Highlights: How NOT to Read the Bible (Episode 50) The road to atheism is littered with Bibles that have been read cover to cover. To most Christians, the Bible is like a software license. Nobody actually reads it. They just scroll to the bottom and click “I agree.” Never Read a Bible Verse By lifting verses out of context, they can easily be misunderstood. The story-line of the Bible must be understood so that we can see where the verse/passage/book fits into the larger over-arching story. W...
What’s On My Bookshelf? A Review: Plagues Upon the Earth, by Kyle Harper - The Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse | Part 3 - Highlights Coronaviruses and influenza viruses are the ones that we are currently worried about. H5N1 (a bird flu)...if it ever gets airborne...it’s got a 60% death rate. (Dr. Larry Brilliant, Harvard Magazine) It is the advance of scientific knowledge, actualized by public policy and private behavior, that has given humans the advantage over microbial thr...
What’s On My Bookshelf? A Review: Plagues Upon the Earth, by Kyle Harper The Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse | Part 2 Highlights We still have much to learn from the experience of those who lived and died before us. It is urgent that we do so. The long history of disease counsels us to expect the unexpected. The worst threat may be the one we cannot see coming. Bubonic Plague (Black Death)Three stages in history - The Justinian Plague (500’s A.D.), The Black Death (...
What’s On My Bookshelf?Part 1 | A Review: Plagues Upon the Earth, by Kyle HarperThe Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse Highlights Up to around 1700 life on earth was short and full of sorrow. Life expectancy was below 30 years. Most people died of infectious disease...around 1900 a great threshold was crossed for the the first time in the history of our species: non-infectious causes of death accounted for a greater portion of total mortality than did infectious diseases. By mid-century d...
What’s On My Bookshelf | Eight Ways to Make This Your Best Year Ever 4000 Weeks, by Oliver Burkeman We’ve been granted the mental capacities to make almost infinitely ambitious plans yet practically no time at all to put them into action...Stop trying so hard...It’s ok to give up on what’s impossible in the first place. One: Accept the limitations of a life-span that’s way too short. The key to begin resolving this problem is to work with the facts of our finitu...
Highlights Ears: The Soft Power of Listening - Part 8 (Episode 45) Six Reasons We Don’t Listen and What to Do About It Six reasons most of us don’t listen well: 1. We’ve never been taught how. We are encouraged to listen to our hearts, and listen to our gut, but rarely are we encouraged to listen carefully and with intent to other people. ( Kate Murphy, You’re Not Listening) Listening well is not an ability we are born with. It doesn’t get magically downloaded to us a...
HighlightsEars: The Soft Power of Listening - Part 7 (Episode 44) Miracle Grow for Relationships Marriage The decision to get married is weighted heavily toward what we see...is this person physically attractive to me? But the decision to stay married is weighted more toward what we hear...do I have satisfying communication with my spouse? Thirty-six Questions that Lead to Love, (NYT January 9, 2015) Communication Exercise - Ask: What’s the biggest thing impacting you and how a...
HIghlights - Ears (Part 6, Episode 43) Persuasion Starts HerePeople don’t care what we know until they know that we care.”To listen well is the first step in caring. Persuasion begins with listening well.Four scenarios:1. When someone is angry2. When you are trying to make a saleI discovered early on that people don’t buy from me because they understand what I’m selling. They buy because they feel understood.’ Jon benefits from his natural tendency to ask a lot of questions and to listen clos...
Ears: The Soft Power of Listening - Part 5 (Episode 42) Help! I’m Hurting! Highlights Be kind to everyone you meet because everyone you meet is fighting a battle. When it comes to helping the hurting...this is almost always true of our words. Less is more. Job’s comforters did everything right for the first seven days, and so do we when we do the same three things they did. First, show up. (90% of success is just showing up.) Second, empathize. To the extent we can, we exp...
Ears: The Soft Power of Listening - Part 4 (Episode 41) Seven Habits of Highly Effective Listeners (Continued) HIghlights Listening well means to pay careful attention to what’s being said in a way that encourages people to continue to share even more of their story The fourth habit of highly effective listeners: Don’t use your own stories to compete with others. Don’t equate your experience with theirs. If they're talking about having lost a family member, don't start talking ...
