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Tag: application

  • Top 10 Reasons for Studying Medicine or Dentistry in Eastern Europe

    Top 10 Reasons for Studying Medicine or Dentistry in Eastern Europe

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    Many students have been unsuccessful in pursuing medicine or dentistry in their home countries such as UK, Germany, USA. The nature of such courses is highly competitive. Here's why you should consider studying in Europe:

    • The course is taught entirely in English, with a foreign language class taught a few hours per week to help you fit in to the country and culture. The foreign language class can assist you when you communicate with the local people or with your patients, as well as when interacting in typical every situations with your new international friends.
    • You will be studying medicine or dentistry at some of the best universities in Europe. Even if your grades are not the best, you can still get accepted into some world class university as many Medical Faculties in Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Ukraine and many more allow some flexibility with grade requirements. Universities will not disregard your application and will individually look at your overall performance to give you a chance. Medical Schools in Europe want you to be able to puruse your dream so they'll give you a chance to study. It then depends on you to keep up with medical school and show them what you're worth.
    • You'll be studying medicine or dentistry at some of the largest medical campuses worldwide and largest teaching hospitals in Europe. The universities are all surrounded by very reputable teaching hospitals with many specialties and specialists. Some universities have specific centers like a military hospital or private hospitals with up to date technology, methodology and equipment.
    • Thousands of UK students are opting for studying medicine in Europe. The international community of students from the UK and Germany and other countries is amazing! There are many students who were in your shoes and managed to pursue their dream career abroad, and so should you.
    • Europe is alive, beautiful and safe, you'll experience a true culturally rich experience.
    • You'll have an exciting additional option, as opposed to the limited four university options that UCAS in the UK allows you. You can apply to as many medical universities in Europe as you like – your options are limitless. Apply to each university with its procedures and have an unlimited option of universities to choose from.
    • Annual Tuition fees begin from € 3000 per year. The tuition is paid in one or two instalments every year. Usually, non-EU applicants must pay the tuition upfront before applying for the visa
    • Living expenses are very low, you can live very comfortably on under € 300 per month. Living costs are fantastic and you will love living like a king with such a small amount of money. A Euro or Pound is twice or sometimes thrice as strong as the local currency making everything super cheap.
    • This will be a great back-up option and your safety net incase you are not accepted into medicine back home. Don't risk losing out on a year of your life because of medical school decided to not accept you, because you're not the best of the best of the best!
    • You are guaranteed a job after graduation from medical school in Europe as a doctor, as the universities are accepted worldwide.

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    Source by Osman M

    Views: 1

  • Breaking Down the Strip-Lining Sales Technique

    Breaking Down the Strip-Lining Sales Technique

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    In our most recent blogs, we’ve been reviewing Negative Reverse Selling and how it is very effective in creating great bonding and rapport with sales prospects. Negative Reverse Selling is a way of saying and doing the opposite of what the prospect expects from a salesperson, disarming them and creating trust with them. One of its more compelling techniques is called strip-lining, a method of using reverse questions to get the prospect talking, and you keep “throwing more line and let them swim”. However, you need to do this step right or it could backfire on you. When you do it correctly, prospects feel like they are in control of the conversation, and you have a better chance of making a sale. Practice this step frequently in low risk situations before using it on your biggest and best prospects.

    What should you practice? Getting the fit right means executing as follows:

    • Neutral prospects get very hard strip-lines, such as, “It sounds like you’re very happy and I should leave. Before I go, what do you like about who you’re doing business with now?”

    • Negative prospects get hard strip-lines, but not as hard as neutral prospects. For example, “Based on what you just said about your current vendor, it makes sense to me why you’re not interested in switching your business to another company. We get great feedback like that from our customers, too, but your vendor sounds really good at what they do. I don’t know if you can do any better than that. There doesn’t seem to be much opportunity for us to work together here, is there?”

    • Positive prospects get strip-lines that are just a light tug: “Thanks for reaching out to us. I have to say, your friend Bronwyn gets almost all the credit for having a great experience with us. She was very good about explaining the application problem, and that really helped her have a happy outcome with us. Since I don’t know your application, I’m not sure if I can help you at this point. Could you be nice enough to tell me about it?”

    In all three examples, you’ll find three components. Look at each of them, and you’ll see how strip-line responses are structured.

