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Week 11 The Gospel in a Postmodern World

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Week 11 The Gospel in a Postmodern World

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This week we talked about the mission of the church being to share the gospel, and how Postmodernism changes the difficulty of it. This article poses that in a Postmodern world it is more difficult to share the gospel in the ways previously used. He uses an example from Mark where the disciples tried to cast out a demon from a boy but it did not work. Jesus then came and cast out the demon and told the disciples that that demon was deeper and required a different tactic. This article parallels that story with how we should approach sharing the gospel. Traditional evangelizing won't work because people do not feel conviction or see truth the same way as before. Instead to focus on the love of God and the use of language to share the gospel are more important. I think the author is right about the changing forecast of the mission field but I do not know if his tactics are correct. I think we should do what Jesus suggested in his example. Pray.

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The Supremacy of Christ and the Gospel in a Postmodern World

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In this message, Tim Keller instructs us on how to engage our post-Christian culture with the gospel.

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Week 11 Is Self Hatred the Source of Your Problems?

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Week 11 Is Self Hatred the Source of Your Problems?

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Thursday in class we talked about Ressentiment, and how this led to Postmodern thought. Ressentiment starts as a self hatred due to knowing that you are weaker than someone or something else. This leads to denial and putting that hatred on the offender and eventually acting on it through words. This article warns about the danger of self hatred and how it can lead to actions that are similar to Ressentiment. I think that a lot of issues we face, and people who constantly try to break down others ideas truly hate themselves. It is hidden under an outward hatred of others. Postmodernist hate modern thought and try to break it down. Do you think Post modernist hate themselves and just want to destroy something they see as the reason they hate themselves?

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Self-hatred is the hidden underbelly of all the violence and nastiness in the world.

Self-hatred may seem like too strong a word to some. "I have a little self-doubt," you may say, "but I don't hate myself." Yet if you doubt, judge, or criticize yourself at all, this indicates some dislike or aversion toward yourself as you are. Or if you have a hard time spending time alone, undistracted by work, phone calls, television, computers, or other forms of busyness that pull your attention away from yourself, this suggests that you don't like being with yourself that much.

Whether you have a mild or an extreme case of self-hatred, it affects how you feel inside and how you experience your life every hour of every single day. It influences the thoughts you have, the choices you make, the actions you take, the lovers you select, and the relationships you create. In our culture self-hatred is epidemic, infecting almost everyone to some degree, even those who manage to conceal it under a veneer of success or looking good.

Self-hatred also fuels grievance and violence against others in a fairly predictable way: We try to transfer our own bad feelings onto other people as a way to not feel so bad ourselves. While this takes an especially grisly form in public displays of scapegoating and warfare, the same dynamic operates to some extent in most human relationships.
Where Self-Hatred Hides in Our Relationships
Discharging aggression on others is a classic way of trying to alleviate the shame or self-hatred that relationship conflicts often trigger. It could be something as simple as a wife making a sharp remark about her husband driving too fast. If he hears this as blame, it may trigger his inner critic. Then, to defend against feeling like the bad self, he makes her into the bad other instead. He counterattacks, blaming her for nagging him. Now she feels like the bad self, and to ward off her own critic she in turn tries to make him the bad other: "Why are you always so defensive?" And he retorts: "Why are you always so critical?"

This is what couples do all the time-tossing the sense of badness back and forth like a hot potato. No wonder marriage partners become so invested in being right, even if it destroys their connection. Being right is a way of trying to deflect the critic's attack, with its crippling self-hatred and shame. It is always very sad to see two people who love each other going at each other this way.

One of the shortcomings of conventional religion is that it often speaks in the voice of the critic, blaming people for their sins and unworthiness. Instead of castigating people for their faults, it would be far more compassionate and skillful to help people see how the so-called deadly sins are all symptoms of not knowing that they're loved.

