Robin Hardy Online
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Belated 4th of July Fireworks James Boswell is relating a conversation initiated by Samuel Johnson at a dinner with friends on April 13, 1778: "He, I know not how or why, made a sudden transition to [a topic] upon which he was a
violent aggressor; for he said, 'I am willing to love all mankind, except an American:' and his inflammable corruption bursting into horrid fire, he 'breathed out threatenings and slaughter;' calling them,
'Rascals--Robbers--Pirates;' and exclaiming, he'd 'burn and destroy them.' Miss Seward, looking to him with mild but steady astonishment, said, 'Sir, this is an instance that we are always most violent against those
whom we have injured.'--He was irritated still more by this delicate and keen reproach; and roared out another tremendous volley which one might fancy could be heard across the Atlantick. During this tempest I sat
in great uneasiness, lamenting his heat of temper; till, by degrees, I diverted his attention to other topicks." [In Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan] There is nothing remarkable about the sentence "I will pay you when I take my Mony [get paid myself]" and "I will fight so long as I can hold my Sword in my Hand." But in their context they are devastating. For they are uttered by two men lying fast asleep on the Enchanted Ground, talking in their sleep, and not to be waked by any endeavour. The final stroke of the grim irony comes with the words: "At that, one of the Children laughed." How horrifying the joke and the laughter are is perhaps immediately apparent only to those who share Bunyan's premises. Yet perhaps not. Even those who think that the stakes we play for in life are not, as Bunyan believed, strictly infinite, may yet feel in some degree the uneasiness he meant us to feel; may wonder whether what we regard as our firm resolutions, our long industry, and our creditable achievements, are not all talking in our sleep and dreaming, sleep from which, though we may talk louder and louder, we shall not wake. C.S. Lewis,
Faith When Evil Comes [On April 26, 1906, a tornado struck the small town of Bellevue, Texas, when W.W. Melton was a young pastor there. Virtually every building in the town was leveled and 15 people died.] The summer following the cyclone, I was holding a revival in Tarrant County. I had lunch one day in the home of a woman who believed in those strong, ultra-Calvinistic doctrines of predestination, foreordination and election. She was asking me many questions about the cyclone. She asked me if we could see it coming. I told her we could. She asked me if I ran. I told her I did. She asked why I ran. I told her just because I couldn't fly, that was the best I could do. Then, she asked me where my faith was. I told her I took it to the storm cellar with me. W.W. Melton
How Conspiracy Theorists Are Made That sense of uncovering deep layers of ancient cover-ups is what drove the sales of The DaVinci Code. There, too, a web of truths, half-truths and outright fabrication spun a story that left the reader with a palpable sense of awe. It made you feel important, like you knew something absolutely essential that very few others ever were privileged to know. Now most normal people do not look at life from within a pit of failure and despair. Our lives are measured by small successes -- like raising children, serving in the military, doing volunteer work at your church – or just doing the right thing in a thousand small but important ways, like returning money if someone makes you too much change. These are simply the small, ordinary milestones of a life of value. They give you a sense of identity. But if I didn't have that sense of identity rooted in my own small achievements, I wonder how likely it would have been for me to grab onto that sense of sudden empowerment, of being an initiate in some arcane club of hidden wisdom. I wonder what might have happened to me if being the Holder of Secret Knowledge had been my only source of self-esteem…the one redeeming landmark in a life of isolation and failure. Indeed, I wonder what power such a worldview would have over me if I could believe that behind the scenes lurked vast and unknowable dark forces – forces that could topple a president and perhaps even explain why a person of my deep, vast and bountiful talents was not doing a whole lot better in life? I wonder what might have happened to me then. Bill Whittle
Entrepreneurship and Freedom Entrepreneurs, who are by nature agents of change, may prove to be among the most important forces for global stability since they promote freedom, which, after all, is at the heart of every nation that operates successfully for a long time. Freedom is more than being able to vote. It is the ability of individuals to live as they wish and pursue their desires. Democracy is a political system that protects personal freedom by giving people a hand in choosing their government, thereby making the government responsive to their wishes. But the main way in which most people exercise freedom is through their work—through economic action. Viewed in that light, entrepreneurship may be the ultimate manifestation of individual freedom. Carl J. Schramm
