No, you are not worth it

By: enigma Date: August 5, 2016 Categories: Emotional, Family, Spiritual

Relationships between men and women can be so frustrating, but I’ve come to the conclusion again (but in a deeper way) that really, only God is worth it. I remind myself that only when we love God first and foremost can we truly love another in the way that they deserve:

Only God is worth my desires, my heart
Only he is worth my attention, my time
No woman is worth my heart

I’m tired of being the white knight in shining armor
I’m tired of saving damsels in distress
I have very strong armor and a sharp sword
Yet I want to be seen for who I am under the armor
I don’t want to be used for what I can give
I want to be seen, appreciated for who I am

No, under the armor I’m not perfect
I have many scars
But God sees me for who I am
He understands me, appreciates me for who I am
No I’m not worth it either, but God makes me worthy
I don’t need to be seen, but I want be
I’m tired of the fakeness, yet I have all that is real and true
No, you are not worth it, but for me, if it is meant to be, he will make you worthy

Why you are not worth it

In this world today women feel over entitled. Feminism has destroyed relationships between men and women. Some evidence of this is the MGTOW movement; for the record I don’t entirely agree with the whole movement but have a listen to RIP Traditional Relationships – A Rude awakening. If we are merely looking on a worldly secular level, it makes no sense at all to get married. Why the hell would I want to get married if it is about mutual use instead free, self-giving love?

I talk to both men and women: they say they would want to believe in a love that is real, unselfish, self-giving, loyal, faithful, total, free, in other words a divine, Godly love, but they believe it is a fantasy. I believe, in part, they think it is a fantasy because they don’t experience this kind of love -a pure love- in their daily life: none in their “family”, none in their “community”, and not even among “friends” and sometimes not even in church! It seems an indictment on how far away people and society are from God, not having that kind of self-giving, loving relationship with God, thus they don’t have it in their personal daily relationships. Mere words are not going to convince people that this kind of love exists, it seems only by personal experience and testimony that people may be convinced.

No, marriage isn’t about “what’s in it for me?” or let’s have a contract: “i do this, you do that”. Marriage isn’t about just passing on your genes nor savage “survival of the fittest”. It’s not about “disney damsels, ponies and butterflies”. It can be about mutual emotional consolation, but it can’t be the only purpose. We in this society can be so selfish. It’s not about F-ing around but giving a good F, actually caring for the world, the future generation – imagine: for love of God and for someone outside ourselves.

Why marriage and relationships are worth it

I believe in marriage for many reasons, one reason is children benefit most from marriage. Without men to be fathers and women to be mothers, children become abandoned, who feel like orphans and in some real sense are actual orphans who do not know God, thus do not have a deep, unselfish relationship with him, thus recreating the dysfunctional cycle of fake-love in all their personal relationships.

I refuse to give up: I will fight for the homeless, orphaned, and abandoned because they are worth it. Building a society based on an authentic, life-giving love it worth it because it is what God wants: to love us as we are yet push us to grow, not for his benefit, but for our own benefit. Sure, loving on this higher level of Godly love is not always easy, but who wants a cheap “love” – real men are created for real love, which can be hard, but definitely worth it. Our bodies of man and woman, with our sexual organs, show we are made to be a mutual gift – we are not God, we cannot give what we don’t have – we have to be open to receiving the love of God, to give as he does.

 

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a poem about stars and saints

By: enigma Date: November 1, 2015 Categories: Spiritual

Funny from my window before the morning sun rises, I see one star in the sky..

Like the saints, even through the darkness it shines bright

We on earth only see a glimpse of the actual reality happening to the stars right now [because the light we see now is actually lightyears away]..

From all eternity, in the heavens, isn’t there a plan unfolding for each of us? As the morning sun rises the star fades away yet by eyes of faith we know, there is a place in heaven already reserved for us [if we of course will it].. should we decide to meet the day?

Happy all Saints day 🙂

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Loving my spouse the best way possible

By: enigma Date: March 16, 2015 Categories: Family

I find myself having to explain myself over and over again why I am against something, but instead of saying of doing so perhaps I should state why I am in favor of a particular belief (especially when trying to find a prospective spouse online!)

Why I am in favor of absolutely loving my spouse the best way possible:

I believe in a love that is faithful, fruitful, total, and a freely-given love, even a sacrificial love. I believe that the man should faithfully love with Jesus as an example, both man and woman should be faithful to create a deep sense of trust and respect, and thus communication and teamwork. I believe love should be total and pure.. not half-hearted. I want to love my future spouse absolutely the best way possible. God’s grace is necessary because humans alone cannot love so purely, so totally, like Jesus does. He can try and with God’s grace, he can. Of course it won’t be easy, there will be sacrifice. There will be struggle. Yet there will be joy because the love is real. There will be a true intimacy because there is deep trust and both would love with the kind of love that lasts for a life-time – a love that does not value the body more than the soul i.e. the person. In other words, a love that loves a person for who they are and not what they can get from that person – this is why I am against contraception and will not enter a relationship without first sharing this belief, because I feel strongly that this beautiful love is not only possible, it is worth fighting for.

