Way to Lead

Rusty and Lisa Akers are good friends of ours and started a new church on Easter. They raised $1000 to give to a needy family that lost their home in a fire.

Way to go guys!

Easter Sunday marks Community of Hopes inaugural service

In a related story...

Hoosiers react to monument vandalism: "'It's really an indication of how morally bankrupt people are who were involved in this,' said State Police Officer Dave Bursten."

CCC family mourns fallen son

Roger and Roxanne Hershey have both served with the U.S. Campus Ministry of Campus Crusade for more than 30 years.

Their son Brett was killed by a land mine while serving our country in Afghanistan.

We mourn their loss and rejoice in their son's love of God and others. I am grateful for Brett's service.

Hoosiers mourn fallen sons: "said his brother 'loved people very well, and he loved them because his first love was Jesus. He was funny, witty and passionate about just sucking the marrow out of life."

Campus Values: Anything Goes! (except religous values)

Dennis Prager - Tapes of The Show:

"Thursday, March 17, 2005 Radio Show
Hour 1:
Newly Bi-Sexual
Dennis
talks to Anna Montrose, a Canadian student who wrote an article in her college
newspaper describing her sexual transformation from rigid heterosexual to
bi-sexual."

This is among the most riveting hours of conversation that I have ever heard. I subscribe to Prager's web site and can download these for free. I'd put in on the web but that would be cheating Dennis.

Ms. Montrose is an upperclasswoman at McGill College, among the most prestigious campuses in Canada. This conversation makes painfully obvious the moral and intellectual vacuum that students experience at college. The most stunning moment was when Ms. Montrose admits that incest is not wrong and really no ones business as long as it's between consenting adults. She's was willing to conclude this rather than affirming that society has a right to encourage some kinds of sexuality and discourage others.

If you want to hear firsthand the dominant thinking of the university, this is it. You will likely be shocked and discouraged.

Blogger stinks

I'm getting really tired of all the glitches and hiccups of Blogger. You may have noticed double posts at times on this blog. That's because you never know whether clicking something on Blogger will actually accomplish what is intended. Lately it seems like clicking does nothing but bring up a "document contains no data." Maddening.

Update: Welcome Wired News Readers. Thanks for the link. At least I didn't use the word sucks. That would have been unoriginal apparently.

TNIV Perspectives

I got an email from a friend on staff with CCC yesterday who told me The New International Version of the Bible by Zondervan was being proposed for use by Campus Crusade for Christ. Each fall CCC gives away a free gift to freshman called a Freshman Survival Kit with various things that will help a student with their first year of college life. Included in the kit may be the TNIV.

My friend has heard controversy over this translation (as have I) and I decided to look into it just a bit. Here's what I found quickly (with more to follow):

Point by Mark D Roberts: http://www.markdroberts.com/htmfiles/resources/tniv.htm

On the Debate: Supporters of the TNIV include many of the heavyweights of evangelicalism: Bill Hybels, Lee Strobel, Erwin McManus, Darrell Bock, Philip Yancey, John R. W. Stott, Ted Haggard, Craig Blomberg, Roger Nicole, Timothy George, Dan Kimball, Diane Komp, John Kohlenberger III, Tremper Longman, Jim Cymbala, and Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.

His street cred: If a mature Christian is looking for a study Bible, I recommend The Reformation Study Bible (formerly New Geneva Study Bible) which as of this date comes only in the NKJV. It will soon be released in the ESV, however, which should improve readability and accuracy. This Study Bible comes with the best notes of any Bible of which I am aware, though Christians who are not Reformed theologically won’t appreciate it as much as I do.

Counterpoint by Vern Poythress in this article: http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/living/11258508.htm

I personally swear by the Reformation Study Bible.

Campus Ministry Job Security Update

For any of you in Campus Ministry, fear not for diversity rests on your shoulders.

This study shows again today why Campus Ministry is needed on most campuses:

"By their own description, 72 percent of those teaching at American universities and colleges are liberal and 15 percent are conservative, says the study being published this week."

In general, my experience on campus has taught me that liberal is a synonym for secular in the vast majority of cases.

"Religious services take a back seat for many faculty members, with 51 percent saying they rarely or never attend church or synagogue and 31 percent calling themselves regular churchgoers."

