Posted on by Abe Austin

Great Forgiveness

Great forgiveness is not passively forgetting your pain over the passage of time, but actively surrendering it while it still burns bright. Obviously, forgiving over time after the pain has died down is better than not forgiving at all, but it is only a step towards greater, more active forgiveness.

Jesus gave an incredible standard for forgiveness when he declared, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” He was not only forgiving those who tortured and killed him, but he was doing it in the very moment that they were carrying out that torture and execution, not after he was resurrected and impervious to their pain. Perhaps we will never get all the way to being able to match such great forgiveness as that, but that is the ideal that we are meant to move in the direction of.

Great forgiveness is not passive, it is active.

Posted on by Abe Austin

True Forgiveness

True forgiveness isn’t about trying to minimize the wrongs of others, or to trying to justify their flagrant offenses away.

True forgiveness is knowing that what the other person did is objectively condemnable and that you would be absolutely within your rights to demand justice, but turning it all over to God anyway. It is letting God be the judge, letting Him choose justice or mercy according to His will.

True forgiveness is not excusing, it is releasing.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Need for Hope

I used to believe that I needed to make my faith so unshakeable that it would stand even when there was nothing left to hope for. Even if every promise had been broken, every desire withheld, and every ambition laid waste, I would still need to do what is right just because it is right.

Now, though, my feelings have shifted. From a pragmatic point of view, I’ve just never seen any good behavior come out of me when I am hopeless, nor have I ever heard of anyone else living a morally fulfilling life while totally devoid of hope. Hope is a virtue, after all, so it is wrong to assume that I could fill the full measure of my life without it.

What matters, I think, is what that hope is in. I need a hope in something that is transcendent, something for which there is no earthly possibility of failure, something that isn’t terrestrial. My original thoughts that I needed to have faith even without hope came about because terrestrial hopes were just about the only hopes I ever had, so surrendering those felt like surrendering hope entirely.

Even my hopes for good things like to improve my marriage, or to have my children secure in their faith, or to be secure against the storms of the world, are terrestrial hopes that will let me down sooner or later. They are terrestrial because they are based on other mortal people and resources. My marriage, my family, and my earthly foundation can all betray me, and at one point or another each will let me down.

I need to have a hope that remains even if my marriage fails, even if my children go astray, and even if my preparations fall short. I need to have hope in something that is now and forever assured, something greater than anything in this world so that nothing in this world can tarnish it. I need to have hope in the divine, in a Savior, in a redemption that has already and forever been won. A true and abiding hope in these, and these alone, will see me through every trial and tribulation.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Too Much Certainty

As I observe all of the angry discourse in our society today, I am left with a sense that we are much too certain of ourselves.

If the other side is wrong, we are certain that then we must be right, even though in most cases that is not necessarily so.

We are certain that we know causation, when all that has been demonstrated is correlation.

In the domains of definite uncertainty, where neither God nor science has spoken, we are nonetheless certain that our opinion is ultimately right.

I do believe that some things we can be certain of, and should be certain of, and should live with passionate conviction to those certainties. But I think that those are only a few, core things, and we should be nuanced enough to call all the rest a hunch, a belief, and an assumption.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Control You Give to God

The control you give God over your life
When times are good
Is the control God has to save your life
When times are evil

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Narrowing of Privilege- Part Two

A Word Maligned)

With my last post I began my exploration of “privilege,” a word that has come to have a particularly negative connotation in recent years. I gave three definitions and uses of the word that defy that narrow connotation, though, showing three positive aspects of privilege. In short, those conceptions of privilege were:

  1. A joyful obligation
  2. The reward for hard labor
  3. A gift handed down by the honest labor of one’s forebearers

Today we will look at two more definitions of privilege, then finally conclude our analysis of the word.

Two More Forms of Privilege)

Fourth, each of us are born with certain advantages built into us, certain talents and proclivities that are innate within us, things that neither we nor our ancestors made happen for us, but which give us an advantage in life. It might be a girl born with a beautiful face, or a boy born with a sharply analytical mind. It might be a rich child with an unusually charitable disposition, or a poor child born with uncharacteristic determination. These are gifts that bestow opportunities beyond one’s first demographic.

Note that this still isn’t the sort of definition that is more and more commonly used as a pejorative in our society. For these are not systemic, socially-constructed advantages, but virtues given by God. They are gifts that we do not control the placement of, and which are sprinkled across all demographics and all walks of life.

Finally, with our fifth definition, we do come to the meaning of the word “privilege” that is intended to humble the proud. Some people have a privilege that is based upon no virtue, no effort, no obligation, and no gift from their forebearers. In every land and in every time, certain people have been exalted above others, giving them advantages for no other reason than their identification with a favored group. No population has been innocent of this sort of preferential treatment, and through the push and pull of society, the pendulum has swung to favor each side in turn. Though all may get their time in the light at one point or another, it isn’t fair that it is isolated to one type of people at a time.

Conclusion)

The main point that I wanted to call attention to is how “privilege” is a complex word, that is actively being pared down to only a fraction of its original meaning. It is becoming nothing more than an epithet, which makes us all dumber by removing our ability to have alternative and nuanced meanings.

Beware the trends that seek to flatten, twist, or erase words. The maligning of a language might seem an inconsequential thing, but our minds are in large part made up of the language we speak, and so it is our own selves who end up being flattened and twisted and erased.

As it stands, I’m grateful and proud for the vast majority of the privileges that I enjoy. I’m proud of the happy obligations I take on to provide for my family, and proud of the rewards I receive for my hard labor. I’m grateful for the gifts given to me by the sacrifices of my forebears, and grateful for the gifts God has seen fit to bestow upon me. The only privilege I feel askance towards is anytime I benefit absent any of the channels mentioned above, when I receive something just because I belong to some group identity.

