Harvey Weinstein, Lori Loughlin, and the Grace of God

I got an email at 12:45 AM Christmas morning from someone who was very angry with my Christmas Eve sermon. (You can watch that sermon here.) In my sermon, I wondered aloud if we are becoming a culture without mercy--once people have sinned, can they ever find redemption?

I cited the extreme example of Harvey Weinstein and asked if even he can receive mercy. The person who sent me the angry email felt that I was excusing Mr. Weinstein's many sins that have caused harm to so many people. It shouldn't have to be said, but let me say it anyway: but I do not excuse, condone, or approve of any of the things Mr. Weinstein is said to have done. In fact, the very reason I used him as an example is precisely because his sins seem so particularly ugly.

Which brings me back to the question I was asking: Can Harvey Weinstein receive mercy? Can he receive redemption?

Our actions have consequences, and justice requires that people face those consequences. I don't think mercy and consequences are mutually exclusive; Mr. Weinstein should be prosecuted for his crimes and if he is found guilty, he should be sentenced accordingly. And, there should be boundaries in place that make it very difficult for him to hurt anyone ever again.

But what happens after that? If he repents, can he be redeemed?

I've been asking that same question recently with regard to Lori Loughlin and the other celebrities caught up in the college admissions cheating scandal.

What they did was wrong and they need to face the consequences.

But what happens after that?

It strikes me that it's when people are guilty and ashamed and despised--that that is exactly the time when they need to be welcomed at church. I have no idea if Lori Loughlin and her family have a church family, but I'd guess that they don't. Is there any church near them who will reach out? If they were to show up at a church, would they be gawked at? Would folks pull out their phones and post pics to social media?

It strikes me that it's when people are guilty and ashamed and despised--that that is exactly the time when they need to be welcomed at church. I have no idea if Lori Loughlin and her family have a church family, but I'd guess that they don't. Is there any church near them who will reach out? If they were to show up at a church, would they be gawked at? Would folks pull out their phones and post pics to social media?

Most of us are able to hide our sins or explain them away. We maintain plausible deniability and pretend.

But sometimes there is no hiding. Sometimes we are totally exposed. Sometimes the whole world knows.

It shouldn't need to be said, but let me say it anyway:

Jesus died for sinners. Not the respectable sinners only, but also the shameful, wicked, public ones. Jesus died for Harvey Weinstein. Jesus died for Lori Loughlin.

Is there anyone around them who will tell them?

Is there a church family who can teach them?

Is there a place they can go on Easter Sunday to hear the Good News?

---

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George H.W. Bush & Ourselves

Although I vividly remember the 1992 Presidential Election, I was really too young to understand it or have an informed opinion about it, but the occasion of the death last week of 94 year-old President George H.W. Bush and the subsequent media commentary and coverage about the life and times of that first President Bush has been clarifying to me.  Not so much about then, as about now.  Three observations about our culture that the death of George H.W. Bush have made clear to me, and what I am going to do about it.

We Delight in Tearing Down; We Hold Others to an Impossible Standard

I found it ridiculous how many of the death announcements of President Bush began with some note about how he "only" was president for one term.  Here's a representative example from the lede in The New York Times obituary:

George Bush, the 41st president of the United States and the father of the 43rd, who steered the nation through a tumultuous period in world affairs but was denied a second term after support for his presidency collapsed under the weight of an economic downturn and his seeming inattention to domestic affairs, died on Friday night at his home in Houston. He was 94.  [my emphasis]

Note: President Bush was "denied a second term."  As if being elected to two terms is someone's birthright, and as if being elected president of these United States only once is not good enough!?  Think how easily that opening sentence might have read

George Bush, the 41st president of the United States and the father of the 43rd, who, after a long career in public service, was elected to the presidency, from which office he steered the nation through a tumultuous period in world affairs and faced the challenge of an economic downturn and the public perception of his seeming inattention to domestic affairs, died on Friday night at his home in Houston. He was 94.

I'll admit it's not a very elegant sentence, but that's because I was trying to preserve as much of the obit's original language as possible, but you get the point: to imply that being elected president once is somehow falling short is outrageous.  The first sentence of the obituary shows that we delight in tearing down and pointing out how other people fail to meet the impossible standards of success we set for them.  Examples are everywhere.Some sports examples: Aaron Rodgers has "only" won one Super Bowl; LeBron should have one more NBA Championships with Cleveland; Peyton Manning "only" won two Super Bowls.  Etc.  It used to frustrate me when Tony Romo played for the Cowboys how some fans used to talk about how he wasn't good enough.  Here's a guy who was undrafted when he signed with the Cowboys, and then went on to start at quarterback from 2006-2015.  He played at a level that only a few dozen people who have ever lived could have played at, for multiple years, and yet he's a failure in many peoples' opinions, because he didn't win enough.We set an impossible standard for other people--he didn't do enough, she didn't win enough, etc.--and we make sure to emphasize where other people fell short, rather than drawing attention to all that they did achieve.  I hate this tendency in our culture.President Bush "only" served one term as president, "was denied a second term."  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?So, what I am going to do about it? I am going to work hard to talk about the positive achievements of others first. 

Our Media Commentators Are Totally Unaccountable

To his credit, Evan Thomas today regrets his editorial decision to imply, on the cover of Newsweek in October 1987, that George H.W. Bush was a "wimp".  I find it amazing that someone would call a man who was shot down in the Pacific Ocean at age 20 as other men were trying to kill him a "wimp".  But, there you are.  Taking our pervasive tendency to tear down (see above) and then publicizing it, our media does this kind of stuff all the time, and the mainly faceless and nameless hacks who do this kind of thing are seemingly immune from accountability.  To take a more recent example: on the same night that he won the Heisman Trophy as the best college football player in the country, Oklahoma's Kyler Murray had to apologize for what the USA Today called "several homophobic tweets more than six years old."Get this: Kyler Murray is currently 21 years-old, which means he posted the offending statements on Twitter when he was 15(!).  Other than yet more evidence that no teenagers should be on social media at all (I am not exaggerating), note the outrageous passive voice in the original USA Today story which "broke" the news:

Heisman Trophy winner Kyler Murray had a Saturday to remember. But the Oklahoma quarterback's memorable night also helped resurface social media's memory of several homophobic tweets more than six years old.  [my emphasis]

When Murray was 15 years old, he tweeted at his friends (via his since-verified Twitter account) using an anti-gay slur to defame them. Four offensive tweets remained active on his account late Saturday night but were eventually deleted by Sunday morning — when Murray apologized for his insensitive language in a tweet.

His "memorable night also helped resurface social media's memory"?  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  These tweets did not "resurface" like a corpse washing ashore after a shipwreck several weeks before.  Tweets don't "resurface"--they have no agency.  Instead, some nameless "reporters" at USA Today were running through a child's tweets from 6 years ago, and then they publicized the results at exactly the moment that would cause a 21 year-old young man the most embarrassment and discomfort.  Instead of being able to celebrate one of the great nights of his life with his family and teammates, Kyler Murray had to enact a familiar routine: the humiliating public apology we have all come to accept.  Let me be clear: I do not approve of Mr. Murray's comments.  But, it seems to me that the USA Today reporters were more interested in tearing down a public figure than they were in drawing attention to the casual way teenagers bully and humiliate others.It's bad enough that the Internet means that any fool can say anything about anyone else and have other people listen to him; it's that much worse that people in media can do the same thing and then use the amazing power of mass media to get millions of people to listen to them.There are many many many more examples I could list of unaccountable media commentators doing this sort of thing, and precious few examples of those people ever being held accountable for what they say.  Burns me up.So, what I am going to do about it?  If I have something difficult or controversial to say, whether publicly or in private relationship, I will put my name to it and stand by what I have said.  If I later change my mind, I'll own that, too. 

