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I Heard Echoes of Angels from the Gilded Ages Saying, “Forecast the Years, and Find in Loss a Gain to Match!”
I just want to lobby for God and have faith that everything else will turn out the way it is supposed to. You cannot have faith without results any more than you can have motion without movement. “If ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true,” reports Alma 32.21. Faith is a principle of action and power. Whenever we work toward a worthy goal, we exercise faith. We show our hope for something that we cannot yet see. In order for faith to lead to salvation, it must be centered in the Lord Jesus Christ. When we have an assurance that Jesus Christ exists, a correct idea of His character, and a knowledge that we are striving t live accord to His will, we can exercise faith in Him. When thinking about a spirit of excellence, thinking about operations at Disneyland might further illustration this condition. Compared to other parks of amusement, Disneyland is just different. From the restaurants and shrubbery to the Indiana Jones ride, the park exudes excellence. For example, Disneyland employs one crew to do nothing but change light bulbs throughout the park year-round. The crew has a catalog listing the life expectancy of they thousands of light bulbs in the park, and they make sure to change each and every bulb at 80 percent life expectancy so no one ever sees burned-out bulb! #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
If Disney can impart this sort of spirit of excellence to its bulb changers, we Christians can afford to do no less when it comes to worshipping God. When it comes to corporate and private worship, we need to increase our expectations of excellence. And if we do, the proper cultivation of the mind will be a crucial dimension of our excellence in worship. Loving and worshiping God includes the total personality, including the min. When we struggle to read something so we can love and serve Him better, when we understand the contents of the hymns we sing, when we activate our minds and make them ready to hear before given something to which to respond in the worships service, we worship God with our minds. Without the bulb changers, Disneyland would be just another amusement park. Without an intellectual component, worship becomes a less tan total expression of adoration to a God who deserves a lot more effort tan Disney insists on at its park. “I need a sign to let me know you’re here. All of these lines are being crossed over the atmosphere. I need to know that things are gonna look up ‘cause I feel us drowning in a sea spilled from a cup. When there is no place safe and no safe place to put my head. When you feel the World shake from the words that are said, and I’m calling all angels, and I’m calling all you angels. And I won’t give up if you don’t give up. I won’t give up if you don’t give up.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
The lyrics above are by Train, the song is Calling All Angels. At times, and many often daily many of us fee lost, or worried due to our financial situations, medical condition, things going on in the family, at school, or at work and we are desperately seeking reassurance that God is there and will protect us. We are desperately asking for a sign that he is listening to prayers and praises. Having faith in Jesus Christ means relying completely on Him—trusting in His infinite power, intelligence, and love. It includes believing His teachings. It means believing that even though we do not understand all things, He does. Because He has experienced all our pains, afflictions, and infirmities, He knows how to help us rise above our daily difficulties. Jesus Christ has overcome the World and prepared the way for us to receive eternal life. He is always ready to help us as we remember His plea: “Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 6.36. Faith is much more than passive belief. We express our faith through action—by the way we live. In a way, worship is an aspect of our fellowship with a personal God. If there is an intellectual component to our fellowship with God, it should be no surprise tat there should be an intellectual dimension to our fellowship with others in the body of Christ. If this is right, then a cultivation of a developed, Christian mind should both enrich and serve as at least one goal of Christian fellowship. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
The living spirit consists of particles in motion, and spirit permeates all modes of human behaviour. God is truly the Giver and Architect of Forms, and it may be to the angels and higher intelligences to help guide us in our building faith. At the beginning of one’s life, the understanding was not quite a blank tablet. The human soul at birth was a product of divine inspiration, not the outcome of natural laws. As the highest part of the rational soul, the understanding contained the seed of conscience from which it developed notions of good and evil, and the vestige of Adam’s perfect wisdom on which it grafted knowledge. As it matured it formed its own ideas; and though it derived information directly from the senses as well as from its own experience, its own nature is always mixing up with the nature of things. The materials that were laid up in the understanding, as a result of its own action and that of reason, were materials altered and digested from the stimuli that prompted them. The process of understanding are in part creative. Our world presents the shadows and counterfeits of an ideal World, if there such there be. Our World is but a figure plane, of princely powers. It is seen with mind alone. Either mind is nothing, or nature has wrought a World in agreement with a suprasensible World. This same just framed World does pass the World that senses see, as much as mind excels the sense in perfecter degree. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
The more perfect World, with God, saints, angels, and stars contains that causes of each thing. The World senses my perception: from this same World doth spring and seemeth here a figure sure, and shadow of that thing. All things more sound and perfect there, and all things whole appear, we have but portions of the same which are increased here. In our reason there notices, or the understanding of things ingraffted, and as it were origin of reason; so intelligence or reason is as it were certain beams of the heavenly light. The Saviour promised, “If ye will have faith in me ye shall have power to do whatsoever things is expedient in me,” reports Moroni 7.33. “Your friends, they stand around, they watch you crumble as you fall to the ground. And someday, your friends, they stand beside as you were flying. Oh, you were flying oh so high, but then some day people look at you for what they call their own. They watch you suffer. Yeah, they hear you calling home. They watch you suffer. Yeah, they hold you down.” The lyrics to the song Far Behind by Candlebox is a reflection of life. Sometimes family can become more like your friends, and friends do not always wish us well nor want the best for us. This can lead to a lot of grief. However, it is really a time for reflection and understanding. It is the time when we are called to build a better relationship with Jesus Christ. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
This relationship is considered as a cognitive power, which as an inward sense depending upon the body, receives the sensible kinds from the common sense, and presents them to the possible understanding, which is the place of the intelligible kinds or forms. The possible understanding is not only the place of forms, but it exhibits an agency which is responsible for the understanding in action. The agency is termed the agent understanding, probably equivalent to what others call the active understanding. Its function is the illumination of forms. The relationships involved may be expressed in a proportional analogy: Possible understanding: agent understanding: potentiality: actuality:: darkness: light. Intellectual experience creates a potentiality that is made actual only through an agency that is comparable to what occurs when darkness is made light. Apprehension tells us that our ideas are real. It gives force to “is” and to other linguistic elements that connect terms. Simple apprehension is of the essence, existence, or being of things and truths without discourse, which more resembles the Divine nature. When we meet for fellowship, we should have something in mind and ought intentionally to seek to foster our mutual commitment to advancing the cause of Christ and spread of the gospel. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Meeting real Christians is appealing. To meet someone and have your relationship be based on God and learning about God is like finding a candle in a dark room and being able to find a way out. We must be committed to praying for each other, to entering more deeply into life in the kingdom of God, and to developing a more articulate and effective ministry of speaking the gospel in our respective spheres of influence. We need Christians who share the same vocation—businesspersons, homemakers, health care professional—to band together in groups to study and encourage each other to penetrate their professions with the gospel and a Christian Worldview. We must encourage youth and adults to “Just Say No” to drugs. The added cost of greater consumption in the United States of America is much higher overall, particularly in healthcare costs plus lost work. And also, the moral choice of not discouraging drugs and other narcotics consumption would be a difficult decision at best. If society takes the stand that it is worth discouraging people from using or overusing or abusing drugs, then some degree of legislative prohibition is called for, and some level of enforcement effort is likewise required. This may be obvious, but it emphasizes the fact that, unless societal characteristics change dramatically, the drug problem will not go away. In fact, the increased consumption of legalizing drugs like marijuana, ignores that the gains in tax revenue may be overshadowed. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
Marijuana is a gateway drug because it puts people in contact with others who use more harsh drugs and they may be encouraged to try them. With the opioid crisis going on, we need to encourage people to abstain from drug use. Logically, legalizing marijuana would attract more consumers who previously abstained because it was a criminal activity. With greater consumption of legalized narcotics, greater addiction could lead to higher levels of robberies and other crimes by addicts seeking to pay for their consumption. There would also be more drug overdoses, traffic accidents, and this could all dramatically increase the cost of law enforcement. Also, on the health care side, the cost of additional lost work and lost lives due to addiction and drug abuse would, under most scenarios, far outweigh these tax revenues. Currently, law enforcement is able to stop 35 percent of drug trafficking. By doubling the number of law enforcement officers dealing with narcotics, that number would rise by 15 percent to being able to stop 50 percent of drug trafficking. However, if we are not going to start another “War on Drugs,” we need to make sure people can see why drug dealing is illegal and a bad idea. They need to see how addiction, consumption, and distribution of drugs impacts individuals, families, the economy, and the community. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
What we do when we weed a field is not quite different from what we do when we pray for a good harvest. We need people to gather for weekly breakfasts or house-church meetings and commit themselves to reading serious books, to developing their understanding of theology and of the structures of thought in the culture they are seeking to reach, to mutual pursuit of life in the kingdom of God and to the spread of the gospel. To live Christianity is to allow Jesus Christ to be the Lord of every aspect of my life. There is no room for a secular/sacred separation in the life of Jesus’ followers. Secondly, discipleship is not a job, it is a vocation! Further, as a disciple of Jesus, I do not have a job, I have a vocation; and if I go to college, I go to find and become excellent in my vocation, not simply to find a job. A job is a means for supporting myself and those for whom I am responsible for. For the Christian, a vocation (from the Latin vocare, “to call”) is an overall calling from God. The general vocation of all Christians—indeed of all men and women—is the same. We are called to live as children of God, obeying His will in all things. However, obedience to God’s will must inevitably take many different forms. The wife’s mode of obedience is not the same as the nun’s; the farmer’s not the same as the priest’s. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
By “special vocation” we designate God’s call to a human to serve Him in a particular sphere of activity. We often neglect God’s concept of vocation in our models of discipleship. A vocation includes a job but is much, much more. It is the specific role I am to play in life, and it includes the sum total of the natural talents, spiritual gifts, and historical circumstances providentially bestowed on me by God. An important part of a believer’s vocation is one’s major in college or main form of work as a career. If we are to be integrated, holistic Christians who make an impact on the World, we need to learn how to be Christian doctors, schoolteachers, lawyers, businesspersons, and so forth. Some economists assert that, others thing being equal, to the degree that people lead morally upright lives and embody a wide range of virtues, the economy will be healthier. Certain scientists have argued that the big bang theory supports the biblical doctrines that the World had a beginning due to the creative power of a supernatural person outside the World. The church must see herself as an educational institution, and the development of the Christian mind will be at the forefront of the church’s ministry strategy of equipping the saints. After all, most practicing Christians sense deep in their hearts that they know far too little about their faith and are embarrassed about it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
They want to be stretched to learn something regularly and cumulatively over the years by the sermons they hear. People really want passionate and deep commitment to come through the message instead of talk that sounds like it was hurriedly put together the day before. It is important for God’s truth to be exposed through a number of different personalities, and that is more healthy. One reason we have no science of transcendent-behaviour may lie in the relationship between the individual and the social system. Humans, as we encounter then, are fundamentally estranged from much of their possible experience, and from the experience of their possibilities. They have repressed their experience of freedom and renounced their freedom t experience. In order to fit the social systems in which they exist, humans feel obliged to conceal much of their experience from others. If a human conceals too effectively, they finally become alienated from their experience. Phenomenologists are discovering that typical human experiences are fragmented, serialized, objectified, separated from action—in short, reduced from its earlier promise of richness and wholeness. Indeed, we denigrate as infantile, mentally ill, or primitive those persons who report experience in which fantasy, memory, feeling, perception, conceptualizing, and action are all integrated into a rich syncretic unity. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
We reward the human whose experience of oneself and the World is intellectualized and schematized, like a blueprint. It is such people whom psychologists typically study. These persons who have transcendent experience are seldom studied because they seem to defy the “laws of behaviour.” Thus, the possibility arises that our psychology is only a report of the behaviour and experience of human beings who have complied with social and biological pressures (including pressure from the experimenter) and have reduced their experience of themselves and their World in order to “play it safe” and conform. If this is true, there is all the more reason for developing a psychology of transcending. If human functions typically in the “reduced” state, but has the potentiality for transcending it, then we are called upon to explore the conditions which such potentiality can be fulfilled. Actually, the study of transcendent-behaviour is a misnomer. Humans do not transcend their real being; one transcends only someone’s concept of their being—one’s own concept, or that of an investigator or a witness to one’s conduct. Humans cannot go beyond their ultimate limits. One only reveals powers beyond someone’s concept of one’s limits. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
If modal human’s actualizing of possibilities is a feeble hint of what one might be, do, or become; and if a human might become what one (or someone) is capable of imagining one might become—then wild imaginations about human possibilities must be encouraged, both individuals and in those who function as consulting specialists. Surely it is a sad commentary on the profession of psychology that writers of science fiction, certain leaders, poets, mystics, inspired teachers of the young, all have been more productive of concepts of human possibility than psychologists. They also may know more about the ways of brining them into being than psychologists presently do. Also, in the adult and professional World, we do not take seriously enough what children say about their own feelings, and needs, their fears, their version of life as they experience it. One makes us wonder if we may not have encouraged the secretiveness (which misleads us) with which a child may hide its fears when parents in a temper threaten to leave home or kill themselves or throw the child out. A similar secretiveness may be encouraged when the child realizes that a loved person’s death must not be talked about. The feelings surrounding separation are so painful that they tend to be denied, as if the pain many of us feel when we leave a child on its own without us. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
We do not care to put ourselves in the shoes of a child that feels unprotected an abandoned, and so we rather tend to claim that children feel less, or do not remember, or must lean, and so on. This although we know that adults have clearer time-perspectives, better self-control, more ways of compensating, and so on. We cannot bear to think what a childhood can be like. Professionals too, for a variety of reasons, may help to obscure the worries of childhood. With an “attachment figure,” usually the mother, a child’s anxiety grows in intensity, the longer the attachment figure is away. No even the TV will sooth the child. The TV is merely a compliment to the attachment figure, not a substitute. The child’s bond to the mother is built up from many experiences which come from being physically close to a person. Attachment behaviour is rewarding to both participants, and thereby their bond is rewarded and confirmed. Nevertheless, attachment behaviour is based on biological predispositions, making loneliness and lack of support as agonizing a deprivation as hunger. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
Yet we live in a society where people are more likely to be economically successful if they can cultivate individual enterprise, independence, and some ability to disregard their own feelings and other people’s. They, and those who have been unsuccessful in this endeavour, may have to pay quite a price for this. Attachment behaviour leads to affection, and this happens not only in childhood but between adults. Attachment is “any form of behaviour that results in a person being in proximity to some other particular person. As long as the latter—the attachment figure—remains accessible and responsive, attachment behaviour may be more than keeping an eye on the person’s whereabouts. In other circumstances, attachment behaviour shows itself in crying, following about, clinging, and so on, likely to elicit a caring response. Attachment behaviour derives from a distinct biological motivational system (like an instinct), just as feeding does, or any other biologically rooted behaviour. Experience through learning elaborates the biologically given behaviour; the infant may learn what leads to a better maintenance of closeness, and it may learn about the circumstances in which it is best to be close to the other, and when this is less important. Attachment behaviour occurs in many species and work for the survival of the species. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
When attachment behaviour occurs, another being will tend to respond by giving care. Especially the attachment figure will do so. Very intense emotions are involved. The formation of an attachment bond is described as falling in love, maintaining a bond as loving someone, and losing a partner as grieving over someone. The threat of loss arouses anxiety. Actual loss gives rise to sorrow. Loss also arouses anger. The unchallenged maintenance of a bond is experienced as a source of security, and the renewal of a bond as a source of joy. Attachment behaviour is not neurotic but normal. In the progression toward complete identification of our will with God’s there are distinctions to be noted. First there is surrender. When we surrender our will to God we consent to attach ourselves to His supremacy in all things. Perhaps we do so grudgingly. We recognize His supremacy to intellectually, and we concede to it in practice—though we still may not like it, and parts of us may still resist it. We may not be able to do His will, but we are willing to will it. In this condition there is still much grumbling and complaining about our life and about God. We find the Christian life so difficult because we seek for God’s blessing while we live in our own will. We should be glad to live the Christian life according to our own liking. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Still, this is an important move forward. The center of the self, the heart or spirit, is not willing for God to be God—even if with little hope or enthusiasm. Perhaps is it only willing to be made willing. However, it is for lack of this minimal identification with God’s will that multitudes of people are unable to understand the truth of Jesus. “If anyone chooses to do God’s will, one will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own,” reports John 7.17. Such persons who do not understand the truth of Jesus are not willing to do His will, and hence God does not open their understanding, and they cannot do so. They are left to struggle in the darkness, which in fact they desire. And they will certainly reproach God for not giving them more light, though they are unwilling to act on the light they have. However, if grace and wisdom prevail in the life of the one who only surrenders to God’s will, one will move on to abandonment. Then the individual is fully surrendered. There is no longer any part of oneself that holds back from God’s will. Typically, at this point, surrender now covers all the circumstances of life, not just the truth about God and His explicit will (commandments) for human beings, given through the Bible. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
The Sun does not ask any plant, animal, or human if it is worthy before shedding benign life-giving rays upon it. The light is given without stint to all. Why should anyone who is untied with the spiritual Sun of pure love within oneself hold its warmth back from any living creature. Why should one make distinctions and bestow it only on a chosen few? The fact is that one does not. However, the mass of humans fail to recognize what one is, seeing only one’s body, and miss the opportunity that one’s presence among them affords. “And it came to pass that he commanded them that they should write the words which the Father had given unto Malachi, which he should tell unto them. And it came to pass that after they were written he expounded them. And these are the words which he did tell unto them, saying: Thus said the Father unto Malachi—Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in; behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of Hosts. However, who may abide the day of his coming, and who shall stand when he appeareth? For he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fuller’s soap. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
“And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness. Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the Lord, as in the days of old, and as in former years. And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger, and fear not me, saith the Lord of Hosts. For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. Even from the days of your father ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Returned unto me and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of Hosts. However, ye say: Wherein shall we return? Will a man rob Gd? Yet ye have robbed me. However, ye say: Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse, for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in my house; and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of Hoist, if I will not open you the windows of Heaven, and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
“And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the fields, saith the Lord of Hosts. And al nations shall call you blessed, for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the Lord of Hosts. Your words have been stout against me, saith the Lord. Yet ye say: What have we spoken against thee? Ye have said: It is vain t serve God, and what doth it profit that we have kept his ordinances and that we have walked mournfully before the Lord of Hosts? And now we call the proud happy; yea, they that work wickedness are set up; yea, they that tempt God are even delivered. Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another, and the Lord hearkened and heard; and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name. And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of Hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them as a man spareth is own son that serveth him. Then shall ye return and discern between the righteousness and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not,” reports 3 Nephi 24.1-18. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
While some things happen to us may clearly not be what God would wish or has brought about, yet He does allow all—the tragic loss of a loved one, for example, or of health or opportunity, or a grievous wrong done to us by the sins of others. Otherwise such things would not happen. We therefore no longer fret over “the bad thins that happen to goo people,” though we may undergo much hardship and suffering. While God does not cause these things to happen, we now accept them as within His plan for good to those who love Him and are living in his purposes. “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose,” reports Romans 8.28. Irredeemable harm does not befall those who willingly live in the hand of Gd. What an astonishing reality! We are privileged to “kiss the rod” of affliction which strikes us, even while trembling with weakness and pain. What a crucial lesson this is for spiritual transformation! We cease to live on edge, wondering, “Will God do what I want?” Pain will not turn to bitterness or disappointment to paralysis. So forecast the years, and find loss a gain to match, and reach a hand through time to catch the far-off interest of tears. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
However, there is still more. Beyond abandonment is contentment with the will of God: not only with His being who He is and ordaining what He has ordained in general, but with the lot that has fallen to us. At this point in the progression toward complete identification with the will of God, gratitude and joy are the steady tone of our life. We are now assured that God has done, and will always do, well by us—no matter what! Dreary, foot-dragging surrender to God looks like a far distant country. Also, at this point, duplicity looks like utter foolishness in which no sane person would be involved. Grumbling and complaining are gone. “For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his god purpose. Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure children of God without faut in crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the Universe,” reports Philippians 2.13-16. If we learn to obey this commandment, strife and suffering will disappear—not painstakingly resisted or eliminated, but they will be simply unthought of. “Rejoice evermore” is natural and appropriate. Faith is much more than passive belief. We express our faith though action—by the way we live. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
The Saviour promised, “If ye will have faith in me ye shall have power to do whatsoever thing is expedient in me,” reports Moroni 7.33. Hail to you, Saviour setting in the west. As you close your day, you end your long journey. As for me, I too will soon begin my time to rest. However, first, I will one more time face you as you sit on the horizon and once more raise my hand in praise. God is just, though we do not always comprehend His ways. When death seems to overwhelm us, negating life, prayer renews our faith in the worthwhileness of life. In prayer, we manifest our desire and intention to assume the relation to the spiritual community which our parents had in their lifetime. The prayers our ancestors said for us are still guiding us through this life. As we continue the chain of tradition that binds generation to generation, we express our undying faith in God’s love and justice, and pray that He will speed the day when His kingdom shall finally be established and His peace pervade the World. Lord of the Universe, enthroned in Heaven, I pray to you at the end of the day, offering to you my day’s actions on the altar of the fiery sky. Please accept them; please take them to yourself, please purify me of my errors, blessing me in my good deeds. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
You can feel a spirit in there forsure. It is a good feeling. Probably due to the age of the place and all the people who have passed through there. Something just speaks to your soul and feels godly.
Winchester Mystery House
What a great first weekend of our Victorian Candlelight Tour! Tour capacity is greatly reduced and tickets sell fast. The holiday ‘spirits’ are strong this year – grab your tickets while you can!
And please do not get tired of the holiday ‘spirit’ pun, because we will not! 👻
Buy Tickets Link in bio. winchestermysteryhouse.com
🗝 winchestermysteryhouse.com
Cast Upward, through the Waves, a Ruby Glow!
