Abraham as the Ideal Man of Faith
The question is frequently asked, “What does it mean to have faith?” “What does it mean to be faithful?” The path to righteousness has always been one paved in good faith, and this is a well-known fact. The ideal man of faith, it can be reasoned, would be the man who was the most suitable spiritual companion for God. This would be someone with whom God could speak with, and fulfill his wishes for human beings there within. God would not simply want a servant, but a friend who would walk through his life with God. This is a hard man to find. One place worshippers of God are always certain to look for an example is the Bible. The Old Testament offers many differing examples of men of faith. Some men of faith closely looked at in the Old Testament are Abraham, Noah, and Job. Abraham can be viewed as the ideal man of faith because his relationship with God exceeded those of Noah and Job. His relationship was ideal in that there was true communication and a mutual respect. While Noah and Job were men of faith, their relationships were not ideal because Noah did not truly communicate and Job lacked both respect and trust for the Lord.
Abraham was God’s chosen “father of all nations.” He and God shared a relationship that no other man ever shared with God. God says to Abraham:
I will make of you a great nation,
And I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
So that will be your blessing.
I will bless those who bless you
And curse those who curse you.
All the communities of the earth
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...ause he never lacked trust or respect for the Lord. Even when God demanded that Abraham kill his own son, Abraham never once lost any respect or trust. He merely had faith.
The conclusion to be drawn is a fairly easy one. Abraham was the ideal man of faith, due to his upholding of the vital elements of the ideal, as well as the fact that he was the best companion for God. He proved that devotion does not necessarily mean just strict servitude, but that it also means maintaining a relationship on a level that servants cannot. Also, he showed that a mutual respect must be present if a relationship will work, and that trust is required at all times. Faith was never a “sometimes” thing for Abraham. He took it to the fullest extent at every moment, which is why he was the ideal man of faith. He did everything necessary to be the ideal companion for God.
The main religion of the Western World is Christianity whose root is based in Judaism. The base of the beliefs rests in the Creator who made an individual person and gave each a single soul. With this belief, a person is considered a complete entity. Combined with the notion that a man was created in the image of the Creator and in the monotheistic sense, this inevitably leads to the essence of a complete physical being as well. The view for an individual rights therefore is perceived to be individualistic for a person as a unit. This is further demonstrated with the concept of “all men were created equal”. A person’s human rights can be thus defined and is finite within a social setting. The implication of theses determined rights are often exhibited in the phrase: “God’s given rights”. The “hard relationships” as view toward human rights in western society can be directly attributed to this physical form with a unique and single soul.
Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher in the mid 1800s. He is known to be the father of existentialism and was at least 70 years ahead of his time. Kierkegaard set out to attack Kant’s rational ethics and make attacks on the Christianity of our day. He poses the question, how do we understand faith? He states that faith equals the absurd. In “Fear and Trembling”, he uses the story of Abraham and his son Isaac to show an example of faith as the absurd. The story of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac signifies a break in the theory that ethics and religion go hand in hand. He shows how the ethical and the religious can be completely different. “I by no means conclude that faith is something inferior but rather that it is the highest, also that it is dishonest of philosophy to give something else in its place and to disparage faith” (Fear and Trembling, 12).
McManus, Doyle. “Drawing Budget Battle Lines.” Editorial. Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 14 Apr. 2011. Web. 5 June 2011. .
U.S Federal Deficit and Debts:Understanding the history and context. (2011, November 1). Utah Foundation. Retrieved January 25, 2014, from http://www.utahfoundation.org/img/pdfs/rr7
Abraham questioned the belief of worshipping these gods. He did not think there were many gods, but to go against his people in this way was not normal. Still Abraham decided that only one God made the universe, and that one God should be honored with prayer. Abraham would start to gather small groups around him who believed as he did.
“The Budget and Economic Outlook : Fiscal Years 2010 to 2020.” Congress of the United States
With the appearance of Abraham we enter into datable history. Abraham (known as “the father of the Jews”) is also significant because the nation of Israel are his descendants.
The United States’ national debt is $18 trillion and increases $16,692 every second (“National”). This debt amounts to $56,704 per citizen (“National”). The government plans to spend $3.9 trillion in the year 2015 (“Federal”). This money comes from taxpayers. When the government does not raise enough revenue to cover their budget, the U.S. Treasury borrows more funds. The government creates many problems for the United States when they spend money that increases the national debt. The most important problem in the United States is the government’s financial spending.
