Is Morality Dictated by Tradition?

For years the question has lingered in philosophy classes: is there a universal moral standard which all societies throughout history have abided by? Or, is morality relative to the culture’s traditions? Is morality merely dictated by habits humans have been indoctrinated with since infanthood? Or, are moral choices decided by a conscious decision through rationalizing?
The problem with accepting that morality is ruled by habit through traditions is that people have no power over their morality and are ultimately “pre- determined” to act in a certain way. Morality being instilled by habit implies that humans are conditioned to make ethical decisions, therefore, they can not be held responsible for their actions because they have no “free will.”
Now, a response may be that this is irrelevant because the habit will always be deemed “good” by that society since they have instilled the choices, therefore, the people will never be put in a position where they will be judged for their choices. But this conclusion is unrealistic. Throughout history cultures have punished people in their societies for immoral choices, and if these choices were only habits instilled by their societies, then they would never be judged for their decisions.

condoms in africa

Pope rejects condoms for Africa

The Pope has already met South African President Thabo Mbeki
The spread of HIV and Aids in Africa should be tackled through fidelity and abstinence and not by condoms, Pope Benedict XVI has said.
Speaking to African bishops at the Vatican, the Pope described HIV/Aids in Africa as a "cruel epidemic".

But he told them: "The traditional teaching of the church has proven to be the only failsafe way to prevent the spread of HIV/Aids."

More than 60% of the world's 40m people with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa.

In South Africa alone, 600-1,000 people are thought to die every day because of Aids.

Pope Benedict, who was elected to succeed John Paul II in April, has already signalled that he will maintain a strictly traditional line on issues including abortion and homosexuality.

Before being elected pope, Benedict served as head of the Vatican's doctrinal office.

These were his first public comments on the issue of Aids/HIV and contraception since taking office.

It is of great concern that the fabric of African life, its very source of hope and stability, is threatened by divorce, abortion, prostitution, human trafficking and a contraception mentality

Pope Benedict

He was addressing bishops from South Africa, Botswana, Swaziland, Namibia and Lesotho, who had travelled to the Vatican for a routine papal audience.

Some Catholic clergymen have argued that the use of condoms to stem the spread of the disease would be a "lesser of two evils".

The Pope warned that contraception was one of a host of trends contributing to a "breakdown in sexual morality", and church teachings should not be ignored.

"It is of great concern that the fabric of African life, its very source of hope and stability, is threatened by divorce, abortion, prostitution, human trafficking and a contraception mentality," he added.

The virus "seriously threatens the economic and social stability of the continent," the Pope said.

The UN estimates that without new initiatives and greater access to drugs, more than 80 million Africans may die from Aids by 2025 and HIV infections could reach 90 million, or 10% of the continent's population.




-bbc news

soaked shoulders

In the back of my mind there is this memory. A recent memory. Or maybe just a reoccuring flashback of a quick moment that has been stored deep inside me.
I dont remember if it was a few weeks ago or a few months ago. It was all a blur.

As I was walking away from the bus on campus, I witnessed a young oriental woman crying on her knees at the feet of a young man. The man stood stark cold ignoring her. Of course, my first reaction was "what a bastard." Thats not fair though, it could have been just as much her fault. Maybe she cheated on him. Maybe she aborted his baby. I will never know. But what I do know is that something had torn so deeply into this woman that it had destroyed her. No one can forget a look like that.
But then I wonder how many students who passed her by felt exactly the same way inside. How many other students were experiencing total emotional turmoil? Its moments like this that make me realize that so many others are screaming inside. How many students in my classes pray that they dont wake up in the morning? Oh, how the whole world is in pain.
And not that we should constantly dwell on this pain, but so many people overlook the remedy.
I dont know what happened to this girl, but I do know one thing:she was missing some kind of love. Whether this boy had broken her heart( which was probably the case), or she was begging forgiveness from him, she wanted him to have compassion on her.
But how sick of hearing that do we get? "all you need is love" Such a simple saying with such a hard meaning. How can we give something so much of us lack.
This scene reminded me of the story of Jesus and the woman who knelt before him crying. The bible says in Luke 7 that she 'wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with her feet.' Jesus replied that her sins had been forgiven- for she loved much. Of course, Jesus gave her exactly what she needed: forgiveness and love. He accepted her despite her faults because she loved Him.
I think if I ask myself 'what do I want out of life?' It would really come down to desiring unconditional love from people. Although I have never soaked someone's feet with my tears, i know i have soaked some shoulders. And thats it. Regardless of my flaws, regardless of how much I have hurt you, I will always want the same thing in the end: to know that I am still wanted and desired.

