Live on purpose

An Unguarded Strength is a Double Weakness In a devotional from My Utmost for His Highest , Oswald Chambers talks about an unguarded strength being a double weakness. I first heard this idea in a sermon at Quest Community Church many years ago and jotted it down in my "write a blog about this someday" list. I guess today is finally someday. I have thought about it many times over the years, about what exactly it means for a strength to be a double weakness. Chambers explains it as "where the least likely temptations will be effective in sapping strength" and points out the people in the Bible usually stumbled over their strong points, not their weak ones. There are a few ways I see this could happen in our lives. As humans, we seem to have an innate ability to take something benign and use it for evil (think the wonder of the internet, used for child pornography). So why would it be farfetched that we can take something we are great at - a strength - and do the same...

If Silence is Golden is Empathy Platinum? We have all heard of the Golden Rule, probably the most common version being Jesus’ words in Matthew 7:12, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” This maxim is seen in multiple religions, and at face value is an ideal way to treat others. And while not questioning the original spirit of the phrase, I have to admit, when I have heard it restated as “Treat others the way you want to be treated,” as it often is, it has never really set well with me. I couldn’t quite put my finger on exactly why, I just knew my social work radar went off when I heard it. Recently I went through the cultural diversity training for my new job and they talked about the Platinum Rule, “Do unto others as they themselves would have done unto them.” This was a new term to me, as it may be to you, and immediately sounded better to my social work ear. Through some research, I found the name was first coined by Milton Bennett in his 1979 book, Basic Concepts of...