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Assorted

If businesses tithed

Christians are familiar with the Biblical principle of tithing, and support many kingdom causes as a matter of course. They apply the principles of Galatians 6:10 with their talents, time and treasure: “So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.” Followers of Jesus Christ are known for their enthusiastic support of their local church, Christian education, organizations helping the homeless and poor nearby and in other parts of the globe.

We are giving, and we can see God blessing those gifts.

So, what might the Lord do if Christians who own their own businesses or are shareholders in a venture with others, found ways to apply these same principles in their business operations?

Retained earnings

Often in the first years of establishing a company, funds can be tight, and any profits that are made need to be invested back in the business to pay down debt, or to purchase new equipment, or to hire more staff. (These profits that are not pulled out of the venture, but are used by the company are often called “retained earnings.”) Sometimes, a new firm can operate for years without paying out profits to its owners, but meanwhile, the company is growing, owns more assets than when it was starting up, and itself is now worth far more than it was when it was just an idea percolating in the minds of its founders.

When Christian owners or shareholders are rewarded with a dividend payout from the business, it’s relatively easy for them to make an individual decision about giving back to the Lord from these earnings, just as they would decide when receiving a regular paycheque. All these good gifts that we receive are really the Lord’s, and for us to “give back” from our first fruits should be a given. In Proverbs 3:9-10, Solomon reminds us to:

“Honor the Lord with your wealth, and with the first fruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine.”

But what about the wealth that has been building up inside the venture, the “retained earnings” referenced above? In Luke 12:16-21, the Lord Jesus warns against covetousness and greed with the story of the rich fool:

“The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things that you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

Stewards, not owners

The rich man’s declaration of what he will do with “my grain and my goods” tells us how he thought of what he owned – it was all his, and not the Lord’s. That’s a point that the Lord Jesus makes again and again – not to think of the possessions God has entrusted to me as mine. All of it is the Lord’s, and all of it is only lent to us here on earth, to use wisely, and give back to Him (Luke 12:42-48, Matt. 25:14-30, etc.). And leading into this passage, He also warns us against thinking that one's life consists “in the abundance of the things he possesses” (Luke 12:15).

Although it’s not an exact analogy, the retained earnings inside our companies can function like the grain and goods in the rich fool’s barn – our company’s growth can be a temptation to measure ourselves by what we have built – so we need to be very careful how we view them.

So, how can we resist that pull?

Firstly, we should consider all of it the Lord’s, to be used for His kingdom and His glory. This does not mean we can’t invest in new equipment, or purchase additional property for our companies, or keep a prudent amount of funds available for potential emergencies. All of these are good business practices. But we should have in the forefront the idea that all of this is the Lord’s: just like the servants entrusted with the master’s property in Matthew 25, we will also be asked to give an account by our Master for how we managed what He lent to us.

Secondly, just as we financially support kingdom causes by giving from our paychecks and dividends, our companies could do the same with their retained earnings and with other resources they have built up. I was exposed to this idea of “corporate tithing” years ago by other Christian business owners. At their annual shareholders’ meeting, where they reviewed the past year’s performance, the shareholders were given an update on how much, and to whom the company had donated in the past twelve months, with the expectation that it would add up to a tenth of the retained earnings from the previous year. This built-in accountability helped the company’s management be intentional about their charitable giving, because there was a specific expectation around a measurable quantity – ten percent of last year’s retained earnings is a clear expectation, and one that can be easily communicated and measured.

So how about it, business owners? Could a principle like this be adopted in your business? Can you encourage the company you work for to consider more than nominal support of causes that promote the Kingdom of God?

May we be encouraged also by Paul who writes in 2 Cor. 9:6-7:

“Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”

Just imagine

Business tithing brings with it all sorts of opportunities and possibilities.

  • Imagine a business tithed from their profit of $100,000: they could cover the cost of a part-time special needs assistant at their local Christian school.
  • If they tithed from $1M, they could provide the means for a church or non-profit to hire a full-time employee, or do a renovation, or fund a medical clinic in the third world for a year.
  • Imagine doing this consecutively over 10 or even 40 years? It really adds up. It could cover the cost of an entire orphanage etc.
  • Another way businesses can tithe, beyond money, is by hiring people who are otherwise not likely to get a job, or a great job. It might be people with special needs, or who are in a place in life where they really need help/grace. Employment is so meaningful. But if we are only thinking about the bottom line, we won't be keen to take them on.

While this editorial focused primarily on the financial portion of a company’s giving back, there are many other ways that businesses can contribute to their community with their employees’ and owners’ time and abilities. If you have suggestions for good practices that encourage good stewardship in these areas, we’d be delighted to learn more! Send us your thoughts.

Marty VanDriel is the chief executive officer of two small businesses in Washington State, voluntary treasurer for three non-profit organizations, and assistant editor of Reformed Perspective.

