Think About It

When the Apostle John wrote, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” (I John 4:1) he challenged believers to make sure that we guard our lives from false teachers. We have a responsibility to know the truth and live by it – yet we also need to make sure to identify those who intend to mislead others. All believers have an obligation to protect the whole. Now, having said that, I wonder sometimes if we spend too much time trying to keep people out of the churches and we don’t spend enough time trying to help them get into heaven? Do we pounce so hard on people who don’t think the way we think that we squeeze the desire to learn more about Christianity right out of their souls? Rather than trying to help them find a better way to live, we alienate them with a hostile spirit. In essence, rather than saving a soul, we are more interested in “winning” the battle. We must be ...

As I was reading from The Proverbs the other day, I came across an interesting concept, “He who shuts his ear to the cry of the poor will also cry himself and not be answered.” (Proverbs 21:13). In essence, the notion is that when we fail to help others, people will tend to refuse to help us when we have a need. Not only is this true from an individual perspective, I also believe that it plays out in society as well. When we make it a point to help others, people are more apt to help us when we have needs. When we dig into our pockets to help those impacted by acts of nature, recessions or catastrophes; they will be more apt to reciprocate when bad things happen. It’s kind of the philosophy of what goes around comes around – but, this time with a positive spin. Not only is it morally good to help others in their time of need, it can be an investment in our own future. Jesus seems to echo this sentiment when He teaches, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” (M...

What do you do when you have a close call with disaster? I believe there are one of two ways people react to brushes with calamity. The first is to be thankful that what could have happened didn’t happen. Whether we assign it to fate, good fortune or divine intervention, we appreciate the fact that somehow we avoided the negative impact of misfortune. While a hearty “Thank God” would be in order, even a “Whew, that was close, I am glad it wasn’t as bad as it could have been” can help us maintain a healthy attitude. Now, I mentioned there were two reactions – the other is to obsess about what might have happened even though it didn’t. We might play the worst case scenario of what almost befell us over and over in our minds. We might continually focus and refocus on what went wrong that took us to the precipice of disaster. When taken to the extreme, this can lead us to over-evaluating our failures that led up to the incident and preoccupying our minds with just how close we came...

Have you noticed how easy it is to be prejudiced? Have you also noticed how futile prejudice is? Now before we move on, let me describe prejudice. Prejudice is believing that someone has a particular quality based on a shallow observation. On the surface, this is absurd and it becomes less and less true the deeper dig. In fact, not only is it unproductive, it is also counterproductive. When someone accuses us of an action or a belief just because we belong to a larger group – and we don’t hold those beliefs – we feel justified in dismissing anything they say. Even if they have some valid points, we can blanketly dismiss them because we feel wrongfully accused. I am not saying that we shouldn’t hold people accountable for the decisions they make and the beliefs they hold; however, we must do so based upon the individual rather than the group to which we have assigned them. We must measure people by what they personally profess, not paint them with a broad brush of bias. Whether...

Don McLean would call it “The Day The Music Died” in his hit song, “American Pie”. In the early morning hours of February 3, 1959 a Beechcraft Bonanza took off from Clear Lake, Iowa headed to Moorhead, Minnesota; but the plane never made it and three stars faded into the horizon. Buddy Holly was 22-years-old, Richie Valens was 17 and J. P. Richardson was 28 when they died in the plane crash. They were all famous, but their lives were cut short in an Iowa cornfield on a cold Midwestern night. I have always been a big Buddy Holly fan, and find it hard to believe that he accomplished as much as he did in so few years. His music brought pleasure to so many people and inspired generations of musicians. Richardson, better known as The Big Bopper made the most of a novelty song. Richie Valens had hit the charts to the point that he was part of a star-studded Rock and Roll Show. Unfortunately, their fame and stardom couldn’t save them from that fateful night. When I think about February...

Have you noticed how easy it is to give advice, but how difficult it can be to take it? We are good about listening to people, then commenting on their situation – sometimes they want our feedback and other times they wish we’d just keep our words to ourselves. Often, when we think about our willingness to “help” other people, we seem to shrink away fearing that we may not be as much help as we’d like, but have you ever thought that maybe we do have good ideas? In fact, the ideas that we have might be so good that we should be taking them ourselves! Rather than limiting our words of wisdom, we might actually be doing ourselves a favor by listening to what we are telling others. Think about it for just a minute, what was the best piece of advice have you given lately … now consider just how much better your life would be if you followed your own advice? I am not trying to condemn hypocrisy, I am encouraging wisdom. If our discoveries can help others, maybe they can be good for us...

What goals do we have for our social involvement? Do we hope to win the battle or are we content with making a difference? This may seem like an odd question, but our approach might help us from getting discouraged. You see, if we set out to eliminate hunger or end homelessness; we’ll run out of resources (and stamina) before we run out of opportunities to help. If we put all of our efforts behind winning the war on drugs or eradicating injustice, we are going to walk away feeling like we have failed. As long as we have people, we are going to have recurring problems. Now, this might seem like a cop-out but the truth of the matter is that our responsibility is not to solve all the issues, but to be engaged in touching people’s lives. No, we can’t use the fact that we’ll never win the ultimate war to stop trying, rather we must keep trying knowing that we will always have an opportunity to help the people around us. The same Jesus who said, “For you always have the poor with you...