Finally, a little reason…

For years, the aggressive presentation of the American Psyc. Asso. has been that homosexuality is innate, that any attempt at reparative therapy amounted to abuse and that therapists who offer such should be banned. They further promoted the idea (and aggressively attempted the enforcement of such) that schools must affirm and even market homosexuality/bisexuality/lesbianism/transsexualism as a great idea for youth or risk being seen as and create children who are bigoted.

It would be nice if they had founded all of this politicking on anything more then rumor and thin air — but, they didn’t — the science just isn’t on their side.

Finally, the push back is coming — and coming VERY hard — from none other then the American College of Pediatricians in the form of a letter stating the obvious:

(1) individuals with unwanted same sex attraction often can be successfully treated;

(2) there is no undue risk to patients from embarking on such therapy and

(3), as a group, homosexuals experience significantly higher levels of mental and physical health problems compared to heterosexuals. Among adolescents who claim a “gay” identity, the health risks include higher rates of sexually transmitted infections, alcoholism, substance abuse, anxiety, depression and suicide. Encouragingly, the longer students delay self-labeling as “gay,” the less likely they are to experience these health risks. In fact, for each year an adolescent delays, the risk of suicide alone decreases by 20%.

In light of these facts, it is clear that when well-intentioned but misinformed school personnel encourage students to “come out as gay” and be “affirmed,” there is a serious risk of erroneously labeling students (who may merely be experiencing transient sexual confusion and/or engaging in sexual experimentation). Premature labeling may then lead some adolescents into harmful homosexual behaviors that they otherwise would not pursue.

Optimal health and respect for all students will only be achieved by first respecting the rights of students and parents to accurate information and to self-determination. It is the school’s legitimate role to provide a safe environment for respectful self-expression for all students. It is not the school’s role to diagnose and attempt to treat any student’s medical condition, and certainly not a school’s role to “affirm” a student’s perceived personal sexual orientation.

Here’s a couple more sources of real information from NARTH and Liberty Counsel.

Don’t expect the politburo at the APA to agree though…

I have no idea what the rest of the movie is about but the trailer gets my vote for movie of the year…

Terrorists Could Use Explosives in Breast Implants to Crash Planes, Experts Warn.

Female homicide bombers are being fitted with exploding breast implants which are almost impossible to detect, British spies have reportedly discovered.

The shocking new Al Qaeda tactic involves radical doctors inserting the explosives in women’s breasts during plastic surgery — making them "virtually impossible to detect by the usual airport scanning machines."

It is believed the doctors have been trained at some of Britain’s leading teaching hospitals before returning to their own countries to perform the surgical procedures.

MI5 has also discovered that extremists are inserting the explosives into the buttocks of some male bombers.

"Women suicide bombers recruited by Al Qaeda are known to have had the explosives inserted in their breasts under techniques similar to breast enhancing surgery," Terrorist expert Joseph Farah claims.

After the failed genius of the underwear bomber who mostly lit his nuts on fire, I commented to a friend that the stupidity of strip searches, make-you-naked-body-scanners and other useless projects of the airline safety industry would only die when some wack-job finally blows something out of the air with an explosive boob-job and the public gets around to realizing that taking away your nail-clippers was nothing more then a sham of security.

Well, it looks like it’s about to happen — and, perhaps, with a butt job too…

Sooner or later, we just gotta admit that no matter how many strip searches we perform, how many people get fondled by security teams and how many naked body scans we perform, we are never gonna be able to get ahead of a terrorist who is unafraid to die and happy to have the mechanism for such sewn inside his/her body…

So, can we all grow up, admit that who people associate with matters, admit that we are gonna have to go back to good-ole-detective-work, start paying attention to who is hanging out with other radical nut cases and figure out who it is who has some insane ideology that would make them want to blow other people up in first place?

Oh, ya, never mind — that would be racist and religiously bigoted. On second though, hand over your nail-clippers sir – we’re certain you are gonna nibble the flight crew to death with them…

Scotteriology

Can you imagine if Jesus actually showed up for that service? The first-century Galilean apocalyptic radical is somehow transported through time and space ala Bill and Ted’s phone-booth, and he can understand English and has a social context for the gathering “in his name”…I imagine him fashioning a whip and driving people out of their seats saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of retards.”

Hopefully, after his mini-sermon Jesus mounts one of the mimes and beats him into submission… ’cause that would be awesome!

Ok, a client just gifted me this site today. My abs and throat already hurt from laughing and I’ve only been at it for 1/2 an hour.

What Evangelical Christendom most desperately needs is another 500 sites like this — sites run by people who stand up in what the true prophetic calling of Christ and His Church really is: the call to truth in the face of that which is SO overwhelmingly and pervasively, yes, “Retarded.”

Then, just maybe, the general public will start waking up, cut off the funding that keeps these people on the air and demand a real relationship with the living God.

American Family Association

The American Family Association, a religious right group, is urging that Tillikum Tilly, the killer whale that killed a trainer at SeaWorld Orlando, be put down, preferably by stoning. Citing Tilly’s history of violent altercations, the group is slamming SeaWorld for not listening to Scripture in how to deal with the animal:

Says the ancient civil code of Israel, “When an ox gores a man or woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner shall not be liable.” Exodus 21:28

However, the group is going further and laying the blame for the trainer’s death directly at the feet of Chuck Thompson, the curator in charge of animal behavior, because, according to Scripture, But, the Scripture soberly warns, if one of your animals kills a second time because you didn’t kill it after it claimed its first human victim, this time you die right along with your animal. To use the example from Exodus, if your ox kills a second time,

“the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death.” Exodus 21:29

SeaWorld has no plans to execute Tilly.

And, we all hoped they would learn from Pat Robertson/Haiti…

But, I for one vote for it… but, they have to stand in the tank while throwing the stones…

nationalpost.com

Christian parents who objected to their children being taught about other religions in a mandatory new Quebec school course have suffered a serious setback with a ruling this week that the teachings do not infringe their religious freedoms.

Quebec Superior Court Justice Jean-Guy Dubois dismissed a bid by parents in Drummondville, Que., who said the course on ethics and religious culture introduced across the province last year was undermining their efforts to instill Christian faith in their children.

“In light of all the evidence presented, the court does not see how the … course limits the plaintiff’s freedom of conscience and of religion for the children when it provides an overall presentation of various religions without obliging the children to adhere to them,” Judge Dubois wrote.

Step #1: Schools and the governments that back them all over North America throw their lot in with secularization and toss religion out of schools. The backing belief is that our society needs freedom of religion — and such freedom demands a secular state that supports all religions equally and promotes none of them.

Church response: “Help, we’re being oppressed!!! You have taken God out of the classroom and our children are becoming secular humanists.”

Step #2: Those same school systems and governments realize that religion is a critical part of society and the ability to understand those religions usually means less killing of the members of such. As such, they introduce a fair and balanced program that promotes none of those religions but simply teaches the facts about them.

Church response: “Help, we’re being oppressed!!! You are indoctrinating our children with other religions…” (Then they sue the school board…)

Step #2: Judge comes back with a well reasoned response saying that learning about world religions is not the same thing as promoting them — and tells them to go away and shut up.

Church response: “Help, we’re being oppressed!!! You are infringing on our rights to form our children’s faith development and we’re gonna sue you some more…”

Humm, so, let me get this straight: The only way a free society which values general human rights can avoid treading on your specific rights is to teach every student in every school only about your religion… Thus, your snowflake’s little minds can remain properly ignorant I mean pure, undefiled and Godly.

Sounds to me like the veil just got ripped back on a plan for a totalitarian theocracy — not the freedom Jesus died to bring.

It may actually be rather pivotal though… We finally get the chance to see Fundamentalist Evangelicalism and Catholicism admitting their hatred of that freedom and acknowledging what they really wanted all along:

Control.

Pivotal, because at least truth provides a foundation for change…

Note, also permalink, top level posted here.

The power of Eternality:

The man/woman who stands with no fear of death is the most dangerous being alive. The entirety of the system of this world rides on the ability to take a life from another. When death ceases to terrify, control is lost.

The power of Absolution:

This world — especially the Christian side of it — stands in the constant fear of guilt. It stands with heads hung in shame while playing roles designed to prove to those who hold this weeks rating scale that they do, indeed, measure up. The teachings of Jesus have been so bastardized and bent by the keepers of religious power that it actually seems reasonable when that-which-formerly-was is again brought as a means of enforcing the awareness of our guiltiness and pinned on Jesus. But, we didn’t get a Bandaid for our sins — we, with Christ, died to them — and were raised to a new life that doesn’t relate to them. Our heads can never again hang low — because the standard which judged us (The law) can never again condemn us — no matter what.

The power of Love:

So many people live in the fear that if they ever gave God control of their lives, He’d bring out massive pain and torment (and a few plagues from Egypt too) to finally hurt them enough to change them. Yet, Jesus made it very clear that to see His heart was to see the Father. It’s a heart that will never lead through shame, fear, guilt, condemnation, coercion, punishment, torment or wrath. It’s a gentle heart that works quietly inside — when we are ready — to call us to life.

The power of Life:

Almost every aspect of our world is focused upon dying. We have drugs — they keep us emotionally dead. We have TV and entertainment to keep us distracted until we die. We have disassociative meditative techniques that are used to attain the peace of the grave while living. We run from shame, fear, guilt and the paralysis that comes from feeling trapped and bound and this drives that seeking of death. Through canceling all of that, the Gospel not only reawakens the desire to live, it legitimated the call to live and unlocked the creative energy to drive such.

The power of Freedom:

Wanna know why our bricks and mortar churches are emptying by the droves? People heard that Jesus came to set them free — and something deep within them intuitively knows that a list of rules isn’t what He had in mind. The message of the Gospel isn’t less rules — it’s TOTAL freedom. “When a man finally grasps grace, he suddenly finds himself standing, naked and trembling, in such a wide open space that he can do naught else but reach up for a hand to hold — for a guide to lead him through.” Anon

The power of Intimacy:

We can reach up for that hand to hold and that guide who will lead us through. It’s safe now. The cross is critical to this for it proved that not only is God good — but it proved that who He is IS GOOD. The human race unleashed the very worst it had to offer on the one being in the universe who could have annihilated them with a thought — and He loved them so much He let them kill Him and then came back to love them even more. To love ME even more…

The power of Faith:

Faith isn’t belief — faith is Christ in you, the hope of Glory. The Christian life has nothing to do with trying harder or trying period. It’s about surrender to that new life which has been created in you to enough of a degree that you can stop trying and literally get the hell out of the way. It’s about a surrender to a wisdom so much greater then our own that the foundations of this sick and corrupt system of control we call life begin to get blown up — not just for yourself, but also for those you love.

The power of Holy Anger:

Jesus made one thing very clear: He didn’t come to make nice — He came to start a war. The religious leaders of the day didn’t kill, “Gentle Jesus meek and mild.” They killed a guy who they could plainly see was destroying everything about their system of religious power — not trying to start the Progressive Conservative/Republican party. Then, He turned to the disenfranchised, the broken, the humiliated, the poor, the shameful, the powerless and promised them a power greater then the world had ever seen — just before he invited them to join up and open fire.

The power of Humanness:

Look around the world — every major religion out there sees human beings as basically screwed up and disgusting. It then offers it’s prescription to fix them — if people will only tow their line. The Gospel sees people as made in the image of God and, though once broken, as currently perfect without them doing anything to fix themselves. (That’s God’s job.) He came not to destroy them — but to reverse that which was broken about them once and for all. He came to make them fully human and fully alive.

The power of Transformation:

The foundational job of the gospel is to tear back the veils that keep people from seeing the beauty and dignity of the current reality of their lives. Read that again — not to fix people, for that job is already done. The primary weapon we are given is truth — the ability to tear back the lies that have the ones we love trapped in a set of falsehoods that reduce them to that which formerly was (dead) and drive them towards a set of broken strategies which will never fulfill the deepest longings of their hearts.

The power of Passion:

The magical core of the Gospel is the call to the deepest desires of our hearts. If God made those hearts and planted those deep longings within them, then those deep longings have to be His will for our lives. All of the above was NOT done because God wants to finally get you to the point of being a well-trained-seal who will do some religious dance when told. He did all of the above so you could finally reach inside and discover that deepest place of your heart where He planted the vision He created for you to become — and then full-tilt LIVE IT OUT.

The Gospel is not seen in ethics. The Gospel is first seen when a human heart, transformed so that it both is able to hear the voice of God and longs to do so, begins to reach out for the hand of a loving father and, when finding that hand, begins to take the risk to step out and live.

The Gospel achieves it’s true 10,000 candle-power brilliance when that heart reaches out and loves, it stops and cries, it gives to another, it stands in defiance of the night, it attacks with fury, it rescues the broken, it binds up the wounded, it touches that paintbrush to canvas, it places finger to string or key, it speaks with fire and precision, it screams with the fury of Almighty God at the thought of one of His precious children living with even one chain, it kisses with passion and then it makes love with with all of the erotic intensity that only a heart set free can even risk.

It’s the captivating and irresistible master plan of liberty the God of the universe, exploding out of the passionate longings of His heart, wrote for you.

cbc.ca.

Religion is serious business, she says, and cultural elites like Hitchens are foolish if they think they can jettison it.

For one thing, she says, religion ties into the the glorious art and cultural traditions of the West. With their bare-bones, secular education, students come to university knowing nothing, Camille says. “NOTHING!” she shouts to the audience, the heavens, the ancient statues that lurk in adjacent rooms.

They don’t know Bible stories anymore (except, occasionally, for working-class students from religious homes, she said). They don’t know the story of Moses, fleeing slavery from Egypt.

How can you understand the depth of the American civil rights movement, she asks, without a regard for the religious underpinning of Martin Luther King Jr. and other clergy? “Let my people go,” which black slaves used to sing, had a great resonance that allowed them to unite their pain and longing with a powerful, religious tradition.

What do we have? Homer Simpson? O.J. Simpson? The Terminator?

And again:

Religion is serious business

It’s just a bunny trail but… It seems that even the atheists are more capable of understanding the current state of Christianity then most of the Church…

That’s true in two senses — the reality that the Church has mostly become a business, and at a deeper level as well…

For years, secular society has claimed art — and we let them (Often acting as though most of it were evil — God FORBID we should paint/photograph a nude…) They claimed music — and we held idiot-level seminars on the evils of drums in worship. They have claimed the authority on traditions and culture — and we let them — often ignoring the roots of such ourselves. Secular society reduced the world to a mechanical system — and we avoided science and the beauty/order that clearly shows a Creator. They claimed/revised history — and we allowed them to ignore spirituality throughout it. They (correctly) mocked religion — and we passively sat back and defended religion instead of reciprocally mocking their ignorance and presenting intimacy with God.

In a place where spiritual people should have stood up and been counted, we have been silent — while barking furiously about ethical issues that change nothing in a society.

Now, finally, the ultimate pathetic irony: We’ve crawled our whipped hides back into our little stained glass caves where we are sitting, licking our wounds and railing on about the evils of this world and it is now the ATHEISTS who have had to stand up and defend the cultural value of faith out of their own fear of what a truly secular society would actually look like.

TheSpec.com.

A Freelton man who describes himself as a software developer and aspiring screenplay writer is accused in a California court of running a $14-million US Ponzi scheme.

Gordon Driver and his company, Axcess Automation, are alleged to have defrauded more than 100 Canadian and American investors since 2006 by promising them weekly returns on their investment as high as 5 per cent, based on special software he says he developed to trade futures.

Among those who invested in the alleged Ponzi scheme, court documents say, are Ron and Reynold Mainse, sons of David Mainse, founder of Burlington’s Crossroads Television and 100 Huntley Street.

Reynold Mainse became interested, Driver testified, and eventually invested some money. Ron Mainse also became an investor.

In Driver’s April 23 testimony, he alleged the two Mainse brothers also acted as finders, bringing other investors to Driver.

Ron Mainse is out of the country and could not be reached for comment.

Reynold Mainse did not respond to an interview request.

(For explanation on the title, go here.)

The mothership, meanwhile, had this to say:

Well the board of Crossroads have asked me to inform you that Ron and Reynold Mainse will not be appearing on any Crossroads programming or otherwise represent Crossroads for the time being as they focus their energies on certain matters in their personal lives. They’ve stepped down from their duties until such time as the board of directors have complete understanding of all the issues related to a matter that they were involved in outside of the ministry here at Crossroads.

(Of course, immediately the right set about painting them as victims instead of the finders they were.)

Nothing ever changes:

Rather interesting how they go down in flames right after attempting to mock/silence Drew for calling them and the Church to account for a gospel of control, shame and guilt and towards a Gospel of freedom, grace and intimacy with the Father. It’s almost Luke 13 in real life:

One of my favorite heretics paraphrased Luke 13 this way:

“I tell you it is not true that these people suffered such things because they were worse sinners than any other, but I also tell you that as long as you persist in seeing it this way, your deaths will be viewed in the same [Judgment of God] way.”

If only they could have looked forward with these eyes — it wouldn’t have been Drew’s last appearance…

Let me be blunt: Any Canadian who does not desire to live in a police surveillance state should probably check this out.

