Christian Monthly Standard

Some of the bad and some of the good…

Lists are popular, and I could not resist offering up a little burned toast onto the plate of modern living.

It is generally not a good idea:

1) To get your news and information from Comedy Central.

2) To trust Hollywood to provide accurate historical information about anything that has ever happened anywhere, at any time.

3) To not pay your taxes, regardless of what some other people may or may not do.

4) To listen to a televangelist (or anyone else on TV?) without doing a little fact checking.

5) To listen to politicians and the talking head class without doing some fact checking and perhaps some rudimentary accounting.

6) To listen to pretty much anyone else without doing fact checking (and perhaps some rudimentary accounting too).

7) To trust addicts of any type to tell the truth and to do what they told you they would do.

8) To listen to the powerful when they tell you they know just how you feel.

9) To drive with your hands on a telephone and your eyes on its tiny screen or any other screen in sight.

10) To claim to love Christ without ever paying strict attention to what he has told you to do.

Here are some additional things you may want to studiously avoid. These are the wrong kinds of things to develop either in yourself or to watch develop in those whom you love. If not checked, these characteristics will become gifts that will never stop giving.

1) Malice

2) Selfishness

3) Envy

4) Rage

5) Hypocrisy

6) Lying

7) Gossip

8) Spitefulness

9) Dependency

10) Hostility

And a final list of the right kind of gifts that will never stop giving.

1) Virtue

2) Knowledge

3) Patience

4) Godliness

5) Kindness

6) Love

7) Humility

8) Meekness

9) Gentleness

10) Happiness

“For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (2 Peter 1:7)