The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year. I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, J. Whiddon

981. SLEEP “I started reading the research on the relationship between sleep deprivation and obesity about 10 years ago. At first the idea that sleeping less would cause you to gain weight didn’t make any sense to me. If you are sleeping less, then presumably you are more active because you are doing something. You aren’t sleeping. And almost any activity burns more calories than sleeping does. But it turns out that if kids or grown-ups are sleep-deprived, the hormones that regulate appetite get messed up, which confuses our brains in all kinds of bad ways. Your brain starts to say, I’m so tired, I deserve some potato chips / ice cream / candy / cookies / cake / and I need them right NOW.”

Excerpt From: Sax, Leonard. “The Collapse of Parenting.”

982. WRITE IT “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”

— B. Franklin

983. YOUR TEAM UNLUCKY? “Psychologists have found that people too often attribute success to skill and failure to luck, a bias called self-attribution. We brag about the three stocks we bought that hit it big but dismiss as bad luck the seven that plummeted. We applaud our quick reflexes and driving skills when avoiding a gaping pothole, but when we hit it squarely, we curse the weather, other drivers, and the city (everyone but ourselves). In many aspects of life, we are quick to claim success and reluctant to admit failure. We do the same thing for our favorite team.”

Excerpt From: Tobias Moskowitz & L. Jon Wertheim. “Scorecasting.”

984. GOOD PARENTING FOR COACH K “I knew I wanted to coach,” Krzyzewski said. “I can’t honestly remember not wanting to coach. I knew I wasn’t a good enough player to play pro ball, but I did think I could teach and I could lead and it was something I wanted to do. But when Coach Knight came to the house and talked about West Point and having a guaranteed job in the army for four years, my attitude was, ‘No way do I want to be in the army.’ ”

His parents felt differently. They thought the chance to go to college for free and then serve your country was about as good as it could possibly get for a teenager whose major aptitude seemed to be for playing a game.

“They would talk in the kitchen after dinner every night,” Krzyzewski remembered. “They knew I was in the next room listening. They would talk in Polish, but there are no words in Polish for ‘stupid’ or ‘dumb.’ I would hear a lot of Polish and then, ‘Mike—stupid’ or ‘Mike—dumb.’ It went on like that for a few nights. The message was clear: they couldn’t believe they had raised a son so stupid and so dumb that he didn’t want to go to a great college and be in the army. Nothing would make them more proud. Where could they have gone wrong?”

Krzyzewski laughed at the memory. “Nowadays, when I hear people say their child has to make up his or her own mind about where to go to college I say, ‘No, that’s wrong.’ If you know things your child doesn’t because you’re older and smarter, you owe it to them to let them know how you feel. If my parents hadn’t done that, I have no idea how my life would have turned out—but it wouldn’t have been like this.

“I knew exactly what they were doing—but it worked anyway. I finally got angry and I stalked in one night and said, ‘Okay, okay, I’ll go. If that’s what you want, I’ll go!’ They just looked at me, smiled, and said, ‘Good decision.’ ”

Excerpt From: Feinstein, John. “The Legends Club.”

985. DIVERSITY? “Ac­cord­ing to data com-piled by the Higher Ed­u­ca­tion Re­search In­sti­tute, only 12% of uni­ver­sity fac­ulty iden­tify as po­lit­i­cally right of cen­ter, and these are mainly pro­fes­sors in schools of en­gi­neer­ing and other pro­fes­sional schools. Only 5% of pro­fes­sors in the hu­man­i­ties and so­cial-sci­ence de­part­ments so iden­tify. A com­pre­hen­sive study by James Lind­gren of North­west-ern Uni­ver­sity Law School shows that in a coun­try fairly evenly di­vided be­tween De­mocrats and Re­pub­li­cans, only 13% of law pro­fes­sors iden­tify as Re­pub­li­can. And a re­cent study by Jonathan Haidt of New York Uni­ver­sity showed that 96% of so­cial psy­chol­o­gists iden­tify as left of cen­ter, 3.7% as centrist/mod­er­ate and only 0.03% as right of cen­ter. (WSJ 4-1-16)
986. FINE TUNING! “If the Earth took more than twenty-four hours to rotate, temperatures on our planet would be too extreme between sunrise and sunset. If the rotation of the Earth were slightly shorter, wind would move at a dangerous velocity. If the oxygen level on our planet were slightly less, we would suffocate; if it were slightly more, spontaneous fires would erupt.”

