Guest Essayist: To be Fully Human in an AI Age, Let Suffering Do Its Virtous Work.

	Digital Anvil presents>>> To Be Fully Human in an AI Age, Let Suffering Do Its Virtuous Work How to overcome the planet of bots. Samuel D. James Note: The following is an excerpt from a guest lecture I recently delivered on the question: “What does it mean to be a person?” The 1998 movie The Truman Show tells the story of a man, Truman Burbank (played by Jim Carrey), who goes about his day in, day out life, completely unaware that he is the star of a 24 hour reality TV show. Every single aspect of Truman’s life is, unbeknownst to him, scripted. His wife, parents, and friends are all actors who have been pretending to be these people as long as he’s known them. Truman’s job, his home city, even the ocean he lives near, are all part of a massive soundstage. Because he thinks his father drowned in a boating accident years ago, Truman is terrified of the water, and thus, doesn’t come close to escaping the boundaries of the soundstage. The movie follows Truman as he begins to question why something feels so “off” about his life. His journey toward the truth begins when one an object falls out a completely clear morning sky and nearly kills him. Truman looks closely; it’s a studio light. Later on, Truman is in the car listening to his normal radio show, when all of the sudden the radio starts describing in perfectly accurate detail every turn Truman makes. Then, an argument with his wife takes a bizarre turn when she suddenly stares into space and gives a stiff advertisement for something she bought at the store. These and other events eventually push Truman toward a dramatic showdown with the reality of his situation. I’ve been thinking a lot about The Truman Show lately, particularly the first half of the film that depicts the inhuman behavior of the people around Truman. It’s inhuman because it’s scripted. It’s on camera. Everything is calculated and controlled. Truman’s thoughts and feelings are genuine, but they are ultimately directed toward nothing. The people and places in Truman’s life are not like him. They perform life, but they signify nothing. They might as well be robots. That sounds familiar to me. Ours has become what I call a “planet of bots.” Modern life has become, and been for a while, very “robotified” life. This robotification of all of life has resulted in everyday experiences becoming agonizingly endless experiments in how long you can go without speaking to another human being. The last few years have been the climax, rather than the beginning, of the robotification of the world. LLMs are bringing what we’ve been doing in the last few decades to a logical, profitable, and psychologically addictive conclusion. We have arrived at the AI era perfectly primed to accept the conditions of life on a planet of bots, because we’ve been living that way for a while. We, like Truman, are citizens of a hyper-controlled, hyper-scripted society. Our attention spans are directed at algorithmically customized feeds. Our reading and our conversations are invaded, not with the unavoidable cares of life, but with advertisements, spam, and “for you” highlights. Now we need to return to the question: What does it mean to be a person, as opposed to a machine? What I want for us this evening is to consider how to live our lives as people on a planet of bots. I confess I do not have any grand political or cultural strategy for rolling back the robotification of the world. I’m grateful for people who think about this, and I’m eager to support it whenever I can. But tonight the question is for us: What does being a person look like for us? We could, of course, go back to very foundations of human identity try to find our answer. We could talk about embodied rationality, spiritual vitality, moral agency, etc. Instead, what I want to give you tonight is one thing. One thing that a human person is and does that a machine is not and cannot do. Here it is: A human person submits themselves to and endures suffering for the sake of a higher moral purpose. In a planet of bots, one of the most important ways we can cling to our humanity is to not flee from suffering, but to put ourselves patiently under it for the sake of God’s glory, others’ good, and our growth. A machine cannot do this. A machine, no matter how intelligent, will always look for the smoothest, most efficient, most optimized way. The planet of bots operates by one rule: Find the most convenient result in the most convenient way. Eliminate all pain points. Reduce everything to the easiest desired result. I probably don’t have to work hard to convince you this is not the way the Bible talks about life. Jesus said anyone who doesn’t carry his cross won’t wear his crown. Paul said unless we die daily, we will never live forever. Wisdom literature warns us to be wary of too much sleep and too much wine, because life is hard, and we should be like ants who endure the hardship during summer so that we reap the benefit during winter. And underneath all of this is the logic of love. God so loved the world that he gave his only son. The apostle John says if Christ died for us, we ought to lay our lives down for one another. There is no version of the Christian life that avoids suffering, disappointment, struggle, waiting, and death. And any cultural spirit that primes our emotions to desire a version that does avoid this is working contrary to our eternal good. There are a lot of reasons we could give for why you should not get ChatGPT to write your papers. But I think one reason we should give more time to is this very one. It is good for you to experience the resistance, the friction, and the frustration of having to do your own intellectual work, with limited time and limited ability, because that striving for something in the midst of suffering is part of the heart of what it means to be a person. Your homework is a training ground for much larger things. As Jesus said, he who is faithful in a little will be faithful in much. If you strive in your suffering now, at 12:30 at night, with the assignment on your syllabus, you are training your heart to strive in the suffering 20 years from now, with the sick, needy child on your bed. Our technological age is an anti-suffering age. This is natural, inevitable, and in a certain way, good. We are given by our creator a mandate of dominion over this world, and alleviation of suffering is one of the greatest ways we exercise that dominion. But the more you try to bring all of your life and all of your society out of any possible experience of suffering, the more you will begin to view the basic exercise of the virtues as suffering to be avoided—no matter how small, like the boredom during a delayed flight, or the banality of crunching some numbers. The very idea of a virtue implies a context