Killed for being Christian.
Ben Patterson teaches you “Five Ways to Pray the Psalms.”
“Over 150 former Baylor football players have played in the NFL over the years, but until this week, no Bear had ever been an NFL head coach. That changed Tuesday, when Baylor great Mike Singletary was introduced as interim head coach of the San Francisco 49ers.” (Baylor Proud) Singletary played for Baylor during my first two years as an undergrad.
What To Say At Halloween When You Aren't Wearing A Costume.
“The Immortality Institute is an international, not-for-profit, membership-based organization with a mission to ‘conquer the blight of involuntary death.’” I know a better organization with a similar goal.
“People wonder if [Barak Obama] is decisive. It is clear he is decisive in terms of his own career. . . . When it comes to his career, his decisions are thought through and his judgments sound. But when it comes to decisions that have to do with larger issues, with great questions and not with him, things get murkier. There is the long trail of the missed and "present" votes, the hesitance on big questions. One wonders if in the presidency he'll be like the dog that chased the car and caught it: What's he supposed to do now?” (Peggy Noonan)
In last week’s Newsweek, Jonathan Alter, with some triumph in an inevitable Obama Presidency, wrote, “We’re Heading Left Once Again.” He was talking about the country and not his colleagues (How much more left can they head?). In the same magazine issue, though, Jon Meacham warned, “It is easy—for some, even tempting—to detect the dawn of a new progressive era in the autumn of Barack Obama's campaign for the presidency. . . . But history, as John Adams once said of facts, is a stubborn thing, and it tells us that Democratic presidents from FDR to JFK to LBJ to Carter to Clinton usually wind up moving farther right than they thought they ever would, or they pay for their continued liberalism at the polls. Should Obama win, he will have to govern a nation that is more instinctively conservative than it is liberal—a perennial reality that past Democratic presidents have ignored at their peril.”
“For many pregnant women, ultrasounds are like candy—there can't be too many of those grainy black-and-white images of the fetus napping or kicking in the womb. But if you're pregnant and don't want to be and are considering an abortion, an ultrasound image could be an object of dread. It might force you to think about the fetus as having a separate identity or as the baby it could become.” You would think that, with an opening like that, Emily Bazelon of Slate was beginning an article defending the right to life for the little one with the “separate identity,” or at least defending laws that require ultrasounds as important information to a woman before she makes a decision to terminate the being with the “separate identity.” If you thought this is where she goes with her article, you’d be wrong.
“There will always be people, many of goodwill, who do not share my view on the issue of choice. On this fundamental issue, I will not yield and Planned Parenthood will not yield.” (Barack Obama, speaking to the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, making no plans to adjust to the views of pro-life voters who may be considering him.
If you're pro-life and yet planning to vote for Senator Obama, there are three things you need to do.
“They were trying to say that I wasn’t a real Democrat because I am pro-life. I believe they have a narrow view of what a Democrat is.” Kathleen Dahlkemper, running for Congress as a pro-life Democrat. Her story was featured in a must-read article from the NY Times. In this election, there are more pro-life Democratic candidates fielded by the party than at any other time in recent memory.
"Doctors have started using powerful new DNA tests to screen fetuses for a wider range of genetic abnormalities, spotting more problem pregnancies early but stirring fears that the results will increase abortions as well as confuse and needlessly alarm many couples." Read this Washington Post article about the brave new world of fetal tests. And--geez louise--the Baylor College of Medicine is front and center on this ethically-questionable practice according to the article, just like they were at the vanguard of introducing RU-486 (the "morning after" abortion pill) to the U.S. years ago. Isn't it time Baylor University revoked the right of this school to use the good Baylor name?
Famous People Who Have Been Homeless.
*Hoo-boy*: “Thomas White, the vice president for student services at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, created a bit of a furor when he declared at a campus chapel service earlier this month that the use of birth control pills is ‘murder of a life.’” (from the Dallas Morning News religion blog)
The Secret Life of Bees, a film celebrating the feminist divine over the patriarchal Christian religion, is marketing to churches with a Bible study based on the film. Yeah, that’s gonna sell.
“We often seem incapable of seeing ourselves first as gardeners: people whose first cultural calling is to keep good what is, by the common grace of God, already good. A gardener does not pull out weeds because she hates weeds; she pulls out weeds because she loves the garden, and because (hopefully) there are more vegetables or flowers in it than weeds. This kind of love of the garden—loving our broken, beautiful cultures for what they are at their best—is the precondition, I am coming to believe, for any serious cultural creativity or influence. When weeds infest the garden, the gardener does not take the opportunity to decry the corruption of the garden as a whole. She gets patiently, discerningly, to work keeping the garden good” (Andy Crouch, “Why I Am Hopeful”)
Research shows that our brightest ideas come to us at night, not during office hours.
“Do you dream in black and white? If so, the chances are you are over 55 and were brought up watching a monochrome television set. New research suggests that the type of television you watched as a child has a profound effect on the color of your dreams” (article)
This Sunday I'll share six steps to financial security found in the book of Proverbs. To get you thinking about it:
“Undermining our natural strengths are [sic] a viral combination of a record national debt now approaching $10 trillion; a federal budget deficit projected this year at $492 billion, but likely closer to $700 billion; a staggering foreign trade deficit; and exhausted savings accounts. The average American household is now buried under mortgage debt of $84,911, car and tuition loans of $14,414, home equity loans of $10,062 and credit card debt of $8,565—in sum, outstanding debt totaling $117,952. According to other Federal Reserve statistics, average household savings this year are a mere $392.” (AARP)
“Not everyone is married to a financial twin, and that’s not necessarily a problem. There are several ways that you and your significant other can become more compatible, and ultimately more prosperous, when it comes to money.” (from a NY Times article, which outlines seven tips from “the successfully married and from experts on psychology, divorce and finance.”
Financial Tips for Newlyweds
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