Changing behavior
Without changing the heart
Is building new structure
On a crumbling foundation
Changing Behavior
Views of a Building
Some might look at the foundation of the building and say:
“Look, it’s forced to sit there beneath everything else, subservient and in the dirt! That’s a fact that it is under everything else, you can’t deny it! That’s wrong, and we have to change it. We have to pull the foundation above the level of the ground, even put it at the top of the building!”
Of course, doing that would make the entire thing topple.
Some look at the foundation of the building and say:
“No, it is supporting the entire building! It’s really the most important part of it all! Better than all the rest. We should all aspire to be steady foundations like that.”
Both views have a claim to some fact, and by that each assumes that they are in the right and are incredulous at anyone with a different perspective. “I see a fact,” they say, “and that means that I am right.” But narrow-minded facts lacking context can lead us astray, just as surely as total ignorance.
There is also a third group of people, who are able to back up and take in a fuller perspective. They might say:
“Foundation, top floor, elevator shafts, facade…they are all building. They all serve an essential and beautiful purpose. The foundation is good, the first floor is good, and the top floor is good. They are different, but that is by design. No part is better, no part is worse, they’re just different. A foundation without a top is useless. A top without a foundation is ruinous. So, appreciate them for what they are and embrace them all.”
A Foundation Built on God- A Little Leaven
Time Equals Love)
As I have considered ways to make my life built more on the foundation of the Almighty, the simplest solution seems to simply be spending most of my waking time in direct communion with God. If I slept for 8 hours, strove with God for 9 hours, and took care of my personal affairs for 7 hours, who could argue that God wasn’t the most significant thing in my life?
As a general rule, we tend to give greatest value to the things we spend the most time with. Even if it’s not something we particularly enjoy, we still give it weight and meaning because we gave it so much of ourselves. Ask any man who worked a career he didn’t like for forty years to provide for his family whether there is substance and significance to the labor he did, and of course he’s going to say “yes.”
So, should we all become spiritual hermits or join the priesthood? Well, the body of Christ we are told is made of many different parts. We can’t all be hands, or all be feet, or all be eyes, or all be mouths. Some must work to build society, which typically consumes at least half of the waking day. Add in the time for family and personal affairs, and the window for exclusive focus on God becomes a small minority of the day.
A Small Foundation)
But maybe a minority of time can still have a majority of impact. As Paul taught, “A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump” (Galatians 5:9). Consider also the example of the foundation of a building. Typically, that part of the structure is only a small percentage of the building’s total height, yet it supports the entire thing. The Burj Khalifa for example 2,7117 feet tall, with a foundation of only 164 feet, about 6% of the entire structure.
The question then, is whether that relatively small amount of time with God is being laid at the foundation, or lost in the middle of everything else? Is it being allowed to spread its leaven through the whole, or is it isolated where it cannot activate any of the rest? I think it is possible to establish a life founded on God, even with a minority of time dedicated directly to Him, but the dedication of time must be of the right quality.
With this idea in mind, I will try to identify a way to achieve the right quality of time dedicated to God with tomorrow’s study.
A Foundation Built on God- Life Defined by Faith
Jesus foretold that, “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity,” (Matthew 7:23). This is a sobering warning to Christians everywhere that many who think they are in alignment with the Lord are actually offensive to Him.
There are multiple conceivable ways that Christians would find themselves on the left hand of the Lord. Perhaps they are hypocrites, professing Christ’s name but still harboring secret sin. Perhaps they treat Christianity as a political cudgel, using it to condemn those that they have no right to. Perhaps they are social Christians only, going to church and saying prayers, but more dedicated to the false churches of social trends.
I believe there are many in that last category. People that treat Christianity as a garnishment to the rest of their life, not the foundation and basis of the entire thing. It is, frankly, a way of being that I continually struggle with also. Most especially I lapse in my prayers because I am just too preoccupied with the distractions of the world, too concerned what I might miss out on if I make time “just” for connecting to God.
Obviously, I do perform a scriptural/spiritual study each weekday, and I do believe that that has helped a good deal in keeping God elevated in my mind, but I do crave more. With this short study I am going to try and identify for myself how I might do better in this aspect of daily prayer.
Rights and Materialism: Part Three
Thus Far)
Over the past two postsI have discussed God as a basis for our fundamental human rights, and also the natural biology of our species for a basis as well. I have explained that I believe in both foundations, but unlike a materialist/humanist, I am convinced that having the natural biology of our species as the only foundation for our rights is insufficient. In my last post I explained why, showing how from the materialist/humanist view, rights would only be an illusion invented by the species that benefits from them. We would say that humans should have a right to life, simply because if they don’t they would cease to exist, so murder is a self-destroying principle.
