It moves from process to transformation when we factor in God’s collaboration. Or, rather, our willingness to collaborate with God.
The higher calculus of God wrapping us into him is beyond our pay grade. I have a friend, wicked smart, who’s attempting to structure a database on the presence of virtues in creation.
Not that the struggle to progress is any easier with God. Remember that whole sharpening steel stuff. I believe, though, we can never move anywhere without the transformer molding us.
Somehow this movement must blend in with our eternal life, since a remarkably few of us are transformed here.
I toss all that work of love into the purgation category. Heaven includes Purgatory, that foggy place which resets our cognitive dissonance.
Nicely done. It would be interesting to see how you would display the process of vice to virtue according to the seven holy virtue categories. There's surely a phasing forward from the deadly sins to the holy virtues. I might need to paste that somewhere near my writing desk ...
That is an excellent idea. St. Paul seems to call it "backsliding." If the virtue is already present, I'd think the mind would be corrupted incrementally - first through the disordered passions (continence), second through the absence of good behaviour, and finally through rationalization to justify one's lifestyle. It might be a type of "slow fade."
A good example of how this can sneak up on us is the adjustment of one's routine. For instance, you may go to the gym regularly - but then a pandemic hits. So the gyms close. So you decide to work-out but in a different way. You find this displeasing either in contrast to what was before or because of the strain it is now. Then you get discouraged and cease to work-out. Then you justify the pound-cakes you eat when you should be working out. So I think we could look at this list, and just flip the numbers, and we'd have the same issue.
It moves from process to transformation when we factor in God’s collaboration. Or, rather, our willingness to collaborate with God.
The higher calculus of God wrapping us into him is beyond our pay grade. I have a friend, wicked smart, who’s attempting to structure a database on the presence of virtues in creation.
Not that the struggle to progress is any easier with God. Remember that whole sharpening steel stuff. I believe, though, we can never move anywhere without the transformer molding us.
Somehow this movement must blend in with our eternal life, since a remarkably few of us are transformed here.
I toss all that work of love into the purgation category. Heaven includes Purgatory, that foggy place which resets our cognitive dissonance.
What thinks you?
Nicely done. It would be interesting to see how you would display the process of vice to virtue according to the seven holy virtue categories. There's surely a phasing forward from the deadly sins to the holy virtues. I might need to paste that somewhere near my writing desk ...
That is an excellent idea. St. Paul seems to call it "backsliding." If the virtue is already present, I'd think the mind would be corrupted incrementally - first through the disordered passions (continence), second through the absence of good behaviour, and finally through rationalization to justify one's lifestyle. It might be a type of "slow fade."
A good example of how this can sneak up on us is the adjustment of one's routine. For instance, you may go to the gym regularly - but then a pandemic hits. So the gyms close. So you decide to work-out but in a different way. You find this displeasing either in contrast to what was before or because of the strain it is now. Then you get discouraged and cease to work-out. Then you justify the pound-cakes you eat when you should be working out. So I think we could look at this list, and just flip the numbers, and we'd have the same issue.