Why We Need Hell

By Frederica Mathewes-Green

It is tragic that some Christians have been so battered with stories of a prideful, vindictive God that they have fled from Jesus' fold. No wonder some become atheists; who would want to spend eternity with such a tyrant?

Yet I'm going to make a case for hell, though not the one you see in cartoons, a fiery cavern where demons poke you with pitchforks. Dante made that kind of thing look pretty exciting, but "The Inferno" was written almost 1300 years after the Gospels. When you strip away European and medieval assumptions, and look at the writings of Christians in lands and cultures closer to Jesus' time, you get a different picture.

First of all, hell is not a place. If you're separated from your body and exist only as a spirit, you don't take up any room. In the Hebrew Scriptures all the dead, righteous and unrighteous, abide in Sheol (the Greek Scriptures translated it "Hades"). It is a non-physical realm where the souls of all the departed await the Last Judgment.

But they don't all experience it the same way. In Jesus' parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man (Luke 16:19-31), the Rich Man is not sequestered in a bleak alternative dimension; he's able to see Lazarus, and speak to Abraham. But he's sure isn't having a good time.

Greeks Need To Be Evangelized Anew

-Credo website

The Department of External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate received the text of a report from the Church of Greece's Holy Synod given by Metropolitan Nectarios of Kerkira and Paksonos on the subject of "Re-evangelization of the people - new perspectives". The report was presented at one of the sessions of the Holy Synod of the Greek Church and reflects its position on this subject.

The document describes a highly prioritized direction which must be taken by the Church - a new evangelization of the Greek society. This is essential because at the present time the faith is understood by many as a cultural tradition rather than a part of a person's life experience.

According to the Holy Synod serious attention must be given to the formation of educated pastors since under present conditions the expectations from pastors have risen considerably. They must be knowledgeable not only in theology but in other categories of knowledge.

so you're gonna get laid off??

As someone who got laid off *expletives* from his first job, this is golden:

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by Dennis Prager

Throughout much of last week, hundreds of thousands of students in France were angrily protesting.

They have been joined by the major French labor unions, which are threatening a general strike.

And what is this all about?

It is all about a new law in France that allows a company to fire a person under the age of 26, without cause, within two years of being hired.

Wow. Imagine that. You might get fired from your first job.

As it happens, the whole point of the law was to encourage companies to hire young people. The unemployment rate among young people in France is 23 percent. And in many suburbs, it is double that. Meanwhile, French companies are understandably loath to hire 22-year-olds when they cannot fire them except "for cause," which under union rules means something like committing mass murder in the workplace.

What these massive demonstrations reveal is the narcissism, laziness and irresponsibility inculcated by socialist societies.

Chef's dead....

The children try to rescue Chef, but in the end he turns to head back to the "Super Adventure Club" — until he falls off a bridge onto rocks, is burned, stabbed and mauled by a mountain lion and bear.

Then he apparently dies.

"A lot of us don't agree with the choices the Chef has made in the last few days," one of the children eulogizes him at a funeral. "Some of us feel hurt and confused that he seemed to turn his back on us. But we can't let the events of the past few weeks take away the memories of how Chef made us smile.

"We shouldn't be mad at Chef for leaving us," the eulogy concludes. "We should be mad at that fruity little club for scrambling his brains."
The door for Hayes' return wasn't completely closed. In the show's final scene, members of the "Super Adventure Club" try to revive Chef, and it's not clear he's really dead.

The liberal baby bust

-Philip Longman

What's the difference between Seattle and Salt Lake City? There are many differences, of course, but here's one you might not know. In Seattle, there are nearly 45% more dogs than children. In Salt Lake City, there are nearly 19% more kids than dogs.
This curious fact might at first seem trivial, but it reflects a much broader and little-noticed demographic trend that has deep implications for the future of global culture and politics. It's not that people in a progressive city such as Seattle are so much fonder of dogs than are people in a conservative city such as Salt Lake City. It's that progressives are so much less likely to have children.
It's a pattern found throughout the world, and it augers a far more conservative future — one in which patriarchy and other traditional values make a comeback, if only by default. Childlessness and small families are increasingly the norm today among progressive secularists. As a consequence, an increasing share of all children born into the world are descended from a share of the population whose conservative values have led them to raise large families.
Today, fertility correlates strongly with a wide range of political, cultural and religious attitudes. In the USA, for example, 47% of people who attend church weekly say their ideal family size is three or more children. By contrast, 27% of those who seldom attend church want that many kids.

