Hiking, Biking, Tennis, Reading, Theology, Abstract & Esoteric debate ... anything new, strange, exotic, (slightly) dangerous or challenging ... ..
____________________________________________________________ ___________ ____________________________________________________________ ___________ I'm a Meyers-Briggs INTP - so here is the low-down on me. ____________________________________________________________ ___________ If any type personifies the absentminded professor, it would likely be the INTP. INTPs tend to see distinctions & inconsistencies in thought & language instantaneously& comprise only 1% of the population & therefore is not encountered as frequently as some of the other types. INTPs detect contradictions in statements no matter how distant in space or time the contradictory statements were produced. The intellectual scanning of INTPs has a principled quality; that is, they search for whatever is relevant & pertinent to the issue at hand. Consequently, they can concentrate better than any other type. ____________________________________________________________ ___________ "The devil can cite scripture for his purpose." -William Shakespeare ____________________________________________________________ ___________ Gender issues are especially pointed for the INTP female. While all of the internal conceptualizing, however misunderstood, may be tolerated in a male, society is less likely to tolerate the same characteristic in a female. The absentminded professor is another image more conventionally male than female. Conceptual originality is similarly not the traditional female trait. Some INTPs, asked the time of day, would be tempted to expound on the philosophical meaning of time; this eccentricity in a man may be looked upon as the result of over-intelligence, in a woman it may result in her being labeled "dizzy" or even "dumb." (this is totally me!) Finally, the Thinking preference of INTPs directly counters most females' scripting to be subjective, soft, & caring. Even worse, when an INTP female's feeling side does surface, it often does so with intensity, an outpouring that can be frightening to both herself & others. In relating to an INTP, male or female, expect an intellectual challenge. Words spoken & thoughts shared with an INTP will be construed as an invitation to expand, clarify, argue, & rethink. ____________________________________________________________ ___________ External or arbitrary socially bestowed authority per se is irrelevant. INTPs abhor redundancy & incoherence. Possessing a desire to understand the universe, an INTP is constantly looking for natural law. Curiosity concerning these keys to the universe is a driving force in this type. INTPs prize intelligence in themselves & in others & can become obsessed with analysis. Once caught up in a thought process, that thought process seems to have a will of its own for INTPs, & they persevere until the issue is comprehended in all its complexity. For INTPs, the world exists primarily to be understood. Reality is trivial, a mere arena for proving ideas. It is essential that the universe is understood & that whatever is stated about the universe is stated correctly, with coherence & without redundancy. ____________________________________________________________ ___________ INTPs value knowledge above all else ... constantly working to generate new theories, or to prove or disprove existing theories, & approach problems & theories with enthusiasm & skepticism, ignoring existing rules & opinions & defining their own approach to the resolution. They seek patterns & logical explanations for anything that interests them. They're usually extremely bright, & able to be objectively critical in their analysis. They love new ideas, & become very excited over abstractions & theories. They love to discuss these concepts with others. They may seem "dreamy" & distant to others, because they spend a lot of time inside their minds musing over theories. ____________________________________________________________ ___________ INTP's take their mating relationship seriously & usually are faithful & devoted - albeit preoccupied at times. The mate of an INTP will initiate & manage the social life. If left to his or her own devices the INTP mate will retreat into the world of books & emerge only when physical needs become imperative. INTP's are, however, willing, compliant, & easy to live with, although somewhat forgetful of appointments, anniversaries, & rituals of daily living unless reminded. They may have difficulty expressing their emotions verbally, & the mate of an INTP may believe that he/she is somewhat taken for granted. As a parent, the INTP is devoted; they enjoy children, & are serious about their upbringing. The home of an INTP parent is usually calm, low-key in discipline, but well run & ordered. They may have difficulty in being understood by others because they tend to think in a complicated fashion & want to be precise, never redundant in their communications. Because their feeling qualities may be underdeveloped, they may be insensitive to the wants & wishes of others, often unaware of the existence of these wants & wishes. ____________________________________________________________ ___________ It is a live-&-let-live lifestyle for most INTPs. Study, follow one's inspirations, master the situation, then move on to some new "problem." INTPs do not like to lead or control people. They're very tolerant & flexible in most situations. The INTP has no understanding or value for decisions made on the basis of personal subjectivity or feelings. They strive constantly to achieve logical conclusions to problems, & don't understand the importance or relevance of applying subjective emotional considerations to decisions. For this reason, INTPs are usually not in-tune with how people are feeling, & are not naturally well-equipped to meet the emotional needs of others. ____________________________________________________________ ___________For the INTP, it is extremely important that ideas & facts are expressed correctly & succinctly. They are likely to express themselves in what they believe to be absolute truths. Sometimes, their