The legislation itself:
Bill C-46:
Bill C-47:

Here’s three dudes who need a note from you:

The Prime Minister of Canada (Steven Harper): harper.s@parl.gc.ca
The guy who sold his soul (Peter Van Loan): vanloan.p@parl.gc.ca
Whoever your MP is: Search

It should probably look something like this: (My MP is Harper)

Dear Mr. Steven Harper and Mr. Peter Van Loan,

I believe that the introduction of legislation which will allow Canadian police to access personal information about the sender or receiver of any electronic message without a warrant is an extremely dangerous and foolish direction for our country to be moving in. I further believe that forcing business (Internet Service Providers) to become the 24/7/365 watchdogs and surveillance system of a society violates the reasonable expectation of privacy that any free society is based upon and creates a culture of fear and paranoia only matched by that of the former Soviet Union.

The very foundation of any democratically based free-society is the expectation of a system of restraints placed upon law enforcement (and those who wield power in general) based upon an understanding that no one is incorruptible. History has always proven that the absence of said restraints always creates a police state for everyone can be tempted to justify their own means if the end is sufficiently believed in. Placing the balance of effort upon law enforcement to prove that surveillance is necessary and then the burden of effort required to effect such upon their own limited resources ensures that said surveillance is only used where truly necessary.

Laws of this nature (C-64 & C-47) are always advanced under one fundamental line of logic: We must maintain the security of our free society from those who would destroy it.

While there may be some security benefit to this legislation, the effect of said legislation is, in and of itself, always a tearing apart of the fundamental freedoms that any free society is based upon to gain such — given that those powers are always handled by corruptible persons. Persons who can be bought or who, for ideological reasons, come to see this power through the lens of, “We can use this to stamp out what we don’t like or what costs us money.” (The villain of the day could be violent video games, offensive statements, religious ideas or simply the control of behavior for profit.) The end result of that security is a loss of freedom which ultimately destroys that which it claims to protect.

Franklin stated: “Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”

C-64 & C-47 are the granting of inordinate power to persons who must always be considered suspect if a free and just society is to be maintained. I believe they have NO place in our country.

If there is truly any need for our private details to be accessed, a judge will see that and grant a warrant so that the police may collect those details — all by themselves.

–
Yours Truly,
Cal H. Henze, M.A.

Wittenburg Door

Ms. Wisteria, who holds a degree in early Christian fabric and drapery design from Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, worked as a model during her student days, and she came to a conclusion: Christian women needed a lingerie line that would let them look sexy but still retain that sense of modesty required for bedtime prayers and morning quiet time.

There’s a widespread misconception, she said, that Christians fear pleasure, especially sexual pleasure, and see it as degrading, corrupting and tainted.

“That’s a dirty, rotten LIE,” she yelled, stamping her foot on the marble floor.

“But it’s always so hard for a couple to transition from kneeling together in awe before the gates of heaven — praying for famine victims in Darfur, for instance, or the political situation in East Timor–and then jumping into the sack for a session of hot carnal pleasure. I wanted to help bridge that gap. That was my sacred mission.”

The result was her first popular cutting-edge design– the breakaway flannel granny gown.

If I wouldn’t take so much heat out of the fundamentalist Evangelical right (And reverends thereof), there’s a twisted part of me that would want to not bill this as the parody it is — and see how many would take it seriously.

But, having been drawn and quartered for not condemning a client who bought his wife sweaters from Victoria’s Secret, for linking to a site which sells foam wedges to support couples for love making (Especially disabled couples), for suggesting a Pyrex toy could be used to treat vaginal spasms, for suggesting that God created our ability to have fantasy and for having the nerve to suggest a sexual teaching guide (with [GASP] pencil diagrams) was not leading a couple into pornography, I must refrain — and wonder how much of the article really is parody; or if it’s history…

PLoS ONE

A pooled weighted average of 1.97% N = 7, 95%CI: 0.86–4.45 of scientists admitted to have fabricated, falsified or modified data or results at least once –a serious form of misconduct by any standard– and up to 33.7% admitted other questionable research practices. In surveys asking about the behaviour of colleagues, admission rates were 14.12% N = 12, 95% CI: 9.91–19.72 for falsification, and up to 72% for other questionable research practices. Meta-regression showed that self reports surveys, surveys using the words “falsification” or “fabrication”, and mailed surveys yielded lower percentages of misconduct. When these factors were controlled for, misconduct was reported more frequently by medical/pharmacological researchers than others.

Considering that these surveys ask sensitive questions and have other limitations, it appears likely that this is a conservative estimate of the true prevalence of scientific misconduct.

Much of the world has a set of illusionary pictures:

(1). The religious nut job: This guy has little ability to think for himself, he follows what he is told by some establishment, he is unwilling to look at contradictory data and he lives only to win the approval of his superiors — who are controlling him. For many, if you believe in God at all, you fit here…

(2). The scientist: This man is deeply driven by a pursuit of truth. He is open minded, unswayed by superiors, profoundly rational (And non-religious) and can never be corrupted by the finances that fund his pure research. He is widely believed to possess a halo as well — but God (who of course, doesn’t exist) had nothing to do with it…

It seems definition #1 VERY often applies to both images…

What is really happening is a fundamentalist extremeification of much of the world. (Yes, that’s probably an invented word…) More and more we are seeing vast numbers of people who hold positions that are untenable and easily confronted. Yet, those people now so commonly refuse to address contrary data and, when forcibly presented with such, refuse to modify their positions. This is the definition of fundamentalism.

Often, those people, when presented with contrary data, will resort to attacking the persons presenting that data rather then even assaulting the data — to say nothing of being willing to actually address the possibility of modifying the positions they hold. Mostly, when they address the data at all, it’s addressed for purposes of vilification — not for understanding.

The myth of a pure scientist is just that — a myth. No scientist can exist without money. Piss off the grant giver = no money. Contradict the widely held scientific consensus = no money. Issue results that upset the ideologues at the university for which you work = no tenure and no money. Say something that just isn’t politically correct and infuriates some special interest group the powers that be support = political pressure from the school donors to give you no money. A successful scientist is one that usually says what he is told — sometimes he slips in truth too — when he can get away with it…

This isn’t some push to cancel science — it has so much to teach us. It’s a push to recognize science as just another religion. A belief system within which people seek truth, perform study, draw conclusions and try to impose such on others.

Like every religion, it demands a rather careful sifting — not bowing down before it…

Simple rule of thumb: If people created it, then STOP worshiping it.

nationalpost.com.

When a teenage girl knowingly sends provocative pictures of herself to friends or a boyfriend, is she guilty of child pornography or simply practicing self-expression?

New research that looks at the criminalization of self-made images exchanged among consenting minors argues that the laws and public service campaigns designed to protect girls from becoming victims may actually be blaming the girls themselves and curbing their natural desire for sexual self-expression.

Teenagers sending provocative and even pornographic images via cellphones — a practice known as sexting — is really just a modern variation on "playing doctor or spin the bottle," Peter Cumming, an associate professor at York University in Toronto, argued in a paper on children's sexuality defending the practice.

"Technology does change things, and there can be very serious consequences," Prof. Cumming said. "But that obscures the fact that children and young people are sexual beings who have explored their sexuality in all times, and all cultures and all places. A distinction has to be made between nudity and child porn," he added.

In the last couple of months, the media suddenly seemed to discover that teens had phones (With cameras) as well as computers (With WebCams) and, as usual, the sky was falling. News outlets ran stories, prosecutors suddenly started charging girls who were even photographed in their underwear and, “Dr.” Phil commenced his usual clueless moralizing and grandstanding to shame girls into ceasing the practice of sending erotic pictures of themselves to others (Which, of course, he and others immediately commenced calling pornography.)

Ignoring the reality that this doesn’t fit any scientific definition of rage based erotica (Which Porn is). Ignoring that even under the blunt instrument of the law, nudity does not even remotely equal erotica/pornography and ignoring the raw senselessness of punishing a victim as her own perpetrator, this insanity has provided an interesting window into the collective self hatred present in the sexual psyche of North America. It’s like the veil has been violently pulled back and people are suddenly exposing the attitudes about sex that make them so uncomfortable:

Sex as a means of manipulating others.
Sex as a means of violating others.
Sex as a reason for marital failure (If marriage itself doesn’t kill sex in advance.)
Sex as pure sleaze.
Sex as a means of keeping one gender or another under your thumb.

No more are those attitudes hidden in the back room — but the weird thing is that the proponents of such are hardly hanging their heads in shame over the obvious shattered reality now visible in their belief systems. The above attitudes are actually the foundations of their sudden outrage and activism with rants about how boys will use girls, how gullible girls are for being sexual, how no one will want a girl who does this and how badly girls who do this are gonna get hurt.

As far as I can tell, this is the first researcher who has squarely faced the key question: Why are we shaming/punishing/condemning young girls for being sexual beings (Yes, very stupid ones…) instead of addressing those who would distribute the evidence of said stupidity?

The stunning irony in this entire debate is that neither Oprah, “Dr.” Phil, Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus, High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens, WiredSafety nor any of the major news outlets launched their campaign with a set of messages to young boys about respecting the sexualities of young girls, how a woman’s sexuality (especially offered to you) is a precious gift, how much of a moron you look like when you treat a girlfriend (Or her picture) like a piece of meat to hand around to your friends, how women are attracted to men of honor and how those that violate the above should be charged and educated to grow up.

Naw… Because that would expose our own attitudes about sex and, particularly, women’s sexuality. Like, perhaps the fact that we think sex is evil, dirty, sick and nasty — and you should only do it with the one you love…

CNN.com

Liberty University, the evangelical school in Virginia founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, is drawing heat Friday for its decision to revoke recognition of the College Democrats’ chapter on campus.

According to the Lynchburg News & Advance, the school decided a week ago the organization “stood against the moral principles” held by the school and therefore could no longer be sanctioned.

Maria Childress, the staff adviser to the club, told the paper the school — which opposes abortion rights and gay marriage — had issues with the Democratic Party platform.

Childress says she was told by Mark Hine, the vice president of student affairs, that “‘You can’t be a Democrat and be a Christian and be a university representative.’”

Ironic isn’t it — a Fundamentalist Evangelical College called Liberty University which purported to be founded for the protection of freedom and the American Way uses its political clout to silence two of the most fundamental of American rights: Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Association…

The experts, in their inestimable wisdom, have spoken: Obama, along with his wife and beautiful children, apparently is going to hell…

CNN.com.

In a message posted on the Miami archdiocese Web page, the archbishop apologized to parishioners and radio listeners for what he called a “scandal.”

“Father Cutie made a promise of celibacy and all priests are expected to fulfill that promise with the help of God,” Favalora said. “Father Cutie’s actions cannot be condoned despite the good works he has done as a priest.”

Cutie apologized in an online statement Tuesday, saying he “wants to ask for forgiveness if my actions have caused pain and sadness. … I assure you that my service and dedication to God remain intact.”

Isn’t it interesting how an archdiocese well known as a safe haven for sexually abusive priests suddenly manages to get so pissy assertive when the other person involved is old enough to vote. And has ovaries.

It says something about the priorities and underlying patterns of brokenness here that this is what would finally be called a, “Scandal…” In any other church, everyone would be cheering that the one leader in the area who is actually doing something productive to really change people’s love lives has now, himself, found love.

You always see this pattern in systems of religious power: Those actions which undermine the power system are always deemed to be so much more evil then those which are neutral or actually maintain said system. The rating process really has nothing to do with any sort of evaluation of the actual damage sustained by human hearts…

post-gazette.com.

Grove City student suspended over gay porn video

Says film income helped pay tuition

Thursday, May 07, 2009

The Associated Press
GROVE CITY, Pa. — A student is appealing his suspension from a Christian college in Mercer County for appearing in gay porn videos using a pseudonym.

Twenty-two-year-old John Gechter, of Philadelphia, was suspended for one year pending appeal from Grove City College after a student saw him last month in a video posted online.

Mr. Gechter is appealing the suspension and says he may sue, claiming that the gay porn job isn’t any of the school’s business, especially since he performed using the name “Vincent DeSalvo.” Mr. Gechter says he used his porn income to pay for his schooling.

School officials say Mr. Gechter is suspended because he was well aware his porn involvement “exhibited behavior contrary to the values” of the school about 50 miles north of Pittsburgh.

Three interesting things here:

The most interesting part of this is still being recognized by precisely nobody… Apparently, the student who was looking at same-sex oriented erotic videos and narc’ed him out — well, s/he’s still a member of the student body…

It seems that, on this week’s edition of the naughty list, the sex acts involved in viewing same-sex erotic materials are not quite naughty enough to qualify as a, “Really bad sin,” — but performing them (at least on film) is. Or maybe, the real issue is just that the public can’t identify which student reported the problem — thus the school can still claim the problem doesn’t exist in their back yard, avoid dealing with it and still retain their carefully crafted public image…

The second interesting fact is that this guy is telling the truth about his financial needs. It seems that, for no better reason then hiding their finances from the government, the school canceled every student’s ability to subsidize an education in the normal (student loan) way.

The third interesting thing is that no one stated considering keeping them both there, admitting that the entire student body is overloaded with broken hearts and working with all of them to heal such…

Fundamentalist logic…

CNN.com

The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 percent of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified — more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words — and the only answer that can be given to this order of monumental stupidity and callous disregard for human life:

(JesusFacePalm)

Christianity has not been based on the teachings of Jesus for a very, very long time…

Chicago Breaking News

The pastor of Willow Creek Chicago — the city campus of the evangelical megachurch Willow Creek Community Church — has resigned and admitted to “sexual impurity,” a church spokesman said.

The pastor, Rev. Steve Wu, could not be reached, and the church would [not] specify what took place.

Wu, 43, moved from California’s Silicon Valley in early 2006, hired by senior pastor Rev. Bill Hybels to lead Willow Creek Chicago, the downtown branch of the South Barrington-based church.

And further down…

The statement said: “He admitted to sexual impurity and has taken full responsibility for his sin. He has expressed a desire to participate in a restoration process.”

The usual drama continues — yet another collection of sex obsessed evangelicals find yet another in their midst who slipped Willy across this week’s line and, yet again, have tossed him out on his, er, nether-regions as a form of utterly useless restorative therapy that is sure to result in both zero change and a speaking tour — probably with a book deal. (Clearly, we assume, this is necessary because sex is so much badder then all the rest of the antics they are involved in.) None of this is new. What’s interesting is how honest they have been this time…

“has taken full responsibility for his sin.”

Two errors in seven words — pretty much a record I think…

Last time I checked Scripture, it tells me Jesus took responsibility for the sin of the entire world, took it all upon Himself and died for it. Paul further tells us that (Rom 7) we died with Christ to all of the elemental principles of this world (Col 2:21) and the very concept of the naughty and nice list style of living that got instituted in at the Fall in the garden of Eden. Sin was such a serious problem that no one other then God Himself could do ANYTHING about it — and He had to die, kill us and then raise all of the above to a new life to do it. And, He did it — once and for all

But not in Bill Hybel’s inferno… It’s a special place of image and performance where people handle sin with so little seriousness that they actually believe that a human being can do something to fix it. Here, sin (At least whatever of it is on the latest naughty list) is still front and center (Because apparently Jesus only died so we can eat Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers) and people are still scaled by it until they can work hard enough to appear to clean up their own acts.

But don’t worry, it’s a caring place where they help people reach that sinless state — by ensuring their unemployment…[SIGH]

I’m still waiting for a church with the guts to stand up and say,

Today pastor _________ came to us to admit that he’s been having an affair with our women’s ministry coordinator. We’re leaving both of them in their jobs and are going to set out as a community to experience what it is like to see Jesus do what He said he would do in setting the captives free if we actually become the safe place He talked about. This week we are going to start that journey by talking about guilt, shame and condemnation and how that unholy trinity keeps people doing stupid things that will never satisfy. Bring what you have been conned into believing is your own dirty laundry at 11am and we’ll see if Jesus can do the stain removal you never could even get started on…

Ya, I know — never mind…[SIGH]

The Denver Post

The Rev. Ted Haggard emerged from three weeks of intensive counseling convinced he is “completely heterosexual” and told an oversight board that his sexual contact with men was limited to his accuser.

Ya, ok, not so much… (To say nothing of the idiotic delusion of reparative therapy being completed in three weeks…)

ap.org

Disgraced evangelical leader Ted Haggard’s former church disclosed Friday that the gay sex scandal that caused his downfall extends to a young male church volunteer who reported having a sexual relationship with Haggard – a revelation that comes as Haggard tries to repair his public image.

Brady Boyd, who succeeded Haggard as senior pastor of the 10,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs, told The Associated Press that the man came forward to church officials in late 2006 shortly after a Denver male prostitute claimed to have had a three-year cash-for-sex relationship with Haggard.

But of course, the church is clearly living out their commitment to a transparent, open reflection of a new life in Christ… We think… Ok, maybe they are mostly covering it up better then even Haggard himself and even paying hush money…

Boyd said the church reached a legal settlement to pay the man for counseling and college tuition, with one condition being that none of the parties involved discuss the matter publicly.

