Wisdom for Your Weekend is your regular installment of what we’ve been reading (and watching) around the web. Presented to you by Chris Pappalardo, with guidance from Pastor J.D., this is our attempt to reflect Proverbs 9:9: “Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be still wiser; teach a righteous man, and he will increase in learning.”
While we do not always agree with everything these authors post, we share these resources because we find them challenging and enriching. As we often say around the Summit, “Eat the fish and spit out the bones.”
Articles of the Week
Democrats Shouldn’t Be so Certain About Abortion, Michael Wear. Most Democratic voters have a nuanced view of abortion. They tend to be opposed to late-term abortions. They would accept more restrictions on abortion. A surprising number are, in fact, unashamedly opposed to elective abortion. Not so the Democratic Party’s presidential candidates, who are lock-set in their absolute commitment to elective abortion—for any reason, at any time. Michael Wear (who served Barack Obama during his two terms) encourages the current candidates to shift more toward what average Democrats actually believe. For those of us who see elective abortion as an atrocity, this is, at least, a small step in the right direction.
Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think, Arthur C. Brooks. This Atlantic article is a longer feature, so get cozy before you dive in. But please do dive in! Moses said that it was wise to “number our days,” (Psalm 90:12) and what is true of our lives is true of our careers as well. You aren’t going to live and work forever. The sooner you act like you believe that, the better your professional career will be.
Love Through the Awkward, Rachel Dinkledine. This title is essentially my life slogan. I love how Dinkledine approaches the reality of awkwardness—as an incomplete aspect of the truth. Because of sin, our lives are characterized by all kinds of relational dissonance. Awkwardness is a low-grade version of this dissonance, and while it is a small obstacle, it is a real one. Jesus reckoned with the awkwardness of broken humanity. And if we love as he did, we will, too.
Trump’s Message: Love It or Leave It, with a Bigoted Edge, Ross Douthat. When running for president, candidate Trump insisted that the United States was in shambles. Now two years into office, President Trump insists that he has restored the U.S. to its former greatness. Douthat recognizes in this the classic paradox of being a nationalist: Problems that bring a person to power can’t be problems once that person is in charge. As Douthat writes, “This [nationalist] spirit infuses the strange-but-predictable spectacle of Trump, just over two years removed from a campaign that constantly emphasized his country’s failings, railing against a squad of left-wing congresswomen for their own criticisms of America and demanding that they go back to the foreign countries whence three of them did not in fact arrive.”
Living in the Bodies We Have and Not the Ones We Don’t, Lore Ferguson Wilbert. “To live in these bodies, the bodies we have, and to not constantly pursue the bodies we don’t have, is our spiritual act of worship. To offer these bodies as living sacrifices—not to burn on some altar for which there is no longer any need, but to live, truly live in sacrificial and embodied ways, this is worship. To submit to the bodies we have, and not the bodies we simply want, is to acknowledge that God is God and we are not. It is to acknowledge that He is sovereign and we are created. It is to reckon with the reality that every person on earth is living a difficult friendship with the bodies they’ve been given, the stories they inhabit, the genetics they’ve inherited, the systemic issues they bear in their bloodlines.”
On the Lighter Side
Bible Verse Lady on the DC Talk Cruise, John Crist. You may have missed the June 2019 Jesus Freak Cruise. But when the reunion cruise comes back around, you’ll be ready.