I have called the major crisis of adolescence the identity crisis; it occurs in that period of the life cycle when each youth must forge for oneself some central perspective and direction, some working unity, out of the effective remnants of one’s childhood and the hopes of one’s anticipated adulthood. If I engage in conversation with you, in dialogue; and if you disclose your experience of yourself and of me to me in truth—then I must be letting change happen and be disclosed to us both. If I reflect upon my experience of the dialogue, I must notice that I am different from the way I was when we began the dialogue. However, if I have (as it were) pledged myself to appear before you and to myself as this kind of human and no other, then my intentional disclosures to you will be very selective. Perhaps I will lie to you, to preserve your present concept of me, or at least my concept of your concept of me. Indeed, if my pledge of sameness is made to myself, then every time my actually changed being discloses itself to me, I will become threatened and repress it. I will pretend to myself I did not have the experience of hatred, or of anxiety, or of lust. And I will believe my own pretense to myself. Then I shall not grow. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
My concept of myself will become increasingly estranged from the ongoing change of my being. If my self-concept is too discrepant from actuality, the disclosure to me of my changed being will become more insistent. I will then have to pretend and repress much harder. If the change is too great, the experience of change will no longer me repressible. It will declare itself in my experience and perhaps in my behaviour; I may become terrified and feel I have “gone out of my mind.” Actually, I have, if by “mind” we mean “self-concept.” If still I insist on trying to appear to you as the same person I was, I may develop neurotic symptoms. Or if I am terrified enough, I may become psychotic. You can help me grow, or you can obstruct my growth. If you have a fixed idea of who I am and what my traits are, and what my possibilities of change are, then anything that comes out of me beyond your concept, you will disconfirm. In fact, you may be terrified of any surprises, any changes in my behaviour, because these changes may threaten your concept of me; my changes may, if disclosed to you, shatter your concept of me and challenge you to grow. You may be afraid to. In your fear, you may do everything in your power to get me to un-change and to reappear to you as the person you once knew. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
However, if you suspend any preconceptions you may have of me and my being, and invite me simply to be and to disclose this being to you, you create an ambience, an area of “low pressure” where I can let my being happen and be disclosed, to you and to me simultaneously—to me from the insides, and to you who receive the outside layer of my being. If your concept of my being is one that encompasses more possibilities in my behaviour than I have myself acknowledged; if your concept of my being is more inclusive and indeed more accurate than my concept of my being, and if you let me know how you think of me; if you say, “Now I like you. Now I think you are being ingratiating. Now I think you can succeed at this, if you try”; if you tell me truly how you experience me, I can compare this with my experience of myself, and with my own self-concept. You may thus insert the thin edge of doubt into the crust of my self-concept, helping to bring about its collapse, so that I might re-form it. In fact, this is what a loving friend, or a good psychotherapist, does. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
There is another way you can help me grow and that is through challenging me and encouraging me to attempt new projects. We actually construe and conceptualize the World and ourselves in the light of the projects we live for. It is our commitment to these which structures our Worlds. The beings in the World, including our own being, reveal different faces of themselves to us, depending upon the projects we are pursuing at the moment. The trees in the forest reveal their timber footage to the lumber merchant, the bugs in their trunks to the insect-collector, and their colours to the painter. My muscular strength or weakness reveals itself to me as I try to chop the forest down, and I form a concept of my muscular strength. I may never come to question or doubt this estimate I made. My self-concept gets frozen if my projects are frozen, and if I become too adept and skilled at fulfilling them. Suppose, when I find my existence dull and boring, I decide to try some new project—to write a book, climb a mountain, change jobs. I tell you of this, at first, faint resolve. I am afraid to try, because, as I presently think of myself, I do not believe I have the capacity to succeed. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
If you encourage me to try and encourage me and support me when the going gets rough, so that I stick with the project with more and more singlemindedness, I discover in myself transcendent powers I never experienced before and never imagined I had. Triumphant starts with try. I do not and cannot transcend my possibilities; I do not know what these are and will not know until I stop living. I only transcend my concept of what my possibilities might be. You can help me transcend my concept of what my possibilities might be. You can help me transcend my self-concept by challenging and supporting me in new projects that I undertake. Even the decision to attempt something new results in a new experience of myself and the World, before I actually get going. If I decide to start a new book, I begin to experience friends as interferences in this project; movies and television, formerly very inviting, become dull and boring. The whole World and my experience of myself change with the change in projects. If you help me give up old projects that are no longer satisfying, delightful, or fulfilling and encourage me to dare new ones, you are helping me to grow. If I am willing, God will lead me to places I have never dreamed I could go—as lofty as my dreams might already be. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
God’s thoughts and His ways are much higher than ours. It is a divine goal. Lofty thoughts are what makes life so attractive, and it is at the heart what makes the restored gospel so attractive and inspiring. Deep in our souls is an echo—a memory—that tells us why we came to Earth. We accepted our Father in Heaven’s plan first and foremost because we wanted to become like Him. We knew that it was a staggering goal that would never be easy to achieve. However, we simply could not be satisfied with anything less. Our souls were created to grow, and we were stirred then and now to make the journey. Teaching, learning, and living the gospel are key principles at the heart of growing toward our divine potential and becoming like our Heavenly Parents. Sometimes we call this process eternal progression. Sometimes we simply name it repentance. However, whatever we call it, it involves learning. Learning in the sense of growth and change, of insight leading to improvement, of knowing the truth, which in turn leads us closer to the God of all truth. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
The Holy Ghost gives conviction to the earnest seeker of truth, it fosters faith, which promotes repentance and obedience to God’s commandments. These essential ingredients of conversion turn us from the ways of the World to the ways of the Lord, which brings a mighty change of heart. This kind of learning is about changing ourselves, about being different (better) because we know more of what God knows. You can help yourself grow if you will engage in aimless contemplation and prayer. All these truths God is trying to teach us each day are only so many seeds sown in rocky soil or among the thorns to be burned up or chocked out unless we take Alma’s counsel to nourish them by experimenting in the word. “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves,” reports James 1.22. To contemplate the World before you, in its visual, auditory, olfactory, and tactual dimensions means simply to let the World present itself to you. You are not searching for anything when you contemplate. Rather, you are letting the World disclose itself to you as it is in itself. You can only do this when you suspend your work, your striving, your goals and projects. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
When you suspend your projects in this way, you open the “doors of perception,” and let the word of God, birds, trees, other people, in fact everything disclose itself to you. All these brings always were, but you did not notice so long as you were involved in some task or mission. Such contemplation yields a different experience of the World, which must change your concepts of the World, and thus fosters growth. Maslow has described such contemplation as “B-cognition,” and has pointed out that it has dangers as well as delights. The dangers, of course, are that one might simply revel in the sheer beauty of evil rather than do something about it. However, it cannot be gainsaid that contemplation of the World in this aimless way enriches experience. So many today need to be blasted from their delusions by an understanding of the great doctrine of the Church. There is no text that will ignite one’s soul more than Hebrews 12.22-24, which describes the seven stupendous meetings which the Christian experiences in the Church: “But you have come to Mount Zion, to the Heavenly Jerusalem, the city of living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of Angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in Heaven. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
“You have come to God, the judge of all humans, to the spirits of righteous humans made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.” We come to the city of God—“But you have come to Mount Zion, to the Heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God.” Mount Zion was the location of the Jebusite stronghold which David captured and made the religious center of his kingdom by bring to it the golden Ark of God’s presence. When Solomon built the Temple and installed the Ark, Zion/Jerusalem became synonymous with the Earthly dwelling-place of God. In Christ we have come to its Heavenly counterpart, the spiritual Jerusalem from above. In one sense it is still to come, but at the same time we have already arrived there in spirit. Christians are now citizen the Heavenly City and enjoy it privileges. As the Church we meet Angels—“You have come to thousands upon thousands of Angels in joyful assembly.” Moses tells us that “myriads of holy ones” attend the giving of the Law (Deuteronomy 33.2), and from Daniel we hear that “Thousands upon thousands attended him [the Ancient of Days—God]; ten thousand times thousands stood before him,” reports Daniel 7.10. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
David said, “The chariots of God are tens of thousands and thousands of thousands,” reports Psalm 68.17. In the Church we come to these dizzying thousands of Angels, all of whom are in joyful celebration. They are everywhere—mighty flaming spirits, “ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation,” reports Hebrews 1.14, passing in and out of our lives, moving around us and over us, just as they did to Jacob of old. Instead of gazing upon the World and letting it disclose itself to you through your eyes, ears, nose, and hands, you can pray upon your own experience of your bodily being. Perhaps close your eyes, or seek a tranquil setting with no sudden distractions. Let your experience happen without direction. Engage in free reverie. You may find yourself now recalling something of the past, now vividly imagining—in playful ways—all kinds of possibilities. You may find yourself experiencing anger for somebody, love for somebody else, you may find you have aches and pains you had not noticed before. Some of your self-experiencing may be frightening. It may help you to pray if, instead of close your eyes, you gaze with or without fixed focus at a mandala, or a flower. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
If you gaze long enough, your experiencing my turn on fully and freely. Instead of being frozen into some one mode of experiencing—say, perceiving, or imagining, or remembering—which may be customary for you, you may find that you become “unglued” and then integrated. You experience perceptions fused with memories fused with imagination fused with conceptualizing fused with fantasy fused with emotion. This richness may truly shatter your self-concept, so that when you “pull yourself together,” you are truly a different person from the person you thought you were. As I said before, your being and mine are always in progress of change, in consequence of the way we live, the passage of time, and sheer past experience. However, living as we do mostly at a conceptual level and for definite projects—dealing, not with concrete things, but with concepts of things and people and of ourselves—we reflect quietly upon our awareness of ourselves, we suspend the concepts, and we et our being disclose itself to us. And thus we grow. As we learn the truth and chose to act on it, our testimonies grow. “If any human will do one’s will, one shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself,” reports John 7.17. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
We come to fellow believers—to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in Heaven. Jesus was the firstborn par excellence, and by virtue of our union with Him we are firstborn. All the rights of inheritance go to the first born—to us, “co-heirs with Christ,” reports Romans 8.17. In the Church we do more than come int each other’s presence—we share membership together. We come to God—You have come to God, the judge of all humans. We come in awe because He is the Judge—but we do not come in craven dread, because His Son has borne the judgment for us. This is our highest delight—to gather before our God! We come to the Heavenly Church Triumph—to the spirit of righteous humans made perfect. Though they are in Heaven, we share a solidarity with those who have gone before. The same spiritual life course through us as through them. We share the same secrets and joys as Abraham and Moses and David and Paul. Growing entails going out of our minds and into our raw experience. Our experience is always of the disclosure of the World and of our own embodied being. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
When we function smoothly, habitually, and effectively in the World, our concepts are confirmed; and we do not receive new disclosure. When we meet impasses and failure in the pursuit of our projects, then our habits, concepts (a habit can be seen as the “outside” of a concept), and expectations are challenged, or upended. Failure of our projects gives us a whiff of the stink of chaos, and this can be terrifying. Our concepts get crack in them when we fail. Through these cracks, the encapsulated experience “contained” by the concept might leak or explode; or though the crack there may occur an implosion of more being. When there are no concepts, there is nothing—no-thing we can grapple with, get leverage on, in order to get on with the projects of living. There is the threat of pure chaos and situationlessness. If we experience the pure nothingness, we become panicked, and seek quickly to shore up the collapsing World, to daub clay into the cracks in our concepts. If we do this, we do not grow. If we let the concepts explode or implode and do not re-form them veridically, we appear mad, and are mad. If we re-form them, to incorporate new experience, we grow. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
As we make the truth part of us by striving to live it consistently even in the face of challenges, it changes us and we become more like the Father of truth. Though Earthly families are far from perfect, they give God’s children the best change to be welcomed to the World with the only love on Earth that comes close to what we felt in Heaven—parental love. Families are also the best way to preserve and pass on moral virtues and true principles that are most likely to lead us back to God’s presence. One again, we must consider projects, this time in relation to integration, a vital and crucial phase of growth. When our projects are obstructed, because our concepts are out of phase with being, the concepts must explode, or become fractioned, differentiated into parts. We experience chaos. Our commitment to the old projects, or recommitment to new projects, serves as the field of force which organizes the fractionated experience of being into meaningful wholes, concepts, gestalten. Growth is our experience of our concepts and perfect being detotalized and then retotalized into newly meaningful unities. We have come to Jesus—to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
It is through Jesus that the promises come to us. He is the source and dispenser of all for which we hope. Jesus is in us, and we are in Him. We come to forgiveness because of sprinkled blood—and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. Abel’s warm blood cried condemnation and judgment from the ground, but Christ’s blood shouts that we are forgiven and have peace with God. Hallelujah! I know I am ready to grow when I experience surprise—a dissonance between my beliefs and concepts and expectations of the World and my perception of the World. I am also ready to grow when I experience boredom, despair, depression, anxiety, or guilt. These emotions inform me that my goals and projects have lost meaning for me; that my being has gotten too big, too out of phase with my concepts of my being. I have a choice at these moments, if indeed I can experience them. I may have become so unaccustomed to and maladapt at reflection and prayer that I simply do not notice these all-is-not-well signals. And I continue to pursue my projects and to believe my beliefs as if experience were conforming them. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
However, if I do not acknowledge the signals, my choice is either to pray, suspend my concept and preconception of self, and let my changed being disclose itself to me, even when it hurts (it frequently does); or to decide to affirm the project of being the same (an impossible project, but one that many people try to live). If I decide to try to be the same, then I will repress my experience of change, of all-is-not-well signals. I have resolved, really, to stop perceiving myself. The invitation to suspend preconceptions and concepts, to let being disclose itself, is actually an invitation to go out of one’s mind. To be out of one’s mind can be terrifying; because when projects are suspended, and experiencing is just happening, myself and the World are experienced as infinite possibility: anything might be possible. Yet, if a person can endure this voyage within one’s own experience—one’s Odyssey within—one can emerge from it with a new concept of one’s being and with new projects; the new concept of being will include more of one’s being in it. However, this new integration will last only so long, and then the entire process must be repeated again. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
A sentient life is an endless series of getting out of one’s mind and concepts, only to reenter and to depart again. The Scriptures tell us that in the Church “you have come” (right now!) to these seven sublime realities: to the city of God, to myriads of Angels, to fellow believers, to God, to the Church of Triumphant, to Jesus, and to forgiveness. If this does not create a wellspring of thanksgiving in your hearts and a longing for fellowship in the visible Church, nothing will! When many of us fall into despondency which may last for several says, we desperately seek a word from God to meet our need. Often times, we will find one night that the World was good to us; maybe we have had but few better; we long for the company of some of God’s people, that we may impart into them what God has shown us. Christ is a precious Christ to our souls on a night like such; we can scarce lie in our bed for joy, and peace, and triumph through Christ. Saviour, if of Zion’s city, I through grace a member am, please let the World deride or pity, I will glory in Thy name. “And it came to pass that Jesus commanded his disciples that they should bring forth some bread and wine unto him. And while they were gone for bread and wine, he commanded the multitude that they should sit themselves down upon the Earth. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
“And when the disciples had come with bread and wine, Jesus took of the bread and brake and blessed it; and he gave unto the disciples and commanded that they should eat. And when they had eaten and were filled, he commanded that they should give unto the multitude. And when the multitude had eaten and were filled, he said unto the disciples: Behold there shall one be ordained among you, and to him will I give power that he shall break bread and bless it and give it unto the people of my church, unto all those who shall believe and be baptized in my name. And this shall ye always observe to do, even as I have done, even as I have broken bread and blessed it and given it unto you. And this shall ye do in remembrance of my body, which I have shown unto you. And it shall be a testimony unto the Father that ye do always remember me. And if ye do always remember me ye shall have my Spirit to be with you. And it came to pass that when he said these words, he commanded his disciples that they should take of the wine of the cup and drink of it, and that they should also give unto the multitude that they might drink of it. And it came to pass that they did so, and did drink of it and were filled; and they gave unto the multitude, and they did drink, and they were filled. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
“And when the disciples had done this, Jesus said unto them: Blessed are ye for this thing which ye has done, for this is fulfilling my commandments, and this doth witness unto the Father that ye are willing to do that which I have commanded you. And this shall ye always do to those who repent and are baptized in my name; and ye shall do it in remembrance of my blood, which I have shed for you, that ye may witness unto the Father that ye do always remember me. And if ye do always remember me, ye shall have my spirit to be with you. And I give unto you a commandment that ye shall do these things. And if ye shall do these things, blessed are ye, for ye are built on my rock. However, whoso among you shall do more or less than these are not built upon my rock, but are built upon a sandy foundation; and when the rain descends, and the floods come, and the winds blow, and beat upon them, they shall fall, and the gates of hell are ready open to receive them. Therefore blessed are ye if ye shall keep my commandments, which the Father hath commanded me that I should give unto you. Verily, verily, I say unto you, ye must watch and pray always, lest ye be tempted by the devil, and ye be led away captive by him. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
“And as I have prayed among you even so shall ye pray in my church, among my people who do repent and are baptized in my name. Behold I am the light; I have set an example for you. And it came to pass that when Jesus has spoken these words unto his disciples, he turned again unto the multitude and said unto them: Behold, verily, verily, I say unto you, ye must watch and pray always lest ye enter into temptation; for Satan desireth to have you, that he may sift you as wheat. Therefore ye must always pray unto the Father in my name; and whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, which is right, believing that ye shall receive, behold it shall be given unto you. Pray in your families unto the Father, always in my name, that your wives and your children may be blessed. And behold, ye shall meet together oft; and ye shall not forbid any human from coming unto you when ye shall meet together, but suffer them that they may come unto you and forbid them not; but ye shall pray for them, and shall not cast them out; and if it so be that they come unto you oft ye shall pray for them unto the Father, in my name. Therefore, hold up your light that it may shine unto the World. Before I am the light which ye shall hold up—that which ye have seen me do. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
“Behold ye see that I have prayed unto the Father, and ye all have witnessed. And ye see that I have commanded that none of you should go away, but rather have commanded that ye should come unto me, that ye might feel and see; even so shall ye do unto the World; and whosoever breaketh this commandment suffereth himself to be led into temptation. And now it came to pass that when Jesus had spoken these words, he turned his eyes again upon the disciples whom he had chosen, and said unto them: Behold verily, verily, I say unto you, I give unto you another commandment, and then I must go unto my Father that I may fulfil other commandments which he hath given me. And now behold, this is the commandment which I give unto you, that ye shall not suffer any one knowingly to partake of my flesh and blood unworthily, when ye shall minister it; for whoso eateth and drinketh my flesh and blood unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to his soul; therefore if ye know that a human is unworthy to eat and drink of my flesh and blood ye shall forbid one. Nevertheless, ye shall not cast one out from among you, but ye shall minister unto one and shall pray for one unto the Father, in my name; and if it so be that one repenteth and is baptized in my name, then shall ye receive one, and shall minister unto one of my flesh and blood. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
“However, if one repent no one shall not be numbered among my people, that one may not destroy my people, for behold I know my sheep, and they are numbered. Nevertheless, ye shall not cast one out of your synagogues, or your places of worship, for unto such shall ye continue to minister; for ye know not but what they will return and repent, and come unto me with full purpose of heart, and I shall heal them; and ye shall be the means of bringing salvation unto them. Therefore, keep these sayings which I have commanded you that ye come not under condemnation; for wo unto one who the Father condemneth. And I give you these commandments because of the disputations which have been among you. And blessed are ye if ye have no disputations among you. And now I go unto the Father, because it is expedient that I should go unto the Father for your sakes. And it came to pass that when Jesus had made an end of these sayings, he touched with his hand the disciples whom he had chosen, one by one, even until one had touched them all, and spake unto them as he touched them. And the multitude heard not the words which he spake, therefore they did not bear record. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
“However, the disciples bare record that he gave them power to give the Holy Ghost. And I will show unto you hereafter that this record is true. And it came to pass that when Jesus had touched them all, there came a cloud and overshadowed the multitude that they could not see Jesus. And while they were overshadowed he departed from them, and ascended into Heaven. And the disciples saw and did bear record that he ascended again into Heaven,” 3 Nephi 19.1-39. Though you are high above, your heat still reached me, testing my endurance as I work under its glare. Please do not give me more testing than I can handle, and please do not insult me by making life a cake walk. May His great name be blessed for ever and ever. Exalted and honored be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, whose glory transcends, yea, is beyond all praises, hymns and blessings that humans can render unto Him; and say ye, Amen. May the prayers and supplications of the whole house of Israel be accepted unto their Father in Heaven; and say ye, Amen. May there be abundant peace from Heaven, and life for us and all of Israel; and say ye, Amen. May He who establisheth peace in the Heavens, grant peace unto us all and unto all Israel; and say ye, Amen. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
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They only complete love is for God. The goal is to love everyone equally, but it does not necessarily work out that way. Science is the creation of scientists, and every science advance bears somehow the mark of humans who made it. The artist exposes oneself in one’s work; the scientist seems rather to hide in one’s, but one is there. If one is to fully understand the process of science, surely the historian of science must understand the human, and if one is to understand the people who make it, one must have some comprehension of the science. The general public image of the scientist has not been and indeed is not now a flattering one, and at best it certainly is not an endearing one. Characterization of scientists almost always emphasize the objectivity of their work and describe their cold, detached, impressive unconcerned observation of phenomena which have no emotional meaning for them. This could hardly be further from the truth. The scientist as a person is a nonparticipating observer in only a very limited sense. One does not interact with what one is observing, but one does participate as a person. It is, perhaps, this fact—that the scientist does not expect, indeed does not want, the things that one is concerned with to be equally concerned with one—that has given others this impression of coldness, remoteness, and objectivity. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
The social scientist is in a remarkably difficult position since the object with which one is concerned are people, and both they and one may be more than a little ambivalent about this matter of interaction. However, this is a special problem which I will by-pass here, nothing only that in many ways the social scientist differs from the natural scientist in terms of personality and motivations. The truth of the matter is that the creative scientist, whatever one’s field, is very deeply involved emotionally and personally in one’s work, and that one oneself is one’s own most essential tool. We must consider both the subjectivity of science and what kinds of people are scientists. However, first we must consider the process of science. Suppose we take the scientist at the time wen one has asked a question, or has set up a hypothesis which one wants to test. One must decide what observations to make. It is simply not possible to observe everything that does on under a given set of conditions: one must choose what to observe, what measurements to make, how fine these measurements are to be, now to record them. These choices are never dictated entirely by the question or hypothesis (and anyway, that too bears one’s own particular stamp). #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
One has only to consider how differently several of one’s colleagues would go about testing the same hypothesis to see that personal choice enters here. However, this is just the beginning. Having decided what is to be observed, and having set up the techniques for observation, the scientist comes to the point of making the actual observations, and of recording these observations. All the complex apparatus of modern science is only a means of extending the range of human’s sensory and perceptual capacities, and all the information derived through such extensions must eventually be reduced to some form in which humans, with their biological limitations, can receive it. Here, too, in spite of all precautions and in spite of complete honesty, the personal factor enters in. The records of two observers will not dovetail exactly, even when they read figures from a dial. Errors may creep in, and the direction of the error is more likely than not to be associated with the observer’s interest in how the findings come out. Perhaps the clearest evidence on this point comes from research on extrasensory perception. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
If the import of an observation is immediately apparent, a scientist who is deeply committed to a hypothesis is well advised to have a neutral observer. Often, of course, such errors are minor, but they can be important, not only to the immediate problem but to society. I have wondered to what extent the disparity in figures on radioactive fallout may reflect such factors. Very few scientists, including psychologists, who have demonstrated selective perception as a laboratory exercise, take account of the phenomenon in their own work. Once the observations are recorded, other questions are asked: When is the evidence sufficient to be conclusive, one way or the other? How important are discrepancies? What degree of generalization is permissible? Here, again, we may expect personally slanted answers. Taxonomy offers a very clear illustration of the effect of personality: One biologist may classify a given set of specimens into a few species, and another may classify them into many species. Whether the specimens are seen as representing a few or many groups depends largely on whether one looks for similarities or for differences, on whether one looks at the forest or the trees. A “lumper” may honestly find it impossible to understand how a “splitter” arrives at such an obviously incorrect solution, and vice versa. #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
Such differences cannot be resolved by appeal to the facts—there are no facts which cannot be perceived in different ways. This is not to say that the facts are necessarily distorted. The problem of the criterion exists in all science, although some scientists are more aware of it than others. The matter of personal commitment to a hypothesis is one that deserves more consideration than it usually receives. Any person who has gone through the emotional process of developing a new idea, of constructing a new hypothesis, is to some extent, and usually to a large extent, committed to that hypothesis in a very real sense. It is one’s baby. It is as much one’s creation as a painting is the personal creation of the painter. True, in the long run it stands or falls, is accepted or rejected, on its own merits, but its creator has a personal stake in it. The scientist has more at stake than the artist, for data which may support or invalidate one’s hypothesis are in the public domain in a sense in which art criticism never is. It may even be because of this that scientist customarily check their hypotheses as far as they can before they state them publicly. And, indeed, the experienced scientist continues to check, hoping that is errors are to be found, it will be one who finds them, so that one will have a chance to make revisions, or even to discard the hypothesis, should that prove necessary. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
If, in one’s efforts at checking, one has been able to come up with another one, one finds it less difficult to discard one’s hypothesis. The extent of personal commitment to a hypothesis is a prominent factor in the historical interplay between scientists. The degree of this commitment varies in an individual with different hypotheses, and varies between individuals. One very important factor here is the scientist’s productivity. If one has many new ideas one will be less disturbed (and less defensive) if one fail to pan out. If one has very few ideas, an error is much harder to take, and there are many historical instances of errors which the author of the idea has never been able to see oneself. I think many scientists are genuinely unaware of the extent, or even the fact, of this personal involvement, and themselves accept the myth of impersonal objectivity. This is really very unfortunate. It is true that only a person who is passionately involved in one’s work is likely to make important contributions, but the committed person who knows one is committed and comes to terms with this fact has a good chance of getting beyond one’s commitment and of learning how to disassociate oneself from one’s idea when this is necessary. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
There is little in the traditional education of scientists to prepare them for this necessity, and there are many who are still unaware of it. The extent of a scientist’s personal involvement in a theory can now be a matter of grave public concern. Scientists who become advisers on political or other policy have an extraordinarily heavy responsibility for achieving some detachment from their own theories. How many of them realize this? However, once one’s hypothesis is found acceptable, this is not the end of it. One hypothesis inevitably leads to another; answering one question makes it possible to ask other, hopefully more precise ones. And so a new hypothesis or a new theory is offered. How is this new theory arrived at? This is one expression of the creative process, and it is a completely personal process. It is personal regardless of whether one or more individuals is involved, for every advance made by a group, the person contributing at the moment has had to assimilate the contributions of others and order them in one’s own personal way. After a person has abandoned one’s previous incarnation, entered one’s experiencing, and then emerged, one experiences the World as disclosing new possibilities, new dimensions of its being for one. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
However, I am part of this World, and I have the capacity to disclose myself to one even while one is embodies in one’s usual fixed roles and self-definitions. When I am with one, I can disclose to one how I experience one. I can enter int dialogue with one; and with each of one’s utterances or acts, I can respond out of my experience and disclose to one what it is that I am experiencing. If I remain in contact with one, consistently in dialogue, I may actually lead one to the edge of going out of one’s mind, thus clearing the way for the emergence of a new self. I ask you to consider dialogue. You say something from your being—let us employ a jazz combo to illustrate. I blow a phrase on my trumpet, and you respond with a passage on your saxophone. Your response is both a reply and a question and a challenge, and so I reply. And so it goes until one of us loses one’s nerve and dares not let spontaneous, true disclosure out. Dialogue has ended for the time. Now switch to the dialogue in psychotherapy. The patient says something to me. I reply, in honesty. My reply evokes experiencing in one, and one utters this. This evokes a reply from me. We continue in this way until one has tripped off panic in the other; at this point, in sincerity, dissemblance intrudes, and dialogue has creased. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
One of the participants does not wish to be known, and one holds back. In dialogue at its best, the participants remain in contact and let their reciprocal disclosures affect one another. If the dialogue occurs in the context of letting be and confirmation, then the weaker of the two may indeed flip into raw experiencing, find it safe, and emerge in a more awakened state. Authentic disclosure of self is a likely factor in the promotion of awakening, of authentication and validation of the other, and the emergence of independent learning. However, authentic disclosure is rare. More common is semblance, role-playing, impersonation of the other one wishes to seem to the Other. Hence, the other person seldom truly encounters a person-in-process. One meets a pledge of consistency, a World of people who do not invite one into new possibilities. If I am in your World, and I do not grow and change, then you are in a World that obstructs and impedes your growth! In true encounter, there is a collapse of roles and self-concepts. No one emerges from an encounter the same as one entered. My willingness to disclose myself to you, to drop my mask, is a factor in your trusting me and daring then to disclose yourself to me. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
This disclosure of yourself to me assists the process of your disengagement from your disengagement from your previous ways of being. And as I disclose myself to you, I am your World, and this World discloses new possibilities to you—it evokes new challenges and invitations that may stir and enliven your imagination. In an age in which infidelity abounds, do we observe them [parents] carefully instructing their children in the principles of faith which they profess? Or do they furnish their children with arguments for the defense of that faith? They would blush on their child’s birth to think one inadequate in any branch of knowledge or any skill pertaining to one’s station in life. One cultivates these skills with becoming diligence. However, one is left to collect one’s religion as one may. The study of Christianity has formed no part of one’s education. One’s attachment to it—where any attachment to it exists at all—is too often not the preference of sober reason and conviction. Instead one’s attachment to Christianity is merely the result of early and groundless possession. One was born in a Christian country, so of course one is a Christian. One’s father was a member of the Church of England, so that is why one is, too. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
When religion is handed down among us by hereditary succession, it is not surprising to find youth of sense and spirit beginning to question the truth of the system in which they were brought up. And it is not surprising to see them abandon a position which they are able to defend. Knowing Christianity chiefly by its difficulties and the impossibilities falsely imputed to it, they fall perhaps into the company of unbelievers. Having witnessed hundreds of evangelical children hit the college campus, I can attest to the fact that we need to start early in teaching them the reasons for their faith. Make no mistake about it. Young children can ask profound intellectual questions about God and religion. And if we do not take them seriously and work to provide them with good answers, it will impact the vibrancy of their Christian commitment sooner or later. Just last night I received a phone call from a woman in our neighbourhood called Monica. Monica has a son in high school who is a friend of my youngest teenage daughter, Jillian. Monica become a Christian five years ago, and her son is a believer, too. Unknown to me, a friend of Monica’s had recommended she read an apologetic book on Christianity. She then called to ask me some apologetic questions. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
