Dad’s Thoughts...

Is it a sin or just bad?

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 14:45:33 +0800

“It might be a bad and hurtful behavior but that doesn’t make it a sin.”

That comment got me thinking. It was made in the context of a discussion about the Twilight craze. If something causes someone to covet what they don’t have and can’t have legitimately is that person wrestling with a sinful thought life or just unhelpful thoughts. I found several articles and a video that talked about Twilight. It would seem that for many women the series might be as harmful to their relationships as pornography is to men’s ability to create and maintain healthy relationships. Society, especially Christian culture, still challenges guys (and rightly so), on avoiding pornography. What should our response and challenge be to women regarding something like Twilight? Is it no big deal or should we be challenging girls on this with as much conviction as we use when challenging men about pornography? Check out the links below and let me know what you think.

Lies Young Women Believe - The Dangers In Breaking Dawn
Generation Cedar - Wives, Guard Against Emotional Pornography
RELEVANT Magazine - You Can't Marry a Hot Vampire
RELEVANT Magazine - Is "Chick Lit" Just Emotional Porn?
PJ Media - Porn for Women: The Twilight Saga

Mars Hill Church, Seattle - Mark Driscoll on Twilight
(13min video: more about the spiritual problems with the series)

Update:

Daniel sent me this picture
and I got a big kick out of it.

Up is one of my favorite
movies partly because of
the way they told the story
of Carl nd ellie at the
beginning of the movie.

The Color of Rain

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 14:49:11 +0800

This last week I heard an interview with Mike and Gina Spehn on the Hugh Hewitt Show. Their’s is a story of great grief but also of hope and God’s redemption. From the sounds of it their new book, The Color of Rain, might be a classic must have book on the topic of grief.

A song was played for them during the interview from the broadway musical, “Ordinary Days” called, “I’ll Be Here”. There are several versions of the song on youtube.
Here’s two versions worth checking out:
• I’ll Be Here by Lisa Brescia
• I’ll Be Here by Betsy Wolfe

I believe a life axiom is that the closer you are to someone the greater the grief will one day be. The higher the mountain top the deeper the valley–both are bookends of an abundant life.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.
I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
John 10:10

Alone and Joyful

Tue, 4 Oct 2011 06:42:32 +0800

I enjoyed a connection between my morning devotional
and a section from a book about the prison camp
Eric Liddell died in, which I had just read.

“Alone, But Not Lonely”
Right From The Heart 1-Minute Devotions (Day 164)

Some feel it in a crowd; others feel it when alone. Sociologists say that never before in history have so many people lived so close together and felt so far apart. Loneliness is a major problem. There's no doubt that singles bars are filled with people battling loneliness. A divorced person, tired of one-night stands, recently said, "Sex is readily available in the American singles scene, but friendship is not."

I propose to you that one can still be alone but not lonely. A person will never find victory over loneliness until he learns to enjoy being alone. At the root of all loneliness is alienation from God.

Years ago, a man named Augustine espoused that God has made us for Himself. Our soul is restless until we find rest in Him. We may seek to fill the void with activities, crowds, and noise, but a nagging loneliness will always be there until we have a personal relationship with God. When we find that, we have found the key to being alone, but not lonely.

Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and,
lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen. Matthew 28:20

He Goes Before Them... Even Into Prison by Meredith and Christine Helsby

The following is adapted from pages 72 and 73 to save space...
Father Scanlon, of Australian-Irish ancestry, was a rotund little man with a shock of red hair. He would go near the wall of the Weihsien Concentration Camp in China. The Japanese guards would see him kneeling and praying. In reality a friend on the other side of the wall was pushing eggs through a hole and under the father’s long robe. These smuggled eggs were the main protein for the prisoners. This went on for months until a guard caught on. With a shout of rage the guard hauled the monk off to the guard house.

Everyone wondered what his fate would be: shot? tortured? When authorities declared, however, that the priest’s punishment for his crimes would be two weeks in solitary confinement, they were baffled by the smiles and muffled laughter their announcement provoked. They did not know that Scanlon was a Trappist monk and had spent most of the past 25 years in a small cell under a vow of silence.

I loved the combination of these two ideas. Our walk with God can remove our loneliness and bring joy. But those who fear the loneliness of aloneness only see isolation as torture.

Get Service...

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 11:46:25 +0800

This video was shown at high school staff devotions this morning. May we all learn to see beyond ourselves....

Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better
than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in
others, too. Philippians 2:3,4

Chick-Fil-A did a commercial, Every Life Has a Story, with a very similar theme.

We also watch a touching video on God’s love.

The defining feature of humanity is inhumanity

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 09:32:24 +0800

It’s been 10 years since on a fluke I turned on our TV with a set of rabbit ears to see if I could bring in all three 3 Chinese Stations. The news was on and it showed a video clip of a plane crashing into a building. My Chinese wasn’t adequate to follow the report but I understood the Chinese for New York.

This week as people are recounting those days the common theme seems to be, “How can some human beings be this evil?” One conversation had a different fundamental thesis that is summarized well by the Ambrose Bierce quote above. It is the message throughout scripture starting with Genesis 3. Romans 3:23 states it plainly:

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, after being released from a Gulag, wrote: “If only there were evil people somewhere, insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

The message of the Bible and history is that we are all capable of horrendous evil. It is only God’s grace and work in us that makes evil events seem like isolated aberrations.

There is an answer but it must be implemented voluntarily by each one of us individually:

So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me.
For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me,
waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin
at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body
that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our
Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature
a slave to the law of sin. Romans 7:21-25

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our
Lord. Romans 6:23