2020 4:08 am

Spread your arms to those with needs, and serve with joy and zest; fill each day with golden deeds, and give your very best. Our beliefs about what we are and what we can be precisely determine what we will be. The real art of communication is not only to say the right thing in the right place, but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment. The force of words, being (as I have formerly noted) too weak to hold people to the performance of their covenants; there are in humans true nature, but two imaginable helps to strengthen it. And those are either a fear of the consequences of breaking their word; or a glory, or pride in appearing not to need to break it. This later is generosity too rarely found to be presumed on, especially in the pursuers of wealth, command, or sensual pleasures; which are the greatest part of humankind. The passion to be reckoned upon, is fear; whereof there be two very general objects: one, the power of the spirits invisible; the other, the power of those people they shall therein offend. Of these two, though the former be the greater power, yet the fear of the later is commonly the greater fear. The fear of the former is in every person, one’s own religion: which has place in the nature of humans before civil society. The later has not so; at least place enough, to keep people to their promises; because in the condition of mere nature, the inequality of power is not discerned, but by the even of battle. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

So that before the time of civil society, or in the interruption thereof by war, there is nothing can strengthen a covenant of peace agreed on, against the temptation of avarice, ambition, lust, or other strong desire, but the fear of that invisible power, which they every one worship as God; and fear as a revenger of their perfidy. All therefore that can be done between two people not subject to civil power, is to put one another to swear by the God one fears: which swearing or oath, is a form of speech, added to a promise; by which one that promises signifies, that unless one perform, one renounces the mercy of one’s God, or calls to Him for vengeance on oneself. Such was a heathen form, “Let Jupiter kill me else, as I kill this beast.” So is our form, “I shall do thus, and thus, so help me God.” And this, with the rites and ceremonies, which every one use in one’s own religion, that the fear of breaking faith might be the greater. By this is appears, that an oath taken according to any other form, or rite, then one’s, that swears is in vain; and no oath: and there is no swearing by any thing which the swearer thinks not God. For though people have sometimes used to swear by their kings, for fear, or flattery; yet they would have it thereby understood, they attributed to them divine honour. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

And the swearing unnecessarily by God, is but orphaning of his name: and swearing by other things, as people do in common discourse, is not swearing, but an impious custom, gotten by too much vehemence of talking. It appears also, that the oath adds nothing to the obligation. For a covenant, if lawful, binds in the sight of God, without the oath, as much as with it; if unlawful, binds not at all; though it be confirmed with an oath. “We do not think about it enough. We spend too much time cursing time—time waits for no man, time will tell, oh, the ravages of time, time flies! We do not think about the gift of time. Time gives us the chance to make mistakes and correct them, to regenerate, to grow. Time gives us the chance to forgive, to restore, to do better than we have ever done in the past. Time gives us the chance to be sorry when we fail and the chance to try to discover in ourselves a new heart. How we use this time means everything. Will we take the opportunity to transform ourselves, to admit our hideous blunders, and become against all odds, the people of our dreams? That is what it is about, right?—becoming the people of our dreams,” (page 375-376, The Wolves of Midwinter by Anne Rice). #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

One day a patient accused himself bitterly of being ungrateful, of being a burden on the analyst, of not sufficiently appreciating the fact that the analyst treated him at a small fee. However, at the end of the interview he found that he had forgotten to bring the money he had intended to pay that day. This was only one of many evidences of his wish to get everything for nothing. His profuse and generalized self-accusations had here as elsewhere the function of obscuring the concrete issue. Another example which may serve as illustration of many is a mature and intelligent woman felt guilty about having had temper tantrums as a child, although she knew, intellectually, that they had been provoked by her parents’ unreasonable conduct, and although in the meantime she had freed herself of the belief that one must think one’s parents beyond reproach. Nevertheless her guilt feelings on this score persisted so strongly that she was inclined to take her failure to make erotic contacts with men as a punishment for her hostility toward her parents. By blaming an infantile offense for her present incapability of making such contacts she disguised the factors factually operating, such as her own hostility toward men and her having withdrawn into a shell as a consequence of a fear of rejection. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

The self-recriminations not only protect against the fear of disapproval but also invite absolute reassurance, by provoking reassuring statements to the contrary. Even when no outside person is involved they provide reassurance by enhancing the neurotic’s self-respect, for they imply that one has such a keen moral judgment that one reproaches oneself for faults which others overlook and thus ultimately they make one feel that one is really a wonderful person. Moreover they give one relief, because they rarely concern the real issue of one’s discontentment with oneself, and therefore factually leave a secret door open for a belief that one is not so bad after all. A defense that is directly opposite to self-recrimination, and nevertheless fulfills the same purposes, is forestalling any criticism by always being right or perfect, thus leaving no vulnerable spots for criticism to find a foothold. Where this type of defense prevails any behaviour, even though glaringly wrong, will be justified with an amount of intellectual sophistry worthy of a cleaver and skillful lawyer. The attitude may go so far as to make it necessary to be right in the most insignificant and trifling details—to be always right about the weather, for example—because for such a person being wrong in any detail opens up the danger of being wrong altogether. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

Usually a person of this type is unable to endure the slightest difference of opinion, or even a difference of emotional emphasis, because in one’s thinking even a minute disagreement is equivalent to a criticism. Tendencies of this kind account to a great extent for what is called pseudo-adaptation. This is found in persons who in spite of a severe neurosis manage to maintain in their own eyes, and sometimes also in those of the people around them, an appearance of being “normal” and well adapted. In neurotics of this type one will scarcely every go wrong in predicting an enormous fear of being found out or disapproved of. A third way in which the neurotic may protect oneself against disapproval is to take refuge in ignorance, illness or helplessness. I encountered a transparent example of this in a French girl whom I treated in German. She was one of the girls I have already mentioned who were sent to me under the suspicion of feeblemindedness. During the first few weeks of analysis I was doubtful myself about her mental capacity; she did not seem to understand anything I said, even though she understood Germany perfectly. I tried to say the same things in simpler language, with no better results. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

Finally two factors clarified the situation. She had dreams in which my office appeared as a jail, or as the office of a doctor who had examined her physically. Both ideas betrayed her anxiety at being found out, the latter dream because she was terrified of any physical examination. The other revealing factor was an incident in her conscious life. She had forgotten to present her passport at a certain time, as required by law. When at last she went to the official she pretended not to understand German, hoping in this way to escape punishment—an incident she related to me laughingly. She then recognized that she had been using the same tactics toward me, and for the same motives. For this time on she proved to be a very intelligent girl. She had been taking shelter behind ignorance and stupidity to escape the danger of being accused and punished. In principle the same strategy is pursued by anyone who feels and acts like an irresponsible, playful child who is not to be taken seriously. Some neurotic persons adopt this attitude permanently. Or even if they do not behave childishly they may refuse to take themselves seriously in their own feelings. The function of this attitude may be observed in analysis. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

Patients on the verge of having to recognize their own aggressive tendencies may suddenly feel helpless, suddenly act like a child, desiring nothing but protection and affection. Or they have dreams in which they find themselves small and helpless, carried in the mother’s womb or in her arms. If helplessness is not effective or applicable in a given situation, illness may serve the same purpose. That illness may serve as an escape from difficulties is well known. At the same time, however, it serves the neurotic as a screen against the realization that fear is making one recoil from tackling a situation as one should. A neurotic person who is having difficulties with one’s superior, for example, may find refuge in a server attack of indigestion; the appeal of disability at such time lies in the fact that it creates a definite impossibility of action, an alibi, so to speak, and thereby relives one of the realization of one’s cowardice. A final and very important defence against disapproval of any kind is a feeling of being victimized. By feeling abused the neurotic wards off reproach for one’s own tendencies to take advantage of others; by feeling miserably neglected one debars reproaches for one’s tendencies toward possessiveness; by feeling that others are not helpful one prevents them from recognizing one’s tendencies to defeat them. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

This strategy of feeling victimized is so frequently used and tenaciously maintained because it is in fact the most effective method of defense. It enables the neurotic not only to ward off accusations but at the same time to put the blame on others. We must show our Scriptures not be in conflict with whatever [our critics] can demonstrate about the nature of things from reliable sources. In fact, it is safe to say that throughout much of church history, Scripture and right reason were considered twin allies to be prized and used by disciples of Jesus. “Nobody knows the actual day on which Christ was born. But December twenty-fifth was a great feast to the pagans of the ancient World, the day when the Sun was at its lowest ebb and people would gather in the fields, in the villages, and in the depths of the forest to beg for the Sun to come back to us at full strength, for the days to lengthen once more. And for warmth to return to the World, melting the deadly snows of Winter, and gently nourishing the crops of the field once again. That is the meaning of all the candles of Christmas, the bright electric lights on our Christmas trees. It is the meaning of all the celebrations throughout the season, that we have the hope always and forever of being better than we are, of triumphing over the darkness that might have dfeated us in the past, and realizing a brilliance never imagined before,” (pages 374-375, The Midwinters Wolves by Anne Rice). #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak—courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. “Think about it for a minute. Think about what it means to renew, to repent, to start all over again. We human beings always have the capacity. No matter how badly we stumble, we can get up and try again. No matter how miserably we fail ourselves and God and those around us, we can get up and start all over again. There is no midwinter so cold and so dark that we cannot reach for the shining light with both hands,” (page 374 The Midwinter Wolves by Anne Rice). While listening may be the most undervalued of all the communication skills, good people managers are likely to listen more than they speak. Perhaps that is why God gave us two ears and only one mouth. It does not matter what you intend to communicate, but how it is heard that counts. “I am grateful with all my heart that time is once more stretching out before me, providing me again with the chance to somehow—somehow—make amends for the things that I have done. God puts in our paths so many opportunities for that, does he not?—so many people out there who need so much from each and every one of us. He gives us people to help, people to serve, people to embrace, people to comfort, people to love. As long as I live and breathe, I am surrounded by these limitless opportunities, blessed by them on all side,” (page 376 The Midwinter Wolves by Anne Rice). #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

Words have a magical power. They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair; they can transfer knowledge from teacher to student; words enable the orator to sway one’s audience and dictate its decision. Words are capable of arousing the strongest emotions and prompting all people’s actions. In order that all people may be taught to speak the truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it. “And it came to pass that I, Nephi, said unto my father: I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord gives no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for the that they may accomplish the thing which he commands them. And it came to pass that when my father had heard these words he was exceedingly glad, for he knew that I had been blessed of the Lord. And I, Nephi, and my brethren took our journey in the wilderness, with our tents, to go up to the land of Jerusalem. And it came to pass that when we had gone up to the land of Jerusalem, I am my brethren did consult one with another. And we cast lots—who of us should go in unto the house of Laban. And it came to pass that the lot fell upon Laman; Laman went in unto the house of Laban, and he talked with him as he sat in his house. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

“And he desired of Laban the records which were engraven upon the plates of brass, which contained the genealogy of my father. And behold, it came to pass that Laban was angry, and thrust him out from his presence; and he would not that he should have the records. Wherefore, he said unto him: Behold thou art a robber, and I will slay thee. But Laman fled out of his presence, and told the things which Laban had done, unto us. And we began to be exceedingly sorrowful, and my brethren were about to return unto my father in the wilderness. But behold I said unto them that: As the Lord lives, and as we live, we will not go down unto our father in the wilderness until we have accomplished the thing which the Lord have commanded us. Wherefore, let us be faithful in keeping the commandments of the Lord; therefore let us go down to the land of our father’s inheritance, for behold he left gold and silver, and all manner of riches. And this he has done because of the commandments of the Lord. For he knew that Jerusalem must be destroyed, because of the wickedness of the people. For behold, they have rejected the words of the prophets. Wherefore, if my father should dwell in the land after he has been commanded to flee out of the land, behold, he would also perish. Wherefore, it must needs be that he flee out of the land,” reports 1 Nephi 3.7-18. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

Christianity is to be identified neither with any Christian Church nor with Christendom as a whole. It embraces both Jesus as the Christ and what is called the “Logos spermatikos.” Every theology knows that there is a sense and a manner in which God is not limited by the Church, that Christ reaches humans outside of those who are official members of the Church. Whether they are aware of it or not, Christ is the unconditional concern. It has to do it even when it is impossible to call him by his name. Every ultimate concern, every protest in the name of the Unconditional against any kind of idolatry—of things, of nations, of doctrines—implies a share in the Christian witness. This explains the messianic eloquence that is it the faith itself in the New Being in Christ which seeks expression in the most meaningless situations as it brings justification in the heart marked by sin, in the mind smeared by unbelief. Christ as the Revelation of the Unconditional among humans must be accepted as the one to explain the contents of the Christian faith, and the datum has to be focused upon as the norm adopted by theology and streamlined according to the norm. O God, Who orders things in Heaven and Earth alike for the assistance of humankind; we beseech Thee that while we are labouring in the lower part of the Universe, Thou would mercifully refresh us by the protection of Thy ministers from above; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

And here is the widespread failure to attain Christian maturity among both leaders and followers, referred to earlier. Those who are Christians by profession—and seriously so, we must add—today do not usually have, are not led into, the VIM (Vision, Intention, Means) that would enable them to routinely progress to the point where what Jesus Himself did and taught would be the natural outflow of who they really are on the inside. Rather, what they are inwardly is left substantially as it was, as it is in non-Christians, and they are left constantly to battle with it. That is why today you find many professing Christians circling back to non-Christians sources to resolve the problems of their inner life. Instead of inward transformation, some outward from of religion—often today even called a spirituality—is taken or impsed as the goal of practical endeavour. What is then important is to be a “good____” (you can fill in the blank). And the respective social group—the “good____s”—wiill enforce that importance, on pain of disapproval or exclusion from the group. Or the individual even enforces it upon himself or herself as what is “obviously” right. However, whatever the detail, authentic inward transformation into Christlikeness is omitted. It is not envisioned, intended, or achieved. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

Not so in the call of Jesus to live with one as one’s student or apprentice in His kingdom. By contrast, for Him and for His Father, the heart is what matters, and everything else will then come along. And the process of inward renovation starts from the stark vision of life in the Kingdom of God. There can be no ongoing devotion without confession, which can take place anytime. Ideally it ought to take place whenever we sin. However, all too often we are too proud and emotionally charged to acknowledge our sins at the time we commit it—for example, when we lost our temper in an argument. However, if we are overloaded with guilt, devotion is impossible. To live by grace is to live solely by the merit of Jesus Christ. To live by the grace is to live solely by the merit of Jesus Christ. To live by grace is to base my entire relationship with God, including my acceptance and standing with Him, on my union with Christ. It is to recognize that in myself I bring nothing of worth to my relationship with God, because even my righteous acts are like filthy rage in God’s sights (Isaiah 64.6). Even my best works are stained with mixed motives and imperfect performance. I never truly love God with all my heart, and I never truly love my neighbour with the degree or consistency with which I love myself. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

Yet God requires perfection. Jesus said, “Be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect,” reports Matthew 5.48. When we take Jesus’ words seriously, we are forced to say with the psalmist, “Thy commandment is exceedingly broad,” reports Psalm 119.96. What is the answer to out dilemma? All Christians recognize that we are justified—that is, declared righteous—solely on the basis of the righteousness of Christ imputed to us by God though faith (Romans 3.21-25). However, few of us fully recognize that we are also sanctified through faith in Christ. Sanctification, or holiness (the two words are virtually interchangeable), is essentially conformity to the moral character of God. We normally think of sanctification as progressive, as an inner change of our character whereby we are confronted more and more to the likeness of Christ. That is certainly a major part of sanctification, but not all of it. O Living God, I bless thee that I see the worst of my heart as well as the best of it, that I can sorrow for those sins that carry me from thee, that it is Thy deep and dear mercy to threaten punishment so that I may return, pray, live. My sin is to look on my faults and be discouraged, or to look on my good and be puffed up. I fall short of Thy glory every day by spending hours unprofitably, by thinking that the thing I do are good, when they are not done to thy end, nor spring from the rules of Thy word. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

My sin is to fear what never will be; I forget to submit to Thy will, and fail to be quiet there. However, Scripture teaches me that Thy active will reveals a steadfast purpose on my behalf, and this quietness my soul, and makes me love Thee. Keep me always in the understanding that saints mourn more for sin than other people, for when they see how great is Thy wrath against sin, and how Christ’s death alone pacifies that wrath, that makes them mourn the more. Help me to see that although I am in the wilderness it is not all briars and barrenness. I have bread from Heaven, streams from the rock, light by day, fire by night, Thy dwelling place and Thy mercy seat. I am sometimes discouraged by the way, but though winding and trying it is safe and short’ death dismays me, but my great high priest stands in its waters, and will open me a passage, and beyond is a better country. While I live let my life be exemplary, when I die may my end be peace. O Light of light, O Brightness indescribable, Christ our God, the Wisdom, Power, and Glory of the Father, Who didst appear visibly to all people as the Word made flesh, and having overcome the prince of darkness, did return to Thy throne on high; grant to us Thy suppliants, amid this dark World, the full outpouring of Thy splendour; appoint the Archangel Michael to be our defender, to guard our going out and coming in; and admit us to place on Thy right hand, to receive the crown from Thee. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

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The Condition Upon which God Hath Given Liberty to Humans is Eternal Vigilance!

March 14, 2020 1:46 am

An individual’s self-concept is the core of one’s personality. It affects every aspect of human behaviour: the ability to learn, the capacity to grow and change, the choice of friends, mates, and careers. It is no exaggeration to say that a strong beneficial self-image is the best possible preparation for success in life. The Master has one’s shortcomings or frailties just as we all have, but one also had what few of us have—a direct contact with God. Where is the person who is wise enough to give everyone else spiritual guidance, personal advice, marital counsel, and prediction of future? Who with a single look knows all about you as one already knows all about God and the Universe? Let us not look for fantasies of wishful thinking but see humans as humans. Let one not expect to find perfection in any mortal. Let one be satisfied to find someone who has so developed one’s spirituality that one is worthy to lead those who are still much in the rear. There is no being without one’s defects: it is a dreamer’s notion that the perfect human being exists on our planet. Hence the disciples who servilely copy their guru in all things may copy one’s defects too! Where is such a master, such a faultless paragon of virtue wisdom strength and pity, to be found? #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

Look where we will, every person falls short of the ideal, shows an imperfection or betrays a weakness. The ideal self-actualized person portrayed in philosophical (as distinct from mystical) books, has not come to life in our times however much one may have done so in ancient times. Behind the majestic phrases of most of these spiritual teachers, we usually find in the end of a searching investigation based on living with them or on the historic fact of their lives, that there stand for frail mortals. Hence those few who emerge as being one with, and not inferior to, their teachings stand out all the more truly as great beings. It is misleading to put such a person forward, as so many people put one forward, as being faultless. One’s consciousness of God may be perfect, but one’s conduct as a human being may be not. Is there anywhere a faultless person? One may be wise but one may not be wise all the time. For history shows lapses of judgment, impulsive actions, and other regrettable happenings due to karmic pressures even where least expected. There are many ways to undermine the student-professor relationship: if the guru is put upon an unreachable pedestal, if one is turned into a god and one’s humanness is denied, or if the guru is believed to be perfection itself. The possibility for perfection in any person is a debatable point. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

When considering fame it can be useful and convenient to consider ill-famed or infamy, this arising when there is a circle of persons who know ill of an individual without having met one personally. The obvious function of ill-fame is social control, of which two distinct possibilities must be mentioned: Formal social control is the first. There are functionaries, and circles of functionaries, employed to scan various publics for the presence of identifiable individuals whose record and reputation have made them suspect, or even “wanted” for arrest. For example, during a mental hospital study, I knew a patient who had “town parole” and also a record of having harassed some youths. On entering any of the neighbouring movies houses he was likely to be spotted by the manager and made to leave. He was, in short, too ill-famed to attend movies in the neighbourhood. Well-known “hoods” have had the same problem, but a scale larger than could be effected by theater managers. It is here that one deals with further examples of the occupation of making persona identifications. Floorwalkers in stores, for example, sometimes have extensive records of the appearance of professional shoplifters along with that identity peg called the modus operandi. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

The production of personal identification may in fact be accorded a social occasion of its own, as in the police line-up. Dickens, in describing the social mixing of prisoners and visitors in a London jail, provides another example, called “sitting for one’s portrait,” whereby a new prisoner was obliged to sit in a chair while the guards gathered and looked at the individual, fixing one’s image in their kinds so as to be able to spot the individual later. Functionaries whose job is to check up on the possible presence of the ill-reputed may operate in the public at large; and this time the famed can be seen to be in much the same position as the ill-famed. It is possible for the circle of those who know of an individual (but are not known by one) to include the public at large, not merely those employed to make identifications. (In fact the terms “fame” and “ill-famed” imply that the citizenry at large must possess an image of the individual.) No doubt the mass media play the central role here, making it possible for a “private” person to be transformed into a “public” figure. Now it seems the case that the public image of an individual, that is, the image of one available to those who do not know one personally, will necessarily be somewhat different from the image one projects through direct dealings with those who know one personally. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

Where an individual has a public image, it seems to be constituted from a small selection of acts which may be true of one, which facts are inflated into a dramatic and newsworthy appearance, and then used as a full picture of one. In consequence a special type of stigmatization can occur. The figure the individual cuts in daily life before those with whom know has routine dealings is likely to be dwarfed and spoiled by virtual demands (whether favourable or unfavourable) created by one’s public image. This seems especially to occur when the individual is no longer engaged in newsworthy larger events and must everywhere face being received as someone who no longer is what one once was; it seems also likely to occur when notoriety is acquired due to a brief and uncharacteristic, accidental event which exposes the individual to public identification without providing one any compensating claim to desired attributes. In law, efforts of an individual to remain a private citizen or regain that status have come to form part of the question of privacy. People have the right to be let alone. An implication of these comments is that the famous and the infamous ay have more in common than either has with what headwaiters and gossip columnists call “nobodies,” for whether a crowd wants to show love of hate for an individual, the same disruption of one’s ordinary movement can occur. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

This type of lack of anonymity is to be contrasted to the type based on social identity, as when an individual with a physical imperfection feels he or she is constantly stared at. Infamous hangmen and famous actors have both found it expedient to board a train at an unanticipated station or to wear a disguise; individuals may even find themselves using stratagems to escape hostile public attention that they also used at an earlier time in their story to escape adulatory attention. In any case, readily accessible information about the management of personal identity is t be found in the biographies and autobiographies of famous and infamous people. An individual, then, may be seen as the central point in a distribution of persons who either merely know about one or know one personally, all of whom may have somewhat different amounts of information concerning one. Let me repeat that although the individual’s daily round will routinely bring one into contact with individuals who know one differently, these differences will ordinarily be incompatible; in fact, some kind of single biographical structure will be sustained. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

A person’s relationship to one’s boss and one’s relationship to one’s child may be vastly different, so that one cannot easily play the part of employee while playing the part of father, but should the person, while walking with one’s child, meet one’s boss, a greeting and introduction will be possible without either the child or the boss radically reorganizing their personal identification of the person—both having known of the existence and role of the other. He well-established etiquette of the “curtesy introduction,” in fact, assumes that the person we have a role relation to quite properly has other kinds of relationships to other kinds of person. I assume, then, that the apparently haphazard contacts of everyday life may still constitute some kind of structure holding the individual to one biography, and this in spite of the multiplicity of selves that role and audience segregation allow one. We have now begun to look at a characteristic whose development markedly distinguishes the human from other animal–’our greater ability to steer behaviour in a particular direction. The potential for this is to come extent built in; that is why it was worth while studying in such detail the process of learning to recognize a triangle. That process is the prototype for all direction-giving processes. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

