Cape Town as seen from space

Pop Culture's View of Faith

Written by: Justin Holcomb
First published in: The Resurgence

“Faith” is an important word and concept for Christians. We are saved because we have faith in Jesus Christ. Protestants believe in sola fide, meaning that we are saved by “faith alone” and not by our works or obedience. The Bible teaches that faith is associated with a specific person (Jesus Christ), knowledge, or a set of beliefs. Faith is belief in the value or trustworthiness of someone or something. In Christianity, faith is a confident and certain knowledge of God and trust in the person and work of Jesus Christ on our behalf and in our place.

Faith According to Pop Culture

The word “faith” is used frequently in contemporary pop culture and primarily refers to the act of believing—not the content of belief. In the movie Dogma we see an example of this. Serendipity, a muse, is asked what is the right religion and responds: “It's not about right or wrong—it's a question of faith. It doesn't matter what you believe in—just that you believe.” In many expressions of contemporary popular culture, the central concern of faith is the act of believing or having faith, not what is believed or the object of faith. In pop culture, the object of faith is rarely specified; it can be love, hope, fate, the unknown, oneself, someone else, or God.

Faith as a Personal Need

In The Simpsons episode Lisa the Skeptic, we see an example of this. Talking to her daughter, Lisa, Marge Simpson says faith means there is something “more to life than what we see.” It is important to “make a leap of faith now and then” because “everyone needs something to believe in.” The focus is the individual benefit of having faith and the result is that faith is malleable to the specific needs of the one who has faith.

Faith as Hope

Other examples of this are found in popular music. Whether the genre is hip-hop, country, pop, or rock, “faith” is synonymous with “hope” and usually in reference to love or relationships. George Michael’s “Faith,” and Limp Bizkit’s remake of the song, reminds us that having faith (“I gotta have faith!”) does not mean holding certain religious teachings to be true, but hoping that it is worth the risk to end a relationship in order to “wait for something more.”

Faith as a Source of Strength

Jessica Simpson’s song “Your Faith in Me” is a celebration of faith, understood as reliability and strength, as the foundation of love: “Your faith in me. It pulls me through when there’s nothing around to hold on to. When I fall, when I’m weak, all the strength that I need is your faith, baby.”

Faith as Waiting for a Miracle

Faith is also used as hoping against all odds or resolve in times of trouble. In the movie John Q, John Q. Archibald comforts his wife during their son’s hopeless medical situation by encouraging her to “have faith,” which is “believing what you don’t want to believe.” In this sense, faith is acknowledging their son’s situation is hopeless and there is nothing that can be done except to hope for a miracle of fate.

Faith as a Commodity

Until recently, if talk of faith in pop culture took place it did so privately, for faith had little currency on the open market. But that has changed and it is now a significant theme of entertainment and a topic of popular culture. Faith has become a commodity. As a consequence, faith becomes tailored to the consumer’s needs and a matter of personal interest, feelings, and individual convictions. All of this reveals a deep cultural religiosity or spirituality. In many ways, our culture is “very religious” (Acts 17:22). The key is to not just criticize the use of “faith” in pop culture, but to point winsomely and clearly to the One in whom we have faith for the forgiveness of our sins.

The effect of Online Shopping on your lifestyle

Contradicting the New York Times: Growing up Digital does NOT make you dumb

This article is written by Don Tapscott and originally appeared in The Huffington Post. Don Tapscott is the author of Growing Up Digital (1997) and Grown Up digital (2008) and most recently with Anthony D. Williams Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World (2010).

The November 21 Sunday New York Times front-page story "Growing Up Digital" created quite a stir, with among other things more than 430 comments on the New York Times site within 48 hours.

As the author of the actual book Growing Up Digital, its recent sequel Grown Up Digital, the person who originally defined the Net Generation back in 1997 and the director of the biggest research projects to date on this generation, many people have asked me for my thoughts (which curiously were not solicited in the writing of the article).

In the article Matt Richel argues that the experience of growing up in the digital age is producing a generation that is "wired for distraction." Richel follows the life of a bright 17-year-old Vishal Singh who is behind on his studies and not doing well in school because he chooses to do activities on his computer over reading a book and doing his assignments. He is said to be typical of a new generation that is easily distracted, because "developing brains can become more easily habituated than adult brains to constantly switching tasks -- and less able to sustain attention."

The article cites anecdotal evidence that teachers are having difficulty getting kids' attention. Unchecked use of digital devices "can create a culture in which students are addicted to the virtual world and lost in it." Multi-tasking is causing bad grades. Many kids, rather than socializing through technology "recede into it" often "escaping" into various media like video games. To make things worse "even as some parents and educators express unease about students' digital diets, they are intensifying efforts to use technology in the classroom, seeing it as a way to connect with students and give them essential skills."

Parents don't get it either. In fact some of them "wholly embrace computer use, even when it has no obvious educational benefit." Use of video games is keeping kids up at night. Kids aren't getting downtime. They are "becoming habituated to distraction and to switching tasks, not to focus." Some teachers have implemented group reading because "students now lack the attention span to read the assignments on their own."

4,000 words later the article ends with Vishad at 11 pm having wasted his entire Sunday on his computer, settling down to some homework.

It's a pretty bleak picture that would make any teacher and parent want to pull the plug. To be sure, technology can be a distraction. If students are not performing well in school it's the responsibility of parents and teachers to help them organize their lives for success. And of course kids need balance. If your son spends more time in solitary video game playing than hanging with his friends or doing his homework then corrective action is required.

However the Times piece is so clichéd and one-sided that it's more than misleading: it's dangerous. Anecdotes can be deceptive. Making the case that kids are not performing well is like shooting fish in a barrel. Jay Leno does it all the time. However while anecdotes and an occasional expert quote about how kids can't focus makes for a good read, the data speaks otherwise. And there are some very big issues being discussed in this piece, not just about technology and kids, but its role in the home, schools and society. And I worry that many parents and teachers might draw the wrong conclusion.

To begin, there is no actual evidence to support the view that this generation is distracted, performing poorly or otherwise less capable than previous generations. In fact the evidence suggests that on the whole, this is the smartest generation ever. IQ is up year over year for many years, university entrance exam scores are at an all time high and it has never been tougher to get into the best universities. Furthermore, volunteering amongst high school and university students is at an all time high and in the US the percentage of kids that are clean in high school -- i.e. they don't do drugs or alcohol -- is up year over year for 15 years. This is a generation about which we can be enormously hopeful.

