Why unity is better than uniformity and Why do we turn to violence and turn away from talking...?

If the pen is mightier than the sword, then our attitudes are more powerful than gunpowder or ammunition.  Yet, our culture has normalized hating the people we disagree with — apparently we all want to be the one holding the microphone controlling the conversation.  But this is to our detriment because when we lose confidence in each other, we lose confidence in ourselves.  We are like cars merging on the highway refusing to yield to one other, causing a catastrophic pileup from our inability to dialogue.  

What is interfering with our ability to hold civil conversions?  Like boiling all of the flavor out, we’ve rendered all of our views down to “either/or” thinking and we’ve lost the “both/and” option because not only do we disagree on what’s best for us all or the path towards whatever is best for us, we lack a mutual respect for opposing viewpoints.

Why can’t the government just make us behave nicely?  Growing up we never had a house key, when I asked my dad why we didn’t lock our doors he told me, “Locks keep honest people honest.”  Stringent laws will not solve our society’s differences, especially the ones that turn violent.  

We need to really examine why we turn to violence as a solution and ask, is all violence preventable?  London England plans to make the purchase of pointed kitchen knives off limits, which makes you wonder how far can a nation go in their attempts to regulate what a criminal can get their hands on.  

As Cain conspired, he never conceptualized or considered a carbine — when deranged people are determined, there’s little to no deterrent that can distract them from devastation.  For example, if we had the ability to legislate morality effectively, then the citizens of Chicago could enjoy walking their streets at night and their rowdier residents wouldn’t look like Swiss cheese every weekend.  

Do differences generate violence?  Any student of the four Gospels knows that Jesus surrounded Himself with a diverse group of apostles, He had tax collectors and fishermen and zealots; the early church had to learn how to deal with different views, if you read the Gospels and Acts it is abundantly clear.  Tragically, we’ve lost sight of the value of diversity as political violence now seems to be an acceptable fact of life.  

There are certain people who we either idolize or demonize, polarizing personalities have the ability to capture our attention, they attract likeminded people, and of course they infuriate people who refuse to be influenced by them.  When it comes to polarizing people, we are either impressed with or intimidated by, we are either drawn to, or threatened by them.  Mature people know how to ignore ideas that are illogical, without feeling the need to shame or insult the people who promote foolishness, immature people on the other hand feel the need to slander everyone and anyone who holds a contrary view that’s different from theirs, but wise people can listen to people with whom they disagree and learn from them too, without feeling hostility towards them.  

Much of the empathy and sympathy that many progressives expressed last month seemed clouded by caveats and clichés, conservatives lack a stellar record of supporting detractors who suffer as well.  What we need is unity, not uniformity -- indoctrination is abominable and conformity is claustrophobic.  Tolerance for and common respect for the rights of others to form and articulate their own views is what is needed now more than ever. 

We have to be willing to accept challenges to our perceptions, if we are to challenge the views of others. We must hear people out as we would like to be listened to. We must give people the same benefit of the doubt that we ourselves wish to receive. We have to find common ground with which we agree upon and build upon that and offer the same amount of acceptance that we would hope to be accepted by.

Consider I Peter 3:8-9 &:15, “[8] Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. [9] Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing…, [15] but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect…”  When we lose sight of the reality that the people on the opposite side of the aisle are created in the image of God, that is when we have begun to idolize our ideologies -- we hold so much more in common and our differences are, for the most part, trivial and temporary.  

People who refuse to fight fairly aren’t winning arguments, they’re losing credibility.  Our deepest problem is that we are selfish and the laws our government enacts are powerless to resolve that, violence is the fruit of and ultimate expression of selfishness, once we solve our selfishness all the rest will fall in place.  

Originally published in the Kingsport Timesnews 10/10/25 Click here for the original newspaper version

Don't shake babies or kick volleyballs:

 

When our boys were growing up, our family's one-liner for categories of behaviors that were off limits was, "You don't shake babies and you don't kick volleyballs."  It was self-explanatory, it was easily understood, immediately comprehended, basically it was simple and to the point.    