Is this not the desire of every heart? True intimacy in love, to love and be loved? Love and be loved the best way possible?

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Time, Treasure, Talent (Revision 14)

By: enigma Date: January 25, 2015 Categories: Carreer, Emotional, Family, Fatherhood, Financial, Intellectual, Physical, Social, Spiritual

See the life manual for more context. Our time, treasure, and talent should be about giving life i.e. creating memories and building relationships with God and others.

Resources to create memories and building relationships with God and others (This is woefully scarce; I have many more resources yet to organize here; come back later for more):

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Contemporary Problems (Revision 9)

By: enigma Date: January 25, 2015 Categories: Uncategorized

See my life manual for more context or see the contemporary problems mindmap where I derive this list. For solutions see Time, Treasure, and Talent, or see the ultimate solution directly.

  • Spiritual Challenges:
    • Dehumanization
    • The Century of Self — a major psychology of society, narcissism
    • Degradation of values
  • Intellectual Challenges:
  • Physical Challenges:
    • Too much dependency instead of self-sufficiency – a form of control
    • Energy and resource problems:
      • Water shortages
      • Oil shortages and war
      • Nuclear
    • Ongoing war
    • Naive attitude toward potential natural disasters e.g. solar flare emp
  • Social Challenges:
    • Loss of Christian Identity in Europe and the West
      • Vacuum filled by muslims, some who are islamic terrorists
    • Communism/Socialism
      • The 4 goals of Marxism:
        • Destroy the family:
          • lie about the inherent “in-equalities” of men and women
          • make the government the “daddy”
        • Destroy private property:
          • Impose regulation
          • Control the food supply e.g. Monsanto
        • Destroy religion:
          • God is a challenge to their fabricated reality and thirst for power
          • Humans have rights
        • Destroy the nation:
          • Destroying the American Dream
    • Replacing God with government
    • The Lost Generations who do not know they are lost:
    • The new crusade: Radical islam vs the West who has lost their identity
  • Family Challenges:
  • Challenges in Careers and Jobs:
    • International competition
    • Outsourcing
    • Lack of skilled workers
    • Automation
  •  Economics

 

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How to love while suffering (Revision 2)

By: enigma Date: January 19, 2015 Categories: Fatherhood, Spiritual

Anything supernatural I’ll have to preface by stating that I am by no means an expert, at the same time I like to describe myself as an imperfect practitioner but at least trying to arrive at a solution.

In one sense, one can describe love in two ways:

  • Natural Love – love on a natural level, the kind of love a parent might have for a child or the kind among friends, getting value out of a relationship
  • Divine Love – love on a supernatural level, the kind of love the Jesus has for each one of us, the kind of love of saints, loving those who have harmed you

Loving while suffering I would say is a bit supernatural, divine love. Divine love is love without a price tag – it is when you love without self-interest. Agape love. It seems true love is unfair as the initiator not only expects nothing in return, he is often left hanging, even suffering while the beloved may be ungrateful, disinterested, self-absorbed. This is often how we treat Jesus.

So how do we love while suffering? Consider a few points:

  • Try to see things in the eyes of Jesus e.g.:
    • Imagine Jesus asking you: “Do you love me enough to share my suffering with you?”
    • Jesus understands your suffering, he consoles us when we let him. At least as a friend, we can accept the suffering as a gift to Jesus, keeping in mind the greater good of the human family
  • Suffering in love in a sense is like a mother giving birth to a child; in the midst of the suffering we can’t always appreciate the meaning of this suffering until there is a birth of something good
  • Some might think suffering is evil, but God allows evil for a greater good – that we may be virtuous yet even better – that we may love freely and more beautifully with deeper meaning and value
  • Why can’t God just take away all the suffering? Why can’t he just give us everything like dropping manna from the sky? He could but he wants us to possess and share his inheritance like he does – from within himself
    • How about we give, not just externally or when it is easy, but how about we give from within ourself, how about we love by giving from within?
  • Consider some thoughts by C.S. Lewis, sometimes our hearts need to be broken, for our own good
  • It can be a joy, not necessarily feeling happy, but some level of contentment as you can derive peace from participating in meaningful love

 

 

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A modest gift to the world – a blog with renewed purpose

By: enigma Date: January 18, 2015 Categories: Uncategorized

For a long time, I have debated whether or not I should even share my website unlastwords.com but I’ve decided to do so anyway. In addition to the outlined purpose, I re-dedicate my blog with renewed purpose.

