day no. 15,909: wealth control

“Life is so brief that no man can afford to lose a day. It has been well said that if a great king should bring us a great heap of gold, and bid us take as much as we could count in a day, we should make a long day of it.” — Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Morning and Evening

While we are not obligated to pursue as much blessing as possible, some blessings require this caveat more than others. 

For example: Children are a blessing. The Bible tells me so.

Psalm 127:3

Behold, children are a gift of the LORD,

The fruit of the womb is a reward.

But children are the kind of blessing people are happy to have at a minimum. They use birth control and family planning to limit how much blessing they have to put up with. They postpone marriage in order to pursue other things. They then pick marital partners based on how many children the other wants to have. They can't imagine what they would even do with 5, 6, 7 kids. That would be too many.

It's a good conversation and one well worth having.

But riches are a blessing as well. The Bible tells me that too.

Proverbs 10:22

It is the blessing of the LORD that makes rich.

But money is the kind of blessing people are happy to see maximized. Few have invested much if any thought into how much money would be too much for them. No one uses wealth control to keep themselves from becoming too well off. No one uses upward mobility management to keep from getting promoted too quickly. No one goes into marriage with a ceiling of how much money they are comfortable making or picks their partners for their insistence on making no more than a particular dollar amount per year. No one takes measures to make sure they only have so much money. And no one lacks ideas for what they would do if they had more of it. Creativity abounds and wish lists accumulate when it comes to considering MORE money.

It's a conversation worth having, but few are contemplating or considering it.

Time is a blessing from God. We tend to want less of it, like children, when we think of it in terms of responsibilities and we tend to want more of it, like money, when we think of it in terms of personal fulfillment. We want our work to be short and our leisure to be long. We want our obligations to be quicker and our play to be extended.

day no. 15,908: a prey to emotion rather than a master of intellect

"Has it ever struck you as odd, or unfortunate, that to-day, when the proportion of literacy throughout Western Europe is higher than it has ever been, people should have become susceptible to the influence of advertisement and mass-propaganda to an extent hitherto unheard-of and unimagined?" -- Dorothy L. Sayers, The Lost Tools of Learning

Literacy without logic is more dangerous than illiteracy. The illiterate may be taken advantage of by the learned, but the illogical literate may be taught to thank the learned for taking advantage of them.

"It has been the great tragedy of our time that people were taught to read and not taught to reason." -- G. K. Chesterton 

Knowing how to read without knowing how to reason only produces fodder for propaganda, but knowing how to reason what you read reduces the utility of propaganda.

"For we let our young men and women go out unarmed, in a day when armour was never so necessary. By teaching them all to read, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects. We who were scandalized in 1940 when men were sent to fight armoured tanks with rifles, are not scandalised when young men and women are sent into the world to fight massed propaganda with a smattering of 'subjects'; and when whole classes and whole nations become hypnotised by the arts of the spellbinder, we have the impudence to be astonished. We dole out lip-service to the importance of education— lip-service and, just occasionally, a little grant of money; we postpone the school leaving-age, and plan to build bigger and better schools; the teachers slave conscientiously in and out of school-hours, till responsibility becomes a burden and a nightmare; and yet, as I believe, all this devoted effort is largely frustrated, because we have lost the tools of learning, and in their absence can only make a botched and piecemeal job of it."  -- Dorothy L. Sayers, The Lost Tools of Learning

The brain is a battlefield. As C.S. Lewis once noted, "the head rules the belly through the chest." In other words, our thoughts lead our instincts through our desires. Our brains must lead us into battle. Education is not merely being taught what to think, but being trained how to think. It is not learning a lot about something, it is learning how to see everything in anything.

1 Peter 1:13

Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind.

Get your head in the game.

Ephesians 6:4

And, you fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

"In this passage, Paul requires Christian fathers to provide their children with a 'paideia of the Lord.' To the ancient world, the boundaries of paideia were much wider than the boundaries of what we understand as education. Far more is involved in paideia than taking the kids to church, having an occasional time of devotions in the home, or even providing the kids with a Christian curriculum." -- Douglas Wilson, The Paideia of God

God has given parents, and fathers in particular, the charge to ensure that their offspring are raised in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. We cannot fail them in this without being held accountable. We must dedicate ourselves and discipline ourselves to discipline and instruct them.

The word "education" is derived from the Latin word ēducātiō (a breeding, a bringing up, a rearing) from ēducō (I educate, I train) which is related to the homonym ēdūcō (I lead forth, I take out; I raise up, I erect) composed from ē- (from, out of) + dūcō (I lead, I conduct).

Education is about leading someone somewhere, It is leading them out of something and into something else. All education is therefore, religious. It all believes and begins with a doctrine of origins and ends with a doctrine of eschatology. There is no neutrality because everything has value. Everything is either complementing or competing with where you're trying to go or how you're trying to get there.

day no. 15,907: laudo

"Pride is passive, desiring only the applause of one person, which it already has."

