Quitting in droves
My mother quit smoking long ago. Yet she didn’t quit her bowling league where teammates smoked like chimneys. And she didn’t break up the monthly bridge club that left our home reeking of stale cigarette butts the morning after. Mom’s never been entirely clear why she quit but two researchers think they know. Their findings – when placed next to your Sunday bulletin – reveal an obstacle and opportunity for anybody trying to connect Sunday to Monday.
In a blink.
Welcome to wedding season, where one-third of today’s smiling couples will be crying in a few years. That’s one-third of all marriages, since the divorce rate of Christians and mainstream culture is statistically identical: 32% versus 33%, respectively.1 Why is it that believers who spend weeks and months in pre-marital counseling fare no better than those who don’t prepare at all? The answer is because we give couples the whole loaf while John Gottman only needs a thin slice to predict with 95 percent accuracy whether a couple will make it. In a blink, he sees what Jesus warned about 2,000 years ago.
Oops…
The game was scoreless in the second quarter of the 1929 Rose Bowl when Georgia Tech’s John Thomason fumbled. California’s Roy Riegels recovered the ball and took off for the Tech goal line. But suddenly Riegels did something that forever earned him a place in football folklore. What happened next is the reason why the California Supreme Court ought to reverse its recent decision in giving homosexuals the right to marry.
Zeroing in.
When you shoot free throws in basketball, where do you aim? At the basket, of course. Nope. That’s too broad a target. The best shooters aim at the front of the rim. With proper ball rotation, even a short shot is more likely to go in. If you’re a parent, businessperson, artist, or really anyone – and happen to be a Christian – where do you aim? I think our targets – the human heart, culture, or character – are too broad. Why not aim at what David, the Apostle Paul, Martin Luther, the Puritans, and William Wilberforce did?
It ain’t what you know…
For the last 100 years there’s been a divisive debate over whether God created the world in six 24-hour days, six long ages, simply supervised evolution, or had nothing to do with it. This contest would benefit from Mark Twain’s caution: it ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. One person with a seat at creation was even tougher: we deserve a kick in the seat of the pants.
Tripping gracefully
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) supposedly started a riot when he discovered that, contrary to what the church taught and everyone believed, the earth revolves around the sun. The Copernican Revolution helped “science suddenly burst forth when a weakened Christianity could no longer prevent it.”1 This makes for a great story except for one niggling detail. It didn’t happen that way. Huh? Don’t worry. Stumbling over truth can be fun, Horace Walpole said—but only if you know what to do after losing your footing.
Misguided objection
The Chinese political leader Mao Zedong was born in Shaoshan, China. I prefer veggie pizza. What’s the connection? The next time someone tells you they dislike Christianity because it says other faiths are wrong, ask them whether we’re talking about birthplace or pizza taste. It’ll reframe the conversation to help you overcome a misguided objection.
Free riders
Bill Cosby was feeling frustrated four years ago at the NAACP gala commemorating the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. He believes black men have become free riders. “Everybody knows how important it is to speak English except these knuckleheads. You can’t land a plane with ‘Why you ain’t…’” Since 2004 “A Call Out with Bill Cosby” has stirred the pot yet has been well received. “People have been waiting to hear the truth, they don’t want to be coddled,” says Cosby. This raises a question. What if a church got feisty and “called out” congregants who are free riders? Oh, no—we couldn’t do that. Well…one religious faith does, with noteworthy results.
The 90% solution.
Millvina Dean might suggest we pay closer attention to what’s below the surface. She was two months old and a passenger on the Titanic when it struck an iceberg on April 14, 1912. Today she’s the last living survivor. Everyone knows that 90% of an iceberg is below the surface. But what does this tell us if human nature is like an iceberg?
Human equation.
A young man once tracked down Albert Einstein and insisted on showing him a manuscript. On the basis of the E=mc2 equation, the man said it would be possible “to use the energy contained within the atom for the production of frightening explosives.” Einstein brushed him off, calling the concept foolish.1 Later in life Einstein recognized the destructive energy in his equation. A phone call this week reminded me that we’d do well to recognize a human equation that often yields destruction.
