Worldly “happiness” is merely subjective (i.e., emotional) and non-virtuous, ergo, non-moral, not to mention superficial and fleeting. The world seeks it directly as a feeling but cannot attain it because true happiness is a byproduct of morality (e.g., justice and righteousness). By comparison, biblical happiness is character-based. That is, true felicity is virtuous, ergo, moral….
One of my favorite Bible verses is 2 Corinthians 5:17, which claims, “anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” (NLT) But what does that mean in relation to who we are as a complete human being? Does it mean that everything about…
Curiosity and distractibility are braided together. Imagination and impulsivity hold hands. Temptation is built in to this intricate web of choosing. Patience–a virtue–is your best friend helping you unravel the knots of tension between beauty and betrayal. Wisdom–another friendly virtue–requires a vocation of untangling flowers from weeds. This, too, is the plight of an artist.
Fear stifles love and ultimately imagination. To freely love and be loved (that is, to create a moment or memory with someone), one must stand ground in the presence of fear and its twin, condemnation, and smile in the dark. By the term “imagination” I mean the soul’s ability to freely create with bold, unapologetic…
Love me. Teach me. Guide me in all Your ways. Help me humble myself before You everyday, and if need be, humble me, so my thoughts may be pure and pleasing to You. May my actions never cease to emulate You releasing a sweet smelling fragrance of salvation’s freedom. More than anything, I seek to…
The struggles we encounter are not always elicited by self-destruction and self-dilapidation, but by strategic trials that are necessarily entailed by divine circumstances. Bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. This is not an appointed suffering by a draconian deity. Look at the life of a “blameless and upright”…
This is one of my favorite stanzas (V) from Wordsworth’s romanticized poem, better known as “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.” This poetic paragraph takes for granted a biblical (or Platonic) pre-existence, which mourns the loss of a child’s vision of an ideal world fading away “into the light of common day,”…
When we live the way we are supposed to God is glorified and we are blessed or happy (shalom). The biblical view of happiness is cultivated by living according to biblical virtues, such as justice and righteousness, which are motivated by flourishing (shalom). In this paper, I explore the prophet Isaiah’s prognostication in Isaiah 32:16-17…
In our fast-paced modern world, pride can disguise itself as busyness or even success. I am not talking about healthy responsibility. I am referring to taking on more and more stress until there is no time for spontaneity, enjoyment, and rest. We shove God off His throne and replace Him as the center of the…
In Rubén Darío’s poem, “Los Motivos Del Lobo” (“The Motives of the Wolf”), St. Francis of Assisi converts a wolf into being civilized but only temporarily does the feral canine stop the slaughter of animals and humans in the hills of an Italian town, Gubbio. At first the wolf conforms to the ways of the…