Sanctification List

I wanted to take a moment to share with you something that I have started doing that has been beneficial to my walk with the Lord. Over the last couple of weeks, I have compiled a list of things I need to work on to become more Christ-like as I think of them. When something comes to mind, whether it be from a comment of someone’s, a reflection, or immediately after I act in a way I regret, I type it into my iPod right away, before I forget it. Needless to say, I was somewhat surprised at how fast the list grew! I have begun to realize that there are many important areas in need of growth and attention that I simply loose track of in the constant flow of information through my mind.

Here is the list as of now:
Pride
a) display of works and talents
b) do not boast in myself

Serve
a) rediscover servant mindset

Lying
a) complete truth; no half-truths

Slander
a) speak evil of no one

Stewardship
a) consider how a choice will affect the promotion of His Kingdom

Discipline
a) consistent time in the Word
b) practice memory verses
c) stick to schedule
d) contribute to blogs

People
a) ask specifics, not just how are you doing
b) help others achieve their goals
c) do not neglect to invest in other Christians in meaningful ways

Commitment
a) strong effort toward my responsibilities

Sarcasm
a) remove sarcastic comments from my speech

Volunteer
a) lead groups in prayer
b) do extras at work

Just today, while I was pondering seeing my coworkers, I started thinking of what specific thing about their life I could ask them about. I truly believe this was on my mind in part because I simply took note of it last night when Sarah Gonzalez made a comment in Home Group about doing so with the people in her life – thanks Sarah!

Do any of you do something similiar to this? Do you have any suggestion for me? Does it seem too legalistic? I am thinking it may be good to come up with some verses to attach to each of these little categories, if anyone knows any good ones for a particular topic.

Noam Chomsky

My professor mentioned the idea of innate linguistic qualities again yesterday, and he spoke of Noam Chomsky. I will just post a small blurb from Wikipedia regarding his theory concerning Universal grammar:

Linguist Noam Chomsky made the argument that the human brain contains a limited set of rules for organizing language. In turn, there is an assumption that all languages have a common structural basis. This set of rules is known as universal grammar.

Speakers proficient in a language know what expressions are acceptable in their language and what expressions are unacceptable. The key puzzle is how speakers should come to know the restrictions of their language, since expressions which violate those restrictions are not present in the input, indicated as such. This absence of negative evidence—that is, absence of evidence that an expression is part of a class of the ungrammatical sentences in one’s language—is the core of the poverty of stimulus argument. For example, in English one cannot relate a question word like ‘what’ to a predicate within a relative clause (1):

(1) *What did John meet a man who sold?

Such expressions are not available to the language learners, because they are, by hypothesis, ungrammatical for speakers of the local language. Speakers of the local language do not utter such expressions and note that they are unacceptable to language learners. Universal grammar offers a solution to the poverty of the stimulus problem by making certain restrictions universal characteristics of human languages. Language learners are consequently never tempted to generalize in an illicit fashion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar

Interesting!

Principles of Language Innate?

While attending my Philosophy of Language class the other day, the professor mentioned an interesting fact near the end of our time together. He said that there have been recent studies pointing toward the idea that humans are innately born with certain elementary principles of language, such as having a natural sense of whether a the order of particular sets of words and the ideas they represent “fit” together, or flow and form a coherent message. Unfortunately, he did not have time to further explain his statement, but I found the thought interesting.

Would it not make sense that God would instill some of these princples within us to properly set us up for the ability to communicate with one another? I wish he had been able to explain more…perhaps I will have a chance later to further explore this topic.