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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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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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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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Life is but an Empty Dream for the Soul is Dead that Slumbers, and things are Not what they Seem!

February 15, 2020 2:37 am

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least. A leader is someone who has the capacity to create a compelling vision that takes people to a new place, and to translate that vision into action. Leaders draw other people to them by enrolling them in their vision. What leaders do is inspire people, empower them. They attract people and opportunities, rather than repelling them. The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we will miss it, but that it is too low and we will reach it. The kind of master one should seek is one who will be a loving one—a master who is large hearted enough to receive one, sins, weakness, foolishness, and all. Other things being equal, choose your teacher from among those who are mature and sincere for they have insight and experiences which many people lack; they can give the tranquil counsel which comes from the acceptance of life, the adjustment to its situations, and the waning of physical desires. The teacher is not to be measured only by one’s weaker disciples nor by one’s foolish pupils. A juster measurement must take into reckoning the wiser and stronger ones also. What one has done for most of them has been done in spite of themselves, for the egos have thwarted or twisted one’s influence all too often. Nevertheless it is there and in twenty or thirty years it will still be there, inevitable and inescapable, awaiting the thinning down of the ego’s resistance. #RandolphHarris 1 of 16

It is a discriminating seeker who responds only to what is wise and true and fine in a teacher, but rejects what is frail or fallible in one. A student is often dismayed, anxious, or upset by the aura of apparent impersonality which surrounds the Teacher. Such reactions are natural but also must be checked—which can be done by learning to smile at oneself and be at peace. Do not look for truth among the unbalanced, the ego-obsessed, the brainless, they hysterical and the unsensitive. Look for it among the modest, the serene, the intuitive, the deep-divers and those who honour God to His uttermost. Many take to an imperfect, half-competent or half-satisfactory teaching because no better one is available. Incompetent instruction is undesirable but it may be helpful in some cases if stopped at the proper point. The student may be certain that if there be competent guidance on this path there is no standing still. Either one must go forward and onward until one reaches the goal, or one must get rid of one’s guide. The politics of the client-centered approach is a conscious renunciation and avoidance by the therapist of all control over, or decision-making for, the client. It is the facilitation of self-ownership by the client. It is the facilitation of self-ownership by the client and the strategies by which this can be achieved; the placing of the locus of decision-making and the responsibility for the effects of these decisions. It is politically centered in the client. #RandolphHarris 2 of 16

Client-centered therapy has forever changed the politics of psychotherapy by the recording and publishing of transcribed therapeutic interviews. The mysterious, unknowable operations of the therapist are now wide open for all to see. This has let a breath of fresh air and common sense pervade the therapeutic World. The individual is able at least to choose a school of therapy that appears congenial to one. And where, at first, only client-centered interviews are available on tape recordings expert therapists of a variety of orientations. Humanistic psychology has served to demystify the nature of therapy. Both the theory and the practice of therapeutic change should be made public, so that this knowledge can be share in common by both the patient and the therapist. It is not a matter of the therapist following the old authoritarian medical model of keeping the patient in the dark as a patriarch might treat a child…It is a matter of the habituated, unhappy individual regaining self-control and self-maintenance of one’s own wholeness and health. Of course, this is a most unprofessional procedure, for it gives away the authority, the secrecy and the unquestionability of the professional healer and therapist. And it gives these things away to the patient. #RandolphHarris 3 of 16

The center of the therapeutic action is not, therefore, considered to be within the therapist’s decisions but within the patient’s decisions. The World-Mind does not fully declare its intentions toward us humans but does give us enough inkling of them through the teachers and prophets of the face. These great souls who have ascended to another plane of being altogether have sent us signals from that distant sphere. It is for us to heed those signals and to understand their meaning. The knowledge of someone far better than oneself shows human possibilities. The longing to become like one provides an individual with an ideal for living. The examples of good beings help us when we compare ourselves with them, and especially our worst with their best. History has honoured those individuals who have gone into the far places of this globe and explored them. It is not time to honour those who have gone deep, not far, within themselves and explored consciousness. A real need of humanity eventually finds its expression in flesh and blood. Just as an oppressive tyranny ultimately produces the rebel who overthrows it, so a growing hunger for spiritual guidance ultimately brings forth those who are to provide it. Those who have lavished their devotion on such an ideal, have lavished it wisely. It is hardly necessary to say that the person-centered view drastically alters the therapist-patient relationship, as previously conceived. #RandolphHarris 4 of 16

The therapist becomes the trained healthy professional who helps sooth growing pain and deliverer of change, not its originator. One places the final authority in the hands of the client, whether in small things such as the correctness of a therapist responses, or large decisions like the course of one’s life direction. The locus of evaluation, of decision, rests clearly in the client’s hands. A person-centered approach is based on the premise that the human being is basically a trustworthy organism, capable of evaluating the outer and inner situation, understanding oneself in its context, making constructive choices as to the next steps in life, and acting on those choices. A facilitative person can assist in releasing these capacities when relating as a real person to the other, owning and expressing one’s own feelings; when experiencing a nonpossessive caring and love for the other; and when acceptingly understanding the inner World of the other. When this approach is made to an individual or a group, it is discovered that, over time, the choices made, the directions pursued, the actions take are increasingly constructive personally and tend toward a more realistic social harmony with others. So familiar has this humanistic, person-centered concept become—more familiar in the realm of the intellect than in actual practice—that we sometimes forget what a blow it struck at that views then current. #RandolphHarris 5 of 16

It has taken me years to recognize that the violent opposition to a client-centered therapy sprang not only from its newness, and the fact that it came from a psychologist rather than a psychiatrist, but primarily because it struck such an outrageous blow to the therapist’s power. It was in its politics than it was most threatening. Dr. Freud shows his degree of distrust of the basic nature of humans when he says, speaking of the need for super-ego control: “Our mind, that precious instrument by whose means we maintain ourselves alive, is no peacefully self-contained unity. It is rather to be compared with a modern State in which a mob, eager for enjoyment and destruction, has to be held down forcibly by a prudent superior class.” To the end of his days, Dr. Freud still felt that if human’s basic nature were released, nothing but destruction could be expected. The need for control of this beast within humans was a matter of the greatest urgency. “The core of our being, then, is formed by the obscure id…The one and only endeavour of these instincts is toward satisfaction…But an immediate and regardless satisfaction of instinct, such as the id demands, would often enough lead to perilous conflicts with the external World and to extinction…The id obeys the inexorable pleasure principle…and it remains a question of the greatest theoretical importance, and one that has not yet been answered, when and how it is ever possible for the pleasure principle to be overcome.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 16

The great majority of people have a strong need for authority which they can admire, to which they can submit, and which dominates and sometimes even ill-treats them. We have learned from the psychology of the individual whence comes this need of the masses. It is the longing for the father that lives in each of us from one’s childhood days. When one has an astonishing mutuality of soul and the immediacy of one’s love is followed by profound commitment—it allows for another person to make a covenant with someone else because there is an ability to love the other person as oneself. With such subline spiritual theatre—it is a symbolism of a noble soul. The son of a Chief Executive Officer will stand humbly in one’s street clothes, while the merchant’s son dons the prince’s attire. This is because materialism is not always a factor in friendship. Just because one is more affluent does not mean they have to flaunt it or have the best of everything. This type of symbolic divestiture places one’s peer as one’s equal regardless of finances, and also represents a conscious display of vulnerability and real risk. The Shakespearean gesture means, “My life for your life,”—and one means every bit of it. We may wonder if such friendships are really possible for common people who are not spiritual giants. The deepest friendships have in common a desire to make the other person royalty. They work for and rejoice in the other’s elevation and achievements. #RandolphHarris 7 of 16

There are no hooks in deep and honest friendships, no desire to manipulate or control, no jealousy or exclusiveness—simply a desire for the best for the other. To love a person means to see one as God intended one to be. Do you have the great fortune to have such a deep friend? What did St. Paul mean when he said all God’s promises are “Yes” in Christ? First of all, Christ in His Messianic mission is the personal fulfillment of all the promises in the Old Testament regarding a Saviour and coming King. In Christ is the yes, the grand consummating affirmative, to all God’s promises. He is the horn of salvation raised up for us by God, “as He spake by the mouth of His holy prophets which have been since the World began,” reports Luke 1.69. In Him all things “which are written in the law of Moses, and the prophets, and the psalms” achieve their fulfillment reports Luke 24.44. The covenant promises addressed to Abraham and his seed are realized in His single person as reported in Galatians 3.16. Beyond the actual fulfillment of all the promises made about Him, Christ is also the meritorious basis upon which all of God’s other promises depend. All of God’s promises depend upon Christ alone. This is a notable assertion and one of the main articles of our faith. It depends in turn upon another principle—that it is only in Christ that God the Father is graciously inclined towards us. #RandolphHarris 8 of 16

His promises are testimonies of His Fatherly goodwill towards us. Thus it follows that they are fulfilled only in Christ. Secondly, we are incapable of possessing God’s promises till we have received the remissions of our sins and that comes to us through Christ. Think just now of what you feel your greatest needs are, both spiritually and temporally. As you bring those needs to God in prayer, which would you rather present to Him as a consideration for meeting those needs: your spiritual disciplines, your obedience, and your sacrifice, imperfect as they are; or the infinite and perfect merit if Jesus? To ask the question is to answer it, is it not? I do not mean to disparage any spiritual discipline, commitment, or sacrifice. These all have their place in the realm of grace. However, they are never to be relied on as a meritorious cause for expecting God’s blessing or answer to prayer. Blessings that at times come to us through our labours and at times without our labours, but never because of our labours; for God always gives them because of His undeserved mercy. If only we will learn to rest our entire cause of the merits of Jesus Christ, instead of our own, we will learn the joy of living by grace and not by sweat. One of the greatest dangers on the process of spiritual formations is that self-denial and death to self will be taken as but one more technique or job for those who wish to save their life (soul). #RandolphHarris 9 of 16

