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

The Power of Your Voice- Summary

Some Concerns)

Over the course of this series I have examined the notion of our voices being powerful, looking through the lenses of historical observation and scriptural example. Key takeaways that have emerged are that yes, our voices our truly powerful, but there are some very important caveats and concerns related to them. Specifically, we identified the three following issues:

  1. Not everyone has their own voice. Many use their voice only to echo the ideas and feelings of what is popular. Thus, they are not so much a voice as a loudspeaker for another person’s voice. It should be the great endeavor of all of us to find who we truly are, and that will only be accomplished through God. Only when we are our true person will we have true voice to share.
  2. Voices are much more powerful when compounded and interwoven. Communities that remain isolated remain stuck in the past. Ones that commune with each other make great leaps in technology and ideology.
  3. Combining voices gives great power, but that does not necessarily have to be good power. Indeed, we have seen that the more interwoven the voices of the world have become, the more we have developed the tools of our own demise. Self-destruction increases in lockstep with creation, creating a situation where our power to eradicate ourselves far outstrips our power to protect.

Conclusion)

Combining the first two points together, we see that there can be incredible power in keeping people mindless, making them drones repeating the same incantations over and over in unison. This is exactly how the most incredible acts of evil have been accomplished.

But surely that is not the only form of unity available. Every now and then, in brief and isolated moments, we get a glimpse of what happens when voices remain distinct, authentic, and self-authored, yet unite over shared ideals. On a larger scale, we have examples of this in the growth of the early Christian church, in the founding of America, and in the healing of the Alcoholics Anonymous program. These are only a few examples. There are other, smaller ones that occur all throughout the world.

True utopia will only occur when all the world is in such a state of individual synergy. Only when people have universally found their true selves, through God, and use their unique voices to progress the unified heavenly vision will we attain the ultimate potential of mankind. We can only imagine what incredible leaps and bounds we will make then. It will be an uncompromised advancement such as we have never seen before.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Power of Your Voice- The Dangers of Our Voices

Compounding Power)

We have discussed different aspects of the power in the human voice. As shown in the last post, when different voices are combined together the power grows exponentially. There are even scriptural examples of this, such as when the shout of the Israelites broke down the walls of Jericho. That is very impressive, but whether it is a good or a bad thing depends on which side of the wall you are on.

As we saw in the last post, the compounded power of universal communication has led to the most tremendous advances in technology, which have included many things that are good for mankind. But at the same time, we have also increased our methods of self-destruction. Historically that has involved the creation of artillery shells, nuclear bombs, and the ability to hack a nation’s infrastructure systems. Today we are seeing all-new threats, such as individuals becoming displaced by robotics and AI and social media dividing us into deeply entrenched factions. Our ability to divide and destroy has always grown in lockstep with our ability to create.

The scary thing is just how far our compounded power extends. Just as one Israelite shouting at a time would never bring down the walls of Jericho and one man working at a time would never build the Golden Gate Bridge, so too our weapons of destruction surpass any individual reach. Once these looming threats start to tip over, it will be well beyond anyone’s power to right them before they come crashing down on our heads.

Divine Forewarning)

And this danger was already known thousands and thousands of years ago. It was recorded for our own education, but we did not heed it. In the book of Genesis, Chapter 11, we read:

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.... And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

There was one language, and one people, and they spoke with one voice, desiring to build a tower all the way to heaven. While the scriptural account does not get explicit in their ultimate intentions, tradition has assumed it was to for a direct assault on heaven. Whether literally or symbolically, their effort was to make something so great that it could dethrone God.

Breaking from the hand of your own creator is logically the greatest act of self-destruction that anyone could ever do. Thus, it was an act of mercy and preservation when God broke their tower, and made them unable to combine their voices, and scattered them across the world. Yes, it made them weaker, but it also limited their ability to destroy themselves.

Today, we have progressively broken down those barriers. We have rediscovered each other, learned one another’s language, and found ways to combine our voices as one. We are much the same now as the people who built the tower of babel, and we seem to quickly be approaching another act of hubris and self-destruction.

Of course, every vision of paradise does necessitate all the people united as one, but it assumes that mankind has learned to let go of his tendency for self-destruction, so that he may unite without danger. That certainly has not happened today, so the danger of our united voices is very, very real.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Power of Your Voice- Communication and Technology Revolutions

Leaps and Bounds)

Yesterday I mentioned the direct correlation between inter-cultural communication and the advancement of technology. The more people share their voices with one another, the more each is fertilized with the other’s ideas, and the more we advance as a whole. Also, as a culture expands in its technology, that has included enhancing their means of communication. Thus, one advancement leads more and more quickly to another, and so the pattern has been one of exponential growth.

