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Frankl discovered that the only way for the prisoners’ humanity to survive was to relocate the main meaning of their lives to some transcendent reference point, something beyond this life and even this world.
Part of the richness of the Christian life lies in the ways Christianity gives Meaning that are distinct from not only secularism but from other religions as well. Unlike the concept of karma, Christianity teaches that suffering is often unfair, not merited by actions from a former life. Unlike Buddhism, Christianity teaches that suffering is a terrible reality, not an illusion to be transcended with stoic detachment. Unlike ancient fatalism, such as the Greek Stoics, or other shame-and-honor cultures, Christianity finds nothing particularly noble about suffering—it should not be welcomed. Yet
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To achieve satisfaction you should not seek to change the world but rather to change your attitude toward the world.
Contradicts?
To avoid having our inner contentment overthrown by the inevitable loss of things, do not become too emotionally attached to anything.
Including a potential lover?
ah- answered in next paragraph
Another obvious problem with the ancient happiness hypothesis was that it undermined any motivation for seeking major social change. Rather than change the world as it is, we were to resign ourselves to it.
joy, fulfillment, and satisfaction in life. Are we achieving those things?
Rather than happiness
to break through and dispel the denial in order to see the magnitude and dimension of our dissatisfaction in life.
But why would you want to?
The lack of any deep or lasting satisfaction drives her to joyless partying.
“it”
What about third aproach - "it" exists and i have found it already ?
We go through houses and spouses and jobs and the constant reinvention of our lives, assuring ourselves that at the next level “it” is going to finally be there.
How does CBA feel about changing house/partner?
Nietzsche, who argued that modern people help the needy out of a sense of moral superiority.
two
But what if its not? What if neither outcome is applicabe here?
The ultimate disordered love, however—and the ultimate source of our discontent—is failure to love the first thing first, the failure to love God supremely.
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
This might be the most influential sentence thus far for me.
Though idolatrous attachment to earthly goods does indeed lead to unnecessary pain and grief, the solution was not to love the things of life less but to love God more.
“Attachment to God amplifies and deepens enjoyment of the world.”44 It does not diminish it.
So we cannot love God just by thinking of an abstract deity who is loving in general. We must grasp and be gripped by the true story of God’s actual sacrificial, saving love for us in Jesus.
Uh oh
begins
“Most of us in America believe a few simple propositions that seem so clear and self-evident they scarcely need to be said. Choice is a good thing in life, and the more of it we have, the happier we are. Authority is inherently suspect; nobody should have the right to tell others what to think or how to behave.”
I wholeheartedly disagree wth this statement.
Jesus tells Nicodemus, an accomplished scholar and leader, “You must be born again!” Lilla wrote: “Jesus seems to be telling Nicodemus that he must recognize his own insufficiency, that he will have to turn his back on his autonomous, seemingly happy life, and be reborn as a human being who understands his dependency on something greater.
This man will have to decide which freedom to sacrifice for the other, because he will not be able to have both.
The conversation on freedome doesn't sit quite right. This mas has the freedom to choose.
keller equates freedomee with every tiny decision, whereas i think having the Ability to choose is the freedom.
If we need other people—and we do—then there is some shared responsibility for and to others, and we don’t really belong only to ourselves.
Yes!
An ideology of extreme personal freedom can be dangerous because it encourages people to leave homes, jobs, cities, and marriages in search of personal and professional fulfillment, thereby breaking the relationships that were probably their best hope for such fulfillment.
Hmmmm
Being honest, generous, and public spirited—being faithful to your spouse and children—regularly infringes on your personal happiness and freedom. If people stop doing these things and (as Haidt says) put personal fulfillment above commitment and relationship, the only alternative is a more powerful and coercive government.
The affirmation that comes from love liberates you from fears and self-doubts. It frees you from having to face the world alone, with only your own ingenuity and resources. Your friend or mate will be crucial to helping you achieve many of your goals in life.
You can be in love or you can be free and autonomous—but never both at the same time. She acknowledges that you have to dip into love every so often to recharge your batteries in some way. But true to the culture, she sees freedom, not love, as the final nonnegotiable. It is the sole, ultimate value.
Does CBA think i operate thIs way? DO i operate this way?
But he questions whether absolute negative freedom—freedom not as a means to an end but as an end in itself—is really liberty.
We must use our freedom of choice to do something—but our culture is mortally afraid of saying what that should be or where we should land. Why? Because we fear that if we tell people, “You ought to be doing this,” that will curtail people’s freedom. So we just drift.
When you are falling in love, you take the initiative to discover a list of all the things that the loved one loves and hates. Then you go all out to say and do the things that delight him or her. You are “doing their will” rather than your own, but you gladly accept the new limits on your behavior. Why? It is because you have put your joy and happiness into the joy and happiness of the other. You are happy to the degree they are.
All this means that Christians, like someone newly in love, are enabled to see the will of God not as a crushing, confining burden but as a list of God’s loves and hates by which we can please him and come to be like him. To have the law “written on our hearts” means that we are freely doing what we most want to do. We are loving our redeemer through following his will.
Can i relate?
“The best way to be free, to ensure that the wrong he has done to you does the least damage, is to forgive him.”
P!!