So two thirds of those with grading power over your academic career are by their own admission out of step with those who regularly observe religious services. In my experience religious views are treated with ridicule and dismissal by those in power on college campuses. Yet the monolithic cloud of secularism that dominates campus life gives rise to weakness in the the arguments against religious belief. Apparently the views of those in power on campus are dismissed by many students:

"It's hard to see that these liberal views cut very deeply into the education of students. In fact, a number of studies show the core values that students bring into the university are not very much altered by being in college."

This is true and not true. Many students retain a religious perspective but become ashamed to admit it in public, fearing ridicule and marginalization which they experienced on campus. Some reject their faith outright under such pressure but others subvert it in shame. It is difficult to maintain a vibrant faith that is hidden.

Yet because students are attracted to the subversive, campus ministry remains strong. Christianity is the subversive ideology on today's campuses in the face of the dominant secular overlords. It is an honor to be a representative of real diversity in an otherwise monochrome world of ideas.

Of course I will soon be on campus in the Northeast:

"The researchers say that liberals, men and non-regular churchgoers are more likely to be teaching at top schools, while conservatives, women and more religious faculty are more likely to be relegated to lower-tier colleges and universities."

It will be an honor to bring diversity to some of the top campuses in the country in and around the Boston area.

Finding Neverland

Once upon a time I used this blog to review movies. Well I'm at it again. I've watched many movies over the past week and months and tis time to get busy again.

Finding Neverland is a subtle, sweet and wonderful movie. It recalls the joy and innocence of childhood to quickly lost to adult concerns. It is a picture of a man who grew up too fast and spend his days trying to regain his lost childhood. Johnny Depp is as good as it gets, another fine performance. This film is a bit to complex for children but only because of the depth of character portrayed.

My rating: Suprisingly it's Big Screen. This film is so subtle that the Big Screen is necessary to fully experience it's emotional power.

No Joke!

Yahoo! News - Latest casualties in Iraq: Ethnic jokes: "'Now if you tell a joke about a Sunni or a Kurd, you wonder whether you're hurting their feelings,' said Joudi, 42, who's a Shiite. 'People are just not relaxed about that stuff anymore.'"

You know what they say, "If you aint Muslim, you aint Shiite."

No offense of course.

CCC Blogging

Mad props to Berger for showing me that like so many other things, students in Campus Crusade are on the leading edge of blogging.

Retreat

I'm headed to the mountains with my wife for a time of west and wewaxation (as Elmer Fudd would say). I'll post as possible.

OpenOffice.org: Goodbye Microsoft!

Have you seen this. WOW!

OpenOffice.org: Home Page

A friend of mine just gave me this new teaching.

Science's new heresy trial

Science's new heresy trial: "Mr. Meyer submitted his paper to the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, a scientific journal affiliated with the Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of Natural History. The editor, Rick Sternberg, a researcher at the museum with two Ph.D.s in biology, forwarded the article to a panel of three peer reviewers. In scientific and other academic scholarship, submitting research to the judgment of other experts in the field ensures that published articles have genuine merit. Each of the reviewers recommended that, with revisions, the article should be published. Mr. Meyer made the revisions and the article was published last August.

Whereupon major academic publications—Science, Nature, Chronicles of Higher Education—expressed outrage. The anger was focused not on the substance of the article, but on the mere fact that a peer-reviewed scientific journal would print such an article.

So the wrath of the Darwinists fell on Mr. Sternberg, the editor. Although he had stepped down from the editorship, his supervisors at the Smithsonian took away his office, made him turn in his keys, and cut him off from access to the collections he needs for his research. He is also being subjected to the sectarian religious discipline of 'shunning.' His colleagues are refusing to talk to him or even greet him in the hallways.

His supervisors also staged an inquisition about Mr. Sternberg's religious and even political beliefs. Mr. Sternberg, who describes himself as a Catholic with lots of questions, has filed a case alleging discrimination not just on the grounds of religion but 'perceived' religion."

Schiavo: Who's life is it anyway.

As with many of us I expect, I have begun to follow the case of Terri Schiavo more closely over the past week. I still do not consider myself an expert on the facts of the case but I was called as an expert witness the other day.

While driving my oldest daughter around town she asked me to explain what all the fuss was over starving someone.

