Blogs

This Week, Speak the Name of Andrew Brunson, A Persecuted Brother in Turkey
The most important post of the week. “Please join us in standing with Brunson’s family and home church in lifting the name of Andrew Brunson to the God he serves.”

Social Media and Sin
“Theology recognizes that human hearts are curved inward, inclined to boast, and always looking for opportunities to prove their own self-righteousness. Human-computer interaction, UX, and user-centered design recognize that social media platforms should be designed to meet the wants and needs of real human users. Putting these two concepts in conversation with one another reveals why Facebook can be so dangerous. Facebook’s technology is designed to accommodate, encourage, and exploit human depravity. The “Like” button on Facebook is not there by chance; the “Like” button was created to satisfy our deep longing to be liked by others, lauded for our accomplishments, and acknowledged for our righteousness.”

I Used This Simple Chart To Prioritize My Crazy Busy Work Life
“This former media executive hated saying “no,” so she created a system that forced her to set boundaries.”

What Happens to Your Body on No Sleep
“In short, nothing good—and just one bad night can trigger a cascade of scary side effects.”

Mariah Carey Beat Stigma. You Can Too
Not recommending Mariah Carey as a model in anything other than her openness about mental illness.

“This week, singing star Mariah Carey made an announcement that was a long time in the making: back in 2001, she was diagnosed with bipolar II disorder. She has recently made the decision to treat it and to share her story. Carey is not the first celebrity to acknowledge a struggle with mental illness, but she is one of the most high-profile people to do so. And she has struck a major blow in the fight against the crippling stigma that keeps so many people trapped behind fences of shame, fear, and isolating silence.”

Starting from zero
“Iraq’s Nineveh churches are retaking their towns from years of ISIS control, without guarantees of money, safety, or a future.

Steve Lawson on Preaching Without Notes

Kindle Books

Do More Better: A Practical Guide to Productivity by Tim Challies $2.99.

Exploring Grace Together: 40 Devotionals for the Family by Jessica Thompson $2.99.

Blogs

If They Fell, So Can You: How Sin Seduced the Strongest, Wisest, and Godliest
“We are tempted to think that the more powerful we become, the better we will battle sin. But the exact opposite is true. The more power, influence, or prestige we possess, the more temptable we are. The strength of sin feeds on our sense of strength.”

On Pastoral Failings and the Fallout“Let’s not waste these painful moments of sin and sorrow. Let’s not presume that we are above a fall. Instead, let’s persevere with a holy stamina in life and doctrine, so that Jesus is exalted and His people are edified.”

4 Lessons I Learned from My Dad, a Faithful Pastor for 37 Years
And in contrast to the first two articles: “A 37-year ministry in a single, small church is not splashy. But thanks to the long obedience of one ordinary man, I came to know and love Christ the Savior of sinners, to cherish Christ as he is revealed in his Word, to love the church for which Christ died, and to desire to serve Christ in all the circumstances of my life.”

Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing
“While many Christians are rightly concerned about the growth of religions such as Islam, the greatest threat to orthodox Christianity is not other religions but false teachers who creep into the church unnoticed.”

How To Control Your Calendar
“We should be reluctant to blame God, however, for our clogged calendars when they are often caused by our own procrastination or poor planning. In my last LifeWay Pastors post I listed, “take control of your calendars” as one of the ways I keep from getting overwhelmed. Today I want to share how I try to control my calendar throughout the year.”

How to Avoid Living a Fragmented Life
“We are truly whole, individually and corporately, in Christ already. His wholeness has been declared true for us as persons and as a people. So how should we then live? We lay hold of those promises in Christ, and we repent toward the wholeness that we have in Him. We confidently pursue the wholeness to which we have been saved.”