I thank God that I at least have enough nuance left in me to tell the difference.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Narrowing of Privilege- Part One

A Troubling Narrowness)

I was recently in a Sunday School class where the teacher asked for a definition of privilege. It was a surprising request, given that our Sunday School classes usually steer clear of social commentary. In any case, the definition that was ultimately given to us was that privilege means to have an unearned advantage.

This was a single passing moment, and I didn’t think too much about it at the time. In hindsight, though, I’ve realized that I don’t hold with that definition at all, and I believe it represents a troubling narrowing of the definitions we have for words. I call it a narrowing because the word “privilege” means several different things, and not all of them match the strictly negative connotation that modern society tries to limit it to. Today we will go through three valid applications of the word “privilege,” tomorrow we will cover two more, and then make our final analysis.

Three Forms of Privilege)

For example, as a husband and a father, I make great effort to provide and protect for my family. It is the primary function of my life to consecrate my time, effort, and resources to keeping those that I am responsible for fed, clothed, sheltered, enriched, and protected. If any of those under my care express gratitude for my sacrifice I have but one response: “it is my privilege.”

This is a common sentiment among fathers, and one that doesn’t line up at all with the idea of unearned advantage. Yes, I consider it a gift and a blessing that I get to provide for those that I love, but it isn’t like I am receiving this “privilege” at no cost to myself. From this definition, the word privilege means something along the lines of “a joyful obligation.”

A second definition of the word comes to mind when I think of my father-in-law, who built a successful company from scratch. I have heard stories of the many years and long nights spent getting a foothold in the industry, slowly but surely building a solid foundation that only yielded fruit far, far down the road. Now, decades later, my father-in-law is finally ready to retire, and selling his company has meant being wined and dined by prospective buyers who are eager to receive the keys to his little kingdom.

Does that wining and dining constitute a privilege? Absolutely. But is it a privilege that was unearned? Absolutely not. Yes, it is a reward that most people won’t attain in life, but it’s one he did the work to receive. What the word privilege means in this context is: the reward for labor.

A third definition of privilege takes place downstream of the “joyful obligation” and the “reward for labors” mentioned already. Many of us enjoy gifts and opportunities that we personally did nothing to earn, but which our forefathers sacrificed greatly for. My ancestors fought to make my country a free nation. They left their homes and crossed the plains to obtain religious freedom. They fought a war to bring liberty to all the people of this nation. They toiled before the sun and the furnace to grow crops and build infrastructure. They innovated and invented to create convenience and security. Did I earn all the benefits I now enjoy because of their labors? Absolutely not. But that doesn’t mean that they weren’t unearned!

A Complex Picture)

Here we have seen three definitions of privilege that have nothing to do with the more negative uses of the word. These definitions describe people who are dutiful, hard-working, and with a noble heritage. Tomorrow we will look at two more definitions, the last of which will acknowledge the more negative aspect of the word. It should already be clear that this word is much more nuanced and deep than modern rhetoric would have us believe.

Posted on by Abe Austin

What We Are, Fundamentally- The Result of Determinism

Determinism Again)

Yesterday I spoke of the physical-materialist theory of determinism, which maintains that all of our behaviors and “choices” are actually predetermined programming. The stimuli to our senses come from an environment that we cannot control, and our reactions to those stimuli are dictated by the preset mapping of the synapses within our brains.

Input + Function = Output, and because the Input and the Function are controlled, so is the Output.

Free will and control are only illusions that arise from the fact that the environment and the brain mapping are so complex that we cannot predict the outcomes before they occur. But just because we mortals can’t predict those outcomes, doesn’t mean that they aren’t predestined. The things that we do are simply the things that we were always going to do.

Moral License)

If this theory is true, though, then I cannot be responsible for anything that I do. I might feel as though I make my own choices, that I wrestle between decisions, but that’s simply my computer-brain evaluating between two programmed priorities, until it finally settles on the option that its biological algorithms were pre-weighted towards. I was always going to come to the conclusion that I was going to come to, and I am no more responsible for coming to that conclusion than a domino is guilty of falling when pushed.

Thus, if I decide to kill another person, there was no alternative to that outcome. There was no option for me to have chosen otherwise. I might have chosen differently if I had been born to a different environment, or if I had a different composition of the brain, but the function and the parameters were already set, and so I simply had to give the only possible output: murder.

And if I were to go around proselyting for this worldview, and the logic of it were to incite a person to decide there was no morality and that he truly was permitted to do anything and none of it would be his fault, and if he were to then go out and planted bombs that killed hundreds of innocent schoolchildren, well it couldn’t be helped because his mind was already such as to take the input of my words and derive those predestined conclusions. And it couldn’t be helped that I inspired him to do those things, because I was also predestined to make those arguments. And though it may appear to the outside world that I had influence and he had choice, even though everything in our natural perception and experience screams at us that such is the case, it would all be a lie and an illusion. The creation of that terrible, bloody would have been necessary and unavoidable.

Common Sense)

The horrifying conclusions of determinism are reason enough to reject it, but even more important than the unacceptable nature of its ends is the fact that it defies so much of our common sense that we have to conclude it isn’t true. Like I said in the last paragraph, everything in our natural perception and reason tells us that we actually do choose what we do, and that the evil are guilty, and that people can decide whether to live as good or evil.

Determinism asks for an even greater level of blind faith than any system of religious morality. It not only asks us to trust its claims, but to do so against all of our perception and reason. It asks us to deny the apparent and obvious reality to accept an unprovable and theoretical one. Everything natural and instinctive about us protests that is a lie, and that would explain why its ends are so horrific and destructive. A reality based upon a lie can only end in obliteration, for a lie is the inversion of reality.