in which suffering has made that virtue both hard and necessary. Jesus said if you love those who love you back, what do you gain? We experience the virtue of love not most clearly when we love those who are easy to love, but when we love those drain us, offend us, or don’t return our love. Likewise, we tend to find self-control, whether in our drink or what we click, easier when it’s been a good, fulfilling day. It’s the dark, depressing days where the voice of drunkenness or pornography seems loudest. This isn’t to say that we crave suffering to actualize our virtues. The point is that suffering clearly plays a role in making us truly virtuous. Bots do not and cannot think this. Digital technology, as it exists under a technocratic regime today, insists that whatever value you find in having to wait, work, or wonder, is minuscule (or even imaginary) compared to the value you can find in making these experiences automate themselves. Let me start to land the plane by thinking about two particular areas where our suffering tempts us toward inhuman relief: Our work, and our relationships. Work entails suffering. This is as old as Genesis. “By the sweat of your brow” is what God told Adam. Sin does not invent work (Adam was cultivating the garden before sin). Sin does invent frustration. Before sin, Adam’s smallest efforts bore immediate, exponential fruit. After sin, Adam has to tear his own body apart in order to get the ground to yield up bare subsistence. The rest of Scripture is the story of God’s people, not trying to avoid work (that is what the sluggard and the fool do), but trying to work like God works. Working to put order on a disorderly world. Working to provide for those who don’t have enough. Working in a way that acknowledges that our work is actually not the determining factor of anything. The whole point of the Sabbath is this: You work 6 days because work is how you bring glory out of this fallen world. You rest 1 day because God is actually the one working. The planet of Bots doesn’t understand the Sabbath at all. This is why, despite the fact that most of us work at computers and desks and have to actually pay a gym for the privilege of sweating, the information economy works people into the ground, with high burnout and depression. You don’t get Sabbath without frustrating work, and frustrating work will destroy you without Sabbath. So when the planet of bots says, “You don’t really need to learn this, or figure out how to complete that assignment, or structure that argument. Just get AI to do it,” it is not offering Sabbath without work. It is offering neither work nor Sabbath. That’s why one of the most important questions to ask the AI generation is, “What are you actually going to do with all this saved time?” The answer for 99% of people is: Scroll/stream more. So instead of that, why don’t we allow the pain and suffering of work in Adam’s world do its virtuous work in us, making us more ready for Sabbath? It’s what we were literally created for. It’s what it means to be a created human. What about relationships? Relationships entail suffering, too. God’s curse on the fallen world creates both pain in childbearing and conflict in marriage. The apostle James says we are at war with one another because our passions rage within us. We disappoint others who disappoint us. Friends are fragile, covenants are restrictive, honesty is dangerous. There’s no version of human life that avoids this. The digital age has polarized men and women. Fewer people now have a desire to marry or even date. Why? Partially because we’ve turned to technology to alleviate the struggle of having to encounter someone different than us. When men and women activate their curated algorithmic feeds, they often see viral content that affirms their gendered experience and belittles the opposite sex. The comfort of the screen seems to relieve the pain of relationship, but in reality it makes relationship itself more painful. To be a human person means to love another at the expense of one’s self. This is what Jesus did for his church. It’s what heroes do for their countries. And, importantly, it’s what Christians are to do for one another. To overcome the planet of bots, to be fully human, we have to encounter others as they truly are, and submit ourselves to the suffering of loving them. This is not a blanket call to endure abuse or never draw boundaries. Our loves must be ordered. We must love God first, and loving God means loving justice and hating injustice. But most of the time, our crisis of love comes down to a question of whether we are OK having our comfortable lives disrupted, even completely changed, by loving another. Technology says, “You can have your cake and eat it too. You can love others from behind a screen, and still hold onto your own kingdom.” But we’ll find this is not true. C.S Lewis writes in The Problem of Pain: From the highest to the lowest, self exists to be abdicated and, by that abdication, becomes the more truly self, to be thereupon yet the more abdicated, and so forever. This is not a heavenly law which we can escape by remaining earthly, nor an earthly law which we can escape by being saved. What is outside the system of self-giving is not earth, nor nature, nor “ordinary life”, but simply and solely Hell. Remember the Truman Show? Let me spoil it for you. Truman’s escape from the world of the TV show happens one night when he sneaks out of his home in a way the cameras don’t catch. The producers of the show realize he’s not where they’ve been thinking he is. A panicked manhunt ensues. When they find Truman, he has gone sailing across the ocean he’s terrified of. When he finally submits himself to the suffering of winds and waves, then, and only then, is he set free to be really human—to be a “true man” (=Truman). My goal has not been to convince you not to use certain technologies. My goal has been to make the idea of being a finite creature, made in the image of God, beautiful to you. He Because our technological moment is a moment where we are tempted to doubt this because we terrified of failure. But we don’t need to be. Christians are the one people in the world who have permission to try and fail, and have confidence in the life of suffering. There’s a savior waiting to catch us every time. Technology cannot save us from a life of struggle, failure, and suffering, because not even Christ will save us from that. Christ will save us through that. In Christ, life is laid out in front of you with success on one side and failure on the other, but both meet at the throne of God. Your heart may break. Your dreams may fail. Your hopes may be dashed. But you will only ever fall into the arms of mercy. Your life will never be wasted, your joy will never be empty, and your glory will never fade. © 2026 Samuel D. James ( from Digital Anvil )

