Principles and Values

This will be an ongoing project of mine and I will be adding to / editing / revising / etc. as I experience life and learn more about true principles.

Statement of Principles & Values

Principles vs. Values

• Principles are true ideas expressed in complete statements — descriptions of the natural laws by which God governs the universe.
• Values are personal attributes which I consider to have worth

Principles:

1. I am, that I might have joy.
2. God is.
3. God governs the universe through natural laws and true principles.
4. God’s purpose (his work and glory) is bringing about the immortality and eternal life of his children.
5. Honest and productive exchange builds relationships.
6. Relationships define true prosperity and wealth.
7. True Prosperity and wealth is the natural result of acting to achieve God’s work and glory on behalf of all of His children; and is only obtained for one individual or group of individuals by furthering the eternal happiness of other individuals.
8. Right and wrong, righteousness and wickedness, are defined by truth and virtue, falsehood and vice (not by majority vote, might of resources, physical strength, force of argument, extent of experience, history of tradition, or skill in rationalization).
9. Wickedness is not happiness.
10. The privilege of individual freedom comes with the responsibility of stewardship.
11. Freedom is the result of true faith and trust.
12. Force is the absence of true faith and trust.
13. Individual actions reflect individual values
14. In creating value for (serving) others, we create value for (serve) God.
15. Contention is counterproductive to virtue.

Values:

1. Honesty and Trust
   • Trust is impossible without Honesty. Trust is essential to building relationships.
2. Integrity
   • It is essential that other people are able to trust that how you act reflects what you say you value.
3. Virtue
   • Virtue is directing your thoughts and feelings in such a way that your actions and and the way you live your life promote God’s work and glory
     • Private Virtue is that which leads to your own eternal salvation
     • Public Virtue is that which leads to the eternal salvation of others
4. Charity
   • Charity is the pure love of Christ
5. Courage
   • Courage is being afraid and pursuing virtue anyway
6. Faith/Hope/Optimism
   • Faith is confidence, leading to action, in the principles by which God governs.
7. Divine nature and Individual worth
   • You are a child of Heavenly Father who loves you and has a unique mission for you to accomplish
8. Knowledge/Wisdom/Education
   • The purpose of education is personal improvement
9. Choice and Accountability
   • You are responsible for what happens to you in your life
10. Good Works
    • True happiness comes from giving your heart, might, mind, and strength to accomplishing the work of the Lord.
11. Prosperity
    • Prosperity is the purpose of life – “Men are that they might have joy.”

The problem of poverty

I recently finished “The Problem of Pain” by C.S. Lewis.  It led me to quite a bit of introspection and contemplation. While the book doesn’t exactly say these words, I understood the main thesis of the book to be: while God does not cause our pain, he knows that it is necessary for us to grow, so he allows it for our experience and benefit.

Physical pain is our body’s natural way of sending us a message that

In Defense of the “Self”

I have a love/hate relationship with the writings of Ayn Rand.  I read her writings and can see some things that I feel are missing from what I understand as her ideal. Then I read a criticism of the heroes in her novels and I feel like they are misunderstanding and misrepresenting the reality of what her heroes demonstrate.

For example:

The hero of her novel Anthem, Equality 7-2521, at the end of the novel, now having named himself Prometheus, comes to believe that instead of living for the state, the brotherhood of mankind, or for others, the highest ideal is actually to live for oneself.  That he, as an individual, has no inherent or a priori obligation to any brotherhood of mankind, to any governmental institution, or to any other individual.  The only obligation he has is to himself.  He states:

I stand here on the summit of the mountain. I lift my head and I spread my arms.  This, my body and spirit, this is the end of the quest.

…

I need no warrant for being, and no word of the sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.  It is my mind which thinks, and the judgment of my mind is the only searchlight that can find the truth.

…

It is my will which chooses, and the choice of my will is the only edict I must respect.

I find this idea intriguing, but easily taken in a direction which is deception.

My own first fundamental principle is “I am.”  In other words, before everything else, before any other truth or principle, I must recognize and embrace the fact that I exist and have worth first and foremost, to myself.  Anthem played a large part in helping me develop this fundamental principle.