    1. The first component is a build-up (a compliment or validation of the prospect’s point of view). In the above, an example of that was, “It sounds like you’re very happy.”

    2. The second component is a takeaway (a conclusion that goes in the opposite direction to what the prospect expects). In the above, an example was, “… and I should leave.”

    3. The third component is a question (a continuation of the discussion). In the above, an example was, “Before I go, what do you like about who you’re doing business with now?”

    Looking at the example above for positive prospects, notice the buildup portion of the response validates how well things went “with Bronwyn” and gives most of the credit to her: “Thanks for reaching out to us. I have to say, your friend Bronwyn gets almost all the credit for having a great experience with us. She was very good about explaining the application problem, and that really helped her have a happy outcome with us.”

    The takeaway portion includes words to the effect that you’re not yet convinced you can help the prospect. “Since I don’t know your application, I’m not sure if I can help you as well at this point.”

    The third part, the question, is pretty obvious; you ask a question to start to understand the application, the problem, and ultimately the prospect’s pain: “Could you be nice enough to tell me about it?”

    When you strip-line a prospect using all three components of the technique, you are likeliest to uncover the most meaningful information. You now know what a good fit looks like. What does a bad fit look like? Let’s say a prospect calls your office and says, “I’ve heard really good things about your company. A friend of mine, Bronwyn, told me all about you, and I’m very interested in doing business with you.” Obviously, that’s a positive prospect. It wouldn’t be appropriate for you to do a hard strip-line since the prospect is almost ready to buy. Saying to the prospect, “You must have used some other vendors in our space. Why wouldn’t you want to use them now?” will not only confuse the prospect, but would probably ruin the sale. So that’s a bad fit. Instead, you’d want to use the approach I shared with you above, the one that begins “Thanks for reaching out.”

    Sometimes the prospect says something that more or less does the buildup for you. In that case, you don’t need to do it, but you still need to do the takeaway and pose the question. For example if the prospect says, “I heard really good things about your company,” you could strip-line by saying, “That’s nice to hear, but we’re not for everyone. Would you like to tell me why you thought it might have been a good idea to call, and hopefully we find out that we’re a good fit”?

    In summary: Strip-line very hard with neutral pros-pects, even sounding like you are getting ready to leave the sales call or implying that you think the sales call is over; strip- line hard with negative prospects; strip-line lightly with positive prospects.

    Strip-lining is a great way to uncover pain because it’s extremely disarming and helps build trust. When you do it right, it doesn’t sound like you’re selling. Prospects feel like you truly embrace and care about their goals and pain. (As, of course, you do!) If you don’t uncover pain with strip-lining, then perhaps that particular prospect doesn’t have enough pain to do business with you. Strip-lining combined with other pain-finding Sandler approaches will put you in a different league from all those other salespeople who traditionally start with the hard sell, list off features and benefits, and offer prospects free quotes.

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    Source by Greg Nanigian

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  • Oxalic Acid – The Cure For Cancer

    Oxalic Acid – The Cure For Cancer

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    Daily, certain foods and beverages are revealed as great antioxidants. For example: carrots, spinach, broccoli, tea, nuts, berries, garlic, onions, grapes, red wine, herbs, spices, and chocolate are foods known to be great antioxidants. We hear about flavonoids and vitamins. It is estimated there are 4,000 identified flavonoids. Isolating each one and determining what effect each, or a combination of each, has on a specific disease is an endless pursuit without an answer. However, common sense and research reveals there is one common denominator in the foods known as great antioxidants. They are all high in oxalic acid.

    Are you aware that every mammal on earth has oxalic acid as a normal blood value? Ask any doctor or researcher what its purpose is and the best answer they will give you is that it aides in bowel movement. So here we are with a surprisingly high quantity of oxalic acid running through our blood with no real purpose?

    There isn’t a place on earth that a plant containing oxalic acid can’t be found. Weeds are the most tenacious of all plants and are rich in oxalic acid. This is no accidental occurrence. There is purpose.

    Research oxalic acid and you’ll discover it’s a deadly poison. So, we have a deadly poison in all the foods that are great antioxidants. Huh? Stop and simply think. Rather than isolating the smallest compounds within foods and researching each, analyze each food known to be a great antioxidant and find the common compound in each. This is exactly what has been done by an amazing 85 year old warrior of a man deep in the hills of Arkansas. This man is Colonel Joe Hart.