Truth Twisters:

Many thinkers are truth twisters. For every thinker who desires to conform his thinking to reality, there are others whose desire is clearly to conform reality to their thinking. The cleverer the mind, the slipperier the heart, and the more sophisticated the education, the subtler the rationalization. 

Where in the world today can we see neferious examples of dubious political persuasion,false representation and twisting of the truth ?

By Digital Anvil.

Quote: Os Guinness.

Guinness, Os. Fool’s Talk

As always,leave your comments below.

Pornography vs Sexuality vs Society: 

 

 Pornography inherently degrades and dehumanizes. Art celebrates the meaning and value of sexual intimacy between two loving individuals.

 

Of course to the unhindered mind, any classic nude art can be reduced to the selfish needs  and perverted tastes of the individual whose gaze is steeped and altered by such needs,  perverted  mind and  wicked heart. This clearly sends the indulging viewer into a more destructive and debased loop of  further depravity. From which state becomes almost impossible to  rescue. But help is available in some forms ranging from blocking apps, psychologists, counsellors, accountability groups and  self-help books.

 

  The Catechism of the Catholic Church addresses pornography as well:

 Pornography consists in removing real or simulated sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners, in order to display them deliberately to third parties. It offends against chastity because it perverts the conjugal act, the intimate giving of spouses to each other. It does grave injury to the dignity of its participants (actors, vendors, the public), since each one becomes an object of base pleasure and illicit profit for others. It immerses all who are involved in the illusion of a fantasy world. It is a grave offense. Civil authorities should prevent the production and distribution of pornographic materials.

 

 One need only look at the major cultural, technological, psychological, biological and spiritual factors converging in our world today to see how pornography has become one of the trademark corruptions of humanity. The fact that our culture is dedicated to capitalism and consumerism contributes to one of the age-old advertising mantras, “Sex sells.” Nearly half a century after the so-called,political, cultural, economic,relational and sexual revolution of the 1950s, 60s,and 70s we are still experiencing its aftershocks.

( P.Paul,*). (Edited)

Of course many may read, chuckle and mock this post because pornography is largely accepted or treated as "normal" by societies in the West. There are robust exceptions and a blind eye for some "softer" forms is used by most jurisdictions, instead of enforced prohibitions. Gone is the  brown paper- bordered shop in the early 60s  culture, some businesses carried print copies openly in the later 60s and 70s and now the internet is the medium. Adults are treated separately as they are of age having the adult ability to access or purchase pornography almost upon demand in almost any available medium.

 

But in more recent years there are movements occurring that are treating pornography as an evil against women, but there is ambivalence. I believe because of the twin realisation that the female form is hypnotic and natural yet exploited by some nefarious individuals and organisations. The ambivalent attitude is shown in the quotes following.

" Our Western culture increasingly rejects the sexual objectification of women, why has it simultaneously rejected the Biblical sexual ethic that gives the strongest philosophical reason for objecting"

"Christianity has never taught that sex is bad or dirty, but rather a gift from God and something that should be reserved for marriage."

"By contrast, the prevailing culture has spent decades claiming that sexual expression is liberating, while increasingly discovering that treating people as sexual objects isn’t liberating at all"

 Unknown Contributor.

( It can be noted that many may mock and ask the sarcastic question, " Oh, have you just researched the topic ? " Or "so well researched, this post " And may even criticise the conclusion forming in their own minds  by saying,"everyone or at least,boys and men, have looked at porn or they are just plain lying !" )

 

 

 Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Phil 4:8)

by Digital Anvil

 

References: 

* Paul, P. 2005. Pornified: How pornography is transforming our lives, our relationships, and our families. Times Books.

and others.

 

The Manual: Getting Masculinity Right.

The Manual: Getting Masculinity Right by Al Stewart

What does it actually mean to be a good man?

In The Manual, Australian pastor Al Stewart tackles that question at a time when public discussion about masculinity can seem dominated by what is supposedly wrong with men. Published by Matthias Media in 2022, this is instead a constructive, practical and unapologetically Christian account of what healthy masculinity can look like.

