Title sounds like my duty is to love and my duty is to boys with long hair. Oops.
Topics: Boys with long hair, and 'my duty is to love'.
I am finding myself becoming more and more jaded and I cannot reason myself out of it. I don't enjoy it. I hate it. Help me!
A friend (nahidface) asked me my opinion on this issue: When is the time to abandon our responsibility to keeping peace in order to fight, and when is the time to sit back and watch injustices occur?
My reply was something like this:
First, my primary responsibility is and always will be to love.
Second, if I am going to fight for a reason that is not purely stemming from love, I will be fighting for truth. Truth, to me, is what is eternal, lasting, and top priority. Truth is what affects beyond any earthly influence.*
Third, any other fighting I do should be a direct result of love. If I fight injustice, it should be because I love God and His people, and thus do not want them to feel the effects of injustice. If I fight hunger, it should be because I love God and His people, and thus do not want them to be hungry. If I fight a tyrannic government or power, it should be because I love God and His people, and thus don't want them to be oppressed. Etc.
The minute I begin to fight out of hatred (I would like to say anger.) towards the people who are doing the injustice, or making people hungry, or oppressing a people, rather than fighting out of love for the suffering, is the minute, I think, that I go wrong. The minute I begin to fight out of selfishness -- to further my reputation, or appear altruistic, or get attention, or to make friends or find a good boyfriend or earn money or get a cool new t-shirt, or so many other reasons -- is the minute I go wrong. The minute I begin to fight out of pride -- believing I'm doing good for the world rather than God is doing good for the world through me (which can be interpreted in many, many different ways, I think) -- is the minute I go wrong. The minute I begin to fight just out of habit, even, is I think the minute I go wrong. And many other possible distractions. The minute I abandon love to fight is the minute I go wrong.
Because fighting is not, I don't think, good, unless necessary. It is disturbing the peace and joy.
I don't even think fighting just for the sake of justice or un-hunger (etc.) is good. We should fight because we love. Again, I believe the minute we abandon love to fight is the minute we go wrong. And so if fighting means un-loving (which isn't even hating!), in any way whatsoever, if it means un-loving Hitler or racists or Saddam Hussein or serial killers or rapists, then it should be avoided. If our desire to fight for anything ever conflicts with our duty to love, it should be set aside. Love should never be abandoned.
Would like to point out that this is only my idea of an ideal. I am utterly unsuccessful. And the idea's awfully recent, anyway.
Gandhi, I think, was the best this earth has seen (that has lasted in the history books, at least).
*Of course, I believe that most often fighting for truth is a direct result of love anyway. A love of truth? Is this a valid love (that is, a love worth fighting for)?
If it is, then that would make a love of justice a valid love. Is fighting for a love of justice different than fighting for justice?
Awfully unrelated, but: geez, I am getting frustrated with long-, straight-, shiny-, soft-haired boys. It's so unattractive and unmanly to me, and it seems so completely about appearance because, really, we all know long hair is inconvenient, especially if you're going to bother conditioning and treating it constantly so it feels and looks nice and especially if you're in a cool band and rock out on stage all the time. Why do heterosexual, talented guys enjoy looking like girls? There seems to be no reason other than to be stereotypically unstereotypical.
To each his own, I suppose.
Just finished The Great Divorce, by C.S.L. Will hopefully get time to talk about later.
Current music:
all of the songs on The Almost's purevolume.
Truth in Sincerity (album), by Amber Pacific
Still Fighting It, Ben Folds (Five? I don't think Rockin' The Suburbs was a solo album.)
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
ideas, emery, holding our own and open-mindedness, happiness
This song by Emery depresses me a lot.
But I really like his river metaphor.
How sad that the writer for a (not publicly professed, but) Christian band is in a place like that.
'publicly professed'. That's probably redundant.
It's interesting the manner in which ideas form when they are forced, and the quality of the work that results. ensues. follows.
The only good ideas are the ones that can stand up to the most potent or foolish of adversaries.
Relatedly: The best time to learn to be open-minded is in learning to hold our own.
Thinking to ourselves that we're right is very different from thinking out loud that we're right. There's always bound to be someone who disagrees, and they'd never pass up a chance to put someone in his/her place. And so when we publicize an idea and it is challenged, and we are then forced to consider this argument and respond to it, we learn to bring into mind views other than our own. Sometimes we end up discovering that we cannot counter an argument, and so we are wrong. But are we not better off for now having the right (until further challenged, at least) idea in our minds rather than ignorantly remaining in the wrong?
It takes a great deal of courage, I suppose.
