“’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.’” Jesus, Matthew 22
Jesus taught that the greatest commandments are to love God and to love one another. Note: these two commands are fulfilled, at least in part, through prayer. When we pray for someone else, we stand as a conduit between a hurting world and the Lord who is actively redeeming it. In this position, the two greatest commandments are fulfilled in a single act.
July 4th: I’m not sure I heard the word nationalism ten times in 2018. I hear it ten times a week today, albeit, in two very different ways: some equate nationalism with patriotism; others link it to Nazism. Few words capture our nation’s growing divide quite so well.
Lewis on Patriotism: Speaking of patriotism, how should American Christians think about the US? (I write this on July 4th from Lake Bluff, whose patron saint is Norman Rockwell, and whose population quintuples for the July 4th parade). As is often the case, C.S. Lewis offers some good coaching. In this article, which frames Lewis’s book, The Four Loves, we are reminded that love of country is better than self-love, but not as ideal as agape love.
Guinness’s Golden Triangle: Os Guinness – the British sociologist who often writes about America – argues that our “experiment in self-government” depends on three things: liberty, which depends on virtue; virtue which depends on religion; and religion which depends on freedom.
Insight: I’ve been sending out scattered thoughts via The Friday Update for over a year now. I see value in passing along the things I pick up in a week of reading, but increasingly I am aware that scattered insights – even of a spiritual nature – are not nearly as valuable as insights organized into a coherent whole. Our world is full of scattered insights absent coherence.
Fathers: I know Father’s Day is behind us – and I also know that comments about Dads are painful to some – but I finally found the stats I was looking for. They are ten years old, but worth revisiting: 1) only 1 in 4 children live now with their paternal fathers; 2) in 1996, 42% of female-headed households with children were poor, compared with 8% of families with children headed by married parents; 3) girls without fathers in their lives are 2 & 1/2 times more likely to get pregnant and 53% more likely to commit suicide; 4) boys without fathers in their lives are 63% more likely to run away from home and 37% more likely to use drugs; 5) boys and girls without father involvement are twice as likely to drop out of school, twice as likely to go to jail and nearly four times more likely to need help for emotional or behavioral problems; 6) the average American father spends only 7 ½ uninterrupted minutes per week with his children but 32 hours a week watching TV.
The Decline of Charitable Giving: This article confirms that recent changes in tax law led to the steepest decline in charitable giving since the Great Recession.
Quotes Worth ReQuoting:
- We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate. Thomas Jefferson
- Despite our efforts to keep him out, God intrudes. The life of Jesus is bracketed by two impossibilities: a virgin’s womb and an empty tomb. Jesus entered our world through a door marked “No Entrance,” and left through a door marked “No Exit.” Peter Larson
Stats Without Comment: According to Jake Meador, in In Search of the Common Good (IVP, 2019), between 1940 and 2010, the US population grew by 134 percent. And the number of therapeutic professionals – i.e., clinical psychologists, social workers, marriage and family therapists, etc. – grew by 3,206 percent.
God’s Beauty: Many people look to God for what they can get – i.e., heaven, forgiveness, answered prayer. This is not as selfish as it sounds. We were made to be in a relationship with him. But at some point we need to be enamored by his beauty and goodness and start caring less about ourselves.
Closing Prayer: O Lord Jesus Christ, Good Shepherd of the sheep, who came to seek the lost and to gather them to your fold, have compassion on those who have wandered from you; feed those who hunger, cause the weary to lie down in your pastures, bind up those who are broken in heart and strengthen those who are weak, that we, relying on your care and being comforted by your love, may abide in your guidance to our lives’ end; for your name’s sake. Amen. Anonymous