{"id":937,"date":"2004-03-09T08:44:44","date_gmt":"2004-03-09T16:44:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2004\/03\/09\/building-on-negatives\/"},"modified":"2004-03-09T08:44:44","modified_gmt":"2004-03-09T16:44:44","slug":"building-on-negatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2004\/03\/09\/building-on-negatives","title":{"rendered":"Building On Negatives"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/bc\/2004\/002\/2.10.html\">Food Porn<\/a>, Susan Wise Bauer writes about the tendency of modern authors to critique culture without offering a viable alternative: <i>The cover-model ideal is warped and twisted, but they can\u2019t manage to unwarp it. I\u2019m reminded of J. R. R. Tolkien\u2019s orcs, who (according to the Silmarillion) were modeled on elves by the dark powers; they were fashioned \u201cby slow arts of cruelty  in envy and mockery,\u201d because dark powers can only warp and twist, not create afresh. If you\u2019ve never seen an elf, and you try to work backwards from an orc to its model, you\u2019re darn well not going to end up with Orlando Bloom.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>You can\u2019t build on negation alone.<\/p>\n<p>How often is our plan for being good to stop being bad? In the Biblical perspective, holiness is an addition equation, not a subtraction equation. We don\u2019t merely seek to eradicate vices such as gossip and lying; on the contrary, we actively cultivate virtues such as love, joy, patience, and self-control.<\/p>\n<p>Just some quick thoughts inspired by an absolutely brilliant Tolkien reference in an otherwise unrelated article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Food Porn, Susan Wise Bauer writes about the tendency of modern authors to critique culture without offering a viable alternative: The cover-model ideal is warped and twisted, but they can\u2019t manage to unwarp it. I\u2019m reminded of J. R. R. Tolkien\u2019s orcs, who (according to the Silmarillion) were modeled on elves by the dark \u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2004\/03\/09\/building-on-negatives\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> \u201cBuilding On Negatives\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spiritual-growth"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-f7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}