The Atlantic Monthly has a great article, "There's More to Life Than Being Happy." The article is AVAILABLE HERE.It points out what has been known for a long time (including Victor Frankl's observations from his time in a WWII Concentration Camp, as described in 'Man's Search for Meaning"), People find more life satisfaction in living …
Continue reading Christianity: “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Meaning”
I will be teaching a two-week module on "Missionary Member Care" starting next week. So I decided to provide an excerpt from “William Carey: Missionary Pioneer and Statesman” by F. Deaville Walker pg. 125-129. It is a fairly old book, published in 1925. This passage describes some of the many challenges, externally and internally, that …
It is common to focus on the Damascus Call of Paul. Perhaps this is because it makes a more interesting story because of its strongly supernatural nature, because of its personal nature, and because of its more radical result. But there were a lot of other calls with regards to Paul. 1. The Macedonian Call. …
I like this short post. And it is far from theoretical. I remember discussing with atheists (or at least closed agnostics). Although many were pretty relaxed in dialogue, they commonly got rather irritated when I suggested that belief in no God is still an act of faith... just with a different object than that of …
In any group there is a strong pressure to conform... coming to agreement in group dogma, group norms, group traditions, group taboos. Even in groups that focus on being open-minded, strong dogma, norms, and taboos build up enforcing what is acceptable open-mindedness and what is unacceptable. It is curious how close-minded "open-minded" groups commonly are. …
“Watzlawick et al (1974) discuss two levels of change--- first- and second-order change. First-order change refers to change within a given system. In other words, the system itself remains unchanged, while its elements or parts undergo some kind of change. First-order change appears to be linear, stepwise, and mechanistic (Adams, 1977). It is a change …
When I worked at a Summer Camp, oh... 30 + years ago, our camp director liked to give this illustration. “Suppose you are walking along a a trail the winds along half way up a very steep mountain. On one side of the trail is the mountain face and the other the sheer cliffs that …
1. Christians "Cursing" Christians. I was reading a blog about Christians, dealing with the question whether Christians can have curses placed upon them (the reference blog is at the bottom). According to the blog, apparently there were Christian leaders who were placing "curses" on individual Christians. The writer made a pretty good case that Christians …
Continue reading Three Thoughts on Curses as it Pertains to Christians.
I wrote a similar article previously. Perhaps this article here says it better.