Arts and Culture on Character Development

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How Our Work Shapes Us

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Keywords

Note: This was originally posted on February 15, 2017 on the Stirring Our Affections website. Does our working shape us? Depending on what you do, you might answer that readily in the affirmativ...

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Working with God through Our Work

Author

Kara Martin

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Scripture

Romans 12:2, 2 Corinthians 5:16-17, Colossians 1:17-20

Note from TPW: Kara Martin addresses life in the secular workplace, sharing insights to help you lead your congregations to understand their faith and work and also to bring the Kingdom into your o...

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How Stories are being used by Companies to Shape Character

Author

David Rose

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Why a story? We all think of our lives as stories, each with a main character (us) theme, and plot (interesteing so far, but as yet unfinished). We also love to hear stories about others and even abou...

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Author

Richard Halverson

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Jesus Christ said more about money than about any other single thing because, when it comes to a man’s real nature, money is of first importance. Money is an exact index to a man’s true character. All...

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Author

Dwight L. Moody

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If I take care of my character, my reputation will take care of me.

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Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson | A Review

Author

Paul Koptak

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Robinson's Winsome Faith I’ve been reading Marilynne Robinson's novels and essays for some time now. Of her fiction, I’ve read Gilead , reflections of a retired minister written for his ...

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Author

David F. Wells

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In our postmodern culture which is TV dominated, image sensitive, and morally vacuous, personality is everything and character is increasingly irrelevant.

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Our Stories Shape Our Values

Author

Dan B. Allender

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Scripture

Revelation 12:11, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, Acts 22:3-8, John 1:46-47, Isaiah 61:1-3, Psalm 78:4

A close friend who started a financial loan business took thirty of his executives to the poverty- and violence-filled section of Montreal where he grew up in order to introduce them to the section of...

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Stories Teach Us about How the World Works

Author

Steven Sloman

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A good story goes beyond just describing what actually happened. It tells us about how the world works more broadly, in ways that pertain to things that didn’t actually happen or at least haven’t happ...

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Author

Erik Erikson

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I must register a certain impatience with the faddish equation, never suggested by me, of the term identity with the question, “Who am I?” This question nobody would ask himself except in a more or le...

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Virtue as Part of Our Story

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue reconnected thinking about ethics back to virtue by connecting virtue to the story a life is a part of. In order to know how we ought to live, we first need to answ...

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Digging Down Deep

Author

Bianca Juarez Olthoff

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Scripture

John 15:5, Proverbs 12:3, Isaiah 61:3, Matthew 13:5-6, Ephesians 3:17-19

I’m more of an aboveground type of girl, as in, I like the stuff you can see. Flowers, trees, and vegetation symbolize life, growth, and transformation. The problem with focusing on external manifesta...

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There and Back Again, A Human Tale

Author

Alan Jones

Keywords

Scripture

Luke 15:11-32

Let us begin with a question. Do you really know how to enjoy the world? Do you know how to enjoy yourself? One of the greatest parables in the New Testament has to do with the search for enjoyment an...

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Lord Jesus—the same yesterday, today

Author

Richard Herman

Scripture

Matthew 5:9, Ephesians 4:32, James 5:15-16, John 14:27, Psalm 34:18

Lord Jesus—the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, and the author of change, who’s constantly doing “a new thing,” which makes us sit up and take notice. We admit, we’d be more comfortable with a pred...

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Holy and gracious God, may your Holy

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Holy and gracious God, may your Holy Spirit give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that, with the eyes of our hearts enlightened, we may know the hope to which Christ has called us, the riches ...

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Author

Kosuke Koyama

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God walks “slowly” because he is love. If he is not love he would have gone much faster. Love has its speed. It is an inner speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the tec...

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An Unexpected Friendship

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Galatians 6:2, Psalm 34:18, Proverbs 19:11, Colossians 3:13, Ephesians 4:32, Luke 6:37

Sometimes moments of forgiveness and friendship come from unexpected places. In 2018, the comedian Pete Davidson appeared on the “Weekend Update” segment of Saturday Night Live (SNL). Davidson made a ...

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The Elderly Contractor

Author

Source Unknown

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Scripture

Psalm 127:1, Matthew 25:23, Luke 16:10, Ecclesiastes 9:10, Proverbs 22:29, 1 Corinthians 3:13-14, Galatians 6:7

An elderly master carpenter was ready to retire. He told his employer of his plans to leave the house building business and live a more leisurely life with his wife enjoying his extended family. He w...

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Nelson Mandela and a Presidency of Reconciliation

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 12:18, Philemon 1:15-16, Matthew 18:15, Romans 5:10, Colossians 1:20, Matthew 5:23-24

What does true forgiveness and reconciliation look like? The world was given such an image the day Nelson Mandela was sworn in as President of South Africa. What was so significant was not just that a...

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Finding the Plots of our Own Lives

Author

William Kilpatrick

Keywords

The same impulse that makes us want our books to have a plot makes us want our lives to have a plot. We need to feel that we are getting somewhere, making progress. There is something in us that is no...

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What is the Christian Imagination Deficit? How Do We Fix It?

Author

Brian Brown

Keywords

There Are No Ordinary Things J. R. R. Tolkien tells a short story about an ordinary fellow who just wants to finish a painting. Over time, he is constantly distracted by the requests of his neighbors...

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We thank You, God our Father, for Your

Author

Richard Herman

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Scripture

1 Peter 1:3-4, Romans 15:13, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, Isaiah 40:31, Galatians 6:2, Psalm 119:105

We thank You, God our Father, for Your grace, mercy and love, expressed today through Your Word and Sacrament; and we ask You to help us to pray and to know what to pray. You give us all good gifts: Y...

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Author

Sally McClung

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I hope someday that God can explain some of the delays to us……but I’m convinced that one of the things He is teaching me, and all of us, is perseverance. In this day and age of everything being “insta...

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Back in Flatland

Author

Austin Fischer

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In this short excerpt, pastor and author Austin Fischer summarizes the late 19th century book Flatland as an analogy for the often-one-dimensional faith that exists our time: tIn 1884, an English sc...

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The Difference Between Heroes and Saints

Author

Lauren F. Winner

Keywords

It turns out the Christian story is a good story in which to learn to fail. As the ethicist Samuel Wells has written, some stories feature heroes and some stories feature saints and the difference bet...

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Villians Over Heroes

Author

Dante Alighieri

Keywords

In imaginary works it is difficult to make virtuous characters as believable and attractive as bad characters. The villains of literature and screen–Captain Ahab, the boys who go bad in Lord of the Fl...

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Author

Heinz Kohut

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Almost all heroic individuals face grave crises while they are still on the road to reaching the ultimate decision that they will remain faithful to their selves, whatever the cost.

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Author

Tom Petty

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I developed a problem with authority. Any time that authority was what I interpreted as being unjust, I stood up to it, and that became my personality.

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Author

Fred Rogers

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Things Are Different: You never know the story By the cover of the book. You can’t tell what a dinner’s like By simply looking at the cook. It’s something everybody needs to know Way down deep inside ...

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The Dickensian Approach to Storytelling (Or, Rather, the Biblical Approach)

Author

Mark D. Roberts

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:, John 1:1-3

Sometimes great stories introduce the protagonist in the very first paragraph. In Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, for example, we are immediately introduced to Pip, the central figure of the nov...

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