3. Stop promoting activities that focus on: over achievement, competitiveness and "you can make a difference in the world-itis" in children.
Children have been deprived of both their proper upbringing and their carefree childhood. This is true of white, black or any other race, boy or girl, rich or poor, advantaged or disabled. Children are pushed by their parents and/or caregivers, schools, peers and society at large to be every increasingly pressured and over achieving. As they grow older (and I'm still speaking of young children) they start to feel the burden (often self generated but as a result of external influences) to be "destined" to "make a difference" and "better the world."
Geez Louise, let's look at the facts. It's been two thousand years since Jesus Christ (who did change the world) and not a single generation of individuals have thought that he or she is "destined" to "make a difference" and "better the world" until the 1960's. Think about it. All of the advances made (the genuine ones, not the false ones) up until the 1960's were done by that vast nameless army of people who led ordinary lives, including ordinary childhoods. They did not have the array of media blaring at them (electronic babysitters and life attitude distortions) from the moment they were born. Most of them participated in the household or at work as children, learning the skills of mommy and daddy as they were still able to be children at play. Most of them realized that Jesus Christ changed the world, and that they did not have to do so again, being little saviors and "touching others for a difference." Children were allowed to be children yet, at the same time, they had worthy and genuine adult participation where appropriate.
It was an entirely different world, that world before the 1960's. Children's heads were not filled with "Baby Einstein" and pre-school "preparation...." if they knew how to count and read before they entered school it's because they read the comics with their fathers. Children did not have dance classes, competitive sports, and the whole spectrum of "talents" that are crammed into them at the earliest of ages. I don't even have to mention how body conscious and fashion conscious children at the earliest ages have been forced to become. Childhood has vanished and it is a pressure cooker instead.
Yet at the same time when children do start to have real concerns about adult family matters, they are not gradually involved in the way they used to, rather like apprentice adults. On the farm they would start to learn adult activities and cares, but at a level they could handle. It seems the only way adults today treat children like adults in training is to 1) sexualize them or 2) make them fend for themselves.
Children are kept in school far too long for dubious reasons. Yes, I agree that high school graduation is essential and yes I feel that college is a key to future success, up to a point. But what used to be a liberal arts education (or in some special schools, a science/engineering orientation) has turned into a combination of 1) social thinking propaganda instead of education and 2) turning out cooperative little cogs for whatever is the popular money making field of the day (does "computer graphics" and "web design" sound familiar?) High school children have far too much homework and not enough solid classroom learning. Parents are unavailable or unwilling to devote time to home study requirements. College has become a strange place of getting "higher" rather than higher education, and part of this is because children are infantalized regarding their participation in the adult world of work and decision making, so they cut loose as adults where they can, which is in going crazy. I graduated a semester early from university because I considered it such a total waste of my time, and I had an actual semi-serious curriculum, yet it was still filled with so much education time wasting. Professors just fill in their own blanks instead of teaching what needs to be taught.
Worse, in surveys conducted year after year, that track what professions or goals (such as being a parent) that children prefer, most recently children no longer "want" to be anything but "famous." So now we have higher education, however shaky its quality, and children increasingly want less of those professions and more to be "rich and famous."
I really want to address education separately, but I mention it here so I can show you the entire pattern of my concern. Pre-school children are raised believing they have to start accumulating talents, wonderfulness, and worthiness through endless activities and works, and that continues non stop until they are in their early to mid-twenties. They are put under great pressure to learn, achieve and even "play hard," and to be popular and "hot," while at the same time they are getting the crappiest education I've ever seen in my lifetime. If I were a young person today I'd want to put on my Doc Martens and kick just about everyone in the behind for this disaster.
I'm sick at heart and sick to the gills of reading about teenagers and younger committing suicide or having mental illnesses that everyone blames on everything but the truth, which is that they were put under too much pressure to "perform," from the earliest age. If you went back in time and spoke to anyone in let's say the nineteenth century, from the poorest person to Queen Victoria herself, and told him or her that you know that "your child will someday make a difference in the world" and that it is their "destiny" to be a great "achiever" and "contribute his or her talents to the world," they would not know what you were speaking of and would think you were mad (as in demented). Even aristocrats of that time did not grow up thinking they would "make a difference in the world." That's something you moderns have to get through your heads. Even the most privileged and influential people prior to this century did not grow up themselves thinking they will "save some part of the world."
Instead, people lived their lives. Some had callings, such as for the military, the clergy, or for professions like medicine. Most wanted and focused on having and supporting a family. No one was running around thinking that they had even a tiny responsibility to "change the world." They were the well balanced ones; what we have today is megalomaniac inflation.
I am not being too strong in that diagnosis. It used to be that an extraordinary person was one who raised a family and was a stable and reliable influence in their local town and community. Ordinary people who, like brick building blocks, form a whole are the ones who collectively "change the world," but change the world not in the sense of being some sort of over achieving superheroes in possession of "enlightenment" or "caring," but of providing the foundation, the grass roots, of children growing into well rounded and educated/skilled and/or able bodied adults.
I continue to be astonished as I see decade after decade of increasingly taking it for granted that someone is "the one," who "can make a difference," and that bull crap being digested by children. It is not a coincidence that this false and grandiose perception increases in direct proportion that humans lose their traditional faith and humility in front of God. Hitler was grandiose and he "changed the world," and was that a good thing? Excuse me for going with the obvious example but it's one that I know everyone from every culture can understand. How many people, really, "change the world," and for those that do, are those good changes? Historically the answer has been "no."
We have an example of a good person who changed the world, but his participation was unexpected, not "destined," and gained through just what I am describing: a normal, though well to do person, leading a well educated and well experienced life, and then responding to the call when his fortitude and commitment recommended him accordingly. That person was General George Washington, who led the Army of the Revolution and then became first President of the United States. He changed the world not because he became a general, or even the President, but because he fathered the ongoing birth of this great democratic republic, when such a deed in such a place was not only difficult but totally new territory. Thus George Washington "changed the world" not through agenda to change the world, but because an average, though financially advantaged, man had the character to step into a role that opened in front of him. He, like everyone else of those times, was not groomed and pressured and clucked over by helicopter parents telling him how he is "special" and "filled with gifts for the world."
Wake up people. Life is life and the world is the world, and it inches forward as the cumulative effect of billions of people simply leading their lives and making their choices. There are not these millions of prodigies, of indigo children, of "destined to make a difference" children, of whatever corn ball New Age label you want to give it, all waiting to give the levers they have been "destined to wield" to "change the world." Most people who think like that end up changing the world like Pol Pot.
So now let's leave the stratosphere and get back to reality. The "greatest generation," those who were adults in the 1940's, each and every one of them grew up thinking they were an average Joe or Mary, but with aspirations. These aspirations were to be well dressed, housed and fed, to have some sort of health care and education, to have a way out of the economic downfall of the Great Depression, and most of all, to provide something even better than they had for their children, and for their country. They did not attend dance classes, or T-ball, or take endless childhood "enrichment" classes (and I'm not saying not to do those at age appropriate times for fun and character building). What I am saying is that they were the greatest with NONE of those supposed "talents" and "gifts" "for the world."
