Surely you must have heard this before: Be more positive! Not that most of us don’t already know that life feels better when we have a smile on our face. But sometimes it’s hard, or so we are quick to conclude, to smile. When we’re overworked, tired, sick, out of luck, genuinely unhappy, lost or just feeling lousy for no good reason at all.
We think: First something good has to happen to me, so I have something to smile about. Right?
Well, not necessarily. Actually, let me be clearer: Not really, no.
During my Health Coaching studies at Atlanta’s Emory University one of the many requirements of this intense educational training program was the study, discussion and active implementation of some of Barbara L. Fredrickson’s scientific findings in regards to positive psychology. As future change agents it was deemed immensely important that we understood the profound power of positive emotions.
Barbara L. Fredrickson, Ph.D. is Kenan Distinguished Professor of Psychology and principal investigator of the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (A quite beautiful place by the way.) More so she is generally seen as the leading scholar in regards to positive psychology. In short: When it comes to the power of positive emotions she knows her stuff!
What is great about her scientific work is that she has encouraging news for her fellow humans: POSITIVITY, heartfelt positivity that is, is one of the most powerful emotions we can feel.
And for the ones of you who are tempted to give this more thought, there is more: Fredrickson compiled her findings in a truly easy to read book 'POSITIVITY' - 'Top-Notch Research Reveals the Upward Spiral That Will Change Your Life' that is not only entertaining and informative, but quite simply a practical tool-box for all of us who like to get a better grip of life; by my experience something of a priority for most people in midlife and beyond.
What an eye-opener her findings were for me! Although some of the experiences seemed familiar, as for the most part, I have always been a quite positive person. Nevertheless, as even I found out, there is much more POSITIVITY to be experienced, and even more so, much more powerful goodness and happiness to be intentionally generated, if one knows how to make positivity work for oneself.
To do so, the author shares with us the tried and proven “tricks” of how to live a positivity-filled life by making some or all of the strategies part of our routine, like ‘finding positive meaning’ or ‘savor goodness’. And trust me, when I say that the way she suggests we savor goodness is so much more powerful than I ever even dared to reward myself with before her encouragement to do so. And powerful it is!
Besides providing the readers of her book with a set of strategies for the proper pursuit of POSITIVITY, Professor Fredrickson also shares a number of tools that we can use to create the very platform on which we can then apply the strategies for a much more positive way of life for ourselves and others around us.
Lastly, especially for the ones of us, who appreciate an honest evaluation of ourselves every once and a while, there are a number of positivity tests within the book (also opportunities for a before-and-after self-evaluation) that the readers can take during her guided journey to a more positivity-filled life.
In any case, I really benefited from learning about the science behind positive emotions, and I thought you deserve to know about this easy to read scientific page-turner, too.
Finally, in case you’re interested, you will find more detailed information about this book here.
“Most American parents are completely confused and going utterly in the wrong direction,” Sax said. “There’s a collapse of understanding what parenting involves.”
In his book, Sax offers a scenario in which parents and a 6-year-old child, who had a sore throat, came into his office. When he said, “Next I’m going to take a look at your throat,” the mother asked for the child's permission, saying, “Do you mind if the doctor looks in your throat for just a second, honey? Afterward we can go and get some ice cream.”
That led to the child refusing to have the doctor look in her throat to do the strep test and the child having to be restrained to get the test accomplished.
“It’s not a question,” Sax said. “It’s a sentence: ‘Open up and say, 'Ahh.'' Parents are incapable of speaking to their children in a sentence that ends in a period,” he said. “Every sentence ends in a question mark.”
Some parenting experts told adults that they should offer their children choices instead of telling them what to do and parents believed them, he said.
The hierarchy of parent over child no longer exists, he said. Instead of parents exercising their authority because they know what’s best, they are focusing on making children happy and boosting their self-esteem.
“They now see their job as facilitating whatever a kid wants to do,” he said.
Instead, Sax said, a parent's job is to teach children right from wrong, teach them the meaning of life and keep their children safe.
“In doing that job, you’re going to do a lot of things a child won’t approve of and not understand,” he said. Sometimes, you have to be the bad guy.
According to Sax, parents should focus on helping children develop skills such as self-control, humility and conscientiousness, meaning they think of people other than themselves.
Those things are the biggest predictors of future success in adulthood, he said, not education or affluence.
