Bear > Recent Status Updates

“To be a moral actor in dark times, then, one doesn’t need superior intellect or superhuman strength; one simply needs to protect their capacity to think. This means resisting the seductive logic of ideology, being skeptical of a movement’s meaning-making stories, and above all rejecting the idea that the consensus of others should compel us to suspend our capacity to judge.” P. 123

3 Ego States:
- Parent Ego State (directing, correcting- aim to spend no more than 30% here each day)
- Adult Ego State (you at work or with your friends)
- Child Ego State (where your kids enjoy you most)

Aim for Mind-Body-Soul time, 2xs per day, 10 mins minimum per day
- turn daily tasks into connection time
- be consistent

It’s not enough to say that ordinary men and women can do terrible things…these terrible things are actually transformed in the moral universe of the Nazis into a positive good. The wholesale murder of an entire race was an act of liberation, and as such, murder became part of the state’s everyday operations. Eichmann [had been] recruited… because of his rootlessness, mediocrity, and lack of purpose. P. 115

“Job’s friends… took a single idea (justice) and distorted the rest of their moral universe to conform to it. Their version of God was a tyrant… like every ideology, this provides an explanation and a pattern with which one can make sense of the chaos and unpredictability of life. Embracing it allowed them to create a psychological distance between themselves and Job’s suffering.” p. 81

Getting better but still has its issues 🤣

“As a result, our culture has a hard time bearing the burden of terrible knowledge. When that pent-up burden meets other factors in the modern world… It contributes to the eagerness with which individuals embrace ideology. The modern age assumes that having acknowledge is, in end of itself, good.” P.69

I’m moving slow on this one but starting to pick back up again!

“Ideology universalizes the local church, making it success of cosmic importance. This heightened urgency cast a shadow over conscience and conviction and in the name of what is ‘good,’ we will be tempted to do terrible things. Only by resisting that exchange… will we have the capacity to discern the circumstances…and resist the grandiosity that would make evil good and good evil.” P.62

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm…..

Hmmmmm…

“We need to ‘think what evangelicals are doing’ and consider the degree to which our church’s doctrine and dogma have been supplanted, supplemented, or subverted by modern ideology. We need to consider the moral distortions those ideologies have wreaked on our churches and what we owe the ‘bodies behind the bus’ who suffered because we mistook the momentum of an ideology for the kingdom of God” P. 38

“Love for a group inclines a person to act in ways that serve the group’s ends and purposes. If one isn’t careful, concern for the many in the group can quickly overwhelm concern for the few… these loyalties and affections… shouldn’t overwhelm a person’s capacity to think and judge clearly, including the ability to speak truths that might make one seem disloyal.” - p.11

Hope to finish this today!

Some really great nuggets here!

Hmmmmmmm…..

Such a quick and profound read…this book should be read multiple times. I feel like you would get something new out of it every time ❤️

I should finish this one today…I have so many thoughts 🤣

Has some good insights that I’m pondering through! I appreciate books that are thought provoking 😊