Strife

Huy Fong Foods’ founder and owner, David Tran, created the sauce we know as sriracha in his L.A. kitchen as a refugee from Vietnam. Starting with nothing but a recipe and condensed milk cans full of 100 ounces gold that he smuggled out of Vietnam, Tran built Huy Fong Foods over the next four decades into a behemoth that was the No. 3 hot sauce brand in America, behind only Tabasco and Frank’s Red Hot.

Sriracha hot sauce has been copied, counterfeited, and even taken into outer space. Tran didn’t spend a dime on marketing, but his product found fans across the country and was celebrated by chefs and celebrities like Miley Cyrus. The bottle could even be found on the International Space Station.

Then a catastrophic disagreement between Tran and Craig Underwood, the California pepper farmer who had grown the red jalapeños for Huy Fong’s sauce for 28 years, created a crisis for the business. The breakup of Huy Fong Foods and Underwood Ranches, stemming from a disagreement over payment that erupted in November 2016, led to shortages of Huy Fong’s “rooster sauce.” This left millions of fans often unable to get their hands on their favorite condiment. The rift decimated both men’s companies—leaving the farmer with thousands of acres of pepper fields but no customer; and the sauce-maker with a 650,000-square-foot factory but not enough chili peppers to keep it running consistently.

Since then, dozens of other srirachas have flooded the market amid the original’s scarcity, including versions from the likes of Texas Pete and Roland’s and generics from various supermarket chains. And the No. 1 hot sauce brand in America seized the opportunity created by the shortage of Huy Fong’s sauce to dominate the category that Tran created: Tabasco had the bestselling sriracha in the country for the second half of 2023, pulling ahead even of the original rooster sauce.

The sad saga of the two men who created one of America's favorite condiments feels like a kind of fable, or cautionary tale, showing how fragile one product’s dominance of a category can be, no matter how beloved it is.

Possible Preaching Angles:

Just as discord can splinter a business and erode its effectiveness, so disagreements within a church can be equally devastating. Unresolved conflicts have the potential to shatter unity, undoing the hard work, and cause harm to its reputation.

In today's fast-paced world, the constant stream of news can feel like a firehose. Political scandals, partisan squabbles, conspiracy theories, outrage, and sensational headlines dominate the media landscape, leaving many feeling overwhelmed and disoriented. For Christians seeking to be informed citizens, this constant barrage of information can be particularly challenging.

Ryan Burge, an Eastern Illinois University professor said, “We were not designed to drink from a firehose in our lives when it comes to media consumption. Honestly, most days, there’s two or three things you need to pay attention to.”

For Christians who find themselves getting angry after watching cable news or scrolling through social media, several media-savvy Christians advise reading less and using discernment to determine which stories really matter. Jeff Bilbro, a professor at Grove City College, emphasizes the importance of avoiding the outrage cycle and seeking out more substantive news sources. He said:

As fallen creatures, we tend to be drawn toward things that titillate us, that are exciting and interesting and shocking and rile us up. When we give into those cravings, we reinforce and support journalistic models that feed them. Christians should be mindful of their own tendencies toward sensationalism and try to support different kinds of journalism.

In an article in The Atlantic, Ross Andersen raises the question: "Did Humans Ever Live in Peace?"

Archeologists have long had evidence of conflict between small rival groups. And the earliest signs of war have been dated to the dawn of civilization (with the Sumerians and Egyptians). But recent discoveries at Laguardia, Spain pushes proof of our warring inclination to the dawn of agriculture. So how far does war go back in our history?

Because war is, by definition, organized violence. Hieroglyphic inscriptions tell us that more than 5,000 years ago, the first pharaoh conquered chiefdoms up and down the Nile delta to consolidate his power over Egypt. A Sumerian poem suggests that some centuries later, King Gilgamesh fended off a siege at Uruk, the world’s first city. But new findings, at Laguardia and other sites across the planet, now indicate that wars were also occurring at small-scale farming settlements all the way back to the dawn of agriculture, if not before.

