A Transformed Life

Heredity, environment, and genes are often escape valves explaining certain characters as though the individual isn’t responsible. Some assume that triumphant dictates character and conduct. They are undeniably influences, but they are not irrefutable influences.

One of the most slovenly persons I know of was the embodiment of an unmotivated, feckless, selfish, base, crude, mendacious, vulgar, and profane person. He didn’t provide for his family and put his young children out to earn money for the family. He was a bottom feeder.

Consider his anthesis. He is industrious, creative, has a marvelous work ethic, loving, giving, an ideal family man, a warm gracious Christian with high morals, and a highly successful business man.

The first of these was the father of the second. That apple fell far from the tree. Unlike father is the son.

Reflect on these two.

One is highly motivated, energetic, enthusiastic, optimistic, warm and personable, cheery, a loving mother and devoted wife, given to helping others, a sweet spirited Christian who is a high achiever.

The other is a biological dad who abandoned his family when his child was five years old. For twenty-five years his daughter sought to find him. When she did she made three appointments to see him. He failed to show up two times and came drunk the third time. He moved a lot in order to avoid paying child support. He was the picture or moral and cultural low life.

The first of these is the daughter of the second.

Every person has a temperament. It consists of their inborn traits that subconsciously affects behavior. Some factors are our nationality, race, sex, and other heredity factors passed on through genes.

Our character is a sum total of our childhood training, education, beliefs, and motivations.

All have a personality. It is our outward expression of ourselves.

In summary our temperament is the combination of traits with which we are born.

Our character is our “civilized” temperament.

Our personality is the “face” we show others.

Character is influenced by our temperament, but is not a slave to it. In this arena our will, intellect, and emotions can trump those negatives that may be embedded in our temperament. Our name isn’t Oedipus Rex. We are free moral agents.

The two persons in the success stories noted resolved to learn from their negative experiences. They typify a sort of moral alchemy. Character prevailed over their temperament.

We do a person a disservice if we imply people can’t overcome inherited challenges.

The Bible speaks of being “transformed.”

Moving cars produce a lot of noise but it isn’t heard in the passengers area. I have an acquaintance in Chicago who developed and sold to car manufacturers a miraculous product that when applied to the firewall between the motor and passenger cabin and to the floorboard it converts sound into heat. The product transforms, that is changes, noise into heat.

The Greek word for “transformed” when anglicized is “metamorphosis,” meaning changed. The process is explained as being achieved by renewing of the mind. It is predicated on there being a loving God who enables change. That change can be as radical as being born again. Where did I hear that?

Renew your mind daily by what you read, view, listen to, and meditate on. I commend the reading of the Bible for a higher reason, but if for no reason than it is great literature. Read it daily.

Bernard of Clairvaux on Love (Module 207)

Writing in the Sixteenth Century Bernard of Clairvaux noted four stages of love. Judge yourself and move toward the third and fourth types.

I. FIRST, LOVING SELF FOR SELF’S SAKE — SELFISH LOVE

II. SECOND, LOVING GOD FOR SELF’S SAKE

Because love is natural, it is only right to love the Author of nature first of all. Hence the first and greatest commandment, “You shall love the Lord your God.” [Deut. 6:5; Matt 22:37-39] But nature is so frail and weak that it has to love itself first. This kind of love means loving oneself selfishly. As it is written, “The spiritual does not come first. The natural comes first and is followed by the spiritual.” [1 Corinthians 15.46] This is not what we are commanded, but what nature directs: “No one ever hated his own body.” [Eph. 5.29] But if, as is likely, this self-love becomes excessive and sensuous, then a command holds it back: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” [Leviticus 19:18; Matt 22:37-39] And this is right: for he who shares our nature should share our love, which is the fruit of nature. So, if you find it a burden serving to your brother’s pleasures, you should mortify those same pleasures in yourself to avoid sin. Cherish y ourself as tenderly as you want, so long as you remember to show the same indulgence to your neighbor

III. THIRD, LOVING GOD FOR GOD’S SAKE

So, we start by loving God, not for His own sake but ours. It is good for us to know how little we can do by ourselves, and how much we can do with God’s help, and therefore to live rightly before God, our trusty support. But when recurring troubles force us to turn to God for help, even a heart as hard as iron, as cold as marble, would be softened by the goodness of such a Savior, so that we love God not altogether selfishly, but also simply because he is God. If frequent troubles drive us to frequent prayer, surely we will taste and see how gracious the Lord is. [Ps. 34.8] Then, realizing how good he is, we find ourselves drawn to love him unselfishly, even more powerfully than we are drawn by our own needs to love him selfishly.

“Now we love God, not because of our own need, but because we have tasted and seen how gracious the Lord is.”

IV. FOURTH, LOVING SELF FOR GOD’S SAKE.

When will this flesh and blood, this clay pot which is my soul’s tabernacle, reach that place? When will my soul, raptured with divine love and utterly self-forgetting, like a broken vessel, long only for God, and, joined to him, be one spirit with him?

