Backslider Quotes

The coffee arrives, and we backslide into what lawyers do best---talking about other lawyers.

The backslider likes the preaching that wouldn't hit the side of a house, while the real disciple is delighted when the truth brings him to his knees.

He foresaw my every fall, my every sin, my every backsliding; yet, nevertheless, fixed His heart upon me.

The more you love the Scriptures, the firmer will be your faith. There is little backsliding when people love the Scriptures.

It is a fact verified and recorded in many histories that soul capable of the greatest good is also capable of the greatest evil. Who is there more impious than backsliding priest? Who more carnal than a recent virgin? This, however, may be a matter of appearance.

Having become a citizen of two worlds, the individual must act accordingly. There can be no backsliding, because the individual must reach a state of certainty before this enlightenment is given that makes it utterly and completely impossible to backslide. He cannot ‘get it’ and then fail and turn from it. If he turns from it, it means he never had it. If he fails, he fails himself. He cannot fail the infinite.

In every Christian’s heart there is a cross and a throne, and the Christian is on the throne till he puts himself on the cross. If he refuses the cross he remains on the throne. Perhaps this is at the bottom of the backsliding and worldliness among gospel believers today. We want to be saved but we insist that Christ do all the dying. No cross for us, no dethronement, no dying. We remain king within the little kingdom of Mansoul and wear our tinsel crown with all the pride of a Caesar, but we doom ourselves to shadows and weakness and spiritual sterility.

I get it. Decent guys backslide into meth and gang rape. Good guys knock up their girlfriends and flip burgers.

The quiet is where I overthink. The quiet is where I backslide. The quiet is where I second-guess everything.

There is no such thing as accomplishing a righteous reform by the use of 'expediency.' There is no such thing as sliding up hill. In morals, the only sliders are backsliders.

In life I will fall, I will backslide, but mark my word I will never give up.

There seems to be a psychological law of inertia that bogs down every hopeful activist and subverts every revolution. When compassion and empathy fail, backsliding begins. Or totalitarianism.

And they continued steadfastly (Acts 2:42) - That is to say, they did not backslide. The real reason there are so many backsliders is because there are so many who have never had a forward slide to Jesus Christ.

It is the worst time in history to be a backslider. It is the worst time ever to be cold in heart and stupid and go and do your own thing.

Our civilization will, of course, be "playing God" in an ultimate sense of the phrase: evolving a greater intelligence than currently exists on earth. It behooves us to be a considerate creator, wise to the world and its fragile nature, sensitive to the needs for stable footings that will prevent backsliding -- and keep that house of cards we call civilization from collapsing.

We may be very sure that men fall in private long before they fall in public. They are backsliders on their knees long before they backslide openly in the eyes of the world. Like Peter, they first disregard the Lord's warning to watch and pray; and then, like Peter, their strength is gone, and in the hour of temptation they deny their Lord. The world takes notice of their fall, and scoffs loudly. But the world knows nothing of the real reason.

Going overboard on a quest for perfection leads to life suckage and backsliding.

Slavish fear brings not back the backslider to God, but the sweet wooings of love allure him to Jesus' bosom.

Lack of gratitude, critical and cynical spirit are the early signs of backsliding.

Going wherever you please, any time of day or night. Doing a man's work, when you should be at home with a mending basket. You'll do more good for the world that way than trying to become a man." "I have no desire to become a man," Garrett said coolly. "That would be backsliding.

Since the end of the Cold War, most democratic breakdowns have been caused not by generals and soldiers but by elected governments themselves. Like Chávez in Venezuela, elected leaders have subverted democratic institutions in Georgia, Hungary, Nicaragua, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and Ukraine. Democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box.

But I am a great sinner, say you. "I will in no wise cast out," says Christ. But I am an old sinner, say you. "I will in no wise cast out," says Christ. But I am a hard-hearted sinner, say you. "I will in no wise cast out," says Christ. But I am a backsliding sinner, say you. "I will in no wise cast out," says Christ. But I have served Satan all my days, say you. "I will in no wise cast out," says Christ. But I have sinned against light, say you. "I will in no wise cast out," says Christ. But I have sinned against mercy, say you. "I will in no wise cast out," says Christ. But I have no good thing to bring with me, say you. "I will in no wise cast out," says Christ.

Christianity is too repressed to offer sex in paradise—indeed it has never been able to evolve a tempting heaven at all—but it has been lavish in its promise of sadistic and everlasting punishment for sexual backsliders, which is nearly as revealing in making the same point in a different way.

Besides. Eternity was going to seem like forever. With the crowds of smiling people smiling at me in the dark, me who spent my life cleaning bathrooms and mowing the lawn, I told myself, why rush anything? I'd backslid before, I'd backslide again. Practice makes perfect. If you could call it that. I figured, a few more sins would help round out my resume. This is the upside of already being eternally damned. I figured, Hell could wait.

We come from a mindset that suggests diets are temporary tortures we must endure,” says Debb. And when we’re done, “then we have permission to backslide into old habits, as if we were entitled to a reward for our sacrifice.

So if you raised yourself and you’re listening to this, I am so proud of you. You raised a hell of a kid and it wasn’t easy! I can’t even imagine — no one can! Okay, I kind of can, but still. But you’re here and you could have easily backslid into pain and nothingness and worthlessness and hopelessness. And maybe you did backslide, time and again. But every time, you climbed back up and tried to be kinder and softer and find more room in your heart for compassion instead of hatred; hope instead of defeat. And let me tell you, someone (YOU) raised you right.

So never mind these failures, these little backslidings. Hold the ideal a thousand times, and if you fail a thousand times, make the attempt once more. . . . There is infinite life before the soul. Take your time and you will achieve your end.