For nearly a century, anthropologists have wanted to know how long people have been engaged in organized group violence. It’s not some idle antiquarian inquiry. For many, the question bears on human nature itself, and with ruinous wars ongoing in Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere, it has become more resonant. If warring among humans began only recently, then we might be able to blame it on changeable circumstances. If, however, some amount of war has been with us since our species’ origins, or earlier in our evolutionary history, it may be difficult to excise it from the human condition.

But Andersen closes his piece with a view of what he thinks is hope:

What separates us most from other species is our cultural plasticity: We are always changing, sometimes even for the better. We have found ways to end blood feuds that implicated hundreds of millions. War may be a long-standing mainstay of human life, an inheritance from our deepest past. But each generation gets to decide whether to keep passing it down.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Andersen's view is common today. It sees humanity as though in constant progress towards perfection. We currently rest at the zenith. His "hope" is for this progress to continue. But a survey of our history reveals that this view is no hope at all. It is simply doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. That is not hope, it is insanity. There is no hope for lasting peace until the Prince of Peace appears (Isa. 9:6-7).

William Muir, a researcher at Purdue University, studies the productivity of chickens. He wants to know how to breed chickens that lay lots of eggs and create environments that foster greater productivity. To research how to make super chickens, he did an experiment.

Muir put chickens into two groups. One group contained normal, healthy chickens. He left them alone for six generations of a chicken’s life. Another, separate group included all the super chickens, those who are proven high producing egg layers. Muir also left them alone for six generations. He provided food, water, and a clean environment, but did nothing to influence the chickens egg laying.

At the end of the experiment, Muir discovered that the group of normal chickens were flourishing: they were laying more eggs per chicken than when the experiment started. In the group of super chickens, only three were left. They had pecked the others to death. The super chickens had laid more eggs through a strategy of suppressing other chickens’ productivity, by killing, or intimidating them, so they were unable to lay eggs.

Possible Preaching Angle

Competition; Leadership; Success - Leadership can fall into the same trap. We believe that if we find the right super chickens we will have success. We look for superstars. In our culture, and in our churches, we often create super chickens, because we desperately want success. We think it can come through one superstar leader.

Set adrift into the vast expanse of amorality, where do people turn? Where within modern society can one find a moral compass that imbues life with meaning? For some, the overwhelming choice made is politics, which, like any idol, consumes everything it touches.

If you put people in a moral vacuum, they will seek to fill it with the closest thing at hand. Over the past several years, people have sought to fill the moral vacuum with politics and tribalism. American society has become hyper-politicized.

According to research by Ryan Streeter, at the American Enterprise Institute, lonely young people are seven times more likely to say they are active in politics than young people who aren’t lonely. For people who feel disrespected, unseen, and alone, politics is a seductive form of social therapy. It offers them a comprehensible moral landscape: The line between good and evil runs not down the middle of every human heart, but between groups. Life is a struggle between us, the forces of good, and them, the forces of evil.

If you are asking politics to be the reigning source of meaning in your life, you are asking more of politics than it can bear. Seeking to escape sadness, loneliness, and lawless disorder through politics serves only to drop you into a world marked by fear and rage, by a sadistic striving for domination. Sure, you’ve left the moral vacuum—but you’ve landed in the pulverizing destructiveness of moral war.

Possible Preaching Angle

1) Church, conflict in; Disagreements; Could we retitle this illustration “How the Church Got Mean?” Have church members allowed taking political sides to divide their unity in Christ? Have we changed our cornerstone from Christ to a political leader we hope can set America right? 2) Arguments; Politics - When the moral anchor of biblical Christianity is abandoned then the tyranny of politics can take its place. People begin to fight political battles with outrage, exaggeration, and censorship. But life is far more than politics and perhaps the revolutionary message of Christianity can still be found by the walking wounded of the world.

