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Board Lit
I love our school board. While so many books and articles about productivity lament the bane of meetings, I always look forward to our time together. (I have the same attitude about our church’s elder board meetings). We do have enough minutia to discuss, but since we’re still in the early institution stage we’re always happy to connect the details back to big ideas.
We also are always reading and discussing something together.
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Do Justice
I am not a social justice warrior. I may not even know exactly what it means. I believe that many injustices are being done in the name of justice. I understand being skeptical of those who brandish the phrase like a two-edged sword in front of others’ necks, let alone of those who beat others over the head with it like a sledgehammer of guilt.
And. (Here’s just one example of there being more than only two colors).
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More Than Two Colors
Why do those who acknowledge subtlety compromise? And why are those who have little capacity for nuance wrong?
This is a false dichotomy. Not everyone who sees a spectrum of options always slides to the negative side. Likewise, those who live in only big categories can choose correctly, though it is more obvious when they’re wrong.
Or, which is better, a framing carpenter or a finish carpenter? Doesn’t it depend on what you’re trying to accomplish?
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Aiming Senior Arrows
One trend that has bugged me for more than a decade is parents, and pastors, encouraging their kids to move away. This is not the same as encouraging them to move out. Yes, raise kids who grow up and take more and more responsibility for themselves, and then commit to a spouse, and start a family, probably in their own house. All that is great. It is the post high school move-away-if-you-can that concerns me.
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Where He Starts
We know that God’s ways are not our ways and that His thoughts are above and beyond our thoughts. We know, mostly because He told us, that we don’t know everything about how He works.
We have problems right from the start. I mean that not from the start of our creaturely condition with finite limitations, though those comparisons do explain part of our problem. What I mean is that we don’t even get where He starts.
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The Bottom Line
Money has become a god for many men. You can tell by how they praise it, love it, sacrifice for it. Money chokes out the seed of the gospel (Matthew 13:22). You can see the fruitlessness from those who claimed faith but no longer. Money is the root of all kinds of evils (1 Timothy 6:10). You cannot serve God and money (Matthew 6:24).
But God also says that those who have money are not supposed to burn it, or even bury it.
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What of a Man's Profit
I’m re-reading Joy for the World with the guys who come to our church’s men’s meeting, and we recently finished chapter 7 about work and money and the economy.
Does God care about these things? There was a day when I might have answered “Meh.” I didn’t have a category to say that God is interested in them, and certainly not to such a degree that we are wrong if we’re not.
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The Code of the Coders
[caption id=“attachment_8797” align=“alignright” width=“300”]Or, A Glitch in the System[/caption]There is no neutrality. It’s not if there is a code, but which code will be written, and then followed.
Tracy Chou is an “entrepreneur, software engineer, and diversity advocate.” (I can get excited about at least two out of three of those.) Almost a year ago she wrote about why every tech worker needs a humanities education. The foundational questions she asks are crucial for anyone involved in creating, consuming, and educating others about either of the previous two.
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The Disconnect of Discontent
Because we are learning to be content in whatever condition we’re in, we are also making great progress out of the condition we’re in. The two conditions are not the same, otherwise the statement would contradict itself. One condition is our station, the other condition is our fellowship.
If we allow false standards to rule our thinking about “higher” callings (think 1 Corinthians 7:17-24) then we will not have true communion.
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No Lifehacks for Obedience
I have read a variety of books about productivity and getting things done and how to figure out what’s best next. I kind of like the genre. I have tried a lot of task apps, todo systems, and techniques for processing information. These have a place. We are created for good works, and being able to plan and organize and aim our good works is a good thing.
But. There is often a but.
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Resubscribed
Phil Johnson announced today that he is stoking the coals in the Pyromaniacs fire pit.
I really appreciate Phil. He is one of my favorite people in California and certainly among those involved at Grace Community Church and Grace to You. I like his family, I like his writing style, and I like his wry, humorous sarcasm.
I also really liked the Pyromaniac back in the day (he started in 2005?
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Et Liberi, Et Libri
Do my kids keep me from being productive?
They could, perhaps, and I used to lean more toward that irritation. I prefer quiet for reading and writing, for study and sermon preparation, you know, for the “important” work. But, along with being married and talking with my wife, my kids give me a greater reason to think about things and figure out how to say them. In other words, I may not crank out more words, but God uses my kids to crank me.
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More Bad Ideas
If you like to create things—and why wouldn’t you as an image-bearer of your Creator—then listen to this podcast by Seth Godin: No such thing (as writer’s block). It’s not that he provides the silver bullet, but he certainly hacks at the Excuse Monster that we often hide behind.
Especially for those who regard their work as precious, who hold their ideas inside too long and often squeeze the interesting juices out of the idea before it even has the chance to get out, we should try out trying out more things.
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4 of 5 stars to I Have a Dream and Letter from Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr.
Brief, not perfect, nor written by a perfect man, but powerful. Makes a man want to Matthew 22:39.
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Proverbial Nose Bleeds
How many ways can you have a bad day? I’m not sure, but I know for sure how to make one worse.
Maybe the “bad” is due to your body. It’s not traceable to anything foolish you did, it’s due to something in God’s sovereignty, and it causes you some amount of suffering. Maybe the bad is in your mailbox, or email inbox. Out of what seems like nowhere to you, God sent you a bill, or a criticism, or an “opportunity” that will take you a week just to decide what to do.
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Uncomfortable Blessings
[caption id=“attachment_8779” align=“alignright” width=“300”]Photo thanks to Leila Bowers[/caption] When I give a talk I prefer to build up to a Big Reveal. This time I will tell it to you up front, then go back and explain what I mean and why it’s important and what you should do about it. Here goes: Since the start of ECS I believe that no one has learned more than me. I have reasons for this claim and, if it’s true, I also believe that no one has been more blessed than me either.
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Affections in Maternal Tones
Paul did not have questions about his gender, but he did speak of his affections in maternal tones a couple times. He told the Thessalonians, “we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children” (1 Thessalonians 2:7). To the Galatians he was even more active:
my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!
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So Not Okay
God hates divorce. God also hates division in the body. He loves unity. Jesus prayed that His people would be one, that they would be one even as He and the Father are one. That’s tight.
But history, which we believe God rules, is filled with conflict and splits between believers, between churches. While Paul climbed all over the Corinthian contentions to correct their petty party preferences, he also told them later that divisions were necessary and part of God’s purpose.
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Knots and Nooses
Give a sinner a knife and he will find knots to cut. He doesn’t want things tied together, he wants things loose. Give a man a rope and he will make a noose. He claims he wants justice, punishment for those who deserve it. A knife is good, but in a culture of lynch mobs, a knife is good for cutting nooses. Rope is good, but in a culture of relativism and emotional goo, it’s good for tying knots that hold things together.
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That Is Really Tired
“Weariness pervaded every sense, including common sense.” —Norman Borlaug, Our Daily Bread