In other words, hope was defined as the perceived capability to derive pathways to desired goals and motivate oneself via agency thinking to use those pathways.
Hope is an optimistic state of mind that is based on an expectation of positive outcomes with respect to events and circumstances in one’s life or the world at large. As a verb, its definitions include: “expect with confidence” and “to cherish a desire with anticipation.”
From Middle English hope, from Old English hopa (“hope, expectation”), from Proto-Germanic*hupô, *hupǭ, *hupō (“hope”), from Proto-Germanic*hupōną (“to hope”), from Proto-Indo-European*kēwp-, *kwēp- (“to smoke, boil”). Cognate with West Frisian hope (“hope”), Dutch hoop (“hope”), Middle High German hoffe (“hope”). Extra-Germanic cognates include Latin cupio (“I desire, crave”) and possibly Latin vapor (“vapor; smoke”).
hope (countable and uncountable, pluralhopes)
(countable or uncountable) The belief or expectation that something wished for can or will happen.
I still have some hope that I can get to work on time.After losing my job, there’s no hope of being able to afford my world cruise.There is still hope that we can find our missing cat. (countable) The actual thing wished for. (countable) A person or thing that is a source of hope. We still have one hope left: my roommate might see the note I left on the table. (Christianity, uncountable) The virtuous desire for future good.
Hope and forgiveness can impact several aspects of life such as health, work, education, and personal meaning. There are three main things that make up hopeful thinking:
Goals – Approaching life in a goal-oriented way.
Pathways – Finding different ways to achieve your goals.
Agency – Believing that you can instigate change and achieve these goals.
In other words, hope was defined as the perceived capability to derive pathways to desired goals and motivate oneself via agency thinking to use those pathways.
Hope is the second round in the theological and Masonic ladder, and symbolic of a hope in immortality. It is appropriately placed there, for, having attained the first, or faith in God, we are led by a belief in His wisdom and goodness to the hope of immortality. This is but a reasonable expectation; without it, virtue would lose its necessary stimulus and vice its salutary fear; life would be devoid of joy, and the grave but a scene of desolation. The ancients represented Hope by a nymph or maiden holding in her hand a bouquet of opening flowers, indicative of the coming fruit; but in modern and Masonic iconology, the science of Craft illustrations and likenesses, it is represented by a virgin leaning on an anchor, the anchor itself being a symbol of hope . Mackey’s Encyclopedia of Freemasonry
Fowler defines faith as an activity of trusting, committing, and relating to the world based on a set of assumptions of how one is related to others and the world.
Faith, derived from Latin fides and Old French feid, is confidence or trust in a person, thing, or concept. In the context of religion, one can define faith as confidence or trust in a particular system of religious belief. Religious people often think of faith as confidence based on a perceived degree of warrant* ( *The theory of justification is a part of epistemology that attempts to understand the justification of propositions and beliefs. Epistemologists are concerned with various epistemic features of belief, which include the ideas of justification, warrant, rationality, and probability. Loosely speaking, justification is the reason that someone (properly) holds a belief.)
James W. Fowler (1940–2015) proposes a series of stages of faith-development (or spiritual development) across the human life-span. His stages relate closely to the work of Piaget, Erikson, and Kohlberg regarding aspects of psychological development in children and adults. Fowler defines faith as an activity of trusting, committing, and relating to the world based on a set of assumptions of how one is related to others and the world.
Stages of faith
Intuitive-Projective: a stage of confusion and of high impressionability through stories and rituals (pre-school period).
Mythic-Literal: a stage where provided information is accepted in order to conform with social norms (school-going period).
Synthetic-Conventional: in this stage the faith acquired is concreted in the belief system with the forgoing of personification and replacement with authority in individuals or groups that represent one’s beliefs (early-late adolescence).
Individuative-Reflective: in this stage the individual critically analyzes adopted and accepted faith with existing systems of faith. Disillusion or strengthening of faith happens in this stage. Based on needs, experiences and paradoxes (early adulthood).
Conjunctive faith: in this stage people realize the limits of logic and, facing the paradoxes or transcendence of life, accept the “mystery of life” and often return to the sacred stories and symbols of the pre-acquired or re-adopted faith system. This stage is called negotiated settling in life (mid-life).
Universalizing faith: this is the “enlightenment” stage where the individual comes out of all the existing systems of faith and lives life with universal principles of compassion and love and in service to others for upliftment, without worries and doubt (middle-late adulthood (45–65 years old and plus).
