Saturday, March 8, 2014

論寬恕On Forgiveness



C.S. Lewis
1960
Bill Lin

我們在教會裡(也在教會外面)不經思考的說了一大堆事情。譬如我們在念信經上的“我信罪得寬恕”,我這樣子說了好多年以後,才問自己,為什麼信經會這麼寫? 乍看之下,好像不值得一提;我想:「假如你是個基督徒,你當然相信罪得寬恕,不用說,必然如此。」

但是當年編寫信經的那些人,似乎認為這是我們的信仰中,每一到教會就必須得被提醒的那一部份。而且我也看到了這一點,依我的看法,他們是對的。要信罪得寬恕並不像我當初想的那麼容易。要真正的去相信它,就像某些東西,假如我們不持續的練習,很容易就會忘掉的。

我們相信,神赦免我們的罪;不過,除非我們先寬恕別人的冒犯,祂是不會這樣子做的;這一點也是無庸置疑的。它出自“主禱文”,是我們的主,耶穌特別強調的。假如你不寬恕人,你就不被寬恕。絕無例外。

祂不是說:我們必須寬恕別人的罪,因為他們不那麼可惡,或因為他們情有可原,或類似的種種原因。不管多噁心、多壞、慣犯累犯,通通寬恕。假如我們不這麼做,我們自己的任一過錯也都不被寬恕。

依我看來,有關神的恕罪和我們被教導的寬恕別人的過錯上,我們經常都犯了個錯誤:先講神的恕罪;我發現,當我以為我是在求神恕罪的時候,其實我經常(除非我把自己看得很緊)是在求祂做完全不同的事。我並不求祂赦免我,而是要祂因為我的藉口而放我一馬。但是在這世上,寬恕和原諒是有很大的不同的。

對於寬恕是這麼說的:「是的,你已經做了這件事,但是我接受你的道歉;我不會再拿這件事來責怪你,我們兩者之間的關係,是完好如初。」假如這個人真正沒有什麼好責怪的,那也沒啥好寬恕的。在這個意義上寬恕,原諒幾乎是對立的。

當然,在許多狀況下,不論是在神與人之間或人與人之間,寬恕和原諒或許有些混淆;有些一開始像是有罪過的,結果真的大家都沒錯而不了了之;其餘的那些也被寬恕了。假若你有一個很好的藉口,你並不需要被寬恕;假若你整個行為需要被寬恕,你也不需要有藉口。

****

We say a great many things in church (and out of church too) without thinking of what we are saying. For instance, we say in the Creed "I believe in the forgiveness of sins." I had been saying it for several years before I asked myself why it was in the Creed. At first sight it seems hardly worth putting in. "If one is a Christian," I thought "of course one believes in the forgiveness of sins. It goes without saying." But the people who compiled the Creed apparently thought that this was a part of our belief which we needed to be reminded of every time we went to church. And I have begun to see that, as far as I am concerned, they were right. To believe in the forgiveness of sins is not so easy as I thought. Real belief in it is the sort of thing that easily slips away if we don't keep on polishing it up.

We believe that God forgives us our sins; but also that He will not do so unless we forgive other people their sins against us. There is no doubt about the second part of this statement. It is in the Lord's Prayer, it was emphatically stated by our Lord. If you don't forgive you will not be forgiven. No exceptions to it. He doesn't say that we are to forgive other people's sins, provided they are not too frightful, or provided there are extenuating circumstances, or anything of that sort. We are to forgive them all, however spiteful, however mean, however often they are repeated. If we don't we shall be forgiven none of our own.

Now it seems to me that we often make a mistake both about God's forgiveness of our sins and about the forgiveness we are told to offer to other people's sins. Take it first about God's forgiveness, I find that when I think I am asking God to forgive me I am often in reality (unless I watch myself very carefully) asking Him to do something quite different. I am asking him not to forgive me but to excuse me. But there is all the difference in the world between forgiving and excusing. Forgiveness says, "Yes, you have done this thing, but I accept your apology; I will never hold it against you and everything between us two will be exactly as it was before." If one was not really to blame then there is nothing to forgive. In that sense forgiveness and excusing are almost opposites. Of course, in dozens of cases, either between God and man, or between one man and another, there may be a mixture of the two. Part of what at first seemed to be the sins turns out to be really nobody's fault and is excused; the bit that is left over is forgiven. If you had a perfect excuse, you would not need forgiveness; if the whole of your actions needs forgiveness, then there was no excuse for it. But the trouble is that what we call "asking God's forgiveness" very often really consists in asking God to accept our excuses. What leads us into this mistake is the fact that there usually is some amount of excuse, some "extenuating circumstances." We are so very anxious to point these things out to God (and to ourselves) that we are apt to forget the very important thing; that is, the bit left over, the bit which excuses don't cover, the bit which is inexcusable but not, thank God, unforgivable. And if we forget this, we shall go away imagining that we have repented and been forgiven when all that has really happened is that we have satisfied ourselves without own excuses. They may be very bad excuses; we are all too easily satisfied about ourselves.

