Mahsheed's Corner

Say you're at a good point in life where everything is going well. What do you say to your friend, who is not as fortunate?

A) I'm happy because I worked hard and made all the right decisions. I deserve it.

B) I'm happy even though I don't deserve it, I've been blessed.

Both answers can be obnoxious to the friend, because it sounds like in A: You are not deserving of happiness and B: You are not blessed by God.

What about C?
C) I'm happy due to a combination of my decisions and dumb luck.
Note that C is a variant of A couched in more diplomatic terms. But to an unhappy person even C can be obnoxious, simply because to a certain type of unhappy person any evidence of happiness in others is an affront (read psychic injury).

Just keep in mind that when a believer annoys you with a B-type comment that the alternative is no better.

I'll write something about Divine Providence in another post.

Labels: Thoughts

Remember in my last post when I spoke of Dr. House meeting Truth?

Here is Dawn Eden writing of her encounter with Truth, and of course she is the much better writer so please visit her site, if you like my writings you'll love her. Plus she's much more prolific (there's an interesting pun for you!).

By the way, she makes an interesting observation when she talks about higher education:

As the course progressed, I became uneasy with the professors' teaching methods. Colwell and Clements used what I have since discovered is the common propaganda method used by liberals seeking to discredit Judeo-Christianity: When they wanted to demonstrate a "good" religion's views on the environment, they would have us read original source material, such as the Tao Te Ching, or texts from Native American mythologies. When they wanted to demonstrate the "bad" views of Judaism and Christianity, they had us read chapters from a book whose author cherry-picked Bible quotes and framed them within the author's critical commentary.

So read the whole thing here.

Labels: Written By Others

I just came across this hilarious song and video from 1972 (Jimmy Castor Troglodyte song):



Via a hilarious and edifying article by RR Reno.

Labels: Music

Monty Python has a famous skit, The World's Funniest Joke, that everyone who hears it dies laughing:


It's silly, of course, but don't we sometimes have similar ideas of the The World's Most Persuasive Argument, or The World's Most Lovable Person? But reality is that there is no such thing as an argument that convinces everyone who hears it, or a man or woman whom everyone loves who knows them. And that's proof of our free will.

However, I say there is one exception, and that is the Beatific Vision, such that anyone who beholds Him will want for nothing, because there is no competing joy that a person can prefer over Him.

Labels: Meditation

There's only one thing worse than having one's idols shown to be false and that is not having one's idols shown to be false.

Labels: Thoughts