At the heart of Stewart’s argument is a compelling idea: masculinity isn't principally about status, toughness or domination. Healthy masculinity means accepting responsibility and using your strength and power for the good of others.

That makes The Manual refreshingly strengths-based. Stewart acknowledges destructive male behaviour without treating masculinity itself as a pathology. His answer to bad masculinity is not less masculinity, but better men.

And he gets wonderfully practical...

The book moves from broader questions about masculinity, male and female differences, self-control and growing from boyhood into manhood to the relationships in which character is actually tested: being a son, friend, workmate, single man, husband and father.

Underlying everything is Stewart’s Christian faith. Jesus isn't an optional appendix to his conception of manhood, but its ultimate model: strength expressed through service, responsibility, sacrifice and love.

I particularly appreciate that emphasis. Men need more than endless messages about what they should not be. Boys and men also need a positive vision of the men they can become...

The Manual provides one: mature rather than self-centred; responsible rather than passive; strong enough to serve; committed to family, friendship, faith and duty.

Accessible, humorous and highly practical, this is an excellent book for Christian men; and particularly valuable for fathers, sons, mentors and men’s groups.

The Manual is a thoughtful contribution to rebuilding a positive vision of masculinity. Definitely recommended.

#Masculinity #HealthyMasculinity #ChristianMen #CatholicMen #Fatherhood #MensBooks #MensMinistry #Manhood

 

 

 

By Masculinity Celebrated. 

 

 

(From Digital Anvil ) 

You Need to Read This:

 

 Are Men to Blame? If so, Why?

"There are now roughly 30.4 million unmarried American men between the ages of 20 and 39, nearly twice the number of married men in the same cohort."

 

 The predictable explanation is that men are to blame. Pornography, gaming, delayed adulthood, declining ambition, fear of commitment, social awkwardness, the manosphere, and economic stagnation all make the list of reasons.
 But after years of dissecting so-called “toxic masculinity,” perhaps it is time to ask what has toxic femininity done to the modern woman? Have women today become poor prospects for marriage?

That honest question may sound inflammatory because our culture has spent decades teaching women to evaluate men while treating reciprocal scrutiny as sexism. Women are encouraged to identify red flags, examine a man's income, ambition, temperament, sexual habits, emotional intelligence, politics, attachment style, relationship with his mother, willingness to provide, and potential as a father.

 

 This is considered discernment, rightly so. 

 

Men, however, are increasingly discovering that asking similarly consequential questions about women's character invites accusations of insecurity, misogyny, or an inability to “handle” independent women."

By Glenn Beck.

Broadcaster,Social and Political Commentator,Father,Husband and Man of Letters. Multiple Best- selling Author,Entrepreneur and Radio and TV Host.

( from Digital Anvil )

 End of Ways, End of Days:

I know that You don't quite understand, yet You dare.

Friends are vanishing, people are following their own gods and families are worried-- for themselves and little else besides.

Jesus stands at the door of your heart and knocks!

A few open but many would- be followers refuse to commit to an uncertain yet vaguely understood future. Opening to an Adventure, mocked by some, most  to a dangerous, truly frightening destination they run,

Dressed in white, flowing robes, many worship at the Throne, but GOD's angels fly to the earthly harvest among the Lost.

Tribulation  begins...

The earth quakes violently as the House of GOD is shaken.

Many scream and shout with the tragic awareness as the Son of GOD re- appears.

For 10s of 100s of millions have rejected Him.

Each day sadness roams and settles in GOD's own vision

My eyes, dim with sorrow, yet gladness fills my heart.

My life- journey nearing completion.

What remains apart from me and my body {will be} precious faith purified by supernatural fire.

By Digital Anvil 

The Reversal marches Onward:

 The Reversal Marches:

 

 

 (from Digital Anvil)

 

 The Reversal:

 

of Believing and Understanding 

 

 I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order that I may understand; for of this I feel sure, that, if I did not believe, I would not understand.

ANSELM OF CANTERBURY

(From Digital Anvil)

Eucalypts: Fire That Liberates

Stephen Pyne has written a book about the Australian landscape called Burning Bush: A Fire History of Australia. He refers to one of the remarkable attributes of the eucalypt, found throughout Australia, as its ability to survive fire.

This has always been the case. When the first Europeans arrived in Australia, they saw the First Nations people using bushfires as forest management.

Pyne notes that eucalypts are built for fire. He writes:

“For most eucalypts, fire was not a destroyer but a liberator.”

Fire does not destroy the tree; it reinvigorates the eucalypt.

We can be like the eucalypt. The fires of life, which sometimes feel like that will burn us up, can actually deepen and build us. God promises us that when we walk through the fire, He will be there (Isaiah 43:2).

Share this daily- reading.

Appreciation for this reading to Karl Faase.

( from Digital Anvil )

Ps:

Like the legendary Phoenix, the Eucalypt rises, freed to live.again.