We Don't Like to Acknowledge the Sufferings of the Rich & Famous

By any standard, George H.W. Bush was born into extreme privilege.  There is no question that his life was made easier because of wealth and connections, and that the things he achieved may have been impossible to someone with neither wealth nor connections.  However, one of the tendencies we have to is downplay the sufferings of wealthy people.  See, wealthy people suffer like the rest of us.  George Bush, for example, had to watch his 3 year-old daughter Robin die from leukemia.  Here's a question for you: would you rather be rich and lose your little girl, or poor?  Trick question.  It doesn't matter--losing a child will break your heart no matter how much money you have in the bank.  Sheryl Sandberg, billionaire and COO of Facebook, lost her husband from an undiagnosed heart condition; he was 47.  All the money in the world won't bring him back.  Joe Biden has lost a wife, a daughter, and now a son.You may dislike those peoples' politics or positions, but you have to acknowledge that they have suffered.  I can tell you from personal experience that people with lots of money and power experience loss in the same way as the rest of us.So, what I am going to do about it?  I want to be someone who is aware and acknowledges the sufferings of others, particularly the people I disagree with.  They are human, like me. I said I had 3 observations, but here's a fourth:

P.S.  It Was a Memorial Service For All of Us

This is totally unoriginal with me, but one of the striking things about the funeral services for President Bush was how it illustrated how far we've come from a national faith.  There was a time when most Americans would have had passing knowledge of the hymns, readings, and creeds that were part of President Bush's services.  Today, I doubt that's the case.  In some ways, the elements of the funeral service were as far removed from modern America as the elements of a royal wedding or the Queen's coronation.  I found it interesting to see the living presidents all reciting The Apostles Creed together, with President Trump not taking part.  I doubt if Mr. Trump's silence during the creed means anything at all, and I don't really care, but I did find the moment symbolic: we modern Americans have less and less in common with our cultural past.  It's very hard for a people to stay together when they don't share the same fundamental beliefs about Reality.  I wonder how much longer we can sustain the American Experiment, now that we no longer believe the same things.  I hope I'm wrong. 

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Happy Halloween

It's Halloween, and even though the weatherman is calling for rain, the "soldier" in our house is planning on braving the elements and trick-or-treating tonight (though he is worried that his Nerf darts will get wet). Mrs. F. and I are raising our kids to be faithful young people, which raises the question: Do I as a pastor see a problem with our kids' participating in Halloween? The short answer is, "No." Some further thoughts below.I was my son's age 30 years ago, and I've been thinking about the differences between his experience of trick-or-treating and mine. I think there is a lot about America that we can learn from Halloween, and sadly, most of the changes that have taken place these past 30 years have been for the worse.As in so many areas of childhood, most of the fun of Halloween was in the expectation: what would I be, and how much loot could I get from my neighbors' largesse? As soon as the calendar turned to October, I'd begin thinking about my costume. When I was a kid, I seem to remember that most kids made their costumes, not bought them from the store. Making your costume was part of the fun. There is no question that Halloween has become much more manufactured and commercialized over the past 30 years. As in many other areas of American life, our obsessive desire to express ourselves as individuals has meant that we have become more like everyone else: everyone just wears the same mass-produced junk made in China. (What do these millions of Chinese people toiling in factories think about us? How stupid and frivolous must they think we are.)There was an unwritten rule in my neighborhood that teenagers were too old to trick-or-treat: Halloween was supposed to be for elementary age children and younger. These days, Halloween seems to be more and more about adults, and this is a change I don't welcome. I remember last year walking with my children up to some houses and feeling really uncomfortable: many of the adult costumes seemed to be as sexualized and violent as possible.I think that's another change I have sadly noticed: for me, trick-or-treating was mainly about kids running around the neighborhood in the twilight, and that was certainly the large part of the fun: you were?by yourself, with no parents!? But today, like most American parents of our class and background, the idea of letting our kids roam free in the dark in our community seems crazy to me and my wife. Maybe American life is more dangerous now than it was 30 years ago, but I liked it better when parents felt fine letting their kids roam by themselves.Don't get me wrong: not all the changes have been for the worse. For example, these days the candy has definitely gotten better. My brothers and I would eat a heaping pile of candy when we got home from trick-or-treating--against our mom's protestations--and then store the rest in those round Christmas cookie tins, which we kept under our beds. For the next few days, our school lunches would have much more sugar than usual, but after that the same thing would happen every year:?we'd eat all the good stuff that first week of November, only to dig out the cans from under our beds months later and find within them forlorn Charleston Chews and Tootie Rolls and other worse candies (if that's possible) that weren't even dignified enough to have been given names. What I would have given for a full-size Milky Way bar!I know folks who object to Halloween on the grounds that the day celebrates evil and the occult. Though I certainly understand their concerns, I personally don't have any problem with the silly and fun aspects of trick-or-treating and dressing up. For me, this is a 1 Corinthians 8 issue: I don't find any problem per se with my children participating in the silly aspects of Halloween, though if other Christians have concluded otherwise for their families, I certainly support them and understand that point of view. And, though Halloween is crassly commercial, frankly in my household it seems to be much less damaging than just basic tv and internet consumption anyway. So, in our family we have fun trick-or-treating, and Halloween is not something I find to be spiritually and morally dangerous for my children.Which is not to say there aren't elements of Halloween that I do in fact find spiritually and morally dangerous.There's that scene in the movie?Mean Girls where the protagonist, who has grown up in Africa, finds herself in her first high school Halloween party back in America, and is shocked to see how all the other girls have used the occasion to dress up in as slutty and provocative a way as possible. Here's what she says:

In the regular world, Halloween is when children dress up in costumes and beg for candy. In Girl World, Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress up like a total slut and no other girls can say anything else about it.

I think the scene is (unintentionally) instructive: we have come to accept the sexualization of everything as normal, and what we have come to accept as normal is shocking and strange to people who haven't been indoctrinated in Western culture. We are obsessed with sex, and even though the miserable results of this obsession are all around us, we persist in worshipping at Aphrodite's temple. The same is true for the way we deliberately embrace evil on Halloween. I was listening to The Ticket this morning as I drove home from working out; Gordo and Junior were talking about serial killers and prison beatings, etc., and so I turned off the radio--I don't want to fill my mind with evil. Because, let's be clear: dismemberment and murder and the like are evil actions. I'll go further--they are manifestations of the demonic. Do those things occur? Of course--this is a fallen world--but they don't need to be celebrated.I think it is spiritually foolish and morally problematic to celebrate evil and violence in costume and decoration, much less to investigate the occult. We should flee from such things, and not deliberately welcome them into our homes.So, I understand why some people strongly dislike Halloween. There will be some houses tonight which we will quickly walk past and avoid. My children are only children once, and they will encounter the violence and sexualization of our world soon enough. When they do, I want them to be discerning enough to discriminate between harmless fun and harmful evil, and Halloween can be a way for them to learn how to do so.So, tonight, I look forward to taking my kids out in the rain and letting them eat way more sugar than is good for them, to welcome the coming change of season and enjoy something fun about being an American child. And then, I hope to teach them one last Halloween lesson: how to discern good candy from Tootsie Rolls.Happy Halloween.  

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Broward County Tightrope

How should we treat that school cop from Florida? I'm going to tell you at the outset that I don't know how to answer the question that I'm going to raise in this post, but I think it's important to raise it anyway. No doubt you've heard that the school resource officer assigned to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida remained outside during the massacre on February 14. No one knows what might have happened if the school cop had entered the building and confronted the killer in the midst of his rampage, but we do know what did?happen: the killer walked out of the school unharmed, leaving 17 corpses behind him.I don't know what I would have done if I were the school cop that day, and neither do you: it was literally a life-and-death moment, and we should judge not lest we be judged. On the other hand, it was that officer's job to protect the school, and he clearly failed in his duty. As a result, this man is internationally notorious as a failure, and that judgment will stalk him the rest of his life. All of this raises a question I've thought a lot about:How do we maintain clear moral standards while at the same time offering grace to the people who violate those standards? Put another way, How do we hate the sin and love the sinner?Almost always, when we think about the above question, we're talking about sexual ethics. But this case shows that the question is much broader than that.

