A man ought not to be so confined by any premeditated form as to neglect any special infusion, he should so prepare himself as if he expected no assistance, and he should so depend upon divine assistance as if he had made no preparation.
On one hand, some people refuse to ask any questions about effectiveness at all, on the grounds that facing up to ineffectiveness would just be too painful. They run on the "if I can help one fainting sparrow back to the nest, it will all have been worth it" standard, a standard by which it is very hard to fail.
If I'm not good at something, it's best to find it out clearly and early, grieve my inadequacy, and move on to more fertile possibilities. How many congregations—and pastors—and pastor's spouses—live in misery year after year because someone won't face the truth about where their gifts do and do not lie. How many of us don't grow because we are afraid of honest feedback. Truth is always our friend.
On the other hand …
Is there anything we don't evaluate to death? And I suspect the reason is that we are desperate to make sure we are perceived to be successful.
Yea, though we walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Performance, we will take another survey.
John Ortberg, CT Leadership, 16th February 2009
And since it is uncertain what will be the outcome of the business he is undertaking (except that he knows that in all things the Lord will provide for his benefit), he will aspire with zeal to that which he deems expedient for himself, as far as it can be obtained by intelligence and understanding. Yet in taking counsel he will not follow his own opinion, but will entrust and submit himself to God's wisdom, to be directed by his leading to the right goal. But his confidence will not so rely upon outward supports as to repose with assurance in them if they are present, or, if they are lacking, to tremble as if left destitute. For he will always hold his mind fixed upon God's providence alone, and not let preoccupation with present matters draw him away from steadfast contemplation of it.
...God's providence does not always meet us in its naked form, but God in a sense clothes it with the means employed.
The hill of Zion yieldsIsaac Watts
A thousand sacred sweets,
Before we reach the heavenly fields,
Or walk the golden streets.
I cannot think on the one without quickly being encircled by the splendour of the three; nor can I discern the three without bring straightway carried back to the one.
The same week that global wealth shrank by $7 trillion, Zimbabwe's inflation rate hit a record 231 million percent. In other words, if you had saved $1 million Zimbabwean dollars by Monday, on Tuesday it was worth $158. This sobering fact leads me to the third and most difficult stage of prayer in crisis: I need God's help in taking my eyes off my own problems in order to look with compassion on the truly desperate.
I promise I will always leave
The darkness for the light.
I swear by all that's holy
I will not give up the fight.
I'll drink down death like water
Before I ever come again
To that dark place where I might make
The choice for life to end.
Stephen to Lazarus
But was I the first martyr, who
Gave up no more than life, while you
Already free among the dead,
Your rags stripped off, your fetters shed,
Surrendered what all other men
Irrevocably keep, and when
Your bttered ship at anchor lay
Seemingly safe in the dark bay
No ripple stirs, obediently
Put out a second time to sea
Well knowing that your death (in vain
died once) must all be died again?
I know what certain rascals bawl out in corners in order to display the keenness of their wit in assailing God's truth. For they ask, Who assures us that the books that we read under the names of Moses and the prophets were written by them? they even dare question whether there ever was a Moses. Yet if anyone were to call in doubt whether there ever was a Plato, an Aristotle, or a Cicero, who would not say that such folly ought to be chastises with the fist or the lash.
Read Demosthenes or Cicero; read Plato, Aristotle, and others of that tribe. They will, I admit, allure you, delight you, move you, enrapture you in wonderful measure. But betake yourself from them to this sacred reading. Then, in spite of yourself, so deeply will it affect you, so penetrate your heart, so fix itself in your very marrow, that, compared with its deep impression, such vigor as the orators and philosophers have will nearly vanish. Consequently, it is easy to see that the Sacred Scriptures, which so far surpass all gifts and graces of human endevour, breath something divine.
If now every sin were to suffer open punishment, it would seem that nothing is reserved for the final judgement. Again, if God were now to punish no sin openly, one would believe that there is no providence.