Sax said this is a generation of parents who are spending more time with children than any previous generation. But instead of spending time at family meals, this generation is spending time shuttling children from one extracurricular activity to the next or spending time doing their work for them.
“It doesn’t help to spend more time with kids if they are spending it in the wrong ways,” Sax said.
In his book, Sax cites numerous research studies that found that a lack of parental authority is why obesity is on the rise, why more kids are on anti-anxiety and attention deficit disorder medication, why children are have a culture of disrespect, seem fragile, and why American children no longer lead the world in education.
He offered some solutions:
Have family meals at home and make that a top priority. “You have to communicate that our time together as a parent and child is more important than anything else,” he said. One study found that for each additional meal a family had together, the children were less likely to internalize problems such as anxiety or externalize problems such as skipping school. It also helped children develop good nutrition habits, lessening the obesity problem.
Take screens out of the bedroom. This includes cell phones, computers, TVs and video games. Kids are chronically sleep deprived, which leads to poor behavior and can even be the reason why kids are getting mental health diagnosis.
Put screens in public places and limit how they are used. This generation lives life in a virtual world. Online friends can quickly become more important than the friends children see in person. They don’t know how to communicate with someone face to face or have outside interests and hobbies. Video games also rewire the way their brains work. And what they post online never goes away. Install software like My Mobile Watchdog, which will share every photo that they take or post with you.
Teach humility. Give lessons that show children that they are not the most important people in the world. They need to be able to see the world through another lens and be able to handle rejection or failure. It really cannot be “everybody gets a trophy.”
Have an alliance between the school and you. If your child did something, don’t approach teachers or administrators with suspicion and distrust. “Parents swoop in like attorneys demanding evidence,” Sax said. Instead lessons of honesty and integrity should be enforced. That means that a brilliant kid who cheated takes the 0.
Parent what they do. No, your 14-year-old cannot go to a party with college students or to the beach for spring break. No, they will not be at parties where alcohol is served, and you will not be the one serving it. You have to think of worst-case scenarios like drinking and driving, alcohol poisoning and sexual assault, and know that these are not decisions that they are ready to make because they are not adults. They need an adult, and that’s you. And even if their peers’ parents are fine with something, you don’t have to be. “Other parents don’t have a clue at what they are doing,” Sax said. “That’s why what they are doing doesn’t have good outcomes.”
Some of those things, especially if they are new for your family, can be difficult and might be hard to enforce. Sax recommends persistence and commitment.
A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF AN EVANGELICAL MILLENNIAL THAT HAS NOT BEEN PROPERLY EQUIPPED BY THE CHURCH
By Henry Patino
(See article referenced below "How Evangelicals are Losing an Entire Generation")
There are good sentiments declared in this text but there are also quite mistaken notions. She said, "But when millennials look back, we see how far our society has come. Evangelicals have warned us against the allure of progressivism, but I’m here to say that we actually like the progress. We actually like that women are on their way to equal pay, we like that you can’t make a racist comment as a public figure and go unnoticed, and we like that there are more female theologians and teachers and professors than ever before in American history. So when you try to pull us back to the “good old days,” you’ll miss us."
That statement makes clear that she is mistaking Progressivism with the word progress. It was not the Progressivist movement that began the woman's suffrage movement but evangelical Christians. It was not the Progressivist movement that led the battle against black slavery, but the evangelical Christians. The problem i have with millennials is their lack of historical knowledge.
Progressivism is not some benign philosophy that promotes progress. It is a collectivist ideology based on atheistic premises. It shall regress religious rights. It shall regress the middle class. It shall bring upon families a tax burden that cannot allow them to proceed forward financially in the future. It will stagnate the economy and keep young people from finding jobs. It does so because their entire premise is the expansion of the Federal Government to give "free stuff." to myopic people that do not understand this: the government cannot give you anything it does not take from you first. The problem is that sooner or later you run out of people to take their money from then the entire citizenry is in one economic level while the oligarchy of the financial elite continue to rake in the billions in interest from the national debt. The IRS becomes their collector and each of us are nothing more than slaves for the elite in power. Socialism/progressivism is the fastest way to fleece the flock.
I would urge this young lady to read a bit of history in order to gain some perspective at the number of human beings that were killed by the Soviet Union and China during the collectivist Revolutions and afterwards as the eliminated any who would oppose their collectivist agenda.
