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Showing posts with the label Psychology

Toxic People, Overexplaining, and False Salvation

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen  While Christians need to obtain their spiritual knowledge from the Bible, pastors, godly teachings, and so forth, the Holy Spirit can sometimes prompt us to learn things from unexpected sources. Indeed, although psychology is entrenched in evolution and naturalism, it can have occasional benefits — but is dangerous to those who are not grounded in the Word of God. Credit: Pixabay / Gerd Altmann You and I may be souls whose intentions are good, so we don't want to be misunderstood. It's natural to clarify what we say to some extent. When it comes to dealing with someone who is accusing and unwilling to believe what we say, why try so hard? In " Toxic Misotheists, Being Alpha, and the Bible ", one of the points discussed was how toxic people manipulate others. A recent video by Ashley Berges (one of my previous sources) titled " Over Explaining is a Trap - Are You Trapped? " brought this into focus in a different way. For some reason, m

Mystical Feelgood Salvation

While Bible-believing Christians understand salvation as being made right with God and spiritual deliverance , other people want salvation in different ways. Because of its Christian connotations, other people seem to avoid the word. But they still seek relief from suffering and to obtain a feelgood experience. Modified from an image at Unsplash / Erik Brolin There is a trend in psychology toward mindfulness  which is a form of meditation that Christians should avoid . Actually, everyone should. Supposedly it relieves stress, but is actually counterproductive. Another secular feelgood technique is to count your blessings , but it leaves out God who provides our blessings. (I fell on Monday and needed medical care. Afterward, I thanked God that it wasn't worse, and that the people at the urgent care clinic had skill and compassion.) Another false feelgood salvation is to have people go to their "happy place", which often has a setting in nature. Mindfulness actually caus

Toxic Misotheists, Being Alpha, and the Bible - Part 2

As planned, here is the conclusion from Part 1 . Harmful people in our lives can feel like we are in an emotional and spiritual whirlpool with our vitality draining away. Not Apologizing or Explaining This is a difficult area for me in several areas. Gibbs makes not apologizing his  Rule #9 , and he picked it up from John Wayne in  She Wore a Yellow Ribbon : "Never apologize, mister, it's a sign of weakness". Related to that is explaining yourself. In fact, the two can often be combined in pitiful displays of poltroonery. File under "Never say never". Credit: Flickr /  Dave Stokes  ( CC BY 2.0 ) One problem is when people offer apologies. Those sound like excuses most of the time, especially when they're strung together like in this humorous example: When we "own it", we are less likely to seem weak. It can also take the wind out of the sails of a detractor. F'rinstance, a different supervisor was armed for bear, ready to give me a deserved cha

Toxic Misotheists, Being Alpha, and the Bible - Part 1

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen This is one of my more unusual articles, and it is difficult to categorize because there are several subjects involved. They may seem contradictory at first, but stay with me. Like my prospector friend Stormie Waters says, "See how it all pans out". Credit: Flickr /  Subharnab Majumdar  ( CC BY 2.0 ) It has a strange beginning that involved riding off on side trails and ending up a long way from where I had intended. It happens to many people on the internet, especially when they are not under an immediate deadline. "You may also like..." can bushwhack productivity. Being the Robust He-Man that I Am When you're done laughing, I want to tell you that I never viewed myself as an "alpha male". In nature, that is the dominant male in a group, and it involves mating, fending off challenges from other males, and being watchful to help protect the group. There are human males who want "alpha male" traits to be the man who stan

Meditation with the Proper Focus

It may be surprising, but everyone meditates in one form or another. It manifests itself in different ways, whether obsession in how to cheat and win an election, activities of favorite sports times, how much an atheist hates God that destroying "religion" and attacking Christians is an all-consuming goal, proving dust-to-Darwin evolution is true, television, sitting there woolgathering , and more. Some seek more formal types of meditation. Credit: Pexels / Gantas Vaičiulėnas Much of what is used for meditation purposes involves Eastern religious practices. Some versions want the meditator to empty the mind and think of nothing, but that is actually dangerous because (some folks balk at this truth) people are opening themselves up to demonic influences. No, I'm not saying you'll become possessed necessarily, but demonic influence does happen through opening that door. The word mindfulness  is often used regarding meditation, but not in the sense of paying attention t

Atheists, Psychology, and the Meaning of Life

In an earlier post, we saw that people try to find meaning in life through many ways, but these all fail in the end. Although atheists suppress the truth of God, they know deep down that God does exist. Some reject the bleak arbitrary assertions by people like C. Richard Dawkins. One atheistic psychologist attempts to make sense of life while still denying the truth. Credit: FreeDigitalPhotos.net / Ambro Secular psychology is essentially based on Darwinism, so it is no surprise that people cannot find true meaning through it. They deny that we were made by and for God. Naturalists are self refuting by attempting to use logic and science, but those are impossible without God; if God did not exist, neither would logic . An atheist (especially a secular psychologist) is left with an incoherent worldview based on speculations, arbitrary assertions, faulty reasoning, and so on. Only the biblical worldview has the necessary preconditions of human experience, and it begins in Genesis.

Demons and Secular Science

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen Materialists contradict themselves by claiming that there is no God, spirits, or anything supernatural, and then they try to explain the soul and their version of free will (which is impossible from an evolutionary worldview ). Ironically, atheists have their own miracles of sorts, but they deny God.  Sure, we see some self-styled ghost hunters on television attempting to obtain electromagnetic, infrared, and other readings of supposedly haunted places. Those do not amount to much. Can secularists ride the trail and scientifically study demons, which they believe do not exist? Kind of difficult with their materialistic presuppositions and bad logic, such as, "Since there are some fakers, there are no spirits at all". I can show you some angry atheopaths that have blasphemed each person of the Trinity, and are demonically possessed. Credit: Pixabay / Pete Linforth The Parkland school shooter, Nikolas Cruz, said he had a demon telling him to k

Intellectualizing God out of the Bible

Some folks spend too much time in secular edjamakation centers and get into a habit of intellectualizing too many things. That is, they commence to pondering the minutiae of many things, and making a mighty great mess of it all instead of starting with the plain intent. A certain tinhorn named Dr. Jordan Peterson does that very thing with the Bible — especially Genesis — and unfortunately, he has many followers. Credit: Freeimages /  Sar Castillo I'll make no apology that he's not the kind of guy I'd like to have lunch with. From excerpts in his books it's easy to see that he's condescending and rejects the God of the Bible. He labels people who believe in creation, the global Flood, even the historical account of the Mosaic writings as fundamentalists.  Like so many other labels, it has become vague and has many connotations nowadays , and is primarily used to stir up negative emotions.  Peterson doesn't tell us how he  defines a fundamentalist. But then