Poetry destroyed? Genius banished? No! Mediocrity, no: do not let envy prompt you to the thought. No; they not only live, but reign and redeem: and without their divine influence spread everywhere, you would be in hell—the hell of your own meanness.
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| Matthew Crawford (see previous post) | |||
We increasingly encounter the world through these representations that are addressed to us, often with manipulative intent: video games, pornography, gambling apps on your phone,” he says. “These experiences are so exquisitely attuned to our appetites that they can swamp your ordinary way of being in the world. Just as food engineers have figured out how to make food hyper-palatable by manipulating fat, salt and sugar, similarly the media has become expert at making irresistible mental stimuli.” Distraction is a kind of obesity of the mind, in other words, with results that could be just as hazardous for our health.
Paul sees this fuller knowledge of God as a more critical thing to receive than a change of circumstances. Without this powerful sense of God's reality, good circumstances can lead to overconfidence and spiritual indifference. Who needs God, our hearts would conclude, when matters seem to be so in hand? then again, without this enlightened heart, bad circumstances can lead to discouragement and despair, because the love of God would be an abstraction rather than the infinitely consoling presence it should be. Therefore knowing God better is what we must have above all if we are to face life in any circumstances.
“There’s a tactility that somehow links the real world to the world of the mind, and it makes for better, more grounded thought. Sometimes I wonder if e-reading leads to e-thinking: fast, fleeting, reactive, but ultimately it doesn’t take root in a mind and transform it. When you publish a real book, those ideas are meant to transcend and endure, no matter what tech is in vogue. That’s the kind of thinking I want to do, and I do it best on paper.
“Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”- Ralph Waldo Emerson
| Q: You mentioned the historical record, and in your books you write about a 30-year pattern with bridge collapses. Describe that. People have studied bridge building over almost a century and a half or more, and it’s been well-documented. They have noticed that there is a major bridge failure about every 30 years. The question is, why 30 years? One of the explanations is that this is about the duration of a professional generation. An engineer’s career is about 30 years long, roughly. What happens is that these young engineers are coming in and the older engineers are, at the same time, moving out. The older engineers have all this wisdom and experience. But many organizations don’t have a formal procedure for taking that knowledge that’s in the older generation and imparting it to the newer generation. Or even if they do, the younger generation is sort of cocky and thinks they know more. After all, they’ve just gone through school and they’ve learned the latest stuff. So even if there is an attempt to pass on the wisdom to the younger generation, the younger generation either rejects it or doesn’t take it very seriously. Then the younger generation, depending on where it comes in the cycle, if it doesn’t experience failures directly due to its own miscalculations, it gets cocky. It gets comfortable, overconfident and complacent, and all of those qualities welcome mistakes and they lead to failure (Interview with Henry Petroski, reprinted at Q-ideas) |
By our making the Sabbath dreary, many young minds may be prejudiced against religion: we would do the reverse. Sermons should not be so long and full as to weary young folk, or mischief will come of them, but with interesting preaching to secure attention, and loving teachers to press home the truth upon the youthful heart...
It was a small group of eleven men whom Jesus commissioned to carry on his work, and bring the gospel to the whole world. They were not distinguished; they were not well-educated; they had no influential backers. In their own nation they were nobodies and, in any case, their own nation was a mere secondclass province on the eastern extremity of the Roman map. If they had stopped to weigh up the possibilities of succeeding in their mission, even granted their conviction that Jesus was alive and that his Spirit went with them to equip them for their task, their hearts must surely have sunk, so heavily were the odds weighted against them. How could they possibly succeed? And yet they did.
You might want to worry less about terrorizing or retro-fitting prospective suitors and worry more about preparing your daughter to choose wisely. And that means building a wall. Instead of intimidating all your daughter’s potential suitors, raise a daughter who intimidates them just fine on her own. Because you know what’s intimidating? Strength and dignity. Deep faith. Self-assuredness. Wisdom. Kindness. Humility. Industriousness. Those are the bricks that build the wall that withstands the advances of Slouchy-Pants...
Today, the fossile record is enormous compared to what it was in Darwin's day, but the facts are unchanged. The links are still missing; species appear suddenly and remain relatively unchanged. As Steven Stanley reported, "The known fossil record...offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid." Indeed, the evidence has grown even more contrary since Darwin's day. As the former curator of historical geology at the American Museum of Natural History noted, "Many of the discontinuities [in the fossil record] tend to be more emphasised with increased collecting.
