"Among the multitude of scholars and authors we feel no hallowing presence; we are sensible of a knack and skill rather than of inspiration; they have a light and know not whence it comes and call it their own: their talent is some exaggerated faculty, some overgrown member, so that their strength is a disease." I start with this quote because this blog is intended to speak about being healthy and part of that is the importance of things and not just words.
My other blog intends to discuss a skill in words. Yet a knack and skill in words alone carries the danger spoken of above, if it is exaggerated. The author of the above quote also wrote: "... answers never by words, but by the thing itself that is inquired after." The author also wrote: "No answer in words can reply to a question of things."
The balance that I want to achieve is that of a healthy relationship between things and words. I want to be derogatory toward neither, except when one truly becomes over-developed at the expense of the other. One of my professors in college points out this distinction another way. He calls it the difference between a knower and a teacher or the difference between a learner and a student. The former is concerned with things, the latter with words. Both are needed together in a healthy educational atmosphere.
What has really driven me to write about being whole and healthy are the real world need for each. Look around you at the people you know. Do not many people need to be whole and healthy? Isn't healthy also a buzz word in our time? Yet what is the thing called healthy? Or what is the thing called whole?
Alongside of stumbling upon the word holy meaning whole, I was stumbling through life in need of being whole. I was not a holy person, because I was not aware that a holy person was a whole person. The words I heard took me away from being healthy to "some exaggerated faculty, some overgrown member." Whether the topic was humility or love or some other, they each in succession pulled me away from the reality of being a whole person, because the community and communication exaggerated one part in place of the whole.
This is where the skill of words becomes important. Words are carriers of things between people and from God to us and us to God. It is much like money which takes the place of the goods. Words are the carriers of things from one person to another, much like people can exchange goods through the exchange of money. Yet the money ultimately is concerned about the goods and about the tremendous advantage that money offers over a world where there is only the goods.
Likewise words themselves are about things and about the tremendous advantage we have, because we have the faculty to communicate by words. I think we have a great yearning in our day for being whole and for being healthy. I think quite a few of the broken want to be healed. I think a few want to stop that healing for others and I think a few of the broken enjoy the excuses they can make from their brokenness. I also think many healthy people can discern something whole and something broken.
What is missing is God's communication on this subject, because the thing called words are in disrepute. They aren't regarded like money. People too often exaggerate the power of money and dismiss the power of words. If God meant to communicate that a holy person is a whole person and therefore a healthy person, then we are missing out because I don't get that thing called healthy, when I exchange my words with another person. This is because the message we are receiving or the money we are getting says that the thing we can exchange our words for is not a whole thing, but a separated thing.
The problem is that the thing we are receiving for our words is not what we need. Unfortunately, while money can be spent on a diversity of things, if you have enough; words can only be exchanged for the thing they are agreed to refer to in the language we speak to one another. So back to my earlier quote: "Among the multitude of scholars and authors we feel no hallowing presence; we are sensible of a knack and skill rather than of inspiration ...." Inspiration comes not from words, but from things. Are you sure when we read your Bible, you are getting the thing God intended and that you needed or has someone swapped the goods on you? May God bless you with discernment.
In Christ,
Jon
Showing posts with label words. Show all posts
Showing posts with label words. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Whole Means Healthy After All Else Fails
Thomas Edison was an incredible example of perseverance. While interviewers wanted to know about his final success, he knew that the key was in the 99 attempts that failed and not in the 1 attempt that succeeded. What we often miss is how normal it is to have to keep going after 99 failures. What we maybe miss even more is that we each have a long path of failures before most of our successes.
We think Edison is the exemption, not the rule. Yet from my own experience, long before I considered that whole means healthy, I tried a barrage of other things that failed. I became a real expert on how to fail. Some ideas failed miserably and some failed gloriously, but in the end they all failed. At the ripe age of 10, I thought I found the resolution to my spiritual struggles. Yet at the next struggle, it was ill-equipped to help me. At age 17, I found resolution again to another struggle. Yet at the next struggle, it actually made things far worse and drove me into the darkness of depression. Then at age 23, I again emerged a little more cautious, yet hopeful as I emerged stronger and I was able to defeat depression through lessons from God's Word. Yet once again, this resolution was poorly suited to my next struggle. Still again, I found resolution to another struggle with still more caution and humility. Yet even with that caution and humility, the next struggle was not resolved by my previous lessons. I had to learn yet more and more and still fail and fail. Finally, in 2004, I found a resolution that brought together the lessons of all that I had been taught previously.
