Tag: Christianity

Risks and Emotional Control: Navigating a Christian Life

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Timing matters for all aspects of life. When there is a task to do, you can do it fast or slow, or anything else in the middle. Some things are easy to discern at which timeframe to complete, but others are unclear. Even when it is clear, we should question our timing. There is a time for everything.

To start, there is a temptation that goes along with impatience to speed up the process and do things as fast as possible. We want results. Now. This forgets that some things require more care and attention that comes with slowing down. This is one aspect of the virtue of patience. Sometimes it takes a stronger person to slow down.

On the other end, we cannot be too slow. Life is limited and we cannot take forever. Being risk-averse is too common when we have such comfortable lives. We don’t want to lose what we have. And, more biologically, we don’t want to take risks that will endanger us–that can possibly cost our lives–if there’s a safer alternative. Yet we need to often overcome being overly precautious when the stakes really aren’t too high. It’s like a child in a life jacket that is dipping into the pool for the first time: there’s almost no risk objectively, yet to the child, it appears to be a life-threatening task.

We need to control our emotions. Emotions can be a good motivator to be proactive. As Christians, we have to be actively fighting temptation and constantly trying to move towards God. The safest way to fall into temptation is by inertia: being pushed along this world and slowly being nudged towards sin.  Emotions are also necessary for work and productivity, but they must be harnessed in a nuanced way. We can see the classic example through the arts. Music evokes universal and complex emotions; shows and movies can masterfully draw on universal experiences. The art is communicating just the right things to evoke a connection. It is so hard to communicate feelings earnestly and vulnerably, but it can be so rewarding when it’s done right. For everyone. It can be cathartic for both the artist and the viewer. It’s beautiful.  

There are risks we perceive as disproportionate or superficially prudent, like being scared of social rejection or the negative feelings associated with failure. On the other end, the extreme is being too risky. It’s a failure of prudence to take risks unnecessarily or at a disproportionate cost. The daredevil or thrill-seeker climbing high buildings with no equipment risks their lives with the reward of the thrill of adrenalin. In these areas, we should practice taking calculated risks and sometimes even practice failing to get us to re-assess our risk tolerance. Sometimes we fear from people the simple “No.” We can seek or “go-for-no” to practice.

Christianity, Mental Health, and the Courage to Be

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I hate anxiety. Not just the somatic, psychological disease, but what the existentialists understood as an effect of a lack of meaning or fear of non-existence. But life is full of it. We dread the unknown and the future is entirely unknown, and somehow we have to make peace with that.

Jesus didn’t die for you to be anxious. He died for freedom from existential anxiety. He gave us the gift of purpose and certainty in God by repairing the relationship between us. We can be happy and truly happy. Even psychological anxiety is defeated: what do we have to worry about? There are no insecurities under the ultimate rock of God.

It’s only when we go back into ourselves and become self-centered and take on the delusion that we are self-sufficient. Our anxiety died in Jesus and it’s replaced with faith. There is such a freedom. Any earthly failure is insignificant. We rely on humility and prayer to God. Our identity is not in earthly work, but rather our eternal efforts. We have to keep the eternal picture in mind.

Whenever we are overwhelmed or lose control of our mind to the chaos of rumination, we can be certain that no authority compares even a little bit to God. Nothing on this earth can give us approval. All comes from God. We can throw the world away for a glimpse of the Lord.

One antidote is courage. The courage to be is a self-affirmation of one’s being in spite of a threat of nonbeing and the anxiety associated with it. We are full of the fear of death, guilt, condemnation, meaninglessness, and emptiness. In spite of this, we need the strength of faith to stand firm in God. Yet this is not of our own accord; we can only find the source of courage from God.

We need courage with every step. Every moment we forget our dependence on God. Our helplessness is always apparent and deluding ourselves into thinking we are not only reinforces the problem. Even in the mundane of everyday life, we need the courage to be.

Often, we need courage through action, and the main action we take in our modern world is through speech. Speech is the key device for interpersonal relations; we must use it to be holy. Being courageous must come with careful discernment and we must put a careful guard on our mouths. Yet we need to know when we must speak. When fear paralyzes our tongues yet we know it will do the Lord’s work, we must act and speak with courage.

A reminder is not enough. We have to actively practice courage at every moment. In all that we do, we have to lean into discomfort and get stronger under God. Little by little, we grow in God’s courage and become little gods.

Apologetics, Oration, and Aesthetic Appreciation: Christian Skills for Spiritual Enrichment

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Christian skills are closely associated with virtue. But Christians have skills that aren’t necessarily Christian skills. For example, Jesus was a carpenter, and while that may serve as a useful metaphor, there is no call for Christians to become better carpenters. However, there might be a call for Christians to acquire skills of reasoning, interpersonal skills, and skills of focus or self-control. It’s difficult to parse these out from virtues because, in some understandings of virtue, they are understood as a skill to be developed. If we understand loving others as a skill, then we might understand the virtue of charity as a skill. I don’t think this is the case. Skills can promote virtues in the way habituation can develop virtues and skills can enable greater virtues. Conceptually, it is easier to think of skills as a neutral device that is necessary for some virtues.