But this is the fault of our generation. That young lady is an Evangelical Christian that has not been properly prepared to meet the lies of the Great Deceiver. WE DID NOT EQUIP HER WITH APOLOGETICS. She has not been taught the apologetics necessary to read through the lies that are being promoted by the Postmodernist/Progressivist agenda that is pushing for globalism. She is a typical example of why our churches have failed.
And she is correct, we are losing our young generation.
The morning hustle began as it always does on Friday mornings. I walked the dog, drank the coffee, cleaned the kitchen, and headed for the shower. My phone in my hand, I checked Twitter (you know, because I’m current and all). Usually, my Twitter feed is a conglomeration of Trinitarian debates, quotes by dead theologians, and cute dog pictures. But not this morning. This morning, I had no more than opened the app on my phone and there it was: Wayne Gruedem’s endorsement of Donald Trump.
Maybe you’re unfamiliar with Grudem, but most church leaders and many Christians are not. He wrote the basic systemic theology that has not only been touted among evangelicals as the primary source of Christian systematic theology for the modern day, but it is the 1200-page book that I was required to read in Bible school and seminary – not once, not twice, but three times. Grudem is the head of the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, a gathering of Christian leaders that believe in a particular model of gender roles that we call conservative Complementarianism, and work to see that vision come to life in homes, churches, and society. A leader among leaders, he is the Evangelical trump card (pun intended). And this morning he released an article titled, “Why Voting for Trump is a Morally Good Choice.”
Listen, I have been fairly silent on this site about my political views, but here they are: I was raised in a Republican home by politically-aware but not politically-obsessed parents. I was raised to believe that voting was a moral decision but to put my trust and hope ultimately in God and His coming Kingdom. Through college, I, like most, wavered between the social justice of the left and the conservatism of the right. Now, I’m just somewhere in between. I’m not politically passionate, though I’m learning to take interest in local politics. I would consider myself like my parents: politically-aware but not politically-obsessed. Seem fair?
This election has brought people like me, particularly millennials, out of the woodwork. We thought Trump was a bit of a harmless joke at first. With “you’re fired” still ringing in our ears, we thought his presence on the screen would be much shorter lived than his show, The Apprentice. I kept waiting for him to trail off, but he didn’t. In fact, he somehow, mysteriously to me, gained momentum and endorsements. Despite his racial generalizations and telling women they look good on their knees, he only grew in popularity. I moved from disappointed to shocked to disgusted as he garnered the approval of Republican and Evangelical leaders.
Over the last several months, I have lost respect for the Republican party, and I honestly thought that would be the biggest tragedy of this election. But the disappointing truth is this: I’m losing faith in Evangelicals.
And this is frightening. I am an Evangelical. I hold to Evangelical theology. I have attended not one, but two Evangelical schools. But I fear that we’re going to lose an entire generation because of the actions, words, and teachings of some Evangelicals. Including Wayne Grudem.
Different hierarchies of moralism
I have watched many Evangelicals endorse Donald Trump. But Grudem did not give an endorsement. No, he gave a moral imperative. Grudem’s article argues that it is morally constraining on the Christian person to vote for Donald Trump, particularly citing things like Trump’s upholding of religious rights for Christian schools and businesses, support of traditional marriage, and pro-life support of the rights of the unborn. Grudem dismisses accusations of Trump being a racist, anti-(legal) immigrant, and misogynistic. He feels Trump has been misunderstood, quoted out of context, and the victim of an unfair media.
What Grudem effectively does, then, is sets up a hierarchy of morality. He is willing to hold some moral values (religious rights for Christian schools and businesses, support of traditional marriage, and pro-life notions) above others (the equality of races, genders, and ethnicities). All are moral concepts, all require a moral stance, and Grudem has chosen which he prefers over others.
I know he is not alone in this hierarchical approach to morality. We all have things that we prioritize over others for no reason other than the way they effect and affect our lives. But Grudem has chosen to be old guard, predominantly upholding political issues that are less felt by our generation. Now, please don’t misunderstand, it’s not that we don’t think these things are important, but we are currently grappling with other moral imperatives that infiltrate the ebb and flow of our daily lives. Yes, we value the rights of the unborn, but we want leaders that are pro-life in all areas of society. Millennials feel the daily pangs of racial tension, a deep desire for equality for all, and a propensity toward the social justice issues surrounding the refugee crisis.