As a gay man, I’ve been fortunate to live in a time when we have gained incredible rights in a historically short period of time. When that happens, there is an inevitable period of backslide. There are cowardly politicians hell-bent on taking hard-fought and -won rights from minority communities while banning our stories in an attempt to deny our basic humanity. We cannot allow that to happen. Thank you to the brave teachers and librarians, parents and readers who have stood on the front lines fighting book bans. Every hateful comment I receive about The Guncle is validation I’m doing something right.

If meditation is doing its job, space opens within. In the space opened by practice, every memory and trauma will revisit us, every fear will surface. Our shadow will come out to play. This is not a sign of backsliding. It is a sign the work is beginning.

He wanted to honor Shad for the sweaty shirt, the honest toil, and all the rugged virtues, but even as a Liberal American Humanitarian, Doremus found it hard always to keep up the Longfellow's-Village-Blacksmith-cum-Marx attitude consistently and not sometimes backslide into a belief that there must be some crooks and swine among the toilers as, notoriously, there were so shockingly many among persons with more than $3500 a year.

The tone of politics had rapidly grown very harsh. Some poison was released into the American political atmosphere that was not put back into the bottle for a generation. As after any revolution, purists were vigilant for signs of ideological backsliding and departures from the one true faith.

The apprehension of God’s infinite knowledge should fill the Christian with adoration. The whole of my life stood open to His view from the beginning. He foresaw my every fall, my every sin, my every backsliding; yet, nevertheless, fixed His heart upon me. Oh, how the realization of this should bow me in wonder and worship before Him!

Someone said, “Backsliding is not a blowout. It’s a slow leak.

Once you backslide, strife will enter your life

The more you love the Scriptures, the stronger your faith will be. There is little backsliding when people love the Scriptures.

Satan rejoices when old habits overwhelm [us] and we cave in to the pressure of the crowd . . .perhaps temptation lures [us] into sin . . .a backsliding Christian compromises their faith and causes unbelievers to mock the Gospel.

You didn’t cut her out, she cut you out. But sure, good for you for keeping your dignity instead of backsliding. That doesn’t mean you can stand there acting all high and mighty as if you’ve never done anything wrong in your life. You—towed—my fucking—car”—my voice is shaking now, and tears are falling from my eyes—“because you used to be just like Charlotte, picking on people simply because you could. That doesn’t make you better than me. That doesn’t even make you better than her—

A man cannot get rid of himself in favour of an artificial personality without punishment,” wrote Jung. “Even the attempt to do so brings on, in all ordinary cases, unconscious reactions in the form of bad moods, affects, phobias, obsessive ideas, backslidings, vices, etc. The social “strongman” is in his private life often a mere child where his own states of feeling are concerned; his discipline in public (which he demands quite particularly of others) goes miserably to pieces in private.

KEEP ADVANCING Once success is achieved, a successful person does not rest on the pedestal of his glory; he keeps exploring further. There are two benefits of this - firstly, new possibilities can be sighted, and secondly, the danger of backsliding is averted.

because the thing he hadn’t understood then (he was happier not knowing it) was that once you were in prison, you never got out. People treated you like a different person; you tended to backslide, the way people tended to backslide into malaria or bad alcoholism

In moments of insecurity and crisis, shoulds and oughts don’t really help; they just increase the shame, guilt, pressure, and likelihood of backsliding. It’s the deep yeses that carry us through. It’s that deeper something we are strongly for that allows us to wait it out. It’s someone in whom we absolutely believe and to whom we commit. In plain language, love wins out over guilt any day. It is sad that we settle for the short-run effectiveness of shaming people instead of the long-term life benefits of true transformation.

If you’re worried about the possibility of rationalization at home or at work, you need to squeeze out the ambiguity from your goal. You need a black-and-white (B&W) goal. A B&W goal is an all-or-nothing goal, and it’s useful in times when you worry about backsliding.

Hope, to me, is a belief that the future will be brighter, which I continue not to set much store in. But the idea of fighting for a better world—and, equally importantly, fighting against backsliding—is not a belief; it’s a political commitment that I can get on board with.

We progress to regress, you and I, always beginning where we began. Hurrying forward just enough, so that our “back-sliding” will not lead to 'our' end. Wondering when will Love grow tired of our loveless game, of our disregard for the feelings that true love claims, of you and I and the same-old-same.

Secondly, it is the very nature of spiritual life to grow. Wherever they principle of this life is to be found, it can be no different for it must grow. "But the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day" (Prov. 4:18); "The righteous also shall hold on his way, and he that hath clean hands shall be stronger and stronger" (Job 17:9). This refers to the children of GOd, who are compared to palm and cedar trees (Psa. 92:12). As natural as it is for children and trees to grow, so natural is growth for the regenerated children of God. Thirdly, the growth of His children is the goal and objective God has in view by administering the means of grace to them. "And He gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints...that we henceforth be no more children...but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into Him in all things, which is the Head" (Eph. 4:11-15). This is also to be observed in 1 Peter 2:2: "as newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby, " God will reach His goal and His word will not return to Him void; thus God's children will grow in grace. Fourthly, is is the duty to which God's children are continually exhorted, and their activity is to consist in a striving for growth. That it is their duty is to be observed in the following passages: "But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 3:18); "He that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still" (Rev. 22:11). The nature of this activity is expressed as follows: "Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after" (Phil. 3:12). If it were not necessary for believers to grow the exhortations to that end would be in vain. Some remain feeble, having but little life and strength. this can be due to a lack of nourishment, living under a barren ministry, or being without guidance. It can also be that they naturally have a slow mind and a lazy disposition; that they have strong corruptions which draw them away; that they are without much are without much strife; that they are too busy from early morning till late evening, due to heavy labor, or to having a family with many children, and thus must struggle or are poverty-stricken. Furthermore, it can be that they either do not have the opportunity to converse with the godly; that they do not avail themselves of such opportunities; or that they are lazy as far as reading in God's Word and prayer are concerned. Such persons are generally subject to many ups and downs. At one time they lift up their heads out of all their troubles, by renewal becoming serious, and they seek God with their whole heart. It does not take long, however , and they are quickly cast down in despondency - or their lusts gain the upper hand. Thus they remain feeble and are, so to speak, continually on the verge of death. Some of them occasionally make good progress, but then grieve the Spirit of God and backslide rapidly. For some this lasts for a season, after which they are restored, but others are as those who suffer from consumption - they languish until they die. Oh what a sad condition this is! (Chapter 89. Spiritual Growth, pg. 140, 142-143)