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Assorted

Life in bloom: The gift of flowers

“Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” - Luke 12:27 When God created the first humans, He placed them in a garden. So it’s natural enough that, since then, people have not only cultivated plants for practical reasons (food, medicine, clothing), but have delighted in the beauty of plants and flowers. Our love of flowers seems to be built into our DNA. In a sense, a garden is our natural habitat. I was reading an article recently about all the ways flowers are good for us (which include lowering stress, improving mood, and boosting memory and concentration). The article quoted from a 2005 Rutgers University study that investigated why exactly humans have the seemingly innate positive relationship with flowers that they do – which is, after all, hard to explain from an evolutionary perspective. I was struck by how the researchers (with their evolutionary assumptions) seemed baffled as they summarized their findings: “For more than 5000 years, people have cultivated flowers although there is no known reward for this costly behavior.... There is little existing theory in any discipline that explains the findings. We suggest that cultivated flowers are rewarding because they have evolved to rapidly induce positive emotions in humans...” But what baffles evolutionists simply delights Christians, teaching us about our Creator. Surely our love for flowers points us to a God who made the world more extravagantly beautiful than it had to be, a God Who takes pleasure in His creation and invites His image-bearers to do the same. Surely flowers are one of His good gifts to humanity – a gift with many different facets. Flowers are good for us Flowers do more than bring us passing joy; their impact can go much deeper, offering benefits in a variety of ways. Mental, emotional, and physical benefits As the Rutgers study, among others, found, flowers are good for people – mentally, emotionally, and even physically. The positive response of humans to flowers seems to be universal, crossing age and gender lines, and going beyond cultural associations with flowers (for example, the idea of flowers as gifts representing affection or gratitude). As the Rutgers study summarized it, “The presence of flowers triggers happy emotions, heightens feelings of life satisfaction and affects social behavior in a positive manner far beyond what is normally believed.” Exposure to nature in general, and to flowers in particular, can contribute to many health benefits. Even the simple presence of a vase of flowers has been shown to reduce stress and increase wellbeing in studies of college-age women, male office workers, and hospital patients. Other research in multiple settings has shown that the activity of flower arranging can lower blood pressure and heart rate, and decrease stress, in participants (including the elderly and those struggling with mental health issues). Theresa Brouwer and Christine VanEerde, sisters who own a flower shop in Fergus, Ontario (and who happen to be my cousins), wouldn’t be surprised by the results of these studies. “Being in the floral industry can be quite therapeutic,” they told me. “We get to be creative and expressive using God’s creation. To be busy with one’s hands, creating floral designs, is a great way to spend one’s day.” The sisters agreed that flowers generally bring a lot of joy to their customers as well. “People typically leave the shop with flowers in hand and a smile on their face. Flowers tend to bring joy all around – whether it be the joy of giving them, or receiving them. To be able to assist others in ‘making their day’ is quite rewarding." John and Margaret Helder at Muttart Conservatory, where John served as director for many years. Horticultural therapy John Helder is a horticulturalist with many years' experiences working as both the long-serving director of Edmonton’s Muttart Conservatory and greenhouses, and as the city’s Principal of Horticulture. He and his wife, Margaret, a botanist, appreciate flowers both personally and professionally. Their beautifully planted front and back yards bring smiles to the faces of many passersby; and John has seen first-hand the far-reaching benefits of flowers in his work. “At Muttart , opportunity is provided for people to be exposed to and enjoy the beauty of plants of God’s creation. Many people come to relax and to be spiritually or emotionally refreshed in such a beautiful, calm setting.” His work with the city of Edmonton also involved working with plants for social improvement. “As Edmonton’s Principal of Horticulture, I worked with community beautification, school plantings, community gardens. Some projects were with various social agencies whose clients were helped through their volunteering in horticulture (planting and caring for floral beds) and using their activities for horticultural therapy.” “Horticultural therapy” was a new term for me, and I was fascinated to learn more about it. This type of therapy is generally designed for people with physical limitations, mental illness, or other particular challenges. Working with plants can stimulate, engage, and bring joy and satisfaction, as well as give opportunities for beneficial socialization. John described his work in helping establish community gardens and community planters in several low-income, troubled areas of the city. Over time he witnessed both personal and social growth for those who participated. Residents began to take pride in their neighborhood, interact more, and even support each other more (in one case by developing a cooperative babysitting service) as they built relationships and trust while working together. Community gardening was a catalyst with many ripple effects, providing “a non-threatening environment start to interact, socialize and counter their loneliness and grow as people.” John also told me about a member of his church who lives at a seniors’ home which started making planters available for residents’ use. “A number of people now gather at the planters and chat, interact and enjoy the growing or just observing and enjoying each other’s company.” Horticultural therapy can be a structured, formal activity; but everyone can benefit from growing or simply appreciating natural beauty. “In my mind, gardening, working with plants and soil, is enjoyable, and people should be exposed to horticulture from an early age to learn to appreciate flowers, plants, nature and beauty,” John concluded. He added, “This also goes for music, the arts, literature, culinary arts, and in whatever other ways we can stimulate our senses and our talents, enjoy life and God’s gifts, and through our interests serve and share with others. As per Philippians 4:8: ‘Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.’” Flowers teach us Like all of the “book” of creation, flowers teach us about their wise and creative Designer. And we can learn other things from them as well. Lessons from God’s Word In the Bible, flowers are sometimes used as a metaphor to remind us of the brevity of life. As David soberingly put it, “As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more” (Ps. 103:15,16). Flowers remind us to “number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom,” as Moses expressed it (Ps. 90:12). Flower imagery in the Bible also gives us a vivid picture of the blessings God will pour out on His people: “I will be like the dew to Israel; he shall blossom like the lily; he shall take root like the trees of Lebanon; his shoots shall spread out.... they shall blossom like the vine” (Hosea 14:5-7). In Isaiah 58, when God promises restoration to His repentant people, He tells them, “you shall be like a watered garden” (Is. 58:11). In Isaiah 35:1, the result of the coming of the Messiah is described as the bursting into bloom of a dry and lifeless land: “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom like the crocus; it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing.” These types of word pictures sink into our minds and hearts in a way that more dry, abstract teaching may not. “Working and walking in my garden... reminds me of God’s goodness, blessings, and grace,” says Gina. Learning experientially Working with flowers can also teach us lessons, and help us experience truths, that we wouldn’t as easily learn in a less tangible way. For myself, my (very small-scale) flower-growing is always a hopeful but also a humbling endeavor. So many variables are outside my control, and the final results are usually not quite what I’d pictured. When I do end up with vases full of vibrant flowers, I know I can’t really take any credit. The flowers from my garden – like so many of the good things in my life – truly are a gift. Gina is one of the women in my church who enjoys growing and sharing flowers on a somewhat larger scale. She shared how working in her garden is a powerful reminder that she has a choice every day whether to focus on all the weeds – the difficulties and discouragements of life – or on the flowers, the beautiful blessings in the middle of the messiness. “Working and walking in my garden full of flowers reminds me of God’s goodness, blessings, and grace,” Gina told me. “Just like life, my garden is chaotic, often a mess full of weeds. I can’t control the weeds or stop them from coming – they keep popping up – but in the midst of this messy garden I can see little patches of beautiful flowers growing. “I will need to deal with the weeds and mess on a daily basis. Sometimes it can be discouraging or overwhelming to keep going. So it’s the flowers in front of me I choose to focus on – like beautiful rays of sunshine of God’s grace and goodness.” Theresa and Christina, co-owners of Grand Floral, love helping their customers “say it with flowers.” Flowers communicate & express “Say it with flowers” is the slogan of Grand Floral (the Fergus, Ontario flower shop), and it captures this key communicative aspect of flowers. As co-owners Theresa and Christine explain: “There are so many things you can express to others by giving flowers…. Gratitude, love, thankfulness and celebration to what may already be a joyous occasion. Expressions of sympathy or simply ‘thinking of you’ to lift someone’s spirits on a difficult day. “Being able to help our customers convey this message to others is often a joyful task – either in meeting their needs or supporting them through any of these occasions. It is often through the difficult times (grief, loss) that we have the opportunity to provide a word of encouragement and support.” Expressing joy and gratitude Flowers have meanings, or can evoke emotions, which make them a beautiful way to express things like joy and thankfulness – also in the context of worship. Both the Old Testament tabernacle and temple included floral designs, and flowers can add a note of joy and vibrancy in our own churches as well. My church has enjoyed beautiful bouquets and arrangements at the front for many years. Mrs. Lenie Noort provided these for well over a decade. “Going to church should be a joyful thing,” she told me, explaining that it’s natural to express that joy with the beauty of flowers. “I loved using the flowers God created to make His house beautiful.” Kim sees her flower arrangements as a way to express and share gratitude and thanksgiving. Several years ago, Kim Kieneker took over providing flowers for our church. Kim, who comes from a family of flower growers and arrangers, loves all things green and colorful; she’s always had a perennial garden as well as a vegetable garden, and enjoys growing as well as foraging for beautiful flowers and plants, and then using them in creative ways. “I love the soil,” she told me. “I enjoy beautiful and created things, I enjoy creating with them.” As she described how she goes about putting together arrangements for the church, and her thoughts during the process, the words “thanks” and “thankfulness” came up often. Kim sees her work as a beautiful way to express, share, and inspire gratitude and thanksgiving in the congregation, giving glory to God for His bounty and blessings. “God gives us so much natural beauty around us,” she commented; “it’d be shame not to give a thank offering of it to Him.” Kim often subtly integrates meaning into her arrangements. She likes researching the meanings of particular flowers, and also thinking about the church season and significant occasions or celebrations in the congregation. She finds it interesting how different people often see different things in her arrangements, and she loves giving people something to reflect on. For example, in her arrangement for Good Friday last year, she made use of palms (looking back to Palm Sunday), thorns (representing the crown of thorns, “but pulled apart to recognize that Jesus no longer wears the crown of thorns”), white lilies (which are often association with Christ’s resurrection), and yellow forsythia (which evoke hope, joy, anticipation, and the coming of spring and new life). Even if we don’t consciously make all these connections, we as members of the congregation often experience an emotional response and are given something to ponder. More simply, some Sundays Kim just enjoys providing “seasonal bouquets from nature” – many of which she gives away to church members at the end of the day. She loves foraging for plants and flowers, wherever she happens to be – “I always keep a pair of rubber boots and a pruner in my vehicle” – and delights in creating from what she finds. Kim is drawn to asymmetrical designs and interesting shapes, finding beauty in the natural “quirkiness” of nature, rather than aiming for stiff, static perfection in her arrangements. Often the results are a bit unexpected or whimsical; I loved the flowers arranged inside a pumpkin last fall, and the blueberries peeking out of a bouquet early last summer when they were in season. “Sometimes it’s hard to find a way to use your talents and passions in a special way to serve in the church,” Kim commented. In her case, providing weekly flowers has been a beautiful and rewarding way for her to do just that. Flowers connect us Finally, flowers can connect us – with our roots, our families, and with our neighbors – sometimes in wonderful and unexpected ways, Connecting the generations My parents grew (and still grow) big, beautiful dahlias, while my father-in-law introduced me to colorful, sturdy zinnias. Both flowers have become standbys for me, and I enjoy how they remind me of people I love. And, although I’m several generations away from the Netherlands, I have a soft spot for tulips and like seeing these bright little reminders of generations of flower lovers before me. Similar experiences were shared by many people I talked to. As Theresa Brouwer remembered, “My Oma always had windows full of plants, and took such good care of her gardens. I spent a lot of time there and must’ve picked up on her love for ‘everything nice.’” Her sister Christine VanEerde felt the same way. Even before working with flowers at Grand Floral, she always had a love for them; “Often you could find fresh cuts on my table after a grocery run.” Mrs. Lenie Noort also reminisced about her flower-growing family when we talked. She says she inherited her love of flowers from her mother: “After the house was cleaned up, then the flowers went on the table. A table without flowers was nothing.” Gina has also found flowers to be a wonderful way to connect the generations. Her young granddaughters enjoy working in her garden with her, and Gina has especially loved helping them pick and prepare flowers as gifts for other family members. Gina described the rewarding feeling of “seeing the joy in whole being when she picked, arranged, and wrapped up a bouquet to give to her great-grandmother. I realize I am passing on the joy of giving. The anticipation of thoughtful giving by choosing the flowers from the garden, arranging them into a bouquet, wrapping them up and seeing the smile of the person receiving your hand-picked gift – it’s worth more than words can describe.” Henk and his daughter Shelley planting dozens of their yearly baskets together. In Henk and Ginny Vanderhorst’s family, planting baskets together in spring has been an all-day father-daughter tradition for twenty-five years now (although, with one of the two daughters having moved away from Langley, BC, where her parents and older sister still live, the tradition has changed over the years). The sons of the family don’t participate, and Ginny understands that, although she is politely welcome to bring coffee, it’s “dad and daughter” time. Preparations begin several weeks ahead of time, as the three visit favorite nurseries and select a variety of plants and flowers, which they’ll later share and exchange with each other. Back at the parental home on the designated planting day, the three use the back of Henk’s truck as their work surface, putting together countless planters and baskets – enough for all their homes, and often a few to give away. The running joke is that, while shopping for their plants, they “didn’t go over budget” – mainly because they didn’t have one. Some things are priceless. The Helders’ frame-worthy front yard, which features a diversity of ground cover, flowers, and shrubs, gets a lot of attention. Connecting with our neighbors The beauty of flowers and plants can also connect us to neighbors and even strangers around us. John and Margaret Helder have found that their beautifully planted (and unfenced) property has become a draw for acquaintances and passersby alike. At first, this “sharing” of their yard and garden was unintentional; “we never thought of fencing our yard because I (a cheap Dutchman) thought a fence to be an unnecessary expenditure,” John told me with a smile. As well, the couple liked having an open play area for their children (and a small collection of outdoor pet rabbits, pigeons, and a chicken), connected to the municipal grassed walkway and treed berm behind their property. “As the grassway became more popular for residents, our menagerie became a popular destination for the neighborhood: little children with parents, as well as school and child-care groups,” John explained. Over time, as their yard matured and the Helders made various changes and additions, including adding an experimental rain garden, “people continued to stop by.” A number of years ago, as part of a more dramatic makeover, they replaced all the grass in their front yard with “a wild diversity of ground cover, flowers and shrubs.” Especially in the spring, when all the front bulbs were blossoming, “we got a lot of attention,” John told me. Eventually the Helders started “sharing” their property in more deliberate, organized ways: “Along with the general public, school and summer camp groups stop by and learn about plants, composting, our rain garden, etc. We have invited specific groups to our garden as well” – including sending out an impromptu invitation to their congregation for a “yard open house” this past summer. “Many people enjoy our property and chat with us about our garden,” John concluded. “The conversations lead to a wide diversity of topics well beyond flowers and plants.” Connecting in Covid A unique example of connecting with the community through flowers took place in southern Ontario in the spring of 2020, during the first of the Covid lockdowns. During the “Covid spring” of 2020, the Ravensbergens’ full greenhouses (shown here this past February) called for creative solutions. Many wholesale florists, including P. Ravensbergen & Sons in Smithville, Ontario, found themselves with greenhouses full of flowering plants – hydrangeas, begonias, chrysanthemums – that were no longer needed by many of their regular buyers. Although Ravensbergen was already regularly donating surplus flowers to charitable organizations such as the Grimsby Benevolent Fund, Habitat for Humanity and others (as they still do today), the sheer volume of “extra” plants called for creative solutions. Staff searched for new and creative ways to sell and donate the plants. “We sold some from trucks by the side of the road,” said general manager William Ravensbergen, “and donated some to seniors’ homes and senior living neighborhoods in the area.” Help was received from a local business that wished to help scale up the distribution from the immediate West Lincoln area to create a larger impact. This involved reaching out to many local Reformed churches with an offer to sponsor flower distributions in the churches’ communities, if groups such as home mission and outreach committees were interested in organizing these activities. The response was positive – both from many churches, and from neighbors who eventually received the cheerful blooms, along with messages of support and encouragement, during that difficult and isolating spring season. Countless plants were delivered door to door or, to avoid physical contact, left on porches, and the gesture clearly made an impact. “We received literally hundreds of thank-you cards from those who got flowers,” William told me. I spoke to one young woman who had been part of the “flower drop” around Dunnville, Ontario. She described how her young people’s group knocked on doors around town, delivering the flowers along with encouraging notes and invitations to their church’s live-streamed services. She remembers it as a very positive experience; “you never got tired of seeing people’s reactions to the flowers.” One older woman broke down and cried when she received her flowers, explaining that she hadn’t had contact with anyone for days. The young woman who had brought them was struck by the older woman’s utter loneliness, and decided to maintain contact. The two of them continue to visit regularly to this day. Although the older woman has hesitated to accept her new friend’s invitation to church, she says she sees God’s hand in making their paths cross. Another friendly church family has recently moved in down the street, and the woman has also expressed that she now feels so much less lonely – surrounded by caring community. And sometimes during a visit the older woman will smile and say, “It all started with flowers, eh?” “O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom have you made them all...” – Ps. 104:24...