Yes, the bottom tier is not performing well -- almost one-third of all students drop out of high school. But even with this group dragging mean scores down there is no noticeable decline in performance. National testing in the U.S. suggests that over the last decade or so, students have improved, especially at the Grade 4 and 8 level, while Grade 12 students have either stayed the same or improved slightly in writing, civics and history.

And when it comes to the poor performance of the bottom tier, blaming the Internet is like blaming the library for illiteracy. There are real problems to be addressed. According to a 2006 report by the Gates Foundation one-third of the dropouts left school to make money, and a significant number left to care for a parent or have a baby. Most in this group come from single parent families where the mom doesn't have time to talk to the kids let alone to work with them on their homework. Kids come to school hungry.

There are also huge cultural factors. The dropout problem is far bigger in inner city public schools than it is in rich white suburbs. While three-quarters of whites graduate, only about half of blacks and Hispanics do. Among rural youth of color, the high school dropout rate is even more alarming than among their urban counterparts. Proportionately, more Net Geners are failing to graduate from high school than any previous generation and test results for many young people are so awful that it has become cliché to say that the educational system in the United States is in crisis.

The sad truth, according to the Gates Foundation report, is that most dropouts could have made it. Nearly half who dropped out said classes were either not interesting or just plain boring. So perhaps the real issue is the gap between how Net Geners think and how most teachers teach. Net Geners are not content to sit mutely and listen to a teacher talk. Kids who have grown up digital expect to be able to respond, to have a conversation. They want a choice in their education, in terms of what they learn, when they learn it, where, and how. They want their education to be relevant to the real world, the one they live in. They want it to be interesting, even fun. Teachers may still think the old-fashioned lecture is important, but the kids don't, futurist Marc Prensky told me recently. He remembers one Australian principal who put it this way: "The teachers are no longer the fountain of knowledge; the Internet is."

Kids' Brains and Technology

As for the brain science, the author should have told the other side of the story. During extended adolescence (age 8-18) a third of the brain gets wired, and how you spend your time is the main factor determining the building of the brain. Consider the typical teenage media diet. Back in the late 1960s, the teenage Baby Boomer in the United States watched an average of over 22 hours of television each week. They were passive viewers; they took what they were given, and when the commercials came, they might even have watched them. Net Geners watch less television than their parents do, and they watch it differently. A Net Gener is more likely to turn on the computer and simultaneously interact in several different windows, talk on the telephone, listen to music, do homework, read a magazine, and watch television. TV has become like background Muzak for them.

Rather than creating dysfunctional brains that can't focus, the evidence is just as strong that experience being "bathed in bits" is pushing the human brain beyond conventional capacity limitations. So-called multitasking may in fact result from better switching abilities and better active working memory. Young people are likely developing brains that are more appropriate for our fast paced, complex world.

And as for kids getting lost in virtual words and losing their social skills? There is no evidence that this is causing a decline in face-to-face communication. Time spent online is not coming at the expense of less time hanging out with friends; it's less time watching television.

To be sure, there is much we don't know about the brain. In fact we've learned more in the last 7 years than in all of history. But some things are becoming clear. The research shows that the brain can change throughout life as it responds to environmental influences. Children's brains can change to a greater degree than adult ones can, but the adult brain can and does change. "Neuroscience has shown that, in the most literal sense, the events of our lives get etched in the very physical structure and the activities of the brain," states Dr. Stan Kutcher, an internationally renowned expert on adolescent mental health, who with his son Matthew, a Net Gen neuroscientist, conducted a study measuring the effect of digital technology on human brain development for the nGenera research program.¹

By the time Net Generation kids reach their twenties, the typical Net Gener has spent over 20,000 hours on the Internet and over 10,000 hours playing video games of some kind.² This immersion is taking place at a time when their brains are particularly sensitive to outside influences -- adolescence and their teenage years. Recent studies show that although total brain volume is largely unchanged after age 6, the brain continues to undergo significant structural remodeling throughout the adolescent years and into early adult life. The studies show that brain regions associated with attention, evaluation of rewards, emotional intelligence, impulse control, and goal-directed behavior all change significantly between age 12 and 24. These neurological changes during adolescence may explain, in part, why many teenagers appear to be disorganized, have poor impulse control, and have difficulty making long-term plans.

Research done at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) documented some of the physical changes that take place in the brain between the ages of 4 and 20. It turns out that the volume of nerve cells in the frontal and parietal lobes, which are thought to be responsible for goal-directed behavior and other higher functions, peaks at age 12.³ How can that be? NIMH researchers suggest that after age 12, the brain starts pruning, reducing connections among brain cells. Say, for example, you learned a language from your mother but stopped using it when you started speaking English. The pathways needed to speak your mother's language will die off, while the other neural pathways associated with speaking English will get stronger. In other words, you use it or you lose it. This pruning period lasts until about age 20.

Some studies suggest that the teen brain processes, operates, and functions differently than the brain of an adult. Sarah-Jayne Blakemore of University College London conducted a series of studies in which participants were asked to answer hypothetical questions while their brain activity was monitored by MRI imaging. When the question was an impersonal one, the teens, whose average age was 15, used the same parts of their brain to answer as did the 28-year-old adults. But when they were asked a question like "You are at the cinema and have trouble seeing the screen. Do you move to another seat?" the teens used different parts of their brain to answer.⁴ As this evidence suggests, the teen brain itself -- not just our understanding of it -- is still a work in progress.

Of course an unchecked obsession with video games, or anything else for that matter is not healthy for a young person. But that's only one side of the story. Video games can be enormously positive. They can teach young people to work in teams. As Generation X came of age, the arcade video games available to them were largely about competition: scores were kept, and there tended to be a winner for every loser. In contrast, popular video games today highlight adventure and exploring what is around the corner, often in real time. They place extraordinary demands on multidimensional visual-spatial skills; enhance abilities for divided attention;⁵ and encourage players to discover rules through observation, trial and error, and hypothesis testing.⁶ They often require cooperation with opponents to defeat a common enemy offering problems to be solved collaboratively and creatively, and acting in a global community -- signifying the movement of the game-playing experience to being social rather than a solitary activity.