    When is the last time you knew of anyone being granted a patent for anything natural? That folks, never happens. It has for Colonel Joe. He has been granted three (3) Patents for the Application of oxalic acid for treatment of cancer, bacterial and viral infections, and vascular diseases. Why isn’t the medical community screaming its merits? I wonder if the fear that this would eliminate a trillion dollar yearly health industry have anything to do with it? Talk about an answer to our nation’s health care crisis.

    Colonel Joe discovered the benefits of oxalic acid during 1992. Once oxalic acid was identified as the acid which kills cancer cells without harming normal cells, he was then able to identify what foods and environmental factors inhibited the therapeutic value of oxalic acid. His approach to eliminating disease by ingesting high oxalic acid foods, has resulted in cures of all kinds of cancer and disease. Do you need to pitch a tent in your backyard and live by a campfire? No. Is this going to cost a fortune? No. Do you need to travel to Mexico? No. Is the information freely given? Yes.

    There is always a sacrifice for gain. Prepare to give up milk and cheese, citric acid (an additive found in far too many processed and canned goods), red meat, cell phones, microwaves, and alcohol. If this proves too difficult, you can always go in for traditional surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy only to find that the cancer comes back eventually or you die. You do know doctor’s never tell you you’re cured……you’re in remission. “Cure” is not in their vocabulary.

    Ask your doctor the next time you or someone close to you is diagnosed with cancer what caused it. They don’t know. The answer is low levels of oxalic acid in your blood. Having adequate levels of oxalic acid in your blood eliminates all abnormal cells effectively with no harmful side effects. Oxalic acid is God’s Poison With Purpose.

    If you seriously look into every alternative cancer cure that shows some success, you will find the foods, herbs, grasses, and teas they suggest all contain high amounts of oxalic acid. They simply don’t know why their protocols sometimes work. Connect the dots people and stop throwing your money away.

    Ask the American Cancer Society about tests they conducted over 50 years ago using oxalic acid in the treatment of cancer in experimental mice. The papers and evidence of positive results exist; however, they will tell you they know nothing about it.

    Simply go to the grocery store, eat your chocolate, vegetables, fish, dark chicken, tea and wine. Toss out the microwave and cell phone. Say “No” to fast foods and truly enjoy eating your way to excellent health.

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    Source by Jennifer Prescott

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  • The Importance of Business Systems

    The Importance of Business Systems

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    “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing” – W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993)

    What are business systems?

    Business systems are documented procedures setting out how your organisation operates. They are processes, usually combining actions taken by people and some form of automated application, organised in such a way so as to meet a given set of business objectives. Such systems can generally take place without the business founder / owner’s direct action, over and over again, as efficiently as possible.

    Examples of processes may include how your staff should answer the telephone, how they take and pass on messages; the procedure for raising, approving, placing and receiving orders; the process for generating, checking and sending out client invoices, as well as receiving payments and following up on outstanding bills etc.

    Regardless of the size or type of your business, it is likely that you already have set procedures in place covering many functions within your organisation, which employees follow out of habit or as directed by their supervisor / manager.

    Business systems are the manual for your business; the “know-how” of any business that many business founders / owners usually hold in their head, and have not got round to putting onto paper.

    Why implement business systems?

    There are many reasons and just as many benefits for having established and documented systems in your business, some of which include the following:

    1. They provide a framework for your operations and an effective structure to support your business.

    2. They improve consistency: production, delivery, customer service, after-sales care etc.

    3. They improve results and/or productivity, because you and your employees don’t have to re-invent the wheel every time.

    4. They provide a better work environment for your employees, as an effective system will contribute to clarifying roles and responsibilities as well as providing staff with some guidelines to refer to.

    5. They ensure compliance with legislation, safety regulations or any other legal requirement specific to your type of business operations.

    6. They give your business the ability to expand and they facilitate business growth, as they will make your business more attractive to any potential investor or buyer.

    What system works best?

    Although there are similarities across many functions, such as Accounts, Human Resources, Sales, Stores, Logistics etc., unfortunately there is no one perfect, one size fits all system that works for all companies. Any system will need to integrate the company’s business objectives, its people and the way it provides its products or services.

    It is important to have a well-designed system, customised to your type of operation, and thought out by people at all levels within the organisation.

