New Sneakers

From Tedd Tripp's Shepherding a Child's Heart:

Imagine this scenario: Your child is putting on his new sneakers. You knew last night when you bought them that he was not really happy with them, but they were the only ones you could afford. Now, as he is getting ready for school,he is crying. How are you going to handle this one? If your objective is to let him know what you think, you may say something like this:

"Look, I don't know you don't like the sneakers, but that's all I could afford. Don't be such a baby. What would Jared say if I told him you were crying over something like this? They're just going to get messed up anyway. In a couple of days no one will know what they look like. What do you care about what those kids think about your sneakers? Who made them the experts anyhow? You should be thankful you even have them. Those sneakers you don't like cost more than my first car. Look, I have to go to work; I have more important things to worry about than sneakers ..."

Now, if your primary objective is to understand the child's internal struggles, you could have a conversation like this:

PARENT: You're upset about the sneakers, aren't you?
CHILD: Yeah.
PARENT: I didn't think you liked them when we bought them last night. You didn't want to tell me, did you?
CHILD: No.
PARENT: What don't you like about them?
CHILD: They look stupid.
PARENT: I don't know what you mean.
CHILD: Jared says they look stupid.
PARENT: When did Jared see them? We just got them last night.
CHILD: Chris got a pair just like this and Jared told everybody in class that he looked like a dweeb.
PARENT: What's a dweeb? Oh, never mind. What looks dweeby about those sneakers?
CHILD: This red strip on the back. They don't put red stripes on the the new ones. They're last year's shoes---that's why they were only $87.98.
PARENT: Oh, I see. You're afraid that they will call you a dweeb today, right?
CHILD: Yeah.
PARENT: That really hurts, doesn't it?
CHILD: Yeah, I don't know why they should care about what my shoes are like, but I know they'll call me a dweeb.

What are you learning? Your child is struggling with feelings that you can identify with. There is a genuine pressure out there in his third-grade classroom. He is feeling the pressure to be approved by his peers. This circumstance is bringing out the hopes and fears of his heart.

Original Goodness

I have spoken of a light in the soul, a light that is
uncreated and uncreateable ... to the extent that
we can deny ourselves and turn away from created
things, we shall find our unity and blessing in that
little spark in the soul, which neither space nor time
touches.
---Meister Eckhart

In his book "Original Goodness", Eknath Easwaran comments and expands on these words, explaining that Eckhart essentially taught four principles:

First, there is a "light in the soul that is uncreated and
uncreateable": unconditioned, universal, deathless, in
religious language, a divine core of personality that cannot
be separated from God. Eckhart is precise: this is not what the English language calls the "soul," but some essence in the soul that lies at the very center of consciousness. ... In Indian mysticism this divine core is called simply atman, "the Self".

Second, this divine essence can be realized. ... It can and should be discovered, so that its presence becomes a reality in daily life.

Third, this discovery is life's real and highest goal.

Last, when we realize this goal, we discover simultaneously that the divinity within ourselves is one and the same in all --- all individuals, all creatures, all of life.

Easwaran also describes this "little spark in the soul" as a "divine seed" and quotes Origen:

because it is God that has sowed the seed in us, pressed it in,
begotten it, it cannot be extirpated or die out; it glows and
sparkles, burning and giving light, and always it moves
upward toward God.

And then Eckhart again:

The seed of God is in us. Given an intelligent and hard-working farmer, it will thrive and grow up to God, whose seed it is, and according its fruits will be God-nature. Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God-seed into God.

The signs of this God-nature, according to Easwaran, include: compassion, fearlessness, and equanimity. Easwaran goes on to say that Original Goodness

does not deny what traditional religion calls sin; it simply
reminds us that before original sin was original innocence.
That is our real nature. Everything else - all our habits,
our conditioning, our past mistakes - is a mask. ... But the
nature of a mask is that it can be removed. This is the
promise and the purpose of all spiritual disciplines: to take
off the mask that hides our real face.

This is how I became a follower of Jesus

Having turned away from the church because I could not believe the message it said that I must believe, I began a search for my own answers to the universal questions. I encountered stories of people who came to an experience of God in an East Indian context, and who told their stories using the rich language of Hinduism. Also from the ancient Indian religious traditions, I found ways of practicing the presence of God on a more daily basis.

As a result of these things, I experienced something mentally, emotionally and spiritually that changed me forever.

I came to see that Jesus had a relationship with the same God as the Indian mystics, that the same God lived in him. And I realized that basically what had happened to me was that I had decided to follow Jesus. My experience of Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit expanded from a distant misunderstanding based on doctrinal statements into something full, meaningful and alive.

Guestbook

Please let me know that you stopped by and leave your name and tell me where you are from. Thanks for stopping by! Philip

Jung and the Self

The following is taken from here:

The self is the most important personality archetype and also the most difficult to understand. Jung has called the self the central archetype, the archetype of psychological order and the totality of the personality. The self is the archetype of centeredness. It is the union of the conscious and the unconscious that embodies the harmony and balance of the various opposing elements of the psyche. The self directs the functioning of the whole psyche in an integrated way. According to Jung, "[C]onscious and unconscious are not necessarily in opposition to one another, but complement one another to form a totality, which is the self" (1928b, p. 175). Jung discovered the self archetype only after his investigations of the other structures of the personality.

