Barna Year in Review

“Not surprisingly,” he continued, “our research found that a majority of churchgoing adults are uncertain as to what their church would define as a ‘healthy, spiritually mature follower of Christ’ and they were no more likely to have personally developed a clear notion of such a life.

“It may well be that spiritual evaluation is so uncommon because people fear that the results might suggest the need for different growth strategies or for more aggressive engagement in the growth process. No matter what the underlying reason is, the bottom line among both the clergy and laity was indifference toward their acknowledged lack of evaluation. That suggests there is not likely to be much change in this dimension in the immediate future. In other words, as we examine the discipleship landscape, what we see is what we get – and what we will keep getting for some time.”

Death by Coveting

Atheism has killed more people in the past 200 years than religion, any religion, has in the past 2,000.  I wanted to put that phrase up on my Facebook update but it seemed a little too incendiary.  My FB isn't serious and if it is, it's for immediate pressing concerns, nothing that would cause debates - political, religious, or otherwise.  Besides it's not really about the dichotomy between Atheism vs. religion, but differences in worldviews and people abusing their authority vs. true Biblical authority.  As I taught in Life Group recently, our coveting is what causes wars and conflicts.

From the website The Road to Emmaus:

"The Bible states that the person who says he loves God, but hates his brother, is a liar. There are many people through history that have done horrible things in the name of Christianity, but Jesus' words, "you will know them by their fruit" tell the real story regarding their love for God and whether they follow the commands of Jesus Christ.

The second point to make is that, yes, people who claim to love God do kill, but nowhere near to the extent that the lack of religion does. According to University of Hawaii political scientist Rudolph J. Rummel, the total number killed in all of human history is estimated to be about 284,638,000. Of that number, 151,491,000 were killed during the past 100 years. The single largest killer in all of human history is, by far, atheistic Communism with a total of 110,000,000 … over 1/3 of all people ever killed! If we add to that number just two other regimes where religion of any sort was strongly discouraged, Nazi Germany and Nationalist China, the number rises to 141,160,000. Almost 50% of all the killings in human history were committed in the past 100 years by regimes that either actively promoted atheism or strongly discouraged religion. We have not considered the over one billion abortions, where Christianity seems to be particularly unwelcome. When the murders of history are tallied up, it is very clear that atheism is the most dangerous philosophy ever embraced by humanity. The most effective restraint on mankind's inherently evil tendencies is faith in God through Jesus Christ, a faith that actually follows the teachings and commands of Jesus Christ as a daily way of life.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM (all stats have come from this site)"

Architects of Ugly

I read an article on the Blaze about the controversy over these towers, how they looked too much like the WTC in mid-explosion.  After reading the back and forth between so many people, I didn't see any comment about what the motives were of MVRDV, the Dutch architectural firm who designed these buildings.  People were either for or against and only assumed these architects' motives.  After a little research, I put in my two cents:

They may not have meant to offend, but they admitted that the WTC was part of their creative process in designing this monstrosity.  They said about their firm that they like pushing boundaries and to be Michael Moores of architecture.  So this Dutch firm either wanted to jab at America "we're just joking but your country does suck" or was truly ignorant, "saw a pic of an exploding building and I was inspired."  Much like the fashion designer who was inspired by Holocaust victim prison attire as something avante garde and yet she didn't mean to offend anybody.  But it was offensive nonetheless, especially if these designers knew where they were getting their inspiration from.  Aside from the obvious 9/11 connection, this is just aesthetically displeasing!  I appreciate art - beauty and balance are important to me.  These towers barely had either!  A few of their organic looking buildings are nicely designed but for the most part, in their effort to be on the edge creatively, they fell off the cliff!

Daniel of the Year

"It's not rocket science. You don't have to have a counseling degree to bring somebody to Jesus and walk them into a place of wholeness. But you do have to have a lot of patience because it's not going to get all cleaned up immediately." 
"God is 100 percent grace and 100 percent truth.  If we fail to represent any part of that then we fail to represent Christ."
- Alan Chambers, President of Exodus International, 2011 Daniel of the Year Award Recipient