Saturday Selections – Mar. 1, 2025

Why we can't focus (12 min) This fellow is worried that moving from a text-based culture to a video-based one is leaving us all stupider – "we are amusing ourselves to death." He's not trying to make a Christian point, but as "people of the Word," we know there is a pressing need for us to not only be able to read, but be able to concentrate on a passage long enough to understand it. Tariffs – an entrepreneur’s perspective What should you do when your neighbor gives you lemons? Christian businessman (and CHPer) Dave Bylsma encourages us to start thinking lemonade – explore the opportunities, rather than fixate on a problem that we really can't do anything about. The biblical basis for such an opportunity-mindset is the assurance "that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28). We didn't seek this hardship, but God is acting on us, and could be acting through us if we rise to this challenge. "The harm is staggering..." Jonathan Haidt on how smartphones and social media are fuelling the youth mental health crisis. He shares their four harms. Could this be the year’s most ridiculous idea about how life originated? Life may have started in space? They found some amino acids on the Bennu asteroid (at a cost of nearly $1 billion) so, the speculation has begun. Count the could haves and other fudge words in the paragraph below and ask yourself, if the prospect is so unlikely, why is this even getting covered? Well, because this level of rampant speculation is among the best prospects they have... "If a vast swarm of briny little worlds produced biological precursors, it could have mixed them together as they crashed into one another. The heat of the impacts could have fueled more chemistry, giving rise to even more complex molecules in their interiors, and perhaps even living cells. 'Could life have started there?' Dr. Rennó asked. 'I’m open to it. I like crazy ideas.'” Resisting gender ideology indoctrination in Canada’s public schools "Imagine that a religious cult had mysteriously swayed Canada’s schools to teach children that they are spirit-beings trapped in their physical bodies as some kind of curse. Imagine further that special staff were dedicated to ensuring schools were 'safe spaces' for kids to discover their true spirit-selves. Imagine special 'student clubs' to guide students in this self-discovery, with help from zealous adult believers from outside the school. Imagine students adopting new cultic names for themselves at school, which everyone else was required to use. And imagine at last schools keeping their kids’ new cultic identities secret from parents because 'children don’t need parents’ permission to be who they are,' to paraphrase Justin Trudeau. "I think Canadians would be appalled at this. And many would intuit that there was something legally suspect about it. But swap in 'gender identity' and this is what’s happening in Canada. A quasi-religious gender ideology is permeating our public schools, and most Canadian families have no opt-out..." Voddie Baucham's thoughts on voting as a Christian He's speaking in the context of the US, but there is crossover... ...