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Time Management 101 – Getting Your Time Back

We live in a world that gives us more and more…faster and faster and calls it progress. But is this good for us? Do you ever feel like someone else is setting the agenda of your life? Thankfully the Bible gives us some wisdom on how to make the most of the days we are given.

Here is a talk that I gave called “I want my time back” in which I explore this topic biblically and try to apply it to our lives. As we begin the new year, we all need to consider an important question.

Click here to listen…

Is there enough time in my life right now for me to do what I say matters most on a daily basis?

Here is an excellent and (short!) book that can make a BIG difference – A Minute of Margin: Restoring Balance to Busy Lives180 Daily Reflections by Richard Swenson

Product Description

Where’s the balance? Too many of us are losing the “war of the planner.” We want to get everything done, but for some reason, it never happens. And the machines that were supposed to make lives easier only leave our lives more stressful.

Something has to give, and often it does––to disastrous consequences.

Expanding on principles from Dr. Richard Swenson’s best-selling books Margin and The Overload Syndrome, this book consists of 180 daily readings to help restore balance to hectic, modern lives. Each reading serves as a practical assignment––a helpful “prescription”––to eliminate unneeded frustrations, reflect on what’s really important, and start winning the war with our time.

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“Let’s Talk About Faith” – New York Times op-ed

Ross Douthat has written a very perceptive op-ed piece at the New York Times and is well worth the read regarding faith in the public square (related to Brit Hume’s comments and the controversy this has stirred up).

Christians are called to engage our world with the good news Jesus offers. It is either true and the hope of the world, or false and a delusion of great proportions. But Christianity needs to rise to the level of true or false. And we need to talk about it in those terms. Not the neutered and self-referentially incoherent language of “that’s just true for me.”

I have picked out some especially insightful quotes to consider:

“Liberal democracy offers religious believers a bargain. Accept, as a price of citizenship, that you may never impose your convictions on your neighbor, or use state power to compel belief. In return, you will be free to practice your own faith as you see fit — and free, as well, to compete with other believers (and nonbelievers) in the marketplace of ideas….”

“This doesn’t mean that we need to welcome real bigotry into our public discourse. But what Hume said wasn’t bigoted: Indeed, his claim about the difference between Buddhism and Christianity was perfectly defensible. Christians believe in a personal God who forgives sins. Buddhists, as a rule, do not. And it’s at least plausible that Tiger Woods might welcome the possibility that there’s Someone out there capable of forgiving him, even if Elin Nordegren and his corporate sponsors never do.”

“When liberal democracy was forged, in the wake of Western Europe’s religious wars, this sort of peaceful theological debate is exactly what it promised to deliver. And the differences between religions are worth debating. Theology has consequences: It shapes lives, families, nations, cultures, wars; it can change people, save them from themselves, and sometimes warp or even destroy them.

If we tiptoe politely around this reality, then we betray every teacher, guru and philosopher — including Jesus of Nazareth and the Buddha both — who ever sought to resolve the most human of all problems: How then should we live?

It’s reasonable to doubt that a cable news analyst has the right answer to this question. But the debate that Brit Hume kicked off a week ago is still worth having. Indeed, it’s the most important one there is.” (read the whole article)

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Hypothetical conversation on the “Who made God?” question

I cam across an interesting post on this at whyfaith.com:

Christian: The cosmological argument is strong evidence that God exists. If the universe was made, it needs a maker; if it was created, it needs a creator. That creator is God.

Skeptic: Ah, but this merely raises the question “Who made God?” which Richard Dawkins himself asks in The God Delusion.* It just pushes the question back one step further.

Christian: This seems to me to be a category error; it confuses the uncreated creator with His created creation. God doesn’t need a maker because God was never made; He was and is eternally existing.

Skeptic: That’s special pleading at best, hypocritical at worst. Why is it okay for God to be “eternal, uncreated” but not the universe?

Christian: Because we have good reasons, both philosophical and scientific, that the universe is not eternal, whereas no such reasons exist to believe that God is so. God is not subject to the same limitations of the material world He created. The cosmological argument proposes not that everything requires a cause, but whatever begins to exist requires a cause; if God did not begin to exist (since there is no reason to believe He did, unlike the universe) He requires no cause.

