Archive for the ‘Culture’ Category

The Promising Pleasures of Porn

In a soon to be released interview with Playboy magazine, John Mayer says that his “biggest dream is to write pornography.”  He says a lot of other thing in the interview that are unsavory and for which he’s taken a lot of heat.  This statement however mostly just gets an eye-role.  It’s seen as an [...]

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Good Christians are Called Atheists

There’s often a lot of talk by Christians lamenting the non-religious nature of our government, but what I find ironic is that the early Christians faced criticism from the government lamenting that they weren’t religious!  The Roman Government repeatedly called Christians atheists and even killed them for it.  In fact, the first martyrdom recorded in [...]

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Blessed are those who bust human traffickers

Last night on my way back from Denver I had the privilege of sitting next to a cop.  This individual was working on a case aimed at arresting some people engaged in sex-trafficking.  She shared some stories, and she talked about the anger she feels when she hears the stories of abuse that these girls [...]

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Stewart Nails Olberman and why Ad Hominem is Too Easy

In last night’s show of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart spent a segment laying into Keith Olberman, host of MSNBC’s Countdown. He is the liberal equivalent to Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, and he used to be a host of ESPN’s Sports Center.  He’s known for his quick wit, fast-talking diatribes and punchy rhetoric.  I don’t [...]

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MLK Holiday Breakfast

We went to the MLK Holiday Breakfast this past Monday.  This was the 20th year of the event, and this year’s speaker was the Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowery.  The 88-year-old Dr. Lowery has been a pillar in the civil rights movement, a friend of Dr. King, and he delivered the Benediction at President Obama’s Inauguration.
I enjoyed [...]

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Brit Hume on Tiger and Pluralism

This past Sunday on Fox News Sunday, Brit Hume offered some commentary and advice for Tiger Woods in the wake of his scandal.  I have no comment about Tiger.  Brit suggested that Tiger should become a Christian because it offers a better path for redemption than Buddhism, which allegedly Tiger Woods adheres to.  Hume suggested [...]

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New Year’s Resolution: Read the Bible More?

Anyone want to read the Bible more this coming year?  It’s a favorite New Year’s resolution for Christians.  Often times we start from the beginning and then get bogged down in the early books.  We give up before we get out of the month of January.   If you’re looking for a new way to [...]

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Singaporeans

Oh, how I love them!  I just dropped of a friend, Gerald Wu, at the airport today.  He’s a Singaporean college student who just finished up a semester as an exchange student at the University of Minnesota.  We were introduced over email by a mutual friend.  Gerald happily jumped on board with our church plant [...]

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Primal

Mark Batterson loves Jesus.  I’ve now read two of his books, Wild Goose Chase and Primal, and the portrait I get of him is a high energy (possibly over-caffeinated, he started a coffee shop) Jesus junky.  He comes across as an adventurer in pursuit of new ways to articulate God’s love. And the good news [...]

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Why Power Prevents the Prophetic

Willimon on the problem of power
if one is on top, well fixed, secure, then one can afford to be sanguine about sin.  We people in power always think of ourselves as basically good people living in a well-ordered world.  Why not? It is our world.  To such folk, “prophetic ministry” means mostly minor tinkering with [...]

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