the fray

Since the beginning of the year, The Fray have gone from being a favorite local band in Denver to national headliners. Their first album, How to Save a Life, is well on its way to going Platinum, or more than one million units in sales. Their music has appeared on at least half a dozen TV shows and in an advertisement for The Devil Wears Prada. They've been on the cable music channels and on every late show on TV (Letterman, Leno, Conan, Ferguson). They've even been Xbox Live Artist of the Month!

Despite all of those measures of success, the band best gauges its impact by simply reading e-mail from fans.

There was the e-mail with a video of two students playing an imaginative version of the title track to How to Save a Life at a high school talent show. Isaac Slade, The Fray's pianist, lead vocalist and songwriter, laughs about it: "The kids were in 11th grade, and we used to do the same thing."

Then there are the more sobering contacts, like the family of a teenager who died in a car accident. They wanted the band know the last song the young man had downloaded was "How to Save a Life," and that he had played it constantly.

"They used some of the lyrics in the bulletin, and his friends had Save a Life with his name tattooed on their arms," Slade says. He pauses before adding, "It's so humbling to hear people connecting to these songs in such a strong way."

The e-mail responses and conversations with fans while on the road are affirmations of what Slade says is God's call to the band away from the Christian music genre and into a secular market. (They are on the Sony label.)

Beyond the angst

Critics have credited the band's success in part to their catchy hooks and melodies, but the power of Slade's lyrics also has been key to catapulting The Fray into the national limelight. HTSL is filled with songs that tell stories of depth and emotion that go beyond the ever-present angst—and Christian—bands.

The band members' lives were largely formed in Denver churches where they helped lead worship, and in the Christian school three of them attended. Slade, 24, and guitarist Joe King, 25, were several years ahead of drummer Ben Wysocki, 21, at Faith Christian Academy. Wysocki and guitarist David Welsh, 21, played in the same worship band.

The band avoided Christian record labels, saying God called them to the secular market instead. "I feel he would be disappointed with us if we limited ourselves," Wysocki says.

Slade says he used to "write all Christian lyrics" until he had an epiphany while working a shift at Starbucks: "None of my friends outside the church understood any of my songs; we had a different set of vocabulary," he says. "So I went home and threw away all those songs."

He adds, "If I handed somebody a double grande mocha latte and told them, 'Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life,' they might throw it back on me.

"If we grow up in the church, it's easy to think it's our Christian duty to preach to every single person because God is the most important thing. And he is, but I'm a musician first. This is my job. We're not pastors. We're not preachers. We're not even missionaries."

Slade likens his job to any other. "If you're a painter, paint, but you don't have to have Jesus in every picture. Paint well, and if you paint well enough, they might ask you why you do that."

Relating to people's lives

Slade points out that Jesus used stories that contained much earthly imagery. "The Pharisees just quoted Bible verses," Slade says. "Jesus related the parables to people's lives. The people were drawn in by the plot development, character and conflict."

After tossing his Christian songs, Slade wrote about the breakup with his first girlfriend. "It was a lot more honest than I had ever been," Slade says. "It was scary being that honest and open."

Slade pushes through the fear with song after song that are every bit as candid. The title track to How to Save a Life recounts Slade's mentoring relationship with a teenager at a Christian halfway house who seemed hell-bent on destroying himself—but, fortunately, did not. With the power of a biblical lament, Slade mourns and cries in anger at the same time:

Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life

"This kid had a thousand opportunities to get into trouble and he got into all of them," Slade says. "It was heartbreaking to see all the sacrifice that went into trying to save this kid. A lot of it came out of love, but it came across as self-righteousness."

