If you grow up without trauma and abuse and you become a fine, upstanding human being as a result, what does that say about your character? Absolutely nothing.
Forgiveness is the process of metaphorically letting go of another person’s throat.
Where you are right now is where you should be.
You can’t change the past; no amount of guilt, regret, or even shame will change that fact.
You are happiest when you first fall in love.
The only true love is undeserved love.
If you have love, you have everything.
How would one lie so well that it is virtually indistinguishable from the truth?
God is the one cause that is not also an effect.
It is what you do that determines whether you are good or evil, not what you think.
Depression: the temptation to despair.
Despair is the path of least resistance.
Nothing in the universe exactly balances. That is why it is such an active place.
Just as there is a difference between happiness and excitement, there is also a difference between sadness and depression.
Politics doesn’t work. Reason: there are no politicians willing to make the hard choices necessary to save us from ruin.
Pain shields pain. It also shields fear.
A full stomach relieves anxiety.
According to the Old Testament Bible, God is not a fan of free will. Exodus 10:20, 12:36.
Addictive behaviour is an attempt to satisfy an unfulfillable need.
Dichotomy of Faith: the same thing that builds faith can also destroy it.
Jesus does not coerce, He reminds.
There are no wrong choices.
It’s our choices that show who we truly are.
Your true character is who you like to be.
How well or poorly you hold up under stress is a measure of your strength of character.
Seek and speak the truth.
At the beginning of my life I was not wanted and didn’t deserve it. And during my life I rejected another who didn’t deserve it. And now, at the end of my life I am not wanted and deserve it.
Imagine how wise you could become if you could live forever. It’s either that or completely crazy.
The truth should be obvious when realized. It should not still be obscure.
I find that I can no longer ignore my ignorance.
If God made His Presence known, we would no longer feel we had free will.
God wants us to be with Him, yet still able to exercise our free will. We need strength of character to do that.
If we punish a sinner, we assuage his guilt. But he is not forgiven, for if we forgave him, there would be no need to punish him.
The quantum universe: the edge of existence, where there is no space-time.
Walking is mostly a matter of balancing on one foot.
The body already knew: Millions of years before we discovered that acids could dissolve things, the body already knew about stomach acid; before we discovered electricity, the body already knew about the nervous system; before we discovered computing, the body already knew about sending messages via neurons and axons; when we discovered levers, the body already knew; when we discovered optics, the body already knew that too. So, we’re playing catch up with a meat-sack.
Age and experience have a stabilizing effect on personality. You are less inclined to extremes of behaviour. Connect that to the notion of God being omnipresent i.e. always existing, and we get an individual who is the antithesis of extreme behaviour. This god is NOT the god of the Old Testament.
The longer I’m a Christian the less I believe in the Old Testament.
I’ve read the bible, particularly the Old Testament, a few times. In those readings I have read the story of the Tower of Babel in which man decided to build a tower to reach heaven. However, God decided that He would thwart the effort and confuse the spoken language among the workers so that they would not be able to communicate instructions to each other on the building of the tower, and that this is why we have so many different languages today. I think the story was written to explain to travellers why they encountered different languages on their journeys. However, it illustrates to me at least one lie that exists in the Old Testament. And if there is one, there are probably more. The lie in the story of the Tower of Babel is obvious: there was no way – and God had to have known this – that man could possibly built a tower to heaven. Heaven is not a place but a state of spiritual existence. And to say that God had decided to confuse the spoken language among the workers as a means to stop the building of the tower suggests that the writer(s) of that part of the Old Testament were using creative license, based on their own ignorance, to say that God was doing things He clearly wasn’t doing. Come to think of it, the story of the Tower of Babel was probably invented to plug a hole in the Book of Genesis. If we all came from Adam and Eve, who obviously spoke the same language, then why do we now speak different languages? Enter the Tower of Babel story. This obvious lie only serves to make me more suspicious of what else is written in the Old Testament.