well thought-out understanding of an idea is not easily understandable by others, but the INTP is not naturally likely to tailor the truth so as to explain it in an understandable way to others. ____________________________________________________________ ___________ The INTP is usually very independent, unconventional, & original. They are not likely to place much value on traditional goals such as popularity & security. They usually have complex characters, & may tend to be restless & temperamental. They are strongly ingenious, & have unconventional thought patterns which allows them to analyze ideas in new ways. Consequently, a lot of scientific breakthroughs in the world have been made by the INTP.I want to meet King David because I want to see what he looked like - he was a lot to fit in any one package ... & Ghengis Khan; I want to know the REAL reason the Pope convinced him to pass by without decimating the land ... & St. Augustine, because he wrote some awesome doctrine, but I think he turned Christians off of enjoying good, fun, marital sex & I have a thing or two to say to him about that ... Aristotle, King Arthur (if he ever lived), Marc Antony, Cleopatra, whichever Pharoah *really* reigned during the Exodus, Moses, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob-Israel, Herod, Adam & Eve, Noah, Samson, Picasso, Einstein ... Oh poop, I don't know. I guess I'd like to meet everyone who ever lived an interesting life!! If there were no God, there would be no atheists." -G.K. Chesterton Dante's Inferno - Canto 13 - Suicide ____________________________________________________________ ___________ How Sweet & Awful Is the Place ____________________________________________________________ ___________ * How sweet & awful is the place * With Christ within the doors * While everlasting love displays * The choicest of her stores * ____________________________________________________________ ___________ * While all our hearts & all our songs * Join to admire the feast * Each of us cry, with thankful tongues * "Lord, why was I a guest?" * ____________________________________________________________ ___________ * "Why was I made to hear Thy voice * & enter while there's room * When thousands make a wretched choice * & rather starve than come?" * ____________________________________________________________ ___________ * 'Twas the same love that spread the feast * That sweetly drew us in; * Else we had still refused to taste * & perished in our sin * ____________________________________________________________ ___________ * Pity the nations, O our God, * Constrain the earth to come; * Send Thy victorious Word abroad * & bring the strangers home * ____________________________________________________________ ___________ * We long to see Thy churches full * That all the chosen race * May, with one voice & heart & soul * Sing Thy redeeming grace * ____________________________________________________________ __________ Isaac Watts ____________________________________________________________ ___________ A Divine Image by William Blake ____________________________________________________________ ___________ Cruelty has a Human heart And Jealousy a Human Face, Terror, the Human Form Divine, And Secrecy, the Human Dress. ____________________________________________________________ ___________ The Human Dress is forgéd Iron, The Human Form, a fiery Forge, The Human Face, a Furnace seal'd, The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge. ____________________________________________________________ ___________ All the World's a Stage by William Shakespeare ____________________________________________________________ ___________ All the world's a stage, & all the men & women merely players; They have their exits & their entrances, & one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, Mewling & puking in the nurse's arms. Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel & shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. & then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths & bearded like the pard, Jealous in honor, sudden & quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth. & then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe & beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws & modern instances; & so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean & slippered pantaloon, With spectacles on nose & pouch on side; His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank, & his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes & whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness & mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. ____________________________________________________________ ___________ Robert Frost - The Road Not Taken 1915 ____________________________________________________________ ___________ Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth. ____________________________________________________________ ___________ Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy & wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same. ____________________________________________________________ ___________ And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. ____________________________________________________________ ___________ I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages & ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, & I-- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. ____________________________________________________________ ___________ "They are all ill discoverers that think that there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea." –Francis Bacon ____________________________________________________________ ___________ Romans 1:18-20 "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness & wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power & divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." ____________________________________________________________ ___________ "His death was sufficient for all; it was efficient in the case of many." -John Calvin Genesis 2:4 - Chapter 3 This is the account of the heavens & the earth when they were created … Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; & there he put the man he had formed. … The LORD God took the man & put him in the Garden of Eden to work it & take care of it. & the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good & evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die." ____________________________________________________________ ___________ The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." ____________________________________________________________ ___________ Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field & all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; & whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air & all the beasts of the field. But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; & while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs & closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, & he brought her to the man. ____________________________________________________________ ___________ The man said, "This is now bone of my bones & flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman,' for she was taken out of man." For this reason a man will leave his father & mother & be united to his wife, & they will become one flesh. The man & his wife were both naked, & they felt no shame. ____________________________________________________________ ___________ Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, & you must not touch it, or you will die.'" ____________________________________________________________ ___________ "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, & you will be like God, knowing good & evil." When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food & pleasing to the eye, & also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some & ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, & he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, & they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together & made coverings for themselves. ____________________________________________________________ ___________ Then the man & his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, & they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?" He answered, "I heard you in the garden, & I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid." & he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?" The man said, "The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, & I ate it." Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, & I ate." ____________________________________________________________ ___________ So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, "Cursed are you above all the livestock & all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly & you will eat dust all the days of your life. & I will put enmity between you & the woman, & between your offspring & hers; he will crush your head, & you will strike his heel." ____________________________________________________________ ___________ To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, & he will rule over you." ____________________________________________________________ ___________ To Adam he said, … "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns & thistles for you, & you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are & to dust you will return." ____________________________________________________________ ___________ Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living. ____________________________________________________________ ___________ The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam & his wife & clothed … [and] after he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim & a flaming sword flashing back & forth to guard the way to the tree of life. ____________________________________________________________ ___________ "To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible." –Thomas Aquinas ____________________________________________________________ ___________ A Dream Within a Dream by Edgar Allan Poe ____________________________________________________________ ___________ Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow: You are not wrong who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. ____________________________________________________________ ___________ I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand-- How few! yet how they creep Through my fingers to the deep, While I weep--while I weep! O God! can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?
Classic rock, oldies, country (old and new, but not most of the very new pop-stuff), some alternative ... pretty much anything but hip hop/rap crap. I am not puritanical about what I listen to, but blatant cursing, sex and really offensive stuff is something I generally avoid. Or try to ... sometimes you just can't tell what they're saying! heh - HERE IS MY STATION - http://music.yahoo.com/lc/?rt=0&rp1=0NaN375074817
Anything other than tedious drama, pretentious cinema and cotton-candy romance. I'm a romantic gal, but Hollywood romance is nauseating at best. Sometimes I think that in the real world, you're lucky if a man thinks about you three times a week when he isn't looking at you ... the bums. I like me some fire breathing, tail wagging, village terrorizing dragons, I live elves, dwarves, magic closets and talking animals that eat you ... heh
Don't watch much, but I like the funny animated stuff (don't tell, but I have been known to laugh at South Park, Family Guy and American Dad - I wouldn't let kiddos watch 'em and I don't like their philosophical bent, but they actually zing a few relevant points while staying funny) ... I also like the History Channel when they have something worth caring about on ... Fox News ... and I love old movies; Marx Bros, Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope, Humphrey Bogart, Dean Martin, Marlon Brando ... Ingrid Burgman, Charlie Chan, Charlie Chaplin ... any of those guys ... My views on "television" run towards the "it's better not to own one, or at least not to have cable and just use the TV for movies once in a long while."