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Adult non-fiction, Assorted, Book Reviews

Necessary Endings

Finding the courage to let go in business, church, and family ***** Why did my dad’s tomatoes and cucumbers always flourish? I used to think it may have something to do with the tobacco smoke from his pipe, which he puffed while tending to them. But the success carried on even when the days of the pipe ended. I got my answer some years ago when my dad checked out our greenhouse and noticed lanky cucumber bushes with little fruit. He showed me how to identify “suckers” and shoots that needed to be pinched off. For a new gardener, it seems strange, even shocking, to cut off healthy branches and flowers. But whether it is cucumbers, apple trees, or flowers, God designed many plants to produce more buds than they can sustain. Plants have limited energy, so without pruning, that energy goes towards growth that literally isn’t fruitful. I was looking for cucumbers, not huge cucumber plants without fruit. In other cases, sick branches or dead branches need to be removed, as they will hold back the plant or tree from flourishing. Contrary to popular thought, nature doesn’t do best when left alone. Through these plants, God is teaching us something about our own lives and the causes we invest in, including in business and the Church. We need deliberate pruning – we need to make endings happen. That is true for all stages of life, but especially as we feel the effects of age. Endings are necessary As much as we value beginnings and growth, God has made endings a natural and important aspect of life, even before the Fall into sin. There is day and night, and a season for planting, watering, harvesting, and cleaning up so that it can start over (Eccl. 3:1-2). Accepting endings, and making them happen at times, is the design that God wove in the very fabric of our lives. “In your business and perhaps your life, the tomorrow that you desire and envision may never come to pass if you do not end some things you are doing today.” That is how Christian psychologist and business coach Dr. Henry Cloud opened his book Necessary Endings. This book gave direction and encouragement when I had to make some hard endings a few years back. But the value of it keeps resurfacing as I notice how much we can struggle because we resist endings: • We hold onto possessions that have no more use to us; • Teens refuse to end their childhood, and continue doing little to help the family; • Young adults grow older but fail to launch, continuing to be cared for by their parents; • Seniors don’t deal with past hurts or ongoing sinful patterns because they have resigned themselves to who they are; • Spouses endure abuse because they think they have no choice. In some cases, endings seem to be even a bigger challenge for Christians: • Committees and societies continue longer than they should because the people involved are simply fulfilling their term, and don’t think it is their place to end something that others started; • Poor performance by people in positions of authority (pastors, elders, deacons, volunteers, school board members) can carry on perpetually because others feel that if they speak up, they will be seen as the problem, inviting unwanted conflict and stress into their lives; • A church member can take advantage of the kindness and care of their congregation year after year, without consequence; • Church leadership can struggle for years with following through on church discipline because of the desire that things will turn around. Dr. Cloud pulls no punches in response to scenarios like these. Endings are crucial and “your life and business must face them, stagnate, or die.” He explains that we prune our lives for the same reasons we prune plants. 1. “If an initiative is siphoning off resources that could go to something with more promise, it is pruned. 2. “If an endeavor is sick and is not going to get well, it is pruned. 3. “If it is clear that something is already dead, it is pruned.” Why aren’t we pruning? This is a proven formula for flourishing. So why do we sometimes have such a hard time doing it? An obvious reason is that endings often require confrontation and some pain. Cutting away an apple tree, or pulling flowers off a plant, doesn’t feel good. There are no immediate rewards. We convince ourselves that the status-quo is a better option than change. But the problem with this approach is that we are being led by our feelings rather than reality. It is wishful thinking. Dr. Cloud compares our reluctance to make necessary endings to getting an infected tooth pulled. It isn’t a pleasant experience. But it is so important to get done. “We all hurt sometimes in facing hard truths, but it makes us grow…. That is not harmful. Harm is when you damage someone. Facing reality is usually not a damaging experience, even though it can hurt.” Another reason why we may not be making necessary endings in our lives is because we don’t know what we are aiming for, or pruning towards. We are drifting with the current, reacting to whatever comes our way. This makes sense for our unbelieving world, which struggles to understand what it means to be a human being, man, woman, parent, or senior. The world isn’t interested in following God’s blueprint. It isn’t sure it even wants the cucumber plant to produce cucumbers. Unfortunately, it is also an issue for Christians, even though God gives very clear direction for our lives. We struggle with disciplining our children in response to behaviors that need to stop, even though the Bible makes it clear that God has entrusted parents with this task. We let teens have the responsibilities and expectations of children even though an entire Bible book was given to them to chart a path of responsible living (see Proverbs). And even church leadership can have a difficult time seeing through commands like 1 Corinthians 5:13 to “expel the wicked person from among you.” When we refuse to prune, not only are we making growth more difficult, we are also getting in the way of the beautiful plan that God has for our lives, the church, and society. Perhaps another reason why Christians may feel uncomfortable with this talk of pruning is that it seems to clash with our calling to love even our enemies, or to care for the vulnerable. As we read in Isaiah 42:3, the Lord sustains the weak: “A bruised reed He will not break and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out.” This is where we need to realize that the pruning metaphor has its limitations. The point of this article, and Dr. Cloud’s book, is not at all to cut away people who have weaknesses. Caring for the vulnerable is one of the goals we are pruning towards and aiming for. We are pruning away what hurts the vulnerable. For example, a church committee that has long passed its expiration date will continue draining the time of its members, and cut into their capacity to help those who really need help. And a person or family who is taking advantage of the care of others in the congregation because they keep asking for help (when they could be taking care of themselves) is preventing the congregation from caring for those who really need it. If all of this sounds like it is based on worldly motivations for productivity, it may help to remember that our Lord Jesus Christ spoke strongly about this: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful” (John 15:1-2). He was also willing to leave an area and move on. For example, in Mark 1 we read how Jesus went to a solitary place to pray. When his disciples came they said “Everyone is looking for you!” To this, Jesus replied “Let us go somewhere else – to the nearby villages – so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” Proactive pruning I have written elsewhere how I learned the hard way (through burnout) that life produces too much to sustain. Unfortunately, I had to feel significant pain to pull the pruners out. The problem with waiting until something crosses a line is that it unnecessarily leads to lasting hurt for ourselves and others. My lack of pruning may have seemed to benefit my family (as I was fixing up our home and property) and employer in the short-term, as there was a lot of growth, but it ending up hurting them both. As we age, it is critical that we make pruning a normal and healthy practice of our day-to-day living. As with a cucumber plant or apple tree, this pruning should be done before there is obviously a problem. Proactive pruning also means that we have to let go of meaningful relationships that we once had, even though there is nothing wrong with them. Dr. Cloud points to brain research that shows we seem to have capacity to manage 140 to 150 relationships. As we grow older, our circle will grow quickly. Trying to juggle 300 relationships in a meaningful way is a recipe for doing a horrible job with all 300. So we will only be able to take on new ones if we are pruning old ones. Settling in a new community will mean having to let go of wonderful people from your old home that meant so much to you. Serving on the school board may mean having to give up that weekly visit you treasure so much. And yes, this also means that some people that we used to send a Christmas card to may no longer get it. It doesn’t mean that we no longer care for these people. Rather, it means we are investing in the relationships that God is calling us to in this time and place. Like a cucumber plant, we are directing the limited energy or “juice” we have to the fruit God wants to see. It also means pruning off parts of our lives that haven’t been fruitful, even if we really hoped they would be. A successful business like Starbucks will still regularly shut down hundreds of stores. Dr. Cloud notes that often “when that occurs, the stock prices go up.” That is because the business community understands that pruning isn’t a sign of weakness but of health and strength. The fact that a church plant isn’t growing to the point where it can sustain itself is a reason to consider working towards an ending, not to stop planting churches, but to try again somewhere better. More fertile ground may be waiting, but your next effort can’t start until the other has ended and sufficient resources are freed up. This is also why it was so important that Christian aid organizations have come to realize that simply giving more money, food, and supplies to people in need isn’t necessarily a blessing. In fact, it may be the very thing holding back people from making the changes necessary to succeed long-term. Sometimes the best way to help a person, family, or non-profit is to stop giving them what they are asking for. They won’t make necessary changes until you stop enabling them to carry on as they are. The wise, the foolish, and the evil Throughout his book, Dr. Cloud coaches the readers to figure out if endings are necessary and how to make them. He teaches the reader to get realistic, and even get hopeless if they expect change while carrying on the same way, so they’ll get motivated. But I found the most value in a chapter he devoted to figuring out how to discern whether the process of change is even worth it. For example, “how do you know when to invest the effort with someone to work on making things better and when should you tell them that you are done talking about it?” He does this by explaining that there are essentially only three categories when it comes to people’s character: the wise, the foolish, and the evil. Although his audience isn’t all Christian, he explains that these Scriptural categories are proven true in all fields of life, including business, psychology, and law. It is critical that we understand whether the person we are dealing with is wise, foolish, or evil, because it will determine the track we take and whether an ending is necessary. A wise person recognizes truth for what it is, takes it in, and adjusts themselves accordingly. When corrected, they listen and change their life. As a result, they improve every day again. They are motivated to change, and are willing to show genuine remorse when they need to. When dealing with a wise person, communication goes a long way. They are eager to be trained or coached. Talking helps. A fool doesn’t adjust to the truth. Rather, they adjust the truth so that they don’t have to change themselves. He or she isn’t the problem. Others are. They are defensive, they blame, and talking to them doesn’t help at all. Instead, it creates conflict and division. “At this point it is time to change the conversation from trying to get them to change to talking about the fact that no change is happening and that is the problem…. Roger, this team and the environment we want to have around here are important to me, so I can’t allow your abusive behavior to ruin it anymore.” Adding consequences is often required. “Dave, I want to live in a sober house, and since you have chosen to not do anything about your addiction, I won’t be living with you anymore until you get treatment and get sober.” The key with dealing with foolish people is to end the pattern. “You cannot control them or get them to change. What you can do is create an ending to the effects their refusal to take responsibility is having on you or others.” Although we would love to think otherwise, there are no shortage of fools in our lives. Apart from God’s grace and the working of His Holy Spirit, we are all fools. But we have been born again, and it is important that we act accordingly. Finally, there are evil people, who intentionally want to hurt you. An evil person is the “kind of person who likes to bring others down, is intentionally divisive, enjoys it when someone fails, and tries to create the downfall of others or of the company is to be protected against at all costs.” As Christians, we can be guilty of a living in a pretend world. We see numerous examples of evil people in the Bible, including among God’s covenant people (e.g., Old Testament Israel or the New Testament Church). But we act as if there are no evil people in our families, schools, or churches today, even when the evidence is clearly stacked against us. Untold pain has been caused by tolerating wicked abusers in our circles, simply because we foolishly assumed that if they came from another Reformed church, they must be trustworthy. Parents, elders, and school boards must have the courage to do whatever is necessary to protect God’s children from these wolves in sheep’s clothing (see Matt. 7, 1 Cor. 5). It's time for change Is God looking to you to make a necessary ending? Will you prayerfully consider this? It may be the beginning of a whole new life. A transition begins with an ending, not a new beginning. We don’t just become an adult. We first stop acting like a child. At this point I should add a caution. Some people are so motivated to see things change that they are too eager to prune. Pruning isn’t something to be done carelessly. It takes discernment. If you attack an apple tree with a chainsaw without knowing the right season or method (something I’m guilty of), your tree may die. The goal of this article, and Dr. Cloud’s book, is not to pursue endings for their own sake. Rather, it is to nurture flourishing lives. As such, if you are eager to see an ending, it would be good to first search your heart to discern what is motivating you. Dr. Cloud is a Christian, but the book is written for a broader audience. If we go to Scripture, we can find even more wisdom and perspective as it relates to the importance of endings. God makes it clear in His Word that our lives, and all history, are progressing towards an ending: our impending death and the judgement we will face before His throne. Whether it is through the pain of burnout, disease, or old age, God is reminding us that our lives on earth won’t carry on forever and we shouldn’t pretend they will. He has given us a blueprint to show us how He wants us to use the time He has given. And He also warns us to “keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come” (Matthew 24:42). But Scriptures also show that God is not a harsh boss who is only interested in the bottom line. Our works aren’t going to satisfy Him. Thankfully, because of the good news of Jesus Christ’s victory over death in our place, death isn’t an ultimate ending. Rather, it is a door to a whole new life of joy. Once again, we see how endings are necessary and open the door to a new life. May our willingness to make endings here reflect the confidence we have in the new life that is waiting. ***** Necessary Endings: The employees, businesses, and relationships that all of us have to give up in order to move forward by Henry Cloud 2011 / 238 pages It is one thing to see the need for pruning, and another to know how to do it. The idea of ending an activity that has gone on for years, or cutting someone out of our lives, can be scary and needs to be managed carefully. Space doesn’t allow me to summarize all of Dr. Cloud’s advice so I’m going to instead encourage readers to get a copy of the book to discover the wealth of wisdom he shares. This includes topics like “having the conversation: strategies for ending things well.” And if you find it difficult to read a whole book on the topic, it is also available as an audio book. Perhaps you can listen to the book with someone else who would be blessed by it....