Take the pressure off of children, child by child, home by home, school by school, for the love of Pete. More traditional solid education of liberal arts, faith and reasoning, and the basic skills, and more meaningful play and recreation, less isolation and fending for themselves by lazy, busy or absent parents, and less ridiculous notions that they have some sort of burden to "change the world." They don't and they can't. The sooner everyone regains that humility the better. Heaven is packed with people who did nothing else but live ordinary lives of simple goodness, none of them even saving a "hair" of the world's head, or offering even one "gift" of their "specialness" to the world. Sad to say the most special people alive today are those able to be ordinary Joes and Marys and who can actually raise a child to ordinary, well adjusted and optimistic adulthood.
Showing posts with label grandiosity and inflation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grandiosity and inflation. Show all posts
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Explaining the "bigger things" feelings
Hi again, especially the young readers :-)
You know how some people will tell you that it doesn't really hurt the lobster to cook it live in boiling water? The reason that they give is that the water is heated so gradually that the cold water living lobster is kind of lulled into unconsciousness, which may be true. I mention this not to bum out animal lovers (though lobsters are pretty tough in turn on their prey, you might know, using those big claws to rip apart live something it wants to eat!) I want you to just think about the analogy of gradually warming up a cold water organism until it is lulled into being dead.
The lobster lives in cold water (except for the warm water ones, yeah, I know, just work with me on the analogy!) So the cold water lobster evolved to fit perfectly into that ecological niche.
Likewise, humans evolved over millions of years to fill their niche. Humans have a few great advantages over cold water lobsters. Humans live in hot, cold and in between climates. Humans are omnivores (can eat plant or animal material). So humans are flexible. And they have big brains so they have great capacity for learning. But when you think about how successful human beings have been, thriving even through natural disasters, disease, famines, poverty, until the one billion population mark was achieved, and then as humans are now at six billion, you have to think over the millions of years of history about a fundamental anti-survival change that humans have embraced... embraced just the way that cold water lobsters might think that a little warming up is just fine... until it's too late. That problem is the over-stimulation of the human brain by false information.
Humans are successful up to today because they were totally reality based. Babies, whether rich or poor, lived in a simpler reality based world, where reality was introduced to them exactly in pace to how their brains developed.
But with the invention of television, we have a tremendous problem with humans, where it is at that point that the cold water lobster is in the pot and getting the first lulling heat.
Babies and toddlers should not even see a television screen, let alone view it, at ALL. Why is that? I've blogged about this before but am giving it to you in context of the title of this blogging, which I'll explain in a minute. But the problem is that baby brain development, which has been very thoroughly studied and is well understood, is entirely focused on understanding that the baby is a "self," that mom and dad and other people are "others," and that the world is reliable, safe, ordered and logical. The classic crucial phase of an infant's brain development, for example, is when babies first understand that when mom or dad leave the room, it is not "forever," that they are not "gone" and they will be back. You can read wonderful psychology literature on this subject.
So here is the problem. Exactly when babies need to comprehend the crucial realities of themselves and the world around them, in modern times they view rapidity and falseness of images that they cannot possibly understand, no matter how "benign." So this is true of everything, from cartoons to "educational" material. Babies and small infants absolutely should not even face a TV set that is turned on, not even for a short time. Remembering what I explained that babies first sense of self and other comes from understanding that mom and dad leave the room, but still "exist" and will come back, think about how a baby is affected, how YOU all were affected, when you, as just about everyone of the past two generations have, saw TV images as an infant or toddler. All television IS is the representation of the rapid fire unreal of things that go away and don't come back. At exactly the time babies need quiet singular development, they get a multitude of false overstimulating images that undermine the development of the proportionality and confidence circuitry that they are supposed to be forming.
This is one huge reason why the past several generations are 1) over stimulated 2) lack confidence in relationships even though they are raised in the most secure circumstances that humans ever had 3) keep feeling "alienated" and "cut off" or "special" 4) mark my words, autism is part of this problem 5) obsess about having super hero powers, origins, aliens, a "greater purpose" and hence as I say in my title, the feelings of "bigger things."
Babies and toddlers have been inadvertently messed up in their circuitry by exposure to TV, no matter how short the exposure or how benign the presumed programming. It is NOT a survival trait and in fact it is an anti-survival trait to allow babies or toddlers to even observe the TV programming when it is on: I argue they should not even be in the room. People need to copy what millions of years of successful human beings thriving did right, no matter the culture, no matter the social class, which is to allow their infants and toddlers to grow up in reality of the natural, family and community world at their pace of brain development, and not be exposed to the artificial and hence confusing rapid fire of the unreality of television images.
The residue of having one's infant brain circuits interfered with by television during their natural development is that feeling that reality is unreal, and that there is a "something else out there," which is actually false. Read that again and think about it because it is really scary and I've watched it develop throughout my lifetime. Because of television and infants and toddlers being allowed to view ANY of it, children, young people, adults and some of the aging of this generation have a troubling partial swap in their brains. They have the feeling that genuine reality feels "unreal" often or some of the time, while they yearn in a creepy way for "reality" that is actually a false and inflated delusion, that comes from misunderstanding the ephemera of television when their brains were developing. This makes the argument about if TV violence causes violence in children (and it does) dwarfed in urgency, because I'm explaining that the foundation of infant and toddler brain development is distorted and skewed from the very beginning due to any exposure at all to TV. If I had an infant or toddler I would not allow him or her to be in a room with the TV on at ALL EVER.
Think about orphanages in poor countries where kids are left alone, often with their cribs turned toward the TV, for "company." I know someone who was abandoned and left in her crib as a toddler facing a TV set in a developing country, and I watched the effects of that, and other abandonment trauma, play out in her life and it was painful, painful, painful. Babies and toddlers, whether in a terrible situation such as abandonment, or in a loving and well provided home, cannot comprehend the over stimulation and ephemera of TV images and it destroys the God given and natural biological phased development of the confident and well paced brain.
I could go into more of the biology and the psychological consequences, but to make one point that you all can think about, I really want to stick with the topic of the feelings of "bigger things."
Before these modern times, people simply did not wonder all the time "why they are there," and "don't I have a 'bigger purpose' or 'destiny' in life" or "we must be from aliens or goddesses," etc. Now before you jump on me, sure, there were religions where people believe they descended from gods, or from other worlds (though they did not know about planets at the time) etc. It is one thing for a society to have a religion that supposes a "bigger thing" type of destiny or origin. But it is entirely a new phenomenon for individuals to be obsessed, overcome by, troubled by, over stimulated by, elated by, or deluded by those feelings on a personal level. Being poor and living in a subsistence pre-TV economy, no matter where in the world, gave all humans a huge survival advantage, which was they were 1) reality based and 2) their children developed rapidly but apace with reality and genuinely beneficial brain development. All children had the advantage of being raised in a household that may be poor, impoverished, or even abusive and dire, but they were not further confused by over stimulation of false images, which is television.
Those of us who read the classics know about the almost stereotyped character of the "clever waif," the "street smart kid." Whether in England or India, the clever and resourceful waif is a recurring theme in literature because that was reality. You of course still see this today in developing countries, but much less so. Why? Well, so much of the clever waif's success, presented in literature but based on much reality, was due to being entirely reality based. Waifs were raised so their brains developed in accordance with reality. What is the street smart kid like today? The "clever waif" of today? Entirely a media creation, looking for his or her cues from the false world they have seen from the cradle, and they genuinely view that as reality. They have that swap I mentioned above, as do their parents and their teachers.