Self-denial will then externalize itself in overt practice of group identity that may seem very sacrificial, but can leave the “mind of the flesh” in full control. We see this, for example, in many who wear what they regard as plain clothing or who abstain from certain foods. A well-known Methodist evangelist of other years, Sam Jones, used to say that a dancing foot and a praying knew do not grow on the same leg. This might prove to be a fairly good empirical generalization. It may be that as a matter of fact few prayerfully bent knees are on legs with a dancing foot at the end. Still, just not dancing would hardly prove that you had abandoned your life to God. Practices of “mortification” can become exercises in more self-righteousness. How often this has happened! This dreary and deadly “self-denial,” which is all too commonly associated with religion, can be avoided only if the primary fact of our inner being is a loving vision of Jesus and His kingdom. This is where correctly counting the cost comes in. Then outward manifestation of self-denial, or the absence thereof, will matter little, as it did for him. The impression gained by most who hear about “counting the cost” of following Jesus is one of how terrible and painful that cost is. However, to count the cost is to take into consideration both the losses and the gain of all possible actions, to see which is most beneficial. This done, Jesus knew, the trails of apprenticeship (discipleship) would appear to be the only reasonable path. #RandolphHarris 10 of 16

As has been said, “One is not a fool who gives up what one cannot keep for the sake of what one can never lose.” The cost of non-discipleship would then be seen for what it is—unbearable. That is why one would become able to sustain cheerfully the much smaller “cost of discipleship” to Jesus. By the same reason may a being in the state of nature punish the lesser breaches of that law. It will perhaps be demanded, with death? I answer, each transgression may be punished to that degree, and with so much severity, as will suffice to make it an ill bargain to the offender, give one cause to repent, and terrify others from doing the like. Every offence, that can be committed in the state of nature, may in the state of nature be also punished equally, and as far forth as it may, in a commonwealth: for though it would be besides my present purpose, to enter here into the particulars of the law of nature, or its measures of punishment; yet, it is certain there is such a law, and that too, as intelligible and plain to a rational creature, and a studier of that law, as the absolute laws of commonwealths; nay, possibly plainer; as much as reason is easier to be understood, than the fancies and intricate contrivances of humans, following contrary and hidden interests put into words; for so truly are a great part of the municipal laws of countries, which are only so far right, as they are founded on the laws of nature, by which they are to be regulated and interpreted. #RandolphHarris 11 of 16

To this strange doctrine, viz. That in the state of nature everyone has the executive power of the law of nature, I doubt not but it will be objected, that it is unreasonable for people to be judges in their own cases, that self-love will make people partial to themselves and their friends: and on the other side, that ill nature, passion and revenge will carry them too far in punishing others; and hence nothing but confusion and disorder will follow, and that therefore God hath certainly appointed government to restrain the partiality and violence of beings. I easily grant, that civil government is the proper remedy for the insolvencies of the state of nature, which must certainly be great, where men may be judges in their own cases, since it is easy to be imagined, that one who was so unjust as to do one’s brother an injury, will scare be so just as to condemn oneself for it: but I shall desire those who make this objection, to remember, that absolute monarchs are but humans; and if government is to be the remedy of those evils, which necessarily follow from human’s being judges in their own cases, and the state of nature is therefore not to how much better it is than the state of nature, where one being, commanding a multitude, has the liberty to be judge in one’s own case, and may do to all one’s subjects whatever one pleases, without the least liberty to any one to question or controul those who execute one’s pleasure? #RandolphHarris 12 of 16

And in whatsoever one cloth, whether led by reason, mistake or passion, must be submitted to? Much better it is in the state of nature, wherein humans are not bound to submit to the unjust will of another: and if one that judges, judges amiss in one’s own, or any other case, one is answerable for it to the rest of humankind. It is often asked as a mighty objection, where are, or ever were there any humans in such a state of nature? To which it may suffice as an answer at present, that since all princes and rulers of independent governments all through the World, are in a state of nature, it is plain the World never was, nor ever will be, without numbers of beings in that state. I have named all governors of independent communities, whether they are, or are not, in league with others: for it is not every compact that puts one community, and make one body politic; other promises, and compacts, human may make one with another, and yet still be in the state of nature. The promises and bargains for truck, &c. between the two men in the desert island, mentioned by Garcilasso de la Vega, in his history of Peru; or between a Swiss and an Indian, in the woods of America, are binding to them, through they are perfectly in a state of nature, in reference to one another: for truth and keeping of faith belongs to humans, as human, and not as members of society. #RandolphHarris 13 of 16

To those that say, there were never any people in state of nature, I will not only oppose the authority of the judicious Hooker, Eccl, Pol. Lib. i. sect. 10, where he says: “The laws which have been hitherto mentioned, i.e. the laws of nature, do bind humans absolutely, even as they are human, although they have never any settled fellowship, never any solemn agreement amongst themselves what to do, or not to do: but forasmuch as we are not by ourselves sufficient to furnish ourselves with competent store of things, needful for such a life as our nature doth desire, a life fit for the dignity of man; therefore to supply those defects and imperfections which are in us, as living single and solely by ourselves, we are naturally induced to seek communion and fellowship with others: this was the cause of human’s uniting themselves at first in politic societies.” However, I moreover affirm, that all humans are naturally in that state, and remain so, till by their own consents they make themselves members of some political society; and I doubt not in the sequel of this discourse, to make it very clear. “Pray for them, my son, that repentance may come unto them. But behold, I fear lest the Spirit hath ceased striving with them; and in this part of the land they are also seeking to put down all power and authority which cometh from God; and they are denying the Holy Ghost,” reports Moroni 8.28. #RandolphHarris 14 of 16

Lord Jesus Christ, Very God and Very Man, Who changest not, but art holy in all Thy works; turn away from us the unbelief of a doubtful mind, and fill our heart with the gifts of Thy grace; that we may believe and know Thee to be Very God, Who by miracles and mighty works are proved to be Saviour of all. We beseech Thee, O Lord, continually to strengthen us by a sincere faith in Thine Incarnation; that the crafty enemy may never be able to overcome us who are established in the love of Thee. Arise, Lord, Who judgest the Earth; and us Thou dwellest in and possesses the faith of all nations, suffer us not to abide in darkness; and grant that we may not lay the foundations of our faith on the sand where the whirlwind may overthrow them, but be established on the rock which is steadfast in Thee. O Heavenly Father, teach me to see that if Christ has pacified thee and satisfied divine justice He can also deliver me from my sins; that Christ does not desire me, now justified, to live in self-confidence in my own strength, but gives me the law of the Spirit of life to enable me to obey thee; that the Spirit and His power are mine by resting on Christ’s death; that the Spirit of life within answers to the law without; that if I sin not I should thank thee for it; that if I sin I should be humbled daily under it; that I should mourn for sin more than other people do, for when I die I shall die because of sin, that makes me mourn. #RandolphHarris 15 of 16

When I see how sin strikes at Thee, that makes me mourn; when I see that sin caused Christ’s death, that makes me mourn; that sanctification is the evidence of reconciliation, proving that faith has truly apprehended Christ; Thou has taught me that faith is nothing else than receiving they kindness; that it is an adherence to Christ, a resting on Him, love clinging to Him as a branch to the tree, to seek life and vigour from Him. I thank thee for showing me that vast difference between knowing things by reason, and knowing them by the Spirit of faith. By reason I see a thing is so; by faith I know it as it is. I have seen thee by reason and have not been amazed, I have seen thee as thou art in Thy Son and have been ravished to behold thee. I bless thee that I am thine in my Saviour, Jesus. It is good for us to hold fast by Thee, O Lord; but do Thou so increase in us the desire of good, that the hope which joins us to Thee may not be shaken by any wavering of faith, but may endure in stedfastness of love. May the hope which Thou hast given us, O Lord, be our consolation in our law estate, as it will fill us with glory in the day of our rejoicing. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal. Dust thou art, to dust returnest, was not spoken of the soul. Lives of great people all remind us we can make our lives sublime, and, departing, leave behind us footprints on the sands of time. #RandolphHarris 16 of 16

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February 14, 2020 1:55 am

Some people drink at the fountain of knowledge while others just gargle. When you use your sense of humor, be sure that you use your sense as well as your humor. What can we say fundamentally about the nature of being? And the answer is nothing in terms of a definition, but something in terms of metaphorical indication. The concept of power for this purpose: Being is the power of being! Power, however, presupposed, even in the metaphorical use of the word, something over which it proves its power. The dynamic self-affirmation of life is overcoming internal and external resistance. By what measures can people judge in reality which is unseen and not in illusion, the moral rectitude of a being who has been sent among them with a mission, who has not only secretly dissolved one’s human “I” but has secretly taken and faithfully kept the self-actualized person’s vows? The vast reticence of such a being will be respected by those who are sensitive but may infuriate those who are not. Because of the many seeming contradictions in one’s nature one may be much misunderstood by others. Humanity venerates the memory of these prophets, but in decreasing degree. For they incarnate values, attainments, and qualities which most people feel are far above any likelihood of their own coming even remotely near. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