Left to our own devices, we are apt to backslide to our instinctive conceptual ways. This underscores the place of education in a scientifically literate democracy, and even suggests a statement of purpose for it (a surprisingly elusive principle in higher education today). The goal of education is to make up for the shortcomings in our instinctive ways of thinking about the physical and social world. And education is likely to succeed not by trying to implant abstract statements in empty minds but by taking the mental models that are our standard equipment, applying them to new subjects in selective analogies, and assembling them into new and more sophisticated combinations.

A commune of library employees in Moscow created an "extreme" commune in which all clothing - including undergarments - was collectivized. According to Mehnert, if a communard preferred to wear his or her own underclothes "it would be characterized as a backslide into darkest capitalism; as prejudice originating in a petit-bourgeois ideology".

IN THE PARLANCE of the Bible Belt, those within the faith used many words and terms to describe those outside of it. On the harsher end of the spectrum, the “lost” were referred to as heathen, unsaved, unclean, hell-bound, and just old-fashioned sinners. More polite Christians called them nonbelievers, future saints, backsliders, or—the favorite—unchurched.

What’s your truth, Adrian?” “I’m tired of being someone I’m not.

If they’re not practicing deliberately, even experts can see their skills backslide. Ericsson shared with me an incredible example of this. Even though you might be inclined to trust the advice of a silver-haired doctor over one fresh out of medical school, it’s been found that in a few fields of medicine, doctors’ skills don’t improve the longer they’ve been practicing

Short devotions are the bane of deep piety. Calmness, grasp, strength, are never the companions of hurry. Short devotions deplete spiritual vigor, arrest spiritual progress, sap spiritual foundations, blight the root and bloom of spiritual life. They are the prolific source of backsliding, the sure indication of a superficial piety; they deceive, blight, rot the seed, and impoverish the soil.

Just as functioning isn't uniform, it isn't linear either. There is a commonly seen phenomenon in autistic children where they'll make big gains in elementary school then regress when they hit adolescence. Or a child will be labeled a late bloomer, seeming practically "normal" in their teen years, then seem to backslide dramatically when they go off to college or enter the adult world of work and independent living

Within fundamentalism, there are those who believe a doctrine of “once saved, always saved,” also called “eternal security.” This means that once you are born again, you are permanently a part of God’s family. You cannot be unborn. If you backslide and stray from the fold, you will eventually return because Jesus the good shepherd will seek you out and bring you back. The anxiety of this doctrine is determining whether you were ever truly saved. Especially for those who did not have a dramatic experience of rebirth, this belief is not much comfort. Believers work hard at making their salvation “take” and blame themselves for not believing enough or not being humble enough to be accepted. This problem is especially relevant to children of fundamentalists. Since they inherited their belief system, they often have not had a distinct conversion experience. Or if they have, there is no lasting evidence that salvation has definitely taken place.

In countries in which violent insurgencies have been victorious, we find, however that the country is much less likely to become a peaceful democracy after the conflict has ended. On the other hand, in analogous countries where mass, nonviolent campaigns have occurred, we see a much higher rate of postconflict democracies and a much lower rate of relapse into civil war. This does not mean that there will not be any sharp political contention or democratic backsliding following a successful nonviolent transition. But it does mean that political contention is more likely to transpire through nonviolent channels. Some may cite the American Revolution against the British as a counterexample to the above assertion. It should be remembered, however, that the armed insurgency against British forces, notably in the form of guerrilla warfare, was preceded by a decade of parallel institution building, nonviolent boycotts, civil disobedience, noncooperation, and other nation-building methods.

Human beings are more alike than unalike. There's no real mystique. Every human being, every Jew, Christian, backslider, Muslim, Shintoist, Zen Buddhist, atheist, agnostic, every human being wants a nice place to live, a good place for the children to go to school, somebody to love, the courage, the unmitigated gall to accept love in return, someplace to party on Saturday or Sunday night, and someplace to perpetuate that God. There's no mystique. None. And if I'm right in my work, that's what my work says.