Excerpt From: Moreland, J.P. “Love Your God with All Your Mind (15th anniversary repack).”

987. RULE OF LAW? “America is a nation of judges and lawyers more than it is a nation of laws.” –Dennis Prager
988. LIFE-LONG LEARNING “I believe the reason a graduation ceremony is called a commencement is because the process of learning begins—or commences—at that point. The schooling that went before simply provided the tools and the framework for the real lessons to come.”

Excerpt From: Stovall, Jim. “The Ultimate Gift.”

989. GOALS “How would you like a job where, if you made a mistake, a big red light goes on and 18,000 people boo?” – Hockey goalie
990. MONEY: GOOD OR BAD? “By the time they have been retired for two years, 78% of former NFL players have gone bankrupt or are under financial stress and within five years of retirement, an estimated 60% of former NBA players are broke.

Rock stars, actors and actresses, lottery winners? The numbers are all similar. The National Endowment for Financial Education estimates that 70 percent of people who suddenly receive life-changing money are separated from it within three years.

Deeming money “good” personifies it, and the people in our lives simply can’t compete with our relationship with an inanimate object that silently promises to make all of our dreams come true.

Those who think money is inherently bad tend to manage it poorly, straining relationships. Those who “love money” and think it is inherently good tend to strain relationships, deprioritizing the people in their lives. And, by the way, straining relationships also tends to cost money—half of your money, typically.

Meanwhile, those who view money as a neutral tool tend to employ and attract it most effectively.”

Excerpt From: Maurer, Tim. “Simple Money.”

The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year. I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, J. Whiddon

961. CONSISTENCY “A resident in a seaside hotel breakfast room called over the head waiter one morning and said, “I want two boiled eggs, one of them so undercooked it’s runny, and the other so overcooked, it’s about as easy to eat as rubber; also grilled bacon that has been left on the plate to get cold; burnt toast that crumbles away as soon as you touch it with a knife; butter straight from the deep freeze so that it’s impossible to spread; and a pot of very weak coffee, lukewarm.”

“That’s a complicated order, sir,” said the bewildered waiter. “It might be a bit difficult.”

The guest replied, “Oh, but that’s what you gave me yesterday!”

Excerpt From: Hodgin, Michael. “1001 Humorous Illustrations for Public Speaking.”

962. PARENT AUTHORITY “The most popular TV shows of the 1960s through the 1980s consistently depicted the parent as the reliable and trusted guide of the child. That was true of The Andy Griffith Show in the 1960s; it was true of Family Ties in the 1980s. But it’s not true today. Looking through the list of the 150 most popular TV shows on American television right now, I did not find one that depicts a parent as consistently reliable and trustworthy.

It’s tough to be a parent in a culture that constantly undermines parental authority. Two generations ago, American parents and teachers had much greater authority. In that era, American parents and teachers taught right and wrong in no uncertain terms. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Love your neighbor as yourself. Those were commands, not suggestions.

Today, most American parents and teachers no longer act with such authority. They do not command. Instead, they ask, “How would you feel if someone did that to you?” The command has been replaced by a question.”

Excerpt From: Sax, Leonard. “The Collapse of Parenting.”

963. POPULISM From a May 26, 1792, let­ter from U.S. Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Alexan­der Hamil­ton to Vir­ginia of­fi­cial Ed­ward Car­ring­ton:

“On the whole, the only en­emy which Re­pub­li­can­ism has to fear in this Coun­try is in the Spirit of fac­tion and an­ar­chy. If this will not per­mit the ends of Gov­ernment to be at­tained un­der it—if it en­gen­ders dis­or­ders in the com­mu­nity, all reg­u­lar & or­derly minds will wish for change—and the dem­a­gogues who have produced the dis­or­der will make it for their own ag­gran­dize­ment. This is the old Story.