Contrary to common belief, the illuminate is not a joyless griefless human who has crushed all human affection, sterilized all human feelings, sunk oneself in physical inertia, and habituated oneself to insensitivity toward the sufferings of others. Such a being cannot be really known by those who have not themselves touched one’s height; part of one—the most important and precious part—must always remain an inscrutable stranger to them. To one observer such a being seems to live inside oneself, to another outside oneself. To the first, one is held fast to some internal power; to the second, one is constantly practising self-identification with others. One’s followers expect too much from one, perhaps because they credit one with powers far beyond what one does possess. This leads to a measure of disappointment. If others think one aloof, cold, even unsympathetic, they may go further and misunderstand the individual. One is not shut stonily in one’s ego, as they think, but on the contrary, is much freer from it than they are. It is possible that one’s actions sometimes puzzle those who put their trust in one. Those who judge only by appearances may be surprised and aggrieved at one’s seeming indifference. However, with the efflux of time they may get to know more or all the facts, and then their puzzlement will vanish. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

They come to inspect the great soul, as if they could really see one. They bring out heir measuring equipment and pronounce verdict on one’s littleness or greatness. Their opinion is based on an appearance that is a possible illusion. Just as Pythagoras and Sokrates were maligned and even put to death by those who either misunderstand or misrepresented their teachings, so Epicurus, another Greek, has been maligned ever since one’s own time, although one fortunately died a natural death. Incidentally, he died of the stone. It could be that there was an excess of calcium in his body and that it had got concentrated in the wrong place, producing the stone in the bladder or the kidney—for he tried to live a simple life and ate only barely, bread, and cheese and drank only water. There was probably an excess of cheese in his diet, producing the excess of calcium. However, it is supposed that he preached heathenism, the pursuit of pleasure and enjoyment as being the highest good, but the truth is, as demonstrated by his simple life, that he was an ascetic. Epicurus did not believe in cluttering himself up with a lot of possession and he sought the freedom from anxiety which this gave him. The freedom from those desires for luxuries and comforts which fill most people left him with a serene mind. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

This serenity was enjoyable and pleasant; so what one meant by pleasure was a pleasure of living the good life, not the pleasure of living the terrestrial life. However, if Epicurus is to be judged by his diet, his philosophy was incomplete and imbalanced. Because he ever practices calmness, other persons may think of him to be indifferent to them, to what is happening, and to one’s own actions, as if he were performing them somewhat casually; but in this they would be mistaken. For the detachment within Epicurus was possessed deep down and consisted in a general attitude towards Worldly life based upon knowledge, understanding, philosophy. He was not heedless but attentive, not unresponsive but touched by situations calling for sympathy, not neutral where right or wrong are concerned, not neglectful of duties and responsibilities, not careless in work but carefree. When it comes, suffering is real and painful. The self-actualized is not heartless to its appearance in other people, but understands it somewhat better than they do. Such a being has enigma and paradox between one and the World’s understanding. It is easy for the populace to be deceived by one’s unassuming manners and unpretentious speech into thinking one to be anything but what one really is. One and the same Master will appear to one’s followers as an incarnation of God, but to the Worldly as a wise lunatic, if not a fraud. None of these views may be correct. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

Although the self-actualized can understand the points of view of the unwise, the ignoramus, the Worlding and the bigot, they cannot understand one’s own. When one’s name is vilified, it is the wise guidance of God which persuades such a being to walk indifferently, and when one’s character is slandered, to hold one’s tongue. Those who do not understand and appreciate this great control of feeling, and especially those who are highly emotional themselves, will see one merely from the outside and consequently misunderstand one’s character. They will consider one to be a cold, shut-in type. The World will assess one’s motives at the lowest level, interpret one’s actions in the basest way. If one were to let it rot in its own ignorance, one would be well justified. To evaluate the work and word of these beings is to judge by appearances alone. For there is in both an incalculable element, a hidden worth. The initiate does not waste one’s time in arguing with others, either to attack their beliefs or defend one’s Own. If one seems outwardly distant and indifferent, we should understand that one’s distance and one’s indifference are not egoistic, and consequently are worthy of close examination and deep study. They contain a mystery as well as a paradox. For in one’s heart there flows, side by side, both a pure love for humanity and an utter detachment from humanity. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

It is in the very nature of one’s attainment of a true philosopher’s status that one should be able to fulfill oneself only by going beyond all selves—ours as well as one’s own. The World should be more grateful for the presence of such people. The good they do is mostly indirect, however, through intermediaries, or mostly hidden because psychological, so it escapes the World’s notice. Light the lamps and it will spread out its rays by itself. We are indeed blessed by the presence of these great souls on this Earth and doubly so if we meet in person. They deserve not merely our respect but our veneration. However, even if we are never fortunate enough to meet one of these masters, the mere knowledge that such beings do exist and live demonstrates the possibility of spiritual achievement and proves that the quest is no chimera. It should comfort and encourage us to know this. Therefore we should regard such a being as one of humanity’s precious treasures. We should venerate one’s sayings or writings as whispers out of the eternal silence. However, if everything that is participate in it, we must ask, what can resist the power of being? If all possible places are established by the power of being, where is the ontological place of that which the power of being is able to overcome. What can that be which is conquered by the power of being is non-being. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

It is an old answer, given in the myth long before the dawn of philosophy, repeated in rational terms by philosophers in all cultures and centuries, brought to a renewed attention in our time by the leading Existentialist philosophers. However, if one tries to relate to that answer that the power of being is conquered by non-being, one must be aware that one has touched at the basic mystery of existence and that one has no chance to explain the riddle of non-being in terms which do not bear in themselves the scars of non-being, namely the language of the paradox. Nobody can fail to ask the question: How can non-being have the power to resist being? Does it not appear in such a statement as a part of being itself, and if so, is it not swallowed up into being, so that the metaphor “power of being” become meaningless? It is understandable that the analytic logic of our time becomes impatient if such language is used and speaks of meaningless sentences. However, if it becomes impatient with present-day ontology it must become impatient with all ontology and reject the works of almost all philosophers of past and present. And that is what logical affirmations have done. However, such a procedure does not defeat philosophers of the past. It defeats those who try to defeat them. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

The answer to the question how non-being can resist the power of being, can only be that non-being is not foreign to being, but that it is that quality of being by which everything that participates in being is negated. Non-being is the negation of being within being itself. Each of these words is, of course, used metaphorically. However, metaphorical language can be true language, pointing to something that is both revealed and hidden in this language. Being which includes non-being is finite being. “Finite” means carrying within one’s being the destiny not to be. It designates a limited power of being, limited between a beginning and an end, between non-being before and non-being after. This, however, is only a part of the answer. The other part must explain why in the balance of being and non-being, being prevails. The answer is both logical and existential. Logically (and linguistically) it is obvious that non-being after. This, however, is only a part of the answer. The other part must explain why in the balance of being and non-being, being prevails. The answer is both logical and existential. Logically (and linguistically) it is obvious that non-being is possible only as the negation of being. Being logically precedes non-being. That which is and comes to an end logically precedes the end. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

The negative “lives” by the absolute it negates. However, these answers, evident as they are, do not satisfy the question of the prevalence of being over non-being. Could one not speak of a balance in which neither prevails? To this only an existential answer is possible. It is what one has called the answer of faith or courage. Courage, and that in faith which is courage, affirms the ultimate prevalence of being over non-being. It affirms the presence of the infinite in everything finite. And a theology which is based on such a courage tries to show that, as non-being is dependent on the being it negates, so the awareness of finitude presupposes a place above finitude from which the finite is seen as finite. However, the act in which the place is occupied is courage and not reasoning. Every being affirms its own being. Its life is its self-affirmation—even if its self-affirmation has the form of self-surrender. Every being resists the negation against itself. The self-affirmation of a being is correlate to the power of being it embodies. It is greater in humans than in animals and in some people greater than in others. A life process is the more powerful, the more non-being it can include in its self-affirmation, without being destroyed by it. The neurotic can include only a little non-being, the average person a limited amount, the creative being a large amount, God-symbolically speaking—an infinite amount. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

The self-affirmation of a being in spite of non-being is the expression of its power of being. Power is the possibility of self-affirmation is spite of internal and external negation. It is the possibility of overcoming non-being. Human power is the possibility of humans to overcome non-being infinitely. In several places in this history of philosophy, notably in the Platonic school, degrees of being have been spoken of. This concept is difficult and highly controversial. It appears to be meaningless if being is identified with existence in time and space. There are no degrees in existing, but an either-or. If, however, being is described as the power of being, the idea of degrees of being loses its difficulty. There are, certainly, degrees in the power of being, namely in the power of taking non-being into one’s own self-affirmation. I tried years ago to describe the process of change as it is inwardly experienced by the client in a person-centered therapy with a male therapist: “I am afraid of the therapist. I want help, but I do not know whether to trust him. He might see things which I do not know in myself—frightening and bad elements. He seems not to be judging me, I am sure he is. I cannot tell him what really concerns me, but I can tell hum about some past experiences that relate to my concerns. He seems to understand those, so I can reveal a bit more of myself. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

