Correction

Your relationship can handle way more honesty than you think it can. In fact, a new study from the University of Rochester found that being brutally honest with your partner benefits both of you.

Most people fear that difficult conversations will damage their relationships, so we avoid tough topics or sugarcoat our feelings. But research shows we’re wrong about the risks of being direct.

Scientists studied 214 couples, together an average of 15 years, and asked them to discuss something they wanted their partner to change. This is a conversation most people dread. Before talking, each person privately wrote down what they wanted to say, then had the conversation while researchers recorded what was actually shared.

The results? When people were more honest about their requests, both partners reported better emotional well-being and higher relationship satisfaction. What mattered more was that people actually were honest and that their partners perceived them as honest.

Three months later, many benefits persisted. People who had been more honest during the initial discussion reported better emotional well-being and were more likely to see positive changes in their partners over time.

You don’t need perfect communication skills or complete agreement about what happened for honesty to help your relationship. You just need willingness to share authentic thoughts and feelings.

Rather than tiptoeing around sensitive topics, couples should lean into honest communication. The truth can set your relationship free, even when it’s hard to hear.

Michael Hoffen is a new author, and like him, the central character of his book is a teenager. But there’s quite an age gap between them—about 4,000 years. That’s because Hoffen translated an ancient papyrus from Egypt’s Middle Kingdom and brought to life the true story of a young Egyptian from ancient times named Pepi. In the papyrus, Pepi’s father, Khety, is intent on getting his son a job in the royal court.

Young Pepi wonders what career path he should choose, an important matter still contemplated today by millions of teenagers forty centuries later. His father Khety takes him on a long journey up the Nile to enroll him in a school far away from home. Along the way, Khety explains 18 other terrible jobs Pepi could end up having to work at if he is not hired as a scribe.

Hoffen, who has been translating ancient texts since middle school, became fascinated by a 4,000-year-old or so piece of literature from ancient Egypt’s Middle Kingdom known as The Instruction of Khety.

Under the guidance and collaboration of his two co-authors, Egyptologists Christian Casey and Jen Thum, Hoffen spent three-and-a-half years translating hieroglyphics into modern-day prose and gathering images to tell the story of Kheti and Pepi.

He then published a book called “Be A Scribe! Working for a Better Life in Ancient Egypt.” In the book he describes just how little the human condition has changed in thousands of years and shows readers that working for a living has never been easy!

Possible Preaching Angle:

Parents still want the best for their children, and teenagers face important decisions as they set out on their career paths. This story shows how little parenting has changed across thousands of years. The record of an Egyptian father giving life advice to his son mirrors the same instructions that Solomon gave to his sons in Proverbs, “Listen, my sons, to a father’s instruction; pay attention and gain understanding. For I give you sound teaching…” (Prov. 4:1)

At one point, U.S. Men’s Soccer Team star Christian Pulisic was dropped from the starting lineup by head coach Gregg Berhalter. Pulisic said, “There were moments when he benched me and I wanted to kill the guy — I hated him, I was so angry. But then the next game comes along, and then I find myself in a better place. The way he handled a lot of situations, I have to give him a lot of credit.”

Pulisic said that he developed an understanding for Berhalter’s coaching methods during his first camp under the coach. In that camp, Pulisc suffered a slight injury. After getting a scan on the injury, Berhalter summoned Pulisic for a meeting. The coach suggested that the injuries may have happened because Pulisic wasn’t training with the intensity at which he played in games. Pulisic was taken aback at first, but eventually he took in the advice. He said:

It changed the way I look at training, even today. ... Listen, it wasn’t easy, and it took me a little while, but I said “Let me take this onboard,” and since then I’ve been in a much better place. It’s things like that. The way that he deals with players, you can tell he is passionate, and he cares about his players. He’s not going to tell you it easy, or what you want to hear, he is going to tell you what he feels is going to improve you.

A man from Georgia found himself in shock after being handed a speeding ticket totaling a staggering $1.4 million. Connor Cato was pulled over in September for driving at 90 mph in a 55-mph zone, resulting in the citation.