If I were dis­posed to pro­mote Monar­chy and over­throw the State Gov­ern­ments, I would mount the hobby horse of pop­u­lar­ity—I would cry out usurpa­tion—danger to lib­erty etc. etc.—I would en­deavor to pros­trate the National Gov­ern­ment—raise a ferment—and then “ride in the Whirl­wind and di­rect the Storm.”

— Wall Street Journal 3-9-16

964. PEERS “The more uncertain people are—and the higher the stakes involved—the more vulnerable they are to the sort of cue taking that leads to herd behavior. That’s why teenagers are presumably more likely to succumb to peer pressure than adults. They have less experience to draw upon when evaluating the pros and cons of conforming, and the stakes are higher.”

Excerpt From: Belsky, Gary. “Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes and How to Correct Them.”

965. TYRANTS “It is in con­nec­tion with the de­lib­er­ate ef­fort of the skill­ful dem­a­gogue to weld to­gether a closely co­her­ent and ho­mo­geneous body of sup­port­ers that the third and per­haps most impor­tant neg­a­tive ele­ment of selec­tion en­ters. It seems to be al­most a law of hu­man na­ture that it is eas­ier for peo­ple to agree on a neg­a­tive pro­gram—on the ha­tred of an en­emy, on the envy of those bet­ter off—than on any pos­i­tive task. The con­trast be­tween the “we” and the “they,” the com­mon fight against those out­side the group, seems to be an es­sen­tial ingredient in any creed which will solidly knit to­gether a group for com­mon ac­tion. It is con­sequently al­ways em­ployed by those who seek, not merely support of a pol­icy, but the un­reserved al­le­giance of huge masses. From their point of view it has the great ad­van­tage of leav­ing them greater free­dom of ac­tion than al­most any pos­i­tive pro­gram. The en­emy, whether he be in­ter­nal, like the “Jew” or the “ku­lak,” or ex­ter­nal, seems to be an in­dis­pens­able req­ui­site in the army of a to­tal­i­tar­ian leader.”

— Friedrich Hayek, “The Road to Serf­dom” (1944)

966. MARCH MADNESS “Sports gamblers are fooled by momentum. Colin Camerer, a Caltech professor of behavioral economics, found that winning and losing streaks affected point spreads. Bets placed on teams with winning streaks were more likely to lose, and bets placed on teams with losing streaks were more likely to pay off. In other words, gamblers systematically overvalued teams with winning streaks and undervalued those with losing streaks.

Excerpt From: Tobias Moskowitz & L. Jon Wertheim. “Scorecasting.”

967. BIBLE VOTER’S GUIDE For whom should you vote? Read Psalm 15.

— Dave Berry

968. WONDERFULLY MADE “Human eyes are composed of more than two million working parts and can, under the right conditions, discern the light of a candle at a distance of fourteen miles. The human ear can discriminate among some 400,000 different sounds within a span of about ten octaves and can make the subtle distinction between music played by a violin or viola. The human heart pumps roughly one million barrels of blood during a normal lifetime, which would fill more than three supertankers.”

Excerpt From: Moreland, J.P. “Love Your God with All Your Mind (15th anniversary repack).”

969. I’M OUT ON BOOKS!

– 42% of college grads never read another book after college.

– 80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.

– Reading one hour per day in your chosen field will make you an international expert in 7 years. (robertbrewer.org)

970. ALL THERE IS? “Those who believe that this life is the only reality are likely to be led to one or more of three negative conclusions about life:

1: Hedonism, If this life is all one has, then it is quite logical to live a life devoted to self-gratification.

2: Utopianism. Idealistic people who believe that this life is all there is reject hedonism. But they may embrace a far more dangerous ideology—utopianism, the desire to make heaven on earth. Hence the attraction of utopianism to so many twentieth-century radicals who have rejected Judaism and Christianity.

