Logicisgreatstuff

All scripture is profitable — if you try hard enough. Good prompt for self reflection. It’s easy to confuse my preferences with objectivity. Reminds me of an indie folk guy who was listening to and rating new releases. One song was from a prominent pop artist. And his response was “it’s not for me.” The funny thing is, I enjoy most other songs by that artist — but not the one he was given. I thought, he probably would like anything else. But my response would have been “this is not good.”

I recently heard something to this effect: Whenever someone mentions Strong's Concordance, it strongly suggests they don't understand Greek or Hebrew. Update No shade to amateur or professional students of texts who use this resource for legitimate purposes! This comment was in reference to the (many) people on the internet who use it to misinform their audiences for political or other reasons.

I once showed this to someone very close to me, who knew some of my past. For many childhood memories, it's hard to bring them all up at once. They come in waves. A lot of it I don't remember until some other event joggles one loose. Anyway, this was on YouTube elsewhere, the one dubbed in French, and I showed it them: "Hey, look at this. We used to watch this all the time when we were kids." Almost immediately they looked back at me with eyes of concern and maybe horror. This surprised me. Incredulity or mockery — I expected. But not the concern, almost a kind of sadness. "You watched this as children?" "Yep." "Are you okay???" I just had to laugh — I never thought about AOS that way. Looking back now, this is some demented stuff even for an adult to look at. But at least we can tell it's all nonsense. But I said, yes, I'm okay now — though I wasn't for a long time. Thanks to experiences like these, I feel more compassion for my former self now. I suffered a lot through no fault of my own. Looking at that kid as if they were my own child. No way they'd be watching this garbage. Or even less so being told it's true. It got me thinking. No wonder I was constantly afraid of being attacked by invisible beings at any and all times! I was afraid of the dark for many years! I was afraid of any scary TV show or movie. To us those weren't fictional — they are real spirits, and the only way to stop them was to speak in a foreign language we did not understand. Which I pretended at, but secretly knew I was not doing for real, not like everyone else, who was definitely speaking angelic languages and not just making it up.

I don't remember! I would guess either nothing, or something like "do what the teacher says." What I can say now is mostly connecting dots in hindsight. Other than a vague intuition, I doubt that at the time I was aware of anything wrong. Cognitive dissonance was strong enough that I could compartmentalize things, without noticing any contradictions.

Just came back to add some more comments, and wow, look at all the nice replies. Thanks everybody, that means a lot. I checked this place out years ago — but didn't really, until recently reading Penworks's book, and only lurked off and on since then. I have procrastinated tremendously (sorry) on adding a 'new members' intro, should probably do that one day soon. I just had to say something on the topic, as it is one of my greatest pet peeves! (Leaving aside for a moment the matter of wooden spoons.) Anyway, I was only going to add a sarcastic remark along these lines: A wonderful recipe for lasting psychological damage, indeed. It is nice though to be on the other side, I've been gone a long time, life is good now, etc. Reading the memoir did make me suspect there's still some recovering to do. Your writing has helped me, it would be nice to do that for someone else.

I experienced the same thing! But instead of my education hindering progress in TWI, it was the other way round. I, an all-A’s student, started receiving C’s (and lower) in my wring class. I failed assignments! Unbelievable. The difference? Before then, I guess most writing assignments were just to check that we knew the mechanics of writing, spelling, grammar, and what have you. Now suddenly our teacher expected us to think clearly, make a point, and give evidence for it. You know, like a thesis statement. And an argument, and one not based on fallacious reasoning. The most hilarious part (in hindsight) is that my lowest marks were when she accused me of plagiarism! I was so confused. I really believed I was citing sources properly by including the name of a book at the end of the paper. Thankfully this lasted only a couple years before the lessons really took. Then I had to learn to split my thinking between school mode and TWI mode, so I could function in both contexts.