Tag: pride

Professionals

Posted on by Olaf

We like to be seen by a professional such as a doctor, accountant or lawyer.  It is reassuring to know that they are experts in their field with letters after their names.  They bring specialist knowledge and experience to advise us in our need. In fact, the more senior they are and the more letters of distinction, the better we feel.  Amateurism is a word that conveys weakness and uncertainty, for can an amateur really be trusted? Here’s a variety of views, some of which are amusing, thought-provoking or deeply challenging. If you research the backgrounds of any here you don’t know, it certainly adds to the interest! Hegel finds something to share as he considers shoes!

  • ‘We do not need to be shoemakers to know if our shoes fit, and just as little have we any need to be professionals to acquire knowledge of matters of universal interest’ – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Footprint

Posted on by Olaf

So much is made of the carbon footprint that we reputedly leave behind us.  Some people have changed their diets moving away from meat, have decided to use more sustainable energy sources and have become more determined to have a ‘recycling lifestyle’.   Others give it little thought as the idea of responsibility towards future generations is far from them.  Where are you on the spectrum and how have things shifted in your thinking? Turn it on its head for a moment and think about the footprint that another has made in your life – perhaps a parent, a friend or a teacher. What impact has their footprint had in your life, for good or bad?  Take another look at your own footprint in the lives of those around you.

  • ‘My mother always told me that as you go through life, no matter what you do, or how you do it, you leave a little footprint, and that's your legacy’ – Jan Brewer
  • ‘Family is very important to me because that is the footprint we perpetuate. That is, the ripple in the water when the rock first impacts the pool, and it is those waves, that energy that one produces, that determines our direction’ – Larry Wilcox

Class

Posted on by Olaf

As you look at this picture, what do you see? Who do you see and why? Unconsciously, we automatically categorise and evaluate what we see.  It’s partly a faculty the brain employs to simplify life as it has to process thousands of images a day but … it’s also due to our own conditioning which has led to many filters and prejudices that shape our human interactions for good or bad.  When you were last in a public place, inevitably you would have looked at people making conscious and unconscious assessments to pigeonhole people according to gender, wealth, skills, desirability, ethnicity and so on.  Even Christians do it! Classification may apply to types of vegetable and animals, but should ‘class’ be applied to human beings?

  • ‘The greatest lesson I learned that year in Mrs Henry's class was the lesson Dr Martin Luther King Jr tried to teach us all: Never judge people by the colour of their skin. God makes each of us unique in ways that go much deeper’ – Ruby Bridges
  • ‘We judge people based on their clothes, social class, and, dare I say, ethnicity. Our comedians make light of these stereotypes regularly, and we laugh at their accuracy’ – Lecrae

gentle AND humble

Posted on by Olaf

Should these two words be so closely associated with each other let alone with donkeys? Which one of these pair looks well-named ‘Gentle’ and which one ‘Humble’?!  Surely ‘Jeremiah’ and ‘Hezekiah’ would be more fitting names!  Does society nowadays recognise and respect humility as an attribute – what is humility anyway?  The same question could be asked of ‘gentleness’.  Can you be gentle without being humble and vice versa?  Why are these two things important in a Christian and is it possible to be both?  So many questions need an answer to make sense of it all and these come in the person of Christ:

‘See, your king comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey’ – Matthew 21:5

CHARACTER

Posted on by Olaf

If ‘character’ is who you are and what you do when no one is looking, then D L Moody is right: ‘Character is what you are in the dark’.  What is ‘character’?  What is good or bad?  What is your character?  Who is interested anyway?

Supposing you were asked to give a full character reference for someone, what would you include?  What if you had to give a genuine character reference for yourself?  Here’s a dictionary definition of ‘character’: ‘the total quality of a person’s behaviour, as revealed in his or her habits of thought and expression, actions and personal philosophy of life’.