Where Did the Pope Come From?
“The world, both religious and secular, seems to yearn for a global figure that no political institution and no international organization can provide at the moment. Therefore, Protestants are pressed with the question, Does the world need a leader in order to live in peace? It’s a question that continues to be posed to Bible-believing Christians, especially in times when the pope attracts much attention and is looked at as being one of the few, if not the only one, who can speak on behalf of all. The troublesome reality, however, is that the pope continues to claim religious and political roles that are biblically unwarranted. As the church does not need a mere human pope to be united, so the world does not need a global religious leader, other than Christ himself, to live in peace. Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you” (John 14:27). The church and the world need Jesus Christ, and him alone.”

In My Place Condemned He Stood
Excellent article from Kevin DeYoung on penal substitution.

One Pastor’s Sermon Preparation Process
“Preparing a sermon week after week is a lot of work. Preaching a sermon week after week is also a pure joy. This past week I posted pictures of my sermon preparation process on Twitter, and several pastors and church leaders commented that it was helpful for them. I figured I would publish this blog post with a little explanation for each step.”

Kindle Books

The Cross and Christian Ministry: An Exposition of Passages from 1 Corinthians by D. A. Carson $1.99.

Getting the Gospel Right: The Tie That Binds Evangelicals Together by R. C. Sproul $1.99.

Above All Earthly Pow’rs: Christ in a Postmodern World by David F. Wells

I was talking with a military leader recently about the growing number of devastating moral failures among prominent Christian leaders. He mentioned to me a training seminar he attended on “The Bathsheba Syndrome” and its application in the military context. I asked him to send me further info and he emailed me the article (online version here) co-authored by Dean Ludwig, Assistant Professor of Management and Director of the Center for Family Business at the University of Toledo, and one of his colleagues, Clinton Longenecker.

The article is not written from a Christian perspective but uses the biblical narrative to describe this syndrome because of people’s familiarity with the story. The main points of the research are:

• Reports of ethical violations by upper level managers continue to multiply despite increasing attention being given to ethics by firms and business schools.
• There are many examples of good, respected, successful leaders, men and women of intelligence, talent, and vision who suddenly self-destruct as they reach the apex of their careers.
• Most cases are usually gross violations, which the leaders know are wrong while in the act of perpetration, but they mistakenly believe they have the power to conceal.
• Most of these leaders are men and women of generally strong principle who have built careers based more on service than self-gratification.
• The most common cause is not lack of operational principles or the willingness to abandon principles in the face of competitive pressure.
• Rather, ethical violations by upper managers are the by-product of success. 
• Power dements even more than it corrupts, lowering the guard of foresight and raising the haste of action.
• Research suggests that many managers are poorly prepared to deal with success.

Why is this? The paper offers four explanations based upon the David and Bathsheba narrative.

1. Success often allows managers to become complacent and to lose focus, diverting attention to things other than the management of their organization.

2. Success, whether personal or organizational, often leads to privileged access to information, people or objects.

3. With success usually comes increasingly unrestrained control of organizational resources.

4. Success can inflate a manager’s belief in his or her personal ability to manipulate outcomes.

David’s inflated self-confident belief in his own personal ability to manipulate the outcome of this story is probably representative of the attitude of many of today’s professionally trained managers of business. Trained in attitude and technique to “get things done” and “make things happen,” todays’ business school graduates often possess a dangerously inflated self-confidence.

Even individuals with a highly developed moral sense can be challenged (tempted?) by the “opportunities” resulting from the convergence of these four dynamics.

The authors draw seven lessons from David’s sad experience. The most important are:

1. Leaders are in their positions to focus on doing what is right for their organization’s short-term and long-term success. This can’t happen if they aren’t where they are supposed to be, doing what they are supposed to be doing.

2. Attempts to cover-up unethical practices can have dire organizational consequences including innocent people getting hurt, power being abused, trust being violated, other individuals being corrupted, and the diversion of needed resources.

3. Not getting caught initially can produce self-delusion and increase the likelihood of future unethical behavior.

4. Getting caught can destroy the leader, the organization, innocent people, and everything the leader has spent his/her life working for.

The authors conclude that organizations must re-evaluate and change structures, procedures, and practices which enhance the likelihood of managers falling victim to the Bathsheba Syndrome.