Competition is the spice of sports; but if you make spice the whole meal you'll be sick. The simplest single-celled organism oscillates to a number of different frequencies, at the atomic, molecular, sub-cellular, and cellular levels. Microscopic movies of these organisms are striking for the ceaseless, rhythmic pulsation that is revealed. In an organism as complex as a human being, the frequencies of oscillation and the interactions between those frequencies are multitudinous. -George Leonard Learning any new skill involves relatively brief spurts of progress, each of which is followed by a slight decline to a plateau somewhat higher in most cases than that which preceded it…the upward spurts vary; the plateaus have their own dips and rises along the way…To take the master’s journey, you have to practice diligently, striving to hone your skills, to attain new levels of competence. But while doing so–and this is the inexorable–fact of the journey–you also have to be willing to spend most of your time on a plateau, to keep practicing even when you seem to be getting nowhere. (Mastery, p. 14-15). Backsliding is a universal experience. Every one of us resists significant change, no matter whether it’s for the worse or for the better. Our body, brain and behavior have a built-in tendency to stay the same within rather narrow limits, and to snap back when changed…Be aware of the way homeostasis works…Expect resistance and backlash. Realize that when the alarm bells start ringing, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re sick or crazy or lazy or that you’ve made a bad decision in embarking on the journey of mastery. In fact, you might take these signals as an indication that your life is definitely changing–just what you’ve wanted….Be willing to negotiate with your resistance to change. Our preoccupation with goals, results, and the quick fix has separated us from our own experiences…there are all of those chores that most of us can’t avoid: cleaning, straightening, raking leaves, shopping for groceries, driving the children to various activities, preparing food, washing dishes, washing the car, commuting, performing the routine, repetitive aspects of our jobs….Take driving, for instance. Say you need to drive ten miles to visit a friend. You might consider the trip itself as in-between-time, something to get over with. Or you could take it as an opportunity for the practice of mastery. In that case, you would approach your car in a state of full awareness…Take a moment to walk around the car and check its external condition, especially that of the tires…Open the door and get in the driver’s seat, performing the next series of actions as a ritual: fastening the seatbelt, adjusting the seat and the rearview mirror…As you begin moving, make a silent affirmation that you’ll take responsibility for the space all around your vehicle at all times…We tend to downgrade driving as a skill simply because it’s so common. Actually maneuvering a car through varying conditions of weather, traffic, and road surface calls for an extremely high level of perception, concentration, coordination, and judgement…Driving can be high art…Ultimately, nothing in this life is “commonplace,” nothing is “in between.” The threads that join your every act, your every thought, are infinite. All paths of mastery eventually merge. [Each person has a] vantage point that offers a truth of its own. We are the architects of creation and all things are connected through us. The Universe is continually at its work of restructuring itself at a higher, more complex, more elegant level . . . The intention of the universe is evolution. We exist as a locus of waves that spreads its influence to the ends of space and time. The whole of a thing is contained in each of its parts. We are completely, firmly, absolutely connected with all of existence. We are indeed in relationship to all that is.

How to make change stick? Conduct a four-stage persuasion campaign: 1) Prepare your organization’s cultural “soil” months before setting your turnaround plan in concrete—by convincing employees that your company can survive only through radical change. 2) Present your plan—explaining in detail its purpose and expected impact. 3) After executing the plan, manage employees’ emotions by acknowledging the pain of change—while keeping people focused on the hard work ahead. 4) As the turnaround starts generating results, reinforce desired behavioral changes to prevent backsliding.

What can we do to maintain slowness in the face of those periods of busyness? How can we avoid overload, exhaustion, or even burnout? Perhaps unsurprisingly, my answer is simply to pay attention. I recognize the way I'm inclined to stay up late, the way I will procrastinate at every option- and instead of spiraling into that overwhelming sense of too much, I check in with myself. Why am I feeling this way? What has changed? What is there more of? What is there less of? Become better at recognizing the signs of a looming backslide and pay close attention to the areas of our lives that have the greatest impact, ensuring they never slip too far out of hand. Nicholas Bate refers to this regular checking in as "taking your MEDS" or more specifically, paying attention to: - Mindfulness - Exercise - Diet - Sleep Once I recognize which of these areas has changed, its simpler (not necessarily easier) to recognize the issue and start fixing it. Sometimes the changes aren't in my control, so I need to look for ways of finding slow by creating more opportunities for a moment of deep breathing or paying close attention to whats in front of me. But other times, I've simply lost sight of what works, and its a matter of adding more of these things I've neglected- Mindfulness, simplicity, kindness- and reducing the things that don't serve me well. Above all else, though, I simply go back to my Why. I call to mind the foundation of this life I want. The vivid imaging of a life well lived. The loved ones, the generosity, the adventure, and the world I want to leave behind. And if that feels too big, I call to mind even smaller reminders, like the warm pressure of my kids hands in mine, the wholeness of a good conversation with Ben, the lightness of simply sitting quietly. Our Why is the antidote to overload. Its a call back to the important things and a reminder that we don't need to carry the weight of everything- only those things that are important to us.

But just as the priests tended to slip into mechanistic religion, so the prophets might drift into sectarianism. Indeed Samuel, like Samson, belonged to the sect of the Nazarites, wild-looking men with uncut hair and few clothes. These sects might diverge into heresy or even into an entirely new religion. The Nazarites had much in common with the ultra-strict and ferocious Rechabites, who engaged in massacres of backsliders when opportunity offered. Such sects were the most extreme monotheists and iconoclasts. They tended to drift into semi-nomad life on the fringe of the desert, a featureless place conducive to strict monotheism. It was from such a background that the greatest of all Jewish sectarian heresies was to spring–Islam.

It is a miserable thing to be a backslider. Of all unhappy things that can befall a man, I suppose it is the worst. A stranded ship, a broken-winged eagle, a garden overrun with weeds, a harp without strings, a church in ruins,—all these are sad sights; but a backslider is a sadder sight still. That true grace shall never be extinguished, and true union with Christ never be broken off, I feel no doubt. But I do believe that a man may fall away so far that he shall lose sight of his own grace, and despair of his own salvation. And if this is not hell, it is certainly the next thing to it! A wounded conscience, a mind sick of itself, a memory full of self-reproach, a heart pierced through with the Lord's arrows, a spirit broken with a load of inward accusation,—all this is a taste of hell. It is a hell on earth.

That transformation requires both personal change and change in structures: to be most durable, people have to not want to and not be able to cause the same kinds of harm again. Ensuring that the harm will not recur therefore requires a realignment of power, from those who have caused harm to those who have been harmed. With mass incarceration and violence, that realignment involves relocating the authority to define and secure safety so that it shifts from the systems that have held that power to the communities that are most impacted. It means not only shrinking systems but developing solutions that stand to displace them. And it means building political power to protect those changes from backsliding and backlash. The people whose lives are at stake will need to have the durable collective power to choose, implement and sustain solutions.

