Find Your Calling in 30 Days
Extreme times!
Huge contrasts and extreme changes shake our time. It’s the best of times, it’s the worst of times, as Dickens (1) and the Bible (2) agree. The darkness gets darker, and the light lighter. (3) It’s like heaven and hell wage war on our planet.
Extreme lifestyle
While people used to live uniform lives, we now express our extreme differences, for better and worse. In the same building; secular fundamentalists, sharia-followers, and charismatic Christians live in peaceful co-existence with fanatical vegans, fast-food consumers, New Age followers, and sleek serial monogamists. In our search for likes, love, and liberty, we keep pushing our boundaries.
Extreme climate
The number of hurricanes have doubled and grown in strength since 1970. Scientists prepare us for more damaging phenomena. (4) Maybe we have good reasons to fear natural disasters more than terrorist attacks? (5) A growing number of people believe that extreme weather is caused by humans. (6) People don’t die in catastrophes because they are bad people, Jesus stated. (7) But we should let such incidents wake us and make us reconcile with our Creator. (8) Life is vulnerable, so we’d better be ready to meet our Maker.
Extreme differences
Every fourth second a poor child that easily could have been saved, dies, while the privileged spend hundreds of billions on cosmetics. (9) More than 80 million Indians live on the street. Despite all good initiatives, the rich get richer and the poor poorer. (10)
Extreme vulnerability
We thought we were safe and secure, but a small virus stopped the world for two years. Borders were closed, offices emptied, and people isolated in their homes. Millions lost their loved ones, suffered from illness, effects of covid restrictions or lost their jobs. The scariest part? This was only a mild pandemic compared to other plagues in history. The black death killed half of Europe’s population. (11) What if we got a pandemic like that again?
Extreme technology
Be cautious about artificial intelligence, is the advice from some of the best brains in the world. (12) Today we carry powerful computers on our wrists. We can get our genes mapped in a couple of hours. (13) The first people are now preparing to go to Mars. (14) Extreme technological development gives possibilities and ethical dilemmas that only intelligent moral people can handle.
Extreme attitudes
It’s sad to see the growing number of people who believe in conspiracy theories. (15) When we open up to them, they infect us more and more and we can easily end up thinking that almost everything is planned by hidden power alliances. Fanaticism is dangerous in all sizes and forms. Boiling hatred and poisonous hostility can be expressed in religion, politics or patriotism. The real threat against world peace is the constant craving of corrupt hearts. (16)
Extreme evil
Up to 1 billion children experience physical, sexual or emotional violence or neglect every year. (17) Good people find it hard to believe, but it is actually possible for humans to become totally evil. (18) Ethnic cleansing, human trafficking and child abuse happen in forms so horrible that Satan must be the source. Driven by lust and narcissism, we open up to destructive and demonic powers. (19)
Extreme goodness
A growing number of billionaires give huge sums to solve global issues. (20) Collective actions work: Extreme poverty decreases, clean water access increases, less children die, and more kids get education. (21) However, we still have a long way to go. To end world poverty, radical changes are needed.
Extreme transformation
Contrary to all the predictions that faith in God would die, we are searching spiritual realities more than ever. Huge numbers leave nominal religion to get a personal relationship with the Creator. Being born again is nothing less than an extreme makeover. (22) When we get God’s Spirit on the inside, the old stuff is taken away and we get divine nature. (23) For this transformation to be complete, attitudes and actions need to match the Spirit we received. That’s why I wrote this book.
Extreme love
Jesus on the cross, that’s extreme love! And that’s the love that fuels our passion. (24) We are called to lay down our lives for undeserving dirtbags, to transform our world like Paul did 2000 years ago: If I acted crazy, I did it for God; if I acted overly serious, I did it for you. Christ’s love has moved me to such extremes. His love has the first and last word in everything we do. (25)
1 It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.
2 Revelation 22:11 (TLB): And when that time comes, all doing wrong will do it more and more; the vile will become more vile; good men will be better; those who are holy will continue on in greater holiness.
3 Isaiah 60:2 (NIV): See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the Lord rises upon you and his glory appears over you. 2 Timothy 3:1ff describes the negative development (ESV): But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty, and Acts 2:17 describes the positive one (NIV): In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
4 A global phenomenon that originates in the ocean and the atmosphere. El Niño and La Niña are big temperature fluctuations in the surface water of the tropical part of the Eastern Pacific Ocean.
5 https://www.tv2.no/a/3805327 (Norwegian article. “This is what we fear more than terror attacks.”)
6 https://www.aftenposten.no/norge/i/04q7E/flere-og-sterkere-orkaner (Norwegian article. “More and stronger hurricanes.”)
7 Luke 13:1-5
8 Repent towards God: See Luke 13:3 and Acts 14:15.
9 On a world basis, we spend billions of dollars on looks. A great part of it goes to cosmetic operations. https://www.economist.com/special-report/2003/05/22/pots-of-promise
10 https://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats (Last updated 2013)
11 Ole Jørgen Benedictow: The Black Death 1346-1353: The Complete History
12 https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/555092/Bill-Gates-Stephen-Hawking-Artificial-Intelligence-AI-threat-mankind
13 https://www.aftenbladet.no/meninger/i/djJGj/forskning-skaper-biotek-framtiden (Norwegian article. “Research creates the biotech-future.”
14 https://www.nasa.gov/topics/moon-to-mars/overview
15 One third of all Americans believe the plane attacks against the Twin Towers in New York were planned by the American government.
16 2 Peter 1:4 and 1 Corinthians 13:5
17 https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-against-children Numbers are from 2016.
18 Genesis 6:5
19 James 3:14-16
20 https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeswealthteam/2021/01/19/americas-top-givers-the-25-most-philanthropic-billionaires/?sh=57453921f597
21 https://devinit.org/resources/poverty-trends-global-regional-and-national/
22 The word used for transformation in Romans 12:2 and 2 Corinthians 3:18 is metamorphoo, which means to be changed into another form. Thayer’s Greek Lexicon: to change into another form, to transform, to transfigure.
23 2 Corinthians 5:17
24 2 Corinthians 5:17 (TPT)
25 2 Corinthians 5:11-15 (MSG)