Option A--Be Lax With the Standards

Let's say we decide that it's too high a standard to expect our cops to risk their own lives on behalf of the public. The inevitable result of that decision would be fewer cops who risk their lives on behalf of the public. The expectations we set matter. If we relax our standards, behavior would follow.Take marriage and divorce: when a culture frowns upon divorce, there are fewer divorces. (I'm not saying that the marriages that persist are good marriages, or even if social condemnation of divorce is a good thing--I'm just making the obvious point that our standards matter.) Today, divorce has much less social stigma than it did in previous generations, and it shouldn't surprise anyone that we have more divorces than in previous generations.A culture's standards and expectations affect the behavior of the people in that culture.

Option B--Be Rigid With the Standards

Instead of relaxing our standards, we could choose to vigilantly maintain them. We could decide, for example, that we?do expect our cops to risk their own lives on behalf of the public, no matter what. Anyone who refused to do so, we would socially shame and professionally reprimand. When it comes to marriage, we could decide that our culture values fidelity highly, and we could have the cultural guardrails and legal safeguards in place to make divorce undesirable and difficult.

The Problem

Each option poses a problem, however:Option A will mean that we'll get more of the behaviors that we don't want;but, human nature being what it is...Option B will mean that those who violate the standards will be marked forever as violators.But again, if we say to the sinners in Option B--"It's really okay. Don't feel bad about it."--we are in danger of making Option A a reality.I confront this problem all the time. If I don't preach strongly in favor of marriage and against divorce, for example, it might seem as if marital fidelity doesn't matter that much. But, if I do hit that topic hard, it might be the case that I am heaping shame on people who are already covered in it.Imagine if the school cop from Parkland were in your church: if you immediately said to him, "It's fine" you'd be saying something that isn't true: it's NOT fine. But, on the other hand, if you didn't extend grace to him, you'd be lying, too, since Jesus forgives sinners.It's a tightrope.I think sometimes that this tightrope--balancing between hating the sin and loving the sinner--is actually impossible for us. Fortunately, it is possible for God, who both hates sin and loves sinners at the same time. What's difficult to know is how we practically live out the mysterious grace of God in the world.So,?how do we maintain clear moral standards while at the same time offering grace to the people who violate those standards?I don't think there is a quick and easy formula. I think this requires wisdom and prayer.(And, I think we should add the school resource officer from Parkland to the prayers we are already praying for the grieving families.) 

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"The Media and the Massacre"

I don't know what to say about the massacre overnight in Las Vegas. Probably the best thing is to say nothing, to resist the urge to explain, to sit in silence and actually pray, rather than just tweeting that worse-than-useless phrase "thoughts and prayers." This morning, however, I came across a brief essay that I actually found helpful in light of today's evil news, an essay that Andy Crouch wrote in 2012 after the Newtown massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary called?"The Media and the Massacre":

The most basic lesson for those who would comfort the victims of tragedy is that the first, best response to tragedy is presence, and often the best form of presence is silence. The grieving, the sick, and the dying sometimes need our words, sometimes need our touch, but almost always they need our presence. And there is no contradiction between presence and silence in the embodied life for which we were all created, to which we are all called, into which God himself entered. Bodies can be present without a word. That is the beauty of bodies.

He goes on to comment on our inability to keep silent in the face of these sorts of events, how the social media have caused us all to feel as if our voice needs to be heard:

And while there was a time when you could count the number of broadcasters on one hand, we are all broadcasters now. A tragedy like the Newtown massacre becomes not just a media event, but also a social media event. As the journalist Alex Massie pointed out in his trenchant essay this week, silence is not an option in social media. Not to tweet or post or blog is not to be silently present?it is to be mutely absent. He suggested, fully aware of the futility of his suggestion, that perhaps we all could have simply posted one-word tweets on Friday, using the hashtag #silent, and left it at that. But we didn't, nor are we likely to during the next tragedy. #silent will never be a trending topic on Twitter. All that any of us who do not live in Newtown, Connecticut, truly needed to know?possibly more than we needed to know?appeared in a 12-word news alert on my phone Friday afternoon. Almost everything else, I believe, was a distraction from the only thing that we who are not first responders, pastors, or parents in that community needed to do at that moment: to pray, which is to say, to put ourselves at the mercy of God and hold those who harmed and those who were harmed before the mercy of God.

Why must we say?anything? Perhaps it's because we'd rather not actually face the brutal facts: that we are not in control, and that there is inexplicable evil in the world:

The quest for more talk, more images, more footage (none of which would ever satisfy our lust for understanding, no matter how graphic police and producers allowed them to become) is rarely about the quest to more deeply contemplate the brokenness of the world?it is the quest to not contemplate it. Because if we were simply to contemplate those 12 words, we would be brought all too soon to the terrifying precipice of our own inadequacy, our own vulnerability and dependence, and even (so the saints testify) our own culpability, our nearness in spirit to even the most deranged and destructive.... Terrible things happen every day. One day, one will probably happen to you, if it has not already happened. Surely it is our suppressed awareness that tragedy is coming our way, too, our unwillingness to be silent and contemplate our own need for mercy, that turns compassion into compulsion, turns our God-breathed impulse to stop for the wounded traveler into the gawking slowdown on the other side of the highway.

Please read the whole thing, especially his piercing final sentence.  

5 Reasons to Love the State Fair of Texas

The 2017 State Fair of Texas opens tomorrow and I am fired up! I look forward to seeing Big Tex each fall and each year he doesn't disappoint. Here are 5 reasons to love the State Fair of Texas. [To my 2018 readers: I originally published this on 9/25/15 and then republished it on 9/28/17, but hey!--like Big Tex himself, it's perennially relevant.]

Everybody's There and Everybody's Happy

The State Fair is one of the few places in Dallas where everybody comes together: rich folks, poor folks, city slickers, small town farmers; black folks, white folks, hispanic folks; folks from Highland Park and folks from Fair Park: everybody is at the State Fair. And, everybody is happy to be there.If there is a better place to people watch, I haven't found it.

The Food is all Fried

ttp://andrewforrest.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/state-fair-of-texas-2011-10-19-018.jpg"> (http://antoniorambles.com)Fletcher's corny dogs, fried Thanksgiving dinner, even fried beer.At the State Fair, all the food groups are covered...in batter.

The Car Show is Texas-Sized

drewforrest.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/as_wide.jpg"> (bigtex.com)I love browsing the 2 huge car pavilions. It's fun to sit in the drivers seats and pop the trunks of dozens of cars that I would never ever consider buying. (Although, be warned: I've actually bought?two cars over the years after first sitting in them at the Fair's Auto Show.)

The Demonstrations are Mesmerizing

In several of the exhibit halls, informercial pros demonstrate knives and blenders and shower heads and mops and vacuums and ladders. These guys are good. I mean, can your blender make soup?

The Farm Children are Inspiring

It does my heart good to see the little boys from Texas farms tend their donkeys and cows and pigs and goats and sheep. Little boys with blue jeans and flannel shirts and cowboy hats who look exactly like their tall fathers beside them. I'm glad that world still exists and seeing those farm families makes me proud to be an American. Really.

What About You?

If you've been thinking about visiting Dallas, you should plan a visit during the Texas State Fair, which runs for 3 weeks every September and October. The weather will be gorgeous and the whole experience is can't miss.If you do visit, Big Tex and I will be waiting for you.

Brangelina

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are getting divorced. Though I don't know them, I'm grieved at the news: divorce is always painful, and the thought of their 6 children having to grow up without a mom and a dad in the same house makes me sad. This news of yet another failed celebrity marriage has got me thinking. 