The First Noble Truth states that "Life is Dukkha." Dukkha, in English “suffering", exists, even that this is the natural and universal state of beings. To live, one must suffer because it is an inevitable part of life, which one cannot avoid. All beings must endure physical suffering as well as enduring psychological suffering the form of many human emotions. Human beings are subject to impermanence and uncertainty which very often, causes us to associate with things that are unpleasant and disassociate with things that are pleasant. This may seem a bit cynical and may suggest to many individuals that Buddhism is a dismal, fatalistic religion yet it just implies we must accept the good with the bad. Buddha’s first noble truth is a statement that can obviously not be denied.
In conclusion, the advantages of participative budgeting include an increase and transferral of information, an increase in subordinate morale and job satisfaction, the development of negotiation skills and goal congruence. However these advantages only come into full affect when particular conditions are present, without these conditions it may turn into a disadvantage through budgetary slack, low job satisfaction and responsibility.
In Buddhism the law of karma is the moral law of causation - good actions give good results and vice versa. It is the quality of an act, which determines its consequences. But what determines the karmic quality of a deed? In Hinduism it is the correct performance of a person's "duty", especially his caste duties that counts. Early Buddhism, which recognized no caste distinctions, evaluates the karmic quality of an act in terms of moral and ethical criteria. In particular it is the mental factors, which accompany the commission of deed that determines its consequences or "fruits" (vipâka). All negative karma (i.e. those leading to bad consequences) arise from the three roots of unwholesomeness. These are greed (lobha), aversion (dosa), and delusion (moha). Accordingly good karmic results follow from deeds that spring from generosity (caga), loving-kindness (mettâ) and wisdom (vijjâ). The Buddha emphasized that it is the mental factors involved rather than the deeds themselves that determine future consequences. Thus the same deed committed with different mental factors will have different consequences. Likewise purely accidental deeds may have neutral consequences, however if the accident occurred because insufficient mindfulness was exercised it could have adverse results for the person responsible for it.
Most Buddhists believe that the negative actions and beliefs of human beings such as greed, anger and ignorance give rise to evil. These three things stop Buddhists from reaching enlightenment. Buddhists do not believe that human beings are evil, but they generally accept that humans create suffering through their greed, anger and ignorance. The story about suffering in buddhists perspective has to do with when Siddhartha (The person who became the buddha) left the palace where he lived, the three people he saw were an old man, an ill man and a dead person. This taught him that people suffer in life. The Four Noble Truths are a summary of the Buddha's teachings. It is these truths that the Buddha taught to his first disciples after he was enlightened. The four noble truths are Dukkha - meaning the truth of suffering, Samudaya - meaning the truth of the origin of suffering, Nirodha - meaning the truth of the cessation (end) of suffering and finally, Magga - the truth of the path to the cessation (end) of suffering. "I teach suffering, its origin, cessation and path. That's all I teach", declared the Buddha 2500 years ago.Suffering comes in many forms. Three obvious kinds of suffering correspond to the first three sights the Buddha saw on his first journey outside his palace: old age, sickness and death. But according to the Buddha, the problem of suffering goes much deeper. Life is not ideal: it frequently fails to live up to our
A company's budget serves as a guideline in planning and committing costs in order to meet tactical and strategic goals. Tactical goals such as providing budgetary costs for daily operations, and strategic objectives that include R&D, production, marketing, and distribution are all part of the budgeting process. Serving as a guideline rather than being set in stone, the budget is a snapshot of manager's "best thinking at the time it is prepared." (Marshall, 2003, p.496) The budget is a method in which to reign-in discretionary spending, and will likely show variances between what costs have been anticipated and what costs are actually incurred.
‘Beyond Budgeting is the set of guiding principles that, if followed, will enable an organization to manage its performance and decentralize its decision making process without the need for traditional budgets. Its purpose is to enable the organization to meet the success factors of the information economy (e.g. being adaptive in unpredictable conditions).’
Every government entity has a primary goal, which is to be as efficient and effective as possible while expending the smallest amount of resources. In addition, the resources expended cannot be more than the resources received as revenues. The budgeting process is a tool that assists government entities in being both efficient and effective. Before a budget can be adequately prepared, you must first understand the budgeting concept and secondly be knowledgeable of budget types.