Some of the advice includes:

1. Realize that living a balanced life reduces the likelihood of the negatives of success causing you to lose touch with reality. Family, relationships, and interests other than work must all be cultivated for long-term success to be meaningful.

2. Build an ethical team of managers around you who will inspire you to lead by example and who will challenge or confront you when you need either.

3. At the board level, directors should have a concern for the leader’s personal/psychological balance. This can include forced vacations, outside activities, and periodic visits to counselors to help the leader keep both feet planted on the ground.

Needless to say, the lessons for CEO’s, boards, and businesses can easily be transferred to pastors, elders, and churches.

May God keep our leaders! May God keep us all!!

Blogs

Depression Increases Risk of Common Arrhythmia
Depression affects an estimated 16 million Americans, and the mental health issue has been linked to an increasing number of physical ailments in recent years. The new study, conducted by the American Heart Association, revealed that those who were on antidepressants or scored in the highest category for depression symptoms were 30 percent more at risk for atrial fibrillation. Exactly how depression affects heart health remains unclear, researchers said, but several possibilities have been suggested.

“Depression can induce a variety of changes in the body [by] increasing the levels of inflammation in the body, activating the autonomic nervous system which increases the catecholamine levels in our body, activating the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis which increases the cortisol levels in our body, and activating the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system,” Garg told MD Magazine.

See also How Does Depression Affect the Heart for further evidence that treating depression is not something to be delayed, but rather should be addressed with urgency.

9 Bible Verses for Depression to Shine Light into Darkness
It’s not the only answer, but it’s usually part of it.

Food to feed your MIND: 7 diet tweaks that help fight depression and anxiety
“According to the Mental Health Foundation, those who reported a mental health problem of any degree also reported a less healthy diet, in terms of fresh fruit and vegetables and cooking from scratch but included more unhealthy foods such as crisps, chocolate, ready meals and takeaways.

A systematic review, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition suggests that high intakes of fruit, vegetables, fish and whole grains are associated with a reduced risk of depression.

It’s no coincidence that the rise in mental health problems in the last 50 years also accompanies a rise in the consumption of processed foods and less fresh fruits and vegetables.”

James Packer: Resignation puts focus on ‘high-flier’ mental health
Australian billionaire James Packer has received much public praise since quitting his gaming empire due to mental health reasons. His resignation has also prompted discussion about mental health at the top of business. In connection with that, here’s lots of good advice from the Harvard Business Review on When You Need to Take Time off Work for Mental Health Reasons

Just because you don’t know of anyone else at your company who has taken time off for mental health reasons doesn’t mean there isn’t precedent. Diagnosable mental health conditions impact one in five Americans in any given year. Treatment for the most common conditions (namely depression) is effective 80% of the time, but fewer than half of the people who need help get it, often because of social stigma, the fear of repercussions at work, or lack of access to quality, affordable care.

New Book

How to Break up with Your Phone by Catherine Price. The first half of the book delves into how phones and apps are designed to be addictive and the research regarding how the time we spend on them damages our abilities to focus, think deeply, and form new memories. The second half of the book then follows with the antidote – a 30-day guide to making customized changes to your settings, apps, environment, and mindset that will enable you to take back control of your life.

Kindle Books

Overcoming Sin and Temptation (Foreword by John Piper): Three Classic Works by John Owen $2.99.

The Mark of the Christian (IVP Classics) by Francis A. Schaeffer $2.99.

A Place for Weakness: Preparing Yourself for Suffering by Michael Horton $2.99.

Quote of the Day

I admire Jordan Peterson’s courage, I’m grateful for his stand against political correctness, and I’m deeply moved by his genuine and practical compassion for young men. But, in my humble opinion, his best-selling book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos is largely gobbledegook. I’ve rarely seen so many words, and so much complexity, used to communicate such simple common sense ideas. There are gems here and there, but you have to dig long and hard to get to them underneath the amalgam of weird Scripture interpretation, evolutionary science, and psychological mumbo-jumbo. For example, one early paragraph on sleep resonated with my own experience of counseling people with depression:

I always ask my clinical clients first about sleep. Do they wake up in the morning at approximately the time the typical person wakes up, and at the same time every day? If the answer is no, fixing that is the first thing I recommend. It doesn’t matter so much if they go to bed at the same time each evening [I disagree with that. DPM], but waking up at a consistent hour is a necessity. Anxiety and depression cannot be easily treated if the sufferer had unpredictable daily routines. The systems that mediate negative emotions are tightly tied to the properly cyclical circadian rhythms.