Keep the end in mind. Don’t just think of small goals. Think of the big win. What will persisting to the end do for you? If the reward is big enough, we can stay on task when the difficulties become discouraging. This trick has seen me through seemingly impossible circumstances more times than I can count.
Sir David Brailsford, the architect of British cycling success in the 2012 Olympics, talks about 'marginal, incremental gains'. He points to the importance of working on improving a whole host of small things by a mere 1% margin. So, for example, better sleep results from each cyclist using the same pillow wherever the team happens to be staying overnight. Add all these marginal gains up and the upshot was that UK cycling virtually swept the board of medals.
So where are your 1% improvements going to be? Our church was challenged to do 1% more praying on a Saturday evening, take 15 minutes more out of the day to commit Sunday to God, and make 1% more smiles - it's amazing what a smiling face does to someone's sense of being welcomed!
Put godly, capable leaders into almost any situation and, given God's good grace, they will take the work forward. That's why almost any scheme can be made to work. It's not so much the particular plan which is the silver bullet, but the quality of the people leading it.
If our goal is "teaching them to obey" all that Jesus commanded, then we may want to rethink our commitment to comfort on Sundays. Recent brain research has shown that when a person is comfortable, the more analytical functions of the brain (necessary for learning) remain disengaged. Psychologists refer to the brain as having a "system one" and a "system two." System one is the intuitive functioning that is active when relaxed, like when vegetating in front of a television or listening to a pleasantly clear sermon in a comfortable seat on Sunday morning.System two is the analytical functioning of the brain that is required to rethink assumptions, challenge ideas, and construct new behaviors and beliefs. System two must be active to learn. Research shows that the brain shifts from system one to system two when forced to work; when challenged and uncomfortable.That's why most people concentrate better in settings with some background noise. The challenge of focusing on my friend's voice amid the clatter in the coffee shop shifts my brain from system one to two. By having to work to listen I actually listen better than if we were to meet in the silence of my office. Of course there can also be too much background noise, making listening impossible, like at a NASCAR race or Chuck E. Cheese.Think of it like riding a bike. Coasting downhill will never engage your muscles. A steep incline will make riding impossible. If your goal is stronger legs, you need some resistance, but not so much that you can't proceed.......We can all agree that Jesus was a brilliant communicator, but when we study his methods, it is obvious that the comfort of his audience was not a significant consideration. In fact, Jesus taught in a manner that challenged (sometimes baffled) his listeners. He expected them to work in order to understand his teaching. He asked them questions, wrapped his teaching in opaque parables, and often taught in distracting settings.
...it simply was not typical in this era to give much credit to predecessors. Thus for example, Galileo falsely presented the telescope as his own invention, and Newton went to great lengths to erase traces of his debt to Descartes. But the more important reason Copernicus has been presented as the lone genius who revolutionised science is that it suited the ideological agenda of those who were (and remain) determined to impose notions of an "Enlightenment" and a "Renaissance" on Western history.
Labor is light to a man of cheerful spirit!
You can work all day and almost all night, when the spirits are right. But once let the heart sink and your soul lack encouragement, and then you grow weary, and cry, “Would God it were evening, and the shadows were drawn out, that we might rest from our toil.”
Success waits upon cheerfulness.
The man who toils, rejoicing in his God, believing with all his heart, has success guaranteed.
He who sows in hope shall reap in joy.
He who trusts in the Lord and laughs at impossibilities, shall soon find that there are no impossibilities to laugh at, for to the man who is confident in Jehovah, all things are possible. It is thus of paramount importance that the spirits of the Christian should be constantly kept up.
SOURCE: C.H. Spurgeon, sermon delivered on October 18, 1863.
We must do hope...We have bought the lie that tragedy is the last word...How will I practice hope? I plan to take a sabbatical from worry and pursue an obstinate optimism. I anticipate falling on my face, but much less often than before.- I have some reasons to worry in the near future. I plan to go completely against type and speak with hope to my wife when the threat comes closer.- I know I have to practice, so I am going to meditate on passages like Psalm 27 and Psalm 46.- I will speak about hope to my friend who has cancer.- I will pray that I have power to turn quickly to Christ when I am afraid.-I will listen to worry and go after it at its roots.How will you protest? How will you do hope?
Fears tend to lose their grip when people face them. As Emmi Bonhoeffer states, “From the very moment one feels called to act is born the strength to bear whatever horror one will feel or see. In some inexplicable way, terror loses its overwhelming power when it becomes a task that must be faced.” Conversely when we experience past difficulties as uncontrollable and unpredictable, we are more likely to carry and accumulate fears and worries.