Why am I sharing my website with you?

  • I’ve been so blessed by God, I feel I have an obligation to share
  • So I can communicate it effectively, and try to lead by example – I have so much in my head I need to write it out to gain clarity, so I can share in person when the occasion is appropriate, or remind myself
  • Ideas have consequences, even when I know what I write will always be imperfect – I can’t wait to publish it until it is perfect (of course I try) but I already have been waiting to publish for over a year
    • I will fail but is is a win-win situation:
      • when I am wrong I will hopefully be corrected
      • whether I am right, any truth that I may say will speak for itself
    • Bad critics will be bad critics, decent people will contribute their perspective – I don’t care what the culture thinks except to understand, to help; I like getting different perspectives but I will live my own way the best way I know how. Mutual learning would be nice but not expected
  • There is a need in this world especially for future generations:
    • So I can practice being a father – it is said that one really doesn’t understand as deeply, until they teach it to others
    • We are at war to reclaim our culture, let’s get our own lives together to affect what we can
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God is love, but Love is not God

By: enigma Date: January 18, 2015 Categories: Fatherhood, Spiritual

The word “Love” is perhaps the most abused word and I find that I should make a few notes:

  • “Love” has many different meanings (to dive deeper, see Deus Caritas Est [“God is Love”] and Caritas in Veritate [“Charity in Truth”])
  • Very often I talk about “Love” and “God” so much and I notice there may be a tendency to sometimes love the idea of “Love” [i.e. “God”] than the person of “Love” [i.e. Jesus]
  • God does [through Jesus] come down to our level [and it is good], but we have to remember and give respect to God by trying to rise up to Him (we need a deeper sense of transcendence):
    • Don’t dehumanize Jesus by stealing his teaching and philosophy (e.g. new age religion, “neo-paganism”), but not have a real relationship with the person of Jesus (Christianity is not primarily about ethics)
    • One can’t experience the divine without going deeply into Jesus as a human; scripture is one definite place where you can learn about the person of Jesus – you can’t love what you don’t know
    • Too often it seems we implicitly have a narcissistic attitude (“What’s in it for me?”) and design our lives accordingly. We can tend to control and design our own idea of God instead of having a relationship with God (e.g. lack of prayer); often in prayer we need to remain silent, at least for us to connect our heart to God:
      • God does not need prayer, it is we who need to pray to God (of course God wants us to pray, to love him, to give him time, to be grateful, to make him part of our lives)
      • In prayer, let the power of God take hold of you, don’t always try to rationalize
      • We by ourselves probably are of little effect, yet it seems the power of prayer in part is because God praying through us

If you are wondering where some of this content is coming from, these are some notes [combined with my own] from attending a retreat with Father Antoninus Wall O.P. (short bio). Other perhaps lesser-known facts: (1) Pope John Paul (now saint) was his peer/classmate when they were studying in Rome. (2) his stories are amazing e.g. teaching to Mother Teresa’s congregation.

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What Keeps Us From Having Deeper Friendships

By: enigma Date: January 12, 2015 Categories: Family, Social

A relevant article on pseudo-friendship (pun intended) I am archiving here in case the original website disappears:

What Keeps Us From Having Deeper Friendships

3 things sabotaging our need for genuine connection.

Drew Brown is probably at a coffee shop drinking espresso and daydreaming right now. He likes to write about God, life and how fun and amazingly difficult it is to be human. Read more at dbreown.wordpress.com. Find him on twitter @dbreown

 

In an era where many of us have a million social media “friends,” but no one to hang out with on Friday night, deep friendships have become increasingly rare.

Our generation is kind of screwed up about friendship. I’m screwed up about friendship. We often have a hard time cultivating real, face to face friendships.

Why do we all feel this way? Here are three enemies that keep us from having deeper friendships:

Forming Ideal Lives on Our Social Media Feeds

We’ve accumulated an entire database of friends, retaining names and facts but omitting relationships and memories. “Hey, remember that one time we chatted on Facebook and shared the Google Image of that beach we both want to go to?” Yeah, neither do I.

The Internet has afforded each of us to live dazzling lives that aren’t ours. It leaves out the run-of-the-mill so we look like some sexy, adventure-seeking, friend-getting machines.

The Internet has afforded each of us to live dazzling lives that aren’t ours. One scroll through my Instagram will show you California, Oklahoma and Colorado—outdoors, mountains, weddings and playgrounds.

However, it won’t show you Netflix, lonely Friday nights, textbooks or that one night I spent sick in the bathroom three weeks ago. It leaves out the run-of-the-mill so we look like some sexy, adventure-seeking, friend-getting machines. We know the real story behind our own social media accounts, but somehow, we think everyone else’s life is more exciting than ours.

