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#ChristAndTheEverlastingGospel #church
a hardy, warlike race
lol
Ooh! the magi again! I think they're so cool and mysterious! An unknown branch of the Lord's people, perhaps, living in another land. Unexplained stuff like this is an absolute treat, and opens the floodgates of my imagination.
Oaks talks about spiritual sedation. Really, too much distracting content can absolutely be sedating. I use it like that sometimes. Youtube, or reddit, as a constant stream of stuff that immerses me, that I find interesting, are especially useful when I need to just pull my mind away and focus on something else. I grew up like this, except I started with books. I'd be completely absorbed in them, walking through the halls with an open book in my hands, and reading throughout classes. It transitioned fully to internet and gadgets more or less when I started high school. So of course this stuff can pull you away from the still, small, calm Holy Spirit. I think a way to mitigate it might be allowing the Spirit to guide my use of technology. If I conciously incorporate virtuous values into what I seek out, the algorithm will be trained to give it to me. I'll be able to have the same benefits that I might get from tech apply to my spiritual life as well.
I might need to study more about the concept of changing Church behavior based on the world's standards. I, in principle, agree that it's a bad idea, but when it comes down to the individual things is where it gets essential, and harder. We aren't God's only people, and some groups will know more in a specific area than we do. They may follow a single teaching of Christ better. We have the essential doctrines, yes, but the millions of people that comprises the Church are certainly not perfect.
Reading about parables makes me think a lot about the concept of honesty. I have often heard about how, supposedly, white lies and concealing information is dishonest, but Christ is clearly doing that when he gives a parable. He is witholding information from people so that "only he who seeks finds." It may even be a standard and effective way to teach, as well. In physics, they teach newtonian mechanics, which are wrong. It's legit not what's considered how the universe works, but they still teach this wrong thing because it's close enough, and a ton simpler than quantum mechanics and such.