A person is made up of three parts. The mind, the heart, and the body. The mind represents thinking which is unseen. The heart in the body represents the affections that are unseen. The body represents the appetites that are unseen.
A life mastered by the appetites ends in morbid obesity, addiction, incarceration, and loneliness. This is not a good life.
A life mastered by thinking seems right but — in the end — is foolish.
A good life is aligning thinking and appetites to serve the affections.
Brandon L. Blankenship is an assistant professor, continuing legal education presenter, and business educator. He and his wife Donnalee live on their hobby farm south of Birmingham, Alabama.
For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in [a]Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life; indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead … 1 Cor 1:8-9 NASB
No good deed goes unpunished.
Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary. So then, [b]while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith. Gal 6: 7-10 NASB
I am second
… for the one that is least among all of you, this is the one who is great. Luke 9:48 NASB
Hate is learned, it has to be taught
But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders. These are the things which defile the man… Mathew 15: 18-20 NASB
The day is coming for good men to do bad things.
You will [a]know them by their fruits. [b]Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? Mat. 7:16 NASB
There are those who say fate is something beyond our command. That destiny is not our own, but I know better. Our fate lives within us, you only have to be brave enough to see it.” -Merida (Disney)
A person’s own folly leads to their ruin, yet their heart rages against the Lord. Proverbs 19:3 NIV
Why do bad things happen to good people?
“THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE.” Romans 3:10 NASB
This verse is quoting: The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, They have done abominable works, There is none who does good. The LORD looks down from heaven upon the children of men, To see if there are any who understand, who seek God. They have all turned aside, They have together become corrupt; There is none who does good, No, not one. Psalm 14:1–3 NKJV
Brandon L. Blankenship is an assistant professor, continuing legal education presenter, and business educator. He and his wife Donnalee live on their hobby farm south of Birmingham, Alabama.
Brandon L. Blankenship is an assistant professor, continuing legal education presenter, and business educator. He and his wife Donnalee live on their hobby farm south of Birmingham, Alabama.
If you are on death row in an Alabama prison, you are scheduled to get an hour a day of yard time. That is, time outside. You are scheduled to get an hour of yard time, but you don’t always get it. You get it unless it storms. You get it unless the prison is short-handed on corrections officers. You get it unless….
I learned about yard time from visiting prisoners. I didn’t understand it until Anthony Ray Hinton explained it.1 He described two types of liberty in prison. One was the trips he would take in his imagination. The other was yard time.
Hinton’s imagination reminded me of William Stringfellow’s statement that true freedom was Daniel Berrigan in prison. I can imagine Berrigan in the cell, eyes closed, boisterous smile. His body is there, but he is not. The truly imprisoned were the correctional officers, the warden – worried, fretting that Berrigan, like Paul, might disappear on their watch. But that is writing for another day.
Then there is yard time. Strange how fences and armed guards border Hinton’s liberty but it was liberty just the same. Not bounded by steel and concrete. A little room to walk. Fresh air to clear his lungs of prison stench. The sun. And the vastness of the sky.
After meeting Hinton, I started thinking about the fact that I could walk outside any time. But I didn’t. In fact, there were many days that I didn’t go outside at all. I had the liberty, but I was choosing to waive it -to give it away. When it comes to the actual experience of liberty, what is the difference between someone who gives it away and someone who it is taken from, even wrongfully taken from, like Hinton?
Now, most every day, I take an hour for yard time. I might be turning the soil, or trimming shrubs, or working on some experiment or project. But while I am out there, I try to experience liberty and how fundamentally American it is just to be outside because I choose to be.2
Brandon L. Blankenship is an assistant professor, continuing legal education presenter, and business educator. He and his wife Donnalee live on their hobby farm south of Birmingham, Alabama.
In the 2006 movie The Ultimate Gift, which is based on a best selling novel by Jim Stovall, a deceased grandfather (played by James Garner) posthumously presents his grandson with a series of tests designed to develop or test the grandson’s character.
One of the tests is a check for $100 million that the grandson has to spend on others.
Immediately, in my mind I started dividing up how the money could best be spent. A few million here would make a difference, another few million there.
The grandson got on the other side of the money. Rather than looking at it as an amount to spend, he saw it as an amount to leverage and invest. He put together a plan to build a $350 million dollar hospital that included housing so that families of sick children could live at the hospital and keep their family together. By investing the $100 million he had control over, he was able to convince other investors to invest hundreds of millions of additional dollars.
Also, at the end of my dividing up and spending the $100 million the money would have been spent and gone forever. It would have done some good, but it would have been unsustainable.
The grandson’s plan actually became revenue generating to the extent that families could afford, health insurance would pay, and so on. His plan was sustainable and would most likely outlive its original investment and investors.
It was just a movie, the money wasn’t real, but I discovered that when I think about money, my thinking is on the wrong side of $100 million.
Brandon L. Blankenship is an assistant professor, continuing legal education presenter, and business educator. He and his wife Donnalee live on their hobby farm south of Birmingham, Alabama.
Right outside the window where I have worked for the past months is a birdfeeder. The birdfeeder stays full of a wide variety of bird seed and draws a wide variety of birds. I’ve noticed that some types of birds – provided there is no imminent threat (like a neighborhood cat) – just plop down and eat. They don’t seem to care who eats next to them or how many are eating. These are the abundance birds.
Another type of bird, however, spends a good bit of its time and energy chasing away other birds. They do eat, but it is more of a hurried snack between flights to fend off others. These are the scarcity birds. While the abundance birds enjoy a relaxed meal, the scarcity birds dash in, grab a bite, and then rush off in their high anxiety flight to keep other birds away.
I’ve noticed a lot of people are like this too. The scarcity people get what they can get when they can get it cause it’s going to get gone. They spend as much or more energy keeping other people away as they do getting for themselves. Whatever they do get, they keep it tightly fisted.
The abundance of people don’t worry about keeping others out. These people tend to have an open hand.
Mother Teresa shares a story about taking a parcel of rice to a poor family in Calcutta who had been starving for many days. On receiving the parcel of rice, the starving mother divided the parcel in half and took it to her neighbor. Open hand.
in Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl shares stories about men in concentration camps who shared their last piece of bread. Open hand.
It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with how much bread (or birdseed) there is. The scarcity birds and the abundance birds in fact receive the same amount of birdseed. It seems to have everything to do with attitude. It seems to have everything to do with whether you are the type of person who sees the world through the lens of scarcity or the type of person who sees the world through the lens of abundance.
Brandon L. Blankenship is an assistant professor, continuing legal education presenter, and business educator. He and his wife Donnalee live on their hobby farm south of Birmingham, Alabama.
