The Friday Update - Seven Times

Happy Friday,

Some monastic orders interpret this passage literally, requiring their devotees to read the Bible and pray seven times a day. Most Christians understand the passage to advocate lives shaped by the prayerful study of God’s Word. I’m in the second camp, but I’m intrigued by the more objective standard. I’m also intrigued by the thought of pastoring a church where people read the Bible and prayed seven times a day. I’d be thrilled with twice!  

Rhinos

I recently heard that although Rhinos have such poor eyesight that they cannot see anything more than 10 feet in front of them, they can run at speeds of 60 mph. Of course, this is not true. Objects traveling 60 mph cover ten feet in .11 seconds, meaning they’d be regularly running off cliffs or smashing into trees. A Rhino’s top speed is 40 mph and they can see 40-50 feet ahead of themselves. The only thing racing 60 mph towards a cliff is Western Civ.

Speaking of

A few weeks ago, I asked for ideas about how to simply assess a society’s health. Your suggestions involved tracking: volunteer hours, crime rates, marriage rates, suicide rates, life expectancy, church attendance, GDP and the Gini Coefficient. I continue to think the single best measurement of a culture is its birth rate, but I’m going to keep pondering.

TTW

“Everything’s a joke” was nominated, but it’s not enough of a theory to be the Theory of The Week. Honorable mention is going to Tom Cargill’s Ninety-Ninety rule (a spoof on Pareto’s 80/20 Principle that claims that it takes 90% of our time to do the first 90% of a project, and a second 90% to do the last 10%). Full honors go to the Correspondence Theory of Truth (CTOT). Though it’s less snarky or clever than most nominees, it’s trending. I saw two CTOT-adjacent quotes this week: Robert L. Stevenson’s, “sooner or later, we all sit down to a banquet of consequences.” And H. H. Farmers, “if you go against the grain of the universe, you get splinters.” 

Without Comment

1) Between 2010 and 2020 Christianity grew 6%, with the largest gains coming in sub-Saharan Africa.

2) The more time you spend with your Mom, the longer she will live.

3) 25% of 15-34 year old US men report feeling lonely “a lot of the previous day.”

4) Between 2020 and 2024 the median price for a starter home rose 44%, from $169K to $287K.

5) Between ‘04 and ‘17, playing video games and viewing pornography accounted for nearly half the decline in working hours among men in their 20s.

WOTW

Honorable mention goes to stay-at-home son (the comical way 27-year-old Jeopardy champion Brendan Liaw describes himself), pre-revival (which I saw in this piece arguing that Europe is not post-Christian but pre-revival), and the combo of engaged leisure (playing sports, hanging out with others, etc.) and sedentary leisure (watching TV, playing video games). The first is better, but the second is more common. Full honors go to zugzwang, a chess term describing a situation in which any move makes a bad situation worse.

Prayer Requests

During most of the last 35 years, when people have asked how they can pray for me, I’ve requested prayer for “discernment and wisdom.” I realized recently that I’ve started asking for prayer for “resilience, hope and joy.”

Vexing Questions

I’m slated to teach a Lakelight class in Q1 of ’26 on the biggest objections to the Christian faith. Step one is selecting them. If you have any nominations, send them my way.

Resources

1) You can click here for last week’s sermon exploring how we should understand and manage our emotions. (Dallas Willard compares them to children: very important but not to be placed in charge.) My sermon is based on Psalm 130.

2) You can click here to watch Lakelight’s panel discussion on AI (or here if you want a written summary of the key points).

3) Last week, I had a fascinating conversation with professor Abigail Favale about her latest book The Genesis of Gender. You can listen here.

4) Finally, last week we offered a chance to listen to the fourth lecture in the recent Truth in the Noise Lakelight class, but the link was broken. We’re trying again here.

Closing Prayer

“God, direct my thinking today so that it be empty of self-pity, dishonesty, self-will and self-seeking. God, inspire my thinking, decisions and intuitions. Free me from doubt and indecision. Show me my next step. I ask these things that I may be of maximum service to you and my fellows. Amen” (Adapted from - Alcoholics Anonymous p. 86-88) 

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