[Another] lesson may be found in the principle behind Proverbs 23:7: The public life is a proclamation of the secret victory or defeat. "When I would do good, evil is present with me," but which one overcomes, the good or the evil? Life will be its own answer, and no argument will be needed to reinforce it. A person is good or bad just as the good or the evil overcame in the secret struggle of his life. There are hundreds and thousands of little battles fought out in the inner soul that the public knows nothing about, but in time the results will begin to express themselves in the public life. Little by little, attention is drawn to some virtue or some vice. The outside world does not know its history but has come to see and accept the results that have surfaced in the life. In time, they can no longer be kept secret. W.W. Melton, Sifted But Saved, p. 45
I'm Supposed to Put Myself in Your Hands? "Since [giving a patronizing speech to a roomful of TV professionals] I've been treated with less condescension and received more respect. . . . The first week I was taping the show, a stunningly handsome young man was assigned to oversee my first photo session. Meticulously coiffed and wearing a silk suit and custom-made shoes, he was just beautifully turned out. He came up to me and said, 'Judy, I want you to put yourself completely in my hands.' "For some reason, this struck me as hilarious. 'Honey,' I told him, 'I've got food in my refrigerator that's older than you.' "The expression on his face was priceless. He fled. I never saw him again. Wherever you are, I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings." Judge Judy Sheindlin,
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate. . . . In the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him—mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevski said once, "There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings." These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom--which cannot be taken away--that makes life meaningful and purposeful. Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, pp. 86-87
Why History is Better than Fiction You learn the benefits of monastic self-discipline: You learn useful new terms: You learn to keep your mouth shut: William R. Cannon, History of Christianity in the Middle Ages
"Ardent spirits played an even greater role in colonial elections. Outcomes were often influenced by a candidate's free distribution of drink. For example, when George Washington stood for election in 1758 to the Virginia House of Burgesses, he spent thirty-seven pounds sterling, seven shillings on his campaign, 'of which over 34 pounds was for brandy, rum, cider, strong beer and wine.'" Alan Marcus and Howard Segal The Necessity of Suffering "We shouldn't fall into the trap of thinking that if we are always doing the right thing, we are not going to suffer. People suffer for doing the right thing. Why is suffering so important? One of the great traps of our culture is always wanting things to be fixed and perfect. We fall into the trap of always wanting to be comfortable and in control. Those are just the natural instincts of human beings. Suffering is the experience that breaks the illusion of that kind of system. Everyone who tries to micro-manage or fix everything knows that there is a point where we can have some strong influence on making things better around us, but it's a very frustrating, unhappy disposition overall. . . . "[First Peter 3:15-18] reminds us that if we are to receive the gifts of the Spirit and open ourselves to the power dwelling within us, we will be empowered to endure the process that is essential. One of those truths is that we have to suffer. We are thrown up against the very hard truth that things are not always going to be the way we want them to be. We can't make the world the way we want it to be. We have to submit. To suffer means to submit." Monsignor Don L. Fischer
Fortune "Bad fortune, I think, is more use to a man than good fortune. Good fortune always seems to bring happiness, but deceives you with her smiles, whereas bad fortune is always truthful because by changing she shows her true fickleness. Good fortune deceives, but bad fortune enlightens. With her display of specious riches good fortune enslaves the minds of those who enjoy her, while bad fortune gives men release through the recognition of how fragile a thing happiness is. And so you can see Fortune in one way capricious, wayward and ever inconstant, and in another way sober, prepared and made wise by the experience of her own adversity. "And lastly, by her flattery good fortune lures men away from the path of true good, but adverse fortune frequently draws men back to their true good like a shepherdess with her crook." Boethius