In many ways, President Trump followed the electoral authoritarian script during his first year. He made efforts to capture the referees, sideline the key players who might halt him, and tilt the playing field. But the president has talked more than he has acted, and his most notorious threats have not been realized. Troubling antidemocratic initiatives, including packing the FBI with loyalists and blocking the Mueller investigation, were derailed by Republican opposition and his own bumbling. One important initiative, the Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, is just getting off the ground, so its impact is harder to evaluate. Overall, then, President Trump repeatedly scraped up against the guardrails, like a reckless driver, but he did not break through them. Despite clear causes for concern, little actual backsliding occurred in 2017. We did not cross the line into authoritarianism.

It was like having two children in the car with her. Okay, one child and a young adult that kept backsliding. Hal, of course, was attempting to prove he was really only eight years old. Taggart could resist the taunting part of the time. Nigel was the senile grandmother who never noticed that the children were fighting. He sat in the backseat, smiling serenely at the passing landscape. What made things worse was that Taggart called shotgun so he could film through the front window. That made it so she couldn't reach Hal to swat him into silence. She found herself tempted to hit Taggart just because he was beside her. And because he'd changed into a dark blue silk shirt and cologne that smelled so good she just wanted to roll in it. "I can kill us all," Jane growled, gripping the wheel tightly, and resisted the urge to drive the production truck into the ditch to prove her point. Somehow they reached downtown without her killing anyone.

When he broke that long kiss, he smiled at her before kissing her hard. “So, my love, I hope that your punishment will stop you from trying another payback for a while at least?” Laura laughed and sighed, dramatically. “Of course, it will. I never want to be punished like that again. Well, not until tonight anyway. You will be back tonight, won't you? I'm often very bad at night so you may have to do this all over again to me until I learn how to be good. Hmm, and during the day, I'm not always very good either so you'd better watch out for that too.” “You don't make punishing you an easy task, do you? It almost seems like you enjoy being punished.” “No, it's not that, baby. Though, your punishment was very well given. It's just that I have a very aggressive, bad gene and it makes me backslide, umm, and often frontslide too. I have learnt with you that I'm always wanting to backslide and frontslide but, as it's obviously a genetic defect, I can't really be blamed for that, now can I” (Tales from Terrigal, Book 2, WIP)

The biblical story of the binding of Isaac shows that human sacrifice was far from unthinkable in the 1st millennium BCE. The Israelites boasted that their god was morally superior to those of the neighboring tribes because he demanded only that sheep and cattle be slaughtered on his behalf, not children. But the temptation must have been around, because the Israelites saw fit to outlaw it in Leviticus 18:21: “You shall not give any of your children to devote them by fire to Molech, and so profane the name of your God.” For centuries their descendants would have to take measures against people backsliding into the custom. In the 7th century BCE, King Josiah defiled the sacrificial arena of Tophet so “that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Molech.”10 After their return from Babylon, the practice of human sacrifice died out among Jews, but it survived as an ideal in one of its breakaway sects, which believed that God accepted the torture-sacrifice of an innocent man in exchange for not visiting a worse fate on the rest of humanity. The sect is called Christianity.

If they’re not practicing deliberately, even experts can see their skills backslide. Ericsson shared with me an incredible example of this. Even though you might be inclined to trust the advice of a silver-haired doctor over one fresh out of medical school, it’s been found that in a few fields of medicine, doctors’ skills don’t improve the longer they’ve been practicing. The diagnostic accuracy of professional mammographers, for example, doesn’t get more accurate over the years. Why would that be? For most mammographers, practicing medicine is not deliberate practice, according to Ericsson. It’s more like putting into a tin cup than working with a coach. That’s because mammographers usually only find out if they missed a tumor months or years later, if at all, at which point they’ve probably forgotten the details of the case and can no longer learn from their successes and mistakes. One field of medicine in which this is definitively not the case is surgery. Unlike mammographers, surgeons tend to get better with time. What makes surgeons different from mammographers, according to Ericsson, is that the outcome of most surgeries is usually immediately apparent—the patient either gets better or doesn’t—which means that surgeons are constantly receiving feedback on their performance. They’re always learning what works and what doesn’t, always getting better. This finding leads to a practical application of expertise theory: Ericsson suggests that mammographers regularly be asked to evaluate old cases for which the outcome is already known. That way they can get immediate feedback on their performance.

Eventually the girl-child will turn away from the Spirit-filled One. Her original spirituality will become confined within the acceptable lines of religion. She will be taught the right way to imagine and name god. “He” will be mediated to her through words, images, stories, and myths shaped, written, and spoken by men. She will adopt the god she is given. It is too dangerous to rebel. If she dares to venture out of the lines by communing with the spirit of a tree, the mysterious night sky, or her grandma, she will be labeled heretic, backslide, or witch. She is told: Prideful One, your grandma is not god; neither is your favorite star or rock. God has only one name and face. You shall have no gods before him. God is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. He is found in the church, heavens, and holy book, not in you. God is the god of the fathers and sons; the daughters have no say in the matter. As it was in the beginning, it is now and ever shall be. The Spirit-Filled One falls asleep. Occasionally she awakens to remind the girl-child-turned-woman of what she once knew. These periodic reminders are painful. The woman fills her life with distractions so she will not hear the quiet inner voice, calling her to return home. Years later, new teachers enter the woman's life—a therapist, a self-help group, a support circle, a beloved friend, or perhaps this workbook. They remind her of what she once knew: Spirit-filled One, your grandma is god and so are your favorite star and rock. God has many names and many faces. God is Mother, Daughter, and Wise Old Crone. She is found in your mothers, in your daughters, and in you. She is Mother of all Living and blessed are her daughters. You are girl-woman made in her image. The spirit of the universe pulsates through you.

