What Creates Hunger?

I find myself asking this question and I am not sure if I can attribute it to a searching of myself or a lament of what I observe in our athletes.

I've been in the Christian schools for over 20 years and I wouldn't trade it for the world; my sons have grown up, developed, matured and been given ample opportunities to put their faith into practice. They've been challenged in athletics, classroom, Bible class and on various ministry outreaches the schools have had over the years.

However, they've not lacked for much. They don't have what other kids (their friends & peers) have: they didn't get a car because they turned 16, they haven't had to choose between two or three vacation destinations and the house they've grown up is modest in size. However, they would recognize their blessings are bountiful in comparison to most of the world.

That is the majority of our kids. Abundant and not lacking for much, i.e.- not hungry.

I grew up with my Mom working numerous jobs, at some points we were dependent upon government help and without reliable transportation. I knew we were poor. My self worth didn't come from material goods, my self worth came because I was a good athlete and I was better than most everyone else when it came to performance. I separated myself through effort and my will to compete, win, give maximum effort.

Why did I hate to lose so much? That isn't a quality that made me more valuable. It isn't even a character trait. We could put passion, diligence, competitive greatness, etc in there, but ultimately, hating to lose doesn't endear me to God.

The question remains, what creates hunger?

Obviously, hunger is manifest as a result of not having that which is needed to satisfy the hunger. So, physical hunger is sated by food. Emotional hunger is sated by relationships which are healthy. Spiritual hunger sated by God.

What about competitive hunger?

In Proverbs 14:12, it is noted all hard work brings a profit. A study of successful people noted the number one thing which brought them success was delayed gratification. The ability to put in the work and wait for the results.

A healthy hunger is satisfied with proper amount of preparation, diligence...and delayed gratification.

Healthy meals take more time to prepare and enjoy. Healthy relationships are cultivated over time. Spiritual growth is marked by perseverance, mixed in with joyous moments of rapture and painful moments in the valley.

Learning to compete is no different than any other discipline, but perspective is the key. Most importantly, John Wooden's definition of success is the primary arbiter of judging the fruit of competition.

Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.

Jim Harbaugh shared a fantastic quote on how giving less than our best cheats and demeans the essence of who we are and who God created us to be - best effort givers!

Anything less than a man's best effort cheats himself! Demeans him! Spoils him! Ruins Him! Cheapens Him! - Emerson

 Competitive hunger can be grown in a fear of failure, and many athletes thrived on that very thing. However, the freedom and joy of competition can be cultivated in an atmosphere where the fear of failure is secondary to the best effort axiom.

I hated to lose because I felt I was less when I did. Effort was not a part of my vocabulary and certainly wasn't a measuring stick of satisfaction. Many parents are caught in that trap.

Creating hunger is not some artificial attempt at proving how much we "wanted it". Rather competitive hunger is cultivated when there is freedom for failure and the intrinsic reward of great effort is emphasized over the extrinsic reward of winning.

Granted, we do need to want to "win" our share of battles, in all areas of life. But our value in that cannot be found in the result, because any way we get a positive result can be justified. The effort piece will show up in the preparation, the execution, and the result; if that is whole (or a person can be at peace with all three) than the competitive hunger can be satisfied until the next moment of preparation begins.

 

Screwtape on Wearing Down our Soul

Screwtape advises Wormwood on using time to wear down a soul:

The Enemy has guarded him from you through the first great wave of temptations. But, if only he can be kept alive, you have time itself for your ally. The long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity are excellent campaigning weather. 

You see, it is so hard for these creatures to persevere. 

The routine of adversity, the gradual decay of youthful loves and youthful hopes, the quiet despair (hardly felt as pain) of ever overcoming the chronic temptations with which we have again and again defeated them, the drabness which we create in their lives and the inarticulate resentment with which we teach them to respond to it—all this provides admirable opportunities of wearing out a soul by attrition. 

If, on the other hand, the middle years prove prosperous, our position is even stronger. 

Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that he is ‘finding his place in it’, while really it is finding its place in him. His increasing reputation, his widening circle of acquaintances, his sense of importance, the growing pressure of absorbing and agreeable work, build up in him a sense of being really at home in earth, which is just what we want. You will notice that the young are generally less unwilling to die than the middle- aged and the old.

From The Screwtape Letters

Lewis on Being Aware of Self

Remember that, as I said, the right direction leads not only to peace but to knowledge. When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk. Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.

From Mere Christianity

Zman on feminism, chivalry, and degeneration

The answer to the degeneracy of feminism is not sullen indifference or craven opportunism. The solution to feminism is for men to get back to policing their own ranks, by enforcing codes of conduct that leave women no choice but to fulfill their natural roles. If white people are going to survive, it will be in a world in which guys like Riley Reynolds are found dead in a ditch. It’s a world where Roosh V lives in fear of men, not in fear of women.

That was always the insidiousness of feminism. It was never really about women. It was always about undermining Western societies by emasculating the men. A society where the men are unwilling to protect their daughters from pornographers, too timid to fight back against Pakistani rape gangs, is a defeated society. Men who wait for someone else to protect their women will never find the courage to fight against their masters. When men on our side get that and begin to enforce a moral code on other men, the revolution begins.

The one line that stood out to me was when he wrote about the men who look at porn as desperate.

I have never quite looked at it this way before but its sadly true. Desperate for what? Two dimensional images from women who are most assuredly not doing this for the joy. Men have allowed it, have stopped being protectors (generally speaking) and have cheered on men preying on the wrong thing and seeking dominion in the wrong sphere.

Sultan Knish & Appropriating Handmaids Tale

Great read on the current cultural chaos we are in the midst of in Western Civ

Margaret Atwood, its author, drew inspiration from the events of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, but she projected the treatment of women in Muslim countries on to “fundamentalist Christians” in America instead. The Hulu show picks up on the abuses inflicted by the Islamic State on women in Iraq and Syria, and once again projects the abuses of Islamic theocracies on to Trump, Republicans and Americans.

But the hijab and the burka is, as every good lefty knows, empowering. As are genital mutilations and honor killings. Mohammed, who raped and enslaved women across the land, was a feminist. And every immigrant from a religion, whose texts prescribe beating women and whose laws legalize the rape of unaccompanied women, is another triumph for diversity, feminism and the right side of history.
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The Handmaid’s Tale, the Hulu show even more than the book, serves to advance modern feminism’s reductionism of women’s rights to abortion. The difference between abortion on demand at any time and any restriction on it is the difference between some European feminist nirvana like Sweden, (with several times the sexual assault rate of the United States), and the Tale’s Gilead.

This reductionism makes it easy to ignore the plight of women in the Muslim world. If the defining issue of women’s rights isn’t the right to own property, to walk the street or to not be beaten, but abortion, then wealthy white feminists are just as potentially oppressed as Iranian or Qatari women are. And when Muslim Brotherhood front groups sign on to the lefty united front, even when it includes abortion, that must mean that a repressive Islamic theocracy is actually more liberal than America.

When the core of women’s rights is abortion, then it’s easy to ignore the actual oppression of women

I find this resonates with me, perhaps because I agree with the premise. However, the continual screeching from women who are powerful, yet oppressed all at once is comical if it werent so sad.