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

Coexist

I've always wanted to write my own article about this bumper-sticker, but someone else beat me to it!

You’ve seen these, right? They make me mad. Why? Because they don’t really mean what they say.

Let’s break it down. We’ll call each worldview by the letter it’s supposed to represent. So:

• C = Islam
• O = Pacifism
• E = “Gender equality” (=the LGBT agenda) 
  
• X = Judaism
• I = Wicca / Pagan / Bah’ai
• S =Taoism / Confucianism
• T = Christianity

And let’s assume a very broad definition of “coexist”: living together without calling for the destruction of each other. Here are the problems with that:

• C wants to kill E, X, T, and (by implication) O. If they achieved the world they wanted, I and S would also no longer exist.
• O doesn’t allow for effective resistance or defeat of C.
• E stands in direct opposition to C, X, and T, and accuses those who speak against them of hate speech. Also, they’re trying to edge X and T out of public schools in favor of their own agenda. (They’re afraid C will be offended, so they get less trouble.) E is actually very, very intolerant.
• X’s existence is threatened not only by C but also by O, who invariably supports C over X.
• I and S are statistically insignificant and are mainly on there to complete the bumper sticker.
• T is who the bumper sticker is really arguing against, but poses no physical threat to any of the others.

Historically, T has brought about more tolerance– “coexistence” if you will– than any other movement. But the kind of “coexistence” the people who make this sticker envision is one where at least X and T are completely marginalized.

http://wisertime.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/coexist/

Notes on Cholesterol

'A nice adaptation of conditions will make almost any hypothesis agree with the phenomena. This will please the imagination, but does not advance our knowledge.' J Black, Lectures of the elements of Chemistry 1803

In truth, the current ideas on plaque formation used to keep the cholesterol hypothesis afloat are complex nonsense. But the entire area is now protected by a ring-fence of scientific jargon that frightens off all but the most dedicated seeker after truth.


Dr Malcolm Kendrick is a medical doctor who has spent many years researching the causes of heart disease. He has been critical of the 'cholesterol hypothesis' for many years, and more of his writing on the area can be found on the website of the International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics. This is an edited version of a chapter in Panic Nation? Unpicking the myths we're told about food and health, edited by Stanley Feldman and Vincent Marks (buy this book from Amazon (UK) or Amazon (USA)).

Cholesterol research paper

Inadvertently started something

My friend Cheyenne posted a video on a Facebook update of a pro-abortion person berating the peaceful protest of pro-lifers.  Cheyenne was supportive of the pro-abortionist's outrage, even though she's neutral on the issue.  But she inadvertently started a discussion thread concerning the video.  In italics is a friends of hers who responded to the video and then I responded afterwards:
   

"Without talking about the issue of whether aborting the baby was right or wrong, this isn't a very christian way to approach abortion. Even if you believe the act was a sin, it would do well to remember the addage 'hate the sin, love the sinner' and these people have no sympathy or love in them, there is a way to say you disgaree with abortion without acting like this. It's not like they just decided one day, 'hey we should have an abortion and kill a baby'. Perhaps they should have got a second opinion but, working with the information they had their child would have had a brief life of intense suffering, in my opinion the humane thing to do is kill the child. One might argue that we are 'playing god' but if you take that stance why use medicine at all? If god gives somebody cancer, don't treat them they must deserve it. Either way you are altering the 'natural' cause of events Even more puzzling is the pro life camp's stance on stem cell research the US is far behind the rest of the industrialized world (whats new?) in this promising area of research because people are scared of using non-sentient cells that would just be frozen in a lab or discarded. If medical research on stem cells is playing god, then fine, we are gods"

The Christian way to approach the abortion issue is to do so in a loving way, be it protest like this or on a personal level. Don't know about these two women, but I have been to a protest where everyone was civilized on both sides except for a few pro-abortionists who weren't even part of the event. If a person believes that aborting a baby, or for that matter assisted suicide, is an option to "prevent suffering" then it just shows a lack of understanding about the meaning of life and a total disregard of the greater possibility that the "suffering" is temporary, which is usually the case in the abortion decision (check CDC and medical records, in nearly all cases, there is only emotional "suffering" rather than an actual medical emergency). It's not a case of natural vs. preventative, but rather a case of the preservation of life no matter what vs. terminating life because of suffering, or worse, "possible" suffering. This even includes the nonsensical example where you state "why use medicine at all? If god gives somebody cancer, don't treat them they must deserve it. Either way you are altering the 'natural' cause of events."  The issue is beyond the ideas of "if god gives somebody cancer" and "natural cause of events," which misses the point.  The issue is "preservation of life" and the emphasis is seeing God at work through the difficulties and tragedies that we brought upon ourselves from the very beginning and still bring on ourselves today.  To allow this thought process of "preventing suffering" to succeed on a federal level is even more deplorable because it will go down a slippery slope to a worldview in which government will determine life or death and will even hold the information to such a decision. To bring it back to the pertinent, there are always options besides abortion especially if you have more information and not just the opinion of those who believe in their rather limited ideas. Quickly, concerning stem cells, embryonic stem cells aren't effective in treating disease and to keep trying because the theory sounds good on paper is to waste precious resources, not to mention actual lives. Adult stem cells are still the most effective in treating a variety of diseases and ailments and the US is among other industrialized nations ahead in that respect.