Posted on by Abe Austin

Liking Bias

Once you’ve decided that you don’t like someone, then however they are is the wrong way for someone to be. And if they were the opposite, that would be the wrong way to be, too. It must be the wrong way, because you don’t like them, so how they are must deserve that disliking.

But, of course, then it isn’t really something about them at all. You don’t like them because of something in you, not them.

And the opposite is also true. People can give their love to another person, and then still love that person, even when given absolutely no reason to do so. They love because of something inside of them, not in the other person.

So, whether you look at God’s children and see much to despise, or much to love, is a reflection of what is going on inside of you.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Who Serves Whom?

John F. Kennedy famously said, “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” With those words, he accurately identified one of the great problems we have in our modern Western culture: we invert who ought to be in service of whom. We get into painful situations because we constantly put ourselves above things when we are rightly beneath them.

Is my marriage serving my needs? Does this community match my preferences? Is my church supporting my beliefs? Does my conception of God align with my interests?

All of these are backward. Marriages languish because couples don’t submit themselves to the betterment of it. Society’s fracture because households don’t contribute to the whole. Churches go astray because parishioners rewrite its doctrine. God is lost because His children try to make Him in their own image.

Yes, the individual is important but never forget that some things are bigger than you, and you should be serving them, not the other way around.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Greatness of the Task

Sometimes, it isn’t the greatness of the task that you do
It’s the greatness of the opposition you overcame to do it

Posted on by Abe Austin

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.”

Posted on by Abe Austin

Look Higher

All too often we limit our perspective when trying to remedy’s society’s ills. We see what appears to be immediately wrong around us and we try to implement what we see as the immediate solution to that problem. But this is like staring down at our feet while hiking on a trail. We may find the path of least resistance, but it may very well lead us off the edge of a cliff!

To navigate uncertain terrain, you must raise your view and fix it upon your ultimate destination. Only by focusing on our highest ideals, even the standard of heaven, can we make the right societal changes, both in the short and long term.

Posted on by Abe Austin

God Reaching for God

God is the standard to strive for, but He is also the activating agent that makes the striving possible. God lives outside of us, but also part of Him lives inside of us. Thus, it is God that reaches for God and God that raises God, and we simply are pulled along by the part of Him that is inside us.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Hell Within

If you live every day with a level of physical comfort, security, wealth, and peace that almost no one in history has ever enjoyed, yet every day is filled with anger, anxiety, and despair, then perhaps it is time to consider that your hell comes from within.

Posted on by Abe Austin

If God Can Do Anything

Because I believe that God can do anything, I believe that He can make any desired miracle come true for me! But even more impressive, because He can do anything, He can also make things work out without the miracle. Indeed, it requires less faith to believe that God can change the world to match my heart, than to believe that God can change my heart to survive in spite of the world.

Believe in the bigger God. Believe in the God who can make you whole, with or without the thing you most desire.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Christian Conception of Evil

A Shallow View of Evil)

Great divisiveness in a culture tends to form ideologies with a naïve and overly-simplistic perception of evil. Festering hatred lures people into a mentality where they conceive of evil itself as propagating outward from “those people” over there. Strict ideologues believe that if they could just convert or destroy “those people,” then the evil would be gone, and society would be a perfect Utopia.

This narrow view of evil is a powerful tool for focusing and concentrating the passion of the ideologues. It progressively motivates them to disparage, dehumanize, and destroy their enemies. Mankind has fallen into the routine of dividing, declaring the other side to be the bastion of evil, and then destroying them for as long as we have a historical record. Yet if the problem of evil is so simple, then why has this pattern never succeeded in the eradication of evil? Why haven’t we finally killed it already? Why do we keep facing it in every generation?

The Christian View of Evil)

For an answer, let us consider the Christian conception of evil instead, taken directly from the words of the Bible.

And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. -Genesis 6:5

There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man. -Mark 7:15

But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. -James 1:14-15

For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. -Galatians 5:17

As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. -Romans 3:10, 12

This view of evil is far more mature, nuanced, and difficult to solve. Instead of saying “evil comes from that group over there,” the Christian perspective maintains that “evil emanates from us all.” It is in me, in you, in everybody. Evil is a super-entity, one that pervades through all of us.

And yes, maybe certain ideologies have a deeper fealty to evil than others; perhaps some dark trains of thought really should be arrested and ceased; perhaps some collectives need to be disbanded; but the true Christian knows that even these efforts will not bring about the perfect Utopia. The true Christian knows that the eradication of “those people” is not the final solution to the problem of evil because even if we stamped all the evil out in one place, it would still seep out from within our own ranks. Eventual corruption is the rule of the world.

The Solution)

Obviously, this conception of evil is much more daunting to wrestle with. If evil will emerge anew in every heart, than what can be done to have victory over it?

Ultimately and universally, nothing.

God will have to claim the victory there because it will always be beyond us. However, on a more individual level, there is something we can do.

This Christian conception of evil, that it arises in every heart, is the very reason why Christianity has always taught that every man ought first and foremost to address his own personal evil before that of the world. That isn’t to say that we don’t concern ourselves with the greater evils of the world, or that we don’t give our energy to curtail it, but our primary concern is to first plug the well of evil in our very own heart. If all of us could just do that, could just get control of the darkness that is within, then that would be the greatest blow against evil we could ever achieve.

It may seem paradoxical, but the fact that evil is so universal means that it can only be remedied individually. It is up to all of us to each do our part.