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The peculiar blessings of Covid

God used even this evil for good ***** In the early spring of 2020, Christian pastors from across Alberta sat on a telephone townhall with Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and Chief Medical Officer Deena Hinshaw. On the call – which had been scheduled to offer Alberta’s religious leaders an opportunity to ask questions about Covid-related regulations – pastors shared opinions, asked for medical advice, and requested clarification on the government’s early pandemic guidelines. Uncertainty about the future of the pandemic and its effect on in-person worship dominated the conversation. In the months following the townhall, as pandemic restrictions became more hotly contested and closely enforced, pastors and other church members reckoned with deep theological questions about the nature of human embodiment, the importance of in-person worship, and the efficacy of the Lord’s Supper. In addition to such practical theological questions, Canadian Christians – like their non-Christian neighbors – faced a litany of disappointments and devastation over the course of the pandemic era. These included cancelled weddings, cancelled funerals, the death of loved ones from Covid, the death of loved ones from suicide, frayed family relationships, and crushing financial hardships. As a result, many Christians – and most non-Christians – now view the pandemic as a long international nightmare which must never be repeated, and which would best be forgotten. This response to the human devastation of the Covid pandemic is natural. And in many ways it might even be healthy: a desire to constantly relitigate past events at the expense of tackling present problems serves no good purpose. However, underneath the severe difficulties of the Covid-era are surprising proofs of God’s covenant-keeping faithfulness – proofs that should make Christians rejoice in God’s sovereign activity during the Covid pandemic, and should produce hope about God’s activities amid today’s often-grievous cultural developments. Nothing to do but be renewed For some, the hated pandemic restrictions became the means through which God saved their soul. Allison, a young government employee from Alberta, spent much of the pandemic in the United Kingdom, unable to return home. As a result, she stayed at the house of a kind friend who invited her to watch livestreamed worship services. Convicted of her sin and curious about the God proclaimed in the sermons, Allison’s atheistic thinking began to fall apart. Renewed by the Spirit, she embraced the gospel. Today, she is a member of a local church in Calgary, having rejected the godless ideology of atheism and instead now embracing the whole counsel of the God who purchased her with His blood. Jared, a young data scientist from Hong Kong, was unable to find work at the height of the pandemic. Forced to change plans, he moved to Canada to pursue his education and career in a new country, eventually taking a job in Calgary. With no immediate social connections in his new city, Jared started consuming hours of YouTube content and the site’s algorithm eventually led him to Christian apologetics. Intrigued by arguments defending Christianity, he was learning as much about the Christian faith as he could, and soon turned to Christ for salvation. He now faithfully serves his local church where he is beginning to teach theology classes to fellow church members. As Covid spread throughout the world in March of 2020, God carefully laid the foundation for Allison and Jared’s conversion. Long before patient zero, God had chosen vessels of mercy to be converted during the pandemic and ordered the decade’s darkest circumstances to bring His chosen sons and daughters into the marvelous light of His grace. Public education exposed A second proof of God’s covenant-keeping faithfulness during the pandemic is the dramatic expansion of Christian school and homeschool participation in Canada. As school buildings closed, and mom and dad began to pay closer attention to the public school content that was now being streamed into their homes, parents didn’t always like what they were hearing. Some then responded by homeschooling their children, or by placing them in faithful Christian schools. As a result, both homeschooling and Christian school registration rates skyrocketed in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic. Jeff Park, the Executive Director of the Alberta Parents Union, commented that, during the Covid pandemic, parents, “…saw hostility to their values, and less competence than they had always assumed. Public trust in public schools took a big hit, especially for people of faith.” According to Park, “God meant for good – to wake up the sleeping giant of Christian parents and save their children from godless indoctrination.” God is using the previous difficulties of school closures to help Christian parents think more deeply about their children’s education. And He is causing many to ask deep questions about the kind of education that will most benefit the souls of their children. Conclusion The Lord grieves the death, division, and persecution of His people. However, He is never surprised by such occurrences. As Christians braced for the unknowns of a viral pandemic in early 2020, God had already prepared for the salvation of men and women who previously cursed His name. As congregations bitterly disputed about distancing requirements, God applied His pruning to strengthen the unity of His church. As governments made school closure decisions, God established the steps of Christian families. In 2020 – despite the fears of many of His people – the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not falter in His promises to the church He’d bought with His own blood. He used a virus to build and strengthen His chosen assembly, against whom the gates of Hell have not prevailed. And if God’s faithfulness did not falter through some of the most dramatic world events of the modern era, should we not also have joyful confidence that He will use every other sin and disaster that besets Canadian society for the good of those who love Him? None of this lightens the tragedy of death, the pain of unhealed division, or the grievousness of sin. It does, however, offer a small glimpse into the eternal perspective. As we approach today’s news – war in Ukraine, war in Israel, a society in rapid moral decline, skyrocketing inflation – we must not do so as those without hope. Instead, we do so with the expectation of eternal joy and with a lasting confidence in the wisdom of an Almighty King who will one day split the sky and prove forever that what man meant for evil, God meant for good....