Simplifying grossly, we may say that because of the way the eye is constructed, its attention travels between angles until the structure “triangle” is registered. When this happened very often, a more permanent structure is established: the concept of t for triangle. Once this has happened, the concept “triangle” sometimes comes to mind when angles are perceived. We begin sometimes to think “triangle” before we have counted the corners. Here is a kind of system where the perception of two angles (or sometimes just one) can call forth the concept “triangle,” and where the concept of “triangle” calls forth the activity of looking for angles. “Looking for” (formally called expectancy) is a direction- giving process, closely related to attention-giving. Referring to the reciprocal facilitations which operate when looking at the triangle. Attention is the central reinforcement of a sensory process. But the same process is called expectancy when the sensory reinforcement is delayed. I shall usually call this process “expectation.” Seeing an angle, the eye is drawn along a line to the adjacent angle. This is the influence of the past. It can however become the influence of the future. Because the eye is drawn along, there is an element of action. A neural organization can come into being, which involves both an expectation of what will happen next, and an impulse to do the next thing. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

Structural changes produce enduring concepts, and perhaps quite elaborate structures of ideas and feelings which give meaning to much that happens. One consequence of such structures is to make it possible for us to expect events to happen which have not happened yet. Expectations can cause a message to get organized in a more powerful way than the message would warrant if the structures had not already become established, and in a more powerful way than other messages coming in at the same time. Expectations give meaning to current events. So much so that expectation is often the same as meaning. If the central “steps” assembly reverberates easily and is a relatively enduring structure, than a great variety of messages about height can evoke a sense of danger—height will come to stand for sanger; height will bring with it the expectation that something dangerous is about to happen. This sense of danger will have come from the person’s anticipation that he or she is about to remember a painful experience associated with the upstairs room. This anticipation is called signal anxiety: the present situation is a signal (symbol) that something else will happen next, in this case, something undesirable. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

The central process which lead to expectancy and meaning can also act selectively so that certain stimuli are sought for—“selected.” Insofar as people’s lives in society, as one of many creaturely beings, as one of many individuals, one is influenced by one’s environment. One also constantly abuts against one’s intrinsic limits. Being justified by grace, simul peccator et justs, one runs the permanent risk of negating one of the two poles of one’s existence, sin or justice. Thus one does not live in a comfortably peaceful region, but rather on a spiritual boundary line between the demonic—or the realm of idolatry, of misinterpretation—and justice by grace. Ultimately this situation, which is psychologically translated as an awareness of sin, stems from the “spiritual cleavage” between essence and existence, between Eden and the World. It is the drama and also the privilege of modern humans that one is more conscious than one’s forerunners were of this “boundary situation.” Hence the existential questions that crop up in one concerning the means of being, of existence and of life, to which one finds no ultimate answer in oneself. No answer does not mean that a person is not ultimately concerned regarding the dilemmas of existence. Far from it, an analysis of one’s situation shows that humans are away of something that calls for unconditional allegiance. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

Beyond the contradictions of the dialectic of existence one senses, however dimly, a sort of undercurrent to being, a ground of being where contradictions would be resolved and dilemmas uncoil themselves if one could reach so far. The great religions and their philosophical or political substitutes have tried to give it a name and to elaborate means of allegiance to it. The Christian faith knows that this unconditional concern has been revealed to us in Jesus as the Christ. The ultimate ground of being in one other than God. The method of apologetics, therefore, would consist in witnessing to the New Being in Jesus as Christ at the moment when humans reach awareness of the Unconditional in oneself. To be efficient today, the theological norm must be apprehended ad an answer to human’s situation, as the name for the ultimate ground of being. This is why we follow a method of correlation wherein an existential analysis, a transcendent realism, lays bare human’s ultimate concern and proceeds to show that the New Being in Jesus as the Christ is the God-given answer to human’s questions, the unfolding of one’s situation, the justification by grace of one’s existence. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

When a person is ultimately concerned, when one has reached the bottom of being and has given oneself to it, even thought in doubt and with hesitancy—for these belong to one’s situation as human—then one is indeed justified by faith. Whether one knows it or not, whether one has heard of Christ or not, one is then grasped by the New Being. For this is the Protestant protest: to assert God in the midst of the demonic, the Unconditional amidst the conditioned. This is justification by grace alone: to be take hold of by the Christ now, not doctrinally but existentially, not in theory but in fact. Every unconditional concern stamps a person as having been reached by the New Being in Christ, by a reality in which the self-estrangement of our existence is overcome, a reality of reconciliation and reunion, of creativity, meaning and hope. Adhesion to the Unconditional resolves the contradictions of the conditions of existence. Then the New Being re-establishes the courage to be, which is rooted in the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt. Then humans are justified by grace alone. We must bring light to the unconditional concern of humans and show the identity of the Unconditional, with which humans are concerned, with the New Being manifested in Jesus Christ. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

Hence the norm is best expressed thus: The material norm of systematic theology today is the New Being in Jesus as the Christ as our ultimate concern. Theology is interested in this ultimate or unconditional concern in itself. In the Christian faith it is equated with Christ himself as the revealer of the New Being. Theology today has to show people Christ as the Revelation of the Unconditional. The Eye of Providence or the all-seeing eye is a symbol showing an eye surrounded by rays of light or glory, and usually enclosed by a triangle. It is sometimes interpreted as representing the eye of God keeping watch on humankind. In 1782 the Eye of Providence was adopted as part of the symbolism on the reverse side of the Great Seal of the United States of America. On the seal, the Eye is surrounded by the words “Annuit Coeptis,” meaning “He approves (or has approved) our undertakings,” “Novus Ordo Seclorum,” meaning “New Order of the Ages,” and the lowest level of the pyramid showing the years 1776 in Roman numerals. The Eye is positioned above an unfinished pyramid with thirteen steps, representing the original thirteen states and the future growth of the country—Manifest Destiny. The combined implication is that the Eye, or God favours the prosperity of the United States of America. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

It is written: “The grace of God is life everlasting,” reports Romans 6.23. However, life everlasting consists in the vision of the Divine essence, according to the words: “This is eternal life, that they may know Thee the only true God,” excreta reports John 17.3. Therefore to see the essence of God is possible to the created intellect by grace, and not by nature. Knowledge is regulated according as the thing known is the knower. However, the thing known is in the knower according to the mode of the knower. Hence the knowledge of every knower is ruled according to its own nature. If therefore the mode of anything’s being exceeds the mode of the knower, it must result that the knowledge of the object is above the nature of the knower. Now the mode of being of things is manifold. For some things have being only in this one individual matter; as all bodies. However, others are subsisting natures, not residing in matter at all, which, however, are not their own existence, but receive it; and these are the incorporeal beings, called Angels. However, to God alone does it belong to His own subsistent being. Therefore what exists only in individual matter we know naturally, forasmuch as our soul, whereby we know, is the form of certain matter. Now our soul possesses two cognitive powers; one is the act of a corporeal organ, which naturally knows things existing in individual matter; hence sense knows only the singular. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

There is another kind of cognitive power in the soul, called the intellect; and this is not the act of any corporeal organ. Wherefore the intellect naturally knows natures which exist only in individual matter; not as they are in such individual matter, but according as they are abstracted therefore by the considering act of the intellect; hence it follows that through the intellect we can understand these objects as Universal; and this is beyond power of the sense. Now the angelic intellect naturally knows natures that are not in matter; but this is beyond the power of the intellect of our soul in the state of its present life, untied as it is to the body. It follows therefore that to know self-subsistent being is natural to the divine intellect alone; and this is beyond the natural power of any created intellect; for no creature is its own existence, forasmuch as its existence is participated. Therefore the created intellect cannot see the essence of God, unless God by His grace united Himself to the created intellect, as an object made intelligible to it. This mode of knowing God is natural to an Angel—namely, to know Him by His own likeness refulgent in the Angel oneself. However, to know God by any created similitude is not to know the essence of God, as was shown above. Hence is does not follow that an Angel can know the essence of God by one’s own power. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

The general pattern of personal transformation, which also applies to spiritual formation in the Christian tradition, should now be clear. Indeed, this is the pattern of al human accomplishment, even that which—like spiritual formation can only occur at the initiative and through the constant direction and upholding of God, or through grace. To keep the general pattern in mind, we will use the little acronym “VIM,” as in the phrase “vim and vigour.” Vision, Intention, Means. “Vim” is a derivative of the Latin term “vis,” meaning direction, strength, force, vigour, power, energy, or virtue; and sometimes meaning sense, import, nature, or essence. Spiritual formation in Christlikeness is all of this to human existence. It is the path by which we can truly, as Paul told the Ephesians, “be empowered in the Lord and in the energy of his might,” as reported in Ephesians 6.10 and “become mighty with his energy through his Spirit entering into the inward person,” reports Ephesians 3.16. If we are to be spiritually formed in Christ, we must have and must implement the appropriate vision, intention, and means. Not just any path we take will do. If this VIM pattern is not in place properly and held there, Christ simply will not be formed in us. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

Larger segments, especially classic texts, are tailor-made for meditation. The Ten Commandments, with the first four Godward commands, and the six manward injunction following, should be regularly murmured in reverent self-examination (cf. Exodus 20.1-17 and Deuteronomy 5.1-22). There are eight Beatitudes which consecutively considered poverty of spirit, mouring over sin, gentleness, spiritual hunger, mercy, purity, peacemaking, and persecution. The Lord’s Prayer begins with the foundational awareness “Our Father, who art in Heaven” and then presents three upward petitions and three horizontal petitions—a perfect pattern for prayer and meditation. There are endless possibilities, including he so-called kenosis passage, Philippians 2.5-11, which begins, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus.” Other food for meditation includes Jesus’ parables, the Psalms, and the epigrams of James. Both practical and esoteric passages can provide divine substance for reverent soul chatter. The effect of meditation are supernal, bringing: Revival—“The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul,” reports Psalm 19.7. Wisdom—“The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple,” reports Psalm 19.7; “Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long. Your commands make me wiser than my enemies, for they are ever with me,” reports Psalm 119.97, 98. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

Increases in our Faith—“Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ,” reports Romans 10.17. We may be challenged, convicted, and exhilarated with the call to meditation. The question is, how is this to be done? The Scriptures say it should be continual, telling us we ought to mediate “day and night” reports Psalm 1.2; cf. 119.97), and even while we lie awake at night reports Psalm 63.6; 119:148. Ideally, we are to make meditation part of our regular devotion, giving hidden time to reverently muttering God’s Word. However, even our bust schedules can be punctuated with Scriptural meditation—in the car, at lunch break, or waiting for a bus. Select a choice text, write in on a card, and slip it into your pocket. Pull it out on those spare moments. Murmur it. Memorize it. Pray it. Say it. Share it. The discipline of meditation is a must. Moses told Israel as he finished the “Songs of Moses”: “Take to heart all the words I have solemnly declared to you this day. They are not just idle words for you—they are your life,” reports Deuteronomy 32.46,47. “Then he said, ‘Here I am, I have come to do your will.’ And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all,” reports Hebrews 10.9-10. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

The great mistake made by most of the Lord’s people is in hoping to discover in themselves that which is to be found in Christ alone. Most of us have a tendency to seek within ourselves what is to be found in Christ alone. O Merciful God, that we who by violating the Divine precepts fell away from the happiness of Paradise, may by the keeping of Thy commandments regain the access to eternal bliss; through Jesus Christ our Lord. No person is obliged to accuse oneself. A covenant to accuse oneself, without assurance of pardon, is likewise invalid. For in the condition of nature, where every person is judge, there is no place for accusation: and in the civil state, the accusation is followed with punishment; which being force, a person is not obliged not to resist. The same is also true, of the accusation of those, by whose condemnation a person falls into misery; as of a father, wife, or benefactor. For the testimony of such an accuser, if it be not willingly given, is presumed to be corrupted by nature; and therefore not to be received: and where a person’s testimony is not to be credited, one is not bound to give it. Also accusations upon torture, are not to be reputed as testimonies. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

For torture is to be used but as means of conjecture, and light, in the further examination, and search of truth; and what is in that case confessed, tends to ease of one that is tortured; not to the informing of the torturers: and therefore ought not to have the credit of a sufficient testimony: for whether one deliver oneself by true, or false accusation, one does it by right of preserving one’s own life. Lehi’s sons return to Jerusalem to obtain the plates of brass—Laban refuses to give the plates up—Nephi exhorts and encourages his brethren—Laban steals their property and attempts to slay them (sliving)—Laman and Lemuel smite Nephi and Sam and are reproved by an Angel. About 600-592 Before Christ. “And it came to pass that I, Nephi, returned from speaking with the Lord, to the tent of my father. And it came to pass that he spake unto me, saying: Behold I have a dreamed a dream, in the which the Lord hath commanded me that thou and thy brethren shall return to Jerusalem. For behold, Laban hat the record of the Jews and also a genealogy of my forefathers, and they are engraven upon plates of brass. Wherefore, the Lord hath commanded me that thou and thy brothers should go unto the house of Laban, and seek the records, and being them down hither into the wilderness. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

“And now, behold thy brothers murmur, saying it is a hard thing which I have required of them; but behold I have not required it of them, but it is a commandment of the Lord. Therefore go, my son, and thou shalt be favoured of the Lord, because thou has not murmured,” reports 1 Nephi 3.1-6. O Lord, help me to approach thee with becoming conception of Thy nature, relations and designs. Thou inhabitest eternity, and my life is nothing before thee; Thou dwellest in the highest Heaven and this cannot contain Thee; I live in a house of clay. Thy power is almighty; I am crushed before the moth. Thy understanding is infinite; I know nothing as I ought to know. Thou canst not behold evil; I am vile. In my ignorance, weakness, fears, depression, may Thy Spirit help my infirmities with supplies of wisdom, strength and comfort. Let me faithfully study my character, be willing to bring it to light, observe myself in my trials, judge the reality and degree of my grace, consider how I have been ensnared or overcome. Grant that I may never trust my heart, depend upon any present resolutions, but be strong in the grace of Jesus: that I may know how to obtain relief from a guilty conscience without feeling reconciled to my imperfections. Sustain me under my trials and improve them to me; give me grace to rest in thee, and assure me of deliverance. May I always combine they majesty with thy mercy, and connect Thy goodness with Thy greatness. Then shall my heart always rejoice in praises to thee. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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We Must Behave with the Utmost Respect Toward this Instant of Birth, this Fragile Moment!

March 13, 2020 1:18 am

Consider how hard it is to change yourself, and you will understand what little chance you have of trying to change others. The disciples exaggerate the master. They create a new deity. If later some among them inevitably discover that one has one’s minor faults and makes one’s little mistakes, there is almost an emotional collapse, a nervous shock. Why, with all one’s wonderful attainments, can they not accept one as a human being? It is inevitable that they will demand continuing individual attention and it is just as inevitable that one will be unable to give it. Disappointment will ensure and negative thoughts will start to breeding. They associate one with omnipotence, if not omniscience, but when time shows up the extravagance and the exaggeration of their idealized expectations, their faith falls to the ground, deflated. Nearly every professional who helps people intimately or mentally has to undergo certain tests or temptations or ordeals. When one deals with a neurotic patient, the psychoanalyst, the physician, or the schoolteacher may pass through the same experience as the spiritual guide. If one is too emotionally affectionate or too physically sensual, or if one is starved off affection or sensuality, one may naturally fall in love with one for a time. I say “for a time” advisedly because the succeeding phase—equally known to the spiritual guide—is to become antagonistic to one. Psychology has identified this first phase and calls it “transference.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

The same disciple whose exaggerated enthusiasm caused one to regard the master as archangel, now, by a curious process of transformation regards one as an archdevil! The guide is up against the fact that most aspirants expect too much from one. Even if one warns them at the start, one’s words are given little weight or else are soon forgotten. They expect one to use some trick, whose secret one alone knows, to turn them quickly into illumined mystics or even powerful adepts. Consequently they react emotionally against one in their later disappointment. When the discrepancy between the real being and the preconceived mental image of one becomes too obvious and too large, they blame one instead of themselves. It is because followers place one in such a unique and exalted position in their hearts that they do real psychic injury to themselves when they believe it necessary to throw one down from it. The first and last illusion to go is that any perfect people exist anywhere. Not only is there no absolute perfection to be found, but not even does a moderate perfection exist among the most spiritual of human beings. Hence, the atmosphere of personal idolatry is not a healthy one. It is right that the impact of an unusually outstanding personality should produce an unforgettable intellectual or emotional experience. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

However, it is wrong to believe one a god rather than a human, or to lead others to believe it, for that is an excess which can only lead to the reaction of disappointment in the end, as sooner or later one will be reduced by further knowledge to human proportions. To ask that a spiritual master or a loved mate shall be perfect in every respect is to ask the impossible and the non-existent. In the case of a seeker, it is likely to result in missing the very opportunity one is seeking. In the case of one who is already associated with a master or mate, experimental straying away is likely to result in disappointment and a retracing of steps. Let us not turn them into what they are not. They are human, they make mistakes; they are not gods. The desire to deify their teachers, which is so common, can have no place among philosophic ones. We look upon the teacher as a being, as one who incites us to seek the best and inspires of to self-improvement and guides us to the truth. However, one is still a human to be respected, not a god to be worshipped. One has one’s imperfections. How early can this relationship between unique persons begin? #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

While I have been fascinated by the horizontal spread of the person-centered approach into so many areas of our life, others have been more interested in the vertical direction and are discovering the profound value of treating the infant, during the whole birth process, as a person who should be understood, whose communications should be treated with respect, who should be dealt with empathically. This is the stimulating contribution of Frederick Leboyer, a French obstetrician who, after delivering thousands of babies, began to change his methods in very striking ways and who has assisted in the delivery of at least a thousand infants in what can only be called a person-centered way. Dr. Leboyer has become indignant at our failure to understand, empathically, the struggles and cries, the fear and pain of the newborn. He points out that the newly arriving infant is not blind, as is often supposed. After nine months in the womb, the newborn is instead ultrasensitive to light, and we blind the baby with floodlights in the delivery room. We assume that it makes no difference what the baby hears, and hence loud conversations and exhortations to the mother in labour to “Push! Push harder,” are unimportant. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

Yet the baby is very sensitive to sound, and for some time after birth can be soothed and put to sleep by a tape recording of the sounds from inside of the uterus—the movements of joints and muscles, the rumblings of stomach and intestines, and above all the steady rhythm of the mother’s heartbeat. We assume that the baby’s skin can stand the touch of dry cloth, when actually it is almost as raw as tissue that has suffered a burn. When the child’s cries indicate that they are probably extremely painful, we assume that the first breaths are exhilarating. Above all, the individuals involved are concerned with their own feelings, not those of the newly born baby. The doctor has completed one’s delivery—and is pleased with oneself. The mother is smiling because the ordeal is over; she hears the baby crying and is proud of herself. The father is happy for having sired a son or daughter. So who pays attention to the infant’s reactions? No one. The baby is too immature to have feelings or reactions, it is assumed. The infant is picked up by the feet, forcefully straightening a spine which has always been curved, slapped on the buttocks to force him or her to breathe, cut off from one’s alternate source of oxygen by snipping the umbilical cord, often places on a cold metal scale for weighing, and then wrapped in dry cloth. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

The photographs of the screaming, terrified, blinded infants handled in this customary fashion are damning. And what does Dr. Leboyer do about all this? He enters into the trauma of birth and new life and tries to understand this nascent person. In doing he changes almost every step of handling an infant’s birth. First is the training of the mother for a natural childbirth. She is prepared for the steps the doctor will take. She will not be frightened by the fact that her baby will not loudly cry, but may simply utter one or two small cries or grasps as it starts to breathe. She is encouraged to feel “I am a mother,” not “This is my child.” Then come the changes in the methods of delivery. As soon as the head appears, and it seems the birth will be normal, all the bright lights are extinguished, leaving only one soft light. During this time and afterward, the deliver room is silent. If there must be conversation, it is whispered. As the child emerges, care is taken not to touch the dead, which has borne the brunt of the pain of the birth canal. The child is then settled immediately on the mother’s belly, now so hollow, where the warmth and inner gurgles and the heartbeat can again be experienced. This placement makes it unnecessary to but the umbilical cord, thus leaving the infant with two sources of oxygen, avoiding brain damage from anoxia. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

The baby, usually after a cry or two, begins to breathe. Sometimes, too, the infant stops breathing for a bit, and then starts again at one’s own pace. Since oxygen is still being received from the placenta, this is not dangerous. By the time the umbilical cord stops pulsating—usually after four or five minutes—the infant’s breathing apparatus is working, one is cradled in the most comfortable place, second only to the womb, and is beginning to move and stretch. The baby has not been rushed. One’s natural pace has been respected. The umbilicus is now cut, having ceased to function. Dr. Leboyer adds, “We must behave with the utmost respect toward this instant of birth, this fragile moment.” As the child begins to use its limbs to explore the new space on the mother’s abdomen, touch becomes the means of communication. Hands—preferably the mother’s—are placed quietly and softly on the infant, or the back is stroked rhythmically as a reminder of the internal rhythms previously experiences. This touching assures the baby that “We are both still here; we are both alive.” When the infant seems ready, it is lifted from the mother’s body and lowered slowly and gently into water that is heated to body temperature—98 or 99 degrees Fahrenheit. Here the baby begins to move its limbs, to turn its head from side to side. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

Then the eyes are opened! Photographs of these newborn show them to look astonishingly older than we would expect. They are calm and exploratory, not in panic or fear, nor sobbing in pain. They begin clearly to enjoy themselves and their movements. Only when the child seems fully relaxed, and showing a welcoming attitude toward these tremendous new discoveries, is one removed from the water and placed in warmed cloth. The transfer from the womb to the World has been successfully begun. Though it is too soon to know the long-term effects, this new way of handling the birth process is profoundly important. By respecting the infant, and endeavouring to deal with one understandingly, the psychological scars of the birth trauma have been enormously reduced. To come into the new life so gradually, with security and a caring, loving touch is much better for the child’s psychological development than for one to be suddenly exposed to all sorts of terrifying stimuli and forced into a fearful new way of being. A French study of 120 of these infants up to the age of three shows them to be astonishingly free of feeding and sleeping problems, and to be more alert, coordinated and playful than other children. They are also relaxed and aggregable. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

England expects every person will do one’s duty. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom. And the awareness of the Holy is insight,” reports Proverbs 9.10. When the term “wisdom” almost disappeared from Christian preaching and teaching, it was a grave loss. Of course, it is still used sometimes in both popular and philosophical language. However, its original significance and power have vanished. It has been called “the virtue of maturity,” which is of no concern to youth. It has almost become as ridiculous as the ancient word “virtue” itself. One speaks of experience, insight, knowledge; and indeed those are related to wisdom and often part of it. However, none of them is wisdom itself. Wisdom is greater than these. It is one of the great things that profoundly concern every human being in every period of one’s conscious life. Wisdom is not bound to the golden years. It is found equally in the young. And there are fools at all ages of life. It is my hope in this hour to communicate the meaning and the greatness of wisdom, particularly to those who are young and who must make wise decision about their lives. To understand the meaning of wisdom we must see it in the breadth and depth in which it was seen by the person whose words are our lesson. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

