Showing posts with label topic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label topic. Show all posts

Saturday, May 31, 2014

Knowing One's Limits

A popular Christian book in recent years started off with the author writing that they were writing the book because they were poor at the topic. The author wrote the book to understand and grasp the topic.

The book has many good qualities and has been very well received. Of course it takes the author two thirds of the book to explain the problem and the solution to the problem is woefully low.

The shame of course is how well the book has been received. The author never understood the topic and people have flocked to a book with partial answers.

It is interesting that often a lot of the lack of quality in action comes from doing too much. The author wrote a book which he was not prepared to write and his audience read a book that did not have really adequate solutions to the problem the book addresses.

You see while the book probably has done a great deal of good and done more good than most books it is also really woefully inadequate. Sometimes we can do more by having the humility to do less.

It is often the case that if we have a few projects we see of value and we attempt 1-2 projects with zeal more good will come of it than if we do 5 projects with great haste and sloppiness.

It is not always the case, but it is easy to try to do too much and thus accomplish too little. This is of course why the bible has a theology both of work and of rest.

The bible tells man to be diligent. The bible also tells man to rest and enjoy life and trust that leisure and enjoying the world is good.

I have heard many preacher criticize men who go home and watch sports on a Sunday afternoon. The man who kicks back after a long week and relaxes watching sports after a long week is not doing anything wrong.

Maybe there is validity to some criticism if it is nuanced, but ultimately God made the Sabbath for man to rest. Many pastors seem to act as if Sabbath was made for a regime of strict all day worship. Really they need to open up their bibles and read Jesus' condemnation of their unbalanced perspective on life.

God created man to be happy and have joy. Of course the ultimate joy of man is in God, but God also created man to delight in the fullness of the world he has made.

Friday, May 30, 2014

Loving Others in Practical Things

One of the most essential elements of loving others is caring about what they care about. We cannot really love someone if we do not care about the things which are important to them.

Conversely it is also avoiding things which upset them. If we have a friend where something of little or no importance upsets them we cannot love them if we bring it up.

You see this is what it means to love others as we love ourselves. We care about the things we care about very deeply. Love to others entails caring about what those people care about.

We cannot always get deeply excited about what others enjoy. If a friend loves to fish and I do not then I may not be able to connect on that topic well. But it is the spirit of love to care about what others care about within reason.

At the very least we should not act as if the interests of others are inferior or pointless. You see there are many things which interest others that do not interest us simply because we are different.

Some people like this piece of music and some people do not. Some people prefer certain types of food and some do not. In the realm of preference love should at a minimum accept that certain interests of others that we see no point in are simply a difference in preference.

Often we see people make absolute statements about preference and actually think they are saying something absolutely true. This is against the spirit of love. It is also somewhat irrational to think our preferences toward non ethical issues in some way are absolute or more valid than others' preferences to the same non ethical things.