I read this daily- reading during a tough time...and wanted to share with you,my discovery. Coupled with care and prayer, the end result is mightily accomplished

 Free will:

 

 is a concept that has been debated and discussed for centuries. It refers to the ability of individuals to make choices and decisions freely, without any external or predetermined influences. 

 

The concept of free will is highly valued in many societies, as it is seen as a fundamental aspect of human autonomy and personal responsibility. It allows individuals to take ownership of their actions and shape their own lives.
 

 The belief in free will also plays a significant role in various philosophical, religious, and ethical frameworks, as it raises questions about moral accountability and the nature of human agency.

 Overall, the concept of free will is widely embraced and considered essential for the functioning of a just and equitable society.

 

by Digital Anvil 

100 of the Best Books for Men:

 

 Contains timeless wisdom, deep insights into human nature, pathways to male initiation, a restoration of rites of passage, a strong focus on intentional parenting, and a clear ambition for healthier relationships.

Importantly, it honours the authors, elders, and thought leaders (both the men and women in our midst, as well as those who have come before us).

You can read it for free at the website of the National Library of Australia, right here:

https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-4239882219/view 

The paperback and Kindle version are available from Amazon, for example at the Australian website:

https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/1764339738

Searching for "buy 100 of the Best Books for Men by David Maywald".

 

( from Digital Anvil ) 

 Universe Helps or ?

   

When the universe chooses - seemingly - to ruin one person while uplifting another.

 

Is it unfair?

Does vastly, empty space, dust, dark matter and energetically fusing atoms help someone like you and me?

Can the immeasurable universe think, feel, care and send help when one needs  such attention during a tough time? Must you believe in order to obtain help or does it just occur? Is this an attitude similar to " wishing upon a star?"

If the universe is so real and caring, why doesn't life exist -everywhere...and if it does, where are those living alien civilisations ? Why hasn't the SETI project discovered any--apart from us ? (after decades )

 

Some contend that aliens are here or have been visiting for centuries, but why hide, when we would probably welcome them? Aren't there petroglyths depicting UFOs or ancient alien astronauts? Where are they, those advanced alien species? Remember books,songs,movies and plays have been created and performed. Expectations are running high. Many muse openly, "we could live side by side ". Or, "ask the super- intelligent Ai to seek them out?" Again, are we really alone, after all?

 

" Why, o why, my alien person, do you hide, where art thou?"

 

Of course, that compels asking the question,if the universe cannot help and isn't a viable, living entity-- what or who is?

Where DO we find help ?

 

 

By Digital Anvil.

 

When you know, let us know-please? 

Our Hearts and Our Words:

Our Hearts and Our Words

One of my favourite quotes from Jesus is when he said, “... the mouth speaks what the heart is full of” (Luke 6:45).

Jesus is telling us that we can often see what is in people's hearts by what they say and do. But sadly, that is not always the case. There is another time recorded in Luke 6:46, when Jesus challenges His listeners by saying: “Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say?”

There are times when our words don’t reflect our hearts, when they are designed to deceive and cover our true motivations.

While we may never fully know what drives another person, we ought to consider what is in our own hearts. What is your motivation? What’s your agenda? Are you seeking to live authentically or are your words and behaviour deceptive?

Share this daily- reading.

My Thanks for Karl Faase.

( from Digital Anvil )

One Life at a Time:

“If you give even a cup of cold water to one of the least of My followers, you will surely be rewarded.” Matthew 10:42 NLT

 

 

Les Goldberg’s friends thought he was crazy when he cashed in his personal investments to buy a home to lease for the homeless. A retired engineer, Les felt it was the only decision he could make. He spends a minimum of one hour each day with his homeless friends and has helped renovate several properties on their behalf.

In all his efforts, Goldberg never regarded the homeless as irresponsible or unreliable; he only saw them as people. Hurting people! He figured the house he purchased could be used as both a temporary shelter and a drop-in centre—a place where homeless people might pick up post, make phone calls, follow up job leads, and receive donated goods.

 

Four homeless men live at the house, paying minimal rent to offset expenses. House rules are strict: no alcohol, no drugs, no loitering.

 

 Goldberg has never been rich. For twenty years he ran his own business designing and installing fire sprinklers, making less than minimum wage. He simply was a man who saw an unmet need and found a way to help meet it.

 

 Mother Teresa said: “We cannot all do great things, but we can all do small things with great love.” Jesus put it this way: “If you give even a cup of cold water to one of the least of My followers, you will surely be rewarded.”

 

 As you go through this day, keep your heart open and ask God to make you a solution to someone else’s problem. When you do, remember that no act of kindness goes unnoticed by God.

SoulFood: Neh 5–7 Mark 12:1–12 Ps 78:1–8 Pro 23:19–21

Thank you,Vision.org.au

( from Digital Anvil )

 Heaven or the Dead End ?

 

 

In our Journey what is surely certain is the uncertainty of it all.

Perhaps it's logical or to many, supra-natural to find a space called Heaven.

What made it uncertain is the atheistic worldview masquerading as obvious wisdom making the expected space of Heaven  a complete nonsense. Death is final. Life ends, when breath is spent-- they say.

