Category Archives: Christianity

White Paper: Mining the Ordinary—How Writers Transform Daily Life Into Essays, Poetry, Fiction, and Drama

Executive Summary Writers working in every genre—essay, poetry, prose fiction, and drama—regularly depend on the raw material of their daily lives to produce compelling, resonant work. This white paper examines the cognitive, perceptual, and craft-level mechanisms by which ordinary experiences … Continue reading

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Resilience: Nature, Development, and Institutionalization: A White Paper on Building Durable Individuals and Robust Institutions

Executive Summary Resilience is the capacity to withstand shocks, adapt to changing conditions, and emerge with retained or improved functionality. Across both individuals and institutions, resilience is neither an inherent trait nor a static end state. It is dynamic, cultivated … Continue reading

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White Paper: Intelligence and Counterintelligence Techniques for Capable but Ordinary People

Executive Summary While intelligence work is often imagined as the domain of government agencies and clandestine services, the underlying disciplines—situational awareness, structured information gathering, threat analysis, influence assessment, and protective behavior—are universally applicable. Ordinary people face adversarial environments in business, … Continue reading

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White Paper: Understanding What We Want—and Obtaining It—While Building and Maintaining Good Relations

Executive Summary Individuals, teams, and institutions frequently fail to achieve their goals not because the goals are unrealistic, but because they misunderstand their own motivations, misjudge the motivations of others, or pursue outcomes in ways that undermine long-term relational capital. … Continue reading

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Fruit and Fruitfulness in the Bible: A Biblicist White Paper on Terminology, Imagery, and Theological Function

Executive Summary This white paper examines the Hebrew and Greek vocabulary, literary contexts, and canonical theology of fruit and fruitfulness in Scripture. In the biblical canon, “fruit” functions in multiple senses: agricultural, biological, moral, covenantal, spiritual, missional, eschatological, and judicial. … Continue reading

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Two Measures of Gratitude — The Pharisee’s Pride and the Giver’s Cup

[Note:  The following is the prepared text for a sermonette given to the Tampa, Florida congregation of the United Church of God on Sabbath, November 29, 2025.] Introduction: The Measure of the Heart As we have just celebrated Thanksgiving, it … Continue reading

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White Paper: The Meaning of “Willing to Yield” in Biblical and Extra-Biblical Literature: A Biblicist and Literary-Grammatical Analysis

Executive Summary The expression “willing to yield” (Greek: eupeithēs) appears centrally in James 3:17 as one of the qualities of the “wisdom from above.” Although often translated as “submissive,” “open to reason,” or “compliant,” the word does not imply gullibility, … Continue reading

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Fruit That Cannot Hide: A Sermonette on the Inevitable, External, and Public Nature of Biblical Fruit

[Note: This is the prepared text for a sermonette given to the Tampa, Florida congregation of the United Church of God on Sabbath, November 29, 2025.] Introduction Fruit is one of Scripture’s most powerful pictures of the life of a … Continue reading

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Hur in the Exodus Narrative: A Biblicist White Paper on His Role, Identity, and Notable Absence After the Golden Calf

Executive Summary Hur appears only a handful of times in the biblical text, yet he is placed beside Moses and Aaron at key moments in Israel’s early wilderness history. He functions as a stabilizing elder, a supporter of Moses’ God-ordained … Continue reading

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A Biblicist White Paper on Mary, Joseph, Their Children, and Their Social Status

Executive Summary This white paper (1) compiles all direct biblical information about Mary and Joseph, (2) evaluates the textual evidence for Jesus’ siblings, (3) reconstructs the probable social status and household composition of the family in first-century Galilee, and (4) … Continue reading

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