Does feeling like a victim make you selfish?

Three experiments demonstrated that feeling wronged leads to a sense of entitlement and to selfish behavior…
 
 
 
 

The known universe

Rob Bell and Don Golden on eucharist and the new humanity

A church is not a center for religious goods and services, where people pay a fee and receive a product in return. A church is not an organization that surveys its demographic to find out what the market is demanding at this particular moment and then adjusts its strategy to meet that consumer niche. The way of Jesus is the path of descent.

Isaac of Syria on Humility

From Met. Hilarion Alfeyev”s The Spiritual World of Isaac the Syrian:
To speak of humility (mukkaka or makkikuta) meant to Isaac to speak of God, for God in his vision is primarily the One who is ‘meek and lowly in heart’. God’s humility was revealed to the world in the Incarnation of the Word. In the [...]

Practical apocalypticism

The point that apocalyptic makes is not only that people who wear crowns and who claim to foster justice by the swords are not as strong as they think. It is that people who bear crosses are working with the grain of the universe…

In the Temple of Broken Hearts

The Way, through tests, introspection, and suffering, is hard and has many pitfalls. There is a strong temptation to look for happiness and consolation right from the beginning. If we experience disillusionment or disappointment, then we might start fearing that our journey to God might turn into torment and punishment…

The inverted pyramid

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross…

Plundering Grace

…And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force. (Matthew 11:12)

When you are wronged

Elder Porphyrios said: Our aim is not to condemn evil, but to correct it. A man can be lost through condemnation, but through understanding and help he will be saved. We must treat the sinner with love and respect his freedom.

Worse than ignorance

Spurious knowledge, or ‘knowledge falsely so called’ (1 Timothy 6:20), is that which a man possesses when he thinks he knows what he has never known. It is worse than complete ignorance, says St. John Chrysostom, in that its victim will not accept correction from any teacher because he thinks that this worst kind of [...]

Saint Silouan the Athonite

Saint Silouan was born Simeon Ivanovich Antonov in 1866…