Cato says he knew he would be paying a hefty fine for driving so fast, but even taking that into account, the amount seemed excessive. “‘$1.4 million,’ the lady told me on the phone. I said, ‘This might be a typo’ and she said, ‘No sir, you either pay the amount on the ticket or you come to court on Dec. 21 at 1:30 p.m.’”

Eventually, city officials clarified that the amount was not the actual fine but rather a placeholder generated by the e-citation software used by the local court. The official statement from the City of Savannah stated, “The programmers who designed the software used the largest number possible because super speeder tickets are a mandatory court appearance and do not have a fine amount attached to them when issued by police.”

Savannah city spokesperson Joshua Peacock told the Associated Press that the citation’s value was not meant to intimidate or coerce individuals into appearing in court, explaining that the actual fine is subject to a cap of $1,000, along with additional state-mandated costs. Furthermore, Peacock assured the public that the court is actively working on revising the placeholder language to prevent any further confusion or misunderstanding regarding the nature of the citation.

Still, Cato was not the only person riled up by the big-ticket citation. In a recent editorial, The New York Post called it a metaphor for “the absolute state of the social contract we make with our elected officials and their administrative henchmen.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

People don’t always understand the eternal consequences of their behavior, but there is a shocking day of judgment coming. At that time many will face the consequences of violating God’s laws and there will be no mercy. However, God is merciful “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). At the present time, God uses consequences to awaken people to the penalty of disobedience (Heb. 12:4-12).

Cole Mushrush does two things when he wakes up each morning at the family ranch: make up a pot of coffee, then fire up his laptop to see if any cows have wandered astray. Not many do, because electronic collars have been hung around their necks that give them a jolt if they try to cross one of the invisible fence boundaries created on a computer. The digital fence follows the contours of a pasture, and the collars are designed to keep the cows hemmed in without having to go to the expense of building a real fence.

He said, “The collars have mostly deterred cows from wandering past the no-go zone—although the animals don’t always behave as desired after a shock that comes following warning beeps. Some of them close their eyes and run. We don’t need that.”

The cows undergo a four-day training regimen which included a beep followed by shock, and playing around with the boundaries. There were a few rule breakers, such as when a cow might see her friend on the other side of an invisible fence. Mushrush said, “There are social cliques within a herd. Sometimes a cow will walk through the shock to be with their friend.”

If you are wondering what the shock feels like, it is reported to hurt less than a bee sting.

Possible Preaching Angle:

We know we have freedom in Christ but sometimes we need to be reminded or warned that we are crossing a line which God has placed there for our good.

Gerrit De Vynck wrote a story in The Washington Post about how artificial intelligences respond to the errors they make.

Citing a recent MIT research paper, De Vynck reported that a group of scientists loaded up two iterations of Open AI’s ChatGPT, and asked each one a simple question about the geographical origin of one of MIT’s professors. One gave an incorrect answer, the other a correct one.

Researchers then asked the two bots to debate until they could agree on an answer. Eventually, the incorrect bot apologized and agreed with the correct one. The researchers’ leading theory is that allowing chatbots to debate one another will create more factually correct outcomes in their interactions with people.

One of the researchers said, “Language models are trained to predict the next word. They are not trained to tell people they don’t know what they’re doing.” De Vynck adds, “The result is bots that act like precocious people-pleasers. [They’re] making up answers instead of admitting they simply don’t know.”

AIs like ChatGPT are not trained to discern truth from falsehood, which means that false information gets included along with truth. Chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Bing, and Google’s Bard have demonstrated a major fatal flaw: They make stuff up all the time. These falsehoods, or digital hallucinations as they are being called, are a serious concern because they limit the effectiveness of the AI as a tool for fact-finding.

What’s worse, scientists are beginning to see evidence that AIs pick up on societal fears around robots gaining sentience and turning against humanity, and mimic the behavior they see depicted in science fiction. According to this theory, if an artificial intelligence actually kills a human being, it might be because it learned from HAL, the murderous robot from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer at Google said, “No one in the field has yet solved the hallucination problem. All models do have this as an issue.” When asked if or when this will change, Pichai was less than optimistic. “[It’s] a matter of intense debate,” he said.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In our pursuit of technology, we must never give up our human responsibility to seeking or telling the truth.

