“Welcome back to 21 questions that will change your life.
Question #4 is about how we skip around between the past, present, and future… and how much of the now of life we miss out on by worrying about the future or getting tripped up in the past.
Question #4: How much of each twenty-four-hour period do you spend in the past, present, and future?
A great memory of time with friends from a few years back is a great way to spend a few moments of any day. Ruminating endlessly about something you did in the past or something that happened to you isn’t a great way to spend the precious now.
How much time did you spend lost in the past or the future yesterday? 10 minutes? An hour? Longer? Spend an hour a day lost in this type of worry about the future and ruminations of the past and it adds up. An hour a day means you spend two weeks a year doing just that.
What would you rather spend those two weeks doing this year? Every time you feel the past or the future pulling at you in unhealthy ways, turn your mind to the things would you rather spend those two weeks doing.”
“Welcome back to 21 questions that will change your life.
Question #3 is about dissatisfaction. Most people think of dissatisfaction as a bad thing, but often it is just a messenger coming to deliver a message. And that message… well it might be “get your act together”, it might be “it’s time for a change”, it might be “stop procrastinating, you know what you need to do.”
Question #3: What are you dissatisfied with? And if a friend described your situation to you and asked for advice, how would you advise him/her?
Your dissatisfaction may be caused by something large or small and to some extent it doesn’t matter what is causing your dissatisfaction. What matters is how you respond to that dissatisfaction.
Your dissatisfaction is an invitation to change, to grow, to wake up. Will you accept the invitation? Now, that’s the question.”
“Have you ever heard someone say, “Religious people are stupid!” I’ve heard it many times, but someone said it in a conversation recently and I challenged myself to really think it through.
When we hear statements like this, our tendency is to either accept them as completely true or reject them as completely false.
In the case of the statement, “Religious people are stupid” people who oppose religion instantly accept it and religious people instantly reject. The problem with that is that we are just reacting based on bias, rather than thinking critically.
Are religious people stupid? No. Why am I so certain? Well, for one, the statement is a gross generalization, there are billions of people on the planet who fall into this category, and at the very least generalizations are never completely true.
Some people would be satisfied at this and return to the comfortable place in their mind, assured that religious people are not stupid.
But let’s go a little further.
Why? Because the further we go, the more compete our answer, the greater confidence we can have in our conclusions.
So, I asked myself two questions: Why do some people believe religious people are stupid? and Do religious people behave stupidly sometimes?
The main reason non-religious people believe religious people are stupid is found in their accusation that religious people are “narrow-minded.” But then I asked myself another question: How to non-religious people experience religious people’s so-called narrow-mindedness? Is it in rigorous discussion of important topics? I don’t think so. It’s through judgement, sometimes real and sometimes imagined.
The definition of stupid is “showing lack of intelligence or common sense.” So, this is the question that emerges: Is it stupid to be judgmental?
Jesus was clear in Matthew 7:1 when he said simply, “Do not judge.” He repeated this teaching many times throughout his public life.
I think a fairly good case could be made that judging other people shows a lack of intelligence and a lack of common sense.
But why did Jesus counsel us not to judge? Many reasons, but let’s look at a three. First, because it is unreasonable to ask someone to do something they are incapable of doing. It’s like asking a three-year-old to teach a post-graduate course on bio-ethics. When we judge other people we are pretending to be God, but we are eminently unqualified.
Next, because judging others interferes with healthy human relations (something God is intensely interested in). And finally, because judging other people poisons our hearts and complicates our souls.
All these lead to chaos and confusion and God prefers order and clarity.
But here is the big revelation I discovered in my recent exploration of this topic: Judgement makes empathy impossible.
What is empathy? It’s the ability to emotional understand what other people are experiencing and feeling. It’s the ability to see things from another person’s perspective. It’s the ability to imagine yourself in their situation. Or… and this is a big one… the awareness that for whatever reason you are unable to relate or connect or imagine what it feels like to be that person.
Empathy is so central to human relationships that God rigorously steers us away from anything that impedes it, and judgement seems to be at the top of that list.
Judgement makes empathy impossible.
I don’t know for sure if it is stupid to judge others, but I do know that empathy is a beautiful expression of emotional genius that we are all capable of and that we should all continue to develop.
Are religious people stupid? No. But we do behave stupidly sometimes, and when we do, we impede other people’s ability to experience God.
Judgment belongs to God and stealing from God is never a good idea.
The difference between God’s judgment and human judgement is that in His perfection God can judge and remain empathetic. His judgement and mercy are in perfect balance and unison. When human being become judgmental it shuts down our capacity our empathic functions, creating division and conflict.
There is no such thing as a highly evolved spiritual person who lacks empathy. Empathy is proof that the truth of religion has taken deep root in our lives.”
“There is a moment at the end of each day, when we lay our head on our pillows. Our bodies are tired, our minds relax, and our egos let go. It is a solitary moment. If we listen carefully in that moment, we will discover where we stand. That moment never lies. It reveals the meaning or meaninglessness of our lives.”
“Holy Moments give meaning and divine purpose to our lives. Meaning is crucial to our health and happiness. We cannot thrive as human beings without it.”
“We crave more because we were made for more. We try to satisfy those cravings with trivial activity and meaningless things. But this foolishness just leaves us exhausted, dissatisfied, and hungrier than ever.”
“When you sense that something is missing, that there must be more to life, or that you have so much more to offer, your intuition has never been so sharp. Claim these as sacred truths about yourself. Listen and follow where they lead.”