I couldn’t agree more. Sleep is about the first area I ask about (it’s usually a mess), and fixing that and establishing a regular daily rhythm can pay quick and big dividends.

How do we thrive in digital Babylon? Over a number of posts, we’ve highlighted many of the advantages of technology, warned of some of the dangers, and begun a digital detox. But we want to turn more positive and suggest what a healthy digital diet might look like at different ages and stages of life.

You’ll remember how Daniel and his friends purposed in their hearts not to defile themselves with the heathen diet of Babylon (Daniel 1:8). They still ate though. But they chose a different diet, a less exciting diet, to the one offered them in Babylon. And the result? With God’s blessing they thrived and flourished ten times more than their peers (Daniel 1:20). So what will a Daniel diet in digital Babylon look like?

No Technology 

There are probably a few people left who are still trying the “no technology” approach. They say: “The dangers are too great; the consequences are too awful. Therefore, we’ll keep separate from the world by rejecting technology. We won’t buy it, and we will ban our children from using it, too.”

This approach is admirable and understandable, but impossible. Digital technology is so pervasive that trying to avoid it is like trying to avoid breathing. And even if we succeed in avoiding contamination, our children certainly won’t. They will find it, or it will find them. They will then be using it without our knowledge and without any training and teaching—probably the worst of all worlds.

More Technology

Other people try the “more technology” strategy. That’s what I used to focus on most, the idea being that we use good technology to defeat bad technology. So, we set up passwords and time limits on home computers, we add tracking apps to our children’s cell phones, we install accountability software on our laptops, and so on. All of these things are good and can certainly be helpful parts of an overall package of caring for ourselves and our children.

If you want to go all-in on this, then go for the Challies Porn Free Family Plan. Add Circle if you want the Fort Knox version. If you don’t do that, then at least get Covenant Eyes on all your family’s devices—including your own (Shona and I both use Covenant Eyes to keep one another accountable).

There are some problems, though, if we are relying on the “more technology” approach alone. The first is that we can never get enough good technology to beat bad technology. Teens are especially adept at circumventing controls and finding loopholes in the most secure systems. Sure, we can slow them down, we can make it more difficult by putting some obstacles in the way, but if they are determined enough, they are going to beat us. They can always find more technology to beat our “more technology” battle plan.

Also, even if we succeed in securing their devices, as soon as they walk out the door, they can access anything they want on friends’ devices. Or, they can simply get another device and hide it from us.

This approach can sometimes tend toward legalism and often undermines relationships by creating a sort of “cat and mouse” scenario, resulting in suspicion on the one side and hiding on the other.

We need technology, but we need more than “more technology.” Tomorrow we’ll begin to look at what more we can do to help our families thrive in digital Babylon.

Previous Posts:  Technology is Created by God, Technology is the Gift of God, Technology Reveals God, The Dangers of Digital Babylon, Digital Technology is Killing our Minds, Digital Technology is Killing our Health, Digital Technology is Killing our Relationships. Digital Technology is Killing our Productivity, Digital Technology is Killing our Souls. Digital Detox.

Digital technology is not only killing our minds, our health, our relationships, and our productivity, it’s also killing our souls.

Digital Technology is Killing our Self-Control

The Great Disconnect: MegaHERTZ to MegaHURTS by Michael Wolff and Bradley Bridges.

Violent video games result in less activity in the prefrontal portions of the brain, which are involved in inhibition, concentration and self-control.

