…I believe; help my unbelief! – Mark 9:24

Last year marked the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, published in 1611 as the king’s attempt to create one Bible for everyone in a society simmering with divided doctrinal loyalties. Michael Gove, the British education secretary, intended to commemorate the anniversary by donating a new leather-bound copy to all government primary and secondary schools. After Prime Minister David Cameron nixed the plan to use taxpayers’ money, Conservative Party members donated.

Famous atheist/agnostic Richard Dawkins penned an article about the plan for The Guardian last Saturday. He not only supports having Bibles in schools, but he wrote that his organization, the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, would have “given it serious consideration” if Gove had asked for a donation. He calls the Bible “a great work of literature” and wrote that a native English speaker who’s never read the book is “verging on the barbarian.”

Read the full article.

I used to love blogging. I ate it, drank it, and slept on it at night. Then I became a consultant and professional blogger, earning a living giving advice and blogging for others. Then I burned out on politics and started blogging about digital tech and music (and more pop cultural topics). I was even quoted in a story on a tech news site. Fun times.

Now I hardly blog at all. I returned to what I intended to do in the first place, before I’d ever heard of blogs: freelance writing.

Going through dusty boxes of notebooks, loose papers, and other stuff, I found a copy of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine (homeschooling) from Winter 2006. A reporter had interviewed me about blogging at a God Blog convention that October. I’d forgotten about it. I re-read it, and it reminded me of how much I used to love blogging. Click on the image above if you’d like to read the interview (and click again to magnify). Nothing profound. It just brought back memories.

While running for the Illinois state senate in 1996, Barack Obama responded to a questionnaire saying he favored legalizing homosexual “marriage” and wrote that he “would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.”  In 2004, he said he opposed homosexual “marriage,”  based on his faith, and didn’t consider it a civil right.

For the record, homosexuals have the same rights of citizenship as the rest of us. What they want is the special right to redefine a foundational institution. But putting that aside, sources reported that Obama’s stance changed again (when in fact it hadn’t). Some politicians will say anything for a vote, and Obama falls into that category.

Read the full article.

Did Harvard University hire the blond, blue-eyed Elizabeth Warren, a U.S. Senate candidate in Massachusetts, because she claimed to be an American Indian?

That’s what members of the Massachusetts Republican Party want to know. They’ve called for Harvard to investigate whether Warren’s supposed racial minority status played a role in her recruitment. Warren, who is challenging Sen. Scott Brown for his seat, listed herself as Native American in legal directories but said she was hired on merit. Columnist Michael Barone said Warren identified as an Indian at previous schools where she taught.

Read the full article.

*Wish I’d come up with that name, but Mark Steyn beat me to it.

[Note: The point I tried to make in the column was how ridiculous it is for the blond, blue-eyed Elizabeth Warren to list herself as a racial minority, an American Indian, not that the descendants of American Indians cannot be blond and blue-eyed.]

Update (5/8): North Carolina voters approved a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

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North Carolina already has a law that defines marriage as between a man and a woman. Why do legislators want another? Read on, and if you’re a registered voter in North Carolina, please vote.

[On Tuesday, May 8], North Carolina voters will decide for or against the following language:

“Constitutional amendment to provide that marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State.”

If the voters who choose to protect marriage outnumber those who don’t, the following will appear in the state constitution:

“Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state. This section does not prohibit a private party from entering into contracts with another private party; nor does this section prohibit courts from adjudicating the rights of private parties pursuant to such contracts.”

At least 41 states have laws banning homosexual “marriage” by amendment or statute, including North Carolina. In 1996, the state legislature passed a law that defined marriage as between a man and a woman. But the political landscape has changed in 16 years. Homosexual activists have become much more determined to redefine marriage and render it meaningless. North Carolina lawmakers decided to let the people vote directly and make the ban part of the state constitution, so only the voters—not courts or lawmakers—can change it, according to state law.

Read the full article.

In case you haven’t figured it out, today’s my birthday.

Time…it flies, no?

How should Christians respond in the so-called illegal immigration debate? Gabriel Salguero, president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, opposes laws like SB 1070. In fact, he favors immigration reform, a euphemism for amnesty. “Hospitality is not at the margins of Scripture,” he said earlier this year at the G92 South Immigration Conference at Samford University. “Jesus wasn’t kidding around when He said, ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me.’”

