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.”

Alaska Weather

When I saw this Alaska weather pie chart I had a good belly laugh. Yes, winters are long, but 85% of the year?!?! Not quite, but it can seem that way!

Kreeft on Suffering and Love

Perhaps we suffer so inordinately because God loves us so inordinately and is taming us.

Perhaps the reason why we are sharing in a suffering we do not understand is because we are the objects of a love we do not understand.

Perhaps we are becoming more real by sharing in the sufferings that are the sufferings of God, both on earth, as part of Christ's work of salvation, and in heaven, as part of the eternal life of the Trinity which is the ecstatic death to self that is the essence of both suffering and joy. (78)

Kreeft on the Problem of Evil: "shiny reason is not the answer"

"Shiny reason founders; only opaque paradox stays afloat."

As Kreeft lays out the plan of the book he says he will first work through ten easy answers to the problem of evil -- answers which turn out to be inadequate. See how artfully he explains this rationale:

Each of these ten answers is a nice, clean shortcut around the mystery. Who wants to steer into the fog bank when there are roads running through the clean air? 

The Bible looks like a fog bank. Its story centers on mystery. Christianity is not one of the neat, clean little roads. It is like Noah's ark, a big, sloppy, cumbersome old boat manned by a family of eccentrics and full of all kinds of animals who have to be tamed, fed, cleaned, and mopped up after (remember, Noah had no deodorants!).

The ten easy answers are like sharp, trim, snappy craft with outboard motors skipping over the surface of the great deep and leaving the drippy old ark behind as hopelessly inefficient and outmoded. Their only problem is that they don't reach port. They sink. Shiny reason founders; only opaque paradox stays afloat. (page 28)

Blogging Daily, Unknown Merit

Blogging daily fetching thoughts

from passing notions fraught

with ephemeral concerns.

Bloggers publish more than print

and so in this immediacy lent

the words are more unworthy.

Media forms of past at least

tended to a better feast

for hungry mind and soul.

Of course it's not immediate

this one often indigent -

can tend to empty words.

And poems that are not at all

though definitions hear the call

define some 'poets' who are not.

Blogging daily may have merit

Gives ambitious author carrot -

but that is meager feast.