Parents and haters
Random collected thoughts
Dear T,
Some random thoughts I hope you enjoy.
Favorite Bible verses.
My pastor likes to say nobody gets to pick his favorite Bible verse: your favorite Bible verse picks you. Solomon likes to say that every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but in the end it leads to death.
Nobody to my knowledge has ever picked this verse or even stitched it on a pillow, and to me this is proof Solomon was right. We hold our ignorance, our stubbornness, our folly as only a creed — we deny it in practice.
Fakeup.
"Maybe she's born with it" is the best makeup ad slogan in the entire world — and proof that makeup people know better than half the population. The purpose of makeup isn't to look like you're made up. It's to look like that's how you look when you wake up.
Nothing can make an ugly woman beautiful. The hottest women aren't covered up: they're set free. Their features can't be put on, they can only be highlighted — and the highlighter has to be kept a secret.
The end result of trying to put on features isn’t a bombshell. Whoever paints them on, man or woman, is a drag queen.
A paradox.
The best thing about DEI is that they say it needs to be happening and people are proud of it happening but if you point out where it's happening they hate you.
“We need a woman to be the President” — feminism.
"She got the Presidency because she’s a woman” — sexism.
True skeptics and fools.
Christ teaches that even the sinners do good to their friends. Inversely, you might say even a gullible man questions the enemy. Neither is a compliment — they're the bare minimum.
You have to do good to your enemies to be a good Christian. You have to question both parties to be a good citizen.
The delinquent churchgoer.
Every time I meet a Christian who doesn't go to church anymore, his reasons boil down to two: 1) he can't admit he’s an ignoramus and an ass, and 2) he refuses to accept that churches are run by asses such as himself. A fatal misconception — especially in a religion predicated on universal asshood.
Signs of the times.
“Is this guy cool?” was a question we’d ask, when we were teenagers, whenever we wanted to break out the drugs. Now as adults we have to ask it before saying anything intelligent.
Gratefulness is the key.
The beginning of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations isn’t the best part of the book, but it’s probably the most revealing. In it he lists a series of things he wouldn’t have learned if it wasn’t for other people: not only a list of traits he loves about himself, but the fact that these aspects of himself were a gift. He doesn’t tell us to be humble and grateful: he shows us humility and gratefulness.
9. From Sextus, a friendly disposition. His was a good example of a family governed in a fatherly manner, living in unity with nature; a sense of gravity without affectation. He encouraged me to help in my friends’ interests. To tolerate ignorant people and those who form opinions without consideration. He made himself available to everyone: his conversation more nourishing than flattery. He was beloved. He was happiest when investigating and discovering the world in a scientific, methodical way, never giving over to anger or other passions. He was very affectionate, and could express admiration without being grandiose, and he was smart but never pretentious.
10. From Alexander the grammarian: to refrain from correcting people, nor admonish those who mispronounce, misremember, or utter an odd expression. He would simply debate the thing they meant to say or provide an answer, while at times dexterously producing the very expression the person sought to begin with.
11. Fronto taught me to recognize envy, duplicity, and hypocrisy in tyrants, and that the well-off noble types we call Patricians are generally rather deficient in human affection.
—a beautiful portrait in the Kochon translation.
Nuclear family: better and worse.
The nuclear family usually takes a hit from one of two directions: the first one by people better than it, and the second by people much worse.
The first attack comes from people who believe aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins are just as important as mothers and fathers. This is to say that two people aren’t just poverty in quantity, but in quality. A dad can’t provide what a cousin can, or a grandpa, and visa versa.
But the second attack comes from people who are much worse. They believe you can cut out a parent — usually a father — and that he can be replaced by a daycare worker, some welfare, and an overburdened state employee. They say “it takes a village” and then throw kids to the mercy of a jungle. They believe funding makes a kid successful, and completely forget to make sure he’s loved — and surrounded by the people most likely to love him.
Who’s raising whom?
Few parents are worthy of their own children.
Haters.
There are two kinds of haters. The first makes fun of something because he thinks it's stupid, or gross. The second — either a puritan or a loser — makes fun of something because he can’t do it for one reason or another and he's jealous. What the second haters don't know is it's really easy to tell the difference between the two of them.
A Scorned Lover.
Unconditional love is a phrase we made up and doesn’t fit the facts. First off is the fact that God, as described in the Bible, does have conditions to love you, and the first of these is that you love him back. Hell, as described in the Bible, is only for people who reject Him — the ultimate portrait of a scorned lover.
But second, we forget the whole message of the Gospel is that God had to fight to get you to love Him in the first place, and the fight involved His own murder. If God has to fight desperately to get you to love Him, who are we to claim unconditional love from anyone — even from Him? Love is a pre-emptive strike: whoever wants to be loved most has to love first.
Yours,
-J