Thanks for calling yesterday. I like it when you do things like that.
I've been thinking about that subject that must always come up when one has a score in which your opponent gets two sets before you. Here are a couple of my thoughts that I would like to contrast between your mother and me. You can correct me if she doesn't use this term.
So here goes:
1. Where your mom says that, you have to love yourself more - and immediately at that. While I say, that self-respect (maybe synonymous with love) is built up over periods of time. Sometimes a lifetime. I'll give you an ancient but relevant example. I think it a problem that more women of today can't get their hands around the antiquity of Sarah and not find the modern relevance of this women from Ur. (Bad analysis, thinking and a lack of savvy, I suspect.)
Here is a short snippet:
528. … Before ever he [Abraham] obeyed God, and left his own kindred with Sarah, he put her under bonds to represent herself as merely his sister, to save his own life from all risk (Genesis 12:13)…
529. Sarah, at this period, lacked self-respect; and Abraham had insufficient respect for her.…
530. Sarah ought not to have agreed to such an arrangement with Abraham, and she would not have done it later in life,¾if we read her character aright, in its unfolding. But not knowing any better, God protected her,
537. The legal requirements of King Hammurabi which Sarah obeyed… Par. 144 says: “He shall not take a concubine” if his wife “has given a maid to her husband;” and Par. 146 says, if “she has given a maid to her husband and she has borne him children [and] that maid has made [should make] herself equal with her mistress,” the mistress may reduce her to servitude again, but may not sell her. This is surely wonderful confirmation that Sarah’s treatment of this whole matter, up to the time of Isaac’s weaning, was precisely in accord with the legal provisions and customs by which the country was governed. But when Isaac was weaned, she took another course, and God, by express revelation to Abraham, confirmed her new departure as in the line of His will.
538. It is worthwhile for us to pause long enough to call attention to these very unjust and humiliating laws, as relates to women, engraven on that stone which records the Code of Hammurabi, …
539. Sarah did go through the form of asking Abraham to bear a son by Hagar, but the act should be judged by the fact that a man had legal right to divorce a childless wife, and she was now past seventy-five years of age. That Sarah had had reason to fear divorcement seems certain, because when Hagar became arrogant in her treatment of Sarah, the latter accuses Abraham of being himself to blame for Hagar’s conduct, in the words: “My wrong be upon thee.” The Septuagint gives the idea conveyed by the words as, “I am wronged by thee.” Sarah is opening her eyes in new self-respect; she tells Abraham he had no right to have ever brought Hagar the price of her humiliation into the family; and then to have so conducted himself as to have created in her the fear of being divorced, through no fault of her own, but merely because she had not fulfilled for him the promises of God, that he should have a son. This is what we understand by her expression, and she adds: “The Lord judge between me and thee,” declaring her confidence that her position was just in God’s sight.
540. And Abraham yielded, which he would not have done so readily had he not felt she was right.
545. God cannot always elect, that is, select persons who are ideal, for they cannot be found. He takes faulty ones, but those capable of development. Such was the condition in which he found Abraham and Sarah. It is simply ludicrous to read some of the attempts that have been made by blundering expositors to explain away all the wrong things Abraham did: “Abraham’s venture was not from laxity as to the sanctity of marriage, or as to his duty to protect his wife: it was from a presumptuous confidence in the wonderful assistance of God,”thus speaks Lange’s Commentary. Such men, in their strained efforts to make Abraham appear ideal from the day God called him, leave no place for that most valuable and much-needed lesson, as to the wonderful transformation of character which the grace of God can bring about in the faultiest person who will submit to God’s authority, as Abraham began to do when he left his home in Chaldea.
546. The character of Abraham changed greatly under the moulding influence of divine grace, but we will not occupy the space to describe this transformation, for the reason that, as women, we are more interested in the character of Sarah, who, we hold, has been greatly belittled by the same commentators who will not admit that Abraham ever had many faults. Her character underwent a transformation quite as wonderful as Abraham’s. Think what she was, as the servile female who went, apparently without protest, into the harems of Pharaoh and Abimelech, not knowing that she could ever come out undefiled; accepting polygamy weakly, if not happily. Like almost any Oriental woman of today, her husband’s wish seemed as law, even when it bade her do that which was immoral, and which she may have utterly detested to do. She makes no complaint, but obeys.
547. Now study her character a little later, when she wakes up to resent the way she had been treated by Abraham in the matter of Hagar. She accuses Abraham as in the wrong, and appeals to God to judge between them. There were reasons why she might have been very cowardly at this moment, for Hagar was in the ascendancy just then, and was making the most of her position. Sarah might have reasoned: “I must not offend Abraham now, while Hagar seems so much more in his favor because of the boy.” Doubtless Hagar counted on such a compromise. But Sarah was courageous, and met the situation boldly, calling upon Abraham to defend her in refusing Hagar the right to be a concubine, or a second wife, in the family, for Sarah had yielded to the provisions of Hammurabi’s Code on purpose to prevent this.
That is enough to see that you don't necessarily get born with it. It comes as a result of activity, which you are pursuing, that will make it clear that you must go from point A (what you possess now) to point B ( more confidence than you had at point A). That is called development.
When you get to that part of the match where these activities of the mind make your muscles twitch with nervous energy, you will - little by little - learn what to do, or cease to do, better than the last. But never with perfect success.
I know this a bit archaic but Sarah is miscontrued most of time and I would like you to understand her not for what men say she is, but for who she really is.
I cannot know if this will help or not, but it helps me to know that just being told to think a certain way is not all there is to it. (Next time I will state why there is no 'law of attraction' and you don't get something by thinking a certain way.)
I'll leave it there for now,
Dad
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