This is why, to bring it back to religion and faith, the "swap" I mentioned above can be observed as such. Reality is viewed as unreal ("I don't believe the Bible because it's just all made up stuff) while unreality is viewed as real ("I think that I was personally destined to save the world and be a superhero"). Young people and adults and their teachers are far more willing to believe (especially if their egos are stroked) the most unbelievable proof lacking stuff and garbage, while they will reject without even examining reality that boring but truthful old men carefully penned onto parchments so that their future generations will know what really happened. I mean, if you think about it, it's mindboggling. MUCH of this comes from babies and infants being exposed to seeing television screens with content, regardless of the supposed benefit or benign nature of the actual show.
A baby's brain cannot understand a cute puppy galloping off the TV screen and disappearing. A baby can understand a real puppy that gallops across the kitchen floor and disappears through the door to the living room... where either baby can follow or the actual puppy returns.
The exposure of babies and toddlers to TV has been suicidal and totally insane for that reason alone, say nothing of the other factors we all know about (violence, couch potato, no longer reads, watches too mature content, sees bad examples, etc). The damage is already done in a much more fundamental level. The past two generations watched cute puppies gallop across a TV screen and not understand what it is, instead of watching only the cute puppy, or cat, or chicken, or fish in the fish tank move across the room and out of view, but it is still real and alive, just like mom and dad. The brains of humans were not meant to be given crossed signals of artificial media while they are still under development as babies and toddlers.
Be horrified. I am and have been all my life, as I've known about this problem all along. People listen to me for all the wrong reasons (prior to this blog) but refuse to comprehend and heed me, as I've worried and warned about these problems. Even as a teenager I would not have the TV on while I was caring for an infant or toddler, even if parents urged or recommended it. All parents got brainwashed and selfish about the "baby sitter in a box," the nickname for television. TV interfered with natural brain development of infants and toddlers and that is a fact.
So this, to get back to the main point, is the reason so many of you, and I am saying this with great love, concern and compassion, have these feelings of inflation, alienation, goofy beliefs, hubris, "destiny," "unrecognized specialness," etc.... not because "everyone feels that way" (maybe they do now, but they didn't "back then")... but because when you were infants and toddlers and following the well known and highly successful process of brain development and individuality recognition, against a backdrop of constancy, with a well understood and logical ordered world, it was contaminated by the contrarian over stimulation of any exposure to TV.
Thus genuine "calling" in the real world is muffled, misheard, unheard, and dismissed as being "unreal," while false "calling" and "purpose" are inflated into grandiose but ultimately depressive longings that are viewed as "reality." It is a total swap of the real with the false, and it comes from, in large part, the inconstant development of infant and toddler brains when they should have been in reality based constancy and consistency. I hope this helps. Be strong and keep it really real, not falsely real. Do not let your babies or small children observe either TV or now the other obvious problems, video games and computer screens. Seriously. It's already too late for many. But if you understand what I am saying you can start to edit and comprehend some of your own unremembered experiences, and realize that you have been influenced yourselves in such a way.
You know how some people will tell you that it doesn't really hurt the lobster to cook it live in boiling water? The reason that they give is that the water is heated so gradually that the cold water living lobster is kind of lulled into unconsciousness, which may be true. I mention this not to bum out animal lovers (though lobsters are pretty tough in turn on their prey, you might know, using those big claws to rip apart live something it wants to eat!) I want you to just think about the analogy of gradually warming up a cold water organism until it is lulled into being dead.
The lobster lives in cold water (except for the warm water ones, yeah, I know, just work with me on the analogy!) So the cold water lobster evolved to fit perfectly into that ecological niche.
Likewise, humans evolved over millions of years to fill their niche. Humans have a few great advantages over cold water lobsters. Humans live in hot, cold and in between climates. Humans are omnivores (can eat plant or animal material). So humans are flexible. And they have big brains so they have great capacity for learning. But when you think about how successful human beings have been, thriving even through natural disasters, disease, famines, poverty, until the one billion population mark was achieved, and then as humans are now at six billion, you have to think over the millions of years of history about a fundamental anti-survival change that humans have embraced... embraced just the way that cold water lobsters might think that a little warming up is just fine... until it's too late. That problem is the over-stimulation of the human brain by false information.
Humans are successful up to today because they were totally reality based. Babies, whether rich or poor, lived in a simpler reality based world, where reality was introduced to them exactly in pace to how their brains developed.
But with the invention of television, we have a tremendous problem with humans, where it is at that point that the cold water lobster is in the pot and getting the first lulling heat.
Babies and toddlers should not even see a television screen, let alone view it, at ALL. Why is that? I've blogged about this before but am giving it to you in context of the title of this blogging, which I'll explain in a minute. But the problem is that baby brain development, which has been very thoroughly studied and is well understood, is entirely focused on understanding that the baby is a "self," that mom and dad and other people are "others," and that the world is reliable, safe, ordered and logical. The classic crucial phase of an infant's brain development, for example, is when babies first understand that when mom or dad leave the room, it is not "forever," that they are not "gone" and they will be back. You can read wonderful psychology literature on this subject.
So here is the problem. Exactly when babies need to comprehend the crucial realities of themselves and the world around them, in modern times they view rapidity and falseness of images that they cannot possibly understand, no matter how "benign." So this is true of everything, from cartoons to "educational" material. Babies and small infants absolutely should not even face a TV set that is turned on, not even for a short time. Remembering what I explained that babies first sense of self and other comes from understanding that mom and dad leave the room, but still "exist" and will come back, think about how a baby is affected, how YOU all were affected, when you, as just about everyone of the past two generations have, saw TV images as an infant or toddler. All television IS is the representation of the rapid fire unreal of things that go away and don't come back. At exactly the time babies need quiet singular development, they get a multitude of false overstimulating images that undermine the development of the proportionality and confidence circuitry that they are supposed to be forming.
This is one huge reason why the past several generations are 1) over stimulated 2) lack confidence in relationships even though they are raised in the most secure circumstances that humans ever had 3) keep feeling "alienated" and "cut off" or "special" 4) mark my words, autism is part of this problem 5) obsess about having super hero powers, origins, aliens, a "greater purpose" and hence as I say in my title, the feelings of "bigger things."
Babies and toddlers have been inadvertently messed up in their circuitry by exposure to TV, no matter how short the exposure or how benign the presumed programming. It is NOT a survival trait and in fact it is an anti-survival trait to allow babies or toddlers to even observe the TV programming when it is on: I argue they should not even be in the room. People need to copy what millions of years of successful human beings thriving did right, no matter the culture, no matter the social class, which is to allow their infants and toddlers to grow up in reality of the natural, family and community world at their pace of brain development, and not be exposed to the artificial and hence confusing rapid fire of the unreality of television images.