In fact, every major advancement in communication leads to a spike in technological advancement. Here are the most notable examples:

  1. Early writing systems from 3000-2000 BC, followed by large-scale agricultural systems and bureaucratic states.
  2. The printing press from 1440, followed by the scientific and industrial revolution.
  3. Telegraph system from 1830s-1840s, followed by trains, long-distance transit and transportation, factories and distribution.
  4. Radio, telephone, and television from 1920s-1950s, followed by consumer appliances, personal automobiles, and rocket science.
  5. The internet from 1969, followed by software and home computers, globalized manufacturing, and robotics.

The Road Ahead)

Our communication technology has progressed from talking to our neighbors, to meeting each other across great distances, to writing down words that could be carried elsewhere, to having instantaneous communication with millions across the globe. Today we appear be on the cusp of yet another advancement in communication and technology. With the advent of AI, for the first time ever we have the ability to receive messages from the aggregate sum of millions of voices all at once. Given the wealth of historical writing included in these models, that includes being able to have conversations with those who are already dead. What sort of leaps in technology this may lead to remains to be seen, but we can only assume it will be similarly transformative.

It is also left to our imaginations what higher forms of communication could yet await us. Perhaps some sort of thought-to-thought or spirit-to-spirit communication would unlock the highest era. Perhaps some of those higher forms of communication are reserved for the life after this one, though.

Of course, we have to acknowledge that not all advancement and technology is good. There is much to be concerned about, much division and destruction before us, and the scriptures predicted this exact dilemma in the story of the Tower of Babel thousands of years ago. Tomorrow we will take a closer look at that story, and what it means for us today.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Power of Your Voice- Cultural Advancement

An Old View)

Yesterday we discussed the physical range and speed of the human voice, and its ability to vibrate an awesome volume of air. Today we will consider another power of the human voice by examining its abstraction: communication.

One of the old mysteries of anthropology was the great disparity in development of different cultures. As the Western world expanded into the most remote corners of the world, it found people that were technologically far behind. Isolated tribes that lacked even writing systems, the wheel, and agricultural systems, to say nothing of firearms, ships, and medicine.

At the time, the simplest explanation was that some groups of people were fundamentally more advanced than other, almost like a different species. It was assumed by many that the savage could never be an educated man. But as these different worlds became more overlapped, there came opportunities for the tribesman to participate in the systems of the more advanced cultures, and it was discovered that any race and color could attain the same understanding and integration as any other participant in that culture.

A New Theory)

Now we live in a time where this experiment has played out repeatedly and universally. The old theories of superior and inferior races do not hold up to the reality that we have perceived. Having so many more data points to draw our conclusions from, a new pattern has emerged.

The factor that determines whether a culture is advanced or not is the amount of inter-cultural communication that that culture is subject to. Trade routes first caused drastically different people to become intimately familiar with one another’s language and customs. The English had to have an understanding of the Chinese, and the Chinese of the Arab. And they did not only trade in goods, but also in ideas. On the other hand, the isolated tribe in the wilds of Africa remained as a people frozen in time, remaining at the same level they had been for thousands of years.

It is now clear that communication, not race, is the driver of technology and advancement. And any race that becomes integrated in communication with others soon shares the same technologies and patterns of thought. It as we members of humanity share our voices together, everyone advances. As we remain isolated, we stagnate.

This causal link probably went unrecognized for so long because our level of communication is easily taken for granted. It transforms us seemingly effortlessly. We will explore this fact a little further with tomorrow’s post, where we examine the different milestones of communication that we have achieved, and the sudden and automatic spikes in technology that followed.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Power of Your Voice- Range and Speed

The Greatest Force)

I wanted to start my analysis of the human voice by considering some of the physical aspects of it. Let us consider the case of speed and reach in the human body. If I were to ask what the fastest way for a man to propel something forward is, and to the greatest distance, you might think it would be by a kick, or a throw. Baseball pitchers can hurl a ball at 100 miles per hour, and cricket players have hurled a ball by hand 420 feet!

Let’s even suppose that we allow the person to use a simple tool, though no external source of power. Golfers have been known send a ball hundreds of yards, at speeds as high as 200 miles per hour!

But none of that would be the right answer. For the fastest, furthest cast, we do not look to the arms or the legs, we must look to the lungs. It is the human shout that is able to carry farther, and travel faster, than any other human-powered method. Under ideal conditions, some shouts have been reported to travel 10 miles, and the sound propagates at a speed of over 700 miles per hour. And what of the volume? When we shout, we physically vibrate the surrounding air particles in every direction, commanding the vibrations of over 100 billion cubic meters!

The human voice is therefore not only metaphorically powerful, but also physically magnificent as well. There is no other way that we can project farther, faster, and over a greater volume when using only the power of the body. But of course, this is not the only domain where the voice dominates. Tomorrow we will examine how being able to talk to one another and share ideas is the most important driver of all our technology and invention. I’ll see you then.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Power of Your Voice- Trite but True

Disempowering Empowerment)

The expression, “the power of your voice,” is used so overused and misused, that I couldn’t help but cringe as I wrote it as the title to this series. Most of the time that we hear it the message is trite and vapid, meant to flatter the listener and assign them an unspecific power. All of that being said, there actually is some real truth to the expression, and it seems sinister that the phrase has been appropriated so as to hide the real depth of it.

