Sunday, September 21, 2008

Measure of success

What are your criteria for knowing whether an experiment is successful or not. John Hobbins has weighed in with some $10 words on a post here at Exploring our Matrix. He uses the words 'success' and the phrase 'not going well'.

I wrote this question and quartet 15 years ago.

What do we value?

life over death but one death over all life
pleasure over pain but accepting pain to preserve life
joy over sorrow but sorrow showing the value of life
peace over war but at war with values that prefer death
Now - how do we measure it? Surely not by adjective, nor by prejudice... When is it that we will be satisfied?

3 comments:

scott gray said...

bob--

here's what i notice most about your responses in these threads: when you see goodness in a realtionship, you don't merely tolerate it, or justify it, you celebrate it. and that, my friend, is an admirable principle that i need to do more of.

Bob MacDonald said...

scott - thank you and I thank others for their kind thoughts to me

you can see that i was writing in your lower case style 15 years ago

please tell me what you think of the prior post - law and faith

am i really so incomprehensible? (I know it is not particularly 'precise')

(i am no worse than the apostle - if anyone says they understand romans and all they get from it is a statement of law from chapter 1 - then they have not even begun to understand let alone obey)

but i do have my moments of doubt

as i translated psalm 73 i realized i was suffering a twisted foot these last 6 months as if in preparation for the reworking of my raw first cut

i find every day the joy and the questioning of god in my life - it is that joy that i desire for everyone else - for all of us who argue

our thoughts are not his thoughts but he can let us know the glory of his thoughts to us when we enter in to the holy place through his flesh, the veil, by means of that one death

scott gray said...

bob--

i've printed out a copy of your previous post... give me a day or two to think about and wrestle with it, and i'll respond soon.

scott