The second of my fundamental principles is “God is.”  By which I mean that no less important, and inseparably related to recognizing and embracing the fact that I exist and have value to myself, is that I recognize and embrace that God exists and that my happiness is of worth to him – hence “I am.”

However, today I was reading another book which is already having a transformational effect on my understanding of truth, The Student Whisperer.  I’m only about 1/3 the way through the book, but it is really inspiring me.  In it one of the two authors, Tiffany Earl, is sharing some excerpts from her study journal, written as a student at George Wythe College.  These are her criticisms of the same messages in Anthem:

Ayn Rand rejected the imitation and simultaneously refected the “real thing.”  She rejected communism with its “two-headed dragon” of terror and force and all its inherent evils, the indignity it bring upon mankind.  And like a person who rejects imitation vanilla as not quite cutting it and at the same time decides to discard all vanilla, Ayn Rand rejects the imitation brotherhood and also throws out the real brotherhood in her writings.  But in her heart of hearts she held to the real, though her words denied it.  Her whole life was dedicated to mankind, lifting them from the yoke of force, terror, Communism.  It’s ironic really.

Actually, I don’t think it’s that ironic if she had truly understood what Ayn Rand felt in her heart of hearts.  I believe Ayn Rand would argue that she did not dedicate her life to mankind, but to her own desire to have a world free from the Communism she experienced as a youth.  She would say she was not motivated by any sense of obligation to mankind, but by her, as she would likely put it, selfish desire to see “communism with its ‘two-headed dragon’ of terror and force” destroyed.

The student, Tiffany Earl makes the erroneous assumption that when Prometheus declares:

I shall call to me all the men and the women whose spirit has not been killed within them and who suffer under the yoke of their brothers.  They will follow me and I shall lead them to my fortress.

That he “actually does feel an obligation to the brotherhood.” And thus sees an apparent contradiction in the book.

However, I see an important difference between wanting others who are like minded and want the intellectual freedom he can offer to be with him and to associate with such people, and a feeling of obligation toward these same people.  He is not making a statement about what he needs, or has an obligation to perform, but a statement about what he wants and what he believes will help him achieve happiness.

The way I see it, this is no different than God.  God does not need anybody to do his work.  He is perfectly able to accomplish, on his own, anything that he wants accomplished.  Nor does he do his work out of a sense of obligation toward us.  My religious beliefs include a doctrine that God wants us to be with Him and enjoy the same things He enjoys – to be like him.  That is the motivation behind everything He does.  Not out of a sense of obligation, nor out of a need of his to have us be like him.  If it’s not immoral for God to be motivated by nothing other than the furthering of his own purposes and will, why would it be immoral for those, whom he wants to be like him, to do the same?

April 2011, Saturday Morning Session

Federalist 4

This one didn’t take me so long. Now that I know what html code to edit out and what to insert for the footnotes, it went a lot smoother.

Federalist 4

Wealth, wants, needs, … and stewardship.

I have recently been reading a bit of Aristotle and find some of his conclusions interesting – though dead wrong.  I really enjoy reading people with whom I disagree.  I have the highest occurrences of epiphanies when I do.  For instance, in Politics, Book I, he talks about

Anarchy, the institution of Government, and self-governance.

I just recently listened again to a talk on the FEE podcast entitled “Self-Governance.” As I was listening the speaker, who is a self-proclaimed anarcho-capitalist, gave Somalia as an example of how anarchy can sometimes be a better option than

Our Greatest Fear and our Great Potential

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually who are we not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.
And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

From “A Return to Love”
by Marianne Williamson

I love what Marianne Williamson wrote. It is, I think, the perfect explanation of Principle 2: Faith begins with Self interest.

Many people confuse what I mean by self interest with what I mean by selfishness. Though these two terms share the root of self, they are actually polar opposites of the same idea

Federlist 3

OK, so the amount of time between 1 and 2 was long, but nothing compared to this.  Here’s Federalist 3 with my personal notes added.

On some of the footnotes, just remember that I wrote some of them a while ago and my perspective has changed a bit since I wrote them, so I may not feel the same now.

Federalist 3

Federlist 2

Sorry it’s taken so long.  I’ve had the first few annotated since about a year ago, but getting it into a web friendly format is harder than I thought.

Federalist 2