Woohoo! Ryan is student of the day. That means he gets to lead the class when they leave the room.
He was excited, and I'm excited for him.
BTW, I'm not sure what happened to the picture. I'm gonna try re-sending it, and see what happens. Maybe it'll turn out better.
On the surface, this sounds like good news. It sounds like flame to the oil to me.
"The bishop in charge of Aghapy TV says the channel will not carry anything that could upset Muslims." But here is another statement, three paragraphs later: "Last month three people were killed when Muslims tried to storm a church in Alexandria because a play had been performed there two years earlier (emphasis added)which was deemed offensive to Islam."
I'm sick of all this. Bush mislead us? He lied to us? I think I'm missing something here.
My wife and I both remember 9/11. (Our daughter was born shortly after.) Buildings. Planes. Burning. Death. Massive homicides. Al Qaeda. "Let's go get them!" With me so far?
Where was Al Qaeda, and Osama bin Laden? In Afghanistan. That's why we invaded this little country. What did we do? We declared war on Terrorism.
Why did we invade Iraq? The war on Terror. President Saddam Hussein was allowing terrorists to train in his country, use his resources, funding, supplies, etc.
I was not, and still am not, worried about WBD. "It's not the man with 2 dozen nukes I worry about. Its the man who only wants one." Saddam hadn't threatened us. Nor was he a threat to us. It was the fanatics, terrorists, and homicide bombers who used his country as a base of operations.
How did we get so off track?
BBC NEWS ran an article about the Kansas state Board of Education. They voted 6-4 in favor of throwing some doubt on the "facts" of evolution.
Finally. We can't teach creationism, because we can't teach religion. (But safe sex is okay.) Creationism has been redefined as 'Intelligent Design.' Can't these people get it through their thick heads. Intelligent Design does not presuppose Deity, just someone, or a race of someones, vastly more powerful than us. Someone who could create life as an experiment.
Arthur C. Clarke dabbled with this in 2001: A Space Odessey. An alien race took an existing group (monkeys/apes) and taught them to use tools, etc. Other authors have written along this basic theme also.
Yet people are terrified that I will force my morality on them if we even suggest that evolution isn't hard fact. After reading this article, all Kansas wants to do is tell students that there are problems, and that evolution is an unproven theory. So what, it is. As far as I know, no one has yet duplicated it in a laboratory anywhere. Any other theory has to be repeated by outside people before it is widely accepted.
I read a quote on another website tonight by a Chinese scientist, I believe. In China, they can criticize Darwin, but not the government. In America, we can criticize the government, but not Darwin.
Something here seemed off to me, until I read a little blurb in one of my commentaries. Why are these "things" they saw called visions. False, misleading, vain, and foolish. Read different translations and you'll see even more descriptive terms. But they are all called visions. Why?
Because ... they really were visions. Jeremiah wasn't the only prophet God had. He tried moving through many people. A lot of them had visions. Visions of Israel's future. The time of the Messiah. Glory and riches. Leadership among the nations. The thousand year reign of the Christ.
They sort of left out all the intervening years. The years of wandering. The years of slavery. Blood, smoke, death. Romans and Nazis. Millenia of anti-semitism.
Yes, they had visions. But they twisted them for the pleasure of their hearers. God's Truth mangled in such a way as to become dangerous to the hearer.
"The visions which your prophets have seen for you."
It sounds to me like they had a specific target audience in mind. That's not a bad thing, if the message isn't affected. You have to change the format of your message to fit the crowd you are speaking to. Children learn differently than adults. Groups of adults learn differently from other groups. Lecture vs. multimedia vs. Veggie Tales. Put it into language the audience will understand.
But don't change the message. These prophets of ancient Israel, and maybe modern America, have skewed the message of God to fit the hearers desires, not their needs. This group of prophets forgot that they were anwerable to God, not to the people.
The visions may have been authentic, but they had been filtered for the people's short term comfort.
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