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Category: Evangelicalism

The Sounds of Fundamentalism: Bible Scares the Gay Right Out of a Woman

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my beliefs are right

This is the one hundred and sixty-fourth installment in The Sounds of Fundamentalism series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a video clip that shows the crazy, cantankerous, or contradictory side of Evangelical Christianity, please send me an email with the name or link to the video. Please do not leave suggestions in the comment section.  Let’s have some fun!

Today’s Sound of Fundamentalism is an Anchored North video detailing a woman’s conversion from lesbianism. While the young woman in the video desperately wants to believe that the Evangelical God, by his oh-so-awesome grace, has delivered her from the “sin” of homosexuality, when in fact all that has happened is that she has allowed a few Bible verses to corrupt her thinking and scare her straight.

Video Link

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Women Who Wear Men’s Clothing Are Rebellious Crossdressers

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women wearing mens clothingThe woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God. (Deuteronomy 22:5)

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I want to zero in on a massive blind spot for conservative Christians; feminist envy and rebellion. Specifically, feminists have worked tirelessly to remove the stigma from women dressing like men. Feminists have been so successful here that the very idea of a woman “dressing like a man” is foreign to our current thinking.

Deut 22:5 tells us that men dressing like women, and women dressing like men is an abomination to God.

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The problem is, for decades we have been taught that there is nothing shameful about a woman dressing like and acting like a man.  This is so much the case that it is really difficult to conceive of what would be considered cross-dressing for a woman in our culture, including modern conservative Christian culture. Which of the following would cause a modern woman to be shamed for being a cross dresser?

  • Wearing jeans instead of dresses and skirts?  Nope.
  • Wearing boxer shorts?  Nope.
  • Joining the army and driving a tank, eating field rations, and wearing combat boots?  Nope.
  • Dressing up like a lumberjack?  Nope.
  • Wearing a man’s haircut?  Nope.

A woman today who dresses like a man might be chided for her questionable  fashion sense, but she wouldn’t seen as cross dressing.  For a woman to be considered a cross dresser, she would have to go to the greatest extremes.  Not only would she have to make herself look like a man in every way, she would have to actually claim to be a man for us to consider her a cross dresser.

Contrast this with a man who does any of the below.  Is he seen as a cross dresser?

  • Wears women’s underwear?  Yes.
  • Wears women’s dresses or skirts (excluding kilts)?  Yes.
  • Wears women’s shoes?  Yes.

We have in our culture two kinds of clothing/styles:

  • Clothing and styles everyone can wear.
  • Clothing and styles men must not wear.

From a practical perspective, it is all but impossible for a woman to cross dress in our culture.  We have great difficulty even conceiving of the idea.  Cross dressing in our culture is something that almost exclusively pertains to men, because a woman cross dressing is simply normal.  From this perspective, we were already half way to accepting cross dressing as far back as the 1980s.  We’ve lived for decades rejecting the idea that something God detests is even possible.  Even worse, we have denied that our perspective on the issue has changed.  We forgot it, and then we forgot that we forgot it.

— Dalrock (I’m a happily married man living with my sexy wife and our two wonderful kids in the Dallas/Forth Worth area), Cross Dressing Snuck Up in Our Blind Spot, November 29, 2017

Black Collar Crime: Christian School Teacher Andrea Baber Accused of Having Sex with Student

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andrea baber

The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.

Andrea Baber, a teacher at Logos Christian Academy in Springfield,Oregon, was arrested and charged with “third-degree rape, third-degree sodomy, unlawful delivery of marijuana to a minor, online sexual corruption of a child and contributing to the sexual delinquency of a minor.”

CBS reports:

An Oregon teacher has been accused of having a sexual relationship with a student.

Lt. Chris Merrifield of the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office said Monday that 29-year-old Andrea Baber was arrested after investigators obtained a warrant to search her Cottage Grove home.

Baber taught at Logos Christian Academy in Springfield.

Merrifield says the relationship began in 2016, when the male student was 15 years old. Merrifield says the relationship continued on a regular basis, with Baber also providing the boy with marijuana.

Baber is charged with third-degree rape, third-degree sodomy, unlawful delivery of marijuana to a minor, online sexual corruption of a child and contributing to the sexual delinquency of a minor.

