Vanity is the devil's favorite vice and if we get too self-righteous we can fall too!
Posted on 05/10/2011 5:44:43 PM PDT by Gamecock
Osama masterminded the killing of about 3,000 Americans.
I would think that those involved with killing about 46,000,000 Americans would be worried that there may be a SEAL in THEIR future!
Vanity is the devil's favorite vice and if we get too self-righteous we can fall too!
HMMmm...
Letter # 10
“Recognizing the Traps of Becoming a Duplicitous Christian”
MY DEAR WORMWOOD,
I was delighted to hear from Triptweeze that your patient has made some very desirable new acquaintances and that you seem to have used this event in a really promising manner. I gather that the middle-aged married couple who called at his office are just the sort of people we want him to know—rich, smart, superficially intellectual, and brightly skeptical about everything in the world. I gather they are even vaguely pacifist, not on moral grounds but from an ingrained habit of belittling anything that concerns the great mass of their fellow men and from a dash of purely fashionable and literary communism. This is excellent. And you seem to have made good use of all his social, sexual, and intellectual vanity. Tell me more. Did he commit himself deeply? I don't mean in words. There is a subtle play of looks and tones and laughs by which a Mortal can imply that he is of the same party as those to whom he is speaking. That is the kind of betrayal you should specially encourage, because the man does not fully realize it himself; and by the time he does you will have made withdrawal difficult.
No doubt he must very soon realize that his own faith is in direct opposition to the assumptions on which all the conversation of his new friends is based. I don't think that matters much provided that you can persuade him to postpone any open acknowledgment of the fact, and this, with the aid of shame, pride, modesty and vanity, will be easy to do. As long as the postponement lasts he will be in a false position. He will be silent when he ought to speak and laugh when he ought to be silent. He will assume, at first only by his manner, but presently by his words, all sorts of cynical and skeptical attitudes which are not really his. But if you play him well, they may become his. All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be. This is elementary. The real question is how to prepare for the Enemy's counter attack.
The first thing is to delay as long as possible the moment at which he realizes this new pleasure as a temptation. Since the Enemy's servants have been preaching about "the World" as one of the great standard temptations for two thousand years, this might seem difficult to do. But fortunately they have said very little about it for the last few decades. In modern Christian writings, though I see much (indeed more than I like) about Mammon, I see few of the old warnings about Worldly Vanities, the Choice of Friends, and the Value of Time. All that, your patient would probably classify as "Puritanism"—and may I remark in passing that the value we have given to that word is one of the really solid triumphs of the last hundred years? By it we rescue annually thousands of humans from temperance, chastity, and sobriety of life.
Sooner or later, however, the real nature of his new friends must become clear to him, and then your tactics must depend on the patient's intelligence. If he is a big enough fool you can get him to realize the character of the friends only while they are absent; their presence can be made to sweep away all criticism. If this succeeds, he can be induced to live, as I have known many humans live, for quite long periods, two parallel lives; he will not only appear to be, but actually be, a different man in each of the circles he frequents.
Failing this, there is a subtler and more entertaining method. He can be made to take a positive pleasure in the perception that the two sides of his life are inconsistent. This is done by exploiting his vanity. He can be taught to enjoy kneeling beside the grocer on Sunday just because he remembers that the grocer could not possibly understand the urbane and mocking world which he inhabited on Saturday evening; and contrariwise, to enjoy the bawdy and blasphemy over the coffee with these admirable friends all the more because he is aware of a "deeper", "spiritual" world within him which they cannot understand. You see the idea—the worldly friends touch him on one side and the grocer on the other, and he is the complete, balanced, complex man who sees round them all. Thus, while being permanently treacherous to at least two sets of people, he will feel, instead of shame, a continual undercurrent of self-satisfaction. Finally, if all else fails, you can persuade him, in defiance of conscience, to continue the new acquaintance on the ground that he is, in some unspecified way, doing these people "good" by the mere fact of drinking their cocktails and laughing at their jokes, and that to cease to do so would be "priggish", "intolerant", and (of course) "Puritanical".
Meanwhile you will of course take the obvious precaution of seeing that this new development induces him to spend more than he can afford and to neglect his work and his mother. Her jealousy, and alarm, and his increasing evasiveness or rudeness, will be invaluable for the aggravation of the domestic tension.
Your affectionate uncle,
SCREWTAPE
Yes, David was a warrior but it was for that reason that he was not allowed to build the temple.
The pastor doesn’t need OUR forgiveness nor can we give it on behalf of someone else.
Yes, the “seeking sincere forgiveness” is seeking sincere forgiveness of God.
I was coordinating a relief mission in Bangladesh. I had supplies from NGO’s and the government, I had native doctors and my corpsmen. I had a map showing where personnel and supplies had been deployed and where there were known outbreaks of disease. There was a blank spot on the map where there was no personnel and no information. It turned out there were no open roads in that area.
