Page History

...

Is there good culture? Bad culture? Or it just depends?

I think there is a culture based on good principles which have deviated away from these good principles and there are cultures which are based on horrible principles. We can look at how God used the people of Israel to wipe out evil nations with evil culture. For example human sacrifices was part of the culture of some of these nations.

...

In order to get good at software development, it's not enough to look at other people's code, you need to develop software yourself,

The point being, it is not enough to only learn theory, you need to actively practice in order to get good.

...

One criticism which can be raised against this argument is within the church we have immutable doctrine. However, this doesn't deny the right for people to express their questions, doubts, lack of understanding. In order for someone to gain a better understanding of these immutable doctrinedoctrines, one must be able to examine them, understand their history and prove them for himself.

For example, let's take the doctrine of the Trinity. From my personal view many times when this comes up we tend to go down the road of trying to explain it using pictorial images like the triangle, or the sun and the rays, etc. While these are good for a young child, it is not effective for older youth. It doesn't help them grow, because these images are themselves not proof of anything. They People need to be able to derive this conclusion from their own research, or be guided by understanding the source of this doctrine. The trinity is not something humanity invented, it is a divinely revealed truth. And it's not something that the church has come up with from thin air. Therefore, we should be able to provide guidance for people to go and do their own research and be able to arrive to the same doctrine. Not everyone is interested in such research, but I'm talking about the people who do want to understand more in depth. This should be encourageencouraged, even if their thoughts portrays disbelief or doubt.

...

I would argue that it is good for the general strength of the church to allow freedom of thought, because that leads to people who believe not because they are forced to or because they are told not to question, but because they are truly convinced. This leads to a strong stronger community.

Another argument against freedom of expression is that if you have contradictory opinions you might cause disagreements and it's hard to deal with disagreements. Disagreements can be viewed as something that shakes the confidence in the institution. A rebuttal would be to say this:

There are different types of disagreements or differing views. Ones which revolve around non-immutable points and another revolves around immutable doctrine. I do not say that there should be a compromise on the immutable doctrine. However, we should be able to prove these immutable doctrine using infallible proofs. And we should not raise the non-immutable points to the level of immutable doctrine, because if everything is immutable doctrine, then there is nothing immutable anymore.

Thus far I described two approaches to the principle "freedom of expression" above:

1. Discouraging freedom of expression in fear of the blowback it could cause. This is the culture of the middle east
2. Encouraging freedom of expression because it produces stronger societies

...

The culture though has abandoned that standard and therefore, we find ourselves taking this principle in an unnatural direction. We have people saying that they speak their truth, as if truth is a subjective concept. We have people trying to live and express harmful ideas and stopping their ears from listening to any reasonable arguments against their point, because it would be offensive to them. They defend their stand by saying we have the freedom of expression. But by disallowing arguments and cancelling the opposing point of view, they are denying that same principle to others. Therefore the pendulum has swung in the other direction. By allowing a subgroup freedom of expression but denying another group the same, there is no longer freedom of expression, but tyranny.

Reverence (respect) of the elderly and those in positions of responsibility

This brings me to a related point. Reverence takes on a different understanding in traditional Western culture versus Eastern (Egyptian) Culture.

...

It's important to highlight that due to the abandonment of the principles spoken of earlier, the western view of reverence has been taken too far of off course, to the point where the wisdom of the elders is no longer respected. Their view is now played off as "old school" or "old fashioned" and completely discarded.

...

Egyptian and the Coptic Church culture tend towards collectivism. We're big on tradition and keeping up the tradition. Much of the decision making is made with that in mind. We term it protecting the faith. But we tend to lump tradition along with the faith, which is not necessarily true.

Individualism works well with the idea of timeless and universal morals. IE morals which are not reliant on the culture or authority to be true. Individuals can then make moral decisions on their own without having to turn to some authority figure to tell them what 's is right from what 's is wrong. In my opinion it agrees more with the idea that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. We derive our morals from God directly and it's written on everyone's heart. That doesn't mean that we do not need the church, rather that we are individual members given gifts and brought together into the body of Christ. Individuals are meant to work in concert and take care of each other; prop each other up and care for each other.

Unfortunately, the changing culture took individualism again to the an unnatural extreme. Made They made the individual the centre of the world. The current society took away God and replaced him with the individual, making the individual God. Instead of empowering the individual this in effect destroyed him. An individual needs God to obtain true individuality. Straying away from God, leaves a shadow of an individual, eaten up by their own desires and self loathing.

...

I have highlighted what is in my opinion two of the key differences between Eastern and Western culture cultures which accounts account for the bulk of differences between people who grew up here versus people who are more inclined towards the eastern way of thinking whether it is by adopting imported Egyptian Culture or having grown up in the Egyptian culture.

It is left as an exercise to the reader to outline specific impacts of these two differences on the Service and how it could limit the communication between the different parties.

Exercise