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The sheriff’s office identified Baber as a former teacher, but she remains on the school’s online staff directory. The website says Baber teaches writing and literature, and is married.

“Andrea has always felt called to work with youth and is very excited that God opened the door for her to be part of the Logos team,” her biography says, according to KPIC.

The Register-Guard adds:

The victim’s father reported the sexual relationship Dec. 12 after he and his wife received an anonymous email asking if they knew about their 17-year-old son and Baber, according to a probable cause affidavit filed in Douglas County Circuit Court on Monday.

Attached to the email were several photographs of Baber and the boy, together in Baber’s bed, according to the affidavit.

Authorities interviewed the teen, who told deputies that he and Baber had been in a relationship since 2016, when the boy was 15.

According to the affidavit, the boy told deputies that their relationship started with flirting at school, kissing at the movies and eventually progressed to sexual acts. He estimated having sex with his teacher once or twice a week at her residence on Territorial Highway, the affidavit states. He also told deputies that Baber occasionally gave him marijuana and alcohol.

During the investigation, authorities discovered that Baber’s husband recently made a report with Child Protective Services after he caught his wife and the teen in the Baber home, partially unclothed, according to the affidavit.

Baber’s husband told CPS that he also found topless photos of his wife that had been sent to the teen via text message, the affidavit states.

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Quote of the Day: The Virgin Birth and the Gospel of John by Bart Ehrman

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birth of christ

I have pointed out that our earliest Gospel, Mark, not only is lacking a story of the virgin birth but also tells a story that seems to run precisely counter to the idea that Jesus’ mother knew that his birth was miraculous, unlike the later Gospels of Matthew and Luke.  It is striking to note that even though these two later Gospels know about a virgin birth,  our latest canonical Gospel, John, does not know about it.   This was not a doctrine that everyone knew about – even toward the end of the first century.

Casual readers of John often assume that it presupposes the virgin birth (it never says anything about it, one way or the other) because they themselves are familiar with the idea, and think that John must be as well.  So they typically read the virgin birth into an account that in fact completely lacks it.

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Many people will respond (some of you are responding right now, in your heads!) by saying that if Christ was the Word of God [John 1] who became a human, his mother must have been a virgin.  Right?   Well, no, I’d say, not right.  The idea that the incarnation implies a virgin birth makes sense only if you already think that Jesus’ mother was a virgin.  If you don’t know about a virgin birth, there would be absolutely no reason to think that an incarnation requires a virgin birth.

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Scholars have often thought that there is an indication in John’s Gospel that there were questions floating around about Jesus’ “unusual” birth.   In the controversy that Jesus has with his Jewish opponents in John 8, they make a comment that is often taken to be directed to Jesus paternal lineage, when they say “WE (emphasize the “we” here) were not born from an act of fornication” (8:41).   Is this a suggestion that Jesus was known to have been born out of wedlock?

If so, is it possible that the virgin birth stories that appear in other traditions (Matthew and Luke) was a response to this charge against Jesus?   “You nonbelievers say he was born out of fornication.  It’s true that his mother was not married when she conceived, but that’s because it was God who made her pregnant.”   It is interesting that in pagan circles we have stories of women who were charged with extra-marital sex, leading to pregnancy, who claimed that in fact a God had made them pregnant.  This is precisely what legend says about the mother of Romulus, the founder of Rome.

My point:  John’s Gospel does not mention a virgin birth.   And it does not presuppose a virgin birth.   It indicates that Jesus was the incarnation of the Word of God.   The only way to get a virgin birth into the Gospel of John is to read it into the Gospel of John.  Because it’s not there.

And this now is the yet bigger point.   Matthew and Luke do not say a THING about Jesus being the incarnation of the pre-existent Son of God.  In Matthew and Luke, Jesus is not a pre-existent being.  He comes into existence when he is conceived of a virgin.  John’s Gospel is just the opposite: it does not have a virginal conception of Jesus.  It has Jesus as a pre-existent divine being who becomes incarnate.

The traditional Christian doctrine takes the view of Matthew and Luke, and smashes it together with the view of John, and creates a view found in NONE of the Gospels, namely, that Jesus Christ was a pre-existent human being “who became incarnate through the Virgin Mary” (as the Nicene Creed states).