There are many more words about the glory of wisdom, both in the Old and the New Testament. And there is praise of wisdom and passionate seeking for it in many religions. Wisdom is universally human. It is present in the spiritual life of all humankind. And it is present not only in all humankind, but in the Universe itself. For the Universe is created by the divine power in the presence of Wisdom. This is the vision of the author of Proverbs and of the poet who wrote the book of Job. Some believe that William Shakespeare actually drafted the Christian Bible. Wisdom was beside God before creation of the World. “When he marked out the foundations of the Earth, then I was beside him,” Wisdom says. “When he gave to the wind its weight and meted out the waters by measure; when he made a decree for the rain and a way for the lightning and thunder, he saw Wisdom then and studied her.” The meaning of these words is that God explores Wisdom, which is like an independent power beside Him, and according to what He finds in her He forms the World. The Universe in all its parts is the embodiment of wisdom. This vision was confirmed for me a few weeks ago when I met someone well-known astronomers, physicists and biologists, who passionately expressed their conviction that they increased the awareness of the eternal wisdom in the structure of the Universe by increasing the knowledge of our World. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

They rejected a science that gives knowledge without wisdom and a theology that neglects the divine wisdom shining though human’s knowledge of nature. When methods of scientific research were first introduced, at the height of the Middle Ages in the thirteenth century, a keen observer made the prophetic remark: “Under the new method science will increase but wisdom will decrease.” Wisdom was for him the understanding of the principles which determine life and World. He was right: science conquered wisdom; knowledge replaced insight. From century to century it has become more and more evident that knowledge without wisdom produces external and internal self-destruction. The health of the younger generation is demonstrated by the fact that it has experienced and violently expressed the emptiness of knowledge without wisdom. Those who feel dissatisfied with learning facts without an understanding of their meaning, and those who feel the emptiness of the possession of knowledge without wisdom are most important in our academic and national society. May they never cease to express this feeling! May they force us, the older ones, to listen. However, we shall only listen, if contempt of knowledge and scholarship does not color their complaints; then we shall try with all that is given to us to become their helpers on the road to wisdom. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

Personal identity, like social identity, divides up the individual’s World’s of others for one. The division is first between the knowing and the unknowing. The knowing are those who have a personal identification of the individual; they need only see one or hear one’s name to bring this information into play. The unknowing are those for whom the individual constitutes and utter stranger, someone of whom they have begun no personal biography. The individual who is known about by others may or may not know that one is known about by them; they in turn may or may not know that knows or does not know of their knowing about one. Further, while believing that they do not know about one, nonetheless one can never be sure. Also, if one knows they know about one, one must, in some measure at least, know about them; but if one does not know that they know about one, one may or may not know about them in regard to other matters. All of this can be relevant apart from how much is or is not known, since the individual’s problem in managing one’s social and personal identity will vary greatly according to whether or not those in one’s presence know of one, and, if so, whether or not one knows they know of one. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

When an individual is among persons for whom one is an utter stranger, and is meaningful only in terms of one’s immediately apparent social identity, the great contingency for one is whether or not they will begin to build up a personal identification of one (at the least a memory of having seen one in the context conducting oneself in a particular way), or whether they will refrain altogether from organizing and storing their knowledge about one around a persona identification, this latter being a characteristic of the fully anonymous situation. Note that while pubic street in large cities provide anonymous situations for the well behaved, this anonymity is biographical; there is hardly such a thing as complete anonymity regarding social identity. It maybe added that every time an individual joins an organization or a community, there is a marked change in the structure of knowledge about one—it is distribution and character—and hence a change in the contingencies of information control. For example, every ex-mental patient must face having formed in the hospital some acquaintances who may have to be greeted socially on the outside, leading a third person to ask, “Who was that?” More important, perhaps, one must face the unknown-about knowing, that is, persons who can personally identify one and will know, when one does not know they know, that one is “really” an ex-mental patient. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

By the term cognitive recognition, I shall refer to the perceptual act of “placing” an individual, whether as having a particular personal identity. Recognition of social identities is a well-known gate-keeping function of many servers. It is less well known that recognition of personal identities is a formal function in some organizations. In banks and credit unions, for example, tellers or member service representatives may be expected to acquire this kind of capacity regarding customers or members. In British criminal circles there is, apparently, an office called “corner-man” whose incumbent takes up a post on the street near the entrance of an illicit business and, by knowing the personal identity of nearly everyone who passes, is able to warn of the approach of a suspicious character. Within the circle of persons who have biographical information about an individual—who are knowing in regard to one—there will be a smaller circle of those who are acquainted with one “socially,” whether slightly or intimately, and whether as an equal or not. As we say, they not only know “of” or “about” one, they know one “personally” as well. They will have the right and the obligation of exchanging a nod, a greeting, or a chat with one when they find themselves in the same social situation with one, this constituting social recognition. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

Of course, there will be times when an individual extends social recognition to, or receives it from, an individual extends social recognition to, or receives it from, and individual one does not know personally. In any case, it should be clear that cognitive recognition is simply an act of perception, while social recognition is one individual’s part in communication ceremony. Social acquaintanceship or personal knowing is necessarily reciprocal, although of course one or even both of the acquainted persons can temporarily forget they are acquainted, just as one or both can be alive to the acquaintanceship but temporarily forgetful of almost everything about the other’s personal identity. For the individual who lives a village life, whether in town or city, there will be few who merely know of one; those that know about one are likely to know one personally. In contrast, by the term “fame” we seem to refer to the possibility that the circle of people who know about a given individual, especially in connection with a rare desirable achievement of possession, can become very wide, and at the same time much wider than the circle of those who know one personally. The treatment accorded an individual on the basis of one’s social identity is often accorded with added deference and indulgence to a famed person become of one’s personal identity. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

Like a small-town person, one will always be shopping where one is known. The mere fact of being cognitively recognized in public places by strangers can also be a source of satisfaction, as a young actor suggests: When I first became a little well-known and had a day when I was feeling down, I would actually say to myself, “Well, I think I will go out for a walk and be recognized.” This kind of promiscuous minor acclaim presumably provides one reason why fame is sought; it also suggests why fame once obtained is some times hidden from. The issue is not only the nuisance in being chased by reporters, autograph hunters, and turned heads, but also that a widened range of acts become assimilated to biography as newsworthy events. For a famous person to “get away” where one can “be oneself” may mean one’s finding a community in which there is no biography of one; here one’s conduct, reflecting merely on one’s social identity, can have a chance of being of interest to no one. Contrariwise, one aspect of being “on” is acting in a fashion designed to control implications for biography, but doing this in what are ordinarily non-biography creating areas of life. In the everyday life of an average person there will be long stretches of time when events involving one will be memorable to no one, a technical but not active part of one’s biography. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

Only a serious personal accident or the witnessing of a murder will create moments during these dead periods which have a place in the reviews one and others come to make of one’s past. (An “alibi,” in fact, is presented piece of biography that would not have become part of one’s active biography at all.) On the other hand, notables who come to have a book-length biography written about them, and especially those such as royalty who are known from the start to be destined for this fate, will find they have experienced few periods of life which are allowed to remain dead, that is, inactively part of their biography. A covenant not to defend myself from force, by force, is always void. For (as I have showed before) no person can transfer, or lay down one’s right to save oneself from death, wounds, and imprisonment, (the avoiding whereof is the only end of laying down any right,) and therefore the promise of not resisting; rather than the greater, which is certain and present death in not resisting. And this is granted to be true by all people, in that they lead criminals to execution, and prison, with armed people, notwithstanding that such criminals have consented to law, by which they are condemned. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

O God, Who chastisest us in Thy love, and refreshest us amid Thy chastening; grant that we may ever be able to give Thee thanks for both; through Jesus Christ our Lord. “And I spake unto Sam, making known unto him the things which the Lord had manifested unto me by his Holy Spirit. And it came to pass that he believed in my words. But, behold, Laman and Lemuel would not hearken unto my words; and being grieved because of the hardness of their hearts I cried unto the Lord for them. And it came to pass that the Lord spake unto me, saying: Blessed art thou, Nephi, because of thy faith, for thou hast sought me diligently, with lowliness of heart. And inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper, and shall be led to a land of promise; yea, even a land which I have prepared for you; yea, a land which is choice above all other lands. And inasmuch as thy breathren shall rebel against thee, they shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord. And inasmuch as though shalt keep my commandments, thou shalt be made a ruler and a teacher over thy brethren. For behold, in the day that they shall rebel against me, I will curse them ever with a sore curse, and they shall have no power over thy seed except they shall rebel against me also. And if it so be that they rebel against me, they shall be a scourge unto they seed, to stir them up in the ways of remembrance,” 1 Nephi 17-24. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Sam is the third son of Lehi, and elder brother to the prophet Nephi. Early in the Book of Mormon narrative, Nephi confided in Sam. Lehi saw Sam in his vision of the tree of life, noting that he ate the precious fruit, symbolizing the righteousness of Sam, and that he would be saved. We beseech Thee, Almighty God, that the prosperity bestowed upon us may not lead us to be ashamed of Thy worship, but rather may always enkindle us to render heartier thanks to Thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O Lord, no day of my life has passed that has not proved me guilty in Thy sight. Prayers have been uttered from a prayerless heart; praise has been often praiseless sound; my best services are filthy rags. Blessed Jesus, let me find a covert in thy appeasing wounds. Though my sins rise to Heaven thy merits soar above them; through unrighteousness weighs me down to hell, Thy righteousness exalts me to Thy throne. All things in me call for rejection, all things in thee plead my acceptance. I appeal from the throne of perfect justice to Thy throne of boundless grace. Grant me to hear Thy voice assuring me: that by thy stripes I am healed, that though wast bruised for my iniquities, that Thou has been made sin for me that I might be righteous in thee, that my grievous sins, my manifold sins, are all forgiven, buried in the ocean of Thy concealing blood. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

I am guilty, but pardoned, lost, but saved, wandering, but found, sinning, but cleansed. Give me perpetual broken-heartedness, keep me always clinging to Thy cross, flood me every moment with descending grace, open to me the springs of divine knowledge, sparkling like crystal, flowing clear and unsullied through my wilderness of life. My opinion is only that of a human. It is no my business to make know matters that would only stir controversy about past history quite uselessly. However, it would be a serious omission of duty not to utter a warning that human perfection does not exist; that famous figures in history, politics, warfare, government, literature, religion, mysticism, and art have committed grave errors of judgement, impression, or teaching; that these errors are known only to a few in each case, and will probably never be known to posterity at all. A person may be successful in leading one’s people through a war to final victory but, on the way, one may be spiritually enlightened but personally inexperienced; one’s opinions on unfamiliar matters may not have much value. So long as a person is turned into a god and is worshipped as such, so long as one is regarded Perfect and without defects, so long are those concerned—both the person and one’s followers—kept outside the philosophic goal by their own deficiencies. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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When You Become Weary and Feel Like Quitting, Wait on the Lord and He Will Renew Your Strength!

March 9, 2020 12:51 am

Strange, when you come to think of it, that of all the countless folk who have lived before our time on this planet not one is known in history or legend as having died of laughter. The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a person’s foot long enough to enable one to put the other somewhat higher. Do not compromise yourself. You are all you have got. If you have the will to win, you have achieved half your success. If you do not, you have achieved half your failure. If you have made mistakes, there is always another chance for you. You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call “failure” is not falling down, but the staying down. “Treasure the pain; treasure what you have, including fear. Treasure it because if we do not live this life, if we do not live it to the fullest year after year and century after century, well, then we die,” (Page 32, The Wolves of Midwinter by Anne Rice). To understand each faculty is to grasp first the nature of the faculties in general, and their relationship to each other and the divisions of knowledge. The fundamental relationship among the faculties is that of knowledge to action. Understanding, reason, and imagination yield contemplative knowledge and memory recorded and recalled it. Knowledge is a state or condition of the human being that constitutes a potential for action. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

In any instance of rational behaviour, action came about when an individual, confronted with the need to choose among alternatives, brought one’s knowledge to bear in ways that controlled appetite and directed one’s will. Rational conduct is thus knowledge actualized. Practical knowledge, on the other hand, is a state or condition built up chiefly through experience. It becomes rational to the extent that knowledge affected experience. The best division of human learning is that derived from the three faculties of the rational soul, which is the seat of learning. History is properly concerned with individuals, which are circumscribed by place and time. For though Natural History may seem to deal with species, yet this is only because of the general resemblance which in most cases natural objects of the same species bear to one another; so that when you know one, you know all. All this relates to the Memory. Philosophy discards individuals; neither does it deal with the impressions immediately received from them, but with abstract notions derived from these impressions; in the composition and division whereof according to the law of nature and fact its business lies. And this is the office of work of reason. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

The sense, which is he door of intellect, is affected by individuals only. The images of those individuals—that is, the impression they make on the sense—fix themselves in the memory. These the human mind proceeds to review and ruminate; and thereupon either simply rehearses them, or makes fanciful imitations of them, or analyses and classifies them. Wherefore from these three fountains, Memory, Imagination, and Reason, flow these three emanations, History, Poesy, and Philosophy. I consider history and experience to be the same things, as also philosophy and the sciences. These faculties or powers had as their vehicle the motions of spirits. Each faculty modulated, shaped, and figured spirit movement in ways peculiar to it: some of the ancients, who in too eagerly fixing their eyes and thoughts on the memory, imagination, and reason, have neglected the faculty of thinking [or cogitation], which holds first place in the work of contemplating and considering [id est, in the work of conception]. For one who remembers and also one who recollects, is thinking; one who imagines, is thinking; one who reasons, is thinking; and in a word the spirit of a human, whether prompted by sense of left to itself, whether in the functions of the understanding, or of the will and affections, dances to the measure of thoughts. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

The context of the passage makes clear that by nature the souls of all living creatures are in infinite and endless motion, the human soul having its own mode of motion That which is in motion is spirit. It seems evident, then, that thinking is a general mode of spirit activity in the rational soul and that the faculties designate distinctive types of motion. Thinking is like a radio carrier wave which is modulated according to the tasks it does. The faculties are types of modulation. Although we speculate much about the spirit, the physical basis of mental life, very speak very little about the anatomical location of mental activity. We are aware of the medical lore which locates the faculties in the ventricles of the brain. That arrangement of the intellectual faculties (imagination, reason, and memory) according to the respective ventricles of the brain is not entirely destitute of error. Yet, it is known that the cognition of humans is in their head, but we also know the heart and the gut seem to have intellectual abilities as well. Primary learning is the acquisition of rather simple connections between events, based largely on sensory input and simple messages from other parts of the body. The simpler the organism, the more simply and easily these connections are made—the faster, too, and the more enduringly. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Mature learning, on the other hand, depends a great deal on meaning, that is on relating the current sensory input to what is already known. And what is already known is stored in the association areas in very complex ways. So, the more complex the organism, the slower the incorporation of new sensory input into the existing frame or context. We know this from other forms of organization. How hard it is to get some change introduced into bureaucracy, and how hard it is for us outsiders to talk to those inside—insiders like to talk to each other. Only the higher beings have the capacity to learn through the use of concepts and symbols. The first learning of primates is extremely slow, and very different from that at maturity. Human meticulousness in the learning process is due to the very complexity of which our thinking is ultimately capable: primitive animals learn fast; complex, patterned, configurational learning comes later and takes longer. To appreciate the nature of more central functioning, it now becomes important to distinguish between two parts of the cortex (the surface of the brain). Some cells here are connected directly with the sensory nerve-cells bringing messages about the environment or the state of the body; other cells are mainly connected with each other; this is the distinction between the sensory cortex and the association cortex, respectively. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

This distinction between sensory and association cortex enables us to speculate about how environmental, peripheral, sensory control over behaviour differs from the higher achievements of some animals: more central controls over behaviour, even amounting to purposive behaviour. Verbal and nonverbal feedback are strategies thar are most rudimentary forms of vivification. First, let us consider the verbal modality. There are two basic ways to provide verbal feedback—noting and tagging. Noting alerts clients to initial experiences of resistance; tagging acquaints them with those that follow. Some examples of noting are observations such as, “This issue seems really difficult for you,” and “You appear to be distracted right now.” Some examples of tagging are, “Whenever we discuss this topic, you seem to want to change it,” and “There you go again, preferring to argue rather than face your life.” Because I am trying to alert rather than shock, I sometimes find I necessary to temper my appraisals. For example, I might say to a client just beginning treatment: “I wonder if I am pushing too hard right now. Maybe you can begin again where you feel comfortable.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

I also try to acknowledge the potential fallibility of my feedback; this helps clients to direct themselves to the relevant issues. “My observation my have been off base here,” I might remark. Or I might say, “I wonder if we could suspend my observation for a bit, see how it feels to us at a later time.” I find that use of nonverbal feedback to be particularly elucidating to clients. Whereas verbal feedback appears to animate predominately conscious domains of clients’ resistance, nonverbal feedback seems to clarify primarily subliminal barriers and domains. By mirroring a client’s crossed arms, for example, unless they are posing for a studio picture, I am able to help one see how unexpectedly guarded one has been about a particular topic; by echoing a client’s sense of being “choked up,” I am able to appraise one of one’s “suffocating” relationship. Resistances sometimes seem like broken records to clients, endlessly duplicating a theme. While the vivification process can often amplify that sense of repetitiveness, it can also provide fresh opportunities to transcend it. I try to alert clients to these possibilities and to subtle changes in their patterns of defensiveness. For example, I might refer an intellectualized client to one’s sudden use of the pronoun “I,” or direct a client who chronically suppresses one’s sadness to an abruptly formed teardrop. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

The idealized image might be called a fictitious or illusory self, but that would be only a half truth and hence misleading. The wishful thinking operating in its creation is certainly striking, particularly since it occurs in persons who otherwise stand on a ground of firm reality. However, this does not make it wholly fictitious. It is an imaginative creation interwoven with and determined by very realistic factors. It usually contains traces of the persons genuine ideals. While the grandiose achievements are illusory, the potentialities underlying them are often real. More relevant, it is born of very real inner necessities, it fulfills very real functions, and it has a very real influence on its creator. The process of operating in its creation are determined by such definite laws that a knowledge of its specific features permits us to make accurate inferences as to the true character structure of the particular person. However, regardless of how much fantasy is woven into the idealized image, for the neurotic oneself it has the value of reality. The more firmly it is established the more one is one’s idealized image, while one’s real self is proportionately dimmed out. This reversal of the actual picture is bound to come about because of the very nature of the functions the image performs. Every one of them is aimed at effacing the real personality and turning the spotlight on itself. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

Looking back over the history of many patients we are led to believe that its establishment has often been literally lifesaving, and that is why the resistance a patient puts up if one’s image is attacked is entirely justified, or at least logical. As long as one’s image remains real to one and is intact, one can feel significant, superior, and harmonious, in spite of the illusory nature of those feelings. One can consider oneself entitled to raise all kinds of demands and claims on the basis of one’s assumed superiority. However, if one allows it to be undermined one is immediately threatened with the prospect of facing all one’s weaknesses, with no title to special claims, a comparatively insignificant figure or even—in one’s own eyes—a contemptible one. More terrifying still, one is faced with one’s conflicts and the hideous fear of being torn to pieces. That this may give one a chance of becoming a much better human being worth more than all the glory of one’s idealized image, is a gospel one hears but for a long time means nothing to one. It is a leap in the dark of which one is afraid. With so great a subjective value to recommend it, the position of the image would be unassailable if it were not for the huge drawbacks inseparable from it. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

The whole edifice is in the first place extremely rickety by reason of the fictitious elements involved. A treasure house loaded with dynamite, it makes the individual highly vulnerable. Any questioning or criticism from outside, any awareness of one’s own failure to measure up to the image, any real insight into the forces operating within one can make it explode or crumble. One must restrict one’s life lest one be exposed to such dangers. One must avoid situations in which one would not be admired or recognized. One must avoid tasks that one is not certain to master. One may even develop an intense aversion to effort of any kind. To one, the gifted one, the mere vision of a picture one might paint is already the master painting. Any mediocre person can get somewhere by hard work; for one to apply oneself like very Tom, Dick, and Harry would be an admission that one is not the mastermind, and so humiliating. Since nothing can actually be achieved without work, one defeats by one’s attitude the very ends one is driven to attain. And the gap between one’s idealized image and one’s real self widens. One is dependent upon endless affirmations from others in the form of approval, admiration, flattery—none of which, however, can give one any more than temporary reassurance. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

One may unconsciously hate everyone who is overbearing or who, being better than one in any way—more assertive, more evenly balanced, better formed—threatens to undermine one’s own notions of oneself. The more desperately one clings to the belief that one is one’s idealized image, the more violent the hatred. Or, if one’s own arrogance is repressed, one may blindly admire persons who are openly convinced of their importance and show it by arrogant behaviour. One loves in them one’s own image and inevitably runs into severe disappointment when one becomes aware, as one must at some time or other, that the gods one so admires are interested only in themselves, and as far as one is concerned care only for the incense one burns at alters. Tracing out and enabling helps clients to trace out the consequences of their resistances and enabling them to be resistant are two other ways to catalyze productive change. I have often found it helpful for client invested in smallness, for example, to detail the dullness, routine, and oppressiveness that they foresee in their lives. I have found it equally useful for inflated clients to peer into their unsettling futures. While such strategies may acutely frustrate certain clients, they can also alert them to present opportunities, which can head off their nightmarish fantasies. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

Ambivalent clients can also benefit from the strategy of tracing out. Experientially detailing the pros and cons of a situation or anticipating the meaning of remaining ambivalent have all helped my clients to substantively reassess their predicaments. One of the most interesting and ironic features of vivification is that when all else fails, just allowing the client to resist can be the most salient remedy. When I worked with highly resistive (nonviolent) children, for example, I found that divesting of a given treatment plan was more effective, frequently, than pressing for a particular strategy. Highly resistive adult clients also respond favourably to such divestitures. When such clients are allowed to simply be their withdrawn, grandiose, or intractable selves, they will frequently begin to relinquish those dispositions. For example, I suggested to one intransigent client that she just “be that way,” and that she could use her time as she wished. At first she agreed and diverted us to another topic. As time went on, however, it became clear that she felt uncomfortable with this arrangement. When I worked with her to stay present to that discomfort, she acknowledged how infuriated she had become with herself and how tired she had become of treating herself like an invalid. It was then that she recommitted to change. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

Vivifying or modeling desired behaviour is another way to catalyze resistant clients. By forming an alliance with the part of a client that could be, the therapist can tacitly underscore who that client is; the contrast between the two can invigorate the client to transform. I once told a client who was about to give up on herself, for example, that I was not about to give up on her, and that I would form an alliance with the part of her that believed. Although little changed at first, she gradually realized how absurd her hopelessness had been. As long as I can be of help to you, I will work with you. You not only have permission without condemnation to express your struggle to be; you have prior experiences, from the greatest authority (God), of your own rights and your own being. You are a person with your own rights. To make covenant with God, is impossible, but by deep prayer of such as God speaks to, either by revelation supernatural, or by his lieutenants that govern under Him, and in His Name; for otherwise we know not whether our covenants be accepted, or not. And therefore they that vow anything contrary to any law of nature, vow in vain; as being a thing unjust to pay such a vow. And if it be a thing commanded by the law of nature, it is not the vow, but the law that binds them. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

Christianity is holding that human beings are somehow good apart from God and therefore capable of saving themselves, even saving themselves by merit. The fear of many is that if you do not hold human beings to be, essentially and as such “rotten,” and forever so, you are thereby committed to the view that they are, as such, essentially good and therefore righteous and meritorious. This is a field of battle fought over by Pelagius and Augustine many centuries ago and repeatedly revisited through Christian history. It involves many important issues, which cannot be fully dealt with here. We must keep clear, however, that it is the worth of the human beings, not their righteousness, which is tied to their nature. Things of great value can still be lost and often are; and to be of great values does not mean one is not lost, but is saved and safe. “Depravity” does not, properly, refer to the inability to act, but to the unwillingness to act and clearly the inability to earn. Everyone must be active in the process of their salvation and transformation to Christlikeness. This is an inescapable fact. However, the initiative in the process is always God’s, and we would in fact do nothing without His initiative. Yet, that initiative is not something we are waiting upon. The ball is, as it were, in our court. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