Greed, for example, grows out of an inner sense of hunger, "I don't have enough," under which lies an even deeper sense of "I'm not enough." Yet what is this inner poverty that we try to relieve through consuming and possessing, if not the emptiness of feeling cut off from love? Fire-and-brimstone moralists would have us believe that greed is proof of our sinfulness. But perhaps greed is only as compelling as it is because it promises to relieve our deprivation, yet without ever delivering the real goods, thus leaving us ever more prey to our hunger, which only the food of love can truly satisfy.

Likewise, jealousy only arises out of lack of confidence in being loved: Somehow life is loving others more than us. Similarly, self-centeredness, arrogance, and pride are attempts to make ourselves important or special, to make up for a lack of genuine self-love. Egocentricity is a way of trying to make the world revolve around "me," to compensate for an underlying fear that I don't really matter much at all. If we felt loved, of course, it would never occur to us that we didn't matter.
Self-Hatred on the World Stage
What drives people to seek power over others? Why would anyone want to spend their short, precious life pursuing the chimera of empire-building or world domination? What's the thrill in that? Power over others is a way of trying to prove that I am somebody, to force others to look up to me: "I'll get you to respect me one way or another, even if it means torturing or killing you." If I can show you I'm really somebody-the chief honcho, the dictator, the world conqueror, the filthy rich magnate-then you will have to look up to me, and then maybe I can feel good about myself. But if I felt held in love, there would be no reason to try to set myself above you.

Behind all the evils of the world is the pain of a wounded, disconnected heart. We behave badly because we hurt inside. And we hurt because our basic nature is wide open and tender to begin with. Thus all the ugliness in the world can be traced back to turning away from our raw and beautiful heart.

When we recognize this-that the sins of the world are but symptoms of the universal wound- we can understand the words of the French spiritual teacher Arnaud Desjardins when he writes: "There are no bad people (including Stalin and Hitler, who were responsible for the deaths of millions)-only badly loved people." Here the root of all evil is laid bare: There are no bad people, only badly loved people. If Stalin, Hitler, or Osama bin Laden experienced themselves as loved and lovable, what motivation would they have to kill? Feeling love circulating through you makes you want to celebrate and nurture life, not destroy it.

Of course, dictators like Stalin or Hitler don't realize what is driving them because they have buried the pain of their wounding underneath many layers of grievance, hardening, and self-aggrandizement. No doubt it would take many years of psychotherapy to unpack the ways that they are bruised, badly loved souls in need of tender, loving care.
Love Is the Answer
"If Stalin had been truly loved," as Desjardins points out, "he would not have killed twenty million people." The same holds true for humanity as a whole. Imagine for a moment humanity as an individual. If this fellow called Humanity knew himself as truly lovable, as a wondrous being whose essential nature was to bring luminous love and wisdom into this world, would he need to continue blindly destroying the planet while indulging in senseless vengeance and violence?

As long as Humanity fails to recognize his basic goodness, he can only act in pathological, self-destructive ways. And when he stops for a moment to look at all the havoc he's caused, he can only conclude that he is a miserable creature indeed. Indeed, the news media serve as a mirror in which Humanity looks at himself each day, reflecting back to him lurid, degraded images of what he is. How can poor old Humanity come to love himself when, continually seeing through this glass darkly, he only witnesses his own pettiness, depravity, and ugliness?

Humanity as a whole is still a child in need of healing-in need of knowing that it is beautiful in its very nature. Each of us must heal the heart and wake up to our inner beauty on our own, for the sake of humanity, by developing self-love. This is a journey of loosening up your self-concepts, letting yourself have your experience, letting yourself be the being that you are, saying yes to yourself, understanding your weaknesses with kindness, and appreciating the unique gift your life has to offer.

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Is Self-Hatred the Source of Your Problems?

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Self-hatred is the hidden underbelly of all the violence and nastiness in the world. Self-hatred may seem like too strong a word to some. "I have a little self-doubt," you may say, "but I don't hate myself." Yet if you doubt, judge, or criticize yourself at all, this indicates some dislike or aversion toward yourself as you are.

