On not Speaking Up

On not Speaking Up

(on the theory that learning to hold my peace will 

atone for the myriad times I should have and didn't!)

If you speak up, you're wrong.
If you don't speak up, you're wrong.
If you speak up because you don't like being wrong for speaking up or not speaking up, you're wrong for speaking up about that!
What about the ones who say "I'm wrong"? Can they be wrong for speaking up, too?

I give up. Is that wrong?

    

The moral umbrage is poly-directional. Could it be that Jesus was right after all, that we should give greater weight to the simple “Do not judge?” Of course someone's wrong, and maybe more someones and different someones than any of the other someones can tell. 

Indeed, we are better to keep our opinions to ourselves for the most part, humble in prayer, aware that our weakness is greater than we can know, remembering the parable about glass houses. 

Why exactly was it our business in the first place? Because Facebook and constant news made it possible to hear and be heard? 

Since when is constant literal hearsay – news in most forms now-days – a viable, noble and moral enterprise? Since never, I'm thinking. It entangles mind and imagination in farflung bits and events framed for titillation, gone before they can be remembered, and for which we can do virtually nothing. Help, Lord!

So there. I've made a statement. I'm sure I am wrong to someone. I hope I'm okay with Someone. Whatever the case, I'm hedging my bets by staying far away from Facebook! 😊

On Truth: Beautiful and Compelling

"That which is true, will also be beautiful and compelling." (Aristotle)

I have little to add, but find this instructive. Why do we fear the truth? We fear it, I think, wherever it crosses our will. But truth never changes. Our will suffers from an impossible battle and our person slowly decays.

So embrace truth. This is more than propositional, cognitive processes. Indeed, way more. Truth is personal and we find it most when we open our lives -- through the classic disciplines -- to the person of Christ, who Himself is truth. Rational acceptance and explanation have their place, but they are not primary. Until I bow to truth itself I will never ascertain what it actually is.

That seems true, and I am slowly learning to take the knee in this matter, and learn from the Master to be at peace with truth, indeed to embrace it. I want the beautiful and the compelling and so I surrender to truth.

Humility: Objective Distance Easily Attained

I am working through an excellent book on humility: Humilitas by one John Dickson. As you would expect, his first discussion deals with how one can even talk about humility. If you're really humble you won't pretend to know anything about humility and so you certainly won't write a book about it! Or so it seems at a glance.

John is known for being, in his words, "dominance-leaning, achievement-focused, driven". So when he told his long-time friend he was writing a book on "the origins of humility in western ethical thought" his friend quipped:

"Well, at least you have the objective distance from the subject."

Zing! And so might be said of us all. Of course, John makes the reasonable case for trying to learn about this classic virtue. And right off he reminds us that one of the more remarkable sociological studies of recent years, the book Good to Great, identifies humility as one of two key ingredients in the extraordinary success he documented.

I'll hope to finish the book soon, and may share a bit as I go along.

Ministry Remnants: Apostle Paul tells us what to see

What do you look at? Do you regularly look at what is invisible? How would you? Or do you spend your time looking at what can be seen, the things for which eyes are obviously made?

In II Corinthians 4:18 Paul speaks in paradox, easily missed by those too familiar with the passage. "Look at what you can not see," he says. Huh? How do you see what cannot be seen? And further he says "Do NOT look at what CAN be seen."

I love the apostle Paul and believe he speaks the Word of God and so I listen and learn. Of course we know he speaks of the life of faith, the only life which leads to the eternal, the only path by which we can know God. As we see in a later Epistle, when we come to God we must "believe that He is and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him." And in that same letter we read that faith is itself the evidence of what we cannot see.

What am I looking at? Paul says quit looking at the stuff you can see because it is passing away! Ever reasonable, Paul does not disappoint. Why would we set our sights on passing things? Because they will not last. We long for that which is forever, even for the eternal - whatever always has been and always will be.

Indeed we do. One of the radio commercials here in Alaska revels in the enduring beauty of Bristol Bay and the Native Corporation that shepherds it. The closing lines of the ad say, "We're not going anywhere. We'll always be, in a place that's always been."

Bristol Bay Landscape

This ads taps the deepest longings of the heart. It also betrays what the heart knows: contrary to those deepest longings, we will someday be dead, unable to embrace the reality for which we painfully long.

Here the Scripture steps in and gives hope. "Set your affections on things above." "Lay up treasures in heaven where they will not decay." "Look at the things which are not seen -- for those things, they last forever."

This is the life of faith, the life that invests in the eternal, the only answer for you and I who desperately long for something real, something that lasts. I think God uses most of life to teach us to set our sights on the unseen, for when we finally do see it -- to borrow Elliott's apt phrase -- we will be home "and know the place for the first time."

 Nothing which is of a perishable nature can be the chief good of a being that was made for eternity. (Quesnel, quoted by Adam Clark)

He has set eternity in our heart. 

(Ecc. 3:11)

Global Straw Shortage Attributed to Social Media (Amateur Night at the Babylon Bee)

Global Straw Shortage Attributed to Social Media

Austin, TX

Local farmers who rely on straw for plant and livestock bedding are gearing up for disaster in spring. Straw wholesaler Al Dirkson said since the election his supply is completely depleted. “I had 1,000 bales in one warehouse alone. Gone in a week! Usually I don't sell out until June.” He said suppliers around the country and overseas have sold out as well.

When asked who is buying Al said, “It's the craziest thing: college students, grandmas, techno-geeks – I've never seen anything like it. Whenever I ask them what they are doing with it they mumble something about 'Trump-Hitler', 'drown the refugees', 'they hate America', 'must want Hillary': and almost always something about 'unprecedented!' If I ask for details they often gesture me away with a loud 'Unfriend!' I followed one of them home and they carried the straw into their basement! Way weird!”

Further investigation reveals that Facebook will shut down several servers until the straw supply is restored. Steph Alsey, Facebook discussion accuracy czar explained: “The straw man arguments just took off after the election, and this immigration order was the death knell. Now that the straw is gone, no one has anything to say.”