The residue of having one's infant brain circuits interfered with by television during their natural development is that feeling that reality is unreal, and that there is a "something else out there," which is actually false. Read that again and think about it because it is really scary and I've watched it develop throughout my lifetime. Because of television and infants and toddlers being allowed to view ANY of it, children, young people, adults and some of the aging of this generation have a troubling partial swap in their brains. They have the feeling that genuine reality feels "unreal" often or some of the time, while they yearn in a creepy way for "reality" that is actually a false and inflated delusion, that comes from misunderstanding the ephemera of television when their brains were developing. This makes the argument about if TV violence causes violence in children (and it does) dwarfed in urgency, because I'm explaining that the foundation of infant and toddler brain development is distorted and skewed from the very beginning due to any exposure at all to TV. If I had an infant or toddler I would not allow him or her to be in a room with the TV on at ALL EVER.
Think about orphanages in poor countries where kids are left alone, often with their cribs turned toward the TV, for "company." I know someone who was abandoned and left in her crib as a toddler facing a TV set in a developing country, and I watched the effects of that, and other abandonment trauma, play out in her life and it was painful, painful, painful. Babies and toddlers, whether in a terrible situation such as abandonment, or in a loving and well provided home, cannot comprehend the over stimulation and ephemera of TV images and it destroys the God given and natural biological phased development of the confident and well paced brain.
I could go into more of the biology and the psychological consequences, but to make one point that you all can think about, I really want to stick with the topic of the feelings of "bigger things."
Before these modern times, people simply did not wonder all the time "why they are there," and "don't I have a 'bigger purpose' or 'destiny' in life" or "we must be from aliens or goddesses," etc. Now before you jump on me, sure, there were religions where people believe they descended from gods, or from other worlds (though they did not know about planets at the time) etc. It is one thing for a society to have a religion that supposes a "bigger thing" type of destiny or origin. But it is entirely a new phenomenon for individuals to be obsessed, overcome by, troubled by, over stimulated by, elated by, or deluded by those feelings on a personal level. Being poor and living in a subsistence pre-TV economy, no matter where in the world, gave all humans a huge survival advantage, which was they were 1) reality based and 2) their children developed rapidly but apace with reality and genuinely beneficial brain development. All children had the advantage of being raised in a household that may be poor, impoverished, or even abusive and dire, but they were not further confused by over stimulation of false images, which is television.
Those of us who read the classics know about the almost stereotyped character of the "clever waif," the "street smart kid." Whether in England or India, the clever and resourceful waif is a recurring theme in literature because that was reality. You of course still see this today in developing countries, but much less so. Why? Well, so much of the clever waif's success, presented in literature but based on much reality, was due to being entirely reality based. Waifs were raised so their brains developed in accordance with reality. What is the street smart kid like today? The "clever waif" of today? Entirely a media creation, looking for his or her cues from the false world they have seen from the cradle, and they genuinely view that as reality. They have that swap I mentioned above, as do their parents and their teachers.
This is why, to bring it back to religion and faith, the "swap" I mentioned above can be observed as such. Reality is viewed as unreal ("I don't believe the Bible because it's just all made up stuff) while unreality is viewed as real ("I think that I was personally destined to save the world and be a superhero"). Young people and adults and their teachers are far more willing to believe (especially if their egos are stroked) the most unbelievable proof lacking stuff and garbage, while they will reject without even examining reality that boring but truthful old men carefully penned onto parchments so that their future generations will know what really happened. I mean, if you think about it, it's mindboggling. MUCH of this comes from babies and infants being exposed to seeing television screens with content, regardless of the supposed benefit or benign nature of the actual show.
A baby's brain cannot understand a cute puppy galloping off the TV screen and disappearing. A baby can understand a real puppy that gallops across the kitchen floor and disappears through the door to the living room... where either baby can follow or the actual puppy returns.
The exposure of babies and toddlers to TV has been suicidal and totally insane for that reason alone, say nothing of the other factors we all know about (violence, couch potato, no longer reads, watches too mature content, sees bad examples, etc). The damage is already done in a much more fundamental level. The past two generations watched cute puppies gallop across a TV screen and not understand what it is, instead of watching only the cute puppy, or cat, or chicken, or fish in the fish tank move across the room and out of view, but it is still real and alive, just like mom and dad. The brains of humans were not meant to be given crossed signals of artificial media while they are still under development as babies and toddlers.
Be horrified. I am and have been all my life, as I've known about this problem all along. People listen to me for all the wrong reasons (prior to this blog) but refuse to comprehend and heed me, as I've worried and warned about these problems. Even as a teenager I would not have the TV on while I was caring for an infant or toddler, even if parents urged or recommended it. All parents got brainwashed and selfish about the "baby sitter in a box," the nickname for television. TV interfered with natural brain development of infants and toddlers and that is a fact.
So this, to get back to the main point, is the reason so many of you, and I am saying this with great love, concern and compassion, have these feelings of inflation, alienation, goofy beliefs, hubris, "destiny," "unrecognized specialness," etc.... not because "everyone feels that way" (maybe they do now, but they didn't "back then")... but because when you were infants and toddlers and following the well known and highly successful process of brain development and individuality recognition, against a backdrop of constancy, with a well understood and logical ordered world, it was contaminated by the contrarian over stimulation of any exposure to TV.
Thus genuine "calling" in the real world is muffled, misheard, unheard, and dismissed as being "unreal," while false "calling" and "purpose" are inflated into grandiose but ultimately depressive longings that are viewed as "reality." It is a total swap of the real with the false, and it comes from, in large part, the inconstant development of infant and toddler brains when they should have been in reality based constancy and consistency. I hope this helps. Be strong and keep it really real, not falsely real. Do not let your babies or small children observe either TV or now the other obvious problems, video games and computer screens. Seriously. It's already too late for many. But if you understand what I am saying you can start to edit and comprehend some of your own unremembered experiences, and realize that you have been influenced yourselves in such a way.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Understand real Satan not cartoon Satan
Satan is a very real risk to all humans, both believers who risk their faith being disturbed, and non-believers who risk never opening their hearts enough to believe and be saved. So I am always glad when I hear a preacher remind their listeners that Satan is a continual reality that cannot be ignored.
However, it is, like all topics related to faith, important that one protects one's self by understanding the real threat, and not a misrepresentation or cartoon of the threat and as always one has to rely on God's word in the scriptures, and the actual events depicted within.
We know that Satan is the leader of the group of angels who, after being created by God, when given the choice of free will (a gift God gives to all whom he loves, both angels and humans), chose not to serve God. Because of this they were cast out of heaven. Satan is allowed to roam the earth at will and has great influence over human world events (which is why he is scripturally refered to as ruling on earth... he's not THE ruler of earth, but he receives that title because by not serving God he can only serve and thus influence things of the world. In other words he is both in the world and "of" the world. Christians in contrast are taught by Jesus to be "in the world" but not ruled by the world, hence they are not "of the world." Their priority, unlike Satan's, is heavenly directed in service to God even while alive on earth and not in heaven).
So there are two aspects of Satan that sound alarming and powerful on the surface, especially the non-scriptural depictions, but are not all that difficult to refute and to have some peace of mind about. One is that Satan is obviously not THE ruler of all earth since he obviously, both in scriptural and in secular earth history, does not run around undoing God's creation. Satan does not blow up mountains, destroy cities, poison the water, kill baby animals as they are born, uproot trees, change the weather, etc. God is still in control of his creation, which he has declared "good" upon the making of each component, and Satan has never had any power, authority or ability to use godly powers to harm life or the natural processes and features of earth. If Satan had that power then there would be nothing left of earth a long time ago, as he would have caused havoc everywhere. But the scripture reports that Satan just wanders around the earth, tempting people to sin against God and each other at every obvious opportunity. Thus it is totally wrong and alarming for no reason to have any concern at all that Satan has some sort of like running amok, evil destroyer, invading alien, anti-life, kicker of sand in the faces of baby dinosaurs type of ability or impulse. Satan's sole interest is to tempt human beings.