Life consists of many choices contemplating: can you versus should you?  Mature people know how to distinguish between what is allowable and what is appropriate.  

There are commonsense subjects that normal people do not make fun of or celebrate, and when these values, mores, and norms are violated, there are social and cultural consequences.  We can ask who defines hate speed, are we defending free speech, and can we argue publicly over any issues we want? but we also know there are times when respect should triumph over political division and politeness over polarization.  

Is there a spiritual side to healthcare?

 

(Me when I was extremely overweight) 

While transferring nearly a decade of our sermon videos from Facebook to our church’s YouTube page https://www.youtube.com/@NewSongChurchKingsport, I cringed.  Peeking at snippets of those sermons as they uploaded revealed how plump, pudgy, and out of shape I was -- well, round is “a” shape so I guess I was in “a” shape, just not in great shape.  

Thanks to some lifestyle changes and the care of Dr. Rogers with Performance Medicine, over the past two years I’ve dropped inches off of my waistline and I’ve lost around 60 pounds (all without diet pills).  I’m at my lowest weight since the 1990s, my overall well-being has improved immensely, I can actually breathe while putting my shoes on (without seeing stars too), I no longer feel bloated, my fatigue and brain-fog are gone, and my emotional/mental-health & quality of life is much better than it has been in decades.  

I share my personal transformation to say, what is in our control is more important than what we can’t control and that taking ownership of our health through proper habits like eating and sleeping better is healthier than trying to cure situations that could be circumvented.  Yes genetics play a role in our health, and unfortunate accidents can happen to us, but the majority of our health issues will not be alleviated by the old medical approach of just “treat a condition” that could’ve been prevented.  

Which makes more sense to you, wait to go to the doctor to get treated for scurvy or take a supplement with vitamin C, or, take insulin for type 2 diabetes or regulate your diet?  As Peter Attis writes in “Outlive,” performance medicine is not passive or reactive, comparing it to the example of Noah who built the Ark, before the rain; he continued his contrast between how he learned to practice medicine in Med school to Performance Medicine, pointing out how insurance companies ignore the value of proactive measures like exercise and healthy lifestyle choices that prevent diabetes, but they pay for insulin while implementing the old “Wait and see” approach to healthcare. 

Yes there are great doctors out there, yet, do you ever feel more like a customer than a patient, are you frustrated with languishing in the waiting room for half of the day only to be rushed through your physician's visit that lasts maybe 5 to 7 minutes leaving you feeling like a widget on a conveyor belt?  I don’t blame our doctors or nurses, I think it is the folks that manage them who have decided that speed is more expedient than bedside manners because more time spent on a patient reduces their profit margins.

More importantly, does our physical health have an impact on a deeper spiritual reality, and if so how, and is there a spiritual element to our healthcare decisions?  Consider what the devil had to say concerning how much value we place on our health as God confronted him about Job, “Then Satan answered the LORD and said, “Skin for skin! All that a man has he will give for his life.  But stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.” (Job 2:4-5)  

What we spend on healthcare & insurance is a stewardship issue, regardless of whether we recognize it or not.  Marketing agencies will prey on our fears, healthcare conglomerates are driven by their bottom line, and lazy people will suffer the consequences of inactivity and poor lifestyle choices.  If you too are frustrated with the higher costs and disappointed by a lowered quality of your medical experiences, maybe it’s time that we consider how fear, greed, and laziness impact the healthcare industry.  

Originally published 9/12/25 in the Kingsport Timesnews click here to read

What’s the point of it all...?

Commitment, a rare virtue it seems, matters more than you might think, not simply the ability to commit to (and here you fill in the blank), but the focus and direction of our commitment matters.  Why?

With the same power that an addiction grips people with, whatever it is that captures your imagination, captivates your heart & soul, fuels your creativity, consumes your mind, drives your hopes, dreams and ambitions is your master, ruler, and king.  What we commit to matters, the clock is is ticking and life is short, so we need to harness our commitments where they count.