Evangelical leaders like Grudem are using their political and social weight on issues close to their generation, and are neglecting the moral imperatives to seek justice, peace, and equality for the Black community, the immigrant community, and the refugee community (and a slew of others). My generation will not identify with this. We cannot call a candidate “good,” as Grudem does with Trump, who has made racist remarks. We will not call a candidate “good” who has demoralized and dehumanized women on national television. We will not buy into the hierarchy of Grudem’s proposed morals over others. Because Grudem (and others) are making this hierarchy of morality intrinsically related to the Christian life and theology, we will not stand with them.
The “Good old days” vs. our days
Evangelicals are endorsing Trump by and large because he promises to return our nation to the “good old days.” Trump promises to bring back steel and coal, to return our country to an immigrant-free land, and, with gusto, he promises to make America the world super power it used to be. His campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” has deeply resonated with leaders across the spectrum.
But our generation doesn’t quite know what that means. Don’t forget, we grew up during war times. On September 11th, 2001, I was in eighth grade. When the war in Iraq started, I was in high school. Graduation came and many of my high school friends enlisted. I can still remember my friend, Kyle, telling me he had enlisted and feeling this overwhelming sense that we were far too young for all of this. These are the days in which we have grown up. We haven’t known the days of peace and tranquility that older generations reminisce about and desire to return to. It’s not that we don’t think things should change, it’s just that we don’t know a different way.
But war was not the only thing the separated the “good old days” from today in many leaders’ minds. There were many “benefits” of that by-gone era for those supporting a traditionalist view. Women were in the home raising the children without complaint, the Christian feminist movement hadn’t yet touched the churches and immensely inconvenienced pastors who had not had to grapple with these issues in a long time, and the notion of being politically correct wasn’t as demanding on conference speakers, writers, and preachers as it is today. When some Evangelicals look back, they see more tranquil days simply because these things were absent. But when millennials look back, we see how far our society has come. Evangelicals have warned us against the allure of progressivism, but I’m here to say that we actually like the progress. We actually like that women are on their way to equal pay, we like that you can’t make a racist comment as a public figure and go unnoticed, and we like that there are more female theologians and teachers and professors than ever before in American history. So when you try to pull us back to the “good old days,” you’ll miss us.
Nationalism and Christian worship
I remember arguing with a dear Christian friend of mine in college over whether or not he should vote. At the time, I was the student body vice president and we were on a mission to register every student to vote for the coming election (2008). Most students didn’t think much of it, except for one student who really pushed back at the notion of voting. I pulled out my best lines, my most passionate pleas, until he hit me with a one-liner I will never forget: “I am not voting right now because I’m trying to figure out if a Christian can also be a nationalist.”
I remember turning his words over in my mind. It was a very good question to grapple with, and yet one I had never considered. Since leaving college, I find that many (if not most) millennial Christians have answered the question with a resounding “no.” Now, don’t mistake me: most of us, to my knowledge, do not believe that voting and nationalism go hand-in-hand as my college friend once did. But you will be hard pressed to find a millennial nationalist outside of the Republican intern pool. Perhaps it is that international travel is more available to our generation, or that we are living in more diverse communities that celebrate that diversity, but we don’t think America is the only great country, and we certainly don’t think that America is a Christian country.
Evangelical leaders are not just supporting nationalism, but are elevating nationalism to a Christian virtue. Many point back to the founding fathers as Christian leaders in our nation and impress upon us that we must support the constitution and protect our country because it is a Christian thing to do. We have deeply muddied the language between serving our God and serving our country. Forget the martyrs of the faith around the world, posters show us that soldiers make the “ultimate sacrifice.” As Christian millennials, we just can’t buy this. We look over our shoulders at our nation’s history and wince a little. We don’t have a lot of national pride because we are waking up to the immense on-going racism that exists in our nation’s systems, the horrors of early American history, and the tragedies around the world that happen because every country has nationalists. So when you equate nationalism with Christian virtue, we’re out.
Evangelical leaders are going to lose an entire generation of Christians in the wake of our current political and social climate. This is not an article asking millennials to leave Evangelicalism because I believe it can’t be saved, nor is this article saying that Evangelicalism is dead. It also is not a proposal of a useful way forward in this “dumpster fire” of an election. It is a plea for reform. It is a big ask of Evangelical leaders to reevaluate the stakes they have put in the ground and ask if there could be a better, more truly Evangelical way. It’s a request to leaders in our communities to speak out against the evils that surround and are supported by Trump. Because you’re losing us, and we don’t want to be lost.
