Category: Meditation

The Ballast of Faith | Peachy Keenan

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When you raise children to believe in God, they have a final authority to answer to. Not you, not the president, not even their favorite YouTube personality, can fully control them. This is why the people in charge bleat so loudly about the dangers of “Christian nationalism” and “religious fundamentalism.” They are afraid of you laughing in their faces when they attempt to impose their dumb rules on you. Children raised to believe in God just wave these haters away. When your values, morals, and rights come from the divine, they are not up for discussion or debate. They cannot be repealed or replaced. God cannot be canceled.

Children who believe this will naturally be skeptical of politicians who make dumb decisions. They will intuitively understand that unborn children deserve to live. They will live by a moral code more compelling than anything man could ever legislate. They will be forces for good in a world breaking bad. They will be better able to resist the urge to join the mind-flayed lemmings flinging themselves by the thousands into Trans Canyon. They will have more willpower to refuse the first offer of a dangerous drug. They will be better prepared to resist the temptation to indulge in harmful sexual behaviors. They will cherish their own lives.

Faith gives children ballast. Faith gives them confidence that even while suffering, even after they die, they will be okay. Best of all, children who believe in God are much more likely to raise their own children to believe in God, thus perpetuating goodness and decency—and grandchildren for you.

Nothing is foolproof, of course. There is no guarantee that a devout child will thrive.

But it’s the best we’ve got.

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/06/the-ballast-of-faith

Do We “Resemble” God? – Outspoken with Dr Naomi Wolf

May 26, 2023

… things we think of as being human — the need for love and connection, the ability to be intimate, the need to express and to create, the love of beauty and order, the drive to form families and friendships, to sustain an harmonic, morally coherent civilization — perhaps are qualities that do not separate us as humans from what has been presented as a cold, un-needing, abstract God; perhaps, rather, these are qualities that we get from God, the way a child gets blue or brown eyes, or a downturned smile, or certain way of waiting a beat at the end of a joke — from his or her parents.

Perhaps we get these needs, drives and qualities not as human flaws or as failings or irrelevant urges, but rather as parts of a proud inheritance, from a God who is literally a parent who is like us, who made us — perhaps emotionally, creatively, expressively, relatedly, as well as physically — to resemble (domeh) Him.

If we understand this, I do think we see ourselves with more compassion.

I think we see God Himself with more trust and intimacy and confidence, and with less fear, perhaps, and with less incomprehension.

I think if we see how we resemble God — as members of His intimate, immediate family — we can’t despair — and ultimately, it would seem, we cannot fail.

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Why we should all be gazing at more sunsets

“We have, as Western populations, become very disconnected from the natural world,” said Smalley, a doctoral candidate at the University of Exeter in England. “When you see something vast and overwhelming or something that produces this feeling of awe, your own problems can feel diminished and so you don’t worry so much about them.”

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/why-we-should-all-be-gazing-at-more-sunsets/ar-AA19Ox30

Meditating Upon The WISDOM OF SOLOMON

AUDIO w/ TEXT: https://youtu.be/Lr2bjN21NPw

TEXT ALONE: https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Wisdom-of-Solomon-Chapter-1/?espv=1

The Wisdom of Solomon (also known as the Book of Wisdom) is a book in the collection of writings known as the Apocrypha or Deuterocanonical Books of the Bible. As such, it is accepted as Scripture within the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Church traditions, but does not appear in the Protestant Scriptures. In the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Old Testament and other Jewish writings, the Wisdom of Solomon is listed as one of seven wisdom books along with Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, and Sirach.

Americans’ IQ scores drop in four of five measurements – Study Finds

EVANSTON, Ill. —  IQ scores significantly increased from 1932 through the 20th century all over the world, with differences ranging from roughly three to five IQ points per decade. This phenomenon is known as the “Flynn Effect.” Now, however, a new study out Northwestern University suggests a “reverse-Flynn Effect” of sorts may be taking place in the United States.

https://studyfinds.org/americans-iq-test-scores-drop/