Navigating The Finite: August 2015

Monday, August 10, 2015

The New Rules for Love, Sex, and Dating by Andy Stanley

The New Rules for Love, Sex, and Dating by Andy Stanley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Kindle version was cheap, $2.99 so I bought it out of a curiosity for what the loyal opposition is doing. While I am a rather poor excuse for a Christian (I like Christmas Trees) with a one way ticket to hell for some matters involving lusting over a bare thigh (in church no less) for which I refuse to ask forgiveness, I am a rather dyed in the wool monogamist. So for the price, I thought I would see what the good pastor has to say.

Actually I was pleasantly surprised. The book starts out fairly secular. Later chapters he drags out the sin and purity and starts thumping the Bible, but if you can get around the rhetoric, for the most part the suggestions in this book are good and would apply to non-religious folks as well as the religious. Let us say that I agree with most of his methods.

His main tenet is that instead of looking for the right partner become the right partner. Become the person that you are looking for. Pretty good advice. He goes a little overboard in my estimation on premarital sex...the sin and purity stuff that doesn't set well me. That said however I will admit that I think he is right, jumping into sex prematurely blinds one to the relationship flaws. Sex is a powerful binding element in human relationships, but it does not guarantee longevity in a committed relationship. He states the way to resolve your relationship issues is with a clear head before you get involved with sex. I agree, but I don't think waiting until your wedding night is a good maneuver for determining your sexual compatibility. But then again I don't find premarital sex conducted in a committed loving relationship with the aim of marriage to be sinful. Am I willing to bet my Soul on that? Yes, but I am not willing to bet yours so read what he has to say and decide for yourself.

While I didn't agree with all he had to say and perhaps the theology behind it, I have to say if you can ignore the churchy hype, this guy has something important to say about love, sex, and marriage.

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Quotes

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide for those who have too little.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Second Inaugural Speech

Being Irish he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” W. B. Yeats

"In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time."

Edward P. Tryon

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." Bertrand Russell

“My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there’s hardly any difference.”
― Harry S. Truman

"Grant, O God, that we may always be right, for Thou knowest we will never change our minds."

Old Scottish Prayer

“If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won’t."

Admiral Hyman Rickover

"The feeling remains that God is on the journey too." St. Teresa of Avila

"Wisht I knowed what all the sins was, so I could do ’em."

Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”
- Douglas Adams

Trust those who seek the truth. Doubt those who find it.
. . . From The Bumper Sticker.

Religion is belief in someone else's experience; spirituality is having your own experience.

Source unknown. Passed on by Olga

ESCHEW OBFUSCATION
. . . From The Bumper Sticker

On taking your time & paying attention to details:

"Few, if any, of the world’s problems can be solved with a mere twenty minutes of attention, and yet here, in the complex sociopolitical landscape of the bedroom, we have an opportunity to create bilateral satisfaction."

Ian Kerner

"We humans are destined to live with our feet on the earth and our heads in the heavens, and we can never be at peace because we are pulled both ways."

Kent Nerburn

I am an old man now, and when I die and go to Heaven there are two matters on which I hope for enlightement. One is quantum electrodynamics and the other is the turbulent motion of fluids. And about the former I am rather more optimistic.

Sir Horace Lamb 1932

Quoted in Computational Fluid Mechanics and Heat Transfer, by Anderson, Tannehill, and Pletcher, 1984.

Well, you know the definition of right and wrong constantly changes, but the definition of honesty never does. NPR, interview with Jim Garrett.

“The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.”

Ted Hughes

The older I get...

the better I was.

From The Tee Shirt.

My head is firmly up my ass, and it is the 1950s in there.

Sextant in an email to a friend.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

T. S. Eliot

The H1 (Humvee) will be marketed to "RUGGED INDIVIDUALISTS". These are people who are irreverent and daring and want to be seen that way by other people, Mr. DiGiovanni said. "The rugged individualists are people WHO REALLY SEEK PEER APPROVAL...."

Source unknown.