Memorization can be a skill that enables virtue. For instance, memorizing scripture and being able to comprehend it to apply it to relevant circumstances enhances virtues. The ancients used memory as the primary way to relay information and stories. The mind palace or Temple of Loci is an ancient technique to visualize multiple, complicated elements to memorize. Memory is what makes us, and they are so precious. It makes sense why it’s such a valuable skill.

General comprehension can be a skill for apologetics or teaching others. The gift of teaching is the gift of changing people and the way they think. You can radically alter the way they see the world. You give back a little bit of the precious truth you received. It’s important to develop this skill by identifying weaknesses one has and constantly seeking knowledge through the right questions. We have a web of memories, know-how, and experiences. Teaching can also demonstrate mastery; good teaching is mastery of knowledge to the point that it can be broken down and manipulated to be served on a plate to a beginner.

Oration is a skill in itself. Communication is so difficult, especially when it comes to complicated ideas. Oration involves the unique combination of being able to speak on the spot, synthesizing the right words, and translating abstract thought into the correct concrete words. Even more, there is the task of going through this process to end with something persuasive, adding gestures, intonations, and having the right rhythm.

Appreciation of aesthetic experience can be a skill. To enjoy the creation that God has given. I cannot appreciate fine wine and I’m a novice when it comes to appreciating classical music. But I know from my love of food and literature that more experience leads to greater appreciation.

Self-control is a skill. Tolerating discomfort is difficult in an environment where we are spoiled and have our every comfort met. Being calm and composed is easy in a tame and quiet environment. Exercising some semblance of discipline can be easy when we don’t need a lot of discipline to be successful in modern life. Self-mastery is a bit of a lost skill or virtue. Self-control is often understood as a virtue, but it’s such a wide umbrella of skills. Should we let this skill atrophy because we don’t have much adversity? Never. We have to remain sharp and continue to grow in virtue.

Wisdom is a compilation of skills. Philosophy is a love of wisdom. Human wisdom is lost. It claims to be precise, thoughtful, and polished, but we can never attain it. We strive to dig deeply in the wrong spot. However, philosophy can be useful if we are directed by God. Philosophy can help us think about God. Meditating on God and trying to figure out what God is trying to say. We can enjoy what little we know and what wisdom the Lord has given us. We can enjoy a piece of the joy of art and godly happiness. We can develop virtues of patience, diligence, and trust. We can think deeply, read rigorously, and do our best to play with our thoughts. But we need a balance of rigorous structure and creativity. We must consume but also create.

Excellence is context-dependent. For the Christian, it doesn’t necessarily mean beating out the competition in the rat race for our jobs, school, or other life goals. Excellence is a virtue. Excellence and reflecting God’s glory. Excellence is having a proper relationship with God.

God is perfect, but we are far from that. But we can strive for that by striving to be closer to God. We cannot be fooled into thinking that we must be excellent for our own sake or promoting ourselves; all of our excellence is with the aim of serving God. We cannot be drunk with power or self-centeredness once we start to get closer to excellence.

God’s grace is all we can rely on. We can take comfort in the fact that his power is made perfect in our weakness, and we don’t need to strive for perfection other than as an aspiration target. Yet we must still strive for this perfection, especially in the moral domain. But more generally we can strive to be a light in our culture, local community, and personal intellect.

We have to redirect our focus whenever it stops being about Christ. The perspective from which we act must always be focused on the service of the Lord. Not ourselves, not for the approval of anybody else. The excellence we strive for is secondary and prior to our relationship with God, but it flows naturally as well. It is not aimed at for its own sake.

Rigor takes a great deal of discipline. There’s a particular standard and it takes a particular level of conscientiousness to meet it. It takes effort, dedication, and patience. We must strive for rigor in the fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These are the aspirational virtues that we work towards. Yet all is at the mercy of God.

We can apply this to our work, virtue, and devotion to others. The efforts we put in and the product of our hands must reflect an earnest work that pleases God. It’s taxing and difficult, but we work hard for God. It’s all we can do.

We have to be careful not to take the standard of rigor to be earthly. We need to focus on the perspective of God. It’s so easy to be swept up by the earth, make comparisons to others, and be influenced by what amounts to earthly failure. Remember, earthly failure can be a godly victory. We must be true to our loyalty.

Maximizing Talents and Influencing Others: The Way of Faith and Commitment in Christian Living

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A way of looking at the world can change after a night’s sleep. Some mornings we can wake up and everything in the world is shining and there is a veil of happiness; other mornings, doom and gloom, for no particular reason at all. In a more sophisticated way, we can be motivated by wages, the service of people, and, most importantly, hold the teachings and will of Christ in our hearts.

The perspective of Christians should be on Christ rather than Christianity. This is to say that our perspective needs to be aligned with the person and relationship we have with Christ. In contrast, we must not have our perspective aligned with the impersonal set of rules, doctrine, and theology of the church without first thinking of the person of Christ. The trap of the impersonal focus on Christianity is that we focus on the wrong thing: abstract bits and pieces that are applied in our lives that forget the very roots. It’s like copying out the letters of a foreign language without knowing what any of it means.

