Who is your favorite celebrity? Your favorite political pundit? Your favorite politician?
Why are you drawn to these individuals? Maybe it is their personality. Perhaps it is because you respect their convictions. Possibly, it is because of their unique style.
Taylor Swift might be the most beloved celebrity in the world. Many have commented that one of the reasons that Swift has cultivated such a devoted following is her accessibility and down-to-earth qualities, from what she wears to the love stories she writes about in her music.
Bart Ehrman has perhaps done more to undermine the credibility of the Bible than anyone else in my lifetime. But his story didn’t begin that way. Ehrman is a New Testament scholar and skeptic. Ehrman grew up in a Christian home, attended a conservative Bible school, and then found his way to a liberal seminary where his faith in the God of the Bible unraveled. That seminary happens to be the seminary I would attend a couple of decades later.
For Ehrman, everywhere he looks he sees holes in the biblical story. The inconsistencies that he sees have led him to determine that he cannot trust in the God of the Bible.
“Don’t listen to your feelings; remember what Jesus did for you!”
“Don’t be guided by your feelings; listen to what God commands you to do!”
In just the past week, I heard both of these warnings. Two very different Christian speakers urged their audiences to shut down their feelings. These admonitions resonate. They contain truth. It is correct that our feelings don’t override truth, nor do our emotions negate what God has done. Neither do our feelings give us an out for what God commands us to do.
I had outsized emotions as a child. Games, especially, would get the best of me, whether cards or boardgames or sports. In response to a stroke of bad luck, a hot surge of anger would erupt, followed quickly by tears and then embarrassment.
Emotions are God’s gift to us in many ways. They are one of his kind ways of showing us where our deep attachments lie.
Our son started his freshman year at the University of Arizona this fall. It’s been a great experience for him, but not without its adjustments. The climate of a secular school is quite different than the Christian school he graduated from
Most have heard of the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment. In 1970, psychologist Walter Mischel invited kids into his lab. A child was offered a marshmallow that they could eat, or, if they waited until the researcher returned, they were given a second marshmallow. About one-third of the kids waited approximately fifteen minutes for the additional reward.
The study then tracked those children over time and found that children who waited for the second reward tended to have higher SAT scores and lower body mass indexes. Later tests have challenged those outcomes, but it hasn’t stopped parents everywhere from running the experiment on their kids, often with humorous results.
One afternoon, the spider and the dust mite met in the cool underside of a misshapen pillow.
Greetings and pleasantries concluded, an awkward silence grew. Intimidated by the size of the spider, the dust mite boasted, “Have you ever noticed how similar I am to an eagle?”
“You? Like an eagle?” the spider questioned scornfully.
“Oh yes,” the dust mite responded, gaining confidence. “I am like an eagle. Like an eagle, I have a head and legs and lay eggs.”
“What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?” It is not that Thomas doesn’t believe marriage can be a source of joy, but that we ask too much if we ask marriage to bring us our “happily ever after.” Joy will likely trail holiness if we make that the main aim in marriage, but if we aim at happiness, we will miss both happiness and holiness.
Angel and I can testify to how fragile marriage is. In the summer of 2009, our marriage began unraveling after my first three years of pastoral ministry—years I neglected Angel for my mistress, the church.
With over 1,000 videos and eight million subscribers, the Jubilee channel on YouTube is a popular platform for debate. Each episode of Jubilee brings people who have disagreements together to try to hash out their opposing opinions. They have episodes about everything from abortion to immigration to the Israel-Palestinian debate. In one of the episodes, two sides debate whether the earth is flat or not. Of the three proponents that the earth is flat, two of the three were Christians. The three opponents were all scientists.
How did we get here?
Christian friends, we’ve got to do better.
How do you greet your friends? “Good morning!” “Hey!” “How are you doing?”
Zip back 2000 years and drop yourself into a Christian community and you would have be welcomed with, “grace and peace to you.”
You’ve probably noticed those greetings in scripture before. Because our greetings tend to be tired, it’s unsurprising that we skip over these salutations. Let’s slow down and look at those five words and consider why they would be used so frequently.
What does “grace and peace” mean? How can we offer grace and peace?
YOLO is the new Epicureanism: Cameron Cole explains why YOLO (and FOMO) are just reheated old ideas. “If this life constitutes the entirety of your existence, then you absolutely must maximize your enjoyment. You must never miss an opportunity for fun and pleasure. If this life is it, then you live with a sense of urgency and fear that if you decline an invitation or miss a good time, then you are wasting your one and only finite life.”
The indiscipline of overwork: Ryan Holiday asks, “Do you want to be the artist who loses their joy for the process, who has strip-mined their soul in such a way that there is nothing left to draw upon? Burn out or fade away—that was the question in Kurt Cobain’s suicide note. How is that even a dilemma?
“Do you want to do this the easy way or the hard way?” That phrase has been used so frequently that it isn’t clear who first used it.
James urges us that the path that seems easy will ultimately be much more painful for us. We all long for peace but think we can walk our own path to get there. There is only one path to true peace: humility. James reminds us, “And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace” (James 3:18). And he exhorts us, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you” (James 4:10).
Four years ago my dad suffered a series of seizures that significantly impacted his health. His seizures were unusual. Because of the location of a brain tumor, his seizures were hard to detect unless you knew what to look for: confusion, facial droop, and right-side mobility limitations. While my dad’s medical care overall was very good, multiple times during his stay he had seizures that went undetected by nurses even though they saw him during the seizures. Their oversight was not intentional, but it was frustrating nonetheless.
One of the many disappointing realities about the American political landscape is the lack of ownership. It’s not just politicians who shirk ownership – we all do. When my microphone sounds wonky, my mind immediately goes to the sound tech wondering if he will remedy his mistake, not to the more likely responsible party: myself. I probably moved the microphone or pulled the cord.
Of course we know that avoiding ownership usually backfires. Our esteem falls for those who dodge responsibility. But even still, the temptation to blame shift is strong in all of us.
“I am what I feel” sums up expressive individualism. Our culture frames identity around discovering what our deepest desires and longings are. To know our longings is to know ourselves.
In Billie Eilish’s 2023 song “What was I made for?” written for “Barbie,” Eilish reflects on the confusing journey to understand her feelings. It’s this journey, she assures herself that will lead to her happiness.
Was anyone more alone? Charisse Compton reflects, “I am hardly alone in my loneliness. About one in four adults across the world suffers from a similar hunger. Bankrupt of any long-term solutions, the world suggests increased human interactions to alleviate the suffering. But for all our digital connectedness, the loneliness epidemic persists and grows.”
When I have intrusive thoughts: This is a subject I’ve done a lot of thinking about as well. Lara D’Entremont offers solid counsel, “Through therapy, I learned that fighting against intrusive thoughts is like trying to stop water from gushing out of your faucet with your hands—it will continue to burst through, perhaps even explosively.”
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