Our Deepest Problems Are Spiritual Problems

Our deepest problems are spiritual problems. If this were not the case, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie would not be getting divorced. If our deepest problems were merely material problems, then money would solve our problems. If money could solve our problems, then rich people would never get divorced.Our culture is obsessed with material reality. We've bought into the self-evident lie that the only reality that matters is that which we can see, taste, touch, and measure. But, this belief is self-evidently false, because material solutions don't actually fix our deepest problems. Spiritual reality matters. Our deepest problems are spiritual problems, and so they can't be solved with material solutions. Spiritual reality is just as real as material reality, but because we can't see, taste, touch, and measure spiritual reality, our culture pretends it's not real.Unfortunately, the effects of spiritual brokenness are quite real, and these effects are all around us:

• War is a result of spiritual brokenness;
• Divorce is a result of spiritual brokenness;
• Racism is a result of spiritual brokenness, etc.

Yes, these problems have material results, but the roots of these problems are spiritual.Again, if our deepest problems were merely material in nature, then we could buy solutions to our problems. This is the false god of wealth. If our deepest problems were merely material, we could solve our deepest problems through technological invention. This is the false god of progress.If our deepest problems were merely material, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie wouldn't be getting divorced. What about you? What is the spiritual brokenness in your heart producing in your life?Anxiety?Adultery?Anger?These come from our hearts, and their effects can be seen in the material world. But, they can't be fixed with material solutions.This is the human predicament: our problems all have spiritual roots, and we can't fix ourselves.But...This is the gospel:?the God who is Spirit entered into material reality and fixed our Problem himself. Do you understand?  

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Social Media: Soda, Wine, Oxycodone, or Heroin?

The following is a guest post (my first ever) from my friend and fellow Mungarian Mike Pratt. Mike and I have been having a friendly argument about social media: is it mainly helpful, harmful, or neutral? I'm increasingly of the opinion that it does more harm than good, but Mike doesn't agree. Here's what Mike thinks. Andrew asked me to write a guest post on this blog in response to my taking issue with his argument. It‘s not that I think his points in his first post and subsequent follow-up post are entirely wrong, but I’ll argue they have omissions and thus fail to convince. I will counter his argument and offer an alternative framework for viewing this thing called social media.Before I start I?d like to make one side point: I also think Andrew's‘statement:

?What has your attention is what has your worship. What you think about in your free moments, the topics and places to which your thoughts tend to go, those are your gods.

is gross generalization of the meaning. As Keller puts it

?What is an idol? It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give??

To simply have your attention is not necessarily bad or false worship. When it has all of your attention, in place of other, more important things (first and foremost, God) then it becomes an idol of worship. Thoughts can go to many things and not render those things worship. Thank God or my daydreaming is convicted!

Now to the Main Topic

This analogy is by no means perfect but I think it‘s a decent framework to look at the issue. As you read each blurb on these four substances, ponder in your mind which one you think is most analogous to social media.

Soda

With a few exceptions, soda is viewed as a relatively benign substance to be enjoyed. In small quantities, it‘s clearly harmless and even for regular users, there have been few, if any, documented cases of extreme adverse health consequences. It is accepted that soda is not even remotely hazardous like any of the other 3 substances in this analogy.

Wine

Given the alcohol contained in wine, it‘s a step up from soda in that it can be abused and in extreme use cases, is addictive and can have serious health consequences. The Bible celebrates wine in measured doses (wedding at Cana) and also condemns its abuse (drunkenness.) Many people drink wine. Many choose not to.

Oxycodone

This seriously addictive and controlled substance is a ruiner of lives when abused. It is also extremely beneficial in tightly controlled use cases (post surgical pain relief) It is highly controlled because it is so addictive as well as misused (leading to abuse).

Heroin

There are no beneficial uses. Highly addictive. Bad bad bad. So what is Facebook, then?One man‘s opinion:It‘s not soda. I think, to Andrew‘s point, there are many people who are hooked on the stuff. Hooked? in this case being defined as they use it so much that it takes away from the lives they normally led in a detrimental way or at the expense of basic things?It‘s not Oxy. That implies a very limited, positive use case like Oxy which is just not true. A significant number of social media users engage on their platform(s) of choice in positive and beneficial ways. The government does not (nor should) control use of the platforms to prevent a possible mass wave of harmful addiction because with free use, the facts are that only a minor set of users qualify as harmfully addictive.It‘s not Heroin. That presumes there are NO beneficial uses of social media and while many do think that, those folks probably think all soda is a mind-control beverage that Pepsi uses in cahoots with the government.It‘s wine. There are plenty of beneficial, everyday uses of Facebook. Can it get out of hand? Sure. Can you drink too much?? Sure. Should some people give up drinking? Definitely. The key is to look at what you drink? and why. Does it rule your life? Are you grumpy without a drink? or do you love a glass? with a good meal or when out with friends? Andrew posted a picture of everyone in line at an airport on their phones (presuming that it was a wrong? state of the world) Replace everyone in that picture with a paperback (Google search images and you will find plenty pre-Facebook!) The devices were simply being used as boredom elimination devices. I don‘t think that picture was indicative of the eroded state of the world.

A Word on Facebook's (or Coke's) Intentions

Coke wants you to buy Coke Zero. Coke Zero is not medically addictive. You may think Coke wants to addict? you but it doesn‘t matter. They can‘t. They will do everything they can to get you to buy it. They should. That‘s their business. Blaming Facebook for not caring about the consequences? is like blaming <insert your favorite brewery or winery> for not caring about the consequences of having a glass. They inform you to drink responsibly and it can be argued that Facebook should not need to place a warning label that you might spend too much time in their web app.So, I’ll leave you with sage advice: Don‘t drink and post!

The above was a guest post by Mike Pratt. (Click?here‘to subscribe to regular updates from this blog.) Mike is:

• A Mungarian! (Member of Munger Place Church.)
• The CEO of technology startup Panamplify
• Founder & President of professional org Digital Dallas
• A former soldier, wall street trader, marketing exec and non-believer
• Check out Mike on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikepratt
• Email Mike:?mike@mikeratt.tv

The Limits of Tolerance

Is there a limit to tolerance? A friend of mine put that question to me this afternoon, in response to last week's post on tolerance. My answer: No. Here's why. 

The Roots of Tolerance

Tolerance is simply the social recognition of a fundamental truth: all people are completely free to choose to believe and do whatever they want to believe and do. There are no exceptions to this principle. This truth is not dependent on whether laws and governments recognize it; this truth is simply true.Yes, governments and societies try to constrain the behavior of the people under their power, but they cannot actually remove free choice from their people--all they can do is make it more or less likely that people freely?choose this or that action.As I argued last week, tolerance has its roots in the character of God: God created us as free creatures and allows us to exercise that freedom, for good or ill.I don't think there is a limit to tolerance because I don't think there is a time when God takes away our freedom to choose.

But Actions Have Consequences

We are all free to believe and do whatever we choose, but we are?not free to choose the consequences of our actions. Actions have consequences. I'm free to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, but I cannot avoid the consequences of my freely chosen actions. Actions have consequences.

Doesn't God's Tolerance Have a Limit?

In the Bible, we read how God eventually allowed the Israelites to be conquered by their pagan neighbors as a consequence of their continued disobedience. I don't think this is an example of the limits of God's tolerance, however. Rather, I think God's tolerance never wavered: he always allowed the Israelites to freely choose to accept or reject him. But, although God's forbearance (a synonym of tolerance) never ran out, the Israelites' actions eventually caught up with them. Their actions led to the Exile. Certain actions lead to certain consequences, the way day inexorably follows night.

What About Human Law?

As humans, we seek to constrain certain behaviors precisely because?we know that people are always free to choose. When we lock up the serial murderer, we are not suddenly denying his freedom to choose, but acknowledging it: we know that if we do not lock him up, he may very likely continue to freely choose murder. Actions have consequences and human societies impose various consequences on various behaviors, but those consequences do not change the fundamental fact on which the principle of tolerance rests, namely that people are always free to choose.