Why Robin Was Flummoxed by an "Probably no man has ever troubled to imagine how strange his life would appear to himself if it were unrelentingly assessed in terms of his maleness; if everything he wore, said, or did had to be justified by reference to female approval; if he were compelled to regard himself, day in and day out, not as a member of society, but merely as a virile member of society. . . . "His newspaper would assist him with a 'Men's Corner,' telling him how, by the expenditure of a good deal of money and a couple of hours a day, he could attract the girls and retain his wife's affection. . . . People would write books called, 'History of the Male,' or 'Males of the Bible,' or 'The Psychology of the Male,' and he would be regaled daily with headlines such as 'Gentleman-Doctor's Discovery,' 'Male Secretary Wins Calcutta Sweep,' 'Men Artists at the Academy.' "If he gave an interview to a reporter, or performed any unusual exploit, he would find it recorded in such terms as these: 'Professor Bract, although a distinguished botanist, is not in any way an unmanly man. He has, in fact, a wife and seven children. Tall and burley, the hands with which he handles his delicate specimens are as gnarled and powerful as those of a Canadian lumberjack, and when I swilled beer with him in his laboratory, he bawled his conclusions at me in a strong, gruff voice that implement the promise of his swaggering moustache.'" Dorothy Sayers
To Die Well "What you do amiss in your life today, you may amend tomorrow; for as many suns as God maketh to arise upon you, you have as many new lives; but you can die but once; and if you mar that business, you cannot come back to mend that piece of work again. No man sinneth twice in dying ill; as we die but once, so we die but ill or well once. . . . Fulfill your course with joy; for we take nothing to the grave with us, but a good or evil conscience." Samuel Rutherford
To Know God . . . or Not "A similar pleasant 'discovery' came in 1 John 4:7, in the words 'everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.' Again, this inspired truth had naturally been there all the time, but I don't think I had ever heard a sermon preached on it. Throughout my years of experience it had struck me that the things that were really admirable in human behaviour were those inspired by love. "I had also noticed, like many others, that people could exhibit most remarkable compassionate love without any great religious profession, or indeed with none at all. But if it is true, as John declares, that 'God is love,' it would make sense that any action that sprang from love had its origin in God. It would also mean that those who did give themselves in love to others did in fact 'know God,' however loudly they might protest their agnosticism. "I have never been happy with any ecclesiastical or theological system in which correctness of belief was of paramount importance. It is only too easy for some men to build up a certain theological structure which includes them and excludes others. But what we really believe in our heart of hearts may be quite different from what we outwardly profess. I saw then, and I have seen nothing in life to disturb this view, that when a man acts in response to love and compassion he is responding to God whatever he thinks or says. Conversely the man who refuses to become involved in the troubles and burdens of his fellows is rejecting God, however religious his outward profession may be." J.B. Phillips (See "What Is Salvation? Or, If I Accept Jesus Christ as My Savior, Can I Do Whatever I Want and Still Go to Heaven?")
Which Religion Will Make Me Happiest? "'Which of the religions of the world gives to its followers the greatest happiness?' While it lasts, the religion of worshipping oneself is the best. "I have an elderly acquaintance of about eighty, who has lived a life of unbroken selfishness and self-admiration from the earliest years, and is, more or less, I regret to say, one of the happiest men I know. From the moral point of view it is very difficult! I am not approaching the question from that angle. As you perhaps know, I haven't always been a Christian. I didn't go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don't recommend Christianity." From Chapter 4, "Answers to Questions on Christianity" in Pascal's Pensées If it is an extraordinary blindness to live without investigating who we are, it is a terrible one to live an evil life while believing in God. (495) Nothing is more dastardly than to act with bravado before God. Let [those who think they can] then leave these impieties to those who are sufficiently ill-bred to be really capable of them. Let them at least be honest men, if they cannot be Christians. Finally, let them recognize that there are two kinds of people one can call reasonable: those who serve God with all their heart because they know Him, and those who seek Him with all their heart because they do not know Him. (194) Between us and heaven or hell there is only one life, which is the frailest thing in the world. (213) Blaise Pascal, Beggarly Pride Robin is fascinated by the themes she sees running through great Christian literature. Here is a bit from Samuel Rutherford (from a letter to James Bautie, 1637): "We would still have God in our common, and buy his kindness with our merits; for beggarly pride is devils' honesty . . . it will only give a 'good day' for a 'good day' again. . . . If He will not be friends [on our terms] let him go, saith pride; beware of this thief, when Christ offereth himself." And in 1977, Ruth Bell Graham published this piece: O tenderest Love, from Sitting by My Laughing Fire (Word Books, Waco, TX, 1977) p. 204.
