Is there a reason?
I know, I haven't posted on here for a little while. I ran out of my thoughts of the week, and there was nothing worth posting. Now I bring thee news, kind of. This past Sabbath I was over at Gina's, and you can read her blog to find out what happened. It was crazy, in a very good way. I did a decent amount of work this week, and actually think I did really well on 2 quizes that I had to take the same day. I've got a ton of work due Monday, no idea how I'll get it all done. So much for getting caught up on sleep, again!
Now onto my thought of the week. It's different than the others. The others were explanations of how I was seeing the world around me. This one's an explanation of my world, my thinking. I titled this post "Is there a reason?" because there is a reason I posted what I did before. It wasn't just to show what I thought of the world, but to also look at the attitudes that people have when they do things. I'll start off by explaining what I mean when I say attitude.
For lack of a better word (since I can't think of one, and I don't know if there's a better one), that's the word I'm going to use. Attitude seems to have the connotation of being negative. You usually hear that word when someone says that you have a "bad attitude". It describes someone's emotions at a certain time. However, with that description, it doesn't quite convey what I mean. The word mindset doesn't quite work either. Mindset is someone's focus, their reasoning. If you combine mindset and attitude, you see what someone's trying to achieve, and why. That's the explanation I'm going to assign to the word attitude right now.
One of the things I pointed out in my topics from September 3 onward was the concept of attitude. I said that I didn't want to sound like I was preaching at times. I questioned whether people talk to others online to tell the other person how good their week was, or to actually listen to what the other person has to say, and see how they're doing. Are we talking to someone to tell them the worldly things we did that week, or to talk about Godly things? I explained my attitude about talking to people online: what my "test" was trying to achieve, and why. I talked about the attitude people have talking to someone on a cell phone all the time when they go to their next class.
The concept of attitude has fascinated me lately, since it explains why people do stuff. I'll start off with a simple example: Why do we talk online? One might say that we want to stay in contact with others, see how they're doing, ask and answer questions, that sort of thing. However, that describes only half of the reason why. When we apply the definition of attitude that I'm using, we see that the emotional aspects haven't been talked about. The emotional aspect leads to questions like: What emotions do we have when they're online? Our we selfish, empathetic, seeking after knowledge, gossiping? Do we look forward to when the other person talks about their week, and makes you wait to talk about your's? If you hear that they didn't have a good week, do you forget about talking about your week altogether, and try and comfort the other person? We can say "sure, I do that, if they've had a bad week. What's your point?" Well, this was just a mirror of a larger example.
Why are we Christians? Are we doing this because our parents brought us up like this? Are we doing it because the Bible said so? Because we can see prophesy unfolding, and the benefits of following God? We would probably say that God called us, we've proved the things in the Bible to ourselves time and time again, we see prophesy unfolding, and it's a matter of life and death, and you want life. That's a good answer, but it doesn't fulfill the concept of attitude. Add in emotion, and the questions become different. Do you enjoy following God? Are we doing this to save ourselves, or because we love God so much we want to obey Him? Are we practicing the fruits of the Spirit because we're told to, or want to? Do we want love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control? God cares about the emotions we have and the reasons we have them. What are the weightier matters of the law? Justice, mercy, and faith. Those are emotional aspects.
We have the example of the woman washing Christ's feet with her hair, and people asking Christ to heal someone out of faith. It doesn't say if some of those people kept the Sabbath and whatnot. Some of them didn't, but Christ admonished them because their "heart was in the right place." They had the right attitude. They did things out of love and faith, and it wasn't so that they could get into the Kingdom, but because they trusted and/or loved Christ. If you don't think I've proved my point well enough, that's fine, I don't want to make a sermon out of this. If you believe me, great; evaluate your life and really ask yourself why you're doing things. I started asking myself whether I was in college to learn or get grades that are supposed to be proportional to what you've learned. I wanted to do the former, and ended up doing the latter. Now that I'm actually learning for the sake of learning, it's making college easier for me. I still have a ton of work, but I see it as a good thing.