For all practical purposes, your accepted responsibilities are your reasons for your existence. What we are passionate about motivates us, energizes us, gets our feet out of bed in the morning, and we will willingly sacrifice our time & effort for it.  It is in the deepest sense, what we submit ourselves to, where we feel obligated, what draws our duty freely from within has won us over and holds ownership over us.

In other words, whatever it is that captures us completely is our god/God.

It’s possible to be more interested in the idea of God than God Himself.  Yes we like the notion of blessings and heavenly realms, but we aren’t exactly excited about personal transformation or taking risks for God.  We think about God once or twice a week, typically on Sunday, and then we pursue what we want.  Is that commitment?  

I'm all for gathering as the church, but sometimes church is more about preferences and church-politics.  Corporate worship assemblies we call "church" can easily miss the point.  Many people are infatuated with projects, performances, and presentations and then they wonder why they feel disconnected from God.  

Where you place your trust is what or who you worship.  Most people appear to be more interested in being spectators in a big production they tag with the label “worship” than they are interested in being in the presence of the Almighty.  The lightshow and performance are like scaffolding, and God is the House, but we settle for erecting the scaffolding without ever dreaming about entering in the House.  

How do we know the real focus of our worship?  Whatever moves you the most is what you truly worship.  Say whatever you want, but what we obsess over and allow to captivate our imagination and what are motivated by is the source of what our heart desires and thus the object of our worship.

Should worship be enjoyable, exciting, and meaningful?  I certainly hope so, but the focus of worship shouldn't be personal motivation or what we "get out of it."  The enjoyment is a byproduct, not the main point of worship.  

You are either an implement or an impediment, you are either in the way or on the way, we either lead people to God or we interfere by misguiding their focus on the trivial.  What we win people with is what we win them to, either a gimmicky production or the Glorified Person of Jesus.  Would you still "go" to church if it was only about Jesus and nothing else?  Could you worship without all the entourage and pageantry?  Worship should be about God, simple and direct.  

Why people without self control try to control you

There’s a tremendous difference between feeling powerful and actually being powerful, for example, some people childishly confuse cutting down or cutting-off others with having power.  Real power is unrelated to inhibiting others.  How so? 

Authentic power minimally includes, letting your guard down, empowering others & building them up, blessing them, and giving them what they couldn’t achieve on their own.  Yet, true power incorporates more than exhibiting vulnerability or edifying others.

So, what is power?  Power is controlling yourself, not others.  

Who are truly powerful people?  Not tyrants, but folks who practice self-control, as we read in Prov 16:32, “Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.”

Powerful people are reserved, humble, grateful, as well as confident, and they do not believe that anyone owes them anything.  Powerless people with their fragile egos are rash, arrogant, rarely satisfied, and lacking in confidence they always feel slighted by the world.   

At the negotiating table of life it is the unconfident ones who resort to threats, steamrolling you by shunning & shaming you, not the confident people.  Weak people seek to discourage and dominate while the strong prefer to encourage and liberate.  In our desperation to feel more powerful we try harder to control others around us by withholding our affections, our compliments, even access to our very selves, but again, these pitiful efforts aren’t actual power.  

The more we feel the need to constrain others, the greater the depth of our own felt-weakness is magnified.  The weaker we feel, the stronger our struggle to appear powerful becomes -- think of bullies and how they suppress others out of a sense of ineptness, frailty, and self-loathing.  

Sadly, our culture encourages us to disregard self-control, instead to overeat, overspend, overextend, over-do-it and to ignore the consequences.  Consider the fallout resulting from the counterfeit feeling of power that high interest credit cards entice us with, and then the predatory title-loan institutions lurking in the shadows waiting to exploit those already buried in debt.  These corollary disastrous financial examples often pale in comparison to the pain we inflict on each other.

Weak people lash out at those who anger them or stand in their way while powerful people try to help people -- that’s the main outward/visible difference between weak and powerful people.  And, our actual strength or lack thereof comes down to embracing self-control.  Therefore, the most important people-skill we can instill in our children is exhibiting self-control, and as adults it might be our most important continuing endeavor as well.  

