Who is Wasting Whose Time?

from The Bible as Literature · host The Ephesus School

Everyone thinks about inconvenience in terms of how it impacts their time and their personal comfort. Rare is the individual who thinks not of personal preference, but of the needs of others. A teacher burns the candle at both ends to make time to teach and we who have done nothing check our watch twenty minutes into the lecture. A parent wakes up early in the morning to prepare food before rushing off to work, even as their child complains about the breakfast menu. People make sacrifices on our behalf every day and we do nothing but complain and criticize. We never stop to consider the burden that others bear. We experience life as though we are at its center, complaining often about what we do not like, almost never expressing gratitude. Imagine the horror of a person who views everything through the narrow lens of his or her own perspective, individual rights, feelings, beliefs, and personal experience— one whose only priority is comfort and convenience. Yes, of course, I am talking about us. Thankfully, in the face of our self-obsessed, self-serving, neurotic, consumerized individualism, the story of Jonah shows the path out of our calamity, providing us with a perfect example. However, in order to heed the story's wise advice, we must ignore this example, clinging instead to the teaching it carries. Richard and Fr. Marc discuss Jonah 4:1-5.Episode 218 Jonah 4:1-5; Subscribe: http://feedpress.me/the-bible-as-literature; “Electro Cabello” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com (http://incompetech.com/)) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http:// creativecommons .org/ licenses /by/3.0/ ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

What this episode covers

Everyone thinks about inconvenience in terms of how it impacts their time and their personal comfort. Rare is the individual who thinks not of personal preference, but of the needs of others. A teacher burns the candle at both ends to make time to teach and we who have done nothing check our watch twenty minutes into the lecture. A parent wakes up early in the morning to prepare food before rushing off to work, even as their child complains about the breakfast menu. People make sacrifices on our behalf every day and we do nothing but complain and criticize. We never stop to consider the burden that others bear. We experience life as though we are at its center, complaining often about what we do not like, almost never expressing gratitude. Imagine the horror of a person who views everything through the narrow lens of his or her own perspective, individual rights, feelings, beliefs, and personal experience— one whose only priority is comfort and convenience. Yes, of course, I am talking about us. Thankfully, in the face of our self-obsessed, self-serving, neurotic, consumerized individualism, the story of Jonah shows the path out of our calamity, providing us with a perfect example. However, in order to heed the story's wise advice, we must ignore this example, clinging instead to the teaching it carries. Richard and Fr. Marc discuss Jonah 4:1-5. Episode 218 Jonah 4:1-5; Subscribe: http://feedpress.me/the-bible-as-literature; “Electro Cabello” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com (http://incompetech.com/)) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http:// creativecommons .org/ licenses /by/3.0/