The conversation was quite interesting. She opened up on the phone about a frustration and a fear. The frustration was that she still has a large number of non-Christian friends and relatives who regularly asked her hard questions about her faith that she was not able to answer. She felt fear because of the spiritual life of her son, like most teenagers, was something she could not take for granted, and her son regularly asked her questions about Christianity that she could not address. If she did not take hard questions seriously enough to find out answers, she feared not only for her son’s spiritual growth but also that he would not respect her own dedication to Christ. Her son had pointed out that she had time to do a number of hobbies, watch television, and so on, so that if getting god answers to certain questions mattered to her, she would have gotten them by now. He concluded that her faith must not matter that much to her, because she had not taken the time t wrestle with issues that might show her faith was false. I encouraged her to continue growing and to be intentional about making progress in learning apologetical answers to various questions. My experience leads me to believe that Monica’s situation is not unique. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Monica’s call reminded me that it is important to develop our Christian minds by learning why we believe what we believe. This is an important aspect of our spiritual lives. As we grow in our apologetical knowledge and skills, our faith becomes more steady, powerful, and confident. We also grow in our courage and boldness as witnesses for Jesus Christ. And we learn to be attractive, nondefensive ambassadors for Christ who are prepared to give an answer to someone who asks us what we believe and why. As one can see, there is great importance in the transformations of our minds toward Christlikeness as it relates to evangelism. An important foundation for evangelism is the ability to answer questions, much like Monica’s need just mentioned. The Master is always there, behind the disciple, always ready to give one stability, guidance, inspiration, peace, and strength. If the disciple does not find these things coming to one from the Master, the fault is in oneself, the blockage is self-created, is somewhere between the two, and only one alone and remove it. If the disciple becomes responsive enough, if one’s mind is harmonized with the master’s, there will be a feeling of one’s presence even though a continent’s width separates them. The master’s nearness will sometimes seem quite uncanny. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
Yet the deeper we travel, the less need have we of thoughts and words, for all multiplicity collapses in this marvelous unity. We can neither think nor talk of this sublime state with any accuracy. Hence the only medium whereby we can properly represent it is—silence! Hence the competent teacher gives one’s best teaching not through lectures, talks, or books, but through this magical, mysterious, yet effective silence wherein the higher initiations are wrapped. To sit with such a teacher in the right receptive attitude for a single hour of meditation may bring more than ten years of previous self-effort could bring. For one can telepathically carry the other’s power of attention to a depth in the stillness which is habitual with one but which is rare or unknow to most. Thereafter one of the veils is torn aside and one can more easily penetrate to the same depth alone. One should ask oneself whether one is attracted by the teacher’s mind or body, whether one is devoted to the teacher’s thought or flesh. If one can answer correctly one should grant that real discipleship exists only when the sense of the teacher’s physical form is absent and one’s spiritual being is present. And this indeed is the case. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
The outer relation is only a beginning, a slight foretaste of the richness possible in this inner relation, this union of heart and soul. Then the disciple finds that the teacher’s nearness to or distance from one is not to be measured in miles, is not an affair of what can be seen sensorily, but of what can be felt mentally. Sat-sang, or inner affiliation with the master, is regarded as more important than outer association with one. “If any human is willing to do His will, one shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God, or whether I speak from Myself,” reports John 7.17. Would you know who is the greatest saint in the World? It is not one who prays most or fasts most; it is not one who gives most alms or is most eminent for temperance, chastity, or justice; but it is one who is always thankful to God, who wills everything that God wills, who receives everything as an instance of God’s goodness and has a heart as an instance of God’s goodness and has a heart always ready to praise God for it. By this point we are beginning to get a glimpse of what those renovated in Christlikeness look like. We know that they will have a thought life centered on God in His goodness and greatness, and therefore on truth. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
Also, their feelings will be dominated by the rich array of beneficial feelings that naturally accompany love, joy, and peace, along with their foundational conditions of faith and hope. However, such conditions of thought and feeling are not to be produced and sustained without massive changes in other dimensions of the human being, nor do those massive changes in other dimensions come about without corresponding transformations of thought and feeling. Each constituent of the human being is but one element in an interlocking whole. Those constituents can to some degree be distinguished and described in isolation from the others, but they cannot actually exist or develop except in tandem with the others. “And now it came to pas that there were a great multitude gathered together, of the people of Nephi, round about the temple which was in the land Bountiful; and they were marveling and wondering one with another, and were showing one to another the great and marvelous change which had taken place. And they were also conversing about this Jesus Christ, of whom the sign had been given concerning his death. And it came to pass that while they were thus conversing one with another, they heard a voice as if it came out of the Heaven. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
“And they cast their eyes round about, for they understood not the voice which they heard; and it was not a harsh voice, neither was it a loud voice; nevertheless, and notwithstanding it being a small voice it did pierce them that did hear to the center, insomuch that there was no part of their frame that it did not cause to quake; yea, it did pierce them to the very soul, and did cause their hearts to burn. And it came to pass that again they heard the voice, and they understood it not. And again the third time they did hear the voice, and did open their ears to hear it; and their eyes were towards the sound thereof; and they did look steadfastly towards Heaven, from whence the sound same. And behold, the third time they did understand the voice which they heard; and it said unto them: Behold my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, in whom I have glorified my name—hear ye him. And it came to pass, as they understood they cast their eyes up again towards Heaven; and behold, they saw a Man descending out of Heaven; and he was clothed in a white robe; and he came down and stood in the midst of them; and the eyes of the whole multitude were turned upon him, and they durst not open their mouths, even one to another, and wist not what it meant, for they thought it was an Ange that had appeared unto them. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
“And it came to pass that he stretched forth his hand and spake unto the people, saying: Behold, I am Jesus Christ, whom the prophets testified shall come into the World. And behold, I am the light and the life of the World; and I have drunk out of that bitter cup which the Father hath given me, and have glorified the Father in taking upon me the sins of the World, in the which I have suffered the will of the Father in all things from the beginning. And it came to pass that when Jesus had spoken these words the whole multitude fell to the Earth; for they remembered that it had been prophesied among them that Christ should show himself unto them after his ascension into Heaven. And it came to pass that the Lord spake unto them saying: Arise and come forth unto me, that ye may thrust your hands into my side, and also that ye may feel the prints of the nails in my hands and in my feet, that ye may know that I am the God of Israel, and the God of the whole Earth, and have been slain for the sins of the World. And it came to pass that the multitude went forth, and thrust their hands into his side, and did feel the prints of the nails in his hands and in his feet; and this they did do, going forth one by one until they had all gone forth, and did see with their eyes and did feel with their hands, and did know of a surety and did bear record, that it was he, of whom it was written by the prophets, that should come. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
“And when they had all gone forth and had witnessed for themselves, they did cry out with one accord, saying: Hosanna! Blessed be the name of the Most High God! And they did fall down at the feet of Jesus, and did worship him. And it came to pass that he spake unto Nephi (for Nephi was among the multitude) and he commanded him that he should come forth. And Nephi arose and went forth, and bowed himself before the Lord and did kiss his feet. And the Lord commanded him that he should arise. And he arose and stood before him. And the Lord said unto him: I give unto you power that ye shall baptize this people when I am again ascended into Heaven. And again the Lord called others, and said unto them likewise; and he gave unto them power to baptize. And he said unto them: On this wise shall ye baptize; and there shall be no disputations among you. Verily I say unto you, that whoso repenteth of one’s sins through your words, and desireth to be baptized in my name, on this wise shall ye baptize them—Behold, ye shall go down and stand in the water, and in my name shall ye baptize them. And now behold, these are the words which ye shall say, calling them by name, saying: #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
“Having authority given me of Jesus Christ, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. And then shall ye immerse them in water, and come forth again out of the water. And after this manner shall ye baptize in my name; for behold, verily I say unto you, that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost are one; and I am in the Father, and the Father in me, and the Father and I are one. And according as I have commanded you thus shall ye baptize. And there shall be no disputations among you, as there have hitherto been; neither shall there be disputations among you concerning the points of my doctrine, as there have hitherto been. For verily, verily I say unto you, he that hath the spirit of contentions is not of me, but is of the devil, who is the father of contention, and he stirreth up the hearts of humans to contend with anger, one with another. Behold, this is not my doctrine, to stir up the hearts of humans with anger, one against another; but this is my doctrine, that such things should be done away. Behold, verily, verily, I say unto you, I will declare unto you my doctrine. And this is my doctrine, and it is the doctrine which the Father hath given unto me. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
“And I bear record of the Father, and the Father beareth record of me, and the Holy Ghost beareth record of the Father and me; and I bear record that the Father commandeth all humans, everywhere, to repent and believe in me. And whoso believeth in me, and is baptized, the same shall be saved; and they are they who shall inherit the kingdom of God. And whoso believeth not in me, and is not baptized, shall be damned. Verily, verily, I say unto you, that this is my doctrine, and I bear record of it from the Father; and whoso believeth in me believeth in the Father also; and unto one will the Father bear record of me, for he will visit one with fire and with the Holy Ghost. And thus will the Father bear record of me, and the Holy Ghost will bear record unto one of the Father and me; for the Father, and I, and the Holy Ghost are one. And again I say unto you, ye must repent, and become as a little child, and be baptized in my name, or ye can in nowise receive these things. And again I say unto you, ye must repent, and be baptized in my name, and become as a little child, or ye can in nowise inherit the kingdom of God. Verily, verily, I say unto you, that this is my doctrine, and whoso buildeth upon this buildeth upon my rock, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against them. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
“And whoso shall declare more or less than this, and established it for my doctrine, the same cometh of evil, and is not built upon my rock; but one buildeth upon a sandy foundation, and the gates of hell stand open to receive such when the floods come and the winds beat upon them. Therefore, go forth unto this people, and declare the words which I have spoken, unto the ends of the Earth,” reports 3 Nephi 11.1-41. The truth of our intellect is according to its conformity with its principle, that is to say, to the things from which it receives knowledge. The truth also of things is according to their conformity with their principle, namely, the divine intellect. Now this cannot be said, properly speaking, of divine truth; unless perhaps in so far as truth is appropriated to the Son, Who has a principle. However, if we speak of divine truth in its essence, we cannot understand this unless the affirmative must be resolved into the negative, as wen one says: “the Father is of Himself, because He is not from another.” Similarly, the divine truth can be called a “likeness to the principle,” inasmuch as His existence is not dissimilar to His intellect. Not-being and privation have no truth of themselves, but only in the apprehension of the intellect. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
Now all the apprehension of the intellect is from God. Hence all the truth that exists in the statement—“that a person commits fornication is true”—is entirely from God. However, to argue, “Therefore that this person fornicates is from God,” is a fallacy Accident. My day begins again, and again I dedicate myself to the service of God. May it be His task I perform. Remember the Messiah of the house of David, Thy servant, and Jerusalem, Thy holy city, and all Thy people, the house of Israel. Please grant us deliverance and wellbeing, lovingkindness, life and peace on this day of : The Feast of Unleavened Bread. The Fest of Weeks. The Feast of Tabernacles. The Eighth-Day Fest of Assembly. Please remember us this day, O Lord our God, for our good, and please be mindful of us for a life blessing. With Thy promise of salvation and mercy, please deliver us and be gracious unto us, have compassion upon us and please save us. Unto Thee we do life our eyes for Thou art a gracious and merciful God and King. Just as the proximity of an electrified wire coil can induce a current of magnetism in a bar of soft iron, so the proximity of those who love God and are true Christians can induce some of their Christlike inner stillness to appear in those who are receptive of God’s grace. #RandolphHarris 23 of 23
Winchester Mystery House
During Sarah Winchester’s lifetime, the spookiest day of the year was actually Christmas Eve. Families and neighbors would gather around the fire in shadow filled story circles to hear tales of specters and the supernatural.
The all new Victorian Candlelight Tour will feature some of our most chilling ghost stories told as you explore the most active parts of the Mansion, including the basement, which has been off limits for quite some time now. It is a rare chance to glimpse one of the world’s most alleged haunted mansions at night…all alone on a safe, self-guided adventure! Tour capacity is LIMITED and these dates will sell out quick – get your tickets while they’re available! 🎄🔔
Buy Tickets Link in bio. winchestermysteryhouse.com
The Learner Has the Need and the Capacity to Assume Responsibility for One’s Own Continuing Learning!
The system has not failed—but some of us have failed the system. Do not become the problems instead of the solution to the problem. Recent insights from the behavioral sciences have expanded our conceptions of human potential through a re-casting of the image of the human—from passive, reactive recipient to an active, seeking, autonomous, and reflective being. What are the implications of this impelling new image for our concern with human the learner? Educators are giving increased attention to implementing in practice the recognition that the learner has both the capacity and the need to assume responsibility for one’s continuing learning. However, the real question is here is what do humans learn and for whom? Learning is not a task; it is a way to be in the World. Humans learn as they purse their goals and projects that have meaning for them. Humans are always learning something. Perhaps the key to the problem of independent learning lies in the phrase, “The learner has the need and the capacity to assume responsibility for one’s own continuing learning.” That is one phrase that will help wide unclasp the table of their thoughts. These same thoughts—people, the little World. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
It may well be that those who train young people in the ways of their group (a most necessary task) have overshot the mark; they have trained youngster to believe that they cannot, dare not, learn anything without a trainer close at hand. The only safe and good learning is learning-for-the trainer. And the youngsters, being human, independently learned something meaningful to them; namely, that it is dangerous or futile to become interested in something, to learn for oneself. It is only safe to learn for the teacher’s or for society’s approval. One set of image-molders, the teachers, have been commissioned by social leaders to shape youngsters to the acquiescent mode. They implement this commission by invalidating a child’s experience of spontaneous curiosity and fascination with aspects of the World. They insist one learn only when and what one is taught. One must learn for others. The teachers and parents have robbed children of their autonomy—their capacity to experience amazement, wonder, and fascination—by invalidating it whenever it appears. Then, they look at their product and find it wanting; they produced a Golem, a humanoid, a “dependent learning.” Now we are asked to breathe life into it. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
We are caught on the horns of a dilemma. Children must be shown the ways of their group; they must be taught and trained. However, if they are to experience their lives as meaningful, and if the society in which they live is to grow and change, they must also be able to transcend this training and learn for themselves. The question is, how is it possible to reconcile the contradiction between teaching children for society and letting them learn for themselves, such that children can serve their society without a loss of freedom and capacity to go beyond what they have been taught? This is the same problem, write large, that every serious teacher—of piano, of art, of math, or English, of Science, of History, of woodshop, of psychotherapy, or even of teaching—faces: how can one teach a pupil in the fundamental techniques of this art without producing a mere technician? In any of these arts, we wish the learner to commit oneself, to be willing to struggle for objectives beyond mastery of exercises and technique (learning experienced as “for-the-teacher”) and even beyond current goals. We hope one will week to make actual one’s own image (not one’s teacher’s image) of beautiful music, pictures, woodworks, healthy personalities, or independent learners. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
If the teacher has been effective, one will have shown one’s pupil that techniques are no more than a beginner’s set of tools, to be used up to the point that an impasse is reached. Then, the trust scholar, the involved therapist, the committed teacher (committed to one’s own image of ultimate goals, not means), gropes and leaps into the unknown, exercising that courage that is not devoid of fear and trembling, to invent or discover new means to further one’s project of actualizing the image. If the old versions of the ultimate goals have lost meaning, the pupil will envision new embodiments of them. Your must play the teacher to yourself. One cannot tread the path for you: you must walk and work by your own effort. The mother cannot grow up on behalf of the child, no matter how greatly she loves it. The adept cannot do your growing-up for you. Nature’s laws must prevail. One has shown you the way; use your will to follow it. However, devote a little time each day to keeping open the channel of communication with your teacher and thus receive one’s impetus, one’s inspiration to help you. So although you must strive by your own use of free will, do not imagine that you need to strive unassisted. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
Working along the line that the teacher found suitable for oneself, slavishly and artificially trying to produce a copy of one, will in the end not even produce that but a caricature instead. For only the teacher’s bodily acts will be imitated; one’s Spirit is invisible and therefore cannot be imitated. Why should anyone copy another’s artwork? Why should Whistler paint pictures in the same way that Gainsborough did? Whistler remained loyal to one’s own conceptions. Why then, going further, copy another’s lifestyle? We may honour a master’s inspirations but yet express our own in our individual way. It is true that followers have no right to burden the teacher with their personal problems, that they should learn bravely to shoulder their difficulties and not pass them on to one. Yet human nature is weak, the teacher kindly. What they may do without taxing one’s strength is to place the problem before one in prayer, thought, or meditation silently, and nor in letter or interview. If they will keep their distresses, troubles, or indecisions to themselves in this way, such reticence will not be to their loss. When an aspirant plagues a teacher too frequently or on too trivial matters, it is indeed a sign of neuroticism. Such conduct is quite suited to children but not to adults. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
Every person must come to terms with who they are now. It reveals too egocentric a person, one who is unwilling to bring the stage of novice to an end because the dependence on another person is more comforting and much easier than endeavouring to settle one’s own little problems. One must learn to speak, move, and even experience the World in the given ways, those deemed right and sane where one lives. It is not easy. It takes a long time. The temptation to stary is strong. Commissars stand close, to insure each person conforms to one’s prescribed position and role. Once a human masters the rules of the social “games,” what then? One plays the games so long as they yield meaningful rewards and the rewards of meaning. Ultimately, the games become confining, boring, even strangling. The person may then wish to opt out, but one cannot—there re no other games to play. So one may become sick. Then, one is patched up by doctors who pronounce one healed, and they send one back into the game. If one seeks to transcend the given, for new realms of experience, one threatens the sleep of the unawakened. They condemn and invalidate one. So one gives up and becomes “normal,” or else seeks a richer experience in private, the while impersonating a typical person. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
It should be made clear that dramatic and directive dominance are dramaturgical terms and that performers wo have positions of visible leadership are often merely figureheads, selected as a compromise, or as a way of neutralizing a potentially threatening position, or as a way of strategically concealing the power behind the front and hence the power behind the power behind the front. So also, whenever inexperienced or temporary incumbents are given formal authority over experienced subordinates, we often find that the formally empowered person is bribed with a part that has dramatic dominance while the subordinates tend to direct the show. Since we all participate on teams we must all carry within ourselves something of the sweet guilt of conspirators. And since each team is engaged in maintaining the stability of some definitions of the situation, concealing or playing down certain facts in order to do this, we can expect the performer to live out one’s conspiratorial career in some furtiveness. A basic problem for many performances, then, is that of information control; the audience must not acquire destructive information about the situation that is being defined for them. In other words, a term must be able to keep its secrets and have its secrets kept. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
There are what are sometimes called “dark” secrets. These consist of facts about a team which it knows and conceals and which are incompatible with the image of self that the team attempts to maintain before its audience. Dark secrets are, of course, double secrets: one is the crucial fact that is hidden and another is the fact that crucial facts have not been openly admitted. There are also what might be called “strategic” secrets. These pertain to intentions and capacities of a team which it conceals from its audience in order to prevent them from adapting effectively to the state of affairs the team is planning to being about. Strategic secrets are the ones that businesses and armies employ in designing future actions against the opposition. So long as a team makes no pretense of being the sort of team that does not have strategic secrets, its strategic secrets need not be dark ones. Yet it is to be noted that even when the strategic secrets of a team are not dark ones, still the disclosure or discovery of such secrets disrupts the team’s performance, for suddenly and unexpectedly the team finds it useless and foolish to maintain the care, reticence, and studied ambiguity of action that was required prior to loss of its secrets. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
It may be added that secrets that are merely strategic tend to be ones which the team eventually discloses, performance, when action based upon secret preparations is consummated, whereas an effort may be made to keep dark secrets secret forever. It may also be added that information is often held back not because of its known strategic importance but because it is felt that it may someday acquire such importance. Thirdly, there are what might be called “inside” secrets. These are ones whose possession marks an individual as being a member of a group and help the group feel separate and different from those individuals who are not in the know. Inside secrets give objective intellectual content to subjectively felt social distance. Almost all information in a social establishment has something of the exclusion function and may be seen as none of somebody’s business. Inside secrets may have little strategic importance and may not be very dark. When this is the case, such secrets may be discovered or accidentally disclosed without radically disrupting the team performance; the performance need only shift their secret delight to another matter. Of course, secret that are strategic and/or dark serve extremely well as inside secrets and we find, in fact, that the strategic and dark character of secrets is often exaggerated for this reason. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Interestingly enough, the leaders of a social group are sometimes faced with a dilemma regarding important strategic secrets. Those in the group who are not brought in on the secret will feel excluded and affronted when the secret finally comes to light; on the other hand, the greater the number of persons who are brought in on the secret, the greater the likelihood of intentional or unintentional disclosure. The knowledge that one team can have of another’s secrets provides us with two other types of secrets. First, there re what might be called “entrusted” secrets This is the kind which the possessor is obliged to keep because of one’s relation to the team to which the secret refers. If an individual who is entrusted with a secret is to be the person one claims one is, one must keep the secret, even thought it is not a secret about oneself. Thus, for example, when a lawyer discloses the improprieties of one’s clients, two quite different performances are threatened: the client’s show of innocence to the court, and the lawyer’s show of trustworthiness to one’s client. It may also be noted that a team’s strategic secrets, whether dark or not, are likely to be the entrusted secrets of the individual members of the team, for each member of the team is likely to present oneself to one’s teammates as someone who is loyal to them. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
Since time immemorial, each society had secretly harbored “gurus.” These wise humans have been sought by sufferers, who may have been rich in goods but poor in spirit. The gurus have taught the seekers to let go their attachments in this World, the better to concentrate on spiritual purification. The intimated rewards have not been wealth, fame, or power; but rather enlightenment and liberation, an enriched, more meaningful experience of oneself and one’s World. The gurus have helped seekers attain liberation from entrapment in the culture. They have invited the experience and disclosure of individuality that had hitherto been concealed under the trappings of conformity to roles. The society that would not fall must locate and treasure its gurus, protect them, and not deny seekers access to them. The gurus and their ways are not for everyone. Gurus cannot be hired or bought; they can only be deserved! A society without gurus is stagnant, and will perish as did the dinosaurs, unable to change ways to cope with changing conditions. In the New World, I think we are experiencing an absence in our midst, an absence of gurus. We have myriad commissars, but no one to lead beyond their ways. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
The commissars insure that everyone conforms to existing ways, to the image of humans that is current, that is synonymous with goodness and sanity. Commissars use bribery, guile, and threats of force to get people to follow their prescribed ways, the ways that keep the society and its existing power-structure intact. Who are the commissar? Most of our teacher are commissars. So are our parents. And law enforcement, judges, lawyers, congress, our psychiatrist and psychologist, and even our neighbours. Radio, TV, and the press function as commissars. All commissars collude with oner another to keep us wanting what we are supposed to want and doing what we are supposed to do. Conform, and be reward. However, we are discovering, we who have graduated from such institutes, that something is missing. The something was ourselves. Somewhere along the line, we have lost ourselves, our capacity to experience in new modes and qualities. If we are at all sensitive, we notice the absence and become concerned. We state to seek ourselves and our lost capacity for experiencing. I hope we find it. Our nation will sit stunned, the people having forgotten how to live for themselves, otherwise. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
If we do not get in touch with reality, people will know only how to live for the system of things. An era will have ended. Then, it will be the turn of the Asiatics and Africans to follow the American Way, until they too reach the end of their tether. Finally, people of Marts will land on Earth and have their turn. When you lose yourself your own experiences and their meanings are being denied, and you are developing a self that is different from your real experience self, which may be becoming increasingly unknow to you. Because so many people accept other’s meanings as their own experience, they will come to distrust their own organismic experience. As one beings to distrust more and more of one’s own experience, one’s sense of self-worth will steadily decline until one has very little use for one’s own experience or one’s self. Of course things will be well for those you are trying to please. This pseudoself is just what they want. It is only within oneself, at some deep and unknown level, that there is a vague uneasiness. When a person denies awareness to all of one’s own experiencing—one will get to a pint where one no longer really has a self and is trying to be a self wanted by someone else. Next, rebellion happens. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
One can only attribute this rebellion to the actualizing tendency that has been suppressed for so long but that finally asserts itself. However, often times, because one has distrusted one’s own experience for such a long period and because the self by which one is living is so sharply different from the experiences of one’s organism, one cannot reconstruct one’s true self without help. When there is such a great discrepancy, the need for help often exists. In contrast, however, when people have spent years and even decades trying to socially engineer you, and you do not adhere to their values, even though they do not know you, they will think you are acting weird because their sick and twisted and sadistic methods are not working on you. When people reclaim the value of their experience, they are the ones who decides what matters to them and how they want to live. The center of the valuing process, and the evidence is provided by one’s own sense. What is right for someone who is trying to indoctrinate and corrupt you, may not be what is right for you. One may have started off at a young age knowing the love of God and who one wants to be. Society may call a given experience bad, but when one trusts one’s own valuing of it, one will find that following the path to truth and the love of God is significant and worthwhile. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
When denied experience comes close to awareness, anxiety always results because these previously unadmitted experiences will have meanings that will change the structure of the self by which one as been living. Any drastic change in the self-concept is always a threatening and frightening experience. One may be dimly aware of this threat even though one does not yet know what would emerge. When the denied experienced break through the dam, they turn out to be hurts and angers that one has been completely unaware of. It is impossible for people to realize how completely an experience can be shut out of awareness until it does break through into awareness. Every individual is able to shut out and deny those experiences that will endanger one’s self concept. When the self-concept is so sharply changed that parts of it are completely shattered, it is a very frightening experience, and it is accurate to feel like an alien has take over you. That is why the law allows for mental competence to be called into question when some people are accused of crimes, for they may have been manipulated since they were too young to think for themselves and unaware of what they are doing is wrong. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
So, the system wants to give people who are victims of crimes, who have gone on to commit crimes, an opportunity for repentance and the chance to live a life as themselves, instead of being condemned for having been brainwashed. Some will realize that they are the alien because the submissive, malleable self by which they have been living, the self that has been guided by the statements, attitudes, and expectations of others, is no longer theirs. The new self that had seemed so alien is more than likely one that had experienced hurt and anger and feelings that society regards as bad, as well as wild hallucinatory thoughts—and love. As one goes further into self-discovery, it is likely that one will find out that some of one’s anger is directed against one’s parents. The hurts will have come from various sources; some of the feelings and experiences that society regards as bad but that one finds good and satisfying are experiences and feelings that probably have to do with pleasures of the flesh. Sometimes one has to let their experiences tell them what they mean instead of trying to impose a meaning on them. The more the individual’s self-concept is rooted in the spontaneously felt meanings of one’s experiencing, the more one is an integrated person. People who are learning to self-actualize will enjoy meet and making friend with their thoughts and feelings. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
Here is the dawning of the self-respect and self-acceptance of which one has been deprived for so long. One will even feel an affection for oneself. One of the curious but common side effects of this change is that now one will be able to give oneself more freely to others, to enjoy others more, to be more genuinely interested in them. As one becomes more expressive of one’s love one can also be more expressive of one’s anger and hurt, one’s likes and dislikes, and one’s “wild” thoughts and feelings (which will turn out to be creative impulses). One is in the process of changing from psychological maladjustment to a much healthier relationship to others and to reality. There is a peaceful harmony in being a whole person, but one will be mistaken if one thinks this reaction is permanent. Instead, if one is really open to one’s experience, one will find other hidden aspects of oneself that one has denied to awareness, and each such discovery will give one uneasy and anxious moments or days until it is assimilated into a revised and changing picture of oneself. One will discover that growing toward a congruence between one’s experiencing organism and one’s concept of oneself is an exciting, sometime disturbing, but neverending adventure. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
“And now behold, there was not a living soul among all the people of the Nephites who did doubt in the least the words of all the holy prophets who had spoken; for they knew that it must needs be that they must be fulfilled. And they knew that it must be expedient that Christ had come, because of the many signs which had been given, according to the words of the prophets; and because of the things which had come to pass already they knew that it must needs be that all things should come to pass according to that which had been spoken. Therefore they did forsake all their sins, and their abominations, and their whoredoms, and did sever God with all diligence day and night. And now it came to pass that when they had taken all the robbers prisoners, insomuch that none did escape wo were not slain, they did cast their prisoners into prison, and did cause the word of God to be preached unto them; ad as many as would repent of their sins and enter into a covenant that they would murder no more were set at liberty. However, as many as there were who did not enter into a covenant, and who did still continue to have those secret murders in their hearts, yea, as many as were found breathing out threatenings against their brethren were condemned and punished according to the law. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
“And thus they did put an end to all those wicked, and secret, and abominable combinations, in the which there was so much wickedness, and so many murders committed. And thus had the twenty and second year passed away, and the twenty and third year also, and they twenty and forth, and the twenty and fifth; and thus had twenty and five years passed away. And these had many things transpired which, in the eyes of some, would be great and marvelous; nevertheless, they cannot all be written in this book; yea, this book cannot contain even a hundredth part of what was done among so many people in the space of twenty and five years; but behold there are records which do contain all the proceedings of this people; and a shorter but true account was given by Nephi. Therefore I have made my record of these things according to the record of Nephi, which was engraven on the plates which were called the plates of Nephi. And behold, I do make the record on plates which I have made with mine own hands. And behold, I am called Mormon, being called after the land of Mormon, the land in which Alma did establish the church among the people, yea, the first church which was established among them after their transgression. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
“Behold, I am a disciple of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I have been called of him to declare his work among his people, that they might have everlasting life. And it hath become expedient that I, according to the will of God, that the prayers of those who have gone hence, who were the holy ones, should be filled according to their faith, should make a record of these things which have been done—yea, a small record of that which hath taken place from the time that Lehi left Jerusalem, even down until the present time. Therefore I do make my record from the accounts which have been given by those who were before me, until the commencement of my day; and then I do make record of the things which I have seen with mine own eyes. And I know the record which I make to be a just and a true record; nevertheless here are many things which, according to our language, we are not able to write. And now I make an end of my saying, which is of myself, an proceed to give my account of the things which have been before me. I am Mormon, and a pure descendant of Lehi. I have reason to bless my God and my Saviour Jesus Christ, that he brought our fathers out of the land of Jerusalem, (and no one knew it save it were himself and those whom he brought out of that land) and that he hath given me and my people so much knowledge unto the salvation of our souls. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
“Surely he hath blessed the house of Jacob, and hat been merciful unto the seed of Joseph. And insomuch as the children of Lehi have kept his commandments he hath blessed them and prospered them according to his word. Yea, and surely shall be again bring a remnant of the seed of Joseph to the knowledge of the Lord their God. And as surely as the Lord liveth, will he gather in from the four quarters of the Earth all the remnants of the seed of Jacob, who are scattered abroad upon all the face of the Earth. And as he hath covenanted with all the house of Jacob, even so shall the covenant wherewith he hath covenanted with the house of Jacob be fulfilled in one’s own due time, unto the restoring all the house of Jacob unto the knowledge of the covenant that he hath covenanted with them. And then shall they know their Redeemer, who is Jesus Christ, the Son of God; and then shall they be gathered in from the four quarters of the Earth unto their own lands, from whence they have been dispersed; yea, as the Lord liveth so shall it be. Amen,” reports 3 Nephi 5.1-26. We adore Thee, Blessed Jesus very God and very Man, the Same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever, our strong Salvation and our only Hope. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
Please take us, we pray Thee, into Thy keeping, both now and at the hour of our death; please make us faithful to Thee upon Earth, and blessed with Thee in Heaven, where the Father, Who raises in glory the World, piercer of darkness, illuminates our path as we go through our days. God, pleased continue to illuminate or paths as we go through life. O God, Who hast brought us near to an innumerable company Angels, and to the spirits of just human made perfect; please grant us during our pilgrimage to abide in their fellowship, and in our Country to become partakers of their joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. I pray Thee, good Lord Jesus, by the love which Thou hadst for him that lay on Thy heart, to make me thankful for all that Thou hast given men in this World and to bless this planet exceedingly abundantly, above all that I can ask or think. Please help us to love each other in Thee and for Thee, to be one in heart through all separations, and to talk as friends in the path of Thy service; and finally unite us for ever at Thy feet, where peace and love are perfect and immortal, and Thou with the Father Who is turning the World towards Him, as He has turned it since its very beginning, in infinite longing, in infinite love. And I, a child of Earth, take the Lord as my exemplar, and hold my heart out to Hum in the dawn. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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I am Not a Politician and My Other Habits are Good for in the Evening of Life, One Shall be Examined on Love!