So long as our rights are tied only to the biology of our race, it is possible to create logical exceptions to them. I gave two examples:
- We could say that we are not the same race as other humans, and we only need to observe the rights of our own race, and not of others.
- We could say that even if the rights should be enforced by society at large, if we violate them and conceal it from society, there is no other authority that we must answer to.
Today we will consider how having our rights also based in God resolves these issues.
A New Equation)
In my previous post I gave an equation that showed the cyclical, self-contained logic of rights when based upon the natural biology of our species. I said that if we call humanity “X,” and the basic human rights “Y,” then we can say:
Y is essential for X
So X must secure Y
Now let us consider how that equation changes if we assume that God has given us our rights. We will represent God in our equation as “Z.”
Z states that Y is essential for X
So Z must secure Y for X
The rights (Y) are tethered to man (X) by God (Z). It may not seem like much of a difference, but this small alteration has massive ramifications. Introducing Z now makes X and Y reside in Z, not in each other. We no longer have a circular, isolated interdependency. The relationship between X and Y no longer collapses once we are outside of their context. Y is no longer a relative need of X, which nothing outside of X is obligated to fulfill.
Through this God-centric view, human rights are now just as universal and unchanging as mathematical truths. Just as how the Pythagorean Theorem will always be a true mathematical expression, the statement that “life and liberty are necessities for all people” will always be a true, moral principle. Even if there were no people around to observe it, the Pythagorean Theorem would still be a universal maxim between the sides of right-triangles, maintained in God, independent of man. In just the same way, even if humanity were to go extinct, it would still be a maxim in God that life and liberty are good for people and nothing would change that.
The Answer to the Problems)
Now, even if a group of people declared themselves to be a different race they would still have to answer to God if they violated the rights of other races. If individuals violated the rights of one another, and concealed it from the larger species, they would still have to answer to God. They would have to answer to God because it is He, not merely “other people,” who demand these rights for all. He demands them, and He enacts His will to see that they are secured.
And from the Christian perspective, that is exactly what has transpired throughout history. Yes, there have been long periods of various rights being violated by entire nations and individual souls, but over the years the idea of basic human rights has emerged, and in more developed countries has been applied to all, and of it has been done under the justification that “it is God’s will.”
Conclusion)
There is nothing wrong in observing the ways that our biological nature compels us to seek what is best for one another, to enshrine rules of conduct between all people, to sacrifice our own interests for the greater good. Recognizing these logical, natural realities can certainly be further evidence to help convince all people to live in moral, ethical ways.
The problem is when we try to weaponize the existence of this biological nature against the divine basis for our rights. There are those that use a new moral perspective to beat away at the very foundation that all our moral principles rest upon! How strange, when it was the perspective that God was the author of our morals that led us to implement the freedoms and rights that we have in the first place. Trying to remove that perspective is a regression, one likely to take us back to the darkest epochs humanity has ever seen, with the vast majority of the population living under all manner of oppression and suffering.
If we destroy the one, best moral grounding we have ever had, and give the next generations a flawed moral grounding instead, they will carry it to conclusions that we would never dare. And when they do, who will the sufferers take their appeal to then? The God that we abandoned?
Basis for Judgment: Summary
I’ve spent the last week-and-a-half exploring this concept of why we believe the things that we do, and which justifications for our moral alignment are reasonable and which ones are not. Today I’ll wrap things up by reviewing all of the things that I’ve covered.
Our Basis for Right and Wrong)
After contemplating the different foundations people set their judgment of right and wrong upon, I concluded that there were three main bases. A person judges what is right and wrong based on what God has said, or what society has said, or what he, himself has said.
I observed that people in our society have adopted a principle that they must listen to their own heart, determining their own right and wrong to live by. I also noted that usually what we think comes from our own self, has actually come from the society we live in. We tend to absorb the ideas we are surrounded by osmosis and then have those ideas come out of us word-for-word the same as we heard in the public square. Thus, most people end up basing their morals on what society has said, but they think they have based it upon themselves.
But neither individual whim or society’s favor are reliable bases for determining what is right or wrong. Both of them have too much variance and transformation to reflect any sort of objective, universal truth. What is “right” in society today was wrong yesterday, and likely will be wrong again in the future. A cursory glance at history shows us that it’s not as if society only improves, either. Sometimes it gets better, but sometimes it gets worse. Things have been brighter since the dark ages, but things were also brighter before them. Who is to say whether society today is at a local maxima or minima? We might think we know, but some future generation somewhere will surely disagree.
