Buckle Up

This section of The Memo is about leadership ideas and financial concepts. Today, I want to give a brief recap of where we are concerning our economy. Reader, beware: I am a doctor, not an economist!

Having said that, I do think some things are obvious if you stop and look and think for yourself. Our media today is very polarized and is really just selling something. You should be careful and understand they (the media) are promoting an agenda. This is true of the right and of the left. So, when you read something or hear something, it helps to know their angle.

Our government told us that inflation was going to be transitory. I think many good people really believed this message. I’m not sure why educated people would think so. Maybe it was wishful thinking? All one has to do is to take a step back and look at what has happened. Inflation isn’t transitory and is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

I’m not trying to cast blame or be critical of our government. I’m simply trying to understand and convey where we are today as it relates to our economy. The pandemic was an unprecedented event in our world. It shut down the world economy like nothing else has ever done. Governments all over tried to ease the pain of economic shutdown by printing money. One of the measurements of this money supply is called The M1 Money Supply.

Dating Your Spouse

When was the last time you asked your wife out on a date?

I don't mean when you looked across the living room and said, “Want to go get something to eat?” I’m talking about the kind of asking that takes some effort. Think back to when you were dating, if your memory can go back that far. Do you remember how you worked hard to get this girl to like you? You had to step it up to impress her or to woo her away from another fella’s attention. Like the peacock strutting his stuff, you had to pull out all the romance you could muster to get this girl to go on a date with you. You took time and effort to pursue your wife back then.

Did you know that women still love to be pursued? Your wife, like mine, still wants her husband to ask her out on a date. Give her a call or write her a letter asking her to spend the day with you at a picnic by the lake, to take a drive in the country, or to attend a concert. Show up at your own doorstep with flowers and ring the doorbell to ask her out.

For some reason, we as men tend to stop dating our spouse once we get married. What happens over time in marriage that stops the dating? It’s so fun and keeps the marriage exciting. Maybe you don’t see it as important or think it isn’t a need you have. Odds are that your wife wants you to continue to pursue her on a regular basis. Why? It makes her feel special. It makes her know that you still want her and still choose her. Sure, you don’t have to ask her out because you’re married, but the joy it brings and the flutter in her heart it elicits when you do can bring a big boost to your relationship.

It’s no surprise that men and women have very different needs in life. Think about your deepest needs. In the classic Willard Harley book His Needs, Her Needs, he surveyed and found the majority of responders gave this list of needs according to their gender.

His Needs, Her Needs List: Men’s Needs

1. Sexual Fulfillment

2. Recreational Companionship

3. An Attractive Spouse

4. Domestic Support

5. Admiration

His Needs, Her Needs List: Women’s Needs

1. Affection

2. Conversation

3. Honesty and Openness

4. Financial Commitment

5. Family Commitment

What would happen if your wife stopped meeting your need for sexual fulfillment or recreational companionship? What if she no longer showed you admiration and respect? Don’t start thinking passive aggressive thoughts of revenge or retaliation, but rather think about when you provide for her needs, then, in most cases, she will over time begin to respond in meeting your needs.

This isn’t a scorekeeping match like tennis. That will destroy relationships when you keep track. However, God calls us to serve others and imitate Christ as he gave himself up for us. Your wife is the most important person in your life. That is a high calling as men who claim to follow Christ. The health of our marriage relationships are most of the time a direct reflection of the health of our relationship to Christ.

Philippians 2:3–7 says, “(3) Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, (4) not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. (5) In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: (6) Who, being in very nature[a] God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; (7) rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature] of a servant . . .”

Get out there and ask your wife out for a romantic date!

Author: Garrick McAnear

Application

Who else is afraid of becoming something they aren’t in control of? Afraid of ending up somewhere and not being quite sure how you got there? Afraid of finding yourself retiring at seventy from a job you despise and wondering if you wasted your life on worthless work? Afraid of disappointing your childhood self with your decisions? If you often hear these questions rumbling around in your head like I do, please know that you are not alone. And let me be clear: I often find myself living in fear because of these questions. A fear that paralyzes me from making choices. If these words resonate with you, I hope you’ll be willing to face up to your own heart as we think on this together.

When you meet someone new, what is the first thing either one of you brings up? When we were children, it was probably something like, “What is your favorite color?” or “Do you like such-and-such game?” At some point during our journey into adulthood, this opening question has contorted itself into asking one another what we do for a living. The bulk of our lives are spent working, so this would seem to be a natural on-ramp to get to know someone. In all fairness, I think using the “What do you do?” question to get to know someone is mostly harmless and can lead to good conversation. However, I do think this gives us a glimpse into what most of us truly believe to be the most important things about one another—whether we are aware of it or not. Deep-seated beliefs like these can shape how we view ourselves, the world, and those in it.

