QUOTE (Tim Keller) – Troublemakers

I have been listening to Tim Keller’s sermon series on wisdom. He referred to his devotional book during his sermon Knowing God. So, I bought God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life. Yesterday’s devotion struck me as so relevant to today’s issues that I wanted to share it. It is hard to make a case that our culture is getting wiser.

THE TROUBLEMAKER. Another kind of fool is the troublemaker. The mark of this person is constant conflict (Prov. 6:14). This is the opposite of the peacemaker (Matt. 5:9), the bridge builder whose careful, gracious answers (Prov. 15:1) disarm and defuse tensions. The troublemaker instead stirs them up. This is not the person who disturbs the false peace with an insistence on honesty. Rather, this is someone who always feels the need to protest and complain rather than overlooking a slight or wrong (Prov. 19:11). When troublemakers do contend, they do not present the other side fairly. Their corrupt mouths produce deceptive omissions, half-truths, and innuendo. Their body language (winking, signaling) creates a hostile situation rather than one that leads to resolution.

Troublemakers tell themselves and others that they just like to “speak truth to power”. But disaster will overtake the troublemakers (Prov. 6:15). As time goes on, it becomes clear that the troublemakers themselves are a reason that conflict always follows in their wake. They can be permanently discredited by events that expose them for what they are. But the ultimate reason for their downfall is that “the Lord hates…a person who stirs up conflict in the community” (Prov. 6:16, 19).

Tim Keller, God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life, Page 11

QUOTE (Noreena Hertz) 3-8-21

Those who don’t think they need people or fellowship, might be the lonely ones in the most need of both.

QUOTE (Elon Musk)

I have had several conversations with young(er) people who can’t afford a home and are not optimistic about the future.  They are struggling with hopelessness.  

My tendency is to feed and confirm that skepticism.  The messaging of doom and gloom is not unique.  

I have been wrong for my part in those attempts at predictions. We are making bets on the future through our words, with no skin in the game.  

It is a form of pride.

It is harmful when we as leaders make predictions of forbodings without remedies of hope.  The predictions might be right. I don’t know.  What I do know is that it is not kindness to tell someone something they already feel and add to their hopelessness.  

We should help them.  The help might be as simple as reminding them that they are not alone.  It might be helping them practically navigate a chaotic world to find that bright day.  Hope comes with the discovery of their plan.  Their unique plan for a bright future, a hopeful future.  The kindness comes in assuring them that they are not alone.

That is kindness. That is the golden rule. 

QUOTE (C.S. Lewis) 2-24-21

https://soundfaith.com/logos-media-share/610588

QUOTE (Frederick Buechner)

“But to preach the Gospel is not just to tell the truth but to tell the truth in love,and to tell the truth in love means to tell it with concern not only for the truth that is being told but with concern also for the people it is being told to.”

 ~ Frederick Buechner, “Telling the Truth”

Quote (John Maynard Keynes)

Thinking Highly of Faith

I read this quote from “The Kierkegaard Collection” by Soren Kierkegaard –

“I do not however mean in any sense to say that faith is something lowly, but on the contrary that it is the highest thing, and that it is dishonest of philosophy to give something else instead of it and to make light of faith. Philosophy cannot and should not give faith, but it should understand itself and know what it has to offer and take nothing away, and least of all should fool people out of something as if it were nothing.”

So often, we tend to apologize for living by faith and not by philosophy.  As if philosophy were the higher of the two alternatives.  Philosophy assumes an understanding of reality’s rules that cannot be realized and therefore must always be in subjugation to Faith based on reality revealed.

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QUOTE (John Bunyan)

“This hill, though high,
I covet to ascend;
The difficulty will not me offend.
For I perceive the way to life lies here.
Come, pluck up, heart;
let’s neither faint nor fear.
Better, though difficult,
the right way to go,
Than wrong, though easy,
where the end is woe.”
― John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress

In honor of John Bunyan, whose Pilgrim’s Progress was published on this day in 1678.

Resources:

This Day in History Feb. 18th

QUOTE (Alexander Graham Bell)

 

In honor of Alexander Graham Bell, a Scottish-born scientist, inventor, and engineer, who received a patent for the telephone on this day in 1876.

Resources:

This Day in History March 7th

QUOTE (William Shakespeare)

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man know himself to be a fool.”
~ William Shakespeare, As You Like It

“God shall be my hope, my stay, my guide and lantern to my feet.”
~ William Shakespeare, Henry V 

“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.”
~ William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

 “Now, God be praised, that to believing souls give light to darkness, comfort in despair.”
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry VI

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil.
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet

In honor of William Shakespeare, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language, who is believed to have died on this day in 1616.

Resources:
No Sweat Shakespeare
William Shakespeare Quotes