In the early days of World War II, the stress of the war began to take its toll on Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of England. His wife Clementine grew alarmed. A member of Churchill’s inner circle told her that Churchill’s sarcastic and over-bearing manner was starting to discourage his inner circle of leaders. Clementine decided to speak the truth in love.

“My darling Winston,” she began in a letter, “I must confess that I have noticed a deterioration in your manner; and you are not so kind as you used to be.” She cautioned that in possessing the power to give orders and to sack anyone and everyone, “he was obliged to maintain a high standard of behavior—to combine kindness and if possible Olympic calm.” She reminded him that in the past he had been fond of quoting a French maximum, meaning, essentially, “one leads by calm.”

She continued: “I cannot bear that those who serve the country and yourself should not love you as well as admire and respect you.” But she warned, “You won’t get the best results by irascibility and rudeness. It will breed either dislike or a slave mentality.” She closed the letter with these words: “Please forgive your loving, devoted and watchful Clementine.”

Apparently, the letter got through to Winston. The next day people reported that he seemed remarkably at ease. He lay in bed, propped up by his bed rest as he gazed adoringly at his cat, Nelson, sprawled out peacefully at the foot of the bed.

It’s ironic that Grace Community Church, pastored by John MacArthur, is located in Sun Valley, California, because its leadership seems committed to keeping certain details hidden from light.

Christianity Today published a story in February about the struggles Hohn Cho had with getting people in his church to admit fault and correct an injustice. Cho is an attorney, and had been an elder at GCC. A year ago, he and several other elders were tasked with investigating claims of spousal abuse from a woman in the church’s care. What he discovered was that she’d been rebuked by elders for failing to reconcile with her husband, but later the husband was imprisoned for child molestation and abuse, vindicating her claims.

Cho says he repeatedly asked church officials to privately apologize and make things right, but they refused. He says Pastor John MacArthur himself told him to “forget it,” and Cho was eventually pressured into resigning from the board. Even after his resignation, Cho was contacted by numerous other women from GCC who’d been given similar counsel to endure abuse from their husbands. Ultimately, he concluded that he just could not forget it.

Cho wrote in a report to the elder board, “I genuinely believe it would be wrong to do nothing. At the end of the day, I know what I know. I cannot ‘un-know’ it, and I am in fact accountable before God for this knowledge.”

Cho told reporters at CT:

They sided with a child abuser, who turned out to be a child molester, over a mother desperately trying to protect her three innocent young children. And that was and is flatly wrong, and needs to be made right. Numerous elders have admitted in various private conversations that “mistakes were made” and that they would make a different decision today knowing what they know now. But those admissions mean you need to make it right with the person you wronged; that is utterly basic Christianity.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Abuse; Church Discipline; Failure, Spiritual - We can't claim to stand for the truth if we won't tell the truth when it's inconvenient to do so.

New York Times columnist Kashana Cauley knows a little something about regrets. She wrote, “My friends and I got tattoos so we could feel dangerous. Not very dangerous, because very dangerous people went to jail, but slightly dangerous, like a thrilling drop of botulism in a jar of jelly.”

She explains in the piece that when it came time to select her first tattoo, she picked a design of Chinese characters that she was told meant “fame and fortune.” But then she had chat with an older Chinese-speaking woman in a university locker room when they were changing clothes.

“She asked me what I thought the Chinese characters on my shoulder meant, and I told her. Then she asked me what I was at school to study, and I said law. She frowned and told me the tattoo was better suited for someone in the arts — that I should hurry up and get into the arts. We both laughed.”

But Cauley thought it would be different when she got a tattoo of her own name. As an African American descended from slavery, her knowledge of family history doesn’t extend very far. But a friend told her once that her name meant something beautiful and significant in Arabic. As a result, she looked up an online Arabic translation of her name, and got that design as another tattoo.