Scripture misapplication notwithstanding, Christians certainly are called to be compassionate, but are we called to welcome lawbreakers? In light of such questions, Professor James K. Hoffmeier, author of The Immigration Crisis: Immigrants, Aliens, and the Bible (Crossway, 2009), investigated what the Bible has to say about foreigners/strangers/visitors in a host country. The relevant terms he found are ger,zar, and nekhar. Zar and nekhar refer to people passing through, but only ger refers to foreigners who live in the land with the host’s permission.

Read the full article.

The web is buzzing about an opinion article published by The New York Times last Saturday. “The Downside to Cohabitating Before Marriage” has been one of the most emailed and among the most viewed articles on the Times’ website this week, although it contains nothing new or groundbreaking. It merely confirms what most know or suspect: Living together before marriage increases the risk of divorce.

Meg Jay, a clinical psychologist and author, writes about a client she calls “Jennifer.” The client and her live-in boyfriend eventually married, but when Jennifer was in therapy with Jay, divorce was on her mind. During cohabitation—a euphemism for “shacking up”—Jennifer said she felt like she was on a “multiyear, never-ending audition to be his wife.” They’d bought furniture together and had the same friends. In their 20s when they moved in together, they married in their 30s seemingly by default. How romantic.

Read the full article.

One side of the political aisle claims that requiring American citizens to show a photo ID to elect other Americans to positions of power presents a hardship to “the poor,” blacks, and Hispanics. The claim is absurd on its face and even more so when you consider that people have to show photo ID throughout their lives, including when cashing a check, boarding a plane, or even entering the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), which opposes voter ID laws.

Voter fraud doesn’t have to be rampant to pose serious problems. One fraudulent vote is one too many, especially in close contests. In a stunning and ironic display of potential fraud, James O’Keefe, who released undercover videos of ACORN employees advising operatives on how to break the law, released this week an undercover video that revealed how easy it is to commit voter fraud in the nation’s capital.

Read the full article.

This Sunday we commemorate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, the One we call the Christ. The resurrection is the foundation of our faith, and Christianity itself rests on the truth of the claim that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. His physical resurrection is a sign pointing to our own physical resurrection, but also a deeper, spiritual rising from the dead.
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We are spiritually dead and unable to do anything to save ourselves. Before salvation, we were as spiritually dead as Lazarus was physically dead in his tomb. Christ called to him and commanded him to come forth, and the dead man rose and came forth.

“I am the resurrection and the life,” Christ said to Martha, Lazarus’ sister. “Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

Read the full article.

Tim Tebow knows his future

Doctors thought Timothy Richard Tebow, the youngest of five homeshooled children, would be stillborn. While doing missions work in the Philippines, his pregnant mother contracted a bacterial infection. The medication she took caused placental disruption. Doctors recommended abortion, but his mother refused. In his memoir, Through My Eyes, Tebow said his mother’s pregnancy caused her “a great deal of pain and bleeding.” The whole family prayed for him.
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Before he was drafted, Tebow appeared in two Focus on the Family commercials that ran during the 2010 Super Bowl. The ads featured him and his mother, and the message clearly was pro-life and anti-abortion, although the words were never uttered.

While the Great Commission doesn’t require that we attain celebrity status to be effective, God raised Tebow to an international stage, and he seems to be using his platform well. While his on-field numbers leave much to be desired, his off-field mission to help and to heal both physical and spiritual sickness inspires.

Read the full article.

Richard Dawkins encourages atheists to mock and ridicule Christians

[At last Saturday's Reason Rally] Dawkins called on atheists and agnostics to “ridicule and show contempt” for the religious and their doctrines. The example he used was the Roman Catholic belief that the bread and wine of communion turns into the actual body and blood of Christ. He encouraged atheists to mock and ridicule the religious in public.

Although Protestants don’t adhere to the doctrine of transubstantiation, we do believe in the virgin birth and that Christ rose from the dead, which atheists find equally mock-worthy. But it wouldn’t occur to this Protestant to mock and ridicule Roman Catholics. We can reason together from Scripture the doctrine’s veracity.