Our whole heart should be centered on him, so that we only ever seek to do his will, not to please ourselves. And real happiness will come, not in gratifying our desires or in transient pleasures, but in accomplishing God’s will for us.

As a bar of iron, heated red-hot, becomes like fire itself, forgetting its own nature; or as the air, radiant with sun-beams, seems not so much to be lit as to be light itself; so for those who love God for God’s sake all human affections melt away by some incredible mutation into the will of God. In this life, we can never fully and perfectly obey the command to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and strength and mind.” [Luke. 10.27]

But it should be our primary objective in life

How To Identify A Socialists

In the famed novel, The Iliad, Peleus or Thetis, seeking to save Achilles from his fated death, hid him on the Island of Scyros at the court of King Lycomedes dressed as a girl named Pyrrha. Odesseus, also known in Latin as Ulysses, sought him out.

Upon visiting the island Odysseus displayed lavish jewelry for the girls. Among the jewels he placed a dagger. Achilles came dressed as a girl along with all the girls. As the girls fondled the jewelry Achilles showed his true identity by selecting the dagger. In doing so he showed his true nature.

Let the jewels be the counterpart of our republic. First, it should be noted our form of government is a republic, not a democracy, which our Founders feared, not a socialistic state. If the jewels represent our republic the dagger is socialism. Any of the girls, national leaders, who pick up the dagger are revealing themselves to be socialists. Calling them one doesn’t make them one — their conduct and policies reveal their nature.

Who have you seen pick up the dagger recently?

If you check Wikipedia for a definition of socialism you will find eight different types noted. Dictonary.com defines it as a “social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc. in the community as a whole.”

Bottom line, it is a form of government where an autocratic government rules. Government determines the production and distribution of wealth.

Increased government regulations controlling businesses, even taking over businesses, is a symptom of encroaching socialism. Productive businesses, the givers in society, don’t like socialism for that reason.

However, standing on the sideline is a large cadre of “takers” waiting to be given what someone else has earned. They vote. Presently over 50 percent of the American population pays no taxes. Many of these are recipients of entitlements.

An entitlement is what a person feels they are entitled to and the government owes them. It is their right. They really believe that.

A legitimate side-bar to the thesis of this column is an acknowledgment that there are some people who would work if they could work, but can’t. They deserve help. Our current jobless rating in America means there are many unemployed who desire most earnestly to get back in the work force, but can’t find jobs.

However, there is a large segment of our society that has learned to work the system. There are many ways to buy votes. Redistribution of wealth is one. When the takers outnumber the givers some politicians buy takers’ votes with “gifts” paid for by givers. That is socialism.

That defines the dagger, socialism. Have you noticed anyone in public who has picked up the dagger lately? If so, that one is espousing socialism.

Socialism is antithetical to a republic. America is a republic. Hence, socialism is un-American.

With every person espousing socialism elected America moves closer to socialism and the disestablishment of our republic.

I won’t bias anyone’s answer by suggesting an answer to this question but it deserves asking. What is that in the hand of our President?

Leadership Failure

Hear the parable of the bramble. It is a little known and apparently its lesson less well known.

When the Old Testament character Gideon died, Abimelech, persuaded the people to select him as their leader. He then killed all of the sons of Gideon except the youngest, Jotham.

Jotham went to the summit of Mount Gerizim, the mount of judgement, and told this parable regarding leadership. Incidentally, it is considered to be the oldest known fictional writing. In it trees are given personalities and can talk.

The trees needed a leader. They appealed to the olive tree, the fig, and the grapevine for help. All declined.

The trees then turned to the bramble to be their leader. The bramble (Lycium Europaeum) is a shrub with sharp spines and long runners that form a tangled mass. It has lovely white flowers.

When trees, capable and competent leaders, neglect their civic responsibility or are not put in leadership brambles assert themselves.

When there is good responsible government it is because such citizens have gotten involved. After all, ours is postured as a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

A characteristic of a bramble is it is aggressive and asserts itself. Those are traits of leaders depicted by brambles in Jotham’s parable. They entwine themselves among good trees. In the parable they are represented as devouring even the strongest tree of the region, the cedars of Lebanon. Brambles smother even the tallest trees much like kudzu.

I will not personalize the current counterparts of the brambles but the philosophical equivalents must be identified and uprooted. We are blessed to live in a land where the uprooting can be done with minimal negative impact. It is our electoral process.

With a year before a major election, citizens should study issues and evaluate candidates in order to be able to identify the best trees. Our heritage is replete with them.

A grove of Sequoia tree-like men prevailed in leading America to its independence. They crowded out the brambles with faith in what they entitled “Divine Providence,” and forged the Declaration of Independence.

One of them, the exhausted young John Adams, wrote to his beloved wife Abigail on the eve of the signing expressing his hope the event would be commemorated as “the Day of Deliverance, by solemn acts of Devotion to Almighty God.”

