Ambition

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IF YOU ARE YOUNG, THEN YOU ALREADY GOT A MAJOR PROBLEM…..?

You’re probably too ambitious.

I’m young like you, or at least my mind is. And you have no idea how ambitious I am. Unfortunately, that’s the sickness that plagues you too.

Yeah I know, I’m totally aware, that I just called your always present, overzealous, soulful Ambition, a sickness. A sickness that needs to go away and I’ll tell you why.

Don’t get me wrong, ambition is good. Good Ambition is good.

But your ambition, that your precious drive, that unexplainable passion has left you living a pixelated life. This is not a 100% match make, but I’m kind of sure you’re part of the 99; the 99 that don’t understand that ambition is the door, but patience is the key. In lay man’s terms; time, plenty of time is the avatar to your fire nation.

I said I’ll tell you why, so here is it.

Ambition is crazy, it’s the local dog off its leash, it’s a wild cat far away from the wild, it’s the wisdom-less chi that lives inside you, that tells you everything is possible. Everything is not possible mate, but some things are; just some things.

And maybe Ambition is not the problem, I mean; shouldn’t I simmer down on this factor that has accelerated civilization for all of man’s existence? Then you have to be the problem.

Yeah…I said it, I know I said it. You’re the problem. Because it’s a blessing to be blessed with even a little ambition, but yet the curse; cause it came with no ‘handle with care’ manual, it came with no prescription to tame your dose; its abuse.

So I’ll tell you why ambition is bad, firstly and apparently, you cannot predict how life will turn out. Secondly and famously, you will probably chose a style of attack that will end with you king dead. And I mean, from the plethora of options of people past, who have achieved their dreams, how exactly are you supposed to approach ‘this little light of yours’? Ambition is bad because 99 out of 100 of you will make it bad, preferring to pursue rather than to wait, preferring to strive rather than to be patient.

We all hate that phrase; be patient. I mean, what gives anybody the right, including yourself, to demand patience from you, when it is clear to all mankind that nobody knows the time, the place and the when, when everything could have ultimate meaning.

The problem with ambition is, you might spend all of your good years pursuing, striving after this dream, that islandic passion, without any applaud-able achievements to show for it, and yet, that drive will still be on heat, ambition will still not set you free.

I mean, isn’t it really ambitious of me to think that I could sentence Ambition to a life ‘outside your heart’?

And yet without Ambition, life will be a whole lot harder.

John Okor

(C) 2019

Thunder

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On my rugged road
To gather coins and grains
I blinded my conscience,
I buried the Lord’s laws

And strangled my Mama’s
Moral whisperings
Just to overtake time and space
Now, look at me !

Look at what I have become
Timeless prince in prison
Hero, who does not exist
Legend of the unknown

I look around and all I see
Is despair and darkness
No one cares for me
Just because the flesh has fallen

My errors are my mine
But Lord you’re my THUNDER!
Forgive me O! Lord
Break my chains, for I am yours

Ugwu David .C
©2019

Blanket One: The Cross-Bearer’s Blank Intellect?

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‘Godidit.’

That’s the trendy new term with which internet atheists mock ‘scientifically illiterate’ Christians for ascribing every good thing to God. When us faithful people praise God for the birth of a new baby, deliverance from dangerous circumstances, or even the beauty of a sunset, skeptics now respond by shooting that short ugly line back at us.

‘Goddidit’- a bundling together of the phrase ‘God did it’ -is the latest addition to a pool of cliché terms that militant unbelievers draw from to highlight the apparently lazy intellectual attitudes of Christians (or their lack of any intellectual attitude).

The careless compaction of the words that make up the term is itself supposed to suggest that Christians can’t speak intelligently about what we say we believe. It also carries with it the idea that we are unwilling or unable to probe physical reality with our minds, and just invoke God as an explanation for things we can’t understand.

In a nutshell, it’s supposed to make Christians look dumb.

But are Christians really bereft of intelligent thought?

As a Christian and a proud lover of all things intellectual, I deny that this is the case. I know too many straight-thinking, ridiculously smart people who live a life of faith to accept the assumptions implicit in mocking terms like ‘Godidit’.

I mean, there are brilliant responses to such derisive claims, as well as to the more sophisticated arguments against belief in God- responses formulated by Christians. There’s even a whole branch of Christian ministry- apologetics –which tackles these issues. It’s clear to any well-informed person that Christians aren’t intellectually inept by definition.

Also, contrary to popular belief, faith, especially in the Christian context, does not defy logic. Too many times in the bible has the message and personality of Jesus been called to question and that many times it has stood its ground against reason. The abhorrent laziness of ‘some’ Christians in our day does not do justice to the fact that ours is a faith-based on undeniable facts and answers not many are willing to accept.

Unfortunately, many Christians have accepted the unbeliever’s caricature of them as weak-minded without realizing it. You see this resignation in the way a lot of us respond to questions about God and suffering, or nature and its functioning, or the resurrection of Christ. “Just have faith” or “because the Bible says so” appear to be the standard answers to such inquiries. This sort of attitude fuels atheist memes about Christians, and undermines our attempts to reach out to a world that won’t simply take our word for it.

We’ll conclude with a two-sided appeal. To the unbeliever or skeptic: Christians aren’t silly by default. We can and have answered your questions about our faith with logic, facts, and sympathy. If you’re open to sound reasoned arguments for Christianity, please look up the works of Christian apologists. We’d recommend reading C.S. Lewis if you’re a regular fella (like us), or William Lane Craig if you’d like more advanced stuff or watch lectures by Dr. Ravi Zacharias on Youtube.

To our Christian brothers and sisters: faith is not an excuse to indulge in intellectual laziness. Always be ready and willing to give reasons for your faith (1 Peter 3:15). Be like Paul at Athens, if the occasion demands- debate the skeptics with smarts and tact. Show them that to believe in Jesus is not to cower from reason, but to believe in the one who is Logic made flesh.

Selah.

 

By

Godswill Ezeonyeka and Alexander Ikenna.

THE BLANKET: An Introduction to Us

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The human brain has a system of recognizing patterns and overtime saving energy by blazing past these patterns to expected results. When you’re just starting to learn math, you would have to grapple with why 1+1 should equal 2. Over time, you just know the answer is 2. Your mind skips the reasoning process and jumps to the answer and for every time you turn out to be right, the process becomes shorter, leading to faster answers and lightspeed reasoning.

It’s a fascinating fact about the way our minds work.

As the world grows more socially intelligent, we are increasingly aware of the rising epidemic that is “Stereotyping”. I say that we are only getting aware because this issue has been around for as long as we have been. I believe that stereotyping has its roots in our brains trying to reach conclusions as quickly as possible, so much so, it misses out on the individuality of the experience of life.

I dare say, that we are all guilty of stereotyping; it’s our nature.

That last statement up there is stereotypical too. The thing is, this pen is cocked and pointed at all of us not because we have evil intentions all the time, but because we carry a mind that needs to be trained to do better.

The Bible says in Romans 12:2, to be transformed by renewing the mind. The key is in the brain, in the mind. If we willingly take a step back to reconfigure our minds, we will be creating a transformed world. The following series hopes to question as many stereotypes as we can, but it will have no impact on you the reader if you don’t make a conscious and willing effort to accept when you are in the wrong and to make a change for the better.

Humanity is really a host of individuals. The human experience is individual by every definition. To throw a blanket over any group might save you a moment of consideration but you risk prejudice and consequences that might never be recovered from. Take this journey with us not to feel good about yourself, but to make a conscious effort to recalibrate your mind, to be transformed.

 

Cheers.

BY

Alexander Ikenna & Ezeonyeka Godswill