That is often how Christian doctrines are created out of the Bible, by combining disparate views of different authors and through that combination creating something that precisely none of them subscribed to.   I’m not saying these doctrines are wrong.  I’m simply saying that they are not the doctrines held by the authors whose writings are used to create them.

— Bart Ehrman, The Virgin Birth and the Gospel of John: A Blast from the Past, December 28, 1997

You must be a member of Bart Ehrman’s forum to access the complete text of this post. At $24.95 a year, it is a worthwhile investment, especially if you are interested in better understanding the nature and history of the Biblical text. All proceeds go to charity.

Blessed, Thankful, and Grateful: Three Words I Refuse to Surrender to Christians

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god is my strengthEvangelicals use all sorts of words to describe various aspects of their religion; words such as saved, faith, salvation, grace, redemption, and spirit, to name a few. When unbelievers use these words in other than Evangelical ways, Christians object, saying that these words are theirs; that they have specific meanings and no other meanings are permitted. Never mind what the dictionary says. These words must always be defined according to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance.

Blessed, thankful, and grateful are three words that Evangelicals think belong only to them. However, I refuse to surrender these words to Fundamentalists. Every day, I am blessed, thankful, and grateful to be alive. I am blessed to be married to Polly, and I am double-blessed to have six wonderful children and eleven grandchildren. I am grateful my car started today, despite below-zero temperatures. I am thankful that I can still coherently and thoughtfully write for this blog. Every day I am above ground, I have much to be thankful for, all without the need of mentioning the name of the Christian God.

Therein lies the problem for Evangelicals. They cannot conceive a life of thankfulness and gratefulness without God. Why does the use of these words require a deity? Unlike the Alabama and Georgia football players last night who repeatedly gave God credit for their wins, I choose to express thankfulness and gratefulness to the people who actually do the work. When I sat down today to each a lunch of pork chops, roasted red potatoes, and Brussel sprouts, I didn’t bow my head and thank Jesus for the food. I thanked Polly, the person who labored in the kitchen to prepare this scrumptious meal. The car Polly takes to work wouldn’t start today, resulting in me doing a fair bit of cussing and complaining. Once I got that out of my system, Polly contacted our mechanic son and asked if he could get a battery and install it for us. He gladly said yes, even though at that moment he had four cars up on lifts at the shop and had been installing new batteries all day long. After working ten hours, our son came to our house and by flashlight installed a new battery. I am grateful that he had the skill and time to do it. Who did I thank for our son’s labor? The Christian God? Of course not. He’s never fixed a car for me — ever. I thanked Jaime for taking care of the old folks. He did the work and he alone deserves the praise.

When I use the word blessed, I don’t mean it the same way Evangelicals do. Christians wrongly think that all blessing comes from God. Countless Evangelicals grew up singing The Doxology:

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow; Praise Him, all creatures here below; Praise Him above, ye heavenly host; Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

Told over and over that all blessings come from the God who supposedly has the whole world and itty, bitty babies in his hands, Evangelicals become confused when atheists such as myself tell them to have a blessed day or a blessed New Year. They often ask me blessed by whom. I reply that I used the word “blessed” to mean good or happy and that goodness and happiness do not require a God. Billions of good people walk the face of this earth who don’t know or worship the Evangelical God. Billions more live lives filled with love, joy, peace, and happiness, all without giving a tip of the cap to God.

Of course, Evangelicals turn to the Bible for proof that everything we have in life comes from the hands of the Christian God. Verse after verse tells them that it is God who gives the strength and ability to do what they do in life, and that without God they can do n-o-t-h-i-n-g. Of course, when a snarky atheist such as myself says, fine and asks does this mean that God is also responsible for all the bad that happens in the world? Evangelicals are quick to say, oh no, it is we humans who are totally responsible for bad behaviors — thus showing the inconsistency of their worldview.

We humans are responsible for most of what happens on planet earth. Good things and bad things alike flow from our minds and hands. Sure, there’s not much we can do about the weather, but outside of that we (or other humans) are pretty much in control of what happens in our lives. There’s no need for any of us to invoke the name of God. Give credit to whom credit is due, and do the same with blame. My children will tell you that one of the things I drilled into their heads was personal responsibility. YOU are responsible for your behavior. It is YOU who are in control of your actions.  My grandchildren are now “blessed” to get this same instruction from their grandfather. When one of them says, I can’t find my shoe/sock/coat/barrette/toy, they know I am going to say, who had it last? 