We must wait patiently for God’s plan. It can come overnight and we must be patient. By God’s will, we must trust and faithfully work as he guides us to larger milestones. The work is incremental and we might not notice, but there can be some drastic change we must be ready for at some critical mass. Since change can happen at any point, we have to appreciate the present. Things may seem monotonous but we can miss those days. We must value every day, minute, and second. And we have to work gratefully and diligently.

I try to be ambitious, whatever that means. I try to do the most in order to maximize what talents God blesses me with. But an issue I run into is having too many goals and having a fear of missing out. It’s important to maximize many talents and it might be possible if you delegate enough. You also need to make a game of being as fast and efficient as possible. All of this is also a fear of regret.

Life is short and we must remember we all die. We can take for granted that time passes and be passive until we face regret. Still, we cannot fear not achieving everything as this is a form of pride; we cannot believe that we are in any control of our lives and entitled to a kind of life. We must humble ourselves to the Lord and trust that we will live the best kind of life without any regret. The Christian life has no room for regret since we are fulfilling our true purpose–everything else pales in comparison.

As we live a Christian life, we always have to push hard and have a fighting spirit. We need to push through discomfort and be disciplined. Fortunately, with God, we have a good life and we can naturally push into these uncomfortable areas with a learning mindset and desire for knowledge. We can seek the truth and the tough road it takes to attain it. It gives us a tough day to come home and rest with satisfaction. We must commit to something, which means not committing to another thing. The opportunity cost.

Faith is the core of religion and has a bad reputation for being opposed to rationality. Faith is not irrational, as commonly understood. It is a leap after proper deliberation and forms a commitment in the areas that lack complete certainty. Complete certainty is often a lot more difficult to attain, especially with the scientific method. We aim for probabilities and inferences that are consistent with some base axioms. But we need not worry ourselves with questions of justifications among Christians. That’s the concern for natural theology.

There’s so much written on the topic of faith that it’s hard to add anything new; so, I’ll only share what I know, is unique to me, and I have experienced. Being faithful for me is always connecting everything in our lives to Christ. We give thanks first thing in the morning for continued life. The game that we get to play is insignificant from the eternal point of view. However, every action we take can have eternal ripples and we have to use every opportunity to serve God and glorify Christ. Faithfulness is directing all our actions toward Christ. We are the sacrifice: every hour, minute, and second. At the same time, we need not have an obsession based on some anxiety that we’ll be forgotten otherwise. Our eternal creator is faithful to us.

We can practice this virtue by being faithful to people. We can also be faithful to principles. It should be that order, however, because people should be our priority for serving God. He commands us to love others, not love rules. Rules are a guide to shape us to be loving. We have to keep loyal and steadfast in serving people. We have to remain trusting and confident that God will guide us towards the right people and that serving people will be a part of the great plan. And we have to be loyal to our relationships and love others fully.

Being faithful is ultimately a relational term. It is what binds us to one another. The precious relationship we have with Christ affects every part of us. It penetrates us through and through to the point that every decision in this life is understood through our relation to Christ.

Hope is the calming ointment from faith. Hope is also an act of faith and is tethered to the ultimate commitment of faith. Hope strives towards the eternity that is promised and that we cannot fully comprehend. Like a ticket of our faith, we hold onto hope and we experience the joy with Christ in anticipation of knowing him more. When we feel lost, we need to have hope. When we feel we are weak or alone, we must have hope. In the darkest times, we have to trust in the Lord with all our hearts and lean not on our own understanding. The relationship we have in Christ is unbreakable and perfect.

Hope overcomes the world. Any pain, strife, or trouble can be overcome by the hope we have in Christ. All is insignificant compared to the hope we have in eternity. We endure and wait as patient servants. Hope is has a direction: it points to our faith in Christ. Hope gives us the joy of desire and anticipation. We can have the safety net below us and we can always trust that our future will be good. Perhaps not comfortable, but good.

Being steadfast is understood in terms of resolution or being unwavering. We need this attitude towards our faith. It is not always easy to keep our faith in the center of our minds, even though it is the center of our lives. We have to have the right priority in being steadfast. The way we have to be steadfast in our work has to be in virtue of our faith, and not in the work alone. All the historical heroes are steadfast in their goals. They are steadfast in their mission through every trial or tribulation. We have to stay focused but focused in the right way. All other distractions get to draw us away.

It’s a commitment, loyalty, or faith in the Lord and his plan for us. We can never know if what we do is right or wrong or productive or completely silly. Our conception of what is correct is so often completely wrong, so we should lean on the Lord. That is our Archimedean point. We will be firmly fixed and not change in belief or determination. Like a servant or warrior, we will be moved and trust that we will grow to be sons and friends in the end. We have to grow.

Understanding the Virtue of Purity and Its Relationship to Modern Struggles

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Purity is tied up with the ugly history of Puritanism. Without going into this history, we can try to unbundle the virtues of purity. There’s another aspect to also be careful of that might be tied up with the ugly historical developments. That is the basicness or primitivity of purity in our moral thinking. Recent evolutionary morality traces our moral reasoning to basic instincts or intuitions that are sensitive to notions of purity. The adaptive component is related to disease prevention, but the same mechanism leads to repugnant social norms, like homophobia. In any case, a look at Christian purity as a virtue must be informed by these distractions and traps.

