Current Affairs and Causes on Social Media

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This Blasted Smartphone!

Author

Keywords

Scripture

Psalm 63:1, Romans 12:2, John 4:13-14, Ecclesiastes 2:10-11, Exodus 32:1-6, Jeremiah 2:13

Tony Reinke does a great job capturing the deep ambivalence many of us feel about our smartphones in this short excerpt: This blasted smartphone! Pesk of productivity. Tenfold plague of beeps and ...

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The Dark Side of the Web

Author

Andy Crouch

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 25:40, Romans 12:21, Luke 4:18-19, James 1:27, Micah 6:8, Isaiah 1:17

In October 2014 Wired magazine reported on the dirty work every social media company must somehow handle: moderating the deluge of exploitative, degrading content posted in unimaginable quantities aro...

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Race and Friendship

Author

Stuart R. Strachan, Jr.

Keywords

Scripture

Colossians 3:11, 1 Corinthians 12:25-26, Romans 12:10, James 2:1, Galatians 3:28

In a 2009 stand-up special, Chris Rock made a funny, and perhaps true, statement: “All my black friends have a bunch of white friends. And all my white friends have one black friend.” It turns out, R...

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Creating Christian Consumers

Author

Jay Y. Kim

Keywords

Scripture

1 Corinthians 1:22-25, Romans 12:2, 1 Corinthians 2:1-5, Isaiah 55:8-8, 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

I’ve served on staff at a few different churches throughout Silicon Valley for the last decade and a half, including a medium-sized church, a young church plant, and a multisite megachurch. At each, w...

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The CNN Effect

Author

Ryan Holiday

Keywords

Scripture

Philippians 4:8, Romans 12:2, Luke 21:34, Psalm 46:10, Matthew 6:22-23

In the 1990s, political scientists began to study what they called the “CNN Effect.” Breathless, twenty-four-hour media coverage makes it considerably harder for politicians and CEOs to be anything bu...

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Modern Parents Need Help with Technology

Author

Andy Crouch

Keywords

Scripture

Deuteronomy 11:18-19, Proverbs 22:6 , Exodus 20:8-10, Matthew 6:33, Romans 12:2, Psalm 119:37

If there is one word that sums up how many of us feel about technology and family life, it’s Help! Parents know we need help. We love the way devices make our lives easier amid the stress and busy...

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The Most Powerful Choices in our Lives

Author

Andy Crouch

Keywords

Scripture

Deuteronomy 6:6-9, Daniel 6:10, Proverbs 4:23-27, Psalm 119:9-11, Romans 12:1-2, 1 Corinthians 9:24-27

The most powerful choices we will make in our lives are not about specific decisions but about patterns of life: the nudges and disciplines that will shape all our other choices. This is especially tr...

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Author

Dorothy L. Sayers

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 12:4-8, 1 Corinthians 12:, 1 Corinthians 14:12, Ephesians 4:4-6, Romans 12:4-6, 1 Peter 4:10

The Power—the Spirit—is thus a social power, working to bring all minds into its own unity, sometimes by similarity and at other times by contrast. There is a diversity of gifts, but the same spirit.

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Hard to Care about Anything

Author

Lily Rothman

Keywords

Scripture

Galatians 6:9, James 2:14-17, 1 John 3:18, Revelation 3:15-16, James 4:17, Hebrews 6:11-12, 1 John 3:17, Romans 12:11

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, a pervasive sense of societal malaise seems to be affecting a significant portion of the population. Journalist and managing editor of Time , Lily Rothman, ...

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Author

Wendell Berry

Keywords

Scripture

1 Peter 3:8, Philippians 2:3-4, Galatians 5:14, Romans 12:10, Ephesians 4:32, Luke 6:31, Matthew 7:12

Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.

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A Guard Against Paternalism

Author

Kent Annan

Keywords

Justice

Scripture

Galatians 6:2, Romans 12:10, Isaiah 1:17, Micah 6:8, James 5:16

Practicing confession is one way to guard against paternalism in both extreme and more subtle ways. For example, we can tell stories of justice in a way that discounts other people’s agency—that is, t...

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Nudges for the Better

Author

Andy Crouch

Keywords

Scripture

Deuteronomy 30:19 , Proverbs 4:26-27, Genesis 2:9 , Matthew 6:22-23 , Romans 12:2, Psalm 119:105

As popularized in Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s fascinating book by the same name, nudges are small changes in the environment around us that make it easier for us to make the choices we want to ...

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The Messy Middle

Author

William Bridges

Keywords

Crises

Scripture

2 Corinthians 4:8-9, Hebrews 10:23, Romans 12:2, Psalm 37:23-24, Philippians 1:6, Isaiah 43:19, Ecclesiastes 3:1

The Messy Middle In his classic work Transitions, author and professor William Bridges shares an excellent anecdote about life in crisis: it can happen at any time and in a myriad of ways. It also de...

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True Love

Author

Lisa Ann Moss Degrenia

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 12:1, Isaiah 58:10, Philippians 2:3-4, Matthew 20:26-28, 1 Timothy 6:17-19, Luke 9:23

Merciful Jesus Give us courage to deny privilege to lay down favor and safety in order to take up the cross of opportunity and justice Too often we fail to do this Merciful Jesus Give us courage to d...

