The Second

A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.   Prov. 25:11 NKJV As a golden apple in a small necklace of sardius stone, thus it is to speak a wise word.   Prov. 25:13 SAAS (LXX) I have made a lifelong observational study on what it is to say the right thing at the right time, in the right way.   "A word fitly spoken" has been something of a snipe hunt.   How this became such a quest seems largely the result of contradictions.   From the womb I received, on the one hand, a sensitive nature with which, involuntarily, I readily notice when a self-possessed wise man (or woman) moves through life as though untouched, dispensing golden apples of peace, or of timely goading, or of a blessed aloofness that admonishes without a word.   And on the other hand, I was cursed (also from the womb) with an inability to bring to mind appropriate words in the moment of need.   For it seems that the time required for me to observe and u...

Brilliant minds chew on the great human questions: how should we find meaning? How should we order our lives together? What are the essential and real qualities of being human, and what does that imply for what we do?   And, although answers vary, one dominant, modern idea informs most of the modern answers: Human beings emerged through time on a continuum with everything else, from non-life to life, from non-consciousness to consciousness, from practical survival behaviors to morality, from awareness to self-awareness, from awe to religion, from irrational to rational.   In short, to say that man evolved from the lower animals is to say something mundane, like saying the earth is round. This now commonplace theory of origins has found renewed energy in the teachings of Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, whose essential message is that of acquiring virtue.   Unlike traditional treatments—ancient wisdom, religious teaching and practice—Peterson’s is grounded in a remarkably broad...