Category: faith

There Is No Such Thing as a Waste of Time

by WFTD, posted in faith, Personal
Janus and Public-Sector Innovation - The Atlantic

We liked wasting time, but almost nothing was more annoying than having our wasted time wasted on something not worth wasting it on.

Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End

And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.

Colossians 3.17

Many things feel like a waste of time. My, uh, housemates expect me to do certain chores which in my view are obvious wastes of time. (Which chores, you ask? Ha!) But I had a realization the other day: Nothing is a waste of time unless I allow it to become one.

Why? Because literally anything can be an opportunity to become more Christlike—more loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, gentle, faithful, self-controlled—and becoming more Christlike is never a waste of time. Even (and perhaps especially!) life’s annoyances are opportunities to grow, because it is precisely life’s annoyances that teach us patience and every other virtue. Anything that comes our way can refine and strengthen us. So no life experience has to be useless.

For better or for worse, it’s not physically possible to work towards any earthly goal literally all the time. We can’t work out or study for the MCAT or [insert earthly goal here] 24/7. But we can become more like Jesus 24/7 (though of course it’s hardly natural or easy to do so). And the more we look at annoyances, inconveniences, obstacles, trials, and tribulations as opportunities to become more like Jesus, the happier, healthier, and holier we’ll be.

No doubt, the change in mindset from “This is a waste of time” to “This is an opportunity for me to grow and become more like Jesus” is not one I’ve mastered. (The art of living is hard to master!) But it is one I’ve been keeping in mind the past few days, and it’s already started to pay tiny dividends in who I am.

And what could be more valuable than that? If I have love, joy, peace, and all the other virtues—all the other qualities of Jesus—what more could I want or need?

Happy New Year, readers! I’m thankful for all of you. My 2022 thought: There is no such thing as a waste of time.

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No Profit Under the Sun

by WFTD, posted in faith, worldview
Mansion ruins by SkyCam on DeviantArt

I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure: and, behold, this also is vanity. I said of laughter, It is mad: and of mirth, What doeth it? I sought in mine heart to give myself unto wine, yet acquainting mine heart with wisdom; and to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was that good for the sons of men, which they should do under the heaven all the days of their life. I made me great works; I builded me houses; I planted me vineyards: I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kind of fruits: I made me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees: I got me servants and maidens, and had servants born in my house; also I had great possessions of great and small cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before me: I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces: I gat me men singers and women singers, and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that of all sorts. So I was great, and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem: also my wisdom remained with me. And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them, I withheld not my heart from any joy; for my heart rejoiced in all my labour: and this was my portion of all my labour. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 2.1-11

There Are No Peasants Now

by WFTD, posted in Culture, faith, worldview

“The faith of the majority of educated people of our day,” Tolstoy observes, “was expressed by the word ‘progress.’ It then appeared to me that this word meant something. I did not as yet understand that, being tormented (like every vital man) by the question how it is best for me to live, in my answer, ‘Live in conformity with progress,’ I was like a man in a boat who when carried along by wind and waves should reply to what for him is the chief and only question, ‘Whither to steer,’ by saying, ‘We are being carried somewhere.'”
There has been no advance beyond this position since Tolstoy’s day.

Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God

Quite the opposite:

Tolstoy began to recover himself at the point where he realized that “I and a few hundred similar people are not the whole of mankind, and that I did not yet know the life of mankind.” He could observe the mass of persons, the peasants, who in the most miserable of conditions found life deeply meaningful and even sweet. They had not heard about “particles and progress.” But this is no longer possible. The peasants now watch TV and constantly consume media. There are no peasants now.

There are, however, godly men and women now—as there have always been and always will be. They are easily found by those who wish to find them.

(Related.)

Jolly Beggars

by WFTD, posted in faith, Literature
#lord of the rings from Lord of the Rings Scenery

All those expressions of unworthiness which Christian practice puts into the believer’s mouth seem to the outer world like the degraded and insincere grovellings of a sycophant before a tyrant…. In reality, however, they express the continually renewed, because continually necessary, attempt to negate that misconception of ourselves and of our relation to God which nature, even while we pray, is always recommending to us. No sooner do we believe that God loves us than there is an impulse to believe that He does so, not because He is Love, but because we are intrinsically lovable. … [D]epth beneath depth and subtlety within subtlety, there remains some lingering idea of our own, our very own, attractiveness. It is easy to acknowledge, but almost impossible to realise for long, that we are mirrors whose brightness, if we are bright, is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us. Surely we must have a little—however little—native luminosity? Surely we can’t be quite creatures?

For this tangled absurdity of a Need … which never fully acknowledges its own neediness, Grace substitutes a full, child-like and delighted acceptance of our Need, a joy in total dependence. We become “jolly beggars”. The good man is sorry for the sins which have increased his Need. He is not entirely sorry for the fresh Need they have produced. … For all the time this illusion to which nature clings as her last treasure, this pretence that we have anything of our own or could for one hour retain by our own strength any goodness that God may pour into us, has kept us from being happy. We have been like bathers who want to keep their feet—or one foot—or one toe—on the bottom, when to lose that foothold would be to surrender themselves to a glorious tumble in the surf. The consequences of parting with our last claim to intrinsic freedom, power, or worth, are real freedom, power and worth, really ours just because God gives them and because we know them to be (in another sense) not “ours”. Anodos has got rid of his shadow.