The self is depicted in dreams or images impersonally (as a circle, mandala, crystal, or stone) or personally (as a royal couple, a divine child, or some other symbol of divinity). Great spiritual teachers, such as Christ, Muhammed, and Buddha, are also symbols for the self. These are all symbols of wholeness, unification, reconciliation of polarities, and dynamic equilibrium--the goals of the individuation process (Edinger, 1996).

Jung explains the function of the self: The ego receives the light from the Self. Though we know of this Self, yet it is not known.... Although we receive the light of consciousness from the Self and although we know it to be the source of our illumination, we do not know whether it possesses anything we would call consciousness.... If the Self could be wholly experienced, it would be a limited experience, whereas in reality its experience is unlimited and endless.... If I were one with the Self I would have knowledge of everything, I would speak Sanskrit, read cuneiform script, know the events that took place in pre-history be acquainted with the life of other planets, etc. (1975, pp.194-195)

The self is a deep, inner, guiding factor, which can seem to be quite different, even alien, from the ego and consciousness. "The self is not only the centre, but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious; it is the centre of this totality, just as the ego is the centre of consciousness" (1936b, p. 41). It may first appear in dreams as a tiny, insignificant image, because the self is so unfamiliar mid undeveloped in most people. The development of the self does not mean that the ego is dissolved. The ego remains the center of consciousness, an important structure within the psyche. It becomes linked to the self as the result of the long, hard work of understanding and accepting unconscious processes.

References

Edinger, E. (1996). The Aion lectures. Toronto: Inner City Books.

Jung, Carl. The relations between the ego and the Unconscious. In Collected works (Vol. 7). (Originally published, 1928b.)

------. Individual dream symbolism in relation to alchemy. In Collected works (Vol. 12). (Originally published, 1936b.)

-------. (1975). Letters, Vol. 11: 1951-61. (G. Adler, Ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

A Statement of Faith

Here is a 'Statement of Faith' that my wife and I put together recently in response to "A Brief and Simple Statement of the Reformed Faith" by B.B. Warfield:

1. The Bible is full of inspirations from God and helps show us the way to live a good life, wisely and skillfully.

2. God is good and created all things and the Holy Spirit is in all things. God makes himself known through nature, wildlife, music, art, ordinary people, saints, Jesus, and other individuals.

3. Because God created all things, the universe is inherently good.

4. Because God created all things, man is inherently good. However, we are ‘sinners’ in that we get lost in selfishness (anger, greed, fear, delusion, and so on).

5. We seek to uncover our inherent goodness by putting God first in our lives. The Prayer of St. Francis is helpful: “Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. …”

6. God’s grace is always available. At each moment, we can choose God’s righteousness, peace and love rather than our own sinful nature. For example, we can choose to give thanks and to forgive others. And we can choose to stand up for what is right and good and true.

7. Christ shows the way, the truth and the light. He can be our way-shower, walking side-by-side with us each step of the way. He can redeem us and lead us out of darkness. Note - we are using 'Christ' in the post-Easter sense that Marcus Borg uses.

8. God’s love was so strong that it manifested through Jesus who died for all of us. Nothing can separate us from God’s love.

9. The Holy Spirit is in all things.

10. We can be redeemed by surrendering. As we surrender more and more, then through prayer, meditation, reading, fellowship, and so on, Christ, working within us, will reform our thoughts, speech and actions. The Jesus prayer is helpful: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”.

11. Good works follow from uncovering and releasing our own inherent goodness, the “Christ within” (peace, love, joy, understanding, forgiveness, and so on).

12. We need the help of others to guide and support us as we develop our own personal relationship with Christ. In return we are called to help others in any way we can.

13. God will not leave us, even after death. Life is eternal and all those we love, and who love us, cannot be separated even by death.

As you can see, the language is very different than that used by Warfield and the theology is also different, although there is also much agreement. We could probably add to this but it is a point-by-point contemplation of what Warfield wrote.

Tradition: To be part of a community that tells these stories and sings these songs

The liberal religious author and scholar Marcus Borg wrote in 1993:

When I was a child, I thought that being a Christian was about "believing," and belief was no problem. When I was an adolescent and young adult, I struggled with trying to believe, and finally was no longer able to do so. Now I see that it is not a question of belief, and there is much that I do not believe. I do not believe that Christianity is the only way of salvation, or that the Bible is the revealed will of God, or that Jesus was the unique Son of God. Rather, I now see that the Christian tradition—including its claims about Jesus—is not something to be believed, but something to be lived in. I see that Bible and the tradition as "icons," mediators of the sacred. The point is not to believe them, but to be in relationship to that which they mediate: God, the Spirit, the sacred. My own journey has thus been "beyond belief." It has moved from belief through doubt and disbelief to relationship. For me, to be a Christian is to be part of a community that tells these stories and sings these songs. It feels like home. Read More

This is a new concept for me - a middle ground between total acceptance of tradition and total rejection of it. I like it.

I took an online quiz called "Which theologian are you?" which concluded that I had views similar to Charles Finney. On the quiz, I strongly agreed with the following two statements:

1. Good preaching is more important than good theology.

2. The best way of expressing our love and unity with God is by music.

I guess another to put this is that how my heart feels is at least as important as what my head thinks when it comes to participating in a church.