God provides clues to solve the riddle of your life. He does it for me. I’ve every reason to think He does it for you as well. God sees everything and He saw what happened to you that made you what you are today. Everything good, and especially everything bad.
God isn’t about reason. God is about faith.
Faith is an indicator of character: if you have faith, you have character.
If one could prove that God exists then you will have removed faith from religion.
God’s Rule: If you do not ask for forgiveness, you do not receive forgiveness.
True forgiveness is unconditional.
What would you be like if you received love and understanding every time you needed it, and sometimes when you didn’t?
One purpose of living is to experience who you really are rather than who you think you are.
I think God is a kind of minimalist. He never gives you more help than you need. The rest is up to you. That makes sense if the object of the help is to build character, to make you stronger so that you have the tools to overcome the next challenge. It’s like in a race. If you fall and can’t get up, someone hopefully will come along to help you so you can finish the race. You certainly don’t expect him/her to finish the race for you, you have to do that yourself. It’s too bad it has to be so painful.
I’ve realized why we are here: to ascend in heaven. Not ‘to heaven’ but ‘in heaven’. Why? To be closer to God, the Father, the center of all life and love. Heaven is a hierarchical continuum through which we strive to have closer access to God. The bottom end of this scale is probably a complete absence of God’s Presence. That could be hell.
If free market economics claims it can fix everything, then it should pay for everything, including social programs.
If free market economics can fix everything than why do we still have governments? During the Great Depression in the U.S., Woodrow Wilson thought that by leaving the free market policies of business alone, that business would fix the problems brought on by the depression. He was wrong. It took FDR with his New Deal and other socialist policies that enabled the country to recover.
Intelligence is the ability to pose, perceive, and resolve problems.
I have just finished reading a book entitled “The Lighthousekeeper’s Daughters” which made me feel such a depth of sorrow that felt not so much painful, but as if I were completing something, making a connection to something deep and eternal. It felt like I was fulfilling my reason for being. It’s hard to put it into words. To feel an emotional connection is to link all of us together, to know that we are all connected. Before, I could barely stand emotional pain, now I embrace it.
Imagine a world where evil is viewed as a good thing. Now imagine a world where evil cannot even be imagined. These are completely contrary worlds.
Journalism today seeks to emotionally persuade, rather than factually report.
We should all own a dog. Then maybe we will see what innocent behaviour looks like.
Treat others as if they were Innocents. Then maybe you will be Innocent in your own behaviour.
What would happen if we all decided that from this day forward we were never going to harm another human being?
Wars will end when the thought of killing becomes unthinkable, including mercy killing.
Imagine this scenario: you’re a group of people traveling across a land and you come upon a place that has everything you need to survive. You decide that this is where you are going to stay. However, there are already people living there. Being a particularly ruthless group, you decide that you are going to kill every man, woman, and child of this other group and take that land over. You justify your actions by claiming that God told you to do it.
Imagine that you lived in a world where if you stepped outside your door you knew that you could be murdered by the next person you meet on the street. This person would probably not even know you. You would be just another random killing. Such is the state of this world that people no longer need a reason to kill. You are prey in a predatory world. Sound familiar?
As long as you are still suffering, you are not as close to God as you want to be.
The Church has done a great disservice to humankind by focussing on sin rather than suffering. I wonder if they did it deliberately? If so, why?
We never actually touch. We are separated by an electron cloud, which is like a negatively-charged force field. What would happen to me or you if I could truly touch you?
The basic difference between a narcissist and a psychopath seems to be a matter of focus. The narcissist’s focus is entirely on themselves, whereas a psychopath focusses on you and how they can take advantage. The psychopath has been described as a social predator. A narcissist is not. On the other hand, the narcissist and the psychopath are virtually identical in many other respects.
There is nothing sadder than an unfulfilled life.
We all live in pain. We should strive to accomplish something in our lives that compensates for that pain.