And she was satisfied with her choice … until she wasn’t. “For a few years I walked around confident that I had finally restored some meaning to my name, until an Arabic-speaking friend spotted my tattoo at lunch. ‘What do you think it means?’ she asked.”

Her friend’s response surprised her. “Instead of complimenting me on the beautiful, permanent version of my name needled onto my arm, my Arabic-speaking friend paused. Apparently, tattoo No. 2 was actually one of those 404 error messages, when an online search comes up blank. So my arm said, more or less: ‘Result not found.’”

“As a reluctant pioneer in the field of bad tattooing, I spent years afterward stubbornly telling people it meant ‘the eternal search.’ It sounded more elegant than ‘I didn’t find a correct translation of my name on the internet.’”

Possible Preaching Angle:

We can avoid embarrassing mishaps by asking for the counsel of others to help guide us through the major decisions we make.

In June, a group of students were honored in an off-campus commencement ceremony, being conferred with degrees from a neighboring educational institution. But unlike many pandemic-era distance learning arrangements, these students were not doing their learning from home. On the contrary, these men were residents of Statesville Correctional Center. But despite their institutional disadvantages, they earned master’s degrees in Christian Ministry and Restorative Arts from North Park University in nearby Chicago.

Michelle Clifton-Soderstrom is the former dean of faculty at North Park, and says she helped start the program because most Statesville inmates have never had access to quality education. The Statesville Restorative Arts program examines Biblical theology and history, but also includes courses on trauma, race relations, nonviolent communication, conflict transformation, restorative practices, and transformative justice.

Cook County State’s Attorney Kimberly Foxx was in attendance as the commencement speaker, and praised the graduates for their initiative. She said, “We achieve our highest calling as a community when those who have the least among us are leading the charge to get us there.”

Perhaps the best summary of the program’s significance was uttered by one of its participants, Jamal Bakr: "Our potential is not defined by our worst mistakes. Let today's event be an example of what happens when opportunities are created, potentials are unignored and complete restoration is always the aim of justice."

Possible Preaching Angle:

No one is beyond God's redemption. Even those who've done wrong can still find roles to participate in God's service.

For well over three decades, Patrick Vacarella has been a fixture at a local Christmas tree lot, helping local families get into the holiday spirit. He says, “It’s kind of fun to see everybody every year, and they remember you from year to year because you’ve been there for so long.”

The lot is run by the Mountain Scouts Tree Sale Association, and serves as a fundraiser for several local Boy Scout troops. Ironically, the inciting incident that launched Vacarella into his annual tradition of service was not exactly Boy Scout behavior.

Back in 1987, Vacarella was a headstrong teenager who loved to show off his 1979 Pontiac Trans Am. So he made a habit of pulling up to stop signs and burning his tires’ rubber on the asphalt, leaving a trail of smoke in his wake. As he’d done many times before, Vacarella approached the intersection on Highway 31 next to the Christmas tree lot, where there were sure to be plenty of onlookers.

However, Bo Young, who ran the lot at the time, wanted to teach Vacarella a lesson. So he’d previously called police, who were waiting just around the corner. Immediately after his big burnout, police appeared and pulled the teen over. They gave him two choices – either pay a hefty fine for a traffic ticket, or instead, volunteer at the Christmas tree lot for a few weeks. He chose the second option.

But it wasn’t long before what seemed like a punishment became a privilege. He quickly became friends with Young’s two sons Matt and Paul, and together they helped families pick out trees and tie them onto their cars. Vacarella enjoyed it so much, he agreed to do it again the following year, and then the year after.

Vacarella says, “It got to a point where it was fun. It seems like every year I was up there, I got to do something else until it evolved into me being lot manager. Sometimes, I ask myself, due to how long I’ve been in this, if I just shouldn’t have paid the ticket and went on.”

But his answer is obvious. “You see the same people every year, and they’re like, ‘Well, I knew you would be here when I came; good to see you again.’”

Possible Preaching Angle:

God often uses the repercussions of our misbehavior to invite us into newer, healthier ways of living. In God's kingdom, discipline is less punishment and more an invitation into wholeness.