Boyd said a Colorado Springs TV station reached him Thursday to say the young man was planning to provide a detailed report of his relationship with Haggard to the station. Boyd said the church preferred to keep the matter private, but it was the man’s decision to go public.

But no, of course it’s not hush money — it’s just compassionate assistance… Um, no wait…

“It wasn’t at all a settlement to make him be quiet or not tell his story,” Boyd said. “Our desire was to help him. Here was a young man who wanted to get on with his life. We considered it more compassionate assistance – certainly not hush money. I know what’s what everyone will want to say because that’s the most salacious thing to say, but that’s not at all what it was.”

Boyd said the church will not take action against the man if he tells his story in the press.

“We have legal standing to do that, but not the desire to,” he said.

Yep, compassionate assistance — with a Non Disclosure Agreement. I’ll bet the church also makes patrons of their food bank sign one though so I’m sure it’s all standard procedure…

It isn’t often that Evangelical Christendom manages NOT to make me ashamed to be associated with them — this is not their lucky day…

Times Online

Scientists have found that the pleasure women get from making love is directly linked to the size of their partner’s bank balance.

They found that the wealthier a man is, the more frequently his partner has orgasms.

“Women’s orgasm frequency increases with the income of their partner,” said Dr Thomas Pollet, the Newcastle University psychologist behind the research.

Ok, this is so striking it just screams out for a comment. One of the foundational rules in statistics is the law that, “Correlation does not equal causation.” In other words, just because you can prove that the rising or falling levels of one thing (Say the number of rum runners in Boston during prohibition) are exactly linked to the same in another (Say the number of Baptist Ministers in Boston during prohibition), you have NOT proved that they actually have ANYTHING to do with each other (No, all Baptist Ministers are not rum runners — they are all a function of population growth).

Oh yes, every researcher on the planet is taught this fact.

So, then we have this genius — Dr Thomas Pollet claims that because he can link the success of a man giving a woman an orgasm with his success in making money, women must be biologically programmed through some strange evolutionary adaptation to like sex (And therefor have better orgasms) with men who have money.

Of course, there’s a problem with this — Ros has had the same number of orgasms from our lovemaking today that she had when I was a starving grad student living on student loans. Shouldn’t her sex life have improved dramatically since I started earning a living?

Or, perhaps men who can make a decent living tend also to be educated men — men who are willing to get off their butts and read a book about sex — men who are willing to learn from someone smarter then Hugh Hefner…

Naw, couldn’t be that — gotta have something to do with a woman’s vestigial primate tendencies to be a gold digger…

Just remember this the next time someone says, “But Science says…”

The New Yorker

But, according to Add Health data, evangelical teen-agers are more sexually active than Mormons, mainline Protestants, and Jews. On average, white evangelical Protestants make their “sexual début”—to use the festive term of social-science researchers—shortly after turning sixteen. Among major religious groups, only black Protestants begin having sex earlier.

Another key difference in behavior, Regnerus reports, is that evangelical Protestant teen-agers are significantly less likely than other groups to use contraception. This could be because evangelicals are also among the most likely to believe that using contraception will send the message that they are looking for sex. It could also be because many evangelicals are steeped in the abstinence movement’s warnings that condoms won’t actually protect them from pregnancy or venereal disease. More provocatively, Regnerus found that only half of sexually active teen-agers who say that they seek guidance from God or the Scriptures when making a tough decision report using contraception every time. By contrast, sixty-nine per cent of sexually active youth who say that they most often follow the counsel of a parent or another trusted adult consistently use protection.

The gulf between sexual belief and sexual behavior becomes apparent, too, when you look at the outcomes of abstinence-pledge movements. Nationwide, according to a 2001 estimate, some two and a half million people have taken a pledge to remain celibate until marriage. Usually, they do so under the auspices of movements such as True Love Waits or the Silver Ring Thing. Sometimes, they make their vows at big rallies featuring Christian pop stars and laser light shows, or at purity balls, where girls in frothy dresses exchange rings with their fathers, who vow to help them remain virgins until the day they marry. More than half of those who take such pledges—which, unlike abstinence-only classes in public schools, are explicitly Christian—end up having sex before marriage, and not usually with their future spouse.

The stats just keep rolling in — Evangelical shame and Catholic guilt once again just doesn’t seem capable of arresting the misplaced human teen’s longing for love. Whatever shall we do???

Perhaps that might be a reason to offer it to them some other way — like maybe just being fathers and mothers to the fatherless and motherless???

Or, we could just launch another purity ball instead…

globeandmail.com.

“There are millions of people around this world praying to their god – whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah – that his [McCain's] opponent wins. … And Lord, I pray that you will guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their God is bigger than you, if that happens.” – Arnold Conrad, pastor of Grace Evangelical Free Church, delivering the invocation at a John McCain rally in Davenport, Iowa, last Saturday.

You know, some articles nearly say it all — the once strong and vibrant God of Evangelicalism clearly is now barely surviving, on life support and down to His last best strategy — saving the world (or at least his own branding rights) through a trigger happy fighter pilot and an even more trigger happy moose hunter. (And, apparently, He might not even be capable of pulling that one off given that the public has finally figured out the moose hunter is also more then just a bit of a dimwit…)

Back in their day, the Roman Catholic response to Protestant heretics was to burn them at the stake. Surly some of the technology involved was documented or there is at least some expert in the Catholic Church who could be freed up to lend us a hand for a few days… This has now become an emergency — somehow we’ve gotta cleanse the Evangelical gene pool before this order of ignorance reproduces…

USATODAY.com.

Now there are 1.1 million copies in print and, two weeks ago, FaithWords, a division of Hachette Book Group, signed on as co-publisher with Windblown. Hatchette agreed to a 500,000-copy press run in June and a national campaign in the secular market in July.

The Shack's success has changed Young's life — a little.

He no longer works three jobs running a manufacturer's sales office and working on websites. Kim still works at Gresham High School as a baker, but she's driving a new Honda. They've moved from the tiny rental house, where he wrote The Shack in the windowless basement near the washing machine, to a bigger rental nearby.

Holding hands and beaming at one of their grandchildren, the Youngs say they'd be fine if the money vanished tomorrow.

"Mack is me, a guy who has made a mess of everything," Young says. "The book takes him outside everything familiar, back to the worst experience of his life and lets him recognize God is so much greater."

Yet, as McVey, the minister from Tampa, says, "This pure grace of God has always divided people."

Mohler, Driscoll and other evangelicals pick The Shack apart plank by plank.

No, God can't be a presented as a woman. No, the three parts of the Trinity did not all become fully human. Yes, there is a hierarchy in the Holy Trinity with God the Father in command. Yes, God will punish sin.

Young shrugs them off. Out there in America, where only three in 10 people attend weekly worship services and millions are ignorant of the Bible, his readers struggle to find a good God amid their pain.

As for critics, he shakes his head.

"I don't want to enter the Ultimate Fighting ring and duke it out in a cage-match with dogmatists. I have no need to knock churches down or pull people out," he says.

"I have a lot of freedom by knowing that you really experience God in relationships, wherever you are. It's fluid and dynamic, not cemented into an institution with a concrete foundation."

"But it's not about me. I have everything that matters, a free and open life full of love and empty of all secrets."

I have not read this book but I have it on order. I just discovered I didn’t waste my money…

Let’s do a brief assessment: Love of God? Check. Grace of God? Check. Freedom? Check. Fundamentalist Evangelicalism hates it? Check. The author has such freedom in the love of Christ he’s not even bothering to fight his critics? Check. Yep, it’s gotta be good.

It’s always easy to identify quality. It’s got a clear message of the heart of God — and the, “Dogmatists,” are tearing it apart. They are not tearing it apart because of the message of grace, love and freedom though — that message they claim to espouse (though their hearts are so far from it.) No, they are tearing it apart because, as a novel, it doesn’t rigidly chant a chapter and verse based perfect literal orthodoxy in telling that story and getting its point across.

The same critics that have ignored the thousands of theological inconsistencies in the allegorical work of, oh, I donno, say C.S. LEWIS!!!!!!{SIGH} Clearly they hate the message — but lack the guts to say so…

Associated Press

Yearly estimates allow better recognition of trends in the U.S. epidemic. For example, the new report found that infections are falling among heterosexuals and injection drug users.

Some experts celebrated that finding, saying it’s a tribute to prevention efforts, including nearly 200 syringe exchange programs now operating in 36 states despite a federal ban on funding for such projects.

But they also lamented the CDC’s finding that infections continue to increase in gay and bisexual men, who accounted for more than half of HIV infections in 2006. Also, more than a third of those with HIV are younger than 30.

Every time you hear the claim that this is a disease that is everyone’s problem, remember the above stats: A social subgroup that represents less then 3% of a population account for more then 50% of the infections of HIV. While the experts insist that it’s not a problem of the gay community, they also see their primary means of reducing the infection rate in the heterosexual community being needle exchange programs.

They are not admitting the numbers of those on the heterosexual side that are infected through needles — neither are they separating out spouses who are infected by a partner they wrongly assume is heterosexual and monogamous. I suspect that if we factor the above in, we actually cut the heterosexual infection rate at least in half.

So many times we hear stats saying things like, “The greatest increase in infections has been seen in the heterosexual community among women.” Trouble is, we don’t stop to think about them. If you have already saturated one group, then you will always be able to claim percentage of growth in the other is high — even if it is actually microscopic in terms of the whole. (There are lies, damned lies — and then there are statistics…) The reality here is that it’s unsafe anal sex (Now just termed virus chasing) and IV drug use that is still in the driver’s seat of HIV.

“Obviously,” it’s then time to launch an ad campaign aimed at heterosexuals and based on race to scare them about AIDS…

Whether more funding comes or not, the revised estimate clearly is a “wake-up call to scale things up,” said Dr. Kevin Fenton, who oversees CDC’s prevention efforts for HIV/AIDS.

Some said more attention needs to focus on prevention among blacks, who account for nearly half of annual HIV infections, according to the new CDC report.

Yep, apparently political correctness is still alive and well in the CDC…

Chris Sligh – Empty Me – Lyrics

Empty me of the selfishness inside
Every vain ambition and the poison of my pride
And any foolish thing my heart holds to
Lord empty me of me so I can be filled with you.

Imagine you and your husband/wife gave birth to a little girl and you loved her dearly. You held her, cuddled her, you taught her to walk, you repeated things over and over to her so she could talk and you even spent endless hours feeding her obvious desire to draw and paint such that she became a rather accomplished artist.

But then, that fateful day came when your little girl, with face downcast, walked up to you and said:

“Mommy/Daddy, I suck. I’m really an awful person. I think I’m totally filled up with evil, disgusting and terrible qualities and there’s not a thing good in anything I have ever painted. Mommy/Daddy, could you please erase me and make me like you?”

Would your heart break? Would you move heaven and earth to find psychological help for her? Would you tell her in no uncertain terms that you thought she was fantastic, wonderful and totally amazing and that you loved her just as she is? Would you want to strangle whoever it was that planted that thought in her brain?

So then, exactly what is it that makes us imagine that the God who created us exactly as He wanted each of us to be, loved us enough to die for us and moved the gates of hell to give us a new, pure and washed heart would see us singing our Evangelical self-centered-contempt in the form of, “Worship,” songs in any other way?

Houston Community Newspapers

Riggle last week disclosed a plan to erect 150-foot crosses at the south and north entrances to the city. The crosses would be on the Grace South Campus and the North Campus properties.

Riggle doesn’t mince words when he says that the country is headed in the wrong direction politically and spiritually. The only way out, he adds, is what he believes the Founding Fathers always intended the United States to be – a Christian nation. He says the project is a start in the right direction.

Multiple choice pop quiz for the Evangelical Right:

Q: What do you think would do more to show your city the love of Christ and bring people to Jesus?

(1). Take several million dollars and feed the poor, house the homeless, heal the sick, counsel the abused and mend the broken — you know, kinda like Jesus did.

(2). Take several million dollars and build two cross shaped prayer towers so high they require FAA approval such that America can climb up them to pray that God would stop the moral decline of a greedy and vain country.

Answer key: If you picked #1, you obviously haven’t lived here for the last twenty years…

St. Petersburg Times

Calling it a way to “open the door for dialogue” between the resort and its homeowners, Anne Hathorn, of the Clearwater firm of Becker & Poliakoff, said the resort must cut off ties with Web sites that promote the swinger lifestyle, tighten control on the use of Caliente’s name in event advertisements and where the ads are distributed, and get Caliente reinstated in the American Association for Nude Recreation.

Caliente Resort said it plans to keep on marketing to those it calls “nontraditional nudists.”

Caliente was embroiled in controversy last month when the association temporarily suspended its membership and opened an investigation into sexually charged monthly parties at Caliente organized by Aahz Party Lifestyle Group, a “lifestyle,” or swingers, group with Caliente’s blessing.

The association promotes family-friendly nudism. Its investigation puts at stake Caliente’s access to marketing assistance and membership subsidies for tourists, among other advantages.

Here’s one for the category of ironic parallelism…

They come there looking for freedom, a chance to throw off the oppressive constraints of society and run free in their (largely) wrinkled, middle-aged birthday suits — “just as God intended it.”

Then they create a complicated series of rules and regulations for what constitutes appropriate freedom, a homeowners association to back it and retain a lawyer to enforce their definitions of freedom… It seems oppression follows wherever rule-keeper type people are…

Sounds a lot like Evangelical Christianity doesn’t it??? We too set out to create a place supposedly based based on grace with its calling of freeing people from the bondage to law and judgment that has trapped them in that which formerly was (A system of law, sin and death) and unable to breath free.

Then we create a place sanctioned by Revenue Canada, governed by a federally approved charter, led by a talking head (we misname a pastor), controlled by an elected board issuing edicts (which we misname the elders) and managed by staff people (often misnamed the deacons) hired under their agreement to uphold a code of conduct and do what that board tells them to do. We preach a gospel of performance and moralizing and flood people with good-works systems and, “Opportunities,” to perform such in to prove that they really belong — and guilt them into doing such.

And, then we wonder why it becomes a place of fear, shame and the bondage of a tiny minority’s control with people living in the exact opposite of what Jesus came to bring.

And, worst of all, we do so because we can’t believe that Jesus/the Gospel has any real power. We can’t believe that setting people free will unleash love and community — not selfishness. We can’t believe that preaching real grace (Not the performance based version) will draw people to heal — not to wreak the lives of others. We can’t believe that creating a church where the broken messes of our lives are spilling out all over the place (where everyone is ok with those messes being there) and relying on God to heal them (Rather then using judgment based performance to fix it) could actually create a church where it is safe to be — not a haven for abusers. We can’t even fathom that the absence of structure could actually inspire creativity — not anarchy.

We can’t — because, if we’re honest with ourselves, we don’t really believe that Jesus is real or that He can heal. So, we’ve created our own systems. Surprise surprise, they suck.

Rolling Stone

When most Americans think of the Christian right, they think of scenes from television — great halls full of perfectly groomed people in pale suits and light-colored dresses, smiling and happy and full of the Holy Spirit, robotically singing hymns at the behest of some squeaky-clean pastor with a baritone voice and impossible hair. We don’t get to see the utterly batshit world they live in, when the cameras are turned off and their pastors are not afraid of saying the really dumb stuff, for fear of it turning up on CNN. In American evangelical Christianity, in other words, there’s a ready-for-prime-time stage act — toned down and lip-synced to match a set of PG lyrics that won’t scare the advertisers — and then there’s the real party backstage, where the spiritual hair really gets let down. I was about to go backstage, to personally take part in the indoctrination process for a major Southern evangelical church… I badly wanted to be invisible.

In these Southern churches there are few wizened old sages such as one might find among Catholic bishops or Russian startsi. Here your church leader is an athlete, a business dynamo, a champion eater with a bull’s belly, outwardly a tireless heterosexual — and if you want to know what a church beginner is supposed to look like, just make it the opposite of that. Show weakness, financial trouble, frustration with the opposite sex, and if you’re overweight, be so unhealthily, and in a way that you’re ashamed of. The fundamentalist formula is much less a journey from folly to wisdom than it is from weakness to strength. They don’t want a near-complete personality that needs fine-tuning — they want a human jellyfish, raw clay they can transform into a vigorous instrument of God.

It will make you laugh, it will sicken you, and, most of all, it will definitely annoy you — because it’s the truth.

Contrary to popular belief, you will find no evil in Harry Potter. Real evil is found here, clothed in the garb of religion, masked with the illusion of holiness and preaching a Jesus who died to be your rabbit’s foot and wants you to do what your reverend tells you to do. It revels in power and it delights in the weakness and ignorance of others that allows it to reduce children of the Most High King to idiocy.

Oh ya — it would like your donations too…

CTV.ca | A few minutes is best, sex therapists say

Maybe men had it right all along: It doesn’t take long to satisfy a woman in bed. A survey of sex therapists concluded the optimal amount of time for sexual intercourse was 3 to 13 minutes.

The findings, to be published in the May issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine, strike at the notion that endurance is the key to a great sex life.