Playing online games can be good for your mind, according to Steven Johnson, writing in Everything Bad Is Good for You: "Games force you to decide, to choose, to prioritize."⁷. Some of the world's leading thinkers in this field agree. When James Gee, a teacher and theoretical linguist, started playing video games at age 60, he realized he had to think in a new way. To excel at a video game you have to learn skills that are crucial for any learning experience, such as understanding design principles, making choices, practicing, and discovering.⁸

Matthew Myers, for instance, is a 21-year-old student at Southern Methodist University. He's the captain of his wrestling team, a church youth leader, and president of his dorm. He's also second-in-command in his guild, and every week he spends a few hours playing World o Warcraft. "I'm taking a class on managing people and strategy," he says. "I can take all the lessons that I learn in class and apply them to my guild." He continues to note that managing a group of 40-plus players is a complex job. There are new players to recruit and current guild members who need help raising their skill levels as they pursue quests and run raids.

What about the overall effect of spending so much time in front of a screen -- not a TV but an interactive screen? Does the medium affect the way we absorb the information? Back in the 1950s, Marshall McLuhan argued that it does. The way we receive information -- by reading a book, watching a movie, or listening to someone on the telephone -- has a big impact on the brain, and that impact is even more important than the actual content of the message. In other words, McLuhan said in his famous but somewhat oblique line, "the medium is the message."

The great Toronto thinker did not, of course, have the benefit of modern brain scans. So, Erica Michael and Marcel Just of Carnegie Mellon University did a brain scan to test McLuhan's hypothesis. It turned out that he was right: the brain constructs the message differently for reading and listening. "Listening to an audio book leaves a different set of memories than reading does," say Michael and Just. "A newscast heard on the radio is processed differently from the same words read in a newspaper."

You'd expect, then, that information absorbed on the Internet would have a different impact than information obtained by reading the newspaper. A 2006 study of Net Geners certainly suggests it does. Researchers played the same newscast in four different ways -- as a traditional radio newscast, as an online newscast played with one click, as an interactive Webcast where you click to get each news item, and as a Webcast that included links for details. Net Geners remembered less from the traditional newscasts -- told from beginning to end -- than they did from the interactive versions that gave them a chance to click to hear the news, or learn more details.⁹

Multitasking: Are Net Geners Better at Switching Attention?

Media multitasking is a quintessential characteristic of the Net Generation brain. Three out of every four Net Gen students claim to instant message while doing their homework.¹⁰ Moreover, in a national study of over 2,000 young people, aged 8 to 18, researchers found that participants were able to squeeze the equivalent of 8.5 hours of electronic media into 6 chronological hours because of multitasking.¹¹ Most parents can't understand it. Boomers usually have trouble focusing on a complicated task if the TV is on, the music is cranked up, and friends are checking in every few minutes. Are Net Geners any better at it than boomers are? Have they learned to be top guns of multitasking?

When I look at my own children, their friends, and legions of other Net Geners, this is what I see: They're faster than I am at switching tasks, and better than I am at blocking out background noise. They can work effectively with music playing and news coming in from Facebook. They can keep up their social networks while they concentrate on work; they seem to need this to feel comfortable. I think they've learned to live in a world where they're bombarded with information, so that they can block out the TV or other distractions while they focus on the task at hand.

Back in 1992, P. David Pearson, a comprehension theorist at the University of Illinois, set forth the skills that a good reader uses to understand a text. The good reader activates prior knowledge, makes sure she understands what she's reading and reads it again if necessary, makes inferences, and synthesizes or summarizes what she's learned. It turns out that searching for information on the Internet requires those same skills -- and then some -- according to a study in the September 2003 issue of the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy.¹²

Searching for information on the Internet is obviously a different exercise than reading a book. You read or scan until you have found what you wanted, and then you click on a keyword to hunt for more information. Unlike the journey you take when you read a book, no one is holding your hand or serving as your guide. You're on your own. But it requires the same skills you need to read a book -- plus the ability to scan, navigate, analyze whether information is pertinent, synthesize, and remember what question you're trying to answer as you click on the links. The RAND Reading Study Group put it this way in 2002: "Accessing the Internet makes large demands on the individuals' literacy skills; in some cases, this new technology requires readers to have novel literacy skills."¹³

Kids Aren't Paying Attention in School?

So why do some Net Geners seem to have attention deficit disorder in class? Isn't it possible that the answer is because they're bored -- both with the slow pace and with the content of the lecture? Researcher Marc Prensky thinks so. "Their attention spans are not short for games, for example, or for music, or rollerblading, or for spending time on the Internet, or anything else that actually interests them," he writes. "It isn't that they can't pay attention, they just choose not to."¹⁴

Donald Leu, co-director of the New Literacies Research Lab at the University of Connecticut, has found that the skills needed for effective reading of books are different from those you need to read effectively online. To read online, you need all the skills of the off-line reader-plus the ability to search, locate information, and evaluate how pertinent or credible it is. You have to remember what you're looking for -- what question you're trying to answer -- so you don't get lost in the morass of information. You have to synthesize what you're learning from multiple sources, and usually communicate your findings to someone else. Online, you are creating your own narrative, instead of following the writer's journey. These are different experiences, Leu says. His research shows that conventional text readers are not always good online readers. Sometimes kids who are poor readers of textbooks turn out to be among the top performers in terms of online search and reading skills.

The old model of pedagogy is what I call broadcast learning. It was a one-size-fits-all one-way model designed for the Industrial Age when industry needed workers who did what they were told. The teacher was the sage, and he or she was supposed to deliver knowledge to the grateful students who were expected to write down the sage's words and deliver it back to them, often word for word, in exams if they wanted to score an A.

In the old model, the teacher is the broadcaster, sending information from transmitter to receiver in a one-way, linear fashion. It goes like this: I'm a teacher (or professor) and I have knowledge. You're a student and you don't. Get ready, here it comes. Your goal is to take this data into your short-term memory and through practice and repetition build deeper cognitive structures so you can recall it to me when I test you. As I often tell educational audiences, the definition of a lecture is the process in which the notes of the teacher go to the notes of the student without going through the brains of either.

So is it any surprise that teacher-broadcasters and TV broadcasters are both losing their audience? Kids who have grown up digital are abandoning one-way TV for the higher stimulus of interactive communication they find on the Internet. Sitting mutely in front of a TV -- or a teacher -- doesn't appeal to this generation. But unlike the entertainment world, the educational establishment doesn't offer enough alternatives to the one-way broadcast.

If schools were a business that was routinely losing one-third of its customers -- and half in some places -- I suspect the board of directors would insist on some fundamental changes, or simply fire the CEO. So why doesn't the school system do what some of the leading customer-faced companies are doing today? Focus on the customer, or in this case, the student. It sounds simple, but as many companies have found, focusing on the customer requires a deep change throughout the organization. This means changing the relationship between student and teacher in the learning process.