If you don't believe me that attitudes are that important, then at least I've hopefully stirred up some questions in your mind, and you'll investigate. We should follow God because we want to, not because we have to, or want to have eternal life. Do we want to give God our love and obedience, or try to get eternal life from Him?
If you plan on evaluating yourself and your attitude, you have to ask God to give you the ability to see yourself for who you really are, and that God gives you the proper attitude as you evaluate yourself. You can't change your attitude to show your love to God without involving Him. Ask that He show your friends and family the proper attitudes they should have in life. By truly wanting God to help them that way shows Him how much you have your mind centered on giving and not getting. That's the attitude God wants His children to have.
I'll leave you with one final example which is kind of related. Malachi 3:8 says "Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed Me! But you will say, 'In what way have we robbed You?' In tithes and offerings." We use that scripture to show people that we need to tithe. What about the offerings? We give them during the Holy Days. Yeah, because we're commanded to. What about giving an offering because God blessed us with something, or delivered us from a trial? We'd be giving an offering because we want to, not because we have to. That's real love. I have yet to do this (since this idea came to me about 2 weeks ago), but I plan to.
This has been quite a long post, and I probably seem like I'm preaching again. I'm just sharing my opinions on things, and at worst, if I'm right, and people listen, I've helped their lives. I feel that if I'm right, I should share this with my friends. If you feel that there are some good points from what I've said, then apply those in your lives, or keep applying them. I honestly want you to tell me via reply or instant message how you feel about this and the other things I wrote, because if you think I'm going off the deep end, I'd like you to save me. If I'm actually helping you, then that makes me feel better because I don't feel like I'm preaching.
I don't know if I can come up with any more posts for now. I've reached writer's block, which may be a good thing for the reader. I'm sorry if some parts might not have sounded coherent, or if I didn't flow too well in certain areas. I wrote this in one sitting, while I was "in the mood", and that's when you speak most truthfully. Everyone, I love you all, I hope I didn't offend once again. Please, be honest with me, and honest with yourselves. Take care, fear God, and keep His commandments.
Now onto my thought of the week. It's different than the others. The others were explanations of how I was seeing the world around me. This one's an explanation of my world, my thinking. I titled this post "Is there a reason?" because there is a reason I posted what I did before. It wasn't just to show what I thought of the world, but to also look at the attitudes that people have when they do things. I'll start off by explaining what I mean when I say attitude.
For lack of a better word (since I can't think of one, and I don't know if there's a better one), that's the word I'm going to use. Attitude seems to have the connotation of being negative. You usually hear that word when someone says that you have a "bad attitude". It describes someone's emotions at a certain time. However, with that description, it doesn't quite convey what I mean. The word mindset doesn't quite work either. Mindset is someone's focus, their reasoning. If you combine mindset and attitude, you see what someone's trying to achieve, and why. That's the explanation I'm going to assign to the word attitude right now.
One of the things I pointed out in my topics from September 3 onward was the concept of attitude. I said that I didn't want to sound like I was preaching at times. I questioned whether people talk to others online to tell the other person how good their week was, or to actually listen to what the other person has to say, and see how they're doing. Are we talking to someone to tell them the worldly things we did that week, or to talk about Godly things? I explained my attitude about talking to people online: what my "test" was trying to achieve, and why. I talked about the attitude people have talking to someone on a cell phone all the time when they go to their next class.
The concept of attitude has fascinated me lately, since it explains why people do stuff. I'll start off with a simple example: Why do we talk online? One might say that we want to stay in contact with others, see how they're doing, ask and answer questions, that sort of thing. However, that describes only half of the reason why. When we apply the definition of attitude that I'm using, we see that the emotional aspects haven't been talked about. The emotional aspect leads to questions like: What emotions do we have when they're online? Our we selfish, empathetic, seeking after knowledge, gossiping? Do we look forward to when the other person talks about their week, and makes you wait to talk about your's? If you hear that they didn't have a good week, do you forget about talking about your week altogether, and try and comfort the other person? We can say "sure, I do that, if they've had a bad week. What's your point?" Well, this was just a mirror of a larger example.
