When my sister walked out of her room and said she met Jesus, my mom knew all that. And here is the part that gets hard to believe: Sima, my mom, read about him and became a Christian too. Not just a regular one, who keeps it in their pocket. She fell in love. She wanted everybody to have what she had, to be free, to realize that in other religions you have rules and codes and obligations to follow to earn good things, but all you had to do with Jesus was believe he was the one who died for you. And she believed.
It’s true, I’m not deficient. There is no moral value to being bipolar. There are merely advantages and disadvantages. But the reason I have value has nothing to do with my job or productivity. It has to do with the incredible and nearly unfathomable fact that the God of this universe deeply loves and values me. Through gospel-centered and cognitive behavioral therapy, I now have a toolset to help me process and understand what I’m going through and prevent relapses.
When I was a young new lawyer, I was often asked by older adults in the church how I expected to work in that profession and be a Christian completely committed to the Lord. My answer was simple. I could surely serve God in any profession. I never gave the question much thought. Now as a much older Christian lawyer I wish I had.
I had been born and raised in Nigeria to Nigerian and Northern Irish parents, and because of the CG’s location I was hopeful this group might have some Black people in it, though I saw very few on Sundays. When I joined my CG, I was amazed, for God had led me to a CG that was part of the then Racial Unity Ministry (RUM).
I can’t say when he first used marijuana but I’d guess it was freshman year of high school and by junior year he was smoking weed on a regular basis. Concerned, I turned to friends who would talk about their own kids who were partying too much, reassuring me that it wasn’t unusual, that we were in this together. I turned to the school therapist who did not seem fazed at all by my son’s weed use.
Tim Keller reviews Chris Bail’s book, Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing (Princeton, 2021)