When I was younger, my dad and I would go shoot clay pigeons in the waning days of summer in preparation for dove and quail season. After a few rounds of clearing our local airways of the orange menace with an over and under and a side-by-side, we’d head inside to clean our shotguns in preparation for cooler weather–and the legally approved hunting season. After many seasons and reminders from Dad about the proper procedures, I first had to take the barrel and the stock apart. Then, I got a rope-like tool with bristles on the end and pulled it through the barrel to clear the inner parts of the barrel of gunpowder and other debris left behind by the shotgun shells. Once the inner barrels are sufficiently clean, the next task was oiling the separate components of the gun. The oil helps preserve and protect the gun while also making sure the moving parts in the gun (trigger, firing mechanism, etc.) operate without any issues. After dabbing a bit of oil on an old sock, I then spread the oil over the metal parts of the gun and make sure they are adequately covered. Once covered, I reassembled and stored the gun away in anticipation for the upcoming season.

Since entering the working world a few years back, I’ve had a silly thought now and again about this memory: Does the oil lose itself once it’s been applied to the gun? Since oil is neither sentient nor alive, I doubt there is an answer to that. But as I keep dwelling on this memory, the question has seemed less silly to me as I connect the dots between that thought and my own life. Do I lose parts of who I am to my work? Should I be doing something else? Will I be the same person, or will my work change me? I think these questions rattle around the minds of most men in the working world, and we often just bury them deep down and keep on trucking, as is the American man’s way. But I believe leaving such thinking to the birds can sow unseen seeds of pressure and anxiety in our lives that take deep roots in our hearts if we’re not careful. Especially if we have a skewed perspective of what God says about us and about our work.

Scripture tells us in Genesis 1:27, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” It also tells us in Ephesians 2:8–10, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” We can see here that being made in the image of God involves “good works,” which God prepared for us to do. The Greek word used in this verse is “ergois” (ἔργοις), which comes from “ergon” (ἔργον). “Ergon” is typically defined as work, task, employment, a deed, an action, or even that which is wrought or made. It can even be described further as a work or worker who accomplishes something. All good definitions.

However, my favorite description that I believe aligns with Paul’s intentions in this chapter is this: a deed (action) that carries out (completes) an inner desire (intention, purpose). We have been created for work with purpose. But where does that purpose come from? And what purpose are we working out of? These are questions we all must answer.

I do not think our understanding of how to possibly apply this section of Scripture should be limited to our place of employment, where we earn a set sum of money for depositing a set amount of our time. To add more context to this, we need to look at Colossians 3:17: “And whatever you, whether and word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” The key word to note is everything. One more time: the Greek word used for describing “everything” is “pan” (πᾶν), which can be used as “all,” “the whole,” and “every kind of.” It is also wonderfully explained this way: The emphasis of the total picture then is on “one piece at a time.”

I thought of a wheel when reading this definition, with each spoke representing the different facets of our lives. Some of us have a few spokes, and some of us have many. Yet we all have a wheel. Are we turning our wheels toward the redemptive work of Christ? And are we more concerned with maintaining some spokes than others? Again, questions we all must answer.

Both Ephesians 2 and Colossians 3 deal with a similar theme: living differently. Before Christ, we might have found ourselves looking in the mirror and only seeing our work. We might head out for the day, and all our interactions would be coated with that first look in the mirror. After Christ, we can look in the mirror and see more than just our work. We can see Christ and the freedom offered to us. I wonder what might happen if we were to take these ideas from Scripture to heart. I’d like to imagine that work would seem less like a threatening place filled with pressure and anxiety, but a place of freedom and opportunity. A place where we can apply ourselves fully to the work set before us. A place where I think God is excited to see what we are willing to do for the Kingdom and those in it.

Author: Jake Brown

RETIREMENT PART 2.0: What Am I Going to Do?

Well, this month was going to be about retirement and money, but last month’s article needed some follow-up. We’ll talk money next month, I promise. But today I want to add a little to the discussion of what to do in retirement, because it pertains to the rest of our lives as well.

How we spend our lives—whether we call ourselves retired or working or something else—matters to God. Again, not because He needs us, but because He has things for us to do that will make life better for us and everyone around us. I like to think He doesn’t have “rules” or “laws” as we think of them, though we often take His advice and turn it into “rules” (especially if we see they pertain to someone else).

I think of His commandments and other dos and don’ts as encouragements or warnings to do or not do the things He knows are best for us or are harmful to us and others. If you tell your children not to put their hands on the stove, you’re not trying to restrict their freedom, you’re trying to protect them from harm. And not because you want to make their lives miserable, but because you love them. God does the same for each of us.