Films like Waiting for "Superman" don't help much. They blame teachers and suggest that charter schools are the answer, when what's needed is an entirely new model of pedagogy and educational modus operandi. To focus on the student, teachers have to step off the stage and start listening and conversing instead of just lecturing. In other words, they have to abandon their broadcast style and adopt an interactive one. Second, they should encourage students to discover for themselves, and learn a process of discovery and critical thinking instead of just memorizing the teacher's information. Third, they need to encourage students to collaborate among themselves and with others outside the school. Finally, they need to tailor the style of education to their students' individual learning styles.

Some leading educators are calling for this kind of massive change, such as Richard Sweeney, university librarian at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He says the education model has to change to suit this generation of students. Smart but impatient, they like to collaborate and they reject one-way lectures. While some educators view this as pandering to a generation, Sweeney is firm: "They want to learn, but they want to learn only from what they have to learn, and they want to learn it in a style that is best for them."

The Kids Are All Right

Over my career, I have listened to thousands of people make dire predictions about what technology will do to young brains. TV was supposed to melt their minds. Video games would turn them into zombies. It hasn't happened. So I'm skeptical when I read that digital immersion is making kids stupid. And I've yet to see any convincing evidence.

The Times article was just the latest in litany of pieces. Take Mark Bauerlein, the English professor who wrote The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future. The premise of his book is that youth today are stupider than any preceding generation because they spend so much time immersed in digital technology, especially the Internet. But even Bauerlein has to admit that raw IQ scores have been going up three points a decade since World War II, and that screentime's ability to improve certain visual processing skills may have played a role in the rise in recent years.¹⁵ After noting that inconvenient fact, the professor acknowledges that Net Geners may be "mentally agile" but says they are "culturally ignorant." They don't read the great works of literature, he complains, and their general knowledge is poor -- they suffer from what he calls "vigorous indiscriminate ignorance." So now he's arguing that they're not mentally slow, just ignorant. But are Net Geners any more ignorant than boomers were at their age? Again no evidence is provided.

The professor hunts for more evidence to support the grandstanding title of his book from school test scores. "No cohort in human history has opened such a fissure between its material conditions and its intellectual attainments," he thunders. "None has experienced so many technological enhancements and yielded so little mental progress." In other words, they should be doing better, presumably because of the Internet. So which is it? The Internet is a force for stupefication or enlightenment?

The Times piece ends with the story of Vishal, who after a long Sunday on his computer is finally getting to his homework at 11pm. But we learn that Vishal's time online was in fact editing his new film. Vishal is a budding film director! Sure, he should get to his homework earlier. But the reader is left wondering how Vishal's passion for his craft, and his laser-like focus on editing over a 12-hour period is somehow evidence that he has lost his intellect or his attention span.

Sure there are unknowns and challenges as this media revolution extends out into every aspect of human existence. And all of us need to better design our families and our own lives to ensure that this smaller world will be a better one for all of us.

But the evidence suggests that many young people today are using technology to become smarter and more capable than their parents ever could be; and, like Vishal, to accomplish important, perhaps great things. Rather than kids losing their attention spans there is a stronger case to be made that growing up digital is equipping today's youth with the mental skills, such as scanning and quick mental switching, that they'll need to deal with today's overflow of information. The superior performance for many of them, as evidence by university graduation rates show they know when they have to focus, just as the most intelligent members of my generation did. They may think and process information in a different way than most boomers do, but that doesn't stop them from coming up with brilliant insights, new models of doing business, new ways of collaborating; or, for that matter, creating a carefully edited film as a teenager.

References

1. Kutcher and Kutcher, "Understanding Differences of a Cognitive and Neurological Kind," 4

2. Marc Prensky, Digital Game-Based Learning, 1st ed., New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000.

3. Jay N. Giedd et al., "Brain Development during Childhood and Adolescence: A Longitudinal MRI Study," Nature Neuroscience, vol. 2, 1999, 861-63, www.nature.com.

4. Miranda Hitti and Louise Chang, M.D., "Teen Brain: It's All About Me," WebMD Medical News, www.ivorweiner.com, May 5, 2008.

5. Patricia Marks Greenfield et al., "Action Video Games and Informal Education: Effects on Strategies for Dividing Visual Attention," Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, vol. 15, 1994, 105-23, h.

6. Ibid., Prensky, Digital Game Based Learning (No page number necessary, still summarizing)

7. Steven Johnson, Everything Bad Is Good for You, New York: Riverhead, 2005

8. James Paul Gee, What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy, 1st ed., Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

9. Hesham M. Mesbah, "The Impact of Linear vs. Non-linear Listening to Radio News on Recall and Comprehension," Journal of Radio and Audio Media, vol. 13, no. 2, December 2006, 187-200, www.leaonline.com.

10. Hesham M. Mesbah, "The Impact of Linear vs. Non-linear Listening to Radio News on Recall and Comprehension," Journal of Radio and Audio Media, vol. 13, no. 2, December 2006, 187-200, www.leaonline.com.

11. Donald F. Roberts et al., "Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-Olds," Kaiser Family Foundation Study, March 2005, www.kff.org.

12. Elizabeth Schmar-Dobler, "Reading on the Internet: The Link between Literacy and Technology," Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, September 2003, www.readingonline.org.

13. Catherine E. Snow and RAND Reading Study Group, Reading for Understanding: Toward an R&D Program in Reading Comprehension, RAND Corporation, 2002.

14. Ibid., Prensky, Digital Game Based Learning

15. Steven Johnson, Everything Bad Is Good for You, New York: Riverhead, 2005. "Think of the cognitive labor--and play--that your average 10-year-old would have experienced outside school 100 years ago: reading books when they were available, playing with simple toys, improvising neighborhood games like stickball an kick the can, and most of all doing household chores--or even working as a child laborer. Compare that with the cultural and technological mastery of a 10-year-old today: following dozens of professional sports teams; shifting effortlessly from phone to IM to e-mail in communicating with friends; probing and telescoping through immense virtual worlds; adopting and troubleshooting new media technologies without flinching."

MIDWEEK DEVOTION: Advent : God sent his Son

Written by Andries Combrink, minister of Centurion West Presbyterian Church. Website: www.centurionwest.co.za Minister's blog: http://andriesgraceandmercy.blogspot.com

Season of Advent – the four Sundays before Christmas, starts on 28 November.

