Arts and Culture on Personal

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Justice is Personal

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Scripture

Matthew 25:40, Leviticus 19:15, Galatians 3:28, James 2:8-9, Amos 5:24, Micah 6:8, Isaiah 1:17

When did the topic of justice become important to you?” Gideon Strauss posed that question to two dozen people crammed into our living room one fall evening in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Some of us wer...

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Author

N. T. Wright

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Scripture

1 Peter 2:9, Galatians 6:2, Colossians 3:16, Romans 12:4-5, Acts 2:42-47, Ephesians 4:15-16

Far too many people, especially within evangelicalism, think that the individual is all that matters, and that the corporate dimension is a distraction or diversion. Of course Christianity is deeply p...

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Author

Alexander Schmemann

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Our modern theology, which in many ways has ceased to be personal, i.e. centered on the Christian experience of "person," nevertheless - and maybe as a result of this - has become utterly in...

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Sherwood G. Lingenfelter and Marvin K. Mayers

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The key for successful personal relationships and ministry is to understand and accept others as having a viewpoint as worthy of consideration as our own.

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Author

Randy S. Woodley

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Shalom is meant to be both personal (emphasizing our relationships with others) and structural (replacing systems where shalom has been broken or which produce broken shalom, such as war-or greed-driv...

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Expressive Individualism Today

Author

Brian S. Rosner

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You don’t need to look far today to notice that personal identity is a do-it-yourself project. A gym near where I live advertises itself with the slogan: “Be Fit. Be Well. Be You.” A new apartment com...

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Holy God–Father, Son and Spirit: We

Holy God–Father, Son and Spirit: We come with our agendas in order to enlist you in our causes but You won’t be co-opted for our small visions. Instead, You hold out a greater vision and purpose and i...

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The Fourth Option to Dealing with Contempt

Author

Arthur C. Brooks

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In his book Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt , author and professor Arthur C. Brooks charts the rise of anger — and more importantly, contempt — ...

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Slow Down. Be Considerate. Be Aware

Author

Ryan Holiday

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Scripture

1 Samuel 16:7, Proverbs 4:7, Philippians 2:3-4, Matthew 7:12, James 1:19

In the intro sequence of the beloved children’s show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood , the first interior shot does not show the host. Instead, in the beat before Fred Rogers appears on the screen si...

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Prayer of Adoration God, Almighty –

Author

Richard Herman

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Prayer of Adoration God, Almighty – holy, gracious, truthful and loving, we’re drawn by Your invitation to enjoy Your love, an invitation to feel Your touch and hear Your voice, to taste and see tha...

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Author

A. W. Tozer

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Rules for Self Discovery: What we want most; What we think about most; How we use our money; What we do with our leisure time; The company we enjoy; Who and what we admire; What we laugh at.

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Cultivating a Spirit of Generosity: A Pastoral Call to Year-End Giving

Author

Aaron Schweizer

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Scripture

Proverbs 11:1, Philippians 4:18

As a five-year-old at Christmas I remember how excited I was to get my first bike. It was a yellow BMX Huffy, a mean machine for a kid in the late 70s. It is one of my fondest memories because I remem...

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God, you call us to prayer. Throughout

Author

Ellen R. Dawson

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Scripture

Exodus 2:23-25, 1 Samuel 1:10-11, 1 Kings 3:9-12, Acts 4:29-31, Luke 7:37-38, Exodus 3:7-10, Esther 4:16

God, you call us to prayer. Throughout the Scriptures, we read about your people praying. The Israelites cried out for you to rescue them from slavery. You sent them Moses. Hannah wept, asking you t...

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Author

Skye Jethani

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The god of Consumer Christianity does not inspire awe and wonder because he is nothing more than a commodity to be used for our personal satisfaction and self-achievement.

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Playing Busy like a Fiddle While the World Burns

Author

Jen Pollock Michel

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Scripture

Ecclesiastes 2:22-23, Psalm 46:10, 1 Corinthians 15:58

As early as April 2020, a debate raged about the responsibilities of those of us turned safely inside during this global storm. For those time privileged enough to find their calendars suddenly cleare...

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Generosity Is Paradoxical (Part 2)

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Christian Smith and Hilary Davidson

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In recent years, I (Smith) have been leading a study called the “Science of Generosity Initiative” at the University of Notre Dame, in which I (Davidson) have been deeply involved. In that study, we h...

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A Desire for Fame Rises in Millenials

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Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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In a survey given in 1976, participants were asked to list their life goals. Fame ranked fifteenth out of sixteen. In a recent survey, 51 percent of millenials listed being famous as “one of their top...

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The Christian Self-Actualization Plan

Author

Ashley Hales

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Scripture

Galatians 5:13-14, Matthew 16:24-25, Romans 12:4-5, Philippians 2:3-4, Ephesians 2:8-10

In her excellent book on following Jesus in the suburbs, Ashley Hales describes one of the ways in which our discipleship has been influenced by modern secular trends such as the desire for self-actua...

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On Winning? Considering Kevin Durant and Anthony Bourdain

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Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

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There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Albert Camus Two events recently collided in my mind and coalesced into this short essay: The first was a relatively in...

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Never Leaving Their Work

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A. J. Swoboda

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Because of the modern rhythms of work that are mediated through personal computers and phones, people, in the words of one cultural commentator, “leave the office, but they do not leave their work. Th...

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The Primary Problem of Marriage

Author

Bertrand Russell

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Destructive to marriage is the self-fulfillment ethic that assumes marriage and the family are primarily institutions of personal fulfillment, necessary for us to become “whole” and happy. The assumpt...

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The Danger of Trusting Yourself

Author

John Maxwell

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Over the years, I’ve read about many leaders who failed ethically in their leadership. Can you guess what they had in common? They all thought it could never happen to them. There was a false sense of...

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Benchmarks Motivate us to Grow

Author

Chip and Dan Heath

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Companies in this era of apps and personal tracking devices have grown much smarter about surfacing milestones that were previously invisible. The app Pocket, which stores articles from the Internet o...

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Virtue as Part of Our Story

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

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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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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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Author

John Onwuchekwa

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Prayer was never meant to be a merely personal exercise with personal benefits, but a discipline that reminds us how we’re personally responsible for others. This means that every time we pray, we sho...

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The Saturated Self

Author

Steven Garber

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Looking into his life and out to the wider world, Kenneth Gergen writes about The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life, arguing that “social saturation brings with it a general lo...

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Longing and Belonging in Runner’s Club

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Justin McRoberts & Scott Erickson

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Recently I’ve wondered about the connection between the English words “longing” and “belonging”. Isn’t belonging one of our greatest longings in life? Don’t we all have some deep, inner desire t...

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The Charm of Beauty is to Win Hearts

Author

James Bryan Smith

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Scripture

Matthew 6:28-29, 1 Peter 3:3-4, Proverbs 31:30, Romans 1:25

Recently, when I was in London, I went to the National Gallery. It was a weekday, but it was still crowded with people wearing headsets, staring at famous paintings, listening to a narrator explain th...

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The Cave

Author

William Rowley

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Scripture

1 Corinthians 12:8-12, John 1:, John 17:18, Philippians 2:6-11, 1 John 1:7, Romans 8:1, Colossians 1:13-14

The Cave One of the most famous passages in Plato's Republic is his "Allegory of the Cave," which is found at the beginning of book seven . Socrates imagines the human condition al...

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