So, here are some suggestions and references for sorting out what you could do with your life whether retired, thinking of retiring, or living whatever season of life you’re currently in.

Always begin with the Bible and prayer. I’ll remind you of Psalm 37:4: Listen to God’s still, small voice by observing the desires he places in your heart. God’s guidance is unique to you and to your time and place. Don’t be so busy or so focused on planning and running your life that you don’t have time or interest in discerning the leadings of the desires He places in your heart.

There are also a thousand (or more) other sources of advice. Here are a few that I would recommend:

1. Michael Wiederman, a PhD in clinical psychology who specializes in professional development, wrote a meaningful article in Psychology Today recently. In it, he says all of us have four universal needs:

1. Contribution (or Calling) – A sense that your life and work have meaning.

2. Choice (or Control) – That you have freedom to choose your own direction.

3. Competence (or Capability) – Knowing that you are good at some thing or things.

4. Connection (or Community) – A sense of belonging and being a part of something.

When you’re thinking about what you’re doing with your life, or what you might do, consider all these needs in planning your future.

2. The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence

This was a life-changing book for me when I first read it nearly twenty years ago. It’s a simple and short book of letters and conversations with Brother Lawrence, a monk in the seventeenth century whose whole adult life was spent working in a kitchen or mending shoes in a monastery, but who was known and visited by every famous holy man in Europe because of his amazing Christlike persona, which he attributed to the habit (which took him ten years to develop) of feeling and acknowledging God’s presence in every moment regardless of what he was doing. I’m still trying to get there, but for the short times I can accomplish it, it is life-changing.

3. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl was a Jewish victim of the Holocaust who was a Doctor of Psychology and created a branch of therapy called logotherapy, which discovered that many people’s emotional and mental issues stemmed from a lack of purpose or sense of meaning in their lives. It’s a short book, and the first half is his story of surviving the Nazi concentration camps and his observations of how people survived or failed to.

4. The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren

Most everyone has read or is at least familiar with this best seller from twenty years ago. It’s worth a read or reread.

Next month, we’ll talk about finances and how they relate to retirement. Until then, blessings.

Author: Dave Gillogly

It Might Be High

I cannot count the times I have asked a guy if he has ever checked his blood pressure and the answer is no. When I ask why, they will often say, “Well, it might be high.” Exactly! And that is why you should check it! Yet many men simply want to ignore the warning signs. Talk about sticking your head in the sand!

I’m not sure of the psychology behind all of this, but I do believe most guys think they’ll get it done tomorrow: “I don’t want to weigh myself until I lose a little weight”or “I don’t want to get my blood sugar checked until I clean up my diet.” Tomorrow never comes, the weight only increases, and the diet never changes.

At the root of this is passivity. Being passive is the default nature of masculinity. We have to fight being passive. You would think that something as important as your health would motivate change, but in my experience, it rarely does.

As Christ followers, I think we have even more responsibility for taking care of our flesh suits. I believe that one day (soon?) I will stand or kneel before the Creator and answer to him. “Brown, how did you do with the physical body I loaned you? Did you nourish it well? Did you abuse it? Did you take care of it?”

If we have a spiritual responsibility (and I believe we do), we also have the Spirit to help us and guide us. God did give us brains to use and to think with. He typically will not do for us what we can and should do ourselves. So, get a checkup every now and then. And yes, check your blood pressure. It might be high!

High blood pressure is called “the silent killer.” It is most often asymptomatic. Your blood pressure can be smoking high without a single symptom. The only way to know is to check it. It’s painless! Just check it! High blood pressure increases your risk of heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure, and below-the-belt problems.

Today, we have all sorts of medications that effectively treat high blood pressure, also known as hypertension. Most of the newer meds have very limited side effects and offer other benefits. Of course, if you can control your blood pressure without any medications, that is preferred. Weight loss and aerobic exercise can lower or control your blood pressure. Aerobic exercise even without the weight loss can lower your BP. Ideally, you want to get your heart rate up to about 120–130 beats a minute and keep it there for around 30 minutes 3–5 days a week. Please get checked out by your doctor if you’re at risk for heart disease before starting an aggressive exercise plan. If you’re having chest pain when you exert yourself, stop and get a checkup.

Gentlemen, please take care of yourselves. Squeeze all of the life out of the body God gave you. Take care of your body. Check your blood pressure—it might be high.

Author: Dr. Curtis Brown

Science, St. Augustine, and the Church

Let’s talk about science.

The science talk, if you will.

A nice, hopefully not awkward chat about the S-word.

Forgive me, because I’m belaboring my point with unnecessary comedy. Let me get to it.

