What Happens to Right and Wrong Online

What's the difference between "cheating on a test" in an actual classroom and "emailing test answers to friends" over the Internet? They're both unethical, right? So why is it that some teenagers are willing to do one, but not the other?

Does "Right or Wrong" Matter Online?

Researchers at Michigan State University wanted to know if young people held the same moral standards online as they do offline. So, in ongoing studies they asked hundreds of 12-year-olds to classify certain virtual actions as "right" or "wrong" and then they asked them to classify similar real world actions as "right" or "wrong." 

The tweens were asked about the acceptability of online practices such as "spreading computer viruses," "viewing pornography," and "sending sexually explicit messages to strangers." The real world actions they were asked about included "bullying or teasing," "lying to parents or teachers," and "using racial slurs."

What they discovered was a bit unsettling.

Continue reading here...

Hooked on Facebook

Imagine a drug that made American teenagers think and talk more about the timeless concerns of adolescence: who's cool, who's cute and who's going out with whom. Then imagine that millions of teens were taking this drug, every day.

You don't have to. The drug exists, and it is called "Facebook."

There are competitor drugs, too, such as "My Space."

Between one-half and three-quarters of American teens now have a profile on an Internet social networking site, where they spend hours each week -- nobody really knows how many -- sharing pictures, gossip and jokes. And we should all be worried about it, although not for the reasons you might suspect.

Continue reading here...

Mission Trip

Hey dudes- just wanted to kick out another reminder that the signup and deposit deadline for this summer's mission trip to Detroit, Chicago, and St. Louis is this Sunday, March 29th. 

We need, for each student, the permission slip, filled out by a parent or legal guardian, and a $40 deposit. 

Some states buck embryonic stem cell trend

President Obama may have opened the floodgates for federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, but a handful of state legislatures are trying to carve a different path in what some are calling the latest front in the nation's culture wars.

In the days since Obama made his March 9 announcement, legislatures in Oklahoma, Georgia and Mississippi have taken steps toward restricting or prohibiting embryonic stem cell research. Additionally, Oklahoma's legislature passed a bill that could provide more than $1 million to adult stem cell research -- which does not involve embryos -- and a Texas Senate committee considered a bill that would establish an adult stem cell research consortium to help coordinate ethical forms of stem cell research in the state.

Continue reading here...

Vatican Offical Says Catholics Who Voted for Obama Cooperated With Evil

In an interview in Rome with Catholic activist Randall Terry, Archbishop Raymond Burke said that Catholics who voted for President Barack Obama engaged in “a form of cooperation” with evil because of Obama’s pro-abortion policies. 

 

If a Catholic knew that abortion was gravely sinful and that Obama wanted to make abortion more available and voted for him, that Catholic “cooperated” and bears a responsibility for the consequences, said Burke.

Continue reading here...

Abortion clinics to advertise on television

Television ads for abortions will be allowed for the first time under the biggest shake-up of advertising rules for 50 years to be announced today.

In a move which the advertising watchdog acknowledges will offend members of the public, ads for pregnancy advisory services will be allowed in prime-time evening slots on the major channels: ITV, Channel 4, Sky and other broadcasters.

Britain's biggest independent pregnancy advisory service, whose clinicians perform abortions as well, said it would immediately consider running ads. "Absolutely," said Julie Douglas, who is head of marketing at Marie Stopes International. "I don't know if we could afford to do it in prime-time TV, but it would be a very interesting thing to do."

Abortions up amid recession

The pregnant woman showed up at the medical center in flip-flops and in tears, after walking there to save bus fare.

Her boyfriend had lost his job, she told her doctor in Oakland, Calif., and now - fearing harder times for her family - she wanted to abort what would have been her fourth child.

"This was a desired pregnancy - she'd been getting prenatal care - but they re-evaluated expenses and decided not to continue," said Dr. Pratima Gupta. "When I was doing the options counseling, she interrupted me halfway through, crying, and said, 'Dr. Gupta, I just walked here for an hour. I'm sure of my decision.'" 

Continue reading here...

