Reactions

In a 2022 behavioral study, researchers explored the connection between anger and moral courage. While participants were supposedly waiting for the study to start, they overheard two experimenters plan, and then execute, the embezzlement of money from the project fund. (The embezzlement was staged.) The participants had various opportunities to intervene, including directly confronting the experimenters, involving a fellow participant, or reporting to a superior.

Depending on your perspective of the events of the last few years, you may or may not be surprised to learn that only 27% of participants intervened. (Other experiments confirm the natural human inclination towards passivity). Interestingly, researchers found that the more an individual reported feeling angry, the more likely they were to intervene, showing that anger can serve as an important catalyst for moral courage.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Often the anger of man does not achieve God’s purposes, but there is a place for “righteous anger” at what is wrong and evil.

When Tanner Cook approached Alan Colie in the food court of the Dulles Town Center mall, he was hoping to obtain prank footage for his YouTube channel. Instead, he got shot.

Security footage from the incident shows Cook approaching and following Colie for a little over a minute. After repeatedly asking Cook to go away, Colie pulled out a firearm and shot Cook in the abdomen. For the shooting Colie was charged with aggravated malicious wounding, using a firearm while committing a felony, and discharging a firearm in a building. Loudoun County attorney Buta Biberaj said,“There is nothing that would suggest, based on information we have to date, that what Cook did warranted this response.”

However, the Loudoun County attorney has not ruled out the possibility that Cook will face charges for his role in the altercation, especially if evidence showed that Cook threatened or touched Colie. She said, “You don’t know the recipient of this type of prank, where they are, or what their trauma might be — they may receive it as being a threat.” When asked if such evidence exists, she simply responded, “the collection of evidence continues.”

Jeramy Cook, Tanner’s father, thinks any potential charges would set a troublesome precedent for entertainers who specialize in public interaction. He said, “If you’re going to bring charges against my son, go bring charges against TV celebrities in prank shows. And everybody else — all the videos of people getting punked on social media — let’s make it so no one can do that anymore.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Immature and reckless behavior often results in unintended consequences. Young people need to be instructed toward mature thinking and should be taught the consequences of their actions at an early age.

Eight in ten Americans agree society puts too much value on appearing youthful. A survey examined perspectives around aging and found that most agree that in today’s world there’s a negative bias around aging or the perception of being old—so much so that six in ten avoid sharing their age for fear of being “judged.”

But a new poll also identified the benefits of getting older. 75% of the respondents agreed that age is not something to fight or fear, but rather an opportunity to live a more fulfilling and emotionally healthy life. Two-thirds of respondents actually feel younger than they are—nearly a decade younger, on average.

The survey found that three in four people want to spend less time fighting aging and more time doing things they love. Jim Burkett, president of Great Lakes Wellness said, “While ‘anti-aging’ has become the norm for quite some time, we’re starting to see a shift among Americans who realize aging is living.”

The Top Four Benefits of Aging:

–Learning new things about themselves or the world every year

–Having more life experience

–Gaining wisdom

–Being more confident

What, then, is the secret to living well in your advancing years? 80% will tell you that a better attitude leads to more graceful aging. 70% said they’re embracing their age, believing that getting older is not as bad as they thought it would be.

In Chase the Lion, Mark Batterson writes that in 1983 Lorne Whitehead published an article about the domino chain reaction. You can picture it in your mind, can't you? You knock over a domino, and it sets off a chain reaction that can knock down hundreds of dominoes in a matter of seconds. But the unique significance of Whitehead's research was discovering that a domino is capable of knocking over a domino that is one-and-a-half times its size. So a two-inch domino can topple a three-inch domino. A three-inch domino can topple a four-and-a-half-inch domino. And a four-and-a-half-inch domino can topple a … well, you get the point.

By the time you get to the eighteenth domino, you could knock over the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Of course, it's leaning so that's not fair. The twenty-third domino could knock over the Eiffel Tower. And by the time you get to the twenty-ninth domino, you could take down the Empire State Building.

In the realm of mathematics, there are two types of progression: linear and geometric. Linear progression is two plus two equals four. Geometric progression is compound doubling. Two times two equals four. If you take thirty linear steps, you're ninety feet from where you started. But if you take thirty geometric steps, you've circled the earth twenty-six times!

Faith isn't linear. Faith is geometric. Every decision we make, every step of faith we take, has a chain reaction. And those chain reactions set off a thousand chain reactions we aren't even aware of. They won't be revealed until we reach the other side of the space-time continuum.

I showed up at the house of a friend and rang the doorbell. I was supposed to bring some chairs. He opened the door and said, "Ron, where are the chairs?"

I responded, "Oh, I forgot."

He glared at me and barked, "That figures!"

I thought, That figures? He thinks I'm no good. He thinks I can't follow through. He thinks I'm useless. Then I thought, Who does he think he is? The creep. I bet he's got a problem or 12!

But then I decided I had two options: believe the best about what he was saying—although that was pretty tough—and just forget about it, or ask him what he meant—even though it seemed obvious to me.

A couple of weeks later I saw him and brought it up: "You know the other day when I was at your house and forgot to bring the chairs and you said, 'That figures'? …"

He interrupted me and said, "I shouldn't have said that."

"I was wondering what you meant."

"Well, all day long that day in every meeting someone had forgotten something. It just figured."

So, he wasn't saying, "Jenson, you're a jerk." He was saying, "My day's been terrible."

I am convinced that life is 10 percent what happens to us and 90 percent how we react to it.

What really matters is what happens in us, not to us.