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

You Believe Something False

There are so many different interpretations of scripture, so many opposing theological opinions, so many churches that have divided over incompatible beliefs. Is man saved by faith, or works? Are our fates predetermined, or dependent on free will? Should we believe in theosis true, and if so to what extent? Is God a trinity, or separate persons? Is the Bible a closed canon, or can there be new prophets and revelations? Is the rapture pre-tribulation, or post? What is the correct mode of baptism? Do any Old Testament traditions still apply today, and if so, which ones? Should women serve as pastors? Does God approve of same-sex relationships?

With so many different interpretations and opinions, the only way to assume that a certain church has the correct answer on all of them is to believe it is the one, true church, and that all others have gone astray. But even in that case, within the narrower scope of that single religion’s theology, there would still be room for a plethora of different personal beliefs, most of which would necessarily be false.

It is therefore unrealistic to assume that everything that you or I believe is correct. It is far more probably that as Isaiah said, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way,” (Isaiah 53:6). Obviously that scripture applies to our sins, but surely also to our own misguided beliefs.

Each of us must reason as best we can, and obey as we see understand, but we must also have the humility to recognize that we are surely wrong in one way or another and be willing to make dramatic changes as needed. We must be open to ideas that before seemed impossible to us. We must always remain teachable. We must never be so sure of ourselves that we resist the corrections of the Lord. Ultimately, there is no belief that should be so precious that we would be unwilling to relinquish it if required by God.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Death of the False Self

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to God winning our souls is that true conversion requires an interaction with the genuine self. And we, being a highly social and impressionable species, very rarely exist as our genuine self. Most of us spend our lives as a collage of other people’s thoughts and beliefs and attitudes. We hear a question, and we immediately know the pre-scripted answer that we have been told by others. God reaches out to us, but all He finds is fragments of Darwin, Nietzsche, and Oprah.

And so, before God corrects the false image we have of Him, He first must shake loose the false image we have of our own self. He thwarts our pretend identity. He puts us in situations where our pale imitations and our tired platitudes fail spectacularly. He does for us what He did for Abram, and Jacob, and Saul, stripping us down and leaving us barren, and lame, and blind.

Seek the death of the false self. Unearth the real you. Learn how to think outside the catechisms that you have been given. Only then will you be able to find your real identity, like Abraham, and Israel, and Paul. Only when you have the real you can a proper introduction be made between you and the Father.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Hatred or Love of Self

Over the past few decades, deaths of despair have climbed steadily in the United States. We seem to be a culture progressing into deeper and broader levels of hopelessness and personal anguish.

Many have pointed out how more and more people seem to hold an intense self-hatred also, the most likely cause of these increasing deaths. Naturally, it is assumed that the cure would be more self-love. More self-affirmation. More “me time.” But this assumes that self-hatred and self-love are mutually exclusive, and that they cannot exist in the same body.

In my experience, that assumption could not be further from the truth. Indeed, I have seen in my own life how the times of overabundant “self-love” have fueled the self-hatred that followed. Urging people to pursue more self-love might be like seeing someone who is drowning and bringing them a helpful glass of water.

In my experience, love is the cure to despair, but not self-love, divine love. I don’t need to find myself, I need to find Him. I don’t need to give myself what I want, I need to give myself what He wants for me. The true self-love that actually drives out self-hatred is only found in the love that we cultivate with our Creator.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Overwhelming Passion

We have many stories of people who are in want of strength, who plead for the Lord to empower them for the task ahead, and so it is in some cases. However, many of us carry a burden that is exactly the opposite. We have been given a passion that is too powerful for us to handle on their own.

If we turn that passion to self-indulgence it damages us with its overpowering stream. if we try to ignore it, it builds up pressure until it bursts out in painful ways. This passion could be a great gift, but it will instead be a great danger if we never learn what to do with it.

God gave us this passion so that we are meant to do with it is pour it back into Him. He is not only the well that forever gives He is also the well that can forever take. Only into Him can we safely disperse our passion, our energy, and our drive, and not be harmed by the flowing power.

We were never designed to operate on our own. God made us with oversized hearts so that we can fit the extra parts into Him.

Posted on by Abe Austin

Always Right

It is often easier to accept that God’s laws and principles were right for ancient people than to accept that they still apply today. So much has changed since the time of chariots and slings. Jesus and his apostles never had smartphones or cryptocurrency or space travel or AI. Can words of scripture from thousands of years ago truly never expire?

This is the testimony of all true believers.

Faith in God includes faith that His way was right in 3000 BC, 34 AD, and even in the 21st century. While the situation surrounding man is in constant flux, the word of God is rooted in something eternal, something that runs from before our root and extends beyond our end. So long as we remain human, God’s way will always be right.