“However, not that I have shard with him some of this bad side of me, he despises me. I am sure of it, but it is strange I can find little evidence of it. Do you suppose that what I have told him is not so bad? It is possible that I need not be ashamed of it as a part of me? I no longer feel that he despises me. It makes me feel that I want to go further, exploring me, perhaps expressing more of myself. I find him a sort of companion as I do this—he seems really to understand. However, not I am getting frightened again, and this time deeply frightened I did not realize that exploring the unknown recesses of myself would make me feel feelings I have never experienced before. It is very strange because in one way these are not new feelings. I sense that they have always been there. However, they seem so bad and disturbing I have never dared to let them flow in me. And now as I live these feelings in the hours with him, I feel terribly shaky, as though my World is falling apart. It used to be sure and firm. Now it is loose, permeable and vulnerable. It is not pleasant to feel things I have always been frightened of before. It is his fault. Yet curiously I am eager to see him and I feel more safe when I am with him. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

“I do not know who I am any more, but something when I feel things I seem solid and real for a moment. I am troubled by the contradictions I find in myself—I act one way and feel another—I think one thing and feel another. It is very disconcerting. It is also sometimes adventurous and exhilarating to be trying to discover who I am. Sometimes I catch myself feeling that perhaps the person I am is worth being, whatever that means. I am beginning to find it very satisfying, though often painful, to share just what it is I am feeling at this moment. You know it is really helpful to try to listen to myself, to heart what is going on it me. I am not so frightened any more of what is going on in me. It seems pretty trustworthy. I use some of my hours with him to dig deep into myself to know what I am feeling. It is scary work, but I want to know. And I do trust him most of the time, and that helps. I feel pretty vulnerable and raw, but I know he does not want to hurt me, and I even believe he cares. It occurs to me as I try to let myself down and down, deep int myself, that maybe if I could sense what is going on in me, and could realize its meaning, I would know who I am, and would also know what to do. At least I feel this knowing sometimes with him. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

“I can even tell him just how I am feeling toward him at any given moment, and instead of this killing the relationship, as I used to fear, it seems to deepen it. Do you suppose I could be my feelings with other people also? Perhaps that would not be too dangerous either. You know, I feel as if I am floating along on the current of life very adventurously, being me. I get defeated sometimes, I get hurt sometimes, but I am learning that those experiences are not fatal. I do not know exactly who I am, but I can feel my reactions at any given moment, and they seem to work out pretty well as a basis for my behaviour from moment to moment. Maybe this is what it means to be me. However, of course I can only do this because I feel safe in the relationship with my therapist. Or could I be myself this way outside of this relationship? I wonder. I wonder. Perhaps I could.” The initial element in a great friendship is a mutuality of soul. People are sometimes able to become one spirit. Their souls will be bound together. This type of bonding usually happens when people view life from the same divine perspective (God is sovereign and does as He pleases, and all of life is to be lived from Him). And when people see this, their soul reflexively clings to someone else’s. Here is a person with a heart that beats with one’s own heart. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

This is the way it is with deep friendships. It is not that friends think alike on everything. Often it is quite the opposite. However, they do share the same Worldview and approach to life. And this is why a Christian friendship exceeds anything that exists between nonbelievers—for such a friendship is founded on a supernatural mutuality of soul. They Holy Spirit makes your souls chorus the same cries. You assent to the same authority. You know the same God. You are going the same way. You long for the same things. You dream mutual dreams. Mutuality of soul is followed by love. as the next phrase indicates—and one is able to love their friend as one loves oneself. This is an amazing statement because of its immediacy. This type of love does not develop in a month or even a day, but in a flash. It is usually because your kind soul meets such a deep need in another person’s—”At last I have found someone who lives like me!” When one is able to love oneself, in doing so one is also able to love one’s neighbor as oneself—and thus fulfilling the Law of God. His love would pay great dividends because honest, unselfish love has an irresistible drawing power. You will one day also be drawn to the same love. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

The same tone applies to Jesus’ teaching about who can be his disciple or apprentice. This too is put in very shocking language: “If you come to me,” he said, “and do not prefer me over (do not hate) your own father, mother, wife, children, brothers and sisters—yes, and your very own life (soul)—you cannot be my apprentice,” reports Luke 14.26. And then he uses an absolutely shocking image—one all too familiar to his hearers, but rather hard for us fully to appreciate today. It was that of a man carrying on hi back the lumber that would be used to kill him when he arrived at the place of execution. “Whoever does not come after me carrying one’s own cross cannot be my apprentice,” reports Luke 14.27. The cross is an instrument of death, of “losing your life.” The teaching here is exactly the same as in the statements about losing and finding our lives. It is one of comparative costs, as the verses that follow in Luke 14 show. Those who are not genuinely convinced that the only real bargain in life is surrendering ourselves to Jesus and his cause, abandoning all that we love to him and for him, cannot learn the other lessons Jesus has to teach us. They cannot proceed to anything like total spiritual transformation. Not that he will not let us, but that we simply cannot succeed. If I tell you that you cannot drive a BMW M760Li automobile unless you can see, I am not saying I will not let you, but that you cannot succeed even if I do. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

Still, from within the life that remains “lost” to God, the teaching of the Cross and of abandoning all that is “first” in ordinary human life seems repulsive and impossible. And it has often been disastrously misinterpreted, resulting in the destruction, not the renovation, of the human heart and life. It remains a dangerous half-truth if left to stand on its own. It is a negation that in practice can only rest on an affirmation. “Brethren, do not be children in your thinking; be babes in evil, but in thinking be mature,” 1 Corinthians 14.20. In thinking be mature! Such an admonition one would hardly expect in the context of apostolic writing. However, here it is, appearing in the same letter of Paul in which he contrasts sharply the wisdom of the World with that foolishness of God that is wiser than the wisdom of humans. And he points to the fact that not many wise humans belong to the ranks of the congregation, but that God has chosen what is foolish in the World. Maturity on the basis of divine foolishness—this is hard to understand—not only for the first readers of the letter to the Corinthians, but for all generations of Christians and non-Christians in the history of Christianity. In some way, the whole problem of the possibility of Christian existence is implied in this combination of divine foolishness and humanity. However, perhaps it is not only the problem of the possibility of Christian existence; perhaps it is the problem of human existence as such—how to unite divine foolishness with human maturity. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

From the distinct rights, one of punishing crimes for restraint, and preventing the like offense, which right of punishing is in every body; the other of taking reparation, which belongs only to the injured party, comes to pass the magistrate, who by being magistrate hath the common right of punishing put into one’s hands, can often, where the public good demands not the execution of law, remit the punishment of criminal offenses by one’s own authority, but yet cannot remit the satisfaction due to any private being for the damage one has received. That, one who has suffered the damage has a right to demand in one’s own name, and one alone can remit: the damnified person has this power of appropriating to oneself the goods or service of the offender, by right of self-preservation, as every being has, in the state of nature, has a power to kill a murderer, both to deter others from doing like injury, which no reparation can compensate, by the example of the punishment that attends it from everybody, and also to secure beings from the attempts of a criminal, who having renounced reason, the common rule and measure God hath given to humankind, hath, by the unjust violence and slaughter one hath committed upon one, declared war against all humankind. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

And therefore, because one has declared war against all humankind, one may be destroyed as a lion or a tyger, one of those wild savage beasts, with whom human can have no society nor security: and upon this grounded that the great law of nature, Whoso sheddeth human’s blood, by human shall one’s blood be shed. And Cain was so fully convinced, that every one had a right to destroy such a criminal, that after the murder of his brother, he cries out, Everyone that findeth me, shall slay me; so plain was it writ in the hearts of all humankind. The fact is, of course, God is gracious and generous to all who are his children. God is not only sovereign, but He also dispenses His grace to people who do not even feel or know they deserve it. God is fully of gracious generosity. The Bible is full of God’s promises to provide for us spiritually and materially, to never forsake us, to give us peace in times of difficult circumstances, to cause all circumstances to work together for our good, and finally to bring us safely home to glory. Not one of those promises is dependent upon our performance. Hey are all dependent on the grace of God given to us through Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul wrote, “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And so through him the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God,” reports 2 Corinthians 1.20. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

O God, Who art One and True, we humbly beseech Thee that the Catholic Faith, which is acceptable to Thee, may continue for ever in us all; through Jesus Christ our Lord. “For behold that all little children are alive in Christ, and also all they that are without the law. For the power of redemption cometh on all them that have no law; wherefore, one that is not condemned, or one that is under no condemnation, cannot repent; and unto such baptism availeth nothing—but it is mockery before God, denying the mercies of Christ, and the power of his Holy Spirit, and putting trust in dead works. Behold, my son, this thing ought not to be; for repentance is unto them that are under condemnation and under the curse of a broke law. And the first fruits of repentance is baptism; and baptism cometh by faith unto the fulfilling the commandments; and the fulfilling the commandments brings the remission of sins. And the remission of sins bringeth meekness, and lowliness of heart; and because of meekness and lowliness of heart cometh the visitation of the Holy Ghost, which Comforter filleth with hope and perfect love, which love endureth by diligence unto the prayer, until the end shall come, when all the saints shall dwell with God,” reports Moroni 8.22-26. O Holy Father, thou hast freely given thy Son, O Divine Son, thou hast freely paid my debt, O Eternal Spirit, thou hast freely bid me come, O Triune God, thou dost freely grace me with salvation. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

Prayers and tears could not suffice to pardon my sins, nor anything less than atoning blood, but my believing is my receiving, for a thankful acceptance is no paying of the debt. What didst thou see in me? than I a poor, ailing, despised sinner should be clothed in thy bright glory? that a creeping worm should be advanced to this high state? that one lately groaning, weeping, dying, should be as full of joy as my heart can hold? that a being of dust and darkness should be taken like Mordecai from captivity, and set next to the king? should be lifted like Daniel from a den and be made ruler of princes and provinces? Who can fathom immeasurable love? As far as the rational soul exceeds the senses, so does the spirit exceed the rational in its knowledge of thee. Thou hast given me understanding to compass the Earth, measure the Sun, Moon, Stars, Universe, but above all to know thee, the only true God. I marvel that the finite can know the Infinite, here a little, afterwards in full-orbed truth; now I know but a small portion of what I shall know, here in part, there in perfection, here a glimpse, there a glory. To enjoy thee is life eternal, and to enjoy is to know. Keep me in the freedom of experiencing thy salvation continually. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21

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Do I Not Have the Right to do What I Want with My Own Money? Or are You Envious Because I am Generous?

