Pride
When Success Runs Amok
My senior year in high school I had the privilege of being the featured speaker at the Junior-Senior Banquet. I was certainly not the first choice for the role, and I was absolutely not the best choice. At the time, I had no intention of speaking publicly for a living. However, I accepted the challenge…
Read MoreIt’s Not About You
It seems like so much today encourages self-absorption. The typical social media profile contains more self-portraits than previous generations would have amassed in a lifetime. We have opinions on everything and believe that it is everyone’s obligation to hear them. Advertisers insist that we deserve just about every material thing they can offer us. Selfishness…
Read MoreKnowing the Difference
No one shows up in your life with a sticker on the lapel saying, “I am a gossip,” no matter how helpful that warning might prove. Similarly, to my knowledge, no one on Twitter, Facebook, or any other social media site provides a profile picture that reads, “Cagy Internet Troll.” Instead, we must figure these…
Read MoreSweet Talk with a Bitter Aftertaste
The coronavirus pandemic has created a bizarre combination of reactions ranging from mocking irresponsibility to mass hysteria and panic. In the early days, ignorance spread far more quickly than knowledge, and people assumed a level of safety rooted in misinformation. This quickly transformed into modern society’s best impersonation of a zombie apocalypse as normal people…
Read MorePrepare Yourself Like a Man
Man up. Years ago, those two words could hardly constitute a sentence. The combination of a noun and a preposition simply do not have what it takes to pass grammatical muster. But then someone very clever found a way to make “man” a verb too. Man up. The phrase may be of recent invention, but…
Read MoreRighteousness in Perspective
When we find ourselves in the midst of difficulty and distress, feeling sorry for ourselves can quickly dominate our mindset so much that we decide we are being treated unfairly. It often proves to be our natural first reaction. When we do not get that promotion or raise, we assume that whoever did undermined us…
Read MoreElusive Insight
Constantly developing technology, advances in medicine, and the information available on the Internet combine with pride to convince people today that they have built a world of wonders—despite simultaneously destroying the best of that world in the name of being a more advanced civilization. However, Job lamented in Job 28:1-11 how many discoveries and advances…
Read MoreSpeaking From Ignorance
The Internet has created a venue where anyone with the time and inclination can get his ideas and opinions into the wild for all the world to see. The proliferation of blogs, social networks, and even comments on news sites has provided the opportunity for every voice to be heard. Whereas in years past people…
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