Our True Limit

God's tolerance does not have a limit, but our lives are limited: we are limited by the choices of our actions, and we are limited by our?mortality. None of us can choose to be exempt from the consequences of his choices, and none of us can choose to be exempt from death.Sooner or later, all our actions catch up to us.

P.S. Why Does This Matter?

Tolerance recognizes that it's never too late for anyone--all people can choose to turn towards God or away from God up until their last breath. (And maybe beyond their last breath--who knows?) Because I can't take away someone's free will--even by force--it means that the pressure is off: I can't force anyone to believe what I believe. I can't make anyone believe anything, but I can persuade her‘through my words and actions to freely choose the Truth I've chosen.Which is a sacred privilege, when you think about it.   

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In Praise of "Deep Work"

As focused attention becomes rarer and rarer in our distracted culture, the people who cultivate focused attention will find themselves becoming more and more valuable. In other words, you can't afford NOT to be doing deep work. This is the thesis of the book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport, a book that I cannot recommend highly enough. Here's why.

Deep Work: A Definition

Cal Newport, computer science professor at Georgetown University, defines deep work in this way:

Deep Work: professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.

In contrast with deep work is shallow work:

Shallow Work: noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate.

Most knowledge workers spend most of their time engaged in shallow work--email, anyone--so that, though they may be busy, they are not productive.The people who are writing the best-selling books, making the blockbuster movies, creating the irresistible advertising campaigns, winning the major tournaments, and leading the market-beating companies, these are the people who are doing deep work (whether they realize it or not). Deep work makes a difference.

The Deep Work Hypothesis

The prevalence of shallow work in our culture leads to Newport's deep work hypothesis.

The Deep Work Hypothesis: The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy [and becoming valuable because it is becoming rare--AF]. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.

Newport also argues that deep work actually makes people happier. As someone who has certainly spent a day being busy without being productive, I know that he's right: I'm happier when I'm able to focus.So, if you want to thrive in our knowledge work economy and if you want to be happier while doing it, you need to learn how to do deep work.

The Deep Work Rules

Newport has come up with what he calls The Rules of Deep Work.

1. Work Deeply
2. Embrace Boredom
3. Quit Social Media
4. Drain the Shallows

1. Work Deeply

Deep work is something we can learn how to do. Focused attention is not something you can just turn on or off--it's something that must be trained and cultivated, like a muscle. Just as someone who spends his time sitting on the couch eating Doritos and watching television cannot overnight become a marathon champ, neither can someone who spends his time like that be immediately good at deep work. Deep work requires practice and planning.

2. Embrace Boredom

Internet tools (social media, on-demand video, infotainment sites, etc.) have taught our minds to need constant stimulation, but deep work requires focused attention, and our need for shallow stimulation will undermine our ability to do deep work. Therefore, we need to embrace boredom. It's good to resist the urge to pull out your smart phone when waiting in line at the post office: our minds need boredom.

3. Quit Social Media

You knew this was coming, right? Newport makes the argument that people who are actually producing deep work (best-selling authors like Michael Lewis, e.g.) produce deep work because they do not allow themselves to be distracted by social media. I know lots of people believe that social media is like alcohol--to be used and enjoyed in moderation. I wonder, though, if social media is more like heroin: addictive and distracting for everyone. (UPDATE: In conversation, I could say something provocative like that and you'd understand from my jocular tone what I was trying to convey, but I realize that, if you just read those words, they come across differently. My church actively uses social media (and I use it, too) and I have many friends who work in social media marketing; if I really believed that social media was the same thing as heroin, I'd stop using it immediately. I think social media marketing is necessary in our culture. My point is just that I think all of us are much more easily distracted than we want to admit.)

4. Drain the Shallows

By "drain the shallows," Newport means that we should aggressively eliminate the non-essential from our working lives. For example, he gives practical tips on how to cut down on email, a major source of shallow work for most people.

Why I Need This Book

About 45 times a year, year after year, my professional responsibilities require me to create a brand-new, relevant, engaging, and faithful presentation and then deliver it in front of an average live audience of about 1,000 people, each one of whom is judging me savagely (even if they seem to be nice people!) on that presentation. In addition to that, I also create multiple smaller presentations and essays through the year that also need to be original, relevant, helpful, and faithful. In our distracted world, it seems as if everything but the truly important is screaming LOOK AT ME! PAY ATTENTION TO ME!, and so I've come to the following conclusion:

if I don't learn to do deep work, I'm not going to make it.

Deep Work is one of the most insightful, practical, and challenging books I've read about work and creativity...maybe ever. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.★★★★ excellent

Note on My Rating System

I use a 5 star system in my ratings to signify the following:

★★★★★  life-changing and unforgettable★★★★  excellent★★★  worth reading★★  read other things first★   not recommended

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Further Thoughts on Facebook

I wrote a post last week suggesting that, in its quest to capture our attention, it's almost as if Facebook wants our worship. I meant the post to be provocative, and at least for me, it was: the post has provoked some further thoughts, which I share below.

My Name is Andrew and I'm a User

I have a Facebook account and a Twitter account, I use YouTube, and I carry around an iPhone that enables me to be connected whenever I want. It's precisely because I'm a user that I'm concerned about what Cal Newport calls "Internet tools" (search engines, social media sites, online encyclopedias, etc.): I see their effects on my own life. It is because I've seen what these tools are doing to me that I'm calling into question our naive and uncritical adoption of Internet tools.

Facebook Is Shorthand

For me, Facebook functions as shorthand for all the other Internet tools. I don't have anything against Facebook?per se.

Social Media Is Different Than Television

One commenter wondered if I should have included television in my critique. I don't think television and Facebook are apples to apples, for several reasons:

• Television goes in one direction only: I receive it. Facebook, on the other hand, allows me to transmit messages to the world, and the very act of transmitting those messages in that medium promotes narcissism: it's all about me.
• Television isn't one‘thing, but a grouping of many things: networks, advertisements, writers, actors, etc. Facebook is a for-profit monolith. It's ubiquity and power make it more dangerous than old media.

Social Media?Promotes Narcissism

The very nature of the social media promotes narcissism, because they encourage me to make everything about me: my updates, my likes, my reactions.

Social Media Isolates

For all the talk about connectivity, I find that social media and the other Internet tools are more likely to isolate than connect us together. The more time we spend looking down at our blinking smart phones, the less able we are to cultivate presence and mindfulness.

Social Media is the Enemy of Patience

Everything about Internet tools is about immediacy: immediate reactions, thoughts, and gratification of desires. If I want something, I buy it on Amazon; if I have an opinion about a current event, I share it to the world. This immediacy keeps us from developing the virtue of patience, and patience matters because the important things in life require that we wait.

Social Media Trains Me to Need Constant Stimulation

It is shameful how often I find myself in a line somewhere, only to pull out my iPhone. The way Internet tools have trained us to need constant stimulation is what scares me the most about these tools.

Social Media is the Message

If the medium is the message, then it's not the content of the various social media platforms that ought to worry us, but the very nature of these platforms themselves. In other others, it could be the case that even if we eschew all the destructive and evil things on the Internet (pornography, terrorist death videos, etc.), these tools might still warp our minds and twist our wills.At least, that's what I've started to worry about.  

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My 2015 Reading List

I set a goal to read 50 books in 2015. In September, I revised my goal down to 40?and I hit it! What follows is my reading list for 2015, in chronological order. (Click here to see my post on the best 6 books I read last year.)

