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Showing posts from June, 2020

Truth-Obscuring Mindsets

 Every day feels like a new adventure in figuring out what the truth is. It can be unsettling to read about new studies which contradict what we what we were told a month ago. Were they wrong then? Are they wrong now? Why did a Lancet study use a bad data set? It's actually encouraging for me to see people scrutinize the studies from even top journals. When ideas can compete, the truth can rise to the top. Unfortunately, I think a lot of us choose to keep truth buried because we like our own deceptions better. Sometimes, we might even be right about the facts and still deceived because of our mindset about those facts. Here's a list of seven feelings that make it hard for us to recognize truth. 1. Stubbornness. This one is obvious. Even though you are a smart person, you don't have a monopoly on knowledge. Just sit back and listen a little bit, and see if there's something you were wrong about before! 2. Smugness. If you see a group of people doing or saying something a

To my son on your baptism day

I have had so many thoughts floating around as we've been preparing for your baptism. Can you believe that I had 3 other letters I tried to write besides this one? And this one is 3 letters in one. Some other time we can talk about the other letters. But today we'll talk about these three ideas. I.  Love God I wanted to make today about you. You are, after all, a really great kid. You are bright (oh so exceptionally bright), empathetic, easygoing, and fearless. I still remember the nurse who helped take care of us both after you were born. She asked what I was going to name you, and when I told her, she said, "Good. He is going to be a strong man so he needs a strong name." Maybe she said that about every baby, but it felt prophetic then and true today. So, yes, I wanted your baptism day to be about you. Before coronavirus hit hard I had big dreams of everyone we would invite to help celebrate -- cousins, second cousins, friends from your school, fri