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Lewis talks about conditioning and subjective thought and how it can be a detriment to society. I agree that subjectivism in classrooms is dangerous. This cartoon shows a bow who does not know the answer to a question so he uses subjective thought about here not being linear time to counteract the question. I think this is where danger comes into education. When subjectivism is brought into education principles cannot be accurately known because they are denied and not agreed upon. The purpose of education is not to agree on a fact, but to learn the fact. If subjectivism were to take over the education system we would forget all facts and not know objective truth. There would be more confusion than solutions. This student is answering a question about history, if history is subjective how do we know where we came from? Same as science, english and math. Education cannot be subjective and still be called education.

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Week 9 Men without Chests Threaten Civilization 

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Week 9 Men without Chests Threaten Civilization 

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This article talks about how C.S. Lewis predicted moral relativism that is present in today's society. It states that men without chests are just animals, not actually human. Without virtue we aren't truly human. It notes that today's education system has "fully embraced" moral relativism, and people in power of America are men without chests. I do not think that America's education system has fully turned to moral relativism. This is because students still get punished for unmoral behavior like fighting, or wearing holes in their jeans. I do think the idea of moral relativism is being introduced more in schools through the sensory that educators have to have.  However, I do agree that there are, and have been people in power in this age that could be considered "without a chest". It is being pushed more now than ever before to be okay with others beliefs and that everyone is right.

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Men without Chests Threaten Civilization

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Mid-twentieth-century C. S. Lewis witnessed and wrote about the increasing moral breakdown and intellectual decay of Western civilization. He observed how secular and atheistic academics, philosophers, politicians, intellectuals, and cultural e…

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Week 8 Decisions Are Emotional, Not Logical

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Week 8 Decisions Are Emotional, Not Logical

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We talked in class about arguments and basing our arguments purely on logic and not emotional. This article talks about a study was done to see how people base their decisions. The study was done on people who had damage to the part of the brain that generated emotion. He discovered that these people rareley could come to a decision. The reason was they had to base their decisions solely on logic and there were always pros and cons to every decision. I find this interesting because many times we think we are making decisions based on logic but this shows that we do factor in emotion. Emotion aids in logic to make decisions. Emotion does not go against it, but can hinder our thoughts. When we think logical we may know which one would be better, but choose the other due to emotion. The question is should we factor in logic to our decisions or base them solely on emotion? Or should both be weighed equally in our decision making?

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Think of a situation where you had bulletproof facts, reason, and logic on your side, and believed there was absolutely no way the other person could say no to your perfectly constructed argument and proposal. To do so would be impossible, you figured, because there was no other logical solution or answer.

And then the other person dug in his heels and refused to budge. He wasn't swayed by your logic. Were you flabbergasted?

This is similar to what many negotiators do when they sit down at the table to hammer out a deal. They come armed with facts, and they attempt to use logic to sway the other party. They figure that by piling on the data and using reason to explain their side of the situation, they can construct a solution that is simply irrefutable-and get the other party to say yes.

They're doomed to fail, however, because decision-making isn't logical, it's emotional, according to the latest findings in neuroscience.

A few years ago, neuroscientist Antonio Damasio made a groundbreaking discovery. He studied people with damage in the part of the brain where emotions are generated. He found that they seemed normal, except that they were not able to feel emotions. But they all had something peculiar in common: they couldn't make decisions. They could describe what they should be doing in logical terms, yet they found it very difficult to make even simple decisions, such as what to eat. Many decisions have pros and cons on both sides-shall I have the chicken or the turkey? With no rational way to decide, these test subjects were unable to arrive at a decision.

So at the point of decision, emotions are very important for choosing. In fact even with what we believe are logical decisions, the very point of choice is arguably always based on emotion.

This finding has enormous implications for negotiation professionals. People who believe they can build a case for their side using reason are doomed to be poor negotiators, because they don't understand the real factors that are driving the other party to come to a decision. Those who base their negotiation strategy on logic end up relying on assumptions, guesses, and opinions. If my side of the argument is logical, they figure, then the other side can't argue with it and is bound to come around to my way of thinking. The problem is, you can't assume that the other party will see things your way.