Win us back, and let’s complete the work ahead together.
To a man who lives unto God nothing is secular, everything is sacred. He puts on his workday garment and it is a vestment to him. He sits down to his meal and it is a sacrament. He goes forth to his labor, and therein exercises the office of the priesthood. His breath is incense and his life a sacrifice. He sleeps on the bosom of God, and lives and moves in the divine presence.
To draw a hard and fast line and say, “This is sacred and this is secular,” is, to my mind, diametrically opposed to the teaching of Christ and the spirit of the gospel. Paul has said, “I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself” [Romans 14:14]. Peter also saw a sheet let down from heaven in which were all manner of beasts and four-footed creatures, which he was bidden to kill and eat, and when he refused because they were unclean, he was rebuked by a voice from heaven, saying, “What God hath cleansed that call not thou common” [Acts 10:15; 11:9].
The Lord hath cleansed your houses, he has cleansed your bed chambers, your tables, your shops, he has made the bells upon your horses holiness to the Lord, he has made the common pots and pans of your kitchens to be as the bowls before the altar, if you know what you are and live according to your high calling. You housemaids, you cooks, you nurses, you ploughmen, you housewives, you traders, you sailors, your labor is holy if you serve the Lord Christ in it, by living unto him as you ought to live. The sacred has absorbed the secular.
Childhood trauma leads to lifelong chronic illness — so why isn’t the medical community helping patients?
When I was twelve, I was coming home from swimming at my neighbor’s dock when I saw an ambulance’s flashing lights in our driveway. I still remember the asphalt burning my feet as I stood, paralyzed, and watched the paramedics take away my father. It was as if I knew those flashing lights were a harbinger that my childhood was over.
At the hospital, a surgeon performed “minor” elective bowel surgery on my young dad. The surgeon made an error, and instead of my father coming home to the “welcome home” banners we’d painted, he died.
The medical care system failed my father miserably. Then the medical care system began to fail me.
At fourteen, I started fainting. The doctors implied I was trying to garner attention. In college I began having full seizures. I kept them to myself, fearful of seeming a modern Camille. I’d awaken on the floor drenched in sweat, with strangers standing quizzically over me. Then, I had a seizure in front of my aunt, a nurse, and forty-eight hours later awoke in the hospital with a pacemaker in my chest.
In my early forties I developed Guillain Barre Syndrome, a neurological autoimmune disorder that causes paralysis from the neck down. I found myself in Johns Hopkins Hospital, on the exact anniversary of my father’s death, in the same hospital wing where he had died, unable to move. I was a few days shy of turning forty-two, the very age at which my dad had passed away.
I recovered, only to relapse, falling paralyzed again. Many of my children’s early memories revolve around my bed, where we played board games and read books.
It wasn’t until I was fifty-one-years old that a physician sat me down and asked me the most important question of my life – one that would lead me to better health than I’d had for decades: “Were there any childhood traumas or stressors that might have contributed to the extreme level of inflammation you’re experiencing as an adult?”
My physician explained that ongoing adversity in childhood leads to a chronic state of “fight, flight or freeze.” Researchers at Yale had recently shown that when inflammatory stress hormones flood a child’s body and brain, they alter the genes that oversee our stress reactivity, re-setting the stress response to “high” for life. This increases the risk of inflammation, which manifests later in cancer, heart disease, and autoimmune diseases like mine.
As a science reporter I was shocked to discover that research linking childhood stress to adult illness began in 1996 with the Kaiser Permanente-CDC Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE Study). Since then, over 1500 peer-reviewed studies have replicated these findings.
The research was stunning. Two-thirds of Americans report experiencing Adverse Childhood Experiences. These include obvious sexual and physical abuse, but also stressors that many consider to be normal — growing up with divorced parents, living with a depressed or alcoholic mom or dad, having a parent who belittled or humiliated you – or simply not feeling as if your family had your back. People who’d experienced four such categories of childhood adversity were twice as likely to be diagnosed with cancer and depression as adults.
One statistic struck home with me: women who’d faced three types of childhood adversity had a sixty percent greater risk of being hospitalized with an autoimmune disease as an adult. Similar links existed between childhood stressors and adult heart disease, diabetes, migraines and irritable bowel disease. Suffering six categories of early life stress shortened one’s lifespan by twenty years.