After doing an analysis of seven high-profile cases where people died as a result of use of force by police, Washington Post reporters Ashley Parker and Justine McDaniel found a disturbing pattern. They say they found that police consistently gave initial statements that were “misleading, incomplete or wrong, with the first accounts consistently in conflict with the full set of facts once they finally emerged.”

Philip Stinson teaches criminal justice at Bowling Green State University, and says trends like these are not merely coincidental. He said, “The police own the narrative in every interaction they have with the public, because they write up the reports. Sometimes the reports are written to justify the actions the officers have taken, and sometimes to cover up what actually happened.”

In their analysis, Parker and McDaniel found that police accounts “regularly described the victims in terms assuming they were guilty of a crime; and the initial police version frequently used clinical language that seemed to obscure their own role in the incidents.”

According to Lauren Bonds, executive director of the National Police Accountability Project, police often achieve this by employing deliberate use of the passive voice. She said, “When we use passive language in our own lives, usually we’re trying to create some distance from what happened, [as in] it’s ‘the milk fell’ instead of ‘I spilled the milk.’”

According to Stinson, restoring trust with the public will require greater accountability by police departments. “It’s very damaging to the police department because it does damage to their reputation when they put out these press releases and it turns out they’re false.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Effective leadership requires integrity and truth telling; when those in authority lie, obscure, or exaggerate the truth to protect themselves, they erode their credibility and trustworthiness.

A playground scene turned tragic after a woman was shot and killed after a basketball game. Cameron Hogg, 31, is facing murder charges in connection to the shooting of Asia Womack, 21. Womack had recently defeated Hogg in pickup basketball, and witnesses say the game was heated and that there was plenty of trash talk on the court. Later that day, Hogg drove his truck to another location where Womack and another friend were seated outside, watching a football game on TV. When Hogg got out of his truck, Womack stood up, ready for another confrontation. But instead of saying a word, Hogg pulled out a firearm and shot her four times.

Her mother Andrea lamented the killing, noting that the two had been friends. She said, ”He’d pull up to my house, pick her up. They’d ride together, eat food together, take his phone calls, give him money in jail, and you turn around and kill her? It was senseless for him to kill his friend over a basketball game … Not even the basketball game itself, but the words that were spoken after the game."

After witnesses identified Hogg in a photo lineup, police arrested him without incident.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Society is witnessing increasing acts of spontaneous rage and extreme violence. This highlights the words of Scripture which describes that “the works of the flesh are evident…strife, jealousy, fits of anger” (Gal. 5:19-21) and confirms that “in the last days terrible times will come. For men will be abusive … unloving, unforgiving … without self-control … brutal” (2 Tim. 3:1-5).

A decade ago, the music industry saw a strange trend—a revival of millennials buying old-school vinyl records. In 2021, the format’s popularity surged in the US, selling 41.7 million units, up from 21.5 million in 2020. LPs outsold CDs for the first time in 30 years, as well as digital albums.

A Wall Street Journal article notes:

The spike has been driven, in part, by younger listeners nostalgic for an era when music—and maybe life in general—seemed more hands-on and fun. … Stressed out by fears of climate change, political strife and pandemic variants, a growing number of younger adults have been spending more time nesting and seeking refuge in their past. Many have fond childhood memories of parents playing vinyl albums in the 1980s and early 1990s, and they yearn to regain that feeling of security.

A clinical psychologist quoted in the article added, “For millennials who favor vinyl albums, the format may offer them control and stability. You can hold the vinyl, you’re responsible for making the music play, and perhaps it’s reminiscent of a more certain time in their lives. With vinyl, there are no decisions to make. You put on the record, you sit back and you listen.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

In stressful times like these we’re all looking for ways to “regain that feeling of security.”

A Florida man was jailed for assaulting another man, but unlike most scenarios, the conflict was not over a woman, a debt owed, or even sports fandom. According to a Facebook post by the Lee County Sheriff’s Office, Justin Anthony Garcia was charged with aggravated battery in connection with an altercation with his cousin, who sustained injuries from a pocketknife. Authorities and witnesses confirmed that the argument was over whether almond milk was superior to whole milk.