What the negotiator can and must do, however, is create a vision for the other side to bring about discovery and decision on their part. In the end, your opponent will make the decision because he wants to . Getting him to want to , using the step-by-step methodology that is part of the Camp System , is the job of the negotiator-not trying to convince him with reason.

You don't tell your opponent what to think or what's best. You help them discover for themselves what feels right and best and most advantageous to them. Their ultimate decision is based on self-interest. That's emotional. I want this. This is good for me and my side.

There's a detailed and systematic way to go about building vision the right way. But in general, if you can get the other party to reveal their problems, pain, and unmet objectives, then you can build a vision for them of their problem, with you and your proposal as the solution. They won't make their decision because it is logical. They'll make their decision because you have helped them feel that it's to their advantage to do so.
is founder and CEO of The Camp Negotiation Institute, with more than 400 students from 24 countries enrolled in its Team Member courses. He is author of two bestselling books published by Crown, Start with No and NO: The Only System of Negotiation You Need for Work or Home, which have been translated into 12 languages, and a new 6-CD audio program "The Power of No," produced by Nightingale-Conant. He was recently a featured panelist at Harvard's 2012 Negotiation & Leadership Conference.

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Decisions Are Emotional, Not Logical: The Neuroscience behind Decision Making

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Think of a situation where you had bulletproof facts, reason, and logic on your side, and believed there was absolutely no way the other person could say no to your perfectly constructed argument and proposal. To do so would be impossible, you figured, because there was no other logical solution or answer.

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This cartoon goes right along with the Parable of the Madman. However in this case the "madman" is carrying a sign, not yelling. This cartoon is referring to how God is dead in the mind of teenagers in today's society. I think that this is interesting but I do not think that God is dead in the mind of teenagers alone. It seems as if God has died in the minds of many people in the early to mid-20's as well. Look at secular college campus'. College level is where a lot of religion questioning begins in people, and I think that this is where God begins to "die". People who grew up in the church will no longer believe when they have been in college for while. The secular, ungodly influence of college campuses had killed God in the minds of many young people.

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Many people confuse Socialism and Communism. Many times they are used interchangeably and are seen as the same. This article shows the similarities and differences between the two. Communism is socialism, but Socialism is not Communism. Communism is and extreme form of socialism that strips people of their identity and riches to make them all one unit. Socialism has a form of economic democracy, which I find interesting because generally when thinking of Socialism I think of a strong central government controlling a people. However, the central government controlling the people is actually Communism. Socialism seems to be a little more voluntary by the working class to put their abilities together for the better good, while Communism seems like the government stripping people of identity for power.

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Communism vs Socialism - Difference and Comparison | Diffen

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What’s the difference between Communism and Socialism? In a way, communism is an extreme form of socialism. Many countries have dominant socialist political parties but very few are truly communist. In fact, most countries - including staunch capitalist bastions like the U.S. and U.K. - have government program…

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Many people argue that money is not the most important thing in, but having time to enjoy. What is interesting is that people spend time, which they claim is the most important, for money. You can always make more money, but you cannot get more time. I think that the two go hand in hand, and you cannot have a good life unless their is a balance. One with a lot of time and not money may struggle and suffer from the weight of poverty. One with lots of money, and no time, my suffer from the lack of personal relationships and life enjoyment. For one to truly enjoy life they must have both time and money. Time to make moments that last, and money to make a difference with the short time that they have.

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This photo is of a series of tree branches coming to together at a sunset. The way they meet looks like a portrait of Christ. The trees do not know they image they create, instead we create the image in our minds. This is how Freud viewed religion. He believed religion was an illusion that people created in their lives from issues in their childhood. Freud believed that people need to make something out of their circumstances and so they turn to a god or gods. To him religion of any sort was foolish and was created out of defense against nature and not a true need.