I was able to get a ride out from a couple of British Royal Marine helicopters but they never came back to pick us up. We had to make our own way home. I didn’t ask for any more rides from them.
I was next able to get the SEALs to take us up river within a couple of miles of where we needed to be. They even showed up on time to take us back. But the next day, not a single native doctor showed up. I don’t know about them, but I’m pretty sure my kidneys were bleeding after those boat rides. They did take us where we needed to go and always were there to pick us back up but I can’t say that I enjoyed a single minute. It felt like a jack hammer and they only had two speeds, dead stop and full out.
If your husband was in Bangladesh in 91, tell him hi.
I don't think God has drinking buddies. In fact, I think your statement is just the sort of dumbing down of God that too many Americans engage in anywise. What a stupid and flippant statement about God on your part.
One thing I can tell, biblically speaking, is that if a SEAL doesn't get saved, he goes to eternal judgment just like everyone else. Meanwhile, God has said in His Word that He will honour faithful pastors for their service.
So I can take your word for it, or God's Word for it. Not a difficult choice.
That he, and all of us, should do anyway.
Hard to tell what you’re referring to, since you apparently babied up and went crying to the Mod, since I was saying mean things that you didn’t like.
Glad to have beaten the odds. The guy is a class act. We know his mother well.
And no, I haven’t seen his DD 214, since he doesn’t have one. Still active. But I have seen his original Bronze Star citation for his part in (we’re pretty sure) the Jessica Lynch rescue at his mom’s house.
She called him up immediately after hearing the OBL news. “What are you talking about, mom? Wow, that’s great news!” Another sign he’s real - he doesn’t talk much at all. Based on some very, very circumstantial information, we think it quite likely he was directly involved in the ops planning for OBL. And that is purely circumstantial by tenuous inference, no direct information whatsoever.
People really just need to be satisfied with who they are themselves. If they're not, then they need to find ways to improve themselves.
Overweight? Then go exercise and eat right and slim down.
Not as educated as you'd like? Take some classes, or get some books and read them.
Dissatisfied with your marriage? Get together with your spouse and examine what's wrong, and make the decision to change that/those thing(s).
Don't like your job? Try to find a new one, or even strike out on your own and be your own boss (harder to do in the Obamaconomy, I realise).
Anything is better than just making up stories about yourself, setting yourself up for a fall, embarrassment, having nobody ever trust you again. "Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour: so doth a little folly him that is in reputation for wisdom and honour." (Eccl. 10:1)
I think a lot of it has to do with the predominance and type of entertainment in our culture. Instead of valuing the things of life that could enrich us every day, we are wowwed by the big action movies with muscle-bound hulks toting massive guns and doing deeds of derring-do. We start to think that that is what manhood and goodness and self-worth are all about.
Then, people like this pastor start transferring that over to the military in general, and special forces in particular. They love the Steven Seagal movies, and want people to think of them as they would the people in those movies, and the way to do that is to claim to be what they're not.
They never stop to think about why, really, should they value what a military man does over their own lives. Even here on FR, we see people who think that those in the military are some kind of gods among men, when they're not. They're just guys who wear a uniform and sometimes have to do dangerous, heroic things. We should honour them for their sacrifices, but we should not idolise them as if they, and only they, do anything that is worthwhile. I'd hate to live in a world where only military action and fighting are worthwhile. It'd be like living among Attila's Huns or Genghis' Mongols. No thanks.
Real manhood is meeting your responsibilities, to your family, to your God. Real manhood doesn't mean putting on some camoflauge and playing with guns - or falsely telling people that you used to do that at one point. Real manhood involves having your priorities straight, having eternity's values in view. Everything else needs to be subordinate to that, else something is out of whack in your life.
The US Military Spec Ops Community is VERY small, so if you claim to be a...US Army Green Beret, USMC Force Recon, US Navy SEALs(or UDT), USAF ParaRescue or Forward Air Controllor or USCG Rescue Swimmer. You had BETTER have the “goods” or you WILL be found out.
So true.
I though, am slim and trim, have three PhD’s and am more interesting than that old dude selling Mexican beer. Besides...just a minute...my mom says the President has called back (again) so I suppose I should go see what he wants!
He is NOT old!
(Is 27 considered old in AMERICA?)
Unless you’re far, far older than my jokes the guy selling Dos XX beer is not 27!
well, maybe if he really sucked down that suds but otherwise.........
I was just on vacation with a large number of buddies. Bachelor party. Don’t think that SEAL Team 6 reunion didn’t come out of some mouths. Of course, it was used as a quick opening line.
He’s had a REALLY hard life!! :^)
David was the youngest and "least" of Jesse's sons. God seemed to enjoy placing the youngest over the oldest.
David's first act, after bringing his older brothers their lunches, was to kill a giant with a sling shot.
I bet he would have made a helluva Navy Seal.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.