Why you shouldn’t make New Year’s Resolutions

| joshsabey
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AHS State Champion Track Team 2008

I don’t set many goals. This may be surprising to people who see me as a highly motivated person. Because I don’t struggle to be effective with my time, some people might assume I’m a goal setter. But I’m quite the opposite. While it is true that many successful people set goals, I am not convinced that I therefore should follow. Historically, many successful people also smoked.

It was about eight years ago as I began college that I first noticed that I didn’t like setting goals. Continue reading →

An Invitation to Join The Book Club of the Ages.

| briansabey
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Photo courtesy of ©iStockphoto.com/naphtalina

Think back with me: what’s the last book you read? Not your textbooks or your washing machine owner’s manual, but your free-time reading. Was it from Oprah’s Book List or maybe the New York Times Bestsellers? The newest spine-freezer or rib-tickler or even (yikes) bodice-ripper?

In the spirit of the coming New Year and self-improvement, let me try to convince you to change up your reading habits. Let’s consider C. S. Lewis’s advice:

It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.[1]

Ugh, those stuffy relics they tried to get me to read in Humanities 101?

Yes, precisely. Reading old books will save us from ourselves. Continue reading →

In defense of my Muslim friends

| joshsabey

 

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A picture of me and many of my Muslim (and Christian) friends

This is my defense of Islam (and Christianity for that matter). I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine who suggested that religion produces extremism. This may be the case, but to no greater extent than any paradigm produces extremism.

Marx saw all history as reducible to class struggles. Many feminists see the world as simply the saga of gender roles. We all have that friend who has internalized the platitudes of a self-help book and with a knowing look, uses them to explain everything. Religions are not all that unique. Continue reading →

Helicopter Spousing

| alizabethworley
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Image from: marriagehelper.com/my-wife-says-im-controlling-how-can-i-change/

Michael, my husband, has Cerebral Palsy. While he is able to walk, all of his muscles are contracted, and his movements tend to be broad and imprecise. At a glance, he looks pretty disabled: he is difficult to understand by most who do not know him and some who know him well; his walk leaves his torso rocking from side to side, and his fingers fumble to achieve a solid grasp on whatever he is holding or trying to manipulate Continue reading →

Resolving gun violence with passionate polemics wont work

| davidsabey

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I am sobered and frustrated by the news of recent shootings, and headlines cacophonic to the carols we sing at this time of year. And although I believe there are conversations to be had about gun control, I am also frustrated with the rhetoric from both sides of the debate because they so often employ alienation. Arguments laced with othering terms like “stupid liberals” and “clueless conservatives” may seem benign, but perpetuate the alienation that is epidemic in our politics and communities, which fertilizes seeds of hatred that eventually sprout in blossoms of bullets. Continue reading →

Freedom to force the artist’s hand

| Adam Balinski

***Adam Balinski is a guest contributor and a friend of Brian’s from BYU Law School. This article was first posted on his blog, rethbo.org. Please visit his blog for more respectful, insightful commentary.***

Some people have jumped on what I think is an incoherent bandwagon that creates crazy consumer rights.

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An uncontroversial wedding cake that the baker could’ve declined to decorate for dislike of flowers or the color pink. photo by tracyhunter

Under federal law, public accommodations are places where consumers go to receive a service. Consumers can’t be kept out of or denied services at public accommodations because of their sex or other protected attributes. (It’s true that under many anti-discrimination laws, sexual orientation is not a protected attribute. But it should be. It’s fair to allow people to go and buy regardless of how they self-identify.) Continue reading →