In light of the hells on earth that secular Utopians have produced, it is clear just how important the deferring of Utopia to a future world is. Had people like the Bolsheviks and millions of other secular radicals not tried to create heaven on earth, they would not have created hell here.

3: Despair. In light of the great physical and emotional pain that so many people experience, what is more, likely to induce despondency than believing that this life is all there is? The malaise felt by so many people living in modern Western society is not traceable to material deprivation but, at least in part, to the despair induced by secularism and its belief that this world is all there is. That is why peasants with religious faith are probably happier than affluent people who have no faith (and why more affluent secularists, not the poor, are generally the ones who start radical revolutions).”

Excerpt From: Prager, Dennis. “Think a Second Time.”

The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year. I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, J. Whiddon

941. CHRISTIAN REASON “The God of the Bible requires teachers who diligently study His Word and handle it accurately (compare 2 Timothy 2:15 and 1 Timothy 4:15-16). He demands of His evangelists that they give rational justification to questioners who ask them why they believe as they do (1 Peter 3:15). On one occasion His chief apostle, Paul, emphasized that his gospel preaching was by way of “words of sober truth” (Acts 26:25, nasb) when Festus charged that his great learning was driving him mad (Acts 26:24). No anti-intellectualism here! By contrast, the monistic religions of the East promote gurus who offer koans, paradoxes like the sound of one hand clapping, upon which to meditate in order to free the devotee from dependence on reason and enable him to escape the laws of logic. The Buddhist is to leave his mind behind, but the Christian God requires transformation by way of the mind’s renewal (Romans 12:1-2).

Is it any wonder that we Christians started the first universities and have planted schools and colleges everywhere our missionaries have gone? Is it any wonder that science began in Christian Europe because of the belief that the same rational God who made the human mind also created the world so the mind would be suited to discern the world’s rational structure placed there by God?”

Excerpt From: Moreland, J.P. “Love Your God with All Your Mind.”

942. STORMS “The difference between the wise and foolish builder isn’t that one has storms and the other doesn’t. They both have storms.

The difference between the wise and foolish builder isn’t that one knows the words of Jesus and the other doesn’t. They both hear His words.

The difference between the wise and foolish builder isn’t that one is a church member and the other isn’t.

The difference between the wise and foolish builder isn’t that one has correct doctrine and the other doesn’t.

Be wise.”

The difference between the wise and foolish builder is that one hears and practices the words of Jesus while the other only hears.

— Chris Seidman, The Branch Church

943. STRESS “What kinds of pressures can trigger overwhelming stress? The greatest stressors of life have been enumerated in a life-events monitoring list known as the Holmes-Rahe Social Readjustment Scale. The stressful events include, in descending order of impact on the individual, the following: death of a spouse; divorce; separation from a living partner; a jail term; death of a close family member; a serious personal injury; being fired from a job; and retirement. Also, marriage and menopause may be included toward the top of this list.”

Excerpt From: Kenneth Cooper, M.D., MPH & Tyler Cooper, M.D., MPH. “Start Strong, Finish Strong.”

944. SELF-MADE MAN “A man brought his boss home for dinner for the first time. The boss was very blustery, very arrogant, very dominating! The little boy in the family stared at his father’s boss for most of the evening, but did not say anything. Finally, the boss asked the little boy, “Why do you keep looking at me like that, Sonny?” The little boy answered, “My daddy says you are a self-made man.” The boss beamed and proudly admitted that indeed he was a self-made man. The little boy said, “Well, if you are a self-made man, why did you make yourself like that?”

Excerpt From: Hodgin, Michael. “1001 Humorous Illustrations for Public Speaking.”

945. PATIENCE

“In any contest between power and patience, bet on patience.”

—W. B. PRESCOTT

“Patience is the ability to put up with people you’d like to put down.”

—ULRIKE RUFFERT

“Patience is something you admire in the driver behind you and scorn in the one ahead.”

—MAC MCCLEARY

“There’s a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore like an idiot.”

—STEVEN WRIGHT

“Regardless of how much patience we have, we would prefer never to use any of it.”