The biblical King David was also a sacred shepherd. His sensual and ecstatic songs of earthly love, so untypical of the Bible, derive from the ancient love rites of the shepherd king and the Goddess—her Canaanite names were Asherah, Astarte, Ashtoreth. The settled people of the Old Testament, like everyone else in the Near East, practiced Goddess worship. The Old Testament is the record of the conquest and massacre of these Neolithic people by the nomadic Hebrews, followers of a Sky God, who then set up their biblical God in the place of the ancient Goddess. The biblical Hebrews were a nomadic pastoral and patriarchal people, tribes of sheepherders and warriors who invaded land belonging to the matriarchal Canaanites. Both Hebrews and Canaanites were Semitic people. The Canaanites lived in agricultural communities and worshiped the orgiastic-ecstatic Moon Mother Astarte. As Old Testament stories relate, the Hebrews sacked, burned, and destroyed village after village belonging to the Canaanites, massacring or enslaving the people—a series of brutal invasions and slaughters described typically by theologians and preachers as “a spiritual victory.” In this way the Hebrews established themselves on the land, along with the worship of their Sky-and-Thunder God Yahweh (Jehovah), calling themselves his “chosen people.” Yahweh’s male prophets and priests, however, despite their political victory over the Canaanites, had to carry on a continuous struggle and fulmination against their own people, who kept “backsliding” into worship of the Great Mother, the Goddess of all their Near Eastern neighbors. For she had originally been the Goddess of the Hebrews themselves. This constant fight against matriarchal religion and custom is the primary theme of the Old Testament. It begins in Genesis, with the takeover of the Goddess’s Garden of Immortality by a male God, and the inversion of all her sacred symbols—tree, serpent, moon-fruit, woman—into icons of evil. Of the two sons of Eve and Adam, Cain was made the “evil brother” because he chose settled agriculture (matriarchal)—the “good brother” Abel was a nomadic pastoralist (patriarchal). The war against the Goddess is carried on by the prophets’ rantings against the “golden calf,” the “brazen serpents,” the “great harlot” and “Whore of Babylon” (the Babylonian Goddess Ishtar), against enchantresses, pythonic diviners, and those who practice witchcraft. It is in the prophets’ war against the Canaanite worship of “stone idols”—the Triple Moon Goddess worshiped as three horned pillars, or menhirs. One of her shrines was on Mount Sinai, which means “Mountain of the Moon.” Moses was commanded by “the Lord” to go forth and destroy these “idols”—who all had breasts. We are told monotheism began with the Jews, that it was the great “spiritual invention” of the religious leader Moses. This is not so. The worship of one God, like everything else in religion, began with the worship of the Goddess. Her universality has been duly noted by everyone who has ever studied the matter. “Monotheism, once thought to have been the invention of Moses or Akhnaton, was worldwide in the prehistoric and early historic world,” i.e., throughout the Paleolithic and Neolithic ages. As E. O. James wrote in The Cult of the Mother Goddess, “It seems that Evans was correct when he affirmed that it was a ‘monotheism in which the female form of divinity was supreme.” The original monotheism of the Goddess is perhaps most clearly shown by the fact that, in Elizabeth Gould Davis’s words, “Almighty Yahweh, the god of Moses and the later Hebrews, was originally a goddess.” His name, Iahu ’anat, derives from that of the Sumerian Goddess Inanna.

A man stood up in one of our meetings and said he hoped to get enough out of the series of meetings to last him all his life. I told him he might as well try to eat enough breakfast at one time to last him his lifetime. That is a mistake that people are making; they are running to religious meetings and thinking the meetings are going to do the work. But if these don’t bring you into closer contact with the Word of God, the whole impression will be gone in three months. The more you love the Scriptures, the stronger your faith will be. There is little backsliding when people love the Scriptures.

God, I pray this man is from you because, if not; I apologize for the way I’m about to backslide straight to hell.

You see from this subject why it is that young converts so uniformly wax cold in religion. Let any individual pass through one business season, acting upon business principles, and it is impossible that the love of God should be alive in his heart. He is assiduously cultivating and cherishing a spirit of selfishness; and in all his daily avocations, he does not so much as intend to seek the good of others, but his own good; and can we be at a loss for the reasons of such universal backsliding?

Love will not call you out to sever your relationship with God.

One imagines that similar scenes of joy erupted throughout the world wherever two or three faithful Catholics gathered together. In contrast, the election of Ratzinger was greeted with grief and horror by those heretical theologians and cafeteria Catholics whose heresies and backsliding equivocations had been condemned by the new Pope during his many years as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. As usual, these wolves in sheep’s clothing howled in unison with the wolves in the secular media, uniting themselves with the avowed enemies of the Church in their hatred of the hero of orthodoxy who had forced them into retreat during his years as John Paul II’s faithful and fearless servant. In the war of words that followed the Pope’s election, the enemies of orthodoxy decried the new German shepherd as “God’s Rottweiler.” Although the gentle and saintly Ratzinger did not deserve such an epithet, it is ironically apt that the wolves who would devour the flock should hate the Rottweiler who had courageously stopped them from doing so!

Looking back, the hardest part was overhearing all the accusatory whispers—how he’d succumbed to a weakened, watered-down Christianity—when precisely the opposite was true. “They would say, ‘Brian’s backsliding,’ and if anything, I was frontsliding,” he said, laughing. “Suddenly, I’m more committed to Jesus than I’ve ever been. But they saw it differently. Because when you’re stuck in that left-right paradigm, that’s all you can see.

Never can you be short of themes for prayer; even if no one should suggest them to you, look at your congregation. There are always sick folk among them, and many more who are soul-sick. Some are unsaved, others are seeking and cannot find. Many are desponding, and not a few believers are backsliding or mourning. There are widows’ tears and orphans’ sighs to be put into our bottle and poured out before the Lord.

the New Order would become newer and newer, constantly revised and updated, containing less and less of substance and more and more of reaction, each new day’s ideology ready to denounce the last day’s thought as regressive backsliding.