Why are we Christians? Are we doing this because our parents brought us up like this? Are we doing it because the Bible said so? Because we can see prophesy unfolding, and the benefits of following God? We would probably say that God called us, we've proved the things in the Bible to ourselves time and time again, we see prophesy unfolding, and it's a matter of life and death, and you want life. That's a good answer, but it doesn't fulfill the concept of attitude. Add in emotion, and the questions become different. Do you enjoy following God? Are we doing this to save ourselves, or because we love God so much we want to obey Him? Are we practicing the fruits of the Spirit because we're told to, or want to? Do we want love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control? God cares about the emotions we have and the reasons we have them. What are the weightier matters of the law? Justice, mercy, and faith. Those are emotional aspects.
We have the example of the woman washing Christ's feet with her hair, and people asking Christ to heal someone out of faith. It doesn't say if some of those people kept the Sabbath and whatnot. Some of them didn't, but Christ admonished them because their "heart was in the right place." They had the right attitude. They did things out of love and faith, and it wasn't so that they could get into the Kingdom, but because they trusted and/or loved Christ. If you don't think I've proved my point well enough, that's fine, I don't want to make a sermon out of this. If you believe me, great; evaluate your life and really ask yourself why you're doing things. I started asking myself whether I was in college to learn or get grades that are supposed to be proportional to what you've learned. I wanted to do the former, and ended up doing the latter. Now that I'm actually learning for the sake of learning, it's making college easier for me. I still have a ton of work, but I see it as a good thing.
If you don't believe me that attitudes are that important, then at least I've hopefully stirred up some questions in your mind, and you'll investigate. We should follow God because we want to, not because we have to, or want to have eternal life. Do we want to give God our love and obedience, or try to get eternal life from Him?
If you plan on evaluating yourself and your attitude, you have to ask God to give you the ability to see yourself for who you really are, and that God gives you the proper attitude as you evaluate yourself. You can't change your attitude to show your love to God without involving Him. Ask that He show your friends and family the proper attitudes they should have in life. By truly wanting God to help them that way shows Him how much you have your mind centered on giving and not getting. That's the attitude God wants His children to have.
I'll leave you with one final example which is kind of related. Malachi 3:8 says "Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed Me! But you will say, 'In what way have we robbed You?' In tithes and offerings." We use that scripture to show people that we need to tithe. What about the offerings? We give them during the Holy Days. Yeah, because we're commanded to. What about giving an offering because God blessed us with something, or delivered us from a trial? We'd be giving an offering because we want to, not because we have to. That's real love. I have yet to do this (since this idea came to me about 2 weeks ago), but I plan to.
This has been quite a long post, and I probably seem like I'm preaching again. I'm just sharing my opinions on things, and at worst, if I'm right, and people listen, I've helped their lives. I feel that if I'm right, I should share this with my friends. If you feel that there are some good points from what I've said, then apply those in your lives, or keep applying them. I honestly want you to tell me via reply or instant message how you feel about this and the other things I wrote, because if you think I'm going off the deep end, I'd like you to save me. If I'm actually helping you, then that makes me feel better because I don't feel like I'm preaching.
I don't know if I can come up with any more posts for now. I've reached writer's block, which may be a good thing for the reader. I'm sorry if some parts might not have sounded coherent, or if I didn't flow too well in certain areas. I wrote this in one sitting, while I was "in the mood", and that's when you speak most truthfully. Everyone, I love you all, I hope I didn't offend once again. Please, be honest with me, and honest with yourselves. Take care, fear God, and keep His commandments.
posted by Charles Fan at
7:46 PM
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2 comments