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More time to pray

Martin and Christina Veenstra on retirement in your nineties ***** Little did Christina Veenstra know, more than six decades ago, that meeting her future husband, Martin Veenstra, at Reformed Bible Institute would help her preparations for retirement. I recently had the opportunity to interview Christina and Martin, and as she explained, prayer was a part of her life then, and is all the more so now, in her nineties. “I went to Reformed Bible Institute (RBI). I wanted to go into nursing, then, but I didn’t know enough English yet, after three years, so they advised me to take . So I went to RBI and that’s where I met Martin. He was in his first year, and I was in my last year, and for me, it was love at first sight. But he had other plans, and he had other girlfriends, but I prayed for three years. When I was in nurses’ training, I prayed for three years that the Lord would give me Martin. “I was a C student in nursing at RBI, but I always passed everything. But then I did not pass my state boards for nursing, because it was multiple choice, and I still was having some problems with dealing with English, so my mind went blank. So I became a graduate nurse. And after I graduated, I think it was either the same week, or the week after, I got a letter from Martin that we would correspond. Then I knew that’s what the Lord meant me to be, that the husband I prayed for would become my husband.” While we do not always get the spouse that we desire, even when we pray for them, in the grace of God, Christina’s three years of prayer brought her two great spiritual benefits: a partner to pray and serve with, and practice in persistent prayer, which she carries on now in her retirement years. Partners in prayer and service God did see fit to grant Christina the husband who, sixty-three years later, continues to join her in prayer for the people they care most about. Martin: “Now that we’re retired, and we’re both 90, I think that our service is more here , because I don’t drive anymore either. But we do get a ride to church every Sunday. So we talk to people here, the people here who don’t know the Lord. We hope that we can help to mold them, and talk to them at hymn sing.” Christina: “We have a hymn sing every Monday evening. Martin plays the organ, and I more or less lead it. We have 50, sometimes 60 people come, and some of them are not from the church. So we are so happy about that. I pray the Lord that I can sing until the day I die.” Practice for persistent prayer Three years of earnest prayer for a very specific thing is good practice for the life of prayer that is now the focus of Martin and Christina’s retirement. Me: “What do you see right now as your role in your own family?” Martin: “Prayer, and more prayer, and then some more prayer, because we have some grandchildren or great-grandchildren that don’t walk with the Lord. They all love us, and we love them too, but they need the Lord.” Christina: “That’s why I pray every morning for the whole family, every one of them, in the morning.” Me: “What do you think is your greatest challenge in life right now?” Martin: “The greatest challenge is prayer, and just, to live daily for the Lord. And hopefully that somehow, in time, rubs off on our children, that they say, ‘We love the Lord.’” Christina: “The Lord can change the heart. As long as we are alive, we’ll pray for them until the very end. The Lord can change their hearts and lives.” “Living the dream” Of course, a life of prayer is not what our culture sees as ideal “golden years.” Back on May 20, 2000, John Piper told a crowd of 40,000 college students to aim for more than just comfort in their retirement: “I tell you what a tragedy is. I’ll read to you from Reader’s Digest what a tragedy is: ‘Bob and Penny took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Fla., where they cruise on their 30-foot trawler, play softball and collect shells.’ “That’s a tragedy. And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream. And I get forty minutes to plead with you: don’t buy it. With all my heart I plead with you: don’t buy that dream. The American Dream: a nice house, a nice car, a nice job, a nice family, a nice retirement, collecting shells as the last chapter, before you stand before the Creator of the universe to give an account of what you did: ‘Here it is Lord – my shell collection! And I’ve got a nice swing, and look at my boat!’ “Don’t waste your life; don’t waste it.” Is that “Freedom 55” attitude still around? It seems to be harder to achieve now, but many of those who have the money still want it. Recently, as I was waiting in line at A&W beside an older gentleman, he said that it was good that “we” retired people (I guess I look retired) had plenty of time to kill. So I asked him what a typical day was like for him. He told me that he spent six months every year in Arizona, playing softball and tennis. Living the dream? A counter-cultural daily life Martin and Christina have certainly not bought into that “American dream.” Me: “In what ways are you staying close to the Lord?” Martin: “I love to read Scripture. One thing we learned at Bible school; we fell in love with our Bibles. We love our Bibles; we want to read it more, and I should read more, and now I have the time, so I can. There’s some wonderful things in there that we can know, and remember, and put into practice.” Christina: “I do it in the morning. I’m an early bird. I’m up at five, and Martin gets up at seven, so I have my devotions in the morning.” Martin: “So I read more at night.” Me: “Do you have any things that you share, Bible readings that you share?” Christina: “More or less all day long. If he finds something, then he will tell me, and if I find something in my Bible reading….” Me: “Do you have a list of people that you pray for?” Martin: “Mostly family. We pray for people when we hear about the need, but it changes all the time…” Christina: “And people from the church…” Greatest joy in life So, what is retirement like without the 30-foot boat, the shell collection, or even a driver’s license? For Martin and Christina, it is, even with all the problems of aging, a time of joy: Me: “What is your greatest joy in life now?” Martin: “You raise a wonderful subject. Yesterday we heard about Levi, who is a tax collector who came to know the Lord. He could instantly know the Lord. I think the greatest joy is that we can serve the Lord, and we know that we are His. He made a covenant with us: ‘I am your God, and you are my people,’ and we take that to heart, and believe that, and we rejoice in that. I do think that sometimes there may not be joy enough in this place. We need to dwell on that more. The joy of the Lord is our strength.” Christina: “What is your only comfort in life and death? That I belong with body and soul to my Lord Jesus Christ.” Martin: “I think He strengthens us daily for the walk that we have with Him, and if we want to live with Him, we get reminded of that daily. He wants us, daily, to read the Scriptures, how He loves and cares for us each day….” While Christina needs a walker for her daily walk, because of peripheral neuropathy – ”The outlying nerves don’t like getting old, so they let me know” – she also finds joy in the Scriptures, and the opportunities she has to serve others less formally. Christina: “Over the years, the Bible means more and more to you – how much the Lord means to you. It’s just wonderful. I love this age. You have all the time in the world to be of help, or to read the Bible. When I see somebody that looks a little bit sad, I do encourage them, as much as I can.” Martin: “You want to encourage people as much as you can. When people live in a community, it gets very lonely for people, especially when their spouse dies. So when somebody says, ‘Hi, how are you today?’ – sometimes that’s all it takes.” Christina: “We love it here. We do believe that God put us here….” Unlike Bob and Penny from John Piper’s illustration, who have cause to tremble at their eventual meeting with their Creator, Martin and Christina are not wasting their lives. They are, instead, living in genuine hope in the time that God continues to give them on this earth, as the final Bible passages we discussed show. Me: “Is there a specific Bible passage that lifts you up at this time in your life?” Martin: “Philippians 1: ‘For me to live is Christ; to die is gain.’” Christina: “‘The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the strength of my life.’ (Ps. 27).” Martin: “Or 103 would be a good one: ‘Bless the LORD and forget not all his benefits.’” Christina: “He is in communion all the time.” Interview responses have been lightly edited for brevity and clarity....

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How to look forward to the future

Hopefulness is a skill we can learn, because… God ***** Doomerism: despair and apathy caused by a disbelief that anything can get better; most often used with regard to global warming, lack of positive social change, and the risk of AI takeover. – as defined by Wiktionary I am shocked at how much optimism has died just in my own lifetime. I didn’t even realize the cultural atmosphere in my childhood was particularly optimistic – it was just “normal” to me. But compared to the current atmosphere, with the oppressive worries of natural disasters, new diseases, social tension, authoritarian governments, and renewed nuclear threats, the previous decades take on a rosy hue. Why do so many people, especially young people, feel an impending sense of doom? It’s less about our current circumstances, and more about the loss of hope for the future. We might be all right at the moment, the feeling seems to be, but we’re just hanging in there. Who knows how long we’ll be able to hang in there for? You might argue that this is worldly thinking. Climate change, authoritarianism, social issues are all things “the world” is concerned about. But I can relate to feeling like my actions and decisions are pointless, my life is going nowhere, and that the future looks bleak. I have had times in my life where I felt paralyzed, like anything I did would likely lead to doom. It turns out that being hopeful takes a lot of effort sometimes. And when the world around us persistently sends messages about how bleak everything is, about how young people are worse off than their parents’ generation, and how disaster looms on the horizon, it feels even harder to go against the flow. But as Christians, shouldn’t we know how to hope? Yet Christian discussions can also be full of how the world is getting worse. Christians are worried about what will happen to their families and their churches. And so, hopefulness becomes a hard skill for us to learn. How do you learn to have hope for the future? Here are a few perspectives that have helped me along the way. 1. Don’t miss the big story by obsessing on the details One helpful way I’ve found to think about the future is to remind myself that I already know the ending, and that ending is a happy one. The day-to-day right now might look like it inevitably leads to doom and gloom, but I know that’s not the big picture. I just need to zoom out enough to see the whole big story, and see that I’m just in a small part in the middle of it. I’m muddled down in the details, but a detail isn’t the whole story. And the best way to remind myself of the big story is to read the Word of God. That’s where we hear the end of the story and are reminded about who’s writing it. Ok, ok, you might be thinking, that's the big picture, but I still feel hopeless about my life. I might know in the end everything will turn out all right, but I still don’t feel capable of doing anything right now. I still feel like the current circumstances make whatever I do seem pointless. It’s true, it can be hard to connect what we believe to how we feel. Sometimes we know something, but we still feel anxious or paralyzed. But this means that it’s worthwhile examining what story our feelings are buying into, if we feel that way. We might not realize the degree that we’re accepting other people’s narratives about our lives. 2. No, the pessimists don’t know it all You might be sitting at home, doomscrolling on your phone, and some talking head on TikTok pops up bringing all these facts together: while wages in Canada have increased by 74.3% since 2003, housing prices have increased by 227%. Add to that the information that Canada’s population has also increased during this time, and that housing starts have struggled to keep up with the demand. Your heart sinks. You weren’t thinking about when you’d be able to afford a house before that moment, but now you’re convinced you never will. What’s the point of going to work tomorrow? And that’s just one example. It doesn’t take much time online to find theories about why Gen Z, or millennials, or whatever generation is doomed – why they will never get married, or afford a house, or be able to have children, or ever retire. These theories all seem so airtight, based on facts and statistics laid out in a logical fashion, with each piece of data leading to the next. But life is not so airtight. These theories are not prophecies about your life. Perhaps some of the stats and data might be useful for bureaucrats trying to understand social conditions, but when they become reasons for you to give up on life, they’ve left the realm of usefulness. We’re often skeptical of mainstream media narratives about politics and the environment, but somehow this kind of data can sneak into our brains. Sometimes it starts off being comforting, because it explains why we’re not quite where we want to be in life yet. It’s not us, it’s just our circumstances. But an inescapable path of doom unfolding beneath your feet doesn’t help you in the long run; it paralyzes you. What will help? Stop listening to these voices. No one theory can take into account all the information available – each tends to cherry-pick facts that fit. Online influencers and writers and videos tend to emphasize the negative narratives because that’s what gets clicks. And no theory can predict the unexpected event that changes everything and throws all accepted theories into chaos (sometimes known as a black swan event). The world is not predictable, and events that don’t fit the theories do happen (and disprove the theories). So why base your life on one of those theories? 3. Learn from history as it actually was When my grandma was a young woman in the Netherlands, World War II started and all the young men left town to join the army. She didn’t think it was likely she would get married. Then she met my grandpa, who was a resistance fighter. After the war, they wanted to get married, but so many houses had been bombed in the Netherlands that there was nowhere for them to live. We can look back on the past with nostalgia – “in the 1950s you could support a family on one income!” But we don’t remember all the times that a future didn’t look possible for them back then, all the times when, logistically, there was just no one around to get married to, or statistically there were zero homes for newly married couples to live in, or that the “better life” looked a lot harder than the old life. Maybe life doesn’t give us “optimal conditions.” Sometimes “doing something” really looks like doing the impossible. My grandma just kept taking the next step, even if circumstances didn’t look great. After all, nothing is impossible with God. So don’t base your life on disheartening statistics. Instead, why not base your life on the Word of God? 4. Trust God with the future God loves you, and He didn’t design your life as a kind of trap you can’t escape. But He also doesn’t reveal our life paths to us before they happen. He calls us to trust in Him as we walk in His ways: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Ps. 119:105). In other words, God hasn’t shone a spotlight on your destination, but He does light your feet as you take each step. You are part of a big story, but your part might not include our society’s preferred narrative of buying a home to fund your retirement, or finding the one career where you can make a meaningful impact. Or, who knows, maybe that will be part of your story one day. But the fundamental thing to hold onto is that you are a part of the story God is telling, and this means your life has meaning. What does knowing this do for us? It means we don’t have to be paralyzed. It also means we don’t have to see what will happen to us before it happen, even though we think predicting our future will make us feel better. We don’t need to add up all the facts together to predict our future and come to a negative conclusion (“there’s more women than men in the average church I attend, therefore the likelihood of me finding a husband is less than...”). God doesn’t work according to statistics. God doesn’t stop working out His plan because forecasters say most millennials won’t be able to afford a house. He will do whatever His will is for your life. The question is, are you open to that? 5. Trust Him one step at a time Can you keep taking the next step God lays in front of your feet, and the next step, and the next step, without always knowing where it will go? Can you find the courage to try things that are a little scary for you, if He calls you to them? Sometimes moving forward in life feels like plunging into the unknown, into something that could go terribly wrong (because any momentous choice in life could go terribly wrong) but with the willingness to try and see what God will do with your life. It’s easy to say, just do something, but doing something come with risk. We can take actions that make us suffer, we can make wrong decisions, we can do the wrong thing. That’s what scares us, and makes us paralyzed. The reality of risk feeds our paralysis. But to begin to exercise our faith and trust in our God Who is bigger than us, we do have to step out and learn to leave what’s out of our control up to Him. The Bible is full of examples of people stepping out in faith and leaving the future up to God. There is Abraham, who "went out, not knowing where he was going... to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land” (Heb. 11:8-9). People did not live their lives by theories or statistics: “By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised” (Heb. 11:11-12). And in the face of our fear of the future we can still act: “In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good” (Eccl. 11:6). We’re urged in the Parable of the Ten Talents, and in Proverbs, to do the work in front of us. But we’re also urged to leave the results up to God. “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for He gives to his beloved sleep” (Ps. 127:1-2). So let go of what you can’t control. God isn’t calling you to navigate what’s out of your hands. And then do your part. Take steps in what areas you can do something. This is the only place to start. Conclusion Hopefulness isn’t a journey we can travel on our own. We can’t always formulate or speak the positive story to ourselves, and others can come alongside us to tell us their own stories of God’s work in their lives. If you’re feeling hopeless, reach out and talk to someone you trust. But at the same time, lean into God and His Word. He can contradict and counteract the negative narratives from culture that surround us every day. He can give us hope when the world claims it is dark. And we know His promises to us never fail....