The song, Slade says, actually is "a case study" of a point in time of struggling with the teen, whose life is finally turning for the better. "I talked to him just last month," he adds.

The hit "Over My Head (Cable Car)" recounts the struggle to maintain a relationship with his brother. "We had our ideological differences," Slade says. "We were not seeing eye-to-eye on a whole lot of things, and we had to figure out whether or not the relationship was going to continue."

Slade's songwriting skills are apparent in two lines of the song, which capture the pain of wishing his brother were someone else so the situation and accompanying pain could summarily be dismissed:

I wish you were a stranger I could disengage
Say that we agree and then never change

"I think that's the part that a lot of people can relate to," says Slade, acknowledging that most people think the song is about a girl. "All real relationships don't just happen. They take so much work, sacrifice, compromise and understanding and determination to keep going."

Getting his emotions on paper

Slade says he tried to follow a musical mentor's advice and stay away from writing about his own relationship. "I just couldn't figure that one out," Slade says. "It seems the only thing I could write with authority about were things that happened to me or to people closest to me.

"The reason I started writing songs was because I have a talent for it, and I just love getting an emotion in my head out on paper," he continues. "It helps me make sense of life. It's the same way people write in journals so they can look back in years. I basically just put my journals to music."

With his typical wry sense of humor, Slade adds, "Then we try to tighten them up a bit and make them catchier than the average diary."

The band's diaries include entries trying to make sense of what has been essentially an overnight success after four years of playing any place that would have them. Just six months ago, they were still driving themselves in a van from one concert to another, setting up and tearing down their own equipment, eating fast food and then moving on to the next town.

Wysocki sums up that lifestyle: "You're just completely wiped out."

Life is better these days. Now they ride on a luxury bus supplied by the record company, a road crew handles the equipment, the food tastes a lot better, and sometimes they even have enough time to explore a city. "We get to experience so many things that we wouldn't have otherwise," says Wysocki. "It's a really cool job."

Little steps to stardom

What catapulted The Fray from local favorites to national celebrities so quickly? A series of circumstances, actually.

"It was a matter of momentum," Slade says. "It's a million things happening all at once. Opportunities come in a lot of teeny little steps. A radio station plays a song once at 9 p.m. on Sunday. Another deejay hears you and likes your stuff."

Slade doesn't know how the band wound up on The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson—their first major TV gig—but says that led to the other appearances. The rest was just a mixture of appearances and song placements fueling sales, with sales leading to more appearances and song placements.

It's been a dizzying run; Slade even says their lives have been "turned upside down." As a result, the band members are trying to maintaining control of their lives that are suddenly so different from anything they ever imagined. "You're changing your life," he says. "You're changing how you operate."

Accountability partners

The recent changes include learning to deal with the temptations that often accompany fame—including female fans who are looking for more than just an autograph.

The men say they take the temptations seriously and serve as accountability partners for one another. If any member of the band were caught with a woman, Welsh jokes that the other guys wouldn't just reprimand him: "We'd skip right to murder."

"There's also this subconscious pressure," says Welsh, the only unmarried member of the group—and he's getting married in a few weeks. "You don't want to disappoint yourself and the three guys you're spending most of your life with." He adds that their years of friendship make it easier for them to speak frankly with one another.



"There's not a wild card in the band," says Welsh. "It's a group of four solid guys."

As far as being rock stars, "We're pretty boring," says Slade. A typical evening generally is spent in a hotel room calling their wives or, in Welsh's case, fiancée.

Still, they admit that one of their biggest struggles is staying grounded in their relationship with Jesus.

"We're all just learning that there are a lot of more proactive things that need to be done," says Welsh, adding that with time on the road, they're rarely able to attend their home churches. "So," he says, "a lot of that now falls into our hands.


"We're kind of past that first stage where you're thinking, It's great; we're on the road, it's exciting, it's fun. Now we're sort of at the stage where it's still fun, but now it's something where I feel a little distant from God. But I'm working at it. We're all working at it."

Band members don't publicize their faith, but they don't hide it, either. "We're definitely not going to deny it," Wysocki says. "We all grew up on Christian bands like Steven Curtis Chapman and dc Talk. Most of our musical past has been in worship bands."

