Tag Archives: pre-destined

Aptitude

dictionary with letter A

Aptitude (n): 1. an ability to do something 2. suitability or fitness

For a myriad of reasons, I barely made it through the 1980s with my being intact, primarily because of my complete disdain and obvious aversion to personality tests and aptitude quizzes.

It was all the rage in that era and still persists today in pockets promoting superficial psycho-babble.

The notion of taking responsibility for one’s life or learning a craft seems so arduous to the average person that they would like to believe they were born with certain abilities, rarities and anointings so as to take all of the mystery and work out of their personal journey.

Parents, aunts, uncles and grandma and grandpa all encourage this by noting everything from the timber of our early babble, to the length, height or breadth of body parts, to place a mission upon us before we’ve even learned how to stop messing our pants.

Certainly everyone wants us to fall into a personality type, where we can hide behind the pluses and minuses of that particular idea to explain our behavior.

But even though these testers will insist that you can be docile, quiet, introverted and silent, they sometimes fail to remind you that it is the world around us that requires we step out of our shadow and into the light.

Yes, perhaps intimidated folks can be given a name, but it is the gregarious ones who will be given the position. One would think it’s a plot, to keep part of the population oppressed in order to supply fodder for the more menial tasks, if one was of a nind to believe in conspiracy theories.

What I think is that we are too grounded in a Calvinistic, pre-destined American thinking that wants the whole plan laid out in front of us by the time we’re three years old, to ever instruct the general populace in matters of manners, intensity, perseverance and expansion.

I can tell you of a certainty that I had no aptitude for anything but eating. Yet there isn’t a doctor alive who will let me believe “I was born” with the aptitude to be fat. Isn’t that interesting?

Apparently some characteristics are inserted at birth and others become bad habits.

So what I choose to believe is that I have nothing but an aptitude for laziness and if I pursue that, I will end up poor and alone. Therefore I choose to overcome my aptitude … and study the present pursuit that rings my bell.

 

Donate Button

Thank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix

Agnus Dei

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter AAgnus Dei: (n) 1. a figure of a lamb bearing a cross or flag as an emblem of Christ 2. an invocation of liturgy meaning “lamb of God“

I suppose I’m an inferior religious person because some of the symbolism really bothers me. Maybe it’s not so much that it bothers me, but it really confuses me with its mixed messages and unclear signals.

First, we have a God who tells people He doesn’t want them to kill. Then we’re told that He really likes the idea of us killing animals and spilling their blood on an altar as a token of absolution for our sins. Then some renegade prophets come along and tell us this is completely inaccurate and that He really finds it revolting to “sacrifice little beasts so that we can make it to a heavenly feast.”

And finally, convinced that God wants mercy and not sacrifice, we are reintroduced to a blood-thirsty deity who apparently demands the suicide mission of His human, flesh-clad son, in order for us all to be redeemed from our nasty little vices.

Then, further adding to my bewilderment, we are supposed to refer to this pre-destined, condemned offspring as the “Lamb of God,” when it was made very clear that God didn’t like lambs becoming the scapegoat.

You see what I mean?

So whenever I’m in church and I find myself listening to a rather Druid interpretation of the tenderness of God, and especially when they’re asking me to repeat words which parrot this oblique philosophy, I teeter between silence and rage.

Would somebody please make up their minds? Does God hate bloody lambs?

Or does He secretly like them?