For all of you concerned about recent facebook changes concerning your privacy and your firstborn son, here’s a link that supposedly helps you know how exposed you are.
Try it out.
I came up all good.
Of course, there may be some hidden data miner that means I just funded someone’s shopping spree at www.borrowmycreditcard.com.
But at least I feel better about Facebook.
HT: Lifehacker
Ed Stetzer, from Lifeway Research, has some new research out about the priorities of the millennials (those born between 1980 and 1991). You can read Stetzer here, or the Christian Post article to which he refers here.
Here’s what’s interesting to me. Only 13% of millennials say that religion or spirituality is their top priority. My guess is that’s probably not actually different than past generations, though I have no numbers to demonstrate that.
My guess is tied to the fact that very few people, on any given week, practice any actual religion or follow any actual spiritual practices in any substantive way.
For decades, we have seen attendance and involvement in all kinds of churches decline. So this study simply puts a number on a fact that we all already know: the people we are trying to reach simply are not that interested in religion and spirituality as a top priority in their life.
Does that affect the way we do ministry? I think it does.
How? I will tell you later.
By the way, 61% say family is the top priority. Again, that is a number placed on a fact that we already know. How many people do we here claiming that their priorities place family over church, with the result that church worship and involvement takes a back seat to family issues.
I know that opens a huge can of worms from which, honestly, some very dumb arguments are made.
Does that affect the way we do ministry? I think it does.
How? I will tell you later, much later, when the danger of being killed for my beliefs is less.
But in a nutshell, let me put it this way: I think the idea that a father leads his family to miss church for a Sunday for a “family day” at the lake or beach or whatever, rather than missing work on a Friday for that family day so that they can be in church on Sunday speaks volumes to actual priorities.
Or the idea that a family misses midweek Bible teaching because it’s the night of the week they have together after shopping, ball games, and homework, speaks equally loudly.
And we need to think very seriously about what it says.
People who would have nothing to say if they did not constantly repeat the same thing over and over.
Here’s a Twilight Zone-type premise for you. What if surgeons never got to work on humans, they were instead just endlessly in training, cutting up cadavers? What if the same went for all adults – we only got to practice at simulated versions of our jobs? Lawyers only got to argue mock cases, for years and years. Plumbers only got to fix fake leaks in classrooms. Teachers only got to teach to videocameras, endlessly rehearsing for some far off future. Book writers like me never saw our work put out to the public – our novels sat in drawers. Scientists never got to do original experiments; they only got to recreate scientific experiments of yesteryear. And so on.
Rather quickly, all meaning would vanish from our work. Even if we enjoyed the activity of our job, intrinsically, it would rapidly lose depth and relevance. It’d lose purpose. We’d become bored, lethargic, and disengaged.
In other words, we’d turn into teenagers.
Newsweek writes about a new book on the topic of teenagers and maturity.
Without painful real-life experiences, modern teens’ brains never learn to tell the difference between what they should fear and what they shouldn’t. Without real consequences and real rewards, teens never learn to distinguish between good risks they should take and bad risks they shouldn’t.
I don’t know if the article and book are right, but it is an interesting thought.
We live in a world of almost perpetual adolescence. I cringe when I hear twenty- and thirty-somethings talk about playing video games. I roll my eyes when I hear of video game tournaments in bars, knowing that the people who may (I say may not as permission but as possibility) legitimately enjoy video games are not even able to go in bars.
If only video games were the worst. This immaturity shows up in every area of life. Men and women in the middle ages of life treat spouses like high school prom dates: have a good time, “get some,” and then move on to the next person. Share your children like it’s a $1 large drink at McDonald’s. Work out the custody arrangements in such a way that you get at least every other weekend free to go out and party like you’re a child.
One of the characteristics of childhood is that children think life is about them. Parents are supposed to take care of them, provide them with food and toys, keep them from getting bored. All the toys in the room are their prerogative, and if another child has it, just take it away. Nap when you feel like it, and stay up when you feel like it. No need to take responsibility because mom will cook the food and clean it up. If you stall long enough, you won’t even have to put your toys away before bed. Mom and Dad will just get tired of fighting with you. And when you don’t get your way, make a big scene with lots of noise and angry voice tones. Mom and Dad will be shamed into compliance … or make a big scene with lots of angry voice tones.