However, one study of 125,000 patients showed that when physicians acknowledged and discussed patients’ childhood trauma openly, patients enjoyed a thirty-five percent reduction in doctor visits. Validating patient suffering invites patients to address it at last.
Yet, despite twenty years of research linking childhood stress to adult disease, the majority of the medical community acts as if these findings don’t exist.
This August, students will begin training in medical schools across the country. They will be expected to emerge with deep-rooted knowledge about how to help patients heal. But shockingly, only a few medical schools teach students about how childhood suffering influences adult disease. The majority of medical schools leave this science out. Perhaps they fear teaching it will open the door to bringing psychiatry into the exam room.
But shouldn’t physicians consider the whole patient – body and mind – so that they can suggest behavioral health tools that will alleviate both the root causes and the symptoms of disease? When physicians help patients come to the profound revelation that childhood adversity plays a role in the chronic illnesses they face now, they help them to heal physically and emotionally at last.
All disease is multifactorial. Past trauma is one of those factors. I can’t help but think of how my own story might have been different if the medical community had been trauma-aware. What if, after my father’s sudden death, the emotional cost of such a traumatic loss had been validated, and our medical system had offered therapeutic interventions?
It’s been two decades since the research linking childhood adversity to adult illness began. But think of how much money we might have saved in our health care system since then if we considered the role that past trauma plays in one’s current medical condition, instead of waiting a lifetime for it to show up in devastating and difficult to treat diseases that ruin lives for a second time.
According to the CDC, the annual health care cost of adult patients who have a history of early trauma is $124 billion a year. Validating patients’ past trauma isn’t only beneficial for their well being, it translates into fewer tests, procedures, and health care dollars spent.
Statistics tell us that two-thirds of Americans reading these words, including physicians, will recognize that experiences in their childhood still trail after them today, like small ghosts. Fortunately, medical science now recognizes manyproven interventions for recovering from trauma, even decades after events have occurred.
We are long overdue for a national awareness campaign — similar to public health initiatives on how seat belts save lives, smoking causes cancer, and hand washing prevents flu — to educate physicians and families on how childhood trauma begets adult illness. Only then can we help those who feel paralyzed by their pasts to achieve the healthy lives they deserve.
I believe in always going to the funeral. My father taught me that.
The first time he said it directly to me, I was 16 and trying to get out of going to calling hours for Miss Emerson, my old fifth grade math teacher. I did not want to go. My father was unequivocal. "Dee," he said, "you're going. Always go to the funeral. Do it for the family."
Nubar Alexanian
Deirdre Sullivan grew up in Syracuse, N.Y., and traveled the world working odd jobs before attending law school at Northwestern University. She's now a freelance attorney living in Brooklyn. Sullivan says her father's greatest gift to her and her family was how he ushered them through the process of his death.
So my dad waited outside while I went in. It was worse than I thought it would be: I was the only kid there. When the condolence line deposited me in front of Miss Emerson's shell-shocked parents, I stammered out, "Sorry about all this," and stalked away. But, for that deeply weird expression of sympathy delivered 20 years ago, Miss Emerson's mother still remembers my name and always says hello with tearing eyes.
That was the first time I went un-chaperoned, but my parents had been taking us kids to funerals and calling hours as a matter of course for years. By the time I was 16, I had been to five or six funerals. I remember two things from the funeral circuit: bottomless dishes of free mints and my father saying on the ride home, "You can't come in without going out, kids. Always go to the funeral."
Sounds simple — when someone dies, get in your car and go to calling hours or the funeral. That, I can do. But I think a personal philosophy of going to funerals means more than that.
"Always go to the funeral" means that I have to do the right thing when I really, really don't feel like it. I have to remind myself of it when I could make some small gesture, but I don't really have to and I definitely don't want to. I'm talking about those things that represent only inconvenience to me, but the world to the other guy. You know, the painfully under-attended birthday party. The hospital visit during happy hour. The Shiva call for one of my ex's uncles. In my humdrum life, the daily battle hasn't been good versus evil. It's hardly so epic. Most days, my real battle is doing good versus doing nothing.
In going to funerals, I've come to believe that while I wait to make a grand heroic gesture, I should just stick to the small inconveniences that let me share in life's inevitable, occasional calamity.