February 13, 2020 1:38 am

An optimist goes to the window every morning and says, “Good morning, God.” The pessimist goes to the window every morning and says, “Good God! Morning!” If A equals success, then the formula is A = X + Y + Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut. “And to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody,” reports 1 Thessalonians 4.11-12. If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a person, do not bother analyzing one’s ways of being silent, of talking, of weeping, or seeing how much one is moved by noble ideas; if you watch one just laugh, you will get better results. If one laughs well, one is a good being. My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure. To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all people are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other person. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

A state also of equality, wherein in the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of one’s will, set one above another, and confer on one, by an evident and clear appoint, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty. This equality of humans by nature must be built on the foundation of an obligation to mutual love amongst humans, on which one builds the duties they owe one another, and from whence one derives the great maxims of justice and charity. The like natural inducement hath brought people to know that it is no less their duty, to love others than themselves; for seeing those things which are equal, must needs all one measure; if I cannot but wish to receive good, even as much at every human’s hands, as any human can wish unto one’s own soul, how should I look to have any part of my desire herein satisfied, unless myself be careful to satisfy the desire, which is undoubtedly in other beings, being of one and the same nature? #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

To have anything offered them repugnant to this desire, must needs in all respects grieve them as much as me; so that if I do harm, I must look to suffer, there being no reason that others should shew greater measure of love to me, than they have by me shewed unto them: my desire therefore to be loved of my equals in nature as much as possible may be, imposeth upon me a natural duty of bearing to them-ward fully like the affection; from which relation of equality between ourselves and them that are as ourselves, what several rules and canons natural reason hath drawn, for direction of life, no being is ignorant. However, though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of licence: though humans in that state have an uncontroulable liberty to dispose of one’s person or possessions, yet one has not liberty to destroy oneself, or so much as nay creature in one’s possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it. The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all humankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in one’s life, health, liberty, or possession: for humans being all the workmanship of one omnipotent, and infinitely wise maker. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

All the servants of one sovereign master, sent into the World by his order, not another’s pleasure: and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for our’s. Every one, as one is bound to preserve oneself, and not to quit one’s station willfully, so by the like reason, when one’s own preservation comes not in competition, ought one, as much as one can, to preserve the rest of humankind, and may not, unless it be to do justice on an offender, take away, or impair the life, or what tends to the preservation of life, the liberty, health, limb, or goods of another. And that all humans may be restrained from invading others rights, and from doing hurt to one execution of the law of nature is, in that state, put into every human’s hands, where every one has a right to punish the transgressors of that laws to such a degree, as may hinder its violations: for the law of nature would, as all other laws that concern humans in the World be in vain, if there were no body that in the state of nature may punish another for any evil one has done, every one may do so: for in that state of perfect equality, where naturally there is no superiority or jurisdiction of one over another, what any may do in prosecution of that law, every one must needs have a right to do. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Not only does God sovereignly determine how and to what extent He will bless us, He often blesses those who, in our opinion, seem most unworthy. We see this demonstrated rather forcefully in Jesus’s recounting of two Old Testament incidents as recorded in Luke 4.25-27: “I assure you that there were many windows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a window in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.” Luke recorded that “all the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this.” Why were these Jewish people who heard Jesus so enraged that, as verse 29 tells us, they wanted to kill Him? It was because the widow and Naaman were despised Gentiles. In the opinion of the Jewry, these people were most unworthy. The reaction was, “How could God bless those Gentiles instead of more deserving Jewish people?” The fact is, God did bless those two Gentiles while passing right by His own chose people. Were in the widow of Zarephath and Naaman the Syrian more “deserving” than anyone in Israel? Not all. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

The Old Testament record of one’s healing indicates that Naaman, by his anger and haughtiness, was very undeserving. God often does bless people who seem to us to be quite unworthy. However, that is what grace is all about, because we are all unworthy. We rejoice in the generosity of God’s grace as it is directed toward us, or toward our family or friends. However, how do we feel wen someone whom we think does not deserve it is blessed by God? Are we envious because of the generosity of God toward that person? Do we feel, as did the workers in the parable, who got paid as much for one hour of work as did those who slaved away in the hot Sun for twelve hours, that we have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day, and yet that other person has been blessed more than we have? The workers who labored all day did not grumble because they received too little pay, but because less deserving workers received the same as they. The “A” students in the modern version of the parable were not outraged because they received only an “A,” but because some obviously undeserving students received the same grade. The reality of the Christian life, though, is that there is no “A” students in God’s Kingdom. Some are more obedient than others, some have labored more and sacrificed more than others, but none of us measures up to an “A.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

None of us wants to get what we actually deserve. We all want God’s grace, but we cannot enjoy God’s grace when there is an attitude of comparing. See the two groups of labourers as they severally wend their way home that evening. As to amount of money in their pockets, they are all equal: but as to amount of content in their spirits there is a great difference. The last go home each with a penny [a denarius] in one’s pocket, and astonished glad gratitude in one’s heart: their reward accordingly is a penny, and more. The first, on the contrary, go home, each with a penny in one’s pocket, and corroding discontent in one’s soul: their reward accordingly is less than a penny. Arnot believed it was in this sense that “the last will be first, and first will be last,” reports Matthew 20.16. That is, the last workers hired ended up “first” because they had a day’s wages plus contentment, whereas the first workers hired ended up “last” because of their discontentment. While that is certainly a helpful observation about life, I understand Jesus’ two statements in Matthew 19.30 and 20.16 somewhat differently than Arnot does. I believe Jesus is asserting the sovereign prerogative of God to dispense His favours as He pleases. I do not think His statement, “So the last will be the first, and the first will be last,” is to be taken in absolute sense as if this would always be the case. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

Rather, I think there is often no apparent correlation between what one seemingly “deserves” and what he or she receives. Remember, the whole point of the parable is to respond to Peter’s attitude as expressed in this statement: “The more we do, the more we earn, and the more God owes us.” If we are to succeed in living by grace, we must some to terms with the fact that God is sovereign in dispensing His gracious favours, and He owes us no explanation when His actions do not correspond with out system of merits. Indeed, as Paul said, “How unsearchable His decisions, and how mysterious His methods! For who has ever understood the thoughts of the Lord, or has even been His advisor?” reports Romans 11.33-34. We are left without any grounds for grumbling about the treatment we receive from God. God never becomes obligated to us, so He can always say to us, “Friend, I am not being unfair to you,” reports Matthew 20.13. At the same time God reserves the right to treat each of us differently, bestowing blessings as He sovereignly chooses. In the words of the landowner, God says to us, “Do I not have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?” reports Matthew 20.15. Doing what you want—God’s way. What does that mean? It means that they will then for the first time be able to do what they want to do. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19

Of course they will be able to steal, lie, and murder all they want—which will be none at all. However, they will also be able to be truthful and transparent and helpful and sacrificially loving, with joy—and they will want to be. Their life will be in this way caught up in God’s life. They will want the good and be able to do it, the only true human freedom. The mind set on the spiritual is in that sense “life and peace,” reports Romans 8.6, because it lives from God and, “sowing into the spirit, out of the spirit reaps the eternal kind of life,” reports Galatians 6.8. So—and this is of utmost importance to those who would enter Christian spiritual formation—life as normally understood, where the object is securing myself, promoting myself, indulging myself, is to be set aside. “Can I still think about such things?” you may ask. Yes, you can. However, you increasingly will not. And when you do, as formation in Christlikeness progresses, they simply will not matter. In fact, they will seem ridiculous and uninteresting. Jesus’ words on not being anxious about what will happen to you and his admonitions to consider the flowers and birds, as reported in Luke 12.13-34, will seem obviously sane and right, whereas they previously sounded obviously crazy and wrong, or “out of touch with reality.” #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

From the perspective of interpersonal politics, this element of the relationship—congruence—gives a maximum space to be—for the client and for the therapist. The therapist is saying, in effect, “Here I am, as I am.” There is no hint of any kind of control over the client’s responses to one’s way of being. To the contrary, finding that the therapist is permitting oneself to be as one is, the client tends to discover that same freedom. The second attitude of importance in creating a climate for change is acceptance, or caring or prizing—unconditional beneficial regard. It means that when the therapist is experiencing an optimistic attitude, acceptant attitude toward whatever the client is at that moment, therapeutic movement r change is more likely. It involves the therapist’s willingness for the client to be whatever feeling is going on at that moment—confusion, resentment, fear, anger, courage, love, or pride. It is a nonpossessive caring. The therapist prizes the client in a total rather tan a conditional way. This resembles the love the parent sometimes feels toward the infant. Research indicates that the more this attitude is experienced by the therapist, the greater the probability that therapy will be successful. It is not, of course, possible to feel such an unconditional caring all of the time. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