Some kids never grow out of it. We see it with spouses who say, “If I don’t get my way, you are on your own.” Angry voices, withdrawal, and abandonment result. We see it with employees who say, “If I don’t get my way, I am not working hard.” We see it with church members who say, “If I don’t get my way, I am going to another church.”
One of the challenges of parenthood is actually raising children to be adults. I have a four-year old and a one-year old. I used to be an expert on raising children. Then I had some. Now I don’t have a clue. But in between laughing a lot and crying a lot, between the temptation to yell at them and to shut up and do it myself, I am reminded that my job is not to have a peaceful evening, or a great day, but to raise disciples of Jesus who are prepared to live the gospel in a messed-up world.
And if you are going to live the gospel in a messed up world, we are going to have to deny ourselves and grow up in a hurry.
Because if the gospel teaches me anything, it teaches me that life is not about me and my desires, but about self-denial, about working for a greater cause, about serving a greater God than the god of “my way right away.” It is about life transformed by grace.
As we approach Mother’s Day, I am reminded that moms are given great tasks. When it comes to spiritual influence, God gave men the task of teaching in the church. He said that “woman are saved through childbearing” (1 Timothy 2:15).
What did he mean? I think he meant that a woman’s way of repairing the damage of the fall takes place through her influence on her children. She was not given the task of leading the church through teaching, but of raising her children to not follow in the ways of Eve, who for the pleasure of the moment brought a world full of hurt.
Children who don’t grow up usually come from families who didn’t make them grow up. Parents raised teenagers and left them there.
I wish I had all the answers. I don’t. So I will stop talking with this final word: Let’s grow up already.
Two interesting stories juxtapose themselves in the Detroit Free Press this week.
In the first story, nine members of the Hutaree militia were ordered released on bond. They were arrested for plotting the death of law enforcements officers by luring one to a 911 call and killing him, and then attacking the funeral procession where many police officers would be killed. The judge released these dangerous people on bond, declaring that there was not enough evidence to hold them and hateful speech was protected by the First Amendment, even though the speech threatens an attack on the government with clearly laid out plans, including weapons. (A federal judge has stayed the release until Wednesday at 5:00 pm.)
In the second story, a man released on bond for multiple violations including being an absconder from probation for previous convictions and carrying a concealed weapon shot a killed a Detroit police officer early Monday morning. He wounded four others before taking a bullet to the back side. Today, a young wife is a widow and a young son is fatherless because a judge decided to release a dangerous man on bond.
The judge who ordered the release of the Hutaree must surely hope that the second scenario doesn’t take place again. That will be a heavy burden to bear for this gross misjudgment and irresponsible order.
The judge has imposed some strict bond conditions, such a home arrest, electronic tethers, surrendering passports and concealed weapons permits, and staying away from guns and drugs.
But this group strikes me as the type of group that is totally unmoved by government orders. If they were likely to submit to the authority of the government, they would not have have been plotting this attack in this first place.
In a land of freedom, there is also responsibility. And that responsibility falls as much to the judicial branch as to the citizens of this country. When a person or persons declare their intent to commit mass murder, and have laid out those plans, a responsible judiciary takes action; it does not release them to continue their plots.
Free speech has never included the right to yell “Fire” in a crowded theater. Surely plotting to the mass murder of law enforcement officers is not less than that.
We have many dedicated police officers who place their lives on the line every day. Every call they go to is a potential grave for them. They know it. It is a life of risk.
Judges should not increase that risk by releasing people with violent histories and documented plots to kill law enforcement officers.
It is irresponsible. It is dangerous.
Hopefully, it won’t become tragic again.
Verse:
John 3:16; Jn 3:16; John 3
Keyword:
Salvation, Jesus, Gospel
With Operators:
AND, OR, NOT, “ ”