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The pot experiment has been a disaster

If marijuana definitively destroys lives, should we be free to smoke?  ***** A few weeks ago, Dave Portnoy of Barstool Sports publicly supported a measure that would legalize marijuana in Florida. “As an adult,” Portnoy said, “I should be allowed to smoke weed, watch football, and eat pizza on Sunday regardless if I’m at home in Mass or Florida.” To which, Matt Walsh replied: "Can you point to any state or city in the country where life has been, in any way, measurably improved after legalizing marijuana? Where are the legalization success stories? Give me just one please." After the rushed social experiment by many states to legalize marijuana, we know the answer to this important question. Study after study has demonstrated that legal pot has been even more disastrous than predicted. The most obvious consequences have been in basic safety concerns. Legalizing pot correlates with a rise in auto crashes, as well as property and violent crimes. Also, despite the fact that this is now a multibillion-dollar industry, legalizing pot has grown rather than reduced the black market. Promises of health benefits have also proven to be more smoke than substance. Pot’s most devastating impact has been in the arena of mental health, which has declined to epidemic levels in the U.S. This is largely due to the increased potency of pot that is sold today, which is significantly stronger than what was passed around at Woodstock. Analyzing medical data from 6 million people, researchers in Denmark found that up to 30% of schizophrenia cases among young men could be linked to marijuana use. Though advocates and lawmakers have worked to “decrease the public’s perception of its harm,” as the study’s lead author said, they have misrepresented the reality. Other studies also have shown a clear link between marijuana use and psychosis. For example, according to a report at CBS News, "eople who smoked marijuana on a daily basis were three times more likely to be diagnosed with psychosis compared with people who never used the drug. For those who used high-potency marijuana daily, the risk jumped to nearly five times." In other words, pot isn’t a victimless crime and, given its social impact, cannot simply be reduced to a matter of personal freedom. Not only are cannabis users more likely to start using opioids, but the National Academy of Medicine reports that using pot “is likely to increase the risk of schizophrenia and other psychoses; the higher the use, the greater the risk.” Between 2006 and 2014, emergency room visits for marijuana-induced psychosis tripled to 90,000. Most troubling of all is the link between pot and teen suicide. According  to Colorado state statistics, the drug was found in the system of some 42% of teens who had taken their own lives, a rate nearly twice that of alcohol and four times that of any other substances. Colorado consistently ranks among the worst states in terms of suicide rates. Critics will quickly argue that correlation does not imply causation, but connections like this must be investigated. If nearly half of stroke victims took the same medicine, would we wonder if there was a link worth our consideration? Why the reluctance to connect the dots when it comes to marijuana? Since suicide rates have risen every year that pot has been legal, we’re far past giving the benefit of the doubt. Of course, if lawmakers took up Matt Walsh’s challenge, they’d have to reconsider and recant their promises of personal liberty, not to mention millions of dollars for education and better roads. The science here is all but settled. Pot is bad for individuals, and it’s bad for society. The kind of freedom Portnoy is claiming ends in slavery, a slavery to one’s own passion. It is a freedom from rules and restraint, not a freedom for the good life. True freedom is a necessary means for human flourishing, but as Chuck Colson often noted, there is no true freedom without virtue. A freedom that wrecks the mind, puts families, children, and neighbors at greater risk, and contributes to general social degradation is not freedom. It’s license built on selfishness. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to Breakpoint.org. This is reprinted with permission from the Colson Center....

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6 on Anxiety

“I have anxiety.” How often do we hear this phrase nowadays? And most of us can relate to it. There’s so much to be anxious about in our modern world, with so many things changing all around us. But one thing that doesn’t change, and the one thing Reformed Perspective aims to focus on above all else, is the God Who is our Rock in the midst of the storms. It can be so hard to let Paul’s words “do not be anxious about anything” sink into our souls. But article after article, published through RP’s many years, repeats this simple biblical message. And they pair that biblical foundation with our authors’ personal experiences of how challenging and how peaceful the act of putting these words into practice can be. Be encouraged through these reads below! You can click on each heading to go to the linked article. Learning to be anxious for nothing Mark Penninga shares his own journey through anxiety and burnout. He shares the highlights of his years of learning, counseling, and slow change in the hopes of helping other Christians along the way. He explores how care and concern for others is a good thing, but can cross a line into bearing cares and concerns we were not meant to carry. Anxiety and the triumph of hope: 3 biblical counselors explain anxiety In this interview, three biblical counselors bring their wisdom to explain anxiety and how we can approach it. They give insight into whether anxiety is more common in the Church, and how Christians can sometimes experience it differently. They also give some practical tips. Do not worry… Sharon Bratcher suggests that one root of worry can be our pride, and gives some suggestions for addressing that particular root of anxiety. Technology and our anxious hearts One of the biggest causes of anxiety is our use of technology. Even pastors see this come up in their congregations. Reuben Bredenhof explains why technology can cause such anxiety in us, and how we can recalibrate our relationship to technology in the light of God’s word. Just how bad is the teen anxiety epidemic? While adults are anxious, teen anxiety has been described as an “epidemic.” How bad is it? According to the stats, it is far more common, and there are many reasons for this. This list of factors may help teens and parents sort out what might be contributing to anxiety. Gezellig: cozy, restful What’s the opposite of anxiety? In Dutch, there is an untranslatable word, gezellig, which captures the idea of coziness and restfulness. This concept can be a helpful guide to slowing down in our fast-paced and restless world. Anxiety is a challenge, but we hope these articles give you encouragement and a place to start your journey to the peace God promises us in His Word!...

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A New Atheist loves that old time Religion

In 2007, four now fairly famous atheists – Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins – met to discuss their views. They filmed the discussion, titled it “The Four Horseman,” and when it went viral, they became known as the “Four Horseman of New Atheism.” The name of their group was ironic, since they certainly had no interest in the book of Revelation, in which four horsemen bring God’s judgment on the rebellious world; however, it was also fitting, since the Four Horsemen of Revelation are destructive, as are the New Atheists. Even they seemed to understand the destructive nature of their godless stance. Daniel Dennett saw Darwinism’s Dangerous Idea (the title of his 1995 book) as “a universal acid" that would eat through whatever it came into contact with. The despair of our current culture supports that, though in a way that Dennett did not intend. Cultural Christian? Of these “horsemen” the most famous today is Richard Dawkins, who is best known for his book The God Delusion. His prominence is partly because he is one of only two still living: Christopher Hitchens died in 2011, and Daniel Dennett died just this past April. But Dawkins’ fame is also because he has repeatedly made news for embracing aspects of the very Christianity he’s made his name attacking. And God has allowed Dawkins to live long enough to see some of the impact of his own form of atheistic evangelism, so that the lead horseman could begin to understand the destructiveness of his godless stance. This past year, in an interview with journalist Rachel Johnson, Dawkins declared that he “was slightly horrified to hear that Ramadan was being promoted instead” of Easter, because: “ culturally a Christian country. I call myself a cultural Christian. I’m not a believer.” Dawkins noted that “there is a distinction between being a believing Christian and being a cultural Christian.” But as British evangelist Glen Scrivener noted, Dawkins has maintained his “cultural” Christianity for quite a while now. Dawkins offered to read a chapter of the King James Bible for the Bible Society during the 400-year anniversary of the publication of the KJV back in 2011. Dawkins wasn’t paying tribute to the truth of God’s Word – he was only expressing a “historical interest” in the KJV, equating it to a similar appreciation for Richard Wagner and the Greek gods, since all three give us a better understanding of English literature. He also said that “it is important that religion should not be allowed to hijack this cultural resource.” Scrivener also noted that in 2018, Dawkins tweeted a picture of himself with the following caption: “Listening to the lovely bells of Winchester, one of our great mediaeval cathedrals. So much nicer than the aggressive-sounding ‘Allahu Akhbar.’ Or is that just my cultural upbringing speaking?” Dawkins was more pointed in his 2024 interview with Rachel Johnson. He said: “I love hymns and Christmas carols. I sort of feel at home in the Christian ethos. I feel that we are a Christian country in that sense,” And later in the interview he added: “Christianity is a fundamentally decent religion.” Comparing the treatment of women and homosexuals in both religions, Dawkins admitted that Christianity’s treatment of all people, whatever their sex or sin, is fundamentally more decent than that of Islam. But he still cannot, or will not, acknowledge why it is more decent. And that why is rooted in Christianity's working out of the truth of Genesis 1: that all people are created in the image of God. There is no fruit without the root Glenn Scrivener makes a great point about Dawkins’ inconsistent positions: he said that Dawkins is like the birds pecking at the seeds of the gospel in Jesus’ Parable of the Sower (Matt. 13:1-8). You can see such pecking in his Easter conversation with Rachel Johnson. He kept pecking at her own limited faith, asking, repeatedly, whether she herself believed in the virgin birth or the resurrection of Jesus Christ (she could only reply that she’d like to believe it). Scrivener says that Dawkins wants the fruits of Christianity without the root that brought it into being. He makes a connection to a later parable in the same chapter: the Parable of the Mustard Seed where a giant tree grew out of a small seed (Matt. 13:31-32), and suggests that Dawkins is one of the birds that is allowed to perch in the branches, enjoying the earthly fruits of God’s kingdom, even while he saws at the root of the tree. Every knee shall bow (Phil. 2:10) So what is the good news in Dawkins’ claims of cultural Christianity, even as he continues to deny the objective truth of Christianity? Let’s go back to the first Horseman we looked at: Daniel Dennett, who saw evolution – Darwin’s dangerous idea – as the acid that would transform everything it came into contact with. Dawkins has been admitting the terrible truth of Dennett’s boast. Evolution’s attack on the root of Christianity has left the West vulnerable to false gods, like Allah and trans ideology – two things that horrify Dawkins. Dawkins’ confused, but stubborn and hostile, attitude toward Christ shows the truth of Galatians 6:7-8: “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.” And some people have, unexpectedly, been brought by the Spirit to begin sowing to the Spirit. For instance, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who first embraced atheism in her rejection of her Muslim upbringing, has seen, like Dawkins, how the New Atheism helped open up the West to destructive gods, and how atheism had nothing to counter them. She has been brought to acknowledge both the fruit and the root of Christianity – Christ himself – and in a conversation with Dawkins, opened him up to at least admit that the existence of God is “a dramatic important idea.” The good news is that the lead horseman has to acknowledge that what he and his friends have been sowing – the wind – is reaping the whirlwind. Even better, that whirlwind is preparing some to be blown over by the wind of the Spirit that Jesus tells Nicodemus about (John 3:8). In that way, willingly or unwillingly, they already have to fulfill the truth of Philippians 2:10, and bend the knee before the King....