God has invaded human history and reality. Jesus Christ has died on our behalf, is risen, and is now supervising events on Earth toward an end that He will certainly bring to pass, to the glory of God. The issue now concerns what we will do. The idea that we can do noting is an unfortunate confusion, and those who sponsor it never practice it, thank goodness. If we—though well-directed and unrelenting action—effectually receive the grace of God in salvation and transformation, we certainly will be incrementally changed toward inward Christlikeness. The transformation of the outer life, especially of our behaviour, will follow suit. That too is an inescapable fact. “No good tree produced bad fruit,” reports Luke 6.43. However, this means both goodness and ability in union with God, not apart from Him—not independently, on our own. The transformation of the inner being is as much or more a gift of grace as is our justification before God. Of course neither one is wholly passive. (To be forever lost you need only do nothing. Just stay your course.) However, with reference to both justification and transformation, “boasting is excluded” by the law of grace through faith (Romans 3.27-31; Ephesians 2.1-10). #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

In fact, we consume the most grace by leading a holy life, in which we must be constantly upheld by grace, not by continuing to sin and being repeatedly forgiven. The interpretation of grace as having only to do with guilt is utterly false to biblical teaching and renders spiritual life in Christ unintelligible. Hopefully, it will now be clear that our inner (and therefore outer) being can be transformed is not only possible, but has actually occurred to a significant degree in the lives of many human beings; and it is necessary if our life as a whole is to manifest one’s goodness and power, and if we as individuals are to grow into the eternal calling that God places upon each life. God is the only who has no beginning. Now whatever has a beginning, is not eternal. Therefore God is the only one eternal. Eternity truly and properly so called is in God lone, because eternity follows on immutability. However, God alone is altogether immutable. Accordingly, however, as some receive immutability from Him, they share in His eternity. Thus some receive immutability from God in the way of never ceasing to exist; in that sense it is said of the Earth, “it shall stand forever,” as reported in Ecclesiastics 1.4. Again, some things are called eternal in Scripture because of the length of their duration, although they are in nature corruptible things; thus Psalms 75.5 the hills are called “eternal” and we read “of the fruits of the eternal hills.” Deuteronomy 33.15. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

Some again share more fully than others in the nature of eternity, inasmuch as they possess unchangeableness either in being or further still in operation; like the Angels, and the blessed, who enjoy the Word, because “as regards that vision of the Word, no changing thoughts exist in the Saints,” as Augustine says. Hence those who see God are said to have eternal life; according to that text, “This is eternal life, that they may know Thee the only true God,” excreta (Jn. 17.3). There are said to be many eternities, accordingly as many share in eternity, by the contemplation of God. The fire of Hell is called eternal, only because it never ends. Still, there is change in the pains of the lost, according to the words “To extreme heat they will pass from snowy Psalm “Their time will be forever,” reports Psalms 80.16. Necessary means a certain mode of truth; and truth, according to the Philosopher, is in the mind. Therefore, in this sense the true and necessary are eternal, because they are in the eternal mind, which is the divine intellect alone; hence it does not follow that anything is eternal besides God. Be present, O Lord, to Thy suppliants, and graciously protect those who place their whole trust in Thy mercy; that being cleansed from the stain of sin, they may continue in holy living, and being sufficiently supplied with temporal blessings, may attain the inheritance of Thy promises; though Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Grant us, O Lord, we beseech Thee, always to seek Thy kingdom and righteousness; and of whatsoever Thou seest us to stand in need, mercifully grant us an abundant portion; through Jesus Christ our Lord. “For behold, it came to pass that the Lord spoke unto my father (Lehi), yea; even in a dream, and said unto him: Blessed art thou Lehi, because the things which thou has done; and because thou hast been faithful and declared unto this people the things which I commanded thee, behold, they seek to take away thy life. And it came to pass that the Lord commanded my father, even in a dream, that he should take his family and depart into the wilderness. And it came to pass that he was obedient unto the word of the Lord, wherefore he did as the Lord commanded him. And it came to pass that he departed into the wilderness. And he left his house, and the land of his inheritance, and his gold, and his silver, and his precious things, and took nothing with him, save it were his family, and provisions, and tents, and departed into the wilderness. And he came down by the borders near the shore of the Red Sea; and he traveled in the wilderness in the borders which are nearer the Red Sea; and he did travel in the wilderness with his family, which consisted of my mother, Sariah, and my elder brothers, who were Leman, Lemuel, and Sam,” reports 1 Nephi 2.1-5. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

Sovereign Lord, when clouds of darkness, atheism, and unbelief come to me, I see thy purpose of love in withdrawing the Spirit that I might prize him more, in chastening me for my confidence in past successes, that my wound of secret godlessness might be cured. Help me to humble myself before Thee by seeing the vanity of honour as a conceit of human’s minds, as standing between me and thee; by seeing that thy will must be done, as much in denying as in giving spiritual enjoyments; by seeing that my heart is nothing but evil, mind, mouth, life void of thee; by seeing that sin and Satan are allowed power in me that I might know my sin, be humbled, and gain strength thereby; by seeing that unbelief shuts thee from me, so that I sense not thy majesty, power, mercy, or love. Then possess me, for thou only art good and worthy. Thou dost not play in convincing me of sin, Satan did not play in tempting me to it, I do not play when I sink in deep mire, for sin is no game, no toy, no bauble; let me never forget that the heinousness of sin lies not so much in the nature of the sin committed, as in the greatness of the Person sinned against. When I am afraid of evils to come, comfort me, by showing me that in myself I am a dying, condemned wretch, but that in Christ I am reconciled, made alive, and satisfied; that I am feeble and unable to do any good, but that in Hum I can do all things; that what I now have in Christ is mine in part, but shortly I shall have it perfectly in Heaven. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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Distinguish Between Duty and Anxiety, and May our Character and Not Our Circumstance Chiefly Engage Us!

March 7, 2020 3:43 am

Get up every morning know that time is moving forward and God is manifesting your dreams. I do not want to get to the end of my life and find that I just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well. Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. It comes to us at midnight very clean. When it arrives, it is perfect, and it puts itself in our hands and hopes we have learned something from yesterday. A result of human’s vulnerability to death and one’s symbolic consciousness of it is the struggle to get power to fortify oneself. Other beings must simply use those powers that nature provided them with and the neural circuits that animate those powers. However, humans can invent and imagine powers, and they can invent ways to protect power. This means that all the moral categories are power categories; they are not about virtue in any abstract sense. Purity, goodness, rightness—these are ways of keeping power in tact so as to cheat death; the striving for protection is a way of qualifying for extra special immunity not only in this World but in others to come. Hence all categories of dirt, filth, imperfection, and error are vulnerability categories, power problems. For young children Band-Aids are already an obsessive religion that sets the whole tone of it: cleanliness is safety. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

So we see that as an organism humans are fated to perpetuate oneself and as a conscious organism one is fated to identify evil as the threat to that perpetuation. In the same way, one is driven to individuate oneself as an organism, to develop one’s own peculiar talents and personality. An what, then, would be the highest development and use of those talents? To contribute to the struggle against evil, of course. In other words, humans are fated to consider this Earth as a theater for heroism, and one’s life as a vehicle for heroic acts which aim precisely to transcend evil. Each person wants to have one’s life make a difference in the life of humankind, contribute in some way toward securing and furthering that life, make it in some ways less vulnerable, more durable. To be a true hero is to triumph over diseases and things like the Coronavirus, want, death. If it has been able to being real benefits to life of human kind, one knows that one’s life has gad vital human meaning. And so people have always honoured their heroes, especially in religion, medicine, science, diplomacy, and way. Here is where heroism has been most easily identifiable. From Constantine and Christ to Harriet Tubman and De Gaulle, people have called their heroes “saviours” in the literal sense: those who have delivered them from the evil of the termination of life, either of their own immediate lives or of the duration of their people. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Even more, by one’s own death the hero secures the lives of others, and so the greatest heroic sacrifice is the sacrifice of the god for one’s people. We see this in Columbus, Christ, Robert E. Lee, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. The giants died to secure humankind; by their blood we are saved. It is almost pathetically logical how humans, the supremely vulnerable beings, developed the cult of logic. However, if we add together the logic of the heroic with the necessary fetishization of evil, we get a formula that is no longer pathetic but terrifying. It explains almost all by itself why humans, of all beings, have caused the most devastation on Earth—the most real evil. Humans struggle extra hard to be immune to death because they alone are conscious of it, as far as we know; but by being able to identify and isolate evil arbitrarily, they are capable of lashing out in all directions against imagined dangers of this World. This means that in order to live one is capable of bringing a large part of the World down around their shoulders. History is just such a testimonial to the frightening costs of heroism. The hero is the one who can go out and get added powers by killing an enemy and taking one’s talismans or one’s scalp or eating one’s heart. Humans become a walking repository of accrued powers. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Animals can only take in food for power; humans can literally take in the trinkets and bodies of one’s whole World, like we saw in the film Neon Demon. Furthermore, the hero proves one’s power by winning in battle; one shows that one is also favoured by the gods. Also, one can appease the gods by offering to them the sacrifice of the stranger. The hero is, then, the one who accrues power by one’s acts, and who placates invisible powers by one’s expiations. One terminates those who threaten their group, one incorporates their powers to further protect one’s group, one sacrifices others to gain immunity for one’s group. In a word, one becomes a saviour through blood. From the head-hunting and charm-hunting of the primitives to the holocaust of Adolf Hitler, the dynamic is the same: the heroic victory over evil by a traffic in pure power. And the aim is the same: purity, goodness, righteousness—immunity. Hitler Youth were recruited on the basis of idealism; the nice boy next door is the one who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima; the idealistic communist is the one who sided with Stalin against one’s former comrades: terminate to protect the heroic revolution, to assure the victory over evil. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

The ending of a life is sometimes distasteful, but the distaste is swallowed if it is necessary to true heroism: as one of the revolutionaries asked Pyotr Verhovensky in The Possessed, when they were about to end the life of one of their number, “Are other groups also doing this?” In other words, is it the socially heroic thing to do, or are we being arbitrary about identifying evil? Each person wants one’s life to be a marker for goo as one’s group defines it. Humans work their programs of heroism according to the standard of cultural scenarios, from Pontius Pilate through Eichmann and Calley. People cause evil out of good intentions, not out of wicked ones. People cause evil by wanting heroically to triumph over it, because humans are a frightened being who tries to triumph, a being who will not admit one’s own insignificance, that one cannot perpetuate oneself and one’s group forever, that no one is invulnerable no matter how much of the blood of others is spilled to try to demonstrate it. Another way of summing up this whole matter is to contrast evil out of good intentions, but the idea that evil is as a fatality for humans, forever locked in the human heart and soul. This is what gives some psychiatrists, such as Dr. Freud, such a dim view of the future of humans. Many eyes looked to a man of his greatness for a prophecy on human possibilities, but he refused to pose as the magician-seer and give people the false prediction. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

And it is possible that some people do have evil locked in their souls and hearts, and they like to torture and end the life of those who are beautiful and kind because it reduces the competition and it is fun to them see others suffer. As Dr. Freud reported in a late writing: “I have not the courage to rise up before my fellow-humans as a prophet, and I bow to their reproach that I can offer them no consolation.” This is a heavy confession by one of history’s greatest students of humans; but I am citing it not for its honesty or humility, but because of the reason for its pathos. The future of humans was problematic for Dr. Freud because of the instincts that have drive humans and will supposedly always drive them. As he put it, right after the above admission and at the very end of his book: “The fateful question for the human species seems to me to be whether and to what extent [it] will succeed in mastering the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction.” The most that humans can seem to do is to put a veneer of civilization and reason over this instinct; but the problem of evil is “born afresh with every child,” as Dr. Freud wrote three years earlier, in 1927, and it takes the form of precise instinctual wishes—incest, lust for ending the life of another, cannibalism. This was human’s repugnant heritage, a heritage that one seems forever destined to work upon the World. From crooked wood of which humans are made, nothing quite straight can be built. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

Yet today we know that Dr. Freud was wrong about evil. Humans are a crooked wood all right, but not in the way that Dr. Freud thought. This is a crucial difference because it means that we do not have to follow Dr. Freud on the exact grounds of his feelings for the problematic of the human future. If, instead, we follow Rank and the general science of humans, we get quite different picture of the oldest “instinctual wishes.” Incents is an immortality motive, it symbolizes the idea of self-fertilization—the defeat of biology and the fatality of species propagation. For the child in the family it may be an identity motive, a way of immediately becoming an individual and stepping out of the collective role of obedient child by breaking up the family ideology. Historically, the brother-sister marriage of ancient kings like the Pharaohs must have been a way of preserving and increasing the precious mana power that the king possessed. Cannibalism, it is true, has often been motivated by sheer appetite for meat, the pleasures of incorporation of a purely sensual kind, quite free of any spiritual overtones. However, as just noted, much of the time the motive is one of mana power. Which largely explains why cannibalism becomes uniformly repugnant to humans when the spirit-power beliefs that sustained it are left behind; if it were a matter of instinctual appetite, it would be more tenacious. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

And as for the lust for ending a life, this too, we now know, is largely a psychological problem; it is not primarily a matter of the satisfaction of vicious animal aggression. We know that people often end life of others with appetite and excitement, as well as real dedication, but this is only logical for animals who are born hunters and who enjoy the feeling of maximizing their organismic powers at the expense of a rapped and helpless prey. If a covenant be made, wherein neither of the parties perform presently, but trust one another; in the condition of mere nature, (which is a condition of war of every person against every person,) upon any reasonable suspicion, it is void; but if there be a common power set over them both, with right and force sufficient to compel performance; it is not void. For one that performs first, has no assurance the other will perform after; because the bonds of words are too weak to bridle means ambition, avarice, anger, and other passions, without the fear of some coercive power; which in the condition of mere nature, where all people are equal, and judges of the justness of their own fears cannot possibly be supposed. And therefore one which performs first, does but betray oneself to one’s enemy; contrary to the right (one can never abandon) of defending one’s life, and means living. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

However, in a civil estate, where there is a power set up to constrain those that would otherwise violate their faith, that fear is no more reasonable; and for that cause, one which by the covenant is to perform first, is obliged so to do. The cause of fear, which makes such a covenant invalid, must be always something arising after the covenant made; as some new fact, or other sign of the will not to perform; else it cannot make the covenant void. For that which could not hinder a person from promising, ought not to be admitted as a hindrance of performing. One that transfers any right, transfers the means of enjoying it, as far as posses in one’s power. As one that sells land, is understood to transfer the herbage, and whatsoever grows upon it; nor can one that sells a mill turn away the stream that drives it. And they that give to a being The Right of government in Sovereignty, are understood to give one the right of levying money to maintain soldiers; and of appointing magistrates for the administration of justice. To make a covenant with bruit beats, is impossible; because not understanding our speech, they understand not, nor accept of any translation of right; nor can translate any right to another; and without mutual acceptation, there is no covenant. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

Love does not harm to anyone. However, suppose that were all we knew about love. Suppose we did not have the Ten Commandments, from which Paul quoted in verse 9: “’Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not covet.’” If we did not have those specific directions, how would be know what it means to harm one’s neighbour? Most of us are familiar to some degree with the classic description of love given by Paul in 1 Corinthians 13.4-7: Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trust, always hopes, always perseveres. Paul did not give a dictionary definition of love; instead, he described it in terms of specific attitudes and actions toward one another. What are these attitudes and actions? They are nothing more than various expressions of the moral law of God. However, no doubt the later Paul who wrote these words was very sure that whatever spiritual formation in Christlikeness he had received might be overwhelmed. There remained in him a spark of evil that could be fanned into a flame were he not watchful or if God did not continuously direct and uphold him in every dimension of his nature. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

Paul knew he was running a race, as you and I are. That race will not be over until we pass into God’s full World. No doubt he had in his lifetime seen many falter and fail, many who would not be able to say at the end, as he did, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith,” reports 2 Timothy 4.7. The image of the athlete was strong and ever-present in Paul’s World and in his own mind. He knew that you had to keep yourself in spiritual shape to finish and finish well. In 1 Corinthians 9 he discussed how he therefore conducted himself in his course of life, how he exercised and treated his body severely, making it his slave (not he its slave), “lest possibly, after I have preached to others, I myself should be disqualified,” reports 1 Corinthians 9.27. The valid point in “miserable sinner” Christianity is correctly expressed in these well-chosen words by St. Augustine: If anyone supposes that with humans, living, as one still does, in this mortal life, it may be possible for him to dispel and clear off every obscurity induced by corporeal and carnal fancies, and to attain to the serenest light of immutable truth, and to cleave constantly and unswervingly to this with a mind wholly estranged from the course of this present life, that humans understand neither what one asks, nor who one is that is putting such a supposition. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

If ever the soul is helped to reach beyond the cloud by which all the Earth is covered, that is to say, beyond this carnal darkness with which the whole terrestrial life is covered, it is simply as if he were touched with a swift coruscation, only to sink back into his natural infirmity, the desire surviving by which one may again be raised to the heights, but one purity being insufficient to establish one there. The more, however, anyone can do this, the greater is one; while the less one can do so the less one is. In the spiritual life one never rests on one’s laurels. It is a sure recipe for falling. Attainments are like the manna given to the Israelites in the desert, good only for the day (Exodus 16.4,20). Past attainments not place us in a position of merit that permits us to let up in the hot pursuit of God for today, for now. Paul knew that, and he knew that others missed it or forgot it to their great harm. We deserve nothing before God, no matter how far we have advanced, and we are never out of danger. As long as we are “at home in the body,” as reported in 2 Corinthians 5.6, we still just recovering sinners. And in these respects, though only in these respects, do we remain as wicked as anyone else—Mother Teresa as Adolf Hitler. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

However, to distort this important truth into a claim that we can never really change, and especially in our hearts, is to substitute a glaring and harmful falsehood for liberating and life-blessing truth. And that distortion, which sometimes is a true expression of genuine humility, can also be done by those who wish to take themselves off he hook, to enjoy remaining the same in their inner life. It is not easy to really want to be different. As my personal understanding of the interior life has developed, I have learned that apart from the well-known Scriptural calls to prayer, there are two great human reasons we ought to pray. The first is because of what prayer does to our character. Prayer is like a time exposure to God. Our souls function like photographic plates, and Christ’s shining image is the light. The more we expose our lives to the white-hot Sun of His righteous life (for, say, five, ten, fifteen, thirty minutes, or an hour a day), the more His truth, His integrity, His humility. As we have seen, this was true of General William Harrison, who maintained a disciplined devotional life for over seventy years. People say his presence brought a distinct sense of Christ. The second corresponding reason is that prayer bends our wills to God’s will. If I throw out the anchor to my yacht, and catch hold of the shore and pull, do I pull the shore to me, or do I pull myself to the shore. Prayer is not pulling God to my will, but the aligning of my will to the will of God. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

What tantalizing personal benefits are offered by time spent in the presence of God in prayer! Herein is possessed the spiritual desolation of our days. The open secret of many Christian Bible-believing churches is that a vanishing small percentage of those talking about prayer are actually doing that they actually talking about. Leviticus 19 is basically an amplification of the Ten Commandments as originally set forth in Exodus 20. Let us consider verses 11-18 of Leviticus 19: “Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not deceive one another. Do no swear falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God. I am the LORD. Do not defraud your neighbour or rob him or her. Do not hold back the wages of a hired being overnight. Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but fear your God. I am the LORD. Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favouritisim to the great, but judge your neighbour fairly. Do not go about spreading slander among your people. Do not do anything that endangers your neighbour’s life. I am the LORD. Do not hate your brother in your heart. Rebuke your neighbour frankly so you will not share in one’s guilt. Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbour as yourself. I am the LORD.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

Now, let us paraphrase those verses using the format “Love does not,” which Paul used in 1 Corinthians 13. When we do this, the passage from Leviticus 19 reads as follows: Love does not steal, it does not lie, it does not deceive. Love does not profane God’s name. It does not defraud nor rob its neighbour. It does not hold the wages of a hired being overnight. Love does not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block in front of the blind. Loves does not pervert justice, nor show partiality to the poor or favouritism to the great. Instead, it judges is neighbour fairly. Loves does not slander another, nor do anything that endangers one’s life. Loved does not hate its brother, nor seek revenge, nor bear a grudge, but rather treats its neighbour as itself. We can see from the paraphrase that the various expression of God’s moral law, wherever they occur in Scripture, are simply a description of love in action. Leviticus 19 also helps us understand who our neighbour is. One is the hired person, the def, the blind, the less affluent, the great, the person whom we are tempted to lie to, or steal from, or slander. One is the person who has wronged us and against whom we are tempted to hold a grudge. Our neighbour is even the person whose life we might endanger by reckless behaviour. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

We can easily say our neigbour is anyone with whom we come in contact. However, because of our human frailty and our tendency to have moral blind spots, it is helpful to think in terms of specific situations. He principle of love is not a higher principle over God’s moral law. Rather, it provides the motive and the motivation for obedience, while the law provides the direction for the biblical expression of love. If they were not motivated by love for both God and our neighbour, the actions prescribed by God’s law would be hollow indeed. I would much rather do business with someone who wanted to treat me fairly because one loved me than someone who deals fairly only because “it is good for business.” I would also want one’s love to be guided by the moral and ethical principles of the Christian Bible. Some people fail to attend church and read less because they are not spiritually sensitive and as open as others. Also, many people are dominated by the time crunching production ethic of the marketplace, which makes them feel lightyears away from deep prayer and reading of the Christian Bible. However, most fail because they simply do not know how to go about cultivating the disciplines of the interior spiritual life. One’s prayer and devotional life cannot be reduced to a few simple rules. These areas of spiritual experience are far too dynamic and personal for simplistic reduction. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

We must also be cautioned against imagining from the outline we are using (deep prayer, confession, adoration, submission, petition) that there is a prescribed order for devotion, for there is not and never has been. Life’s rhythms sometimes demand that we launch directly, for example, into petition with “Lord, help me!” Other times will be spent almost entirely in confession, or meditation, or adoration. God’s Word is essential to developing a Christian mind. All Christians and Catholics, no matter what denomination or faith should be systematically reading through the Bible, once a year if possible, so that our minds are being perpetually programmed by the data of Scripture. This understood, there is yet another step: intersession—which is like a marathon of prayer, where you bare your entire soul to God, all your concerns, praise, and dreams for the future and personalizing and internalizing the Word of the Lord. “And now I, Nephi, do not make a fully account of the things which my father hath written, for he hath written many things which he saw in visions and in dreams; and he also hath written many things which he prophesied and spake unto his children, of which I shall not make a full account. But I shall make an account of my proceedings in my days. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

“Behold, I make an abridgment of the record of my father (Lehi), upon plates which I have made with mine own hands; wherefore, after I have abridged the record of my Father then will I make an account of my own life. Therefore, I would that ye should know, that after the Lord had shown so many marvelous things unto my father, Lehi, yea, concerning the destruction of Jerusalem, behold he went forth among the people, and began to prophesy and to declare unto them concerning the things which he had both seen and heard. And it came to pass that the Jews did mock him because of he things which he testified of them; for he truly testified of their wickedness and their abominations; and he testified that the things which he saw and heard, and also the things which he read in the book, manifested plainly of the coming of a Messiah, and also the redemption of the World. And when the Jews heard these things they were angry with him; yes, even as with the prophets of old, whom they had cast out, and stoned, and slain; and they might take it away. However, behold, I, Nephi, will show unto you that the tender mercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen, because of their faith, to make the mighty even unto the power of deliverance,” reports 1 Nephi 1.16-20. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Grant, O Lord, that Thy family, devoted to Thy service, and confiding in Thy protection, may obtain the blessing which they humbly implore; that being at rest under Thy defense, they may not be left destitute of assistance for this life, and may be prepared for the good things which are eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O Thou Most High, it becomes me to be low in thy presence. I am nothing compared with thee; I possess not the rank and power of Angels, but Thou hast made me what I am, and placed me where I am; help me to acquiesce in thy sovereign pleasure. I thank thee that in the embryo state of my endless being I am capable by grace of improvement; that I can bear thy image, not by submissiveness, but by design, and can work with thee and advance thy cause and glory. But, alas, the crown has fallen from my head: I have sinned; I am alien to thee; my head is deceitful and wicked, my mind an enemy of Thy law. Yet, in my lostness Thou hast laid help in the mighty one and one comes between to put one’s hands on us both, my umpire, daysman, mediator, whose blood is my peace, whose righteousness is my strength, whose condemnation is my freedom, whose Spirit is my power, whose Heaven is my heritage. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

Grant that I may feel more the strength of Thy grace in subduing the evil of my nature, in loosing me from the present evil World, in supporting me under the trials of life, in enabling me to abide with thee in my valleys, in exercising me to have conscience void of offense before thee and before humans. In my affairs may I distinguish between duty and anxiety, and may my character and not my circumstance chiefly engage me. “I would be very happy to oblige you, if my passes were respected. But the fact is, sir, I have, within he last two years, given passes to two hundred and fifty thousand men to go to Richmond, and not one had got there yet.” (President Lincoln’s answer to man who asked for a safe conduct to Richmond, 1863.) I distrust the legends which are told about most gurus by the disciples. They exaggerate because they have stopped seeking truth. When a person turns belief in the superior knowledge of the guide into belief in the virtual omniscience of the guide, it is dangerous. After having charted all the merits and capacities of the enlightened person, one’s devotees and disciples easily fall into exaggerations and forgets one’s limitations, or ignore the simple fact that one remains a human among humans. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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God, the Creator of the Universe, Will Thrust You Further and do More than You Can Even think or Ask!