Morning, July 3 "The ill favored and leanfleshed kine did eat up the seven wellfavored and fat kine." Genesis 41:4 Pharaoh's dream has too often been my waking experience. My days of sloth have ruinously destroyed all that I had achieved in times of zealous industry; my seasons of coldness have frozen all the genial glow of my periods of fervency and enthusiasm; and my fits of worldliness have thrown me back from my advances in the divine life. I had need to beware of lean prayers, lean praises, lean duties, and lean experiences, for these will eat up the fat of my comfort and peace. If I neglect prayer for never so short a time, I lose all the spirituality to which I had attained; if I draw no fresh supplies from heaven, the old corn in my granary is soon consumed by the famine which rages in my soul. When the caterpillars of indifference, the cankerworms of worldliness, and the palmerworms of self-indulgence, lay my heart completely desolate, and make my soul to languish, all my former fruitfulness and growth in grace avails me nothing whatever. How anxious should I be to have no lean-fleshed days, no ill-favored hours! If every day I journeyed towards the goal of my desires I should soon reach it, but backsliding leaves me still far off from the prize of my high calling, and robs me of the advances which I had so laboriously made. The only way in which all my days can be as the "fat kine," is to feed them in the right meadow, to spend them with the Lord, in His service, in His company, in His fear, and in His way. Why should not every year be richer than the past, in love, and usefulness, and joy?--I am nearer the celestial hills, I have had more experience of my Lord, and should be more like Him. O Lord, keep far from me the curse of leanness of soul; let me not have to cry, "My leanness, my leanness, woe unto me!" but may I be well-fed and nourished in thy house, that I may praise thy name.

Backslider was a basic word in the religious vocabulary I learned as I grew up. Exempla were on display throughout the town: people who had made a commitment of faith to our Lord, had been active in our little church but had lost their footing on the ascent to Christ and backslid.

However true that is generally, and I think it is, there are exceptions. It would seem that if God will not force us to faith in the first place, he will not keep us against our will finally. Falling away is possible. We know of Judas. We know of Hymenaeus and Alexander, who “made shipwreck of their faith” (see 1 Tim 1:19-20). These are the ones described in the psalm as “the backsliders.”4 The way of discipleship gets difficult; they see an opening through the trees that promises a softer, easier path. Distracted and diverted, they slip off and never return.

to the semi-Christians and their backsliding, often corrupt clergy, that Boniface first went. The task of reform he undertook to impose standards on priests, resume regular church councils, and re-catechize and minister to recently converted Germanic peoples occupied Boniface for decades. He would not return to the truly pagan mission fields that were the first object of his zeal until later in life, in 753. And he would die the following year, in Frisia, far from the protection of Frankish royal power, cut down by a pagan raiding party.

He foresaw my every fall, my every sin, my every backsliding; yet, nevertheless, fixed His heart upon me. Oh, how the realization of this should bow me in wonder and worship before Him!

The uneasy conscience that many Christians have, and the anxiety based on it, do not come about because they are sinners and backsliders but because they have stopped believing in the truth and efficacy of their beliefs; they measure the power of faith by their own weakness, they project God's world into their own psychological makeup instead of letting God measure them. They do something that Christians are forbidden to do; they observe faith from the outside; they doubt the power of hope; they deprive themselves of the power of love; and they lie down to rest in the chasm between the demands of Christianity and their own failure, in a chasm that, for a Christian, is no place at all. Is it any wonder that anxiety seizes them on account of this placelessness?

When a man gets serious about changing he has to be willing to look at the choices he is making every day, from the most trivial to the most significant. He has to accept that no one and nothing other than him is determining what he does. If he backslides into drinking, if he returns to abusive behavior, if he cheats on his partner, it's because that's what he decided to do. In short: His change depends on his willingness to accept complete responsibility for his own actions. He has to stop blaming them on you, on his addic tion, on his childhood, or on anything else.

Check- In It’s all too easy for the brain to slip back into old habitual patterns. One extremely effective way to prevent backsliding is to make a regular practice of checking in with yourself and consider the ways you’re improving/changing. When you check in, you can assess what’s going well and what you might have lost sight of on your path to a peaceful life. And you can recommit to persevering. Rewiring the brain takes practice and time.

If I have dealt at some length with this single side of Wesley's character-I mean his preoccupation with strange psychological disturbances, now commonly minimized-it is because I think he, and the other prophets of the Evangelical movement, have succeeded in imposing upon English Christianity a pattern of their own. They have succeeded in identifying religion with a real or supposed experience. I say 'real or supposed', because in the nature of things you cannot prove the validity of any trance, vision, or ecstasy; it remains something within the mind. Still less can you prove the validity of a lifelong Christ-inspired attitude; in the last resort, all it proves is that certain psychological influences are strong enough to overcome, in a given case, all the temptations towards backsliding which a cynical world affords. But, for better or worse, the England which weathered the excitements and disappointments of the early nineteenth century was committed to a religion of experience; you did not base your hopes on this or that doctrinal calculation; you knew. For that reason the average Englishman was, and is, singularly unaffected by reasonings which would attempt to rob him of his theological certainties, whatever they may be. For that reason, also, he expects much (perhaps too much) of his religion in the way of verified results; he is easily disappointed if it does not run according to schedule. It must chime in with his moods, rise superior to his temptations; a decent average of special providences must convince him that it works. Otherwise, though without rancour, he abandons the practice of it. He is not prepared for that unrewarded adventure of naked faith which is, for the Quietist, the common lot of Christians. Not on the scale, but in the spirit, of those eighteenth-century pioneers, he demands 'heart-work'. And, in days when we are apparently less moved by the crowd-appeal, it is hard to come by.

Moving backward isn't always backsliding; perhaps it's a moonwalk.

The point still stands. No new growth doesn’t mean you’ve failed. Backsliding doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It only means that progress takes time. I used to think there was a finish line I had to cross, that if I worked hard enough and fast enough, I’d reach it, but finish lines are an illusion.