Taking Our Lusts to Heaven "It is impossible that a man can take his lusts to heaven with him; such wares as these will not be welcome there. O how loth are we to forego our burdens that hinder us in running our race with patience! It is no small work to displease and anger [our own] nature, that we may please God. . . . . Oh, what pains, and what a death is it to nature, to turn me, myself my lust, my ease, my credit over into my Lord, my Saviour, my King, and my God, my Lord's will, my Lord's grace! But alas! that idol, that whorish creature, myself, is the master-idol we all bow to. . . . "O blessed are they, who can deny themslves, and put Christ in the room of themselves! O, would to the Lord, I had not myself, but Christ; not my lust, but Christ; not my ease, but Christ; not my honour, but Christ! O sweet word, 'yet not I, but Christ liveth in me!' Gal. ii. 20. O if every one would put away himself, his own self, his own ease, his own pleasure, his own credit, and his own twenty things, his own hundred things, that he setteth up as idols above Christ." Samuel Rutherford
What Satan Accomplished So stretcht out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay John Milton, Paradise Lost, ll. 209-220, 1667 (See: "Is Satan the Hero of Paradise Lost?")
Your Only Happiness "You shall find it your only happiness, under whatever thing disturbeth and crosseth the peace of your mind in this life, to love nothing for itself, but only God for himself. It is the crooked love of some harlots, that they love bracelets, ear-rings, and rings, better than the lover that sendeth them: God will not be so loved; for that were to behave as harlots, and not as the chaste spouse, to abate in our love when these things are pulled away. Our love to him should begin on earth, as it shall be in heaven; for the bride taketh not by a thousand degrees so much delight in her wedding garment, as she doth in her bridegroom; so we, in this life to come, howbeit clothed with glory as with a robe, shall not be so much affected with the glory that goeth about us, as with the Bridegroom's joyful face and presence. "Madam, if you can attain to this, the field is won. . . ." Samuel Rutherford
Resisting Impetuous Prayer "Our prayers must often turn into a patient waiting; but by no means must they be ever without hope. Moreover, the Lord has His own times. He knows what must, in the proper order of things, take place first. His turn may be before ours. He always so helps as to prove that He alone has done it. He will not share His glory with another. He only is the deliverer and helper; therefore looking alone to Him, take fresh courage. He is friendly, He will come." Pastor Johann Blumhardt
Serenity Prayer, Unabridged God, grant me the Reinhold Niebuhr
When earth's last picture is painted, And those that were good will be happy; And only the Master shall praise us, Rudyard Kipling
Clarity "I love poverty because He loved it. I love riches because they afford me the means of helping the very poor. I keep faith with everybody; I do not render evil to those who wrong me, but I wish them a lot like mine, in which I receive neither evil nor good from men. I try to be just, true, sincere, and faithful to all men; I have a tender heart for those to whom God has more closely united me; and whether I am alone, or seen of men, I do all my actions in the sight of God, who must judge of them, and to whom I have consecrated them all. "These are my sentiments; and every day of my life I bless my Redeemer, who has implanted them in me, and who, of a man full of weakness, of miseries, of lust, of pride, and of ambition, has made a man free from all these evils by the power of His grace, to which all the glory of it is due, as of myself I have only misery and error." Pascal's Pensées, 549
Everlasting Fire "Then I saw in my dream, that the Interpreter took Christian by the hand, and led him into a place where was a fire burning against a wall, and one standing by it, always casting much water upon it to quench it: yet did the fire burn higher and hotter. "Then said Christian, What means this? "The Interpreter answered, This fire is the work of grace that is wrought in the heart; he that casts water upon it, to extinguish and put it out, is the devil: but in that thou seest the fire, notwithstanding, burn higher and hotter, thou shalt also see the reason of that. So he had him about to the back side of the wall, where he saw a man with a vessel of oil in his hand, of the which he did also continually cast (but secretly) into the fire. "Then said Christian, What means this? "The Interpreter answered, This is Christ, who continually, with the oil of his grace, maintains the work already begun in the heart; by the means of which, notwithstanding what the devil can do, the souls of his people prove gracious still." John Bunyan To learn more about John Bunyan, see the footnote to A Very Short Course in Writing Fiction.
