Sermon Tone Analysis

Stopping Bad Ideas

Researchers at USAMRIID study every imaginable infectious disease.

They thought they had seen it all, but never had they encountered anything like this.

Looking through a microscope, they saw monkey cells collapsing.

Melting, almost.

The cause was a killer virus: nearly all monkeys that were exposed to it died.

What worried the researchers even more was the deadly virus had spread through the air.

Monkeys had been isolated from one another in separate cages and still contracted the deadly disease.

What if Humans were susceptible?

The two researchers looked at each other.

The virus, known as Ebola, could represent an apocalypse.

This was not half way around the world this was 30 miles away from Washington DC in Reston, Virginia.

How to stop viruses before they spread out of control.

Stopping viruses such as Ebola seems impossible, but its not.

Learning form Ebola’s first outbreaks in Africa.

Thousands died in most recent outbreak, but millions more might have if scientist had not responded so decisively with four steps

They Identified the virus’s characteristics.

They isolated the virus’s impact by tracing where it had been and who was at risk.

They informed people of how to stop the virus.

They invested in those who were sick by helping their bodies survive and recover.

Step 1 IDENTIFY

DOCTORS CAN IDENTIFY VIRUSES BY SYMPTOMS THEY CAUSE: aches and pain, fever, and so forth.

This true of ideals too.

Among Christians, for example, a terrible “virus” is striking the young.

They are walking away from the faith.

What kinds of bad ideas produce such casualties?

Secularism.Life is about control.

Marxism.

Life is about capital (money)

Postmodernism.

Life is about context.

New Spirituality.

Life is about consciousness.

Islam.

Life is about conquering.

Step 2 ISOLATE

After identifying bad ideas, we have to look at how they spread so we can stop them.

Step 3 INFORM

Willam McGuire, a psychology professor in the 1950s, speaialized in showing people how to resist bad ideas.He suggested that you don’t just tell people the truth; you also inform them about the lies that would stand against the truth.

You give them a little of the disease so they can build an immunity to it.

Its call inoculation.

My thoughts is it might also help people resist bad ideas.

Step 4 INVEST

The final thing you can do to stop bad ideas is help people survive once they’ve been attacked.

With Ebola, doctors treat patients through medication to combat infection.Prompt intervention buys time for the body to fight for itself, increasing the chance of survival.

It’s true with idea viruses too.

You can’t “uninfect” someone.

But you can help them fight off infectious ideas by dialoguing about them.