My Ratings

??????life-changing and unforgettable?????? excellent???? worth reading??? read other things first??? not recommended The Class Meeting: Reclaiming a Forgotten (and Essential) Small Group Experience,?by Kevin Watson. Clear, simple book about the most important building block of the Methodist movement. ??? Notes from Underground, by Roger Scrunton. Novel about the dissident movement in communist Prague in the 1980s, and the way freedom was a betrayal and a disappointment for the movement's ideals. Scruton is a very interesting philosopher and thinker. ??? Outliers: The Story of Success,?by Malcolm Gladwell. I wrote about?Outliers in my Best Books of 2015 post. ???? You'll Get Through This: Help and Hope for Your Turbulent Time, by Max Lucado. ??? Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell. My least favorite of the Gladwell books. ?? David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants,?by Malcolm Gladwell. Some really interesting stories of turning weaknesses into strengths. I think his reading of the David and Goliath story in 1 Samuel 17 is right on. ??? Meeting God in Mark: Reflections for the Season of Lent,?by Rowan Williams. Typically well-written insights from the former Archbishop of Canterbury. ??? Mark: the Gospel of Passion (the Biblical Imagination Series),?by Michael Card. I like his creative, faithful thoughts on the Gospels. ??? The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference,?by Malcolm Gladwell. The stuff on "connectors," "mavens," and "salesmen" was helpful to me. ??? The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy As They Do,?by Cloture Rapaille. I think the basic premise--that different objects mean different things to different cultures--makes sense, but I think he really stretches to make some of the points he does. ? The Radetzky March, by Joseph Roth. I wrote about?The Radetzky March?in my?Best Books of 2015?post. ???? The Epic of Eden: A Christian Entry Into the Old Testament, by Sandra Richter. I LOVE this book, which provides a cohesive vision for understanding the Old Testament. Highly recommended for anyone who has trouble making sense of‘the Old Testament. ??? Every Man a King, by Bill Kauffman. Vulgar, convoluted, with a ridiculous plot: I hated this book. (This 1 star review on Amazon does a good job capturing what I disliked--I didn't write that review.) ? Seabiscuit: An American Legend, by Laura Hillenbrand. Good, not great. A story about a horse can only be so captivating, and I much preferred?Unbroken, which I wrote about last year. ??? Little Failure: A Memoir, by Gary Shteyngart. Really funny, particularly the parts about this Russian Jewish immigrant learning to be a good American. ??? To Live Is Christ to Die is Gain, by Matt Chandler. Based off his sermon series. ?? Faithful: a Theology of Sex by Beth Felker Jones. ??  Autopsy of a Deceased Church: 12 Ways to Keep Yours Alive, by Thom S. Rainer. ??  The Martian, by Andy Weir. Might be a good movie (haven't seen it), but not a great novel. ?? Simplify: Ten Practices to Unclutter Your Soul by Bill Hybels. Important topic, but I didn't find the book all that helpful. ?? Crazy Busy:A (Mercifully) Short Book about a (Really) Big Problem, by Kevin DeYoung. Helpful, particularly the chapter on acedia. ??? An Unhurried Life: Following Jesus' Rhythms of Work and Rest, by Alan Fadling. I wrote about An Unhurried Life?in my?Best Books of 2015?post. ??? Kristin Lavransdatter, by Sigrid Undset. I wrote about?Kristen Lavransdatter?in my?Best Books of 2015?post. ????? Do Not Live Afraid: Faith in A Fearful World, by John Indermark. ?? Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense, by Francis Spufford. Although Mr. Spufford and I would disagree on a number of issues, his sincere devotion and creative approach won me over. Recommended for someone who might want to think about the Christian faith from an unconventional starting point. ??? The Searchers: A Quest for Faith in the Valley of Doubt by Joe Loconte. I really like Professor Leconte's reading of the Emmaus story. ??? The Thirty-Nine Steps, by John Buchan. ??? Thriving in Babylon: Why Hope, Humility, and Wisdom Matter in a Godless Culture, by Larry Osborne. Book never really lived up to the promise of the title. ?? How (Not) To Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor, by James K.A. Smith. People I respect were enthusiastic about this book, and though it offers some helpful insights into Taylor's work, in general I thought it was poorly written, full of academic jargon and convoluted sentences. If it were not for the fact that I think Taylor's insights into our secular age are worth hearing, I would otherwise give this book a lower rating. Very disappointing. ??? Accidental Pharisees: Avoiding Pride, Exclusivity, and the Other Dangers of Overzealous Faith,?by Larry Osborne. ?? The Jesus Cow: a Novel, by Michael Perry. What do I say 2 stars means? Right: "read other things first." Exactly. ?? Compassion Without Compromise: How the Gospel Frees Us to Love Our Gay Friends Without Losing the Truth, by Adam Barr and Ron Citlau. Honestly, I don't remember anything about this book. I don't know if that's my fault or the authors'. ??  The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, by Marie Kondo. This lady is weird--we're supposed to talk to our clothes and books?--but I actually kinda liked this book. ??? The Heart and the Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy SEAL, by Eric Greitens. ?? The Great Christ Comet: Revealing the True Star of Bethlehem, by Colin Nicholl. First of all, this is physically a beautiful book: hardback, with glossy illustrations on nearly every page. An exhaustive study of the topic. ??? The Hunger Games,?by Suzanne Collins. I wrote about?The Hunger Games?in my?Best Books of 2015?post. ??? Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins. Better than?Mockingjay,?worse than?The Hunger Games. ?? Creativity, Inc., by Ed Catcall. I wrote about?Creativity, Inc.in my?Best Books of 2015?post. ???? The Means of Grace: Traditioned Practice in Today's World, by Andrew Thompson. Good, clear summary of ways people have learned to connect to God. ??? Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins. Not a good book. But, to be expected: wrapping up complicated plot lines neatly is difficult. ?

My 2016 Reading Goal

Once again, I‘ve set myself a goal of reading 50 books this year. What about you?do you have a reading goal for the year?[Here are my?2013?and?2014?reading lists, respectively.] 

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My Thoughts on "Spotlight"

I?went to see the?movie Spotlight?on Friday?afternoon. Here are some quick thoughts.Every now and then I'll go to the movies by myself on Fridays. I tend to do a lot of my sermon preparation on Fridays, and from time to time I'll go to a movie for sermon research. (I'm not kidding.) I'm preaching on Judas this Sunday, and it struck me that the movie?Spotlight might give me some insight into the idea of betrayal.Spotlight, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture on Sunday, is about the investigative reporting the Boston Globe did in 2001 that blew the clergy sex abuse scandal wide open. It is a serious, earnest movie that thankfully avoids the self-importance and self-regard?in which these sorts of "Important" Hollywood films sometimes?indulge.At one point in the film, one of the reporters, for whom reporting on the story has been an emotional ordeal, shouts: "They?knew?and they let it happen...to kids." That line really struck me, and I just started crying quietly, in the dark.How could you betray that trust?But that's the way it always is, isn't it? Spotlight does a good job of showing how the real scandal was not that hundreds of priests preyed on the vulnerable, but that thousands of people let it happen, covered it up. As one of the characters says, "It takes a village to molest a child."The movie very clearly takes on the Roman Catholic Church, but I don't think Spotlight?is either anti-Christian or anti-clerical.? There was never a point while watching the movie that made me say, "I don't think you are being fair." Rather,?I found the film‘to be a spotlight on the inevitable tendency of the strong to hurt the weak, and the invariable human tendency to knuckle-under, close ranks, and deny ever seeing anything.I can't compare Spotlight to any of the other Best Picture nominees since I haven't seen any of them, but it is exactly the sort of movie that is worthy of that designation: tautly constructed, about an important topic, and a moving story.Recommended. 

2 Brief Thoughts on Elections

Christians make two mistakes when it comes to elections. Either we are triumphalist, thinking that because our candidate won, all will be well, or we are defeatist and despairing, thinking that because our candidate lost, all will be lost. Both reactions are mistaken.

Elections Are Important

Don't get me wrong--politics matters. I voted yesterday, and I think it matters who is elected, from dog catcher to president, and I want our leaders to lead and our government to run well. It matters whether the trains run on time and the roads are paved and the trash picked up. But as important as all that is, politics is not ultimate, and political power is not most important. There is something more important than politics, and therefore Christians shouldn't make the mistake of believing that our hope depends on how the election returns come in.