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Author

Tom Howard

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 4:6-7 , Ecclesiastes 2:10-11, Daniel 3:16-18, Romans 12:1-2 , Luke 9:23-24 , Psalm 73:25-26

Modern man is a bleak business. To our chagrin we discover that the declaration of autonomy has issued not in a race of free, masterly men, but rather in a race that can be described by its poets and ...

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Stuck in the Houses Our Words Construct

Author

Gregory Spencer

Keywords

Scripture

James 3:5-6, Psalm 19:14, 2 Corinthians 4:18, Proverbs 18:21, Romans 12:2

All day long, all of us are framing and reframing our lives. We talk about the memory of our adorable but sexist grandpa. We label ourselves as movie critics or introverts or justice-lovers. We say th...

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Rosa Parks & Helpful Comparisons

Author

Richella J. Parham

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 12:2, Luke 4:18-19, Ecclesiastes 3:7-8, Amos 5:24, Proverbs 31:8-9, Micah 6:8, Isaiah 1:17

Very often, comparison to an ideal is a helpful practice, not a harmful one. Helpful comparisons are those that place a normal or ideal condition on one side of a scale and a real-life condition on th...

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Author

A Franciscan Blessing

Keywords

Scripture

1 Corinthians 1:27, Romans 12:15, Luke 4:18-19, Psalm 34:18, James 1:27

God bless us with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships, so that we may live deep within our hearts. God bless us with righteous anger at injustice, oppression, and exp...

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Adapted from Romans 12:1-2

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 12:1-2

Therefore I urge you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service. Don’t be conformed to this world, bu...

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Tension Leads to Breakthrough

Author

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Keywords

Justice

Scripture

1 Peter 3:8-9, Galatians 3:28, Proverbs 31:8-9, Matthew 5:9, Romans 12:18

Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and ob...

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Author

Timothy Keller

Keywords

Scripture

Galatians 1:10, Jeremiah 29:7, Matthew 5:13-14, Colossians 2:8, John 17:15-16, Acts 17:22-23, Romans 12:2

To reach people we must appreciate and adapt to their culture, but we must also challenge and confront it. This is based on the biblical teaching that all cultures have God's grace and natural rev...

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Author

Helen Keller

Keywords

Scripture

Ecclesiastes 4:9-10, 1 Corinthians 12:12, Hebrews 10:24-25, Romans 12:4-5, Philippians 2:2, Matthew 18:20

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much. While they were saying among themselves it cannot be done, it was done.

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Author

Gregory Spencer

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:1-3, Exodus 3:13-14, Deuteronomy 6:4-9, John 1:1-3, Romans 12:1-2, Psalm 19:1-4

To frame is to put a language boundary around our experience. It is to name what happens in particular ways, to say how we see the world, and to see the world how we say it is. Framing includes tellin...

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Empathy Defined

Author

Richard J. Mouw

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 23:9, Job 2:11–13, Isaiah 58:6–7 , Hebrews 4:15, Romans 12:15 , Psalm 103:13–14

“Empathy” literally means “in-feeling”—it is to project myself into another person’s feelings so that I begin to understand what it is like to have his experiences. If I want to gain empathy for a nei...

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Anxiety in Disagreements

Author

Buster Benson

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 5:44, Colossians 3:12-13, Proverbs 29:11, 2 Timothy 2:23-24, Romans 12:18

Anxiety sparks when a perspective we value bumps into another perspective that challenges it in some way. If we find this new perspective to be unacceptable, that’s when our “Someone is wrong on the i...

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Author

Eugene Peterson

Keywords

Scripture

Romans 12:2, Isaiah 55:8-9, Psalm 42:4, Exodus 23:2, 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5, Hebrews 13:4, 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

Classically, there are three ways in which humans try to find transcendence--religious meaning--apart from God as revealed through the cross of Jesus: through the ecstasy of alcohol and drugs, through...

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Compassionate God—In Christ, you enter

Author

Richard Herman

Scripture

1 Timothy 2:1-4, Psalm 33:22, Philippians 4:6-7, John 14:1, 1 Peter 5:7, Romans 12:15

Compassionate God—In Christ, you enter our condition; you experience our sorrow and our joy ... and redeem them. By Your Holy Spirit, you carry us along: in crisis and celebration, in despair and acco...

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The Importance of Selective Change

Author

Jared Diamond

Keywords

Scripture

Ecclesiastes 3:1, Romans 12:2, Isaiah 43:19, Hebrews 12:27, 2 Corinthians 4:8-9, James 1:2-4

Crises, and pressures for change, confront individuals and their groups at all levels, ranging from single people, to teams, to businesses, to nations, to the whole world. Crises may arise from extern...

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Preventing Vengeance

Author

Mia Levetan

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 4:8–15, Exodus 21:23–25, Micah 6:6–8 , Matthew 5:38–45, Romans 12:17–21, Psalm 46:9–10

I did some of my Clinical Pastoral Education Units in Gastonia. One of the units that I served was the Emergency Department. If there was an incident that was suspected to be gang related, they would ...

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Lord: In our times of weakness and our

Author

Richard Herman

Scripture

Matthew 11:28-30, Colossians 3:12, Matthew 5:14-16, Romans 12:18, Matthew 5:9, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4

Lord: In our times of weakness and our hours of need, Yours is the strength that enables us to carry on, Yours the shoulder we rest our heads upon. When our load is heavy and too much to bear, Yours a...

current affairs and causes on Social Media

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