Where is it ( Heaven )  when the universe is infinite? How could there be an afterlife when everyone dies and none return to vouch for its existence?

If it isn't true,  many cry, boo, hoo. 

Yet there is a quiet voice crying out into the darkness: "Jesus, is it true, come quickly, before my life is through?"

Is there nothing certain in life but endless strife, then the curtain descends, its the ignominious end?

 Except there is a voice deep inside for whom I am a guide. There is One who prepares, of Him i declare today," He is the Way." Reach out to Him this day.

By Digital Anvil.

Encouragement:

 In all of our experiences. Few things are more comforting or more exhilarating than knowing that God is the One putting together the jigsaw puzzle of your life.

Thanks for yours...

By Digital Anvil.

 One K + One: 16/09/2026

 

Celebrate with me, One Thousand plus one posts reached Today.

 

Hip, hip Hooray. 16/09/2026- a 1001.

 

Drop by, what's your favourite post.  Drop a line or three.

 

You made it possible, viewers, prompting and encouraging me to write. 

 

 Digital Anvil

retrotimetunnel.blogspot.com 

Attitudes: Healthy and Unhealthy.

 

 What is the Difference? 

 

 Healthy Attitude:

To be all I can be, I must focus outwardly

and aspire to a meaning beyond myself.

Unhealthy Attitude:

To be true to myself and

finding happiness is the most important value in life.

Healthy Attitude:

I am unique and all I do is

important in this world and the next.

Unhealthy Attitude:

It matters little what I do:

 I am a mere gear in  largest machine

Healthy Attitude:

The effect I have had on others

I may never know

Each encounter,  I experience

is important and unique to them and me.

Unhealthy Attitude.

Everyone makes their own way in

life. I am not responsible for them;

They are not responsible for me.

 A Christian Ethos:

All that we are and ever can be is unique with Love and Truth as our guide. We are called and while we journey, we perform good deeds prepared for us in advance. We need to walk in these deeds effectively and focus as outwardly as possible.

 

 

(From Digital Anvil) 

 Once Said

 

Rabbi Hillel once said,  If I don't do it, who will do it? If I don't do it now, when will I do it? If I do it only for myself, then who am I?

 

 ( From Digital Anvil)

Modern Feminism ?

MODERN FEMINISM IS  RUINING THE WORLD.

I can support women.

I can believe women deserve equal rights.

I can believe women should be safe, respected, educated, independent and able to make their own choices.

AND I can think that some of the rubbish  being pushed under the label of “modern feminism” is toxic.

Because somewhere along the way, feminism stopped being about equality for a lot of people and became:

“Men are the problem.”

“Women are victims.”

“Accountability is misogyny.”

“Being a mother is oppressive.”

“Traditional femininity is embarrassing.”

“Having standards makes you insecure.”

“And if you disagree with me, you hate women.”

No.

I don’t hate women.

I actually think women are capable of far more than some modern feminist ideology gives them credit for.

You don’t empower women by teaching them that they’re permanently oppressed, that men are inherently dangerous, that motherhood is a trap, or that every consequence in life is somebody else’s fault.

You empower women by telling them:

You are capable. You have choices. You have responsibility. You have value. Your voice matters and deserves to be heard. And you don’t need to hate men to love women.

I will ALWAYS advocate for women’s rights.

But I refuse to blindly support every thing that gets slapped with the word “feminism.”

Equality? Absolutely.

Radical ideology that teaches women to resent men, reject responsibility and view the world through a perpetual victimhood lens?

Hell no.

And if that annoys you off, maybe ask yourself why.

Because apparently in 2026, saying you support women without subscribing to radical feminism is controversial.

And honestly?

That says more about modern feminism than it does about me.

If you’re new here, I am a firm believer that two things can be true at once.

And if you believe that too, maybe consider following along.

#ModernFeminism #canada #WomensRights

This article is from an unnamed source.

Almost verbatim.

( from Digital Anvil )

What If Christians Are Wrong?

Over the years Christians have been challenged by the question: What if we are wrong? What if we have committed our lives to something that is just a massive hoax on all humanity and there is no God? What if Jesus was only a good person and there is nothing after death? Would this mean that we have wasted our lives?

From Paul and the early church through to recent Christian thinkers, people have been responding to this question for centuries. Christians believe that we have a full life where we experience hope and joy. But that doesn't mean it's always easy.

Christians also know that we have a life committed to living beyond ourselves and sharing that focus with thousands of like-minded people. It is a great way to live.

If, though, you do not believe in God, you also must face the same question: what if you are wrong? What if you get to the end of your life and discover that there is an eternity and a moment of personal judgment? For all of us, the stakes are very high and it's an important question to ask.

Share this daily- reading.

Gratitude for you,Karl Faase.

( from Digital Anvil )

Boys, A Rescue Plan: 

Moving Beyond the Politics of Masculinity to Healthy Male Development, by Michael Gurian and Sean Kullman, with a foreword by Warren Farrell.