Yet in many ways, I can say that I was perhaps open to this 1 resolution, because I had first failed 99 times. I think my thinking arises from knowing what it is to try something and see it fail before being willing to seek out a success. A lot is learned the hard way. Only after that, does 1 idea come the easy way.
I consider that one of the greatest applications of what I have learned from wholeness is that Edison was right and the interviewer wrong. This world is not a place where everyone is seeking success and just needs to find it. Rather people often have to fail at something else before they will accept a successful option. As long as they see something as potentially successful, even if everyone else knows it will fail, they will hold onto that bound to fail option.
Again, I see this with my own strength or my physical health. I have tried many many options to bring my physical health to where it should be. Yet I still have an unresolved difficulty. A resolution came in 2003 for 6 months, yet neither I nor my doctors to this date, understand what made the difference. So I am still trying options that might potentially work. Like Edison, yet under the inspiration of the hope that God inspires, I am marching on toward what I hope will resolve my health issue for the long term.
Yet it is often a long and lonely path. It seems that so many things I have tried, that I thought would work or a doctor thought would work, have failed. It is also true that the path is lonely, because there are many naysayers that claim to know the answer already. They perhaps think that 99 attempts must mean I am on the wrong path. Yet there lurks the danger for them.
Yet I now know this. Wholeness has brought many successes that were not previously there. It has also continued to meet new challenges the previous failures did not. I think Thomas Kuhn, the sociologist of science, and Imre Lakatos, the philospher of science, both had it right. Old ideas die hard. They must fail before we give up on them. That sounds sort of biblical doesn't it, in light of our sinful tendencies.
Perhaps failure is the soil that then the plant of success can grow in. It is as though the seed cannot be planted until the ground is well tilled. So when people still resist an idea, perhaps it is true, they are still working on a failure. Just wait until they realize the failure. Just maybe then, they will accept the one thing that succeeds after all else fails.
In Christ,
Jon
We think Edison is the exemption, not the rule. Yet from my own experience, long before I considered that whole means healthy, I tried a barrage of other things that failed. I became a real expert on how to fail. Some ideas failed miserably and some failed gloriously, but in the end they all failed. At the ripe age of 10, I thought I found the resolution to my spiritual struggles. Yet at the next struggle, it was ill-equipped to help me. At age 17, I found resolution again to another struggle. Yet at the next struggle, it actually made things far worse and drove me into the darkness of depression. Then at age 23, I again emerged a little more cautious, yet hopeful as I emerged stronger and I was able to defeat depression through lessons from God's Word. Yet once again, this resolution was poorly suited to my next struggle. Still again, I found resolution to another struggle with still more caution and humility. Yet even with that caution and humility, the next struggle was not resolved by my previous lessons. I had to learn yet more and more and still fail and fail. Finally, in 2004, I found a resolution that brought together the lessons of all that I had been taught previously.
Yet in many ways, I can say that I was perhaps open to this 1 resolution, because I had first failed 99 times. I think my thinking arises from knowing what it is to try something and see it fail before being willing to seek out a success. A lot is learned the hard way. Only after that, does 1 idea come the easy way.
I consider that one of the greatest applications of what I have learned from wholeness is that Edison was right and the interviewer wrong. This world is not a place where everyone is seeking success and just needs to find it. Rather people often have to fail at something else before they will accept a successful option. As long as they see something as potentially successful, even if everyone else knows it will fail, they will hold onto that bound to fail option.
Again, I see this with my own strength or my physical health. I have tried many many options to bring my physical health to where it should be. Yet I still have an unresolved difficulty. A resolution came in 2003 for 6 months, yet neither I nor my doctors to this date, understand what made the difference. So I am still trying options that might potentially work. Like Edison, yet under the inspiration of the hope that God inspires, I am marching on toward what I hope will resolve my health issue for the long term.
Yet it is often a long and lonely path. It seems that so many things I have tried, that I thought would work or a doctor thought would work, have failed. It is also true that the path is lonely, because there are many naysayers that claim to know the answer already. They perhaps think that 99 attempts must mean I am on the wrong path. Yet there lurks the danger for them.
Yet I now know this. Wholeness has brought many successes that were not previously there. It has also continued to meet new challenges the previous failures did not. I think Thomas Kuhn, the sociologist of science, and Imre Lakatos, the philospher of science, both had it right. Old ideas die hard. They must fail before we give up on them. That sounds sort of biblical doesn't it, in light of our sinful tendencies.
Perhaps failure is the soil that then the plant of success can grow in. It is as though the seed cannot be planted until the ground is well tilled. So when people still resist an idea, perhaps it is true, they are still working on a failure. Just wait until they realize the failure. Just maybe then, they will accept the one thing that succeeds after all else fails.
In Christ,
Jon
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