Digital Heroin

• Recent brain imaging research is showing that they affect the brain in exactly the same way that cocaine does.
• Technology is so hyper-arousing that it raises dopamine levels — the feel-good neurotransmitter most involved in the addiction dynamic — as much as sex.
• This addictive effect is why Dr. Peter Whybrow, director of neuroscience at UCLA, calls screens “electronic cocaine” and Chinese researchers call them “digital heroin.”
• The handbook of “Internet Addiction” by Dr. Kimberly Young states that 18 percent of college-age internet users in the US suffer from tech addiction.
• The immersive and addictive world of screens dampens and stunts key developmental processes.

“Once a kid has crossed the line into true tech addiction, treatment can be very difficult. Indeed, I have found it easier to treat heroin and crystal meth addicts than lost-in-the-matrix video gamers or Facebook-dependent social media addicts.”

The Addiction that’s Worse than Alcohol or Drug Abuse

In some ways, the psychological impact caused by Facebook, Snapchat and other digital platforms can be more difficult to treat than other recognised addictions, Driskell says. “It’s worse than alcohol or drug abuse because it’s much more engaging and there’s no stigma behind it,” he says. Driskell charges $150 per hour and works with patients on a weekly basis for at least six months.

Digital Technology is Killing our Purity

Multiple and manifold temptations and all in the privacy of our own homes.

Fight the New Drug

If you click through you’ll find peer-reviewed research on how porn harms the brain, porn affects relationships, and porn affects society. The Table of Contents is frightening enough before even opening the research.

‘She’d gone from a happy teenager to a wreck’: The day my daughter was caught sexting

Almost a third of teenagers have shared explicit pictures of themselves online and regularly share naked photos with each other via their smart phones, seemingly blissfully unaware – or in denial - of the pitfalls.

Porn 2.0: The Sexting Crisis

Teens and young adults said “Not Recycling” is more immoral than viewing pornographic images. They also placed “thinking negatively about someone with a different point of view” as a much worse activity than viewing pornography.

Why It’s Terrible News That Millennials Are Having Less Sex

Pre-marital sex is dropping. That sounds like a good thing until we find out that it’s largely because pornography and social media are disincentivizing young people from pursuing real romantic relationships.

Digital Technology is Killing our Spiritual Disciplines 

It’s killing communion with God as it usurps communication with him first thing in the morning, last thing at night, and throughout the day.

3 Reasons Why We Are Addicted to Digital Distraction

I surveyed eight thousand Christians about social media routines. More than half of the respondents (54 percent) admitted to checking a smartphone within minutes of waking. When asked whether they were more likely to check email and social media before or after spiritual disciplines on a typical morning, 73 percent said before. This reality is especially concerning

Thirty Seconds Alone with God | Desiring God

Tony Reinke analyzes the changes in our use of digital technology between 2015 and 2016. The clearest finding is “that our mobile devices, our tablets, and especially our smartphones are filling in more and more of life’s little gaps with perfectly sized bits of consumable media.” He warns us: “The worst of our compulsive social media habits in the empty spaces of our lives is corroding our prayer lives.”

In the little cracks of time in my day, with my limited attention, I am more apt to speak into social media than I am to pray. That’s the brute honesty of the situation. And because of this negligence, God feels more distant to my life as a result.

Time to Shut off our Phones and Go Deep with the Lord

I’ll tell you, one of the reasons we don’t go so deep and we don’t mourn so deeply and we don’t weep so bitterly and we don’t contemplate things like David did is because we’re so caught up in the trivialities of our – you know what, there’s a time to turn off your computer, turn off your phone…And if you’ve gotta take a 12-gauge shot gun and put a slug hole through the front of your television in order to get alone with the Lord, then do it.

Digital Technology is Killing our Churches 

8 Ways the Internet Can Damage the Church

I have young adult friends who spend most of their life secluded in front of a computer screen, often missing the relational blessings God intends for us. Isolation almost always leads to trouble.

It’s not uncommon to see a public tweet or a Facebook post that speaks positively of Christ, followed by a post that contradicts the kind of life Christ expects us to live–both from the same person. It’s not surprising that the world sometimes ignores our message of the transforming power of the gospel.