    Such a system will be more likely to be followed by all employees, because they have been involved in its design, and they understand the value that having a system in place brings to the quality of their work and the service they provide to customers.

    One point to keep in mind is that having great people working with poorly designed systems – or no systems – is likely to lead to an under-performing business. On the other hand, great systems without good people won’t work either, hence the additional benefit of involving employees in designing a system, or simply in documenting the processes they are following.

    Equally so, employees who have been trained in your business systems should also feel empowered enough so that they don’t feel they just have to follow a given script without using their head.

    For this reason, it is important to encourage feedback not just from your customers, but also from your employees and to use such comments to review and to continuously improve and develop your business systems.

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    Source by Cecile Scaros

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  • Journey of a Drug: Design to Market Seller

    Journey of a Drug: Design to Market Seller

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    Where do the medicines we take from chemists come from? How do the doctors know which drug is good for which disease? How the medicines really are able to cure a particular ailment they have been prescribed for? Do these questions come to your mind, whenever you buy any medicine?

    Come, let us today know about the medicine development from the beginning …

    The development of medicine is called a Clinical Research and has different Phases. Phases of the clinical research are the steps of experiments with a health intervention in an attempt to find enough evidence for a process which the scientists think would be helpful in medical treatment.

    The pharmaceutical study starts its journey from a drug design and drug molecule discovery which further progresses into animal testing and then human studies to see the drug's effectiveness.

    Drug undergoes many trials- Preclinical, Phase 0, Phase I, II, III and IV. Sometimes combined trials also are undertaken to reduce the time of development, like Phase I / II and II / III.

    Pre-Clinical Study

    When the drug molecule is identified, it undergoes many in vitro ( test tube or cell culture ) and in vivo ( animal ) experiments. These experiments are conducted to know the preliminary efficacy, toxicity, and pharmacokinetics of the various doses of the drug. Many drug molecules are designed at a time and these pre-clinical studies let the pharmaceutical companies decide which molecule has a greater potential in further studies.

    Design of the Studies:

    Trials are always conducted by following the set of steps, called the protocol, developed by the researchers to find the specific questions related to the medical product. Information from the prior studies become the base for the researchers to develop research questionnaire and objectives:

    • Participant selection
    • Number of participants
    • Duration of the study
    • Controlled or not
    • How and what dosage will be given
    • What and when the data will be collected
    • Review and analysis time

    Phase 0 Study

    It is also called micro-dosing trials, 10-15 human subjects are taken and single sub-therapeutic doses are administered to gather the pharmacokinetic ( PK ) data of the drug. This enables the company in deciding to go or no go for the further development of the drug, based on more relevant human data instead of animal data.

    Such trials exceed the speed of promising drug development by establishing whether or not the drug acts on humans as expected in pre-clinical studies.

    After the company decides to take the molecule of the drug forward in development, it will have to submit the data of its preliminary studies to the FDA called Investigational New Drug ( IND ) application filing.

    Phase I Study

    Also called First-in-man studies as these are the first stage of human testing studies. These are the studies which are designed to determine the maximum dose that can be administered without showing adverse effects.

    Contract Research Organizations ( CROs ) conduct such studies in the clinical trial clinics where medical staff provides full-time attention to 2-100 healthy subjects enrolled for the study and collects the data.

    These studies determine the safety ( pharmacovigilance ), tolerability, pharmacokinetics ( PK ) and pharmacodynamics ( PD ) of the drug. The design of Phase I studies is dose-ranging also called dose escalation studies conducted in controlled clinics called Central Pharmacological Units ( CPUs ).

    Usually, healthy subjects are hired but sometimes terminally ill patients like of cancer and HIV and also those who have already tried and failed to improve on existing medications.

    There are two divisions for Phase I study:

    Phase Ia: Single ascending dose

    Phase Ib: Multiple ascending dose

    Phase II Study

    More than 100 diseased subjects are enrolled for a longer period study, to know the benefits of the drug along with its safety which includes genetic testing. These studies are also called as "Proof of Concept or Pilot" studies.

    This is the phase when the drug's development can fail due to toxicity or less than expected results.

    Two divisions of this phase are:

    Phase IIa: Pilot study, to determine the clinical efficacy or the biological activity.

    Phase IIb: Dose-finding study, to check the biological activity with minimal side-effects.

    A combined trial determining the efficacy as well as toxicity are Phase I / II trials.