No hard-and-fast rule requires individuals pursuing faith to go through all six stages. There is a high probability for individuals to be content and fixed in a particular stage for a lifetime; stages from 2-5 are such stages. Stage 6 is the summit of faith development. This state is often considered as “not fully” attainable.
“Faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to.” ― Valentine Davies, Miracle on 34th Street
In the theological ladder, the explanation of which forms a part of the instruction of Masonry, faith is said to typify the lowest round. Faith, here, is synonymous with confidence or trust, and hence we find the essential qualification of a candidate is that he should trust in God.
I, (state name of enlistee), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”
By Lee Cary ——October 2, 2019
Those who’ve taken the oath remember it as a rite of passage.
Inside
a military induction center, in the company of strangers in civilian
clothes, with a few military personnel in uniform, a commanding voice
orders the civilians to line up single file outside the door, to an
empty room, displaying the national flag.
The door opens, the
civilians file in, and, in equal increments, peel off to form a block of
rows where they are called to attention for the first of many times to
come.
When directed, they raise their right hands and repeat, phrase by phrase, these words:
I, (state name of enlistee), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;
that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will
obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of
the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the
Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”
For
many of the oath-takers, other important and memorable oaths will be
taken in their lives. Like wedding vows, and their oath to “tell the
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” in a court of law.
But, for those who take this oath, no other will be more memorable.
The
oath originated during the American Revolutionary War. It was altered
in 1789. Then, later, it was amended, on 5 May 1960, during the Cold
War.
On 5 October 1962, the newest words took effect. The
oath-takers pledged to “support and defend the Constitution of the
United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic”.
The “enemies” are unnamed. For while the oath is fixed in place, the enemies change over time.
The leading foreign enemies
of the 20th Century were clear. The Empire of Japan. The Third Reich.
Then the USSR, the Peoples’ Republic of China and the Korean War.
Followed by an episode of the Cold War turned hot in Vietnam.
The domestic enemies—those
inside our borders—were Soviet spies, many known to exist but
identified only by their code names, particularly in the era of nuclear
arms development. Later came spies from the Peoples’ Republic of China
entering America as foreign students in U.S. universities, not just
searching for state secrets but for industrial secrets enabling the
theft of intellectual property.
Today, the leading domestic enemies
of the U.S. Constitution are not dispatched to America from foreign
shores. They were born in the USA. English is their first language.
They include Government Service employees in the U.S. “intelligence community”— a soft moniker for a hard bunch. Not all of them, of course. But enough to matter.
Some act openly, others are clandestine operators.
They designed and staffed the Trump-Russian Hoax operation. We know the
field leaders, many of them, but we can’t yet prove who authorized
their mission. And we may never be able to document who gave the “go,”
and when.
The field trade craft doesn’t appear to have relied on the standard pedestrian techniques like dead drops, brush passes, or one-time pads.
They
used other espionage tools against the Executive Branch of their own
government: black propaganda, cut-outs, even a swallow—many of the
standard tools were used one time or another during the Trump-Russian
Hoax by GS-rated personnel and a few agency stringers, operating under
the guise of the “intelligence community”. A harmless sounding label
conveying the image of block parties, pot-luck suppers and book clubs. A
family affair.
In their efforts to overthrow a President, the
“intelligence community” solidly earned the designation of a domestic
enemy of the U.S. Constitution.
The role of liberal media newsrooms as domestic enemies is, also, well-established. Akin to the Nazi-controlled newspapers Vőlkischer Beobachter, Der Angriff and Boersen Zeitung, they toe the Democrat Party line under the banners of the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, et al.
On the internet, they edit POLITICO, Daily Kos and Mother Jones
where news means spreading each new narrative defined by the thought
leaders of the American Left. Facts and truth matter not. Today there
is no “news”.
The most modern invention in political propaganda
is practiced by the censors, and with the logarithms, of big social
media and search engine outlets: e.g., Facebook, Twitter and Google.
Domestics enemies of the U.S. Constitution.
Among their various
campaigns are open borders, unhindered access to lethal drugs, unlimited
abortions, unenforced laws, unbounded genders.
Identity politics is a propaganda tool for torquing disorder leading toward the reformation of the old civil order by spreading incivility.
Their
agenda, once heralded as fundamental transformation of America by a
former U.S. President, is fundamental deformation of American society.
Tear down the old to bring on the new.
Their end-game goal is the optimization of federal power – which they will control because they know best—over the citizenry.
