Jim Huffman

“People who reported wearing face masks ‘often’, ‘sometimes’, ‘almost always’, or ‘always’ had a substantially higher incidence of COVID-19 than those who used them ‘never’ or ‘almost never’. Intriguingly, it wasn’t a tiny bump up – we’re talking about a whopping 33% to 40% increased occurrence.”

Justin Hart

From a generational view, there is no such thing as minor philosophical or theological error.

All errors lead to apostasy — the only question is how many years, decades, or even centuries it will take.

Your having a problem with something doesn’t mean that someone necessarily needs to provide a solution for you.

Sometimes your problem is just, well, your problem. That means you need to provide your own remedy. Or at least figure out how to deal with it.

The most recent egregious example are the lunatics still wearing masks in public places. And some of those nuts, since they are being nuts, have no problem with asking those around them to comply as well. Especially on airplanes.

Don’t comply. People like that must be shown that normal people – like you – will not facilitate their neuroses. In our time especially, it’s important to be someone who is brave. And non-compliant.

Diversity is not a strength, contrary to what you are endlessly told.

Diversity is in reality a problem, a factor, an issue that has to be successfully dealt with.

Let’s imagine a hypothetical situation. Company A has a group of employees who are basically alike. They have similar cultural backgrounds, speak the same language, and are like each other.Company B on the other hand has a team from varying cultural background, are native speakers of several languages, and are fundamentally unlike each other.

Company A can work together to serve customers and hopefully make money without having to negotiate cultural misunderstandings, without having to translate – whether explicitly or mentally – from one language to another, and the employees can work knowing a similar mental scaffolding.

The opposite holds true for company B. And all of those things take time, energy, and mental strength, and all of them are drains on customer service and erode profits.

I am NOT suggesting that companies need to be monolithic. That’s probably not possible now, and maybe not even desirable.

But the problems with diversity have to be dealt with. They can be dealt with well or they can be dealt with badly, but they cannot be ignored. What people in a company (or any other group working toward a common goal must do is minimize diversity issues, build a culture that emphasizes similarities, and strengthen those similarities.

A funeral is never a pleasant event.

A funeral is sometimes expected, sometimes a relief, and sometimes a time of unexpected grieving.

And you should go to them. Almost nobody truly wants to go to a funeral. At best, you view it as a sad event that you wish you weren’t supposed to be going to.

But this is your rule of thumb: if you have the slightest thought that you should go to a funeral, you should go. You think it won’t make a difference, but it will. Because if you are thinking about it, that means that the person meant something to you or you to them or both. But go. At the very least, make an appearance and express your condolences. Even better: plan to stay a while. Talk to the family, talk to the friends, and maybe be the shoulder someone needs to cry on. Just don’t think about it, and don’t make excuses. Just go.

The person who died obviously doesn’t need you there, but maybe somebody else does. And you probably need to be there. Just go.

“Conforming does not require belief. It requires allegiance and rote obedience. Official propaganda is not designed to deceive the public (no more than the speeches in an actor’s script are intended to deceive the actor who speaks them). It is designed to be absorbed and repeated, no matter how implausible or preposterous it might be.”

C. J. Hopkins

Today is about learning. Specifically, learning a language. In this case, koine Greek.

Koine is common Greek of the first century around the Mediterranean Sea. Most people imagine that Latin was the the normal language used in that area, but it wasn’t. The English equivalent of that time was Greek, spoken in public and private and from Egypt to Rome.

And to Palestine. Which is where our topic comes in. Because common Greek became the language used for writing the New Testament of the Bible.

I have an undergraduate major in Bible and theology but the particular path of study I followed didn’t require biblical languages and I began a couple of years ago to remedy that lack.

Koine Greek has not been a spoken language for many centuries. Of course, it’s one of the ancestors of modern Greek but while learning to sound out the language is important, learning it includes no conversation.

But this is a way of learning any language needed for reading an ancient text.

First, you have to learn the alphabet when it’s different from the one you use every day. Greek letters have some similarities to the Roman alphabet and the differences are not hard to deal with. The next steps will also help to learn the alphabet.

The next step – which should start as quickly as possible – is to dig into the text. I started with the Gospel of John, beginning with chapter 1, verse 1.

One verse a day. Don’t get overzealous and try to tackle more. Learning a new language is a journey. Enjoy the journey.

Start with your first verse. Look over it in Greek. (And no need to buy a text unless you want to – there are a lot of Greek New Testament apps available). You don’t know any of the words? Fine. That’s what you’re here for. Start the learning.

Next, I go to a video series called ‘Daily Dose of Greek’ on YouTube. The guy who does this series is a seminary professor and while his videos are more aimed at refreshing Greek knowledge for those who already have some acquaintance, it has worked for me as well. He reads the verse in Greek and then explains it. There will be minutiae that you don’t understand, and that’s ok. Those minutiae are part of the language and it will increasingly make more sense as you go along.

The important thing is to keep at it. Steady, daily (or at least close to daily) work is how you get a kind of intellectual compound interest. The words will grow in meaning.

This morning, I worked through John 10:30. I’ve gone through 10 chapters of the book and I’m at the point where I can usually read the verse through in Greek. It helps that I know the English, of course, but the progress is real. Get started, and this time next year, you can indeed have a new language under your belt.

Lots of people have dreams that never start. Much less come to fruition. And that’s too bad.

Because a lot of those dreams are dreams of wonderful things, things that would be fun and make a better life not only for the dreamer but for families and communities and maybe even the world.

Getting started doesn’t end the task you’re undertaking. It often scarcely begins the work needed to complete it. But it does get the task started. And that’s crucially important.

Defining what you really want is important. But getting started with something helps us with that as well, because when we start taking steps, we sometimes realize that we didn’t truly want to do that thing. Or we realize that we didn’t want to accomplish it the way we were planning.

This week, find something you want to do, and start on it. There’s a burst of energy that happens when we begin a task. So start. Start something you’ve just been thinking about. And start to make that something a reality.

It’s easy to posit that there are things we don’t need to do anymore. Things that 100 years ago were commonplace can be bought from someone more expert than ourselves.Think minor car maintenance. Or home cleaning. Or bread baking. Or most cooking, for that matter.

But life is not only about economic transactions. It’s not only a case of being a good worker bee, money coming in one hand and going out the other. We’re not bankers. We’re not virtual beings. We’re real, live, and physical. We’re free people, families, churches, neighborhoods, and communities.

Getting your hands involved in your life is good. There are dozens of forces that want you disengaged in existence. Fight against those forces.

The good news is that in our time, we have the means to learn these things. Your mom didn’t teach you how to bake bread? Well, watch a couple of videos, and start experimenting. Your first couple of times will probably be less than stellar (I’ve been a twice weekly bread baker for over 40 years) but the results will probably be edible and maybe even really good. And the learning curve can be surprisingly fast.

Bread’s just an example, of course. But whatever the task, find something to take back your life from the corporate interests that want you to be a kind of cog. Your life will be better in so many ways. And as you and others reclaim those areas of life, our neighborhoods and communities will improve. You really can change the world.

“It is the primary responsibility of a scientist to face, and resolve, discrepant observations.” (p. 22)”The seminal advances in science, and perhaps human affairs in general, were made by recognizing patterns in natural phenomena.” (p.15)Halton Arp, ‘Seeing Red’