    Phase III Study

    These are pre-registration trials means the data of this study is submitted to the regulatory agency through New Drug Application (NDA) for its registration. Also called Pre-marketing or Pivotal trials.

    Such studies are multicentral, randomized, in large diseased population ( more than 500 ) with much longer duration of treatment and short follow up period, to determine the long-term safety and efficacy of the drug.

    Even if the regulatory submission is pending, the drug is received by the patients in case it's a lifesaving drug until the drug can be purchased.

    'Label expansion' that is drug can treat an additional disease, other than the disease for which the drug is already approved, may also be the reason for running the Phase III trial.

    It is said that for FDA ( United States Food and Drug Administration ) and MHRA ( United Kingdom's Medicines and Health products Regulatory Agency ) needs at least two trials of successful trials data to register the drug.

    After these trials, the drug is approved for market selling.

    Phase IV Study

    These are Post Market Safety Monitoring studies done after the drug is registered. Also called Late Phase or Confirmatory trials.

    This kind of study determines the long-term adverse effects on the much larger population for a very long duration (at least 2 years). If harmful effects are detected in this study, then the drug is disapproved and the company has to retrieve the drug from the market as it can no longer be sold.

    The entire journey of the drug from a molecule to a market selling product takes around 15-20 years.

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    Source by Nidhi Sharma

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  • Cure Stuttering Effectively With DAF And GILCU

    Cure Stuttering Effectively With DAF And GILCU

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    Stuttering as a speech disorder poses a lot of beliefs and theories concerning its origin and characteristics. One of them is the belief that stuttering is a result of the mismatch between a person's speech capacities and the demands the person receives from the environment. A person may constantly receive pressure around very fluent people. This may lead to the breakdown of his / her speech systems because the pressure he receives is just too much of what his speech system can accommodate. This makes concerned individuals look for ways on how to match these two factors and ways on how to cure stuttering.

    There are a lot of myths and devices that promise instant cure for stuttering. Unfortunately, these are hoaxes and only provide temporary cure. But, with the help of techniques that are taught and implemented by certified speech pathologists, stutterers will be able to eliminate their moments of stuttering and communicate effectively. A lot of techniques are well-received by researchers in this field.

    How To Cure Stuttering With GILCU?

    Stutterers and concerned families have always been in the search for ways on how to cure stuttering. Speech pathologists incorporate different fluency techniques during therapies that promise to reduce and then completely eliminate the abnormal repetitions, prolongations and stoppages or blocks present in a stutterer's speech. With the help of the techniques, stutterers are also able to eliminate the physical concomitants or movements that they involuntarily do. Two of these techniques that aim to treat stuttering are Gradual Increase in Length and Utterance (GILCU) and Delayed Auditory Feedback (DAF).

    How to cure stuttering with GILCU? GILCU, as what it stands for implies, involves the structured plan of the application of fluency techniques. The fluency techniques taught to patients are introduced and then applied in the patients' speech in a gradual manner. The patients will first apply the techniques with syllables then proceed with words, then to phrases and in turn to sentences. The patients, who seek ways of how to cure stuttering, will need to master first applying the techniques in the shortest utterances before proceeding to longer and more complex ones.

    GILCU is incorporated in the Fluency Shaping treatment plan because it targets the over-all fluency of the person. This is also a convenient and effective technique because it doesn't bombard the stutterer with a lot of techniques at once. This gives the patient the chance to adapt and incorporate the techniques needed according to his / her own capacities. GILCU answers people over their concern on how to cure stuttering effectively.

    How To Cure Stuttering With DAF?

    DAF is another technique used by speech pathologists for people who are concerned on how to cure stuttering. Delayed Auditory Feedback, as the name implies, alters the auditory feedback system of the stutterer to lessen the dysfluencies. It is based on the belief that stutterers are not able to immediately implement corrections when what they wanted to say is different from what they have said. How to cure stuttering with DAF?

    With DAF, a device is placed on the patient's ears. This device modifies the feedback system by delaying the sound heard by the stutterer by 50-75 milliseconds. This will make the stutterer prolong syllables and reduce the rate of utterances, thereby lessening the sudden dysfluencies created because of pressures for rapid speech. The delay caused by the DAF is decreased over the course of therapy to increase the pressure imposed on the stutterer. Its goal related to how to cure stuttering, is to practice the speaker to not hurry his / her speech and give him / her ample time to construct his ideas and produce them well.