Elsewhere
in time and place, they’ve used other labels—Communism, Fascism,
Socialism – but it always comes down to control over people. How they
live. Where they work. What they read. What they think. What they own.
The Politburo, the Stasi, the Gestapo, the Communist Party, the Central Planning Committee—same play, different actors.
And
now we have the newest rendition of control being directed from the
hive of America’s leading domestic enemy—free stuff for everyone funded
by confiscating the property of the rich.
Today, the domestic enemies of the U.S. Constitution live in our midst as the Democratic Party and its allies.
They put on a clown show, but we had better take them seriously. For they are not joking.
Many times we misinterpret the command to “make disciples” by divorcing this command unintentionally from other commands of Jesus, as if the imperatives of Jesus are weighted, with some being more valuable than others.
Matthew 28:18-20
18 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
Usually this verse uses the word “disciples”. The word “disciple,” which is “mathetes” in Greek, literally means “pupil”. The Greek term μαθητής (mathētēs) refers generally to any “student,” “pupil,” “apprentice,” or “adherent,” as opposed to a “teacher.”
The Gospel of Matthew does not specifically use the term “Great Commission”. It does not appear until late in Christian history. Some scholars argue that it was coined by Baron Justinian von Welz, a 17th-century Lutheran nobleman, who argued that the words in Matthew 28 meant that all Christians were required to spread the faith, not just Jesus’ closest disciples.
There is evidence that personal discipleship was carried on among the Greeks and the Jews. Though the term “disciple” is used in different ways in the literature of the period, there are examples of discipleship referring to people committed to following a recognized leader, emulating his life and passing on his teachings. In these cases, discipleship meant much more than just the transfer of information. Again, it referred to imitating the teacher’s life, inculcating his values, and reproducing his teachings. For the Jewish boy over thirteen this meant going to study with a recognized Torah scholar, imitating his life and faith, and concentrating on mastering the Mosaic Law as well as the traditional interpretations of it.
Disciplship then is the kind of teaching that takes place through modeling the Christian life before others. More than simply drilling information into young believers, Christians should serve as mentors, coming alongside others and showing them what it means to walk as a disciple of Jesus. This emphasis on guidance coincides with the ancient Israelite concept of teaching, “. . . the task of a teacher was to create the conditions in which learning could occur—and those conditions would be most effective when the learner had direct contact with relevant ‘on the job’ experience.”
Many times we misinterpret the command to “make disciples” by divorcing this command unintentionally from other commands of Jesus, as if the imperatives of Jesus are weighted, with some being more valuable than others.
We would do well to remember Mark 6:14; “And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet.”
Discipleship requires teaching by the example of emulating the Great teacher and pupils willing to receive the instruction. It is a gift to be given freely and accepted gratefully by the recipient. To make disciples we must be an exemplar that the unschooled want to emulate.
The Lord’s mission was to redeem us from sin, not to redistribute our property or impose an economic equality on us.
The concept of justice is based on numerous fields, and many differing viewpoints and perspectives including the concepts of moral correctness based on ethics, rationality, law, religion, equity and fairness. It is the moderation or mean between selfishness and selflessness – between having more and having less than one’s fair share.
Plato’s definition of justice is that justice is the having and doing of what is one’s own. A just man is a man in just the right place, doing his best and giving the precise equivalent of what he has received. This applies both at the individual level and at the universal level.
Socrates argues that lovers of wisdom – philosophers, in one sense of the term – should rule because only they understand what is good, (moral). If one is ill, one goes to a medic rather than a farmer, because the medic is expert in the subject of health. Similarly, one should trust one’s government to an expert in the subject of the good, not to a mere politician who tries to gain power by giving people what they want, rather than what’s good. Socrates uses the parable of the ship to illustrate this point: the unjust government is like a ship in open ocean, crewed by a powerful but drunken captain (the common people), a group of untrustworthy advisors who try to manipulate the captain into giving them power over the ship’s course (the politicians), and a navigator (the philosopher) who is the only one who knows how to get the ship to port. For Socrates, the only way the ship will reach its destination – the good – is if the navigator takes charge.
But we must be wary of the current “social justice” snare. Many good people over many years have been beguiled by the Left’s use of the term “social justice.” This is because fair-minded folks rightly love justice and hate injustice. But “social justice”—or, at least, how it’s often used by liberal Leftists—isn’t necessarily justice.
