If you have been watching the news over the last couple of weeks, you might not know that a very controversial trial is taking place in Philadelphia. Kermit Gosnell is accused of murder. Allegedly he murdered one of his patients in the process of doing a late term abortion under abominable sanitary conditions at his abortion clinic. She died from a drug overdose. He was charged with infanticide since he allegedly delivered late term babies and then snipped their spinal cords with scissors. As I was writing this post, it was reported that the charges of infanticide were dropped because the prosecution could not prove the babies were born alive. Gosnell’s abortion clinic has been called a house of horrors by anti-abortion advocates. I’m sorry I can’t give you more details about the conditions or Gosnell because there seems to be a sort of collective ignoring of the case by the media. As one blogger pointed out, there seems to be an asymmetry of the coverage of outrage between those who were so exorcised that the Susan G. Komen foundation withdrew support from some clinics who also did abortions and  the near non-outrage regarding Gosnell’s almost macabre nonchalance at infanticide (apparently he kept the severed feet of some of the fetus’ in a jar). Continue reading …

The Roman Catholic Church went through the process and ritual of selecting the next Pope, the head of that institution. By all accounts Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the man who has chosen the name, “Francis” has great humility. He cooked is own food, rode the bus rather than having a limo and doesn’t even wear flashy shoes. He is very concerned about the poor but the liberal media is in utter shock! The new pope is not in favor of same gender marriage or abortion. Not even contraception. Imagine, they hired a Roman Catholic to head the church! At times I thought some of the news personalities were going to become apoplectic. On one of the FOX shows Juan Williams expressed his dismay at the Pope’s lack of being up with the times and it was pointed out that the Pope is Roman Catholic and a requirement in taking the position is a pledge to uphold and defend the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. Juan than said that lots of American Roman Catholics favor same gender marriage and abortion. The host then pointed out that the Church is NOT a democratic institution. Perhaps part of the problem is that our President and Congress also swear to uphold and defend the Constitution but once sworn in ignore their commitment and go on to do whatever they want in violation of the Constitution. Honesty, integrity and fidelity are not highly valued commodities among liberals and progressives. Continue reading …

At first some readers will this is another political diatribe but really the examples I will be using are for illustration of a communication problem which is growing in our nation and culture in not only the political but religious arena. It is the problem of undefined words and concepts. Many claims to be spiritual but not religious. What does that mean exactly? Does God or some sort of deity come into play in the spiritual but not religious life and if so what sort of God? If it remains undefined we might simply call it the Fuzz God. Wispy with comforting colors which help to relax but makes no demands. It is the sort of God that fuzzy undefined language would allow. Continue reading …

I became a Christian in the mid-1970s. The winds of cultural change were already evident in good old America. Even though it had long been a nation which operated on Judeo/Christian morals and values, Progressivism had been doing its work slowly in universities and amongst politicians for 60 or 70 years. Even though the nation has a sort of a Christian hangover, still generally holding biblical values in the main, it was cultural but not necessarily tied to any embrace of biblical faith. The Barna Research Group recently released its material on America’s Most Bible Minded Cities. The statistics were not overly surprising to me but rather served to confirm something we at MCOI have said for quite a long time. We need missionaries to America! In fact we did an article in our Journal in 1999 titled, of all things, Missionaries to America? A little more than a decade later, in 2011, I revisited the topic in Missionaries to America – Deux. I won’t reprise either of them today but do think Barna’s research demonstrates something we have raised on more than one occasion. The church, for all of its attempt at remaking itself in order to have a broader appeal, has lost its sense of mission and as a result its impact on and influence in culture. Continue reading …

I have to admit, this started out to be a very different blog than it ended up. Like many, I was discouraged at the results of the election. Yes, I know that God is in control and uses even government for His purposes but sometimes those purposes are to punish His people or the nations in which His people dwell and they suffer as well. To be perfectly honest I am not a big fan of suffering.

I know that politics is messy business and corruption abounds in the hallowed halls of Congress and the White House. Special interest groups are working hard to persuade the Federal Government to use the club of legislation to beat down the opposition. But that is how government works in a Democratic Republic. We vote for candidates that most closely align with our worldview and values and trust they will at the very least protect us from those who have a different view. Continue reading …

Book Review: Buyer Beware Finding the Truth in the Marketplace of Ideas, Janet Parshall, Moody Press, 2012, 199 pages, $14.99

If you are looking for an informative and stimulating Christian book this one is instructive, thought provoking and practical. Janet Parshall is a columnist, author and radio host. In Buyer Beware she begins by taking us back to the 1600’s and John Bunyan’s classic work, Pilgrim’s Progress. She borrows Bunyan’s Vanity Fair imagery to launch into discussions about our present public square; “Vanity Fair” was and still is a rough place. Surely Christian and Faithful would have preferred the gentle countryside that lay not far beyond the fair. After all, who really wants to go into all that messy stuff – the shouting, the stealing, the lying, the sexual promiscuity, the turning of Truth on its head?

So let’s go visit Vanity Fair together. We’ll visit the booths and see for ourselves what is being bought and sold. Come and study the counterfeit goods being offered in the public square today so that you can better know how to offer the countervailing gift of truth. (Pages, 19 and 21).

Parshall transitions to the Old Testament Jeremiah Continue reading …

In the heat of election season the conventions of each major party reveals what they stand for in their “planks.” The Republicans have vowed fiscal conservatism and although they tend to be pro-life and in favor of traditional marriage they are also saying they are not addressing moral but economic issues in this election. The Democrat Party on the other hand have moral issues as a part of their platform. Abortion on demand, abortifacients included in all insurance plans, normalizing same sex marriage and a variety of other issues of moral significance. Quite a flap was raised when it was realized that all mentions of God were removed from the Democrat platform. U.S. Democratic Party removes reference to Jerusalem as Israel’s capital from official platform made quite the headline. Continue reading …