Highlights: Ears | Seven Habits of Highly Effective Listeners (1-3) A checklist for listening well First, keep the focus on the other person A support response does this by asking questions and reflecting/paraphrasing what the other person is saying. While listening...One of the most helpful things we should be listening for is an open door to ask another question. The insight you are seeking is often not behind that first, second or third door but many layers deep into th...
Highlights: Ep. 39 | Ears | Part 2 | The Soft Power of Listening - The Secret Sauce of Great ConversationsCuriosity...it’s the single most important factor in listening well. It’s the secret sauce. Great conversations are driven by curiosity. So follow your curiosity.The obvious tool of my trade is the tape recorder, but I suppose the real tool is curiosity. (Studs Terkel) Curiosity is not an involuntary impulse. It’s a quality that we can choose, if we want to. It’s a muscle t...
Highlights: Ep.38 | Ears | Part 1 | Five Reasons This May Be Our Most Important Life SkillDefinition: Listening well is more than just hearing with our ears. It’s hearing with our hearts.One: Listening well creates a unique and almost sacred bond between people.Those who listen longer than most people ever listen will hear things that most people neverhear. (Carey Nieuwhoff)Two: Listening well brings real healing to others.We hurt in isolation; we heal in community.Be kind to everyone you mee...
Highlights - Ep. 37 | Mere Christianity | Part 16 | The Road Less TraveledI didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity. (God in the Dock)Christ says, “Give me all. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work. I want you. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. God is easy to please, but ha...
Highlights: Ep. 37 | Mere Christianity | Part 16 | The Road Less TraveledThe secret to the abundant life is not our responsibility but our response to God’s ability. (E.Stanley Jones)First: The Imitation of Christ - “Let’s Pretend.”Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already. That is why children's games are so important. They are always pretending to be grown-ups – playing soldiers, playing shop. But all the time they are hardening their ...
“Everything which really needs to be done in our souls can be done only by God.” “If Christianity only means one more bit of good advice, then Christianity is of no importance. There has been no lack of good advice for the last four thousand years! A bit more makes no difference!” Christianity is about being a friend of God. It’s relational. It’s not about being “faced with an argument which demands your assent, but (being faced) with a Person who demands your confidence.” “There is no other ...
Highlights: Ep. 34 | Mere Christianity | Part 13 | More Than What We've BecomeWhen we draw our circle bigger we’re enriched. When we don’t we’re impoverished and diminished. Streams of Living Water, (Richard Foster) If you’ve benefited from the writings of C.S. Lewis, it’s because a few key people a generation ago decided to draw their circle bigger. They took a dip in another stream. We owe them a big debt and we’d be wise to follow in their steps. “Now the whole offer which Christianity mak...
Highlights: Ep. 33 | Mere Christianity | Part 12 | Failure - A Defining Moment “The main thing we learn from a serious attempt to practice the Christian virtues is that we fail… God has been waiting for the moment at which you discover that there is no question of earning a pass mark in this exam. The first result of real Christianity is to blow that idea into bits.” It’s a necessary and defining moment for anyone wanting to walk in new life with Christ. “So, If you were to die tonight and Go...
Ep. 32 | Mere Christianity | Part 11 | To Go The Distance Highlights Faith as Lewis uses it here means “spiritual tenacity.”“Faith is…a necessary virtue. Unless you teach your moods “where they get off,” you can never be a sound Christian…but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion.”“There will come a moment when there is bad news…or he’s in trouble…or is living among a lot of other people who don’t believe…or...
Highlights: Ep. 31 | Mere Christianity | Part 10 | The Gift of TomorrowWhat happens when we die? Only a fool ignores this question. “Think of yourself just as a seed patiently waiting in the earth; waiting to come up a flower in the Gardener’s good time, up into the real world, the real waking. I suppose our whole present life, looked back on from there, will seem only a drowsy half-waking. We are here in the land of dreams. But…cock-crow is coming.” Our present world is a shadow-land compare...