You know the sexually intimate couples of a country are in trouble when even the healers are so totally out of it they collectively espouse the insanity of whatever this is as wisdom…

5000 years of research and tried and true practice to the contrary now swept from public view — by a survey…

www.news.com.au

“Internet addiction appears to be a common disorder that merits inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,” Dr Block said in the journal.

Dr Block said all internet addictions had four common components: excessive use, withdrawal, tolerance and negative repercussions.

He said internet addicts developed a tolerance to a certain level of technology, making them want to upgrade software and hardware. Social isolation and fatigue were listed as examples of “negative repercussions” to internet addiction.

Dr Block said the number of people that could be deemed as having addictions was large.

Welcome to our brave new world — where everything is a disease and medical intervention is obviously mandated (And, of course, charged for…). You don’t need to accept the reality that ANY good thing can become a place to hide and take responsibility for dealing with your own broken heart, you just need treatment — in this case Shock Treatment — for a 12yr old.

Yes, the medical community has spoken. Your kid’s longing for the new MacBookAir isn’t simple technolust, it’s really a key demonstration of mental instability which is now helping us to plumb the dark and depraved depths of his compulsion driven insanity.

So, step right up and make sure you bring the power supply. All we need to do to cure this condition is to unplug one little cord from his new toy — so we can wire it into his brain.

macleans.ca

But don’t just take her word for it! I’ve been following the directions in the Secret for two whole weeks now. And look at me: I’m deeper in debt and fatter than ever! Hmm, and I don’t remember asking the Universe for these bedsores. Excuse me for a moment, won’t you? I’ve got to go think really hard about an author being struck by a falling piano.

Amazing — finally I don’t need to post a rant — someone has done a job so brilliant I actually have nothing left to say.

Ok, I’ve finally been asked about this one time too many. Ignoring grace and freedom for a moment and joining the legalists at their own game, allow me to declare a little jihad…

It’s time to post:

What follows is a brief word study demonstrating what I have said for years: Pastors or other church leaders lumping two teens making out in the backseat of a car in with the word fornication is an improper use of the text, it displays terrible hermetical skills, it represents more of the same attempts to twist Scripture to fit our world views and is basically irresponsible.

(I know it’s unclear but it will just have to do as a position statement…)

First, a simple cut and paste from the Greek Strongs:

1608. e˙kporneu/w ekporneuo; from 1537 and 4203; mid. to give oneself up to fornication: —indulged in gross immorality(1).

4202. pornei÷a porneia, por-ni´-ah; from 4203; harlotry (including adultery and incest); figuratively, idolatry:—fornication.

4203. porneu/w porneuo, porn-yoo´-o; from 4204; to act the harlot, i.e. (literally) indulge unlawful lust (of either sex), or (figuratively) practise idolatry:—commit (fornication).

To combine the three terms in question: It describes a behavior that is not simply immoral — it is grossly immoral and abnormal. It is about sex with children or family members, adultery, prostitution (Or sex which is criminal in nature) and it is almost always referenced in the context of idol worship — a fact we repeatedly blow past as a figurative reference. IT’S NOT!!! It’s about deviant sexual behaviors.

The three verses where such is directly referenced in any more then passing comment are as follows:

Acts 15:20 but that we write to them that they abstain from things contaminated by idols and from fornication and from what is strangled and from blood.

Acts 15:29 that you abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication; if you keep yourselves free from such things, you will do well. Farewell.”

Acts 21:25 “But concerning the Gentiles who have believed, we wrote, having decided that they should abstain from meat sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication.”

We have this picture of their worship as being a bunch of savages dancing around an idol — nothing could be further from the truth. There were two gods in question:

Baal:

Among the false gods to which Israel was vulnerable, Baal (Otherwise known as Mollech) posed the greatest threat. This deity was the supreme fertility god of Canaanite worship. He was celebrated as the lord of death and destruction. Sacrifices to Baal were thought to increase one’s own abundance. Baal was a god associated with the sun, power and violence. Altars to Baal were erected in high places in order to allow a full view of the sun’s rising and setting.

His temple was staffed by prostitutes and involved both heterosexual and lesbian acts as well as the sacrifice of children — usually after raping and torturing them. Bestiality was also involved. Children in question were usually the illegitimate infant offspring of the priestess…

When the early worship centers were excavated in the 60’s, the people involved refused to publish what they found as no one would have believed them that these things were possible.

Ashteroth-wife of Baal:

“The queen of heaven” in Canaanite worship (Or Diana or Isis) (Jer. 7:18) was the feminine counterpart of Baal and the god of life and sensuality; her priests were eunuchs dressed in women’s attire (I Kings 14:24). Worship involved the most gross forms of heterosexual and homosexual sexual behaviors.

Worship emphasized ecstatic, sensual feelings and digressed to orgies and the eventual worship of the penis (phallic symbols marked their worship in the same way that the Cross marks Christian worship).

The penis symbolized Baal in the same way that Ashteroth was the idol of idealized, erotic femininity. Both male and female expressions of sexuality were exaggerated and inflamed by the worship of Baal and Ashteroth.

The writers of the New Testament were very well aware of the behaviors practiced in the worship of these gods as well as the feasts where animals were first tortured to death via strangulation. For them to continually lump this word in with said worship would have come part and parcel with their total abhorrence of the actions in question.

The definition of the word as well as the repeated use in this context makes it hermeneutically irresponsible to try and adapt it to define two teens in the back seat of dad’s car.

Doing so is roughly the equivalent of describing a thirteen year old girl who just had an early term abortion and discovered she would have had twins as a, “Bloodthirsty, homicidal serial killer of children.”

Ok, so, can even the legalists stop beating up on their hormone-stoned children now and find a better way??? (It’s not like your judgment ever stopped their roaming hands anyway…) Just maybe, a weird concept like having a relationship with them could help???

Singapore News

“I was dumfounded. I thought I was dreaming,” the husband told the newspaper Wednesday.

The couple, married for 14 years, are now divorcing, the newspaper reported.

Ok, so I have to post this — if only to ask the odd question…

It’s been known for 50 years that where there is one broken person in a marriage, there is always another — just in a very different (And usually enabling/codependent/co-addict) sort of way. Even in light of that psychology, this still is a strange sort of hyper-congruent validation of the idea if there ever was one…

I’ve just gotta ask though: Is she divorcing him because he visits hookers — or is he divorcing her because she is one??? At least on the surface, it would seem that in the middle of this mess of a marriage, the couple has finally found SOMETHING they can agree upon. Their sex life had to of really sucked in terms of intimacy anyway — so it’s not like they each had high expectations there… She apparently was successful at her profession — and he was obviously intent on purchasing it so the variety of acts likely was not at issue…. Why are they divorcing such ‘perfection’ in first place?

Or, just maybe we have proof positive of what I’ve been saying for the last decade — it’s really NOT ABOUT THE SEX!!! Never has this constant of marriages the world over been more clearly demonstrated: neither can point at the other and say, “I’m ok and you are broken so I need to leave.” In this case, there are two perfectly matched human hearts — hearts totally distrustful of love — now divorcing because their previous distrust driven distance has now been multiplied through absolutely identical offenses.

Divorcing — because they are still too afraid to bring their hearts to the table and be loved — because they are still equally afraid of rejection — from an absolute equal — who is just as desperate for love.

Cracked.com

All I need from you is agreement that it’s entirely possible for either an atheist or theist world to devolve into a screaming murder festival. The religious leader sends his people into battle because he thinks God commanded it, the Stalins and Maos of the world do the same because they see their people as nothing more than meaty fuel to be ground up to feed the machinery of The State. In both cases, the people are equally dead.

A brilliant and rather well written (Though somewhat offensive) shot at fundamentalists — of both the Evangelical and Atheistic varieties.

snopes.com

Bill Donohue, president of The Catholic League, has condemned The Golden Compass as a “pernicious” effort to indoctrinate children into anti-Christian beliefs and has produced a 23-page pamphlet titled The Golden Compass: Unmasked in which he maintains that Pullman “sells atheism for kids.” Donohoe told interviewer John Gibson on 9 October 2007 why he believes Christians should stay away from the film:

Isn’t fundamentalism of every stripe fun? They’re a guaranteed marketing plan for nearly everything:

Want to make a movie about the death of Christ? Just position it to make the zealot Jews mad and get free marketing.

Want to market a fantasy movie to secular society? Get the Christian fundamentalists mad and turn a show likely to do nothing at the box office into an instant hit via all of their free marketing.

Want to release the most dismal and unartistic film about sex and violence possible (One with no redeeming quality that would get it a decent review anywhere)? Just position it so it riles up the family coalition and get free marketing.

Want to release the dumbest cowboy story ever that has such a lame plot it would never get a second glance? Just make sure the cowboys are gay, bent on doing each other and the anti-gay marriage lobby will go crazy while even sane reviewers will give you a positive review. They’ll generate enough fire and smoke that the academy awards will be your oyster…

Want to be a huge star as a radio talk show host and a shock jock? Just tick-off Mr. Al Sharpton and, after a brief vacation, get re-signed to a huge salary and possibly even take in damages via the court system to boot. (Yes, I consider Rev. a term of far to high of respect to apply to him…)

Welcome to the world — it’s hardly just Islamofascism that’s sweeping the planet… Problem is, it’s not just fun — it’s a threat. Fundamentalism of every stripe is being fanned to a furious flame all over the world — and legitimizing the control of themselves and everyone else through their insane actions. Apparently, the members of such are all too stupid to figure out they are probably pawns in a much larger game.

DemocracyNow.org

The foundation of any system of freedom is the rule of law rather then the rule of the elite. The rule of law must be maintained through the voice of the people who are free to learn and think. When they are daily submerged in a swamp of inflammatory rhetoric, they neither think nor learn. In such, freedom dies and tyranny rules.

While the fundamentalist Christian elite think they are bringing a new dawn of the rule and reign of Christ on earth, they are actually destroying the freedom of religion so many fought and died for.

Simply, if they can control others to think their way, so can anyone else:

The person who uses political power to force others to conform to his ideas seems inevitably to become corrupted by the power he holds. In due course, he comes to believe that power and wisdom are one and the same, and since he has power, he must also have wisdom. At this point he begins to lose his ability to distinguish between what is morally right and what is politically expedient. [Unknown]

No one is exempt from this principle — not even the Christian Right.

Pew Research Center

The public is losing confidence in itself. A dwindling majority (57%) say they have a good deal of confidence in the wisdom of the American people when it comes to making political decisions. Similarly, the proportion who agrees that Americans “can always find a way to solve our problems” has dropped 16 points in the past five years.

Americans feel increasingly estranged from their government. Barely a third (34%) agree with the statement, “most elected officials care what people like me think,” nearly matching the 20-year low of 33% recorded in 1994 and a 10-point drop since 2002.

Young people continue to hold a more favorable view of government than do other Americans. At the same time, young adults express the least interest in voting and other forms of political participation.

We’ve known for years that the opinions of the American people have been slipping when it comes to the state of their government — that’s not news. What’s striking about this study is more what it doesn’t say then what it does.

The commentary of the study is focused on the loss of support for the leadership and the cynicism about those officials ability to solve the problems before them. Yet, the statistics of the study paint a totally different picture: A loss of confidence in democracy as a functional system.

The public has finally woken up and realized that the country no longer holds elections — it holds popularity contests. They are media driven games wherein the person who manages to most throughly sell his or her soul to and thus raise the most money from corporate and other interests launches the most elaborate media blitz and wins the game. The moment that person takes office, it’s time to pay the piper with a series of decisions that, to the average person, are nearly always destructive.

The official no longer represents the people — the official represents the corporation. Thus even young idealistic men and women, who still trust government, won’t stir themselves to vote.

If the media was actually the watch dog they are supposed to be, they’d be crying out in rage for the cancellation of any person’s ability to raise funds or use personal funds to run a campaign — mandating a simple government payout for advertising purposes. Finally, that would really make it to be about the issues. But no, they are at the trough themselves…

It’s easier to simply distract the public with, oh, I don’t know — perhaps racism? Ya, cool. There’s a plan. Even though, apparently, the same study found that the public is mostly no longer racist…

Interpersonal racial attitudes continue to moderate. More than eight-in-ten (83%) agree that “it’s all right for blacks and whites to date,” up six percentage points since 2003 and 13 points from a Pew survey conducted 10 years ago.

But, never mind that. Let’s devote most of the news coverage this week to some ex-con bounty hunter (Dog) who swore and used racial epithets in a private conversation with his son. That’ll throw them off the issues that really matter…

waterboarding.org

The confirmation vote for Michael Mukasey, nominee for United States Attorney General, is scheduled for Tuesday, November 6. In his confirmation hearing Judge Mukasey was asked for his opinion on waterboarding as a constitutionally valid technique for interrogation. Mukasey replied, “I don’t know what’s involved in the technique. … I think it would be irresponsible of me to discuss particular techniques with which I am not familiar.”

Waterboarding.org would like to offer to help the nominee become more familiar with water-based coercive interrogation techniques. Using unclassified sources, news reports, and historical records we are attempting to put together as clear a picture as possible of this technique, its history, its legality, and the scope of its use. We are also attempting to organize a group of doctors, paramedics, lawyers, and volunteers to allow anyone who remains confused or unclear on the details of waterboarding to safely subject themselves to as much of the technique as they are willing to endure.

We look forward to advising, educating, and assisting Michael Mukasey, future candidates, public figures, and anyone else who professes ignorance of our nation’s most controversial coercive interrogation technique.

I suspect the proper subtext under this is a line from Lord Acton:

“Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Or to put it in other terms:

The person who uses political power to force others to conform to his ideas seems inevitably to become corrupted by the power he holds. In due course, he comes to believe that power and wisdom are one and the same, and since he has power, he must also have wisdom. At this point he begins to lose his ability to distinguish between what is morally right and what is politically expedient.

Christian Right, meet the, “God fearing,” man who promised he would not let you down: Your president. (He’s a man so holy he likely has never even read that ungodly work of pagan thought called the Geneva Convention.)

USATODAY.com

“I don’t know how long this leave of absence will last, but I fully trust the members of the Board of Regents,” Roberts said in a statement released by the university. “I pray and believe that in God’s timing, and when the Board feels that it is appropriate, I will be back at my post as president.”

Well, the son of the man God wanted to nuke for being short on cash has spoken. First, God thundered from the clouds and told him to stand and fight to the end. Oh, now wait a sec, God just thundered again — now our good friend the Oral Roberts prez has to step aside. (Or maybe his indigestion went gurgle in the night…)

But, only temporarily — and on a deadline — as a negotiating tactic — because he needs one — because he’s innocent — and his wife is sure she isn’t into little boys — (and since God, of course, doesn’t speak to impure people, you can definitely trust him on this one) because, “GOD hath SPOKEN…”

There’s a little psychological trick known as, “Divorcing your own voice and receiving it back as thunder.” It works like this:

(1). You figure out what you want.
(2). Tell the world it’s not your decision; you are just waiting on God.
(3). Claim that God told you to do what it is you wanted to do in the first place.
(4). Profit from the gullible.

It works really well — until you suddenly figure out that you are not the Almighty, that your desires, unlike God’s, have changed and you are now stuck. Then the world and even your own throughly brainwashed followers can suddenly see that either your are your own god, your god is psychotic, and/or you are schizophrenic.

And then there are the thousands of those followers who have now seen the truth that they no longer need priests to stand between them and God and are fleeing to a real relationship with the God who is really there (and isn’t short on cash?) Umm, oh, never mind…

But… But… But, oh, let’s follow him anyway.

wikiHow

How to Live a Good Christian Life This article will guide you in living a good Christian life. You will read about ways you can grow closer to God, ways to spread the faith, and some basic morals and ethics that God wants us to live by.

1. Follow Jesus’ greatest commandment: Love God, love your neighbor and love yourself.

2. Acknowledge you’re a sinner and then repent. Realize that conversion is not simply one act but the beginning of a life-long struggle. Don’t be hard on yourself if and when you fail, pick yourself up and trust in God.

Little problem here, the Greek word for Repent means to experience a change of mind — it’s not about your behavior.

3. Read your Bible. You can really learn a lot from this.

Like the apostles read their Bibles — which were not yet written… When they talked about the, “Word of God,” they were talking about God talking, and them listening.

4. Spend time in prayer.

Nope — Jesus doesn’t want you on your knees — He wants to walk and talk with you all day every day — as a friend, not as a religious experience.

5. Try to see the perspectives of others, even if you personally disagree with them.

Now it’s starting to sound like a cross between a Miss Manners guide and Post-modernist ramblings — where is this in the Bible?

6. Be patient with people who anger you; work on trying to forgive those who may have hurt you. You must learn to love your enemies. God loves everyone, and we need to, also. Say farewell to selective loving. If you have a hard time loving your enemies, pray to God for help.

[Sarcasm]Yep, ’cause it’s all about my effort — rather then about what Christ does in me…[/Sarcasm]

7. Work and pray to the best of your abilities to help others.

That sentence doesn’t even make sense.

8. Treat others kindly as you would like to be treated. Even simple acts of kindness like holding a door open for someone are good deeds.