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The Colson Center: a sibling we look up to

Growing up as the second youngest in a family of ten, I learned a lot about life from my older siblings. Once grown, most of us continue to lean on our siblings in Christ as we navigate what it means to run a business, parent children, or serve in a church. We’ll get in trouble quickly if we think we can figure things out all on our own. That’s why, through the years, we have introduced our readers to some of RP’s “siblings” – organizations and individuals that we have learned a great deal from and aspire towards. If you appreciate what we are doing, you will probably like them too. I have already shared about WORLD Media Group, which covers the news from a solid Christian perspective via a magazine, video program for kids, podcasts, and more. RP is taking steps in that direction (with more journalism). But we don’t want to give up something that has always been core to our identity – worldview training. And the organization that best models this to us is the good folks at the Colson Center, a Christian organization which exists to “equip Christians to live with clarity, confidence, and courage in this cultural moment.” The organization is named after Charles Colson, whose books Kingdoms in Conflict (now retitled as God & Government) and Loving God have been very influential to both RP’s Editor Jon Dykstra and myself. Colson had served alongside President Nixon, before being thrown into prison for his role in the Watergate Scandal. By God’s grace, he repented and became a born-again Christian. God used him in a powerful way, first through creating Prison Fellowship (a ministry in prisons around the world), and then in developing Christian worldview training. He was concerned by the emphasis among evangelicals about “getting saved” without understanding the life of thankfulness we are saved to. The Colson Center trains Christians through many mediums including their daily Breakpoint commentary (on many radio stations), e-newsletters, podcasts, conferences, and intensive courses/programs. Over the past year, my wife Jaclyn and I have been enrolled in the Colson Fellows training program, following a curriculum that requires daily, weekly, and monthly training commitments that average about an hour a day. If you are looking to grow in your biblical worldview, I highly recommend it. Like WORLD, the Colson Center isn’t explicitly Reformed. But a Reformed perspective is very evident in both the underlying principles that guide them, and the teams that lead them. Both organizations seek to be faithful to God’s Word, applying it to the issues of our day, and waging war against Satan’s lies that abound in so many other resources. And they do so with grace, maintaining a positive tone that should always be found among those who hold to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the sovereignty of God. I heartily encourage you to get plugged in to their short daily Breakpoint newsletter or podcast (available in both formats at no cost). You won’t be disappointed. To give you a taste, we included a Breakpoint article in the magazine on occasion, such as "When 'helping' kids hurts them" and "Is AI just another tool, or something else?" As Jon Dykstra explained in the March/April 2024 issue: Breakpoint has an American focus and is not specifically Reformed (though some writers are), so we differ in some notable respects: they are anti-evolution and RP is specifically 6-day creationist; we'll highlight problems with the Pope both when he is acting Roman Catholic and when he is not, while they stick to the latter. So, as with everything, there is a need to read with discernment. But when it comes to the hottest cultural battles of our day – sexuality, gender, the unborn, and God's sovereignty over "every square inch" of creation – they get it right consistently, and they are timely, often replying to events that happened just the day before. That's why Breakpoint articles have been featured in our online “Saturday selections” column for years now. You can also find more about them at Breakpoint.org and ColsonCenter.org....

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When “helping” kids hurts them

Why the generation accessing the most mental therapy is the most mentally unhealthy  ***** As the old saying goes, “to a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Among the hammers today is psychotherapy, and too many wielding it are convinced that every human problem is a nail. However, the unprecedented rise of mental health problems in Generation Z suggests that the overuse of this tool has done as much harm as good. In a bold new book, Abigail Shrier confronts the idea of psychology as an all-consuming ideology. In Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up, Shrier argues that much of what is now taken for granted about psychological and emotional “trauma” is wrong and has left millions of young adults more “traumatized” than if they’d had no therapy at all. This thesis aligns with that of her previous book Irreversible Damage, which exposed the reckless push to medically transition gender-dysphoric kids, especially girls. This push has been driven by the mental health industry. In Bad Therapy, Shrier points out the many indications that the whole approach of our therapy-obsessed age is awry. Most obvious is that despite living in one of the most objectively prosperous and safe times in human history, our young people are, en masse, mentally sicker and emotionally sadder than ever. In fact, over 40% of young adults have a mental health diagnosis, twice the rate of the general population. So, the generation most treated for psychological wellbeing is doing the worst psychologically. How did we get to this point? In a podcast with former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss, Shrier told the story of her grandmother, Bess, who grew up during the Great Depression. Bess was orphaned and so malnourished that her teeth grew in gray. She then contracted polio and spent a year in an iron lung. Yet, despite her suffering, she managed to recover, get married and have kids, go to law school, and become one of the first female judges in her state. She was also, as Shrier puts it, “One of the most optimistic and can-do women” she’s ever met. Today, doctors, psychiatrists, counselors, and teachers would tell Bess, because of her “trauma,” to lower her expectations for what she could achieve. They’d constantly watch her, waiting for confirmation of her permanent damage. Eventually, Bess, like millions of children today, may have even believed them. The central thesis of Bad Therapy is that the anti-adversity worldview that has been embraced by everyone from therapists to parents to self-appointed TikTok influencers hurts children. Therapy has become an ideology, an entire way of looking at life. Experiences that previous generations understood as a part of the human condition are diagnosed and “treated” and, in the process, a generation has been robbed of resilience, responsibility, and character—things that, as Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently noted, only come from facing adversity and, at times, failing. As she told Weiss, Shrier is “no more anti-psychotherapy than… anti-chemotherapy.” Interventions are necessary sometimes but, like chemotherapy, mental health treatments carry risks. Shrier believes we must begin taking these risks seriously, especially when it comes to the youngest patients who have neither the experience nor the authority to argue when adults tell them, “You’re sick.” For Christians who understand that human beings are more than matter that can be molded and medicated, the need for a book like this is even more obvious. Divine revelation and millennia of insight suggest that much of what passes for “psychological trauma” today is spiritual brokenness. Spiritual healing can take the form of counseling and medication, but to put it simply, no amount of psychotherapy alleviates our need for a Savior. In the meantime, Abigail Shrier has, once again, launched a cultural conversation that is a vital corrective. Not only can it help curb the excesses of bad therapy and pop psychology and make us better, wiser parents, but a book like this can help us rethink the true complexities of who and what we are as human beings. For believers, it is a chance to show what it looks like to live redemptively amid the groaning of this fallen world while using all the tools at our disposal. This Breakpoint was first posted to Breakpoint.org March 20, 2024, and is reprinted here with their gracious permission. We're sharing it because Christians need to understand where and why secular counseling can fall so short. The world understands Man as simply matter, and sees Man’s purpose as self-actualization, or perhaps the pursuit of our own happiness. Our "Owner’s manual," the Bible, describes Man’s nature as both body and spirit, and our purpose as being built to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. So, secular psychology could have tips and tricks and drugs to modify our behavior and feelings, but it misunderstands Man at the foundational level. No wonder then, that some of its help hurts instead. If this article caught your interest, then you may want to sign up (see the subscribe button on the top right of the page) to get their free daily commentaries delivered right to your inbox....

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What makes a person instantly unattractive?

I asked this question on a Facebook page for secular women over 60 years of age: “What makes a person instantly unattractive?” I was intrigued by the breadth of answers, but not surprised at those at the top of the list. Within two days I received more than 150 answers. There were trends – answers could be grouped together in 12 different characteristics, so I compiled what I had and ordered them according to the number of answers that were received for each characteristic. Why undertake such a study? I did it for a couple of reasons: A desire to share Christ – In this data, I was hearing from mainly non-Christians. So what types of behavior might make us immediately repugnant to them? Let’s take a look at ourselves and determine whether we are acting in loving ways in order to share Christ. A desire for friendship – Many people are lonely, and some have difficulty building friendships. While it isn’t always our fault, it might be helpful to compare these unattractive traits and prayerfully analyze whether we might find room in ourselves for improvement. Being attractive Proverbs 16:21 says: “The wise of heart is called discerning, and sweetness of speech increases persuasiveness.” Here is a clue towards being a witness for our Lord. And Peter tells us in 1 Peter 3:15-16: “But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.” Being unattractive Let’s take a look at the top twelve characteristics that make a person instantly unattractive, in the order of the number of votes received: Bad attitude Potty mouth/cursing Smoking Body odor/poor hygiene/dirty or unkempt clothes Bad breath Arrogant/entitled/rude Lying Boasting/bragging Complaining/ungrateful spirit Being unkind Bad manners Being bossy/loud/yelling To be honest, years ago it never occurred to me that people might dislike my loudness and yelling, or what I eventually discerned to be my bossiness. These are the top twelve characteristics that may make us instantly unattractive to other people. Where might we improve? Is it possible that some of these characteristics are making us less lovely to be around? Do we come across in any of these ways to our neighbors, coworkers, fellow church members, or prospective friends? How is your attitude when life isn’t going as you would prefer? Working on it Think about 1 Corinthians 13: “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.” This description of real love is a tall order, but it is not beyond what we can learn through the power of the Holy Spirit working in our lives. Without love, we are a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal; we are nothing. This chapter goes on to get rid of nearly half the list immediately: arrogance (6), boasting (8), unkindness (10), and being bossy (12). It pretty well covers bad attitudes (1), lying (7), and complaining (9) as well. Manners (11) are just a culturally agreed upon way to show respect and love for one another. For example, no one wants to watch someone’s food roll around inside his mouth, or be commanded without a please and thank-you. In regards to potty mouth/cursing (2) and hygiene (4), we could say that these come under the law of kindness as well. If we put others first instead of ourselves, we will consider the language that we use, and not make others uncomfortable. We will “do unto others as we would have them do unto us” by not causing others to have to put up with a stench in our presence. A smoker can at least be courteous around those who are sensitive to the odor of tobacco (3). And we can make the effort to clean our teeth and mouths as well as possible (5) to consider the sensitivities of others. Conclusion None of us enjoy being around people who exhibit unattractive characteristics. Now that we know what many other people find obnoxious, we can all take a look at ourselves to see how we can become lovelier....