I hope you have been blessed by what I have written in this post. If you have, please express gratitude or thankfulness to whomever wrote it. If you think God typed this post, by all means, thank him. If, however, you are a person of reason and common sense, feel to thank the author and finisher of this awesome piece of prose — yours truly, the Pope of Ney, Ohio.

I hope each of you have a blessed day. Thank you for taking the time to read this post. I am grateful for your continued support. And just think, I wrote those three sentences sans God. I can’t think of one thing I have done today that required God. Blasphemy? Yep! My New Year’s resolution? Blaspheme more, giving all praise, honor, and glory to the gods of skepticism and reason.

About Bruce Gerencser

Bruce Gerencser, 60, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 39 years. He and his wife have six grown children and eleven grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist. For more information about Bruce, please read the About page.

Bruce is a local photography business owner, operating Defiance County Photo out of his home. If you live in Northwest Ohio and would like to hire Bruce, please email him.

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Black Collar Crime: Methodist Pastor Jonathan Mills Accused of Sexual Harassment

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pastor jonathan mills

The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.

Several female members of Kitty Hawk United Methodist Church in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, have accused their pastor, Jonathan Mills, of sexually harassing them.

WAVY-10 reports:

The North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church has confirmed that four women have made sexual harassment complaints about Pastor Jonathan Mills of Kitty Hawk Methodist.

Conference communications director Derek Leek says Pastor Mills is suspended for up to 90 days as part of the complaint process, effective December 19.

Kitty Hawk police say no one has filed any criminal complaints against Mills.

Mills has been pastor at Kitty Hawk United Methodist since July of 2016.

It’s unclear how many of the women who have complained are Kitty Hawk Methodist members, but Leek says he believes they do attend church there.

Church officials say the Bishop’s office in Raleigh is handling the investigation of the claims of sexual harassment, and is working toward “a just resolution with healing and accountability.”

Leek says they are currently trying to determine the nature of the alleged behavior and whether the allegations can be substantiated.

When we tried to reach Reverend Mills by his church email and phone to get his response to the claims, we got this response instead from the North Carolina Conference:

“Due to the complaint process, Reverend Mills is not allowed to talk to anyone at this time. This creates a time of safety for the complainants, for Reverend Mills and the church.”

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Black Collar Crime: Seventh-Day Adventist Pastor Heather Cook Accused of Skinny Dipping with Church Teens

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pastor heather cook

The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.

Heather Cook, the associate pastor at College Church of Seventh-day Adventists in Lancaster, Massachusetts, has been accused by parents of skinny dipping with their children while on a church camping trip. The fallout from the nude bathing resulted in conflict between Cook and church member Randall Gifford, leading to Cook requesting a restraining order against Gifford.

Melissa Hanson, a reporter for MassLive, writes:

An incident of outdoor nude bathing during a camping trip between chaperones and students from religious private school and church may have actually been skinny dipping between a pastor and students.

A state Department of Children and Families investigation launched earlier this year after a concerned parent reported the incident to the principal of South Lancaster Academy, a Seventh-day Adventist school in Lancaster, MassLive reported earlier this month.

Fallout from the incident led to Heather Cook, the associate pastor at the College Church of Seventh-day Adventists in Lancaster, seeking a restraining order against a congregation member after that member spoke to her about the apparent skinny dipping incident.

Cook allegedly took off her clothes and went into a public body of water in Maine with the female students, some of whom were minors, during an annual “senior survival” trip held by South Lancaster Academy.

“There was a field trip involved with minor children where the pastor disrobed and went skinny dipping with them,” attorney Danielle Thomason, counsel for Randall Gifford, the congregation member, said at Clinton District Court on Tuesday. “Parents were outraged. Some parents weren’t, some parents were.”

The hearing was the first time the incident at the senior survival trip was publicly referred to as skinny dipping.

“She has been accused of inappropriate sexual misconduct with students at the school on a trip in Maine,” Thomason said, according to audio of the hearing.

The Southern New England Conference, which oversees South Lancaster Academy as well as other schools and churches in the area, stated earlier this month that there was a “nude bathing” incident on the trip.

