Honesty and Politeness

Honesty is better than politeness. - Cyrus

I've heard this a couple of times. One example is when someone asks you "How are you?"
The polite answer: I'm fine, thanks.
The honest answer: (well, this depends on how you actually are. Be honest!)

By answering with the polite answer, you've missed an opportunity to connect with the person who asked you how you were.

So after I heard this idea, I tried answering questions honestly, rather than politely.

That didn't go too well. Some of my honest answers weren't helpful to the person who had asked me the question. Sometimes, what I was thinking and said honestly was the wrong thing to say and it was hurtful to the person I said it to.

The thing is that while honesty is important, it's not the most important thing. When asked about the greatest commandment, the two commandments that Jesus talked about shared a common theme: Love.

So my modified statement is that honesty is better than politeness, but it has to be honesty tempered with love. Honesty tempered by fear is politeness (I'll say the truth unless it will make you not like me), but honesty tempered with love says "How can I build up my brother or sister in Christ?"

Ideally, in the end, our thoughts will all be ones of love, and we will be able to speak honestly without thinking about tempering our words with love - our words will be of love just because that's what is in our hearts. But personally, I'm not there yet. My thoughts aren't all pure. But by God's grace, I'm learning to speak from love rather than from fear or other motives.

I am not the man I ought to be, I am not the man I wish to be, and I am not the man I hope to be, but by the grace of God, I am not the man I used to be. - John Newton (paraphrased)

Honesty + Love > Politeness

S. D. G.

Living Life Intentionally

When you look back on your life, what do you want to see? - Connor, a friend of mine (at a working bee we were at last weekend)

My answer (after some thought): I would like to see a life lived intentionally to make a difference in this world for Jesus.

The night before, I had a discussion with another friend (actually, the older brother of Connor, who asked me the first question mentioned). One of the topics we discussed was 1 Corinthians 13:11, which says:

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. - 1 Corinthians 13:11

His definition of 'the ways of childhood' was 'something that doesn't have eternal value'. I like this definition. It doesn't fall into legalism (you must do that vs. you must not do that) or permissiveness.

My example would be that I don't normally play/build with LEGO or buy it anymore, but I'll still play a game with my younger siblings. The eternal value is that I'm investing in their lives as I play with them.

A line from a song I heard over the weekend: I don't want to spend my whole life asking 'What if I had given everything?' (link to song)

This idea is one of my main 'takeaways' from the working bee I was at. A filter to pass everything I do or think about doing through: Does this activity hold eternal value? If not, then I should seriously consider whether I should be doing it.

Don't waste your life. Live life intentionally for Jesus.

Psalm 37

Trust in the LORD and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture.

Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this:

He will make your righteous reward shine like the dawn,

your vindication like the noonday sun.

Psalm 37:3-6

This psalm paints a picture of what life looks like for the righteous. Although at times they may be poor (37:16), and sometimes it may take waiting (37:7), God's reward will be with them. He is their stronghold in times of trouble (37:39).

What I see in this chapter, basically, is a life that may not have all of the world's pleasures. In some places, it looks hard. There's waiting. Turning to evil looks like a quick and easy way to become wealthy. In fact, there's really only one reward that the righteous get.

But that reward's worth it. The LORD is the reward of the righteous. While there are side effects (37:4; 'he will give you the desires of your heart', 37:19; 'in days of famine they will enjoy plenty', 37:29: 'the righteous will inherit the land and dwell in it forever'), the reward of the righteous, above and beyond all of those, is the LORD himself.

Take verse 4: Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

At first glance, this may seem like a way to get what you want. Just fulfill the condition in the first part of the verse, and God has promised to give you whatever your heart desires.

However, it's not quite as simple as that. Take delight in the LORD. If your delight is in the LORD, what will be the desires of your heart? To serve Him? To know Him better? To become more like Him? To lift up the broken, the weary, the weak, the destitute? Maybe another way of thinking about the verse is 'Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of His heart to be the desires of your heart.'

Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him;

do not fret when people succeed in their ways,

when they carry out the wicked schemes.

Psalm 37:7

Better the little that the righteous have than the wealth of many wicked;
for the power of the wicked will be broken,

but the Lord upholds the righteous.

Psalm 37:16-17

S.D.G.

Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander

Link to Oceans

You call me out upon the waters
The great unknown
Where feet may fail
And there I find you in the mystery
In oceans deep
My faith will stand

I'm sure many of you are familiar with this song, Oceans, from Hillsong. I'm sure many of you love it. I know I do - it's one of my favourite songs. The bridges especially stand out:

Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders
Let me walk upon the waters
Wherever you would call me

Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander
And my faith will be made stronger
In the presence of my Saviour

But do we actually realize what we're singing in that bridge? We're asking God to take us to where our trust has no borders. No borders at all. No safety. No security. No familiarity. We're saying to God "We're ready to go wherever you send us to do whatever you want us to do. No questions asked."

Do we actually mean that? Are we actually willing to follow God where our trust has no borders? Because if we don't, you could argue that we shouldn't actually be singing the song.

This question was posed (well, posed more as a thought) at a Bible study which I was attending/running on Thursday evening. Are we actually willing to go where our trust has no borders?

If I'm being honest with myself, I'd have to say that no, at the moment, there are situations which would totally stop me in my tracks, situations that I would have no idea what to do with.

But at the same time, I don't want to stay there. I want to know my Father better. I want to experience more of His heart. I want to press in closer to Him. And while Jesus didn't have prerequisites for people coming to Him (stop sinning, get a job, have a shower) he did require change after they did come to Him. Go and sin no more, go and leave your life of sin, stop sinning or something worse will happen to you.