—JAMES T. O’BRIEN”

946. EDUCATION “A study of twenty-four leaders of the Einsatzgruppen (the mobile killing units that murdered more than a million and a half Jews prior to the use of gas chambers) indicated that the majority were highly educated professionals: “One of the most striking things … is the prevalence of educated people, professionals, especially lawyers, Ph.D.s …”

But there are also many highly moral uneducated people. In other words, there is no link between having a good education and being a good person. This should come as sobering news to the large number of parents who view education as the most important value in their children’s lives. But to become a good person, modern secular education is largely irrelevant. Given the moral relativism and hostility to religious morality that characterize contemporary higher education, it is frequently a handicap.”

Excerpt From: Prager, Dennis. “Think a Second Time.”

947. REGRET “To the extent that decisions to act—decisions to change the status quo—impart a higher level of responsibility than decisions to do nothing, people are averse to sticking their necks out and setting themselves up for feelings of regret.

“Regret aversion” is at the root of costly conventional wisdom among test takers: the idea that you shouldn’t change a doubted answer because your first instinct is usually correct. That’s what 75 percent of students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign thought a few years back …. [But they] examined the test results of those students and found that when they changed an answer, it was more often than not the smart move: Half the time the first answer was wrong and the second answer was correct, and in only 25 percent of switches did students go from correct to wrong answer. So why do most people think changing is bad? Related experiments showed that students felt the pain of switching to a wrong answer more than answering incorrectly and staying put. Such “counterfactual thinking”–aka “if only…” thinking—is more memorable for most people than a successful answer change, and thus a major contributor to regret aversion. But you heard it here first: When in doubt, change your answer.”

Excerpt From: Belsky, Gary. “Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes and How to Correct Them.”

948. INFLUENCES “Just as you have a familial genealogy, you also have a genealogy of ideas. You don’t get to pick your family, but you can pick your teachers and you can pick your friends and you can pick the music you listen to and you can pick the books you read and you can pick the movies you see.

You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life. You are the sum of your influences. The German writer Goethe said, “We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.” Excerpt From: Kleon, Austin. “Steal Like an Artist.”

949. LOVE “Real love for people is a decision, a choice. It shapes our feelings but doesn’t depend on them. It chooses to value and add value to another person simply because of his or her intrinsic worth as a human being. It desires the best and does what is best for another person, even when that person is neither lovable nor demonstrating merit to be loved. It’s not conditional; it’s relational. It’s not about taking, but giving. It’s not about consuming from others for our benefit, but investing in them for their benefit. Finding and adopting this value system is essential for overcoming every blitz you will ever face.”

Excerpt From: Kemp, Jeff. “Facing the Blitz.”

950. USE OBSCURITY “Most of the world doesn’t necessarily care about what you think. It sounds harsh, but it’s true. As the writer Steven Pressfield says, “It’s not that people are mean or cruel, they’re just busy.”

This is actually a good thing, because you want attention only after you’re doing really good work. There’s no pressure when you’re unknown. You can do what you want. Experiment. Do things just for the fun of it. When you’re unknown, there’s nothing to distract you from getting better. No public image to manage. No huge paycheck on the line. No stockholders. No e-mails from your agent. No hangers-on.

You’ll never get that freedom back again once people start paying you attention, and especially not once they start paying you money.”

Excerpt From: Kleon, Austin. “Steal Like an Artist.”

The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year. I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, J. Whiddon

921. EVOLUTION IN SCHOOLS “This is the State of California’s guidelines for teaching evolution in the public schools. You can pick this up in any elementary, junior high, or high school principal’s office anywhere in the state of California. Here is what it says:

“At times, some students may insist that certain conclusions of science cannot be true because of certain religious or philosophical beliefs they hold. It is appropriate, if that happens, for the teacher to express the following: “I understand you may have personal reservations about accepting the scientific evidence, but it is scientific knowledge about which there is no reasonable doubt amongst scientists in their field, and it is my responsibility to teach it because it is part of our common intellectual heritage.”