And that is the second reality check that people need to keep in mind. As I've pointed out before in my blogging, and I've heard more preachers allude to it recently, Satan by no means denies the existence of God. That is a weird misconception that is pretty recent and is refuted by any even casual reading of the Bible. Satan, actually, is by his obvious existence and interaction with God (the Book of Job detailing a far from hostile conversation between God and Satan) is kind of the ultimate witness to God's reality! People who want to get into witchcraft and so forth or believe strange things have recently thought of the impossibility that Satan is like an "alternative possibility" to believing in God. That's obviously ridiculous since the scriptures show that Satan continues to not only acknowledge God's reality, but interact with him, including promptly showing up to test and tempt Jesus Christ at the beginning of his ministry. Further, Satan obeys God when God establishes limits on how much Satan can afflict Job. Demons and so forth who serve Satan are the first to recognize Jesus, before Jesus even speaks to them, and they rapidly proclaim their belief, their alarm and their subservience to Jesus' authority to cast them out. So people who think that maybe there's a real powerful Satan but no God are totally delusional on two basic points. Satan has very little power and controls none of the infrastructure of earth or the life upon it AND Satan himself is the first on most scenes to acknowledge God's reality and his movement in human matters.
So, if Satan does not deny God AND Satan has no actual power except to tempt, how is he so persuasive, so effective and so dangerous? This can best be understood and thus defeated by thinking of the common saying "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." This old saying means that many humans end up going to hell because they did something evil, wrong and sinful because they "meant well." In a way, Satan is very much like the humans who go to hell because they do wrong things but self justify that their "intentions were good." Don't get me wrong because I'm not using the word "good" with "Satan," but I'm preparing you for the analogy. Satan's basic error is that he cannot grasp God's All Knowingness; he just doesn't get within the core of his being that God already knows all that there is to know. Satan's a bit condescending to God, thinking that he knows better than God, particularly when it comes to human weaknesses.
Realistically, can anyone of even weak faith think that God knows less than Satan in any scenario? But that is the Achilles heel of both Satan and human beings, which is why they are such a potent mixture. Satan thinks he knows better than God and thus is even somewhat "protective" and condescending toward God. We see this in the Book of Job, where Satan is debating with God whether Job is really truly faithful to God and if he would stay faithful if God's protection were removed from him. Um, duh, Satan thinks that God doesn't already know every "what-if" scenario already? I've blogged before how one must realize God's All Knowingness by using analogies humans can grasp, such as how God knows every subatomic particle that ever existed or will exist in the universe and all the places each particle was and will be. So God doesn't know what Job will do when hardships befall him? God knows everything already because he is God and he is the only All Knowing.
But you can see that Satan honestly thinks something like this: "Wow, that God is naive. Sure Job loves and worships God now, since he's blessed by God and has a great life and many possessions due to God's protection. I've got to show God that he can't trust Job to stay faithful to him once things start going bad for him." Satan simply does not grasp that God already knows everything, absolutely everything. We know this because Satan recognizes who Jesus is, and promptly shows up to tempt him, and Satan thinks, what, that God didn't know that Satan is going to tempt Jesus? And that Jesus, as the Son of God, would be temptable? It's like Satan thinks that maybe God didn't prepare Jesus enough, or send him with enough power, and thus there is some actual chance of tempting Jesus to disobedience to God!
So the crux of understanding Satan and his enormous power over many human beings is to realize that Satan just does not grasp and ultimately does not have faith in the All Knowingness of God. Satan has plenty of faith that God exists because more than anyone he's been there around God "from the beginning" and so obviously God's reality is Satan's continual focus. But what Satan just does not understand is God's greater plan, which is, of course, the culmination of God's All Knowingness.
And that pride, since that is indeed what we are describing, a condescending pride of Satan's, is exactly the same prevalent flaw in many human beings. Can you think of many humans who do not at some point think they know "better" than God does? Or that God "needs their help?" Brothers and sisters, you know exactly what I mean.
While few people would confess to actually thinking that God needs their "help" or that they "know better than God," they do it all the time when they cherry pick what part of God's word they choose to believe. When they discard or ignore large parts of scripture, (or even just small parts that prohibit one's favorite sin), that is more than being someone of weak faith, or maybe a hypocrite. Secretly, subconsciously, that person is thinking that he or she knows "what God really meant" and that he or she can thus figure that "God would agree with me that this part of the Bible is out of date, and that part doesn't apply to me, but that I can go along with that other stuff because those sinners out there (not me) don't do enough of the good things and God needs my help" and so on and so forth. That is music to Satan's ears and fertile ground for him to sow weeds.
This is why some people are such willing and easy dupes and tools of Satan, while others seem to have a Teflon coating and barely notice Satan's existence. Satan works best with humans who do not believe in, have faith in, or trust God's All Knowingness. The people who diminish God's power in their minds but magnify and glorify their own potential roles in both earthly and, imagine that, heavenly matters are natural allies and pawns of Satan, since they have the same weakness and "philosophy." People who lack fear of God but magnify their own spirituality, resourcefulness and role in life are the most prone to be influenced at alarming speed and depth by Satan. People who fear God (in the way I've explained in previous posts on this subject) and who are humble about their role in the major matters of divinity tend not to be tempted by or hear Satan at all. Satan totally gives a pass by to those who are shielded by their sincere fear of God and their sincere humility.
Now, some of the most devout saints suffered from great torments by Satan. I'm about to say something that is not meant to be unkind or unloving, since these were indeed genuine Christian saints of great sanctity. However, even some saints have insufficient fear of God and humility to render themselves safe from any attacks (or imagined attacks) from Satan. Some very revered Christian saints who were indeed sanctified and worthy of God had the all too human flaw of being sucked into thinking that they are linchpins in some sort of huge "good versus evil" striving. I mean, how scriptural is that? Not at all. What do I mean? Here is what I would have said to some medieval saint in the making who is afflicted by torments he or she feels is sent by Satan:
Read the scripture about the Last Supper and the betrayal of Christ by Judas. Judas, the most ripest, the biggest target of all who ever existed for temptation, was only entered by Satan at the moment he left the table to betray Jesus. Satan spent only a matter of minutes, until the betrayal was done, in Judas. Why in the world do you think Satan is having supposedly hours, days, months or years of battle within YOU?
Sometimes you have to be a tough spiritual director, even with the most sanctified of people.