“Their verbal argument became physical when Garcia became enraged at the victim for disagreeing with him … [He] proceeded to punch the victim with a closed fist to the victim’s left side of his forehead.” When the cousin tried to fight back, Garcia produced the knife. “The victim became scared of what Garcia might do with the knife and proceeded to run away from Garcia as he chased the victim through the front yard,” according to official court documents.

A confidential source at the scene was unable to confirm which variety of milk Garcia preferred, nor whether any actual milk was spilled in the fracas. After seeing some of the injuries that resulted, however, they are confident in the likelihood that crying took place.

Possible Preaching Angles:

If we are to take a stand in public, let it be for justice and righteousness; when we quarrel and fight over trivial things, we reduce our ability to impact the things that really matter.

Spurned by family members who left him out of an event, an Oregon man got his revenge in a most public, disruptive fashion.

Sonny Donnie Smith, 38, was sentenced to three years of probation after he dialed in a terrorist threat that implicated his father and brother, who were both traveling through airports. He placed two anonymous phone calls to McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, and Midland International Air and Space Port, in Midland, Texas.

Smith's father and brother were detained and questioned as part of an investigation, which eventually yielded no evidence of terrorist activity. The temporary detention caused Smith's brother to miss his flight.

US District Judge Anna Brown was reserved in her words to Smith: "I hope you appreciate what you did really did disrupt not just your family but the whole system,'' Brown said.

Smith was tearful and apologetic as he stood before the court, and his attorney Todd Bofferding requested that his sentence not include community service, because Smith's emotional needs were so pressing. Bofferding claimed his client suffers from high levels of anxiety and has been prescribed anti-anxiety and anti-psychotic medication.

As if to confirm his counsel's advocacy, Smith burst into tears at the conclusion of the hearing.

Potential Preaching Angles: Jealousy can turn into immorality under the guise of pranking. When family members turn against each other, it's a sign of impending destruction. If we can't love our family members, it's difficult to love God.

In her book Grapes of Wrath Or Grace, Barabra Brokhoff tells the following story:

A group of American tourists were taking a bus tour in Rome led by an English-speaking guide. Their first stop was a basilica in a piazza, which was surrounded by several lanes of relentless Roman traffic. After they were all safely dropped off, the group climbed the steps for a quick tour of the church.

Then they spread out to board the bus, which was now parked across the street from the church. The frantic guide shouted for the group to stay together. He hollered out to them, "You cross one by one, they hit you one by one. But if you cross together, they think you will hurt the car! They won't hit you."

There is always much to be said for unity, especially unity of the Spirit.

An evolutionary biologist at Purdue University named William Muir studied chickens. He was interested in productivity—I think it's something that concerns all of us—but it's easy to measure in chickens because you just count the eggs. He wanted to know what could make his chickens more productive, so he devised a beautiful experiment. Chickens live in groups, so first of all, he selected just an average flock, and he let it alone for six generations. But then he created a second group of the individually most productive chickens—you could call them superchickens—and he put them together in a superflock, and each generation, he selected only the most productive for breeding.

After six generations had passed, what did he find? Well, the first group, the average group, was doing just fine. They were all plump and fully feathered and egg production had increased dramatically. What about the second group? Well, all but three were dead. They'd pecked the rest to death.

High up in a tree in British Columbia's Shoal Harbour Migratory Bird Sanctuary, six birds are sharing a nest: specifically, two bald eagles, their three eaglets, and a baby red-tailed hawk.

Sure, birds of different species sharing the same nest may sound rather strange, but for those bird aficionados out there, this will sound especially strange—because most of the time, bald eagles and red-tailed hawks are enemies, "known to fight each other to the death."