If Saturday’s gathering was a rally for reason, why didn’t Dawkins urge the crowd to reason with people of faith? His own words betray his contempt not just for Christians, but also for God. Isn’t it telling how strongly the godless embrace godlessness? One wonders why Dawkins, an intelligent man, would promote scorn instead of discourse. Perhaps he’s afraid of conviction.

Read the full article.

Last March 18 I forgot it was the 14th anniversary of my sobriety. I usually talk about it and mention it on my blog. But I didn’t think about it until two months later. I never imagined I’d ever overlook such an important date.

For over a decade, I consumed alcohol in large quantities whenever I could, and alcohol ended up consuming me. I lived a quarter of my life in search of the mind-altering liquid, trying to drown out God knows what. I wish I could say becoming a Christian sobered me up, but I stopped drinking before I was saved. I became a Christian in part because sobriety had left me just as empty as alcoholism.

Read the rest at WORLD.

On Monday, the Pennsylvania State University Board of Trustees released a report explaining why they “removed” the late head football coach Joe Paterno and university President Graham Spanier last November. Penn State alumni, students, and others complained about the firings and asked the trustees to “state clearly” why they did so. The report is their response.
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We didn’t need a report to tell us Paterno showed a failure of leadership or that Spanier’s actions were insufficient. Is there any doubt the “winningest” coach held the kind of power at Penn State to blow the lid off such heinous and disgusting attacks on vulnerable children? Of course, he did. So why didn’t he go to the police? And why didn’t McQueary, who witnessed the rape of a 10-year-old boy, clobber the pervert over the head and rescue the child? According to an ESPN timeline of events, a janitor named James Calhoun also saw Sandusky abusing a young boy in the shower. Why didn’t he help?

What kind of man sees or hears a child being raped, or suspects rape, and leaves the child to his fate?

Read the rest at WORLD.

Kirk Cameron, former teen star of Growing Pains, a sitcom that ran from 1985 to 1992, became a Christian while on the show. In 2002, he co-founded a ministry called The Way of the Master (the on-the-street witnessing is instructional), and in 2008, he played the leading man in the Christian movie Fireproof, a surprise hit. Promoting his new documentary scheduled for release in theaters later this month, Cameron appeared on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight last Friday.

The host asked for his comments on homosexuality, and Cameron told the truth: “I think that it’s … unnatural. I think that it’s … detrimental, and ultimately destructive to so many of the foundations of civilization.”

Naturally, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) didn’t like it. GLAAD’s Herndon Graddick said, “In this interview, Kirk Cameron sounds even more dated than his 1980s TV character. Cameron is out of step with a growing majority of Americans, particularly people of faith who believe that their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters should be loved and accepted based on their character and not condemned because of their sexual orientation.”

Read the rest at WORLD.

Update: Kirk Cameron responds.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Under Maryland law, a resident must show a “good and substantial reason” to obtain a permit to carry a handgun.

But the state has it exactly backward. The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution grants a citizen the right to own and carry guns, and the government shall not infringe on that right. The amendment restricts the government, not the people. And wouldn’t you know it? A court agrees with me.

From the AP (emphasis added):

States can channel the way their residents exercise their Second Amendment right to bear arms, but because Maryland’s goal was to minimize the number of firearms carried outside homes by limiting the privilege to those who could demonstrate “good reason,” it had turned into a rationing system, infringing upon residents’ rights, U.S. District Judge Benson Everett Legg wrote.

“A citizen may not be required to offer a ‘good and substantial reason’ why he should be permitted to exercise his rights,” he wrote. “The right’s existence is all the reason he needs.”

Plaintiff Raymond Woollard obtained a handgun permit after fighting with an intruder in his Hampstead home in 2002, but was denied a renewal in 2009 because he could not show he had been subject to “threats occurring beyond his residence.” Woollard appealed, but was rejected by the review board, which found he hadn’t demonstrated a “good and substantial reason” to carry a handgun as a reasonable precaution. The suit filed in 2010 claimed that Maryland didn’t have a reason to deny the renewal and wrongly put the burden on Woollard to show why he still needed to carry a gun.

Exercise your rights while you still can, people.