Relax

There is a strange progression toward too busy of a lifestyle in American culture.  We forget the importance of stress relievers and instead invent ways to enable us to stay busier more of the time.  Caffeine is one such method of staying busier longer.  What happened to the days of Huckleberry Finn, sitting on a raft fishing, exploring a river, lost in a bliss of ignorance.  Could it be that this disastrous pattern of behavior stems from an overemphasis of wealth and an over exaggeration of being middle class?  We tell our students that the purpose of college is to make money, get a job, and be “successful.”    We applaud the caffeine addict who works every day, and shine disdain upon the pipe or cigar smoker who uses tobacco as a way to be less busy.  Let’s all take a break, chill out, or write a blog.  After all life’s too short to not enjoy it.

Happiness Standard

Clifford Williams makes the argument that certain things have intrinsic good in his article, Is Thinking Good for Its Own Sake.  Things like Praising God, beauty, nature, learning, thinking, and others, according to Williams, have value merely based on their existence.  I strongly disagree.  The only person/entity/thing with intrinsic value is God.  Furthermore, He set up a value system for us to follow just like He set up system of physical rules like gravity for us to follow.  The system which determines the goodness of a thing is happiness.  In other words, the things which are more valuable are those which bring us more happiness.  Forgive me for sounding like a hedonist.  This belief lines up perfectly with Christianity; the thing which brings us the most happiness, having the most value, is God himself.  Someone might argue that a psychopath would then be justified in killing because that act brings him happiness.  However, do we not say that these people are psychopaths, meaning a person suffering from chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behavior, and are not in fact normal?  So, it would follow that their view of reality, and so their view of happiness, would not align with the true version of happiness.  We might also argue that sex outside of marriage brings us more happiness, and so is justifiable.   Marina Adshade wrote an article examining whether sex outside of marriage brought happiness or not and found this, “Research suggests that promiscuity is not associated with increased happiness and, in fact, that the number of sexual partners needed to maximize happiness is exactly one.”  She found her results from the study by D. Blanchlower and A. Oswald called, “Money, Sex and Happiness: An Empirical Study.”  The value system that uses happiness as a standard always points to truth.

University

What is education?  Is it merely a transfer of facts and knowledge?  Or, is it a formative process designed to create a more holistic individual?  Do we get an education just for monetary improvement?  Or, do we seek something else through the college experience?  People answer these and other questions differently, and so our education system requires diversity.  Too many people worry about which method of education works best.  Instead, I would direct them to worry about how they can help students find which educational method works best for them. 

As I walk dangerously close to the line of educational relativity, I realize that there are certain practices that when employed in the art of education prove more successful.  What I would argue, however, is that those practices are universals not particulars the same way that poetry, fiction, and non-fiction all use letters, words, and language, but not all use plot, rhythm, or rhyme.  What are those universals?  How do they affect college?  I don’t think we have all the answers, but that is what we should worry about, not which form of education works best.  Albert Einstein said that, “The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.”  Still, Albert’s knowledge had to come from some effective form of learning.  It is my belief that if we find the universals of learning and education, we can have Eintseins in every subject using every form of education.

Pharisee Now

In Oswald Chambers’ book, My Utmost for His Highest, he says, “The greatest competitor of devotion to Jesus is service for Him.”  From what at first seems self-contradictory, we begin to get the picture that Christians quickly become modern day Pharisees.  The exception, it is no longer from the written law that we seek our salvation and pride, but in the moral satisfaction drawn from completing our Christian ‘duty.’  A pastor giving a sermon, the church goer tithing an extra amount, and even an evangelist delivering the good news become worshipers of works rather than God.

Joining the Dogwood Literacy Council today, I realized the ease with which I began to envision myself benefiting the community, basking in the adoration of the Holy Spirit.  Understand though, in reality my gateway professor forced me into community service by placing twenty percent of my grade on it.  Yet still, thoughts of great deeds flowed through my mind.

Every day I must realize that I am not even sufficient for my own well being, much less the well being of anyone else.  Like most sins, this one roots itself in pride.  Smoothly and subversively, pride turns our attention not on God and our reward from Him, but on glorification of ourselves.  Currently, I am still dying to this sin.

Want to get involved with an Arkansas Literacy Council?  Click here

Satisfied?

Happiness gives life purpose.  As Blaise Pascal illustrates, “All men seek happiness… The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.”  I believe that hedonists have the right idea, searching for what brings the most pleasure, bent on attaining satisfaction of the soul.  Running with the assumption that Pascal’s quote rings truth, what gives us the most enjoyment, thus fulfilling our human purpose, satisfying the yearning inside every person’s heart?  The only satisfaction comes from Christ.  A life lived as He commands finds true happiness. 