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    Source by Samuel Keith

    Views: 0

  • The Year Our Marriage Grew

    The Year Our Marriage Grew

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    AT around our tenth wedding anniversary, we had a realisation.

    The realisation we had was this: despite all the quality marriage counselling we had received from our wonderfully gifted and skilled marriage counsellor early on, we were, at that time, still not enjoying satisfaction.

    We now knew the principles, but now we had to apply them. Knowledge of principles provides no satisfaction, only application provides satisfaction.

    The year our marriage grew coincided with application. Instead of believing in concepts and talking about them, we decided to commit to working the concepts out in our marriage. This inevitably meant adapting the marital wisdom we had learned so it worked for our unique coupling, for our inimitable family structure.

    We had had twenty counselling sessions, and I think our counsellor was at pains to say, ‘Go and do what we’ve been talking about; what I’ve been showing you’… initially it even got worse. It had nothing to do with the standard of our counsel – it was like growing pains in our marriage. Things tend to get worse before they get better.

    Inevitably, we as partners had to learn to commit to each other in ways we had never thought we would need to. Our covenant to each other was solid, but we now had to commit to love this other person in ways that worked for them, not simply ourselves. Without even recognising it at the time, we began to accept each other like we had never done before. That is true love: unconditional acceptance at the deepest level. And it takes time.

    The year our marriage grew was Year 4. Indeed, the previous three simply proved our commitment to each other. We hadn’t torn each other apart. But there were some horrible experiences. Whilst those first three years were unbelievably tough, they set us up as we pressed on into the hard work required in finding our way into the space of marital peace (which is punctuated with conflict that is managed well in the main).

    My wife and I are believers in marriage; that marriage is not only wonderful but hard work. We believe, as we experienced, that counselling works; but not only that, there’s a limit to what counselling can do. I say that as someone who gives marital counsel.

    It must be applied. There needs to be a time where a couple weighs anchor and begins the work of reconciling the problems on the high seas of their marriage. It can take years, but don’t be despondent. You learn to survive when it’s just you and your spouse. Sure, we all need tune-ups, prayer and support, but others’ help is limited.

    This is what we learned: marriage seems best when the foibles of one are acceptable to the other. What seems like an easy concept can demand years of work to arrive at.

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    Source by Steve Wickham

    Views: 0

  • Love One Another (A Sermon on John 13: 31-35)

    Love One Another (A Sermon on John 13: 31-35)

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    We are in the 13th chapter of the Gospel according to St John's this week, and I'm going to unpack our reading verse by verse as it is a difficult passage.

    "When he had gone out, Jesus said," Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. " (John 13:31)

    The person who had 'gone out' was Judas, and the sentence seems to suggest that Judas' leaving somewhat brought glory to Jesus, which sounds really odd.

    "If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once." (John 13:32)

    I really have no idea where to begin with that statement!

    "Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, 'Where I am going, you cannot come.'" (John 13:33 )

    That statement makes sense to us as Jesus speaking about his own impending suffering and death, though at the time it made no sense at all to His disciples.

    I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. "(John 13: 34-45)

    That concluding pronouncement, I suspect, is the most difficult to understand of all!

    "All you need is love!" – so said the Beatles.

    When I read statements like these from the lips of Jesus, I can almost hear the soundtrack of that well-known Beatles song playing in the background.

    "Love is all you need. Love is all you need …"

    It's not true, of course. Love isn't all we need – not in relationships, not in families, not in governments.

    We had an election yesterday. Did you vote for the most loving candidate? Should you have?

    I tried to give some thought after reading this passage as to who the most loving candidate for electoral office was. It wasn't obvious.

    It didn't take me long to come up with the names of politicians who were definitely NOT full of love and sweetness, but it seemed less obvious to me which candidates actually were.

    Did the candidate who loves us the most win? Do we care?

    In truth, in as much as we might say, "all we need is love" , I don't think we really care whether our political leaders love us, any more than we really care whether our boss at work truly loves us. Love is not all we need. A good capacity for management is probably far more important in cases like this than is love!

    Love is not all we need in government or in families, and it's not even all we need in a system of morality! This might sound counterintuitive. Is not all of morality – all our statements about what is right and what is wrong – really an extension of that basic ideal of love?