Corruption can be understood as the antithesis of purity. There is a really broad way of looking at purity: anything that is sin. But that is too broad to be useful. Still, we can make some broad observations before diving into a more focused look into specific topics. C.S. Lewis locates all sin as originating in pride. Applied to purity, pride is a corruption of purity. We might look to the allegory of the Garden of Eden. It was a pure state that was corrupted by the sin of pride of disobedience and self-reliance on knowledge independent of God. The impurity of sin is introduced. Something went wrong and there is no longer perfection. This impurity distances us from the pureness of God’s nature.

How do these abstract stories and conceptualizations relate to the virtue of pureness? Purity is aspirational in that it seeks to return to a sinless state. To this end, the virtues of purity are associated with an increased sensitivity to sin and a striving to eliminate it entirely. Sin takes diverse forms, so, large or small, this virtue aims to capture it all. It strives for a perspective matching God’s nature that is incongruent with sin; it is the Archimedean point from assessing the entirety of actions and our spiritual self; it is an unconditional commitment that gives meaning to every step in our life and continually strives to inch closer to God.

I want to move now to specific topics, with no particular regard for importance other than that it relates to my own struggles and the struggles of modernity. To begin, let’s focus on a manifestation of pride in psychological terms: narcissism. Narcissism is so common in the technological era of being bombarded with grand narratives and main character syndromes, the constant reminder of inadequacy and comparisons leading to envy, and the self-absorbed naval gazing that results.

I want to suggest that this is a particularly devastating problem for our ages. In the age of technology and instant gratification, we have an issue with wanting a thrill, lusting after that dopamine hit. We cannot stay still with our own thoughts. We need to be a part of the constant stream of the technological network and be a part of that community. Missing out, or the fear of missing out leaves us gnawing to get back.

The gnawing feeling can be thought of as an addiction, but we can simply understand it in terms of gluttony. We have an informational gluttony for constant updates. Every desire to take away our internal monologue can be satisfied by picking up the phone. We are fed a constant stream of other thoughts and information which takes us away from our own. The escapism from whatever plagues us, whatever our mind urges us to tend to, and the real issues confronting us are taken away by the ether of our technology.

What is the remedy? We have to correct our desires and control our thoughts. We have to shape our will to develop the ability to desire correctly. Simply put, we need the habit of focusing on the silence instead of the buzz of technology. The difficulty in this is that there is no person to be accountable to, and transparency in our actions is hard to come by in the privacy of our relationship with technology.

The Significance of Christian Love and Relationships in Human Existence

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Love is the greatest command given to us. It’s so elusive and hazy yet intuitive and inescapable. Language finds its limit in trying to capture this epitome of human existence. The cliches and central themes of every story and human experience point to this magnificence.

What’s interesting about love is that it’s a universal human experience yet also the center of Christian belief. We model our lives and often devote our entire purpose to love—romantic, service, and so forth—and it all leads back to God’s love of us.

Exercising love unto others is divine. It models our Lord and orients us into our true selves. No matter how imperfect we are, we can still for a moment become little Christs by exercising love. It is an active process. We serve and use our actions to show love.

Christian love is supposed to be the purest form. Christians have insider knowledge of divine love, which is the ideal form of love. I can’t possibly begin to explain this subject. I’m not sure anybody can. There is a vast theological literature on divine love, and I suspect it coincides with secular literature on the philosophy of love. All truth is God’s truth.

People are not islands. Relationships are necessary for a good life. As much as it’s easy to be passive about it and let relationships come to you–especially in his modern life where you might not be able to get away from people or you desire isolation. What’s crucial is to invest in your relationships. Investments must be careful, however, because you have limited time and resources in your life. But don’t be overly picky and shield yourself from people you aren’t comfortable interacting with. Investing comes with some level of risk, and some more risks can net you more rewards. Humans depend on each other; we are social animals. All the more, as Christians, we must establish and build relationships. A useful analogy, one which I hope won’t be taken too far into a harmful context, is an investment. We can invest in relationships through our interactions, love, and care. Relationships are a great joy for us, but our duty as Christians goes beyond our own selfish fulfillment. We have to create deep, meaningful relationships to show the love of God. Christians are not supposed to be an island all the time. We must interact with the world and this means connecting with people. Jesus did it. We must do it.

Christianity identifies the importance of relationships. Relationships with strangers are necessary for demonstrating Christianity and evangelizing, but they can often be more impactful with those you know. When you are intimate with somebody, you gain their trust and your testimony through your actions is a way of demonstrating what it means to be a Christian. Shine like a light. Not alone, under a bed, covered, or isolated; rather, shine for people.

It’s easy not to interact with people when you’re naturally a bit antisocial or anxious. The inertia of staying alone is easy. But that’s not our duty; this is also not good for us. It’s also wise to choose which relationships to invest in. Sometimes it’ll be clear to us through the hand of the Lord. We can be pushed in directions towards people that we can help and who can help us; the synergy of growth and development. We can’t be shy about this opportunity.