This is one of the most practical and hopeful books yet written on the challenges facing boys. Rather than dwelling on blame or ideological conflict, the authors ask a simple question: What do Boys really need to thrive ?  Their answer is grounded in decades of research, clinical experience, education, neuroscience, and child development.

The book paints an honest picture of declining educational outcomes, rising mental health struggles, fatherlessness, excessive screen time, reduced physical activity, and a growing lack of purpose among many boys. But its greatest strength is that it refuses to stop at diagnosis. Instead, it offers a genuine rescue plan.

Gurian and Kullman advocate practical, evidence-informed reforms: stronger support for fathers and families; developmentally appropriate schooling; more male teachers and mentors; healthy rites of passage; purposeful physical activity; better mental health care tailored to boys; responsible technology use; and communities that celebrate positive masculinity rather than viewing it with suspicion. They argue that boys flourish when surrounded by caring adults who combine high expectations with empathy, structure, and encouragement.

The tone is constructive throughout. Rather than framing boys' wellbeing as competing with girls' progress, the authors show that investing in healthy male development strengthens families, schools, workplaces, and society as a whole...

At a time when public debate often becomes polarised, Boys, A Rescue Plan stands out as a compassionate, evidence-based roadmap for action. It reminds us that boys aren't problems to be managed, but are beautiful young people with immense potential waiting to be nurtured. Every parent, teacher, policymaker, and community leader concerned about the next generation should read this thoughtful and solution-focused book...

 

Link to Buy the Boys A Rescue Plan 

 

 

Tap or Click Link to purchase above Book at Amazon.com.au 

 

 

( Digital Anvil)

Need for You. [Unpopular Notion!]

Need for You:

It’s tempting to think we’re strong, we’re capable, and “we’ve got this.” But in reality, we are powerless on our own. We desperately need God—every moment of every day.

We wouldn’t be here if He didn’t create us. We wouldn’t live if He didn’t sustain us. We wouldn’t flourish if He didn’t guide, protect, and empower us. 

The author of 1 Chronicles knew the importance of depending on God. He said:

“Seek the Lord and his strength; seek his presence continually!”

‭‭1 Chronicles‬ ‭16‬:‭11‬ ‭ESV‬‬

In a world that’s constantly focused on itself, it’s crucial to recognize our need to depend on God. We need His strength, we need His power, and—to put it simply—we just need Him! 

If you’re feeling confident in your own self-sufficiency, ask yourself: Who made this world? Who created my body, my mind, and my soul? My eyes, my legs, my lungs? Who has the power to save—or to destroy? Who holds the keys to life?

Just as we continually need air, we need the power and presence of God to sustain our every move. 

So how can we seek His strength and presence continually? By staying connected to Him: talking to Him throughout the day, prioritizing Him in the midst of busy schedules, humbly asking for His power. 

God will never deny a heart that is genuinely seeking Him. 

So come to Him with your weakness and He will give you strength. Come to Him with your questions, your needs, and your wants, and He will give you Himself. And that is the very best thing of all. 

Repost from Digital Anvil.

One Intellectual's Admission 
 

 But what is truly stunning is that, with some intellectuals, there is no need to pursue any inquiry because they make no bones about what they are doing. They candidly admit that truth is not their guiding consideration at all.

 

 One of the most frank is Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World.

Huxley’s later book of essays, Ends and Means, is “an inquiry into the nature of ideals,” and in the course of it he is candid about his own beliefs. “All that we are,” he repeats twice, “is the result of what we have thought,” so it is important for us to think well, to be clear about how we think, and to choose the best worldview. 

 

 

“It is impossible to live without a metaphysic. The choice that is given us is not between some kind of metaphysic and no metaphysic; it is always between a good metaphysic and a bad metaphysic.” And how are we to decide? By observing the one that is closest to reality, and may be considered true.

Yet “no philosophy is completely disinterested,” Huxley argues. “The pure love of truth is always mingled to some extent with the need, consciously or unconsciously by even the noblest and most intelligent philosophers, to justify a given form of personal or social behavior, to rationalize the traditional prejudices of a given class or community.” Everyone, he claims, thinks for both “intellectual reasons” (based on truth) and “voluntary reasons” (based on desires and the will).

Huxley was a deeply thoughtful and sensitive man who was unafraid to take positions that bucked the fashionable trends of his day and even of his own famous family. He criticized the dangers of false systems of meaning, such as nationalism, national socialism, communism, a false view of science, and argued that a philosophy of meaninglessness can be useful if it liberates people from such false views. 

Then, with considerable realism he also goes on to criticize those who go to the other extreme and claim to be able to live without any meaning at all. Those, such as the Marquis de Sade, who are consistent proponents of meaninglessness, are dangerous, while most people—fortunately for them—are not consistent. They can only live without meaning for a short time and in selective areas, and only then because they assume unacknowledged sources of meaning in other parts of their lives.