Science and Christianity have a contentious past, and science and the church are even worse.

I’m sure many of you are familiar with the famous story of Galileo and the church, where he proposed a heliocentric model (sun at the center) of the known world at the time and the church said something like, “That’s stupid, everyone knows the Earth is the center of the universe.”

Galileo was ex-communicated from the church and held under house arrest for the rest of his life.

Certainly, an unfortunate misunderstanding between science and the church.

Well, thank goodness, though, because most readers to whom this newsletter will reach have likely eschewed the Catholic church and cling to some result of Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses, Credo’s, etc.

How foolish the Catholic church was back then! How could they not see that the sun is the center of the solar system? Simply and truly foolish.

St. Augustine said it better than I ever could, the same Augustine who proposed the doctrine of original sin. Here’s what he had to say about religious text and science, and I quote it here at length because every bit of it is worth reading:

“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the Earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience.

“Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation . . . If they [people outside the church] find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books . . .”

(The Literal Meaning of Genesis, Book 1 Chapter 19 Paragraph 39)

I want to highlight one specific section:

“Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel [read: those outside of the church] to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics (science); and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation . . .”

Before I end this brief article, let me illustrate at least one area where Christians today tend to talk nonsense on such topics: the beginning of the universe.

The universe began roughly 14 billion years ago with something most scientists refer to as the Big Bang.

Perhaps this comes to you as a contentious statement, but it is no less contentious than Galileo’s assertion in the sixteenth century that the sun was the center of the known world.

What evidence do we have for the Big Bang? Let me also say before continuing, I am not at all speaking to the topic of evolution, but simply the origin of the universe, which may have in fact been started by some sort of divine interaction. The topic of evolution would deserve a series of articles, and perhaps they will one day be included in this newsletter.

Before Edwin Hubble discovered in 1929 that galaxies were moving away from each other, there was only one model of the universe: the static model. According to the first law of thermodynamics, matter can neither be created or destroyed, and so most scientists assumed the universe had simply always existed. This directly contradicts Genesis 1:1, which literally asserts that the universe had a beginning.

However, Hubble’s discovery led to a second possible model of the universe, one in which the universe could have a distinct beginning. In other words, since the galaxies were expanding, one might conclude they began expanding from a central point.

For example, if one observes a stone in the air, then it is reasonable to assume the stone was thrown from a particular point. Measuring the velocity of the stone could lead one to discover the location from which it was thrown. Similarly, the rate of expansion of the galaxies led to a hypothesis that all the possible matter and energy in the universe began from a single point, which was nearly infinitely hot and dense.

If that nearly infinitely hot and dense point began to expand, then there should be remnants of that heat evenly spread throughout the existing universe.

Again, allow me to provide an example to illustrate. Imagine that the universe was a bonfire, a clump of wood on fire compressed within the area of a fire pit with a bed of coals. Now the bonfire suddenly begins to expand rapidly, or let’s say the contents of the pit were scattered and expanded over a greater and greater area. As the wood and coals are spread out uniformly, the heat decreases and the fire goes out, but there remains some measurable heat. It will be hard to detect the visible heat being radiated from these coals, but it might still be detected with thermal imaging, which measures electromagnetic waves that occur below the visible length of light.

As mentioned earlier, scientists theorized the “heat” that occurred at the origin of the universe had spread uniformly out across existing spacetime as background radiation. Using math, proponents of the Big Bang model predicted the theoretical wavelength and frequency, of this “background heat,” or “background radiation,” like one might tune to a radio station using a specific frequency.

In 1964 (barely a lifetime ago), Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias observed this exact radiation quantitively through an antenna. They heard a background hiss, which they later confirmed to be the cosmic background radiation. Everywhere scientists looked out into space, they found the cosmic background radiation.

This background radiation, along with the measurable expansion rate of galaxies within the universe has been verified by science. Both discoveries point to a beginning of the universe accurately described by the Big Bang Model.

Perhaps, you might think, that God created the universe looking like it was 14 billion years old, as he supposedly did with Adam and Eve. But then again, 1 Corinthians 14:33 says, “God is not a God of confusion, but of peace.” Why would God create a universe that would lead reasonable people using reasonable technology to believe it was 14 billion years old when it was really only 6,000 years old? Sounds confusing and convoluted to me.

One final point, and then I’m done: The Big Bang supports a literal reading of Genesis 1:1. In the beginning, God said, “Let there be light.” Well, in the few seconds following the Big Bang, all the known universe was simply that: light caused by intense heat.

In conclusion, allow me to paraphrase Augustine’s words quoted earlier: Please stop talking nonsense when it comes to science.Author: Anonymous