Reading List - Christian Compassion, Living in the Moment

Every Saturday, I share a list of inspiring or interesting articles that I read during the week. Here’s what I read this week.

The group of people who are the least compassionate, most angry, and driving division in American culture are secular Christians. This is the group of people who claim Christian identity but never go to church.Pastor Drew Downs

We are not built to live in the moment. We are future focused.

Behaviorists thought of animal learning as the ingraining of habit by repetition. Psychoanalysts believed that treating patients was a matter of unearthing and confronting the past. Even when cognitive psychology emerged, it focused on the past and present — on memory and perception.

But it is increasingly clear that the mind is mainly drawn to the future, not driven by the past. Behavior, memory and perception can’t be understood without appreciating the central role of prospection. We learn not by storing static records but by continually retouching memories and imagining future possibilities. Our brain sees the world not by processing every pixel in a scene but by focusing on the unexpected.MARTIN E. P. SELIGMAN and JOHN TIERNEY for the New York Times

Author: Khürt Williams

Hello, I'm Khürt, a Gen X-er residing near Princeton University in Montgomery Township, New Jersey, with a passion for aquariums, terrariums, and photography, capturing moments with digital and 35mm film cameras. I find solace in the woods through hiking, and my eclectic musical tastes span soca, Afrobeat, calypso, 1990s rap, grunge rock, and alternative genres. My tech interests are towards open-source software, Linux, UNIX, and Apple products, particularly macOS. View all posts by Khürt Williams