...the most perfect way of seeking God...is not for us to attempt with bold curiosity to penetrate to the investigation of His essence, which we ought more to adore than to meticulously search out, but for us to contemplate Him in His works whereby he renders himself near and familiar to us, and in some manner communicates Himself...It is also fitting, therefore, for us to pursue this particular search for God, which may so hold our mental powers suspended in wonderment as at the same time to stir us deeply. And as Augustine teaches elsewhere, because, disheartened by His greatness, we cannot grasp Him, we ought to gaze upon His works, that we may be restored by His goodness.
I love books. I love to buy new books, collect old books, and cover my walls with books. Books are the scholarly jolts that begin my day and the literary nightcaps that bring my day to a close. Books are my hot chocolates, my Irish cream coffees, and my hot lattes with extra shots of espresso.
Tony Reinke
http://spurgeon.wordpress.com/2008/12/22/tip-1-capture-reading-time/
I call 'piety' that reverence joined with love of God which the knowledge of His benefits induces. For until men recognise that they owe everything to God, that they are nourished by His fatherly care, that He is the Author of their every good, that they should seek nothing beyond Him - they will never yield Him willing service. Nay, unless they establish their complete happiness in Him, they will never give themselves truly and sincerely to Him.
A few days before the summer solstice—Stephen Hawthorne's first Christmas in Bolivia—he saw women selling moss in the street, and he bought some for a manger scene. He and his wife arranged their Nativity figures on the moss, put some lights around it, and thought it looked lovely. Soon, members of the evangelical church they attended dropped by. "They were absolutely horrified when they saw what we'd done," says Hawthorne. "We said, 'What's the matter?' They said, 'This is idolatry.'"
Oddly enough, Hawthorne says, when he and his family visited one of the churches that condemned manger scenes, "We in our turn were horrified to see this huge blow-up figure of Santa Claus on top of the church. It was a lesson to us about how people give meaning to symbols."
Susan Wunderink, Christianity Today
Understanding and applying the doctrine of divine providence will be absolutely essential for any church leaders...One reason is that an understanding of providence will help them to fight the temptation to despair, or give up, in the face of the challenges ahead.
Circumstances do not dictate our character. Instead they reveal it and provide the opportunity to refine it. A good leader does not use bad circumstances as an excuse, but as an opportunity for great things to happen by God's grace.
As Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones once said, "The worst thing that can happen to a person is to succeed before he is ready." And when we get to heaven, perhaps we will discover that God worked overtime to keep success from us to preserve us.
Next day we made a late start in the rain…We had now brought ourselves to a pitch of humility in the matter of weather, not often obtained except in the Scottish Highlands. A rag of blue sky or a glimpse of sunshine set our hearts singing; and when the rain was not heavy, we counted the day almost fair.
An Inland Voyage, by RL Stevenson p.35
So our struggles with physical aging are the struggles between idolatry and grace...
Yes, outwardly I am wasting away, but I have real hope and real joy, because inwardly I am being renewed every day. What my life is really about can never be weakened by age or destroyed by years!
I have discovered that a significant part of my job is to stand in the middle of people's lives with them and be used of God to give them eyes to see. My job is to help them come out of hiding and to look through the fog of fear and destruction. My job is to help them see the powerful hand of a loving Redeemer who is not confused, uncaring or inactive.
In times of trial, it is our hearts that are under attack, and it is our hearts that get revealed. It is important to know our hearts, to assess where they are weak and vulnerable to temptation, and to do what we can to guard them. Remember, the decisions we make in moments of difficulty are not forced on us by the situations we are in but by what our hearts think and desire in the middle of them.
This, too, is a danger of the midlife struggle. In moments of disappointment and disorientation, in the grief of regret and the sadness at the death of our dreams, we are very vulnerable to making decisions that will add further trouble to the trouble we are already experiencing.
Faced with a player sending the ball towards them at 80 m.p.h. or more, the goalkeeper has only a fraction of a second to decide how to block the shot. It’s a fearful challenge: 4 out of 5 penalty kicks score a goal.
