Loving, Learning, and Leading

There is danger not only that our trade will lose its good name, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited, and the goddess herself, who is worshiped throughout the province of Asia and the world, will be robbed of her divine majesty." (Acts 19:27) In America, we view capitalism sacredly.  It is not only sacred, but to question  some of the core concepts is akin to treason and heresy.  Unquestionably, the American dream and the incredible ability to accumulate wealth and maintain a high standard of living would not be possible without an aggressively capitalistic economy.  However, this weath can co-opt and inform our understandings of what is right and just. In first century city of Ephesus, the community was in an uproar over the new message of Jesus.  The narrative tells us that many accepted the message of Jesus and lives were changed in dramatic fashion. (Just writing that sentence reminds me of how the contempo...

Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. 16 But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.(Luke 5:15-16) Contemporary society is the busiest in the history of humanity.  This is not to say that previous generations did not work extremely hard, because progress was built on hard work.  However, the complexity of our lives in 2011, dwarfs the generations of the past.  One statistic states that the average person daily ingests and discerns more information than the average person in 1910 did in an entire year.  With economic pressures overhead, most of us feel the tension to be even more productive than ever, and experience more uncertainty than ever.   In the midst of all of this, our ongoing secularization tells us that faith has a diminishing role in the practical affairs of your job, family, relationships, careers, and finances.  Secularization is the process...