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What Would Jesus Really Do?
I recently met a woman who works for a major U.S. airline. She worked as a “stewardess” with them for over twenty years. She said when she first started working for them, the stewardesses wore hot pants, high boots, and cropped tops in flight. In her words, “It was Hooters in the sky.” She (we) is grateful the dress code has changed for flight attendants. We’ve heard the old saying, “The world is going to hell in a hand basket.” Maybe, but at least the #MeToo movement has made strides in the right direction. Or so I thought. Because just when I thought we were turning the corner on this…
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Post Election: Where Do We Go from Here?
At the time of this writing, the numbers say 74,939,396 US citizens voted one way and 70,636,322 voted the opposite. The final numbers will differ some. But regardless of what the final numbers are, that is a lot of difference. NBC broke down the race-based religious data. And they found this—which will come as no surprise: Among white Protestants, 73 percent voted for President Trump, and 26 percent voted for President-elect Biden. Pew Research paints a different picture for Blacks: 90 percent of Black Protestant registered voters backed Biden. Christianity Today reported, based on National Election Pool results, that nationally Trump took 40 percent of the Latino vote; Biden took 59 percent. …
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Book Review: “The Rage Against God” by Peter Hitchens
“In the names of reason, science, and liberty they [have] proved, rather effectively, that good societies need God to survive and that when you have murdered him, starved him, silenced him, denied him to the children, and erased his festivals and memory, you have a gap that cannot indefinitely be filled by any human, nor anything made by human hands…. [Yet] A new and intolerant utopianism seeks to drive the remaining traces of Christianity from Europe and North America. This time, it does so mainly in the cause of personal liberation, born in the 1960s cultural revolution, and now inflamed into special rage by any suggestion that the sexual urge…
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2 Pieces of Biblical Wisdom for Our Current Religious & Political Climate
Every day it feels like the divisions in the Christian and the political spheres stretch wider. Here are 2 pieces of biblical wisdom to help guide us.
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What is Truth?
Pilate’s famous question to Jesus “What is truth?” suggests that truth can’t be known or doesn’t matter. His attitude contrasted with the words Jesus had just spoken: “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice” (John 18:37). Jesus’s followers are to be of the truth—yes, truth about him, but also truth about everything. Paul’s well-known passage defining love says it “does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6). We should rejoice in investigations to uncover the truth and wrongdoing—even when we…
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Three Responses to Charlottesville
Like many of you, I watched in disbelief as white supremacists spouted bigotry, violence, and KKK rhetoric last weekend at a “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, VA. For a brief summary of the weekend’s events and aftermath, see: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/charlottesville-virginia-overview.html I’ve noted two common responses to the persistent racial and political divide in our country: 1) Us vs. Them. Whether it’s Democrat vs. Republican, black vs. white, black vs. blue, male vs. female, gays vs. straights, or Cowboys vs. Redskins, a “vs.” in the middle necessarily puts one group in complete opposition to another. Dividing ourselves into ideological categories is a natural way of expressing our identity, heritage, and values.…
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While you wait on Trump, build a house and plant a garden
Our nation is experiencing a new place, and we are waiting for the "new normal" to sort itself out. Trump won, and whether you were for him or against him, if you are a citizen of the United States of America, he will soon be your president. If you are a Christ-follower, God's Love Letter tells you what to do: "Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established" (Romans 13:1). Paul was writing to Christians about their attitude and actions toward one of the most brutal and unjust governments in history–Rome. So we know what to do, but what…
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Election Day 2016: Where Do We Go from Here?
A member of the US media tweeted, “Obama's dad dumped him at birth & his mom got rid of him at age 10—did they know something we didn't when we signed up for this guy?” We’re so used to such speech in America that for many of us, it’s doesn't even make us cringe. But such statements are evil on many levels. And they’re in direct disobedience to a command in 1 Peter. Let us as Christians never be among those who would talk this way, even though we live in a world where we hear and read comments like this all the time. The apostle Peter, writing to believers…
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“Locker-Room Banter”: A Teachable Moment
The candidate for the US presidency who has received the most enthusiastic support from evangelicals made the following comments, which were leaked recently from a 2005 conversation in which he was talking with a member of the media: "I moved on her like a [vulgar use of term for female dog], and I could not get there, and she was married. And all the sudden I see her and she's got the big phony [vulgar word for breasts], she's totally changed her look." "I'll admit it. I did try to f***her. She was married … and I moved on her very heavily." "I'm automatically attracted to beautiful women — I…
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In a Culture of Never Enough, a Culture at War, “Learning” Real Contentment
Contentment and I have a troubled history. Many reasons: physical limitations, a vivid imagination, a propensity to live in the future… In addition, our culture of More and Better torches our desires with the gasoline of glossy mags, dark theaters, Facebook vacation pictures, clothes we’ll never need for a life we’ll never live… Election year aggravates our struggles. Each side is spending billions to cast their vision of the better life we’ll live once they are elected. Between now and November we will be subjected to an endless parade of speeches, promises, ads, polls and robocalls designed to inflate our expectations so we will vote for change. It’s all…