    Certainly, over the generations, scores of philosophers and other great thinkers have suggested that all of our moral intuitions can be reduced to one simple exhortation – if not 'to love' exactly, to something very akin to that.

    The British philosopher, John Stuart Mill, saw all of morality as a system of increasing pleasure for people and reducing harm. He is probably best remembered for his 'harm principle' :

    "That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."

    I have a feeling that if you'd asked Mill what the essence of morality was, he might not have said 'love one another' , but might well have said 'don't' harm one another ' , which is pretty similar.

    Likewise, the great 18th century German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, believed that morality could be reduced to a single maxim – the 'categorical imperative' :

    "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law."

    That's always sounded to me like a really complex way of saying 'love your neighbor as you would love yourself " , which, of course, was Jesus' 'golden rule' that many people see as being His one-line summary of the moral law , along with the first and great commandment, of course, that you have to love God:

    "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. " (Matthew 22: 37-40)

    We are familiar with these commandments. We hear them every week in church, and they do seem to suggest that everything in the law of God comes down to love, and that the rest is just commentary.

    Is that really what Jesus was saying? St Augustine thought so, and in my previous sermons on these passages, I have suggested exactly that – that there is really only one law of God – that we love – and that the rest is just application. My more recent reading though has suggested that it's actually a lot more complicated than that, at least if Jesus really was being true to His Hebraic tradition.

    The Hebraic law centers around the Ten Commandments – the ten words of God to the people of Israel – and while it seems straightforward to see commandments like "thou shalt not steal" and "thou shalt not murder" as being extensions of the commandment to love , other commandments like "honor thy father and thy mother" do not seem to be so easily reducible. Honoring your father and your mother seems to be more about respecting authority than it is about love .

    I've been reading a very interesting book lately by moral psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, called "the Righteous Mind" , in which he outlines what he calls 'moral foundation theory' .

    I'm not suggesting that everyone should rush out to get a copy of this book. It is not an easy read and could prove difficult if you don't have an academic background in the study of philosophical ethics (which, thankfully, I do).

    The author's key point, at any rate, is that our moral intuitions can't be reduced to any one simple maxim such as 'love one another' as morality is invariably more complex than that.

    Haidt suggests that there are five reasonably independent dimensions to our moral awareness, and 'caring' for others is just one of those dimensions. The others are:

    • Fairness (which is all about justice, rewards and punishments)
    • Loyalty (which is associated with values ​​such as faithfulness and patriotism )
    • Authority (where you honor your father and your mother, king and country)
    • Sanctity (which involves respecting your body and potentially embracing things like chastity, temperance and cleanliness)

    Forgive me if I'm now sounding more dry and esoteric than the book I mentioned. My point is actually a simple one – that 'all you need is love' is both simplistic and inadequate. We don't only need love – not if we are going to be successful in our relationships or in all of life. We actually need a lot of things – courage, self-discipline, wisdom, nurture and support and a good education, and more!

    Of course, Jesus didn't say "love is all you need". That was ' The Beatles' . What Jesus did say was "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" . In other words, Jesus didn't say that love is all we need to live a full and productive life. What He said was that it was all we needed in order to show the world that we are His disciples. That might sound like much the same thing but it's actually quite distinct.

    The life of love is not a strategy for success, despite what any number of tele-evangelists might have told you. Indeed, if it's right to consider it a strategy at all, the life of love could only be a strategy for getting yourself killed. That's certainly how it worked for Jesus.

    I'm sure I've mentioned before that friend who said to me "I'm sick of hearing people tell me about all the problems they had before they met Jesus and how He solved them all for them. till I met Jesus! "

    That's difficult to hear, I think. We don't want to think of Jesus as the one who leads us down a path of suffering and misery. We want to think of Jesus as one who elevates us to heavenly places.

    Isn't that what religion is for after all? Isn't good religion supposed to benefit our lives and help us live more fully and peacefully with a great sense of purpose and fulfillment? Surely, it's not just about suffering in this world so that we can enjoy a better life in the next? Surely there's more to it than that?

    I don't think Jesus is saying that discipleship is all about suffering any more than it is all about success. Discipleship, Jesus says, is all about love, and everything else depends on what Jesus means by love .

