Always Reforming

Leadership.  If you want to start an argument, discussing leadership is as easy a way as any.  Who should lead, how should they lead, and what it means to lead are all hot topics.  One very popular leadership philosophy in our postmodern world (our post-postmodern--I'm not sure where we're at in 2018) is to be a very passive leader.  In other words, you lead by not really leading at all.  Parents let their kids make their own decisions, managers don't really manage their employees, and husbands don't lead their wives.  No one wants to offend anyone or take responsibility, so leaders are impotent. This philosophy or style of leadership, sometimes explicit and sometimes implicit, is an overreaction to the despotism, chauvinism, and insensitivity to which human nature so naturally inclines.  As such, it expresses legitimate concerns, but the answer to a problem is never to abandon the good and the right into order to avoid the bad and destructive. Mor...

When you're young, you think you know everything, but, as you get older, you learn that maybe your parents, and parents in general, weren't lying when they tried to tell you what you didn't know.  As you mature, you gain more knowledge and wisdom and you are more useful to God, your family, and society.  As you learn what you don't know, you are humbled and try to learn so that you can teach the next generation.  That is, at least, how it is supposed to work. I don't know if I ever thought I knew everything  about being a father (I was the youngest after all), but I'm sure I didn't know what I didn't know.  I didn't know that I knew little to nothing about being a father.  I didn't know how hard being a father is.  Let me tell you, being a father is really hard.  Well, let me say that another way.  Being a good father is really hard.  I know I've been less than that at times.  My temper has been too short, as has my attention span...

My wife has recently become obsessed with the show Catfish .  The show features Nev and Max chasing downing catfish, the former motivated by the fact that he was himself once catfished.  For those who aren't aware,  catfishing  is basically deceiving someone while carrying on a relationship, romantic or otherwise, online.  For instance, you think you've been talking to an attractive 18-year-old white girl, but you've actually been talking to a 47-year-old black dude.   Sometimes it's a con-artist trying to get money.  Sometimes it's just a lonely teenager trying to make friends.  I must admit that it is an addicting show, almost in the "I-can't-look-away-from-a-car-wreck" sense.  It's not that the show is poorly made, but rather it is the real people featured on this program that act as the spectacle from which I cannot avert my eyes. At the end of almost every episode I find myself thinking, "What is wrong with these people?"  These...

I.                   Introduction a.      Chapter 3                                                              i.       In Chapter 3, Paul has been describing for us a heavenly-minded lifestyle.                                                           ii.    ...