Dave Dishman

Guidance from Overlooked Men and Women of the Bible

Category: Bible (Page 275 of 419)

social media

It’s Like Paul Had a Twitter Account

July 7, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Sometimes I read things in the Scriptures that sound so up-to-date I immediately read them again. I did so with this passage, while visions of our social media soaked world danced in my head:

There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power.

I have a love/hate relationship with social media. I love seeing family and hearing from friends, and I like publishing this blog. But I hate trying to have a conversation with any depth or nuance. I hate the way people treat those they disagree with, and I hate the way I get drawn into the snarkiness of it all.

In so many ways, social media magnifies these qualities Paul described as characteristic of the last days. Every hour a new internet mob assails someone for a mistake, current or even long past. Reprehensible language machine-guns back and forth. A lack of goodwill permeates the digital spaces.

Then turn toward the way social media promotes love of self, love of money, love of pleasure and the ditching of self-control. All those influencers promoting all that stuff. How should I treat myself today?

To be frank, social media is the most powerful disseminator of ignorance in human history. While it’s not going away, we were better off without it. The opinion of a crotchety old man? Perhaps, but I present a powerful case made stronger every day.

I don’t normally give much thought to end-times prophecies. But these words of Paul from an ancient era point to deep fissures in our modern world. How ironic to discover the best evidence for the last days in the wondrous technological devices we carry everywhere we go.

2 Timothy 3 in reading the Bible cover to cover in 2022

Photo by camilo jimenez

be still and know

Take a Walk Under the Stars

July 6, 2022 / / 0 Comments

I enjoy a glance up at the stars when taking out the trash or getting home late, or just walking outside for a few minutes before locking up for the night.

But seeing the stars in all their glory involves moving away from ambient light and spending more than a few seconds peering at the heavens. Stargazing involves slowing and stillness. Only when our frenetic days fade to quiet do the stars come out.

The Lord speaks of a similar practice: Be still and know that I am God.

Like stargazing, stillness brings out the depth and nuance and brightness of the Lord. It takes quiet and calm to consider his ways. Exactly the opposite of what my daily intake of social media, news channels, and entertainment brings. There are times for these I suppose, but limited. I don’t find the Lord in those places.

Perhaps many of us feel closer to the Lord when outdoors because it’s calmer out there. Our hearts are stiller in the woods than on the freeway.

Loads of people gaze at the stars and grow convinced there must be a God. Stillness under the stars opens us to the one who spoke and flung those very stars into space.

So, in the warmth of a summer evening, stroll outside and enjoy the stars. There’s no better way to be still and know that I am God.

Psalm 46 in reading the Bible cover to cover in 2022

Photo by Ryan Hutton

not chained

Unchain At Your Own Risk

July 5, 2022 / / 0 Comments

My team trained into Romania as undercover missionaries. The strict communist government forbade contraband—Bibles in particular—from entering the country. But each team member took one anyway. I placed my Bible in the bottom of my sleeping bag, then rolled the bag up tight and stuck it down in my pack. We sat pensively as inspectors questioned us at the border. They poked around, but seeing no threat stamped our passports and sent us on.

My fellow college students and I represented no threat. But those hidden Bibles carried seeds of destruction for communist ideology. We gave each one to a different pastor we met in secretive mountain camps. I watched grown men weep when they held a complete Bible for the first time (they possessed only a few pages of a Bible, or handwritten copies of various passages).

I grasped the privilege of unfettered access to the scriptures. Entire governments committed vast resources to eradicating Bibles, while fervent believers endured great personal risk to get one. I’ve never taken a Bible for granted since.

Two thousand years previously, Paul reminded a young pastor that God’s word is not chained.

Communists tried to chain the scriptures throughout Eastern Europe because of the inherent danger to their authority found in the book. Give people free access to the Bible and God replaces the primacy of ideology or state or even self.

Don’t hinder the scriptures—unchain them.

On my shelf sits an embarrassment of riches—multiple Bibles in various translations and styles. I allow my own chains to bind, like busyness, or scrolling my phone, or my desire for entertainment, or laziness, or whispers from the enemy telling me to get to it later. I’m tempted to layer on chains.

But only when I unchain God’s word do I unchain the rest of my life, and that’s worth the risks it brings.

2 Timothy 2 in reading the Bible cover to cover in 2022

Photo by Thomas Kinto

grandma

Grandma’s Got It Going On

July 4, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Genuine faith never appears out of thin air. Timothy absorbed it from his mother, Eunice, and his grandmother, Lois. Paul knew them both and perceived their faith as the spring that watered the flowering of Timothy’s commitment to the Lord. The text mentions neither Timothy’s father, who was thought to be Greek, nor Timothy’s grandfather. Timothy’s faith developed from his matriarchal lineage.

A strong and sincere faith is not guaranteed from one generation to the next. Many well-meaning parents apply all the religious parenting techniques currently in vogue only to see their children reject the faith, or ignore the faith, or quietly set the faith aside. Christianity is only one generation deep. Every generation must believe afresh. Lois did something right. Too bad we don’t know her practices as we could use them to develop a series of books, podcasts and video guides on how to raise children of faith. We could dub it the “Lois-ization” of our children. I would have bought it when my kids were little. However, we do own one clue about her methodology—her faith is described as sincere.

Sincere is defined as being free from pretenses or deceit; not hypocritical, genuine, whole-hearted, real, honest, frank, upfront, candid, on the level, pure. Our children sniff out hypocrisy in our lives and our words as parents. When we act one way in front of others and a totally different way at home, the kids notice. They start to surmise that the Christian faith that their parents profess is not fully realized, not efficacious, and not deeply meaningful. Kids correctly deduce that if that’s all there is to the Christian faith, then no need to waste their time here. Plenty of other good things to pursue on a Sunday morning.

This was not true of Lois—her faith molded Timothy. You are never alone as you live out your faith. Our sincerity does not fade away in vain, even if we do not see the results. Two old sayings come to mind when I think of Lois and the many godly grandmothers who followed in her path. The first reminds us that the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world. Good grand-parenting imprints qualities on the following generations. If another old saying is true, that our most important contributions are the ones we leave behind, then the legacy left by Lois will be hard to surpass.

Forever stamped in Scripture, this quiet grandmother’s endowment offers us much to ponder as parents, grandparents and leaders.

From Seers, Sayers, Schemers & Saints and 2 Timothy 1

Photo by Raul Petri

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