Cook filed an affidavit asking for a restraining order against Gifford, a longtime member of the congregation.

In her affidavit, Cook wrote that Gifford met with her and two other parties on Nov. 27 to “reconcile perceived misunderstandings.” However, Cook claimed that Gifford then threatened her.

“During the course of the meeting, Randy stated he was the most powerful man in town and could ‘make me disappear,'” Cook wrote. “He also claimed connections to the government and said he ‘would be watching me in ways I couldn’t imagine.’ He also stated he could destroy me and take everything I had.”

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An investigation into the incident by DCF has been completed. Findings by the agency are not public.

“Your honor, there has been an investigation, which is now closed,” Cook told the judge. “It went to the DA’s office in Maine and all criminal charges were dropped. There was absolutely nothing found.

“The DCF investigation is also closed,” she added. “This is purely a harassment order. This has nothing to do with what happened in Maine.”

The Maine trip took place in September. A parent reported concerns about the trip to South Lancaster Academy Principal Jeffrey Lambert in October.

While Cook acknowledged that something did happen in Maine, she did not use the term “skinny dipping” or make any specific statements about the incident during her testimony.

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Two chaperones went on the trip in Maine. The conference identified one as a female church employee, who was placed on paid administrative leave and asked not to participate in any church activities. That leave was later lifted.

The other chaperone was just identified as a female chaperone.

Both chaperones have stated the nude bathing was for hygienic reasons, a letter previously released by Lambert read.

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Senior Pastor Luis Garcia, who was with Cook and Gifford during the Nov. 27 meeting, was called to testify regarding the restraining order.

In recounting the meeting in which Cook claims Gifford threatened her, Garcia said Cook became emotional at one point in the meeting.

“Tears were even shed as Mrs. Cook was expressing how terrible she felt about the whole situation with the camping trip in Maine,” Garcia testified.

He told the court that the meeting was civil and seemed like it was leading to a resolution.

Thomason asked Garcia if he meant that Cook “felt awful about the incident in Maine.”

“No,” he said, clarifying that she “felt awful about how everything has developed and transpired since then.”

Garcia said that some church members have asked him about the trip in Maine, but he could not disclose details of those conversations because they were confidential exchanges with a pastor.

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Thomason also brought up some nude photos that Cook reportedly “liked” using her Instagram account, saying that Gifford felt it was inappropriate for girls in the congregation to see that material through Cook and the social media platform.

“Everything that’s going on here again surrounds the controversy with what some feel is inappropriate behavior of the youth pastor and this is what my client has stated,” Thomason said. She told the judge that there were two parents in the courtroom whose children were “deeply affected by the stripping in Maine.”

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Earlier this month, a teacher was placed on paid administrative leave from South Lancaster Academy after multiple former students contacted the principal alleging inappropriate behavior by the teacher during their time as students.

Scott Fellows will remain on leave until Worcester County District Attorney’s office investigates further and decides on a legal course of action, Dennis, of the Southern New England Conference, wrote in a letter dated Dec. 20.

Fellows, the chairman of the school’s English department, also went on the senior survival trip in Maine.

“In regard to Scott Fellows, our initial review of allegations did not reveal any connection to Senior Survival,” Dennis said Friday. “The police and District Attorney are conducting the investigation and we await their report.”

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Cook’s bio states:

….. Heather is an associate pastor at the Atlantic Union College Church in South Lancaster, Massachusetts. She has spent seven years in ministry, two as the youth pastor at the Connecticut Valley Church, two as an ethics and religion teacher at Hong Kong Adventist College, and three in her present position. Heather holds a BA in theology from Southern Adventist University in Collegedale, Tennessee. She says, “I love people, creating, travel, running, pushing myself, and my babies.” Married to Dustan Cook, physical education teacher at South Lancaster Academy, Heather has twin girls …. **** and ****.

Roadside America Reviews Ken Ham’s Ark Encounter

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ark encounter christmas

We’ve visited other Creationist attractions — each has its own unique charm — but none match the scale and sophistication of Kentucky’s Ark Encounter. Regardless of your religious beliefs (and in spite of a biblically proportioned admission and parking fee [$40 per ticket plus $10 parking]) the Ark is an attraction that should be visited — if only because it’s unlikely that you’ll ever visit anything else like it.

