Posts that contain content related to living a Christian life.
We forgot a very important tip in our last podcast on Bible study—so important it was worth doing another one! Listen in, and take advantage of the most obvious Bible study tools you probably aren’t thinking about! Check it out by clicking below on the platform of your choice.
You want to study your Bible, but it seems intimidating sometimes. Is there a simple way to get started? Our guest today, Mr. Phil Sena, pastor of Living Church of God congregations in Ohio, offers helpful advice to get you past your excuses and into your Bible!
Some of us have noticed a lot of podcasts talking these days about dopamine—the neurotransmitter your brain uses to “reward” behavior—and how our current society is addicted to triggering it in so many unhelpful ways. (For example, social media is like a dopamine-triggering machine training you to keep on scrolling and scrolling and scrolling…) One neurologist said in a podcast recently that, in a way, the only real currency in the world is not the U.S. dollar, the British pound, the EU’s euro, or what-have-you. He suggests the only real currency in the world is dopamine, and that is what everyone in the world is “trading” in. And, in a similar sense, triggering our reward centers through dopamine hits is how many in the world—social media corporations, marketers, entertainment companies, etc.—are “reprogramming” our brains without our even realizing it.
All the talk reminds us of two articles by Mr. Gerald Weston that are very worth your time.
One that is very old but, ironically, increasingly relevant: “In Search of the Eternal Buzz,” from a 2006 TW magazine issue. It’s a short read—less than 10 minutes. Give it a shot.
The other is Mr. Weston’s article on the influence of social media, “Tame the Social Media Monster!”—the cover article of the 2018 March-April issue.* Of course, social media is not the only arena in which people are using our neurology against us (which Mr. Weston makes very apparent in the article, with comments from tech experts, themselves, who helped design it all), but reading about it—and equipping yourself—is a great place to start. It’s a longer read, but should still take most readers under 20 minutes.
Here are the two links again. Check them out!
* Unnecessary Behind-the-Scenes Comment™: We loved the cover on this issue. It was an early experiment more than four years ago in doing something a little different, and we were glad Mr. Weston let us play with it!
It’s that time of year again. As Christians who don’t keep Christmas, the season presents its special challenges! In this episode, we discuss some of those challenges, prompted by a request from one of our listeners. At a certain point in the podcast, we refer to a Tomorrow’s World Whiteboard video, which you can find by clicking here, or by watching it below. Also, you can now find us not only on Spotify, but also Apple Podcasts.
We hope this episode is helpful!
And here is the Whiteboard we mentioned.
A listener-recommended topic today from one of you: Gossip! Tempting to do, but so damaging to yourself and others. Today, we dive into gossip and talebearing and give some simple advice both to those who’ve been the victim of gossip and to those who feel its temptations.
The article mentioned in today’s podcast episode has been posted here on the Living Youth page before. Just head over to this entry almost a year ago—“Being Christian Online: Two Great Articles!”—and you’ll see a link to the article Mr. Robinson’s mentioned.
Here in the U.S., Thanksgiving Day is tomorrow, and while not all of our teen and young adult readers are in the U.S., many of you are—and even for those who are not, when does thankfulness go out of style?
In the spirit of that, consider enjoying this short read from Mr. John Robinson titled “Hacking Thankfulness,” initially published in our January 2021 Tomorrow’s World. Mr. Robinson highlights how secular science and “biohacking” advocates have come to understand the power of gratitude and how we improve our health and our lives, in general, and the benefit of actively cultivating a spirit of thankfulness—an attitude the Bible has recommended for centuries.
We refer to this article in the podcast we plan to publish later this week, and we wanted to make sure we gave you a link so you could read it for yourself! Just click below—it’s only a 4-minute read, and worth the time!
And for those who do observe Thanksgiving Day, we pray yours is a happy one that brings to mind the many, many things in your life for which you can thank your Creator!
[Apologies to Mr. Shakespeare, there…]
We received a question from a young adult out there on matters of clean and unclean animals, and it prompted us to post this great Tomorrow’s World Whiteboard which some of you may not have seen. It does a great job of summarizing Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14. We hope you like it!
P.S. The question we received was about ducks and swans. In the list of unclean birds, “swan” is a mistranslation in some Bibles (like the KJV). Best evidence (including internal evidence in the passage) suggests that the Hebrew word concerns a kind of owl, completing the list of owls in the passage. Many other translations (NKJV) get that right.
P.P.S. Unlrelated to the topic, but, hey, why not here? We apologize that there was no podcast last week! Our podcasters were very focused on getting a new literature item ready for final review, and there just wasn’t time. We’ve thought about putting out two podcasts this week to make up for it, but we’re also in the middle of the Council of Elders meetings. So, we’ll see! But please forgive us! Now, the video (which was the whole point of this post)…
Tomorrow’s World