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Not Until After My Death
Frederick William I was a king of Prussia in the early 18th century. Personality-wise, he was described as exacting, frugal and austere. He was known to beat his children when they disappointed him. H... -
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Erecting a Life Around Dysfunction
Remember Miss Haversham in Charles Dickens's Great Expectations? Her entire life was defined by the fact that she was jilted on her wedding day. People can become very attached to their pain and i... -
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Mutual Accusations
In the mid-1980s, I helped facilitate a series of conferences between top Soviet and American policy advisers on the question of how to prevent a nuclear war. The times were tense and the accusations ... -
Quote
Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves. -
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One Vice
There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they ... -
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The Discipline of Not Having the Last Word
In his book, Soul Keeping, pastor John Ortberg describes his mentorship by Dallas Willard early in his ministry. The following vignette occurred while Willard was teaching a philosphy course at the Un... -
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I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost ... -
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I have held many things in my hands and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God's hands, that I still possess. -
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Living in Outrage Heaven
The political cartoonist and Op-Ed writer Tim Kreider has provided us with some insight into the “world of outrage” we currently inhabit. A world that has been amplified by the dawn of the Internet an... -
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Dissonance theory predicts that we will eventually (and conveniently) forget good arguments made by opponents just as we forget silly arguments we made ourselves. . . . It’s motivated by our need to b... -
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It infuriates me to be wrong when I know I’m right. -
Quote
We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is pos... -
blog
The Thrill of Being Right: Sermon Illustration Tuesday
Why is it so fun to be right? As pleasures go, it is, after all, a second-order one at best. Unlike many of life’s other delights—chocolate, surfing, kissing—it does not enjoy any mainline access to o... -
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Case Closed?
During the infamous Dreyfus trial in France, Jewish army officer Captain Alfred Dreyfus was falsely accused of treason, sparking a national scandal marked by anti-Semitism and injustice. Among Dreyfus... -
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Division in American Politics
In 2014, researchers at Northwestern University, Boston College, and the University of Melbourne published an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , a prestigious academ... -
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When We’re Wrong
To be told we are wrong is sometimes an embarrassment, even a humiliation. We want to run and hide our heads in shame. But there are times when finding out we are wrong is sudden and immediate relief,... -
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Stop being so sure that you are always right, and others wrong. Don't trust your own opinion, when you find it contrary to that of older men, and especially to that of your own parents. Age gives ... -
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Offending people is a necessary and healthy act. Every time you say something that’s offensive to another person, you just caused a discussion. You just forced them to have to think. -
liturgy
Seeking Patience and True Repentance
Gracious God, we have not been patient, nor have we been kind. We have been jealous of others and we have been quick to boast. We have denied others the dignity of being made in your image. Bring us t... -
liturgy
How quickly our loyalties fade, oh God.
How quickly our loyalties fade, oh God. We proclaim you are our Lord, but lives do not reflect that truth. We pay you homage when it’s easy, but live our own way when we feel like it. We praise you to... -
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Reducing People to the Madness of a Single Moment
In his thoughtful book, Our Good Crisis: Overcoming Moral Chaos with the Beatitudes , Jonathan K. Dodson points out our blind-spots with respect to pride: We rarely think of ourselves as proud. I... -
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The Lie that Held Him Captive
When legendary magician Harry Houdini came into a town to do his show, he often went to the local jail, gathering a crowd of people along the way. To get buzz going about his upcoming performance, he ... -
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Getting Unstuck with a Grand Gesture
In 2007, author J. K. Rowling was struggling to finish the final novel, The Deathly Hallows , in her seven-part Harry Potter series. She was feeling stressed, trying to connect the dots in a way ... -
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John Steinbeck Hears an Old Fashioned Hell & Brimstone Sermon
While it has become unpopular in many circles, including many Christian circles, to avoid the "s" word (sin), some, including the writer John Steinbeck, see it's value. In his travelogue... -
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Lifting the Rock
One day a father decided to take his son to play at the local park. The boy quickly gravitated to the sandbox and found himself mesmerized by the colors and textures surrounding him. After a short tim... -
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The Feeling of Being Right
Studies show we actually get a dopamine hit when we think we’re proven right. We can literally become addicted to the sensation of our rightness. “Your body does not discriminate against pleasure,” wr... -
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We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts... -
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We will often stop at nothing to avoid cognitive dissonance. We will twist logic, bend reason, conveniently forget facts, invent new stories, even destroy relationships—all in the name of preserving o... -
scripture guide
Scripture Guide, Matthew 25:1-13
Ancient lighting took Work I remember watching a movie (I think it was The Mummy ) where the protagonists descended into an underground structure built by the ancients. The structure was completel... -
lectionary
14th Sunday after Pentecost
Context: The Grumblers Jesus tells the three parables of Luke 15 to “the Pharisees and scribes” who were grumbling. Throughout Luke’s gospel account Jesus has been involved in controversy with the Ph...
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