It is a lonesome walk to the sidelines, especially when thousands of people are cheering your replacement. Humans are not and cannot be justified by anything of their own doing; they are not, and cannot be, separated from God by their sinful actions: sinful or not in their behaviour, humans are estranged from God. What stand in the way of the divine if not one’s bad deed only; it is one’s very existence. The self, as such, is sinful before any act; it is separated from God, unwilling to love Him. When you come to God forget your Christian morals, your achievements and your failures. Nothing is demanded of you—no idea of God, and no goodness in yourselves, not your being religious, not your being Christian, not your being wise and not your being moral. Immoralists take the opposite of the law, calling evil good and good evil. The New Being manifested in Christ is above morality and immorality. It demands nothing but your being open and willing to accept what is given to you, the New Being, the love and justice and truth, as it is manifest in Him whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light. The mortality of the Christ does not mean that we can be saved by good actions or damned by evil actions; it means that there is a creative and saving possibility implied in every situation, which cannot be destroyed by any event. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
Deep under the estrangement from God which is our existence and which our life manifests, there lies a unity, a unity with the ground being, with the power to be. The ethics of the New Being consists in letting the power to be inform all our actions. The forgiveness of sins of the Gospels is a symbol of this victory of the ground of being over existence; it conveys the certainty that we reach eternal life in spite of suffering and sin. Christian revelation does not give a new law and a new set of commands; it gives a new spirit, in which any law may be accepted as a norm of behaviour because it is already transcended in spirit. Can the problem of conscience be answered at all in terms of moral conscience? Being able to become deeply involved in one’s personhood, one’s very self, might lead to the reconstruction of the person—the person’s outlook, attitudes, values, behaviour. This would be a true reconstruction of experience; it would be a learning in a real sense. In those moments of unearthing the New Being are moments when you see a human soul revealed before you, in all its breathless wonder; and then a silence, almost like reverence, overtakes the environment. And each individual becomes enveloped with a warmth and a loveliness that borders on the mystic. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
The Bible presents human’s experience in relation to God as being above all, ethical existence. The ethics of the Old Testament is in a constant tension between the law and prophecy, between fear and love. In the New Testament, Jesus reinterprets the law, shows its radical implications, and sums it up n the commandments of love. In the person, this might be characterized by a healthy change, an increase in one’s flexibility, one’s openness, one’s willingness to listen. In the process, we all feel elevated, freer, more accepting of ourselves and others, more open to new ideas, trying hard to understand and accept. Once you become close to a person, perceive one’s thoughts, one’s emotions, one’s feelings, one becomes not only understandable but good and desirable. Every generation in every nation, including the selected one, the decision against righteousness means self-destruction. We must acknowledge with ultimate seriousness that all righteousness is from God and not from humans. To choose the righteous that is from God is to choose the Christ. To prefer a righteousness that would be from humans is to decide against Christ. What is decisive is only whether one acts for the law of love, for which Christ stands. Acting according to it means being received in the unity of fulfilment. Acting against it means being excluded from fulfilment and being cast into the despair of non-being. This is biblical ethics. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
If we view education, however, as the reconstruction of experience, does not this presume that the individual must do one’s own reconstruction? One must do it oneself, through the reorganization of one’s deepest self, one’s values, one’s attitudes, one’s very person. What better method is there to engross the individual; to being one, one’s ideas, one’s feelings into communication with others; to break down the barriers that create isolation in a World where for one’s own mental safety and health, humans have to learn to be part of humankind? From this standpoint, biblical ethics means being presented with an ultimate choice and making with courage an ultimate decision. In every such choice the fight of light with chaos of Christ with estrangement, is fought anew. And in every choice of absolute love the victory of the New Being over estrangement and existence triumphs again. Obviously, this has little do to with the middle-class ethics of avoiding a few things which are supposed to be wrong, and doing a few things which are supposed to be right. There exists a Universal transmoral conscious called the emotional-esthetic, the abstract-formalistic, and the rational-idealistic interpretations of conscience. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
The first rests on the principle of Universal harmony which humans discover through one’s conscience, and with which one should harmonize one’s actions. A conscience may be called “transmoral” which judges, not in obedience to a moral law, but according to the participation in a reality which transcend the sphere of moral commands. It is a new concept of conscience from the experience of justification through faith. Justification through faith is an ultimate experience which throws new light on all things, including the commands of morality. Justification implies that it is not because of our moral perfection but in spite of our moral imperfection that we are fighting and triumphing on the side of God. We are justified in our estrangement and sin. In the experience of sin we are graciously justified. Participation in the New Being is the other side of the experience of estrangement. It is the depth of estrangement, the depth of estrangement, the abyss and the ground under existence. Human’s actions, whether good or bad, reveal, in the ecstatic experience of the New Being in the Christ, an ultimate ground: the saving grace of the courage to be, the universal redeeming power of being-itself. The ethical question is not, to do or not to do; it is, to be nor not to be, to accept or to reject being-itself. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
Any view of the politics of human relationships must rest basically upon the conception of the human organism and what makes it “tick”—the nature and motivation of that organism. Here in this palmlike seaweed of society is the tenacity of life, the forward thrust of life, the ability to push into an incredibly hostile environment and not only for the soul to hold its own but to adapt, develop, become itself. We can even attempt some biochemical explanations of phototropism. We can say that the human soul grows where it does because there is an ecological niche that is fills, and that is this soul had not developed to fill this niche, the process of evolution would have favoured some other organism that would gradually have developed much these same characteristics. Yet it is very valuable as a part of the continuing differentiation, the finer description, the more accurate picture of functional relationship, which our curiosity demands, and which gives us at least a deeper respect for and understanding of the complexities of life. The transmoral conscience is not without content. It is rooted in the power to be. It is enlightened by the historical manifestation of the power to be. It is enlightened by the historical manifestation of the power to be under the conditions of existence in Jesus the Christ. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
On the strength of this, the transmoral conscience dominates all law and all mortality. It determines a situation instead of being determined by it. If it is not, in this sense, moral, neither is it amoral or immortal. For its very definite content is immovable, being no other than the ultimate rock of life, justification of the sinner: The good, transmoral conscience consists in the acceptance of the bad, moral conscience, which is unavoidable wherever decisions are made and act performed. This is to say, as soon as humans act ethically, one develops a moral conscience, a system of good and evil, categories of good deeds and misdeeds. It matters little where the contents of this moral conscience come from. They may derive from religion or from society; they may be biblical commands, primitive taboos, bourgeois prejudices, or superstitions. What matter is that the moral conscience, judging itself in the light of the New Being, perceives its incapacity to do justice to being-itself even in its fulfilment of an accepted system of ethics. Then, it is impossible not to transcend the moral conscience because it is impossible to unite a sensitive and a good conscience. The content of the transmoral conscience consists therefore in accepting both the dictates of the moral conscience and also the guilt that unavoidably accompanies ethical actions, in the knowledge that even morality does not justify. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
The moral conscience derives beyond the sphere in which it is valid to the sphere from which it must receive its conditional validity. The moral conscience receives its validity from the ecstatic perception of its incapacity: when this takes place, the transmoral conscience is born. It is the ethical analogue of faith as the self-transcendence of the intellect. We find that all parts and processes are so ordered so that they guarantee the maintenance, construction, restitution, and reproduction of organic systems. Here, then at the very heart of the mystery of what makes organisms “tick,” is an important foundation stone for our political thinking. The organism is self-controlled. In its normal state it moves toward its own enhancement and toward an independence from external control. What the transmoral conscience brings is neither security nor comfort. The person who is justified does not cease to be a sinner, and there is no comfort in accepting life in a boundary-situation, on the boundary-line that forms a ridge between and above the affirmations and the negations of morality. If we accept the message of the new reality in the Christ, we must understand that this message does not contain an easy answer, and that it does not guarantee spiritual security. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
The transmoral conscience does not prescind from the human situation; on the contrary, it knows that there is no ultimate answer to the ethical questions unless we experience it permanently in the light of our human situation, in which tragedy and hope fight each other without victory. It is the meaning of the Cross that victory is given in death, that resurrection is also crucifixion. The New Being arises out of the wrecked old being. The most impressive fact about the individual human being seems to be that directional tendency toward wholeness, toward actualization of potentialities. Psychotherapy or group experience is not effective when one tries to create in another individual something that is not there, but it is effective when one provides the conditions that make for growth, then this positive directional tendency brings about constructive results. It is much like when a scientist divides a cell One cannot cause the cell to develop in one way or another, one cannot (as yet, at least) shape or control the DNA molecule, but if one focuses one’s skill on providing the conditions that permit the cell to survive and grow, then the tendency for growth and the direction of growth will be evident, and will come from within the organism. Given the opportunity, a living organism tends to fulfill its more complex potentialities rather than settle for simpler satisfactions. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Then there is no security; there still is sin and guilt, estrangement and frustration. However, there is liberty. For sin and guilt, estrangement and frustration are accepted as revelatory of the ground of all being. Bondage and fear have disappeared; obedience has ceased to be obedience and has become free inclination; ego and super-ego are united. This is the liberty of the children of God, liberty from the law, and because from the law, also from the condemnation to despair. It is very clear that when you receive an absolute minimum of any external stimuli, you open yourself to a flood of inter experiencing that goes far beyond that of everyday living. You most certainly do not lapse into homeostasis, into a passive equilibrium. This only occurs in diseased organisms. When it comes to motivation, the organism is an active initiator and exhibits a directional tendency. Even when its primary needs are satisfied and its homeostatic chores are done, an organism is alive, active, and up to something. We are, in short, dealing with an organism that is always motivated, is always up to something, always seeking. With liberty, holiness is recovered. The holy is human’s apprehension of the divine. When a human commits oneself unreservedly to the New Being, one enters into communion with God. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
So I reaffirm, even more strongly than when I first advanced the notion, my belief that there is one central source of energy in the human organism; that it is a trustworthy function of the whole organism rather than some portion of it; and that it is perhaps best conceptualizes as a tendency toward fulfillment, toward actualization, not only toward the maintenance but also toward the enhancement of the organism. The ethics of the New Bring develops a sensitive rather than “good” conscience. It implies liberation from moral commands as well as from moral prohibitions. Human’s free inclination now determines one’s purposes. The liberty of the children of God creates a new morality in harmony with the New Being, and by so doing unveils the holiness of creation. And the holy is the sphere of the divine, in which the divine radiates. A classic experiment showed that even the human infant eventually does a quite satisfactory job of balancing one’s diet. One may go on a protein “binge,” for a time, or devour too much fat, but soon evens out these errors, showing a wisdom of the body in maintaining and enhancing one’s development. This type of relatively integrated, self-regulating behaviour, directed toward maintenance and fulfillment, seems to be the rule in nature rather than the exception. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
Life flows into ever more diverse forms, correcting in its errors, and moving towards its own enhancement. God’s wrath is not directed against our moral shortcomings, against special acts of disobedience to the divine order. It is directed against the secret of our personality, against what happens in us and to us, unseen by humans, unseen even by ourselves. This, our secret, determines of fate. Love alone can transform itself according to the concrete demands of every individual and social situation without losing its eternity and dignity and unconditional validity. When a person is functioning in an integrated, unified, effective manner, one has the confidence in the directions one unconsciously chooses, and trust one’s experiencing, of which, even if one is fortunate, one has only partial glimpses in one’s awareness. Love alone is able to determine standards of conduct that will respect the changing human situations while safeguarding the divine content of every human action in which humans are ultimately concerned. Love has the power to transform human actions. Love is an absolute law because it is also absolute self-sacrifice. As love it is absolute, eternally related to the ground of being and manifesting this ground in action There is no danger of its swerving from the divine, because it is the divine. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
Love is always love; that is its static and absolute side. The ethics of the New Being is essentially inter-personal. Love is the drive toward the unity of the separated. The love of Jesus as the Christ, which is the manifestation of the divine love—and only this—embraces everything concrete in self and World. In love, the absolute become relational. Humans are totally dominated by the divine ground of love, and totally committed to all other human beings. When love reigns, the ethical problem is solved. The yoke of the law no longer exists. Moral pride has vanished. The sin of religion has come to an end. There are no right decisions which are rooted in love, which by resigning the absolute do not fall into the relative. No decision can be annihilated; no action can be undone. However, love gives meaning even to those decisions and actions which prove to be failures. The failures of love do not lead to resignation but to new decisions beyond absolutism and relativism. No objective law is absolute. What is absolute is this: life, as directed by the transmoral conscience, becomes the expression of unconditional love. Love creates the forms in which it will express its divine ground. These forms may be successful or they may be failures; at any rate they are neither right nor wrong. They are beyond morality, in the realm of love’s creativity. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
Love creates its forms, or it gives a divine content to forms of behaviour borrowed from human culture. If a condition of worth imposed on a child are numerous and significant, then the dissociation can become very great, and the psychological consequences very serious indeed. Individuals are culturally conditioned, rewarded, reinforced, for behaviours that are in fact perversions of the natural directions of the unitary actualizing tendency. If awareness and conscious thought are seen as part of life—not its masters nor its opponent but an illusion of the developing processes within the individual—then our total life can be the unified and unifying experience that seems characteristic in nature. If our magnificent symbolizing capacity can develop as part of and be guided by the tendency toward fulfillment that exists in us both at the conscious and nonconscious levels, then the organic harmony is never lost and becomes a human harmony and human wholeness simply because our species is capable of greater richness of experience than any other. Dissociation occurs when love and esteem are made conditional. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
In such a World God intrudes, gently and in many ways, but especially in the person of Jesus Christ. It is he who stands for love, as no one else has ever done, and pays the price for it. His crucifixion is the all-time high-water mark of love on Earth. “While we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly,” reports Romans 5.6. No other source, whether inside or outside of religions, even comes close to what God in Christ shows of love. This is the first “move” of love in the process of redemption. “He first loved us,” reports 1 John 4.19. Therefore, “love is from God,” reports 1 John 4.7. And “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us,” reports 1 John 3.16. All other loves are to be measured by this standard (Acts 17.31). When we receive what is thus clearly given, the revelation of God’s love in Christ, that in turn makes is possible for us to love. Love is awakened in us by him. We feel its call—and to love Jesus himself, and then God. Thus the first great commandment, to love God with all out being, can be fulfilled because of the beauty of God given in Christ. This is the second movement in the return to love: “We love, because He first loved us.” Every conscience, be it right or erroneous, is binding. And conscious is not only an intellectual knowledge of the law. It is also the recipient of God’s moral guidance through the gifts of the Holy Spirit. This guidance increases with growth in love. One who is totally committed to love always knows how to behave, even though one may be in the dark as to the letter of the law. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
If we can identify the environmental influences that promote a continuing learning of dissociation, these findings could be put to preventive use. We can prevent the rift from occurring. We can, if we will, use our scientific skills to help us keep the person whole and unified, a creature whose actualizing tendency will be continually forming one in the direction of a richer and more fulfilling relationship to life. The human species is composed of basically trustworthy organisms, trustworthy persons. The actualizing tendency, when operating freely, tends toward an integrated wholeness in which behaviour is guided as much by the experiencings within as by the consciousness that flutters over these experiences. However, what does this mean from the point of view of the political of interpersonal relationships? It leads me to the conclusions that the most trustworthy entity in our uncertain World is an individual who is fully open to the two major sources: the data from internal experiencing, and the data from experiencing of the external World. This person is at the opposite pole from the dissociated individual. Either one was fortunate in not developing the internal rift between the experiencing organism and the conscious self or this rift has been eliminated in helping relationships or by healing life experiences. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
In such an individual, functioning in a unified way, we have the best possible base for wise action. Politically, then, if we are in search of a trustworthy base to operate from, our major aim would be to discover and possibly to increase the number of individuals who are coming closer to being whole persons—who are moving toward a knowledge of, and harmony with, their innermost experience, and who sense with an equal lack of defensiveness, all that data from the persons and objects of their external environment. These persons would constitute an increasing flow of wisdom in action. Their directions would be wiser than the commandments of gods or the directives of governments. They might become the vitalizing stream of a constructive future. The love in question is the love of God, God being understood in the sense of being-itself, not one being among others, but the Supreme Being. Such a love embraces all created beings as concrete expressions of being-itself. It is focused on the Christ as the manifestation of being-itself in the conditions of existence. There is a close kinship between this and the Catholic doctrine of the supremacy of love. Well known is the saying of St. John of the Cross: “In the evening of your life, you shall be examined on love.” #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
Conformity to the moral law will not decide eternal bliss or doom. Rather, the love of God that shall have informed both our obedience to the law and, if possible, our aberrations shall judge us. The soul is entirely guided by the instinctive discoveries of its love of God. The higher one has been raised into the love of God, the more all embracing is the light. What the mind learns through the commandments, love knows by experience. Then the law is transformed. No longer a yoke, it is a delight. Humans no longer obey an exterior, heteronomous authority; rather, one discovers anew the regulations of the law in implications of His love. “And now, my beloved brethren, behold, I declare unto you that except ye shall repent your houses shall be left unto you desolate. Yea, expect ye repent, your women shall have great cause to mourn in the day that they shall give suck; for ye shall attempt to flee and there shall be no place for refuge; yea, and wo unto them which are with child, for they shall be heavy and cannot flee; therefore, they shall be trodden down and shall be left to perish. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
“Yea, wo unto this people who are called the people of Nephi except they shall repent, when they shall see all these signs and wonders which shall be showed unto them; for behold, they have been a chosen people of the Lord; yea, the people of Nephi hath he loved, and also hath he chastened them; yea, in the days of their iniquities hath he chastened them because he loveth them. However, behold my brethren, the Lamanites hath he hated because their deeds have been evil continually, and this because of their iniquity of the tradition of their fathers. However, behold, salvation hath come unto them through the preaching of the Nephites; and for this intent hath the Lord prolonged their days. And I would that ye should behold that the more part of them are in the path of their duty, and they do walk circumspectly before God, and they do observe to keep his commandments and his statues and his judgments according to the law of Moses. Yea, I say unto you, that the more part of them are doing this, and they are striving with unwearied diligence that they may bring the remainder of their brethren to the knowledge of the truth; therefore there are many who do add to their numbers daily. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
“And behold, ye do know of yourselves, for yes have witnessed it, that as many of them as are brought to the knowledge of the truth, and to know of the wicked and abominable traditions of their fathers, and are led to believe the holy scriptures, yes, the prophets, which are written, which leadeth them to faith on the Lord, and unto repentance, which faith and repentance bringeth a change of heart unto them—therefore, as many as have come to this, ye know of yourselves are firm and steadfast in the faith, and in the thing wherewith they have been made free. And ye know also that they have buried their weapons of war, and they fear to take them up lest by any means they should sin; yea, ye can see that they fear to sin—for behold they will suffer themselves that they be trodden down and slain by their enemies, and will not lift their swords against them, and this because of their faith in Christ. And now, because of their steadfastness when they do believe in that thing which the do believe, for because of their firmness when they are once enlightened, behold, the Lord shall bless them and prolong their days, notwithstanding their iniquity. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
Yea, even if they should dwindle in unbelief the Lord shall prolong their days, until the time shall come which hath been spoken of by our fathers, and also by the prophet Zenos, and many other prophets, concerning the restoration of our brethren, the Lamanites, again, to the knowledge of truth. Yea, I say unto you, that in the latter times the promises of the Lord have been extended to our brethren, the Lamanites; and notwithstanding the many afflictions which they shall have, and notwithstanding they shall be driven to and fro upon the face of the Earth, and be hunted, and shall be smitten and scattered abroad, having no place for refuge, the Lord shall be merciful unto them. And this is according to the prophecy, that they shall again be brought to the true knowledge, which is the knowledge of their Redeemer, and their great and true shepherd, and be numbered among his sheep. Therefore I say unto you, it shall be better for them than for you except ye repent. For behold, had the mighty words been shown unto them which have been shown unto you, yes, unto them who have dwindled in unbelief because of the traditions of their fathers, ye can see of yourselves that they never would again have dwindled in unbelief. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
“Therefore, saith the Lord: I will not utterly destroy them, but I will cause that in that day of my wisdom they shall return again unto me, saith the Lord. And now behold, saith the Lord, concerning the people of the Nephites: If they will not repent, and observe to do my will, I will utterly destroy them, saith the Lord, because of their unbelief notwithstanding the many mighty works which I have done among them; and as surely as the Lord liveth shall these things be, saith the Lord,” reports Helaman 15.1-17. How wonderful! How marvelous! This house if the gift of those who drew it forth and those who prepared it. How wonderful! How marvelous! This house is the gift of God and the spirits. How wonderful! How marvelous! We give, in return, our thoughts and prayers, our words and deeds. A gift for a gift, with thanks to the architects. How wonderful! How marvelous! We humbly beseech you, O God, Whose nature is purification. Almighty God, unto Whom assists us all, Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom; Almighty God, Who hast promised to hear, you are the model of our lives. When we wake in the morning, we are doing so because of you, taking place in the chain of life. Bless this say, then, that is might be productive and healing both in body and spirit. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
Winchester Mystery House
Nothing more beautiful or bizarre during the Hallowe’en season than the Winchester Mystery House. Let’s be real, Hallowe’en is all of October 🎃
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Open this weekend from 10AM-4PM and 7PM-12AM! Buy Tickets Here 👉 http://ow.ly/xtTn50BTJyD
Told by an Idiot, Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing!