But Political Power is Not *Most* Important

Faithfulness is more important than politics and election results. David Watson is the Dean of United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, and he wrote a blog post yesterday about the temptation the church faces to value political power over faithfulness. Professor Watson's article is worth quoting from at length (though you should read the whole thing):

My fellow evangelicals, let me state this clearly: the ‘system? will never serve us, because the ‘system? is not of Christ. The ‘system? is a political machine beholden to special interests, lobbying groups, large corporations, financial contributors, and other entities, many of which are not the least bit concerned with anything remotely resembling Christian values. The idea that you can tear down the ‘system? and reshape it to serve you is, and always has been, a lie. It has been a lie since the time of Constantine. The ‘system? is about power, but Christ‘s power is the power of the cross, and God‘s power is made perfect in weakness. Christians must always stand outside the ‘system,? even when it is ostensibly Christian. As Christ taught us, No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other? (Matthew 6:24). Christians willing to compromise core tenets of the faith in order to bend the political process‘to their will may win in the short term, but it will be a pyrrhic victory. In the end, they will lose far more than they gain. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?? (Mark 8:36). It‘s not worth it. It‘s?not even close....

His ending makes our choice clear:

Who will we follow? Will we follow Christ and rightly understand ourselves as a countercultural family of faith, or will we baptize an idol of crass?materialism, place a crown on its?head, and call it?Jesus?

Good stuff.  

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Everybody Wants To Be The Same

Everybody wants things to be different, but nobody wants to be different. It is the different people, though, who make the biggest difference. The people of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon were always different, which is why they made the difference they did.

Le Chambon Was Different

Le Chambon is a small town in southwestern France, and for centuries it had been the home for a population of French Protestants called Huguenots. The Huguenots had been influenced by John Calvin and had been persecuted by the Roman Catholic French state during the wars of religion. The Huguenots, therefore, knew what it meant to be different and knew what it meant to suffer.

Andr? Trocm? and the Jews

When World War II began, Pastor Andr? Trocm? led the people of Le Chambon in welcoming and sheltering refugees and fugitives, many of them Jews. The people of the town refused to declare allegiance to the collaborationist government in Vichy and devised ingenious ways to disguise the Jewish population around them.In August of 1942, the police came to the town and demanded that Le Chambon give up the Jews they were hiding. On August 30, Andr? Trocm? ascended the steps of the pulpit in his packed church.The pastor told the people to "do the will of God, not of men." The authorities left the town without making any arrests.In 1943, however, Pastor Trocm? was arrested and detained for 5 weeks, and after his release he had to go into hiding until the end of the war. His wife Magda carried on his work and provided leadership to the effort to shelter and save Jewish refugees.Approximately 5,000 Jewish refugees were sheltered in Le Chambon (a town of only 5,000 people) over the course of the war; not a single Jew was given over to the Nazis.There is a memorial to Andr? and Magda Trocm? at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

If You're Not Different, You're Not Any Good

Nobody wants to be different, which is why the world is the way it is: everybody is just like everybody else.It's like salt. Salt is meant to flavor and preserve, but if salt loses its saltiness, it's good for nothing but to be trampled underfoot.The people of Le Chambon were different, and so they made a difference. In memory of the people of Le Chambon, the salt of the earth and "righteous among the nations."  

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Who Cares if Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God?

Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God? Lots of folks are asking that question these days, and though it is an important question (and one that I will not be answering in this post), I don't think the question is as helpful as other people seem to think.

Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God?

Some people say yes, and these people imply that Christians are therefore under obligation to show compassion to Muslims because of their theological commonalities. After all, aren't Christians and Jews and Muslims all "people of the book?" (That phrase comes from the Qu'ran.) And, since we are all people of the book, shouldn't Christians treat Muslims with compassion?I do not agree with this implication.

The Problem With Saying Yes

As Mark Tooley points out in Newsweek, if you stress that Christians are obligated to show compassion to Muslims because they are theological cousins, you are inadvertently implying that Christians are not under the same obligation to show compassion to other peoples with whom they don't have any theological commonalities. Hindus, for example, are not "people of the book," and yet that fact should not affect Christian treatment of Hindus (or Sikhs or Jains or Buddhists or atheist communists, etc.)A Christian's compassion for another does not depend on that other's theological commitments. Whether or not Christians and Muslims worship the same God is completely irrelevant to the issue of whether a Christian should show compassion towards his Muslim neighbor.Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God? What if the answer is no--should‘that change how a Christian treats her Muslim neighbor?

Love Isn't Conditional

Christians are not required to only love people with whom we agree (or partially agree).Jesus, after all, told his followers to love their enemies.  

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Best of 2015

The editors at www.andrewforrest.org (best blog on the internet?)?have been working long hours and our fingers to the bone to get our 1st annual best-of list together. Yes, we didn't make it by 12/31, but it's not too late to look back at 2015, right? 

Best Book I Read in 2015

The Amazon description calls Kristin?Lavransdatter?"the turbulent historical masterpiece of Norway's literary master." I agree that it's a masterpiece (though certainly an overlooked one): Sigrid Undset's 1100 page historical novel is a book that will stay with me for years to come. It's about the life of the title character in 14th century medieval Norway, and I can honestly say I've never read anything like it. Highly recommended.

Best Movie(s) I Saw in 2015

Here's what?I wrote in April about the brutal war thriller?'71:

Walking down the stairs of the theater afterwards, I realized that I?d been keeping my entire body rigid and tense throughout the movie?it‘s that kind of film. It‘s really well done: terrifying, honest, brutal, and resists the urge to clean-up everything at it‘s end. Highly recommended, though not for the faint of heart."

Thinking back on it 9 months later, I stand by that assessment. '71 is one of the best movies of the year.

Meanwhile, on the complete other end of the movie spectrum....

On the complete other end of the spectrum, the British claymation film?Shaun the Sheep: the Movie?is also one of my favorite movies of the year. It's wordless, really funny, and touching and sweet as well. Recommended.

Best Reason Not to Visit Seattle

Kathryn Shultz wrote a long article in?The New Yorker's July 20 issue called "The Really Big One,"?about how the Pacific Northwest is overdue for a massive earthquake. One of the memorable quotations from the piece comes from the region's FEMA director when he says (and subsequently stands by his remarks): "Our operating assumption is that everything west of Interstate 5 will be toast. Her follow-up piece 8 days later addressing some FAQ's won't make you feel any better.

I'll stay in Texas, thank you.

Best App

My wife and I made a decision to never share pictures of our son on social media. However, our extended family is far-flung and lives on 3 different continents, and sharing pictures is an important way to feel closer. Enter?Togethera, a photo sharing app that allows you to create closed groups. We've been using it since the summer and love it.

Best Sermon

That's like asking me to choose which one of my kids is the best. The answer is obvious: I like them all, except the ugly ones.

Best Everyday Carry Accessories

I never leave the house without the following in my pants pockets:

• a pocket notebook (which I keep in my back pocket);
• my space pen;
• and my trusty ole?pocketknife.

Best State Fair

Too easy:?The State Fair of Texas, fool! (September 30 will be here before you know it....)

Finally: Best Hanukkah Song

I know, I know: with so many to choose from, how do you narrow it down to just one? But, this year's winner (which, being held hostage by our house's resident kindergartner, we played on repeat in our household 1,000 times in the month of December) is Jewish reggae?rapper Matisyahu's 2012 single "Happy Hanukkah." The video ain't my favorite, but I defy you not to be happy with the audio turned way up.[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1QRSl6hUZw[/embed]My favorite part is the "Lion of Juuuuudah" part of the refrain.

Auld Lang Syne

2015 was a great year; here's to an ever better 2016.   

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236 Piercing Words

The following 236 words are among the most insightful, prescient, and terrifying words I have ever read.

Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be in itself good?? At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they go about congratulating each other on their unmediaeval practicality. But as things go on they do not work out so easily. Some people have pulled the lamp-post down because they wanted the electric light; some because they wanted old iron; some because they wanted darkness, because their deeds were evil. Some thought it not enough of a lamp-post, some too much; some acted because they wanted to smash municipal machinery; some because they wanted to smash something. And there is war in the night, no man knowing whom he strikes. So, gradually and inevitably, to-day, to-morrow, or the next day, there comes back the conviction that the monk was right after all, and that all depends on what is the philosophy of Light. Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark.

G.K. Chesterton, Heretics, 1905

This is the culture in which we now live. Chesterton, writing 110 years ago, noticed the inclination we have in the Western world to disregard and dismantle the hard-won wisdom of the centuries in the name of "progress," progress both of the moral and technological variety.

In the name of political progress:

• 60,000 men were mowed down with machine guns?on the first day of the Somme, July 1, 1916. (The wise men of Europe were certain that they had eliminated man's tendency to war.)

In the name of racial and evolutionary progress:

• 6 million Jews were incinerated in Nazi ovens. (The Nazis were interested in eugenics, the cutting-edge science of the time that promised to eliminate the dregs of humanity.)

In the name of sexual progress:

• Millions and millions of children are being raised without a father in their lives. (The sexual revolution promised us that uncoupling marriage and sex would lead to increasing levels of human flourishing and freedom.)

In the name of technological progress:

• We're unable to sit alone with our thoughts, but must constantly be connected.

This is the world in which we live. "Only what we might have discussed under the gas-lamp, we now must discuss in the dark."

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What I Read

What do you read on a regular basis? We are what we eat, and that includes the words we consume. Today's post (part 3 of a 3 part series) is about the magazine, journals, and books that make up my media diet.

Print Subscriptions

In addition to?The Dallas Morning News (mentioned in part 1),?I subscribe to the print editions of the following periodicals:

• First Things,?a magazine founded by the late Father Richard John Neuhaus that, while including Protestant writers as well, tends to come at things from a conservative Roman Catholic perspective. First Things is hit or miss for me: some of the long essays are just first-rate, while others are either over my head or boring.
• The Atlantic, a magazine that I've been reading since I was in middle school and that used to be much better than it is. (I guess I subscribe out of loyalty.) In the 90s and early 2000s when Cullen Murphy and then Michael Kelly (who was killed in Iraq in 2003) were editors and William Langesweiche and James Fallows were writing frequent longform pieces for the magazine and Benjamin Schwartz (especially Benjamin Schwartz!) was editing the Books section,?The Atlantic was one of my favorite magazines. I'd receive a copy in the mail and read the whole thing, almost in one sitting. In recent years, though, The Atlantic (founded in 1857!)??has seemed to me to foolishly chasing "relevance" and adopting the perspective of the sort of 25 year-old secular graduate student in the humanities who gets his wisdom from?The Daily Show. (This is not a perspective I share, if you couldn't figure that out.) Although The Atlantic published‘some great longform pieces from time to time, I get each new copy of the magazine out of the mailbox with much less enthusiasm than I did 20 years ago.
• Outside,?a glossy adventure magazine. I wish?Outside devoted more space to book reviews, as I've ready some really excellent novels the past couple of years that I first read about in?Outside, e.g.,?The Dog Stars and?The Abominable.
• Texas Monthly, which has enough ads to fill JerryWorld?, but also includes in each issue something I find worth reading about my adopted home state.
• Plough,?a small Christian journal that, while ecumenical, draws on the Anabaptist tradition.
• Books and Culture,?a newspaperish magazine that covers, from an evangelical perspective, exactly what the title suggests. Like?First Things,?Books and Culture?is hit or miss for me, but I recently resubscribed because I really believe in its mission.
• The American Conservative, a magazine that I discovered from reading Rod Dreher's blog. I don't know of any other place online or in print that is similar to?TAC: small c conservative, isolationist, contrarian, and realist. (I was pleased when Benjamin Schwartz, whose work at?The Atlantic I referenced above, joined?TAC last year as national editor.) For a good example of the kind of stuff?TAC covers that no one else does, see this piece from April on suburban sprawl and walkable cities called?"Cities for People--or Cars?".

The Dallas Public Library

Where would I be without a good public library? Well, I'd have a lot more shelf space, that's for sure. Here is my current library shelf in my home office:Don't be impressed--I have a habit of hearing about a book, placing it on hold at the library, and then stockpiling a bunch of great books I haven't yet and probably won't ever read.

And Most Importantly, Real Books!

I love reading, and I love reading physical books. I have aKindle and I use the Kindle app for iPhone; I like the way I can quickly annotate an ebook. But, despite the convenience of the ebook, I still think the regular old book is a pretty great form of technology, and reading a good book can quiet my mind better than just about anything else.I read books on theology and leadership for my job, but what I really like reading are books on history and especially long novels. I try to vary up the books I read: something on one topic, and then something completely different. (As an example of something really different, I read a very long novel this summer, completely unlike anything else I've read in years:?Kristin Lavransdatter, Sigrid Undset's 1100 page masterpiece about a woman living in 14th century Norway, and one of the best books I've ever read.)

In Conclusion: I Need to Make Some Changes

As I've been thinking about my media diet these past few weeks, I've once again been confronted with the fact that I fritter away too much of my time on unimportant online content that cuts into my time and ability to read books that matter.My goal is to read 40 books this year, which would be more than I've managed in the previous 2 years. My current total: 29.Maybe I need to stop watching so much?Arrested Development.  

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The 2 Skills Every Man Needs

When I was a boy, I thought that grown men men knew about the world; I thought that grown men weren't afraid of anything. But now that I'm a grown man myself and now that I know lots of other men, I've come to realize that most grown men are just as insecure, feel just as inadequate, and are just as fearful as they were when they were boys, but that now, as grown men, they have more power, more responsibility, and more potential to hurt others. Unfortunately, our culture doesn't teach men the skills we need to thrive as men; there are 2 skills in particular that I believe every man needs to know.

Every Man Needs to Know How to Pray

Men don't know how to pray. I talk to guys all the time who feel completely inadequate when it comes to prayer. Prayer makes the man. To be a man of confidence, peace, and inner strength, you need to be a man of prayer.I talked at length about prayer here, but I believe there is one thing any man can do immediately to become better at prayer:To become better at prayer, you need to be specific.

• Be specific in your time and place for prayer. Pick a favorite arm chair, or your kitchen table, or your front porch, and pray there every morning.
• Be specific in your prayer requests. Lots of men are afraid of really asking the Lord for specifics, but this is a misplaced fear. God desires our specific prayers. "If you want a brown hat, don't just pray for a hat." I keep an index card in my Bible with specific prayer requests on it. Pray for a specific meeting at work, or a specific issue with a child, or a specific fear or worry. (It's also powerful to be specific in your prayers of gratitude.)

Learning to pray can do more to change how a man sees and engages the world than anything else.

Every Man Needs to Know How to Apologize

Do you know how to repair relationships that you've damaged? Many men, not knowing how to apologize, do one of the following:

• they either walk away when relationships become injured; or
• they ignore‘the problem, hoping that it will somehow get better.

Neither tactic works. And we wonder why so many men are so lonely. If you don't learn how to apologize, you'll live with failed relationships, and over time you'll see marriages and friendships wither. A failure to apologize is one of the primary ways I've seen men fail at relationships.There are 3 parts to a good apology.

1. Make eye contact.? If possible, an apology should be done in person. Apologizing over the phone is a distant second. In my opinion, a man should never apologize in email or over text.
2. Take complete responsibility. Say, "I did [X] and it was wrong." Never ever make an excuse when apologizing.
3. Say, "I'm sorry. Will you forgive me?"

Learning to apologize and repair a relationship?will change a man's life for the better.

Here's the Good News

Praying and apologizing are skills that a man can learn. Like riding a bike, they don't come naturally to us, but we can learn to get better. And, like riding a bike, you have to start somewhere, and when you fall down, you get back on and have another try.  

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