Bird experts have been theorizing about how this "unexpected interspecies family" came to be. According to NPR, "[T]he two options essentially boil down to a timeless question—which came to the nest first: the chicken (ahem, hawk) or the egg?"

The Hancock Wildlife Foundation's David Hancock pointed out that "[t]his little red-tailed chick is sharing the nest with three fast-growing, usually aggressive siblings … Sibling rivalry and fratricide is not uncommon in eagles."

For now, however, Sanctuary caretaker Kerry Finley has described the eagles as attentive caregivers: "It's quite something to see the way [the red-tailed hawk] is treated. The parents are quite attentive."

Potential Preaching Angles: Our world is fraught with divisions and enemy lines—from the animal kingdom to our churches. But for now, in their own small way, these birds are modeling the kind of upside-down world that we long for, a day in which God "will judge between the nations / and will settle disputes for many peoples" (Isa. 2:4).

Pedro Reyes, an artist from Mexico City, transforms weapons discarded by the Mexican army for his project called "Disarm." So far he has transformed 6,700 guns that were turned in or seized by the army and police into musical instruments. The guns came from Ciudad Juarez, a city of about 1.3 million people that averaged about 10 killings a day at the height of its drug violence. Reyes said that the guns he used are "just the tip of the iceberg of all the weapons that are seized every day and that the army has to destroy." But rather than succumb to the despair, Reyes took the very instruments used for violence and created instruments for music.

Reyes already was known for a 2008 project called "Palas por Pistolas," or "Pistols to Shovels," in which he melted down 1,527 weapons to make the same number of shovels to plant the same number of trees. Reyes stresses that his work "is not just a protest, but a proposal." "To me at least," Reyes says, "the concept is about taking weapons that are destructive in nature and chaotic and trying to make them for something else. So instead of objects of destruction, they become objects of creation." Art, for Reyes, is about transformation. He takes objects of destruction and transforms them into objects of creation. It is not by accident that Reyes' creative work hearkens back to the ancient vision of the prophet Isaiah when on the great day of the Lord "they will hammer their swords into plowshares."

A survey by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers found that 81 percent of lawyers said they'd seen an increase in divorce cases using evidence found on social media. A group of divorce lawyers gave the following five ways social media can hurt a marriage. (All the quotes are from divorce lawyers.)

#1) Screentime got in the way of face time. "Instead of getting into bed and discussing how each other's day was, couples opt to be on social media … [They] engaged with friends, acquaintances or even followers during times that they would otherwise be growing and improving their marital relationship … Put down your device, ask your spouse how their day was and listen."

#2) Reconnecting with old partners led to an affair. "Your former partners bring you back to a time when life was less complicated and your greatest challenge was a term paper. Some get so caught up in the romance that they move from posts, to emails, texts, calls and then secret rendezvous. Even if things don't work out with the old fling, the temporary checking out from your marriage can cause irreparable harm."

#3) Everyone else's marriage appeared perfect in comparison. "As you scroll your news feed and see so many seemingly perfect marriages, there is a tendency to compare your own relationship to the perceived perfection of another's. The weaknesses in your own marriage may become more obvious."

#4) Too much personal information was shared online. "Intimate details about your relationship and marriage should never be exposed on social media. It causes distrust between partners and it can backfire if you and your partner divorce."

#5) The single life started looking more and more attractive. "The social media posts of your single 'friends' look … so much better than your own life because many people's posts are [staged] to portray their own lives in the most positive light. There is a reason the selfie stick was one of the most popular holiday gifts last year."

It's difficult for parents who are trying to navigate how their children relate to social media. Here's one story about how NOT to do it. The following story ran in a British and then an Australian newspaper:

Taking away electronics is a common parental punishment, but this mother decided to take it one step further—and shoot up her children's iPhones with a rifle. "I hereby denounce the effects that social media have on my children," the mom shouts at the beginning of a YouTube video, a gun in her hand. "Their disobedience and their disrespect."