Humans all are in constant grave danger of the "road to hell is paved with good intentions" weakness and pride. Saints are no exception except in one matter: their suffering (even if self induced or exaggerated) never destroys their faith in God or takes them from their sanctity of service. But I explain this problem with certains saints in order to point out to you the scriptural basis for what I am saying: Satan does not occupy or vie with human beings. Satan only strews temptations that those who fear God and are genuinely humble never even notice, while those who do not fear God and who are prone to pridefulness catch themselves up in the temptations all of the time. Satan's temptations are like lint or dust on furniture: you don't even notice it unless you think it is your job to clean it up. That's the danger of not believing completely in God's All Knowingness and over exaggerating your role in "helping" God. You start thinking that you are the one who has to dust all the furniture, and thus those hundreds and thousands of tiny nearly invisible temptations to sin, like dust motes, gather together as you focus your attention on them. The rest of us live with dusty furniture ha ha. (Just some levity for a serious subject... please excuse the humor, I so rarely get to demonstrate it!)
Do you see what I mean? This is why an analogy is so powerful. Satan is constantly scattering tiny harmless temptations, most centered around insufficient faith in God and excess pride in one's own judgment and supposed "goodness." People who are not vulnerable to temptations of hubris, pride or vanity, and who are firm in their fear of God and trust in his All Knowingness, never even notice the tiny dust motes of temptation. But those who are prone to scrutinizing the dust particles start to pick them up in quickly growing clumps that stick to them and they are now accepting of and subjugated to Satan's temptations with alarming weight and rapidity.
Taking upon one's self a perception that you personally are "battling Satan" is a grave and not-scripturally based error. Remember, Judas himself did not "battle" Satan, nor was he owned by Satan or possessed by Satan. Rather, Judas picked up a lot of "dust particles" of pride which estranged him from his basic trust in God's providence, and then Satan only had to enter him for a few minutes to actually perform that greatest betrayal. If you think that you are in combat with some supposed spiritual forces, you have deviated from the truth of what is in the Bible (no one in the Bible is combating Satan etc on a personal basis). What they are doing is resisting Satan's temptations. There is a huge difference between the two.
This is why Paul said that Christians must be "dead to sin." When one is dead one is inert and like a chemical that just won't react with anything. Being in a hypersensitive and combative stance toward anything is not being "dead to sin." Rather, like collecting the dust motes, it is a problem of insufficient protection (study of scripture, faith in God's power, cultivating fear of God and humility) while completely over exaggerating one's own interaction with temptations. People, like that class of afflicted saints, who think they are in some sort of numinous and supernatural "combat" against "evil forces, such as Satan" are driving themselves nuts by collecting every dust mote of temptation that Satan has laid out there for them. Who in the Bible is actually "combating" Satan? Jesus did not even waste an hour of his earthly time doing so. Moses didn't. David didn't. Isaiah didn't. Joseph and Mary didn't. John the Baptist didn't. All the prophets and holy people of the Bible were focused on two things 1) teaching God's will based on righteousness to the people and 2) strengthening their faith so they resist all temptations, both the worldly everyday ones and the opportunistic ones by Satan himself.
Here's another analogy, with pop culture. Remember how in "Lord of the Rings" Gandolf is going crazy trying to open the door that is secured by a magic spell? He is reading the sign that says "Speak friend and enter." He thinks that if you are a real friend you will be able to guess the secret magic password phrase, but all his guesses are wrong. After a painfully long time he realizes that the password IS to speak "friend."
Satan and his temptations are exactly that obvious. There is no secret profound "battle" between humans and Satan or other "evil forces," one where humans must "help out" the obviously hapless God who is just not handling things without the supposed wisdom and combativeness of humans. You just don't pick up the temptations of Satan; it really IS AS SIMPLE AS THAT. Thinking you are battling him personally and that God is just kind of hanging around waiting to see what happens IS one of Satan's most effective temptations: "Guaranteed to work on saints and sinners alike."
I hope that you have found this thought provoking and helpful. Read the Bible (or Qur'an, of course, for my Muslim friends). It really is that simple. Fear of God and humility regarding the puniness of humans compared to the All Knowing of God is the best protection from temptation, such that those who attain it barely notice temptation even if there was a ton of it piled in front of them because, like those particles of dust, the truly faithful and humble just don't even notice worldly or Satan provided temptations.
However, it is, like all topics related to faith, important that one protects one's self by understanding the real threat, and not a misrepresentation or cartoon of the threat and as always one has to rely on God's word in the scriptures, and the actual events depicted within.
We know that Satan is the leader of the group of angels who, after being created by God, when given the choice of free will (a gift God gives to all whom he loves, both angels and humans), chose not to serve God. Because of this they were cast out of heaven. Satan is allowed to roam the earth at will and has great influence over human world events (which is why he is scripturally refered to as ruling on earth... he's not THE ruler of earth, but he receives that title because by not serving God he can only serve and thus influence things of the world. In other words he is both in the world and "of" the world. Christians in contrast are taught by Jesus to be "in the world" but not ruled by the world, hence they are not "of the world." Their priority, unlike Satan's, is heavenly directed in service to God even while alive on earth and not in heaven).
So there are two aspects of Satan that sound alarming and powerful on the surface, especially the non-scriptural depictions, but are not all that difficult to refute and to have some peace of mind about. One is that Satan is obviously not THE ruler of all earth since he obviously, both in scriptural and in secular earth history, does not run around undoing God's creation. Satan does not blow up mountains, destroy cities, poison the water, kill baby animals as they are born, uproot trees, change the weather, etc. God is still in control of his creation, which he has declared "good" upon the making of each component, and Satan has never had any power, authority or ability to use godly powers to harm life or the natural processes and features of earth. If Satan had that power then there would be nothing left of earth a long time ago, as he would have caused havoc everywhere. But the scripture reports that Satan just wanders around the earth, tempting people to sin against God and each other at every obvious opportunity. Thus it is totally wrong and alarming for no reason to have any concern at all that Satan has some sort of like running amok, evil destroyer, invading alien, anti-life, kicker of sand in the faces of baby dinosaurs type of ability or impulse. Satan's sole interest is to tempt human beings.
And that is the second reality check that people need to keep in mind. As I've pointed out before in my blogging, and I've heard more preachers allude to it recently, Satan by no means denies the existence of God. That is a weird misconception that is pretty recent and is refuted by any even casual reading of the Bible. Satan, actually, is by his obvious existence and interaction with God (the Book of Job detailing a far from hostile conversation between God and Satan) is kind of the ultimate witness to God's reality! People who want to get into witchcraft and so forth or believe strange things have recently thought of the impossibility that Satan is like an "alternative possibility" to believing in God. That's obviously ridiculous since the scriptures show that Satan continues to not only acknowledge God's reality, but interact with him, including promptly showing up to test and tempt Jesus Christ at the beginning of his ministry. Further, Satan obeys God when God establishes limits on how much Satan can afflict Job. Demons and so forth who serve Satan are the first to recognize Jesus, before Jesus even speaks to them, and they rapidly proclaim their belief, their alarm and their subservience to Jesus' authority to cast them out. So people who think that maybe there's a real powerful Satan but no God are totally delusional on two basic points. Satan has very little power and controls none of the infrastructure of earth or the life upon it AND Satan himself is the first on most scenes to acknowledge God's reality and his movement in human matters.