The modern left’s “social justice” strives for absolute economic equality. It endeavors to reduce, if not erase, the gap between rich and poor by redistributing wealth. This is “justice” more akin to Marx and Lenin, not according to Moses or Jesus. It is a counterfeit of real justice, biblical justice. Modern notions of “social justice” are often wolves in sheep’s clothing.
The fundamental error of today’s “social justice” practitioners is their hostility to economic inequality, per se. “Social justice” theory fails to distinguish between economic disparities that result from unjust deeds and those that are part of the natural order of things.
We are different from each other. We are unequal in aptitude, talent, skill, work ethic, priorities, etc. Inevitably, these differences result in some individuals producing and earning far more wealth than others. To the extent that those in the “social justice” crowd obsess about eliminating economic inequality, they are at war with the nature of the Creator’s creation.
The Bible doesn’t condemn economic inequality. You can’t read
Proverbs without seeing that some people are poor due to their own
vices. There is nothing unjust about people reaping what they sow,
whether wealth or poverty.
Jesus himself didn’t condemn economic inequality. He told his disciples, “ye have the poor always with you” (Matthew 26:11), and in the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:24-30) he condemned the failure to productively use one’s God-given talents—whether many or few, exceptional or ordinary—by having a lord take money from the one who had the least and give it to him who had the most, thereby increasing economic inequality.
The Lord’s mission was to redeem us from sin, not to redistribute our property or impose an economic equality on us.
By all means, let us tackle persistent injustices. But let us be careful to abide by the biblical standard of impartiality and equal treatment by law, lest we create additional injustices.
Culture and disciplined actions should be about the beneficial action.
Prudence (Latin: prudentia, contracted from providentia meaning “seeing ahead, sagacity”) is the ability to govern and discipline oneself by the use of reason.
It is often associated with wisdom, insight, and knowledge. In this case, the virtue is the ability to judge between virtuous and vicious actions, not only in a general sense, but with regard to appropriate actions at a given time and place. Although prudence itself does not perform any actions, and is concerned solely with knowledge, all virtues had to be regulated by it. Distinguishing when acts are courageous, as opposed to reckless or cowardly, is an act of prudence.
In modern English, the word has become increasingly synonymous with cautiousness. In this sense, prudence names a reluctance to take risks, which remains a virtue with respect to unnecessary risks, but, when unreasonably extended into over-cautiousness, can become the vice of cowardice.
Aristotle gives a lengthy account of the virtue phronesis (Ancient Greek: ϕρόνησις), traditionally translated as “prudence”, although this has become increasingly problematic as the word has fallen out of common usage. More recently ϕρόνησις has been translated by such terms as “practical wisdom“, “practical judgment” or “rational choice“.
The function of a prudence is to point out which course of action is to be taken in any concrete circumstances. It has nothing to do with directly willing the good it discerns. Prudence has a directive capacity with regard to the other virtues. It lights the way and measures the arena for their exercise.
Without prudence, bravery becomes foolhardiness; mercy sinks into weakness, free self-expression and kindness into censure, humility into degradation and arrogance, selflessness into corruption, and temperance into fanaticism.
Culture and disciplined actions should be about the beneficial action. Its office is to determine for each in practice those circumstances of time, place, manner, etc. which should be observed. So it is that while it qualifies the intellect and not the will, it is nevertheless rightly styled a moral virtue. The difference between prudence and cunning lies in the intent with which the decision of the context of an action is made.
Consider how much improved our plight would be if folks in general and our public servants in particular exercised rational judgement and prudence in their affairs both personal and public.
Thucydides, a 5th Greek historian said; “The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.”
Courage (also called bravery or valor) is the choice and willingness to confront agony, pain, danger, uncertainty, or intimidation. Physical courage is bravery in the face of physical pain, hardship, death or threat of death, while moral courage is the ability to actrightly in the face of popular opposition, shame, scandal, discouragement, or personal loss.
“First, in feelings of fear and confidence the mean is bravery (andreia). The excessively fearless person is nameless…while the one who is excessively confident is rash; the one who is excessively afraid and deficient in confidence is cowardly.“ — Aristotle
Fear and confidence in relation to courage can determine the success of a courageous act or goal. The confidence that is being discussed here is self-confidence; Confidence in knowing one’s skills and abilities and being able determine when to fight a fear or when to flee from it. The ideal in courage is not just a rigid control of fear, nor is it a denial of the emotion. The ideal is to judge a situation, accept the emotion as part of human nature and, we hope, use well-developed habits to confront the fear and allow reason to guide our behavior toward a worthwhile goal.