A therapist who is real will often have very different feelings, negative feelings toward the client. Hence it is not to be regarded as a “should,” that the therapist should have an unconditional optimistic regard for the client. It is simply a fact that unless this is a reasonably frequent ingredient in the relationship, constructive client change is less likely. What of the interpersonal politics of such an attitude? It is a powerful factor, but it is in no way manipulative or controlling in the relationship. There is no judgment or evaluation involved. Power over one’s own life is left completely in the hands of the client. It provides a nurturant atmosphere but not a forcing one. Another facilitative aspect of the relationship is empathic understanding. This means that the therapist senses accurately the feelings and personal meanings that are being experienced by the client and communicates this understanding to the client. At its best the therapist is so much inside the private World of the other that one can clarify not only the meanings of which the client is aware but even those just below the level of awareness. When the therapist responds at such a level of level the client’s reaction is of this sort: “Perhaps that is what I have been trying to say. I have not realized it, but yes, that is how I do feel!” This element of the relationship is perhaps the most easily improved through even brief training. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

Therapists can learn, quite quickly, to be better, more sensitive listeners, more empathic. It is in part a skill as well as an attitude. To become more genuine or more caring, however, the therapist must change experientially, and this is slower and more complex process. Being empathic involves a choice on the part of the therapist as to what one will pay attention to, namely the inner World of the client as that individual perceives it. Thus it does change the interpersonal politics of the relationship. It in no way, however, exercises control over the client. On the contrary it assists the client in gaining a clearer understanding of, and hence a greater control over, one’s own World and one’s own behaviour. You may well ask why a person seeking help changes for the better when one is involved in a relationship with a therapist that contains these elements. Over the years I have come to see more and more clearly that the process of change in the client is a reciprocal of the attitudes of the therapist. As the client finds the therapist listening acceptingly to one’s feelings, one becomes able to listen acceptingly to oneself—to hear and accept the anger, the fear, the tenderness, the courage that is being experienced. As the client finds that therapist prizing and valuing even the hidden and awful aspects which have been expressed, one experiences a prizing and liking of oneself. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

As the therapist is experienced as being real, the client is able to drop facades, to more openly be the experiencing within. Politically, by listening to the feelings within, the client reduces the power others have had in inculcating guilts and fears and inhibitions, and is slowly extending the understanding of, and control over, self. As the client is more acceptant of self, the possibility of being in command of self becomes greater and greater. The client possesses oneself to a degree that has never occurred before. The sense of power is growing. As the client becomes more self-aware, more self-acceptant, less defensive and more open, one finds at last some of the freedom to grow and change in the directions natural to the human organism. Life is not in one’s hands, to be lived as an individual. If there ever was a “man’s man,” it was Jonathan; and if there ever was a man who felt the need of a friend, I was Jonathan. The Philistines’ domination of Israel in that day was so complete that they allowed no blacksmiths in the land for fear they would make swords and spears for the Israelites. In fact, there were only two swords in the entire nation, those of King Saul and his son Jonathan. All Israel was in a dark storm of depression and despair—all, that is, expect Jonathan. Jonathan saw matters differently. He believed that if God willed it, Israel could be saved, even by a few. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

While others looked down, Jonathan looked up and saw a great and glorious God who could deliver hum anything He saw Fit. Armed with this conviction and his sword, Jonathan and his armour-bearer attacked a Philistine detachment alone. His sallying words say it all: “Come, let us go over to the outpost of those uncircumcised fellows. Perhaps the Lord will act in our behalf. Nothing can hinder the Lord from saving, whether by many or by few,” reports 1 Samuel 14.6. Assured that God would deliver them into his hand, Jonathan launched a horrifying single-handed attack. It was a mano a mano, hand-to-hand, man-to-man. Blood ran to the dust and white bone gleamed in the Sun as Jonathan sliced and hacked attacker after attacker, until twenty Philistine lay spread over a terrible half-acre. Blood-covered Jonathan was one tough Golden State Warrior! Jonathan’s heroics put some steel into his people, and a rebellion followed—and some good days for Israel. However, with Saul’s subsequent sin and rejection, Israel fell to even darker days than before (chapters 15-17), and Jonathan was more alone than ever. Even his greater heart was affected, as he too trembled before Goliath. There was no one of like mind, he thought—until he encountered David. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

Jonathan could not believe his ears as David called out to the giant: “You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will hand you over to me, and I will strike you down and cut off your head…and the whole World will know that there is a God in Israel. All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.” (17.45-47). Then David ran full-speed at Goliath and nailed him right between the eyes! Blood-smeared David stood holding the great gory head, talking calmly with Jonathan’s father, Saul. At last Jonathan had found someone whose heart was in tune with his—a friend. What followed was the flowering of a deep male friendship, one of the most celebrated friendships in all of literature. As such, it provides the essential elements and wisdom for all genuine friendships. “Little children cannot repent; wherefore, it is awful wickedness to deny the pure mercies of God unto them, for they are all alive in him because of his mercy. And one that saith that little children need baptism denieth the mercies of Christ, and setteth at naught the atonement of one and the power of one’s redemption. Wo unto such, for they are in danger of death, hell, and an endless torment. I speak it boldly; God hath commanded me. Listen unto them and give heed, or they stand against you at the judgment-seat of Christ,” Moroni 8.19-21. #RandolpHarris 15 of 19

And thus, in the state of nature, one being comes by a power over another; but yet no absolute or arbitrary power, to use a criminal, when one has got one in one’s hands, according to the passionate heats, or boundless extravagancy of one’s own will; but only to retribute to one, so far as calm reason and conscience dictate, what is proportionate to one’s transgression, which is so much as may serve for reparation and restraint: for these two are the only reasons, why one being may lawfully do harm to another, which is that we call punishment. In transgressing the law of nature, the offender declares oneself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity, which is that measure God has set to the actions of humans, for their mutual security; and so one becomes dangerous to humankind, the Simon clasp, which is to secure them from injury and violence, being slighted and broke by one. Which being a trespass against the whole species, and the peace and safety of it, provided for by the law of nature, every being upon this score, by the right one hath to preserve humankind in general, may restrain, or where it is necessary, destroy things noxious to them, and so may bring such evil on anyone, who hath transgressed that law, as many make one repent the doing of it, and thereby deter one, and by one’s example of others, from doing the like mischief. And in the case, and upon this ground, EVERY PERSON HATH A RIGHT TO PUNISH THE OFFENDER, AND BE EXECUTIONER OF THE LAW OF NATURE. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19

I doubt not but this will seem a very strange doctrine to some people: but before they condemn it, I desire them to resolve me, by what right any prince or state can put to death, or punish an alien, for any crimes one commits in their country. It is certain their laws, by virtue of any sanction they receive from the promulgated will of the legislative, reach not a stranger: they speak not to one, nor, if they did, is one bound to hearken to them. The legislative authority, by which they are in force over the subjects of that commonwealth, hath no power over one. Those who have the supreme power of making laws in England, France, or Holland, are to an Indian, but like the rest of the World, beings without authority: and therefore, if by the law of nature every being hath not a power to punish offenses against it, as one soberly judges the case to require, I see not how the magistrates of any community can punish an alien of another country; since, in reference to one, they can have no more power than what every being naturally may have over another. “Remember that The Maker knows all things, all that is past and present, all that has happened and will happen, and what might happen as well. Remember there is no past of future where The Maker is but only the vast present of all things living,” reports Anne Rice, Angel Time, page 132. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Besides the crime which consists in violating the law, and varying from the right rule of reason, whereby a being so far becomes degenerate, and declares oneself to quit the principles of human nature, and to be a noxious creature, there is commonly injury done to some person or other, and some other being receives damages by one’s transgression: in which case one who hath received any damages, has, besides the right of punishment common to one with other people, a particular right to seek reparation from one that has done it: and other person, who finds it just, may also join with one that is injured, and assist one in recovering from the offender so much as may make satisfaction for the harm one has suffered. We beseech Thee, O Lord, in Thy compassion to increase Thy faith in us; because Thou wilt not deny the assistance of Thy loving-kindness to those whom Thou bestowest a stedfast belief in Thee; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant us, O Lord, we pray Thee, to trust in Thee will our heart; seeing that as Thou dost always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so Thou does not forsake those who make their boast of Thy mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Confirm, O Lord, in our minds the mysteries of the true faith, that as we confess Him Who was conceived by the Virgin to be Very God and Man, so by the power of His saving Resurrection we may be enabled to attain eternal joy; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

