“Moral communities are fragile things, hard to build and easy to destroy,” the psychologist Jonathan Haidt writes in The Righteous Mind. When you are raised in a culture without ethical structure, you become internally fragile. You have no moral compass to give you direction, no permanent ideals to which you can swear ultimate allegiance. “He […]
Did you ever wonder why most independent donut shops are run by Cambodian immigrants? Documentary, Donut King – Ted Ngoy, aka Uncle Ted. Frustrations and inability to stop gambling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_NgoyIn 1975, Ngoy fled the Khmer Rouge with his wife and three children to Camp Pendleton. He was employed by a church as a janitor. Winchell’s. […]
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Esau McCaulley, On Hope, Hate and the Most Radical Claim of the Easter SeasonApril 8, 2023 Easter has never been my favorite church service. Shouting “Alleluia, Christ is risen!” requires an emotional crescendo my melancholy temperament can’t easily manage.I’m much more comfortable on Maundy Thursday, the beginning of the Triduum, the holiest three days in […]
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as ethicist Martha Nussbaum writes, “A good doctor is also a good poisoner.” In other words, the difference between a life-saving doctor and a life-taking poisoner or between an able artist and a master forger lies not in the possession of knowledge or skill, but in its rightful application.
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To Tell Someone They’re Wrong, First Tell Them They’re Right A philosopher’s 350-year-old trick to get people to change their minds is now backed up by psychologists. Quartz Olivia Goldhill Read when you’ve got time to spare. The 17th century philosopher Blaise Pascal is perhaps best known for Pascal’s Wager which, in the first formal use […]
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Drop the Rock highlights We surrender as much of ourselves to as much of God as we understand. Surrender prayer God we want to… “change fear into faith, hate into love, egoism into humility, anxiety and worry into serenity, complacency into action, denial into acceptance, jealousy into trust, fantasy into reality, selfishness into service, resentment […]
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Quitting is sometimes the best thing. It opens us up to new paths. https://hbr.org/2018/09/when-to-stick-with-something-and-when-to-quit A final benefit of perseverance is that we don’t know when our luck will turn. A recent study of the careers of nearly 29,000 artists, filmmakers, and scientists found that most of them had a hot streak in their career when […]
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How Much Land Does a Man Need? a short story by Leo Tolstoy http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/2738/ “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” Matthew 16:26-28 King James Version (KJV) I An elder sister came to […]
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[From Dww-work]… LORD, LIAR OR LUNATIC CS Lewis in Mere Christianity writes: I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “”‘m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.” That is the one thing we […]
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The ‘P’ word Some people may think “proselytize” is a dirty word, but that depends on how you define and practice it. Proselytize means to convert someone to another belief or opinion. And the truth is, we all do it — or at least try to. We try to convince our buddies that our sports […]
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Tags: evangelism, proselytizing