Built at a reported cost of $91 million, opened to the public in July 2016, the Ark is the brainchild of Answers in Genesis, the same group that opened the Creation Museum in 2007. Billed as “The Largest Timber-Frame Structure in the World” and “a modern engineering marvel,” the Ark contains 3.3 million board-feet of lumber and weighs more than two thousand tons. Answers in Genesis CEO Ken Ham claims that it was built to scriptural specs, 510 feet long and as tall as a seven-story building — an exact replica of Noah’s enormous wooden boat.

The purpose of the Ark, according to Ham, is to fuel the faith of his fellow Bible literalists and to reach people who would otherwise avoid a Creationist attraction. Co-founder Mike Zovath has stressed the Ark’s broad appeal, saying that he hopes it becomes a bucket-list roadside wonder, “like seeing the biggest ball of twine.”

The Ark itself is dimly lit, a windowless wooden labyrinth whose brown interior is enlivened with over 100 bays of colorful, professionally-designed exhibits. As you walk up a ramp into the Ark’s belly you’re greeted by the recorded sounds of a thunderstorm and caged animals. There are no live animals on this Ark, only lifelike replicas, including a surprising number of juvenile dinosaurs. These creatures are a big part of the appeal of Ark Encounter, especially for children. The attraction could have simplified its narrative by wiping out the dinosaurs in the Flood, but then it wouldn’t have had any dinosaurs for visitors to see. Answers in Genesis speculates that the dinosaurs’ later extinction — after all the trouble taken to save them — was not a miscalculation by God, but because Noah’s descendants ate them.

Ark Encounter features a number of exhibits showcasing the wickedness that made God decide to drown everyone on the planet (The “Help Me Understand” display explains that God created humankind, so He’s within His rights to kill everybody whenever He wants to). These detailed glimpses of the sinful pre-Flood world are the most memorable part of the attraction. One miniature diorama shows people murdered in an arena by a human giant and a toothy dinosaur with gilded horns. Another elaborate tableau depicts babies being delivered into the belly furnace of a golden snake god.

Poster-size illustrations with titles such as “Abuse of Creation” and “Descent into Darkness” show poor, defenseless dinosaurs being senselessly slaughtered by depraved humans, and crowds of smug, shirtless revelers with tattoos and tambourines — time-honored visual shorthand for every parent’s nightmare of party debauchery.

If you’re wondering how you missed the part in the Bible that chronicled the age of dinosaurs as gladiators… you didn’t. A sign explains that Ark Encounter had to invent these details because the Bible doesn’t mention any of them. Nevertheless, visitors are assured, the pre-Flood world “was thoroughly infested with violence, idolatry, and every imaginable form of immorality.”

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An attraction so invested in its own feasibility can tolerate no perceived insults. This is stressed in the “Fairy Tale Ark” exhibit, which attacks children’s books (most of them Christian) for practicing the “7 D’s of Deception,” including “Discrediting the Truth” and “Deceptively Cute.” Ark Encounter makes clear that there’s nothing cuddly about the Earth’s greatest premeditated mass slaughter, although there is one bright spot. Answers in Genesis CEO Ken Ham has said that his Ark, despite appearances, is not built to float, because God promised He would never flood the Earth again.

Roadside America review of the Ark Encounter

Quote of the Day: A Strange God by Mark Twain

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mark twain

Strange…a God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; mouths Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied seventy times seven and invented Hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!

— Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

Christians Say the Darnedest Things: Women, Your Place is in the Home by John Piper

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john piper
John Piper

What children need at age one, five, six, fourteen, eighteen is simply amazing, and so is what those needs call forth from a woman’s creativity and heart and mind, personally for each one of these little ones that are coming along.

And, just being able to focus on the home where ministry can happen—not being enslaved by anybody’s clock—you can say, ‘I want to work my tail off for King Jesus, but I don’t want anybody to pay me for it. I’m going to do it right here in this neighborhood with my husband’s connections and my connections. We’re going to lavish grace on people’s lives.’

So, I’m calling for ministry full-time when I say ‘don’t work full-time if you have a family.’ Turn your family into ministry. Turn your family into a global dream for what this family might become, or what this man might be, or what we might be together as we are home.

— John Piper, Is It Okay for Mothers to Work Full-Time Outside of the Home? June 22, 2010