There are two remedies for this danger. One is to remember that God knows all the real excuses very much better than we do. If there are real "extenuating circumstances" there is no fear that He will overlook them. Often He must know many excuses that we have never even thought of, and therefore humble souls will, after death, have the delightful surprise of discovering that on certain occasions they sinned much less than they thought. All the real excusing He will do. What we have got to take to Him is the inexcusable bit, the sin. We are only wasting our time talking about all the parts which can (we think) be excused. When you go to a Dr. you show him the bit of you that is wrong - say, a broken arm. It would be a mere waste of time to keep on explaining that your legs and throat and eyes are all right. You may be mistaken in thinking so, and anyway, if they are really right, the doctor will know that.

The second remedy is really and truly to believe in the forgiveness of sins. A great deal of our anxiety to make excuses comes from not really believing in it, from thinking that God will not take us to Himself again unless He is satisfied that some sort of case can be made out in our favor. But that is not forgiveness at all. Real forgiveness means looking steadily at the sin, the sin that is left over without any excuse, after all allowances have been made, and seeing it in all its horror, dirt, meanness, and malice, and nevertheless being wholly reconciled to the man who has done it.

When it comes to a question of our forgiving other people, it is partly the same and partly different. It is the same because, here also forgiving does not mean excusing. Many people seem to think it does. They think that if you ask them to forgive someone who has cheated or bullied them you are trying to make out that there was really no cheating or bullying. But if that were so, there would be nothing to forgive. (This doesn't mean that you must necessarily believe his next promise. It does mean that you must make every effort to kill every taste of resentment in your own heart - every wish to humiliate or hurt him or to pay him out.) The difference between this situation and the one in which you are asking God's forgiveness is this. In our own case we accept excuses too easily, in other people's we do not accept them easily enough. As regards my own sins it is a safe bet (though not a certainty) that the excuses are not really so good as I think; as regards other men's sins against me it is a safe bet (though not a certainty) that the excuses are better than I think. One must therefore begin by attending to everything which may show that the other man was not so much to blame as we thought. But even if he is absolutely fully to blame we still have to forgive him; and even if ninety-nine per cent of his apparent guilt can be explained away by really good excuses, the problem of forgiveness begins with the one per cent of guilt that is left over. To excuse, what can really produce good excuses is not Christian charity; it is only fairness. To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.

This is hard. It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single great injury. But to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life - to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son - How can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night "Forgive our trespasses* as we forgive those that trespass against us." We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it is to refuse God's mercy for ourselves. There is no hint of exceptions and God means what He says. 

Sunday, March 2, 2014

Facebook 股票的option market




Facebook 1月底報完業績,下次報業績在4月底。所以如果有勁爆的事情會發生的話,5月的option 賭盤可見端倪。現在只開出517日的monthly option, weekly option 還沒開始。

2/28的關門價是$68.46/股。

有人願意先給你$2.38/股的預約金,如果到了5/17關門價超過$80/股,你必須賣給他$80/股,你會不會心動?

有人願意先給你$1.54/股的預約金,如果到了5/17關門價超過$85/股,你必須賣給他$85/股,你會不會心動?

還有人願意先給你$1.00/股的預約金,如果到了5/17關門價超過$90/股,你必須賣給他$90/股,你會不會心動?

你覺得哪個contract比較好? $80? $85? $90? 為什麼?

你會在這幾天趁低價買些FB股票來賣那些option contract ?

假設FB的股票在5/17只到了$79.98/股,賣了option contract的人仍舊保有股票,賣了不同contract的人,仍舊保有不等的預約金在口袋裡。假設FB的股票在5/17漲到了$82.98/股,賣$80 contract 的人每股少賺了60 cents, 但是他等於是賣到了$82.38/股。假如你的本金是$69.23/股,你應該高興賺了$13.15/股,或是懊惱少賺了$0.60/?

如果沒有看到這篇文章,你會想像到FB5月中會漲到 $80? $85? $90? 而且還有人會給你錢表明他的信心嗎?

股票學生守則



1. 一定要有兩本Note Book, 小本的記下每天的進出帳,大本的整理出每種股票的買賣帳,每種股票預留兩三張空白篇幅。買的記在左半部,賣的記在右半部,淨賺的記在最右邊上。記得據實記載。如果有機會要與我面談股票買賣問題時,我一定要看你的簿子。不可以用鉛筆記(因為可以擦掉更改)

2. 不需要cost averaging, 那是浪費時間,而且騙人騙自己。一定要一筆賣對應一筆買,冤有頭, 債有主,搞得清清楚楚。最好能記得為什麼買?為什麼賣?為什麼賺這麼多?為什麼賺這麼少?記不得也無所謂,但是萬一賠了,一定要記得為什麼賠了?因為我一定會追究。

3. 記得股票是商品,是貨物,是拿來買賣賺錢用的,不是用來搞意識形態,不是買來當紀念的,不是買來當股東,不是買來經營公司(誰讓你插嘴插手?),不是因為用Apple產品所以買Apple股票,不是用來炫燿人的。記得:我們是殷實的擺地攤的(看到警察不用跑),我們要買進,也要賣出,買低賣高;不要買高賣低來找我哭訴。

4. 沒膽子的不要來;自認命不好的不要來;有depression的不要來;玩票的不要來;緊張型的不要來(有人大膽但是很緊張)

5. 我們是真的在做, 不是在玩“大富翁”的遊戲, 玩假的不要來, 不然每天眼巴巴的看人家賺錢, 你會很難過的。

6. 有聰明才智很好,但是要度過難關主要是靠信心和恆心(不是靠貪心)。

7. 不要把以上的每一條守則當成是在天上飛的氣球。

** 想到了再加