Skeptic: Even if we agree that the universe is not eternal, why must its cause be God? Why not some other explanation?

Christian: Whatever created both time and space must transcend both time and space. Also, there are numerous other attributes which can be discerned about whatever created the universe that imply a personal entity (that is, it possesses volition among other things). So the creator of the universe is an entity which is beyond time and space yet still possesses certain attributes and is personal. This sounds to me a lot like God.

* In The God Delusion Dawkins is attempting to apply the question as a defeater to the design argument (p.109), not the cosmological argument (which Dawkins shockingly dismisses in less than a page). I’ve personally heard it applied more often to the cosmological argument, at least in the realm of Internet banter.”

(This conversation is from www.Whyfaith.com)

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Earliest example of Hebrew writing found

“By decoding the inscription on a 3,000-year-old piece of pottery, an Israeli professor has concluded that parts of the bible were written hundreds of years earlier than suspected.

The pottery shard was discovered at excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa near the Elah valley in Israel — about 18 miles west of Jerusalem. Carbon-dating places it in the 10th century BC, making the shard about 1,000 years older than the Dead Sea scrolls.

Professor Gershon Galil of the University of Haifa deciphered the ancient writing, basing his interpretation on the use of verbs and content particular to the Hebrew language. It turned out to be “a social statement, relating to slaves, widows and orphans,” Galil explained in a statement from the University.

The inscription is the earliest example of Hebrew writing found, which stands in opposition to the dating of the composition of the Bible in current research; prior to this discovery, it was not believed that the Bible or parts of it could have been written this long ago.

According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, current theory holds that the Bible could not…” (More)

Also, Check out the Archeological Study Bible. It is a wonderful resource in full color.

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Sex objects: Pictures shift men’s view of women

Here is an article that talks about the neurological / mental effects of sexual images on the male brain and perceptions.

by Ian Sample / The Gaurdian UK

“Men are more likely to think of women as objects if they have looked at sexy pictures of females beforehand, psychologists said yesterday.

Researchers used brain scans to show that when straight men looked at pictures of women in bikinis, areas of the brain that normally light up in anticipation of using tools, like spanners and screwdrivers, were activated.

Scans of some of the men found that a part of the brain associated with empathy for other people’s emotions and wishes shut down after looking at the pictures.

Susan Fiske, a psychologist at Princeton University in New Jersey, said the changes in brain activity suggest sexy images can shift the way men perceive women, turning them from people to interact with, to objects to act upon.

The finding confirms a long-suspected effect of sexy images on the way women are perceived, and one which persists in workplaces and the wider world today, Fiske said.

“When there are sexualised images in the workplace, it’s hard for people not to think about their female colleagues in those terms. It spills over from the images to the workplace,” she said.

Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago yesterday, Fiske said the findings called into question the impact of sexualised images of women that might be pinned on workplace walls or sent around offices where there was a strong locker-room culture.

“I’m not saying there should be censorship, but people need to be aware of the associations people will have in their minds,” Fiske said.

In the study, Fiske’s team put straight men into an MRI brain scanner and showed them images of either clothed men and women, or more scantily clad men and women. When they took a memory test afterwards, the men best remembered images of bikini-clad women whose heads had been digitally removed.

The brain scans showed that when men saw the images of the women’s bodies, activity increased in part of the brain called the premotor cortex, which is involved in urges to take action. The same area lights up before using power tools to do DIY. “It’s as if they immediately thought to act on theses bodies,” Fiske said.

In the final part of the study, Fiske asked the men to fill in a questionnaire that was used to assess how sexist they were. The brain scans showed that men who scored highest had very little activity in the prefrontal cortex and other brain regions that are involved with understanding another person’s feelings and intentions. “They’re reacting to these women as if they’re not fully human,” Fiske said.”

To see this whole article at the Gaurdian, click here

This is another reminder that people must gaurd what enters their minds. I am not trying to be puritanical, but you and I are simply being naive if we think we’re are not being effected by the media we are regularly exposed to. For those who may not take religious or biblical admonitions seriously, perhaps neuroscience will do the trick.

“Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.”–2 Cor. 7:1