By analyzing data on more than 300 kicks, the researchers calculated the action most likely to prevent a goal being scored. Surprisingly, it is standing in the center of the goal and doing nothing until the trajectory of the ball can be seen. This resulted in a 1 in 3 success rate — far higher than the average.
Yet goalkeepers almost never act in this way. They typically try to guess the ball’s direction before the player’s foot has actually made contact with it, diving left or right to try to be in the right spot when the ball arrives. Neither is a good option. Diving left resulted in success 14% of the time; diving right only 12.6%.
Why then is it so common to act in a way that is even less successful than the average?
The researchers suggest that the answer lies in the goalkeepers’ emotions and the response they meet from others after failing. By taking action — even if it’s neither rational nor likely to be successful — they can at least be seen to have done something.
If they stand and wait until the ball is kicked and then fail to stop it, they feel worse because of their inaction; and others are far more likely to criticize them for not appearing even to try. It’s better to try a poor action than try a better — but seemingly passive — response if both fail; even though the “inactive” response is more rational and based on a better likelihood of success.
Lifehack March 5th 2008
The key to getting things done is to consistently get things done. It is about building a new habit and making it so much a part of you that you don’t have to think about how you’re going to get it done and what you’re going to do to psych yourself up for it; you just sit down and complete it.
Motivation is important, but I’d contend that it’s not a big part of how much you complete. It can certainly affect you on an off day, but if your problem is repeated, regular procrastination, your problem isn’t motivation. It’s bad habits...
...Discipline, which is at the core of building new habits until the associated actions don’t require discipline in order to be executed, is like a muscle.
James Boice said learning to pray is a little like learning to play the violin with the virtuosos. No instrument sounds worse in the beginning stages of learning; it's all screech and scratch. But if the student is determined to play well, he checks the program guide for the classical music station and notes when the violin concertos will be aired. He buys the score for each concerto and does his best to play along. At first he sounds terrible. As time passes, however, he begins little by little to sound more and more like the virtuosos. But all along, as he groans on his instrument, the orchestra plays the music beautifully—his poor performance is caught up and completed in the music of the masters.
Simplicity in life...is evidenced by the ability to live an uncluttered life with focus, creating margins in life by learning the principles of effectiveness, Learning to say no by having bigger yeses is the key to simplicity in life. Instead of doing a lot of things efficiently, it is important to do the right things for effectiveness.
...we find midlife hard because it is hard! We struggle with the plan because it is not our plan. We are disappointed because we age. We are dissatisfied because our dreams slipped out of our hands. We are discouraged that, in our sin, we failed many, many times. We are disappointed that good things come to an end and people move on. Midlife exposes how much we struggle with the fact that God completes his work of redemption in us by keeping us in the middle of all the harsh realities of the fall.
"the more directly one aims to maximize pleasure and avoid pain, the more likely one is to produce a life bereft of depth, meaning, and community."quoted Ortberg (see previous post)
Only when your whole attention is fixed on something else...does the "thrill" arise...It's very existence presupposes that you desire not it but something other and outer.Suprised by Joy, p.136
In our day, I think, we are seeing more accurate ways of understanding the gospel. But we need clarion calls of directness to help people respond today.
When Jesus walked the earth, the call "Follow me" was easily understood. People would actually, physically, bodily, walk with Jesus. People knew if they were following.
When the church formed, the call to follow Jesus was easily understood. There was an alternative community that met daily, that radically transformed people's financial lives, social lives, time, learning, allegiances, and hope. People knew if they were following.
In our day, that experience has become so diluted and enculturated that people have a hard time knowing.
The availability of life, with God, in his favor and power, as a gift of grace we receive by repentance and trust, through the death and resurrection of Jesus—that's the gospel with power. What needs still to be done is to find ways to express this with great clarity and simplicity, ways to help ordinary people know for sure they have made the great decision, the great commitment of their lives.
John Ortberg, Leadership online, October 20th 2008
Content thee, greedy heart.
Modest and moderate joys to those, that have
Title to more hereafter when they part,
Are passing brave.