Wysocki tells of a visit to a radio station that was welcoming calls from listeners when one fan surprised everyone with a comment, including the DJ, who had been looking at a Playboy magazine.

The DJ had asked listeners, "Tell us why you love The Fray," and one caller made their day by saying, "Because they're a faith-based band."

"That," says Wysocki, "was the coolest thing that happened to me in a long time."

porn again christian

Sex Slavery
Over the past three decades the world has witnessed four distinct waves of trafficking for sexual exploitation1. The first wave of trafficked women came from Southeast Asia in the 1970s and was composed mostly of Thai and Filipino women. The second wave arrived in the early 1980s and was made up of women from Africa, mainly Ghana and Nigeria. The third wave, from Latin America, followed right behind and was comprised of women mostly from Colombia, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic. The newest wave is from Eastern and Central Europe. Just a decade ago these women did not even register in the sex trafficking radar screen. Today they represent more than 25 percent of the trade.
There is a wall of complacency, complicity, and corruption that has allowed this trade to explode recently. Sex trafficking runs by the laws of supply and demand. Demand is generated by thousands of men. Economic, social, cultural, and gender factors make women and girls vulnerable to being exploited as an endless supply2.
The international political economy of sex not only includes the supply side—the women of the third world, the poor states, or exotic Asian women—but it cannot maintain itself without the demand from the organizers of the trade—the men from industrialized and developing countries. The patriarchal world system hungers for and sustains the international subculture of docile women from underdeveloped countries. These women are forced or lured into the trade of providing international sexual services. Men accept this world order as well, regardless of their background. The world that is so satisfying to too many men is the same world that is utterly devastating to too many women and girls.
How Are Women Procured?
The Trafficking in Person Report is an annual report that serves as the primary diplomatic tool through which the U.S. Government encourages partnership and increased determination in the fight against forced labor, sexual exploitation, and modern-day slavery. In the 2008 report, these true stories were documented:
Lila, a 19-year-old Romanian girl who had already endured physical and sexual abuse from her alcoholic father, was introduced by an “acquaintance” to a man who offered her a job as a housekeeper/salesperson in the U.K. When she arrived in the U.K., the man sold her to a pimp and Lila was forced into prostitution. She was threatened that she would be sent home in pieces if she did not follow every order. After an attempted escape, her papers were confiscated and the beatings became more frequent and brutal. Months later, after being re-trafficked several times, Lila was freed in a police raid. She was eventually repatriated back to Romania where, after two months, she fled from a shelter where she had been staying. Her whereabouts are unknown.
Nineteen-year-old So-Young stands at less than five feet tall after being chronically malnourished in North Korea. A refugee, she crossed illegally into China with hopes of a better life, but found instead a nightmare of sexual exploitation. An “employer” offered her approximately $1.40 per day in exchange for work—money that So-Young planned on sending back to her family. Deceived by this empty promise, So-Young spent the next several months being passed between handlers. Just days before she was to be purchased by a forty-year-old Chinese man, So-Young managed to escape with the help of a local pastor. Three years later, she was forcibly repatriated to North Korea where she was imprisoned for six months before escaping once more to China. Traffickers kidnapped her once again, repeatedly raping her prior to her sale. Her new “husband” also raped her multiple times before she was able to escape. So-Young remains in hiding today: “There are many people coming out of North Korea, but they don’t have anywhere to go and no other choice but to go that route [into China].”
Samya lived with her mother, step-father and three brothers in a small Cairo apartment. When her step-father raped her, she ran away from home and started living on the streets at the age of 14. She met a group of street kids who, like her, had fled abuse at home. After two months on the streets begging for food and avoiding harassment from police, she met Shouq, an older lady who allowed some of the street girls to stay with her. The first night Samya stayed at Shouq’s apartment, Shouq told her she would have to earn her keep by having sex with male clients for the equivalent of $16. Samya, afraid to live on the streets and fearful of returning home, had sex with several men a day for nearly one year; Shouq kept all of the money.
Kunthy and Chanda were trafficked into prostitution at ages 13 and 14. Held captive in a dilapidated structure in Phnom Penh that locals called the “Anarchy Building,” the girls were raped nightly and routinely beaten, drugged, and threatened by the brothel-keeper and pimps. The girls were released thanks to police intervention and placed in safe aftercare homes. The brothel owner and pimp were prosecuted, tried, and sentenced to 15 and 10 years in prison, respectively, for trafficking and pimping children. Today, Chanda lives in a local aftercare home where she receives excellent care; she wants to become an English translator. Kunthy’s dream is to own an Internet café and design Web sites for businesses. Right now, she works at a local NGO, attends a computer training school, and lives in a transitional housing facility that allows her both freedom and security.
Mary, a young Kenyan woman, met a German tourist in his late sixties at a beach resort and he impressed her with presents and pampering. After departing Kenya, he convinced her to visit him in Germany, but immediately upon her arrival he confiscated her passport and forced her into prostitution. “He raped me, as did the men I was forced to pick at the bar.” Lucy’s health then deteriorated. “I knew it was time to escape—or risk death trying.” Fortunately, Lucy was able to gain access to a telephone and seek help from German police who then rescued her from her trafficker.
