Church Community as Conduit of Grace
As community, the church's primary relationship with God pours forth in relationship among believers and toward the world, functioning as a conduit of grace.
Places for One Anothering
Christian practices are the places where one anothering takes place, and all of it must focus on Jesus.
Closed-off Thought
Summary: Prebuttal cuts off true dialogue by retreating inward to prepare for an attack that may not come.
• Prebuttal happens when you expect or predict disappointment and respond by retreating back into your internal world.
• Prebuttal happens when you react to your own anticipation and limit participation to your closed thought world.
• Prebuttal happens when you prepare your claim in advance, either refusing participation or not delaying intellectual gratification.
• Prebuttal clogs your ability to hear fairly and diminishes your skill at and willingness to engage in dialogue.
Wise Sight
Summary. Perspicacity is insight, shrewdness, understanding, and judgment internally sourced and externally applied.
• Having a ready insight exercises that capacity to uncover how material and immaterial things work in the dailies.
• Shrewdness produces judgments and decisions that consider provenance, means, context, and telos.
• Accurate and deep understanding provides clarity about elements in their relations and functions.
• Good judgment is public wisdom.
Influence as Godly Connection
Summary: Disposition Is the conduit for the personal influence that links relationship with God and with community.
• Inherent qualities of mind and character, also known as disposition, are expressed through skills, strengths, and knowledge.
• Influence happens when one's disposition is relationally connected with communities.
• Proper influence is when one's personal influence is the conduit through which trust in and alignment with God and faithfulness to God are carried out in relationship with others through one's place in a community.
Emulation versus Imitation
Summary: Emulation creates expansive improvement, while imitation creates additive replication.
Emulation. The one who emulates seeks to be better than, and being better is the measure of success. The end goal is to match or surpass the model, though both model and emulator remain comrades. Emulation is expansive: the one who emulates seeks to replace the model, creating rivalry and tension while maintaining horizontal honor.
Imitation. The one who imitates seeks to be the same, and similarity is the measure of success. The imitator follows the model by copying, even if in externals alone, so the resulting simulation can have some flatness. Imitation is additive, for imitators create copies of the model. Imitator and model are in parallel, maintaining vertical honor.
Obey God and Be Free
Obedience to God is always better than subjection to the usurpers of divine rule.
Obedience is personal responsibility; it is action and motivation undertaken freely toward God's will. It is a choice. Obedience to God is freedom.
Subjection is top down, from humans who take themselves to be false gods, whether they know it or not. In subjection, the ruler makes demands and forbids choice. Subjection to false gods is slavery.
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Inspiration: "Submission to the law created by men makes one a slave; obedience to the law created by God makes one free" (Tolstoy).
Chaos or Community
In every moment of mass conflict, we stand on the verge of chaos or community.
On the Verge
We stand on the verge, and we shall either fall or take flight.
There are spaces, liminal spaces, that exist between what has been and what may be. In this liminal space, all is both/and, rather like Schrodinger's famous cat. In liminal space, the imagined and possible swirl about, confusing us and poking us to angst. We live in the not-known. Right now, American in 2020 and 2021 is in liminal space. What has been is being shaken and what may be is too divergent to nail down. We stand on the verge of that which is next, and we shall either fall into chaos or take flight into community.
Choose.
Peace That Stirs Up Questions
Christians reside in an upset world, but we abide in Jesus, who has already given peace.
In the current cultural upheaval Christians ought to be at peace in a way that is shocking.
Develop The Immaterial And Proclaim The Actual
Christians ought to focus on immaterial resources and public proclamation. In order to do that, we must take steps to build those immaterial resources in our souls and choose to actually proclaim.
Percepts, Concepts, And Understanding
Careful consideration of percepts and thorough yet brief descriptions of concepts create foundations for understanding.
Setting Up A Framework For My Intellectual Playground
Figuring out thinking-writing processes and structures provides a framework for written intellectual play.
A call for blatant godliness
In a culture going headlong into godlessness, it is all the more crucial for Christians to be blatantly godly.
Not All Religious Practices Are Worthy
The worth of a practice is in its provenance, means, and telos, and in how the practice acts out God's unhindered love.
it's about knowing stuff and people
Becoming both wise and shrewd involves deep knowledge of the essentials of reality and persons, and a willingness to risk putting one's view out there.
Learning to see reality
The perspectives of the one trusting Jesus ought to be moving ever closer to the perspectives of Jesus himself.
The Brave New World Stinks
Brave New World shows what happens when industrialization, pleasures-seeking, and commercialism go to seed.
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