Is God in Everything? [A strange lady, a Christian, tells the writer of a vision she had--] "She thought she was in a perfectly dark place, and that there advanced toward her, from a distance, a body of light which gradually surrounded and enveloped her and everything around her. As it approached, a voice seemed to say, 'This is the presence of God! This is the presence of God!' While surrounded with this presence, all the great and awful things in life seemed to pass before her—fighting armies, wicked men, raging beasts, storms and pestilences, sin and suffering of every kind. She shrunk back at first in terror; but she soon saw that the presence of God so surrounded and enveloped herself and each one of these things, that not a lion could reach out its paw, nor a bullet fly through the air, except as the presence of God moved out of the way to permit it. And she saw that if there were ever so thin a film, as it were, of this glorious Presence between herself and the most terrible violence, not a hair of her head could be ruffled, nor anything touch her, except as the presence divided to let the evil through. "Then all the small and annoying things of life passed before her; and equally she saw that there also she was so enveloped in this presence of God, that not a cross look, nor a harsh word, nor petty trial of any kind could affect her, unless God's encircling presence moved out of the way to let it. . . . "God was in everything; and to her henceforth there were no second causes. She saw that her life came to her, day by day and hour by hour, directly from the hand of God, let the agencies which should seem to control it be what they might." Hannah Whitall Smith When You Can't Pray "But what shall I do in spiritual exercises? you say. I answer, if you knew particularly what to do, it were not a spiritual exercise. . . . I shall rather spoil twenty prayers than not pray at all. Let my broken words go up to heaven; when they come up into the great angel's golden censer, that compassionate Advocate will put together my broken prayers, and perfume them. Words are but accidents of prayer." Samuel Rutherford
"We are in the world like men playing at tables; the chance is not in our power, but to play it is; and when it is fallen we must manage it as we can; and let nothing trouble us but when we do a base action, or speak like a fool, or think wickedly: these things God hath put into our powers; but concerning those things which are wholly in the choice of another, they cannot fall under our deliberation, and therefore neither are they fit for our passions. "My fear may make me miserable, but it cannot prevent what another hath in his power and purpose: and prosperities can only be enjoyed by them who fear not at all to lose them; since the amazement and passion concerning the future takes off all the pleasure of the present possession. Therefore if thou hast lost thy land, do not also lose thy constancy: and if thou must die a little sooner, yet do not die impatiently. "For no chance is evil to him that is content, and to a man nothing is miserable, unless it be unreasonable. No man can make another man to be his slave unless he hath first enslaved himself to life and death, to pleasure or pain, to hope or fear: command these passions, and you are freer than the Parthian kings." Jeremy Taylor, Holy Living, 1650 What We Need from God "The verse which you want more than any other, and which you had better make your whole Bible for the present, is that wonderful passage in Deuteronomy—'I led thee, and suffered [allowed] thee to hunger, and fed thee with food that thou knewest not, to teach thee that man does not live by bread alone'—no, not by what you and I think necessary of life, that without which we cannot live—love, success, fulfilled desire—but by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Most High, whether that word ('thing' in the Revised Version) be failure or success, love or heart-hunger, uselessness or abounding labour—by that does man live. Our life is distinctly a supernatural life, and we are always longing for a natural life, and God has let us go hungry of the natural life, in order that we may enter into the supernatural, and our wish be taken up into His." Ellice Hopkins
What God Needs from Us "It is a wonder that Christ's glory is not defiled, running through such an unclean and impure channel [as the writer]; but I see Christ will be Christ, in the dreg and refuse of men; his art, his shining wisdom, his beauty speaketh loudest in blackness, weakness, deadness, yea, in nothing. I see, nothing, no money, no worth, no good, no life, no deserving is the ground that Omnipotency delighteth to draw glory out of." Samuel Rutherford
"Vanity, My Little Man"
The Proud Cleric "At the end of the sixteenth century regular processions were organized around Hereford Cathedral to mark holy occasions. Before one such, the Dean of Hereford, Dr. Price, decided that in view of his own importance he would not, as before, walk on foot with the ruck of lowlier canons. He would instead ride on horseback so that he might be more easily seen reading from his prayer book. The proud cleric mounted his mare, opened his book and took to the streets. "His reading was at an early stage when a stallion broke loose, saw his mare and mounted her. "The dean was trapped, read practically nothing and swore he would never ride in a procession again." --Stephen Pile, The Book of Heroic Failures (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), p. 40. |
