Leadingchurch.com

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/01/pig-human-hybrid-brings-us-closer-to-barnyard-organ-factories/#p3

http://everydayfeminism.com/2017/01/term-human-nature-oppressive/

Dallas Willard on Human Nature

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/2016-election-realignment-partisan-political-party-policy-democrats-republicans-politics-213909

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/47145

I thought of you when I read this quote from “Miracles” by C. S. Lewis –

“There is still a third situation to be dealt with. In our two previous examples we have been concerned with thought and imagination, but not with language. I had to picture Euston Station, but I did not need to mention it; the child thought that poison was Horrid Red Things, but she could talk about poison without saying so. But very often when we are talking about something which is not perceptible by the five senses we use words which, in one of their meanings, refer to things or actions that are. When a man says that he grasps an argument he is using a verb (grasp) which literally means to take something in the hands, but he is certainly not thinking that his mind has hands or that an argument can be seized like a gun. To avoid the word grasp he may change the form of expression and say, ‘I see your point,’ but he does not mean that a pointed object has appeared in his visual field. He may have a third shot and say, ‘I follow you,’ but he does not mean that he is walking behind you along a road. Everyone is familiar with this linguistic phenomenon and the grammarians call it metaphor. But it is a serious mistake to think that metaphor is an optional thing which poets and orators may put into their work as a decoration and plain speakers can do without. The truth is that if we are going to talk at all about things which are not perceived by the senses, we are forced to use language metaphorically. Books on psychology or economics or politics are as continuously metaphorical as books of poetry or devotion. There is no other way of talking, as every philologist is aware. Those who wish can satisfy themselves on the point by reading the books I have already mentioned and the other books to which those two will lead them on. It is a study for a lifetime and I must here content myself with the mere statement; all speech about supersensi-bles is, and must be, metaphorical in the highest degree.”

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You can find his article “Horrid Red Things” also in God in the Dock

I thought of you when I read this quote from “The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God” by Dallas Willard –

“What a “Kingdom” Is To gain deeper understanding of our eternal kind of life in God’s present kingdom, we must be sure to understand what a kingdom is. Every last one of us has a “kingdom”—or a “queendom,” or a “government”—a realm that is uniquely our own, where our choice determines what happens. Here is a truth that reaches into the deepest part of what it is to be a person. Some may think it should not be so. John Calvin remarked rather balefully, “Everyone flatters himself and carries a kingdom in his breast.”14 He understood this to mean that “there is nobody who does not imagine that he is really better than the others.” Perhaps this is so for human beings as they are. All too easily, at least, we presume to rule others—in opinion and word, if not in deed. But it is nevertheless true that we are made to “have dominion” within an appropriate domain of reality. This is the core of the likeness or image of God in us and is the basis of the destiny for which we were formed. We are, all of us, never-ceasing spiritual beings with a unique eternal calling to count for good in God’s great universe. Our “kingdom” is simply the range of our effective will. Whatever we genuinely have the say over is in our kingdom. And our having the say over something is precisely what places it within our kingdom. In creating human beings God made them to rule, to reign, to have dominion in a limited sphere. Only so can they be persons. Any being that has say over nothing at all is no person. We only have to imagine what that would be like to see that this is so. Such “persons” would not even be able to command their own body or their own thoughts. They would be reduced to completely passive observers who count for nothing, who make no difference. The sense of having some degree of control over things is now recognized as a vital factor in both mental and physical health and can make the difference between life and death in those who are seriously ill.15 Anyone who has raised a child, or has even supervised the work of others, knows how important it is to let them do it—whatever “it” may be—and to do so as soon as that is practically feasible. Obviously, having a place of rule goes to the very heart of who we are, of our integrity, strength, and competence. By contrast, attacks on our personhood always take the form of diminishing what we can do or have say over, sometimes up to the point of forcing us to submit to what we abhor. In the familiar human order, slaves are at the other end of the spectrum from kings. Their bodies and lives are at the disposal of another. Prisoners are, in most cases, several degrees above slaves. And, as the twentieth century has taught us, thought control is worst of all. It is the most heinous form of soul destruction, in which even our own thoughts are not really ours. It reaches most deeply into our substance.”

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