Transitioning into college brought with it a new set of experiences for me. Everything was new and exciting, but I also recall feeling emotionally stressed about making new friends and connections. Being an international student intensified my situation as I tried to look for something relatable in a foreign environment. Bonding with new people with similar interests made it easier, but just as quickly as I bonded and made new friends, my perceptions of people could and did change.
baie goeie waarnemings, Beaula…Andrews, en enige ander Amerikaanse universiteit, is 'n wonderlike plek om die belangrike les te leer dat wat jy dink en voel belangrik is…jy kan nie jouself opoffer vir wat jy dink ander nodig het nie…
TRANSLATION:
very good observations, Beaula…Andrews, and any other American university, is a great place to learn the important lesson that what you think and feel are important…you can’t sacrifice yourself for what you think others need…
One of the fundamental flaws in all purportedly Christian education is the intense, materialistic focus on things supposedly outside oneself when it has yet to be shown that any such universe actually exists.
So far as anyone has been able to demonstrate, the Stoics were right to insist that everyone lives in a self-generated cosmos where all that exists is a bubble created-or at least “made up”-by one’s senses, intuitions, reasoning, experiences, etc., and for oneself.
Thus, Jesus’ admonition, if true, to love others as one loves one’s self implies, first and foremost, that one must love this “self within one’s self” prior to being able to love the concomitant self of another. Any philosophy which teaches anything other than an essential and prerequisite need for self contentment, or which preaches that an unhappy person should simply work harder to make others happy before trying to be happy himself, has placed the cart ahead of the horse and is fated to go no where while continually fostering discontentment within its sphere of influence.
One of the most harmful teachings to which I was exposed as a child in church was at an English-language SDA church where the teachers taught that the key to happiness was from the acronym “J-O-Y” - “Jesus” first, Others second and Yourself last.
We were taught it was a virtue to be pushed around, that it was a virtue to grant others an uncompensated claim one my time, efforts, knowledge, talents and treasure. This thinking messed me up and was one of the things I had to unlearn.