The word “Advent” essentially means “coming” and “expecting”. It is a time to be filled with joy, because God became a man and was born as a baby on that first Christmas, to become our Redeemer and King!
During this season we also remember that Jesus wants to come to us, here and now through his Spirit’s work in us, and through us come to a lost world in dire need of him.
Finally we also remember during this season that Jesus Christ promised to physically come to us again, to create a new heaven and earth in which we will live for all eternity!

The Advent Wreath

The symbolism of the Advent Wreath is beautiful. On Sunday our wreath will be displayed on the Lord’s Table.

The wreath is made of various evergreens, signifying continuous life. It signifies victory over persecution and suffering. The prickly leaves remind us of the crown of thorns. Any pine cones or other seeds symbolize life and resurrection.

The circle of the wreath, that has no beginning or end, symbolizes the eternity of God, the immortality of the soul, and the everlasting life found in Christ who entered our world a true man and who was victorious over sin and death through his own passion, death, and resurrection.

The four candles on the wreath represent the four weeks of Advent. The progressive lighting of the candles symbolizes the expectation and hope surrounding our Lord’s first coming into the world and the anticipation of his second coming to judge the living and the dead.

The lighting of candles signifies Christ, the Light of the world.

In family practice, the Advent candles on the wreath is usually lit at home on Sundays at lunch or dinner time, after the blessing of the food.

Advent: God sent his Son

During the next four weeks, until Christmas day, we will remember that Christ took on our weak, human nature and became one of us.

As the Apostle Paul puts it in 2 Cor 5: 21: God made him who had no sin, to be sin for us so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God.

This is what Christ did for us during that first Christmas day. In taking on ”weak human flesh”, he associated himself with our dilemma which is the result of our mistakes, disobedience and sin. He came to live the life that God requires and we cannot accomplish, and lived it perfectly, holy and without sin, in our place! The Son of God became our brother and will never leave nor forsake us.

During this season of Advent, the four weeks before Christmas, we want to celebrate that when God gave the gift of salvation, he did not send new laws and rules through which to figure our how we can be saved. No, he sent his Son to save us.

The Advent message always remains that (John 3:16) God so much loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

Lets trust in the Son. Lets rejoice because he did everything we could not do, to save us! Lets pray that he will come again soon to dry all our tears.

INTERNET (RE-) POST: Putting Evangelism on Hold

Will the Global Faith Forum's "evangelistic model" of engaging Muslims and Jews catch on?

WRITTEN BY Mark Galli

One session of the Global Faith Forum—a conference for Muslims, Jews, and Christians—began with everyone singing, "Father Abraham had many sons, many sons had father Abraham … ," that old children's chorus with body motions. There's nothing uniquely Christian, Muslim, or Jewish about it (though it's uniquely evangelical in its silliness!). But the prominent evangelical standing next to me did not join in, and later told me, "I just couldn't decide if singing that song with Muslims and Jews constituted joint worship, and I'm not convinced we can worship together."

Such was the tension that many evangelicals experienced at the forum, held at NorthWood Church in Keller, Texas, November 12-14.

Bob Roberts, pastor of NorthWood Church and catalyst of the forum, opened the event by emphasizing his own beliefs:

"I am an evangelical Christian. I believe in the Bible," he said to a group of about 500 who had gathered the first night (eventually over 600 attended the event held Nov. 12-14). "I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that he died for my sins, that he will come again."

Then he added that he was not interested in a lowest-common denominator faith, or "inter-religious" dialogue. For him "inter-religious" means dumbing down everybody's beliefs to some bland, sentimental, global civic religion. Instead he organized this conference to be "multi-faith," so that people could discuss openly and frankly the differences of the three Abrahamic faiths.

In fact, the conference spent relatively little time on theological differences, and more on trying to clear up stereotypes we have of one another. In two different plenary panel discussions, Roberts began by asking each participant, "What is the one thing people most misunderstand about your tribe?" Answers ranged from "Muslims don't hate evangelicals" to "There has been a dynamic Arab Christian community from the days of the Pentecost."

Among those giving the Muslim perspective in such forums were Saudi Arabia's Prince Turki Al-Faisal, nephew of the present King Abdullah and former ambassador to the U.S., Najeeba Syeed-Miller of Claremont School of Theology, and Eboo Patel of the Interfaith Youth Core.

The Jewish perspective—represented only on Friday night's plenary panel—was represented by Rabbi Jeremy Schneider (of Temple Shalom, and Reform congregation in Dallas) and the vociferous anti-Zionist Mark Braverman. Unfortunately, there was no sufficient voice on the pro-Zionist side to counterbalance Braverman, or the Islamic scholar John Esposito, who also made a few digs at Israel in the course of his presentations.

Two Palestinian Christians, Sami Awad, executive director of Holy Land Trust in Bethlehem, and Henry Mikhail, an American raised in Jerusalem, were the major Christian voices on the plenary panels. They gave a decided slant to the Christian perspective, but it did open the eyes of a number of attendees to the significant Christian population among Arabs—and this was Roberts's point in featuring these two so prominently.

The "Global Faith" part was a little confusing at times. Two plenaries included Vietnamese Ambassador to the U.S. Le Cong Phung, a man who claims no religious affiliation. Other plenary addresses were on global business (by Al Weiss, president of Walt Disney World Resort), urban ministry (by Ray Bakke of Bakke Graduate University), multi-cultural churches (by Pastor Mark DeYmaz of Mosaic Church in Little Rock, Arkansas), and religious freedom (by Os Guinness). These were each engaging, even inspired, talks, but it was difficult to make the connection to the multi-faith conversation.

It soon became clear that the conference was driven from start to finish by the dynamic Roberts, the networker's networker. He kept noting how this odd mélange of participants were his personal friends whom he loved deeply—and the feeling seemed universally mutual. Many a speaker noted how hard they found it to turn down Roberts's invitation to this event, many coming at their own expense and foregoing honorariums to be there. So the forum was more a conversation between the friends of Bob Roberts on multi-faith issues—and a few other issues thrown in for good measure.

This is not a criticism as much as a fact. This conference would have never been pulled together without Roberts's charisma. That it wasn't comprehensive and was sometimes off-topic might be expected of a "first-of-its-kind event." Such was the talk among the speakers, who also praised Roberts's courage for hosting it. In fact, Roberts received a lot of pushback from some in his congregation and community. Given the current climate of evangelical-Muslim relations (although Jews were included, the conversation between Christians and Muslims dominated), it felt new, risky and boundary-pushing. Evangelicals often gather to better evangelize Muslims, but not to listen to them.