We cannot love without relationships. Our greatest duty is to love, but how can we love without interacting with the world. It’s an act of faith to be vulnerable. For me, as a man, raised in an environment of toxic masculinity and emotion suppressing, my emotional dimension was largely stifled. I had to really focus on this weakness and my lack of emotional intelligence because it really started to affect my relationships with others. I had so many barriers to overcome insofar as trying to not only express my feelings but understand my feelings. For me, communicating my feelings and understanding them went hand-in-hand. It involved a step of earnestly speaking without pretense, ulterior motive, or rhetoric. I had to unlearn my defense mechanism of avoiding these tough discussions. I had to bare myself to be hurt. I had to trust that I wouldn’t be hurt, or, at the least, that I could recover from it. This process wasn’t triggered by intimates, although they may have been a catalyst for it. Rather, my step towards vulnerability stemmed from a faith in God. My prayers had to be honest. I could trust God that I could be vulnerable. To speak the truth.

It can be tough to do so many things as a Christian. Trying to be social when we naturally aren’t or doing the hard work of reaching out and growing a relationship is uncomfortable. Our comfort is our sacrifice to God. What we value most–safety, time, comfort–is a worthy sacrifice. Compared to the more abstract sacrifices of efforts it should be easy to sacrifice in other areas, like charity or generosity. We have to note that it’s part of our duty to give all of our idols. Money is an obvious one. Time is an obvious one. Less obvious is a combination: our efforts, sacrificing financial gain or personal leisure time, to devote to others. We have to sacrifice the best lamb.

We see that our purpose is to have a relationship with God, and we cannot be alone or it’d be hell. In the world, we seek to mimic the perfect relationship with imperfect people. We cannot avoid people and I believe we are commanded to dive deep into relations with people. It’s how we show God’s love. It’s how we see the presence of fellowship. We can see this through God and model our relationships with our relation with God. In the best case, in this world, we can have a small glimpse of heaven through our relationships. We create communities. We have fellowship.

Living by Faith and Love: The Power of Trust and Care in Serving Others

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Conceit and selfishness are a type of temporary indulgence that is meaningless. Much of our purpose comes from serving others. We cannot take comfort in our own comfort. For me, my motivation comes from the service and sacrifice of my parents, and this generates my own attitude of service and sacrifice for their comfort. Often, we can be self-indulgent and accountable to no person in particular. But we need transparency. We should be accountable to ourselves and what can beget regret.

To serve with love and kindness requires humility. We have to be careful against pride. The temptation to be kind to ourselves over others is inertia. This temptation has been overcome by our Lord. We must serve others wholly without thinking about ourselves. It has to be love for love’s sake. We shouldn’t seek admiration from others or ourselves. Kindness—true Christian kindness—involves a deep and pure love for others. It isn’t self-referential. It teaches us to stop thinking about ourselves and be benevolent in the proper way.

We should practice kindness at every chance we get. We must look for every opportunity. We exist to serve. Even the secular world is given the moral sense to know that kindness is needed; we see it in toddlers. But as we grow more sophisticated, or perhaps haughtier, we must return to the basic kindness to show to others. The simple idea is to treat others how we want to be treated: with kindness.

We must be generous and considerate. It’s active and merciful. We must go out of our way to be kind. It’s our onus to others to bear the burden of social interactions. To make them feel comfortable and go out of our way to connect. In the same way Paul didn’t care about food restrictions in order to accommodate others, our job is to go out of our way to love others.

It helps us grow. Our mission is proactive and we have to bring a sword. But it isn’t to antagonize; rather it is to fight for souls. We have to teach others with tenderness, patience, and love. The weight and burden are something that a person must bear, and why shouldn’t it be us?

God accommodates us in the greatest and most perfect way. He gives us a bridge and lifeline from his eternal perfection down to our little, dirty world. We can see the perfect example of accommodation. But we also see where we don’t have to accommodate. We don’t have to tolerate sin in itself, but we must accommodate the sin within others as we do ourselves; we see God is perfect, and sin is more detestable but he still loves us.

We have to remember and habituate ourselves to put ourselves in the way of discomfort. It’s nothing compared to the actual harm and danger that Christian predecessors had. We should be considered fortunate that the worst we experience is discomfort or expend a little effort. This is our mission. Our fight is manageable.

The fight for charity and discomfort go hand-in-hand. We need to keep giving so as to not clutch onto anything as an idol. Our giving to others is an act of faith in God. I do not need anything but you Lord. We can be renewed in comfort by laying our heads every night on our beds inside our homes. We must be grateful but also appreciate that others are lacking. We must try to help others always and not lose heart.

In the modern age, we grow increasingly insensitive to private gestures of generosity. We can tip heavy sums to impress our friends but we neglect the homeless and destitute we walk by. It’s such a basic necessity that intersects with all social problems. I remember as a boy, I thought it was a given that everybody had homes. I remember some nights when I desperately wished I was home when I was out late at night.

It’s important to place others above ourselves. It’s a model of service that habituates us to be in the presence of God. When Jesus washed the feet of his disciplines, he did it out of love and care and it flowed naturally from his relationship with God. Those overt acts of service are not the only forms, though. Every step Jesus took and action was in service of us.