Just about everything barring instruction manuals and bodice-ripping romance. Lets see ... The Bible * Mere Christianity * The Apocrypha * Aristotle * Plato's Republic * Dante's Inferno * Machiavelli's "The Prince" * Memnoch The Devil * Jane Eyre* Chronicles of Narnia * Knowing God * The Shining * The Book of God * Lord of the Rings * The Screwtape Letters * Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin * Wuthering Heights * Interview With a Vampire * The Taltos * Insomnia * Mother Goose * Brother's Grimm * Aesops Fables * Great Expectations * Hebrews The Study *
Jesus/God, my mother (kind, selfless, gentle), Augustine (great theologian, even though I'm afraid he might have ruined sex for a lot of Christians), Hosea (poor guy ... but he kept on trucking), John Piper (he has an obvious heart for the Lord and it comes across in every precise and articulate word), Einstein (um, need I say more?), The Prophet Isaiah, Leah (Jacob loved Rachel way more than her & she must have had so many miserable days wishing her father had let someone who might actually cherish her come along and have her as a wife ... but she did what God said & made the best of it to become a mother of the Israelite nation), Jonathan Edwards Sir Isaac Newton, C.S. Lewis, Ann Coulter (her wit is soooo fast and soooo sharp!), The Apostle Paul, Esther, President Ronald Reagan, Thomas Edison (Um, Menlo Park), Abbott & Costello, the Marx Brothers (all four, even though only three got top billing), Socrates (I want to be like him so badly - he is my role model), Laura Ingraham, Leonardo DiVinci, Benjamin Franklin (one of the smartest guys around, politically, scientifically & yes, even morally. He had a lot of moral issues [women], but he knew them and he had a system), & Bob Hope (come on ... the man was tres funny). The First Psalm: Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers. Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. The Fifty-First Psalm: Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge. Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place. Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity. Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you. Save me from bloodguilt, O God, the God who saves me, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are [c] a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. In your good pleasure make Zion prosper; build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then there will be righteous sacrifices, whole burnt offerings to delight you; then bulls will be offered on your altar. Matthew 5:3-12 3 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. 6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. 7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. 8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. 9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. 10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 "Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. An Awesome Excerpt From Mere Christianty by C.S. Lewis chapter 14: Morality & Psychoanalysis: _____________________________I have said that we should never get a Christian society unless most of us became Christian individuals. That does not mean, of course, that we can put off doing anything about society until some imaginary date in the far future. It means that we must begin both jobs at once --(1) the job of seeing how 'Do as you would be done by' can be applied in detail to modern society, and (2) the job of becoming the sort of people who really would apply it if we saw how. I now want to begin considering what the Christian idea of a good man is--the Christian specification for the human machine. _____________________________ Before I come down to details there are two more general points I should like to make. First of all, since Christian morality claims to be a technique for putting the human machine right, I think you would like to know how it is related to another technique which seems to make a similar claim-namely, psychoanalysis. _____________________________ Now you want to distinguish very clearly between two things: between the actual medical theories and technique of the psychoanalysts, and the general philosophical view of the world which Freud and some others have gone on to add to this. The second thing-the philosophy of Freud - is in direct contradiction to the other great psychologist, Jung. And furthermore, when Freud is talking about how to cure neurotics he is speaking as a specialist on his own subject, but when he goes on to talk general philosophy he is speaking as an amateur. It is therefore quite sensible to attend to him with respect in the one case and not in the other - and that is what I do. I am all the readier to do it because I have found that when he's talking off his own subject and on a subject I do know something about (namely, language) he is very ignorant. But psychoanalysis itself, apart from all the philosophical additions that Freud and others have made to it, is not in the least contradictory to Christianity. Its technique overlaps with Christian morality at some points and it would not be a bad thing if every person knew something about it: but it does not run the same course all the way, for the two techniques are doing rather different things. _____________________________ When a man makes a moral choice two things are involved. One is the act of choosing. The other is the various feelings, impulses and so on which his psychological outfit presents him with, and which are the raw material of his choice. Now this raw material may be of two kinds. Either it may be what we would call normal: it may consist of the sort of feelings that are common to all men. Or else it may consist of quite unnatural feelings due to things that have gone wrong in his subconscious. Thus fear of things that are really dangerous would be an example of the first kind: an