And this is where tension was felt all weekend. Roberts repeated often his desire not to compromise his faith, but attenders kept wondering if merely participating in such an event—where mutual understanding was the key note—was to compromise. The basic premise of the forum is a good one: To love the neighbor means we must really listen to and get to know the neighbor. That means we need to start not by trying to convert the neighbor but by trying understand him or her, engaging in two-way conversations characterized by mutual respect and a refusal to manipulate or coerce.

But of course, as soon as you set up those guidelines, it becomes very difficult to evangelize as such. That was made apparent in the gentle teasing by Roberts throughout the conference, like when he told Prince Turki that he was filling the baptistery for him. The twinkle in his eye and the laughter the line provoked suggested that while Roberts would really like to see the Prince converted, we all knew that was never going to happen.

So, when you set up a conversation in which conversion is never a real possibility, and yet in which genuine and respectful love is clearly evident—well, is it an event worthy of an evangelical's time? That's the question that evangelicals need to be asking in the next decade or so. We are going to have to figure out how to live with Muslims in peaceful co-existence on an increasingly small planet, but we still have a command from Jesus to share the gospel with them.

I suspect Roberts's experiment will slowly catch on, because in the end, we may have no choice. The old evangelistic model—one-way communication framed by the effort to persuade—seems increasingly manipulative in the modern world. Instead, Roberts is trying to reimagine evangelism by (paradoxically) initially taking the Great Commission off the table and first working on the Great Commandment: listening to and serving those of other faiths. Roberts, in fact, says he has the most "incredible" (his word) theological, even evangelistic, conversations in private with friends of other faiths. Surely he has gained entrance into their lives because of his generous spirit.

To many evangelicals, Roberts's work feels as if it might be compromising evangelical faith. Then again, you have to wonder what has happened to our faith when we think that loving people in a way that makes them feel loved makes us think we have stopped following Jesus.

Mark Galli is senior managing editor of Christianity Today, and author of Jesus Mean and Wild: The Unexpected Love of an Untameable God, and the forthcoming: Chaos and Grace: Discovering the Surprising Work of the Holy Spirit. He was one of the speakers at the Global Faith Forum.

Wireless Clothes Hanger

Taken from Kaaskrul. It's a pun on wireless technology. The caption says: "Bessy wasn't too impressed with her new wireless clothes line." Perhaps because some research suggests that wireless technology does damage to trees? (Yeah yeah, i know, there's other research stating the exact opposite!)

Guest post: Surfing the Digital Tsunami

This article is written by Mynhardt van Pletzen. I think it is a good contribution. You can read the original HERE.

I register on everything.

I have a obsessive compulsive streak to apply for every beta release, subscribe to every newsletter and join every new social network. Combining this with a mild case of attention deficit disorder, makes for the very real possibility of me drowning daily in a sea of digital bits flooding my screens at any given moments.

Naturally, I need some kind of strategy to effectively navigate this tsunami of information and connection that finds its way to all my different devices and electronic portals, no matter where or when I find myself.

So, without further ado, here is a simple list of my top 5 digital stops, annotated with their specific purpose, whether I use it to take from or contribute to the digital community, and listed according to average time spent on site:

1. Google is where I work [more contributing than taking]
2. Twitter is where I play [more taking than contributing]
3. My blog is where I teach [contributing]
4. Kindle is where I learn [taking]
5. Facebook is where I connect [contributing]

Its that simple.

I try to keep the boundaries more or less in place, so that although there might be some overlapping, it will not become overwhelming.

So, have you thought about this before? How does it work for you?

MIDWEEK DEVOTION: Sick and Tired 4 (Final)

Written by Andries Combrink of Centurion West Presbyterian Church.

Renewable Energy
When we grow weary, we often fall into depression. It’s so easy to be negative and critical when you are tired, and at the same time feel defenceless and loose reasonable perspective. When you are exhausted, its so easy to feel sorry for yourself. You become like the man who had both an identity crisis and energy crisis. He didn’t know who he was, but was too tired to find out.

But what can we do about it? We need a renewable source of energy. We need to grow strong again.
Isaiah says: (Isa 40: 31) "Yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength: They will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary."

"Those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength." The contrast here is between the vulnerability of a weary person and the vigour of a waiting believer. We wait for the Lord because we trust him and walk by faith. Literally, the word for “wait” has the connotation of "to bind" or "to braid." The idea is to braid ourselves together with the Lord. To wait upon the Lord may be the Old Testament equivalent of faith in the New Testament. To wait on the Lord means that we seek his presence earnestly, while waiting patiently and expectantly for his answers.

The promise to those who wait upon the Lord, is that they shall renew their strength. The original word for “renew” means that the Lord shall "exchange" their weakness for his strength. As we draw nearer to God, waiting upon him expectantly in faith and trusting in him as our resource, he will impart his strength to us.

Paul expresses this same idea in 2 Corinthians 4:16 where he says, "Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day." In Jesus Christ, our inner man can be renewed everyday as we effect our faith in him. And spiritual renewal makes it easier to truly rest emotionally and physically as well.

We must give top priority to our daily relationship of quietly being with the Lord, listening to him and submitting to his will and way with our lives. We cannot allow anything to rob us of this renewable spiritual energy. It is in these daily times of drawing upon God’s resources that we are given the strength to live for him. If we want to face our circumstances victoriously, we must spend time patiently waiting upon the Lord. This is how we receive his renewable strength.

Are you, here at the end of the year, in desperate need to renew your strength? Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Prayerfully ponder. Focus. Braid yourself with him. And Christ will give you strength.

Email Etiquette as seen by Oatmeal

Go check this site: www.theoatmeal.com

Ministry Trends

John Ortberg was involved with a Catalyst Conference in the US of A and after the experience he blogged about some insights he garnered through his participation. He listed five prominent changes he observed:

- "Emerging Church" is not the trend for innovative churches any longer. While this is fading fast, the conversation about and rethinking of the church as missional community, together with justice is starting to shape ecclesiology.

- It would seem that American church leaders are still confused about the role women have to play in the church. They have difficulty in understanding ministry from the perspective of gitfedness rather than gender roles. I think it is a question in South Africa as well.

- High quality in small groups emerged as a critical challenge in congregational ministry. It is one thing to have lots of small groups, but for small groups to be the vehicle for spiritual growth and one-another care seems just the crisis.