We are given a duty to serve. We are told to serve. We might know a tiny slice of why we need to serve others. I’m sure there are countless other reasons why it is good for us, but we need to do it out of genuine love for others or, at the least, love for God. We cannot lose focus from serving others. The sins that might hinder and entangle us can distract us and push us inwards into some navel-gazing. The best we should do is forget about ourselves and just serve. If we can’t reflect in the proper way without becoming self-absorbed, we should instead just serve others. Then we might learn to serve ourselves as we serve others.

We need to go out of our way to serve. Our every action needs to be to serve. With love and faith, we need to embrace every pain and discomfort that comes with service. It makes our lives easier: we have a singular general principle for action. I’m sure there are exceptions, but they are few and clear. The cross can get heavier, but it’s light for now.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. Trust others through our trust in God, but not naively. We must be faithful and generous with our trust in others, especially because it’s how we can show our love. We can live in peace when we are able to trust freely. I think about the shrewdness of being selective of who we trust. We fear harm. Some are warranted. We can expose ourselves to most harm except spiritual harm. We need to put our faith in God to have good discernment.

We must live by faith in the Son of God. He loves and gives himself. I think trust is easier for some than others. With empathy and care, trust can come easily. If we aren’t this way, we need to learn.

We need to care. It’s an active process. It requires emotion and thought. Where we often fail is to think that appreciating rights and distancing ourselves is sufficient to fulfill our duty to others. We have to for further and go out of our way to serve. Jesus cared for us. God cared for us. He didn’t have to show mercy and love, but he went out of his way to do so. We have to learn from this and model this.

Care is focused and devoted. We care deeply about individuals and get to know their needs so that we can properly address them. It tries to parse out people from the masses. Often, through tribalism or indifference, we group people and have a general misanthropic attitude. We need to get rid of it to love people—individual people, with patience and commitment.

We cannot be selfish, but we can show care for ourselves in a holy way. We shouldn’t think that reframing from sim or a good time is failing self-care; rather, it is a sacrifice and act of faith to God that he will take care of us and know what’s best for us.

The Role of God in Self-Control and Endurance

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Patient self-control. Restraint.  It’s often externalized to focus on one’s relationship with others, but here I want to focus on one’s relationship with oneself. Our relationship with ourselves is confusing and a possibly unhelpful metaphor. But the point I want to drive home is that we need forbearance for making decisions that pull us in every way, and it needs to go beyond just being disciplined.

Forbearance is closely related to temperance. One of the classical virtues (the others being prudence, justice, and fortitude).  It looks at abstinence or moderation. We need to withdraw and reframe from certain activities, and it’s important to discern what exactly to avoid and for what reasons. Take fidelity to purity as an example, primarily, avoiding lust. It can seem primal and morph our very reasoning or decision-making faculties. Youth and hormones can be very powerful. We might think we have a right to act on it. That it’s natural and how the body ought to function. The countless rationalizations to act in one way to tip the scales. It takes a special kind of patience and discernment to decide to pull back on our desires.

Self-control is something that I struggle with. I grew up in a generation of distraction and easy fixes. Technology constantly wears down and trains distraction. It’s important to stay focused in order to stay self-controlled. Being self-controlled is something like a muscle. It takes a lot of practice to exercise this level of discipline. Little by little, the smaller decisions put us on the right track to make better bigger decisions. That’s why it’s important to exercise forbearance in even the little decisions and be wary of it. A kind of mind-muscle connection, but a mind-virtue connection. Like a mind-muscle connection, we can be extra mindful of a certain experience and focus on how our mind is affecting virtues just as we might focus on how the mind is affecting our muscles. The analogy is useful because we build our souls and virtues through small acts. The action of repetitions of lifting can strengthen muscles. Acting virtuously can similarly strengthen our souls. We have to practice our virtues.  Age is not a good indicator. We need to regulate every part of ourselves. We do have limits and our self-control can be depleted. We also have our will and have a part in regulating our own actions. This free will cut directly into what makes us human. It’s a profound question of who we are yet it can be as trivial as grabbing a marshmallow when we shouldn’t.

We need more than mental fortitude to endure the trials of life, but we can’t do it by ourselves. We need God. In fact, the less we rely on ourselves, the easier it gets. It’s easy to get overwhelmed. When we do, we have to rely on God; it’s not about digging deeper within ourselves, it’s about letting go and trusting God. Through prayer and meditation on God’s presence. Through the Lord’s perspective, we can work with joy and trust that it pleases our Father. There will be things we must endure—this is an inevitability. We should embrace the discomfort as a good. An opportunity to grow, like a baby learning to walk. I can think of no better metaphor for endurance than a marathon runner. The pain is clear. The goal is clear. It takes mental fortitude to keep pressing on when your body is in pain. But when the pain isn’t physical, and the pain is mental, it becomes strangely different and difficult. The barriers in our minds seem unbreakable.