Women do not sign up for sexual slavery. Most of girls were recruited or coerced into prostitution. Others were "traditional wives" without job skills who escaped from or were abandoned by abusive fathers or husbands and went into prostitution to support themselves and their children3. There are numerous ways that women are procured for the sex trade. Below are the most prevalent: 4
Bogus recruiters offer prospective job seekers a “complete package” for positions abroad. These offers don’t require prior work experience, and they almost always seek young, preferably single, women. These arrangements often include training, travel documents, and airfare, at no cost to the applicant. In 95 percent of these cases, the promised job does not exist.
Ads are placed in seemingly legitimate employment agencies. Some set up “career day” booths at universities and offer “contracts.” These firms are nothing more than hunting grounds for criminal networks involved in the sex industry.
Relatives, neighbors, or acquaintances can gain trust and approach a young woman or her family with an offer to help her land a job abroad. These culprits include teachers, orphanage workers, police officers and their wives, etc.
Other trafficked women lure in new women. Sometimes this is the only way for the old ones to escape. Sometimes pimps give them the option of going home if they can reel in a certain number of other women.
Sometimes family members (parents, siblings, spouses, etc.) sell women or girls into sex slavery.
New boyfriends also lure women by promising a night out and then force them into waiting vehicles to sell them to pimps or traffickers.
Outright abduction is one of the most terrifying. Women and girls are simply taken while walking home from school or work.
The most horrible is the targeting of orphans. Many girls are at risk when they must leave the orphanage when they graduate at sixteen or seventeen. Most have no resources or funds for living expenses or any education or training to get a job. Traffickers often know when these girls are going to be turned out of the institution and are waiting for them with job offers. Sometimes girls are even purchased from orphanage workers.
Drugs also play a role in procuring and keeping women. Some women are involved in sexual exploitation because they need money for their addiction. But many are forced drugs to make them compliant and to incapacitate them.
It is important to note that not every woman is an innocent dupe. In fact, police and government officials often go to great lengths to stress that some of these women willingly enter the trade. In their eyes, this so-called willingness justifies their apathy and indifference. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even the “willing” women have no idea of what really awaits. It’s true that many women know full well when they accept a job offer that they’ll be working in some aspect of the sex industry—massage parlors, strip clubs, peep shows, and escort agencies. The vast number of women are not aware of the nature or conditions of the work that awaits them. Women are told they will earn $5,000 a month, live in luxury, have three days off, and be able to pick their clients. Also, the “contracts” they sign are for three months, after which time, they are told they are free to leave.
Most women are put into debt bondage, unable to pay off the high interest rate their pimp charges them. They are sold in markets, raped, forced to service ten to thirty men a day, can’t refuse any paying customer, are given no sick days and no days off for their periods, get pregnant, acquire HIV and other STDs or medical and psychological problems, and experience constant abuse and frequent gang rapes.
Customers of these women are sex tourists, U.N. peacekeeper and international humanitarian aid workers, U.S. military men, and local men in the area. The presence of these “mongers” has provided a valuable, readymade market for local brothel keepers trading in trafficked women.
“Breaking” the Women
In secret training centers, thugs snap the spirit and will of their terrified hostages. Women are quickly raped, often a few times. Their travel documents are taken and their activities are tightly controlled and restricted. They are locked in their rooms where they “work” and are under constant guard. They are warned that if they attempt escape they will be severely punished. And they are told that if they do escape their families are targeted. Often, they are videotaped or photographed in embarrassing sexual encounters, and warned that if they escape, the pictures will be sent to their families and hometowns. One woman forced into sex slavery shares her story:
There were many women in this one apartment. Some were crying. Others looked terrified. We were told not to speak to each other. Not to tell each other our names or where we were from. All the time, very mean and ugly men came in and dragged girls into the rooms. Sometimes they would rape girls in front of us. They yelled at them, ordering them to move certain ways . . . to pretend excitement . . . to moan. . . . It was sickening. Those who resisted were beaten. If they did not cooperate, they were locked in dark cellars with rats with no food or water for three days. One girl refused to submit to anal sex, and that night the owner brought in five men. They held her on the floor and every one of them had anal sex on her in front of us all. She screamed and screamed, and we all cried. That girl killed herself the next day. 5
After women are beaten and threatened, they are sold to brothel and bar owners that service the huge numbers of foreigners who make up sex tourists, international peacekeeping forces, and U.S. military men. The level of physical violence and psychological intimidation used to control these women is deliberate and extreme. It’s meant to instill fear—to crush them, destroy their will, and force them to comply. Some women have been mutilated and murdered as punishment for refusing to engage in the sex trade. Some are killed as examples to other women. In short, women are forced to do whatever it takes with whoever pays, and they are forced to do it with a smile on their face, a sparkle in their eye, and a moan on their lips. But all this is done because they will be killed and discarded if they do not.