Let th’ upper springs into the low
Descend and fall, and thou dost flow.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Midlife exposes what a person has really been living for and where a person has tried to find meaning and purpose. It has the power to reveal the significant gap between a person's confessional theology and their functional theology. What we say we are living for on Sunday may not, in fact, be the thing that has taken daily rulership over our hearts. And when these things which rule us are taken out of our hands, we tend to become angry, fearful, bitter or discouraged. We will experience a loss of identity and a flagging of meaning and purpose.
There is a way in which we don't live our life, but our life lives us. We just get carried along by its locations, relationships, situations, responsibilities, opportunities and activities without stopping very long to look, listen, and consider. Huge chunks of time can pass virtually unnoticed.
The struggles of midlife expose the true health and character of the relationships to which God has called me...
...everything we do is somehow shaped by who we think we are and what we have been called to do...
...midlife crisis is a struggle of identity and responsibility, and it exposes weaknesses in these area that have existed for a long time but are aid bare during this passage of life...
Instinctively, we organise things into the little boxes that we carry around in our brains. Sometimes we are wise enough to see that our boxes are too little or too few, but often we are quite skilled at squeezing our story into whatever boxes we happen to be carrying around in our minds. In doing so we fail to recognise how important and influential this interpretative function is. Life will always look like the categories you bring to it, and what you do will always be determined by the way you have organised your understanding of your own story.
...The overgeneralised category of 'adult' tends to ignore the fact that a human beings we are always in some kind of process of change...
...we do not live by the facts of our experiences, but by the ways that our interpretations have shaped those facts for us. The difficult disorientation of midlife is not because the passage itself is disorienting. Whatever trouble midlife brings to us is essentially caused by the wrong thinking we bring to it. Suddenly we see things about ourselves that have been developing for years but went by unnoticed...
FWIW, here’s my opinion: it’s neither. It’s just not that good or that bad.
The story behind the story is great: homespun tale for family and friends becomes global publishing phenomenon, through efforts of said friends who have to form a company to deal with success. But the novel itself is a good deal more ordinary.
Without giving too much away, it seems to be a novelised attempt to present Christianity to a post-modern, suffering world. A man who cannot recover from a terrible event gets an opportunity to talk to God about it - and in the process God is revealed as compassionate and purposeful. So where do the radical, new, unexpected bits come in?
Good question because, I dare to suggest, there aren’t many. The answers the book suggests are actually fairly traditional evangelical apologetics. For example, in understanding why this event could happen: it’s a broken world where bad stuff happens, God works through bad events to bring about a greater purpose, He still loves you despite the appearances of the situation (witness His nail scarred hands) and is not distant. Along with this comes the usual stuff about God never forces anyone to do anything, but basically you could read similar themes in books on providence, suffering and theodicy. Perhaps putting it into novel-form, these ideas can be communicated well to those who would be resistant to other forms. But it isn’t new or radical; although it does lapse into what I would think of as a leap in the dark when God reveals that the victim of the crime was accompanied by Him through the experience, that she was conscious of this and therefore wasn’t scared. So there is a theological answer, and a sentimental one: good things will come (fine) and they didn’t suffer fear (not so fine or realistic).
There does seem to me to be a note running through it which I also found in some emergent stuff: the author appears to be reacting against a kind of church background. The main character learns the Trinity is a loving communion, that God cares in sorrow etc and reacts as though church has never taught him these things. Many of us have been in churches where, actually, we have always heard this. So, although not stated explicitly, it does imply the same idea as, say, Rob Bell, that probably all churches are like that and we need something new and different. (Which is a remarkably narrow view for allegedly open-minded people.)
So, having said all this, what’s good and bad in my illustrious opinion?
GOOD
BAD
So what kind of book is it? It’s not a great book, because the writing is not up to, say, CS Lewis. This is evident for example in a sequence towards the end which resembles the final sections of Perelandra. I know which will stand out in my mind for the longest. But neither is it a terrible book. It may in fact open up helpful avenues for discussion. Would I buy it for a non-Christian friend? Maybe, if other routes had failed.
Badger.
