Become more thankful by “mental subtraction”

We can increase our feeling of gratitude by reflecting on what our world would be like without those things we cherish the most. In New Happiness Strategy: Mentally subtract the positive from your life published at PsychologyToday.com, Ryan M. Niemiec describes a technique for mentally removing the best things from our lives and visualizing what we would lack without them. Niemiec observes that this “back-door intervention for boosting gratitude” can help us rediscover “the myriad of good people in our life, the many little (and big) accomplishments we have had, and the many freedoms that exist in our country.”

Paul wrote, “In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” (1 Thess. 5:18, KJV).

The Meaning of Love

When Jesus instructed His disciples to love one another, He employed the Greek term agapaō, which is translated as love over 135 times in the New Testament of the King James Version. Jesus said, “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another” (John 13:34).

The English word for love does not have the same degree of precision as the Greek term Jesus used. Agapao is a verb which means do caring things, or act caringly.

Vine observes, “Christian love, whether exercised toward the brethren, or toward men generally, is not an impulse from the feelings, it does not always run with the natural inclinations, nor does it spend itself only upon those for whom some affinity is discovered. Love seeks the welfare of all, Rom. 15:2 , and works no ill to any, 1 Cor. 13:8-10; love seeks opportunity to do good to ‘all men, and especially toward them that are of the household of the faith,’ Gal. 6:10.” (citing Notes on Thessalonians, by Hogg and Vine, p. 105).

John, who penned Jesus’ words in John 13:34, later wrote, “But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:17-18).

Love is a caring attitude that has moved into compassionate action.

The Value of Genealogy in the Bible

It could be tempting to pass quickly over chapters like Genesis 5, Genesis 10 or Matthew 1, when encountering their lengthy lists of names. As pointed out by Wayne Jackson in an article in The Christian Courier titled The Importance of Messianic Genealogy, these catalogs of family lineage held important social, religious and spiritual significance. The Christian Courier is “a journal dedicated to the study of religious doctrine, Christian evidences, and biblical ethics associated with the churches of Christ.”

Noah and the Great Flood

With another big-screen production of Noah and the Flood about to be released, it is likely questions will arise regarding the faithfulness of the dramatic expression in film to the original biblical account recorded in Genesis 6 through 9. It is not uncommon for productions using Bible characters or events to take liberty with or strain the biblical account or setting for effect, as noted in these observations about the series The Bible. How much leeway should be allowed for artistic expression of a biblical account?

One of the features of the story of the Great Deluge of Noah that is often questioned or lost in portrayal is that the flood waters “prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered” (Gen. 7:19).

Henry Morris provides a summary of biblical and scientific reasons Why Christians Should Believe in a Global Flood in this article published by the Institute for Creation Research. Dr. Morris co-authored an extensive work on this subject, The Genesis Flood, with John Whitcomb.

Jesus the Carpenter

Jesus grew up as the son of Joseph the carpenter, and was trained in that field of work. Mark recorded the derogatory comments of Jesus’ critics: “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him” (Mark 6:3, KJV).

The Greek term for carpenter (tekton) referred generally to “any craftsman, but especially a worker in wood” (Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words). It has been observed that the emphasis in this term is not on the specific tasks being performed or materials used, but on the use of His hands to perform the work – it was a blue collar job.

The Hastings Dictionary of the New Testament contains this insight into the significance of Jesus’ activity as a carpenter:

“By His toil at the bench He has dignified and consecrated manual labour. We may derive the practical lesson expressed in Faber’s hymn, ‘Labour is sweet, for Thou hast toiled.’ Even more to us than St. Paul the tent-maker is Jesus the carpenter. He was not an Essene, holding Himself aloof from temporal affairs, but a true Son of Man, taking His part in the business of life. Before He preached the good tidings of the kingdom, He preached the gospel of work. The work that His Father had given Him to do was not the exceptional duty of the teacher, but the ordinary industry of the artisan. His first pulpit was the carpenter’s bench, and His first sermons were the implements and utensils He made for the country folk of Galilee.”

Debate about the Shape of Earth

Whatever your opinion on whether Christopher Columbus believed the world was flat, you will be engaged by thought-provoking material posted online for Dr. Bruce Railsback’s geology course at the University of Georgia – GEOL 1122 – Earth’s History of Global Change. The professor adds spice to the course with a transcript of a Debate about the Shape of the Earth. Here’s some help on the meaning of prolate spheroid.

The Bible affirms Earth is spherical. Isaiah wrote, “Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in” (Isaiah 40:21-22, KJV).

Earlier, Job had observed, “He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing“ (Job 26:7).

Ancient Nineveh and the Assyrians

The ancient city of Nineveh played a key role in several Old Testament story lines. The prophet Jonah was sent there. Its armies invaded the Promised Land in 2 Kings. Nahum prophesied its demise. In this piece by Gordon Franz on Nahum, Nineveh and Those Nasty Assyrians, at BibleArchaeology.com, Franz provides an extensive background to the Old Testament accounts, focusing on passages in Nahum.

The Associates for Bible Research produce biblearchaelogy.com. for the purpose of “demonstrating the historical reliability of the Bible through archaeological investigation and related apologetic investigation.”

Examining Paul’s Shipwreck in Acts 27 and 28

A gripping account of a shipwreck during Paul’s trek to Rome is recorded near the end of the Book of Acts. The event is carefully analyzed by Jefferson White in this excerpt: Apostle Paul’s Shipwreck: An Historical Examination of Acts 27 and 28, which provides insight from ancient nautical and meteorological narratives and other sources. The material on the site is a chapter from White’s more extensive work, Evidence and Paul’s Journey’s: An Historical Investigation into the Travels of the Apostle Paul, which affirms: “The Acts account of Paul’s journeys is as reliable as we may expect history to be. So far as it can be tested by objective evidence, Acts has proven to be an astonishingly accurate record of events.”

Paul later wrote: “Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep“ (2 Cor. 11:25).

Ghost town for sale – Uptop, Colorado

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has a photo gallery of a ghost town for sale in Colorado. The small town of Uptop was once a thriving mining town, then a popular destination for skiers. Today, the lonely little village – including its empty chapel – is for sale for the sum of $2 million. Perhaps it will again be filled with activity, but the scene reminds us of the brevity of life.

Paul wrote, “For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out” (1 Tim. 6:7).

Re-thinking the Milgram Obedience Experiment

Reflecting on the fiftieth anniversary of the Milgram Obedience Experiment (in which subjects were instructed to apply seemingly-painful shock treatments to victims being held in another area of their testing facility), John M. Grohol goes deeper into the ethics of the study in his article Psychology Secrets: People Aren’t as Evil as the Milgram Obedience Experiment Suggested. While the study nevertheless continues to support the suggestibility of many to apparent authority figures, perhaps Grohol’s report could be subtitled (based on the material that has come to light about the methods used in the study): “Researchers Aren’t Always as Ethical as Presumed.”

Both sides of the report illustrate in part the need to think reflectively about assertions of truth, no matter who makes them. This concept is taught and exemplified in the Bible:

1 John 4:1: “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.”

Acts 17:11: “These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.”