Maybe it was the atmosphere or maybe old patterns were just reasserting themselves. Everyone liked to pretend that life was a smooth path upward, with lessons and improvements, but in her experience there was plenty of backsliding and forgetting as well. Too much.

There are many things I dreamed of once that I know now I’ll never do. So many opportunities I missed, situations I failed to grasp, mistakes I made that will never really be righted. I carry some baggage, old ratty parcels packed with disappointment and regret. I’ve wasted too much time worrying, backsliding into fear, when I could have loved and lived more boldly. I’ve skimmed the surface of life when I could have been diving deep.

American democracy is backsliding in the twenty-first century. The root cause is the combination of three factors. First, political tribalism that enflames age-old cognitive biases. Second, brand-new social-media platforms that transform how people publish, consume, and process information. And third, long-entrenched structural deficiencies, like the two-party duopoly, that distort the US political system. The combination of these three components is a flywheel spinning faster and faster every day. Social media exacerbates tribalism by feeding users confirmatory and incendiary political news. The two-party political system compounds the resulting irrationality by pitting two juggernauts against each other in a bitter, all-consuming rivalry that stifles and deforms the marketplace of ideas. The polarized political debate, in turn, turbocharges over-stimulated tribal biases with partisan falsehoods (e.g., Trump colluded with Russia to hack the DNC’s email servers), gross caricatures (e.g., Hillary Clinton is a crooked felon), and abhorrent stupidities (e.g., Barack Obama was born in Kenya). And so the flywheel spins. This throbbing frenzy erodes respect for the Constitutional principles and essential traditions of American democracy examined in Part One—a respect that is necessary for them to function. Indeed, these principles and traditions aren’t laws of physics; they are rules for structuring society that require good faith, compromise, and broad consent to work. And they will eventually disintegrate if the American people continue to ignore them while fixating instead on short-term political battles.

How can God be so cruel in his rejection of their plea? His response is that the nation is condemned for its corporate sins. And judgment against the nation has been accruing for many years, particularly since Manasseh reintroduced idolatry in Judah. Moreover, God knows that many people who have sincerely turned to him for a time will later backslide and turn away. So at this time in history God’s compassion is cautious.

With God on Our Side August 13, 2024 at 7:30 AM [Verse] This country’s going to hell, it's plain to see, So let's put God back where He should be. We, the people, must take a stand, Together we're strong, hand in hand. [Verse 2] Out here in the country, where life is tough, With calloused hands, we know how to be rough. We'll take back this land, through toil and fight, With faith in our hearts, we'll set things right. [Chorus] Proud Americans, leading the way, We won't back down, come what may. Standin' up for what's ours, with God on our side, For our country, we'll rise, never backslide. [Verse 3] Through fields of golden grain, where freedom grows, In small-town squares, where everyone knows, We'll stand united, let our voices be heard, Living by truth, not just by word. [Verse 4] In every church bell's toll, in every prayer, Our spirit's strong, we'll show we care. No room for compromise, we'll hold the line, For faith and country, through the test of time. [Chorus] Proud Americans, leading the way, We won't back down, come what may. Standin' up for what's ours, with God on our side, For our country, we'll rise, never backslide.

A backsliding Christian compromises their faith and causes unbelievers to mock the Gospel.

When I say “Christianese,” I am referring to informal, homogenous, and often vacant lingo intended to sound theologically profound. “God just laid it on my heart.” “Our pastor really brings the Word.” “The Bible helps us ‘do life’ together”—that kind of thing. Christianese simplifies the complex, complicates the simple, leans heavily into bumper-stickerisms, and often has the effect of making the speaker sound like they learned English from church marquees. In Christianese, you don’t merely read the Bible, you “spend time in the Word.” You aren’t disconnecting from God, you are “backsliding.” You aren’t sharing time and food with friends, you are “fellowshipping.” Your donation isn’t a gift or tithe, it is a “love offering.” You don’t have a devotional, you have “quiet time.

XV. Personal Work—Three Kinds of Church Services—Church Members—Individual Experience—One Inquirer at a Time—Those who lack Assurance—Backsliders—Not Convicted of Sin—Deeply Convicted—The Divinity of Christ—Can’t Hold Out—No Strength—Feelings—Can’t Believe—Can’t be Saved all at Once—Not Now—Further Suggestions. PERSONAL dealing is of the most vital importance. No

Your Mindless Margin. By making 100–200 calorie changes in your daily intake, you won’t feel deprived and backslide. • Mindless Better Eating. Focus on reengineering small behaviors that will move you from mindless overeating to mindless better eating. Five common places to look (diet danger zones) include meals, snacks, parties, restaurants, and your desk or dashboard. • Mindful Reengineering. To trim your mindless margin, you can use basic diet tips, but a more personalized approach is to use 1) food trade-offs, or 2) food policies. Both give you a chance to eat some of what you want without making it a belabored decision. • The Power of Three. Design three easy, do-able changes that you can mindlessly make without much sacrifice. • Mindless Margin Checklist. Use this daily checklist to help you move from mindless overeating to mindless better eating.

Great is repentance, because for the sake of one that truly repenteth the whole world is pardoned; as it is written (Hosea xiv. 4), 'I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely, for mine anger is turned away from him.'" It is not said, "from them," but "from him.

Another reason to avoid stopping a good habit is that, sadly, starting again is often far harder than starting the first time. It’s natural to think, “Oh, I did this before, it will be easy to do it again,” but often it’s much harder to start again. True, taking that first step the first time around can be hard, but there’s also a special energy and optimism to launching a new habit. When I’ve tried to summon up the same energy for restarting a lapsed habit, it hasn’t worked very well. The novelty has worn off, I’ve remembered all the reasons I struggle with that habit, and it’s discouraging to feel myself backsliding.

The reason why many ministers go astray is that they underestimate what they were called to do

If you do not evaluate your salvation highly enough, then in time you will backslide