    Jesus says His command to love is a new commandment, and that's a surprise. Certainly, the commandment to love is as old as the Scriptures themselves, so it must be the latter part of the commandment – to love one another ' as I have loved you' – that makes it new.

    When we hear those words, I suspect most of us immediately think of the cross and Jesus laying down his life for us. That makes sense, and indeed the same Gospel writer, John, writes in his first letter "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us" (1 John 3:16). Even so, without wanting to press the issue of the timeline too heavily, the exhortation we have in today's Gospel reading -to love one another "as I have loved you" happens before the cross, suggesting that the model on view here may not be the death of Jesus but the life of Jesus!

    Further, as noted, today's reading begins with a reference to Judas – "when he had gone out" – and Jesus' exhortation to love each other as He has loved us comes immediately before the two terrible betrayals from disciples whom Jesus had just broken bread with and whose feet Jesus had just washed – the one betrayal being from Judas, of course, and the other one being from dear Peter!

    Jesus loved Peter, was betrayed by Peter, and would eventually be reconciled with Peter. Jesus loved Judas but would never be reconciled with him. Even perfect love does not guarantee a perfect ending to the story. Even so, love anyway – that's the new commandment .

    Yes, "greater love has no one than this – to lay down one's life for their friends" (John 15: 3). That is true, and bodily self-sacrifice is indeed the ultimate example of love, but most of the time love is not so grandiose and (thankfully) not quite so painful. The far more common (and in some ways more difficult) labor of love is the ongoing work of having to forgive those who fail us, and sometimes fail us very badly.

    This, I believe, is the love by which everyone will now that we are His disciples – it's the love that breaks bread with those who betray us and that washes the feet of those who turn their backs on us. It's the love that finds its ultimate inspiration in the sacrificial death of Christ on the cross, but which likewise finds daily encouragement in the simple acts of grace shown by Jesus towards those whom He knew would radically fail Him.

    I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. "(John 13: 34-45)

    It's not a strategy for success. It's not a means to a better life or more successful relationships. It's just the way that we demonstrate to the world that we are followers of Jesus. We break bread, we wash feet, we empathise, we forgive. We love one another just as He loved us.

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    Source by David B. Smith

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  • Wisdom For Living

    Wisdom For Living

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    Do you have wisdom? Wisdom is the key to successful living on earth. Lack of it is to be groping in the dark and be surrounded by great woes, wailing and destruction. Wisdom makes the difference between success and failure, life and death, poverty and prosperity, health and sickness. Possession of wisdom is to possess life.

    “I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, and find out knowledge and discretion… I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently will find me. Riches and honor are with me, enduring riches and righteousness… The Lord possessed me at the beginning of His way, before His works of old… Then I was beside Him as a master craftsman; and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him… – Proverbs 8:12, 17-18, 22, 30 (NKJV).

    The Lord founded the earth by wisdom (Proverbs 3:19) and so man needs wisdom to be able to occupy her successfully. Wisdom is the principal thing to possess in order to enjoy living on earth. Every challenge in life is basically a wisdom problem and to have wisdom for any challenge is to have 50% of it solved.

    Wisdom was God’s master craftsman in creation. He utilized wisdom to successfully create all we see, use and enjoy. With wisdom you have prudence, knowledge and discretion; a complete package that will help you not to stumble or make mistakes in your words and action.

    The choices you make are measures of the wisdom available to you. The more the wisdom you acquire the better your choices and the outcomes you get. It is your responsibility to go for wisdom in all areas of your life. You need wisdom to live a victorious Christian life and also to live every phase of your life very well and remarkably: as a child, student, worker, spouse, parent, friend, leader, neighbour, colleague, group member, boss, employee and client. The list can go on and on. Your level of wisdom will affect your relationship with others and so is important that you possess it.

    Your tomorrow is a product of your application of wisdom today. The wisdom seeds you plant today grow and add up to give you a glorious future. The wisdom steps you take today will take you to your ultimate peak tomorrow. The prize you pay today to get wisdom cannot be compared to the returns that will come to you in future. The outcome of wisdom is worth all you have to put in or sacrifice to get it. The success of your life depends on it, so go for the wisdom for living.

    The word of God (The bible), which is the bag of wisdom seeds, has all the wisdom you need to live a triumphant life on this earth. Search the word for them, for whoever finds wisdom finds life and obtains favour from God.

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    Source by Ngozi Nwoke

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