O Divine Redeemer, great was thy goodness in undertaking my redemption, in consenting to be made sin for me, in conquering all my foes; great was thy strength in enduring the extremities of divine wrath, in taking away the load of my inequities; great was thy love in manifesting thyself alive, in showing thy sacred wounds, that every fear might vanish, and every doubt be removed; great was thy mercy in ascending to Heaven in being crowned and enthroned there to intercede for me, there to succour me in temptation, there to open the eternal book, there to receive me finally to thyself; great was thy wisdom in devising this means of salvation; bathe my soul in rich consolations of thy resurrection life; great was thy grace in commanding me to come hand in hand with thee to the Father, to be knit to Him eternally, to discover in him my rest, to find in him my peace, to behold His glory, to honour Him who is alone worthy; in giving me the Spirit as teacher, guide, power, that I may live repenting of sin, conquer Satan, find victory in life. When thou art absent all sorrows are here, when thou art present all blessings are mine. Be gracious to our prayers, O merciful God, and guard Thy people with loving protection; that they who confess Thine Only-begotten Son as God born in our bodily flesh, may never be corrupted by the deceits of the devil; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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Fools makes complaint that the Prophet brings to then this old message of the eternal Deity that wait to light all human heart and brings nothing new or fit for this age and hour. We may make a preamble to our answer with the statement that one indubitabtly gives such scientific and practical turn to one’s teachings as the time demands, but we must admi that one’s first and last words remain ever the same as the first and last words of all the illustrious divine teachers. For what other message can one give? When the soul hungers for a happiness it has hitherto been unable to find in its mudpits of sensuality or in its marketplaces of barter, is one to offer it a stone of some economic doctrine and not the bread of spiritual nourishment? Is one to come to confirm our self-deceptions and our self-govellings and to give the lie to the divine bliss one enjoys in the moment? One’s continual serenity, one’s unemotional manner may draw the admiration of the discerning few, but it will also provoke the exasperation of the undiscerning many.

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All We Ask is to be Let Alone—God Made this Country and Humans Made this Town!

February 6, 2020 2:48 am

We do not lose our sense of humour when we get older—we get older when we lose our sense of humour. It is great to be great, but it is greater to be human. “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove,” reports St. Matthew 17.20. Today I want to consider the question of how we—as individuals, as groups, as a culture—will live in, will respond to, will adapt to, this brave new World. What stance will we take in the face of these new developments? Deny and Ignore—one attitude which we can take is to deny that these scientific advances are taking place, and simply take the view that there can be no study of human behaviour which is truly scientific. We can hold that the human being cannot possibly take an objective attitude toward oneself, and that therefore no real science of behaviour can exist. We can say that humans are always a free agent, in some sense that makes scientific study of one’s behaviour impossible. Not long ago, at a conference on the social sciences, curiously enough, I heard a well known economist take just this view. And one of this country’s most noted theologians writes, “In any event, no scientific investigation of past behaviour can become the basis of predictions of future behaviour.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

This attitude of the general public is somewhat similar. Without necessarily denying the possibility of a behavioural science, the being in the street simply ignores the developments which are taking place. To be sure one becomes excited for a time when one hears it said that the Communists have attempted to change the soldiers they have captured, by means of “brainwashing.” One may show a mild reaction of annoyance to these revelations which show how heavily, and in what manipulative fashion, the findings of the behavioural sciences are used by modern industrial corporations. However, by and large one sees nothing in all this to be concerned about, any more than one did in the first theoretical statements that the atom could be split. We may, if we wish, join one in ignoring the problem. We may go further, like the antiquated intellectuals, and looking at the behavioural sciences may declare that “there ain’t no such being.” However, since these reactions do not seem particularly intelligent I shall leave them to describe a much more sophisticated and much more prevalent point of view. Among behavioural scientists it seems to be largely taken for granted that the findings of such science will be used in the prediction and control of human behaviour. Yet most psychologists and other scientists have given little thought to what this would mean. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

An exception to this general tendency is Dr. B.F. Skinner of Harvard who has been quite explicit in urging psychologists to use the powers of control which they have in the interest of creating a better World. In an attempt to show what he means Dr. Skinner wrote a book some years ago entitled Walden Two, in which he gives a fictional account of what he regards as a Utopian community in which the learnings of the behavioural sciences are fully utilized in all aspects of life—marriage, child rearing, ethical conduct, work, play, and artistic endeavour. There are also some writers of fiction who have seen the significance of the coming influence of the behavioural sciences. Aldous Huxley, in his Brave New World, has given a horrifying picture of saccharine happiness in a scientifically managed World, against which humans eventually revolt. George Orwell, in 1984, in which the behavioural sciences are used as instruments of absolute control of individuals so that not behaviour alone but even thought is controlled. The writers of science fiction have also played a role in visualizing for us some of the possible developments in a World where behaviour and personality are as much the subject of science as chemical compounds or electrical impulses. I should like to try to present, as well as I can, a simplified picture of the cultural pattern which emerges if we endeavour to shape human life in terms of the behavioural sciences. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

There is first of all the recognition, almost the assumption, that scientific knowledge is the power to manipulate. We must accept the fact that some kind of control of human affairs is inevitable. We cannot use good sense in human affairs unless someone engages in the design and construction of environmental conditions which affect the behaviour of humans. Environmental changes have always been the condition for the improvement of cultural patterns, and we can hardly use the more effective methods of science without making changes on a grander scale…Sciences has turned up dangerous processes and materials before. To use the facts and techniques of a science of humans to the fullest extent without making some monstrous mistake will be difficult and obviously perilous. It is not time for self-deception, emotional indulgence, or the assumption of attitudes which are no longer useful. The next assumption is that such a power to control is to be used. It is seen as being used benevolently, though we recognize the danger of its being misused. Even if control is used with benevolent intent, it could actually create a nightmare. If such power of the behavioural sciences is used malignantly, the results will be that it will enhance the degree of regulation exercised by a dictatorial government. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

Let us look at some of the elements which are involved in the concept of the control of human behaviour as mediated by the behavioural sciences. What would be the steps in the process by which a society might organize itself so as to formulate human life in terms of the science of humans? First would come the selection of goals. One possible goal is to be assigned to the behavioural technology is this: Let humans be happy, informed, skillful, well-behaved, and productive. Well, what do you say to the design of personalities? Would that interest you? The control of temperament? Give me the specifications, and I will give you the man! What do you say to the control of motivation, building the interests which will make humans most productive and most successful? Does that seem to you fantastic? Yet some of the techniques are available, and more can be worked out experimentally. Think of the possibilities! Let us control the lives of our children and see what we can make of them. What is essentially being said here is that the current knowledge in the behavioural sciences plus that which the future will bring, will enable us to specify, to a degree which today would seem incredible, the kind of behavioural and personality results which we wish to achieve. This is obviously both an opportunity and a very heavy burden. #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

The second element in this process would be one which is familiar to every scientist who has worked in the field of applied science. Given the purpose, the goal, we proceed by the method of science—by controlled experimentation—to discover the means to these ends. If for example our present knowledge of the conditions which cause humans to be productive is limited, further investigation and experimentations would surely lead us to new knowledge in the field. And still further work will provide us with the knowledge of even more effective means. The method of science is self-correcting in thus arriving at increasingly effective ways of achieving the purpose we have selected. The third element in the control of human behaviour through the behavioural sciences involves the question of power. As the conditions or methods are discovered by which to achieve our goal, some person or group obtains the power to establish those conditions or use those methods. There has been too little recognition of the problem involved in this. To hope that the power being made available by the behavioural sciences will be exercised by the scientists, or by a benevolent group, seems to me a hope little support by either recent or distant history. It seems far more likely that behavioural scientists, holding their present attitudes, will be in the position of the rocket scientists specializing in guided missiles. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

First they worked devotedly for the aggressor to destroy Russia and the United States. Now depending on who captured them, they work devotedly for Russian in the interest of destroying the United States, or devotedly for the United States in the interest of destroying Russia. If behavioural scientists are concerned solely with advancing their science, it seems most probable that they will serve the purposes of whatever individual or group has the power. However, this is, in a sense a digression. The main point of this view is that some person or group will have and use the power to put into effect the methods which have been discovered for achieving the desired goal. The fourth step in this process whereby a society might formulate its life in terms of the behavioural sciences is the exposure of individuals to the methods and conditions mentioned. As individuals are exposed to the prescribed conditions this leads, with a high degree of probability, to the behavioural which has been desired. People then become productive, if that has been the goal, or submissive, or whatever it has been decided to make them. To give something of the flavour of this aspect of the process as seen by one of its advocates. Now that we know rewarding reinforcement works, and why negative does not, we can be more deliberate and hence more successful, in our cultural design. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

We can achieve a sort of control under which the controlled, though they are following a code much more scrupulously than was ever the case under the old system, nevertheless feel free. They are doing what they want to do, not what they are forced to do. That is the source of the tremendous power of using rewards as a way to reinforce behaviour you want—there is no restraint and no revolt. By a careful design, we control not the final behaviour, but the inclination to behave—the motives, the desires, the wishes. The curious thing is that in that cause the question of freedom never arises. The neurotic, in contrast to the psychotic, cannot help registering with painful accuracy all the thousand little incidents of real life which do not fit in with one’s conscious illusion. Consequently one wavers in one’s self-valuation between feeling great and feeling worthless. At any minute one may shift from one extreme to the other. At the same time that one feels most convinced of one’s exceptional value one may be astonished that anyone takes one seriously. Or at the same time that one feels miserable and down-trodden one may feel furious that anyone should think one in need of help. One’s sensitivity can be compared with that of a person who is sore all over one’s body and flinches at the slightest touch. #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