Sooner or later, any who believes that truth is defined by the individual or the society and pursues that logic to its end must come to the only possible conclusion: there actually is no absolute truth, no ideal, no sacred or unchanging standard by which our actions can be judged. Morality is transient and subjective, and any attempt to censure another person as being “wrong” is both hypocritical and vain.
The Proper Basis)
The only logical and consistent basis for moral judgment is God. Only a being that exists outside of the individual or society, one that is constant through all ages, one that is greater than the created world could lay down a law and a morality and a truth that would be consistent and objectively right.
Of course, the identity and exact opinion of that God would still be up for debate, but at least we would accept that truth could only come from some sort of theology. Of course, it would be important to acknowledge that whatever god was the true God, our knowledge of His universal law must transcend from heaven itself. It cannot simply be the idea of some man that this is what God must want, God Himself needs to have dictated it to some persons, and those persons need to have written it down as directed. Again, if such a thing were to occur, it would still be a matter of opinion as to which sacred book actually represents the mind of God, but at least we would accept that the truth could only be read out of the scripture He had given us.
And then, once we felt that we had identified that true scripture, from that true God, describing that universal truth that we are all beholden to, then all competing ideas and philosophies would have to be discarded. Never mind if your loved ones thought you were crazy, or your friends reviled you, or society persecuted you, or the great enemy destroyed you. Because, as we have established, none of those other voices have any foundation to stand upon as they oppose you. Let them think, say, and do what they will, their logic and methods are self-defeating, and all of them will crumble in time.
You, however, will have made yourself an acolyte of genuine truth, and having laid hold of it, you will be united with the only thing that is permanent, the only thing that can stay with you through all of life, and even into the world that lies beyond. Whether you be a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, or any other believer of divinely-inspired words, hold to that inspired truth above all others, and your existence will surely work out better for you than chasing the ever-changing goalposts of society’s latest fad.
Basis for Judgment: The Foundation
We All Discriminate)
I’ve seen a trend where people are incredulous that those who hold traditional, Christian values could follow and believe the principles that were common in our society until just recently. “How could you believe that outdated doctrine? It’s sexist, it’s homophobic, it’s discriminatory, it’s shaming!”
But people who say such things seem to be oblivious to the fact that we all consider one social behavior or another to be reprehensible. If we list out every controversial behavior, we will all find many things that we discriminate against. Child marriage, eating disorders, slavery, incestuous relationships, bestiality, animal sacrifice, cannibalism, the use of hallucinogenic drugs, polygamy, asceticism, and many, many more. Are there not at least some of these practices that you are staunchly opposed to?
Thus, to some extent, we all discriminate and judge between what is right and what is wrong. The only question, then, is on what basis do we judge the way that we do?
The Religious Basis for Judgment)
For the traditionally religious, the answer is simple. Our basis for moral judgment is that God is our creator. He made us according to a fashion and order that is consistent with His own principles of right and wrong, and He educates as to what morality we must live by to fulfill our design and purpose.
And, if these assertions are true, then what coherent argument could be brought against those who strive to live by the principles given by that creator God? Frankly, it wouldn’t matter what God asked of us, simply the fact that He did ask it would be justification to follow it. Our understanding isn’t necessary, compliance with the modern trends of the world isn’t necessary, and a public vote of approval isn’t necessary. As I have heard others state, if God were to tell me that the way for me to fulfill my design and purpose in life was to stand on my head from this moment on, then that would be what I needed to do. As a creation, living in a greater universe that I do not perfectly understand, I have no basis to disagree. What He says I must follow.
So if God pronounces certain behaviors evil, and other behaviors good, and asks me to live by these principles and testify of them, then that is what I need to do. No matter of social rejection should dissuade me, for society did not fashion my innermost being, nor know the core purpose for which I was made.
The World’s Basis for Judgment)
But what basis does modern society have for the things it condones and the things it condemns? What justification does it have for judging certain behaviors as worthy and others as unacceptable? If we have rejected the belief that we are creations of God, living according to His revealed precepts, then our basis for judgment must be derived from either the individual or the society.
If it is derived from the individual, then there can be no universal truth, for no one believes all the same things as another person. Every conviction that you hold, somewhere there is another person that feels just the opposite, and their “truth” would be just as valid as yours. Or, if you deem their disagreement to not be valid, then there must be something greater that your “truth” is anchored in that theirs is not, in which case what would that be? This line of logic quickly falls apart.
Correct judgment must be based in society then. Whatever the current society has decided is right, then for today that must be what is right. Truth is therefore a matter of popular vote, and no one who lives against the popular consensus can be right. Activists who seek to change society are in the wrong, until they are able to convince a majority of the people to agree with them, and then they are right.