So, if Satan does not deny God AND Satan has no actual power except to tempt, how is he so persuasive, so effective and so dangerous? This can best be understood and thus defeated by thinking of the common saying "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." This old saying means that many humans end up going to hell because they did something evil, wrong and sinful because they "meant well." In a way, Satan is very much like the humans who go to hell because they do wrong things but self justify that their "intentions were good." Don't get me wrong because I'm not using the word "good" with "Satan," but I'm preparing you for the analogy. Satan's basic error is that he cannot grasp God's All Knowingness; he just doesn't get within the core of his being that God already knows all that there is to know. Satan's a bit condescending to God, thinking that he knows better than God, particularly when it comes to human weaknesses.
Realistically, can anyone of even weak faith think that God knows less than Satan in any scenario? But that is the Achilles heel of both Satan and human beings, which is why they are such a potent mixture. Satan thinks he knows better than God and thus is even somewhat "protective" and condescending toward God. We see this in the Book of Job, where Satan is debating with God whether Job is really truly faithful to God and if he would stay faithful if God's protection were removed from him. Um, duh, Satan thinks that God doesn't already know every "what-if" scenario already? I've blogged before how one must realize God's All Knowingness by using analogies humans can grasp, such as how God knows every subatomic particle that ever existed or will exist in the universe and all the places each particle was and will be. So God doesn't know what Job will do when hardships befall him? God knows everything already because he is God and he is the only All Knowing.
But you can see that Satan honestly thinks something like this: "Wow, that God is naive. Sure Job loves and worships God now, since he's blessed by God and has a great life and many possessions due to God's protection. I've got to show God that he can't trust Job to stay faithful to him once things start going bad for him." Satan simply does not grasp that God already knows everything, absolutely everything. We know this because Satan recognizes who Jesus is, and promptly shows up to tempt him, and Satan thinks, what, that God didn't know that Satan is going to tempt Jesus? And that Jesus, as the Son of God, would be temptable? It's like Satan thinks that maybe God didn't prepare Jesus enough, or send him with enough power, and thus there is some actual chance of tempting Jesus to disobedience to God!
So the crux of understanding Satan and his enormous power over many human beings is to realize that Satan just does not grasp and ultimately does not have faith in the All Knowingness of God. Satan has plenty of faith that God exists because more than anyone he's been there around God "from the beginning" and so obviously God's reality is Satan's continual focus. But what Satan just does not understand is God's greater plan, which is, of course, the culmination of God's All Knowingness.
And that pride, since that is indeed what we are describing, a condescending pride of Satan's, is exactly the same prevalent flaw in many human beings. Can you think of many humans who do not at some point think they know "better" than God does? Or that God "needs their help?" Brothers and sisters, you know exactly what I mean.
While few people would confess to actually thinking that God needs their "help" or that they "know better than God," they do it all the time when they cherry pick what part of God's word they choose to believe. When they discard or ignore large parts of scripture, (or even just small parts that prohibit one's favorite sin), that is more than being someone of weak faith, or maybe a hypocrite. Secretly, subconsciously, that person is thinking that he or she knows "what God really meant" and that he or she can thus figure that "God would agree with me that this part of the Bible is out of date, and that part doesn't apply to me, but that I can go along with that other stuff because those sinners out there (not me) don't do enough of the good things and God needs my help" and so on and so forth. That is music to Satan's ears and fertile ground for him to sow weeds.
This is why some people are such willing and easy dupes and tools of Satan, while others seem to have a Teflon coating and barely notice Satan's existence. Satan works best with humans who do not believe in, have faith in, or trust God's All Knowingness. The people who diminish God's power in their minds but magnify and glorify their own potential roles in both earthly and, imagine that, heavenly matters are natural allies and pawns of Satan, since they have the same weakness and "philosophy." People who lack fear of God but magnify their own spirituality, resourcefulness and role in life are the most prone to be influenced at alarming speed and depth by Satan. People who fear God (in the way I've explained in previous posts on this subject) and who are humble about their role in the major matters of divinity tend not to be tempted by or hear Satan at all. Satan totally gives a pass by to those who are shielded by their sincere fear of God and their sincere humility.
Now, some of the most devout saints suffered from great torments by Satan. I'm about to say something that is not meant to be unkind or unloving, since these were indeed genuine Christian saints of great sanctity. However, even some saints have insufficient fear of God and humility to render themselves safe from any attacks (or imagined attacks) from Satan. Some very revered Christian saints who were indeed sanctified and worthy of God had the all too human flaw of being sucked into thinking that they are linchpins in some sort of huge "good versus evil" striving. I mean, how scriptural is that? Not at all. What do I mean? Here is what I would have said to some medieval saint in the making who is afflicted by torments he or she feels is sent by Satan:
Read the scripture about the Last Supper and the betrayal of Christ by Judas. Judas, the most ripest, the biggest target of all who ever existed for temptation, was only entered by Satan at the moment he left the table to betray Jesus. Satan spent only a matter of minutes, until the betrayal was done, in Judas. Why in the world do you think Satan is having supposedly hours, days, months or years of battle within YOU?
Sometimes you have to be a tough spiritual director, even with the most sanctified of people.
Humans all are in constant grave danger of the "road to hell is paved with good intentions" weakness and pride. Saints are no exception except in one matter: their suffering (even if self induced or exaggerated) never destroys their faith in God or takes them from their sanctity of service. But I explain this problem with certains saints in order to point out to you the scriptural basis for what I am saying: Satan does not occupy or vie with human beings. Satan only strews temptations that those who fear God and are genuinely humble never even notice, while those who do not fear God and who are prone to pridefulness catch themselves up in the temptations all of the time. Satan's temptations are like lint or dust on furniture: you don't even notice it unless you think it is your job to clean it up. That's the danger of not believing completely in God's All Knowingness and over exaggerating your role in "helping" God. You start thinking that you are the one who has to dust all the furniture, and thus those hundreds and thousands of tiny nearly invisible temptations to sin, like dust motes, gather together as you focus your attention on them. The rest of us live with dusty furniture ha ha. (Just some levity for a serious subject... please excuse the humor, I so rarely get to demonstrate it!)
Do you see what I mean? This is why an analogy is so powerful. Satan is constantly scattering tiny harmless temptations, most centered around insufficient faith in God and excess pride in one's own judgment and supposed "goodness." People who are not vulnerable to temptations of hubris, pride or vanity, and who are firm in their fear of God and trust in his All Knowingness, never even notice the tiny dust motes of temptation. But those who are prone to scrutinizing the dust particles start to pick them up in quickly growing clumps that stick to them and they are now accepting of and subjugated to Satan's temptations with alarming weight and rapidity.
Taking upon one's self a perception that you personally are "battling Satan" is a grave and not-scripturally based error. Remember, Judas himself did not "battle" Satan, nor was he owned by Satan or possessed by Satan. Rather, Judas picked up a lot of "dust particles" of pride which estranged him from his basic trust in God's providence, and then Satan only had to enter him for a few minutes to actually perform that greatest betrayal. If you think that you are in combat with some supposed spiritual forces, you have deviated from the truth of what is in the Bible (no one in the Bible is combating Satan etc on a personal basis). What they are doing is resisting Satan's temptations. There is a huge difference between the two.