On a cold April night three years ago, my father died a quiet death from cancer. His funeral was on a Wednesday, middle of the workweek. I had been numb for days when, for some reason, during the funeral, I turned and looked back at the folks in the church. The memory of it still takes my breath away. The most human, powerful and humbling thing I've ever seen was a church at 3:00 on a Wednesday full of inconvenienced people who believe in going to the funeral.
“[T]he more serious a moderate Muslim gets about practicing his religion, the more ‘radicalized’ he will become,” he contended. “With those that look to the Bible, just the opposite happens. The core message of the Bible urges believers to love your neighbors as yourself, not cut their heads off. So the more a Christian or Jew gets serious about his biblical beliefs, and practices them, the more loving and godly they become.”
“Everyone agrees that any form of violence committed in the name of religion is a bad thing,” he told WND.
“It is another thing altogether to insist that every form of ‘religious extremism’ is an inherently bad thing. This would be to assume that every religion, at its foundation, is essentially the same and that the greatest danger to the world is when humans take their religion seriously. The simple fact of the matter is that whether we are speaking of Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, or David Koresh, every religion has its own very different founders and thus foundational principles.”
Richardson stressed the importance of divorcing the core doctrines of a faith from the problematic periods of its temporal history. He acknowledged “periods of darkness” when Christianity was “intermingled with state power and turned violent.”
However, he forcefully argues none of this was core to Christianity.
“Virtually all Christians agree … that such periods do not reflect the teachings and principles that Jesus taught,” he said.
“When we look at what is being carried out today in many parts of the world by Muslims however, it is a simple fact that much of the violence and bloodshed is simply a recapitulation of what was carried out by Muhammad and his closest successors, the first four Caliphs of Islam. If you doubt me, then I challenge you to read ‘The Biography of Muhammad’ by Ibn Ishaq and translated by Alfred Guillame, or ‘The Conquest of Syria’ by Imam Al-Waqiddi. The atrocities witnessed by the world these past few years carried out by ISIS or the Taliban are virtually identical to the things that were carried out by Muhammad’s earliest ‘rightly guided’ successors.”
Richardson believes Islamic and Christian “extremism,” if faithfully practiced, would lead to widely disparate outcomes.
“‘Extremism’ carried out by Muslims is quite different than ‘extremism’ carried out by those who actually follow the principles and teachings of Jesus,” he said. “Extreme examples of love for one’s enemies, or extreme examples of altruism are what the world needs far more of, not less. Oh that the whole earth would be engulfed by Christian extremism!”
Pamela Geller, a renowned activist against Islamic jihadism, WND columnist and author of “Stop the Islamization of America,” also held there is a critical distinction between Christian or Jewish “extremism” and Islamic “extremism.”
“Religious extremism is only toxic if the religion in question contains toxic teachings,” she told WND. “If someone is an extremely religious Jew, he or she will be wise, magnanimous, generous, etc. But extremely religious Muslims, because their religion enjoins violence and hatred, will tend to become violent and hateful. ‘Extremism’ is not the problem; it’s just a dodge to deflect attention away from the grim reality of Islam.”
Mark Biltz, the man who discovered the “Blood Moons” phenomenon and the author of “God’s Day Timer,” said it is good to be zealous, but there must be a distinction between “self-righteous zealotry” and “righteous zealotry.”
He ultimately stressed the knowledge of Torah is the best way to avoid errors that can lead to violence.
“There have been self-righteous religious extremists over the last 2,000 years, mostly within Islam and Christianity ever since the Torah was abolished, derided and considered retired,” he said. “According to the Bible, the only way world peace will come is when the Torah is magnified and it is being taught properly from Jerusalem to all the nations of the earth, as it says in Isaiah 2:2-4.”
Pastor Biltz said that following the example of Jesus Christ and zealously serving God ultimately will bring humanity closer to God.
“When we are passionately serving the God of Israel we will walk according to His truth and there will be peace on Earth,” he said. “The Torah is the Word of the Lord, which is forever, and as King, the Messiah will bring its proper interpretation so the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. May the Lord soon reverse the world’s retirement of His Torah and make it honorable again. When the Messiah fulfilled the Torah, it was not so we don’t have to but so we would have an example of a ‘how to.’ The Messiah fulfilled the commandment to love the LORD our God with all our heart and our neighbor as ourselves not so we don’t have to but we would see how to.”
Carl Gallups, a pastor, talk show host and author of “Be Thou Prepared,” said the problem with modern Islam is not “extremism” but the core of the religion itself.