CS Lewis, The Four Loves

Peak Spirituality

by WFTD, posted in faith
This is the ideal male body. You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like. - Imgflip

Socrates: “It is a disgrace to grow old through sheer carelessness before seeing what manner of man you may become by developing your bodily strength and beauty to their highest limit.”

A lot of people (including me!) have thought long and hard about how to achieve peak physical performance. Everyone’s optimizing for something, and whatever it is—strength, health, beauty, talent, knowledge, GPA, income, status, fame—there’s an app for that, and lots of freely available advice on the Internet (some of which is even good!).

When we try to optimize for things like wealth, health, and beauty, we structure our lives in specific ways that are usually very easy to recognize. Everyone pretty much knows what it looks like to optimize for wealth, health, or beauty; everyone knows lots of people who optimize for those things.

What about spirituality? What would it look like to achieve peak spiritual performance? And lest that question seem too performance-based: What would it look like to achieve optimal closeness to God?

Could we even recognize a life that optimized for such a thing? Could we even know what such a life would look like? And if we could, would we—would I—be genuinely willing to pursue it?

Wonderment and Open Contempt

by WFTD, posted in faith

A Black Friday reflection, perhaps:

The very Nazis look at you with wonderment and an open contempt! For even they are sure that to live for nothing higher than oneself is to lose life; that life, to be called life, can be found only in serving something bigger than one’s personal interests; something that crowds these out of mind and heart, till one forgets about them and lives wholly, and without exception, for that other, worthier thing…. It is long since Aristotle told us that only barbarians have as their ideal the wish to live as they please, and to do what they like. And the New Testament gravely sets us down before the Cross, and bids us gaze, and still gaze, and keep gazing, till the fact has soaked itself into our minds that that, not less than that, is now the standard set us, and that whatever in our lives clashes with that is sin.

AJ Gossip, Experience Worth Hope

None of That Dark Brown Feeling

by WFTD, posted in faith
Fulton Sheen beatification tickets available starting Friday | CIProud.com

Meditation effects far more profound changes in us than resolutions to “do better”; we cannot keep evil thoughts out of our minds unless we put good ones in their place. Supernature, too, abhors a vacuum. In meditation one does not drive sin out of his life; he crowds it out with love of God and neighbor. Our lives do not then depend on the principle of avoiding sin, which is a tiresome job, but on living constantly in the climate of Divine Love. Meditation, in a word, prevents defeat where defeat is final: in the mind. In that silence where God is, false desires steal away. If we meditate before we go to bed, our last thought at night will be our first in the morning. There will be none of that dark brown feeling with which some men face a meaningless day; and in its place will be the joy of beginning another morning of work in Christ’s Name. 

Fulton Sheen

If God So Loved the World…

by WFTD, posted in faith, politics
Kyle Rittenhouse's former lawyer predicted weapons charge dismissal a year ago in politically charged case | Fox News

…then God so loves Kyle Rittenhouse—and Joseph Rosenbaum, Anthony Huber, Gaige Grosskreutz, Jacob Blake, George Floyd, Derek Chauvin, Biden, Trump, Gandhi, Hitler, Madonna, Prince, the person crossing the street. Anyone. You. Me.

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.” But when I’m walking around town, pretty much all I see is ordinary people. Nice people, sometimes, but also annoying people. Obese, loud, forgettable people. Rarely extraordinary.

What would it mean to see only extraordinary people? What would it mean to recognize the immortal beauty in every single human being? What would it mean to love the whole world wholly—clean through?

And what does it mean to be so loved? To be so recognized and seen? And to know that we are not alone—that literally everyone else is just as loved, just as recognized, just as seen?

Annunciation

by WFTD, posted in Art, faith, Literature
File:Henry Ossawa Tanner - The Annunciation.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
Henry Ossawa Tanner, “The Annunciation”

I have come to accept the story of my own

obedience—how I waited not knowing

I was waiting, ear obliging, body

poised. You sent a man I could not

look at fully, or touch, he was a flame

which spoke, and I could not

be afraid—as it’s told,

I rose instinctive as a dove

startled into flight, blue

veil fluttering

floorward and tongue

unglued—May it be done

to me, I said, and it was done

so quickly, I thought to say it

meant I had some say, but

it was preordained—the breath

barely out of my body

before my mind had changed.

Leila Chatti, “Annunciation”

Till the Man Is Perfect

by WFTD, posted in faith
George MacDonald: The Fantasy Writer Who Shaped C.S. Lewis, J. R.R. Tolkien and Madeleine L'Engle | Guideposts

To call the faith of a man his righteousness is simply to speak the truth. Was it not righteous in Abraham to obey God? The Jews placed righteousness in keeping all the particulars of the law of Moses: Paul says faith in God was counted righteousness before Moses was born. You may answer, Abraham was unjust in many things, and by no means a righteous man. True; he was not a righteous man in any complete sense; his righteousness would never have satisfied Paul; neither, you may be sure, did it satisfy Abraham; but his faith was nevertheless righteousness, and if it had not been counted to him for righteousness, there would have been falsehood somewhere, for such faith as Abraham’s is righteousness. It was no mere intellectual recognition of the existence of a God, which is consistent with the deepest atheism; it was that faith which is one with action: ‘He went out, not knowing whither he went.’ The very act of believing in God after such fashion that, when the time of action comes, the man will obey God, is the highest act, the deepest, loftiest righteousness of which man is capable, is at the root of all other righteousness, and the spirit of it will work till the man is perfect.

George MacDonald, “Righteousness”