On technical terms...

Technical terms really can get troublesome at times, can't they? And they don't do you any good unless you know what they mean. Once you know what they mean, then they can become quite useful, but only then. I think an important skill in teaching is the skill of being able to define previously boring and obscure technical terms in a way that people can really understand and remember. The technical term then becomes a handy little bag in which they can condense and carry that understanding. Of course, every time someone accumulates lots of handy little bags, they can start waving them around as if everyone knows what is in them. Fellow bag-carriers might appreciate it, but everyone else needs the bags unpacked. I guess higher education sometimes consists of a teacher handing students one bag after another and saying "Unpack that one and tell me what's in it". Then we can unpack the bags for others.

A Precious Lesson

There is nothing that requires such gentle handling as an illusion, if one wishes to dispel it. If anything prompts the prospective captive to set his will in opposition, all is lost. And this is what a direct attack achieves, and it implies moreover the presumption of requiring a man to make to another person, or in his presence, an admission which he can make most profitably to himself privately. This is what is achieved by the indirect method which, loving and serving the truth, arranges everything dialectically for the prospective captive, and then shyly withdraws (for love is always shy), so as not to witness the admission which he makes to himself alone before God--that he has lived hitherto in an illusion.

If real success is to attend the effort to bring a man to a definite position, one must first of all take pains to find him where he is and begin there. This is the secret to the art of helping others. Anyone who has not mastered this is himself deluded when he proposes to help others. In order to help another effectively I must understand more than he--yet first of all surely I must understand what he understands. If I do not know that, then my greater understanding will be of no help to him. If, however, I am disposed to plume myself on my greater understanding, it is because I am vain or proud, so that at bottom, instead of benefiting him, I want to be admired. But all true effort to help begins with self-humiliation: the helper must first humble himself under him he would help, and therewith must understand that to help others does not mean to be sovereign, but to be a servant, that to help does not mean to be ambitious but to be patient, that to help means to endure for the time being the imputation that one is in the wrong and does not know what the other understands.

--S. Kierkegaard

a random thought on the art of writing...

The skillful commentative writer takes his pen like a scalpel to cut through the hardened skin of societal norms and expose the beastly cancer beneath.

"The essence of the prosperity gospel is that it leaves people unchanged in their appetites and then provides 'Jesus!' to meet them....Better business, better marriage, better kids - better everything I wanted before. Then you don't know Him. He did not come to serve your unregenerate appetites; He came to give you new appetites. That's the meaning of being born again."

- John Piper on John 6

The present ministry of Jesus

"We speak of the perseverance of the saints as if that were some innate quality which is placed in us. But that is not the case. The perseverance of the saints means that for every second of your life, Jesus will hold you and and Jesus will keep you and Jesus will guard you. We will persevere because we are being preserved." - Ted Donnelly

"You hold me by my right hand, you guide me with your counsel and afterward you will receive me into glory." - Psalm 73

"The psalmist doesn't say 'I hold you'. The psalmist says, 'You hold me'." - Ted Donnelly

"...because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold." - Matt. 24.12

But oh Lord, not mine, please, please, not mine!

"If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love..." - John 15.10


Scripture from ESV

"Waking on a Fall Morning"

Morning
Soft gray light steals
Through cold and gentle curtains and
My bundled sleep
Swaddling, grave-clothes, bedclothes wrapped
Me now unwrapped to
Face the shiv’ry morning
But heat now greets
Me rising warm
With roasty air that boasts of toast
And coffee
And hearts that should be
Thankful

- AFC - 10-6-09