Nothing more then a restatement of #1 — and under the same heading.

9. Volunteer to help people. For example, you could take a shift at a soup kitchen near you, help with a Christmas effort to give gifts to the poor on Christmas, or visit a people staying in a nursing home.

Why oh why do we consider Mormons, J.W.’s and the like cults — we teach the same performance based religion… If Jesus doesn’t do it in me — then forget it. It ain’t happening…

10. Remain modest and remember that pride can be dangerous. Pride is said to be the mother of all sins, because pride resides in each one of us and the source of all of our sin is ourselves.

Oh, except, it seems there is a little problem of being given a new heart in place of the old one (which, yes, was desperately wicked) — and Paul was rather fond of calling us saints — not sinners…

11. Share your beliefs and spread the good news. Remember, living the Christian life through your actions will make others want to follow God. Always stick up for your beliefs.

So, let me get this straight: Being good — however I define that — and arguing with others (Who presumably don’t meet my expectations) is going to make people want to hang out with Jesus? (This is too easy — it’s like shooting fish in a barrel…)

12. Understand that Christians believe God said they would be persecuted for their beliefs, so do not allow others’ attacks to weaken your faith.

Truer words have never been spoken — freedom is always under persecution — from religion.

I think Steve McVey said it best in his book Grace Land when he said:

“The underlying foundation of all religion is performance – whether it’s a tribal dance around a campfire to satisfy the fire god, or a dead religious activity performed week after week by an evangelical Christian with the intent of impressing his God. It’s all religious performance, and God isn’t impressed by our performance. What impresses Him is faith.”

Blog-o-Fascists

Here’s something American media are virtually guaranteed to not report: a British court has determined that Al Gore’s schlockumentary “An Inconvenient Truth” contains at least eleven material falsehoods.

After all the years of any detractor to his Majesty Al Gore being burned at the stake of, “How dare you refuse to believe real scientists,” it seems that it has finally taken a court of law in England to force said scientific experts to hand over the real evidence. Considering DDT, the ozone hole (Based on a software glitch), global cooling, spotted owls, lizard protection (simply because of the 49th parallel makes them rare on one side) and other raw idiocy that defines environmental activism’s track record, it’s not surprising that Gore’s indisputable science also, inconveniently, turns out to be mostly fiction. The court has now forced English schools that wish to show this work of speculative fiction to their students to define it as such before and after showing it.

Of course, that hasn’t stopped him from being given a Nobel peace prize. It’s beginning to look a lot like none of these scientists really care at all about science — though they wrap themselves in it by the hour. They now have a champion and, not even proving him a liar can cancel his personality cult.

(Just remember this the next time someone tells you that, “Science says…”)

But, on to bigger things. We’re facing a crisis — if we do nothing, Al may continue torturing us with junk science movies for years to come — something must be done — the sanity of the free world rests on it. Any ideas?

Wait, I’ve got it — let’s make him president!

womensenews.org

Now, Davis and other local sex workers have banded together to establish Canada’s first cooperative brothel in an attempt to offer women a safe place to work.

The group, formed by a sex workers’ alliance based here, called the British Columbia Coalition of Experiential Women, will incorporate next month and is already setting the groundwork to open the co-op brothel.

Members have begun scouting for a location and are enlisting the backing of local businesses, police and labor organizations.

Faced with the task of cleaning up the city to host the 2010 Winter Olympics, Vancouver authorities said they are open to the idea.

“We would be willing to explore anything that . . . would be helping the situation of sex trade workers, and make it safer for them and make it better for the community,” said Vancouver police spokesperson Howard Chow. He noted one requirement: “It has to be something that is lawful.”

So, let’s see: we’ll take an abuse of women that clearly is also a social blight, mix in the idea of creating a central edifice for it and then ice it with a thin veneer of socialist yammering about cooperative business being a wonderful thing. Take this lovely cake and get an idiot police spokesman to endorse it — now there, don’t we have a warm fuzzy story to tell our children about social progress?

Or, we could endorse the idea, get all the sex trade workers in there and arrest them. Then put in a whole raft of plain cloths officers posing as hookers and arrest all the Johns too. Get a judge to sentence the lot of them to treatment. Find two deserted patches of forest somewhere, set up a bunch of oilfield camp trailers, bring in the therapists and get to work on actually fixing the problem.

Naw, the warm fuzzy stories are more fun…

Frederica.com

The idea of returning to an era of young marriage still seems daunting, for good reason. It is not just a matter of tying the knot between dreamy-eyed 18-year-olds and tossing them out into world. Our ancestors were able to marry young because they were surrounded by a network of support enabling that step.

Young people are not intrinsically incompetent, but they do still have lots of learning to do, just like newly-weds of any age. In generations past a young couple would be surrounded by family and friends who could guide and support them, not just in navigating the shoals of new marriage, but also in the practical skills of making a family work, keeping a budget, repairing a leaky roof, changing a leaky diaper.It is not good for man to be alone; it’s not good for a young couple to be isolated, either.

In this era of extended education, couples who marry young will likely do so before finishing college, and that will require some sacrifices. They can’t expect to “have it all.” Of the three factors—living on their own, having babies, and both partners going to school full-time—something is going to have to give. But young marriage can succeed, as it always has, with the support of family and friends.

A rather refreshing example of rational thought in the rather polarized abstinence vs. contraception debate. Perhaps it’s finally time to admit that they both have failed, that (Barring forcible physical segregation) sex is going to happen and that our options are either young marriage or abortion?

I was 25 when we married and neither I nor Ros had yet finished Graduate school. It wasn’t easy — in fact it was the hardest thing I have ever done. I discovered just how fun it was to experience panic attacks and stress induced skin rashes — and, I’d do it again. I had to grow up in one all-fired hurry — but it eventually had to happen. It could have been a lot easier if our society didn’t think I was 5-7 years too young and actually had some supports in place.

My kids will likely be out of the house and in college before I’m 50 and, with the current progress of modern medicine, I might actually still be around by the time their kids have children. Show me the down side of that…

AOL News

Richard Roberts is accused of illegal involvement in a local political campaign and lavish spending at donors’ expense, including numerous home remodeling projects, use of the university jet for his daughter’s senior trip to the Bahamas, and a red Mercedes convertible and a Lexus SUV for his wife, Lindsay.

She is accused of dropping tens of thousands of dollars on clothes, awarding nonacademic scholarships to friends of her children and sending scores of text messages on university-issued cell phones to people described in the lawsuit as “underage males.”

First we have Daddy telling them that God told him that he needs $8 million for Roberts’ university, or else he would be, “Called home.” Now we have his son and his son’s wife spending it — and they apparently are catching up… The apple truly has landed in a nice shady spot — right under the tree.

What is most striking to me is that this insane show should have been shut down twenty years ago when the first 8 million dollar lie was told. All the believers of North America would have had to do is stop giving. Roberts would have lived — and his little corner of a false gospel would have died.

Instead believers continued to flood this charlatan with money. Now they point in horror at the fruit of their refusal to think for themselves — aghast at the possibility that a man who so obviously serves a false god could violate their hearts and pocketbooks.

News flash Church: If the god you serve is leading you through fear, shame, judgment, condemnation, guilt, rejection or the iron fisted control of the law the real God died to free you from, then you are serving a false god and living under what Paul called, “Another gospel.” Not even the prophecies of the Old Testament (Jer 31:31 –> for example) would have endorsed this.

Bonno put it well when he stated, “The God I believe in is not short on cash…”

P.S.: Dr. Roberts, it’s time for you to meet again (For the very first time) the fruit of your loins and the fruit of an evil that would dare to defraud God — they’re now a package deal…

The Calgary Sun

Every Canadian-made green paintball that stings you like the end of a wet towel, does so with the grace of tiny Christian fish symbols printed on their shell.

“I’ve looked in the Bible, and can’t find anything wrong with paintball,” reasons Andy Leong, a 48-year-old Chicago marketing executive who’s come to celebrate the birthday of his 13-year-old son, Luke. “In fact, the Bible is filled with combat as a topic.”

A number of months ago, a columnist noted that Evangelical Christianity has succeeded in creating a parallel culture of such magnitude it has totally lost touch with the culture that actually is and seriously believes that this parallel culture is the real thing. If this isn’t the most clear example of such ever created, I have no idea what could top it.

We ultimately have become neither, “In the world,” nor, “Of it,” and, thus, mostly irrelevant to it.

In the process, we’ve become a joke to it.

BBC NEWS

A B-person – as opposed to an A-person – genetically pre-disposed to operate better and to be more alert later in the day.

Denmark it seems is full of B-people. So where better to form the B-society?

Six months after it was set up, it already boasts several thousand members.

Now it is campaigning hard for businesses to sign up to its B-certification list.

These guys — and especially the software company that allows you to show up to work whenever you want — are officially my new heroes. I’m almost ready to renounce my citizenship and move overseas… I just knew that someone, somewhere, had to understand that morning people need help and that it’s PERFECTLY normal to find the sun a significant and soothing contributor to the urge to sleep!

(BTW: for all you morning people among us — there is drug treatment available for the problem…)[GRIN]

The Beaumont Enterprise

Helped by aggressive marketing and a new generation of conservative Roman Catholics, convents around the country say they are experiencing an increase in applicants for the first time in decades. The women are inspired by Pope John Paul II and his defense of Catholic orthodoxy, and are seeking a life that draws them closer to God.

Anecdotal evidence about the increase has convinced the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, which analyzes church trends, that it should start a formal study of the growth.

“It’s not a huge increase, but for a while there was hardly anybody and now there are some, so something is going on,” said Mary Bendyna, executive director of CARA, based at Georgetown University.

Their founders would tell them to “go to the edges,” embrace technology, says Sister Arlene Scott, assistant vice president of mission at this coed Catholic school in Miami.

That attitude has helped their order, the Adrian Dominican Sisters in Michigan, attract a handful of new candidates in their 20s and 30s this year. They used billboards and hired an ad agency to research what would appeal to younger women.

“We’re not selling ourselves like we’re worried we’re gonna die out,” Scott said. “We’re evolving into something else.”

“A number of religious communities are finding that the Internet is where people are gathering,” said Vieira.

“We’re realizing that we need to have a presence there as well.”

Cool — smashing idea… How about some social networking sites — maybe a means of allowing the learning of the public with respect to Scripture and the voice of God to be shared and interacted with? How about a realization that a batch of celibate lily white priests probably need some online assistance in their interaction with sexuality from the rank and file Catholics who are actually doing it? How about a message board admitting that they don’t have a corner on theology, that some of the people they allowed to write it were basically twisted and weird and that they need to start over from the ground up?

Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, the largest religious order in the United States, hired an outside ad agency to design ads for secular magazines like People, along with Internet banner ads.

Oh, wait… Never mind. [SIGH]

“It’s a radical way of living,” says Sister Catherine Marie Hopkins, of The Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia Congregation in Nashville, Tenn.

“When you used to put the habit on, it was conventional. Now it’s radical and I think people want to do something radical with their lives.”

Apparently, even the Roman Catholic church isn’t above spin-doctoring. That being said, they definitely need MUCH more practice…

In Massachusetts, the Sisters of St. Joseph in Springfield is hoping to appeal to the broader public by restructuring memberships to include roles for married women and those with no formal connection to the congregation.

Ok, basically this is the first sign of real hope so far. Finally an organization willing to admit that their long dead human ideas about one organization lead by a dude in a strange hat (The hat loosely derived from the worship of the god Daggon) having the right to arbitrarily decide that 52% of the human race are second class church leadership and that married ones pretty much should sit down, shut up and get pregnant — yep, those ideas are starting to die. Thank God!

They have extended their roles to include people with different levels of commitment to the religious order, said Sister Natalie Cain, coordinator of membership and association for the Sisters of St. Joseph.

Even more hope: The dude’s proclamation that only faithful members of his little club get God’s stamp of approval is even slipping. Now, if only we could get them to admit that God just isn’t that big of a fan of political systems…

Yes, revolutionary change has finally arrived. It’s time for these fine sisters to party like it’s 1997.

Perhaps when they sober up someone can let them know that was a decade ago…

The Psychopathic School by John Taylor Gatto

Schools were designed by Horace Mann and by Sears and Harper of the University of Chicago and by Thorndyke of Columbia Teachers College and by some other men to be instruments of the scientific management of a mass population. Schools are intended to produce, through the application of formulas, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.

To a very great extent schools succeed in doing this, but in a national order increasingly disintegrated, in a national order in which the only “successful” people are independent, self-reliant, confident, and individualistic (because community life which protects the dependent and the weak is dead and only networks remain), the products of schooling are, as I’ve said, irrelevant. Well-schooled people are irrelevant. They can sell film and razor blades, push paper and talk on telephones, or sit mindlessly before a flickering computer terminal, but as human beings they are useless. Useless to others and useless to themselves.

The daily misery around us is, I think, in large measure caused by the fact that, as Paul Goodman put it thirty years ago, we force children to grow up absurd. Any reform in schooling has to deal with its absurdities.

It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life and the synergy of variety; indeed it cuts you off from your own past and future, sealing you in a continuous present much the same way television does.

It is absurd and anti-life to move from cell to cell at the sound of a gong for every day of your natural youth in an institution that allows you no privacy and even follows you into the sanctuary of your home demanding that you do its “homework.”

Ok, some rants just need to be posted — even if written by others.

Think this is the rantings of a cynical lunatic? Think again. This is taken from John Taylor Gatto’s book, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. This speech was given by Gatto on January 31/1990 in accepting an award from the New York State Senate naming him New York City Teacher of the Year. Yes, he’s a teacher.

I just wish we could find another few hundred thousand teachers to stand up and scream the same message…

TimesOnline

But this time, we know what it’s all about, don’t we? Not joyful, simplified Christianity but a pulling-up of drawbridges. Anglican archbishops in Dar es Salaam are struggling to avoid “schism” in their vast communion over the issue of ordaining, or indeed tolerating, Christians whose unsought orientation is to pair up with others of their own gender. And it will be the illiberal, genitally-fixated wing of Anglicanism that sidles towards unity with Rome. It will do this because it thinks — accurately, more’s the pity — that Rome is where you find the most intolerant attitudes towards homosexuality.

It always intrigues me to watch liberal/postmodernist columnists going to war against fundamentalism on issues of sexuality. They start out with all the fire and fury of their supposed passionate love for the broken hearts of others and their desire for, well, something or other… They then vent their frustrated rage at the Churches’ incurable obsession with genital sexuality which, they hold, “Cripples every good intention, impedes every good work,” as though it were definitively the core of the problem that is causing the pain of those they claim to defend. Then, they present their solution:

The irony is, their solution is simply, “Let’s not talk about it.” They state that, “Christianity could just grow up, and stop treating sex as if it were innately toxic or radioactive and yet irresistibly interesting,” ignoring, for a moment, that these voices may actually have noticed something real. (Not that sexuality is innately toxic, but that there may actually be some seriously broken hearts resulting from the misuse of sexuality…) How do they substantiate this position of willful obliviousness?

The present Pope’s use of expressions such as “objectively disordered” is not only cruel, but unfounded in any solid fact. Nor is real homosexuality, as evangelicals love to claim, “curable”. You can persuade, inspire or bully people out of committing crimes, but not out of perceiving a particular kind of beauty, loveability, caressability and companionableness more in one sex than another. You can condemn people for doing bad things, but you cannot dictate where they will see beauty, a reflection of divinity.

Well, never mind that the very man that removed Homosexuality from the DSM has released his studies stating rather conclusively that homosexuality can be changed. Never mind that there are thousands of persons world wide who’s personal journeys beg to differ with this position. Let’s ignore all the research and just make a raw batch of categorical statements about your own opinions. In other words — they just don’t substantiate it — in fact, they don’t even engage any research that disagrees with them while upholding research as that which will vindicate them.

Ironically, the solution they offer — just ignoring the broken hearts of those trapped in this lifestyle — is exactly the same solution actually being currently practiced in the fundamentalist churches they rail against. In fact, it’s the solution nearly exclusively practiced on both sides (except for a very few.) While one side rails against behaviors and the other side praises the same, the real problem is that neither side is prepared to engage the broken at a level that actually matters.

And, what would engaging them look like? It would start with reading Romans and Galatians again for the very first time, walking away from the idiocy of our ethical revision of Christianity and figuring out that there is no other way to describe Christianity but with the word, “Freedom.” It would continue with the recognition of the dignity and sonship/daughtership of every child of God (regardless of their behavior) and a reexamination of the radical nature of both love itself as well as the call of Christ to do so. It would continue with an honest recognition of the reality of human broken hearts — especially in the case of those who are settling for so much less then what they were created for. Then it would require figuring out that love doesn’t tell a person who is settling for such that that’s all they can expect for their lives.

Just maybe, somewhere in there, the church might discover the point Paul was making back there: That love, grace, freedom and an intimate relationship with God/others can heal what no amount of hiding our heads in the sand or shouting our judgments at the broken will ever even touch.