(Some of) God’s Purposes in This Recession by John Piper

This was just part of a sermon given by John Piper on sunday...
Now what are some of God’s purposes in this recession? I will mention five:
1.He intends for this recession to expose hidden sin and so bring us to repentance and cleansing.
2.He intends to wake us up to the constant and desperate condition of the developing world where there is always and only recession of the worst kind.
3.He intends to relocate the roots of our joy in his grace rather than in our goods, in his mercy rather than our money, in his worth rather than our wealth.
4.He intends to advance his saving mission in the world—the spread of the gospel and the growth of his church—precisely at a time when human resources are least able to support it. This is how he guards his glory.
5.He intends for the church to care for its hurting members and to grow in the gift of love.

2. To Awaken Us to World Poverty
It’s astonishing how blind prosperity makes us to the miseries of the world. God has some remedies for that kind of indifference. For example, it says in Hebrews 13:3, “Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.”
How does that work? He says that there are people that we should care about who are imprison and mistreated. We tend to forget them. So he says, “Remember!” And he says: “As though with them” and “since you have a body.” So how does it work? It works like this: You have a body and sometimes it hurts. When it hurts, remember that there are people right now who are being mistreated—who are hurting much more than you. Imagine yourself in their shoes, and treat them the way you would want to be treated.
Recession hurts us. It imprisons us. What is God’s aim? That we would wake up. Does this recession bother us? If it bothers us, we should be bothered by the fact that millions always live in recession. Only live in recession.
One billion people do not have safe water to drink. Sixteen thousand children die every day from hunger related illnesses. Almost eighteen million children are orphaned in sub-Saharan Africa.
Our family prays through the Global Prayer Digest each morning. For January 29, 2009, we prayed for the Afar people of Ethiopia:
It’s 3:00 a.m., and the Afar father is still awake. The desert night is cold. He snuggles up to his wife and newborn baby to keep them warm. Their stomachs rumble with hunger. Should he slaughter his scrawny goat to feed his wife, hoping she will produce enough milk for their baby? Or should he beseech the clan elders to move again, in search of weeds for the goat, or maybe even some fresh water?
They are fortunate; both his wife and their baby survived the birth. The Afar people have the highest maternal fatality rate in the world. Women give birth without benefit of sterile conditions, or even clean water. Of the babies born alive one-third die before age five. Afar people roam throughout one of the most desolate places on earth: the Ethiopian desert.
Drought and malnutrition make them vulnerable to diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, conjunctivitis, and other water-borne illnesses. Of 13 million Afar people, three million are infected with HIV/AIDS.
It is good to know these things. And to pray about these things. And to cultivate a radical culture at Bethlehem in which hundreds of people dream of ways that their lives can count creatively and long-term for the relief of suffering. Recession has a way of making us wake up to the endless recession of millions. It has a way of changing our priorities and releasing effort and money for others.
Part of our overall vision at Bethlehem called Treasuring Christ Together (TCT) is the Global Diaconate. The giving to TCT is over and above the $9.2 million budget for church and missions this year. Ten percent of everything you give to the vision of TCT goes to our efforts to help the poorest of the poor. Since 2005 when TCT started, you have given over $700,000 to this fund, and $593,000 of it has been disbursed. God’s purpose for this recession is to say: That’s good work; and now more than ever, don’t let up.