In a recent issue of GQ, The Weeknd (real name Abel Tesfaye), recently sat down to discuss his music and of course his recent snub by the Grammys. The superstar, with downloads numbering in the billions, was not nominated in a single category for 2021.

A lot of artists claim they do not read reviews of their work. They want to avoid negative critique of their art and performance. But when asked how he handles reviews, The Weeknd had this to say:

I read every single review. I read every comment. Everything. And I like reviews, man. I like critics. Even the biased ones that are against me, I like reading it. I think it's interesting.

Why would he feel this way?

I think it's humbling, which is always great. I can now understand, when you're reading stuff . . . I can see through the lines now. Between the lines . . . Heartbreak isn't a good experience, but it still inspires great music.

Possible Preaching Angle:

1) Examination; Scripture; Word of God - Scripture is a review of our life. It gives an honest and thorough assessment of our thoughts and actions. Its review of our performance will result in humbling and heartbreak. It doesn't feel good, but it still inspires great worship. 2) Criticism; Growth – Listening to and accepting helpful criticism brings about maturity and personal growth.

The epidemic of call-out culture is very disturbing to Professor Loretta J. Ross. She is a Black feminist who has been doing human rights work for 40 years. Although she does not claim to be a Christian, she does share a valuable lesson. She writes:

Today’s call-out culture is so seductive, I often have to resist the overwhelming temptation to clap back at people on social media who get on my nerves. Call-outs happen when people publicly shame each other online, at the office, in classrooms or anywhere humans have beef with one another. But I believe there are better ways of doing social justice work.

In rural Tennessee in 1992, a group of women whose partners were in the Ku Klux Klan asked me to provide anti-racist training to help keep their children out of the group. All day they called me a “well-spoken colored girl” and inappropriately asked that I sing Negro spirituals.

Instead of reacting, I responded. I couldn’t let my hurt feelings sabotage my agenda. I listened to how they joined the white supremacist movement. I told them how I felt when I was eight and my best friend called me “n---er.” The women and I made progress. I did not receive reports about further outbreaks of racist violence from that area for my remaining years monitoring hate groups.

We can change this culture. Calling-in is simply a call-out done with love. Some corrections can be made privately. Others will necessarily be public, but done with respect. So, take comfort in the fact that you offered a new perspective of information and you did so with love and respect. But the thing that I want to emphasize is that the calling-in practice means you always keep a seat at the table for them if they come back.

Since 2003, Matthiasson Wines has been producing high-quality wines in the Napa region. In a recent newsletter, the Matthiasson's explained how they prune their vineyards:

Why do we prune? Because if the vine is not pruned it reverts very quickly to its wild nature, climbing everywhere with its long, sinewy trunk and tiny, scraggly bunches of uneven grapes. Every year we need to assess the growth of the vines, and decide whether to prune them back harder, or to let them grow a bit bigger, or return them to the same size and shape they were the year before.

Part of the pleasure of pruning is that it is pure craftsmanship, like woodworking or ceramics, a blending of form and vision, assessing the vine’s growth and adjusting the pruning cuts to its individual differences. It’s also a tactile relationship with nature, the living vines that could easily grow wild guided by our hands to line up in vineyard rows ready to bear another crop of wine grapes for our pleasure and nourishment.

If we prune correctly the vine will be balanced. That means it will grow just enough. If it grows too much, the resulting wines will be thin and simple. If it grows too little, the wine will be bitter and hard. The right amount of growth — what we call “balanced growth” — results in balanced wines that are delicious and show the terroir (environmental factors).

David Roseberry writes in a recent blog on LeaderWorks:

I went to see a doctor for a pain in my shoulder. My shoulder was just hurting all the time, whenever I moved it. The doctor examined me and he diagnosed the problem as “frozen shoulder.” It comes from just being my age, and from use.

The doctor said, “There are a couple of things we need to do. The first is physical therapy,” and he wrote me a prescription for that. “And I can give you a steroid shot, a cortisone shot, right into the joint of that shoulder.”