We are all mad scientists creating Frankenstein when it comes to social media modeling: the life we create turns its head, opens its eyes and becomes a monster. We start feeling down if we can’t find something worth posting on a daily basis.

On top of all of that, am I trying to be a cool, culturally aware Christian on social media just because I want more followers? After all, there’s nothing like being affirmed by a few hundred Twitter followers that I’m a good Christian. I tweet because I’m self-conscious.

Trying to Be Best Friends With Everyone

I grew up thinking that because I was a Christian, everyone had to be my best friend. I had to like everyone, and everyone had to like me and know my life story and be my accountability partner.

By the time I made it to college, I couldn’t do it anymore. My inner circle was as wide as the Pacific, and I didn’t have the relational energy to build a bridge across it.

I’ve since realized that Christians misrepresent friendship when they claim everyone is their friend. Jesus was not friends with everyone. Christ had His three, his 12, and His 5,000. He did not suffocate with FOMOOF (Fear Of Missing Out On Friendships). There were probably some great men and women in the crowd of 5,000 who sat eating the fish and loaves, but Jesus was purposeful about being with the 12.

Today there’s an extreme pressure to get to know everyone. We feel like we aren’t being fair to others if we grow deeper with one person and not another. We feel the need to spread ourselves out among 5,000 rather than with three.

I can only be friends with so many people, and I waste my time trying to be everything for everyone and end up being nothing for anyone, sitting alone watching Friends re-runs on a Friday night.

In order to understand how to have real friends, we must learn how to start small and remain intimate.

Using Technology as a Crutch

I can only be friends with so many people, and I waste my time trying to be everything for everyone and end up being nothing for anyone.

Before the invention of the air conditioner, families would spend hot summer nights sitting out on their porches and talking with the neighbors. Before the Internet, there was a sharing of communication through printed books and interviews (R.I.P. Borders). Before cell phones, there were landlines that only talked and didn’t text. Before GPS, there were maps and gas stations. And before Netflix, there was Blockbuster (R.I.P. again).

The modern world is becoming more and more efficient with work and less and less meaningful with human interactions.

No friendship is based on efficiency. Friendship is spending time with someone, intentionally setting aside time to look someone in the eye, to hear their voice and to watch their eyebrows furrow or cheeks get red.

It is not an efficient exercise; in fact, friendship necessitates inefficiency. It is days spent gazing at ocean waves rather than writing job applications, evenings spent drinking coffee with a friend rather than an essay, school nights spent watching sports or movies or playing games rather than studying or reading or sleeping. Jobs are practical. Getting good grades is practical. Networking is practical. Friendship is not.

If God were practical, I think He should have given up on me a long time ago. But He calls me His friend. And friendship is not easy, simple or practical.

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What is Christmas?

By: enigma Date: December 24, 2014 Categories: Fatherhood, Spiritual

About 2000 years ago, God who is love and out of love manifested himself to reveal himself as love. Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem. He altered the path of humanity, gave us dignity, showed us how to love, and through mercy gave us an opportunity to be saved from eternal misery. He gave us purpose and meaning to our lives; every moment of our being on earth is sustained by him. As with any birthday we celebrate the person’s meaning in our life and show gratitude for all that he is. Since Jesus is a gift to us we want to be gifts and give gifts to others, an example set in the 4th century by a bishop by the name of Nicholas who became a saint, who became a legend.
Most of us know the story of Christmas and what it means for us today, but what did the first one mean to Mary and Joseph? For Joseph was it one of happiness and cheer? Was it one with lots of family, friends, and relatives? Was it one of restful leisure?
Consider Joseph:
  • Imagine being married and your spouse mentions that they are with child but not your own; would you still trust your spouse?
  • Joseph by dream does know Mary carried the son of God, but would not his faith be tested?
  • Knowing that he is to be father of the Son of God, would there not be such a worry of being responsible to protect both the mother and son of God?
  • Joseph wouldn’t be in the presence of many friends nor family (who would have believed if he mentioned that Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit?) He kept it secret to protect Mary and he was too busy anyway, providing all accommodations for his pregnant wife and doing all possible to keep safe the son of God amid the dangers of night travel
  • With only a star for guidance, would he not feel like a failure at not being able to find an inn for Mary and Jesus, but only a stable. Out of humility Joseph, to the best of his ability, did his duty.. from a humble stable, joy was born
I’m not suggesting that Christmas not be about enjoying time with happiness, cheer, family, friends, and relatives. Joseph reminds us that Advent can be a time to trust God more, a time to be more faithful, even a time where faith can be tested, a time of responsibility, a time to do our duty before God. For those whose Christmas is a time away from family or away from home (such as orphans and the homeless), remember that one might not have much to offer yet one can use their suffering as a gift.
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