-- G.K. Chesterton, Heretics

Pride is self-satisfied or self-condemned. Either way, it's vote is final. It has the last word. No one can overrule the proud. If it sees itself as guilty, no one else can acquit them. If it sees itself as innocent, no one else can condemn. No one else's opinion matters. The only opinion that matters is the one already held. So, even when pride disparages itself, it congratulates itself for its high standards. Its assessment is always ultimate. It applauds itself even for its criticism of itself.

day no. 15,906: the new nuns... from convent to corporate

"Unless women are willing to sacrifice their sexuality in the pursuit of their career and become nuns in devout service to the corporation, they have to deal with the fact that they will get pregnant." -- Rebekah Merkle, Eve in Exile

Corporations and colleges have replaced convents.

Once upon a time, a woman could make a vow of celibacy for the sake of pursuing a life of service in the house of God in lieu of a life of serving a husband and children in a household of God. Today, women take vows of sterility for the sake of an advanced degree and upward mobility in the marketplace. These modern acolytes are no less devoted than their sister ancestors. They are equally as committed as the nuns of days gone by. However, the nuns of yesteryear at least knew full well that they were religious, whereas the modern sisters of sophisticatti do not. These new nuns are devoted to worshiping their gods and devoting themselves to their demands without realizing the sacrifices they are making. The offerings are so ubiquitous they are rarely noticed. They have so flooded the market that one rarely notices how damp everything is.

day no. 15,905: entitled egalitarianism

Deuteronomy 25:14–15
You shall not have in your house two kinds of measures, a large and a small. A full and fair weight you shall have, a full and fair measure you shall have, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

Equality is a virtue, except for when it isn't. It, like avocados, can go bad pretty quickly. Equality left on the counter spoils. Entitled Egalitarianism, as Doug Wilson calls it, is simply *Screwtape's "democracy" re-purposed for a post-Christian society.

Egalitarianism desires more than mere equality of access, it requires equality of outcome. It wants everything to end up equal -- not just guaranteeing a fair fight, but a draw.

By doing so, however, it is itself an unfair measure. It weighs a matter based entirely on its outcome. And because it is easier to cut a few inches off the tall than it is to produce a few inches in the short, those at the privileged end of any stick are the objects of their fair-mindedness. The tall throw the level off. The rich make the bell curve move. The handsome remind the ugly of their ugliness by the disparity. So, they all simply need to be taken down a few notches. It's easier  and more efficient to cut some people down than to lift everything else up.

As Margaret Thatcher once observed, "(they) would rather that the poor were poorer, provided that the rich were less rich."

As long as everything ends up equal. Even if that means equally bad. Egalitarianism prefers equally bad to unequally good. Equal is the goal. That is what becomes of pursuing equality as a virtue without considering it in the world that God has made. This is what comes of failing to measure equality by any other standard. When equality is the only standard you have, you have nothing to judge your equality. It makes equality untouchable and subject to nothing else. But equality is only good when in submission to God. Outside of His rule, it is merely a fashionable tyrant.

Egalitarianism isn't concerned with everyone being at the starting line at the same time. It isn't mainly concerned with a fair start. That is the fair and square kind of equality God gets behind. Egalitarianism is concerned with engineering and ensuring that everyone crosses the finish line at the exact same time. In order to accomplish this, the race must be rigged. In other words, egalitarianism embraces unfairness as a means of achieving what it calls "fair." Fair and square for them is not measured at the starting line, but at the finish.

God commands equality of standard, not of outcome. An ounce should be the same regardless of whose ounce it is. An inch should be the same regardless of what part of town its measuring. But the scale should not read 12 oz. regardless of what is placed upon it. A scale should not say ten pounds regardless of what is placed upon it. That is simply unfairness in another direction. It is equal, but it is wicked. Equality not always a virtue because lying never is. Equality is like the little girl that Longfellow knew who had the little curl right in the middle of her forehead... when it is good, it is very good indeed, but when it is bad, it is horrid.

*C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes a Toast, postlude to The Screwtape Letters

day no. 15,904: running the wrong direction

1 Corinthians 13:11
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

Once upon a time, little boys wanted to be like their dads when they grew up. Nowadays, many dads wish they could get back to being boys again. The discontent has begun to run in the wrong direction. We have elevated the wrong end of the stick.

Boys wanting to be men is godly discontent producing maturity.
Men wanting to be boys is ungodly malcontent producing immaturity.

Hebrews 6:1
Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity.

day no. 15,903: ordo amoris

Colossians 3:1-7 (KJV)
If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: for which things’ sake the wrath of God cometh on the children of disobedience: in the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them.

We were made to set our first and best affections on God above and to set what’s left on His green earth below. We were not made to despise the ground beneath our feet, but to praise the God above the heavens and to thank Him for the feeling of mud between our toes and dirt under our fingernails. The problem with our affections is not having them, but having them out of order. C.S. Lewis, in the Abolition of Man, agreed with Augustine who said that the aim of education is ordo amoris, or ordered affections.

The apostle Paul urges us to set our affections first and foremost where they belong first and foremost, on God above. He also exhorts us to kill our disordered affections. Better to die to desire than to live under disordered ones. When we place anything above God, we ruin whatever affections we have for it. Our first and best given to anything except Him ends in the worst at last. But when we love Him above and beyond any and every other thing, we are set free to love whatever He gives. We do not honor the Giver by rejecting His gifts, we love the Giver by receiving what He gives and appreciating it enough to keep it around, but not on the top shelf.