Who has been the toughest person for you to explain your faith to? Why? What have you found to be helpful in dealing with people who ridicule your faith? (Serendipity Bible Fourth Edition, page 1494).
A belief in self-sufficiency on the part of the nonbeliever is the greatest difficulty to overcome. When this is coupled with unfortunate prior encounters with sanctimonious and rigid religiosity (which is in fact not faith at all but simply another form of myopic self-sufficiency), then the challenge becomes relaying a fresh definition of religion that is faith-based rather than based in inflexible arrogance, greed, insecurity, and fear. A fundamental pillar of Christianity is the Golden rule which inherently calls into question the sufficiency of self-sufficiency. Next, Christianity's realistic understanding of humanity's potential and creativity in conjunction with recognition of its limitations and frailties all together underwritten by grace provide the opportunity for planting seeds of faith which will germinate in due season.
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Have you lived through a trying time, learned lots of lessons and then gone to ways "as in times past" when the dust settled? How can you make a lesson once learned stick for all time? Can the group help? (Serendipity Bible Fourth Edition, page 1112).
Once I read that people with a business background are immensely frustrated when they enter government because in government they lack the controls they had in business – when in business they could direct a job to get done and it would get done because there was an audited trail of actions that allowed close accounting of employee behavior up and down the lines of authority. In this environment problems can be anticipated in advance and preemptive action taken so that "dust does not need to rise in the first place." (I might add this is also true for government when functioning essentially as a business. It does not apply equally however when politics becomes the determinative factor in the decision process.)
Thus, when politics is involved and we are dealing with a broad sweep of social issues, often jobs do not get done and cannot get done unless there is an unrelenting swirl of dust to keep the matter on the public agenda. There is always a huge force of inertia in public affairs enforcing the status quo-- awesome forces with massive stakes in keeping things as they are. These forces have obtained benefit from the status quo and often over time have amassed great power, wealth, and influence infiltrating key aspects of public life. In times of crisis when the dust is swirling, these forces look to levers of control to dampen the situation. Thus they emphasize short-term solutions and narrow focus often using the police power of the state. They look forward to using these levers to quiet the situation causing the dust to settle and everything to return to what is taken as normal exactly as before.
Unfortunately for forces of power--often more or less tyrannical--modern technology has introduced graphic images of reality into public discourse. Therefore delusional social justice will increasingly be preempted by the real thing.
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Paul found that intense pressures led him to depend on God all the more (v. 9). How do you respond to intense pressures? Do they deepen your walk with God or drive you away from him? (Serendipity Bible Fourth Edition, page 1606).
Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. (2 Corinthians 1:9).
Jonathan Swift once remarked, "Most of us have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love." (From A Year with Jesus by Eugene Peterson, page 119).
America has two related bedrock anchors – belief in God ("in God we trust") and belief in brotherhood (equality encapsulated within the Bill of Rights and the Golden rule). No one can fully understand the formation and evolution of America without understanding these underlying anchors. There has always been contrapuntal voices of cynicism – but these voices have always been proven wrong in the end as faith and brotherhood prevailed.
We are now in a time of severe testing as the next great dawning in understanding envelops us. This relates directly to social and economic justice on an ever broadening scale. We do not and will not give up our reliance on capitalism and its many benefits; but, even so, our present calling is to calibrate it more fully to align with our bedrock ethical values. Intense pressures will escalate in the days ahead and present many challenges and, sometimes, periods of doubt. But we must ask the fundamental question – will these pressures cause us to let go of the anchors that have held us through war and peace and given us hope through the stresses of rending storms?
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In your planning, are you near-sighted or far-sighted? Telescopic or microscopic? When have you failed to see what lay ahead because you kept looking down? (Serendipity Bible Fourth Edition, page 975).
The human dilemma often revolves around issues of perspective – do we take a wide view or a narrow view; do we take a long view or a short view? The profound and momentous implications of "perception bias" drives any realistic nation to its knees in prayer with a sometimes desperate placing of ultimate trust in God. The recent news from Baltimore provides our latest example of this dilemma. Urgency tends to draw down focus and make it narrow and short. However, issues often have structural and systemic implications that require wide views and long perspectives. Thus at the present juncture conscientious Americans are driven to prayer for divine guidance in calibrating perspectives such that we can identify the wisest and most charitable direction forward.
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When have you rooted for the "underdog"? (Serendipity Bible Fourth Edition, page 323).
I root for the underdog on occasions when I agree with the underdog on essential matters. That is, I may disagree with the underdog on many secondary issues, but the underlying issue that the underdog senses – even if he does not identify it with absolute precision – causes me to root for him. I can easily think of an example. The current distribution of wealth in America is unfair to many wealth producers. Now there are a multitude of possible facets to this problem – allowing for many spokesmen "underdogs" with idiosyncratic solutions – many of which I disagree with. Yet I still identify with these underdogs because they have felt something I have felt, and have sincerely expressed their troubling sense of needed attention to our shared ethical failure to achieve economic fairness.
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What authority figures do you still trust completely? Which do you distrust? Why? (Serendipity Bible Fourth Edition, page 1403).
My favorite authority figure is Barack Obama. As president he has been given every opportunity to become mentally unbalanced if not downright insane. He has been the object of unrelenting torrents of hatred and vilification. Through it all he has remained the steady, sane, honorable, and, most admirable of all, a genuinely kind man. I distrust all those who beneath a millimeter of skin are as mean as sin.
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If Jesus ask you, "What do you want me to do for you?" What would you say? (Serendipity Bible Fourth Edition, page 1401).
In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. (1 Peter 1:6).
The short answer for me would be the same as I would have for everyone else – "Lord, may I be happy." Now of course realism dictates that this will not be unrelieved happiness and joy--no frozen smiles, please. There inevitably will be times that I feel low, even dejected. But I would ask that these periods be of short duration and placed within the broader context of God's love, purpose, and multiple blessings--not the least of which is Jesus himself.
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