- In America, evangelical churches (i.m.h.o. nondenominational churches who mixed pentecostal and mainline theology into a individualistic American version of being the church) are now mainline and mainline are forgotten. But, to the mind of non-churched Americans, evangelical churches - mainline or not - are marginal to contemporary culture. I don't think that is such a bad thing. It only reiterates the church's return to the positions it held in the early years of its history, before Christianity was accepted as state religion.

- The last one is the most insightful: "New church leaders, who once learned mainly from denominations, and then learned from large flag-ship churches, are increasingly learning from high-profile individuals through social media." Facebook and Twitter are forever changing the way we learn from each other? Thanks for the insight John!

Just Humour Me!

Thanks to Tim Walburg at Toonfever.

AFRIKAANS POETRY: Dowwe Glas

Ek begryp hierdie lewe

net deur ‘n dowwe glas –

opgerook met nuttelose sorge,

vuilgevat en wanhopig.

Die ander kant praat wasig,

en stormsterkte onbegrip

vol dooie gebedstiltes

ratel verward die panele van

my halwe insig rond.

Elke dag weer probeer ek kyk

deur hierdie dowwe waas,

en hoop halsstarrig

dat ek uiteindelik iets

van God sal sien.

AFRIKAANS POETRY: Bitter Pil

'n Lewe alleen -
geskerf
en ontneem
van hoop -
in 'n wêreld
vol stryd,

is wanhopig
aan 't klou,
aan 't pleit,
aan 't droom.

Jy het gekies
en ek moes mee.

Dis 'n bitter pil
en ons albei sluk
hom stik-stik af,
morsel vir morsel ...

MESSAGE FROM AN EX-CHRISTIAN

BACKGROUND

I personally know the writer of this article. He is a highly intelligent thinker from a solid background. If he writes something like this, I tend to take it seriously. Therefore, if you want leave a comment, please do so, but in a spirit of respect and integrity. I will delete any belittling comments or personal attacks. Having said this, I URGE YOU TO TAKE PART IN THIS VERY IMPORTANT DISCUSSION. I protect his identity to facilitate this conversation without any prejudice (in case you get some urge to Google him or something ... :-) )

Dear reader

Some context for this post is in order:
• Your blog master Guillaume and I shared a university residence in the late 1980’s.
• At the time, I was convinced that my soul had been saved from eternal damnation by Jesus Christ. As a direct result, I was active in many (formal and informal) Christian activities. It would be fair to say that I was a fervent believer in and a fairly radical follower of Jesus.
• Since then, my beliefs have changed dramatically. I have an open mind around the possible existence of God, at least in the sense of a prime mover but potentially even in a more personal sense. However, if God does exist, I think it’s highly unlikely that he (used interchangeably with “she”) resembles the God described in Christianity.

Guillaume has asked that I post an explanation of the evolution (my insincere apologies for the choice of phrase ☺) of my beliefs. His hope is that this will be useful as you consider the role and relevance of the Christian church. I’m not convinced that this post will achieve that objective, since my arguments against the Christian God are (largely) independent of the church and how it operates. However, I do hope that this post will at least provide some interesting / stimulating food for thought. So here goes…

Christian mythology tells a story that appeals perfectly to certain deeply routed human insecurities and aspirations. As a result, the Christian story “sells” very easily to those that are prone to these fears and ambitions (most of humanity falls into this category). For as long as such individuals are willing to at least partially suspend their critical faculties, this (largely emotional) Christian appeal is
sufficient to maintain belief.

The problem, however, is that key elements of the Christian story are fundamentally incompatible with what I call “moral logic”. As a result, the story does not hold up under a critical analysis. The resulting tension in the heart, mind and soul of the believer can only be resolved by either:

* Suppressing truly critical thought (this is essentially “faith” of the blind or child-like variety),
* Modifying key elements of the Christian story (this is essentially “cheating”), or
* Relinquishing the Christian faith (this is, in my mind, the only morally consistent option).

In what follows, I elaborate on some of the key points in this argument for non acceptance of the Christian view of the world.

What are the key elements of the Christian story?

The summary below highlights the key tenets that a Christian is expected to believe. Note that there is no reference here to many other biblical elements (such as, for example, the ten commandments) since these do not, in my view, constitute the core of Christianity.
1. There is only one God.
2. God is omnipotent, omniscient, infinitely wise and the creator of everything.
3. God has three components or aspects: the father, the son (Jesus Christ) and the holy spirit.
4. The fundamental reason why God created humans (and the rest of the universe) is to glorify God.
5. There would be no point in creating humans who have no choice but to glorify God.
6. God therefore gave humans free will – the choice to do either good (which ultimately comes down to glorifying God) or evil.
7. Through no fault of God, the first humans chose to do evil.
8. As a result, all humans were “sentenced” to eternal damnation (the wages of sin are death).
9. Every human is therefore, from birth, subject to eternal damnation by default.
10. No human can save him or herself from eternal damnation.
11. A major sacrifice is required in order to save a human from eternal damnation.
12. Because God loves humanity, he allowed his son Jesus Christ to assume a human form and then to be sacrificed to save humanity.
13. The only way for any human being to be saved from eternal damnation is to admit his sinfulness, ask God for forgiveness / redemption, and accept Jesus as his personal saviour.
14. While there is no further requirement for salvation, it is expected that the Christian (in light of his miraculous salvation) will strive to do good and avoid evil.
15. At a point in time, God will judge humanity (the end of the world as we know it).
16. Those who chose to accept Jesus will spend eternity in heaven with God.
17. Those who have not been saved by Jesus (for whatever reason) will suffer eternal damnation.

Note that this belief system is fundamentally radical. This is no surprise – any Christian is, by definition, a follower of Jesus Christ, and it is blatantly evident, even from a cursory reading of his statements (assuming that the biblical record in this regard is at least reasonably accurate), that he was a radical. There are individuals who call themselves Christians but choose to ignore many of Jesus’ more radical views. In my view, this is a form of “cheating” as described above, and in what follows I will therefore only deal with a pure / radical interpretation of Christianity.

Why does the Christian story appeal so strongly to many people?

1. It addresses our fear of the unknown (and especially death).
2. It allows us to feel that we have a personal relationship with God.
3. It appeals to our conscience (i.e. our natural sense of guilt around our mistakes / sins).
4. It appeals (at least partly) to our sense of justice (i.e. evil people will be punished).
5. It makes us feel special (especially compared to those evil non-believers).
6. It helps us deal with pain / problems in this world (by promising a better world to come).