But then, that would require us to actually go into the dark places of the human heart that Jesus hung out in — instead of acting like the damage is beautiful or, conversely, too evil to do anything but mark the person as fuel for the fires of hell…

Oh wait… Never mind… That would cut into the stained glass window budget…

calgary.ctv.ca

“There is somebody right now watching, and God is speaking to them about RRSPs. They’ve got RRSPs, and they’ve got a sizable amount, and it’s a security thing. Well, it’s not a security thing; your security is in God. And God’s speaking to you to cash those in. And I dare you to do it,” the host said.

Owners of the station have applied for the right to set up transmitters in Calgary and Edmonton that would broadcast the channel over the air for free, an important move that would allow it to reach more viewers.

A CRTC hearing starting Monday will consider the application to expand the station’s broadcasting power. But the regulator will also look into whether The Miracle Channel has adequately responded to complaints about high-pressure tactics and promises of a windfall after money is given.

The CRTC has just discovered a slight problem with our current Christian push to avoid evil… We are it. Evil doesn’t look like a thug in a back ally — it dresses in a business suit, chants, “Thank you Jesus,” promises healings for money and holds meetings with the CRTC.

I just hope the CRTC has enough sense to do what the churches of our nation have failed to do — shoot this scam dead.

Guardian Unlimited

Busch is suing Robertson for what he says is misappropriation of his image to promote Robertson’s protein diet shake.

Robertson has been touting his “age-defying” weight-loss shake for five years on his Virginia Beach-based Christian Broadcasting Network talk show “The 700 Club,”

And also:

This is not the first time Robertson has been accused of threatening an adversary.

After the failure of an earlier Robertson commercial venture featuring Bible study courses and discount coupon books, the broadcaster fired Mark Peterson, the venture’s top executive.

The two feuded publicly, blaming each other for the failure. Peterson sued Robertson in 1995, alleging that Robertson made a veiled death threat in a telephone conversation with Peterson’s sister.

Apparently the whole turning, “My Father’s house into a den of thieves,” selling health food milkshakes routine just isn’t twisted enough — without adding in the drama of a death threat or two for marketing purposes.

Isn’t it delightful to hear the thunderous roar of his former followers now shouting for his removal from the airwaves — oh, uhh, wait… Never mind.

USATODAY.com

Our young friend, in a moment of teenage brilliance, decided to post some naked pictures of herself to the internet and (GASP) kept copies of said pictures on her computer.

She has been charged with sexual abuse of children, possession of child pornography and dissemination of child pornography.

Puritan ethics and the American legal system unite in stunning wisdom to create this heart warming example of common sense guidance for a child. (I’d assign 10:1 odds they are also going to add her name to the sexual offender’s list and force her to continually report her address for life.)

For one thing, I can’t help but wonder where we as a society finally lost our collective mind and our ability to differentiate between the stupid pranks of a kid and real criminal behavior. Reality is, by charging her, we have reduced the charges and likely the sex offender registry to an absurdity. Next stop, let’s ban mirrors from homes…

Darker then that though, our sex negative society has finally spoken — her naked body was so evil and offensive that taking self portraits of such is abusive. Even simply owning (forget looking at) those pictures of herself must be charged as a crime.

All things considered, the sexual revolution appears to have been a bust: It managed to take a society where the human body was evil and dirty and sex wasn’t done and make it into a society where the human body is evil and dirty and sex IS being done (By evil and dirty people). Then, we taught our little girls that sex was all they had to offer and that the same freaked out shame is modesty — all the while telling them an inverted flaunting of such is normal. The sexual revolution totally ignored the shame based core of the problem.

This little girl has a problem: her parent’s modeling (and inability to monitor her internet usage) appears to have conspired with society at large to create a hyper sexualized child. She’s a kid who’s obviously hungry for love and is willing to settle for so much less. All of them — especially her parents — need to get help before it’s too late.

Oh, I forgot. Never mind. That would require dealing in reality. It’s more fun to charge her as a child abuser anyway…

VirtueOnline

“The thing that has sustained me through all this is God has seemed so very close that prayer has seemed almost redundant. … Sometimes God calms the storm and sometimes God lets the storm rage, and calms the child.”

Personally, “I couldn’t be happier. I think that’s the best revenge,” he said.

He said his 15,000-member diocese was healthy, but the news he seemed most eager to relay was that immediately after the luncheon he was leaving for the Sundance Film Festival, where a documentary film, featuring his story and those of four other gay families, has been nominated for a grand jury prize.

Titled “For the Bible Tells Me So,” it is about families split by their beliefs about homosexuality and Scripture. He said his own parents talked more openly to the filmmaker than they had to him after his own announcement at age 39 that he was gay and getting divorced.

Well, it’s happened again. This time it comes via the Sundance Film Festival. A new movie is released about the lives of a number of families who have had their children come out of the closet. The same tired, thirty-four year old arguments have yet again been trotted out by the left (E.g., Paul was only talking about homosexual prostitution) to try and make the Bible say God thinks homosexual sex is a wonderful idea and the same well worn rebuttal (Original design) issued by the right. The media is all over it with CNN devoting almost 20min to it.

Honestly, I wonder what’s next? “Gays can sneeze; details on channel four news at 11:00pm,” perhaps?

Frankly, it isn’t news and it hasn’t shifted anyone’s mind. It’s more of a tactic — a tactic to, yet again, pit two sides of evangelicals against each other. On the one side is the fundamentalist right ranting about how Gays are breaking the law of God. On the other is the liberal left trying to show how the law of God is actually not being broken. Strangely, neither side seems to see that they are both on the same side — and it’s the wrong one — and it’s making them both look like idiots.

Even more strangely, neither side has figured out that making them look like idiots was the whole point. As long as they are debating their respective standing as to the rules, they are essentially neutralized and the message of the Gospel is going nowhere.

A message that would clearly say:

God loves you regardless of what you have ever done or failed to do, He just loves you for no good reason and so do we.

He has set you free from the law — and that freedom is total — so that you would no longer have to run from relationship with Him based on your obvious inability to be good as measured by such.

He knows what it means to be fully human and fully alive and longs for you to move closer to such and thus closer to the fulfillment you were created for.

The gay life is so much less then what you can have — can we walk with you and love you towards all that God has for you?

But, of course, it’s just so much more fun to measure ourselves with the wrong measuring stick that the, “Healing of the nations,” can wait…

blessitt.com

To open today’s round up of Titans of the Faith, we have a genius who thinks that enough money to feed who knows how many hungry people would better serve the cause of Christ if it were spent launching space junk. (It’s getting way too easy to find this nonsense…)

News Flash, launch date set for Spring 2007! Glory

The cross will be over You personally! The Cross will be over every Nation on earth! Over Afghanistan! Saudi Arabia! Jerusalem! America! The cross in Space Satellite will be in a Polar orbit from pole to pole. As the earth turns it will pass over every inch of the earth like peeling an apple. The cross will circle the earth every one and a half hours. After launch we can tell you on our site when it will be over you and your nation. We have carried the cross in Every nation. Now we will, God willing have it flying above Every nation! We wave the cross in the face of Satan and proclaim that Jesus is Lord over All the Earth. All glory to God.

As if this psychotic attempt at space graffiti isn’t enough, we move onto another fellow brother in Christ who believes God has called the church to a new ministry of eating her own young — I mean sending government agencies to harass fellow churches:

ratoutachurch.org

Our immediate purpose is to fight back against vicious left-wing attempts to silence conservative, Bible believing pastors. Every election year, liberal groups have a field day intimidating and harassing conservative pastors into silence.

Er, could this be the Republican National Convention pot calling the Democratic National Convention kettle black??? Um, never mind… Of course, if you have a problem with this, they have, in the spirit of Matt 18, offered a convenient means to discuss it with them:

DON’T AGREE WITH US?

If you don’t like who we are or what we do please place a note in a sealed container and toss it into the Boston Harbor the next time you are there. At some time in the future we are sure it will drift up the Potomac River toward our office.

All things considered though, who really would want to hang around for this anyway…

ChristianExodus.org

Finally, we have the rats-leaving-a-sinking-ship genius of ChristianExodus.org who have decided that the best way they can be salt and light in a broken world is to simply run away.

ChristianExodus.org is moving thousands of Christians to South Carolina to reestablish constitutionally limited government founded upon Christian principles. It is evident that the U.S. Constitution has been abandoned under our current federal system, and the efforts of Christian activism to restore our Godly republic have proven futile over the past three decades. The time has come for Christian Constitutionalists to protect our liberties in a State like South Carolina by interposing the State’s sovereign authority retained under the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Something tells me that the world they are fleeing is going to follow them there — because it is them…

After careful consideration, I’ve decided that it’s time to get ordained and start my own church: (From here on, refer to me as Reverend…) ;-}

themonastery.org

You are about to become an ordained minister with the Universal Life Church. For information regarding the legal aspects of this in your state or province, view the FAQ page on the site.

Before proceeding with your information, please make sure you have complied with the following instructions:

* Please only ordain others with their permission. (This includes public figures as well as cartoon and other fictional characters.”)
* Please only put your true and legal name. Nicknames will invalidate your ordination.
* Please use only factual information in this serious religious rite.
* Please double check your name and email address.
* Please capitalize where appropriate, as this is how our records will show from here on out.

Your privacy is carefully guarded. We maintain this information only for our own uses and for legal reasons.

Finally, the peace and tranquility of having a place to worship the God who actually is there instead of the one we’ve made up — supported by a denomination who’s statement of faith is at least both internally consistent and reasonably palatable.

The Universal Life Church has only two tenets (beliefs/doctrine):

To promote freedom of religion and
To do that which is right.

Sadly, I really wish I were totally kidding…

Friedrich Nietzsche commented that:

God made man in His own image, and man returned the favor.

In case you had any doubt, it wasn’t exactly a compliment to God…

Rick Warren’s latest thoughts/musings/curiosities seem to finally be focusing on why half of evangelical Christians won’t darken the door of a church any more — while still retaining their faith. Considering his own thinly veiled attempt at the insertion of ethics based legalism into the church and the total insanity that seems to define the church in general, it’s highly curious to me that he still seems legitimately puzzled by the phenomenon…

I just have one simple question though: Exactly what are these charlatans going to have to do? How low will they have to sink before millions of real Christians world wide rise up in rage and drown them in hundreds of thousands of emails, phone calls, faxes, blog postings and personal appearances — all demanding that they shut down and do it now?

As long as we stand by silently, we condone them — and are painted with the same brush.

JunkScience.com

The guesses of significantly larger warming are dependent on “feedback” (supplementary) mechanisms programmed into climate models. The existence of these “feedback” mechanisms is uncertain and the cumulative sign of which is unknown (they may add to warming from increased atmospheric carbon dioxide or, equally likely, might suppress it).

The total warming since measurements have been attempted is thought to be about 0.6 degrees Centigrade. At least half of the estimated temperature increment occurred before 1950, prior to significant change in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Assuming the unlikely case that all the natural drivers of planetary temperature change ceased to operate at the time of measured atmospheric change then a 30% increment in atmospheric carbon dioxide caused about one-third of one degree temperature increment since and thus provides empirical support for less than one degree increment due to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

There is no linear relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide change and global mean temperature or global mean temperature trend — global mean temperature has both risen and fallen during the period atmospheric carbon dioxide has been rising.

Ok, I just finally sat down and watched it. Strangely, I also feel sick — though not for the standard reasons. It’s a sick feeling that comes from realizing we are dealing with the death of rational thought and the ability to understand information by the scientists of North America (in favor of pure hype and federal science grant chasing.) Al Gore can divorce his own voice and receive it back as thunder a thousand times by referring to, “Scientists,” but the facts simply do not always march in unison with his shrill rhetoric.

I wish I could have just ignored it (like I also do with everything Michael Moore presents…) However, after dealing with a number of clients (And their raw anxiety) who have watched Al Gore’s pathetic little piece of propaganda, I figured it was time to watch it. It’s now clear it’s also time to post some real science from real scientists who can actually do math and who manage to comprehend some basic concepts of statistical analysis (Like: correlation does not prove causation for example…).

BTW: No one is questioning that global warming is happening. What is in question is the degree of such (Remember, most readings from any more then 45yrs ago came from fishermen with buckets/thermometers), whether we have much of anything to do with it and whether it’s effects will actually be any sort of disaster. Geological reality states that for Greenland to do what Gore is predicting we would have to experience a seismic event capable of destroying at least one entire mountain range — so disastrous we’d mostly be dead anyway. (Also, remember, Greenland used to host vineyards in the time of the Vikings and the rest of the world somehow managed to keep on functioning.) Somehow global cooling managed to happen without our help — perhaps we have had as much of an impact on the opposite effect…

The Acton Institute also has a brilliant philosophical commentary on the subject.

Update: Someone also sent me thisand this. They are a much more comprehensive (And less mathematical) debunking of Gore’s static.

Sometimes, when no one will listen to truth in any other way, all that remains is mockery…

[Full resolution image]

Charleston Daily Mail

Why doesn’t the manger scene have a baby Jesus?

“We try to explain that by law we can’t do that. We have been advised by (city) council not to get into that,” said David Cunningham, superintendent of St. Albans City Park.

Instead, there is a scene that looks remarkably like depictions of the night Jesus Christ was born. There’s a star, a couple of sheep, some camels and a structure that could be taken for the barn where Mary and Joseph had their baby.

“You could call it a manger,” he said. “We call it a place for the animals. It looks like two things coming up on the sides with a roof-like structure. What it looks like depends on your imagination.

A rather brilliant observation posted via Fark.com seems to sum it up better then I ever could:

2006-11-30 04:45:09 PM IdBeCrazyIf

Number40: And to remove Christ from the mix? You gotta be kidding me!

Well… to be fair. It’s not like Christians were using Christ for anything important anyway.

Lord knows they certainly don’t actually listen to what he says.

Isn’t it interesting that a secular society can more clearly see the teachings of Jesus then the church can? Jesus came, he basically took on a religious system that controlled people’s lives (While robbing them blind) and called people to love each other while, moment by moment, listening to and following the voice of God. His disciples demanded to be put at the helm of a new system — and Jesus refused to even name the president or define it’s structure.

He was barely gone before we had a new religious system — run by a dude we call the pope, an organization we call the synod or whatever — and a new set of rules to back an organization that, once again, is usually about money. Worst of all, it’s not about love, grace or freedom.

“It’s not like Christians were using Christ for anything important anyway. Lord knows they certainly don’t actually listen to what he says.”

Yep — Guilty as charged.

BTW: The town officials are using the law to hide their real addenda. The Supreme Court long ago ruled that creches, complete with baby Jesus, do not violate the constitution, so long as they are part of an otherwise secular holiday display. The ruling basically said that Christmas is a secular shopping holiday and that cities have an interest in promoting secular shopping holidays via holiday displays.

A letter from a son who left
The Capital-Journal/May 19, 1993
By Mark W. Phelps

“Many people have been asking me, over the past several weeks, about my father. They want to know what I think about him and ‘What is he really like?’ People’s interest in what I think baffles me, but after careful consideration, I decided to respond.

What is he like? Well, it’s been 19 years since I left home, but his behavior still appears to be the same. He considers his environment to be against him without admitting, acknowledging or taking responsibility for how he contributes to that. He likes to show himself as being moral, pro-family, pro-Bible, but his actions just don’t add up to that. I believe in God and the Bible, and my father’s behavior doesn’t fit the description of behavior that would show in the life of one who loves God; behavior characteristics such as Love, Joy, Peace, Longsuffering, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, Self-control. Instead, my father’s behavior characterizes, I believe, Hate, Outbursts of Wrath, Contention, Jealousy, Vengefulness, Misery, Harshness, and Selfish ambition. He mis-states the truth about his own behavior, about others, about the Bible, with apparent ease and regularity. He behaves with a viciousness the likes of which I have never seen. He accepts no genuine accountability in his life and is subject to no one. His lifestyle betrays the sacred trust of what a pastor, husband, father and grandfather should be. I suppose if a comparison were made between the life of Jesus Christ and my father, there would not be much to compare.

I also realize that my father is a very unstable person who is determined to hurt people. And because he is so bound to be hateful and hurtful, and because he’s so untrustworthy, I believe it’s a good idea to respond to him with caution much like the caution used when dealing with a rattlesnake or a mad dog. You see, the causes that he crusades for, including the Bible, are not the issue here. He simply wants to hate and to have a forum for his hate. If the causes he focuses on were the issue, that is, if they really meant something to him in his heart and he meant for the things he does to be for the good, his behavior would not be what it is. He would not betray his message with his behavior. But, when he needs to, to vent his hate, he readily goes outside the bounds of any previously stated ‘value’ or ’cause’ he may have supported. He experiences no moral dilemma when it comes to doing what he wants to do. If it weren’t the homosexuals, it would be something else.

Yet checks and balances on his behavior are appropriate, on the part of the community, in order to at least confine his destructive behaviors and to limit his influence. I believe that Topekans are making a good effort to try and stop him and should continue to do so. He can seem very intimidating. He can use foul language and come across with a booming voice to the community, but the truth is, like the Wizard of Oz, when Toto pulls the curtain back, instead of this big powerful individual, it’s only a small, pathetic old man. I feel sorry for my father as I would for anyone who displays this kind of hate and evil viciousness. These can only be the manifestations of tortured, injured and agonizing souls.”

