One Writer's Thoughts

I would like you to stop for a moment an imagine a self-esteem workshop for a group of pre-teen boys.  What types of activities do you think might be planned?  What would the boys do?  Really think…

I would like you to stop for a moment an imagine a self-esteem workshop for a group of pre-teen boys.  What types of activities do you think might be planned?  What would the boys do?  Really think about this for a moment before I go on.  What comes to mind when you think of boys and self-esteem building?

Now, I want to tell you about a workshop called “Boys Unstoppable!” The workshop is put together by a company in the personal care industry.  The boys arrive with their dads.  They sit down at tables and find paper and magic markers.

The leader, known as a “Self-esteem Ambassador” first asks the boys to think about their dad and his appearance.  The Ambassador asks each boy to write down anything he has heard his dad say about his looks.  Then the boys create a second column, and they write down how those statements made them feel.

One boy, Tommy, starts to fidget in his chair. Why do they have to think so much about their feelings?  It’s a nice day out. Can’t they go out and do something?

The Ambassador smiles like a salesman or a Ken doll.  He introduces the next exercise.  The boys are asked to think about all of the good things about themselves.  Then the Ambassador hands out “confidence cards.”

The cards say “I have a beautiful________”

The Ambassador tells them to fill out as many cards as they want.

Tommy stares at the cards.  “I have a beautiful face?” he thinks.  Not really, he thinks, but he writes it down anyway.

The exercise is kind of hard.  It’s hard to fit what he is good at into that sentence without it sounding weird.

“I have beautiful math skill.”

Tommy thinks about last week when he won the 100 yard dash.  He was proud of that.  “I have beautiful running skill” is awkward. So he writes “I have beautiful feet.”

That’s not right.  He gives up and looks out the window.

“What’s wrong?” asks the Ambassador with a kind of cheery sympathy.

“I can’t think of anything,” Tommy says.

The Ambassador tilts his head. Tommy can tell he is thinking that the boy is a real hard case.  He must have no confidence at all.  It’s worse than he thought.

(Read the full article on my blog by following the link)

http://morganguyton.wordpress.com/2013/04/18/how-did-jesus-come-to-love-guns-and-hate-sex/#comment-6743

Let’s say I do go to a “right-to-carry” church. The reason that I’m not going to tense up if Deacon Billy’s pistol falls out of his pocket while he’s passing the offering plate is because good people like Deacon Billy don’t shoot people; bad people do.

If I carry a gun into church, I am embodying a two-fold doctrine of sin: 1) There is no danger that I would be tempted to sin with my gun (like in the heat of an argument over the church budget or a sermon that sounds un-Biblical). 2) There is enough danger from the wickedness “out there” that I should be armed in case the bad people storm our building and start shooting. This two-fold doctrine of sin could be termed the total depravity of everyone else.

I have been reading a lot of biographies lately, mostly of Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas.  They have left me wondering if “that which is the man” can ever be captured in a biography.

In life you never experience a person the way you do in a biography.  You never get an overview of a whole life– the same person in his context as a worker, a family man, a lover, a friend, a debtor, in all of his moods: when he is up, when he is down.  You have impressions of people.  You know parts of them.  A biographer tries to harmonize all of the impressions he or she can collect from people who caught these glimpses, who knew the person in part.

Who has the truth? Is the opinion of a person who dislikes you, colored by the memory of a bad experience less “true” than the memory of the person who was delighted by you? Is the truth the middle ground of these two poles or are you actually both things at the same time– a thoughtless person and a thoughtful person, depending on the context?

(Read the full article via the link)