It is important to identify the times of endurance. A transition into something better. It helps us rely that much more on God. The cycle of life rarely has us enduring pain all the time. There a periods of pain and periods of rest, and our Lord promised us no burden that we cannot overcome. Like a wise coach, we will never have more weight than we can handle. We will receive just enough to grow. With God, we are in a safe environment. We can grow in endurance–mentally, spiritually, and physically. We forget the mental and spiritual, and I have a hunch that they’re just as intimately linked as the mind and the body; the same goes for the body and the spirit. The mind can grow in discipline and focus, and this can translate into spiritual virtues of increased patience and love. Caring for our body can make it easier to be more loving and patient, just as exercise can be good for the body.

There is a Korean word that’s difficult to translate: “Han.” It’s a feeling of internalized sorrow or resentment, and it goes hand-in-hand with longsuffering. Patience in spite of troubles. It’s difficult to endure the discomfort. Especially if you feel some sort of entitlement from being comfortable for a long time. This is why a tough life can be good. This is why it’s difficult for a rich man to pass through the gates of heaven. We can only walk into the fire. Without being melodramatic, the crucible shapes us and changes us into something stronger. Suffering doesn’t necessarily lead to something better. But it’s so often that the road to growth is a rough road. We are unworthy servants. We have only done our duty. We aren’t entitled to comfort and every second of comfort is a blessing. We need to shift our attitude to that of a servant: humility. We are unworthy of even the work we are entrusted with, so we should be grateful for the opportunity to do this work. Courage through tough times or discomfort. It’s a part of faith. By trusting in God fully, we have no backup plan. We go forward into the valley of the shadow of death having faith that God will be with us. How trivial is everything compared to that? Our daily trials are meager in comparison.

Still, it’s all about reference points. A splinter can be incredibly painful and the end of the world for a child, yet a warrior faces a spear to the side without fear. We need to grow, but God is patient with us. He will not give us more than we can handle. We must be deliberate in our courage and why we have courage. The tough times and pain are a part of life, but it’s also a part of God’s will. We have courage in God. It’s an act of faith to have courage. The courage to be. We should have fortitude through our desire to be with Christ yet also serve his people. We must have courage through all the pain and adversity of life. We must be brave despite inflictions. It can be what makes Christians the strongest breed.

I can’t figure out the relationship between psychology and virtue, especially with respect to responsibility. What is really within our control that we should be responsible for? The addict might have little self-control, but discrete decisions within their control led them there. Fortunately, we don’t have to figure out this mystery to keep trying our best to build our self-control. The effort and striving are effort. The father is pleased with the effort despite whatever natural limits we might have. We need strength greater than us. We need God. He gives us more power and control, and we need to exercise self-control to serve him. We must give up control. Give it all up to God. For true freedom, we need to give up control.

The Gift of Life: Finding Gratitude and Joy in God

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Vitality is embracing the gift of life. The joys of being alive. Animals seem to embrace it fully, but humans seem to take it for granted. Somehow complexity undercuts vitality or perhaps distracts our minds away from the true joys of life. We need consistent gratitude despite the undulation of the days.

We must always acknowledge grace and make the most of every day, minute, or opportunity. Maybe we can think about death and our limited life. We can take risks knowing that God is with us and won’t let us fall beyond despair. The reminder of death can push us to make the most of every moment. We have to love others as if we can never love them again, and experience life to enjoy as if we don’t have another day. With trust faith and urgency, life becomes so much more beautiful. We don’t have to be afraid of the lion outside, rather we can dance outside and enjoy our life with God.

There is another element of maximizing life: pushing ourselves to the limit and experiencing something new. For instance, in athletics, there is an ineffable feeling of achieving the pinnacle, like winning the gold medal at the Olympics. Or, in feats of the mind, a joy that comes from pushing one’s intellectual abilities and synthesizing something new using all of our capability. In the spiritual domain, I think this becomes the closest thing to the ideal of experiencing the best of life. The perfect harmony of accessing the spiritual in the physical world is somewhat abstract, but those with the eternal perspective know that this is what life on earth is all about.

True vitality comes from doing God’s will. The harmony with our ultimate purpose in life is incomparable to anything else. It’s impossible to explain, but I think this is what many thinkers have believed to be the best kind of life. It encapsulates the physical and mental. It is perfect resonance. Living with the joy of God. Joy is everywhere in life, and this life is a blessing from God. We give thanks for everything—every moment of our life. Even in pain, we can find a glimmer of joy. It is hard to say when others suffer unimaginable pain. To tout our privilege for an easy life seems almost mocking. But from God’s perspective, our easy life can be unimportant compared to the pain. Everything seems so contingent and our idea of significance can be so often misguided. All we can do is give thanks, purely and innocently.

I always look to animals for the purest expressions of joy. They don’t know they are given the gift of being taken away from the wild. They enjoy it all anyway. They look always in the present and enjoy every moment. It’s a kind of freedom that might be impossible for rational humans who are aware of their own existence and mortality. But we need not despair in the same way as the humanist; we have our Lord to free us.