I believe that principle can be applied here. No, maybe I'm not ready to go wherever God leads me. But I'm asking Him to change me, to grow me, to transform me, to mold me into who He wants me to be. And part of that is childlike trust, childlike faith. He wants us to be willing to trust Him completely, to go wherever His Spirit leads us. And that will be difficult. He promised that. (John 16:33). But it will be worth it in the end. Being like Jesus, being with Jesus, will be worth it in the end. When He wipes away every tear from our eyes and says "Well done, my good and faithful servant," everything will be worth it.

It's not up to us to change ourselves into who God wants us to be. That's what He does. Yet in a way, it's totally up to us. This is one of the strange balances in this world, where two things that seem to be complete opposites can and are both completely true. Justice and mercy. Predestination and free will. Working out our salvation with fear and trembling yet also resting in God's love and grace and the completeness of His finished work on the cross.

And in a way, it doesn't matter whether or not I'm ready yet to go wherever God will lead me. We don't need to see the end of the journey. All we need is the next step. I struggle with this. In my humanity, in my brokenness, I want to know how everything is going to work out. I want God to provide me with an exact roadmap of how He is going to deal with me and where He is going to lead me for the rest of my life. But that's not always how God works. He leads us one step at a time. If we always knew exactly where we were going over the next year, over the next five years, over the next ten years, then where would faith be?

Actually, faith requires that we don't know, that we aren't ready. If we're prepared to meet any situation, then we aren't trusting God, we're trusting ourselves.

Oceans isn't a declaration of supreme faith and borderless trust. It's a cry to God to bring us to where He wants us to be. And it's my cry. Father, make me more like you. Lead me where my trust is without borders. More of You and less of me, Lord.

And I will call upon Your Name
And keep my eyes above the waves
When oceans rise
My soul will rest in Your embrace
For I am Yours and You are mine

S. D. G.

On Proving the Nonexistence of God

Let us assume that a divine being exists. Furthermore, this divine being, in addition to being immaterial and supernatural, is also omnipotent and omniscient.

Any divine being possessing these characteristics could blind any non-divine being as to the existence of the divine being, and, if they wished, could make it appear that they never existed. Therefore, it is impossible for any non-divine being to prove the nonexistence of a divine being.

"Ah!" but the sceptic says. "If it is impossible for me to disprove a divine being, it is equally impossible for you to prove one."

Not so. The reason that a divine being can't be disproved is that the possibility of the prescence of a divine being brings any natural processes into question. If we start from the assumption that there is no divine being, then there is no supernatural to confuse the natural.

This reason doesn't prove a divine being, any more than it disproves one. All it does is disprove the disprovability of a divine being.

In summary: A divine being could hide itself, so we can't say there isn't one.

^ ^ ^ That's what I thought of while practicing violin today. It doesn't take into account why a divine being would want to hide their existence, but I didn't think it was necessary in order to make my argument clear.

Any critiques? Thoughts? Feel free to play devil's advocate :)

More than Epicness

Epicness is not a bad thing. Detailed worldbuilding, sweeping grandeur, and amazing scenes can create a compelling story. The detailed languages of Tolkien's world make it feel authentic. The sheer size of Erebor, of Cirith Ungol, of Minas Tirith, awe us. The finality of the last march of the Ents, of the death-ride of the Rohirrim, can make our hearts burn within our chests and our fists tighten. Tolkien's work resounds with epicness.

But epicness alone isn't enough. Epicness can be a taster to draw in readers, but it shouldn't be the full meal. Give a reader an epic story, and they'll probably remember it. But after it's been read enough times, the epicness wears thin. Reading about the same amazing scenes and magnificent structures over and over again can get tiring.

But not theme. The best books are those that can be read over and over again, each time picking up some new nugget of meaning and insight, some new thread of hope, some new morsel of mental or spiritual food.

Epicness doesn't do that. But theme does. As does characterisation, which is implicitly linked – I believe – with theme. You can't have a resonant theme without strong characters – at least, not without it feeling forced and contrived. Artificial.

Great stories should have great themes. If a reader is going to take the time to read your story, take the time to give them something meaningful, something worthwhile, out of it.

I'm not against epicness. Give your stories all the epicness you can imagine. Make epicness run home to its momma crying. (Semi-inside joke, if you didn't get it). But give them something that will stay with them forever.

NaNoWriMo

This year was my first time doing NaNoWriMo, and I managed to complete it at 50045 words on the 29th, although I got to 51394 by the end of the 30th. (link to stats) Here's some of the things I learned.

1. Plotting is important to be able to write fast.
I didn't plot out much of my NaNoNovel, but I had a basic idea of what I wanted the next couple of scenes to be about. They might change, but I had a short-term plan for the next few thousand words, and a (somewhat vague) long-term plan, of where I wanted to end the book up at. This meant that I could write much faster.

2. Writing is important.
If you're going to write, you need to do it. You can't just procrastinate and not write, especially if you have a deadline. You have to write. But...

3. Writing isn't important.
Well, it is, like I said above, but it's not the most important thing, by a long way. There are times when other things come before writing, and it's important for writing to not be the most important thing. And this means that sometimes, you may not be able to find the time to finish the project by when you want to. It's a matter of making priorities.

And ... I can't think of any other concrete things which I learned at the moment, yet ... or asphalt either (yes, I know, bad pun...) so I'll sign off and prepare for my next post in three months.

-Jag Swiftstorm