Life is the only sentence which does not end with a period. “He looked like a porcelain eskimo, and all kinds of colour—blue, green, red, and shiny,” this was one account of a woman seeing her baby for the first time, after a natural childbirth. Sensory messages are streaming into the baby’s cortex. The senses crate cortical effects which generally make shapes and patterns, and some of these, if all goes well, are increasingly accurately experienced as “me” while others are experienced as “not me but other.” Messages about “not me but other” go to the cortex just as messages abut “me” do. Where else? However, some amount of cortical organization has to take place before these messages can find a place in the cortex as messages about “the mother.” So at this time there is hardly any differentiation between the mother and the baby, or between the baby’s various bodily parts, as far as the baby’s experience goes. What the mother does is experience in terms of these bodily zones which are just then in a state of excitement. Before differentiation, mother and baby are ne in the baby’s experience: both are embedded in the one stream of sensations. From the point of view of the baby’s sensations, we might say that mother and baby are merged. Somehow the baby has to e-merge—come out of the merge. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19
As the baby e-merges, so does the mother, in the baby’s experience. We are here at the very origins of self-imagery. We find here also the beginnings of our imagery of the World of other people and things. Body-imagery is the forerunner or prototype both of self-imagery and of our knowledge of others. There are probably constitutional predispositions to particular body-imagery. These innate forms would seem to be the bodily forerunners of later thoughts and phantasies. They seem to be the flexible moulds into which experience is cast, at a primitive level of emotional development, and which are modified by the experience so cast. When an innate form seems to coincide with a correspondence in the outside World, the child has the illusion that everything is synonymous and continuous with one’s own body stuff. Unless something goes wrong, these predispositions are confirmed, refined, and elaborated by sensory messages: by the feel of cloth against skin, the feel of warmth and fullness inside, the feel of muscles flexing and stretching. Also, if things go well, the infant will feel interested and pleased when it discovers a difference between “me” and “not me.” However, the healing cleansing flow between mother and baby can seem to be broken in such a violent and catastrophic way that it cannot be recycles, transformed and made bearably by interchanges between mother and baby. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19
To some extent, all infants suffer the disillusionment of the “fall” from the seeming perfection of the continuous silky smoothness into the broken, gritty darkness of perfect satisfaction in the exact terms which they desire. Disturbances of primary sensuousness being a feeling of being traumatically disconnected from the sensation-giving mother, who then becomes a “not-self” mother. This provokes a volcanic uprush of elemental feelings of rage, distress, and terror, expressed as spasms of agitation, cramping tantrums, even seeming epileptic fits. The baby recoils from the not-self mother with which these are associated. In defence, the infant may attempt to preserve an illusion of fusion with the other, or to maintain some confusion of self with mother, or, as in autism, it may create a hard shell or “encapsulation” which shuts out the not-self World as much as possible. “I am not yet born; O fill me with strength against those who would freeze my humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton, would make me a cog in a machine, a things with one face, a thing, against all those who would dissipate my entirety, would blow me like thistledown hither and thither or hither and thither like water held in the hand will spill me. Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me otherwise kill me,” a Prayer Before Birth by Louis MacNeice to help us understand. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19
John, at the age of 3, showed many of the traits associated with autism. Dr. Mildred Creak, the referring psychiatrist, wrote of him that his chief interest seemed to be, “to tap different surfaces, or to spin objects. He is fascinated by mechanical moving parts, and has always been quite clever at learning to move his body. Although he is sure-footed he still does not feed himself; not that he cannot—it seems as if he will not. He shows excessive anxiety at times, with days of screaming. He has no useful speech, and only communicates very tentatively by trying to use your hand.” John’s first visit to me when he was 3 ½ and his face was expressionless. He went past me as if I did not exist. The moment when this was not so occurred in the consulting room. I worked with John for thee and a half years, and would have liked more time. However, when we parted this little boy was attending school for normal children, which reported that he was not markedly different from other children there. He was still a finicky eater, and in times of stress he was inclined to stammer and to have sleeping difficulties. However, he enjoyed life, he enjoyed school, he was learning avidly, and he was making friends with other children. It took much imagination, much empathy, much skill, and much determination to help John come out of his shell and relate to other people and things in a rewarding way. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19
John like to be around people who are unintrusive so he can reflect on himself without being invaded. People should find understanding of the process of helpful intervention in people’s lives. In his “garments of grace” list in Colossians 3.12-14, Paul put forbearance (“bear with each other”) and forgiveness together. These two character traits should certainly be hallmarks of a person living by God’s transforming grace. Forbearance is no longer a common word in most vocabularies. We tend to use the word patience in its place, as in “please be patient with me.” Forbearance literally means “to put up with” and is translated that way several places in the New Testament. For example, the Lord Jesus said in Matthew 17.17, “O unbelieving and perverse generation, how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you?” Paul spoke similarly when we wrote to the Corinthians, “I hope you will put up with a little foolishness; but you are already doing that,” reports 2 Corinthians 11.1. So when Paul said to “bear with each other,” he was saying, “put up with one another,” or as we would say, “be patient with one another.” When we use “be patient” in this manner, we are saying to put up with twenty or so minutes of tardiness from the habitually late person. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19
However, there are two ways we can put up with the faults and thoughtless acts of other people. One way is politely but grudgingly. A person says, “Excuse my lateness,” and we smile and say, “Of course,” while inward we are saying, “Why cannot you be on time like I always am?” Such an attitude is born out of pride and is obviously not the way God intends that we put up with or be patient with one another. The other way is to recognize that God has to constantly put up with our faults and failures. Not only are we faulty and thoughtless in our relationships with one another, more importantly, we are faulty and thoughtless in our relationships with one another, more importantly, we are faulty and thoughtless in our relationship with God. We do not honor and reverence Him as we should. We prefer the entertainment of television to intimate fellowship with Him. However, God is patient with us because of His grace. And to the extent that we consciously live in His grace, we will be patient with others. In fact, the definition of patient in our common use implies the latter, gracious way of putting up with the faults of others. We all recognize that grudgingly “putting up with” is not true patience according to our common meaning. True patience holds no grudge, not even a minor, momentary one. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19
In Ephesians 4.2 Paul urges us to “bear with one another in love.” The basis for our patience with one another is love. As Peter said in 1 Peter 4.8, “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” Love not only covers over a multitude of sins but also a multitude of faults in one another. However, where do we get such love? John answers this in 1 John 4.19: “We love because he first loved us.” The object of the verb love in 1 John 4.19 is indefinite. John could be saying, “We love one another because God first loved us.” Perhaps John intended both meanings, although the context seems to indicate the latter. If so, he is saying the basis of our love for one another is God’s love for us. This being true, the extent of our love for each other will be based on our consciousness of and appreciation of God’s love for us. The more we have a heartfelt comprehension of God’s love for us, the more we will be inclined to love others. And since love covers over a multitude of faults, the more we will be inclined to be patient with one another. So patience ultimately grows out of a recognition of God’s grace in our lives. The more we are consciously living by grace, the more we will be patient with one another. Or to say it another way, if we are not patient with each other, we are not living by grace. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19
Paul said we are to go beyond being patient with one another; we are also to forgive each other. Forgiveness differs from forbearance in that it has to do with real wrongs committed against us. Forbearance or patience should be our response to unintentional actions due to the faults of carelessness of another. Forgiveness should be our response to the intentional or provocative acts of another, the instances when they attempt to our actually do harms us in some way. In Colossians 3.13, Paul said, “Forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another.” Paul’s language seems to take for granted that such grievances will occur. As believers, all of us are still far from the Christlikeness we would like to have. So we not only offend our fellow believers unwittingly through our faults and failures, but we also sometimes offend deliberately. We need forgiveness not only from God but from one another. And we need to forgive one another as God forgave us. Paul said, “Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” We are to forgive because we have been forgiven. The free grace of the Father’s forgiving love is the pattern for his children in their forgiving love is the pattern for his children in their forgiveness of one another. #RandolphHarris 8 of 19
This thought takes us back to Jesus’ parable of the unmerciful servant, Matthew 18.21-35. We considered this briefly in the past, but I want to look at it in more detail now. For convenience the parable is reproduced here: Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not even seven times, but seventy-seven times. Therefore, the kingdom of Heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all he had be sold to replay the debt. The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go. However, when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’ However, he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19
“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Should not you have had mercy on your fellow servants just as I had on you?’” In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed. This is how my Heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.” As we consider the parable, note first that Jesus gave it in response to a specific question from Peter: “How many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?” The parable serves to reinforce Jesus’ answer, “not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” The servant in the parable owed his master millions of dollars. When the master ordered that he and his family and all he had be sold to repay the debt, the servant stalled for time. He said, “Be patient with me, and I will pay back everything.” The servant should have declared bankruptcy and pleaded for mercy; instead, he pleaded for time. He thought he could wipe out this huge debt, given sufficient time. However, he owed an impossible sum. According to David Seamands, the annual taxes at that time from the Palestinian provinces put together amounted to only $800,000.00. Yet the servant owed millions of dollars. There is no way he could pay his debt. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19
This servant illustrates a person who is living by works. He foolishly thought he could work his way out of debt. However, the master knew that only grace would suffice to meet the human’s needs, so he freely forgave him and canceled the debt. Despite experiencing such overwhelming forgiveness, this man refused to forgive a fellow servant who owed him only a few dollars. Instead, he ruthlessly demanded payment. The obvious message of the parable is that, whatever offense anyone has committed against us, it is trifling compared to the vast debt of our sins against God. It seems that the unmerciful servant’s unforgiving attitude arose out of his lack of understanding grace. He wanted to repay his debt, or to use an earlier expression in this book, to pay his own way. In his mind he never declared total bankruptcy. That is why, even after receiving such gracious forgiveness himself, he treated his fellow servants so unmercifully. Had he recognized his own total bankruptcy, and consequently, the necessity for absolute grace on the part of his master, he probably would have behaved differently. Many Christians behaved like the unmerciful servant and for the same reason. Because they have not admitted their own total and permanent spiritual bankruptcy, they do not recognize the infinite extent of God’s grace to them. #RandolphHarris 11 of 19
They still see themselves as basically “good,” and because of that, they expected everyone else to be “good” also, especially in relationship to them. Because they do not recognize their own continued bankruptcy before God, they insist that everyone else pay his own debts. However, the Christian living by grace recognizes one’s own spiritual bankruptcy. One sees the vast contrast between one’s sins against God of “several million dollars” and his neighbour’s sins against one of only a “few dollars.” And because of this, one both understands and responds to Paul’s instruction, “Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” So we have come full circle recognizing our own spiritual bankruptcy. This is where we must begin and end if we are to experience the joy of living by God’s transforming grace. So I invite you and urge you to lay aside any remnant of self-goodness you may think you still have. Admit your total spiritual bankruptcy, and drink deeply from the infinite grace of God. And then in deep awareness of what you have received, extend that same spirit of grace to others. “Behold, now it came to pass that when Nephi had spoken these words, certain men who were among them ran to the judgment-seat; yea, even there were five who went, and they said among themselves, as they went: Behold, now we will know of a surety whether this man be prophet and God hath commanded him to prophesy such marvelous things unto us. #RandolphHarris 12 of 19
“Behold, we do not believe that he hath; yea, we do not believe that he is a prophet; nevertheless, if this thing which he has said concerning the chief judge be true, that he be dead, then will we believe that the other words which he has spoken are true. And it came to pass that they ran in their might, ad came in unto the judgment-seat; and behold, the chief judge had fallen to the Earth, and did lie in his blood. And now behold, when they saw this they were astonished exceedingly, insomuch that they feel to the Earth; for they had not believed the words which Nephi had spoken concerning the chief judge. However, now, when they saw they believed, and fear came upon them lest all the judgments which Nephi had spoken should come upon the people; therefore they did quake, and had fallen to the Earth. Now, immediately when the judge had been murdered—he being stabbed by his brother by a garb of secrecy, and he fled, and the servants ran and told the people, raising the cry of murder among them; and behold the people did gather themselves together unto the place of the judgment-seat—and behold, to their astonishment they saw those five men who had fallen to the Earth. And now behold, the people knew nothing concerning the multitude who had gathered together at the gathered together at the garden of Nephi; therefore they said among themselves: These men are they who have murdered the judge, and God has smitten them that they could not flee from us. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19
“And it came to pass that they laid hold on them, and bound them and cast them into prison. And there was a proclamation sent abroad that the judge was slain, and the murderers had been taken and were cast into prison. And it came to pass that on the morrow the people did assemble themselves together to mourn and to fast, at the burial of the great chief judge who had been slain. And thus also those judges who were at the garden of Nephi, and heard his words, were also gathered together at the burial. And it came to pass that they inquired among the people, saying: Where are the five who were sent to inquire concerning the chief judge whether he was dead? And they answered and said: Concerning this five whom ye say ye have sent, we know not; but there are five who are the murderers, whom we have cast into prison. And it came to pass that the judges desired that they should be brought; and they were brought, and behold they were the five who were sent; and behold the judges inquired of them to know concerning the matter, and they told them all that they had done, saying: We ran and came to the place of the judgment-seat, and when saw all things even as Nephi had testified, we were astonished insomuch that we fell to the Earth; and when we were recovered from our astonishment, behold they cast us into prison. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19
“Now, as for the murder of this man, we know not who has done it; and only this much we know, we ran and came according as ye desired, and behold he was dead, according as ye desired, and behold he was dead, according to the words of Nephi. And now it came to pass that the judges did expound the matter unto the people, and did cry out against Nephi, saying: Behold, we know that this Nephi must have agreed with some one to slay the judge, and then he might declare it unto us, that he might convert us unto his faith, that he might raise himself to be a great man, chosen of God, and prophet. And now behold, we will detect this man, and he shall confess his fault and make known unto us the true murderer of this judge. And it came to pass that the five were liberated on the day of the burial. Nevertheless, they did rebuke the judges in the words which they had spoken against Nephi, and did contend with the one by one, insomuch that they did confound them. Nevertheless, they caused that Nephi should be taken and bound and brought before the multitude, and they began to question him in divers ways that they might cross him, that they might accuse him to death—saying unto him: Thou art confederate; who is this man that hath done this murder? #RandolphHarris 15 or 19
“Now tell us, and acknowledge they fault; saying, Behold here is money; and also we will grant unto thee thy life if thou wilt tell us, and acknowledge the agreement which thou hast made with him. However, Nephi said unto them: O ye fools, ye uncircumcised of heart, ye blind, and ye stiffnecked people, do ye know how long the Lord your God will suffer you that ye shall go on in your way of sin? O ye ought to begin to howl and mourn, because of the great destruction which at this time doth await you, except ye shall repent. Behold ye say that I have agreed with a man that he should murder Seezoram, our chief judge. However, behold, I say unto you, that this is because I have testified unto you that ye might know concerning this thing; yea, even for a witness unto you, that I did know of the wickedness and abominations which are among you. And because I have done this, ye say that I have agreed with a man that he should do this sign ye are angry with me, and seek to destroy my life. And now behold, I will show you another sign, and see if ye will in this thing seek to destroy me. Behold, I say unto you: Go to the house of Seantum, who is the brother of Seezoram, and say unto him—has Nephi, the pretended prophet, who doth prophesy so much evil concerning this people, agreed with thee, in the which ye have murdered Seezoram, who is your brother? #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
“And behold, he shall say unto you, Nay. And ye shall say unto him: Have ye murdered your brother? And he shall stand with fear, and wist not what to say. And behold, he shall deny unto you; and he shall make as if here were astonished; nevertheless, he shall declare unto you that he is innocent. However, behold, ye shall examine him, and ye shall find blood upon the skirts of his cloak. And when ye have seen this, ye shall say: From whence cometh this blood? Do we not know that it is the blood? Do we not know that it is the blood of your brother? And then shall he tremble, and shall look pale, even as if death had come upon him. And then shall ye say: Because of this fear and this paleness which has come upon your face, behold we know that thou art guilty. And then shall ye say: Because of this fear and this paleness which has come upon your face, behold, we know that thou art guilty. And then shall greater fear come upon him; and then shall he confess unto you, and deny no more that he had done this murder. And then shall he say unto you, that I, Nephi, know nothing concerning the matter save it were given unto me by the power of God. And then shall ye know that I am an honest man, and that I am sent unto you from God. And it came to pass that they went an did, even according as Nephi had said unto them. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19
“And behold, the words which he had said were true; for according to the words he did deny; and also according to the word he did confess. And he was brought to prove that he himself was the very murderer, insomuch that the five where set at liberty, and also was Nephi. And there were some of the Nephites who believed on the words of Nephi; and there were some also, who believed because of the testimony of the five, for they had been converted while they were in prison. And now there were some among the people, who said that Nephi was a prophet. And there were others who said: Behold, he is a god, for except he was a god he could not know of all things. For behold, he has told us the thoughts of our hearts, and also has told us things; and even he had brought unto our knowledge the true murderer of our chief judge,” reports Helaman 9.1-41. Siting in the presence of the One who deserves praise, I turn my thoughts to thankfulness, thinking of the gifts God has granted to the World He loves so well. Intertwined with the World’s substance, God has created and sustained, brought forth and upheld, wonders beyond humanity’s lifetimes’ imagining. Out of the multitude of scattered gifts, I have been witness to only a few. Yet still I experience awe; still I am moved to gratitude; still I approach you with thanks. Giver of gifts, accept y words as my own gift to you in return. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19
From you have come answers to my prayer. From me come offerings in gratitude. See what I give you: a grateful offering with grateful words. In payment of my vow, I offer [offering] to [name of God and Holy Ghost]. Open hands deserve an open mind. Thank you, God and Jesus Christ, for my continued prosperity, for my continued health, for my continued life. Continually I will pray to you, and how beloved Son, always remembering your sacrifices. “The Heaven and the Earth were finished, and all their host. And on the seventh day God had finished His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it, because He rested thereon from all His work which God created and made,” reports Genesis 2.1-3. Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the great mighty, revered and Most High God, Master of Heaven and Earth. Steadfast in this Faith we are to be safe from evil—that our Creed is to be the shield of our life. Lord God Almighty, Who hast made us to come to the beginning of this day, save us this day by Thy power; that in this day we turn aside into no sin, but that or words may go forth, our Holy Lord, Father Almighty, eternal God, Who hast made us to come to the beginning of the say, save us this day by Thy power, and grant that this day we turn aside into no sin thoughts and deeds be directed, to do always what is righteous in Thy sight. #RandolphHarris 19 of 19
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We Have No More Right to Consume Happiness without Producing it than to Consume Wealth without Producing it!
The truth is something you stumble into when you think you are going some place else. Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God. The basic principle underlying initiation rituals: “if I had to suffer so much pain and humiliation to get into this club, it must be a wonderful organization. To tame the savageness of humans and make gentle the life of this World is a prayer for our country and for our people. To suggest that we say a prayer for our country and our people is to acknowledge error—the fault that lies within Americans and must not be ascribed to alien, un-American influences. Nearly 50 percent of American between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four do not think it necessary to know the location of other countries in which important news is being made. More than 33 percent consider it “not at all important” to know a foreign language, and only 14 percent consider it “very important.” When they were young People used to know more, not less, about geography because classroom lessons were still fresh in their minds. And 90 percent of students have no idea of the locations of four countries intimately linked to American interest. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
The United States of America’s education system is not preparing young people for an increasingly global future. Cultural literacy is a desirable trait for a candidate in a presidential election. Many youths used to grow up and dream of being president, so that means we need to do a better job of preparing them. To raise questions about an individual’s intellectual qualifications carries more weight than anything else one can say about a person. One crucial qualification to determine if a person is competent is their intellectual ability to distinguish, in times of crises and on the daily basis, between worthwhile and worthless opinions. One of the major concerns about those who have proven themselves competent is the corruption of intellectuals by power than the potential corruption of government policy by intellectuals whom on one had elected. Many Americans rely on television as their only source of information for whatever they know about influences on government policy. At some point a devourer always overreaches oneself, like the witch or gain in folk tales who tries to drink up the sea and bursts, or like the vacuum monster in Yellow Submarine who ultimately devours himself and disappears. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
As it stands, 66 percent of Americans cannot name three branches of government or come up with the name of a single Supreme Court justice. Americans who get their news primarily from television rather the newspaper know much less about the judicial system than newspaper readers. Furthermore, 66 percent of newspaper readers, but only 40 percent of television news watchers, know hat the primary mission of the Supreme Court is to interpret the United States Constitution. When people are ignorant of the high court’s constitutional mandate, it is much easier to convince them that justices are supposed to reflect public opinion—and that something has gone wrong when a court hands down a decision that contradicts popular wisdom. More than 50 percent of adults do not even know that there are nine Supreme Court justices. About half of adults—but just about 41 percent of teenagers—can name the three branches of government (Legislative, Executive, and Judicial). Only 25 percent of adult—but 20 percent of teenagers—know that there are one hundred U.S. senators. The vast majority of both adults and teens have no idea of when or by whom the Constitution was written (James Madison in 1787). Among teenagers, nearly 98 percent cannot name the Chief Justice of the United States (John G. Roberts). #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
We are still operating under the illusions that all Americans are playing by the same rules. This is our civic present and, if nothing is done to stem the rising tide of ignorance among the young, our even more disturbing civic future is doomed. So long as our society had a common point of moral reference there was a tendency for conflict to be resolved by compromise, and this comprise had a moral as well as practical basis. People no longer learn anything for the mistakes of others, instead they repeat them and expect a good outcome. However, the enemy is too dangerous to give them the benefit of the doubt; their crimes require emergency measures. Change must therefore affect the motivational roots of a society or it is not change at all. When the mind of the country is taught to aim at low objects, it eats upon itself. Despite the steady rise in the formal educational level of the population, so many Americans seems to know less and less. Technology, our servant, has also become our master, as the information highway—potentially the greatest tool for the diffusion of learning ever devised—has, for too many, become a highway to the far-flung regions of junk thought. At times like this, people must be willing to consider ideas, and even makes changes in behaviour, that they generally preferred to avoid. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
To seize the moment, Americans must recognize that we are living though an overarching crises and knowledge involving everything about the way we learn and think. Such a recognition has to come from ordinary citizens as well as their elected representative, from nonintellectuals and intellectuals alike. The first essential step is negative: we must give up the delusion that technology can supply the fix for a condition that, however much it is abetted by our new machines, is essentially nontechnological. That some children from affluent homes can pass undemanding standardized tests does not mean that they are learning what citizens of a functional democracy need to know. The real problem is that we, as a people, have become too lazy to learn what we need to know to make sound public decisions. Our own ignorance is our worst enemy. However, reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable—and we believe it can do it again. Americans must consider their behaviour from a different perspective. The job of higher education is not to instruct students in popular culture but to expose them to something better. Genuine intellectuals—we need to hear more, not less, from reality-based intellectual about all of the social problems that have been exacerbated by people ignorance—that is, all social problems. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
If we persist in our efforts and finally attack the dysfunction of the system at its motivational roots, we may indeed be successful. In any case, there is n such thing as “compromise”: we are either strong enough to lever the train onto a new track or it stays on the old one or it is derailed. Everything rests on the assumption that the World does not contain the wherewithal to satisfy the needs of its human inhabitants. From this it follows that people must compete with one another for these scarce resources—lie, swindle, steal, and kill, if necessary. These basic assumptions create the danger of a “war of all against all.” I do not believe that our society can long continue on its old premises without destroying itself and everything else. Nor do I believe it can contain or rest the gathering forces of change without committing suicide in the process. The nation’s memory and attention span may already have sustained so much damage that they cannot be revived by the best efforts of America’s best mind. Intellectuals must be willing to step up and bring their knowledge, instead of a lust for power, to the public square; for educators devoted to teaching and learning rather than to the latest fads in pop psychology. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
None of these suggestions address the core problem created by the media—the pacifiers of the mind that permeate our homes, schools, and politics. These is little evidence to indicate that Americans have either the desire or the will to lessen their dependency on the easy satisfaction held out by the video and digital World. The old culture turned the volume down on emotional experience in order to concentrate on its dreams of glory, but the new culture has turned it up again. Too much stimulation makes the carrot hard to see. Good taste is a taste for carrots. Happy babies must learn early that the beautiful things in life are not free. It is unrealistic o expect people simply to turn off their television sets, computers, or smart phones, because infotainment addiction resembles compulsive eating rather than alcoholism or smoking: alcohol and nicotine can be eliminated, but both food and the media supply essential nutrients as well as nonessential junk. If this is truly the new American dream for the upbringing of future generations, it is painful to think about what the cultural landscape will look like a generation from now. If there is not enough resources to go around, then those who have more will use structural inequality to find ways to prolong their advantage, and even legitimate it though various devices. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
The law itself, although philosophically committed to equality, is fundamentally a social device for maintaining structured systems of inequality (defining as crimes, for example, only those of theft and violence in which lower class persons engage). However, when White collar criminals steal from people, it is glorified and they usually receive less prison time, and people are less likely to kill them in their process of breaking the law because they have more money and are deemed more valuable by society. It is still considered permissible, for example, to kill someone who is stealing your property under certain conditions. This is especially true if that person is without property oneself—a wealthy kleptomaniac (in contrast to a poor looter) would probably be worth a murder trial if killed while stealing. A more trivial example can be found in the handing of noise controls. Police are called to prevent distraction by the joyous noises of laughter and song, but not to stop the harsh and abrasive roar of power saws, leaf blowers operating at illegal hours, air hammers, power mowers, snow blowers, and other baneful machines. However, do not burn your fireplace on a bad air quality day, even if you cannot afford to run the heater and need to use your fireplace, you will be fined. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
The rich and the poor have always been with us to some degree. However, there is a new culture that has emerged. What is significant about the new culture is that they do not necessarily care about the causes they represent, they do not even care that whatever cause they are taking up is a new trend, they are rejecting the foundation of American culture altogether. They are much given to acing out grandiose fantasies of taking society by storm, through achievement of wealth, power, and fame. Like so many of the more successful nineteenth century utopian communities (Oneida and Amana, for example), the puritans became corrupted by involvement in successful economic enterprise and the communal aspect was eroded away—another example of system being destroyed by what it attempts to ignore. Just as a plane needs to be fixed in space by at least one more pint than the two necessary to a line, so any complementary schism needs an additional referent in order to avert mutual destruction. This has usually been popularly recognized in any situation where civil warfare threatens in either the individual or social dimension. It frequently takes an external enemy to bring the individual together with oneself, to reunite the quarreling family, to being the nation together, to restructure the idea. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
However, it is not necessary that the “third force” be negative and threatening; a common goal can unite the split group or individual. And in fact that is the essential aspect even under negative pressure. The chaos and lack of discipline is what we are most afraid of confronting and that is what we are most anxious and insecure that we have ourselves created. If society remains in a state of internecine warfare, it will bring either the group or the individual to its own destruction long before its time. In our fear of burning the candle at both ends we burn it in the middle and thus fall apart sooner. One would not have neurosis if the things fought against were not sufficiently nourished by one’s environment to enable in the first place. If we were perfect, if we had the exclusive solution, there would be no anxiety, no doubt, no disease. However, in fact, there has always been something else left to be desires and in an expanding Universe one would have to have colossal conceit, superhuman knowledge and experience, to ever not feel that something remains unexplored in this Universe. Every art, every science, every system has at one time or another found itself unnecessarily limited by its own conceit and has admitted its humility or has perished. This is as much a hard fact of experience as any “hard fact” in any field of endeavour. There is little reason to believe that this state of affairs will ever change. #Randolphharris 10 of 25
For a new culture pattern does not emerge out of nothing—the seed must already be there, like the magic tricks of wizards and witches in folklore, who can make an ocean out of a drop of water, a palace out of a stone, a forest out of a blade of grass, but nothing out of nothing. Our homes are furnished as if we intended to spend the rest of our lives in them, instead of moving every few years. This perhaps represents merely a kind of technological neurosis—a yearning for stability expressed in a technological neurosis—a yearning for stability expressed in a technological failure to adapt. Should Americans ever settle down, however, they will find little to do in the ways of readjusting their household furnishing habits. Much of the new culture is implicitly and explicitly “neotenous” in a cultural sense: behaviour, values, and life-styles formerly seen as appropriate only to childhood are being retained into adulthood as a counterforce to the old culture. When the system as it stands is no longer viable, however, the mechanism must be exposed for the swindle that it is; otherwise the needed radical changes will be rendered ineffectual. They key to the mechanism is the powerful human reluctance to admit that an achieved goal was not worth the unpleasant experience required to achieve it. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
You tell me it is the institution, you had better free your mind instead. However, what is all the freed minds are in jail? I am afraid there are no quick solutions to the problem of the empty self, and we cannot simplify its impact on the Christian mind. The battle here will be won or lost in the area of habits. Admit the problem. First, we must admit that this is a problem and we need to inform others about it. We do ourselves or our God no good if we hide from the fact that the empty self threatens all of us. Any movement that brings about lasting changes begins with conscious raising. Start talking to your Christian friends about the value of the Christian mind. Mention the empty self in your Saturday or Sunday school class, your home Bible study, and so on. Talk to your children about developing their intellectual abilities for the service of Christ and His people. Before a problem can be solved, it must be carefully defined and clearly acknowledged. Choose to be different. Second, at some point we need to make a fundamental decision that we will be different no matter what the cost. We Christians simply must admit that we have allowed our culture to squeeze us into its mold. We must stand against the culture (including inappropriate tendencies in the evangelical subculture), resist the empty self, and eschew the intellectual flabbiness that goes along with it. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
Motivation is key here. I am no expert on motivation, but I do have one piece of advice, derived from several decades of ministry: Expose yourself to ideas with which you disagree and let yourself be motivated to excel intellectually by the exposure. Listen to talk shows, read the editorial page, and walk around a local university and look at bulletin boards or read the student newspaper. Get into discussion with people at work with whom you differ. The point is to spend time around those who do not simply reinforce your own ways of looking at things. There are two advantages to this. For one thing, we can learn from our critics. For another, such exposure can move us to realize just how serious the war of ideas really is and how inadequately prepared we are to engage in that contest. Change your routine. Third, for one week, note two things on a sheet of paper. First, observe your energy rhythms. When is your energy at a low point during that day and when is it vigorous? Second, note what you tend to do when you tend to do when you get home from work or just after you have finished eating dinner. Often, when our energy is low or when we get home from work or finish dinner, we go into a passive mode and turn on the television. If a person learns to limit television watching and spends more time getting physical exercise, I believe that an intellectual life is easier to develop. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
I do not think I have to defend limiting television watching in this regard, but what about exercise? If you are in good shape, your mind becomes more alert and you have more energy to be proactive. I tell my graduate students that if they want to get the most out of the intellectual opportunities of graduate school, then they must learn to use low-energy times, or moments like after work or diner, as occasions to engage in physical exercise. Try something. After dinner go for a walk instead of turning on the TV. When you get back, sit down for thirty minutes to an hour and read an intellectually challenging book. The important thing here is to get out of passive ruts, especially those passive couch hamburger moments, and replace old habits with the new ones that create energy to read, reflect, and be more proactive. Develop patience and endurance. Fourth, learn how to duffer and develop patient endurance. A life of intellectual cultivation takes effort. And it can be painful. The mind is like a muscle: it needs to be stretched beyond itself. I often read books that are a little over my head so I can develop my intellectual strength. Also, it often takes time to work through an important topic with sufficient care and attention. One needs to take a long-term perspective toward reading and study. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