There is an exception, of course: There are people (Bill O'Reilly, for example) who have the ability to appear right without ever having, for the most part, to defend an actual opinion. It involves a lot of manipulation and relies, I think, on attacking a person rather than a view. It also, it seems, requires a complete lack of loyalty to intellectual ethics, such as the one that says: I pursue the truth.
I've been thinking lately about my responsibility to happiness, rejoicing in the Lord and having joy. It occurred to me just now that I don't, in fact, have to blame my unhappiness on myself and that many people don't. I will continue doing so, though, because I believe that the responsibility really does lie on me. I'm glad I was raised this way.
Maybe more on this later.
Currently listening to:
Seattle, The Classic Crime
Be My Escape, Relient K
Daisy, Switchfoot
Currently reading:
A Severe Mercy, Sheldon Vanauken
But I really like his river metaphor.
How sad that the writer for a (not publicly professed, but) Christian band is in a place like that.
'publicly professed'. That's probably redundant.
It's interesting the manner in which ideas form when they are forced, and the quality of the work that results. ensues. follows.
The only good ideas are the ones that can stand up to the most potent or foolish of adversaries.
Relatedly: The best time to learn to be open-minded is in learning to hold our own.
Thinking to ourselves that we're right is very different from thinking out loud that we're right. There's always bound to be someone who disagrees, and they'd never pass up a chance to put someone in his/her place. And so when we publicize an idea and it is challenged, and we are then forced to consider this argument and respond to it, we learn to bring into mind views other than our own. Sometimes we end up discovering that we cannot counter an argument, and so we are wrong. But are we not better off for now having the right (until further challenged, at least) idea in our minds rather than ignorantly remaining in the wrong?
It takes a great deal of courage, I suppose.
There is an exception, of course: There are people (Bill O'Reilly, for example) who have the ability to appear right without ever having, for the most part, to defend an actual opinion. It involves a lot of manipulation and relies, I think, on attacking a person rather than a view. It also, it seems, requires a complete lack of loyalty to intellectual ethics, such as the one that says: I pursue the truth.
I've been thinking lately about my responsibility to happiness, rejoicing in the Lord and having joy. It occurred to me just now that I don't, in fact, have to blame my unhappiness on myself and that many people don't. I will continue doing so, though, because I believe that the responsibility really does lie on me. I'm glad I was raised this way.
Maybe more on this later.
Currently listening to:
Seattle, The Classic Crime
Be My Escape, Relient K
Daisy, Switchfoot
Currently reading:
A Severe Mercy, Sheldon Vanauken
Sunday, October 7, 2007
pride, running from God
I'm gonna articulate something in this post that feels to me to be universal to Christians, but realistically there's only one other person I know who might go through the same process. Tell me if I'm wrong please.
Every non-surface Christian (I realize I haven't yet explained what I mean by this, but hopefully I'll get the chance to soon -- if it helps, I've heard C.S. Lewis call surface Christians semi-Christians), I suppose, has an individual way of striving for the perfection God asks of us. The way I've done it in the past and the way I'm trying not to do it now is a prideful one. It says, "God, You have a lot to do anyway. I'll go ahead and try on my own. I don't feel comfortable asking for Your help when You've given me so much already." We must let go of the attitude in which we do it ourselves or we don't do it at all. It breaks everyone's heart. We (and by we I mean the people who do this, me included) spend so much time running the race with our shoes tied together, weights on our back, saying, "Watch me, God! I can do it myself, I'll finish, You don't have to help me." And then we fall flat on our faces, tasting dirt, anguish, despairing in our failure, and it is God who picks us up again, it is Him that embraces us in His loving arms and gets us back on our feet and tells us it's okay that we can't do it on our own, that we weren't made that way. And we thank Him, we are so grateful. He nurses us back to health and as He does confidence in ourselves rekindles and plants its seed. "I feel so much better," we tell ourselves. "I'll never make that mistake that tripped me up again. " And then, once again, we take off and leave God behind. What a childish, naive pride. Such a desire to please God and such an inability to do it, such an inability to realize we can't do it without Him. And then, inevitably, our humanity hits us square in the face. We can't do it. It is impossible. We are fallen and sinful and it is only the grace of God that allows us to do any pure good. And yet, we still do not accept God's help. There is no falling out, because how can there be in the face of this truth? We are tragically stubborn. We say, "Well, God, I'll do the best I can. I'm sorry it's so horrible."
Profoundly relevant songs:
When I Go Down, Relient K
Find Me Tonight, Everyday Sunday
I don't have much of substance left, but I can leave you with some food for thought. Those of you who know me most likely have heard me talk of C.S. Lewis (and actually I've talked of him here), and that is because I think he is absolutely amazing. This is an excerpt from a letter by C.S.L. found in a book called A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken:
My feeling about people in whose conversion I have been allowed to play a part is always mixed with awe and even fear: such as a boy might feel on first being allowed to fire a rifle. The disproportion between his puny finger on the trigger and the thunder & lightning wh. follow is alarming. And the seriousness with which the other party takes my words always raises the doubt whether I have taken them seriously enough myself. By writing the things I write, you see, one especially qualifies for being hereafter 'condemned out of one's own mouth'. Think of me as a fellow-patient in the same hospital who, having been admitted a little earlier, cd. give some advice.