irrational fear of cats or spiders would be an example of the second kind. The desire of a man for a woman would be of the first kind: the perverted desire of a man for a man would be of the second. Now what psychoanalysis undertakes to do is to remove the abnormal feelings, that is, to give the man better raw material for his acts of choice; morality is concerned with the acts of choice themselves. _____________________________ Put it this way. Imagine three men who go to a war. One has the ordinary natural fear of danger that any man has and he subdues it by moral effort and becomes a brave man. Let us suppose that the other two have, as a result of things in their subconscious, exaggerated, irrational fears, which no amount of moral effort can do anything about. Now suppose that a psychoanalyst comes along and cures these two: that is, he puts them both back in the position of the first man. Well it is just then that the psychoanalytical problem is over and the moral problem begins. Because now that they are cured, these two men might take quite different lines. The first might say, ..Thank goodness I've got rid of all those doo-dahs. Now at last I can do what I always wanted to do - my duty to my country.' But the other might say, 'Well, I'm very glad that I now feel moderately cool under fire, but, of course, that doesn't alter the fact that I'm still jolly well determined to look after Number One and let the other chap do the dangerous job whenever I can. Indeed one of the good things about feeling less frightened is that I can now look after myself much more efficiently and can be much cleverer at hiding the fact from the others.' Now this difference is a purely moral one and psychoanalysis cannot do anything about it. However much you improve the man's raw material, you have still got something else: the real, free choice of the man, on the material presented to him, either to put his own advantage first or to put it last. And this free choice is the only thing that morality is concerned with. _____________________________ The bad psychological material is not a sin but a disease. It does not need to be repented of, but to be cured. And by the way, that is very important. Human beings judge one another by their external actions. God judges there by their moral choices. When a neurotic who has a pathological horror of cats forces himself to pick up a cat for some good reason, it is quite possible that in God's eyes he has shown more courage than a healthy man may have shown in winning the V.C. When a man who has been perverted from his youth and taught that cruelty is the right thing, does some tiny little kindness, or refrains from some cruelty he might have committed, and thereby, perhaps, risks being sneered at by his companions, he may, in God's eyes, be doing more than you and I would do if we gave up life itself for a friend. _____________________________ It is as well to put this the other way round. Some of us who seem quite nice people may, in fact, have made so little use of a good heredity and a good upbringing that we are really worse than those whom we regard as fiends. Can we be quite certain how we should have behaved if we had been saddled with the psychological outfit, and then with the bad upbringing, and then with the power, say, of Himmler? That is why Christians are told not to judge. We see only the results which a man's choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it. Most of the man's psychological makeup is probably due to his body: when his body dies all that will fall off him, and the real central man, the thing that chose, that made the best or the worst out of this material, will stand naked. All sorts of nice things which we thought our own, but which were really due to a good digestion, will fall off some of us : all sorts of nasty things which were due to complexes or bad health will fall off others. We shall then, for the first time, see every one as he really was. There will be surprises. _____________________________ And that leads on to my second point. People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, 'If you keep a lot of rules I'll reward you, and if you don't I'll do the other thing.' I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow-creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other. _____________________________ That explains what always used to puzzle me about Christian writers; they seem to be so very strict at one moment and so very free and easy at another. They talk about mere sins of thought as if they were immensely important : and then they talk about the most frightful murders and treacheries as if you had only got to repent and all would be forgiven. But I have come to see that they are right. What they are always thinking of is the mark which the action leaves on that tiny central self which no one sees in this life but which each of us will have to endure - or enjoy - for ever. One man may be so placed that his anger sheds the blood of thousands, and another so placed that however angry he gets he will only be laughed it. But the little mark on the soul may be much the same in both. Each has done something to himself which, unless he repents, will make it harder for him to keep out of the rage next time he is tempted, and will make the rage worse when he does fall into it. Each of them, if he seriously turns to God, can have that twist in the central man straightened out again: each is, in the long run, doomed if he will not. The bigness or smallness of the thing, seen from the outside, is not what really matters. _____________________________ One last point. Remember that, as I said, the right direction leads not only to peace but to knowledge. When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk. Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either. (if you're wondering, these are a mix of works by Picasso and Van Gogh)