As I began to explain I could feel nausea in my gut. I explained that Terry Schiavo is in a coma (which I learned later is not true) and her husband wants to relieve her suffering by removing a tube that feeds her. I tried to be as even handed as possible in my explanation but when it came right down to it I was explaining to my daughter that a judge is going to order the starvation of a helpless victim.

My daughter, even at the tender age of 11, was incredulous. She immediately asked an interesting question, "Why is it her husband's decision? He's not even related to her."

I'm not one to extol the virtue of blood over love in the realm of family bonds (a la Dennis Prager) but in this case I thought my daughter had raised a pretty fair question. Why is the life of Terry Schiavo in the hands of someone who has no life long blood relation to her?

It seems from this article that Terri Schiavo's brother is more concerned with her life than here husband.

...and a little child shall lead them.

ScrappleFace: Judge Rules Separate Restrooms Unconstitutional

ScrappleFace: Judge Rules Separate Restrooms Unconstitutional

Priceless.

Dennis Prager: The case for Judeo-Christian values: Part II

Here's the next installment in a great series.

Dennis Prager: The case for Judeo-Christian values: Part II: "Years ago, I debated this issue at Oxford with Jonathan Glover, currently the professor of ethics at King's College, University of London, and one of the leading atheist moralists of our time.
Because he is a man of rare intellectual honesty, he acknowledged that without God, morality is subjective. He is one of the few secularists who do."

Campus Paper: I think I was born this way?

Dennis Prager talked about this article the other day.

The McGill Daily: Brain Candy: Meow meow meow mix: "It’s hard to go through four years of a humanities BA reading Foucault and Butler and watching The L-Word and keep your rigid heterosexuality intact. I don’t know when it happened exactly, but it seems I no longer have the easy certainty of pinning my sexual desire to one gender and never the other. "

Apparently some people choose to be gay.

Updated: You gotta be kidding me!

I could have mailed this faster:

I'm in the airport in Phx @ 2pm on Sat. March 12. I don't know how much internet access I'll have for the next few days. More soon..
From my phone,

Ryan

Why Oil in ANWR us probably a good idea...

When liberal columnists in the New York Times are writing like this, you know environmentalism has a bad name: The New York Times (free sign up required):

"In the 1970's, the environmental movement was convinced that the Alaska oil pipeline would devastate the Central Arctic caribou herd. Since then, it has quintupled.

When I first began to worry about climate change, global cooling and nuclear winter seemed the main risks. As Newsweek said in 1975: 'Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend ... but they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century.'

This record should teach environmentalists some humility. The problems are real, but so is the uncertainty. Environmentalists were right about DDT's threat to bald eagles, for example, but blocking all spraying in the third world has led to hundreds of thousands of malaria deaths.

Likewise, environmentalists were right to warn about population pressures, but they overestimated wildly. Paul Ehrlich warned in 'The Population Bomb' that 'the battle to feed humanity is over. ... Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.' On my bookshelf is an even earlier book, 'Too Many Asians,' with a photo of a mass of Indians on the cover. The book warns that the threat from relentlessly multiplying Asians is 'even more grave than that of nuclear warfare.'"

Actually the UN has been convening to figure out how to solve the problem of underpopulation.

Back in 1991 I heard some guy on the radio doing a bit he called an "Environmentalist Wacko Update". I was stunned because I had never heard anyone desecrate the holy name of environmentalism. He went on about how most of what Environmentalism claims is exaggerated or outright, politically motivated lies.

He later published a book called See I told you so.

I wonder why?

Cronkite: Stay Classy America!

In a Providential irony, I watched the Netflix DVD of Anchorman on the way back from Phoenix yesterday. Ron Burgundy is an newsman who is almost completely ignorant about the world around him. This is only a movie though, right?

Just the day before, however, I read this article about the rambling incoherence of America's foremost anchorman, Walter Cronkite. His comments are too long winded and muddled to reproduce here at length but this summary will give you an idea:
OpinionJournal - Best of the Web Today: "So, to sum up: 'Those Arabs,' who are at once 'dying of AIDS' and 'starving to death,' and who by the way get their electricity from 'a foot pump,' are 'mad at us' over the Kyoto accords and bejeweled TV 'doxies.' Ergo, we need 'true world government.' Such wisdom is the product of 65 years in the news business."

This is not a joke. Read it for yourself.

Life imitating art. Stay classy America!