Huxley finishes with a sharp description of the problems created by this approach. On the one hand, by overriding considerations of truth and giving so much attention to personal needs, it creates a fateful divorce between truth and whatever is considered goodness. On the other, it becomes impossible in practice to live without meaning.

 “The mind is so constituted that a philosophy of meaninglessness is accepted only at the level of the passions and is persisted in only by those whose heredity and upbringing make it possible for them to live as though the world were at least partially meaningful.”

One might think that after this trenchant diagnosis of the radical dualism in human thinking, Huxley would urge us to take truth seriously and lean against any way in which we may be tempted to rationalize our needs—as Plato and Aristotle would have recommended.
 

 Instead, bizarrely, he goes on to take the very approach he was attacking. He freely admits that he “took it for granted” that the world had no meaning, but he did not discover it, he decided it. “I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption.”

 His philosophy of meaninglessness was far from disinterested. And the reason? “We objected to morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.”

Os Guinness, Fool’s Talk:

 

(From Digital Anvil. )

 

Final Comments:

The concluding sentence above is a tell all.

It exposes the overall  work of many who use revisionist  language in the pursuit of their own agenda/worldview/belief system.

The mark of the rationalising intellectual can be the concealment of their true objective by the reworking and twisting of terms and subtle use of words to convince the listener without alerting him/her to the true nature of their nefarious  breach with reality whilst proclaiming their "truth."

 Via persistent repetition, emotive terms and consistently singular objectives in discourse with print, radio, podcast, social media and other media aligning throughout.  The interfering Intellectual gains freedom while restraining step- by -step the overall freedoms of the common woman and man. For example, Hitler's charismatic speeches. Contrast Winston Churchill's Radio Broadcasts during WW2 ? If still available, listen and watch on Youtube.

 

 Democracy is the ultimate solution coupled with the Judeo- Christian Framework. Truth with Compassion. Truth with Love. Truth absolutely not relativistic truths. Truth without Fear. Truth without condemnation.

 

As always, drop a comment whether you agree or not. 

 

 

 

  

"Beware Intellectuals!”

 

 Paul Johnson’s stunning summary of a study of Western intellectuals runs counter to what many people think, or at least once used to think.

 

 If truth is not the Holy Grail ( the Summa Grande ) for intellectuals, what is? 

Truth surely is the reason why intellectuals think passionately, read voraciously, pursue research tirelessly and argue about anything and everything interminably. 

Almost at the dawn of the Western intellectual tradition, Plato described philosophers in the Republic as those with “no taste for falsehood; that is, they are completely unwilling to admit what’s false but hate it, while cherishing the truth.” Similarly, Aristotle wrote in his Ethics that the person who loves truth for the very sake of truth when nothing is at stake will still be the more truthful when someday everything is at stake.

But that was then. To be sure, there have always been people who were skeptical about anyone who knew more than they did. How could they ever find out whether the other person was trustworthy? 
 

But now we have many people for whom mistrust is the badge they wear proudly to show their schooling in postmodern suspicion, so that “mistrust intellectuals” and “question authority” go hand in hand. After all, Nietzsche and his postmodern disciples have surely won for the moment. Truth is dead, and everything is relative at best and at worst a matter of the will to power.

 Nothing is what it appears to be. 

 

If truth was once the stated goal of intellectuals, it is now easy to read between their scholarly lines and see the petty egos and the dirty ambitions behind the lofty aspirations for truth. Truth is finally undecidable, as the postmodern philosophers express it...

 

 At best, truth is simply the compliment you pay to sentences that you happen to agree with.

However you explain the record, what are undeniable are the facts about the story of intellectuals, and the embarrassing evidence long precedes postmodernism. Many of the celebrated makers of the modern world have been shown up for their devious handling of truth in some aspect of their thinking or their lives—including Rousseau, Shelley, Marx, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Brecht, Bertrand Russell, Sartre, Margaret Mead and others.

 Yet these are the men and women of ideas who have risen up to overthrow the guardians of traditional Western society, and who on the basis of the brilliance of their minds are now trusted to diagnose our ills, prescribe our remedies and direct the future for our children and for the world.

 

My Final Thought: 

Given the veracity of the books: The Intellectuals  and  Fool's Talk... 

...We are left with suspicion on our minds, disagreeable taste on our intellectual palate and a world divided and polarised by the ideas trickled down a savage mountain side filled with  twisted debris, spewed muck and silent venom. From men and women who declared their lot with intelligent banter, fiction producing worldly friction endued with relative nonsense masquerading as wisdom for the common man and woman.

Denying the truth and as some proclaimed that even telling us that they were NOT telling the truth but their thought-ful version of reality.

Recommended Sources:

Os Guinness, Fool’s Talk:  

Paul Johnson, The Intellectuals.

R.C. Sproul, Consequences of Ideas. 

 

(From and By Digital Anvil) 

 

As usual , if you disagree or..... then drop a comment as you drop by. 

 

 ( Essay based largely on Os Guinness, Fool’s Talk: )