Why Your Brain Loves Procrastination – When people procrastinate, they’re avoiding emotionally unpleasant tasks and instead doing something that provides a temporary mood boost. The procrastination itself then causes shame and guilt — which in turn leads people to procrastinate even further, creating a vicious cycle.
Christmas Tree, Inc. – We only have income for 35 days a year; the rest is all expense.
The Christmas Story Is All Wrong – When we think of the first Christmas, often we have a certain image in our minds. The nativity scenes in our homes and churches have the figures neatly arranged around a quiet child wrapped in a clean blanket placed in a quaint manager in a Pinterest-worthy stable. But if we allow ourselves to look past the sterilized sheen of those ceramic or plastic nativity sets, we know that wasn’t really the case.
Racism Is A Deeper Symptom Of A Deeper Issue That We Don’t Want To Address – Christian groups like the ERLC and the Kainos Movement are moving toward hosting discussions on racism in America and in the church in the 21st century, which is a good thing. But, if we are not careful, we will miss the deeper issues that animate the entire problem.
Jane Austen, Tim Keller, and The Happiness of Holiness – After many long, inexcusable years, I finally sat down to read a Jane Austen novel; Pride and Prejudice, to be exact. I suppose I had avoided them in my youth because they were the type of thing my sister–a girl, mind you–read. Also, I’d been subjected to the film Sense and Sensibility as a young boy and I’m still not sure what effect that’s had on my disposition ever since. In any case, inspired by my English acquaintances and a sense of nostalgia for literature, I picked up the copy off the shelf last week and got to work.
The Silence Exercise – The assignment calls for 90 minutes of silence. Students are instructed to put away their smartphones and leave the presence of other people. They should just be still by themselves, then write a two-page paper reflecting on the experience and putting it in historical perspective. What does it feel like to be silent, to be without constant access to a smartphone? How is this part of our lifestyle now different than in premodern times?
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