"Integrity is vital because any breach of our integrity pits us againdt reality, and that is a war no perdon ever won. You can stave off reality only so long before it crushes you."
Chuck Colson
Monday, November 30, 2009
Friday, November 27, 2009
Hyperindividualism
Hyperindividualism leads to loneliness, isolation, and despair. When you live for yourself you will end up an exile on the island of your own self-determination.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Meaning of Life
"Fear not that your life will come to an end but rather that it will never have a beginning." Walker Percy
"The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less." Vaclav Havel
"The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less." Vaclav Havel
Reality
"God's best servants are those who wish to shape their life on God's answers rather than shape God's answers to their wishes.".
Augustine
Augustine
Peace
"We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves. We are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God."
Thomas Merton
Thomas Merton
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
The Question
"My question--that which at the age of fifty brought me to the verge of suicide--was the simplest of questions, lying in the soul of every man...a question without an answer to which one cannot live. It was, 'What will come of what I am doing today or tomorrow? What will come of my whole life? Why should I live, why wish for anything?' It can be also expressed thus: Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not dedtroy?"
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Monday, November 16, 2009
Identity
"A child's need for self-worth is THE condition for his life," so much so that every person is desperately seeking a "cosmic significance." Our need for worth is so powerful that whatever we base our identity and value on we essentially deify. We will look to it with all the passion and intensity of worship and devotion.
Ernest Becker
Ernest Becker
Sin
The primary sin is not the doing of bad things, but the making of good things into ULTIMATE things.
Sin
Translation: Sin is the despairing refusal to find your deepest identity in your relationship and service to God. Sin is seeking to become oneself, to get an identity, apart from God.
Sin
"Sin is: in despair not wanting to be oneself before God. Faith is: that the self in being itself and wanting to be itself is grounded transparently in God."
Soren Kierkegaard
Soren Kierkegaard
Sin
"Sin is: in despair not wanting to be oneself before God. Faith is: that the self in being itself and wanting to be itself is grounded transparently in God."
Soren Kierkegaard
Soren Kierkegaard
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Discontenment
"It is only right that if we are discontented with what God offers us every moment, we should be punished by finding nothing else that will content us." Jean-Pierre de Caussade
Path of Least Resistance
"The path of least resistance leads to the road of greatest hardship." Thomas Merton
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
How Do We Change the Culture?
How Do We Change the Culture?
Here is an interesting summary of a part of a chapter in Andy Crouch’s Culture Making:
Because culture is the accumulation of tangible things, not something vague or ethereal, it can be changed only by creating some new tangible things that gain a wide enough acceptance by the public to reshape their world. Since cultures are always “full,” one has to create something new that will convince enough people to set aside some current cultural good and exchange it for the new cultural good. However, Christians often choose other less effective strategies for changing the culture. Condemning the culture usually doesn’t work since people will continue to consume the cultural goods even if we disapprove of them. Critiquing the culture doesn’t work either, merely producing more sophisticated analyses that have no effect on people’s choices of cultural goods. Copying culture doesn’t work either since it merely creates a sub-culture that consumes its goods while the larger culture ignores them. Consuming culture is also a poor strategy for change since individual consumers have a negligible effect on a global, or even national, culture. Instead, the best way to change the culture is to create new cultural goods that are better or more attractive so that the public will consume them, and thus change the culture.
Here is an interesting summary of a part of a chapter in Andy Crouch’s Culture Making:
“The only way to change culture is to create more of it.”
Because culture is the accumulation of tangible things, not something vague or ethereal, it can be changed only by creating some new tangible things that gain a wide enough acceptance by the public to reshape their world. Since cultures are always “full,” one has to create something new that will convince enough people to set aside some current cultural good and exchange it for the new cultural good. However, Christians often choose other less effective strategies for changing the culture. Condemning the culture usually doesn’t work since people will continue to consume the cultural goods even if we disapprove of them. Critiquing the culture doesn’t work either, merely producing more sophisticated analyses that have no effect on people’s choices of cultural goods. Copying culture doesn’t work either since it merely creates a sub-culture that consumes its goods while the larger culture ignores them. Consuming culture is also a poor strategy for change since individual consumers have a negligible effect on a global, or even national, culture. Instead, the best way to change the culture is to create new cultural goods that are better or more attractive so that the public will consume them, and thus change the culture.
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