The Dip Order Printed Copy

Author: Seth Godin
Size: 887KB | 68 pages
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About the Book

"The Dip" by Seth Godin is a book that discusses the concept of knowing when to quit and when to persevere in order to achieve success. Godin argues that quitting is sometimes necessary in order to focus efforts on pursuits that are truly worth the time and energy. He offers practical advice on how to recognize when it's time to quit and when it's worth pushing through the difficult moments in order to reach a successful outcome.

Augustine of Hippo

Born in 354 CE in the North African city of Tagaste to a Christian mother and pagan father, Augustine began his career as a pagan teacher of rhetoric in, among other places, Carthage. In search of better students, Augustine traveled to Rome in 383, assuming considerable personal risk in doing so, but was disappointed to discover his newfound students lacking the virtue he thought the necessary prerequisite for a proper education. Failing to acquire satisfactory students, Augustine moved once again, this time to Milan where he accepted a position as a professor of rhetoric. It was in Milan that Augustine adopted the study of Neoplatonism in earnest, though he had shown a fondness for classical philosophy, particularly the works of Virgil and Cicero, from an early age. In Neoplatonism the still-young Augustine thought, with great confidence and enthusiasm, that he had found an academic school capable of uniting the teachings of Christianity with those of Greek and Roman philosophy. Shortly thereafter Augustine converted to Christianity and, returning to North Africa, accepted the position of bishop in Hippo in 396, one that he would retain for the remainder of his life. It was arguably his encounter with Neoplatonism that caused Augustine to recognize the teachings of the Church as a source of intellectual insight not unlike that of classical philosophy. An autobiographical account of his religious conversion is the subject of Augustine’s Confessions, which numbers among the most famous and influential of his works. Upon rising to the position of bishop, Augustine increasingly immersed himself in the daily routine of monastic life and became entangled with internal Scholastic controversies facing the Church, particularly those involving the Donatists and Pelagians. Because of his considerable intellect and rhetorical skill, Augustine grew to be a particularly skillful and persuasive defender of Christianity against critics from multiple directions. At the same time, Augustine appears to have grown increasingly skeptical of his youthful opinion that Christianity and classical philosophy might be readily reconciled by way of Neoplatonism. Though Augustine’s work De Civitate Dei (The City of God) contains considerable praise for Platonic philosophy and its intellectual inheritors, more apparent within the work are the major differences between the Platonic tradition and many of the teachings of the Church, with Augustine, not surprisingly, lending his own support to the latter. In his personal life, Augustine is described as living a life of tireless work and rigorous denial of earthly pleasures. Augustine devoted his final days to prayer and repentance as he battled illness and watched his home, Hippo, besieged by Germanic invaders. Shortly after his death in 430 the city was burnt to the ground by its attackers, who, nonetheless, left Augustine’s library unharmed. He was subsequently canonized and was named a Doctor of the Church in 1298. He continues to serve as the patron saint of printers, brewers, and theologians.

the real battle for sexual purity

I used to look at pornography nearly every day for a decade. But for the past twelve years, by God’s grace, I have not visited a single porn site. For many battling addiction, that sentence embodies what we’re striving for. That sentence, however, is not a success story. As we all know by now, lust manifesting in addiction to pornography is rampant in our tech-savvy culture, and sadly it’s little different among Christians. I’m in weekly conversations with college guys at our church who are fighting hard against lust and porn addiction. It’s interesting for me to hear how people talk about their struggle. Often when they share, they frame it in terms of “how long it’s been” since their last encounter with porn. The room rejoices with those who haven’t had an incident in a while, and we spout off advice to the ones who have. You can almost see the ranking system build before your eyes: The most recent sinner cowers on the bottom with the lowest score, while the one with the longest record of abstinence stands tall at the top. But we may have it more wrong than we think. Why? Because our actions don’t always reveal our hearts. Dirty Dishes If you were looking for the most moral people of Christ’s day, you would look no further than the Pharisees — fasting, tithing, praying, obeying. Yet when Jesus has a chance to speak to them he says this: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.” (Matthew 23:25–26) For these religious leaders, holiness was only skin-deep. Their deeds were moral, but their hearts were evil. Jesus understood that what you could see in a person’s life often says very little about the condition of a person’s spiritual life. If God was merely after behavior modification, Jesus would have praised the Pharisees. Instead, they received some of Jesus’s harshest words of all. One way to tell if you’re measuring success by an outer-cleanness versus an inner-cleanness is if you obsess over how many days it’s been since you last sinned. That mentality presupposes that your issue is one primarily of behavior, and not of the heart. But God always seeks a change deeper than our behavior. Superficial Celebrations This isn’t just a porn issue. We see this in other areas. For example, it’s not necessarily grounds for celebration if an obese person loses a hundred pounds. On a superficial level we can certainly say that proper diet and exercise is better for their health, and therefore a good thing. But is it worth celebrating if that weight loss was motivated by vanity? Or if it produced a heart of self-righteousness or self-worship? Perhaps they dealt the decisive blow to their gluttony, only to have narcissism sprout in its place. The new state of the person might be worse than the first! The Puritan John Owen said it well when speaking on the fight against sin: “He that changes pride for worldliness, sensuality for Pharisaism, vanity in himself to the contempt of others, let him not think that he has mortified the sin that he seems to have left. He has changed his master, but is a servant still.” Obedience from the Heart If it’s true that God looks at the heart first, what are some markers of that inner -cleanness he desires beyond the changes in our behavior? A sense of neediness and dependence on the grace of God. Christianity is nothing if not the religion of the helpless. The godliest thing any of us can do in our fight against sin is to admit we cannot fight against sin on our own. We need the power of the Holy Spirit working within us. If you feel defeated in your struggle against lust, let that sense of defeat push you further into the arms of your strong Savior today, and push you to lean on his strength and help, again. A steady gaze at Christ as our treasure and satisfaction. Most of our efforts in sanctification fall short of seeing Christ this way. But Scripture is clear: There is no legitimate conquering of sin without a pursuit of Christ in its place (2 Timothy 2:22; Romans 13:14; John 6:35). Jesus is a good meal for our soul. The battle for purity is really a battle to delight in God. Don’t mistake what I’m saying. God absolutely wants external, visible life-change: “[Christ] gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works” (Titus 2:14). But a change of behavior is only God-glorifying if it is motivated by a change of heart. As you war against your flesh, as you fight against lust and addiction, as you counsel others in the battle, aim higher and deeper than outer moral conformity. Feel your inability to produce lasting life change apart from the work of God’s Spirit. Pray for a heart that is so enamored with the beauty of Christ that it despises the temptations of sin. Win the inner victory with Christ’s help, and the external victories will not be far off.