“The almost daily atrocities we are now witnessing around the world, committed in the name of Allah and often defined by the media as mere Islamic extremism, truly is something endemic to the religion of Islam itself,” he said. “Of course there are Muslims who are at different stages of ‘commitment’ to Islam, the same as with Jews and Christians. But, the sooner we understand the truths of history and the core teachings of ‘committed’ Islam, the sooner we might be able to actually make some viable inroads to workable solutions, thus securing our national sovereignty and security.
“It is equally true, and historically verifiable, that Judaism, Islam, and yes – even Christianity – have been given to extremes above and beyond even what the mainstream of those faith systems might call normal. But Christianity, specifically, is taking another historical beating in this regard, and especially in these insanely politically correct days in which we now find ourselves.”
Gallups argued “extreme” Christianity, far from being dangerous, would make the world a much better place.
“The fact of the matter is that out of the world’s three largest monotheistic faith systems, even accepting Islam is actually monotheistic at its core, the only one, when taken to its truest ‘extremes’ that results in more love, grace, mercy, and peaceful living among all people – is that of New Testament biblical Christianity,” he said. “If Old Testament Judaism were taken to its ‘extreme’ this would not be the case. If Islam is taken to its most ‘radical extreme,’ even the leftist media would have to admit that the entire infidel world would have its head under the sword of submission.
“But Jesus-centered Christianity is a different story altogether – even lived out in its most ‘extreme’ form. There is no call for ‘death to the infidels,’ only a call to love. There is no call for self-righteous judgment, rather it is a call to exhibit grace and mercy. There is no directive for the setting up of a man-ruled Kingdom on earth and the overthrow of governments by violent ends – God’s true Kingdom will arrive through the return of Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glory. The only ‘overthrow’ we seek is that of a person’s heart surrendered to the love of Jesus Christ.
“True Christian ‘extremism’ is demonstrated in a life of holiness, sacrifice, service to fellow man, a worshipful relationship with our Creator, and a loving presentation of God’s grace through Jesus Christ – available to all who will come by repentance unto salvation. Now that’s an extremism the world could live with!”
Persecution is coming. Are you and your family ready? How can you take a stand for your faith? “Be Thou Prepared” by Carl Gallups, available now in the WND Superstore.
David Kupelian, WND Managing Editor and author of “The Snapping of the American Mind,” made the same comparison. He maintains the distinction between devout Muslims and Christians is just common sense.
“It’s not politically correct to say it, but to tens of millions of Americans, learning that a so-called ‘very devout Muslim’ has moved in next door would be cause for worry over their family’s safety,” Kupelian stated. “But learning that a devout Christian moved in next door would inspire no such concerns – and for good reason. In the almost 15 years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Western world has learned, again and again, that so-called ‘devout Muslims’ or ‘serious Muslims’ are simply more likely to have been radicalized into violent jihad than ‘moderate’ or ‘cultural’ Muslims.
“On the other hand, the heart of the ‘serious’ or ‘devout’ Christian’s way of life is to love God and his fellow man – not just love fellow Christians, mind you, but everyone. Who would not want such a person as their neighbor?”
However, if so many recognize this, why is there the intense media focus on the supposed evils of Christian “extremism?” Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, who rocked American believers with “The Harbinger” and “The Mystery of Shemitah,” says it is nothing less than a great apostasy against Christianity, something foretold within Scripture as the world nears the last days.
“The warnings from the secular media about radical Christianity is more a sign of the times than anything else,” he told WND. “What was normative in days past is now considered radical. When Israel was following God, Elijah and the prophets would be considered mainstream, exemplary. But when Israel turned away from God, the society branded people like Elijah as radical, dangerous, even enemies of the state. So King Ahab said to Elijah ‘you are the troubler of Israel.’ But Elijah responded, ‘No, it is you who trouble Israel.’
“So in days past true Christians would be honored in America – and considered mainstream. But as America has turned away from God, as America has grown increasingly radical against the ways of God – then it must view those who remain faithful to God as radical. To an upside down world, those who are standing right side up will appear to be standing upside down. So the apostle Paul was accused of ‘turning the world upside down.’ He was actually turning the world right-side up. So it is for true believers who stand faithful to God in an age and civilization of apostasy – We will be called radical and trouble makers, intolerant, dangerous. But it is simply that we are standing right side up in an upside down world.”