The gospel message is not that' God so loved the world that He inspired a certain Jew to teach that there was a good deal to be said for loving one another'.
If Christ is an all-satisfying treasure and promises to provide all
our needs, even through famine and nakedness, then to live as
though we had all the same values as the world would betray
him. I have in mind mainly how we use our money and how we
feel about our possessions. I hear the haunting words of Jesus,
“Do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall
we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after
all these things” (Matthew 6:31-32). In other words, if we look
like our lives are devoted to getting and maintaining things, we
will look like the world, and that will not make Christ look
great. He will look like a religious side-interest that may be useful
for escaping hell in the end, but doesn’t make much difference
in what we live and love here. He will not look like an
all-satisfying treasure. And that will not make others glad in
God.
If we are exiles and refugees on earth (1 Peter 2:11), and if
our citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20), and if nothing can
separate us from the love of Christ (Romans 8:35), and if his
steadfast love is better than life (Psalm 63:3), and if all hardship
is working for us an eternal weight of glory (2 Corinthians 4:17),
then we will give to the winds our fears and “seek first the kingdom
of God and his righteousness” (Matthew 6:33). We will
count everything as rubbish in comparison with Christ
(Philippians 3:7-8). We will “joyfully accept the plundering of
our property” for the sake of unpopular acts of mercy (Hebrews
10:34). We will choose “ rather to be mistreated with the people
of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin,” and we will
count “the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures
of Egypt” (Hebrews 11:25-26).
Whatever else is true, it is emphatically not true that the ideas of Jesus of Nazareth were suitable to His time, but no longer suitable to our time. Exactly how suitable they were to His time is perhaps suggested in the end of His story.
The fulfilment of God's image is when we enter into the Trinitarian indwelling (keep the greatest commandment) and reproduce it among ourselves (keep the second, which is like the first). this is our eternal purpose; to do this is life...
God, having set Himself the task of making a creature that dwells in a community resembling the community of the Trinity, will not rest until He has accomplished all he has said.
Care worker Christopher Sloggett, 21, admitted driving without due care and attention.
He had lost control of his vehicle on the A39 at Playing Place a year ago and hit an oncoming car.
His badly injured ex-girlfriend in the front seat, 20-year-old Kim Quigley, had been eight months pregnant by another man at the time and lost her unborn boy, Thomas.
Serious charges of causing death by driving could not be brought against Sloggett because the law regards a person as alive only once they have taken their first independent breath outside the womb.
After the court case at Truro Magistrates last week, former nursery nurse Miss Quigley, now 21, called for a change in the law.
The police officer in charge of the case, Motor PC Claire Hawkins, said: “While we have to accept the sentence was proportionate to the charge brought against Mr Sloggett, nothing can reflect the terrible loss that Miss Quigley has suffered.
“Unfortunately, legislation does not account for the death of an unborn child and it was therefore not possible to bring a more serious charge before the court.”
...the adoration of technology pre-empts the adoration of anything else...[religious symbols must] be made impotent as quickly as possible - that is, drained of sacred, or even serious, connotations. The elevation of one god requires the demotion of another.(an example would be the way clergy are portrayed in the media as idiots or terrorists)
who pay no attention to a poll unless they know what questions were asked and why...people who:
Humanity is made both to represent God, to stand in his place, and also to resemble him to such a degree that we might be mistaken for him.
Thou mayest do in this as it is in thy heart. If it is in thy heart to fly, fly: if it be in thy heart to stand, stand. Anything but a denial of the truth. He that flies, has warrant to do so; he that stands, has warrant to do so. Yea, the same man may both fly and stand, as the call and working of God with his heart may be. Moses fled (Ex. 2:15); Moses stood (Heb 11:27). David fled (1 Sam. 19:12); David stood (1 Sam. 24:8). Jeremiah fled (Jer. 37:11-12); Jeremiah stood (Jer. 38:17). Christ withdrew himself (Luke 19:10); Christ stood (John 18:1-8). Paul fled (2 Cor. 11:33); Paul stood (Act 20:22-23). . . . There are few rules in this case. The man himself is best able to judge concerning his present strength, and what weight this or that argument has upon his heart to stand or fly. . . Do not fly out of a slavish fear, but rather because flying is an ordinance of God, opening a door for the escape of some, which door is opened by God's providence, and the escape countenanced by God's Word (Matt. 10:23).