She then points the gun and the camera moves to reveal that she's not about to shoot a pheasant or a bottle, but is aiming straight for an iPhone perched on a tree trunk. With perfect aim she blows the smartphone to smithereens, as its pieces go flying into the grass.

"I also take back my role as parent to my children," she then yells … She then blows the remnants of the iPhone to bits, once again hitting it on her first shot. "My children's lives are more important to me," she begins, as the camera reveals she is standing over the iPhones with a sledgehammer, "than any electronic on this earth." She then hammers the remaining pieces a few times, her dog watching, before screaming: "I'm done!" And with that, she drops the hammer and walks away.

An old joke. A letter to a neighbor reads:

Dear Frank. We've been neighbors for six tumultuous years. When you borrowed my tiller, you returned it in pieces. When I was sick, you blasted rap music. And when your dog went to the bathroom all over my lawn, you laughed. I could go on, but I'm certainly not one to hold grudges. So I am writing this letter to tell you that your house is on fire. Cordially, Bob

Physician Horace Smith warns that in the church "we must guard against 'spiritual autoimmune disease,' in which spiritual white cells see normal cells within the body as enemies and try to destroy them" Dr. Smith adds:

Is it possible for a human body to "bite and devour" healthy cells, destroying life? Absolutely. Sometimes white blood cells mistakenly attack healthy cells in the blood, causing disastrous results. The immune system fails to recognize components of the body as normal. It then creates autoantibodies that attack its own cells, tissues, or organs. This causes inflammation and damage, and it leads to autoimmune disorders. For example, autoimmune hemolytic anemia is a group of disorders that attack red blood cells as if they were substances foreign to the body. Like other cases of anemia, the person may experience shortness of breath, tiredness, and jaundice. When the destruction of healthy red cells persists for a long period of time, the spleen may enlarge, resulting in a sense of abdominal fullness and pain

God intends for his body to be healthy, nourish each other, protect each other, and carry harmful waste away.

An article on Esquire magazine begins with this quote in bold capital letters:

WE THE PEOPLE ARE PISSED. THE BODY POLITIC IS BURNING UP. AND THE ANGER THAT COURSES THROUGH OUR HEADLINES AND NEWS FEEDS—ABOUT INJUSTICE AND INEQUALITY, ABOUT MARGINALIZATION AND DISENFRANCHISEMENT, ABOUT WHAT THEY ARE DOING TO US—SHOWS NO SIGN OF ABATING. ESQUIRE TEAMED UP WITH NBC NEWS TO SURVEY 3,000 AMERICANS ABOUT WHO'S ANGRIEST, WHAT'S MAKING THEM ANGRY, AND WHO'S TO BLAME.

Here's one of the most interesting statistics: "Half of all Americans are angrier today than they were a year ago." And white Americans are the angriest of them all. Here is a summary of how they see life, "From their views on the state of the American dream (dead) and America's role in the world (not what it used to be) to how their life is working out for them (not quite what they'd had in mind), a plurality of whites tends to view life through a veil of disappointment."

The first question in the survey is "About how often do you hear or read something in the news that makes you angry?" The top three responses are: 37 percent once a day, 31 percent a few times a day, and 20 percent once a week. In total, about 88 percent of all Americans are angry at least once a week.

In Walter Van Tilburg Clark's novel The Ox-Bow Incident, an exited youth passes on a rumor that popular rancher has been murdered and his cattle stolen. Eventually an angry mob of townspeople decided they can't wait for the sheriff for fear that the desperadoes will get away, so they form a makeshift posse. Riding long and hard, they discover three strangers and a herd of steers near an oxbow in the river. The strangers claim that they had paid for their cattle that morning and don't know anything about a murder. Despite their repeated pleas of innocence, the mob casts a guilty, except for five who vote they be turned over the courts. The strangers are summarily hung.

Them as the vigilantes return to town, they meet the sheriff and the rancher whom they believed had been killed. It turns out the strangers had been telling the truth all along and the men they had just murdered had nothing to do with the rustling.