An insightful piece on why it’s unhelpful to put Christians in a convenient box for the purposes of your argument. Annoyingly, Christians do it as much as anyone else.
No excerpt. The whole thing is great.
Category Archives: Personal
Smart people on critical thinking
Smart people on critical thinking
The last rule is my favourite:
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second, it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident.
April Fool’s
The really ironic thing about April Fool’s is that it’s the only day of the year that anyone is even remotely skeptical of the Internet.
Thomas Jefferson, via The Callus
Side note: I enjoy April Fool’s Day pranks, and have been known to pull some of them myself, but I’m a little troubled by the expense involved in certain stunts. Daring Fireball makes a reasonable point.
John Piper on Roman Catholic “heresy”
John Piper on Roman Catholic “heresy”
A timely and helpful post from John Piper, I reckon:
God’s mercy is not a warrant to neglect or deny precious truths, especially those that are at the heart of how we get right with God. And the teachers of the church (notably the Pope) will be held more responsible than others for teaching what is fully biblical.
Idolatry aside, this is a pretty good summary of why I’m not a Catholic, why I have major problems with Catholic theology, and why I totally respect many Catholic individuals regardless.
Discomfort
I don’t buy into everything I read on Zen Habits, but this post resonates deeply. Please read the whole thing.
I desperately need to become more comfortable with discomfort.
“Hooked on hacking life”
Seth Godin’s latest post wasn’t quite what I was expecting from the title.
Here’s a snippet:
Striving to get smarter, better and faster helps us create our future. The risk is that merely collecting, trading and discussing the tools turns into the point.
It’s possible that your next frontier isn’t to get more efficient, it’s to get more brave.
(See? It has absolutely nothing to do with compromised computers at Facebook, Microsoft, Apple and Twitter.)
My 2012 was pretty overrated, so I’m currently doing more “life-hacking” than usual – ditching some of the things I don’t have time to do, removing friction wherever possible, trying to have more fun, etc. It’s all part of trying to make 2013 a better year.
But, as always, I’m finding it easy to focus on the minutiae of optimising myself rather than on Actually Getting Things Done.
Thanks for the timely post, Seth.
To bravery! #drink
Steroids, by xkcd
“Those people”
For once, I disagree with Seth.
At a recent seminar, a woman who helps run a community college stood up to ask a question.
“Well, the bad news,” she said, “is that we have to let everyone in. And the truth is, many of these kids just can’t be the leaders you’re describing, can’t make art. We need people to do manual work, and it’s those people.”
I couldn’t believe it. I was speechless, then heartbroken.
So, there are people who are not leaders. People who are not remarkably creative or artistic. People who don’t aspire to rise to the top of any particular pile. People who are content with a simple life, with work that may or may not stimulate them, with the love they’re able to give and receive.
Admittedly, I’m not one of “those people.” I’m naturally restless. I always have bright ideas for tomorrow / next month / next year. I struggle to find contentment in having my basic needs met. Vocational boredom is almost intolerable to me.
But if everyone were like me, nothing would get done.
This makes me thankful for people who are more easily satisfied than me. Who aren’t so often distracted by endless ideas and inspiration. Who prefer the consistency of repetitive or mundane work to the neurosis of creating, managing, financing, solving, consoling and everything else that comes with being a leader.
I don’t think less of “those people.” I respect them. Heck, I envy them! Their lives are usually so much more balanced than mine.
Why so heartbroken, Seth?
When those that we’ve chosen to teach and lead write off people because of what they look like or where they live or who their parents are, it’s a tragedy. Worse, we often write people off merely because they’ve been brainwashed into thinking that they have no ability to do more than they’ve been assigned. Well, if we brainwashed them into setting limits, I know we can teach them to ignore those limits.
I agree about stereotyping, and I agree about brainwashing, but I don’t think the woman he quoted was guilty of either.
Wasn’t she just being honest? Pragmatic?
We can’t all be leaders, and there’s nothing to be gained by trying to mould the unwilling into something we imagine they could be capable of.
If we’re not careful, we’ll become so desperate to foist our version of greatness – e.g. risk-taking / game-changing / cutting-edge – on people destined for something entirely different.
I’m not interested in trying to tear “those people” away from their straightforward / stress-free / simple lives. I’m certainly not interested in demeaning their choice to live that way, assuming it really was a choice.
I’m grateful for the work “those people” do, and more often than not, I want to learn from their ability to do it so cheerfully.
“Learning to be problem-centred”
“Learning to be problem-centred”
Not that life should be about problems, but when presented with them:
Sometimes the question is just a question and the answer, if there is one, lies somewhere within the problem, waiting to be found.
Worth thinking about, I reckon.
“Complaining: A Short Manual”
Here’s the fifth point, before it was self-censored:
Still not satisfied? Tell someone close, or a therapist or something, but be sure to get honest feedback because at this point you’re probably being a total pussy.
I prefer the original. Sometimes we need a good kick up the posterior. I know I do, whinger that I am.
(via Svbtle)