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Double-Standards Reveal the Culture War

Posted by Doug_TenNapel

I laugh at Southpark precisely because they nail everyone, but it's a guilty pleasure...it's not correct to mock other religions, races, cultures etc. It ends up supporting a soft form of Nihilism, as if nothing is sacred so let's throw crap at everything. To refuse to treat anything as sacred is just another absolute so even Nihilism becomes a self-defeating argument.

As a conservative I actually support Hollywood businesses to have a long leash about how they choose to treat races and ideologies. If they want to discriminate against Christians and "whites" but not Scientologists and "blacks", fine- I don't want government to control their content. But if Hollywood does continue to discriminate against Christians, conservatives or Southerners, they must give up the label of tolerance, progressive, or even "Liberal"...and the thought of giving up that badge of honor is high blasphemy to the religion of the anti-religious.

Our Opportunity With India- Condoleeza Rice

Our agreement with India is unique because India is unique. India is a democracy, where citizens of many ethnicities and faiths cooperate in peace and freedom. India's civilian government functions transparently and accountably. It is fighting terrorism and extremism, and it has a 30-year record of responsible behavior on nonproliferation matters.

Aspiring proliferators such as North Korea or Iran may seek to draw connections between themselves and India, but their rhetoric rings hollow. Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism that has violated its own commitments and is defying the international community's efforts to contain its nuclear ambitions. North Korea, the least transparent country in the world, threatens its neighbors and proliferates weapons. There is simply no comparison between the Iranian or North Korean regimes and India.

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FURRY LOBSTER

Hollywood is so....brave

No doubt about it. Hollywood is now ready to tackle any subject. With that in mind, I’d like to propose a handful of titles for next year.

Che, the Later Years: Following on the success of The Motorcycle Diaries, this sequel would pick up with Che Guevara’s life after he joined forces with Fidel Castro in Cuba. It would include scenes of Che presiding over firing squads after the overthrow of the Batista government and setting up Cuba’s labor-camp system, which was used to imprison not only enemies of the revolution and political dissidents but homosexuals and (later) AIDS victims. The film would also highlight Che’s literary growth from a casual diarist to a political theorist: “Hatred as an element of struggle, unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine — this is what our soldiers must become . . .”

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why can't I post pics???

UPDATE (6/13/06)- Now I can..there's my new profile pic

For some reason...some days I can post pictures...some days I can't
d'ohhhhh

Voice from Sinai

There is a glaring fallacy in the contemporary presumption that idolatry is found only in polytheism. I admit, of course, that all polytheism is necessarily idolatrous, but it seems not to have occurred to most folks that the confession of one false god is just as idolatrous as the confession of several. Monotheism is no defense against idolatry.

This modern misunderstanding about idolatry, moreover, is the twin and steady companion of another, the strange fancy that all monotheists necessarily confess the same divinity.
Arguably the clearest spokesman for the latter fallacy may be that C. S. Lewis character who forthrightly declared, "Tash is another name for Aslan. All that old idea of us being right and the Calormenes wrong is silly. We know better now. The Calormenes use different words but we all mean the same thing. Tash and Aslan are only two different names for you know Who. That's why there can never be any quarrel between them. Get that into your heads, you stupid brutes. Tash is Aslan: Aslan is Tash."

The telltale line in that discourse, I submit, is "We know better now." On matters respecting God, I can't think of anything we know better now.

The character that made that proclamation was, of course, the Ape in Lewis's The Last Battle, and it really was an apish thing to say. Although I have heard his thesis proclaimed times out of mind (and even alas, by those who call themselves Orthodox Christians), it cannot stand up to two seconds of critical reflection.

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