March 5, 2020 3:09 am

The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work, second, consistently, third, common sense. Some people dream of worthy accomplishments, while others stay awake and do them. Somehow I cannot believe that there are any heights that cannot be scaled by a person who knows the secrets of making dreams come true. This special secret, it seems to me, can be summarized in four C’s. They are curiosity, confidence, courage, and constancy; and the greatest of all confidence. Adult learning is a changed relationship between the central effects of separate stimulations. Two sets of events, which are separately experienced on two unconnected occasions, can become associated. It is possible to begin to imagine how one might learn to recognize, for instance a bird, either though seeing and touching it, or through hearing it. Circular cell-assemblies are capable of reverberation. The association might be set up by vision, and yet be manifested later purely from hearing a sound, or feeling a touch. Any element can stand for the whole, and the whole can stand for any element. We catch here a glimpse of what is called conceptual learning or symbolic learning; learning through the use of the words and symbols. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

There is a possibility that a subsystem may act as a link between two systems (conceptual structures). The two systems have a subsystem connecting them, to provide a basis of prompt association. Thus, two concepts may acquire a latent association without ever having occurred together in the subject’s past experience. For instance, a person fears apple-picking and window-cleaning because these are associated with going up steps, and this is associated with some danger connected with being in an upstairs room. And so the experience of seeing something can be associated with something heard, or a word that is read may be associated with a picture or a sound. These can all stand for or means each other. The process of thinking must be rather like this—a sequence of central events which starts when one central activity is a stimulus for the next month, without need the intervention of a sensory stimulus. One of the most interesting epochs in human history is the so-called Neolithic revolution. That revolution accompanied the development of agriculture in Asia Minor about 10,000 years ago. It is very likely, although we have no proof as yet, that it was women who discovered agriculture, and what they discovered was that wild grasses could be raised and improved to yield edible what and other grains. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

The men were not so ingenious. In that same period, they were probably still hunting or were acquiring and caring for flocks of sheep. With the discovery of agriculture came the awareness that one’s food need be limited only to what nature provided of its own accord, but one could also take a creative hand in the natural process. Using one’s intelligence and skills, one could produce something. As I said, it happened only a short time ago. In the early years of this revolution—let us say in the first four thousand—you would no doubt have found remarkably peaceful societies, ones in many respects like those of the North American Pueblo Indians. They were probably even matriarchal in organization and inhabited small villages. They produced a little more than they needed at any given moment, and that surplus gave them added security and allowed their populations to grow. However, they did not have so much surplus that one group would envy another and want to take away its surplus. Neolithic society, like modern tribes I have just discussed here, was probably characterized by a genuinely democratic way of life and, as I said, by much stronger role for women and mothers. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

Patriarchal organization came much later, about 4000 to 3000 B.C., a period in which everything changed. People were able to produce much more than they needed. Slavery was introduced. The division of labour became more pronounced. Armies were built up; governments were formed; wars were fought. Humans discovered that one could use other humans to work for them. Hierarchies formed, with kings at their heads. The kings were deputies of God and often filled the role of high priest. That situation encouraged the development of aggressiveness, for humans now had the ability to rob, steal, and exploit. And natural democracy gave way to a hierarchy in which everyone had to obey. Proponents of the instinct theory often claim that war is caused by human’s aggressive instincts. That is a very naïve as well as a very incorrect view. First of all, we know that most wars come about because governments convince their populations that they are under attack, that they have to defend their most sacred values, their lives, their freedom, democracy, and Lord knows what else. The wave of enthusiasm for war lasts a few weeks and then is pretty much gone. Now people have to be threatened and punished to continue fighting. However, if people were by nature so aggressive that war actually satisfied their aggressive instincts, then governments would not have to take those measures. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

On the contrary, they would have to propagandize for peace all the time so that people would not be constantly yearning for a war in which they could vent their aggression. However, as we all know, that is not the way things are, and we can even identify quite precisely the period when war as an institution had its beginnings or, if you will, was invented. It was the period after the Neolithic revolution, the period that saw he rise of city-state, of kings, of armies, and of the capability to make war, take slaves, steal treasure, and so forth. There was no organize war among the hunter-gatherers and the primitive agriculture peoples, because the capability for it simply did not exist. What this discussion shows us is that a number of primitive tribes have social systems in which friendliness and cooperation are predominant and aggression at a minimum. If that picture of primitive societies is correct, the “hydraulic” theory that identifies aggression as an instinct cannot be maintained. Another point we can cite against the instinct theory is that levels of aggression within a society can vary greatly. If we look at the early 1930s in Germany, for example, we find that the Nazis drew most of their support from the old petit-bourgeoisie and from officers and students whose careers had been disabled by postwar conditions. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

The Nazis found no emotional echo in the middle class an upper middle class. I do not mean to say that those classes did not acquiesce in the Nazi system, but the ardent Nazis did not come from those classes, much less from the working class. Convinced Nazis were, as we all know, more the exception than the rule in the working classes, though, oddly enough, convinced anti-Nazis were also an exception among workers. Why that is so is another question altogether. We find a similar situation in the American South. In some cases, the less affluent people in the South have an incredible store of aggressiveness, typically much more than Southern middle class and more too than the working class either in the South or on the American East Coast. Aggressiveness is always most present in those classes that are on the lowest social level, at the bottom of the social pyramid. Those are people who have few pleasures in life, who are usually uneducated, who see themselves being slowly squeeze out of the social mainstream, who are lacking in motivation and interests. Such people build up vast amounts of sadistic rage that does not develop in people who are productively occupied an who feel fully engaged in—or at least not totally exclude from—the social process. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

Those latter people, who are underrepresented and being pushes out of society, have interests; they have the feeling that they are in step with the rest of society. That is why those classes do not develop the same measure of sadism and aggression that the old petit—bourgeoisie in Germany did or that certain classes in American do. Levels of aggressiveness will differ in individuals, too. Take the patient who comes to a psychiatrist and says, “Doctor, I strongly dislike everybody. I do not care for my wife. I find my children unpleasant. I cannot stand the people I work with. There is nobody I actually like.” For the psychiatrist, and I would hope for almost anyone else, too, that patient has rendered one’s own diagnosis and declared oneself sick. We do not respond to such a person by saying, “But of course, everything is perfectly clear. We have here a case of the aggressive instinct at work.” We say instead that this man’s character is so constituted that it constantly produces aggression. We then ask: How did this person get this way? We inquire into the social circumstances of his life, his family history, his past experiences. We try to understand why such a high level of aggressiveness became part of this individual, part of one’s character structure. We do not say, as the advocates of the instinct theory say when they talk about war: “There is nothing you can do about it. This case just proves all over again how strong our inborn aggressiveness is.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

All of us know aggressive people, and by aggressive I do not mean just quick-tempered. I mean destructive, hostile, sadistic people. And we all know friendly people who strike us as being warm and nonaggressive not just on a superficial level but at their very core. Their friendliness cannot in any way be equated with weakness or servility. If we are unaware of such differences, then we are in a bad way—and many people are in a bad way, because they do no notice those differences. However, most people who take the trouble to look around them with any care know very well that those characterological differences exist. The contradiction between the guilt feelings that are manifested and the lack of that humility which should accompany them must be considered. The neurotic will make great demands for consideration and admiration and will also show a distinct unwillingness to accept the slightest degree of criticism. This contradiction may be glaringly obvious, as in the case of a woman who felt vaguely guilty of every crime reported in the papers, and even blamed herself for every death in the family, but was so overwhelmed by an acute outbreak of rage that she fainted when her sister rather mildly reproached her for requesting too much consideration. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

However, the contradiction is not always so conspicuous; it is present much more frequently than appears on the surface. The neurotic may mistake one’s self-accusatory attitude for a sound critical attitude toward oneself. One’s sensitivity toward criticism may be screened by a belief that one can take criticism very well, if only it is made in a friendly or constructive manner; but this belief is only a screen and is contradicted by the facts. Even obviously friendly advice may be reacted to with anger, for advice of any kind implies criticism for not being altogether perfect. Thus is guilt feelings are carefully examined and are tested for genuineness, it becomes apparent that much of what looks like feelings of guilt is the expression either of anxiety or of a defense against it. In part this holds true also for the normal individual. In our culture it is considered nobler to fear God than to fear people, or in non-religious terms, to refrain from something because of conscience rather than because of a fear of getting caught. Many a husband who pretends to be faithful because of his conscience is in reality merely afraid of his wife. Because of the great amount of anxiety in neuroses the neurotic in inclined more often than the normal individual to cover up anxiety with guilt feelings. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

Unlike the normal person one not only fears those consequences which are likely to happen, but anticipates consequences which are likely to happen, but anticipates consequences utterly disproportionate to reality. The nature of these anticipations depends on the situation. One may have an exaggerated notion of impending punishment, retaliation, desertion, or one’s fears may be completely vague. However, whatever their nature one’s fears are all kindled at the same point, which may be roughly described as the fear of disapproval, or if the fear of disapproval amounts to a conviction, as a fear of being found out. The fear of disapproval is very common in neuroses. Nearly every neurotic, even though one appears on surface observation to be entirely certain of oneself and indifferent to the opinion of others, is excessively afraid of or hypersensitive to being disapproved of, criticized, accused, found out. As I have already mentioned, this fear of disapproval is usually understood to indicate underlying guilt feelings. In other words, it is considered to be a result of such feelings. Critical observation makes this conclusion questionable. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

In analysis a patient will often find it extremely difficult to talk about certain experiences or thoughts—those, for example, concerning death wishes, masturbation, incest wishes—because one believes one feels guilty. When one has gained sufficient confidence to talk about them, and recognizes that they do not meet with disapproval, the “guilt feelings” vanish. One feels guilty because, as a result of one’s anxieties, one is even more than others dependent on public opinion, and hence mistakes it naively as one’s own judgment. Furthermore one’s general sensitivity toward disapproval remains fundamentally unchanged, even if one’s special guilt feelings vanish after one has brought oneself to talk about the experiences that prompted them. This observation suggests the conclusion that guilt feelings are not the cause but the result of the fear of disapproval. “But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit,” reports 2 Corinthians 3.18. We have looked, now, at the basic dimensions of the human self and at the central principle of its dysfunctionality and corruption (that is, self-denial). Spiritual formation in Christ is the process by which one moves an is moved from self-worship to Christ-centered self-denial as a general condition of God’s present and eternal kingdom. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

The next logical step in a practical treatment of spiritual formation might seem to be the provision of detailed instructions on how to move from a life of self-adulation to one of self-denial, dealing with each of the dimensions of the human being in turn. And we plan to do just that. However, before it can be effectively done in our contemporary context, we must clear up a few more preliminary matters. First of all, we must be clear that such a transition as is envisioned in Christian spiritual formation can actually happen, and can actually happen to us. This, today, is not obvious. What we see around us today of the usual Christian life could easily make us think that spiritual transformation is simply impossible. It is now common for Christian leaders themselves to complain about how little real-life difference there is between professing, or even actual Christians, on the one hand, and non-Christians on the other. Although there is much talk about “changing lives” in Christian circles, the reality is very rare, and certainly much less common than the talk. The “failures” of prominent Christian leaders themselves, already referred to, might cause us to think genuine spiritual formation in Christlikeness to be impossible for “real human beings.” How is it, exactly, that a man or woman can respectably serve Christ for many years and then morally disintegrate? #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

And the failures that become known are few compared to the ones that remain relatively unknown and are even accepted among Christians. The effect of Christians working in the church, politics, business, entertainment, or education depends on the circumstances of how widely the failure becomes known, and on various other factors. There was a case of a pastor who became enraged at something a subordinate did during a Sunday morning service. Immediately after the service he found that subordinate and gave him a merciless tongue-lashing. With his lapel microphone still on! His diatribe was broadcast over the entire church plant and campus—in all the Sunday school rooms and the parking lot. Soon there after he “received the Lord’s call” to another church. However, what about their spiritual formation of this leader? Is that the best we can do? And is one not still really like that in one’s new position? Malfeasance with money is less acceptable than anger, and misconduct dealing with pleasures of the flesh is less tolerated still. However, is the inner condition (the heart) all that different in these cases—before God? The sad thing when a leader (or any individual) “fails” is not just what one said or did, but the heart and life and whole person who is revealed by the act. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

What is sad is who these leaders have been all along, what their inner life has been like, and no doubt also how they have suffered during all the years they “did it” or were found out. What kind of persons have they been, and what, really has been their relation to God? Real spiritual need and change, as we have emphasized, is on the inside, in the hidden area of the life that God sees and that we cannot even see in ourselves without his help. Indeed, in the early stages of spiritual development we could not endure seeing our inner life as it really is. The possibility of denial and self-deception is something God has made accessible to us, in part to protect us until we begin to seek him. Like the face of the mythical Medusa, our true condition away from God would turn us to stone if we were fully confronted it. It would drive us mad. He has to help us come to terms with it in ways that will not destroy us outright. Without the gentle though rigorous process of inner transformation, initiated and sustained by the graceful presence of God in our World and in our soul, the change of personality and life clearly announced and spelled out in the Bible, and explained and illustrated throughout Christian history is impossible. We not only admit it, but also insist upon it. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

However, on the other hand, the result of the effort to change our behaviour without inner transformation is precisely what we see in the current shallowness of Western Christianity that is so widely lamented and in the notorious failures of Christian leaders. One that performs first in the case of a contract, is said to merit that which one is to receive by the performance of the other; and one has it due. Also when a prize is propounded to many, which is to be given to one only that wins; or money is thrown amongst many, to be enjoyed by them that catch it; though this be a free gift; yet so to win, or so to catch, is to merit, and to have it as due. For the right is transferred in the propounding of the prize, and in throwing down the money; though it be not determined to whom, but by the event of the contention. However, there is between these two sorts of merit, this difference, that in contract, I merit by virtue of my own power, and the contractors need; but in this case of free gift, I am enabled to merit only by the benignity of the giver; in contract, I merit at the contractors hand that one should depart with one’s right; in this case of gift, I merit not that the giver should part with one’s right; but that when one has parted with it, it should be mine, rather than another’s. And this I think to be the meaning of that distinction of the schools, between Meritum Congrui, and Meritum Condigni. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

For God Almighty, having promised Paradise to those people (hoodwinked with carnal desires,) that can walk through this World according to the precepts, and limits prescribed by one; they say, one that shall so walk, shall merit Paradise Ex Congruo. However, because no person can demand a right to it, by one’s own righteousness, or any other power in oneself, but by the free grace of God only; they say, no person can merit Paradise Ex Congruo. However, because no person can demand a right to it, by one’s own righteousness, or any other power in oneself, but by the free grace of God only; they say, no person can merit Paradise Ex Condigno. This I say, I think is the meaning of that distinction; but because disputers do not agree upon the signification of their own terms of Art, longer than it serves their turn; I will not affirm anything of their meaning: only this I say; when a gift is given indefinitely, as a prize to be contended for, one that wins merit, and may claim the prize as due. It is safe to say that throughout much of church history, Scripture and right reason were considered twin allies to be prized and used by disciples of Jesus. Jesus our Master, do Thou meet us while we walk in the way, and long to reach the Heavenly Country; so that following Thy light, we may keep the way of righteousness, and never wander away into the horrible darkness of this World’s night, while Thou Who art the Way, the Truth, and the Life, art shining within us. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

O LORD, our support and our refuge, deliver us from temptation, give us the defence of Thy salvation, hold us up with Thy right hand, teach us by Thy discipline, and make our way and our life undefiled. “And it came to pass as he (Lehi, Nephi’s father) prayed unto the Lord, there came a pillar of fire and dwelt upon a rock before him; and he saw and heard much; and because of the things which he saw and heard he did quake and tremble exceedingly. And it came to pass that he returned to his own house at Jerusalem; and he cast himself upon his bed, being overcome with the Spirit and the things which he had seen. And being this overcome with the Spirit, he was carried away in a vision, even that he saw the Heavens open, and he thought he saw God sitting upon his throne, surrounded with numberless concourses of Angels in the attitude of singing and praising their God. And it came to pass that he saw One descending out of the midst of Heaven, and he beheld that his luster was above that of the Sun at noon-day. And he also saw twelve others following him, and their brightness did exceed that of the stars in the firmament. And they came down and went forth upon the face of the Earth; and the first came and stood before my father, and have unto him a book, and bade him that he should read,” reports 1 Nephi 6-11. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

O God of grace, Thou hast imputed my sin to my substitute, and hast imputed his righteousness to my soul, clothing me with a bridegroom’s robe, decking me with jewels of holiness. However, in my Christian walk I am still in rags; my best prayers are stained with sin; my penitential tears are so much impurity; my confessions of wrong are so many aggravations of sin; my receiving the Spirit is tinctured with selfishness. I need to repent of my repentance; I need my tears to be washed; I have no robe to bring to cover my sins, no loom to weave my own righteousness; I am always standing clothed in filthy garments, and by grace am always receiving change of raiment, for Thou dost always justify the ungodly; I am always going into the far country, an always returning homes as a prodigal, always saying, Father, forgive me, and thou art always bringing forth the best robe. Every morning let me wear it, every evening return in it, go out to the day’s work in it, be married in it, be wound in death in it, stand before the great white throne in it, enter Heaven in it shining as the Sun. Grant me never to lose sight of the exceeding sinfulness of sin, the exceeding righteousness of salvation, the exceeding glory of Christ, the exceeding beauty of holiness, the exceeding wonder of grace. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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February 27, 2020 2:02 am

We are in a giving society—but we cannot give what we do not have. It is impossible to be an inspirational leader on an empty spirit. We sometimes forget the importance of living balanced lives when the workload seems all-consuming of our time and energies. We seek to make order out of chaos. We need to take the time for infilling and reflection so that we have the inner resources that will enable us to continue to give to others. We know what a person thinks not when one tells us what one thinks, but by one’s actions. There is always war of everyone against every one hereby it is manifest, that during the time people live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called War; and such a war, as is of every person, against every person. For WAR, consisteth not in Battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the Will to contend by Battel is sufficiently known: and therefore the notion of Time, is to be considered in the nature of War; as it is in the nature of Weather. For as the nature of Foul weather, lyeth not in shower or two of rain; but in an inclination thereto of many days together: So the nature of War, consisteth not in actually fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is PEACE. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18

Whatsoever there is consequent to a time of War, where every being is Enemy to every being; the same is consequent to the time, wherein people live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition, there is no place of Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of humans, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. It may seem strange to some people, that has not well weighed these things; that Nature should thus dissociate, and render people apt to invade, and destroy one another: and one may therefore, not trusting to this Inference, made from the Passions, desire perhaps to have the same confirmed by Experience. Let one therefore consider with oneself, when taking a journey, one arms oneself, and seeks to go well accompanied; when going to sleep, one locks one’s doors; when even in one’s house one locks one’s chests. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18

And all these precautions are taken when one knows there are Laws, and public officers, armed, to revenge all injuries shall be done one; what opinion one has of one’s fellow subjects, when one rides armed; of one’s fellow Citizens, when one locks one’s doors; and of one’s children, and servants, when one locks one’s chests. Does one not there as much accuse humankind by one’s actions, as I do by my words? However, neither of us accuse human’s nature in it. The Desires, and other Passions of humans, are in themselves no Sin. No more are the Actions, that proceed from those Passions, till they know a Law that forbids them; which till Laws be made they cannot know: nor can any Law be made, till they have agreed upon the Person that shall make it. It may peradventure be thought, there was never such a time, nor condition of war as this; and I believe it was never generally so, over all the World: but there are many places, where they live so now. For the savage people in many places of America, except the government of small Families, the concord whereof dependeth on natural lust, have no government at all; and live at this day in that brutish manner, as I said before. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18

Howsoever, it may be perceived what manner of life there would be, where there were no common Power to fear; by the manner of life, which people that have formerly lived under peaceful government, used to degenerate into, in a civil War. To this war of every person against every person, this also is consequent; that nothing can be Unjust. The notions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice have there no place. Where there is no common Power, there is no Law: where no Law, no Injustice. Force, and Fraud, are in war the two Cardinal virtues. Justice, and Injustice are none of the Faculties neither of the Body, nor Mind. If they were, they might be in a being that were alone in the World, as well as one’s Senses, and Passions. They are Qualities, that relate to people in Society, not in Solitude. It is consequent also to the same condition, that there be no Property, no Dominion, no Mine and Thine distinct; but only that to be every humans that can get; and for so long, as one can keep it. And thus much for the ill condition, which humans by mere Nature is actually placed in; through with a possibility to come out of it, consisting partly in the Passions, partly in one’s Reason. The Passions that incline people to Peace, are Fear of Death; Desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living; and a Hope by their Industry to obtain them. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18

And Reason suggesteth convenient Articles of Peace, upon which humans may be drawn to agreement. These Articles, are they, which otherwise are called Laws of Nature. The RIGHT OF NATURE, which Writers commonly call Just Naturale, is the Liberty each person hath, to use one’s own power, as one will oneself, for the preservation of one’s own Nature; that is to say, of one’s own Life; and consequently, of doing anything, which in one’s own Judgement, and Reason, one shall conceive to be the attest means thereunto. By LIBERTY, is understood, according to the proper signification of the word, the absence of external Impediments: which Impediments, ay often take away part of one’s power to do what one would; but cannot hinder one from using the power left one, according as one’s judgment, and reason shall dictate to one. A LAW OF NATURE, (Lex Naturalis,) is a Precept, or generall Rule, found out by Reason, by which a person is forbidden to do, that, which is destructive of one’s life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same; and to omit, that, by which one thinketh it may be best preserved. For though they that speak of this subject, use to confound Just, and Lex, Right and Law; yet they ought to be distinguished; because RIGHT, consisteth in liberty to do, or to forbeare; Whereas LAW, determineth, and bindeth to one of them: so that Law, and Right, differ as much, as Obligation, and Liberty; which in one and the same matter are inconsistent. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18