However, such a perspective will require endurance in staying put in a chair, with pen in hand, long enough to read deeply and widely. This requires a spirit of quietness and an absence of distraction. If you are fidgety and have to get up every fifteen minutes, you must get control of yourself. And gaining such control will require self-denial, suffering, and endurance. The intellectual life is both a means to and a result of a life of discipline, self-control, and endurance. The best way to develop these traits is to practice the spiritual disciplines, especially solitude and fasting. Through solitude, I am learning to be quiet, alone, and focused. Through fasting, I am learning to say no to immediate gratification and bodily distraction and control of myself. The spiritual disciplines can facilitate endurance, patience, discipline, and self-control—virtue that constitute the soil in which the cultivation of the Christian mind takes place. Develop a good vocabulary. Fifth, keep a dictionary handy and get in the habit of looking up words that you do not understand. The development of a good vocabulary is an important tool in the cultivation of the Christian mind. The ubiquitous and egregious (look them up!) avoidance of the dictionary today is no help to the person who wishes to love God with one’s mind. Set some intellectual goals. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
It is important for you to set some study goals on a yearly basis. I suggest you team up with another person in your church who has similar study interest and commit yourselves to mutually accountable reading program, like Reese’s Book Club, for example. For six years now, I have met every Friday morning for breakfast with a study partner. My friend and I read books in philosophy, psychology, contemporary culture, spiritual formation, and so on. We meet to discuss our reading. Also, we subscribe to important Christian periodicals (for example, Christian Today) and regularly browse in secular and Christian bookstores. We come together and share our discoveries each week, and our times together are rich! Find a plan that works for you and just do it! Sometimes one of our friends or loved ones have become a spiritual paralytic. The affliction or trial one has undergone has virtually immobilized the person spiritually. One is unable to help oneself. Not only that, but the spiritual “mat” one is lying on—that is, faith in God and trust in His promises—is no more than the equivalent of a thin, straw-filled mattress. If you try to encourage one through Scripture, one will look at you blankly and tell you Scripture just does not mean anything to one anymore. One has tried to claim God’s promises, but nothing “works.” God just is not there. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
This person has become an awkward, heavy spiritual burden. You cannot pray with one, you can only pray for one. However, just as the paralytic’s friends persisted until they brought him to Jesus, so we too must persist in bringing this person to the throne of grace until God heals one spiritually. Of course, the spiritual paralytic is an extreme case. More often than not, the person to whom we are called to be a minister of grace can still go to the throne of grace oneself. However, we are still called to really around that person in prayer. God can, and often does, answer our individual prayers, but the general tenor of Scripture is that God desires we support each other in prayer. Beyond prayer, we must in some way receive permission to be a minister of grace to the person in need. One of the best ways we can do this is to demonstrate that we care. The first thing the person requiring grace needs from you is the assurance and demonstration that you care. We want to help that person come to the place where one can cast that hurt on God, truly believing God does care. So often, though, our perception of other people’s care. If we see care demonstrated in our friends, it is easier for us to believe God cares. If should not be this way; we should not gauge the care of God by the care of fallible, sinful human beings. However, we do. And often, God wants us to be the tangible evidence of His care. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
How can we demonstrate that we care? Obviously the first thing we must do is to make contact. If you live in the same city, invite the person to lunch or coffee, or in some way establish personal contact. Based on my own experience after the death of my first wife, and confirmed by several friends who have lost loved ones, this is where we so often fail each other. Apparently because we feel awkward and do not know what to say, we do not say anything. In fact, we may even avoid the hurting person. One friend, whose wife died some months after mine, said to me, “William, where are my friends?” Another told me of someone, who was one of his best friends, avoiding him after the death of a child. If you have failed to make contact back you did not know what to day, allow me to offer a suggestion. Just tell the person, “I know you must be hurting badly, and I do not know what to say, but I just want you to know I care.” Then, if appropriate you could add, “If it would help, I would like to have lunch [or whatever] with you, and just listen to you. I would like to know how you are really doing.” Above all, do not ask the person merely in passing at church or somewhere else “How are you doing?” Though you may not intend this, it communicates to the hurting person that you are expecting the typical cultural response, “Oh, just fine!” Speaking as one who has “been there,” this is taken as more of an indication that you do not care than that you do. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
When you have demonstrated to the other person that you do care—be sensitive to determine when the other person believes this—you can begin to ask gently probing questions, such as, “How are you and God getting alone during this time?” “Are you able to get any comfort from the Scriptures, or are they just dead to you right now?” Ask questions in a way that communicates you will not be shocked by negative answers. “And now it came to pass in the forty and third year of the reign of the judges, there was no contention among the people of Nephi save it were a little pride which was in the church, which did cause some little dissensions among the people, which affairs were settled in the ending of the forty and third year. And there was no contention among the people in the forty and fourth year; neither was there much contention in the forty and fifth year. And it came to pass in the forty and sixth, yea, there was much contention and many dissensions; in the which there were an exceedingly great many who departed out of the land of Zarahemla, and went forth unto the land northward to inherit the land. And they did travel to an exceedingly great distance, insomuch that they came to large bodies of water and many rivers. Yea, and even they did spread forth into all parts of the land, into whatever parts it had not been rendered desolate and without timber, because of the many inhabitants who had before inherited the land. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
“And they did travel to an exceedingly great distance, insomuch that they came to large bodies of water and many rivers. Yea, and even the did spread forth int all parts of the land, into whatever parts it had not been rendered desolate and without timber, because of the many inhabitants who had before inherited the land. And now no part of the land wad desolate, save it were for timbers; but because of the greatness of the destruction of the people who had before inhabited the land it was called desolate. And there being but little timber upon the face of the land, nevertheless the people who went forth became exceedingly expert in the working of cement; therefore they did build houses of cement, in the which they did dwell. And it came to pass that they did multiply and spread, and did go forth from the land southward to the land northward, and did spread insomuch that they began to cover the face of the whole Earth, from the sea south to the sea north, from the sea west to the sea east. And the people who were in the land northward did dwell in tents, and in houses of cement, and they did suffer whatsoever tree should spring up upon the face of the land that it should grow up, that in time they might have timber to build their houses, their cities, and their temples, and their synagogues, and their sanctuaries, and all manner of their buildings. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
“And it came to pass as timber was exceedingly scarce in the land northward, they did send forth much by the way of shipping. And thus they did enable the people in the land northward that they might build many cities, both of wood and of cement. And it came to pass that there were many of the people of Ammon, who were Lamanites by birth, did also go forth into this land. And now there are many records kept of the proceedings of this people, by many of this people, which are particular and very large, concerning them. However, behold, a hundredth part of the proceedings of this people, yea, the account of the Lamanites and of the Nephites, and their wars, and contentions, and dissensions, and their preaching, and their prophecies, and their shipping and their building of temples, and of synagogues and their sanctuaries, and their righteousness, and their wickedness, and their murders, and their robbings, and their plundering, and all manner of abominations and whoredoms, cannot be contained in this work. However, behold, there are many books and many records of every kind, and they have kept chiefly by the Nephites. And they have been handed down from one generation to another by the Nephites, even until they have fallen into transgression and have been murdered, plundered, and hunted, and driven forth, and slain, and scattered upon the face of the Earth, and mixed with the Lamanites until they are no more called the Nephites, becoming wicked, and wild, and ferocious, yea, even becoming Lamanites. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
“And now I return again to mine account; therefore, what I have spoken had passed after there had been great contentions, and disturbances, and wars, and dissensions, among the people of Nephi. The forty and sixth year of the reign of the judges ended; and it came to pass that there was still great contention in the land, yea, even in the forty and seventh year, and also in the forty and eighth year. Nevertheless Helaman did fill the judgment-seat with justice and equity; yea, he did observe to keep the statues, and the judgments, and the commandments of God; and he did do that which was right in the sight of God continually; and he did walk after the ways of his father, insomuch that he did prosper in the land. And it came to pass that he had two sons. He gave unto the eldest the name of Nephi, and unto the youngest, the name of Lehi. And they began to grow up unto the Lord. And it came to pass that the wars and contentions began to cease, in small degree, among the people of the Nephites, in latter end of the forty and eighth year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And it came to pass in the forty and ninth year of the reign of the judges, there was continual peace established in the land, all save it were the secret combinations which Gadianton the robber had established in the more settled parts of the land, which at the time were not known unto those who were at the head of government; therefore they were not destroyed out of the land. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
“And it came to pass that in this same yea there was exceedingly great prosperity in the church, insomuch that there were thousands who did join themselves unto the church and were baptized unto repentance. And so great was the prosperity of the church, and so many the blessings which were poured out upon the people, that even the high priests and the teachers were themselves astonished beyond measure. And it came to pass that the work of the Lord did prosper unto the baptizing and uniting to the church of God, any souls, yea, even tends of thousands. Thus we may see that the Lord is merciful unto all who will, in the sincerity of their hearts, call upon his hoy name. Yea, this we see that the gate of Heaven is open unto all, even to those who will believe on the name of Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God. Yea, we see that whosoever will may lay hold upon the word of God, which is quick and powerful, which is quick and powerful, which shall divide asunder all the cunning and the snares and the wiles of the devil, and lead the humans of Christ in a strait and narrow course across that everlasting gulf of misery which is prepared to engulf the wicked—and land their souls, yea, their immortal souls, at the right hand of God in the kingdom of Heaven, to sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and with Jacob, and with all our holy fathers, to go no more out. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
“And in this year there was continual rejoicing in the and of Zarahemla, and in all the regions round about, even in the land which was possessed by the Nephites. And it came to pass that there was peace and exceedingly great joy in the remainder of the forty and ninth year; yea, and also there was continual peace and great joy in the fiftieth year of the reign of the judges. And in the fifty and first year of the reign of the judges there was peace also, save it were the pride which began t enter into the church—not into the church of God, but into the hearts of the people who professed to belong to the church of God—and they were lifted up in pride, even to the persecution of many of their brethren. Now his was a great evil, which did cause the more humble part of the people to suffer great persecutions, and to wade through much affliction. Nevertheless they did fast and pray oft, and did wax stronger and stronger in their humility, and firmer and firmer in the faith of Christ, unto the filling their souls with joy and consolation, yea, even to the purifying and the sanctification of their hearts, which sanctification of their hearts unto God. And it came to pass that the fifty and second year ended in peace also, save it were the exceedingly great pride which had gotten into the hearts of the people; and it was because of their prosperity in the land; and it did grow upon them from day to day. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
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Anger is a Brief Madness–Once a Word Has Been Allowed to Escape, it Cannot be Recalled!
We sleep live in different countries, sleep in separate houses, we have dinner apart, we take separate vacations—we are doing everything we can to keep our marriage together. Although we live in the most affluent society ever known, the sense of deprivation and discomfort that pervades it is also unparalleled. Writers are engineers of human souls and they do this for the sake of being able to walk around with a clearer conscience about the World we are bequeathing to the next generation. The dizziness of freedom should never be underestimated. Anxiety is always the first payment towards the price of freedom. Yet the longer the first step is postponed the more difficult it may appear to be to take it. And the main point is overlooked, anyway. The stupidity and madness of totalitarian discipline lie in the fact that in the hysterical haste to regulate and constantify life one loses sight of the truth that life contains in itself sufficient limitation and self-discipline as to obviate the need for regulation if given half a chance. Life itself is its own discipline, contains its own order, is self-regulating. More order in and of itself within the life structure is unnecessary. The more time people spend before the computer scree or any screen, the less time and desire they have for two human activities critical to a fruitful and demanding intellectual life: reading and conversation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21
The nature of relationship seems to have something to do with energy: “civilized” people are usually described as more energetic or restless than their nonliterate counterparts. This does not mean that they possess more energy: even given the same diet the correlation will appear. The difference we are concerned with here lies in the utilization of energy. There appears to be, in other words, some difference in motivation. The screen media invades, and in many instances destroys altogether, the silence that promotes reading and the free time required for both solitary thinking and social conversation. Above all, screen media extend their domination of cultural life by lowering the age at which children’s minds—boy brains and girl brains alike—are exposed to large and continuously increasing doses of packaged entertainment. Television may actually impede language development in children between the ages of eight and sixteen months. Researchers found that for every hour infants watched videos, they understood an average of six to eight fewer words than babies who were not exposed to video at such an early age. However, if marketers have it their way, there will soon be no control group of infants who have not become hooked on video long before they can walk or talk. The lives of the past two decades have produced an explosion of what are called conversation avoidance. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21
One particularly dismaying finding by the Kaiser Foundation is that children under six now spend an average of two hours a day viewing screen media, while they spend only thirty-nine minutes a day reading or listening to their parents and read to them. There is really no need to make a case for the proposition that video watching displaces reading for pleasure. When 40 percent of adults read no books at all (fiction or nonfiction) in the course of a year, and more than half read no fiction, the facts speak for themselves. People are reading less because there are only so many hours in the day. If reading were the only cultural pursuit to show declining numbers, there might be cause for alarm. As long as reading books remains part of our cultural diet, as long as the new popular forms continue to offer their own cognitive rewards, we are not likely to descend into a culture of mental atrophy anytime soon. Reading is part of what is necessary to expand and enrich living, to being more into the scope of living. If we deliberately cut off the paths to the future by distracting attention to the internal disorder which is disordered only by our misunderstanding and fear and by the unconsidered vagaries of existence which have induced or elicited it, this will not likely occur. #RandolphHarris 3 of 21
We are reading less because there are only so many hours in a day, but the other half of the explanation is that growing numbers of people, especially the young, prefer to spend those hours engaged in various forms on noninteractive screens, as well as the more cognitively challenging, interactive offerings of devilishly sophisticated video games, social media, digital streaming. Many people are less interested than their parents were not just in literary reading but in all performing arts, including classical music. The whole point of these fancy mobile phones that cost $500 to $2,000, plus monthly service charge, is that they are computers that also allow you to make phone calls and their availability allows them to be more of a distraction that can literally be held in the palm of one’s hand and will surely reduce whatever part of personal time that is still devoting to reading. You will never walk alone. When television news executives believe that they will lose their audience’s attention if a sound bite lasts more than eight seconds, why should magazines editors believe that readers will sit still for lengthy article that might take a half hour, or even fifteen minutes, to read? Creativity and invention, although they restructure the experience at hand, do so only because of the additional experience of other sorts which create new contexts and dimensions of experience. They do not come from more of the same for all that provides are permutations and combinations of what one already has. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21
However, newspapers and TV news media fret and worry over the future of print while they dismantle the section of the paper and reports which deals most closely with two things which have kept them alive since the dawn of printing presses: the public’s hunger for knowledge and the written word. This insufficient intellectual content has led only to boredom, impoverishment, and destruction of content worth reading or watching. What newspapers and screen media are now doing is they are engaged in—like birds of pray looking for their next meal—a process of swooping around with an eye out for certain kinds of sensational information. It is clear that a human will work hard for food so long as it is scarce. However, what about when one has a full belly? In order to ensure a steady output of energy we must create some sort of artificial scarcity, for it is, paradoxically, only through such scarcity that an abiding surplus of energy can be assured. For instance, when many of your parents, grandparents, great grandparents or maybe even some of you were young, the lure of the black-and-white TV screen was so strong that people would put a TV in their formal dinning room and turn in on while eating meals. Television was still relatively new and not everyone has one, so people loved to watch them. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21
People were more likely to talk about what was happening on the screen rather than wat was going on in their own lives because they were more fascinated by it. Therefore, if you cannot create content that people crave and desire more of an audience, flooding them with junk news will more than likely turn them off. Intellectuals do not watch the brawls on Jerry Springer, they are usually the ones who tune in for educational information, therefore if your news is junk, they are not going to watch. Cutting back the number of hours news is on the three big networks might back more people inclined to tune in when it is on because it has become scarce. For quality conversations and information, many intellectuals are actually reading more books because they want to learn things that will expand their minds. At its hear, all intellectual and emotional life is a conversation—and the conversation begins at birth. If the family dinner table once provided the first face-to-face setting for the semiformal pleasure of social conversation, it was quickly followed by the school lunchroom, sleepovers at friends’ houses, late-night dormitory bull sessions, coffeehouses, and juice bars—any setting that offered the chance foe friends to exchange ideas and personal confidences. However, personal social contact, outside as well as inside the family, is another casualty of the culture of distraction. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21
Adults of all ages report that they have fewer friends, and fewer people with whom they discuss important matters, than they did twenty years ago. One 25 percent of Americans say that they have no one to talk to about important subjects—more than double the percentage in 1985. The greatest drop occurred in social contacts with nonfamily members: 43 percent of Americans talked about important matters with friends in 1985, but only 20 percent did so in 2004. The playdates and evening conversations women used to have with their friends have been replaced mobile phones packed with games and social media and with programs like Gossip Girl that would make a feminist weep, since it is a television show based of beautiful, high class rich young women who can do nothing but deceive, undermine, and fight with one another for the most eligible bachelor. As the art of live conversation continues its decline, people are crying out for a glimpse of the way intellectuals used to talk, not only to one another but to anyone else who happened to be within range. Having a passionate intellectual conversation, with genuine learnedness, with the intensity, the sense of communication is so rare that when it happens it is a lot like falling in love for the first time when you are actually old enough to understand another human being. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21
With the triumph of the culture of distraction, conversations that begin with the printed word and end with a World of knowledge are becoming a blast from the past. Empty selves are a danger to Society and the church. A society filled with empty selves is a morally bankrupt, intellectually shallow society. The empty self is also the enemy of the Christian mind and its cultivation. Try to think about what a church filled with empty selves would look like in a culture. What would be the theological understanding, the reading habits, the evangelistic courage, the articulate cultural penetration of such a church? Pretty inadequate, I am afraid. If the interior life does not really matter all that much, why spend the time reading and trying to develop an interior, intellectual, spiritually mature life? If someone is basically passive, one will just not make the effort to read, preferring instead to be entertained. If a person is sensate in orientation, music, magazines filled with pictures, and visual media in general will be more important that mere words on a page or abstract thoughts. If one is hurried and distracted, one will have little patience for theoretical knowledge and too short of an attention span to stay with an idea while it is being carefully developed. Instead, there will be a rush to get to the bottom line, an overemphasis on practical application and how-tos, a Reader’s Digest approach to sermon evaluation or reading selection. #RandolphHarris 8 of 21
And, if someone is overly individualistic, infantile, and narcissistic, what will that person read, if one reads at all? Such a person will read Christian self-help books that are filled with self-serving content, many slogans, simplistic moralizing, a lot of stories and pictures, and inadequate diagnosis of issues that place no demand on the reader. Books about Christian celebrities will be selected to allow the reader to live vicariously through the celebrity. What will not be read are books that equip people to engage in “destroying speculations….raised up against the knowledge of God,” (2 Corinthians 10.5), develop a well-reasoned, theological understanding of the Christian religion, and fill their role in the broader kingdom of God for the common good and the cause of Christ. Eventually a church without readers or with readers with the tastes just listed will become a marginalized, easily led group of Christians impotent to stand against the powerful forces of secularism that threaten to bury Christian ideas under a veneer of soulless pluralism and misguided scientism. In such a context, the church will be tempted to measure her success largely in terms of numbers—numbers achieved by cultural accommodation to empty selves. In this way, as Os Guinness has reminded us, the church will become her own grave excavator; her means of short-term “success” will turn out to be the very thing that marginalizes her in the long run. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21
Romantic love is one scarcity mechanism that deserves special comment. Indeed, its only function and meaning is to transmute that which is plentiful into that which is in short supply. This is done in two ways: first, by inculcating the belief that only one object can satisfy a person’s heart and affectional desires; and second, by fostering a preference for unconsummated, unrequited, interrupted, or otherwise tragic relationships. Although romantic love always verges on the ridiculous (if a man died of starvation because he could not obtain any brussels sprouts, we would find it comic) Western peoples generally and Americans in particular have shown an impressive tendency to take it seriously. Why is this so? Why is love made into an artificially scarce commodity, like diamonds or “genuine” pearls (“true” love)? To ask such a question is to answer it. We make things scarce in order to increase their value, which in turn makes people work harder for them. Who would spend their lives working for pleasures that could be obtained any time? Who would work for love, when people give it away? However, if we were to make some form of it somehow rare, unattainable, and elusive, and to devalue all other forms, we might conceivably inveigle a few rubes to chase after it. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21
Romantic love is rare in primitive communities simply because bonds are more casual. Children grow up with many caretakers and be sensitive to the fact that there exist many alternative suppliers of love and they apply this belief to their adult relationships. The modern Western child, brought up in a small detached household does not share this sense of substitutability. One’s emotional life is heavily bound up in a single person, and the process of spreading this involvement over other people as one grows up is more problematic. Americans must make a life task out of what happens effortlessly (insofar as it need happen at all) in many societies. Most Western children succeed in drawing enough money out of their emotional and spiritual bank to live on, but some need more. Most of us learn early that there is one relationship that is more vital than all the others put together, and that is our relationship with God. Some people are “married to the job,” and they betray their unconscious understanding of the motivational roots of their striving. People who purse these ephemeral goals are those with most of their emotional funds tied up in some spiritual deficit. They may amass great wealth, but still have little spending money for daily pleasures and not satisfied with ordinary love. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21
Society creates empty people by exposing them to pleasure of the flesh at a young age, or by training children in our competitive value system that it is moral to hurt one another and immoral for them to be kind and loving and accepting to others. The mass screen media depends heavily upon its population being angry and discontented; the renunciation of violence endangers our society as we know it. The notion of sin must be affected by the explanation of original sin. If original sin is simply humans’ necessary passage from essence to existence, sin can no longer be understood in terms of disobedience to a law. Morality is illumined in new and perhaps unexpected ways by the Christology of the New Being. Once faith is understood as Ultimate Concern, as commitment to the Unconditional, a new ethical dimension is disclosed. If it did not determine the entire range of a human’s activities, no concern would be ultimate or unconditional. The dogma that Christ’s death atoned for our sins is symbolic of the ethical dimension of faith in the New Being. The New Being in the Christ is redeemed. It has risen above the equivocation of the desire for holiness and the inevitability of temptation. Behaviour and its conformity to standard are inseparable from an ethical of law. Morality is treated in terms of love rather than of law. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21
Obedience to any law fosters self-righteousness because it stresses the merits of good works rather than undeserved grace. Life is not only creativity; it is also destructiveness. Every life-process unites a trend towards separation with a trend toward reunion. So does moral life. There is no good action without renunciation of a better one. Not only is evil exclusive of good; good itself is exclusive of better. In other words, good and evil are only relative values. An objective ethics, that claims absoluteness for its categories, is misleading. The lasting element of any code of morality is not to be found in its classification of good and bad. Rather, ethics is valuable through its relationship to the Unconditional. Because of this there can be, ultimately, no secular ethics. An ethics can come to fulfilment only as a religious ethics. The quest for salvation and mortality is not a quest for law, but for transcendence above all law. It is a quest for a paradoxical reconciliation of creativity and destructiveness in life for a harmony of better, good and evil. The answer to the moral question is not moral; it is transmoral. The Unconditional which we recognize in the experience of the New Being in Christ must be acknowledged not only in ourselves but also in other human beings, or it would be an illusion. The ethical realm of personal behaviour must be transcended in an attitude that embraces the Unconditional both in myself and in others. #RandolphHarris 13 of 21
There is no depth of life without the depth of common life. Thus, the quest for morality arises as a search for the unity of the personal and Unconditional, or of the ethical and the religious. The ethics of the New Being is neither objective nor subjective. It must transcend subjectivity and objectivity. The only human experience in which both are transcended, because they are untied in a higher synthesis, is love. Ultimately, therefore, Christian ethics must be an ethics of love. It is a dynamic concept: the law is God’s own rule for humans to follow. Having presided over creation, this law left its mark on human’s nature. Being itself an aspect of the Word of God, it was confirmed by the Incarnation. Revealed law, in this line of thought, is not superadded to the law of nature. Rather, it opens human’s nature to the full meaning of the law. Existence in humans tries to mould itself on essence as it is thought out in God. The Universe is therefore a hierarchy of values on the model of the eternal laws in God’s mind. Between the Universe and God, between existence and essence, the Church mediates: “The Church, itself a hierarchical system, teaches this system, educates for it, fights for its political realizations, defends it against new systems. We are to pray for one another, encourage one another, teach and admonish one another, spur one another on, carry each other’s burdens, share with one another, and so on. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21
Truly the Body of Christ should be constantly alive with this reciprocal ministry to one another. We also may need to pray, “Lord, help me to be transparent and open to my friend, even though doing so seems humiliating to me right now. And please make my friend a minister of Your grace to me.” All of us, if we are exploiting this avenue of God’s grace, should find ourselves at various times on both the receiving and the giving end. To borrow a principle of reciprocity from Paul’s teaching on giving, “At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need,” reports 2 Corinthians 8.14. How, then, can we be minsters of grace to others? Well, obviously in the same three basic ways they can be ministers to us: prayer, the word of God, and help in submitting to God’s providence. However, there is a crucial difference between receiving and giving. In receiving we must give permission to the other person to share Scripture with us and to help us submit to God’s providence. In giving, we must receive permission. Usually this means we must first earn the right to minister to the person through a relationship of mutual sharing, openness, and trust that we have already established. The one area where we do not need to give or receive permission is, of course, in praying for one another. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21
However, even in prayer, if you have not been willing to share with another person what is going on in your life, for them to pray for your specific needs may be kind of challenging. There are some difficult or tragic events such as the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, or a debilitating disease or accident, that results in certain obvious needs we can pray for. However, even in these areas, each of us responds to those events in ways distinctive to us, and in these areas of individual response we need to share and receive specific prayer requests with the close circle of friends we have cultivated. Prayer is probably the most important way we can be a minister of grace to someone else. We have already considered God’s gracious invitation to approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace in our time of need. However, sometimes brothers or sisters in Christ are so discouraged about their adversity and God’s seeming silence over a prolonged period, they just do not have the spiritual strength even to approach the throne of grace. To them the doors of Heaven are shut and God just does not seem to “be there.” At these times we need to “carry” that person to the throne of grace by our prayers. Generally speaking, feelings and emotions are fostered and sustained by the ideas and images, though social or bodily conditions also factor in. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21
Hopelessness and rejection (or worthlessness and “not belonging”) live on images—often of some specific scene or scenes of unkindness, brutality, or abuse—that have become a permanent fixture within the mind, radiating negativity and leaving a background of deadly ideas that take over hoe we think and structure our whole World. Such images also foster and sustain moods. What we call “moods” are simply feeling qualities that pervade our selves and everything around us. They are, of course, extremely hard to do anything about precisely because one cannot stand outside of them. Clinical depression is an extreme form of a “bad mood,” but dread, deprivation, and deficiency, as well as simple anger, fear, or pain, can become moods of the negative type because of the capacity of feelings to spread and pervade everything they touch. On the beneficial side, there are feelings and moods associated with confidence, worthiness of good, being acceptable and “belonging,” purposefulness, love, hope, joy, and peace. Being “accepted in the beloved” (Ephesians 1.6) is the humanly indispensable foundation for the reconstruction of all these optimistic feelings, mood, and their underlying conditions. We must be very clear on how the negative feelings rest on ideas and images. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21
Those feelings can themselves be transformed by discipleship to Christ and the power of the gospel and the Spirit, through which the corresponding ideas and images are changed to beneficial ones. And we must be clear that the person given to moods faces special difficulties, though not insurmountable ones, in spiritual formation. “And it came to pass in the forty and second year of the reign of the judges, after Moronihah had established again peace between the Nephites and the Lamanites, behold there was no one to fill the judgment-seat; therefore there began to be a contention again among the people concerning who should fill the judgment-seat. And it came to pass that Helaman, who was the son of Helaman, was appointed to fill the judgment-seat, by the voice of the people. However, behold, Kishkumen, who had murdered Pahoran, did lay wait to destroy Helaman also; and he was upheld by his hand, who had entered into a covenant that no one should know one’s wickedness. For there was one Gadianton, who was exceedingly expert in many words, and also in one’s craft, to carry on the secret work of murder and robbery; therefore he became the leader of the band of Kishkumen. Therefore he did flatter them, and also Kishkumen, that if they would place him in the judgment-seat he would grant unto those who belonged to his band that they should be placed in power and authority among the people; therefore Kishkumen sought to destroy Helaman. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21
“And it came to pass as he went forth towards the judgment-seat to destroy Helaman, behold one of the servants of Helaman, having been out by night, and having obtained, through disguise, a knowledge of those plans which had been laid by this band to destroy Helaman—and it came to pass that he met Kishkumen, and he gave unto him a sign; therefore Kishkumen made known unto him the object of his desire, desiring that he would conduct him to the judgment-seat that he might murder Helaman. And when the servant of Helaman had known all the heart of Kishkumen, and how that it was his object to murder, and also that it was his object to murder, and also that it was the object of all those who belonged to his brand to murder, and to rob, and to gain power, (and this was their secret plan, and their combination) the servant of Helaman said unto Kishkumen: Let us go forth unto the judgment-seat. Now this did please Kishkumen exceedingly, for he did suppose that he should accomplish his design; but behold, the servant of Helaman, as they were going forth unto the judgment-seat, did stab Kishkumen even to the hearts, that he fell dead without a groan. And the ran and told Helaman all the things which he had seen, and heard, and done. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21
“And it came to pass that Helaman did send forth to take his band of robbers and secret murders, that they might be executed according to the law. However, behold, when Gadianton had found that Kishkumen did not return he feared lest that he should be destroyed; therefore he caused that his band should follow him. And they took their flight out of the land, by a secret way, into the wilderness; and this when Helaman sent forth to take them they could nowhere be found. And more of this Gadianton shall be spoken hereafter. And thus ended the forty and second year of the reign of the judges over the people of Nephi. And behold, in the end of this book ye shall see that this Gadianton did prove the overthrow, yea, almost the entire destruction of the people of Nephi. Behold I do not mean the end of the book of Helaman, but I mean the end of the book of Nephi, from which I have taken all the account which I have written,” Helaman 2.1-14. God, please shield the people, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. Divider of time, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. Father of nations, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. Granter of prophecy, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. Seeker of lore, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21
Bestower of sovereignty, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. Knower of secrets, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. Encompasser of Worlds, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. Mystery of mysteries, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. You who are worthy of honor, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. You who are worthy of praise, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. You who are worthy of worship, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. You who are worthy of honor, praise, and worship, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. You who are worthy of praise, worthy of worship, we honor you, we praise you, we worship you. Thou causest the wind to blow and the rain to fall. Thou sustainest the living with lovingkindness, and in great mercy callest the departed to everlasting life. Thou upholdest the falling, healest the sick, settest free those in bondage, and keepest faith with those that sleep in the dust. Who is like unto Thee, Almighty King, who decreest death and life and bringest forth salvation? Who maybe compared to Thee, Father of mercy, who in love rememberest Thy creatures unto life? Faithful art Thou to grant eternal life to the departed. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who callest the dead to life everlasting. Holy art Thou and holy is Thy name and unto Thee holy beings render praise daily. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the holy God. #RandolphHarris 21 of 21
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It is Not Unusual for the Inventive Genius to Claim the Voice of God as the Only Authority!