Past generations must have been right in their time, but they have no vote today, so today we judge them to have been wrong. In the past, homosexual marriage was considered reprehensible, but today we are ready to accept it, so now the past generations were wrong in their views. So, too, we will be in the wrong once a future generation votes against the values that we hold today. Thus, if the future societies are willing to accept pedophilia, self-mutilation, or the killing of undesirables, then they will be right to do so, and we will then be wrong to have ever stood against such things.
Are you willing to accept this view? If not, what outer principle can you point to that would still make these behaviors and lifestyles wrong, and would condemn an entire future society that feels otherwise?
A Sandy Foundation)
If we reject the notion that God is our creator, that we are made according to a particular design, and that the principles or right and wrong come from a universal truth which is interwoven through our beings, then what better foundation could we tie our principles to? What universal anchor does the man who denies he is a creation of God have for decrying any of the practices he considers abominable?
None. Once we let go of the fundamental truths of who we are and what we have come from, then all morality is transient. Our principles are not set in stone, but in sand, an obscure outlier in the greater scheme of things.
Christ saw this very conundrum two thousand years ago. We will finish today with his famous illustration in Matthew 7:
24 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:
25 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.
26 And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:
27 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.
To Live Freely: Part Eight
I am concluding the section of this study where I examine the ways that we set others upon false foundations and all the negative consequences that follow. I’ve considered individual cases thus far, but now I want to turn my scope broader. After all, one way to prove the invalidity of a proposition is to apply it on a universal scale and then see if it maintains its original appeal. With today’s post I will hold the philosophy of the “helpful lie” to this universally-applied metric and see what the result of it is.
Applied in Reverse)
Suppose a religion were to have as one of its tenets that all other religious persuasions ought to be suppressed or destroyed. Clearly things would not work out so well for the members of that same religion if everyone else adopted the same principle towards them! It is a self-destructive policy, because it cannot be applied in reverse without destroying the originator. On the other hand, a religion having a fundamental tenet that there should be religious freedom for all others would be itself benefited and protected if the same principle were applied back to it again.
So I say to the person that believes in using beneficial lies to protect other people, you would do well to consider how you would feel if this same principle was applied back towards yourself, and also universally to all other people. You might say that you are comfortable with people telling you the same sort of lies that you tell to others, but that isn’t a fair comparison. Your idea of what is okay to lie about is your own personal opinion, so to be consistent you would have to be accepting of other people using their own judgment as to what is appropriate to lie to you about. Also, you might feel you could trust the decisions of those who are equal to you in intelligence and morality, but that also isn’t a fair comparison. You are less intelligent and moral than some of those that you lie to, so you must consider how you would feel being at the mercy of those who are less intelligent and moral than you.
Does that sound like a comfortable proposition, being subjected to the false realities concocted by the basest and meanest of society, entirely according to their own opinion and judgment? I’m certain it does not!
When one supports themself in telling a “white lie,” they give all other people permission to do the same, and that’s really not a trend that ought to be being perpetuated. On the other hand, when one firmly decides to tell the truth, they revoke the right of all others to lie. If enough of us were to insist on truth-telling for ourselves, and renounce lying on the part of others, we would likely start to see a ripple of truthfulness throughout our society. Convictions, once held by enough people, influence even those who have not become totally committed to them. And even if we don’t reach the point of mass adoption, at least those who perpetuate honesty will be living in a accordance with a principle that is constructive, not destructive.
Lies Upon Lies)
But let us go back to this notion of lies being told at all levels of our society. I have already discussed in a previous post how a lie, by its definition, separates everyone that stands upon it from the ground level of life as it really is. Everyone who believes in the lie is now out on a ledge which might break under its own weight, particularly as more and more people take residence upon it.
And now, extend that with the realization that many people who are already founded upon a lie are also telling additional lies upon it. People are exponentially multiplying the confusion, carving out more and more from the true foundation, extending ledges out upon ledges, building their deceitful worlds without any knowledge of where the center of balance even is. At some point, we will have the straw that breaks society’s back, and all will crumble in violence and chaos.
And I’m not merely saying that from a theoretical perspective, I believe the notion is borne out by a simple examination of history. I feel that these compounded lies are the only way to explain such collective insanity as was seen at Auschwitz and the Gulag. The deceit might have seemed “harmless” enough at first, a simple mischaracterization of national pride or social inequity. But then that deluded premise was compounded with faulty reasoning for how to address the issue and aggressively expanded by the masses taking hold of the idea, until an entirely untenable reality was force upon millions, killing countless of innocents and eventually collapsing the entire experiment under its own weight.