Westboro Baptist Church is a U.S. religious organization headed by Fred Phelps and based in Topeka, Kansas. It runs the website GodHatesFags.com, and GodHatesAmerica.com, and other websites expressing condemnation of homosexuals, Catholics, Muslims and other groups. The organization is monitored by the Anti-Defamation League, and as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

While its members identify themselves as Baptists, the church is an independent Baptist church not affiliated with any known Baptist conventions or associations. The church describes itself as following Primitive Baptist and Calvinist principles, though it has been accused by others of Hyper-Calvinism.

This is a letter Fred’s son Mark Phelps wrote to citizens of Topeka and northeast Kansas. As of July 7, 1994, Mark Phelps said the letter still represents his feelings. He also cautioned people against taking the letter out of context, saying there is “gentleness” in the context of the letter and a hope that the community can better understand Fred Phelps based on what the letter contains.

Note: I refuse to link to the waste of digital space web site I got this from.

Stuff.co.nz

Hell Pizza has outraged family groups and morals campaigners by delivering innuendo-laden condom packets to letterboxes.

The controversial fast-food chain is promoting its meat-lovers’ pizza – named “Lust” – with a mail drop of 170,000 branded condoms.

But it has provoked criticism from groups who say it is indecent to link pizza with sex and inappropriate to distribute condoms where young children might find them.

The packet includes explicit instructions for condom usage.

I wonder when the fundamentalist Christian right is finally going to figure out marketing firms regard their pathetic moral outrage as the best source of free advertising to ever be invented?

I mean, [GASP] what if a child discovered a contraceptive and [SHUDDER] his or her parent had to actually sit down and talk with him or her about [SOB] sex???

MoralArmor.com

Imagine if you could achieve perfect moral clarity, rid yourself of fear, guilt and moral hesitation, pass down traits of the greatest advantage, take total control and live a life filled with invigoration and inner calm. If that interests you, then this is the most important book you’ll ever read.

My name is Ronald E. Springer. As a child, I experienced firsthand, the nightmare of dishonest people abusing others through a dishonest moral code. I endured, grew strong and broke free, but continued to run into problems in life, caused by mass moral confusion in society. With a philosophy background, I set out to change things. Someone has to stand up and fight for us.

As a result, I’ve developed an organic moral code that will show you exactly how to move through life with complete moral certainty. It will show you how to secure better relationships, safeguard your family, reform our country’s moral drift, and send evil packing.

Funny how we humans still are so convinced we know better then God. We are so sure that if we just figure it all out, we will come up with the perfect strategy to make life work for us — that of course we can then sell to others.

Trouble with that theory is, we end up creating just another set of rules — rules that Paul made very clear will kill us (2 Cor 3:6) and rules that place us firmly under the wrath of God (Rom 4:15). We think we are finally figuring life out — but we are actually just joining up with a lie. It’s a lie that will kill us as we will never manage to live up to even our own expectations.

If the life to which Christ has called us is based upon a seeking of acceptance in Christ through our moral efforts (which of course will never work) so that our continued following Him only proves how unacceptable we are, then Christ would be nothing but a dealer or an enforcer of sin. (Which is totally absurd since Christ is the one who did away with sin.) If I rebuild another “gospel” that re-establishes a relationship with God, myself or anyone else through some form of legality, then I am the one proving myself to be a law-breaker, or sinner.

BTW: This article was originally posted on Fark under the heading of, “Every time a batshiat crazy person learns HTML, God kills a network admin.”

FARK.com

2006-09-26 12:23:29 PM Tatsuma [TotalFark]

muninsfire: It’s on account of those people who believe their way is best, and refuse to compromise, or even think of talking over their differences.

Definitely. I heard a rabbi once on Talk Rabbi that struck me. A man called to talk about how JC was the son of G-d and he said

“Listen, I’m trying to turn Jews into better Jews, into observant Jews. You go on into making Christians good Christians, I make Jews good Jews, someone tries to make Muslims good Muslims and we’ll all live in peace. Deal?”

I wish more people thought like that.

Stop trying to impose your values
Stop trying to convert the world

Work on your own house. Make Christians and Christianity better. If all Christians acted like JC, you can be sure they currently dominate the planet and people would flock to them.

The above comment is written by a young Canadian Jewish man from Montreal. He is a devote Jew who has memorized the entire OT law and is a stunningly brilliant debater. He is currently in Israel in training to join her military — voluntarily.

While I can’t agree with all of it (the second last and the last line are completely contradictory for example), the last line caught my attention. Even a Jewish person can recognize that Jesus had it right — so right that if we simply did what He called us to do (to love others as He did), Christianity would be the only world religion.

Isn’t it interesting how the Church seems to have been the last to get the potential we are sitting on???

Pastors.com

Most people assume that men are just less religious than women, but this is untrue. Other religions have little trouble attracting males. Jesus was a magnet to men. But today, few men are living for Christ, even as many are dying for Allah. Why do rival faiths inspire male allegiance, while ours breeds male indifference?

A business guru once said, “Your system is perfectly designed to give you the results you’re getting.” Christianity’s primary delivery system, the local church, is perfectly designed to reach women and older folks. That’s why our pews are filled with them. But this church system fails to stir men’s hearts, so men (especially masculine ones) stay away.

What do I mean? Most churches offer a safe, nurturing community, an oasis of stability and predictability. Studies show that women and seniors are the groups most likely to seek these things. Our comforting congregations provide women with what they long for, so naturally they show up in large numbers.

On the other hand, men and young adults are drawn to risk, challenge, and daring. While our official mission is one of adventure, the actual mission of most congregations is making people feel comfortable and safe – especially longtime members (Pastors, can I have an amen?) Church insiders routinely block anything challenging or innovative because it might make people feel uncomfortable or unsafe. This caution keeps the peace in the short term, but it drives men and young adults away over the long term.

You know, someone had to say it…

Armor of God PJs

The Armor of God PJ’s were inspired by a mother reading Ephesians 6:10-18 every night to her daughter to give her a safe and secure feeling in the dark.

Some days I suspect Paul forgot one of the critical spiritual gifts when he made his list: The gift of mindlessly shaming the Body of Christ so no one will take Her seriously and She stays a manageable size.

BTW: No, this IS NOT, “Becoming a fool for Christ.” This is being a fool for money — at the expense of Christ.

Salon

Her name is Christina Silvas, a 24-year-old single mother of a 5-year-old in Rancho Cordova, Calif. And as is often the case with vessels of divine intervention, these last few days have not been easy for her. Less than a month before the end of school, Silvas was told by her pastor — Rick Cole of the Capital Christian Center — that her daughter could no longer attend the church kindergarten and that she and her daughter were no longer welcome at the Assembly of God church where they have been loyal parishioners. The problem? Silvas’ job as a dancer at Gold Club Centerfolds.

“If you choose to do the wrong thing willfully, then God’s word instructs me as to what my responsibility is,” Cole told the Sacramento Bee newspaper. “I need to be faithful to my calling.”

Stories like this make my blood boil. The heart of a man who could judge a single mother trying to pay for Christian School for her daughter, throw her out of the only place where her heart could change, offer no other solutions and then toss her little girl out of kindergarten (cutting her off from her little friends) over her mother’s violation of his code of ethics is a heart that is so far from the heart of Jesus I wonder if he ever met the Guy. It’s like throwing someone out of Chemotherapy because they speed on the way to the hospital to get their next treatment — and we don’t want our hospital to be associated with speeders.

But hey — we gotta keep up our image after all… We wouldn’t want any real sinners to mess up our velvet pews now would we? After all, don’t we wanna have our Church be holy — just like Jesus???

Matt. 11:19 “The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”

Think about it — under every nasty rumor lies a kernel of truth. I’m thinking there is a distinct possibility that Jesus went to a LOT of really wild parties with some pretty rough people — and fit in rather nicely. They needed love — and he went in to love them. Oh ya, and he probably tossed back a few too…

He didn’t ask whether they would be getting drunk, whether there would be peelers present, whether the town hookers would be recruiting, whether gluttony would be practiced or whether he could say a flowery prayer before dinner. He came, partied and wrapped his arms of love around them equally — no strings attached.

The religious leaders were convinced: somehow Jesus just didn’t get it. After all, we have to avoid even the appearance of evil. 2000 years later, we’re just as sure they were right as we fix Jesus’ methods and toss the sinners out of our pews. He’s pretty clear on his assessment of His methods too when he states, “Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.” Translation: Entering people’s worlds and just loving them works.

And you know, Paul clearly records that people’s hearts changed. (Cor 6:11) Their hearts changed because of love — not a good stiff threat of excommunication…

Oh yes, and the Rev. Cole? I’d suggest that if he doesn’t haul his sorry excuse for a ministry down to JC’s Girls and learn how to really love the broken, then his parishioners should make sure he is run out of that church on a rail — tared and feathered.

It’s the only way they will ever get Christina (Read Jesus Himself) back into that church. (Matt. 25:35)

ManyBooks.net

But see, there is our friend of the dancing academy just entering on the arm of her devoted father. Three months have passed since we first met her. She is much changed, yet one can scarcely see in what the change consists. The face is the same, yet not the same. There is just the shadow of coarseness in it, a little less of frank innocence and true refinement, and a trace, not exactly of ill-health, but a want of freshness. This last is, however, well concealed by the use of cosmetics, and she is still a very beautiful girl, and the fond father’s heart swells with pride as he sees the handsomest and most fashionable gentlemen of the ball-room press eagerly forward to ask her hand for the different dances of the evening.

Her father remains for a few of the square dances, but soon retires, knowing that his fair daughter will not want for attention from–gentlemen whose attentions he is sure muster desirable, certainly desirable, why not? Are these admirers not rich and handsome, and do they not move in the highest society. Ah, foolish father, how little he knows of the ways of ball-room society.

But let us turn our attention again to the dancers, at two o’clock next morning. This is the favorite waltz, and the last and most furious of the night, as well as the most disgusting. Let us notice, as an example, our fair friend once more.

She is now in the vile embrace of the Apollo of the evening. Her head rests upon his shoulder, her face is upturned to his, her bare arm is almost around his neck, her partly nude swelling breast heaves tumultuously against his, face to face they whirl on, his limbs interwoven with hers, his strong right arm around her yielding form, he presses her to him until every curve in the contour of her body thrills with the amorous contact. Her eyes look into his, but she sees nothing; the soft music fills the room, but she hears it not; he bends her body to and fro, but she knows it not; his hot breath, tainted with strong drink, is on her hair and cheek, his lips almost touch her forehead, yet she does not shrink; his eyes, gleaming with a fierce, intolerable lust, gloat over her, yet she does not quail. She is filled with the rapture of sin in its intensity; her spirit is inflamed with passion and lust is gratified in thought. With a last low wail the music ceases, and the dance for the night is ended, but not the evil work of the night.

T.A. Faulkner, former owner of the Los Angeles Dancing Academy and ex-President of Dancing Masters’ Association of the Pacific Coast, in his anti-dance crusade from 1892 wrote a 40 page tract (From the Ball-Room to Hell) filled with a rather amusing and obsessive relish for describing the carnal urges that get stirred up in people when they dance. If you are a dancer, be warned: Your life is spiraling down into a twisted pit of sin and perversion.

Welcome to the heart of the legalist. It’s a heart of shame that sees it’s own human desires and despises them. It’s a heart that sees it’s needs and takes pride in suppressing them. It’s a heart that sees the joy of others, and in it’s own loveless state, seeks to crush them. It’s a heart that sees beauty and passionate romantic desire in another and longs to profane it. It’s a heart that longs for such control over another that the death of the other is better then the other’s freedom. It is a heart of death.

In 2006, many Churches have actually hosted dancing classes and dancing only remains an issue in the most aggressively fundamentalist churches — thankfully a dying breed. While this is no longer an issue, the pattern still remains — now simply focused around other areas of life such as clothing or video games. We label these areas, define the evil present within them and then vilify the participants in such as a precursor to attempting to save them from their sin…

Those who would dispute the obvious accuracy of our judgments are subjected to our withering stare and a the rather rhetorical question: “If we do everything they [the world] do, how will they ever know we are different???” Apparently the world will know we are Christians if, as the old saying goes,

“We don’t drink, smoke, dance or screw and won’t go out with girls who do…”

Somehow, we have deluded ourselves into believing that, if we avoid the issue du jour, our society will fall to their knees in repentance. Where in the world did we get the idea that telling people how we plan to put them in bondage (Much less doing it) will make them long for Jesus???

It seems to me that somewhere back in the time of the early Church, believers were known for having all of their possessions in common and displaying such an intense love for one another that thousands joined up daily.

It’s been a long time since that happened — I wonder why???

Medical News Today

The word soon got around of a nursing mother with a similar problem at another Victoria’s Secret store in Massachusetts.

Nursing mothers began to protest. 15 mothers breast-fed their babies outside a store in Westlake, Cleveland, Ohio. Breast-feeding in public places has been legal in Ohio since last year.

The mothers’ message is a simple one – breast-feeding is not dirty, it is not something that has to be done in a toilet.

The company said posters will be placed in all stores reminding employees of a nursing mother’s right to breast-feed her child at the store.

It is ironic that a company that promotes many of its products using posters of scantily-clad women with large breasts should squirm at the thought of the breast’s natural function – feeding a child.

I find it rather interesting how the thought process of North America is so bound up within its own Puritan roots that it is unable to see itself.

There are two protests really being waged here: (Both of these protests are founded upon idiocy — to say the least. )

The first is a protest by a group of activist mothers who demand the right to breast feed their children anywhere — in spite of the fact that there’s probably a sign at the front of that store that says the adults can’t have food or drink in that store either… (Yes Sherlock, newly fed infants do vomit…)

It is some sort of crusade for the rights of a woman, mothers and the appropriateness of breasts. The claim seems to be that a woman who is not permitted to feed her child in a particular location is being discriminated against for being a mother and a woman when it is really no different then the women herself being told to leave her soft-drink outside the store to protect the merchandise.

The second is over the exposure of breasts (Which the authors obviously regard as sexual/taboo) and a demand that a place where they are regularly, “Featured,” as sexual accept the exposure of those breasts under other, feared similar, terms if that store is to be consistent. The logic is then that we should accept one taboo behavior because we tolerate another taboo one.

Why are breasts sexual/taboo exactly? Well, we as a society decided to cover them up — though nearly all of the rest of the non-Islamo-fascist world is already topless or at least gets topless at the beach. (Many get totally naked with no real harm done to the society…) In other words, we created a sexual fetish by hiding something that isn’t sexual in the first place. It almost goes without saying that often the least sexual attention gets paid to genitalia proper anyway — and those other parts are usually freely exposed in our society anyway. Complete nudity on clothing optional beaches is usually also completely de-sexualized for all present in only a few minutes.

In reality, this entire story is about control. One side is defending what they see as their divine right to do whatever they want with their children wherever they want to do it — really it’s more about baby vomit on lingerie (though in our civil rights based fervor few will ever be capable of grasping that.) The other is trying to control the public display of those nasty breasts — those twin evil paragons of sexuality that will defile all viewers — out of their strange fetishistic North American world view that has decided which parts of the body are more sexual then others.

It would all be harmlessly stupid except that it’s this sort of insanity that is keeping people locked up in belief systems that teach them that their physical bodies and their sexualities (as well as their status as mothers) are shameful. Both sides do equal damage — ironically one side does it in the name of fixing that same damage. One side teaches women that their rights and status as women depend on where they can feed their children while the other simply teaches them that their bodies are sexual and, therefore, bad. Is this supposed to make us holy???

In some strange way, there’s something refreshing about clothing optional countries like Jamaica — at least people there can just live instead of continually struggling under the shame generated by both those who would repress as well as the misguided efforts of those who would rescue from that repression. At least there you can just forget about the whole absurd game…

Col. 2:20-23 ¶ If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” (which all refer to things destined to perish with the using) — in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men? These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence.

“New American Standard Bible®, by The Lockman Foundation Used by permission.”

Blogcritics.org

On Easter Sunday 2005, ABC’s Extreme Makeover Home Edition aired an especially poignant episode. Five children, ages 14-21, from the Higgins family were orphaned. A couple from their church, with three children of their own, took them in. The result was 10 people living in cramped quarters….

The ending segment is designed to be as heart-tugging as the first. The rebuilt home is always astonishingly beautiful and completely furnished. In the Easter Sunday special, the rebuilt home had nine bedrooms, including one for each child. The show also paid off the mortgage.

The Higgins’ happy ending did not last. The family that took them in asked them to leave the beautiful nine-bedroom home because it did not belong to the Higgins.

I wonder why the Government had to take over charity and make it into welfare — seeing as we’re doing such a great job and all… Wouldn’t Jesus be proud???

News from Agape Press

Cohen’s methods have raised some questions, however; and he has lately taken sharp criticism over a May 23 appearance on Cable News Network (CNN), in which he demonstrated a technique that involves cuddling a male client in his lap. Another of the unusual therapy techniques depicted involved a client hitting a pillow with a tennis racket while shouting the name of a parent or other individual who elicits painful childhood memories.

