I Peter 1:14-16 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; since it is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy."
Passions. This is what moves you, gives you cause for the various effects you encounter when you are stupid. Yep, that's it folks. If you don't have a reason or habit for doing something (and reasons can be assessed and habits trained) you will use your passion for doing something. Then your life become "Stupid on Parade." The removal of ignorance is a great antidote for passionate foolishness. Have you ever wondered why, with all your religious protestations, you still sin like a fraternity brother? Try thinking about your life rather than waiting for Jesus to show up like a buxom blond.
Don't get me wrong. I am a fan of passion, at least those that involve the desires of the flesh and the eyes. Why seem I to be bashing them? I am not. I am entering your life today to suggest that you reposition passion. Heretofore you have used it as a cause. It has gotten you into sin, folly and dumb decisions. Occasionally it is positive, but trust me, that was only accidental. I would suggest that you place passion as "effect" rather than "cause", the punctuation of the sensible sentence of your life, thought, and wise/holy choices. Let wisdom and holiness take a wife for you "not in the passion of lust like the heathen who do not know God." Enjoy this well selected wife passionately. Let good sex be an effect of a good choice and good ideas. Pursuing your fleshy passions as a cause gets you a few nights of steam and a subsequent life of hell. Make up your mind first. A mind made up is examinable. Talking to the drunken ramblings of the passionately driven is not beneficial for they cannot understand. Their "cause" is passion and their life reflects that especial teenage brilliance. So many lives are proudly run this way that many ministries succumb to this method of life decisions and try to replace passions that cause sin with an uninformed "passion for Jesus." Such people and ministries are especially susceptible to false teachers.
II Timothy 3:6-7 For among them are those who make their way into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and swayed by various impulses, who will listen to anybody and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth.
The desires of the Spirit are in this way different from the desires of the flesh. Our possession of the Spirit rests on a response, belief, and conclusion regarding a Truth. This is an informed position on the Nature of Things. Wisely based passions, those existent as effects of truth, do function as future causes but they have been guided. They serve and harmonize with the truth that bred them. A wisely selected, passionately enjoyed wife (versus a passionately selected, wisely regretted one) does find her husband more enjoyably bound to the the marriage. When passion is an effect of a thoughtful good it can become a cause of good.
I Peter 1:13 says, "Therefore gird up your minds, be sober, set your hope fully upon the grace that is coming to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. "
9 comments:
You'll be Orthodox before you know it.
Let me know when they need a new Patriarch.
You just missed it. A new Moscow Patriarch was elected a couple of months ago.
Here's the story. You really should have been more on the ball, now your second fiddle in Moscow, not only to your brother, but to the new Patriarch Kirill.
I'm about seventh fiddle in this Moscow and non-fiddle in the other. Being on the ball would not have helped in either.
Bravo Oracle,
I am not one to extol or obsequiously promote another man’s ideas above my own in contradictio of my cultivated narcissism.
Yet of all the Fort Russell oracles, this “intelligent passion” oracle is the most profound and simple that I’ve yet encountered.
Consequently, I shall inject some “intelligent passion” into my marriage and await the promised results. Not that you, or your vast fawning audience, needs the gory details of my marriage, but heretofore I have failed to intelligently deploy examined passions in my marriage, and have relied unduly on will power or natural passion, in the manner of a simian brute. (My children shall look like apes at this pace.)
The “intelligent passion” point puts the question to my marriage as a tertium quid and supplies an alternative to brute will power & ungoverned passion.
Futurely, please be sure to make “intelligent passion” a motif in your proclomations, if it is passionworthy.
Concludingly, permit me the courtesy to crow: Based on this post alone I shall henceforth increase my generous donations to the Big Haus Society in an amount compatible with my meager earnings in this treacherous economy.
Adverbialy yours,
Anonymous.
Um.... thanks?
My goodness. Given the posts, one would think nothing major has happened in the lives of neither your eldest nor your youngest.
This may be an instance of the sloth calling the coma patient lethargic, but you really should throw us a new post.
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