Earlier, Vanauken speaks of Lewis (who was a close friend and mentor to him), saying:
...and I therefore saw and heard, both at table and at the semicircle by the fire in the common room as the port went round, the Lewis who, in brilliance, in wit, and in incisiveness, could hold his own with any man that ever lived.
C.S. Lewis played (and, myself as proof, plays) such a great (and personal) role in so many people's lives, but his very influence would have been rendered entirely useless and even very detrimental if he hadn't been able to (and, realistically, God hadn't given him the ability to) discover humility and realize his actually nonexistent role compared to that of God.
Current music:
Globes and Maps, Something Corporate
When I Go Down, Relient K
Find Me Tonight, Everyday Sunday
Take Me Out, Everyday Sunday
Apathy for Apologies, Everyday Sunday
Currently reading:
A Severe Mercy, Sheldon Vanauken
Every non-surface Christian (I realize I haven't yet explained what I mean by this, but hopefully I'll get the chance to soon -- if it helps, I've heard C.S. Lewis call surface Christians semi-Christians), I suppose, has an individual way of striving for the perfection God asks of us. The way I've done it in the past and the way I'm trying not to do it now is a prideful one. It says, "God, You have a lot to do anyway. I'll go ahead and try on my own. I don't feel comfortable asking for Your help when You've given me so much already." We must let go of the attitude in which we do it ourselves or we don't do it at all. It breaks everyone's heart. We (and by we I mean the people who do this, me included) spend so much time running the race with our shoes tied together, weights on our back, saying, "Watch me, God! I can do it myself, I'll finish, You don't have to help me." And then we fall flat on our faces, tasting dirt, anguish, despairing in our failure, and it is God who picks us up again, it is Him that embraces us in His loving arms and gets us back on our feet and tells us it's okay that we can't do it on our own, that we weren't made that way. And we thank Him, we are so grateful. He nurses us back to health and as He does confidence in ourselves rekindles and plants its seed. "I feel so much better," we tell ourselves. "I'll never make that mistake that tripped me up again. " And then, once again, we take off and leave God behind. What a childish, naive pride. Such a desire to please God and such an inability to do it, such an inability to realize we can't do it without Him. And then, inevitably, our humanity hits us square in the face. We can't do it. It is impossible. We are fallen and sinful and it is only the grace of God that allows us to do any pure good. And yet, we still do not accept God's help. There is no falling out, because how can there be in the face of this truth? We are tragically stubborn. We say, "Well, God, I'll do the best I can. I'm sorry it's so horrible."
Profoundly relevant songs:
When I Go Down, Relient K
Find Me Tonight, Everyday Sunday
I don't have much of substance left, but I can leave you with some food for thought. Those of you who know me most likely have heard me talk of C.S. Lewis (and actually I've talked of him here), and that is because I think he is absolutely amazing. This is an excerpt from a letter by C.S.L. found in a book called A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken:
My feeling about people in whose conversion I have been allowed to play a part is always mixed with awe and even fear: such as a boy might feel on first being allowed to fire a rifle. The disproportion between his puny finger on the trigger and the thunder & lightning wh. follow is alarming. And the seriousness with which the other party takes my words always raises the doubt whether I have taken them seriously enough myself. By writing the things I write, you see, one especially qualifies for being hereafter 'condemned out of one's own mouth'. Think of me as a fellow-patient in the same hospital who, having been admitted a little earlier, cd. give some advice.
Earlier, Vanauken speaks of Lewis (who was a close friend and mentor to him), saying:
...and I therefore saw and heard, both at table and at the semicircle by the fire in the common room as the port went round, the Lewis who, in brilliance, in wit, and in incisiveness, could hold his own with any man that ever lived.
C.S. Lewis played (and, myself as proof, plays) such a great (and personal) role in so many people's lives, but his very influence would have been rendered entirely useless and even very detrimental if he hadn't been able to (and, realistically, God hadn't given him the ability to) discover humility and realize his actually nonexistent role compared to that of God.
Current music:
Globes and Maps, Something Corporate
When I Go Down, Relient K
Find Me Tonight, Everyday Sunday
Take Me Out, Everyday Sunday
Apathy for Apologies, Everyday Sunday
Currently reading:
A Severe Mercy, Sheldon Vanauken
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