I said, “Go for it.”

As the doctor’s getting ready to do the injection, he says, “What do you do for a living?”

I say, “I’m a minister. I preach for a living. Do you have a church?”

He said, “No, I gave that up long ago. ... Now listen, just relax a little bit here, and we’ll get that joint all loosened up so you can continue to point your finger at people.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Wait a minute! Is that really the world’s perception of the God we represent? Shouldn’t people see the grace of God in our lives? “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever.” (Ps. 103:8-9)

Throughout history, human beings have always attempted to regulate behavior in order for people in a society to live peacefully and productively. Religious and secular values, societal laws, education, and politics have all been used to motivate people to adopt the better sides of our nature. The great atheist nation China has begun to implement a bold new plan to foster a more moral and industrious society.

The government has begun evaluating and ranking every citizen based on their behavior. As of 2020 all citizens have a new identity number and a social-credit record. Because of widespread concerns by Chinese citizens of the prevalence of corruption, scams, and scandals, the Communist Party has developed a system that would “allow the trustworthy to roam freely under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.”

Good behavior is rewarded while bad is punished. “Rewards for high social credit—in other words, being deemed trustworthy—may include perks like free access to gym facilities, public transportation discounts, and shorter wait times in hospitals. Punishments for low social credit could include restrictions on renting an apartment, buying a home, or enrolling a child in one’s preferred school.”

Psychologists warn of the downsides: “People whose futures are tied to the score may make cold calculations about friends’ likely numbers in an effort to make sure no one becomes a drag on their or their family’s prospects. And they may decide against friending some individuals—or whole groups of people altogether.”

In his book, The Reason for God, Tim Keller writes:

If you don’t trust the Bible enough to let it challenge and correct your thinking, how could you ever have a personal relationship with God? In any truly personal relationship, the other person has to be able to contradict you.

For example, if a wife is not allowed to contradict her husband, they won’t have an intimate relationship. Remember the (two) movies The Stepford Wives? The husbands of Stepford, Connecticut, decide to have their wives turned into robots who never cross the wills of their husbands. A Stepford wife was wonderfully compliant and beautiful, but no one would describe such a marriage as intimate or personal.

Now, what happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility and crosses your will? If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you ever have a God who can contradict you? You won’t! You’ll have a Stepford God! A God, essentially, of your own making, and not a God with whom you can have a relationship and genuine interaction.

Only if your God can say things that outrage you and make you struggle (as in a real friendship or marriage!) will you know that you have gotten hold of a real God and not a figment of your imagination. So, an authoritative Bible is not the enemy of a personal relationship with God. It is the precondition for it.

When an envoy visited the White House to advocate for an inmate serving a life sentence, most of the headlines went toward fashion model and lifestyle icon Kim Kardashian West. However, accompanying her was former federal judge Kevin Sharp. Sharp carried an authoritative tone because of his years on the federal bench. But Sharp also had a specific opinion on the inmate in question because he was the one who sentenced him to prison.

Back in 2013, Christopher Young was sentenced to life in prison under a federal “three strikes” law, even though his drug charges were nonviolent. Sharp says Young should never have received such a harsh sentence, but that during the trial, his hands were tied because of the sentencing statutes.

Sharp vividly remembered that day in court, listening to Young give his formal statement:

If anyone is getting a mandatory sentence, you have to remember these are still people. You need to give them a chance to talk. It was the worst time I've ever had on the bench. I knew it was a mandatory life sentence. He knew it was a mandatory life sentence …

Sharp is notable for having left a lifetime judicial position to advocate for change:

Our criminal justice system is a mess. It's still the best there is, but there is so much we could do to make it better. And one of those things has got to be get rid of mandatory minimums. Let the judges do what you ask them to do. I got to the point where I'm thinking: “Is my role in society better on the bench or off the bench? Am I better off the bench working and advocating for a more fair criminal justice system?"

Possible Preaching Angle:

Those in authority have a responsibility to wield that authority justly. If we find we can make a difference for those without influence, we are obligated to do so. This will result in the honor and glory of Christ.