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.
We’ve all had moments in our lives where it seemed like all hope was lost. I remember sitting at my desk in high school, staring at an AP Chemistry test that might as well have been written in Latin. I felt so doomed. My mind spun. I was going to fail this test. I was going to fail the class. Would I have to take summer school? Would I be able to get into my dream college? I had catastrophized this one test into determining the trajectory of my future years.
Have you ever sent off an email or a text with the jab of an angry finger? Have you ever slammed a door or punched a wall? Have you ever hung up on someone? We all have conflict in our lives.
We encounter conflict daily: we have disagreements with our spouses, parents, children, co-workers, and neighbors. But how do we navigate conflict and come out the other side in one piece? How do we not become the worst version of ourselves during conflict? What if conflict provided an opportunity for us to grow as people and also to glorify God?
Your Attention Span Isn’t Dead – Yet: Rebecca Ruiz begins, “I have a modest dare for you, dear reader: Try to stay on this page for longer than 47 seconds. That may seem like a ridiculously short and easy period to focus on one task, but studies show that the average time spent on a single screen has shrunk to less than a minute.”
How Should We Handle Outrage? Amy Hall reminds us, “It’s not wrong to be outraged by evil. Our desire for justice flows directly from our love for God and our knowledge of his magnificent, righteous, beautiful character. Because he is the standard of all justice, we likewise love justice. Because he is the Creator, all truth is valuable. And because we love the truth, lies are maddening. Because he has explained what it means to love, we know how to truly help people. And because we love people, injustices infuriate. God himself is angry at evil because evil destroys human beings, who are created in his image, so our outrage is understandable.”
Facts Don’t Care About Your Healings: This is a dense, but important post by Samuel James. He draws toward this conclusion, “Ben Shapiro’s famous tweet “Facts don’t care about your feelings” has come to symbolize the reactionary conservative movement. Feelings are thought now to be left-coded, and facts right-coded. This isn’t all that new. But the recoding of justice/forgiveness suggests that it is now conservatives who find themselves the party of emotional health, over and against the progressives as the party of capital-L Law.”
Don’t Be a Fig Leaf: Kim Barnes, “Yet we are often uncomfortable when people we love confess sin. Almost like a reflex, we want to reassure and comfort. How many times has someone apologized to you and your automatic response was: “It’s okay”? We minimize the sins of others because we minimize our own sin. While we should love and forgive the friend who comes to us in confession, it’s not okay. Sin is not okay.”
The Peace of Wild Things: Stop what you’re doing and give just over a minute of your attention to this beautiful poem that echoes Jesus’s words about the sparrow.
I wake up first in our home. I get dressed and start the coffee. I wake up Angel and our two teenage kids. The other day, I wake my daughter up with a kiss to the forehead, “good morning, sweetie, it’s time to wake up.” “No, it isn’t!” she responded, pulling her covers over her head. My first whiff of conflict.
I go back downstairs and work on breakfast. At 6:50 everyone is supposed to be gathered around the table. Usually only one of the three is there. I would tell you who, but you know, conflict. It lurks again.
She was desperate. The bleeding started 12 years ago. It began as a typical period and then just didn’t stop. The perpetual loss of blood left her weak and with constant cramping. Ceremonially unclean, she couldn’t go to the temple or the high holy days. She wasn’t allowed to touch her friends or family as she would make them unclean. Loneliness crept in. She went to doctor after doctor. She took herbs and minerals, and oils. Her finances diminished as her desperation increased. She was lonely and depressed.
Should Christian Parents Send Their Children to Public Schools: I’ve appreciated all of these debates and this one between Jen Wilkin and Jonathan Pennington demonstrates humility, grace, and understanding.
The Safest Place: Andrea Seaborn with an invitation, “When we live in His presence rather than imagining ourselves under His thumb, possibilities tumble in—frightening, exhilarating, wonder-filled or painful, but meaningful. Purposeful. Real.”
Be Slow to Pull the ‘God’ Card: Will Anderson says, “When the conversation turns from concrete biblical revelation to promptings, senses, urges, spontaneous thoughts, and claims of “God told me so,” it can feel squishy and prone to abuse.”
Telling the Truth: Brenda Pauken directs this to counselors, but the importance of learning to dig to be honest with oneself is important for all of us, “Many of us tell ourselves untrue things that make us feel better in the moment but don’t serve us well in the long run. Consider, “Yes, that was hard, but I’m fine,” or “It wasn’t a big deal.” These statements, along with “I had a happy childhood,” prevent us from facing the reality of our lives and hearts.” The second part of this piece is also well worth reading.
World Nature Photography Awards: Wow! That croc eye! And check out that Preying Mantis taking down a lizard.
Stripped for Parts: Chris Davis considers the destructive power of lust. “Lust instead reduces a person to shapes, angles, and proportions, to their nearness to the body type du jour. Porn literally strips human beings for parts. With a click or swipe, online users can view other human beings, stripped of clothes, in order to view their most intimate parts.”
What to Do When Your Friend is Considering Suicide: Jonathan Noyes offers, “If you are worried about someone, express your concern. Don’t be afraid to ask directly, “Have you thought about suicide?” Using that word will not push them towards taking their own life, but it will remove any ambiguity or grey area in the conversation.”
Giving to Large Churches Drops even as Charitable Giving Rises: Bob Smietana reports, “Churches with budgets under $2 million saw giving go down by 8%, while those with budgets of more than $20 million saw giving go down by 2.5%.”
Kept: Kristin begins, “This is for the one who is feeling wobbly today. Perhaps you have been flattened: cast aside by another, gossiped about, slandered while doing good.”
3 Elements of Biblical Spirituality: J.A. Medders with a helpful visual that clarifies this truth, “What we believe from the Bible, how we love and respond in the heart, and how we live and practice in life—that's true spirituality.”
I was born in Fairbanks, Alaska. During the dead of winter, there are several weeks when the sun skims the horizon for a mere four hours a day. If you move north to the Arctic Circle, there are days without sunlight.
Can you imagine a world without light? A world where you can’t see your hand in front of your face?
Little kids love re-watching movies. The movie might play in the background as a sort of interactive wallpaper, as their attention is locked on playing with the nearest doll or a truck. Then they’ll freeze, attention rapt on the screen, “This is my favorite part!” The movie is no longer the wallpaper; it is a focal point.
Many of us have faith that latches onto specific parts of the Easter story. But the gospel includes every part of the story. Is there an aspect of the Easter story that you focus on? Over the next two weeks, we will consider five parts of the Easter story and reflect on how each component can enrich our faith.
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