All tagged male and female

407 Anxiety—The Snake That Strangles All (4) Empathy? Exhausted!

Perhaps more than other people, Christians are susceptible to having their emotions manipulated. After all, love of neighbor is an express way to show love of God. But that beautiful attribute can be abused, primed, and played. What's happened? Well, we used to encourage compassion: feeling for the other such that one is moved to action. Today the emphasis is upon empathy: deeply sharing the feelings of the other person. I don't think it started out this way, but empathy has been so emphasized that today it can become not only exhausting but sinful. I explain the hows and whys of that possibility. Today our culture wants us to be mired in empathy and that can transpire to the point of being sinful. In my opening reflection I note different kind of Christian spiritualities: Baptisty, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, spiritual warfare, logos oriented, and affective types. I've learned from them all, but I explain what is dominating my own worldview right now. And then, in my cultural remarks I talk about pastors who shamed their congregations in various progressive ways. Have those same pastors either repented or apologized now that our culture is swinging happily back toward common sense?

192 Science-Y Stuff (5) Creation ex nihilo and Light

How does the Bible compare to other explanations of the origins of the universe? Was the Bible aware of other such explanations? Why is the Bible's explanation truly logical and with what famous scientific theory does that align? And then, what is light? How fast does it travel? What does its dual nature suggest to us about reality, about ethics? What lessons cannot be inferred from studies about light? Come and wonder with me about the magic of our universe.

164 The Cult of the Now (4) Morally Re-framing a Soft Coup

Most coups are local and violent over-throws of rulers. Soft coups involve a gradual, incremental, willing handing over of power. Are we in the midst of a soft coup? Sure looks like it. So how'd we get here? What is the strategy that has brought us to this historic crux? Answer: a massive societal loss of nerve, a loss of nerve driven by a moral re-structuring. In this episode I relate all of this to my own golf game. Weird things happen when you lose your nerve!