Philip Hilton writes,

Consider this passage from O. Hobart Mowrer, which I ran across today; it’s from his book, The New Group Therapy, and I think it speaks for itself:

“At no place in the novel is the theory fully and explicitly stated; but when pieced together, it runs something like this. Most of us live depleted existences: weak, zestless, apprehensive, pessimistic, “neurotic.” And the reason is that when we perform a good deed, we advertise it, display it – and thus collect and enjoy the credit then and there. But when we do something cheap and mean, we carefully hide and deny it (if we can), with the result that the “credit” for acts of this kind remains with us and “accumulates.” A person who follows such a life style is chronically bankrupt in the moral and spiritual sense. If, at any given moment, his life were “required of him,” he would be found wanting, could not pay out, settle up; for his “net worth” is less than nothing, negative. Small wonder, then, that a person of this kind has no confidence or zest and lacks creativity. He is too busy pretending, too “insecure,” too afraid of being “found out.”

Quoting someone to whom he suggested this,

“What you seem to be saying is that when we tell or brag about some accomplishment or favor we’ve done someone, we exchange the “credit” for immediate satisfaction, that is, we “spend” it. And in the same way, when we confess an evil, something we feel guilty about, we likewise get rid of it, dissipate it…like those things I did and thought I wasn’t ashamed of, but was. Now that I have admitted them, they aren’t really a part of me anymore – they just don’t seem very important. By admitting these things, I have “spent” my guilt. And now the same principle seems to work the other way ‘round. Just as the wrong kind of “credit,” if accumulated, will eventually destroy you, so will good “credit,” if not used up, give you strength and inner confidence. The net effect…is that you are what you keep back: strong and self-accepting if what you hide and keep back is good, and weak and self-hating if what you keep and hide is bad.”

Hannah Roorda writes:

I’ve hit that point in life where many of my friends have startes getting married, and I am just old enough to think of it as something I’ll be doing in the not so distant future. So when I go to my friends’ weddings, I pay attention, and note what I like and dislike.

Unfortunately, while it is easy to find things you like…

…it is also easy to find things you really dislike:

We were at a wedding this weekend (since a year ago in August I have been to 5) and while I immensely enjoyed the wedding, I found the reception slightly disappointing (that’s a sure sign there wasn’t enough dancing!). My family spent most of the ride home discussing what we did and didn’t like about the celebration, and what makes for a good wedding and reception.

We kept coming back to this point:

–The best weddings and receptions are the ones that celebrate marriage and families, not the couple themselves.

Why?

Celebrating Christ’s love for the church is a lot better than celebrating Kim and Jake. Or whoever. If all we can do is celebrate the two humans who are getting married, our celebrations are going to be silly, trivial, and boring. We have to learn to party like Christians. I can’t tell you how to do that yet, but I’ll be looking into it. But I will say that it’s got to include feasting and dancing.