the world in turmoil

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,24892394-15084,00.html
For the last few weeks I have become completely dumbfounded in the world's response to the Israel/ Hamas crisis. That anyone would wonder why Isreal would continue to stage its air stikes in Gaza is beyond me. I wonder, If any other country had maliciously time and time again been attacked by a terrorist group would they be opposed? Was not 9/11 the act of a radical terrorist organization? But why has the media forgotten this? Why has only Israel been targeted?
And then I had a revelation...
Like radical islamic terrorists who have no logic to the actions, we american public has also found another radical group that has "no method to its madness." Both organizations are dictated by their irrational prejudices. The left wing, much like Hamas, long for the day they can continue the systematic extermination of the jews. The Israel/ Hamas crisis is not just about land, it is about unadulterated hatred. Whether or not Israel relinguishes an inch, these crazies could care less because they will not be satisfied until every jew is dead.

cool little video from a neat little website

http://www.marshillchurch.org/media/rebels-guide-to-joy/the-rebels-guide-to-joy-in-loneliness/william-cowper-bio

Sunday marked the beginning of a new season; I am now twenty-one and have been freed from the elementary limitations of my youthful days. No limits...no boundaries..only the world at my finger tips!
If only life were that freeing. It seems the older I get the more bound I become. The gravity of reality weighs down leaving me enslaved to so much. I find it ironic that the more I strive, the less fufilled I am. Like the child who tries so hard to reach the cookie jar only to have it tumble out of his grasp falling onto the floor in a million broken pieces. Its funny how the things that we desire and spend our whole lives trying to attain always break. We never can hold onto what we want fully intacted. Even when we seem to reach our goals, it seems that in the end the things that we fight for always unravel and fall apart leaving us empty handed in the end.

