LLLV18 8-2-2018 James B. Conant, Paul, and Larry on Inner Conflict
In the James G. Hershberg bio of James Bryant Conant, Harvard to Hiroshima, Hershberg shares the inner turmoil of Mr. Conant, a giant intellectual of the 20th Century. I often use Dr. Conant’s quotes on the excellence of performance, but until recently I knew little about him.
Here’s a statement that hits home with many Christian men and women:
“Whether a man lives or dies in vain can be measured only by the way he faces his own problems, by the success or failure of the inner conflict within his own soul.”
James Bryant Conant.
Dealing with inner conflict is part of living in the modern world, and I suppose it’s been so since the Garden of Eden. To obey God or eat the fruit and know, like God, is on the table of temptation more often than you may think.
Knowing that evil exists and realizing that we humans have a choice, and the choice has consequences, is more often than not, a daily trial. Shakespeare nailed it with this, “to be or not to be.” Moderns attempt to deal with the conflict with questions such as, “How can something that feels so good be so bad.” Our civilization is afloat with the wreckage of lives lived to the max based on feelings, with little, even no regard to the personal and often national in scope.
Christians often exist in a pseudo bubble that posits, “If God loves me, He will not permit me to do anything that is heavenly wrong. Therefore, whatever I end up doing is OK.”
Paul dealt with the flawed thinking about this course of living when he wrote:
Romans 7:24 “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
25 I thank God--through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.” (NKJV).
In times of temptation, we must learn to go to Christ in prayer for the power to resist the Satanic impulse or compulsion to evil, like a moth to a flame. Christ is our Helper.
Copyright © 2018 Larry Lilly
Realistic IT Work. Oral Deckard
In the James G. Hershberg bio of James Bryant Conant, Harvard to Hiroshima, Hershberg shares the inner turmoil of Mr. Conant, a giant intellectual of the 20th Century. I often use Dr. Conant’s quotes on the excellence of performance, but until recently I knew little about him.
Here’s a statement that hits home with many Christian men and women:
“Whether a man lives or dies in vain can be measured only by the way he faces his own problems, by the success or failure of the inner conflict within his own soul.”
James Bryant Conant.
Dealing with inner conflict is part of living in the modern world, and I suppose it’s been so since the Garden of Eden. To obey God or eat the fruit and know, like God, is on the table of temptation more often than you may think.
Knowing that evil exists and realizing that we humans have a choice, and the choice has consequences, is more often than not, a daily trial. Shakespeare nailed it with this, “to be or not to be.” Moderns attempt to deal with the conflict with questions such as, “How can something that feels so good be so bad.” Our civilization is afloat with the wreckage of lives lived to the max based on feelings, with little, even no regard to the personal and often national in scope.
Christians often exist in a pseudo bubble that posits, “If God loves me, He will not permit me to do anything that is heavenly wrong. Therefore, whatever I end up doing is OK.”
Paul dealt with the flawed thinking about this course of living when he wrote:
Romans 7:24 “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
25 I thank God--through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.” (NKJV).
In times of temptation, we must learn to go to Christ in prayer for the power to resist the Satanic impulse or compulsion to evil, like a moth to a flame. Christ is our Helper.
Copyright © 2018 Larry Lilly
Realistic IT Work. Oral Deckard
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