Civic courage is described as a sort of perseverance – “preservation of the belief that has been inculcated by the law through education about what things and sorts of things are to be feared.”
Thucydides, a 5th Greek historian said; “The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.”
Our Founding Fathers understood the virtue of courage. What a pity that so many of our citizens, and particularly our public servants have lost sight of it.
Temperance is a virtue akin to self-control. It is applied to all areas of life. St. Thomas calls it a “disposition of the mind which binds the passions”.
The four classic cardinal virtues in Christianity are temperance, prudence, courage, and justice. Christianity derives the three theological virtues of faith, hope and love (charity) from 1 Corinthians. Together these make up the seven virtues.
Temperance is defined as moderation or voluntary self-restraint. It is typically described in terms of what an individual voluntarily refrains from doing. This includes restraint from retaliation in the form of non-violence and forgiveness, restraint from arrogance in the form of humility and modesty, restraint from excesses such as extravagant luxury or splurging now in the form of prudence, and restraint from excessive anger or craving for something in the form of calmness and self-control.
It is generally characterized as the control over excess, and expressed through characteristics such as chastity, modesty, humility, self-regulation, hospitality, decorum, abstinence, forgiveness and mercy; each of these involves restraining an excess of some impulse, such as sexual desire, vanity, or anger.
Temperance is a virtue akin to self-control. It is applied to all areas of life.
St. Thomas calls it a “disposition of the mind which binds the passions”.
Consider the major improvement in our current society if we learned to apply the lesson of temperance and generally subdue our passions.
As Franklin explained, “As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.” In other words, if we don’t govern ourselves, we have no choice but to be governed from above.
Virtue (Latin: virtus, Ancient Greek: ἀρετή “arete”) is moral excellence. A virtue is a trait or quality that is deemed to be morally good and thus is valued as a foundation of principle and good moral being. Personal virtues are characteristics valued as promoting collective and individual greatness. In other words, it is a behavior that shows high moral standards. Doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong.
The Founders Warned Us: With Loss of Virtue Comes Loss of Our Republic.
It is the secret at the heart of America’s founding—one that we have largely forgotten. Unlike other countries, America is not defined by a particular ethnic or religious group. Instead, our country was formed around an idea: liberty. But what does it take to maintain liberty?
Now, in order to find the answer to this question, we have to go back 229 years, to 1787. Having won the American Revolution, our founders went about creating a new form of government—one that would be strong, but not TOO strong; one that relied on self-government.
As their summer-long convention finished, a woman asked Benjamin
Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” He
famously replied: “A republic, madam—if you can keep it!”
And what could cause us to lose the republic? Well, that’s simple: the loss of virtue.
John Adams wrote that “the only foundation of a free Constitution is pure virtue.” Have you heard that lately? Me neither.
What Franklin understood—and what modern crime statistics tragically
bear out—is that if citizens do not voluntarily practice virtue, the
authorities have no choice but to attempt to enforce it.
As Franklin explained, “As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.” In other words, if we don’t govern ourselves, we have no choice but to be governed from above.
Beginning tomorrow I will be starting a series of blog posts outlining the Golden Triangle of Freedom. The argument boils down to this: Freedom requires virtue; virtue requires faith; and faith in turn requires freedom. Remove any one of the triangle’s sides, and the whole structure collapses. In the posts following I will begin outlining the first leg of the “Golden Triangle”, virtue.
And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. -Mark 6:11
For Jews to shake dust off their feet was a sign that Gentile territory was unclean. In the New Testament this action indicates that those who have rejected the gospel have made themselves as Gentiles and must face the judgment of God. (See also Acts 13:51) To sprinkle dust on the head was a sign of mourning (Joshua 7:6), and to sit in dust denotes extreme affliction (Isaiah 47:1). “Dust” is used to denote the grave (Job 7:21). To lick the dust is a sign of abject submission (Psalms 72:9); and to throw dust at someone is a sign of abhorrence (2 Samuel 16:13; Acts 22:23). To bite the dust is to suffer a defeat. It became a common expression through its use in American movies about the early west.
Given the many B-feature cowboy movies in which the bad guys, or occasionally the pesky redskins, would ‘bite the dust’, we might expect this to be of American origin. It isn’t though. The same notion is expressed in the earlier phrase ‘lick the dust’, from the Bible, where there are several uses of it, including Psalms 72:9 “They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him; and his enemies shall lick the dust.”