When the average Christian reads this, he or she walks away thinking that the primary matter of concern is the statement about creation and evolution. However, the key issue is not about creation/evolution. It is about the view of knowledge, specifically, the limitation of knowledge to the hard sciences.

Observe the descriptors used of science: “scientific evidence,” “scientific knowledge,” “no reasonable doubt,” “common intellectual heritage.”

Contrast these descriptors with the descriptors used for a religious claim: “personal reservation,” “beliefs they hold.” It is easy to see the difference between the way science is being conveyed here as a source of knowledge, and Christianity and religious claims, which are a source of “personal reservation,” “personal feeling.”

Excerpt From: Moreland, J.P. “Love Your God with All Your Mind.”

922. FREEDOM “Of all times, times of dominance are the most dangerous in which to be complacent about freedom, for in the life cycle of great powers only one thing finally follows dominance: decline. Dominance eventually leads to decline as surely as day ends in night. Thus dominance is precisely the time to think through whether a free people can remain free forever, why the founding generation dared to believe in such a history-defying feat and what the present generation is doing today to ensure that they play their part in this magnificent venture.

There are three tasks in establishing a free society that hopes to remain free—winning freedom, ordering freedom and sustaining freedom—and each was a prominent consideration to the American founders. Yet such a simple statement is beguiling, and masks a myriad of deeper issues, beginning with the sad fact that as time goes by, free people take freedom more and more for granted. Then, as they progress from the first task to the second and third, they increasingly relax, even though the last task raises the stiffest challenge of all, a challenge that stares every generation of free people in the eye: Are we sustaining the freedom of which we are fortunate to be heirs?”

Excerpt From: Guinness, Os. “A Free People’s Suicide.”

923. REALITY “We habitually think of the visible world as real and doubt the reality of any other. We do not deny the existence of the spiritual world but we doubt that it is real in the accepted meaning of the word.

The world of sense intrudes upon our attention day and night for the whole of our lifetime. It is clamorous, insistent and self-demonstrating. It does not appeal to our faith; it is here, assaulting our five senses, demanding to be accepted as real and final. But sin has so clouded the lenses of our hearts that we cannot see that other reality, the City of God, shining around us. The world of sense triumphs. The visible becomes the enemy of the invisible; the temporal, of the eternal. That is the curse inherited by every member of Adam’s tragic race.

At the root of the Christian life lies belief in the invisible. The object of the Christian’s faith is unseen reality.

We must shift our interest from the seen to the unseen.

Excerpt From: A. W. Tozer. “The Pursuit of God.”

924. STILL NEARER “To speak of being near to or far from God is to use language in a sense always understood when applied to our ordinary human relationships. A man may say, “I feel that my son is coming nearer to me as he gets older,” and yet that son has lived by his father’s side since he was born and has never been away from home more than a day or so in his entire life. What then can the father mean? Obviously he is speaking of experience . He means that the boy is coming to know him more intimately and with deeper understanding, that the barriers of thought and feeling between the two are disappearing, that father and son are becoming more closely united in mind and heart.

Why do some persons “find” God in a way that others do not? Why does God manifest His Presence to some and let multitudes of others struggle along in the half-light of imperfect Christian experience? Of course the will of God is the same for all. He has no favorites within His household. All He has ever done for any of His children He will do for all of His children. The difference lies not with God but with us.”

Excerpt From: A. W. Tozer. “The Pursuit of God.”

925. BOW “It’s in the context of pressure and adversity that we can learn to rely on God. When we are weak in the knees, it’s an invitation to get on our knees and tap into a strength beyond ourselves.” –C. Seidman
926. ADMIT MISTAKES “Nikita Khrushchev and President Kennedy were having a vigorous exchange of strong opinions. Finally, Kennedy asked Khrushchev, “Do you ever admit a mistake?” The Soviet Premier responded, “Certainly I do. In a speech before the Twentieth Party Congress, I admitted all of Stalin’s mistakes.”

Excerpt From: Hodgin, Michael. “1001 Humorous Illustrations for Public Speaking.”