And because the condition of Humans, is a condition of War of every one against every one; in which case everyone is governed by one’s own Reason; and there is nothing one can make use of, that may not be a help unto one, in preserving one’s life against one’s enemies; it followeth, that in such a condition, every human has a Right to everything; even to one anothers body. And therefore, as long as this natural Right of every human to every thing endureth, there can be no security to any person, (how strong or wise soever one be,) of living out the time, which Nature ordinarily alloweth people to live. And consequently, it is a precept, or general rule of Reason, “That every person, ought to endeavour Peace, as far as one has hope of obtaining it; and when one cannot obtain it, that one may seek, and use, all helps, and advantages of War.” The first branch, of which Rule, containeth the first, and Fundamental Law of Nature; which is, “To seek Peace, and follow it.” The Second, the sum of the Right of Nature; which is, “By all means we can, to defend ourselves.” In the New Testament no one understood this better than the Apostle Paul. In fact, in his letter to the Philippians, after alluding to guarding the heart Paul prescribed his personal program in one sublime sentence: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things,” reports Philippians 4.8. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18

The true, the noble, the right, the pure, the lovely, the admirable all defy negative exposition. Each ingredient was, and is, a matter of personal choice—and our choices make all the difference in the World. We all can choose a thought program which will produce a Christian mind. I have great sympathy for those whose past has been a series of bad choices. I understand that if over the years one has chosen the impure and the illusory and the negative, it is very difficult to change. However, as a Biblical thinker I give no quarter to myself or anyone else who rationalizes one’s present choices by the past. As Christians we are free to have a Christian mind. It is within our reach, and it is our duty. If anything is shoddy or unworthy of praise—do not think about those things. There is a dark side of human experience. So we must law down as fundamental to our Christianity this truth: a Christian mind demands conscious negation; a Christian mind is impossible without the discipline of refusal. As believers in God we must take control of our minds—what comes in and what goes out. “I will walk in my house with a blameless heart. I will set before my eyes no vile thing,” reports Psalm 101.2-3. We must focus our minds on truth, nobility, rightness, purity, loveliness, admirability, excellence, and praiseworthiness with a deliberate and prolonged contemplation as if one is weighing a mathematical problem. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18

We are to think about the wonderful elements God wants us to put into our computer. God calls us in His Word to a massive and absolute discipline of the mind. Justification by faith means that every principle that every human-made action, formulation or idea must be protested against inasmuch as it tends to undermine God’s transcendence (and it necessarily does so). This Universal protest entails an affirmation of the Universal power of God. It must protest even against itself, whenever justification by faith is shifted from the status of a principle to that of a doctrinal datum. Justification by faith, not only justifies human’s experience as sinner and just at the same time (simul peccator et Justus); it also justifies one’s experience as right and mistaken at the same time, as having the truth and denying it, as believing and doubting. Justification by faith opens the realm of the intellect to the dominion of Christ alone. When we are farthest from God we are nearest to him. When we process atheism we believe. For our adhesion to intellectual truth is not human-made; it is the outcome of out justification by grace alone. The principle of protest must make us deny human’s self-complacency in respect to beliefs or doctrines that one can grasp, and label one’s own. It must urge us to affirm God’s victory in human’s defeat, God’s truth in human’s untruth. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

No intellectual work justifies; what justifies the intellect is faith alone, grace alone. When one justifies by grace, the Incarnate Word makes humans into a new being, which has substance in one alone and is perceived by faith alone. This New Being is the norm of theology. However, let us be careful lest the Protestant protest indict us even here. The New Being comes from Jesus. Yet it flows from his Universal function as the Christ, as showing forth the divine, as mediating the infinite. It is related to Jesus as the Christ, that is, as interpreted by faith alone. Among medieval theologians the question was often raised: Is theology concerned with Christ? or as we would say, Is it “Christocentic?” It is indeed Christocentric, with the role of Jesus as the Christ, as bearer of the New Being for every human and every creature, beyond what humans have formulated concerning that New Being, beyond even human’s consciousness of it. A picture is emerging from our glance at Holy Scripture, a portrait of the mature Christian life in which the intellectual life, the careful development of our faculty of reason, is an essential, valuable component. The spiritual journey is certainly more than loving God with out minds, but just as surely, that journey is at least a life of such intellectual devotion. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18

As we grow in our love for God and seek to be like Him, we make it our intention to become as well-informed and knowledgeable as we can, given that our intellectual development must be balanced with devotion to growth in other aspects of our human selves. Wisdom results when a respectful heart is united with a disciplined mind. Knowledge is the fruit of study, and knowledge is necessary for wisdom. Holy Scripture is the central object of study in loving God with the mind. However, it is not the only object of such study. God has revealed Himself and various other truths on a number of topics outside the Bible. As Christians have known throughout our history, common sense, logic, and mathematics—along with the arts, humanities, sciences, and other areas of study—contain important truths relevant to life in general and to the development of a careful, life-related Christian Worldview. According to the Bible, wisdom comes from studying ant as well as learning Scripture (Proverbs 6)! The true God must be He Who is the Lord of history. God knows the past and the future, the beginning and end, of all things. The gods of the nations cannot answer. For they did not know of the act; they did not predict it; and they did not perform it. These gods are all vain, their words are as nothing, and their images are as mere wind and illusion. Only God, is the God of history. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18

Seldom in history have people been as disturbed about history as we are today. We desire urgently to catch at least a glimpse of the future, of wisdom and prophecy. Tens of millions from all over the World are trying passionately to penetrate the darkness of their future. And with them, a great many other people long for a strong, inspiring word concerning the future. However, those who have the power to shape the future fundamentally contradict each other. Political leaders declare solemnly that it is almost impossible to carry the burden of their office at this time. Ministers at home and in the army can only describe in negative terms the object of their people’s sacrifice. Those who have to speak to the people of the enemy soon realize that they can say nothing of real promise on the political plane. Only the prophets of disaster-without hope given evidence of complete certainty. However, they are not the prophets of God. We should not expect the darkness of our history to be dispersed soon, either by new conferences or by clever political strategy. Our darkness, uncertainty, and helplessness in regard to the future have depths that are more profound. We do not receive an answer concerning the future, because we ask questions of those who cannot know the future, the gods who are as vanity, the gods of the nations, who are nothing beside the God of history. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18

Every person tries to wrest an oracle from the god of one’s nation through the mouths of one’s priests, the mighty and wise. And every human succeeds. All people throughout the World are flooded with oracles from the gods of their nations and the gods of other nations. All people compare their oracles with others, and attempt to determine the most credible ones. However, the darkness simply increases. We have seen a number of spiritual teachers either arise in the West or come here from the East and each one seems to find a certain number of adherent. These teachers and their teachings are of varying quality and may be helpful to many of those who join them. However, it is necessary to give a measure of warning against exaggerations made by the teachers about themselves or, if not, made by their followers. It is easy for untrained and inexperienced seekers to be taken in by confident claims to the highest enlightenment. It is better to look for the signs of humility and impersonality. The excessive importance given to the guru, the exaggerated devotion given to one, can only have value in the earlier stages of the quest. The point of view then present has so much ego in it that the aspirant would not be satisfied unless one had a guru. However, it is still an attachment, this relationship, so it has to be let go later on. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18

All people speak of the future in terms of their own nations. Yet even the greatest nation is as nothing to the God of history. For no nation or alliance of nations can say that it is the meaning, the purpose of history, that it is the nation or alliance which holds the knowledge of the past and the power to shape the future. The entire assembly of national gods must fall finally under the judgment of God, which condemns it as a thing of naught, as a thing incapable of doing anything at all. We receive so many oracles, but no prophecies, only because we refuse to turn to the source of prophecy, the God of history. Along with a sense of profound gratitude of God for His grace, I also find myself motivated to obedience by a deep sense of reverence for Him. We must be motivated to do good by God’s reverence so we do not forfeit or blessings. It is important to be concerned about disobedience to a sovereign, holy God, even though things may happen to us that cause us to suffer. “Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God,” reports 2 Corinthians 7.1. God will protect us, so we must make a complete break with every form of unhealthy compromise. Promises come before duty and that duty flows out of a heartfelt response to the promises of God. #RandolphHarris 13 of 18

Reverence is a sense of profound awe, respect, and devotion. It is a recognition of God’s intrinsic worthiness, the infinite majesty of His being, and the infinite perfection of His character. Because of who God id and what God is, God is infinitely worthy of our most diligent and loving obedience, even if we have never received a single blessing from His hand. The fact is, of course, we all have received innumerable blessings from God. However, His worthiness is intrinsic withing Himself; it is not conditioned on the number of blessings we receive from Him. “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being,” reports Revelations 4.11. God is worthy of our loving obedience because of who He is, not because of what He does. And parents, remember, make sure your children are comfortable expressing their mistakes to you so they can create a chain of communication and seek guidance. You do not want your children to fear talking to you and make mistakes and try to hide them, instead of finding a reasonable solution. Our motivation to obey and serve God cannot rise to such heights until we learn to live daily by grace and to experience freedom each day from the bondage of the performance treadmill. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18

I believe a genuine heart response to the worthiness of God is the highest possible motivation for obedience and service to God. However, we cannot break through to that level of motivation until we are first motivated by His grace, mercy, and love. We cannot be free to think about God’s worthiness and God’s glory as long as we are struggling to earn our own acceptance with Him. The outstanding fact is that different group leaders vary enormously in the way of relating. Some are highly authoritarian and directive. Others make maximum use of their experiences and games to reach the goals they have chosen. Others feel little responsibility toward group members: “I do my thing and you do your thing.” Others, including me, endeavour to be facilitative, but in no way controlling. Each leader should probably be considered as an individual if we are to assess the politics of one’s approach. One new approach appears to be sweeping the country. It is the extreme of the leader-dominated type of group. Members are held to an absolute discipline, subjected to long hours of ridicule and abuse. All their beliefs are “nonsense,” and they themselves are all “nobody.” This leads to such confusion that eventually the unquestioned authority of the leader is established. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18

The final damning statement is that “You are nothing but a machine! And you cannot be anything but what you are.” Then comes the optimistic revelation that “if you accept the nature of your mind and take responsibility for having created all the mechanisms it comprises, then in effect you have freely chosen to do everything you have ever done and to be precisely what you are. In that instant you become exactly what you always wanted to be!” A great many of the group experience conversion-type experiences and feel their lives have been greatly changed for the better. From this point of view of interpersonal politics, two things impress me. One is the leader’s assumption of absolute control. Though some resent this, the majority who surrender to the will of the leader indicates what a large proportion of persons desires to be dependent on a guru. The second point is that in the authoritarian approaches, the ends justifies the means. In the person-centered approach, the process is all-important, and the changes are only partially predictable. Knowledge of different exercises can feed into the realness and spontaneity that is the essence of a person-centered group. A leader is a person who you would follow to a place you would not go by yourself. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18

Learning is the essential fuel for the leader, the source of high-octane energy that keeps up the momentum by continually sparking new understanding, new ideas, and new challenges. It is absolutely indispensable under today’s conditions of rapid change and complexity. Very simply, those who do not learn do not survive as leaders. “And wo be unto the children of men if this be the case; for there shall be none that doeth good among you, no not one. For if there be one among you that doeth good, one shall work by the power and gifts of God,” reports Moroni 10.25. We beseech Thee, O Lord, to renew Thy people inwardly and outwardly, that as Thou wouldest not have them to be hindered by bodily pleasures, Thou mayest make them vigorous with spiritual purpose; and refresh them in such sort by things transitory, that Thou mayest grant them rather to cleave to things eternal; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Eternal Father, Thou art good beyond all thought, but I am vile, wretched, miserable, blind; my lips are ready to confess, but my heart is slow to feel, and my ways reluctant to amend. I bring my soul to Thee; break it, wound it, bend it, mould it. Unmask to me sin’s deformity, that I may hate it, abhor it, flee from it. My faculties have been a weapon of revolt against Thee; as a reel I have misused my strength, and served the foul adversary of they kingdom. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18

Give me grace to bewail my insensate folly, grant me to know that they way of transgressors is hard, that evil paths are wretched paths, that to depart from Thee is so lose all good. I have seen the purity and beauty of thy perfect law, the happiness of those in whose heart it reigns, the calm dignity of the walk to which it calls, yet I daily violate and contemn its precepts. Thy loving Spirit strives within me, brings me Scripture warnings, speaks in startling providences, allures by secret whispers, yet I choose devices and desires to my own hearts, impiously resent, grieve, and provoke him to abandon me. All these sins I mourn, lament, and for them cry pardon. Work in me more profound and abiding repentance; give me the fullness of Godly grief that trembles fears, yet ever trusts and loves, which is ever powerful, and ever confident; grant that through the tears of repentance I may see more clearly the brightness and glories of the saving cross. Protect, O Lord, Thy suppliants, support their weakness, and wash away their Earthly stains; and while they walk amid the darkness of this mortal life, do Thou ever quicken them by Thy light; deliver them in Thy mercy from all evils, and grant them to attain the heights of good: through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18

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It Will Not Take a Lifetime to Accomplish Your Dreams—It Will Happen in a Fraction of the Time!

February 24, 2020 8:41 pm

If you will take the limits off of God, you will see Him do amazing things. Divine connections are coming your way. I believe that the act of leadership is, in part, an effort to impose order on chaos, to provide direction to what otherwise appears to be adrift, and to give meaning and coherence to events that otherwise appear, and may in fact, be random. The complex capacity of the human brain is the subject of ever widening scientific wonder. Its twelve to fourteen billion cells are only a shadow of its complexity, for each cell sends out thousands of connecting tendrils so that a single cell may be connected with 10,000 neighbouring cells, each of which is constantly exchanging data impulses. These twelve to fourteen billion brain cells times 10,000 connectors make the human mind an unparalleled computer. The mind’s activity has been compared to 1,000 switchboards, each big enough to serve New York City, all running at full speed as they receive and send questions and orders. Put another way, there is more electronic equivalent in one human brain than in all the radio and television stations of the entire World put together! Sensory messages combine into concepts. Messages, about variations in light, sound, temperature, or whatever, are sent from the peripheral sensory nerve-cells to other nerve-cells not directly responsive to stimuli from outside the body. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

Messages are also sent from various parts of the body when bone and muscles change position, giving information abut posture and movement. Messages are sent from yet other parts of the body about hormonal secretions or other chemicals in the blood and elsewhere, and this has to do with the emotions then being experienced. Messages about all these situations—and others less easily briefly alluded to—can interlink, and thus we get ever more complex organization of messages. Messages can start anywhere, but in their interlinking they can home in on particular cells which thereby gain an organizing or coding or sorting function. These cells are conventionally spoken of as more central, that is nearer the brain which is being thought of as a centre of the body. Most central are the cells in the appropriately named “association areas” of the brain. These can be contrasted with the more peripheral sensory cells, which are only affected by the particular stimuli they are constructed to be affected by, not by other nerve-cells. Some scientist estimate that there are actually around 100,000,000,000 cells in the brain, and many of them can combine with many others, so there is plenty of room for patterns to be able to form. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

We cannot see “blackness,” only a black this or a black that. “Blackness” is a concept which may be excited when a top hat is perceived, or Pat’s kitten, or ink, or whatever. And the appropriate mood and the effect of rain clouds (in minds that speak the English language at least). And certain colours of the Earth, which painters show us are not black at all, etcetera. And for each of these, while the concept “blackness” is evoked, so are a large number of other concepts which share nothing ese in common. “Blackness” just happens to be the common factor among the examples I have chosen. The human brain does not mis a thing. It is capable of giving and receiving the subtlest input—from imagining a Universe in which time bends, to creating the polyphonic texture of a fugue, or transmitting and receiving a message from God Himself—feats no computer will ever accomplish. We can nor form a tentative notion of how perceptions get organized into concepts. Concepts can carrying feeling as well as cognitive components. We now take two more steps in imagination. One is to imagine how movement, and hence action (and hence “drives” and “motivation” and other such) can be built in at this level of the most elementary detail of our cerebral organizations. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

The other takes us into a deeper understanding of concept-formation: on the one hand a concept is built up from component perceptions, on the other hand the components get their meaning from the concept to which they contribute—they make a Gestalt (something that is made of many parts and yet is somehow more than or different from the combination of its parts). Muscle-movements and other perceptions (for example the perception of angles) activate one another, round and round, and back and forth, until the concept (triangle) joins the chase. In effect, achieving the concept “triangle”—achieving any concept, making sense of anything—involves sequences of nerve-cells such that sensory input and motor input are mutually stimulating. By the time the simplest concept has been established, movement and behaviour are already built in. Motor behaviour is involved from the state, and so is perceptions. The dizzying potential of the human mind reaches its apex in the possibility of possessing the mind of Christ through the ministry of the Holy Spirit—a possibility affirmed by Paul when he said, “But we have the mind of Christ”—a mind which is constantly renewed reports 1 Corinthians 2.16 and Romans 12.2. No computer will ever be able to think God’s thoughts, not will any device ever be able to know the heart of God or do His works. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

However, they mystery which resides between our ears has this capacity to know the heart of God and do His works. Indeed, it was created for this—to have the mind of Christ. Everything that has to do with inner life: concepts, symbols, internal objects, relationships—when one aspect of something stands for the whole, the whole may be activated although the person registers only the one aspect. A phobia would be an unpleasant example of this. Goodness knows what a spider “stands for” for different people. Even the simplest meanings have to be learned. The recognition of a triangle as a triangle is an achievement. It means that percepts have acquired a new meaning, have contributed to concepts. We tend to take our ability to do this for granted. However, it is important to realize that people are born blind take a long time to learn to recognize even the simple shapes if they have the good fortune to be given their sight in more mature years. Investigators are unanimous in reporting that the perception of a square, circle or triangle, or of sphere or cube, is very poor. To see one of these as a whole object, with distinctive characteristics immediately evident, is not possible for a long period. The most intelligent and best-motivated patient has to seek corners painstakingly even to distinguish a triangle from a circle. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

The newly seeing patient can frequently find a difference between two such figures shown together, but the differences are not remembered. There is for weeks a practically zero capacity to learn names for such figures, even when tactual recognition is prompt and complete. It also takes time to learn to generalize as sighted people do. When the patient first gets to the point of being able to name a simple object promptly, recognition is completely destroyed if the object is slightly changed or put into a new setting. The patient who had learned to name a ring showed no recognition of a slightly different ring; having learned to name a square made of white cardboard, could not name it when its colour was changed to yellow by turning the cardboard over; and so on. These reports consistently indicate that the perceived whole at first vision is simultaneously unified and amorphous. There is not a single instance given in which the congenitally blind after operation had trouble in learning colour names; but a great number in which perception of identity in a simple figure was poor indeed. This may be hard for a sighted person to imagine, but many of us do still have to count the corners to tell an octagon from a hexagon, and many of us remember how hard it was to learn to read music. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

It is curiously difficult to recapture pre-conceptual innocence. Having learned a new language, it is almost impossible to recall the undifferentiated flow of voiced sounds that one heard before one learned to sort the flow into words and phrases. Having mastered the distinction between odd and even numbers, it is a feat to remember what it was like in a mental World where there was no such distinction. It is as if the mastery of a conceptual distinction were able to mask the pre-conceptual memory of the things now distinguished. Moreover, the transition experienced between “not having” the distinction and “having it” seems to be without experiential content. Concept attainment seems almost an intrinsically unanalyzable process from an experiential point of view. Now I understand the distinction; before there was nothing, and in between there was only a moment of illumination. I think this is a point worth making much of, when writing for people whose main interest has been therapeutic psychodynamic theory. It illuminates the danger of assuming, from the therapists’ or from the patients’ memories, that we “always had” some of our subjective experiences—that we “always had,” for instance, envy or a primitive ego, or whatever feels basic. I am presenting an alternative point of view, in which each of these experiences is an achievement. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

When we think about the meticulous learning of the newly sighted, take heed. We are not used to thinking of simple perceptions as slowly and painfully learned. The meticulous learning, and the frequent instances of failure to learn at all in periods as long as a year following the operations, would seem extraordinary and incredible had they not been confirmed by evidence such as that provided by animal psychologists. For instance, chimpanzees, some of which were reared in total darkness, were highly motivated by hunger and by loneliness, poor apes, to cling to their attendant when—still in the dark—they were made to leave their familiar cages. Yet when they were finally brought into the light, there was no sign that either hunger or the desire to cling could teach them, in 40 or 50 hours of visual experience, to recognize their white-clad attendant as more important than any other feature of their environment. Astonishing at it may seem, the chimpanzees appeared not to be able to see, or not to be able to use what they saw. They could not conceptualize. Another experiment (equally unjustifiable in my view) showed that even a dozen bad experiences did not help them avoid a large and easily visible object which gave them electric shocks when they touched it. Yet normally reared animals would go nowhere near it after one shock. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

This shows that meticulousness in learning new things is due to the very complexity of which primate thinking is in fact capable. It is the more primitive animals who catch on fast, if they catch on at all; less primitive animals are far more capable of conceptual learning, but it comes later in development. The cosmic potential of the believer’s mind introduces the great scandal of today’s Church: Christians without Christian minds, Christians who do not think Christianly—a tragic fact which is far more true of professing Christian men than women, as we shall see. Some prophetic voices have been sounding the alarm for some time now, like that of former United Nations Secretary General Charles Malik, who told the distinguished audience at the dedication of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College: “Believe me, my friends, the mind today is in profound trouble, perhaps more than ever before. How to order the mind on sound Christian principles, at the heart of where it is formed and informed, is one of the greatest themes that can be considered.” The Christian mind—while many Christians may worship and pray as Christians, they do not think as Christians. Church is just becoming a fashion show and a car show, for people to show off how well they are doing and gossip about and plot against their neighbours. It has also become a secondary dating application, where people go to look for love. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

The Christian minds has succumbed to the secular drift with a degree of weakness and neverlessness unmatched in Christian history. Elsewhere our generation is suffering from religious anorexia (anorexia religiosa), a loss of appetite for growth in Christ. The bottom line is: this grievous scandal comes from a declining willingness to properly program the amazing instruments God has given us. Christians leave their twelve billion cells unguarded and unthinking—and undisciplined. When we turn to God’s Word, we are aware that the Biblical writers understood the problem in a less technical, though more personally beneficial, way. “Above all else, guard your heart,” reports Proverbs, “for it is the wellspring of life,” Proverbs 4.23. “For as one thinks within oneself, so one is,” reports Proverbs 23.7. The Scriptures tell us rightly that input determines output—that our programming determines production. If, however, a thing is called mutable by a power in itself, thus also in some manner every creature is mutable. For every creature has a twofold power, active and passive; and I call that power passive which enables anything to attain its perfection either in being, or in attaining to its end. Now if the mutability of a thing be considered according to is power for being, in that way all creatures are not mutable, but those only in which what is potential in then is consistent with non-being. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

Hence, in the inferior bodies there is mutability both as regards substantial being, inasmuch as their matter can exist with privation of their substantial form, and also as regards their accidental being, suppose the subject to coexist with privation of accident; as, for example, this subject “man” can exist with “not-whiteness” and can therefore be changed from white to not-white. However, supposing the accident to be such as to follow on the essential principles of the subject, then the privation of such an accident cannot coexist with the subject. Hence the subject cannot be changed as regards that kind of accident; as, for example, snow cannot be made black. Now in the celestial bodies matter is not consistent with privation of form, because the form perfects the whole potentiality of the matter; therefore these bodies are not mutable as to substantial being, but only as to locality, because the subject is consistent with privation of this or that place. On the other hand incorporeal substances, being subsistent forms which, although with respect to their own existence are as potentiality to act, are not consistent with the privation of this act; forasmuch as existence is consequent upon form, and nothing corrupts except it lose its form. Hence in the form itself there is no power to non-existence; and so these kinds of substances are immutable and invariable as regards their existence. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