This is why Paul said that Christians must be "dead to sin." When one is dead one is inert and like a chemical that just won't react with anything. Being in a hypersensitive and combative stance toward anything is not being "dead to sin." Rather, like collecting the dust motes, it is a problem of insufficient protection (study of scripture, faith in God's power, cultivating fear of God and humility) while completely over exaggerating one's own interaction with temptations. People, like that class of afflicted saints, who think they are in some sort of numinous and supernatural "combat" against "evil forces, such as Satan" are driving themselves nuts by collecting every dust mote of temptation that Satan has laid out there for them. Who in the Bible is actually "combating" Satan? Jesus did not even waste an hour of his earthly time doing so. Moses didn't. David didn't. Isaiah didn't. Joseph and Mary didn't. John the Baptist didn't. All the prophets and holy people of the Bible were focused on two things 1) teaching God's will based on righteousness to the people and 2) strengthening their faith so they resist all temptations, both the worldly everyday ones and the opportunistic ones by Satan himself.
Here's another analogy, with pop culture. Remember how in "Lord of the Rings" Gandolf is going crazy trying to open the door that is secured by a magic spell? He is reading the sign that says "Speak friend and enter." He thinks that if you are a real friend you will be able to guess the secret magic password phrase, but all his guesses are wrong. After a painfully long time he realizes that the password IS to speak "friend."
Satan and his temptations are exactly that obvious. There is no secret profound "battle" between humans and Satan or other "evil forces," one where humans must "help out" the obviously hapless God who is just not handling things without the supposed wisdom and combativeness of humans. You just don't pick up the temptations of Satan; it really IS AS SIMPLE AS THAT. Thinking you are battling him personally and that God is just kind of hanging around waiting to see what happens IS one of Satan's most effective temptations: "Guaranteed to work on saints and sinners alike."
I hope that you have found this thought provoking and helpful. Read the Bible (or Qur'an, of course, for my Muslim friends). It really is that simple. Fear of God and humility regarding the puniness of humans compared to the All Knowing of God is the best protection from temptation, such that those who attain it barely notice temptation even if there was a ton of it piled in front of them because, like those particles of dust, the truly faithful and humble just don't even notice worldly or Satan provided temptations.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Anthrax killer had unqualified counselor
Very recently I posted on the subject of the error in thinking that being an ex-addict is a "street cred" for being an addictions counselor. Here is a horrifying example of just what I was talking about. Kudos to the authors of this column because "addition grandiosity" is a terrible problem, and a counselor who is a former addict and has a recent DUI is a scary, but not uncommon, scenario.
http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/health/2008/08/15/2008-08-15_suspected_anthrax_killer_turned_to_unqua.html
snip
BILL: "OK," writes Trent, "Dr. Dave is a Ph.D. psychologist, but I see that Dr. Bruce Ivins, the researcher who did the anthrax poisoning, had someone like you, Bill, counseling him on his addiction – maybe long on experience, but short on academic credentials, and simply using her own recovery as a cookie cutter cure-all for her paying patients."
DR. DAVE: If the news accounts about Dr. Ivins, the FBI's identified anthrax killer, are accurate, Trent has a sad but valid point. Jean Duley, his chemical dependency counselor, was employed by Comprehensive Counseling Associates as an "entry level counselor," touting her own drug use as her major credential. "You name it," says Ms. Duley, "I did it. Heroin. Cocaine. PCP. The whole nine yards. In 1993, I hit a bottom. I woke up out of a blackout in Southeast lockup in D.C. and didn't know how I had gotten there ... I had a spiritual awakening."
BILL: I've read about her so-called recovery: She just got a DUI ticket last December and was on home detention for 90 days. Were those her graduate studies?
snip
BILL: So Trent's question would be better phrased as "Why does a newly abstinent counselor (like Ms. Duley) seem to be going it alone with a man so dangerous that even she filed legal papers to keep him away from her?"
DR. DAVE: Duley seems to have been not only Ivins' case coordinator, but also his group counselor and individual therapist. What is particularly alarming is that Ivins was re-entering the community after a four-week stay in a psychiatric hospital.
BILL: So we aren't talking AA or rehab here. He'd been on a special hospital wing for those who are both alcoholic and seriously mentally ill.
snip
DR. DAVE: Whether hired as an "entry level counselor" like Ms. Duley or serving as a trained volunteer facilitator as you were, Bill, at Scripps, the issue is making sure everyone on a team is appropriately trained for providing addiction recovery services.
BILL: I can't imagine anyone in our peer facilitator group at the McDonald Center who'd had a DUI in the previous year.
snip
BILL: So, Dave, as the non-degreed member of our own NY Daily News team, let me try to summarize for the worried husband, wife or parent. If you are looking for a recovery counselor, the best ones work as members of a team. Secondly, that team and its health organization are responsible for quality training and supervision of any team member - even volunteers or peer mentors. Anything else?
DR. DAVE: It is important to avoid the trap of thinking that your way of recovery is THE way of recovery – taking yourself (as Ms. Duley seems to have done) as the template for everyone else is one of the symptoms of addictive grandiosity.
http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/health/2008/08/15/2008-08-15_suspected_anthrax_killer_turned_to_unqua.html
snip
BILL: "OK," writes Trent, "Dr. Dave is a Ph.D. psychologist, but I see that Dr. Bruce Ivins, the researcher who did the anthrax poisoning, had someone like you, Bill, counseling him on his addiction – maybe long on experience, but short on academic credentials, and simply using her own recovery as a cookie cutter cure-all for her paying patients."
DR. DAVE: If the news accounts about Dr. Ivins, the FBI's identified anthrax killer, are accurate, Trent has a sad but valid point. Jean Duley, his chemical dependency counselor, was employed by Comprehensive Counseling Associates as an "entry level counselor," touting her own drug use as her major credential. "You name it," says Ms. Duley, "I did it. Heroin. Cocaine. PCP. The whole nine yards. In 1993, I hit a bottom. I woke up out of a blackout in Southeast lockup in D.C. and didn't know how I had gotten there ... I had a spiritual awakening."
BILL: I've read about her so-called recovery: She just got a DUI ticket last December and was on home detention for 90 days. Were those her graduate studies?
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BILL: So Trent's question would be better phrased as "Why does a newly abstinent counselor (like Ms. Duley) seem to be going it alone with a man so dangerous that even she filed legal papers to keep him away from her?"
DR. DAVE: Duley seems to have been not only Ivins' case coordinator, but also his group counselor and individual therapist. What is particularly alarming is that Ivins was re-entering the community after a four-week stay in a psychiatric hospital.
BILL: So we aren't talking AA or rehab here. He'd been on a special hospital wing for those who are both alcoholic and seriously mentally ill.
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DR. DAVE: Whether hired as an "entry level counselor" like Ms. Duley or serving as a trained volunteer facilitator as you were, Bill, at Scripps, the issue is making sure everyone on a team is appropriately trained for providing addiction recovery services.
BILL: I can't imagine anyone in our peer facilitator group at the McDonald Center who'd had a DUI in the previous year.
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BILL: So, Dave, as the non-degreed member of our own NY Daily News team, let me try to summarize for the worried husband, wife or parent. If you are looking for a recovery counselor, the best ones work as members of a team. Secondly, that team and its health organization are responsible for quality training and supervision of any team member - even volunteers or peer mentors. Anything else?
DR. DAVE: It is important to avoid the trap of thinking that your way of recovery is THE way of recovery – taking yourself (as Ms. Duley seems to have done) as the template for everyone else is one of the symptoms of addictive grandiosity.
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