Dr Paul Allen

Those born in the baby boomer generation are entering the longest phase of elderhood in history, full of potential but also fraught with challenges My friend Jeremy’s father has always taken pride in doing things himself. When Jeremy (whose name I have changed for his privacy) was a kid, he watched his dad, an architect, painstakingly renovate their entire family home – ripping up floorboards and laying tile. Today, Jeremy’s dad still insists on climbing up a ladder to clean out the gutters; he wants to fell deadwood with a pruning saw and move heavy furniture around the basement. But now 80 and living with Parkinson’s disease, his drive comes with higher stakes, every strenuous task increasing his risk of preventable harm. “My dad doesn’t know anything else,” Jeremy says. “He’s always been the person who fixes the hole in the roof.” Now he does it in spite of family members desperately trying to convince him to let them do it instead or pass those responsibilities to hired help. Being...

My coworkers think my faith is a joke. They’re never mean about it. They just don’t realize the significance of it. What should I do? Your question speaks to the heart of many conversations I’ve had with believers in secular spaces. We’re all acutely aware our non-Christian coworkers often don’t “get” our beliefs. And that’s not the end of it. Our brains can take one idea and pile on a whole host of other assumptions: The rest of the team must think I’m so dumb for believing what I do. We have nothing in common. He probably dreads working with me. I bet she thinks I’m a goody-goody, sitting on my high horse, thumping my Bible. He knows his lifestyle isn’t supported by my faith. He probably thinks I hate him. The mental leaps can continue far beyond these examples, depending on your situation. When clients or friends tell me their coworkers think their faith is a joke, I usually respond, “Oh, do they? How do you know that?” I know. That’s a truly annoying response to give someone who’s ...

“So built we the wall; and all the wall was joined together unto the half thereof: for the people had a mind to work.” ( Nehemiah 4:6 ) The ambitious project of rebuilding Jerusalem’s wall, with all its gates and other structures, was completed in less than two months ( Nehemiah6:15 ), for all “the people had a mind to work.” This was in spite of the danger from the external enemies who wanted to delay the work if they could. The third chapter of Nehemiah has a remarkable list of the workmen on the wall. Men of all walks of life participated, each with an assigned portion of the work as organized by Nehemiah. The first verse of the chapter tells of the work done by Eliashib, the high priest, and all the other priests; the last verse lists the contribution of the goldsmiths and the merchants. There were the Nethinims (v. 26), apothecaries (v. 8), rulers (i.e., “mayors,” vv. 9, 12, 14-16), and various others. At least one man even had his daughters working (v. 12). Only the nobles o...

“And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour, it is the gift of God.” ( Ecclesiastes 3:13 ) Some people may have the feeling that having to work for a living is an imposition of a corrupt society. Since they were brought into this world through no choice of their own, therefore the world owes them a living, they think. Is working a punishment because of our sins? Well, God did “curse” the ground because of sin, but in an important sense it was for man’s own good. “Cursed is the ground,” He told Adam, “for thy sake” ( Genesis 3:17 ). It would require “the sweat of thy face” (v. 19) before man could eat his bread, and even then it would be “in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life” (v. 17). But the work itself would not be a punishment, for even before he sinned, God had given Adam the responsibility in his Edenic garden “to dress it and to keep it” ( Genesis 2:15 ). Furthermore, we shall have work to do in the new earth in the ag...

Very few, if any, have awoken one morning and decided all of a sudden, “Today is the day I’m going rogue. Enough with all that honesty stuff. From now on, I’m all about corruption.” It typically begins as an indiscernible leak of integrity, at least in terms of self-awareness. You fail to arrive at a meeting on time without there being any perceptible consequence. You ballpark the mileage on your expense report, maybe even fudge it a bit. No one will notice. You miss an ordinary work-a-day deadline. The world didn’t come to an end. So, what’s the big deal? It’s sin — that’s the big deal. They are little sins, to be sure, but regrettably yet monstrous in the presence of a sublimely holy God. What first appear as hair-like fibers on a subterranean root, in time become a complex root structure capable of supporting a veritable Redwood of sin towering above. What begins as a fudged expense account graduates into the taking of un-earned discounts, overstating sales numbers, and sc...