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Darwin came up with the theory of evolution through natural selection. Darwin made a voyage across many islands and places to study plant and animal life over time. He concluded that both plants and animals (including humans) undergo evolution through natural selection. Therefore in order to survive all living things must change to adapt to changes in their environment. Microevolution is small changing within a species, while Macroevolution is large scale species change into another species overtime. Darwin theorized that through natural selection all species undergo both types of evolution to survive. However, I think that microevolution is the only type of evolution that actually occurs. It can be proven that over time species change to adapt to the changing environment, but I have yet to see a species that changes into a different species.

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I often observe that in discussions of evolution, both evolution skeptics and those who embrace neo-Darwinian evolution are prone to make one of two significant mistakes. Both stem from a failure to distinguish between microevolution and macroevolution.

The textbook for a genetics course I took at the University of Waterloo defined evolution as "changes in allele frequencies in a population over time." An allele can be described as a variation of a particular gene. Defining evolution in this way can be misleading; it would be more accurate to call this variation. No new genes are required, just variation in existing genes or the loss of existing genetic information. This sort of variation is typically referred to as microevolution.

Microevolution (variation) takes place through genetic drift, natural selection, mutations, insertions/deletions, gene transfer, and chromosomal crossover, all of which produce countless observed variations in plant or animal populations throughout history. Examples include variations of the peppered moth, Gal�pagos finch beaks, new strains of flu viruses, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and variations in stickleback armour. Each year, thousands of papers are published dealing with examples of microevolution/variation.

The mistake I often hear evolution skeptics make is to the effect that "evolution" is all rubbish, bunk, and false. They are often astonished to learn that variation (which they completely agree with) is defined as "evolution." The solution is for evolution skeptics to be more precise on exactly what they have problems with. They can endorse microevolution (variation) but point out that a) it is misleading to call variation "evolution" and, b) their problems are with macroevolution.

The definition of macroevolution is surprisingly non-precise for a scientific discipline. Macroevolution can be defined as evolution above the species level, or evolution on a "grand scale," or microevolution + 3.8 billion years. It has never been observed, but a theoretical example is the evolution from a chordate eel-like creature to a human being. Many people who embrace Darwinian evolution confidently state that evolution is a proven fact. They say this on the basis of thousands of papers discussing microevolution. Herein lies the second mistake ... the assumption that because variation/microevolution is such an overwhelmingly proven fact that, therefore, macroevolution must be as well.

Macroevolution is very different from microevolution. The reason there are so many countless observations of variation/microevolution is that it requires no statistically significant levels of novel genetic information; it is trivially easy to achieve. The reason that macroevolution has never been observed is that it requires statistically significant levels of novel genetic information. It is extremely difficult to achieve, but Darwinian theory predicts that genetic information can significantly increase over time. Falsifiable predictions can be made and these are worth examining.

So in order to clearly distinguish between microevolution and macroevolution in a rigorous scientific way, let me propose the following definitions:

Microevolution: genetic variation that requires no statistically significant increase in functional information.

Macroevolution: genetic change that requires a statistically significant increase in functional information.

Both statistical significance and functional information are defined in the literature. We also have a method to measure evolutionary change in terms of functional information, so we are ready to move on, avoiding the two mistakes discussed above.
Cross-posted at SQyBLu/Contemplations. Photo credit: Kirk Durston.

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Microevolution versus Macroevolution: Two Mistakes | Evolution News

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I often observe that in discussions of evolution, both evolution skeptics and those who embrace neo-Darwinian evolution are prone to make one of two significant mistakes. Both stem from a failure to distinguish between microevolution and macroevolution. The textbook for a genetics course I took at the University of Waterloo defined evolution as "changes in allele frequencies in a population over time."

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This picture shows the reality that people mask their true selves to appeal to certain people. Modernism during the Industrial Revolution led people to live two different lives, one at home and one at work. Today that has extended to a social life, social media life, etc. People tend to act certain ways depending on their situation leading them to have multiple personalities in situations. This is similar to a person putting on different mask for different events and settings, only to take the mask off when they're home. People then become confused with who they truly are and where they fit in best.