No one on Earth is more ingenious than an addict out to score. Protestant fundamentalists built a kindergarten-through-college network of Christian schools whose graduates would become warriors in the army of the religious right. Even as students were attacking the authority of secular universities, fundamentalist proselytizers were brining millions of other young people into their fold. Parents do not want their families and children and homes and businesses being destroyed by the demonic decade. The scripts goes something like this: Once upon a time, there was both order and freedom in American cultural life, especially in the universities that served as citadels of learning and beacons to the rest of society. Yes, a few professors were thought to be unpatriotic, but anyone who saw something wrong with American society was acting like a baby. The veterans who took advantage of the GI Bill were profoundly grateful for the chance to go to college because a diploma was their passport to a white-collar job, and their children regarded higher education as a birthright and assumed that jobs would be there when they were ready to take on adult responsibilities. For the most part, students and professors pursed truth with little interference from the Worlds of gross commercialism and gross politics. #RandolphHarris 1 of 24
Think Periclean Athens, the University of Heidelberg in the nineteenth century, Oxford and Cambridge before the Great War, and that is the higher learning Americans enjoyed—except in much larger numbers than had ever been the case in human history. Then the barbarians stormed the gates—no, the barbarians were already inside the gates. Instead of studying for their exams and listening to their teachers, students began to fancy themselves liberators of Americans. Much of the great tradition was still ere, but then decay or collapse started to set in. In the guise of students, an alien cultural started to attack. They were on the warpath against all forms of authority, including the educational authority of the universities and the pieties of middlebrow culture. The American university that was a glorious center of higher learning, was now spewing out nonsense about how awful McMansions where, what an atrocious symbol Germans automobile were, and how middle managers were glorified baby sitters and how they rich deserve nothing. The sentimental falsehoods in public and private institutions poisoned the core curriculum and infected the minds of vulnerable youth for it told them that no matter how hard they work, they should feel guilty about success, and that they do not deserve what they earn. #RandolphHarris 2 of 24
All the anti-intellectuals were doing was filling Americans with shame so they could strip away the American Dream. And then the flags were removed from the class rooms, students were no longer allowed to pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. The pinkos wanted to replace McMansions with high rise apartment buildings with paper thin walls so they could monitor you. They wanted to popularize Korean cars instead of Germany luxury automobiles, and instead of people reading books and studying to become doctors, lawyers, nurses, and engineers, they would watch countless hours of TV and become experts on celebrity popular culture. However, many Americans believed that university presidents and college chancellors were captains of erudition. Veterans were thankful that the GI Bill made is possible for millions of working-class people who served their country to become the first members of their families to attend college. Even women attended college and earned a bachelor’s degree to become educated, well-rounded mothers so they would be better equipped to educate their children. So, the Ivy Tower on the Hill—the place where committed scholars search for truth in a World that desperately needs help is one of the best institutions in the World, no matter what critics say. #RandolphHarris 3 of 24
A college education is the best aspect of the civil rights movement in the World. It allows our youth to learn and use their minds, to obtain job so they do not have to sit around being poor and bitter. It is still possible to get a first-rate education in any number of American colleges. Some institutions have more rigorous requirements than others, and, in any event, it is always possible for self-selected lovers of learning to learn. High culture can never be obliterated as long as the species continues to produce extraordinary individuals with the inclination and fortitude to pursue their interests and talents against the grain and the mass culture surrounding them. However, because of the erosion of core studies, it is now possible at many institutions of so-called higher learning for students to receive a degree in psychology without having taken mid-level biology courses; for a cultural studies major to graduate without reading the basic texts of American history, Economic, or studying the Enlightenment; and for business majors to graduate without having studied any literature after one’s freshman year. And all of these college graduates, should they choose to become teachers at any level of the educational system, will pass on their narrowness and ignorance to the next generation. #RandolphHarris 4 of 24
During the past ten years, many institutions have moved to restore a stronger core curriculum (as they also did in the late seventies), but this grudging, formulaic trend is higher education’s equivalent of the frantic emphasis on standardized testing in elementary and secondary schools: it as everything to do with politics—both academic politic and, in the case of public universities, the politics of getting financial support from state legislatures. When university officials start talking about a return to “the basics,” it is a sure bet that some prominent state legislator or governor or President Trump has zeroed in on the academic shortcoming of State U. and that no one is referring to the unquantifiable and more genuine learning whose importance within a society cannot be measured by test scores and can only be mourned in its absence. The Whole World is Watching, and that is true. Parents want their kids to think of college as a safe and accepting place, where people who have been sheltered from crime and chaos can go and see the trees, drink mochas and lattes, espresso and cappuccinos with the other kids, eat cobb salads and avocado toast, filet mignon and foie gras, read Shakespeare, invest in a McMansion with roommates as a form of student housing, and once in the spring the boys can go to a dance with the girls. #RandolphHarris 5 of 24
This image of peaceful, privileged youth is what the intellectuals who are presumably running the colleges want—and they want to run the goodly, so parents can be happy about writing tuition checks. They want to being back clubs like the Campus Crusade, which is a powerful Christian right-wing youth movement that is really popular in the Bible Belt. Evangelists are trying to save the nation by appealing to young men and women, many who are disillusioned with drugs and the revolution involving pleasures of the flesh, by providing students with a way to remake their lives. These groups even enhance their appeal by their deliberate adoption and adaption of popular fashion trends and language, minus obscenities and showing too much skin, for the purpose of preaching old-time religion. They even have fashionable hairstyles and look just like other college students. Some organizations have names like the Christian World Liberation Front and the Jesus Christ Light and Power Company and open shelters for young people who are burnt out from Worldly ways, which may not even be their fault because they do not know better or just got caught up. Whatever the case, accepting God has been proven to help depression and can put youth in contact with important members of the community who may offer them careers or internships upon graduation. #RandolphHarris 6 of 24
Conservatives want people to celebrate the old American Dream of love and education and Jesus Christ as our Saviour. One might even say that it is a revival and reformation of the Christian American Dream, which is embedded in everyday life society and still manages to dominate attitudes and even behavior within certain limited spheres. Christianity is a ritual of purification and cleansing, a celebration of the capacity of feeling to triumph over Worldly patterns. And it is important that human feelings should occasionally win—as important as occasional epiphanies and miracles are for religion. In our society this issue is a matter of life and death (of society, if not the individual). I also have come to a better understand of what people are saying about injustice in society. They want more funding for adequate programs like education, legal assistance, public defenders, child care, and government investigators who actually will help them because that will prevent people from being arrested. As it stands, these government agencies do not have the ability or skill, time or desire to help people. Then problems fester until it becomes a police matter and people are arrested. At that point, prosecutors will spend countless hours and millions of dollars to prosecute individuals even for minor crimes that would have been avoided if the resources were provided to help these people with ongoing problems. #RandolphHarris 7 of 24
As it stands, the media likes to play it off like there is some major mental health crisis in America, but the fact is that no one helps people when they are facing problems. Now, there may be a mental health issue with some of these people in the news media, politicians, and some people running businesses. However, when people are doing wrong to individuals, even if it is a problem that there is clear cut discrimination, harassment or some kind of other crime a person is a victim of, it is ignored and that is why people end up in police custody. The government is not willing to put ethical people in place to help them and maybe spend $10,000.00 on an investigation, but they are willing to spend millions of dollars prosecuting a person. So these people are not saying defend the police, they are saying there are ways to use resources that will save money and keep these matters from becoming police problems. As it stands, society is abusing the police because all of these problems, and many of them are really petty, get kicked over to law enforcement and then law enforcement is expected to be a lawyer, psychologist doctor or guardian when that is not even their job because other government agencies are not handling their mandated responsibilities. RandolphHarris 8 of 24
The youth assume that their elders are attempting to deceive them with this talk of proper channels—that is deliberate obstruction, since the elders know that “proper channels” are designed to negate rather than to facilitate change. Their reactions are then a horror of social uproar that many people cannot comprehend because they have never experienced what these people are going through. The elders’ notion that radical leaders are “just trying to get their names in the papers” has been replaced by calling the people liars and saying they are crazy. Parents believe that is it their responsibility to make their child into the most all-around perfect adult possible, which means paying a great deal of attention to their inner states and latent characteristics. The child no longer has a private sphere, but one’s entire being is involved with parental aspirations, and it really hurts when you invest so much love, time, money, and energy into a being for society to rip that individual apart, while people sit back watching and laughing. Our children do not even take their own personalities for granted, and it really hurts them to have their dreams crushed by racism and injustice. Parents believe they are required not just to put in the time but to make their children motivated. #RandolphHarris 9 of 24
However, some parents are willing to throw their children to the dogs for something so trivial as etiquette and it makes a deep impression. So, yeah, some of these problems are not just with government institutions, but within the house. Some children are too young to know their parents do not wish them well and want to see them fail. Since these children cannot see anything so important as to justify this betrayal, all social situations seem to have a dishonest quality. However, parents who are good Christians, absorbed with the goal of molding their child’s total character, are much less inclined to sacrifice the child to the etiquette concerns of strangers. The artist working on one’s masterpiece does not let guests use it to wipe their feet on. As a result, their children have grown up to feel that human needs have some validity of their own, ad their careful socialization to upper-middle-class values has well prepared them to accept the responsibility of becoming a gainfully employed, good citizen. Because of the parents know that there is a deep need for economic and status security, they want their children to face reality (by which they mean social reality). “My money is not your money. I am paying all the major bills and providing you with a place to stay, nice clothes, hot meals, and even an Ultimate Driving Machine. Because of this, life seems easy, but it is not.” #RandolphHarris 10 of 24
This unique power that parents have—to give their children attributes they do not themselves possess—is perhaps the unconscious determinant of an otherwise incomprehensible theme that appears so often in fairy tales: that of the impoverished old parent or helper who gives the hero magic gifts that could have made the giver oneself wealthy and powerful but apparently did not. However, upper-middle-class Americans parents relate to their children in a somewhat vampiresque way. They feed on the child’s accomplishments, sucking sustenance for their pale lives from vicarious enjoyment of one’s development. In a sense this sucking is appropriate since the parents give so much—lavish so much care, love, thoughtfulness, and self-sacrifice on their blook bank. However, this is little comfort for the child, who at some point must rise above one’s guilt and live one’s own life—the culture demands it of one. And after all, a vampire is a vampire. Basically, parents want their children to become mannikins which their fathers can display his influence to his friends. The crosses many youth wear around their necks are actually necessary to ward off the elders, whose vampiresque involvement who has been insufficiently exorcized. It is not that they are offended by the elders, but their hope is to magically neutralize their symbiotic relationship. #RandolphHarris 11 of 24
Many youths are asked to take note of their hostile reaction towards older adults in the society, because it is bad to consider any one as being “unnecessary” and their rude reactions are in “bad taste.” One day, we will all be elders and will want our due respect. No one likes to admit that they have spent their lives in a foolish, evil, or crazy manner. That is why God tells us to humble ourselves and respect our elders. Furthermore, youth do not realize that elders are taught to lie about their feelings. They are not likely to say: “You frighten and depress us. We are afraid we have spent our lives on nurturing an ungrateful family, who brutalizes their neighbours, purses useless electronic devices and creates a joyless environment. It always seemed that right thing to do, to try to raise up a family in the way of the Lord, with Christian values, but now we are a little unsure, and if we had known how you would behave so wretchedly, we would have bought a smaller home and took more vacations instead of having children.” Instead, they suppress their doubts and fears about themselves by refusing to perceive the meaning of the stimulus. When their children cry for peace of social justice they says, “Do not talk dirty,” or “Go read the ‘Good Book.’” This is a way of saying, “There is nothing important or disturbing going on here—this is just my child who is mischievous or careless at times—it is just a family affair.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 24
It is a desperate attempt for them to enjoy their lives and want you to enjoy the fact that you are privileged enough to not have to endure injustice and hearing about it makes them feel like failures. They view the World as unchanging—to convert the deep social unrest of the day into the blank torpor of lace curtain suburban life. This philosophy also speaks to a much larger social phenomenon. How, for example, can matters so intrinsically important, such as politics, government positions, new broadcasting be trusted to be handled by people who present themselves as not the most sane, unstable, and ineffective members of our society? The answer is two incompatible processes are taking place at once: politicians are supposed to be philanthropists, they are not supposed to be getting paid to help society, while pretending that the people do not exist. It has become a self-serving job, where many people become wealthy, while citizens and corporation feel it is taxation without representation, and not providing for the general welfare of the people. Assuming the framework of institutions required by equal liberty and fair equality of opportunity, the higher expectations of those better situated are just if and only if they work as part of a scheme which improves the expectations of the least advantaged members of society. #RandolphHarris 13 of 24
The intuitive idea is that the social order is not to establish and secure the more attractive prospects of those better off unless doing so is to the advantage of those less fortunate. A strongly egalitarian conception in the sense of distribution is that unless it makes both persons better off (limiting ourselves to the two-person case for simplicity), an equal distribution is to be preferred. Also, nothing is lost if an accurate interpersonal comparison of benefits is impossible. It suffices that the least favoured person can be identified and one’s rational preference determined. Also, if each person gains relative to the other, further benefits to one become less valuable from a social point of view. If art helps us to define the absolute, so madness brings us to a closer understanding of the relative. For whereas we sometimes can accept the aesthetic, the immediacy of the work of art, we fight acceptance of the products of the deluded and call it madness. We say no to the possessions, the compulsions, the hallucinations. We deny their uniqueness, their absoluteness and immediacy, and place them in relation to something that can be accepted. We say these are the products of diseased minds, of sick brains and glands, of distorting heat waves, of propaganda and suggestion, or drugs and poisons, of the experience of frustration, conflict, and trauma. #RandolphHarris 14 of 24
For these other categories are acceptable. The unacceptable is thus related to the sick organism, to the false culture, to the disproportionate environment: we feel safe once again. And we may be at that, sometimes. For in the relational dimension there is mobility, change, and the chance to choose. One is not captivated entirely; one can compare, discriminate, and select. It is possible to move from or toward, increase or decrease one over the other. Then there is the chance to get out of trouble or into still more. There is freedom to the n—1 absolutes available within the perspective allowed. One has gone from the principle of pleasure to the principle of reality; but when no choice continuum is offered, when there are no degrees of freedom, then one is frustrated in that dimension. We may try to fight as long as there is some dimly sensed hope, but when that too disappears that dimension is dead for us and we are left just a little less alive. Of course for one who is “adjusted” to one’s madness, who accepts one’s mission, who no longer questions one’s lost, the same epiphanous structure of experience is evident as in the case of the experience called aesthetic. There is no need to distinguish between abnormality in the absolute dimension of experience. The mad person like the priest accepts one’s calling. #RandolphHarris 15 of 24
In fact it is not unusual for the inventive genius to claim the voice of God as the only authority. For the new absolute is not derivative, has no ultimate sanction beyond its being, its epiphany. Each individual, including the reader, must refer to one’s own insight for an ostensive definition. To some extent experience in madness and aesthetic experience differ only as a matter of taste. There is no difference that cannot be questioned. Each may be accepted for itself and that is the point. It is only in so far as we see that each leads to consequences of different value to us that any distinction between the two may be noticed. Madness too frequently is self-limiting, and as such defeats its protective function by ultimately removing or devaluating that which it would protect. The question which madness does not answer or answers but poorly is: “Madness, then what?” In fact any inability to answer the questions: “Then what?” is revealing of madness; to the degree that the answer evades this question, to that degree there is madness. That is the only test of the abnormal. The normal epiphany of experience is, like most science and art, open ended. Growth may still occur, selection take place, change be accepted with grace and interest. #RandolphHarris 16 of 24
Life can expand in depth and scope, in richness of action and experience. The completion of one leads to the opening of the next, not to boredom, self-destruction, or fear. Theoretically, if the paths chosen were completely normal, there should be no termination to life. Even at present there is usually continuity of life on into the future somewhere of some species. And that life can be called normal, the healthy life. No, it is not in the absolute dimension that the difference between normal and abnormal lies. It is only in the relative dimension that such a consideration gains significance. Then why do we continue to make the mistake of judging the absolute as good and bad, healthy and diseased, normal and abnormal? I do not know entirely the probable answer to this but the fact is that we do confuse these and I would like to point to a few crucial areas where this confusion causes no end of needless suffering to those so misinformed. This includes all of us. Job and Joseph are examples of those who saw the hand of God in their circumstances. In one day the Sabeans stole Job’s oxen, and the Chaldeans carried off his camels and ended the lives of his servants. #RandolphHarris 17 of 24
Lightning burned up his sheep, and a mighty wind struck the house of his oldest son, ending the lives of all his children. Later Job himself was afflicted with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Job’s response at the loss of his children and his possessions was, “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away,” reports Job 1.21. And with respect to his own afflictions he said, “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble,” reports Job 2.10. Quite apart from Job’s humble reaction toward God, we should note first that he ascribed his sufferings to the hand of God. We must learn to see beyond the actions of evil people and the disasters of nature to the sovereign God who controlled these events. And the inspired writer who recorded the trials of Job, at the close of his account, said, “They [his relatives and friends] comforted and consoled him [Job] over all the trouble the LORD had brought upon him,” reports Job 42.11. Even though the writer had himself reported the malicious activity of Satan in Job’s life at the beginning of the narrative, he still ultimately ascribed Job’s troubles to the Lord. Joseph, when he finally revealed his identity to his wicked brothers who had sold him into slavery, saw beyond their evil acts and said, “So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God,” reports Genesis 45.8. #RandolphHarris 18 of 24
Joseph recognized that God in His sovereignty used even the heinous sins of his brothers to accomplish His purpose. So, you and I, if we are to appropriate God’s grace in our times of need, must see His sovereignty ultimately ruling in all the circumstances of our lives. And when those circumstances are difficult, or disappointing, or humiliating, we must humble ourselves under His mighty hand. Not only must we see God’s mighty hand behind our circumstances, we must also see it as the hand of the loving Father discipling His children. We lose a lot of comfort in times of trials because we tend to view them as evidences of God’s desertion of us rather than evidences of His Fatherly discipline and care. Endure all hardships—all of it—as God’s discipline. You may be sure that whatever hardship comes into your life from whatever immediate source, God is in sovereign control of it and is using it as an instrument of discipline in your life. Discipline is a proof of God’s love, “because the Lord disciplines those He loves,” Hebrews 12.6. This is not a word of warning, but a word of encouragement. The purpose of God’s discipline is that so we may share in His holiness, that we may be conformed in our character to His character. Discipline may be either corrective or remedial. It may be sent for the purpose of correcting some sinful attitude or action, or to remedy some lack of our character. #RandolphHarris 19 of 24
In either case, discipline is administered by our Heavenly Father in love, not wrath. Jesus has already borne the wrath of God in our place, so all adversities that come to us, come because God loves us and designs to conform us to the likeness of His Son. God has thoughts of love in all He does to His people. The ground of His dealings is love, and the purpose of His dealings is love. He has regard, in all, to our good here, to make us partakers of His holiness, and to our glory hereafter, to make us partakers of His glory. From the Light of God that I am. From the Love of God that I am. From the Power of God that I am. From the Heart of God that I am. I decree—I dwell in the midst of Infinite Abundance. The Abundance of God is my Infinite Source. The River of Life never stops flowing and it flows through me with lavish expression. Good comes to me through unexpected avenues and God works in a myriad of ways to bless me. I now open my mind to receive my good. Nothing is too good to be true. Nothing is too wonderful to happen With God as my Source nothing amazes me. I am not burdened by thoughts of past or future. One is gone. The other is yet to come. By the power of my belief, couped with my purposeful fearless actions and my deep rapport with God, my future is created and my abundance made manifest. #RandolphHarris 20 of 24
I ask and accept that I am lifted in this and every moment into Higher Truth. My mind is quiet. From this day forward I give freely and fearlessly into Life and Life gives back to me with a fabulous increase. Blessings come in expected and unexpected ways. God provides for me in wondrous ways for the work that I do. I AM indeed grateful. And so it is. Join me in a POWERFUL ABUNDANCE MASTERCLASS. Set your intentions for the goodness and abundance of all and you will indeed be blessed. “Behold, now it came to pass that soon after Moroni had sent his epistle unto the chief governor, he received an epistle from Pahoran the chief governor. And these are the words which he received: I, Pahoran, who am the chief governor of this land, do send these words unto Moroni, the chief captain over the army. Behold, I say unto you, Moroni, that I do not joy in your great afflictions, yea, insomuch that they have risen up in rebellion against me, and also those of my people who are free humans, yea, and those who have risen up are exceedingly numerous. And it is those who have sought to take away the judgment-seat from me that have been the cause of this great iniquity; for they have used great flattery, and they have led away the hearts of many people, which will be the cause of sore affliction among us; they have withheld our provisions, and have daunted our free people that they have not come unto you. #RandolphHarris 21 of 24
“And behold, they have driven me out before them, and I have fled to the land of Gideon, with as many humans as it were possible that I could get. And behold, I have sent a proclamation throughout this part of the land; and behold, they are flocking to us daily, to their arms, in the defence of their country and their freedom, and to avenge our wrongs. And they have come unto us, insomuch that those who have risen up in rebellion against us are set at defiance, yea, insomuch that they do fear us and durst not come out against us to battle. They have got possession of the land, or the city, of Zarahemla; they have appointed a king over them, and he hath written unto the king of the Lamanites, in the which he hath joined them an alliance with him; in the which alliance he hath agreed to maintain the city of Zarahemla, which maintenance he supposeth will enable the Lamanites to conquer the remainder of the land, and he shall be placed king over this people when they shall be conquered under the Lamanites. And now, in your epistle you have censured me, but it mattereth not; I am not angry, but do rejoice in the greatness of your heart. I, Pahoran, do not seek for power, save only to retain my judgment-seat that I may preserve the rights and the liberty of my people. My soul standeth fast in that liberty in the which God hath made us free. #RandolphHarris 22 of 24
“And now, behold, we will resist wickedness even unto bloodshed. If they would stay in their own land, we would not shed the blood of the Lamanites. If they would not rise up in rebellion and take the sword against us, we would not shed the blood of our brethren. If it were requisite with the justice of God, or if He should command us so to do, we would subject ourselves to the yoke of bondage. However, behold he doth not command us that we shall subject ourselves to our enemies, but that we should put our trust in Him, and He will deliver us. Therefore, my beloved brother, Moroni, let us resist evil, and whatsoever evil we cannot resist with our words, yea, such as rebellions and dissensions, let us resist them with our swords, that we may retain our freedom, that we may rejoice in the great privilege of our church, and in the cause of our Redeemer and our God. Therefore, come unto me speedily with a few of your men, and leave the remainder in the charge of Lehi and Teancum; give unto them power to conduct the war in that part of the land, according to the Spirit of God, which is also the spirit of freedom which is in them. Behold I have sent a few provisions unto them, that they may not perish until ye can come unto me. Gather together whatsoever force ye can upon your march hither, and we will go speedily against those dissenters, in the strength of our God according to the faith which is in us. #RandolphHarris 23 of 24
“And we will take possession of the city of Zarahemla, that we may obtain more food to send forth unto Lehi and Teancum; yea, we will go forth against them in the strength of the Lord, and we will put an end to this great iniquity. And now, Moroni, I do joy in receiving your epistle, for I was somewhat worried concerning what we should do, whether it should be just in us to go against our brethren. However, ye have aid, except they repent the Lord hath commanded you that ye should go against them. See that ye strengthen Lehi and Teancum in the Lord; tell them to fear not, for God will deliver them, yea, and also all those who stand fast in that liberty wherewith God hath made them free. And now I close mine epistle to my beloved brother, Moroni,” reports Alma 61.1-21. Wheat for you, Father of Grain. Barley for you, Father of Grain. Corn for you, Father of Grain. I scatter them for you, Father of Grain: a tribute to your well-famed generosity. God, you are worthy of worship: please hear me. I remember you every moment of the day. I pray to the one whose arrows bring health, to God the beautiful one. From your lyre come tunes of harmonious enchantment, and I listen entrapped, sweet-singing God. We will look to all commandments of the Lord, and do them; Lord bless us that we not follow our own heart and own eyes, but fortify us in your will. We will be holy to the Lord our God. #Randolphharris 24 of 24
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I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Memory is More Incredible than Ink for it is a Wise Father who Knows His Own Child!