The only system which is sure to be equal and fair to everyone, the only one that is sure to be founded on solid bedrock, is the one that stands firmly on the ground of the truth. That truth may be unpleasant, and without any simple solutions, but dealing with it directly is the only possible way to make genuine progress. All other strategies are temporary structures, at times very pretty, but all of them doomed to fall.
To Live Freely: Part One
Axiomatic Truth)
There is a concept that has come up a few times in my previous series, including the last one. I have spoken to the matter in brief here and there, but now I want to consider it more fully. The concept is that living in the truth is the foundation for a full and happy life. Said another way, facing the facts as they really are is the only way to be truly free. Said a third way, only those who are willing to face the truth unflinchingly are ever truly alive.
This is a principle that is basic and fundamental to life. It is so foundational that sometimes it is difficult to really get a grasp on it. Axiomatic truths are, by definition, self-evident in their truthfulness, requiring no argument to prove them. That’s all well and good, but it means that if you then try to explain why an axiom is true you’re going to have a very hard time of it! Explanations tend to lead to circular logic, such as “living in truth is the foundation for a full life because…it just is!”
One way to come to full appreciation of these fundamental truths is to look at them in reverse. Fundamental truths are prerequisites for many other things in life, and by examining those things that are built upon foundational truth we obtain evidence that the underlying axiom really is true, for if it were not the things that we have observed could not be. We find that the fundamental truth is necessarily true, because it is necessary for it to be true for other observable things to be so.
Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.... Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. -Matthew 7:17-18, 20
Jesus describes the same idea in these verses where he teaches that we may recognize that which was good by whether it brought about good or not. So if we want to know whether “a life founded upon the truth is joyful and free” is a true statement or not, then we merely have to look at those who live in harmony with this belief and see what sort of life they possess. I will begin my series today by doing exactly this. I will look at an example of people who are built upon this axiom, living their lives with the assumption that it is absolutely true. We may observe the reality of their lives, and infer whether they built upon a solid foundation or not.
The Happiest of People)
I have mentioned before how the addiction-recovery groups I have attended are singularly focused on living in harmony with truth. Any addict working a twelve-step program can tell you that one of its most fundamental tenets is that we take a fearless inventory of our lives, facing all of the unpleasant and difficult truths in our character. Where most people attempt to cherry-pick their best qualities and define themselves by those, addicts in recovery open the door to all of their qualities. We do not care if the description of us is pleasant, only that it is true.
And what comes about by this strict adherence to seeing things as they really are? For an answer, let me offer an anecdote that occurred to me personally. I was speaking with an ecclesiastical leader about my efforts to overcome my addictions, and my time spent in my recovery group. As soon as he heard that I was part of a twelve-step program he said to me, “you know, I’ve never been a part of such a program, but I have been a witness to its meetings and its members, and those are the most humble, most sincere people I have ever met.”
The reason why the twelve-step program has grown at such incredible rates since its inception is entirely due to the quality of the men and women one meets when they walk through the door. People see men and women who have not only gained freedom from the most terrible of vices, but who also live with a clearness and a joyfulness that simply isn’t to be found anywhere else. Furthermore, the fact that that light has remained consistent throughout the decades and continues to burn brightly in every new generation of members is a testament to the fact that the happy way of life was not due to some pre-existing condition in the first AA members, but is cultured in its members from the principles that they live by. If people had not seen throughout the years that these people had uncovered a superior way of life by their principles, then no one would have stayed and joined the crew, and it would have been a long-extinct experiment.
It was the evidence of this joyful peace that also drew me into the ranks of the twelve step program. It might seem a counter-intuitive thing to say, but I quickly recognized that I had never seen a happier, more satisfied, and more productive people, than these addicts who sincerely identified their miseries and their flaws. One would have thought that bringing out those heavy truths would have crushed them, but so far as I could see those weights, once surrendered, were being taken away, so that they could live free and unfettered. They attested that one had to truly see their shackles before they could receive the key to undo them. Though I was not then converted to the notion of living my life strictly in harmony with the truth, I was persuaded enough by what I saw to give it a try. My result has been much the same as theirs.
But you don’t have to take my word for it. Even if you don’t consider yourself an addict, go and visit a few of the local meetings in your area. See for yourself what manner of men and women these are, and what sort of lives they lead. Granted, every group has its own culture and its own level of sincerity about the work, but attend a few different ones and you will quickly see that there is a clear correlation between those that genuinely face the hard truths and those that live joyful and free.
Thought for the Day- A Flawed Foundation
Laying perfect bricks on a crumbling structure only hastens the collapse of it all. At some point, you have to tear the whole thing down and make a new foundation.
Spiritual Wanderings 