God's grace, the only solution to death and evil, comes free of charge, apart from law, apart from any human efforts toward self-improvement. For a free gift, we need only hold out open, needy hands—the most difficult gesture of all for a self-righteously evil person.
"What is man? What am I? Why would the creator of the universe care about us, about me?"
David's question, so famously asked in Psalm 8, has been ringing in every human soul ever since we hid in the bushes from the sound of God's approach. We may have the option of ignoring the question's answer, but we do not have the ability not to ask it.
I was sitting on my front porch watching a rabbit hop across a field, towards the road and the field beyond. As the rabbit was just beginning to cross the road, a car came by hit it, knocking it flying over the car and onto the pavement.The driver slammed on the breaks, jumped out of the car and ran back to examine the rabbit. Then, she went back to the car, opened the trunk and got out an aerosol can. She returned to the rabbit, used the can; and to my surprise the rabbit revived. It got up, hopped a few steps towards the field, turned and gestured to the woman. It then hopped a few more steps into the field, turned and gestured, and continued on across the field and out of sight.
At this, I came over and questioned the driver about the contents of the aerosol, how it revived the rabbit and caused such odd behavior.
"Well," she said, "It's just hare restorer with permanent wave."
(Sorry, I couldn't resist)
http://merecomments.typepad.com/merecomments/2008/05/the-tragic-deat.html
They constantly try to escape
From the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.
But the man that is shall shadow
The man that pretends to be.
TS Eliot
Even more alarming: goodness is itself bereft of its proper beauty. In Faerie one can indeed conceive of an ogre who possesses a castle as hideous as a nightmare (for the evil of the ogre wills it), but one cannot conceive of a house built with a good purpose - an inn, a hostel for travellers, the hall of a virtuous and noble king - that is yet sickeningly ugly. At the present day it would be rash to hope to see one that was not - unless it as built before our time.
Not long ago - incredible though it may seem - I heard a clerk of Oxford declare that he 'welcomed' the proximity of mass-production robot factories, and the roar of self-obstructive mechanical traffic, because it brought his university into 'contact with real life'. He may have meant that the way men were living and working in the twentieth century was increasing in barbarity at an alarming rate, and that the loud demonstration of this in the streets of Oxford might serve as a warning that it is not possible to preserve for long an oasis of sanity in a desert of unreason by mere fences, without actual offensive action (practical and intellectual). I fear he did not. In any case the expression 'real life' in this context seems to fall short of academic standards. The notion that motor cars are more 'alive' than, say, centaurs or dragons is curious; that they are more 'real' than, say, horses is pathetically absurd. How real, how startlingly alive is a factory chimney compared with an elm tree: poor obselete thing, insubstantial dream of an escapist!
For my part, I cannot convince myself that the roof of Bletchley Station is more 'real' than the clouds. And as an artefact I find it less inspiring than the legendary dome of heaven. The bridge to platform 4 is to me less interesting than Bifrost guarded by Heimdall with the Gjallarhorn. From the wildness of my heart I cannot exclude the question whether railway-engineers, if they had been brought up on more fantasy, might have done better with all their abundant means than they commonly do. Fairy-stories might be, I guess, better Masters of Arts than the academic person I have referred to.
Much that he (I must suppose) and others (certainly) would call 'serious' literature is no more than play under a glass roof by the side of a municipal swimming bath. Fairy tales may invent monsters that fly the air or dwell in the deep, but at least they do not try to escape from heaven or the sea.
What did taking a Sabbath do for you?
