The Friday Update - The Way Up is Down

— November 15, 2024 —

Happy Friday,

Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand,
that he may lift you up in due time.

The Apostle Peter

Christ’s teaching and example instruct us to climb down, not up. We are to serve, not be served, take the worst seat at the banquet, and consider others more important than ourselves. Fighting for our honor is a path to self-destruction, not to Christlikeness. The way up is down. 

Without Comment: 1) This Harvard study suggests the best indicator of whether a child will escape poverty is the percentage of married parents living in their neighborhood. 2) This Newsweek piece shows that FOX News had 10M election night viewers, which was 2X that of ABC and NBC, and 3X that of CBS. (For context, Joe Rogan’s interview with Donald Trump had nearly 40M viewers.) 3) This one-minute video shows the changing ways people meet their future spouse, and 4) This piece notes that 60% of the unchurched believe that churches are good for a community and relevant. However, they do not believe they are trustworthy.

Paying Attention: I recently read that we’ve only paid attention to paying attention for the last 100 years. Not true. Psalm 1 (written 3,000 years ago) is a meditation on meditating—i.e., it is counsel on paying attention to what we pay attention to. And 2 Cor. 10 admonishes us to hold every thought captive to Christ. You’d think those writing about paying attention would pay attention to what others have written about paying attention. 

Sow a Thought: While I’m here, let me repeat Ralph Waldo Emerson’s related counsel: “Sow a thought, reap an action. Sow that action, reap a habit. Sow that habit, reap a lifestyle. Sow that lifestyle, reap a character. Sow that character, reap a destiny.”

Don’t Shoot the Messenger: At the risk of making you mad, here is yet another study showing God’s wisdom regarding sex. If you look past the piece’s incendiary claims—e.g., Rs have sex more than Ds because they're more likely to be married, and Ds and Indies cheat on their spouses at higher rates than Rs do—is the claim that long-term, child-centered, heterosexual marriages based on sacrifice and commitment is what works best for everyone, especially women and children. We really do not like God’s boundaries on sex, but he doesn’t state them because he’s a prude; he states them because he knows that sex is fragile and because its potential for great good creates a potential for great harm. 

Again: Here’s another study noting how washed-out the term “evangelical” has become. Many who identify as evangelical for political polling report attending church once a year OR LESS. Even CEOs (those who attend church on Christmas and Easter Only) attend twice a year.  

Overheard: 1) Despair is a luxury and a sin. 2) The church needs to stop trying to be a subculture and embrace being a counterculture. 3) God’s involvement makes things better but not necessarily easier. 4) Christians can serve the community by “rebirthing a genuine, table-centered community”—i.e., by inviting people over for a meal. 5) I keep hoping that just once, my life will spin into control, and 6) Mass marketing is to the mind what smog is to the lungs. 

WOTW: Honorable mention goes doubleplusungood (Orwell’s 1984 term for "extremely bad”), orthogonal (which is suddenly more popular than either Taylor Swift or Snoop Dogg and means “unrelated to the topic at hand”), and NORC (naturally occurring retirement community). Full honors go to solvitur ambulando, a Latin phrase meaning “it is solved by walking.” While technically linked to the refutation of Diogenes’s claim that movement is an illusion, solvitur ambulando is being used to suggest we’d do well to occasionally clear our cluttered minds by taking a long walk (sans smartphones). 

Clean Up: Last week: 1) I gave WOTW honors to stan, going so far as to suggest you become a stan for Jesus. I’ve been advised that stans are less fans than they are stalkers—i.e., they often give off a serial killer vibe, and 2) I surprised some by citing Shakespeare’s insults rather than Monty Python’s. (I said to those who complained, “Your mother was a hamster, and your father smells of elderberries.”)

Resources: 1) Looking back can fuel regret. Looking forward can fuel worry. But neither scenario needs to be true. Advent invites us to look back at what Jesus has done and look forward to what he will do. My daily, five-minute Advent video devotions start on Dec. 2. Sign up here. 2) Click here to hear (or read) my post-election sermon. 3) The news cycle will be crazy. You don’t have to be. Click here to download a free audio or digital copy of my latest book, On the News. 

Closing Prayer: Forgive me my sins, O Lord; the sins of my present and the sins of my past, the sins of my soul and the sins of my body, the sins which I have done to please myself and the sins which I have done to please others. Forgive me my casual sins and my deliberate sins, and those which I have labored so to hide that I have hidden them even from myself. Forgive me, O Lord, forgive all my sins, for Jesus' sake. Amen (Thomas Wilson, 1663-1775)

P.S. If you know someone who would enjoy The Friday Update, please pass it along. The referral system is down right now, but I’d still appreciate it if you spread the word.