Are You a Neophyliac?

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spirituality, Use of Money

Do you realize that the majority of us are “neophyliacs” (lovers of the new)? Maybe we are not the hardcore type that stand in line overnight to buy the latest gizzmo, but we love new things; new clothes, new cars, new relationships, new jobs, new churches… “Not me,” you say, “I always go to next-to-new shops for clothes and I always buy used cars. That’s terrific, but even these things are “new” in the sense that they are different from what you have.  Human nature is never satisfied, it always wants more; that is why we are such consumers and why we have a throw-away culture. We get tired of something because it no longer satisfies us, so we throw it away thinking we can find something new that does. We do this with our marriages; we do this with our churches and our worship, as well as our possessions. We “shop till we drop” not because we need anything, but because we have a craving in our hearts and we think that buying something will satisfy it. We “church hop” because we have a

Christophobia

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The Suffering Church

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, and escaped an arranged marriage by immigrating to the Netherlands in 1992. She served as a member of the Dutch parliament from 2003 to 2006 and is currently a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Her autobiography, “Infidel,” was a 2007 New York Times bestseller. She wrote a very compelling lead article in Newsweek Feb. 2, 2012, on the rise of Christophobia, which you can read for yourself online at  http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/02/05/ayaan-hirsi-ali-the-global-war-on-christians-in-the-muslim-world.html. She begins “We hear so often about Muslims as victims of abuse in the West and combatants in the Arab Spring’s fight against tyranny. But, in fact, a wholly different kind of war is underway—an unrecognized battle costing thousands of lives. Christians are being killed in the Islamic world because of their religion. It is a rising genocide that

Dinosaurs Did What?

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stewardship of creation

OK. I can’t let this one pass. Perhaps you have already heard that some research scientists have speculated on a new theory concerning dinosaur extinction. No one knows for sure what really happened so every theory is speculative. Some hold to the Asteroid theory. Still others hold the Volcanic theory, the Ice Age theory, the Disease theory, and some Christians the Flood theory. However, some scientists believe it was climate change that took out the big guys. In a new twist on this last theory, they claim that gassy vegetarians like the Brontosaurus may have produced so much methane that they triggered the global warming which may have contributed to their own extinction. A study by a team of British scientists published in Current Biology argues that “dinosaur flatulence turned the Earth into one giant Dutch oven, contributing significantly to a warmer climate 150 million years ago,” says Slate.

A Strange, a Sad, and Terrible Week

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Secret Life

Chris Rush, Editor & Publisher of the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise Newspaper in OK, wrote the following this past Sunday: “This was a strange, sad and terrible week. First, we learned that the executive director of this city’s, if not one of the world’s, most significant and impactful Christian ministries had suddenly died. Although an official ruling still has not been made as to the precise cause of death, all indications appear that Tom White, the widely admired long-time leader of The Voice of the Martyrs, took his own life. The organization acknowledged as much in a press release late Friday afternoon. That same statement issued by VOM also acknowledged more unsettling news — that White was the subject of a law enforcement investigation which had been launched in the wake of very recent allegations that he had improper contact with a young girl. In short, the accusation is child molestation.”