I had been a workaholic, so I would work 24 hours a day. The first thing I would do when I woke up was check my Blackberry. The Sabbath is a great thing, because the Bible is saying you can't work. You can't check e-mail. You have to spend the day with your family. It's a real smell-the-roses type of day. I found it to be a day for joy, for just really reconnecting with my life and realizing that work is not everything. I loved it, but it was a huge struggle. I had to do it in stages. I still practice the Sabbath now. I'm Jewish, so I do it on Saturday. It's a day where I spend time with the family and refuse to work.
CT Leadership 8/4/08
...emotions are not best addressed by focussing on cosy feelings into which all worship participants may not be able to enter. Instead let us convey glorious and wonderful truths to which we might all respond with genuine emotions of our own. Subjectivities cannot be shared; telling you about my feelings will not bring about the same feelings in you. Only if I tell you what aroused my feelings can you respond to that same stimulus with subjective reactions of your own.Dawn p175.
This raises significant questions: Where is God when millions of his children are being persecuted in the most brutal ways? Why does he keep silent in the middle of persecution but speak loudly in the middle of conferences with famous speakers and worship bands? I have prayed many times like Luther: "Bless us, Lord, even curse us! But don't remain silent!"
This reality forces us to take another look at what Paul means in
Ziya Meral
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/march/29.41.html
In a 2007 edition of the New Oxford Review, Dr. A. Patrick Schneider II, who holds boards in family and geriatric medicine and runs a private practice in Lexington, Kentucky, did a statistical analysis of cohabitation in America, based on the findings of a number of academic resources. Here are five conclusions Schneider draws from his studies:
- Relationships are unstable in cohabitation. One-sixth of cohabiting couples stay together for only three years; one in ten survives five or more years.
- Cohabiting women often end up with the responsibilities of marriage—particularly when it comes to caring for children—without the legal protection. Research has also found that cohabiting women contribute more than 70 percent of the relationship's income.
- Cohabitation brings a greater risk of sexually transmitted diseases, because cohabiting men are four times more likely to be unfaithful than husbands.
- Poverty rates are higher among cohabitors. Those who share a home but never marry have 78 percent less wealth than the continuously married.
- Those who suffer most from cohabitation are the children. The poverty rate among children of cohabiting couples is fivefold greater than the rate among children in married-couple households. Children ages 12–17 with cohabiting parents are six times more likely to exhibit emotional and behavioral problems and 122 percent more likely to be expelled from school.
One of the common myths about marriage in America is that "50 percent of all marriages end in divorce." But that figure is derived, not from long-term analysis, but from the fact that the raw number of new divorces each year is roughly 50 percent of the raw number of new marriages. These numbers are distorted by the fact that people with successful marriages usually marry only once, while people with failed marriages have often married and divorced multiple times.
Fortunately, new data from pollster George Barna included a more meaningful statistic. Of all Americans who have ever married, only one-third have ever been divorced. This two-to-one ratio of marital success should encourage young people who may actually fear the "50-50" marriage myth.
Another misconception is that a person's religion and values have nothing to do with marital success. Barna found that the percentage of people who have been divorced after marrying is lower among Catholics, evangelicals and conservatives than it is among non-Christians and liberals. That's not to mention the fact that more born-again Christians (84%) have been married in the first place than atheists and agnostics (65%).
from Pastor's Weekly Briefing, April 4th 2008
The church that takes seriously the fact that Jesus is Lord of all will not just celebrate quietly every time we write the date on a letter or document, will not just set aside Sunday as far as humanly and socially possible as a celebration of God's new creation, will not just seek to order its own life in an appropriate rhythm of worship and work. Such a church will also seek to bring wisdom to the rhythms of work in offices and shops, in local government, in civic holidays, and in the shaping of public life. These things cannot be taken for granted. The enormous shifts during my lifetime, from the whole town observing Good Friday and Easter, to those great days being simply more occasions for football matches and yet more televised reruns of old movies, are indices of what happens when a society loses its roots and drifts with prevailing social currents. The reclaiming of time as God's good gift (as opposed to time as simply a commodity to be spent for one's own benefit, which often means fresh forms of slavery for others) is not an extra to the church's mission. It is central.NT Wright, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/april/13.36.html?start=3
Narcissism in parishes is both a cause and a result of community deterioration. Because churches are not truly communities, many believers seek fulfilment elsewhere. I share Arthur Just's conviction that "if a renewal of biblical theology allows the people of God to see themselves as first and foremost as a community of saints, then they will no longer tolerate metaphors of their life that reflects the individualism of today's culture which has become pervasive in their lives".Dawn, p134.