Cohen, who refers to himself as a reorientation therapist, explained the “holding therapy” exercise as a means of using “healthy touch” on clients, who very often were “touch deprived” as children. He says this technique is one of the most effective ways to help men and women leave homosexuality.

“They’re hungering for that intimacy and that bonding that they didn’t experience in primary relationships with parents and/or same-gender peers,” the psychotherapist asserts. “So what we have to provide then, in the Christian community, is really mentoring these men and women,” he says, “and a lot of them need healthy touch — hugging, holding, just palling around, buddying around.”

You know, some ideas are so colossally dumb nothing more needs to be said except to mention that this is not reparative therapy in any sense of the term and this is NOT PRACTICED HERE!!!!!

U.S. Life – MSNBC.com

A small group of members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., who have been demonstrating around the country at military funerals, sang “God hates America” to the tune of “God Bless America” and held signs that read “God is America’s terror”, “Thank God for dead soldiers”, “You’re going to hell”, and “Bush killed them.”

…Margie Phelps, spokeswoman for the Westboro church group, said the group was protesting because “Congress doesn’t have the power and can’t pass enough laws to stop the wrath of God” against homosexuals.

“America is doomed because she has institutionalized sin and exalted homosexuality,” she said.

Ahh, the love of Christ and a warm call to the healing He offers — delivered in the most gentle of terms by the most loving of people — rings out across a cemetery. (It’s too bad HTML doesn’t have a sarcasm tag…)

Of course, at least the context is correct: A bunch of dead people preaching to, well, a bunch of dead people. If only they were the only ones around…

It’s rather ironic to me that Bush (Who at least claims to be a Christian) has been forced to specially pass a bill to make protesting at funerals a crime — just to keep these passionate lovers of Jesus and their fellow man from destroying the hearts of grieving mothers in their insane crusade.

Isn’t it amazing how those who claim to know the love of Christ can fall so blissfully in love with the idea of savaging the broken — instead of running the field hospital they were called to operate???

Virginity or Death!

…all we need to do is vaccinate girls (and boys too for good measure) before they become sexually active, around puberty… in thirty or forty years, seven in ten cases of cervical cancer — goes poof.

Not so fast: We’re living in God’s country now. The Christian right doesn’t like the sound of this vaccine at all. “Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful,” Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council told the British magazine New Scientist, “because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex.”

As usual, the Christian Right comes out in favor of — well — not much of anything. Completely ignoring the reality that sex is not the only way to get HPV, they apparently don’t want to vaccinate the population in fear that — yes, you guessed it — people might have more sex…

I wonder what Jesus would have to say about those who fail to heal the sick because it violates their sense of ethics? Oh wait: seems he already registered His opinion on such when He healed on the Sabbath…

Well, obviously we can ignore that — because it wasn’t about {GASP}

SEX!!!!

SBCPRAY.NET

Personal

Before we pray for others, we should pray for ourselves, that we would be right with God and in fellowship with Him.

* Ask God to bring to mind any sins in your life and heart.
* Confess those sins God has brought to your mind and receive His forgiveness and cleansing.
* To confess is to agree together with God’s verdict upon sin (Greek-homologeo-to say the same thing as another.) To agree with God about sin is specific, not general.
* When we confess our sin to God, we have assurance He will cleanse us of it. It is His promise; He will not break His Word. See I John 1:9 above.

Once again, the Church launches it’s pathetic crusade against sin in Her members — this time in the guise of a call to pray for America. The formula is simple: First purge all of the sin out of your heart — then God will listen to you. Insert the right number of quarters into the cosmic vending machine and God will give you what you want.

(It’s the perfect fall back plan really: “Since I have a direct line to God and He always does what I say, if God doesn’t give me what I want, I obviously have failed to purge sin out of my life.” I guess my sin is such an awful shock to God He turns away in nausea and obviously can’t hear my prayer…)

Scripture is emphatically clear in so many places that absolutely NOTHING can ever separate us from God. Yet, it is this whole serial repentance teaching/system that causes so many people to be so concerned about sin. It builds theologies that produce the illusion of holiness because they rank violations of the law from mostly OK to downright nasty and then try to avoid/confess the nasty ones believing that, once they have done so, God is again their buddy. It’s a pity the list is ever shifting…

This is so common in our churches today. It’s like the pastor stands up at the front and there is a dividing line down the center of the stage. On the one side are sins like gossip, judgment, eating bacon double cheeseburgers (And other dietary laws) and all of them are under the blood of Christ. On the other side are real sins like homosexuality, adultery, abortion etc. and each seems to come with the demand that the practitioners of such be railed against and condemned. The pastor stands on one side with the pardoned sins and rails against the rest demanding that they stop and RIGHT NOW!!! It’s idiocy and it cheapens what Christ did for us. Without a grasp of how terribly and totally broken we are as a flawed species, we can never experience a holy excitement about how loved we really are.

You will somehow manage to violate the law of God in the next thirty seconds. Want me to prove it? OK. You either just committed the sin of arrogance because you are questioning how that could be true of you or you just committed the sin of self centered contempt after you dug up your secret thought crime — either that or you have treated me with contempt because you are currently asleep while reading my writings — HOW DARE YOU!!! (See I’m a damn fine counselor — I just made you a law breaker… ) Uh oh, you just judged me for swearing — see I’m on a roll…

Unless we come to an understanding of how shattered we were, we are still, at some level, going to reject ourselves for His love will never settle into the deep places of our hearts. Attempts to make sure I have confessed sin (Remember, all of them are equal in God’s eyes) to be eligible to pray to God are an absurdest exercise in self deception because I violate the old code of law (Which I am never to be under again) so often I would never have enough time in any day to confess it all. This is a Joy filled pessimism: I will never come to the end of my brokenness because it is who I am — and that’s absolutely amazing!!!!!

It’s amazing because, In that state, God in his love gave me a new heart — a new identity. In Romans 8:15 Paul makes it so clear that I may once have been a sinner, a homosexual, an adulterer or a gossip but that is no longer who I am. Because of such, I am freed to climb out of the mud puddle I have been rolling in, to run right into the presence of a Holy God, climb up on His lap, wrap my arms around His neck and squeal Dada and receive love from Him for I have been made holy, I am now called a saint and a beloved and forever adopted child of the Most High King. The impact of the Gospel is first and foremost relationship — whatever happens after that is just a bonus — not the goal.

In other words, my response to that love IS the transformation of the Gospel in me. (It may have an ethical look to it but the improvement to ethics is irrelevant — ethics are only one evidence of transformation — not the transformation itself.)

When we make our behaviors the issue and stopping (Or at least confessing) the focus, we commit a cardinal error. Gal 2:16-21 addresses that problem: “But if, while seeking to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have also been found sinners, is Christ then a minister of sin? May it never be! “For if I rebuild what I have once destroyed, I prove myself to be a transgressor.

Paul is saying something critical there that I’m going to try paraphrase:

“If you, in your desire to be holy, have again adopted a performance and rule based system of evaluating whether you are acceptable and have used the Gospel to justify such, then you are making Christ Lord over a system of death again for having to perform killed me in that it made me want to be bad. That can’t happen. If you again put together a system of rules (Written on new tablets of stone) to follow in place of the new law (written on tablets of flesh), all you manage to do is to again make yourself into a person under the condemnation of your new system of rules which Christ came to abolish.” (Stone/flesh metaphor taken from Ez. 36:26-27)

If we have to create a pure heart by going through a religious exercise in confessing every transgression before we believe God will listen to us, we have first of all climbed back under the law to which we died. We have then taken that law and used it to judge ourselves — which God Himself will not do now that we are in Christ. We add insult to injury through creating a new system of sacrifices whereby we figure we can pay for our sins by just reciting a prayer — which insults a God who had to die for that problem. We finally stand before our cosmic vending machine with just the right number of quarters and believe that we can now buy God’s performance. How dare we?

It’s either about relationship with Jesus wherein we address lies that keep us from total freedom to be in His presence (holding His hand where our new hearts want to be) or it’s about cleaning up our act and fighting a war we can only even remotely look like we are winning if we delude ourselves. (And evil wins anyway because we have taken our eyes off our focus — Jesus.)

Los Angeles Times

Rosenbaum found that 52% of those who said they had signed virginity pledges had had sex within a year. And of those who had sex after telling the first interviewers they had taken the pledge, 73% denied in the second interview having made the pledge.

Ok, this is too much fun to pass up: Not only is this just one more evidence that the law never made anyone holy, it’s also proof that it isn’t even very memorable…

KCCI.com – News – Publisher Won’t Print Bibles With Porn Reference

{SARCASM}Once again, the church is out there spreading the Good News that Jesus wants you to get your act together. Isn’t it nice to know the love of God comes with strings attached???

In other news, Rahab and Mary Magdalene just seen fleeing heaven…{/SARCASM}

That being said though, the organization (xxxchurch.org) that is trying to print those Bibles is insane enough to be responsible for this: (No, I’m not kidding…)

Every time you masturbate…God Kills a kitten!

Who needs soap operas when we have Christianity???

Pensacola College rewrites the definition of legalism — yet again…

Sabrina Poirier, a student at Pensacola who withdrew in 1997, was disciplined for what is known on the campus as “optical intercourse” — staring too intently into the eyes of a member of the opposite sex. This is also referred to as “making eye babies.” While the rule does not appear in written form, most students interviewed for this article were familiar with the concept.

I think I’ve finally found it — Christian fundamentalism at its finest. A must read for anyone who still can’t figure out why the credibility of the Church is at an all time low and North America is rapidly becoming a pagan continent…

Text Archived here:

Los Angeles Times

The below image says it all…

(With thanks to George Orwell — 1984.)

Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both. -Benjamin Franklin

By popular request:

I Want To Be A Clone

I’ve gone through so much other stuff
That walking down the aisle was tough
But now I know it’s not enough -
I Want To Be A Clone.
I asked the Lord into my heart.
They said that that’s the way to start,
But now you’ve got to play the part.
I Want To Be A Clone.

Be a clone and kiss conviction goodnight.
Cloneliness is next to godliness – RIGHT!
I’m grateful that they showed the way
‘Cause I could never know the way
To serve him on my own -
I Want To Be A Clone.

They told me that I’d fall away
Unless I followed what they say;
Who needs the Bible anyway?
I Want To Be A Clone.
Their language, it was new to me,
But “Christianese” got through to me;
Now I can speak it fluently.
I Want To Be A Clone.

Be a clone . . .

“Send in the clones……”
(Uh, I kinda wanted to tell some of my friends and people about it, you know?)
WHAT????
You’re still a babe, you have to grow,
Give it twenty years or so.
‘Cause if you want to be one of his,
Gotta act like one of US!

Be a clone . . .

So now I see the whole design:
My church is an assembly line.
The parts are there, I’m feeling fine.
I Want To Be A Clone.
I’ve learned enough to stay afloat,
But not so much I rock the boat.
I’m glad they shoved it down my throat -
I Want To Be A Clone!

(Everybody must get cloned)

Yahoo! News

CHICAGO – Some members of a Lutheran parish on Chicago’s far South Side said they are outraged police arrested the Rev. Jimmy McCants in the middle of his sermon.

Every time, in those dark moments when you think the Body of Christ just can’t sink any lower and you can finally relax, someone pulls out all the stops and manages, yet again, to stun us with their raw stupidity, blatent arrogance and total disregard for the public face of Christ and His church in this world…

Guardian Unlimited | World dispatch | Seminal questions

The purpose of religion (As opposed to faith) is power. For a person or a religious entity to have power, they must have control. For a religion to be in control, there have to be areas over which that religion can claim governance and the only way that governance can be legitimized is through convincing adherents that there is a great evil present in an area that must be avoided.

This must be done in areas that are well WITHIN the bounds of what people would actually do in their day to day lives or there is insufficient shame to gain the power desired. (Simply regulating theft and murder is not sufficient for we are seldom enough drawn to commit such that shame levels would remain low and the population would thus remain uncontrollable.)

Very few religions have, in that pursuit of shame based power, been able to resist the lure of regulating marital sexuality for it is one area where people the world over are innately (And correctly) convinced that it should be an area of total freedom thus (in the presence of those false* rules) resulting in continual transgression…

What is intriguing about this article is that most of it could have been cut -n-pasted from fundamentalist evangelical publications of last year. Christianity was supposed to be about freedom but fundamentalist christianity has become so good at using shame and rules to seize power that Islam is falling behind — and has had to steal a page from our book.

*Note: if you doubt that the presence of those rules are false, have a look at the Greek word usage under Hebrews 13:4. There are no rules governing loving sexuality between a husband and a wife.

Rethinking the Gift of Singleness : “Is singleness biblical? Now, compare those beliefs to what singles are told today. “God is your husband.” “Bloom where you are planted.” “There are plenty of ministries you can help with during this time.” “Be content.” “Make the desire of your heart Jesus, not marriage.” The desire for marriage has been placed on a collision course with the desire for God, the One Who made marriage in the first place. With this kind of pitting, singles are often reduced to extolling singleness, much like a witch having the grace to drown to prove innocence. In the same vein, these messages dissuade young men from seeking marriage because of the false validation they receive for embarking on the less taxing challenges of mere service activities.”

This is a stunning and highly controversial assault on the promotion of singleness most of the Christian Church seems to have begun. Agree or disagree, it’s definitely worth the read…

suvalleynews.com – Researchers confirm role of massive flood in climate change

Turns out that nearly every major civilization around the world having a flood myth wasn’t just collective human stupidity. Here comes the science…

What scripture really says about the role of women in marriage

Excerpt:
For centuries, the church has been telling women that their role is to do what their husbands want and, if their husbands happen to be Godly, they will like it.

It’s time the church woke up and realized that if we are to continue demanding that women do everything men say as our definition of submission, then we also have to demand that people abandon their labor unions to do everything their employers say and bow to atrocities like abortion or mass murder that governments are perpetrating.

Jesus came to set us free from the bondage we were all under and part of that bondage was the war of power and control that is on between men and woman. He came to set men free to be the powerful, relationally initiatory and passionate beings they were created to be and for women to finally again stand as the beautiful, relationally responsive and powerful life giving beings they were created to be.

He is still calling us to be like the radical cultural revolutionary He was – not to be puppets. He came to tell us that the greatest among us was to be the servant of all. He came to teach us to love – not to avoid or to control. He came to declare war on injustice, on oppression, on the legalistic control that had enslaved His people and destroyed their hearts. He came to set the captives free to be fully human and fully alive. That applies equally to both men and women.

I just wonder if we in the church will ever stop shooting at each other long enough to stand side by side as sons and daughters of the Most High King and finally mobilize for the real war for the hearts and souls of the world.

XXXchurch.com X3 Operation Save The Kittens

In all of the years I have worked to assist people addicted to erotic and/or pornographic materials to walk free, this has to be one of the most blatantly unhelpful sites I have ever been presented with.

Think about it for a moment: We do things we shouldn’t for two reasons — we have not had our needs met in legitimate and effective ways and we always do whatever it is we are told not to do.

The fact that we are doing things we are told not to do — things which we know are less then beneficial for us — causes us to feel shame. Shame causes us to avoid community with other people and with God (The two places God created for us to have our needs met) and, so, our needs then can not be met in a legitimate manner.

The above reality has been known since the early days of Freud and most legitimate Christian counselors (Those who are not simply secular therapists who happen to be Christians) are trained in such from the first weeks of their training.

Why then does the Christian church insist on continuing to use/play off of unmentionably stupid tactics of blatant shame (Every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten) as a means of arresting undesirable behavior when they know full well that it is this shame that caused the problem to begin with?

A pastor I know mentioned a few weeks ago that he had confronted one of his colleagues — a man who had been in his graduating class — with this reality. He had asked him why, if he had been trained in the same seminary and had the same knowledge of grace, did he continue to preach shame and condemnation from the pulpit?

The second pastor’s response, though it put him in a significant amount of distress, was strikingly honest. He said, “Yes, I know all that but, if I ever started to preach that grace, how would I control my flock?”

I have to honor that second pastor — that sort of honesty can be worked with. So few Christian leaders are that self aware.They wouldn’t be able to stay that way if their congregations woke up though.

Healing of any brokenness starts when we admit that we can’t get free, that we don’t even want to be free, that we kinda like our addictions and then we ask one more critical question: “I wonder if there is someone out there who can love me — not as I should be — but just as I am.” (Yes, Billy Graham had it right all along…)

When we finally begin to seek love instead of hide in the shadows and seek performance (Which we will never attain no matter how hard we white-knuckle it…) we have begun to take the first steps out of our brokenness and the first steps towards a ABBA who has the power to so deeply meet our needs that we will never want what we were settling for — never again.

The opposite of white-knuckling is grace — and grace is freedom.

Naked man disrupts local church service

Today’s example of the Body of Christ demonstrating the tender compassion, welcoming love and healing power of Christ to the broken brought to you by…

The way I read Matthew 25:43, Jesus showed up in Dayton today — and they got Him arrested…