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A lament for our nation

Lament is not a common word today. It is rare to hear of lamentation in our secular culture, and even within the Church we don’t often speak of lament. And yet, I believe lament is one of the most important – and biblical – postures that we can take as Christians in the public square today. Why lament? Consider our situation. We see (at least) 87,000 abortions every year here in Canada. Over 13,000 died by euthanasia last year, and that number grows every year. We’ve seen our fundamental freedoms eroded. Conscience rights for health care workers aren’t adequately protected. Our governments have redefined marriage by liberalizing divorce laws, recognizing same-sex marriages, and even starting to legitimize polyamorous relationships. The entire concepts of motherhood and fatherhood are fractured by our country’s policies on in vitro fertilization and surrogacy, and jurisdictions like Ontario are recognizing that kids can have many (not just two) parents. Hundreds of kids are pursuing medical gender transitioning, rejecting the bodies that God has given them. Counseling children to love the body and identity they have been given has been outlawed by conversion therapy legislation. Human trafficking, pornography, and prostitution are rampant in society. And our country, ostensibly still founded on the principle “that recognizes the supremacy of God,” has insisted that all cultures and all religions by-and-large are equal. Sin and brokenness are pervasive in all aspects of Canadian society. Let’s consider some potential unbiblical options of how to respond to this sin before coming to why we need to lament for our nation. Unbiblical responses 1. Do not grumble One response – the most unbiblical response – is to grumble. We can be tempted to complain to God, to each other, and to ourselves. But complaining is antithetical to the Christian life. The Israelites of the Old Testament were famous for grumbling. They complained about bitter water or a lack of water (Ex. 15:24, 17:3), about a lack of food (Ex. 16:2), their misfortunes (Num. 11:1), the strength of the Canaanites (Num. 14:2), and their leadership (Num. 16:11, 41; 17:5). In most of these instances, God punished His people. He had just brought them out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and, rather than worshipping and praising Him, they complained. Rather than “grumbling or disputing,” Paul calls on Christians to be “blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world” (Phil. 2:15). We confess that “it is impossible for those grafted into Christ by true faith not to produce fruits of gratitude” (HC Q&A 64). 2. No need to fear Another response to a bleak political situation is fear and anxiety, but this too is an unbiblical response. We may fear persecution from our culture, tyranny from our government, or censure from media companies. But in Philippians 4, Paul instructs followers of Christ, “do not be anxious about anything.” Christ Himself commands us “do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on” or about anything else for that matter (Matt. 6:25-34; Luke 12:22-31). The most frequent command found in Scripture is “do not be afraid.” 3. Do not be angry Another common response to this sin-filled world is anger. Anger can be a powerful motivator to inspire people to speak up and to act. And, unlike complaining or anxiety, there is some biblical justification to be angry (e.g., Eph. 4:26). When people sin and transgress the law of the LORD, there is a reason for righteous anger. Jesus Himself became angry on occasion with a righteous anger (Mark 3:1-6 and Mark 10:13-16). Scripture, however, portrays human anger as a negative phenomenon in almost every instance. Proverbs often counsels the wise and the righteous to refrain from anger (Prov. 14:29, 15:18, 16:32, 19:11, 22:24, 29:22). The apostle Paul commands believers to put away anger on several occasions (2 Cor. 12:20; Gal. 5:20; Eph. 4:31; Col. 3:8; 1 Tim. 2:8). Our fallen anger makes us susceptible to sin. (Perhaps why Eph. 4:26 says “be angry and do not sin.”) Anger can easily lead to hasty and thoughtless words and actions. Perhaps this is why James admonishes believers to be “slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (James 1:19-20). Like fire, anger can be a beneficial and God glorifying tool when used in the right way, yet it can easily grow out of control and cause great spiritual (not to mention temporal!) damage. So instead of complaining, fearing, or being angry about the state of our nation, a more biblical response is lament. An example of lament Scripture is full of laments, but the best example of lamentation flows from the prophet Jeremiah and the people of Judah in exile. Put yourself in their shoes. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Clear your mind. Imagine you are a young Jew living around 609 BC. You and your people are led by King Josiah. Your life revolves around a divinely inspired calendar of feasts and sacrifices. In fact, you just celebrated a Passover the likes of which hadn’t been observed since the days of the judges. You observe a weekly Sabbath day of rest, a year of Sabbath rest of the land every seven years, and a year of Jubilee every 50 years. You periodically visit the glorious temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, perhaps the most ornate, beautiful, and costly structure on earth. There the Levite singers and musicians make music to God and the priests offer sweet incense to the LORD. God has promised that a descendent of David would sit on the throne of Judah forever. In fact, the current king “turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might” so that there was never a king that came before him or after him that pursued the LORD with such fervour (2 Kings 22-23). Life is good. During your lifetime, all that comes crashing down. The Egyptian Pharoah Neco kills godly King Josiah, hauls his successor, King Jehoahaz, in chains to Egypt, exacts a heavy tribute from Judah, and sets up a puppet king, Jehoiakim, on the throne. After a stint under Egyptian oppression, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon puts your country under tribute. When King Jehoiakim rebels against Babylon, bands of Chaldeans, Syrians, Moabites, and Ammonites begin raiding your country. King Nebuchadnezzar comes back with a vengeance, besieges and conquers Jerusalem, carries away all the treasures of the temple and the king’s house, and carries away all the royal family, all officials, all the mighty men of valor, all the smiths and craftsmen, and 10,000 more captives. Only the poor remain under another puppet king, Zedekiah. Thankfully, the temple, the center of Jewish life, still stands. But your religious leadership pollutes this temple. Then Zedekiah rebels against Babylon too, prompting Nebuchadnezzar to return again to besiege Jerusalem and trigger a terrible famine in the city. When the city falls, Nebuchadnezzar slaughters Zedekiah’s sons in front of him, gouges out Zedekiah’s eyes, and carries him off to Egypt. But at least the temple still stands. A few years later, Nebuchadnezzar attacks Jerusalem a third time, destroying every building in Jerusalem, including the temple, and tearing down the walls. Even the poor people who were originally left in Jerusalem are carried off to Babylon, except for the poorest of the poor who are left to work the land.  And even after all this, the poorest of the poor rebel against Nebuchadnezzar, murder the governor, and flee in fear to Egypt, the very place that God had led them out of slavery 890 years before. And so, the land lays desolate. Your nation is utterly destroyed. Your whole religion revolving around the temple, sacrifices, and feasts is impossible. There is no descendant of David seemingly on the throne. It’s a horrific state of affairs. What was the response of the Jews carried off to Babylon? They responded with lament. We get a glimpse of this in Psalm 137: “By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion.” But the main lamentation over the exile is written by the prophet Jeremiah. While there isn’t a book of Complaining, of Anxiety, or of Anger in Scripture, there is a book of Lamentations. For almost the entire book, Jeremiah recounts and laments the destruction of Jerusalem. The book opens, How lonely sits the city that was full of people! How like a widow has she become, she who was great among the nations! She who was a princess among the provinces has become a slave. She weeps bitterly in the night with tears on her cheeks; Among all her lovers she has none to comfort her; All her friends have dealt treacherously with her; They have become her enemies. Judah has gone into exile because of affliction and hard servitude; She dwells now among the nations but finds no resting place; Her pursuers have all overtaken her in the midst of her distress. What is a lament? Lament, properly speaking, is a uniquely Christian activity. It isn’t complaining, though it certainly recounts all the evils of this present age. It isn’t anxiety, although the situation certainly seems bleak and full of uncertainty. And it isn’t primarily angry, despite the calls for judgement on Babylon found in the final verses of Psalm 137. And lament isn’t just mourning what has been lost. A lament has hope. That’s why, smack dab in the middle of the book of Lamentations and in the middle of perhaps the most hopeless period of Judah’s existence, Jeremiah confesses, “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness” (3:21-23). One hundred and one years ago, Thomas Chisholm plucked these words out of Lamentations to create the hymn Great Is Thy Faithfulness. It is a beautiful hymn of hope and praise. But it helps to remember its scriptural context. God’s faithfulness is wonderful indeed when we consider how He changes not; how all nature witnesses to His great faithfulness, mercy, and love; and how His presence cheers and guides us, as the hymn’s verses recount. But those truths aren’t the context for Jeremiah’s confession when he says, “great is thy faithfulness.” Lamentation over the destruction of Judah and the captivity of the Jews (Jeremiah is in captivity himself) is the context. God’s faithfulness is always important, but it tastes the sweetest when it is juxtaposed with the evils of this world. Lamentation today Politically, culturally, socially, economically, religiously – really any way you can think of – we are in a far better position than Judah was at the start of the exile. As we’ve already recounted, we certainly face many evils in this dark world that tempt us to respond with complaints, fear, or anger. But I think that the best response is lament. We can lament instead of complaining about the failure of political leaders to follow God’s will. We can lament rather than fear the cultural hostility to orthodox Christianity. We can lament rather than rage about the injustices in the world. And lament does more than just look around at others. It confesses our own wrongdoings, remembers the faithfulness of our sovereign God, and prays for His intervention. And so, I lament for our nation. And I’ll do it with a song, a Jeremiah lament-style version of Great Is Thy Faithfulness: O LORD, our nation reviles and forgets Thee. We have departed from thy righteous law. We deserve judgement and none of thy favour, But I call this to mind and so have hope: Great is thy faithfulness! Great is thy faithfulness! Morning by morning new mercies I see: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases – Great is thy faithfulness, LORD, unto me! Levi Minderhoud is the BC manager of ARPA Canada....

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