The generation gap is just another way of saying that the younger generation makes overt what is covert in the older generation; the child expresses openly what the parents represses. The mass media with the use of television ( “The Most Effective Devil in America,” is telling you a vision) has flooded out local boundaries and forced the total society into a dim awareness of what it is like to live in fear. It is not so much the increase in violence that upsets middle-class Americans as the democratization of violence: the less affluent and underrepresented have become less willing to serve as specialized victims of violence from a political agenda (“legally”) and each other (illegally). The same point can be made about crimes against property, given the well-known class bias in our legal system. Since the ways in which the affluent steal from the less affluent are rarely defined as crimes (when executives of a major corporation were jailed for a few days some years ago for stealing millions of dollars from the public through antitrust violations many people were shocked that respectable humans could be treated in such a rude fashion) rising property crimes rates may only reflect an increase in the democratization of larceny, a result attributable in part to the success of the mass media in convincing the less affluent that only the possession of various products can satisfy their various social, pleasures of the flesh, and moral requirements. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
Leaving aside these more likely to be considered violent when they have political overtones. Our nation has never known a time without serious urban riots—usually about some kind of economic or social injustice—but it was only when they began to have a political thrust and to attack business districts that the concerns about the rioting began to grow. The same relationship holds true for the college campus. It is not violence as such but its political aims that arouse concern. The same people who assail the violence of campus radicals are quite happy to regale listeners with tales of their own (apolitical) childhood pranks—pranks that would bring a jail sentence if committed today. College students on many campuses have rioted annually for generations, and the injuries and vandalism resulting from such riots have often far exceeded that produced by protests. Yet these apolitical riots have always been considered venial. The difference is that student pranks and riots in the past attacked authority but accepted it. The protests of today confront authority and question it. Thus although no violence at all may occur, those toward whom the protest is directed may feel that violence has been done to them. The disruption of ordinary daily patterns and assumptions are experienced as a kind of psychological violence. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
Consider what happens when a defective traffic light fails to change from red to green. The line of cars grows and restlessness increases. At some point someone decides that the symbol of order is in fact in disorder and either goes through the red light or begins to honk one’s hor. As soon as one goes through, the others all follow suit. The initiator in this situation is engaging in a kind of civil disobedience. One is challenging the specific rule about red lights in terms of a broader understanding which says that the purpose of traffic laws is to regulate traffic not to disrupt it. Yet because the situation has no real political significance the incidence carries no threat or violent connotation. We live in a society in which cruelties inflicted upon humanity can be exposed in every living room through mass media or on Facebook and Twitter. We discuss and debate constantly the appearance of any instance anywhere in the World of inhumane treatment of one person by another, but we still do not always get the full story. Nonetheless, we stress that every human life, even corporations, are beings of value. We live, in short, in modern, secure, civilized World, in which a single isolated act of violence is a calamity, an outrage. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
Yet, innocent people still have their characters and beings terminated by the most barbarous means possible and shows no qualms about it. These techniques are a bit reminiscent of the dunking stool used in earlier centuries to test potential witches: if the person was not a witch the individual would drown—if one did not drown thus proved one was a witch and one was burned to death. The energy required to avoid even the most obvious forms of exploitation by commercial enterprises in our society would not permit the individual to lead a normal active life. Like Looking-glass Country, it takes all the running one can do to stay in the same place. Powerlessness has always been the common lot of most of humankind. However, the more we attempt to solve problems through increased autonomy the more we find ourselves at the mercy of these mysterious, impersonal, and remote mechanisms that we have ourselves created. Their indifference is a reflection of our own. All societies, optimally, must allow for both change and stability since: effective adaptation to the environment requires both modification and consolidation of existing reposes; social integration depends both upon the preservation and upon the periodic dissolution of existing structural differentiation; and personal happiness rest upon both familiarity and novelty in everyday life. Every society evolves patterns for attempting to realize these mutually incompatible needs. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
We talk of technology as the servant of humans, but it is a servant that now dominates the households, too powerful to fire, upon whom everyone is helplessly dependent. We tiptoe about and speculate upon his mood. What will be the effects of such-and-such an invention? How will it change our daily lives? We never ask, do we want this, is it worth it? (We did not ask ourselves, for example, if the major conveniences offered by social media could really offset the calamitous disruption and depersonalization of our lives that it brought about.) We simply say, “You cannot stop progress,” and shuffle back inside. We pride ourselves on being a “democracy” but we are in fact slaves. We submit to an absolute ruler who governs our state or city whose edicts and whims we never question. We watch that individual carefully, hang on to one’s every word; for technology is a harsh and capricious king, demanding prompt and absolute obedience. We laugh at the old lady who holds off the highway bulldozers with a Winchester Rifle, but we laugh because we are Uncle Toms. We try to outdo each other in singing the praises of the oppressor, although in fact the value of technology in terms of human satisfaction remains at best undemonstrated. For when evaluating its effects we always adopt the basic assumptions and perspective of technology itself, and never examine it in terms of the totality of human experience. #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
We say this or that invention is valuable because it generates other inventions—because it is a means to some other means—not because it achieves an ultimate end. We play down the “side effects” that so often become the main effects and completely negate any alleged benefits. The much-vaunted “freedom” of American life is thus an illusion, one which underlies the sense of spuriousness so many Americans feel about their basic institutions. We are free to do only what we are told, and we are “told” not by a human master but by a mechanical construction. However, how can we be the salves of technology—is not technology merely an extension of, a creation of, ourselves? This is only metaphorically true. The forces to which we submit so abjectly were not generated by ourselves but by our ancestors—what we create will in turn rule our progeny. It takes a certain amount of time for the social effects of technological change to make their appearance, by which time a generation has usually passed. Science-fiction writers have long been fascinated with the notion of being able to create material objects just by imagining them, and have built novels, stories, and films around the idea. Actually, it is merely an exaggeration of what normally takes place. Technology is materialized fantasy. We are ruled today by the material manifestations of the fantasies of previous generations. #RanolphHarris 6 of 25
We treat technology as if it were a fierce patriarch—we are deferential, submissive, and alert to its demands. Perhaps, that is why men dominate the Silicon Valley in San Jose, California USA, and in Shenzhen, a city in south China’s Guangdong province known as the “Silicon Valley of China.” (The Silicon Valley of China has gradually become a global hardware center and hub for scientific and technological advances, where skyscrapers appear commonplace and the population has surged past 13 million.) We feel spasms of hatred toward technology, and continually make fun of it but we do little to challenge the rule. People who develop technology, like Wolfgang Egger who is a World-famous Germany car designer, reports, “to have this opportunity to create something like this [an electric car] from nothing is a big challenge that I need.” That is the main reason why he joined the Chinese car manufacturer BYD three years ago. Technology has inherited the fantasy of the authoritarian father. Furthermore, since the technological environment that rules, frustrates, and manipulates us is a materialization of the wished of our forefathers, it is quite reasonable to say that technology is the authoritarian father in our society. #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
The American father can be a good-natured humble man in the home precisely because he is so ruthless toward the nonhuman environment, leveling, uprooting, filling in, building up, tearing down, blowing up, tunneling under. This ruthlessness affects his children only indirectly, as the deranged environment afflicts the eyes, ears, nose, and nervous system of the next generation. However, it affects them nonetheless. Through this impersonal intermediary we inflict our will upon our children, and punish them for our generous indulgence—our child-oriented, self-sacrificing behaviour. It I small wonder that the myth of the punitive patriarch stays alive. From this viewpoint, then, delegating to technology the role of punitive patriarch is another example of the first process we described: the tendency to avoid interpersonal conflict by compartmentalization and a false illusion of autonomy—to place impersonal mechanisms between and around people and imagine that we have created a self-governing paradise. It is a kind of savage joke in its parental form. We say: “Look, I am an easy-going, good-natured, affectionate father. I behave in a democratic manner and treat you like a person, never pulling rank. As to all those roads and wires and social media and clones and machines and bombs and complex bureaucratic institutions out there, do not concern yourself about them—this is my department.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
However, when the child grows up one discovers the fraud. One learns that one is a slave to his father’s unconscious and unplanned whims—that the area of withheld power was crucial. The child becomes angry and rebels, saying, “You were not what you pretended, and I cannot be what you encouraged me to be.” The child attacks “the system” and authority everywhere, trying to find the source of the deception, and using techniques that reflect one’s commitment to what one’s father deceived one into thinking one was—a person. However, by this time one has also learned the system of avoiding conflict through impersonal mechanism and is ready to inflict the same deception on one’s own children. We love and indulge our children, and would never dream of hurting them. If they are poisoned, bombed, gassed, burned, or whatever, it is surely not our fault, since we do not even know how to manipulate those objects. The danger comes from outside. Perhaps long ago we did something to deliver them into these impersonal hands, but we have forgotten, and in any case it is not our responsibility. Technology, in other words, is our plains sorcerer. Because Americans have submitted so passively to the havoc wreaked by technological change, they have had to convince themselves that their obsequiousness is right and good and appropriate. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
Any challenge to the technological-over-social priority threatens to expose the fact that Americans has lost their adulthood and their capacity to control their environment. So long as the priority is unchallenged and unmentioned, the human surrender involved need not be confronted. However, youth is increasingly saying: “What about the people? Why have you abdicated your birthright to hardware?” It is a humiliating question, and humiliating questions tend to be answered with blows. Furthermore, the social changes wrought by technological change are so vast and shattering and we are kept so off-balance by them that the desire for independent social change (that is, change produced by human needs rather than technology) appears not as a solution and the assumption of control, but as still another disruptive force. It is like the inhabitants of an occupied country, who say to their militants, “do not fight the enemy, it will just bring more massive retaliation down upon us. Attack your own family.” The predominant feeling is that there is more change than anybody can tolerate already, so how can anyone ever consider a radical reevaluation of the whole system. I felt sure that it was just a public-relations problem that only needed a public-relations solution. #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
I do not give a damn how it is done; do whatever has to be done to stop these leaks and prevent further lies and unauthorized disclosures. I do not want excuses. I want results…whatever the cost. It became necessary for Americans to express themselves on a middle plane between vaporous idealism and self-interested practicality. The association of highbrow culture with vaporous idealism and lowbrow culture with self-interested practicality exemplified the widespread acceptance, by intellectuals as well as noneintellectuals, of the idea that devotion to the life of the mind must somehow be opposed to a decent regard for the exigencies of everyday life. The distinctive feature of American middlebrow culture was its embodiment of the old civic credo that anyone willing to invest time and energy in self-education might better oneself. Many uneducated people cherished middlebrow values: the millions of sets of encyclopedias sold door to door from the 1920s well into the 1980s were often purchased through an installment plan by parents who had never owned a book but were willing to sacrifice to provide their children with information about the World that had been absent from their own upbringing. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
Remnants of earnest middlebrows striving today among various communities, but the larger edifice of middlebrow culture, which once encompassed Americans of many social classes as well as ethnic and racial backgrounds, has collapsed. The disintegration and denigration of the middlebrow are closely linked to the political and class polarization that distinguishes the current wave of anti-intellectualism from the popular suspicion of highbrows and eggheads that have always, to a greater or lesser degree, been a part of the American psyche. What has been lost is an alterative to mass popular culture, imbibed unconsciously and effortlessly through the audio and video portals that surround us all. What has been lost is the culture of effort. Middlebrow culture was, above all, a reading culture. In the 1950s, to be raised in a middlebrow family meant that there were books, magazines, newspapers in the house and that everyone old enough to read had a library card. Some schools in Sacramento, California would even pause for fifteen minutes a day for reading time, where students could read whatever they wanted, as long as it was a book, it was appropriate, and educational. If much of the reading material was scorned by highbrow intellectuals, the books certainly provided ample room for growth. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
People had books clubs, much like Reese Witherspoon has popularized, where people select a book each month, read it and talk about. And people who live in segregated communities were taught to learn to appreciate masterpieces like The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, The Awakening by Kate Chopin, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, and many more, and to make sure that no one could segregate one’s mind. Still, 25 percent of American high school biology teachers still believe that dinosaurs and humans coexisted. American ideal of self-education is a distinct era of self-help, and people placed far more emphasis on improving personality and public image and the mind like never before. However, “civilized” is still defined by the gatekeeps of greatness on the installment plan. Many people want to make it into the “Fat Man’s” class which was dubbed that for the size of their pocketbooks. We want everything to be cheap and high quality, but do not look at the value and utility it provides, and then complain about how little we get paid. Our parents, grandparents, and maybe for some of you, great grandparents had it a lot harder than we do today. We hear about how inexpensive everything used to be, but do not take inflation into account. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
In 1952, a great book cost $249.95, in 2020 dollars that is $2,470.21. Imagine what a luxury a book was back then. In fact, reading books was a status symbol because the proved to the World that one was the sort of person who did read and who could afford the price of a book. People like Reese Witherspoon is doing an excellent job trying to get Americans back into reading books. When a celebrity is seen doing anything, it becomes a trend and what could be a more productive trend than getting people to expand their minds. The possession of certain kinds of knowledge, and the ability to recalls facts before an audience of millions, could provide both fame and fortune. When being smart become a trend, imagine how much better off our society will be, how much productive our children will be. They will learn the root of what it takes to have fun and know they have to study and work hard to earn the money it takes to have fun. Because, as one gets older, fun gets more expensive. Getting a day off from school and watching TV is no longer fun, but having the ability to legally buy new cars and houses and take vacations and decorate your own private home is fun. Having privacy and dignity in your own environment is fun. Being able to relocate or explore the World when you want to is fun. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
An aspect of the Christian work ethic is enthusiasm. “Whatever you do,” Paul told the Colossians, “work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for humans,” reports Colossians 3.23. To the Romans Pail admonished, “Never be lacking in seal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord,” reports Romans 12.11. It is natural—actually quite easy—to be enthusiastic if your work is prominent, but less natural the more hidden it is, as the conductor of a great symphony orchestra once reveled when asked which was the most difficult instrument to play. “Second violin,” he answered. “We can get plenty of first violinists. However, to get someone who will play second violin with enthusiasm—that is a problem!” And so it is. However, actually, doing one’s work with enthusiasm, even if hidden, plays for an audience far greater than that of the most famous symphony orchestras or World champion sports teams! If we could be really see this, our enthusiasm would never flag. However, it can still be hard to reason with some people. Their very mind has been taken over by one or more feelings and is made to defend and serve those feelings at all costs. It is a fearful condition from which some people never escape. We have noted how thoughts generate feelings. If we allow certain negative thoughts to obsess us, then their associated feelings can enslave and blind us—that is, take over our ability to think and perceive. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
As humans, we can unknowingly become slaves to technology, or feelings and so man other things. Here, for example, is a woman (it could have just as well have been a man) who has taken in the thought that she has been treated unfairly for years in her marriage and her job. Rather than sensibly addressing the circumstances or just turning her mind away from this thought, she receives it and broods over it—for years—developing a tremendous sense of injustice and outrage, which she also welcomes and cultivates with the assistance of sympathetic friends. The “root of bitterness” (Hebrews 12.15) gradually spreads over her whole personality, seeping deeply into her body and soul. It becomes something you can see in her bodily motions and actions and hear oozing through the language she uses. It affects her capacity to see what is actually going on around her, to realize what she is actually doing, and to think thoroughly and consistently. She is in the prison of resentment, though she thinks she is perhaps for the first time acting freely. Beyond the individual level, poisonous emotions and sensations often take over entire social groups, blinding them and impelling them on terrible courses of destruction. This is nearly always what has happened in cases where repression of ethnic groups or genocide occurs. Thus, to the onlooker the participants (the tyrants) seem to be deaf, blind, and insane—which, in a sense, they are. They, too, are imprisoned. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
Feelings can be successfully reasoned with, can be corrected by reality, only in those (whether oneself or others) who have the habit and are given the grace of listening to reason even when they are expressing violent feelings or are in the grip of them. A feeling of sufficient strength may blot out all else and will invariably do so in one who has not trained oneself, or been trained, to identify, to be critical of, and to have some distance from one’s own feelings. Combined with a sense of righteousness, strong feeling becomes impervious to fact and reason. I beseech ye brethren, by the bowels of Christ, believe ye may be wrong! One’s feelings of righteousness does not mean one is right and actually should alert one to be very cautious and humble. Those who are wise will, accordingly, never allow themselves, if they can help it, to get in a position where they feel too deeply about any human matter. They will never willingly choose to allow feeling to govern them. They will carefully keep the pathway open to the house of reason and go there regularly to listen. If we are to appropriate God’s grace, we must humble ourselves, we must submit to His providential working in our lives. To do this we must first see His mighty hand behind all the immediate causes of our adversities and heartaches. #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
We must believe the biblical teaching that God is in sovereign control of all our circumstances, and whatever or whoever is the immediate cause of our circumstances, God is behind them all. “And it came to pass that he wrote again to the governor of the land, who was Pahoran, and these are the words which he wrote saying: Behold, I direct mine epistle to Pahoran, in the city of Zarahemla, who is the chief judge and the governor over the land, and also to all those who have been chosen by this people to govern and manage the affairs of this war. For behold, I have somewhat to say unto them by the way of condemnation; for behold, ye yourselves know that we have been appointed to gather together humans, and arm them with swords, and with cimeters, and all manner of weapons of war of every kind, and send forth against the Lamanites, in whatsoever part they should come into out land. And now behold, I say unto you that myself, and also my men, and also Helaman and his men, have suffered exceedingly great sufferings; yea, even hunger, thirst, and fatigue, and all manner of afflictions of every kind. However, behold, were this all we had suffered we would not murmur nor complain. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
“However, behold, great has been the slaughter among our people; yea, thousands have fallen by the sword, while it might have otherwise been if ye had rendered unto our armies sufficient strength and succor for them. Yea, great has been your neglect towards us. And now behold, we desire to know the cause of this exceedingly great neglect; yea, we desire to know the cause of your thoughtless state. Can you think to sit upon your thrones in a state of thoughtless stupor, while your enemies are spreading the work of death around you? Yea, while they are murdering thousands of your brethren—yea, even they who have looked up to you for protection, yea, have placed you in a situation that ye might have sent armies unto them, to have strengthened them, and have saved thousands of them from falling by the sword. However, behold, this is not all—ye have withheld your provisions from them, insomuch that many have fought and bled out their lives because of their great desires which they had for the welfare of this people; yea, and this they have done when they were abut to perish with hunger, because of your exceedingly great neglect towards them. And now, my beloved brethren—for ye ought to have stirred yourselves more diligently for the welfare and the freedom of this people. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
“However, behold, ye have neglected them insomuch that the blood of thousands shall come upon your heads for vengeance; yea, for known unto God were all their cries, and all their sufferings—behold, could ye suppose that ye could sit upon your thrones, and because of the exceeding goodness of God ye could do nothing and he would deliver you? Behold, if ye have supposed this ye have supposed in vain. Do ye suppose this ye have supposed in vain. Do ye suppose that, because so many of your brethren have been killed it is because of their wickedness? I say unto you, if ye have supposed in vain; for I say unto you, there are many who have fallen by the sword; and behold it is to your condemnation; for the Lord suffereth the righteous to be slain that his justice and judgment may come upon the wicked; therefore ye need not suppose that the righteous are lost because they are slain; but behold, they do enter into the rest of the Lord their God. And now behold, I say unto you, I fear exceedingly that the judgments of God will come upon this people, because of their exceeding slothfulness, yea, even the slothfulness of our government, and their exceedingly great neglect towards their brethren, yea, towards those who have been slain. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
“For were it not for the wickedness which first commenced at our hear, we could have withstood our enemies that they could have withstood our enemies that they could have gained no power over us. Yea, had it not been for the war which broken out among ourselves; yea, were it not for these king-men, who caused so much bloodshed among ourselves; yea, at the time we were contending among ourselves, if we had united our strength as we hitherto have done; yea, had it not been for the desire of power and authority which those king-men had over us; had they been true to the cause of our freedom, and untied with us, and gone forth against our enemies, instead of taking up their swords against us, which was the cause of so much bloodshed among ourselves; yea, if we had gone forth against them in the strength of the Lord, we should have dispersed our enemies, for it would have been done, according to the fulfilling of his word. However, behold, now the Lamanites are coming upon us, taking possession of our lands, and they are murdering our people with the sword, yea, our women and our children, and also carrying them away captive, causing them that they should suffer all manner of afflictions, and this because of the great wickedness of those who are seeking for power and authority, yea, even those king-men. #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
However, why should I say much concerning this matter? For we know not but what ye yourselves are seeking for authority. We know not but what ye are also traitors to your country. Or is it that ye have neglected us because ye are in the heart of our country and ye are surrounded by security, that ye do not cause food to be sent unto us, and also humans to strengthen our armies? Have ye forgotten in the commandments of the Lord your God? Yea, have ye forgotten the captivity of our fathers? Have ye forgotten the many times we have been delivered out of the hands of our enemies? Or do ye supposed that the Lord will still deliver us, while we sit upon our thrones and do not make us of the means which the Lord has provided for us? Yea, will ye sit in idleness while ye are surrounded with thousands of those, yea, and tens of thousands, who do also sit in idleness, while there are thousands round about in the borders of the land who are falling by the sword, yea, wounded and bleeding? Do ye supposed that God will look upon you as guiltless while ye sit still and behold these things? Behold I say unto you, Nay. Now I would that ye should remember that God has said that the inward vessel shall be cleansed first, and then shall the outer vessel be cleansed also. #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
“And now, expect ye do repent of that which ye have done, and begin to be up and doing, and send forth food and humans unto us, and also unto Helaman, that he may support those parts of our country which he had regained, and that we may also recover the remainder of our possession in these parts, behold it will be expedient that we contend no more with the Lamanites until we have first cleansed our inward vessel, yea, even the great head of our government. And expect ye grant mine epistle, and come out and show unto me a true spirit of freedom, and stive to strengthen and fortify our armies, and great unto them food a part of my freemen to maintain this part of our land, and I will leave the strength and the blessings of God upon them, that none other power can operate against them—and this because of their exceeding faith, and their patience in their tribulation—and I will come unto you, and if there be any among you that has a desire for freedom, yes, if there be even a spark of freedom remaining, behold I will stir up insurrections among you, even until those who have desires to usurp power and authority shall become extinct. Yea, behold I do not fear your power nor your authority, but it is my God whom I fear; and it is according to his commandments that I do take my sword to defend the cause of my country, and it is because of your iniquity that we have suffered much loss. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
“Behold, I wait for assistance from your; and except ye do administer unto our relief, behold, I come unto you, even in the land of Zarahemla, and smite you with the sword, insomuch that ye can have no more power to impede the progress of this people in the cause of our freedom. For behold, the Lord will not suffer that ye shall live and wax strong in your iniquities to destroy his righteous people. Behold, can you suppose that the Lord will spare you and come out in judgment against the Lamanites, when it is the tradition of their fathers that has caused their hatred, yea, and it has been redoubled by those who have dissented from us, while your iniquity is for the cause of your love of glory and the vain things of the World? Ye know that ye do transgress the laws of God, and ye do know that ye do trample them under your feet. Behold, the Lord saith unto me: If those whom ye have appointed your governors do not repent of their sins and iniquities, ye shall go up to battle against them. And now behold, I, Moroni, am constrained, according to the covenant which I have made to keep the commandments of my God; therefore I would that ye should adhere to the word of God, and send speedily unto me of your provisions and of your men, and also to Helaman. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
“And behold, if ye will not do this I come unto you speedily; for behold, God will not suffer that we should perish with hunger; therefore he will give unto us of your food, even if it must be by the sword. Now see that ye fulfill the word of God. Behold, I am Moroni, your chief captain. I seek not for power, but to pull it down. I seek not for honour of the World, but for the glory of my God, and the freedom and welfare of my country. And thus I close mine epistle,” reports Alma 60.1-36. A lion protecting His young, you rage when aroused. Nothing stands before You, no troubles can resist You, no enemies defeat You. A roaring in the distance announces your arrival, scattering the dealers of cares. You shake the Earth beneath their feet, upsetting all the plans. “Therefore shall ye lay up these My words in your heart and in your soul; and ye shall bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they shall be for frontless between your eyes. And ye shall teach them to your children, talking of them, when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt write them upon the doorpost of thy house, and upon thy gates; that your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, upon the land which the Lord promised unto your fathers to give them, as the days of the Heavens above the Earth,” reports Deuteronomy 11.16-21. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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Randolph Harris II International Institute 