927. “ICING ON THE KICK”? “Simply put, we found that icing (calling a timeout out just before the kick) made no difference whatsoever to the success of those kicks. NFL kickers being iced are successful from the same distance at exactly the same rate as kickers who are not iced.”

Excerpt From: Tobias Moskowitz & L. Jon Wertheim. “Scorecasting.”

928. JUSTICE “I have never understood how a good secular individual can avoid debilitating despair. To care about goodness, yet to witness the unbearable torments of the good and the innocent, and to see many of the evil go unpunished—all the while believing that this life is all there is, that we are alone in a universe that hears no child’s cry and sees no person’s tears—has to be a recipe for despair. I would be overwhelmed with sadness if I did not believe that there is a good God who somehow—in this life or an afterlife—ensures that justice prevails.”

Excerpt From: Prager, Dennis. “Think a Second Time.”

929. CUP OF JOE! “A 2005 report by Austrian researchers revealed that the caffeine in coffee, tea, certain soft drinks, and chocolate stimulates areas of the brain that control short-term memory and attention. The functional MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scans done on patients in this study showed that two cups of coffee increased activity in the memory and attention-controlling areas of the brain. The participants in the study also improved their performance in remembering a sequence of letters after they consumed 100 milligrams of caffeine (the equivalent of about one cup of coffee).

Recent scientific research has also suggested that coffee may be healthy in other ways, which we might not have expected. For example, a 2005 investigation in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that habitual coffee consumption is associated with a “substantially lower risk of type 2 diabetes”—i.e., the “adult onset” type of the disease. Other studies have shown that coffee drinking may decrease the risk of cirrhosis of the liver and liver cancer.

There are also investigations indicating that the risk of cardiovascular disease decreases with coffee consumption. Research involving evaluation of more than 27,000 women, age fifty-five to sixty-nine, reported that women who drank one to three cups of coffee per day enjoyed a 24 percent reduction in their risk of cardiovascular disease, compared with noncoffee drinkers.”

Excerpt From: Kenneth Cooper, M.D., MPH & Tyler Cooper, M.D., MPH. “Start Strong, Finish Strong.”

930. OUR BODIES “Your bodies are a part of Christ’s purchase, as well as your souls (1 Corinthians 6:19). They are committed to the charge and tutelage of angels (Hebrews 1:14), who have performed many services for them. They are dedicated by yourselves to the Lord, and that upon the highest account (Romans 12:1). They have already been the subjects of many mercies in this world (Psalm 35:10), and shall partake of singular glory and happiness in the world to come (Philippians 3:21). And shall they not then be employed, yea, cheerfully worn out, in His service? How reasonable it is they should be so! Why are they so tenderly preserved by God, if they must not be used for God?”

Excerpt From: Flavel, John. “The Mystery of Providence.”

 

The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year. I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, J. Whiddon

901. THE GOOD LIFE “Another modern trend is a change in what we mean by “the good life.” From Old Testament times and ancient Greece until this century, the good life was widely understood to mean a life of intellectual and moral virtue. The good life is the life of ideal human functioning according to the nature that God Himself gave to us. According to this view, prior to Creation God had in mind an ideal blueprint of human nature from which He created each and every human being. Happiness (Greek: eudaimonia) was understood as a life of virtue, and the successful person was one who knew how to live life well according to what we are by nature due to the creative design of God.

When the Declaration of Independence says we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them the right to pursue happiness, it is referring to virtue and character. So understood, happiness involves suffering, endurance, and patience because these are important means to becoming a good person who lives the good life.”

Excerpt From: Moreland, J.P. “Love Your God with All Your Mind.”

902. STAR-SPANGLED IRONY “Americans today speak endlessly about sustainable growth, sustainable development, a sustainable future and the “conservation” or “ecology” of this, that and the other. And after the Minneapolis bridge collapse in 2007, they talk of the threat of the decaying infrastructure that supports America’s aging roads and bridges. But amazingly few pay serious attention to notions such as sustainable freedom, the ecology and conservation of liberty, the infrastructure of America’s foundations of freedom—or to the idea that freedom itself requires a living system of immunity if it is to stay healthy. This carelessness may prove lethal.”