surprised by joy

Last week I read Surprised by Joy-Although it was not one of my favorite c.s. lewis books, his description of joy and his intellectual journey to Christianity is very interesting.
This is one of my favorite quotes:
"You will remember how, as a schoolboy, I had destroyed my religious life by a vicious subjectivism which made "realizations" the aim of prayer; turning away from God to seek states of mind, and trying to produce those states of mind by "maistry." With unbelievable folly I now proceeded to make exactly the same blunder in my imaginative life; or rather the same pair of blunders. The first was made at the very moment when I formulated the complaint that the "old thrill" was becoming rarer and rarer. For by that complaint I smuggled in the assumption that what I wanted was a "thrill" a state of my own mind. And there lies the deadly error. Only when your whole attention and desire are fixed on something else- whether a distant mountain, or the past, or the gods of Asgard- does the "thrill" arise. It is a byproduct. Its very existence presupposes that you desire not it but something other and outer. If by any perverse askesis or the use of any drug it could by produced from within, it would at once be seen to be of no value. For take away the object, and what, after all, would be left?- a whirl of images, a fluttering sensation in the diaphragm, a momentary abstraction. And who could want that? This, I say, is the first and deadly error, which appears on every level of life and is equally deadly on all, turning religion into a self-caressing luxury and love into auto- eroticism. And the second error is, having thus falsely made a state of mind your aim, to attempt to produce it. From the fading Northernness I ought to have drawn the conclusion that the Object, the Desirable, was further away, more external, less subjective, than even such a comparatively public and external thing as a system of mythology- had, in fact, only shone through that system. Instead, I concluded that it was a mood or state within myself which might turn up in any context. To "get it again" became my constant endeavor; while reading every poem, hearing every piece of music, going for every walk, I stood anxious sentinel at my own mind to watch whether the blessed moment was beginning and to endeavor to remain it if it did. Because I was still young and the whole world of beauty was opening before me, my own afficious obstructions were often swept aside and, startled into self- forgetfulness, I again tasted Joy. But far more often I frightened it away by my greedy impatience to snare it, and, even when it came, instantly destroyed it by introspection, and at all times vulgarized it by my false assumption about its nature. One thing, however, I learned, which has since saved me from many popular confusions of mind. I came to know by experience that it is not a disguise of sexual desire. Those who think that if adolescents were all provided with suitable mistresses we should soon hear no more of "immortal longings" are certainly wrong. I learned this mistake to be a mistake by the simple, if discreditable, processs of repeatedly making it. From the Northernness one could not easily have slid into erotic fantasies without noticing the difference; but when the world of Morris became the frequent medium of Joy, this transition became possible. It was quite easy to think that one desired those forests for the sake of their female inhabitants, the garden of Hesperus for the sake of his daughters, Hylas' river for the river of nymphs. I repeatedly followed that path- to the end. At the end one found pleasure; which immediately resulted in the discovery that pleasure (whether that pleasure or any other) was not what you had been looking for. No moral question was involved; I was at this time as nearly nonmoral onn that subject as a human creature can be. The frustration did not consist in finding a "lower" pleasure instead of a "higher." It was the irrelevance of the conclusion that marred it. The hounds had changed scent. One had caught the wrong quarry. You might as well offer a mutton chop to a man who is dying of thirst as offer sexual pleasure to the desire I am speaking of. I did not recoil from the erotic conclusion with chaste horror, exclaiming "no that!" My feelings could rather have been expressed in the words, "Quite. I see. But havent we wandered from the real point?" Joy is not a substitute for sex; sex is often a substitute for Joy. I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for Joy.
Such, then, was the state of my imaginative life; over against it stoof the life of my intellect. The two hemispheres of my mind were in the sharpest contrast. On the one side a many- islanded sea of poetry and myth; on the other a glib and shallow "rationalism." Nearly all that I loved I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real I though grim and meaningless. The exceptions were certain people (whom I loved and believed to be real) and nature herself. That is, nature as she appeared to the senses. I chewed endlessly on the problem: "How can it be so beautiful and also so cruel, wasteful and futile?" Hence at this time I could almost have said with Santayana, "All that is good is imaginary; all that is real is evil." In one sense nothing less like a "flight from reality" could be conceived. I was so far from wishful thinking that i hardly thought anything true unless it contradicted my wishes.
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But a desire is turned not to itself but to its object. Not only that, but it owes all its character to its object. Erotic love is not like desire for food, nay, a love for one woman differs from a love for another woman in the very same way and the very same degree as the two women differ from one another. Even our desire for one wine differs in tone from our desire for another. Our intellectual desire (curiosity) to know the true answer to a question is quite different from our desire to find that one answer, rather than another, is true. The form of the desired is in the desire. It is the object which makes the desire harsh or sweet, coarse or choice, "high" or "low." It is the object that makes the desire itself desirable or hateful. I perceived (and this was a wonder of wonders) that just as I had been wrong in supposing that I really desired the Garden of the Hesperides, so also I had been equally wrong in supposing that I desired Joy itself. Joy itself, considered simply as an event in my mind, turned out to be of no value at all. All the value lay in that of which Joy was the desiring. And that object, quite clearly, was no state of my own mind or body at all. In a way, I had proved this by elimination. I had tried everything in my own mind and body; as it were, asking myself, "is it this you want? It is this?" Last of all I had asked Joy itself what I wanted; and labelling it "aesthetic experience," had pretended I could answer Yes. But that answer too had broken down. Inexorably Joy proclaim, "You want- I myself am you want of- something other, outside, not you not any state of you."