Note that I do not refer to the positive impact that Christianity may have on society in the broader sense. Christians may argue that their belief system, when shared by most or all members of a given community, helps members of that community interact in a more orderly and well mannered fashion. While this argument has some validity, this is not a unique or core feature of Christianity –
many other religions or belief systems can play (and have played) this role for different communities.

What are the key rules of moral logic in the context of a fundamental belief system / religion?

1. Big picture consistency. Any fundamental belief system or religion should make sense at the level of the individual and also of humanity as a whole. In addition, given that we are fundamentally talking about God, this belief system should also make sense when considered at a cosmic level (both in space and in time).
2. Fairness. Any fundamental belief system should inherently be fair, particularly at the level of the individual. Fairness here incorporates a sense of appropriate reward (for doing good things) and punishment (for doing bad things). In addition, fairness also incorporates a sense that the expectations of what any individual should do (or not do) must be reasonable, i.e. that such expectations should recognise the knowledge, abilities and circumstances of the individual.
3. No avoidable harm / suffering. Any fundamental belief system should, to the greatest extent possible, aim to avoid any harm to living (and perhaps even inanimate) beings.

How does the Christian story break these rules?

1. The big picture around Christianity just doesn’t make sense. Both from the perspective of space (given the scale of the universe) and of time (eternity is a very long time), the concept of humanity as God’s crowning achievement doesn’t ring true. The idea that God is waiting for the moment when a select group of saved humans will forever sing his praises (while the rest of humanity suffers eternal damnation) is so small-minded that I am inclined to think that God (if he / she exists) would find it downright demeaning.
2. Christianity isn’t fair. In fact, it is decidedly unfair in many respects. A God who claims credit for everything good and then delegates responsibility for everything bad to (some / all) humans isn’t worthy of the title. In similar vein, the idea that all newborn babies are (by default and unless saved) evil and worthy of eternal damnation, or that certain individuals are created for the day of damnation sounds like something from a B-grade horror movie.
3. The supposedly loving Christian God seems unbelievably callous when it comes to human pain and suffering. I simply fail to understand why an omnipotent creator would make such a mess of the world we live in. In what way exactly is God glorified by the brutal rape of a baby or grandmother? Or by the suffering of millions of hungry children living in squalor? I know humans who, given omnipotence and a bit of time, could create a better world.
These criticisms may appear simplistic and perhaps even simple-minded. I believe, however, that their simplicity fundamentally unmasks Christianity as a myth. It is, in my view, unnecessary to debate the usual “big questions” around, for example, the legitimacy of the theory of predestination or the compatibility of Christianity and a scientific world view – a much simpler set of arguments is
more than sufficient to show that Christianity just doesn’t make moral sense.

What are the options for dealing with the moral inconsistencies in the Christian story?

1. Blind faith. It is not surprising that faith is emphasised so strongly in conventional Christian teaching. For those with a child-like ability to simply suspend their disbelief and ignore the fundamental moral inconsistencies in Christianity this is certainly an option. I do not fall into this category. Furthermore, there is a real danger in this approach, which has led to unbelievable human pain and suffering throughout history. The parallels between this kind of faith and the brainwashing of ordinary German people by the Nazis (“just believe me when I tell you that all Jews are inherently evil sub-humans and ignore any obvious evidence to the contrary”) are downright scary.
2. Cheating. Many “Christians” twist or re-interpret Christianity in order to reconcile the glaring inconsistencies in the Christian story with the maintenance of their sanity. These individuals choose to ignore or de-emphasise many of Jesus’ more radical utterings (it seems rather likely that the eye of the needle will be clogged with rich “Christians” struggling to find a way through). Personally, I have no serious moral objections to this approach. However, this kind of Christianity is not relevant here – to paraphrase Jesus’ own words, this kind of “lukewarm” Christianity is not Christianity at all.
3. Saying no thank you. With apologies to Mr Holmes: when you have eliminated all the options that simply do not make sense, you have to accept whatever is left.

Ultimately, religion is an intensely personal issue. I cannot begin to claim any right to decide on behalf of any individual what fundamental belief system he / she should adopt. For me, however, the Christian world view is incompatible with my own sense of moral logic. If there is a God, I believe that Christianity (along with several other fundamental / radical religions) portrays a false view of God, and has the potential to lead large sections of humanity dangerously astray.

This article also appears on the website www.gks.org.za.

Midweek Devotion: Sick and tired (3)

Written by Andries Combrink of Centurion West Presbyterian Church

Losing perspective when we are weary

We all run out of energy sometimes and have to face the problem of being weary. Last week we saw that when we become weary, we are defenceless against the enemy. We are like a vulnerable sheep to the wolf.

But we also lose our proper perspective when we are weary. The best. known Bible story to illustrate this is found in Genesis 25:29-34. Its the story of Esau selling his birthright. Notice why he sold it: Because he was famished! He was starved, he was wanting, yes, he was in physical need!
"And when Jacob had cooked stew, Esau came in from the field and he was famished; and Esau said to Jacob, ‘Please let me have a swallow of that red stuff there, for I am famished.’... But Jacob said, ‘First sell me your birthright.’ And Esau said, ‘Behold, I am about to die; so of what use then is the birthright to me?’ And Jacob said, ‘first swear to me;’ so he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew; and he ate and drank, and rose and went on his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright."

It was because Esau was physically exhausted, weary and hungry, that he sold his birthright and lost his proper perspective, and so can we.
Take Note that weariness makes you to pay more attention to your physical and emotional needs, than to your spiritual needs. If you are sick and tired, you usually are more inclined to “looking through physical eyes.”
Because Esau was famished, he could not see what was really important any more, and missed out on the blessing of God.

Even in the Lord’s Prayer Jesus allows us to pray for bread, before we ask for the forgiveness of our sins. Jesus knows that a famished person can hardly think of sins, temptations and forgiving his neighbour. We need bread, our most basic physical needs met, in order to gain proper perspective on our spiritual health.

What we really need is spiritual vision. Jesus also quoted Moses in saying that “man cannot live form bread alone, but from every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord!” We desperately need bread, rest, health and to be physically relaxed. Then we will have the energy and the perspective to repent, to forgive and to seek the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, knowing that we will receive everything else from the Lord we serve. We need to learn how to rest by to trust and obey.

When we grow weary, we tend to lose our proper perspective on God’s reality. But even when I am sick and tired, I must remember that God is still on the throne. We need to see that. We need to know and believe that!

If you are weary, you are more inclined to “looking through physical eyes.” Yet it remains the best time to learn how to rest by to trust and obey.