Please read this article.
Here are a couple of excerpts:
“In effect, the law denies that there is any such thing as one’s biologically determined “gender,” any such thing as “male” or “female.” For the purposes of the law, you are whatever sex you say you are—and your claim, no matter how preposterous, must be treated as reality by school authorities.”
“The possibilities here are endless—Bible clubs, any activity, text, or teaching that portrays traditional families in a positive light, etc., could easily be argued to be either discriminatory because they ‘privilege heteronormativity’ or tend to foster a discriminatory bias against any group included in the definitions of ‘sexual orientation’ or ‘gender,’” Shortt said….”
Link here: http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2007/10/willow_creek_re.html
I was frankly shocked to see this article. It gave me much joy. I was happy that a major church realized that people aren’t growing spiritually, and realizing that this means they need to change how they approach the people and essentially what they are doing at the church there in Willow Creek.
They’ve basically found that participation doesn’t signify the maturing of a Christian. This means that just because you attend church, or attend another fellowship during the week, or a small group meeting, it doesn’t mean you’re growing. Essentially - the numbers don’t matter. For years in mainstream Christianity the only thing that has mattered is the numbers.
I was just listening to an interview on some current New Testament studies that intersected with a book I am reading that was very interesting. Some current studies called, New Perspective, make some great strides in pushing past some lingering traditional viewpoints from the time of the reformers. The time of the reformers was very anti-semitic, and results in a very anti-semitic view of the Scriptures. This still colors the Church and reading the Scriptures today. The New Perspective finds a much greater continuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament.
The picture related to this post is of one of the most famous archaeological pieces of all time. It is believed to be a small pomegranate piece which may be the only known surviving object from Solomon’s Temple. Many scholars believe that it has the following insription on the top of the rounded portion of the piece - “Holy to the priests, belonging to the Temple of Yahweh.” Isn’t that amazing?!
This past week, a large Lutheran organization has been debating how to involve or exclude, recognize or remove the homosexual leaders of their church as well as determine their position on the union of same-sex couples.
Click here for the story in USA Today
USA Today reported: “The Rev. Robert Goldstein, a gay minister at Immanuel Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chicago, wore a rainbow sash around his cleric’s collar as he urged delegates to “go beyond the justice of incrementalism” and remove all limits on gay leadership in the denomination. I’m a gay pastor in this church. I serve faithfully. I love it,” he said. “Our church must go beyond institutionalizing fear.”
Cypress trees in Hungary buried for “eight million years” are unfossilized and uncoalified.
Bacteria buried under Antarctic ice that “range in age from 100000 years to eight million years” were revived.
They have also found soft dinosaur tissue that was apparently millions of years old.
Read more!
According to the geneologies and timelines given in the scriptures the earth is between 6000 and 10000 years old. This flies in the face of modern science where long ages have replaced the great God who created everything with natural random processes. Finds like these don’t ever cause the long ages to be reconsidered…their old ages are just assumed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8vENZwp1rk
What would Jesus do is a great question to ask in our lives in this evil age? Recently there was a Hindu clergy member who was invited to say the opening prayer in the United States Senate. He was interupted by shouts by Christians from the viewing gallery who were eventually removed.
There are some obvious circumstances that do not make this situation like something Jesus would have specifically dealt with (for example, the Senate is not the Jewish Temple or a church and the United States is not Israel or the Kingdom of God), but what do you think Jesus’ actions, reactions or inaction would have been to this? Would he have done what the people in the balcony did? Why or why not?
I was at Borders Books and Music last night with my wife. We like to go to their cafe’ and peruse through the new books that are always coming out. As we entered the store we were met by a man wearing all black including a hood that covered all of his head except a small part of his face. I thought this was a tad odd but then as I looked around the store, all the employees were dressed as witches, sorcerers, and warlocks. These were not your average cheap plastic face with a rubber band costumes either, they were quite convincing. I went up to one of the warlockish men and asked why everyone was dressed so strangely. He responded, “It’s HP7.” I said, “what’s that.” He said “Harry Potter book number seven.” They release the book at midnight and then work till about 2 or 3 am. We were only there for about an hour but by the time we left (a little after 9 pm) there was already a huge line forming chuck full of creepy-costumed children. In fact it was quite difficult to get out. We were some sort of fake potion (strawberry smoothie) to eat as we left. The whole experience was a bit overwhelming. I had a few questions:
A clay tablet that was dug up near the ancient city of Babylon and stored in a British museum was translated by a visiting professor. As it turns out, the tablet was a receipt for a monetary gift that Nebo-Sarsekim gave to a temple. Nebo-Sarsekim, probably not a name you specifically remember from the Old Testament, can be found in Jeremiah 39.
Pretty exciting find! For more info check out:
News article
Creation Evolution Headlines
The following article discusses the creationist perspective of photosynthesis versus the naturalistic/evolutionary perspective:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n2/origin-of-photosynthesis
Any thoughts?