                At this point we must, “Let reason kneel in reverence outside,” as A.W. Tozer says, realizing that through logic the pursuit of Christ cannot be proven as the ultimate satisfactory endeavor.  This I believe is faith, to know beyond a doubt through practice and experience that only by pursuing Christ can we find happiness.  This idea of living to satisfy ourselves through Christ ultimately takes the place of reason then when Christians fish for men, leading unsaved people to Christ.

                If Christ truly satisfies people’s inmost desires, then the most effective evangelism shows unsaved people that satisfaction.  Practically and experientially, the effective evangelist gives the unbeliever samples of Jesus so that he can taste and see that the Lord is good.  The experience brings faith.

                We then should act like the desperate street peddler who sells good food, wafting the smell of Christ through the streets, tempting the skeptic with samples of eternity.  Jesus gives us our motivation for acting as the tempter when he promises us that our reward will be great in heaven.  What is that reward?  More of what got us into the occupation of fishing for men, Jesus, awaits us.  Not just samples, but a straight shot of pure, concentrated God.

Change of Seasons

              The season changed just recently from hot summer to cool fall, bringing with it a change of clothes, going from shorts to shawls and from tank tops to trench coats.  Babies grow up, trees lose their leaves, and the President only has two terms; change happens.  Seemingly while I have had my back turned, I have changed, affected by college despite my belief that I grew up already.  Only a month has gone by, and already I feel more independent, act less self-conscience, and fill out my clothes much better.  After seventy seasonal changes, this fall brings the biggest change of my eight-teen year old life as of yet.

                At first it was difficult to tell what that change was, eluding my attempts to grasp what about my personality was different.  Examining the possibilities, I found that independence was top of the list for new changes this fall, followed by less self-consciousness and a thicker frame.  Yet, despite the forty-five minute drive separating my parents and me, I realized that independence changes mainly circumstances and not my personality.  Moreover, my loss of self-consciousness stemmed from meeting other weird college students, finding camaraderie in abundance, and filling out resulted from café food.  So, what change registered with my subconscious?  With some prayerful consideration and scripture reading, God revealed the answer.

                As a matter of fact, only God could show me the change; the change was my relationship with Him, blossoming into the full flower of personal faith.  Up until this fall, my faith linked directly to my families faith, and although my heart and head knew my savior, I did not own my faith, not knowing whether it belonged to me as my personal property or as communal property within my family.  At college I found out for sure that I am my savior’s and He is mine.

                This concept of ownership leads to my independence, low self-consciousness, and possibly to my better physique.  I firmly believe that if I get nothing more than independence of faith out of college, than all my collegiate endeavors will have been worthwhile.   The quote from Steven Wright that, “Change is inevitable, except from vending machines,” rings home for many of life’s experiences.  It especially remains true for college.

Remember More

               For every good/memorable story there is both a protagonist and an antagonist, and according to Donald Miller, in his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, a stories’ essence lies in the antagonist wanting something and overcoming difficulty in an attempt to get it.  I believe that this principle pertains not only to fiction, but also to the non-fiction lives of real people.  In other words, for every “good/memorable” life there is both a protagonist and an antagonist, and the protagonist overcomes difficulty in an attempt to get something.  This is true also for the single moments of time called memories; each one portrays these same aspects that make life meaningful. 

                One such memory for me came during a blistering summer, mountain biking on a trail system called slaughter pen.  I stood over my bike staring at a technical feature of the trail, several two by four planks of wood, zigzagging across about ten yards, elevated to miniature poodle height.  Crashing for the better part of two hours, I sweated out the hundred and fifteen degree weather, trying to gain the right to say I was good enough for the trail.  I did finally gain that right, but it was not the completion alone that caused this memory to stick with me.  I wanted something, a menace stood between me and satisfaction of my want, and in order to beat the menace I had to overcome difficulty; all three of these things together made a memorable memory.

                Martin Luther King, Jr. illustrates the importance of having memorable memories when he says, “We are not makers of history. We are made by history.”    Our memories are our history, and how much of our life is wasted with unremarkable events?  How much of your life you remember is directly correlated to how much of your life is memorable.  So, let us live our lives not in the easiest path we can find, but rather let us desire things strongly, fearing no antagonist, dismayed by no difficulty, remembering more.