Wherefore Dionysius says (Div. Nom. Iv) that “intellectual created substances are pure from generation and from every variation, as also are incorporeal and immaterial substances.” Still, there remains in them a twofold mutability: one as regards their potentiality to their end; and in that way there is in them a mutability according to choice from good to evil, as Damascene says (De Fide ii, 3,4); the other as regards place, inasmuch as by their finite power they attain to certain fresh places—which cannot be said of God, who by His infinity fills all places, as was shown above. Thus in every creature there is a potentiality to change either as regards substantial being as in the case of things corruptible; or as regards locality only, as in the case of the celestial bodies; or as regards the order to their end, and the application of their powers to divers objects, as in the case with the Angels; and universally all creatures generally are mutable by the power of the Creator, in Whose power is their existence and non-existence. Hence since God is none of these ways mutable, it belongs to Hum alone to be altogether immutable. Paul said the love of Christ compels us to make a commitment to be good Christians and to carry it out day by day. Compel is a strong word and often has a negative association with force or coercion. However, here is has a beneficial meaning. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

The love of Christ coerces, or presses, and therefore impels. It is the governing influence which controls the life. It is no a fear of consequences or expectation of reward that motivates Paul. Rather, the love of Christ is manifested in dying for him is the driving force of his life. “For the love of Christ continuously constrains me,” reports 2 Corinthians 5.14. Note the use of the word continuously, indicating that Christ’s love is the constant wellspring of Paul’s motivation every day. Paul never lost sight of, never forgo, never took for granted the death of Christ for him. And as he reflected on this infinite love manifested in Christ’s death, he was motivated, no, he was compelled and impelled to live for the One who died for him and rose again. The good Angles, besides their natural endowment of immutability of being, have also immutability of election by divine power; nevertheless there remains in them mutability as regards to place. Forms are called invariable, forasmuch as they cannot be subjects of variation; but they are subject to variation because by them their subject is variable. Hence it is clear that they vary in so far as they are; for they are not called beings as though they were the subject of being, but because through them something has being. Sometimes when I talk about living by grace instead of by works, I see people begin to get nervous. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

Some have warned me against “going too far,” by telling me stories of people who, after hearing a message on God’s grace, have committed some grossly sinful act. I grant the possibility that grace can be misunderstood. However, I believe that, in most instances where people apparently abuse grace, they have not heard a message on grace but on freedom from the law. Freedom from the law is a result of grace and is an important application of truth of grace, but it is not the same as grace. To teach freedom from the law without first teaching grace is like trying to build a house without laying the foundation. That approach can indeed lead to abuse. However, when a person truly understands the grace of God in Christ, he or she will not abuse that grace. Judge did speak of “Godless people, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord” (Jude 4). Obviously, Jude was referring to unbelievers—people who are “Godless” and who “deny Jesus Christ”—so that passage is not applicable to Christians. “And I would exhort you, my beloved brethren, that ye remember that he is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and that all these gifts of which I have spoken, which are spiritual, never will be done away, even as long as the World shall stand, only according to the unbelief of the children of humans,” reports Moroni 10.19. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

Each member of the community gives oneself to it, at the moment of its foundation, just as one is, with all the resources at one’s command, including the goods one possesses. This act does not make possession, in changing hands, change in its nature, and become property in the hands of the Sovereign; but, as the forces of the city are incomparably greater than those of the individual, public possession is also, in fact, stronger and more irrevocable, without being any more legitimate, at any rate from the point of view of foreigners. For the State, in relation to its members, is master of all their goods by social contract, which, within the State, is the basis of all rights; but, in relation to other powers, it is so only by the right of the first occupier, which it holds from its members. The right of the first occupier, though more real than the right of the strongest, becomes a real right only when the right of property has already been established. Every human has naturally a right to everything one needs; but the absolute act which makes one proprietor of one thing excludes one from everything else. Having one’s share, one ought to keep to it, and can have no further right against the community. This is why the right of the first occupier, which in the state of nature is so weak, claims the respect of every being in civil society. In this right we are respecting not so much what belongs to another as what does not belong to ourselves. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

In general, to establish the right of the first occupier over a plot of ground, the following conditions are necessary: first, the land must not yet be inhabited; secondly, a human must occupy only the amount one needs for one’s subsistence; and, in the third place, possession must be taken, not by an empty ceremony, but by labour and cultivation, the only sign of proprietorship that should be respected by others, in default of a legal title. In granting the right of first occupancy to necessity and labour, are we not really stretching it as far as it can go? Is it possible to leave such a right unlimited? It is to be enough to set foot on a plot of common ground, in order to be able to call yourself at once the master of it? Is it to be enough that a human has the strength to expel others for a moment, in order to establish one’s right to prevent them from ever returning? How can a human or a people seize an immense territory and keep it from the rest of the World expect by a punishable usurpation, since all others are being robbed, by such an act, of the place of habitation and the means of subsistence which nature gave them in common? When Nunez Balbao, standing on the sea-shore, took possession of the South Seas and the whole of South America in the name of the crown of Castille, was that enough to dispossess all their actual inhabitants, and to shut out from them all the princes of the World? #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

On such a showing, these ceremonies are idly multiplied, and the Catholic King need only take possession all at once, from his apartment, of the whole Universe, merely making a subsequent reservation about what was already in the possession of other princes. We can imagine how the lands of individuals, where they were contiguous and came to be united, became the public territory, and how the right of Sovereignty, extending from the subjects over the lands they held, became at once real and personal. The possessors were thus made more dependent, and the forces at their command used to guarantee their fidelity. The advantage of this does not seem to have been felt by ancient monarchs, who called themselves King of the Persians, Scythians, or Macedonians, present day more cleverly call themselves King of France, Spain, England, etcetera: thus holding the land, they are quite confident of holding the inhabitants. The peculiar fact about this alienation is that, in taking over the goods of individuals, the community, so far from despoiling them, only assures them legitimate possession, and changes usurpation into a true right and enjoyment into proprietorship. The very essence of leadership is that you have a vision. You cannot blow an uncertain trumpet. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

Thus the possessors, being regarded as depositaries of the public good, and having their rights respected by all the members of the State and maintained against foreign aggression by all its forces, have, by a cession which benefits both the public and still more themselves, acquired, so to speak, all that they gave up. This paradox may easily be explained by the distinction between the rights which the Sovereign and the proprietor have over the same estate, as well shall see later on. It may also happen that people begin to unite one with another before they possess anything, and that, subsequently occupying a tract of country which is enough for all, they enjoy it in common, or share it out among themselves, either equally or according to a scale fixed by the Sovereign. However the acquisition be made, the right which each individual has to one’s own estate is always subordinate to the right which the community has over all: without this, there would be neither stability in the social tie, nor real force in the exercise of Sovereignty. The whole social system should rest: for instance that, instead of destroying natural inequality, the fundamental compact substitutes, for such physical inequality as nature may have set up between people, an equality that is moral and legitimate, and that people, who may be unequal in strength or intelligence, become every one equal by convention and legal right. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Dispose our days in Thy peace, and command us to be rescued from eternal condemnation, and numbered in the flock of Thine elect. “Wherefore, there must be faith; and if there must be faith there must be hope; and if there must be hope there must also be charity,” reports Moroni 10.20. O Christ, the Word of the Most High Father, Who wast made Flesh to dwell among us, enter into our hearts, that all we who have been redeemed by the mystery of Thine Incarnation, may remain united in the fellowship of perpetual peace. Lord God Almighty, I ask not to be enrolled amongst the Earthly great rich, but to be numbered with the spiritually blessed. Make it my present, supreme, persevering concern to obtain those blessings which are spiritual in their nature, eternal in their continuance, satisfying in their possession. Preserve me from a false estimate of the whole or a part of my character; may I pay regard to my principles as well as my conduct, my motives as well as my actions. Help me never to mistake the excitement of my passions for the renewing of the Holy Spirit, never to judge my religion by occasional impressions and impulses, but by my constant and prevailing disposition. May my heart be right with thee, and my life as becometh the gospel. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

May I maintain a supreme regard to another and better World, and feel and confess myself a stranger and a pilgrim here. Afford me all the direction, defense, support, and consolation my journey hence requires, and grant me a mind stayed upon thee. Give me large abundance of the supply of the Spirit of Jesus, that I maybe prepared for every duty, love thee in all my mercies, submit to thee in every trial, trust thee when walking in darkness, have peace in thee amidst life’s changes. Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief and uncertainties. Every minute taken from the time of an illumined worker is selfishly taken from many other persons who may be in much greater need of it. It is a mistake to equate the time-measure of such a being with the average one by requesting “just a few minutes” for that is really equal to an entire day robbed from one’s time work, for which one was born and to which one ought to remain loyal and fully committed. Of course I do not refer here to those illuminati whose work is expressly done through personal contact with individuals or groups face-to-face, but to those who labour in studies, study-rooms, or benevolent prayer. If anyone really and truly admires them, or is grateful to them, and wishes to give from one’s feeling, to the fact known, one will do better by writing a letter needing no physical plane answer and not by obstructing their work. #Randolphharris 20 of 20

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Upon Some Mountain-Top Until I Feel a Glowing Splendour Round About Me Hung!

February 18, 2020 12:54 am

What you do speaks so loudly, they cannot hear what you say. Example is a powerful teacher! If as inspirational leaders we are dedicated to helping others grow through their works, then we must strive to model the values, attitudes and actions that we wish to see in those we lead. Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belabouring those problems which divide us. Dr. Freud postulates two basic feelings, Lust and Unlust—pleasure and distress—mirror images of each other. This seems to reflect something in our common thinking. Neurophysioogically, however, they belong to very different bodily systems. Although in our culture we think of them as opposites, both systems can contribute simultaneously to our experience, and indeed, often do. Both systems are very complex and wide-branching, so there need be no difficulty in imagining that these experiences, of pleasure and of pain, can also be connected with other experiences, and organized together, just as “black” and “stripes” are organized in purely visual material. Some messages register as “pain”. There is general agreement that there are nerve endings which generate the messages which are ultimately interpreted as pain. These sensory nerve endings are found in the skin, in the sheath surrounding muscles, in the internal organs, and in the membrane surrounding bones. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20

Just about any kind of manipulation that causes tissue damage will cause pain, and thus most investigator believe that pain receptors are chemically stimulated by substances liberated by damages tissues. The experience of pain is like our experience of “orange” or “bitter” or other information brought in by the senses, in that there are various specialized sensory nerve-endings which can be activated and which in due course produce the experience of “pain”. There are different kinds of pain, with different kinds of nerve-endings concerned with each. There are chemical substances, drugs, which can alter the way messages register because a cell’s receptivity can be affected by chemical substances in the bloodstream—in effect such drugs relieve the perception of pain or change our perception of how unbearable it is. There is also evidence now that the body can itself produce morphine-like substances (a narcotic, psychoactive compound with sleep-inducing properties, which will relieve pain) to regulate the registration of pain—endorphins. Some messages register as “pleasure”. The experience of pleasure seems much more diffuse than the experience of pain, and does not depend on sensory nerve-endings as pain does. On the other hand, distinct areas of the brain are again concerned. Experiments with animals have made it clear that there is an area in the medial forebrain, which can be called a “pleasure-centre”. If stimulated electrically, it produces an effect which the animal seeks to repeat. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20

Birds were trained to press two levers—one delivered rewarding electrical brain stimulation (ESB), the other one produced food pellets. The animals were allowed to press the levers for only one hour each day, and some of them spent so much time at the bar that delivered ESB that they starved to death. When food and ESB are continuously available, however, birds will alternately eat, press the lever for ESB, and sleep; they will not remain at the lever for ESB to the exclusion of other activities. What excites a pleasure-centre in normal circumstances (that is not because of an electrode implanted in the brain by an experimenter) is not yet clear. However, neural messages must be involved, and that must mean that the experience of pleasure is available to be organized with other experiences, just as a sound is, or a touch or a smell or a pain. There is evidence suggesting that when the pleasure-centre is stimulated, this tends to arouse the biological drives, so that animals who have access to increased pleasure-stimulation also explore more, eat more, drink more, copulate more. Pleasure is thus a general arouser of activity—an anti-depressant! After suffering a tragedy, people who have watched comedy shows like 2 Broke Girls, reported laughing so much that it helped hasten their recovery from the event. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20

Aggression and fear can also be produced in the laboratory. In one study cats could be induced to attack a target or flee from a cage in response to electrical stimulation of the brain. Various hormone-like chemicals, some linked to pleasures of the flesh, increase or decrease the amount of aggression or fear which might otherwise be produced or experiences by a person. For our purpose we do not need to understand the details. We need only to notice that just as information is available to the nervous systems about where our limbs are or our head, so there is information available about the amount o pain or pain-inhibition, or aggression, or fear, or pleasure, or pleasures of the flesh stimulus, floating in our bloodstream, contracting a muscle, or distending a vessel. In the manifest picture of neuroses guilt feelings seem to play a paramount role. In some neuroses these feelings are expressed openly and abundantly; in others they are more disguised but their presence is suggested by behaviour, attitudes and ways of thinking and reacting. A neurotic person is often inclined to account for one’s sufferings by feeling that one does not deserve any better. This feeling may be quite vague and indefinite, or it may be attached to thoughts or activities which are socially tabooed, such as masturbation, incest wishes, death wishes towards relatives. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20

Such a person who has manifested deviant thoughts usually tends to feel guilty at the slightest occasion. If someone asks to see one one’s first reaction is to expect recrimination for something one has done. If friends do not come or write for some time one asks oneself whether one has offended them. If anything goes wrong one assumes that it is was one’s fault. Even if others are blatantly in the wrong, have definitely mistreated one, one still manages to blame oneself for it. If there is any collision of interests or any argument one is inclined to assume blindly that the others are right. There is but a fluctuating distinction between these latent guilt feelings, waiting to creep up on any occasion, and what has been interpreted as unconscious guilt feelings, evident in depressive conditions. The latter take the form of self-accusations that are often fantastic or at least grossly exaggerated. Also the neurotic’s everlasting efforts to appear justified in one’s own and in others’ eyes, particularly when the enormous strategical value of such efforts is not clearly recognized, suggest the existence of free-floating guilt feelings which have to be kept in abeyance. The existence of diffuse guilt feelings is suggested further by the neurotic’s haunting fear of being found out or of being disapproved of. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20

In one’s discussion with the analyst one may act as if the relationship were that between a criminal and judge, thus making it very difficult for one to be co-operative in the analysis. Every interpretation that is given to the individual one will take as a reproach. If the analyst has shown one, for example, that there is a lurking anxiety behind a certain defensive attitude, one will answer, “I knew that I was a coward.” If the analyst explains that one has not dared to approach people for fear of being rejected, one will take blame on one’s shoulders for having thus, as one interprets it, tried to make life easy for oneself. The compulsive striving for perfection develops to a large extent out of this need to avoid any disapproval. Finally, a neurotic person may feel definitely more at ease, even lost certain of one’s neurotic symptoms, if an adverse event occurs, such as losing a fortune or incurring an accident. Observation of this reaction, and also the fact that sometimes one seems to arrange or provoke adverse happenings, if only inadvertently, may lead to an assumption that the neurotic person has guilt feelings so strong that one develops a need for punishment in order to get rid of them. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20

Thus there seems to be a great deal of evidence not only for the existence of particularly keen guilt feelings in a neurotic person but also for the power they exert on one’s personality. However, in spite of this apparent evidence it must be questioned whether the conscious guilt feelings of the neurotic person are really genuine and whether symptomatic attitudes suggestive of unconscious guilt feelings do not allow another interpretation. There are several factors which give rise to such doubts. Guilt feelings, like inferiority feelings, are not at all unwelcome; the neurotic person is far from eager to get rid of them. In fact one insists on one’s guilt and vigourously resists every attempted to exonerate one. This attitude alone would suffice to indicate that behind one’s insistences on feeling guilty there must, as in inferiority feelings, be a tendency which has an important function. And another factor should be kept in mind. It is painful to feel honestly regretful or ashamed of something, and more painful still to express the feeling to someone else; in fact a neurotic person, even more than others, will refrain from doing so, because of one’s fear of disapproval. What we have called guilt feelings, however, one expresses very readily. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20

Furthermore, the self-recriminations which are so frequently interpreted as indicating underlying guilt feelings in the neurotic are characterized by distinctly irrational elements. Not only in one’s specific self-accusations, but also in one’s diffuse feelings of not deserving any kindliness, praise, success, one is likely to go to any extreme or irrationality, from gross exaggerations to sheer phantasy. Another factor suggesting that self-recriminations are not necessarily the expression of genuine guilt feelings is the fact that unconsciously the neurotic oneself is not at all convinced of one’s unworthiness. Even when one seems to be submerged in guilt feelings, one may become very resentful if others show a tendency to takes one’s recriminations seriously. A group is extraordinarily credulous and open to influence, it has no critical faculty, and the improbable does not exist for it. Inclined as it itself is to all extremes, a group can only be excited by an excessive stimulus. Anyone who wishes to produce an effect upon it needs no logical adjustment in one’s arguments; one must paint in the most forcible colours, one must exaggerate, and one must repeat the same thing again and again. It respects force and can only be slightly influenced by kindness, which it regards merely as a form of weakness. It wants to be ruled and oppressed, and to fear its masters. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20

And, finally, groups have never thirsted after truth. They demand illusions, and cannot do without them. They constantly give what is unreal precedence over what is untrue as by what is true. They have an evident tendency not to distinguish between the two. A group is an obedient herd, which could never live without a master. It has such a thirst for obedience that it submits instinctively to anyone who appoints oneself as its masters. However, for some, these views seems not only heretical but highly dangerous: that the human organism is, at its deepest level, trustworthy; that human’s basic nature is not something to be feared, but to be released in responsible self-expression; that small groups (in therapy or in classrooms) can responsibly and sensitively build constructive interpersonal relationships and choose wise individual and group goals; that all of the foregoing will be achieved if a facilitative person assists by creating a climate of realness, understanding an caring. Yet, if there is no one told control an individual’s innately destructive core, a dangerous psychopath may be produced. “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again,” reports 2 Corinthians 5.14-15. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20

Living by grace instead of by works means you are free from the performance treadmill. It means God has already given you an “A” when you deserve an “F,” He has already given you a full day’s pay even though you may have worked only one hour. It means you do not have to perform certain spiritual disciplines to earn God’s approval. Jesus Christ has already done that for you. You are loved and accepted by God through the merit of Jesus, and you are blessed by God through the merit of Jesus. Nothing you ever do will cause Him to love you any more or any less. He loves your strictly by His grace given to you through Jesus. How does this emphasis on God’s free and sovereign grace make you feel? Does it make you a little nervous? Does it seem a bit scary to hear that nothing you do will ever make God love you any more or bless you any more? Do you think, Well, if you take the pressure off like that and tell me all of my effort will never earn me one blessing, then I am afraid that I will slack off and stop doing the things I need to do to live a disciplined Christian life? The Bible recognizes the possibility that the grace of God can be misunderstood and even abused. It speaks of “Godless people, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality,” reports Jude 4. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20

Anticipating the question, “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” (Romans 6.1), it warns us not to use our freedom to indulge the sinful nature (Galatians 6.13). All of these passages recognize the possibility that the Bible’s teaching that grace alone is the basis for God’s blessing can be misconstrued as an excuse for indulgent, slothful living. When a giver and a receiver share an expectation about how much sincerity is owed, gestures can be judged as paying less or more than what is owed. Thus, when the receiver of a favour responds less generously than expected, the giver might openly say, “So that is all the thanks I get?” Or one might respond to the thanks in a cold and resentful manner, which indicated that one is rejecting the thanks and considers the other party still in one’s debt. Alternatively, the giver may offer more, as when ne discounts the very need for a thanks by redefining the gift as a voluntary act of pleasure: “Oh on, there is nothing to thank me for. It was a pleasure to read your manuscript.” The sincerity of such a statement, and perhaps the effort needed to sustain it, is a gift in addition to the gift. It is the gift of not seeing the first gift as something to feel grateful for at all because that is just the kind of nice person the giver is. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20

How much in the way of displaying sincerity or of working to feel truly sincere (and working, too, at hiding the effort) seems right to us depends on the depth of the bond in question. In trivial exchanges, when no deep bond exists, less debt is passed back and forth, and the range of qualities, actions, and things that are given and received is reduced. In the case of deeper bonds—as between wife and husband, or between lovers, or between best friends—there are many more ways available to repay a debt; emotion work is only one of them. Most of the time, gratitude comes naturally, thoughtlessly, and without effort. Only when it comes hard do we recognize what has been true all along: that we keep a mental ledger with “owed” and “received” columns for gratitude, love, anger, guilt, and other feelings. Normally, we are unaware of this; indeed, the very idea of consciously keeping such a ledger is repellent. Yet moments of “inappropriate feeling” may often be traced to a latent prior notion of what had been felt all along to be owed or owing. Often, feeling rules are unshared. “Poor communication” and misunderstanding sometimes boils down to conflicting notions about what feelings are owed to another. It is psychologically analogous to disagreeing on the exchange rate of dollars to euros. A husband, for example, may latently feel that he is owed more gratitude for sharing housework then his wife gives him and more gratitude than he gives her for doing the same thing. #RandolphHarris 12 of 20

In straight exchange, the focus is on making a gesture toward observing a rule, not on the rule itself. In improvisational exchange, the rule itself is called into question or played with. Consider the following exchange, observed at the San Francisco International Airport. Two airline ticket agents are working behind the counter; one is experiences, the other is new on the job. The new agent is faced with a difficult ticket: it needs to be reissued for a different date and at a lower fare, with the extra money already paid to be credited to an air travel card. His experienced compassion and instructor is gone. He struggles with the ticket for ten minutes while a long line of people wait their turn, shifting position restlessly and staring intently at him. When the experienced agent returns, the novice says, “I was looking for you. You are supposed to be my instructor.” The instructor answers ironically, “Gee, I am really sorry, I feel so bad,” and both laugh together. The experienced agent is not sorry that he was not available to help the novice. His apparently misfitting feeling does not put him in debt, however, because the more general feeling rule—“We should both take this seriously”—is poked fun at. His meaning seems to be this: “Do not take it personally that I did not feel guilty or regretful about my late return. Neither of us really wants to be here because it is an awful job, and you understand how I appreciate that ten-minute break.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 20

Irony is composed of just such playing with perspectives—now mine, now yours, now the company’s. It is the jazz of human exchange. As in improvisational music, in order to play with some perspectives, others have to be fundamentally understood and occasionally acknowledged. This is why humour and irony are often reserved for later stages of an acquaintanceship because they acknowledge a deep bond that can be played with. Sometimes improvisational exchanges themselves become crystallized into custom. A graduate student of mine from the Untied Kingdom once gave me two masks with wildly happy eyes and broad smiles. These masks, he explained, where used by European royalty when confronting their parents on specified occasions; holding the smiling masks over their faces, they were fee to voice their complaints at them. The masks paid the emotional respect due to the King and Queen and left the children free to respectfully say what they feel uneasy about. Empowering leaders bring joy, enthusiasm, and optimism to the World of those they touch, every day. Empowering leaders are proactive, inspiring, and willing to take the initiative. Empowering leaders have the ability to both give and get authority and the responsibility necessary to improve performance on every level. #RandolphHarris 14 of 20

