Things I Learned And Wrote At Age 32

• You could not possibly feel grief if you were not first given something wonderful you did not deserve.

• Cosmetic makeup is for the superficially minded because the mature mind can only regard it as meretricious.

• When you forgive someone, you are no longer able to blame them for how you feel.

• The three excellencies of the mind:
• Intelligence: the ability to manipulate abstractions rapidly
• Smarts: quantity of knowledge
• Wisdom: timely appropriation of knowledge

• Human beings are reverse mirrors.  That's why it matters what you look at.

• Everyone cares about your talents if they uncover them.  No one cares about your talents if you uncover them.

• Forgiveness is not related to trust.  Forgiveness is a heart issue.  Trust is a mind issue.

• There are those who prepare for life and those who live.
• There are those who prepare for death and those who die.

• The truth most likely to save your life is that the problems that seem most unfixable are still fixable.

• Exercise takes care of the body, which is external. Study takes care of the mind, which is internal. Prayer takes care of the soul, which is eternal.

• When you know a little about someone, you appreciate them.  When you know a lot about someone, you take them for granted. A great challenge of marriage is to know a lot about someone and still properly appreciate them.

• Consistency is a virtue so useful it can even be profitable in error.

• Humans are like the moon:
1. They have no glory of their own. They can only reflect what was given to them.
• The ones who reflect no glory are they who dwell in earth's shadow.
1. They are only partially visible depending on the perspective of the viewer.
• You have to stay with them through a whole season to see all their aspects. And even then, you haven't seen 50% of them, which is their dark side.

• The only morality of modern society is social acceptability.

• The solution to victimhood is not vindication for what you don't have. It is gratitude for what you do have.
• Vindication requires another to change. But gratitude is within your own capability.

• In the relationship between God and humans, God is always the first to take a leap of faith.

• The ones who need safe spaces to speak without judgment are the people whose mind you want to change.

• You should not like your beliefs.
• A belief must always be based on alethiology, not preferences.

• You cannot expect God to care much about that for which you care moderately.

• Horizontal light blinds. Top light illuminates. Be careful thinking you're enlightening others. Let providence do it.

• Jonah of the Bible was a racist.

• The difference between belief and faith is that belief is expressed in words, and faith is expressed in actions.

• The main difference between the ethos of the ancient world and the ethos of today is that today men have to be taught how not to judge God.

• The monster under the bed is of no concern. It's the monster on top of the bed that should worry us.

• The brain is the only thing that learns itself with itself; and the heart is the only thing that hides itself from itself.

• When you become useful, you also become dangerous.

• A happy person doesn't know how bad they have it.

• I used to believe humanity's greatest weakness was forgetting, but without the capability to forget, life would be irrecoverable trauma.

• Faith is nothing more than the shedding of the notion that God is bad at His job.

• I'm stupider than I should be. And so are you.

• For those in hell, atheism is literal: God does not exist.

• You can tell the depth of a person by what bothers them.

• Other than sex, ignorance is the easiest thing to sell.

• At any given moment, your life could be better, but at every given moment, you don't know how good you have it.

• Being single is easier than being married. But being married is better than being single.

• I find that faith has less to do with belief and trust and more to do with cultivating a relationship.
• More so than belief, the ultimate etymology of the word faith is loyalty.

• Of the Trinity: the Father is eminent, the Son is imminent, the Spirit is immanent, and none of them is emanant.

• People tend to think of holiness like knowledge: there is an infinite store of it in God, and humans are always trying to attain unto as much as we can, though always falling infinitely short. This is wrong. You cannot grow in holiness. Holiness is more like innocence: you either maintain it or you lose it, but you can't gain it, though it can be miraculously bequeathed.

• The mental health of a generation is predicated on how they handle boredom.
• Boredom is the cultivator of creativity.
• Boredom is the easiest path to face your personal demons, because your mind quiets down enough to hear them.

• Perceiving those who have your best interests at heart becomes significant once it's apparent that not everybody actually does.

• Knowing much is better than knowing nothing. And knowing nothing is better than knowing little.

• God never prohibits anything that is useful.

• The right thing in the wrong spirit is the wrong thing.

• Whenever you justify yourself saying, "At least I don't..." you worsen the condition of your soul and the world by the end of the sentence: your soul because you're excusing something you shouldn't accept in yourself, and the world because you are disseminating opprobrium with no call or expectation of redemption.

• People who convert to Christianity learn God from the inside out. People who are raised in Christianity learn God from the outside in.

• Faith is not contingent upon requests. Requests are contingent upon faith.
• Faith must not be affected by expectation because our judgment is what sets the expectation, and human judgment is tainted by a limited frame.

• Do not look through anything at reality. Look through reality at all things.
• Never look at an "is" through an "ought."

• Your last hope should be your first recourse.

• It is as easy to see privilege in others as it is difficult to perceive hardship in them.
• The exact reverse is true when analyzing oneself.
• This is why nobody should speak about others' privilege as if they knew how much internal struggle accompanies it. It is also why no one should discount their own privileges when apprized of it.