We can derive simple pleasure and announce it to the world. We often complicate joy. The daily miracles of life, the love we are given, and the care we have daily. I see it in my dog. He’s a little poodle with so much energy and lust for life. Every little thing is exciting to him: the entrance of a friend, the simplest meal, and the most repetitive play activity. The repetition and drudgery of life can make us callous and desensitized to the love of life. The constant disconnect through digitization, industrialization, and abstract information can take us away from the thrills of life.

We can lose our perspective on our lives so easily. The value of life. The joy of somebody who almost lost life and was given a second chance. We need to be excited about life. Everything we have and are given and be grateful for it all. Like the terminal patient given a second chance, we need to seize the blessing of life. We always lose perspective when we get into the monotony of daily life, but it’s important to be mindful of how much we actually have.

Every aspect of life can be exciting. We have so much that we have been blessed with. And we need to be grateful for every meal, every person, every joy that we have. We need reminders to be excited about life. Sometimes it comes to us without wanting it, like life being abruptly taken away from us. Seize the day. Think critically about the cliches. Be present and embrace the love of life. We have to dig deep for energy and strength. We need to have vitality and hunger for life. Enjoy everyday moments and have excitement for the mundane. We have to give it all that we have and push ourselves to the limit in this life. There are many aphorisms indicating this: seize the day; you only live once; remember you will die.

Sometimes we can be weary because of our bodily limitations. But we can push spiritually and be vibrant in the mind. We should count our blessings on our bodies. We must take up the cross and use every ounce of energy to move it. It matters where we derive our energy from. It has to come from humility and fear of the Lord. We need energy to serve the Lord, not to serve ourselves. The energy to serve ourselves can sometimes be an easier pool to take from, but it’s cheap and doesn’t last; even if it lasts longer than we think, we are met with emptiness when it finally does run out, for whatever reason it may be. We often have more energy than we think, we are just limited by our minds. It’s not to say our minds aren’t important. They preserve our health and well-being; yet, they can often be too conservative. We have to push harder, especially in this comfort-driven society.

The secular view tells us to live our lives to the fullest because our life is limited. The Christian view is similar but perhaps goes even further. Although some think the Christian view is escapist because there is life after death, the life we have here has eternal consequences. It’s all the more important that every action is directed towards our true, everlasting purpose. The littlest move matters and has eternal significance.

Balancing Work, Meaning, and Faith in Modern Life

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It’s easy to get myopically caught up in a demanding job. We mistake business for meaning. Or we distract ourselves with business to avoid the question of meaning. But a meaningful life is our responsibility, and it will always be our responsibility despite any distractions. This is a great lesson from the existential philosophers for our modern world.

But we cannot be defined by our profession or our status because it is all too insignificant. This perspective on the significance of work becomes clear on our deathbeds. Sacrificing so much for our work or perception is a dangerous trap. There has to be something more. A greater meaning. Mere approval from others might be attractive and give us a temporary buzz, but when we’re alone and left with our thoughts, we know that there must be something more.

Of course, Christ is the answer I am alluding to. The priority must be kept in mind. Christ wants us to work, but we must always work in virtue of Christ, and only for Christ’s glory and not our glory. The meaning is centrally Christ and our work is just the steps we take with him. I often fall into the trap of engrossing myself in work. But a singular type of work. The work that gives me status, approval, and comfort. We have to be careful of the idol of work. In modern life, we can worship business, productivity, and achievement. For this to take the place of Christ is absurd. It can be important to branch out into other kinds of work or leisure as an act of faith.

It’s a blessing to be able to create or engage in creative work. Creative work can be understood as something broader than something artistic or using our hands, such as creating a community, creating a small process of efficiency, or creating a better world for somebody. We must use this opportunity to work hard and create work to the best of our ability. In the same way, Mozart must develop his talent, we have a duty to do our best and hone our craft. If we can, we can have a little piece of creating beauty that reflects divine glory. In this vein, we have to use every second of our time on earth to work. Doing less than what we’re capable of or being lazy and slothful is a sin. We must cut out all the fluff of the opiate of media, easy pleasure, and anything taking away from true happiness. We can get distracted by easy pleasures that pale in comparison to the true joy of genuine happiness. In the same way, classical music requires a finer and finer ear to enjoy; even more, the rapture that a performer feels at their finest performance.

It’s important to be alert and sober. It’s not always about substance abuse but anything that can intoxicate us. Our minds can be intoxicated by people, technology, or any other distractions. We need to peel these distractions off of us in order to access the correct view of life. The mission we have in our life is our mission for God. We have to stay lucid and embrace the discomfort. It’s a part of life. To try and escape life as soon as it becomes uncomfortable misses out on something. It takes out the pensive confrontation of the thoughts we avoid and the things that rise out of boredom. We must process things in sobriety. Another aspect of sobriety is purity. We need to get rid of all distractions like taking off dirty clothes. We need to purify our minds and what we consume with our attention in order to be completely sober. This isn’t some sterile life that’s in store for us. It’s about maintaining control and knowing our boundaries. It’s about having the clearest mind in order to have fun.

In developing more mature skills, we become more efficient and economical. We need less effort and it becomes more refined in delivering happiness. The mature happiness that goes beyond novelty. At higher levels of skill, there are new planes of enjoyment that only a few, those who have achieved equivalent mastery, have properly attained and experienced.