I had the weird experience in high school of going from pretty weird/awkward to charismatic/popular in about 6 months
The problem was I didn’t realize it was happening
I essentially didn’t believe anyone would be into me, and so I mishandled things badly
I definitely led a few girls on because I didn’t think I could really, you know, do that
Leading people on was for cool people
Not that I was entirely oblivious to the pleasures of attention, but that I used my self-ID as “uncool” to avoid *noticing* that that was going on
I also could never close
Everyone in my high school thought i was gay, because I was flirty and (it turned out) desirable and never pulled the trigger
But I was never sure what I was supposed to do! I faced a couple problems: 1) was Xian and didn’t want to just mess around
2) was 16 and DEFINITELY wanted to just mess around
3) ...but didn’t want to get a *reputation* for just messing around
4) I didn’t realize this at the time, but there weren’t many people at my high school who I fully clicked with, and I felt really bad about using people
One of the big learning curves of the past few years has been behaving in the world as though I am attractive
I originally calibrated my flirtatiousness around the assumption that I’d better be charismatic because no one would be into me otherwise
And so I was constantly just flirting with the whole damn world trying to compensate for my perceived unattractiveness
Problem: I am handsome, intelligent, funny, insightful, and successful
People like that *should not* flirt all the time
It looks like you’re insecure
Which, of course, I was
This is part of a larger pattern in my life: I am larger than life, and tend to be the most charismatic and intelligent person in any given room; and when I try to ignore that fact I do stupid stuff
Instead I’ve gotta just accept that stuff
I assume I’m smarter than everyone else, and therefore, far from being less patient, I’m much, much more patient
I know I’m attractive and so I’m warm and polite, not some PUA firehose flirter spraying everyone with my insecurities
One problem: when I meet someone who I expect to be smarter than me, I *do* get impatient with them
Not talking about my friends here (they *are* as smart as me), but, like, a consultant with a PhD or something
I get way more brusque and short and blunt with them
I have to literally go off and remind myself, “any idiot can get a PhD. You don’t need to have cognitive dissonance about this person. They are not as smart as you. Be kind to them.”
False humility is probably the greatest source of prideful action in the world
I think this means that our sermon shouldn't be shaped at the beginning of our writing process by a simple "hook", an empty image of what the sermon *should* look like that we fill in with verbal concrete
Our sermons still need coherence, though; the bits need to work together. One way to do this *is* to have some larger image that you're trying to build and point back to, some key theme that undergirds every part of the sermon
First let me articulate what I find dissatisfying about current sermon prep
We begin with a "hook", a concise main point summed up as a sentence, and then we have ~3 sub points that support/build on that "hook"
This gives sermons a sort of top-down symmetry
We do things this way because it's a clearly communicable method, something a beginner preacher can just fill-in-the-blanks and do. And it makes it easier to coordinate sermons across locations so two preachers can preach the same thing: same hook, same points
I'm gonna try to do the long-list-of-opinions thing but I don't know if I have the follower account to do the one like, one opinion thing
So let's just see what I can rattle off about wisdom
1. Wisdom assumes that the world is ordered. This sounds trivial, but it's not; there's a whole lot of power packed into the belief that the world is ordered and you can perceive that order.
2. Wisdom also assumes that the world's order is fractal--that analogies work, that what is above mirrors what is below, that order passes through levels of abstraction
How do you ponder the dialectic between ideologies? Aesthetics
What is level 6 subject to? Creation
Level 6 doubles back to level one, which was a simply perceiving existence, and reclaims perception with the strength of wisdom
Wisdom traditions are *not* about teaching you facts, or even ideologies; they are about teaching you to *see rightly*, which vision is the illegible territory every ideology attempts to map
This is why they sound so confusing; you expect maps and they stare at the territory
So I’ve recently been increasingly conflicted re: cops. I grew up in the sort of family (let’s call it ascendant working-class) that was *very* pro-cop: thin blue line, that kind of thing. Have some ex-cops in the family, who I quite like
Plus, families like mine tend to 1) relatively rarely have negative run ins with the police and 2) generally act so respectful to cops that they get pretty positive handling. Not because they fear cops but because they respect them. Also, my small town had pretty good police
So I grew up with a generally positive view of police. Never really had a negative run in. But then I crack open the DoJ’s report on police killings and brutality in places like Baltimore and Cleveland, and... whoa.