With the eight beatitudes, Jesus lays the foundation for the Sermon on the Mount. The…
Category: Christian Character
Among the assorted consequences of social media usage is one of particular importance: we have been trained to assume that anyone who holds a different or an opposing point of view has evil intent. Make no mistake: it is in the financial interests of media companies to make us hate one another. And the fault does not lie with them, it lies with us. We have allowed them to train us in the art of hatred.
The Declaration of Independence enshrines the “pursuit of happiness” as a God-given right. Some folks…
Pain is one of the reasons why we search for meaning and purpose in life. We all suffer from time to time (or, in some cases, all the time). An untimely death, an unexpected illness, a particularly malevolent co-worker, or a terrible accident strikes and suddenly our perception of life is crushed by reality. We think, “life wasn’t supposed to be this way.” We wonder why we have it so hard when others seemingly have it so easy. Our sense of justice and fairness is violated. Why me? Why now? Why, God, why?
I’m a Kansas City Royals baseball fan which means I have watched a lot of bad baseball for the past 25 years. Like many of my fellow KC seam-heads, I thoroughly enjoyed their return to relevance in 2014-17. What made the Royals’ championship in 2015 especially satisfying was their emphasis on tried and true baseball principles — speed and defense — combined with exploiting a facet of the game undervalued by the market: an outstanding bullpen. The Royals reminded an industry dominated by saber-metrics that there are multiple ways to reach the same goal.
At the core of Christianity resides three key elements — faith, hope, and love — and all three elements share a common trait: they motivate one to act. James teaches us to live out our faith through works. John challenges us to love with deeds, not just words. And like its brethren, true hope compels one to seize a better future through action.
Over the past couple of decades, neuroscientists inadvertently discovered something fascinating — our brains naturally default to thinking about the future. They happened upon this little gem through the use of control groups who were instructed in various MRI studies to “think about nothing.” As researchers learned, our minds quickly drift from nothing to something, and the something we drift toward is thoughts of the future.
One of the more interesting books I read this last year was Making Hope Happen: Create the Future You Want for Yourself and Others. The author, Shane Lopez, was one of the lead researchers in the area of hope before his untimely death in 2016. Though Dr. Lopez takes a secular approach to the topic, I found a great deal of overlap between his conclusions and how the Bible presents hope. The empirical evidence along with revealed knowledge suggests we are “hard-wired” to be hopeful.