Excerpt From: Guinness, Os. “A Free People’s Suicide.”

903. NO COMMON COLDS “Exercisers report fewer upper respiratory tract infections, such as colds. Also, regular walkers experience about half as many days of upper respiratory tract infections as sedentary groups. Furthermore, near-daily physical activities reduce the number of work days lost to sickness.

In contrast, competitive athletes who engage in vigorous but irregular athletic events, such as marathons, tend to have an increased risk of those upper respiratory infections if they exercise to the point of chronic fatigue. The keys to maximizing your immune response with exercise, then, appears to be moderation and regularity.”

Excerpt From: Kenneth Cooper, M.D., MPH & Tyler Cooper, M.D., MPH. “Start Strong, Finish Strong.”

904. NO CHANGE “He is immutable , which means that He has never changed and can never change in any smallest measure. To change He would need to go from better to worse or from worse to better. He cannot do either, for being perfect He cannot become more perfect, and if He were to become less perfect He would be less than God.”

Excerpt From: A. W. Tozer. “The Pursuit of God.”

905. INCENTIVES “The difference between two otherwise comparable players, one hitting .299 and the other .300, can be as high as 2 percent of salary, or, given the average Major League salary, $130,000. (Note that though the average MLB salary is $3.4 million, it’s closer to $6.5 million for players batting in the .300 range.) All for .001 of a batter’s average, one extra hit in 1,000 at-bats.

Given the stakes, hitting .300 is, not surprisingly, a goal of paramount importance among players. How do we know this? Pope and Simonsohn looked at hitters batting .299 on the final day of each season from 1975 to 2009. One hit and the players could vault above the .300 mark. With a walk, however, they wouldn’t be credited with an at-bat or a hit, so their averages wouldn’t budge. What did these .299 hitters do? They swung away—wildly.”

Excerpt From: Tobias Moskowitz & L. Jon Wertheim. “Scorecasting.”

906. SECULARISM “It never ceases to amaze me how modern western secularists are doing all in their power to purge Christianity from the public life. They’re sawing off the branch they’re sitting on.” — Chuck Colson
907. WISDOM “Wisdom is a particular attitude toward reality, a worldview. That worldview assumes that the one God embedded truth within all reality.”

— James L. Crenshaw

908. POVERTY AND CRIME RELATED? “The very same people who most argue that poverty causes crime usually believe that the affluent are particularly greedy and corrupt. [But] crime was extremely low during the Great Depression, when a far larger percentage of Americans were unemployed and experiencing great poverty.

Until “Poverty causes crime” is regarded as a foolish and dangerous belief, there is no hope for the regeneration of American society. As long as prominent politicians, intellectuals, and media leaders continue to believe that economics determines whether people act decently, society will continue to ignore what most determines whether people will hurt other people: values.

It will take a long time for this lie to be rejected because the human desire to reject the primacy of values is deep. The reason? As soon as we hold values responsible for human conduct, we must hold people, ourselves included, responsible for the bad that we do.”

Excerpt From: Prager, Dennis. “Think a Second Time.”

909. MORAL TEACHING Commenting on a tragic school shooting in l998, Chuck Colson said:

“What’s happening to our children? The first thing we must understand is that only a biblical worldview of human nature can make sense of these murders. The Bible makes two things clear about humanity. First, we are created in the imago Dei, the image of God, and knowledge of right and wrong is implanted on the human heart. But we’re also warned that we live in a fallen world—and that the human heart is desperately wicked. These two facts require any civilized society to make the moral training of its young its number one priority. . . . The great criminologist James Q. Wilson says all of his studies have led to the same conclusion: Crime begins when children are not given adequate moral training, when they do not develop internal restraints on impulsive behavior.”

Excerpt From: Metaxas, Eric. “Seven Men.”

910. JESUS LOVES US “Jesus loves us as we are, but He loves us too much to allow us to stay that way.” — C. Seidman