...I return to my dreary classroom, populated, it often seems, by under educated but deeply committed Phi Beta Kappa ideologues - leftists who believe in class warfare but have never opened Das Kapital and certainly have never perused Werner Sombart, hard-line capitalists who accept the inerrancy of the invisible hand but have never studied Adam Smith, third-generation feminists who know that sex roles are a trap but have never read Betty Freidan, social Darwinists who propose leaving the poor to sink or swim but have never heard of Herbert Spencer or William Sumner's essay on The Challenge of the Facts, black separatists who mutter bleakly about institutional racism but are unaware of the work of Carmichael and Hamilton, who invented the term - all of them our students, all of them hopelessly young and hopelessly smart and thus hopelessly sure they alone are right, and nearly all of whom, whatever their espoused differences, will soon be espoused to huge law firms, massive profit factories where they will bill clients at ridiculous rates for 2000 hours of work every year, quickly earning twice as much money as the best of their teachers, and at half the age, sacrificing all on the altar of career, moving relentlessly upward, as ideology and family life collapse equally around them, and at last arriving, a decade or two later, cynical and bitter, at their cherished career goals, partnerships, professorships, judgeships, whatever kind of ships they dream of sailing, and then looking around at the angry, empty waters and realising they have arrived with nothing, absolutely nothing, and wondering what to do with the rest of their wretched lives.
Or maybe I am just measuring their prospects by my own.
In a nutshell, connect one bit of Scripture to one bit of life. In other words, always ask two questions for yourself and others: What is your current struggle? What about God in Christ connects to this? … Apply one relevant thing from our Redeemer to one significant scene in this person’s story. Bring one bit of Bible to one bit of life. You can’t say it all at once. (The Journal of Biblical Counseling, Fall 2003, p. 3)Well, you cannot and should not say it all at once, but that hasn’t stopped me from trying in the past! My impulse is to help others by downloading as much information as possible. But I’ve learned this is not wise and really unhelpful. Those we counsel can contemplate and apply a limited amount of information, so in caring for their souls—and especially in the immediate situation—I want to provide counsel they can easily consider and remember. And that’s where David’s wisdom proves so valuable.
The use of theses 'psalms of darkness' may be judged by the world to be acts of unfaith and failure, but for the trusting community, their use is an act of bold faith, albeit a transformed faith. It is an act of bold faith on the one hand, because it insists that the world must experienced as it really is and not in some pretended way. On the other hand, it is bold because it insists that all such experiences of disorder are a proper subject for discourse with God. There is nothing out of bounds, nothing precluded or inappropriate. Everything properly belongs in this conversation of the heart. To withhold parts of life from that conversation is in fact to withhold part of life from the sovereignty of God. Thus these psalms make the important connection; everything must be brought to speech, and everything brought to speech must be addressed to God, who is the final reference for all life...
IS NOT the most helpful way to approach the gospel miracles to place them within the familiar and inescapable tension between the already and the not yet, kingdom come and kingdom coming, the new age inaugurated and the new age consummated? To the skeptical (who doubt all miracles), I want to say "but already we have tasted the powers of the age to come." To the credulous (who think that healing miracles are an everyday occurrence), I want to say "but not yet have we been given resurrection bodies free from disease, pain, infirmity, handicap, and death.
An emphasis on what we "get out" of a worship service - above all, that we feel good about ourselves - displaces the theocentric praise of God with anthropocentric utilitarianism. Since the worship of God is an end in itself, "making worship useful destroys it, because this introduces an ulterior motive for praise. And ulterior motives mean manipulation, taking charge of the relationship, thereby turning the relation between Creator and creature upside down."Dawn (quoting Keck), p88.
