It “struck” me as I read this post that there really is no such thing as self-help. It’s impossible to help oneself without God and Divine Grace. The realization has stopped me in my tracks as I try to advance in the journey. Thank you for being an instrument of grace today.
The ideal Christian man doesn’t seek fame, success, riches.
”””
I think you’re almost right, but the ideal Christian man can seek fame, success, and/or riches—as long as he seeks them for the love and glory of God. If he is attached to them, they are a temptation to pride and terrible vices, but it is not so for the man who regards them with holy indifference and would be prepared to lose them all in an instant.
I sometimes think of the fact that Jesus put no conditions of surrendering his position on the centurion.
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As far as I can tell, to ‘rise above’ one’s professional level, to level up, a guy needs to be aggressive, confident, strong, thick-skinned, and at times, confrontational. . . . And all that seems to be squarely at odds with the Christian ideal, at least as I understand it.
”””
I’m about a generation younger than you, so I’m only starting to find my way in the professional “real world,” but I am discovering—to the dismay of my younger self who wanted nothing more than to turn the other cheek at every opportunity—the first part to be rather true. Being a ‘nice guy’ made a lot of people like me, but it didn’t get me far in my career.
But I’m not sure how opposed to the Christian ideal those qualities really are, at least if we look at Christ as the exemplar of the Christian ideal. When he fashioned a whip of cords and drove the money changers from the Temple, he was aggressive, confident, strong, thick-skinned, and undoubtedly confrontational.
Somehow, I think, we don’t take seriously enough Jesus’ commands to “make friends with the mammon of iniquity” and to “be shrewd as serpents.”
It “struck” me as I read this post that there really is no such thing as self-help. It’s impossible to help oneself without God and Divine Grace. The realization has stopped me in my tracks as I try to advance in the journey. Thank you for being an instrument of grace today.
“““
The ideal Christian man doesn’t seek fame, success, riches.
”””
I think you’re almost right, but the ideal Christian man can seek fame, success, and/or riches—as long as he seeks them for the love and glory of God. If he is attached to them, they are a temptation to pride and terrible vices, but it is not so for the man who regards them with holy indifference and would be prepared to lose them all in an instant.
I sometimes think of the fact that Jesus put no conditions of surrendering his position on the centurion.
“““
As far as I can tell, to ‘rise above’ one’s professional level, to level up, a guy needs to be aggressive, confident, strong, thick-skinned, and at times, confrontational. . . . And all that seems to be squarely at odds with the Christian ideal, at least as I understand it.
”””
I’m about a generation younger than you, so I’m only starting to find my way in the professional “real world,” but I am discovering—to the dismay of my younger self who wanted nothing more than to turn the other cheek at every opportunity—the first part to be rather true. Being a ‘nice guy’ made a lot of people like me, but it didn’t get me far in my career.
But I’m not sure how opposed to the Christian ideal those qualities really are, at least if we look at Christ as the exemplar of the Christian ideal. When he fashioned a whip of cords and drove the money changers from the Temple, he was aggressive, confident, strong, thick-skinned, and undoubtedly confrontational.
Somehow, I think, we don’t take seriously enough Jesus’ commands to “make friends with the mammon of iniquity” and to “be shrewd as serpents.”