One easily feels hurt, despised, neglected, slighted, and reacts with proportionate vindictive resentment. Here again we see a “vicious circle” at work. While grandiose ideas have a definite reassurance value and afford some support, even though only in an imaginary way, they not only reinforce the tendency to recoil, but through the medium of sensitivity create greater rage and thereby greater anxiety. This is, to be sure, the picture of severe neuroses, but in minor degrees it can also be seen in less serious cases, where it may not even be recognized by the person concerned. On the other hand, however, a sort of lucky circle may start as soon as the neurotic is able to do some constructive work. By this means one’s self-confidence grows, and there is thus less necessity for one’s grandiose ideas. The neurotic’s lack of success—one’s falling behind others in any respect, whether it concern career or marriage, security or happiness—makes one envious of others and thus reinforces the attitude of begrudging envy which has developed from other sources. Several factors may lead one to repress one’s begrudging attitude, factors such as inherent nobility of character, a deep conviction that one has no right to demand anything for oneself, or simply failure to recognise one’s existing unhappiness. However, the more it is repressed the more it may be projected on others, resulting in a sometimes almost paranoid fear that others begrudge one everything. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

If something goof happens to one, a new job, a flattering recognition, a fortunate acquisition, good fortune in a love-relationship, this anxiety may be so great that one feels absolutely uneasy. Hence it may greatly reinforce one’s tendencies to refrain from having anything or getting anywhere. Leaving out all details, the main outlines of the “vicious circle” which develops out of the neurotic striving for power, prestige and possession may roughly indicate as follows: anxiety, hostility, impaired self-esteem; striving for power and the like; enhanced hostility and anxiety; tendency to recoil from competition (with accompanying tendencies toward self-belittling); failures and discrepancies between potentialities and achievements; enhanced grandiose ideas (with fear of envy); enhanced sensitivity (with renewed tendency to recoil); enhanced hostility and anxiety, which starts the cycle all over again. In order, however, to understand fully the role hat envy plays in neuroses, we have to regard it from a more comprehensive viewpoint. The neurotic, whether or not feels it consciously, is not only a very unhappy person indeed, but one does not see any chance of escaping one’s misery. What the outside observer describes as vicious circles developing out of attempts to get reassurance, the neurotic oneself feels as being hopelessly caught in a net. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

As a patient of mine has described it, he feels tied up in a Brooklyn Basement with many doors, and whichever door he opens leads only into new darkness. And all the time he knows that others are walking outside in Sunshine. All because he was looking for love in all the wrong places and ended up at the wrong place at the wrong time. Family secrets are revealed and he learns blood is not always thicker than water! I do not believe that one can understand any severe neurosis without recognizing the paralyzing hopelessness which it contains. Some neurotic persons express their exasperation in no uncertain terms, but in others it is deeply covered by resignation or by a show of optimism. It may be difficult then to see that behind all the odd vanities, demands, hostilities, there is a human being who suffers, who feels excluded from all that makes life desirable, who knows that even if one gets what one wants one cannot enjoy it. When one recognizes the existence of all this hopelessness it should not be difficult to understand what appears to be an excessive aggressiveness or even meanness, unexplainable by the particular situation. A person so shut out from every possibility of happiness would have to be a veritable Angel if one did not feel hatred toward a World one cannot belong to. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

Coming back now to the problem of envy, this gradually developing hopelessness is the basis from which envy is constantly generated. It is not so much an envy of something special, but what is described as Lebensneid, a very general envy of everyone who feels more secure, more poised, more happy, more straightforward, more self-confident. If such a feeling of hopelessness has developed in a person, regardless of whether it is close to one’s awareness or far away, one will attempt to account for it. One does not see it—as the analytical observer does—as the outcome of an inexorable process. Instead one sees it as caused either by others or by oneself. Often one will blame both sources, though usually one or the other is in the foreground. When one puts the blame on others an accusatory attitude results, which may be directed toward fate in general, toward circumstances, or toward special persons: parents, teachers, husband, physician. Neurotic demands on others, as we have pointed out frequently, are to be understood largely from this point of view. It is as if the neurotic thought along these lines: “Since you are all responsible for my suffering, it is your duty to help me, and I have a right to expect it from you.” In so far as one seeks the source of evil in oneself, he feels that one has deserved one’s misery. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

Speaking of the neurotic’s tendency to put the blame on others may give rise to a misunderstanding. It may sound as if one’s accusations were unwarranted. As a matter of fact one has definite good reasons to feel accusatory, because one has indeed been dealt with unfairly, particularly in childhood. However, there are also neurotic elements in one’s accusations: they often take the place of constructive efforts toward beneficial goals and usually they are blind and indiscriminate. They may be directed, for example, toward persons who want to help one and at the same time one may be entirely incapable of feeling and expressing accusations against those persons who really injure one. When the floodtides of evil break across the television screen or wash the pages of print media in what is now called “news,” people roll their eyes helplessly and say, “Why?” They never say “Why?” when something good happens. However, they would if they ever faced up to the reality of the ruined soul. However, they simply cannot deal with the actual content of the human heart, mind, body, social context, and soul. In intellectual circles (and do not we all live there now?) evil, like sin, is a non-category. It is impolite and politically incorrect to speak seriously of it, even if it is the most tragic event that has ever taken place in modern history. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

Some years ago a leading media personality had a high-level conference in Aspen, Colorado USA, on the topic of evil. (Should not that meeting have been held elsewhere? South Los Angeles or Sacramento?) The outcome was that one or two participants out of a large group thought that there was such a thing as evil. However, most were either noncommittal on the point or certain that evil did not exist at all. When you heard their comments it was clear that they simply could not conceptualize the evil to be seen flourishing abundantly around them in the twentieth century. One of the most glaring evidences of the bankruptcy of contemporary ethical thinking is that it cannot deal with evil. A recent proposal to found a field of “Evil Studies” within academia will not be enthusiastically received. We should be very sure that the ruined soul is not one who has missed examination at the end of life. Hell is not an “oops!” or a slip. One does not miss Heaven by a hair, but by constant effort to avoid and escape God. “Outer darkness” is for one who, everything said, wants it, whose entire orientation has slowly and firmly set itself against God and therefore against how the Universe actually is. It is for those who are disastrously in error about their own life and their place before God and humans. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

The ruined soul must be willing to hear of and recognize its own ruin before it can find how to enter a different path, the path of eternal life that naturally leads into spiritual formation in Christlikeness. Spiritual formation is not something that may, or may not, be added to the gift of eternal life as an option. Rather, it is the path that the eternal kind of life “from above” naturally takes. It is the path one must be on if one is to be an eternal kind of life. It is not a project of life enhancement, where the life in question is the usual life of normal human beings—that is, life apart from God. It is, rather, the process of developing a different kind of life, the life of God himself, sustained by God as a new reality in those who have confidence that Jesus is the anointed One, the Son of God. “Believing in him we have life in his name,” reports John 20.31. Those “in Christ”—that is, caught up in his life, in what he is doing, by the inward gift of birth from above—“are of a new making. The ‘old stuff’ no longer matters. It is the new that counts,” reports 2 Corinthians 5.17. Here in this new creation is the radical goodness that alone can thoroughly renovate the heart. “Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which one hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons (and daughters) of God; that when he shall appear we shall be like hum, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as one is pure. Amen,” Moroni 7.48. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

Almighty and everlasting God, Who adornest the sacred body of Thy Church by the confessions of holy Martyrs; grant us, we pray Thee, that both by their doctrines and their pious example, we may follow after what is pleasing in Thy sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Mercifully give us, O Lord, an increasing of faith in Thee; that as it glorifies Thy holy Martyrs who held it fast even unto blood, it may also justify us who follow it in truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord our God, that as we welcome with a temporary service the commemoration of Thy Saints, so we may rejoice in beholding them perpetually; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God of my exodus, great was the joy of Israel’s sons, when Egypt died upon the shore, far greater the joy when the redeemer’s foe lay crushed in the dust. Jesus strides forth as the victor, conqueror of death, hell, and all opposing might; He bursts the bands f death, tramples the powers of darkness down, and lives for ever. He, my gracious surety, apprehended for payment of my debt, comes forth from the prison house of the grave free, and triumphant over sin, Satan, and death. Show me herein the proof that his vicarious offering is accepted, that the claims of justice are satisfied, that the devil’s sceptre is shivered, that one’s wrongful throne is levelled. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

Give me the assurance that in Christ I died, in him I rose, in his life I live, in his victory I triumph, in his ascension I shall be glorified. Adorable redeemer, thou who wast lifted up upon a cross art ascended to highest Heaven. Thou, who as Man of sorrows wast crowned with throns, art now as Lord of life wreathed with glory. Once, no shame more deep than thine, no agony more bitter, no death more cruel. Now, no exaltation more high, no life more glorious, no advocate more effective. Thou art in the triumph BMW M5 leading captive thine enemies behind thee. What more could be done than thou hast done! Thy death is my life, thy resurrection my peace, thy ascension my hope, thy prayers my comfort. Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord our God, that the examples of Thy Saints may stir us up to a better life, so that we who celebrate their solemnities, may also imitate their actions; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God, Who permittest us to celebrate the commemoration of all Thy Saints, grant that we Thy servants may enjoy their fellowship in eternal gladness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Almighty and everlasting God, Who dost enkindle the flame of Thy love in the hearts of the Saints, grant to our minds the same faith and power of love; that as we rejoice in their triumphs, we may profit by their examples; through Jesus Christ our Lord. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

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