Adams, a redwood of a man, died July 4, 1826, the fifteenth anniversary of his signing of the Declaration. On his tombstone in the First Parish Church of Quincy, Massachusetts, are these words:

“On the Fourth of July, 1776, he pledged his Life, Fortune, and Sacred Honor to the Independence of his country…

“On the Fourth of July, 1826, he was summoned to the Independence of Immortality and to the Judgment of God.”

He was an accountable towering tree. Are we going to prove to be reluctant olives, figs, or grapes? If not, we will sit in the shade of brambles.

Parables are not designed to be pushed for exactness in every detail, but to illustrate points. Jotham changes metaphors and depicts the bramble as destroying those in its shade with fire. Is there a lesson here? If so, will we learn it and avoid the fire?

Childhood Development

Childhood development is a fascinating study. Unfortunately many of today’s parents have never taken time to engage in even the most elemental inquiry about it.

A child’s brain consisting of approximately 100 billion cells weighs less than three pounds. Each cell is connected to thousands of other electrochemical structures called synaps. A new born baby has about 50 trillion.

If synaps and brain cells aren’t used they wither.

Within the brain there are different areas with various responsibilities.

The “Occipital Lobe” is assigned the job of identifying what we see.

The “Temporal Lobe” processes sounds including language.

There is also an area where the capacity for social interchange is determined.

A baby starts with 500 trillion synaps and by the age of eight months that number has grown to 1,000 trillion. By the age of twenty the number has decreased to about 500 trillion.

Certain areas of a child’s brain are not developed at birth. They have to develop.

If a child can’t hear at birth that part of the brain does not develop. If the child born deaf is not enabled to hear speech by age 10 it will never be able to hear because the Temporal Lobe of the brain will not have developed properly.

If a child is born blind the neural connections between the eye and brain do not develop. If the child is not enabled to see by age two the Occipital Lobe of the child’s brain does not develop properly and it is highly likely the child will ever see properly.

A young child’s experiences can cause the brain synaps to increase or decrease by up to 25 percent.

Here is where the scenario gets scarey.

The “Parietal Lobe” processes touch. CAT scans show that in children deprived of love as expressed by holding, being read to, and stroked that part of the brain does not develop properly. Children not shown such love are candidates for anti-social conduct.

Most of these children grow into adulthood unfeeling, uncaring, and unresponsive. They feel no sorrow or grief for others. The more advanced of these have absolutely no regard for others; no respect for the property of others. They can engage in mayhem, marauding, and murder and have no remorse. They are impervious to the feelings of others.

Recently Britain displayed for the world a significant segment of their society reared without love. They pillaged stores, destroyed property, took wedding bands off couples, torched buildings, and demanded persons to undress in public and give them their clothes. Newscasts showed their glee in such pandemonium.

Prime Minister David Cameron described the youth as “the so-called feral youth seem oblivious to decency and morality…Let’s bear in mind that many of the youth in our inner cities have never been trained in decent values. All they have ever known is barbarism.” He called theirs a “culture of greed and impunity.”

Is anyone listening? Is anyone trying to understand why terrorists are so unfeeling? They have never known love.

Conditions in Britain were the occasion for the riots, but not the cause. The occasion was political. The cause was (OVER) parental. The cause was rooted in the home. Parents take warning.

Government And Benevolence

Our constitutional form of government was well defined by our founders as a republic. James Madison, considered the father of our Constitution wrote the Federalists Papers to assist subsequent generations better understand this vital document. In Federalists Paper Number 45 he explained the intended limits of the Constitution as: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined….(to) be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce.”

Our federal government in recent years has drifted far beyond these bounds and is engaging in conduct not authorized by the Constitution. There is no Constitutional basis for most of our entitlement programs. Yet, approximately two-thirds of our federal budget is spent on “objects of benevolence.”

Charity and benevolence are expedient and highly commendable. Worthy persons and causes are deserving of help.

Madison further stressed the intent of the Constitution when in 1794 it was proposed that Congress appropriate funds for French refugees from what is now Haiti, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which grants a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” He who in large part wrote the Constitution said there is no authority therein granted to benevolence. Again, I want to say benevolence is admirable but the government is not empowered to practice it.

At about the same time Representative William Giles of Virginia opposed a bill that would have provided relief for fire victims saying Congress had no right to “attend to what generosity and humanity require, but to what the Constitution and their duty require.”

Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Pennsylvania Representative Albert Gallatin, stated, “Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.”

Congressman Davy Crockett (yes that Davy) opposed a bill that would have provided support for the widow of a naval officer asserting, “I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has not power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member upon this floor knows it. We have the right, as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of public money.

“I am the poorest man on this floor. I cannot vote for this bill, but I will give one week’s pay to the object, and if every member of Congress will do the same, it will amount to more that the bill asks.”

At about the time the 13 states adopted their new Constitution, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish professor at the University of Edinborough, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic: “A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of gover nment. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time the voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship.”

Violation of this Constitutional restraint helps explain our current federal financial dilemma.