The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless one transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty. Hence the right of the strongest, which, though to all seeming meant ironically, is really laid down as a fundamental principle. However, are we never to have an explanation of the phrase? Force is a physical power, and I fail to see what moral effect it can have. To yield to force is an act of necessity, not of will—at most, an act of prudence. In what sense can it be a duty? Suppose for a moment that this so-called “right” exists. I maintain that the sole result is a mass of inexplicable nonsense. For, if force creates right, the effect changes with the cause: every force that is greater than the first succeeds to its right. As soon as it is possible to disobey with impunity, disobedience is legitimate; and, the strongest being always in the right, the only thing that maters is to act so as to become the strongest. However, what kind of right is that which perishes when force fails? If we must obey perforce, there is no need to obey because we ought; and if we are not forced to obey, we are under no obligation to do so. Clearly, the word “right” adds nothing to force: in this connection, it means absolutely nothing. Obey the powers that be. If this means yield to force, it is a good precept, but superfluous: I can answer for its never being violated. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20

All power comes from God, I admit; but so does all sickness: does that mean that we are forbidden to call in the doctor? A brigand surprises me at the edge of a wood: must I not merely surrender my purse on compulsion; but, even if I could withhold it, am I in conscience bound to give it up? For certainly the pistol he holds is also a power. Let us then admit that force does not create right, and that we are obliged to obey only legitimate powers. In that case, my original question recurs. The spirit is never at rest. Bodily changes and movements not manifestly influenced by the external senses—growth, maintenance of body functions, and decay—are explained by the natural powers of the spirit. The material nature of spirit is something like that of a particle, and particles possess powers of giving and receiving, the chief forms of attraction being appetite and consent. All kinds of change, movement, and behaviour must ultimately rely on sense activity or on something analogous to it. The spirit is assigned to sensory function in organic process. In inorganic processes, the lifeless spirit acts as if it has sensory power. In all human behaviour of which people can become conscious, the basic data of experience is undoubtedly supplied by the sense. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20

If an individual remains fiercely loyal to another being, their friendship will grow. People make oaths not to harm their friends. Loyalty is indispensable to the survival of friendship. How many once-prosperous friendships have faded because of disloyal talk? I set this down as fact, that is all men knew what each other said of the other, there would not be four friends in the World. You will never know a deep friendship unless there is mutual loyalty and trust. When all the World is plotting against you, a friend will help you find strength in God. A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. A friend’s encouragement means more than everything is going to be okay. One will strengthen your hand in God. This undoubtedly involves instruction, prayer, and mutual worship. God will also offer comfort to the downcast so that one’s joy will be greater than ever and this can all be hastened by the golden touch of an encouraging friend. The elements catalogued in a beautiful friendship are—mutuality, love, commitment, loyalty, and encouragement. Repeated mutual commitment began to mark the friendship of remarkable people. There should also be the apex of commitment with the mutual promise to care for one another’s family, should one be taken—“I will take care of yours, and you take care of mine.” Friend bind their lives and their children’s lives to one another, and this creates unexpected heights of devotion. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20

Male friendship has reached Heaven when men make such promises to each other. I treasure a sacred moment when my old childhood friend, married and with family, met my wife and me on vacation in the Colorado mountains and said, after a late-evening meal, “If anything happens to you, Edward, Sarah and I will look out for Katherine and the children.” It was a sacredness I gladly reciprocated. Some men believe that their friendships are more wonderful than the love of men. Some believe that this is because the marriage is not good and monogamous, and is a testimony of the poverty of one’s relationship with one’s wives, an inevitable result of the sin of multiplying wives. However, there is no hint of sensuality here, but simply a celebration of a deep friendship—one’s mutuality of soul, one’s commitment, one’s loyalty, and one’s encouragement—elements one would never know in any other relationship. This is what deep friendships should be. Friendship is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all others. This is certainly what the friendship of David and Jonathan in the Bible does for us. It reveals the beauties that can be ours in a deep male relationship grounded in God and sets the standards for all deep friendships. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20

Confirm, O Lord, we pray Thee, the hearts of Thy children, and strengthen them with the power of Thy grace; that they may both be devout in prayer to Thee, and sincere in love for each other; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O, God, Who makest all things profitable to them that love Thee, grant to our heart an invincible power of love, that the desires which have been convinced by Thine inspiration may not be changed by any temptation; through Jesus Christ our Lord. “Most dear and precious above all things is chastity and virtue. I recommend thee unto God, and I trust in Christ that thou wilt be saved; and I pray unto God that he will spare thy life, to witness the return of his people unto him.” reports Moroni 9.9 and 22. Dear God, Thou Creator, upholder, proprietor of all things, I cannot escape from thy presence or control, nor do I desire to do so. My privilege is to be under the agency of omnipotence, righteousness, wisdom, patience, mercy, grace. Thou art love with more than parental affection; I admire thy heart, adore thy wisdom, stand in awe of thy power, abase myself before thy purity. It is the discovery of thy goodness alone that can banish fear, allure me into thy presence, help me to bewail and confess my sins. When I review my past guilt and am conscious of my present unworthiness I tremble to come to thee, I whose foundation is in the dust, I who have condemned thy goodness, defied by power, trampled upon thy love, rendered myself worthy of eternal death. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20

However, in my recovery cannot spring from any cause in me, I can destroy but cannot save myself. Yet thou has laid help on One that is mighty, for there is mercy with thee, and exceeding riches in thy kindness through Jesus. May I always feel my need of him. Let thy restored joy be my strength; may it keep me from lusting after the World, bear up heart and mind in loss of comforts, enliven me in the valley of death, work in me the image of the Heavenly, and give me to enjoy the first fruits of spirituality, such as Angels and departed saints know. Give strength, O Lord, to those who seek Thee, and continually pour into their souls the holy desire of seeking Thee; that they who long to see Thy face may no crave the World’s pernicious pleasure. Abba, Father, fulfill the office of Thy Name towards Thy servants; do Thou govern, protect, preserve, sanctify, guide, console them; let them be so enkindled with love for Thee, that they may not be despised by Thee, O most merciful Lord, most tender Father! Just as Jesus was in reality greater than the rabbis whose unquestioned authority dominated the people of Israel, so any being today who reflects in all its purity God’s light, unshadowed by one’s personal opinions, is in reality greater than the impressively robed dignitaries of Church and State. Remember that time is money. #RandolphHarris 20 of 20

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But Love is Blind, and Lovers Cannot See the Pretty Follies that themselves Commit!

February 8, 2020 1:51 am

How far that little candle throws his beams! So shine a good deed in a naughty World. Some scientists suggest that the tasks for the behavioural sciences is to make humans productive, well-behaved, and so forth, it is obvious that they are making a choice. One might have chosen to make humans submissive, dependent, and gregarious, for example. Yet by this stated objective of some scientists in another being’s capacity to choose, one freedom to select one’s course and to initiate action—these powers do not exist in the scientific picture of humans. Here is, I believe, the deep-seated contradiction, or paradox. Let me spell it out as clearly as I can. Science, to be sure, rests on the assumption that behaviour is caused—that a specified event is followed by a consequent event. Hence all is determined, nothing is free, choice is impossible. However, we must recall that science itself, and each specific scientific endeavour, each change of course in a scientific research, each interpretation of the meaning of a scientific finding and each decision as to how the finding shall be applied, rests upon a personal subjective choice. Thus science in general exists in the same paradoxical situation as do many scientists. A personal subjective choice made by humans that there can be no such thing as a personal subjective choice. I shall make some comments about this continuing paradox at a later point. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

I stressed the fact that each of these choices initiating or furthering the scientific venture, is a value choice. The scientist investigates this rather than that, because one feels the first investigation has more value for one. One chooses one method for one’s study rather than another because one values it more highly. One interprets one’s findings in one way rather than another because one believes the first way is closer to the truth, or more valid—in other words that it is closer to a criterion which one values. Now these value choices are never a part of the scientific venture itself. The value choices connected with a particular scientific enterprise always and necessarily are possessed outside of that enterprise. I wish to make it clear that I am not saying that values cannot be included as a subject of science. It is not true that science deals only with certain classes of facts and that these classes do not include values. It is a bit more complex than that, as a simple illustration or two may make clear. If I value knows of the “three R’s” (reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic) as a goal of education, the methods of science can give me increasingly accurate information as to how this goal may be achieved. If I value problem-solving ability as a goal of education, the scientific method can give me the same kind of help. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

Now if I wish to determine whether problem-solving ability is “better” than knowledge of the three R’s, then scientific method can also study those two values, but only—and this is very important—only in term of some other value which I have subjectively chosen. I may value college success. Then I can determine whether problem-solving ability or knowledge of the three R’s is most closely associated with that value. I may value personal integration or vocational success or responsible citizenship. I may value personal integration or vocational success or responsible citizenship. I can determine whether problem-solving ability or knowledge of the three R’s is “better” for achieving any one of these values. However, the value or purpose which gives meaning to a particular scientific endeavour must always be possessed outside of the endeavour. Though our concern in these lectures is largely with applied science what I have been saying seems equally true of so-called pure science. In pure science the usual prior subjective value choice, and science can never say whether it is the best choice, save in the light of some other value. Geneticists in Russian, for example, had to make a subjective choice of whether it was better to pursue truth, or to discover facts which upheld strict and rigid government doctrines. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

Which choice is “better”? We could make a scientific investigation of those alternatives, but only in the light of some other subjectively chosen value. If, for example, we value the survival of a culture then we could begin to investigate with the methods of science the question as to whether pursuit of truth or support of governmental dogma is most closely associated with cultural survival. Any scientific endeavour, pure or applied, is carried on in the pursuit of a purpose or value which is subjectively chosen by persons. It is important that this choice be made explicit, since the particular value which is being sought can never be tested or evaluated, confirmed or denied, by the scientific endeavour to which it gives birth and meaning. The initial purpose or value always and necessarily is possessed outside the scope of the scientific effort which it sets in motion. Among other things this means that if we choose some particular goal or series of goals for human beings, and then set out on a large scale to control human behaviour to the end of achieving those goals, we are locked in the rigidity of our initial choice, because such a scientific endeavour can never transcend itself to select new goals. Only subjective human persons can do that. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

Thus if we choose as our goal the state of happiness for human beings (a goal deservedly ridiculed by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World), and if we involved all of society in a successful scientific program by which people become happy, we would be locked in a colossal rigidity in which no one would be free to question this goal, because our scientific operations could not transcend themselves to question their guiding purposes. And without labouring this point, I would remark that colossal rigidity, whether in dinosaurs or dictatorships, has a very poor record of evolutionary survival. If, however, a part of our scheme is to set free some “planners” who do not have to be happy, who are not controlled, and who are therefore free to choose other values, his has several meanings. It means that the purpose we have chosen as our goal is not a sufficient and satisfying one for human beings, but must be supplemented. It also means that if it is necessary to set up an elite group which is free, then this shows all too clearly that the great majority are only the slaves—no matter by what high-sounding name we call them—of those who select the goals. Perhaps, however, the thought is that a continuing scientific endeavour will evolve its own goals; that the initial findings will alter the directions, and subsequent findings will alter them still further and that science somehow develops its own purposes. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

This seems to be a view implicitly held by many scientists. It is surely a reasonable description, but it overlooks one element in this continuing development, which is that subjective personal choice enters in at every point at which the direction changes. The findings of a science, the results of an experiment, do not and never can tell us what next scientific to pursue. Even in the purest of science, the scientist must decide what the findings mean, and must subjectively choose what next step will be most profitable in the pursuit of one’s purpose. And if we are speaking of the application of scientific knowledge, then it is distressingly clear that the increasing scientific knowledge of the structure of the atom carries with it no necessary choice as to the purpose to which this knowledge will be put. This is a subjective personal choice which must be made by many individuals. Science has its meaning as the objective pursuit of a purpose which has been subjectively chosen by a person or persons. This purpose or value can never be investigated by particular scientific experiment or investigation to which it has given birth and meaning. Consequently, any discussion of the control of human beings by the behavioral sciences must first and most deeply concern itself with the subjectively chosen purposes which such an application of science is intended to implement. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

The neurotic’s fundamental attitudes toward others has acquainted us with two of the major ways in which one attempts to solve one’s conflicts or, more precisely, to dispose of them. One of these consists in repressing certain aspects of the personality and bringing their opposites to the fore; the other is to put such distance between oneself and one’s fellows that the conflicts are set out of operation. Both processes induce a feeling of unity that permits the individual to function, even if at considerable cost to oneself. A further attempt, here to be described, is the creation of an image of what the neurotic believes oneself to be, or of what at the time one feels one can or ought to be. Conscious or unconscious, the image is always in large degree removed from reality, though the influence it exerts on the person’s life is very real indeed. What is more, it is always flattering in character, as illustrated by a cartoon in the New Yorker in which a middle-aged woman, above average weight sees herself in the mirror as Paris Hilton, a slender young girl. The particular features of the image vary and are determined by the structure of the personality: beauty may be held to be outstanding, or power, intelligence, genius, saintliness, honesty, or what you will. Precisely to the extent that the image is unrealistic, it tends to make the person arrogant, in the original meaning of the words; for arrogance, though used synonymously with superciliousness, means to arrogate to oneself qualities that one does not have, or that one potentially but not factually. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

And the more unrealistic the image, the more it makes the person vulnerable and avid for outside affirmation and recognition. We do not need confirmation for qualities of which we are certain, but we will be extremely touchy when false claims are questioned. We can observe this idealized image at its most blatant in the grandiose notions of psychotics; but in principle its characteristics are the same in neurotics. It is less fantastic here, but it may be just as real to them. If we regard the degree of removal from reality as marking the difference between psychoses and neuroses, we may consider the idealized image as a bit of psychosis woven into the texture of neurosis. In all its essentials the idealized image is an unconscious phenomenon. Although one’s self-inflation may be most obvious even to an untrained observer, the neurotic is not aware that one is idealizing oneself. Nor does one know what a bizarre conglomeration of characters is assembled here. One may have a vague sense that one is making high demands upon oneself, but mistaking such perfectionist demands for genuine ideals one in no way questions their validity and is indeed rather proud of them. How can one’s creation affect one’s attitude toward oneself varies with the individual and depends largely on the focus of interest. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

If the neurotic’s interest is possessed in convincing oneself that one is one’s idealized image, one develops the belief that one is in fact the mastermind, the exquisite human being, whose very faults are divine. If the focus is on the realistic self which by comparison with the idealized image is highly despicable, self-derogatory criticism is in the foreground. Since the picture of the self that results from such disparagement is just as far removed from reality as is the idealized image, it could appropriately be called the despised image. If, finally, the focus is upon the discrepancy between the idealized image and the actual self, then all one is aware of and all we can observe are one’s incessant attempts to bridge the gap and whip oneself into perfection. In this event one keeps reiterating the word “should” with amazing frequency. One keeps telling us what one should have felt, thought, done. He is at bottom as convinced of one’s inherent perfection as the naively “narcissistic” person, and betrays it be the belief that one could be perfect if only one were more strict with oneself, more controlled, more alert, more circumspect. In contrast to authentic ideals, the idealized image has a static quality. It is not a goal toward whose attainment one strives but a fixed idea which one worships. Ideals have a dynamic quality; they arouse an incentive to approximate them; they are an indispensable and invaluable force for growth and development. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

The idealized image is a decided hindrance to growth because it either denies shortcomings or merely condemns them. Genuine ideals make for humility, the idealized image for arrogance. This phenomenon—however defined—has long been recognized. It is referred to in the philosophic writings of all times. Dr. Freud introduced it into the theory of neurosis, calling it by a variety of names: ego ideal, narcissism, superego. It forms the central thesis of Adler’s psychology, descried there as a striving for superiority. It would lead us to far afield to point out in detail the differences and similarities between these concepts and my own. Briefly, all of these are concerned only with one or another aspect of the idealized image, and fail to see the phenomenon as a whole. Hence despite pertinent comment and argument not only by Dr. Freud and Dr. Adler but by many other writers as well—among them Franz Alexander, Paul Federn, Bernard Glueck, and Ernest Jones—the full significance of the phenomenon and its functions has not been reorganized. What, then, are its functions? Apparently it fulfills vital needs. No matter how the various writers account for it theoretically, they are all agreed on the one point that it constitutes a stronghold of neurosis difficult to shake or even to weaken. Dr. Freud for one regarded a deeply ingrained “narcissistic” attitude as among the most serious obstacles to therapy. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

There is instruction—verbal instruction, verbal warning. The word “instruction” literally means “to place before the mind. Often this means to confront and thus is related to the precious topic, discipline. This is precisely where the high priest Eli was such an abysmal domestic failure in raising his sons. First Samuel 3.11-13 reports to us: And the Lord said to Samuel: “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears of it tingle. At that time I will carry out against Eli everything I spoke against his family—from beginning to end. For I told him that I would judge his family forever because of the sin he knew about; his sons made themselves contemptible, and he failed to restrain them.” The Greek word for “restrain” in the Septuagint has the same root as “instruction” in Ephesians 6.4. Eli failed to confront his boys. He failed to instruct them about their sin. And because of this, they were destroyed. Clear, forthright instruction is necessary for proper upbringing. Men, if we are to own up to our responsibilities, we must be: Involved in verbally instructing children, regularly reading them in family devotions and prayer, monitoring and being responsible along with our wives for the input that enters their impressionable minds, taking responsibility to help assure that church is a meaningful experience. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

And above all, to be responsible fathers we must make sure that the open book of our lives—our example—demonstrates the reality of our instruction, for in watching us they will learn the most. The “do’s” of fathering—tenderness, discipline, and instruction—together demand one great thing, as a certain busy doctor came to realize. He would appear at meals, pay allowances, and give advice, often without really listening to the problems of his family before he spoke. One afternoon, as he was preparing an article for a respected journal of medicine, his little son crept into the forbidden sanctuary of his father’s study. “Daddy,” he appealed. Without speaking, the doctor opened his desk drawer and handed the boy a box of candy. A few moments later the boy again said, “Daddy,” and his father absent mindedly handed him a pencil. “Daddy,” the boy persisted. The doctor responded to this with a grunt, indicating he knew the boy was there but did not want to be bothered. “Daddy!” the body called out again. Angered, the busy doctor swung around in his chair and said, “What on Earth is so important that you insist on interrupting me? Can you not see I am busy? I have given you candy and a pencil. Now what do you want?” “Daddy, I want to hang out with you.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

The “do’s” of fatherhood cannot be lived out by proxy. You need to participate in putting your little ones to bed and praying for and with them. You need to be at their plays, speeches, recitals, and sporting events. You need to schedule regular time along with each of your children. You need to take the lead in planning terrific family vacations and in celebrating and cementing family solidarity. Now in mid-life I sometimes wistfully think, “Where did the time go between the two indelible memories of the birth of my daughter and the birth of her son?” To be honest, some of the years were long and hard. I thought we would never get through many of the stresses. However, when these great events are recalled in all their colour, there seems to be no time between them. That is why, whenever I have occasion to hold a baby in my arms, I often encourage the parents to savour every moment and not to rush through the experience—the child will be grown up and gone in no time. The realization that we have only a brief time to raise our children should give us huge motivation to make the most of it and should make Scriptural advice about fathering pulse with importance for us. Men, time is the chrysalis of eternity—there is no other time but the present. I realize we all go through periods in our lives when we have little time for our families—it is part of the natural rhythm of life. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

However, excessive “busyness” must not be by choice—as it so often is! We must beware of packing our schedules by saying “yes” to things which mean “no” to our families. Now is the time to take time. There is no other! Will you do it? Will I? Men, we must evaluate our fatherhood. What does your heart tell you as you read these questions listed? Are you weak our strong? Do you criticize your children, or build them up? Are you overly strict, or reasonably strict—gradually granting your child greater freedom? Are you impatient and irritable, or patient and self-controlled, when dealing with your children? Are you consistent in your expectations? Have you kept you promises? Do you show favouritism? Are you tender with both your sons and daughters? Do you share in the discipline? Are you spending time with your children, as a family and individually? What awesome power we have! Our children all want the “aura and armament” of their fathers. Men, their hearts are turned to us! And our Lord wants our hearts to be turned to them. We hear this truth memorably stated by the Angel Gabriel when he announced that part of John the Baptist’s mission in making a people ready for the Lord was “to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children,” reports Luke 1.17. Now that Christ has come, this is a perpetual result of His saving work. When a man truly gives his heart to Christ, it is turned toward his children. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

Men, submit to Christ—allow Him to turn your hearts to your children. Ask the Holy Spirit for the power to practice the discipline of fatherhood. Sweat for your children’s souls. We actually cannot give God anything that He has not first given to us. David recognized this fact when the leaders of Israel gave so generously for the building of the Temple. In his prayer of praise to God he said, “But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand. O Lord our God, as for all this abundance that we have provided for building you a temple for your Holy Name, it comes from your hand, and all of it belongs to you,” reports 1 Chronicles 29.14, 16. David knew he and his people had not given anything to God that was not already His. Even our service to God comes from His hand. As the prophet Isaiah said, “LORD, all that we have accomplished you have done for us,” reports Isaiah 26.12. Paul summed up the whole question of what we have given to God rather conclusively when he said, “And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all humans life and breath and everything else,” reports Acts 17.25. When every breath we breathe is a gift from God there really is noting left to give that has not been first given. Almighty and everlasting God, convert us with our whole souls to Thyself; that as Thou vouchsafest such good gifts to the undeserving, Thou mayest bestow yet greater on the devout; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

Almighty and everlasting God, convert our minds, we beseech Thee, to deeds which shall be pleasing in Thy sight; that Thy rebuke may not prove, by our neglect, a greater cause of punishment, but, by our amendment, a Fatherly admonition; through Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, O Lord, convert all our hearts unto Thyself, that we, abstaining from thing which offend Thee, may feel Thy mercy, and not Thy wrath; through Jesus Christ our Lord. “And now, my child, I speak onto you concerning that which grieveth me exceedingly; for it grieveth me that there should disputations rise among you. For if you have learned the truth, there have been disputations among you concerning the baptism of your little children. And now, my child, I desire that ye should labour diligently, that this gross error should be removed from among you; for this intent I have written this epistle,” Moroni 8.4-6. O Lord God, the first act of calling is by thy command in thy word, “Come unto me, return unto me”; the second is to let in light, so that I see that I am called particularly, and perceive the sweetness of the command as well as its truth, in regard to thy great love of the sinner, by inviting one to come, though vile, in regard to the end of the command, which is fellowship with thee, in regard to thy promise in the gospel, which is all of grace. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

Therefore, Lord, I need not search to see if I am elect, or loved, for if I turn thou wilt come to me; Christ has promised me fellowship if I take him, and the Spirit will pour himself out on me, abolishing sin and punishment, assuring me of strength to persevere. It is thy pleasure to help all that pray for grace, and come to thee for it. When my heart is unsavoury with sin, sorrow, darkness, hell only thy free grace can help me ac with deep abasement under a sense of unworthiness. Let me lament for forgetting daily to come to thee, and cleanse me from the deceit of bringing my heart to a duty because the act pleased me or appealed to reason. Grant that I may be salted with suffering, with every exactment tempered to my soul, every rod excellently filled to my back, to chastise, humble, break me. Let me not overlook the hand that holds the rod, as thou didst not let me forget the rod that fell on Christ, and drew me to him. O Eternal Father, convert our hearts unto Thyself; for nothing needful shall be lacking to those whom Thou shalt enabled to be devoted to Thy worship; through Jesus Christ our Lord. We beseech Thee, Almighty God, look not upon the multitude of our wickedness; but draw away our weakness from sin, and guide the wills of Thy servants to what is right; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

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Randolph Harris II International Institute

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