Rewriting history doesn’t really change the past, and moving the field goal when others are trying to accommodate your needs doesn’t really improve any relationship.  Perhaps the more we want to change others only amplifies how poorly we fail to personally change ourselves.  In the end, ignoring our own need for greater self-control hurts us more than we’d like to admit.  

What if Christians could quit fighting each other?

 

Thankfully not all churches are territorial, yet the devil is, I imagine, awfully delighted whenever we allow our doctrinal differences to divide us.  Does doctrine matter? Absolutely, but just think of what we could accomplish for God if we looked past the pride and smugness of those Bible believing brethren down the pew or down the road who disregard our perfect interpretation of the Bible and what if we chose to cooperate instead of debate?

Like leftovers forgotten deep in the back of the fridge, somehow we’ve overlooked this: As followers of Jesus we are only Christians, but we are not the only Christians.  Instead, to “prove” our authenticity what we’ve settled for is bickering about form over function, perpetuated infighting by pitting traditional & contemporary folks against each other over worship styles, arguing over which is the authorized translation of the Bible, fighting over whether God finished creation in 6 literal days and rested on the 7th or took millions of years, squabbling over women’s roles, quarreling about the role of the Holy Spirit, clashing over the name over the door, and of course locking horns over our favorite hobbyhorse theological preferences like our battle-royales concerning pre-post-amillinalism/endtimes.  

Instead of contending for the faith, we’ve become contentious about the faith.  Not so with Jesus, He said there was one way the world could spot an authentic Christian if they ever chanced upon one, “[34] A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. [35] By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35 ESV)

But shouldn’t we correct them for their own good?  “[38] John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” [39] But Jesus said, “Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. [40] For the one who is not against us is for us.” (Mark 9:38-40)

In what amounts to pettifogging, our antagonistic approach is counterproductive — we’re losing the lost and we are not winning the won with our argumentative, arrogant, judgmental attitudes and our habit of labeling & insulting each other.  Like an undertaker in a spaghetti Western sizing-up the doomed gunfighter with his cloth tape measure as the gunslinger saunters out the Saloon’s swinging doors, Americans are unsuspectingly passing through the same portal as Europe, once a stronghold of faith but now they are nearly completely secular.  

While not all, many have traded in the Kingdom of Christ for conflict and chaos -- you can either row the boat or rock the boat, but you can’t do both at the same time.  Rodney King famously asked after the 1991 race riots, “Can’t we all get along…?” Well, what if we as believers could…, just get along? 

Originally published in the Kingsport Timesnews 8/16/25

Credibility: What what you say says about you

In what amounts to same amount of talent as an armchair quarterback, social media is overrun with complainers who add their .02 cents without ever producing valuable thoughts or contributing to the greater good.  It is interesting to me how many people on social media think their comments are more important than the content they comment on.  People complain and criticize and correct far more often than they actually share quality content all on their own, and completely lacking originality they apparently think their opinions are very profound.  

Lacking their own platform, these cyber bullies are acting like a parasite commenting on your posts.  Like a heckler who lacks the ability to come up with their own one-liners they try to interrupt your performance.  

Actually, if you want to be taken credible, create your own content.   Anyone can do a "drive by shooting" of other people's thoughts or content, the truly brave person though puts pencil to paper and with a touch of vulnerability opens themselves up for the nitpickers and naysayers of the world.  

Critical people are self-deceived, they think they are cleaver and witty, but really they are sad pitiful miserable people.  They leave one star reviews on business pages without ever taking the risk of starting their own business, they are faultfinders who never are satisfied but never actually do anything that can be analyzed, and most likely are jealous or envious of the people they attack from behind the safety of their smart phones.  

It's funny and sad how brave people are when they hide behind their keyboards and take potshots at the people who actually are creative and productive.  Like the old saying about turning your prized oxen into bullion cubes, most critical people lack the ability to generate well thought out ideas, so they settle for inaction and cowardly complaining about your content while they pedal their mineral pyrite hoping you think their ideas ideas are pure gold.