I recently made a small post about how rare it is for a person to be their true, genuine self. More often we meet people who are empty puppets, parroting the ideas and beliefs of others. This same pattern continues with the use of our voice. Most of us use our speech to merely regurgitate words that are entirely unoriginal. In fact, the very people who tell us not to forget the power of our voice are usually the ones who are also telling us what to use it to say. We are expected to adopt their cause and priorities, then use the power of our voices to spread them. That isn’t empowering to the individual, only to the one giving orders.

Thus, most people don’t really have a voice; they are only an extension of someone else’s, a speaker to an activist’s microphone. Most people have not delved deep enough into themselves to find out who they really are. They haven’t found their true substance, and so they have nothing real to speak from. So yes, a person’s voice has power, but it isn’t their voice until they are a real person.

Over the next few days, I will try to delve a little deeper into the power of one’s voice, providing a clear basis for why I think the statement is actually true. I will also acknowledge biblical warnings of the danger in that power, and how we should be careful of it. I will begin tomorrow by examining the physical and literal power in the human voice. See you then!

Posted on by Abe Austin

Praying for an Enemy

It is only natural to desire ill for those who have hurt or betrayed us, but we know as Christians that we are called to a higher ideal. We are taught to actively pull our mind back when it tries to fantasize our enemies experiencing pain, and that is good, but we still may feel that we cannot honestly wish them well. We feel that seeking good for those that harmed us is part of our calling, but until God makes a transformation in our hearts, we can’t feel good and positive feelings towards a person just because we want to.

Fortunately, we do not have to wish someone well to pray for their good. We may not be able to say, “I hope that you have peace, I hope that things work out for you, I hope that all is well in your life,” but we can always say, “I pray that you have peace, I pray that things work out for you, I pray that all is well in your life.”

Prayer allows us to invoke that which our feelings are not yet in agreement to. By praying for our enemies, we surrender the course of their lives to whatever God deems right. And then, if it is God’s will for our enemies to face consequences, so be it, we at least have the clean conscience of knowing that we had nothing to do with it. Not even on a spiritual level.

And perhaps as we pray for the good for our enemy, God will work in our hearts so that we can hope for their good with genuine love. In either case, it is great wisdom in God to provide us a way that we may formally support the good, no matter the feelings of the heart.

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

Scriptural Analysis- Leviticus 4:32-35

32 And if he bring a lamb for a sin offering, he shall bring it a female without blemish.

33 And he shall lay his hand upon the head of the sin offering, and slay it for a sin offering in the place where they kill the burnt offering.

34 And the priest shall take of the blood of the sin offering with his finger, and put it upon the horns of the altar of burnt offering, and shall pour out all the blood thereof at the bottom of the altar:

35 And he shall take away all the fat thereof, as the fat of the lamb is taken away from the sacrifice of the peace offerings; and the priest shall burn them upon the altar, according to the offerings made by fire unto the Lord: and the priest shall make an atonement for his sin that he hath committed, and it shall be forgiven him.

In addition to the option for a common Israelite to offer a young goat as a sin offering, he could also offer a lamb. The next chapter might suggest that two turtledoves or pigeons would also be an option for the very poor, though on the other hand it might be referring to a trespass offering instead.

In any case, we have now come to the end of this chapter on sin offerings. We have seen how the same pattern was to be applied to an individual, a community, a priest, and a leader. In all cases, the offeror placed his/their hand(s) upon the sacrifice, the animal was slaughtered, blood was placed on the horns, fat and kidneys were burned on the altar, and the body and dirty parts of the animal were burned outside of the camp. The only difference was whether the animal was a bullock, a goat, or a lamb.

It is interesting to note that the offering was one single animal, no matter how many people it applied to. Whether the entire congregation or a single, solitary soul, the offering was just one animal. This frustrates our common tendency to quantify sin and forgiveness in measurable terms. We have an innate desire to reduce offense to a number and be able to apply good works of equal number to “pay” for the offense. But that’s not how the patterns of the Spirit work. If it were, we would quickly become too “indebted in sin” to ever pay it off.

If there are any measurements and debts and payments, all of that is resolved in the atonement of Jesus Christ. All that remains for us, and for the ancient Israelites, is a ritualistic return to the right path. When we view these offerings as a symbol of commitment, not as a payment for sin, it makes sense why a single offering could stand in for any number of offerors.

SacrificeEligible oblationStepsExplanation
Sin offeringBullock, young goat, lambSacrifice for sin
The same pattern for an individual, community, priest, or leaderAn equal path to God for all
Hands placed on head, slaughteredAnimal takes the place of us
Blood placed on horns of the altarA heartfelt plea to the Lord for mercy
Fat and kidneys burned on altarCleansing our behavior and desire
Skin, dung, and flesh burned beyond the campThe sinful behavior purged out of us

Full table.