The Holiness of God

R.C. Sproul's book, The Holiness of God, is a classic. Written in 1985 and revised in 1998, this book explores the doctrine of God and focuses on the aspect of God that most Christians quickly recognize as one of the most important and central characteristics of God, namely, His holiness. Without giving you anything approaching a book review, I want to give you a sample of Sproul's writing. In a chapter entitled "God In the Hands of Angry Sinners," Sproul notes that

"Our thinking goes like this: If there is a God at all, He is certainly not holy. If He is perchance holy, He is not just. Even if He is both holy and just, we need not fear because His love and mercy override His holy justice. If we can stomach His holy and just character, we can rest in one thing: He cannot possess wrath. 

"If we think soberly for five seconds, we must see our error. If God is holy at all, if God has an ounce of justice in His character, indeed if God exists as God, how could He possibly be anything else but angry with us? We violate His holiness; we insult His justice; we make light of His grace. These things can hardly please Him."

I'd highly recommend the book, which you can purchase here or here. 

Ligonier recently sponsored a national conference and took as it's theme The Holiness of God. They have, for a limited time, made the lectures available online for free, which you can access here. 

If you have time for only one, I would encourage you to listen to either R.C. Sproul's lecture on Thursday, Sinclair Ferguson's lecture on Friday, or Thabiti Anyabwile's lecture on Friday. 

Does Satan Exist?

Tomorrow night (Thursday) on Nightline, Mark Driscoll will present/defend the Christian doctrine of the existence of a literal Satan and evil. You can catch a sneak preview of the debate/panel discussion here. 

I'd encourage all of you to watch this program and Tivo or DVR it if you can't be there when it is airing. It promises to be fascinating and illuminating. 

The Delay of Marriage and the Decline of Church Attendance

W. Bradford Wilcox of the University of Virginia has written a must-read article in the "Houses of Worship" column of The Wall Street Journal.  Wilcox, whose research and analysis is consistently top-notch and relevant, considers the impact of the expansion of the government sector in American society.  As the "welfare state" expands, the church recedes as the source of needed charity and social services.  Thus, as Wilcox notes, the expansion of the state is, in effect, a driving force behind the secularization of the society.

In "God Will Provide -- Unless the Government Gets There First," Wilcox offers reflections on the recent release of the American Religious Identification Survey [ARIS] which indicated that the number of secular Americans has increased from 2% in 1962 and 8% in 1990 to fully 15% in 2008.

Continue reading here...

Fingertip Porn

“In your opinion, what’s the cultural change we should be most concerned about?” I was standing in front of a room full of parents and youth workers and the question came from the sponsoring youth worker at the start of the Q&A segment. “That’s a tough one,” I responded. Then, after scratching my head during a few moments of awkward silence, I answered. “As a husband, father of two girls and two boys, and a youth culture-watcher, I would have to say that one of the cultural changes that concerns me the most is the growing volume, pervasiveness and accessibility of online pornography. It’s shaping how an entire generation is thinking about themselves, about others and about the wonderful God-given gift of their sexuality. And to be honest, where I think it’s leading our kids is very, very frightening.”

Continue reading Walt Mueller's thoughts on the pervasive nature of pornography here.

Kill the Infants, Save the Whales

That is precisely the position advocated by bioethicist Peter Singer of Princeton University. As Dinesh D'Souza points out in a recent Christianity Today article, "He cheerfully advocates infanticide and euthanasia, and, in almost the same breath, favors animal rights. Even most liberals would have qualms about third-trimester abortions; Singer does not hesitate to advocate what may be termed fourth-trimester abortions, i.e. the killing of infants after they are born."

Yes, Peter Singer argues that through the first month of a child's life, a parent should have the right to terminate the life, since the child is not "sentient." Pigs and rats, on the other hand, possess an intrinsic value that forces us to realize their sentient life from day one. 

I'm not kidding. Here is D'Souza's article at Christianity Today, which is a brief synopsis of his recent public debates with Singer. That debate is on Youtube in its entirety, and you can watch the first video here. Youtube only allows 10 minute videos, so the debate is split up into at least 12 segments (I haven't finished watching- this is a multi-sitting project haha). 

Peter Singer is very sincere in his beliefs, which as D'Souza notes is both terrifying and refreshing. An honest atheist, recognizing the logical outcome of his positions, is comfortable explaining the outcome of his views. We should be thankful that men like Singer are honest in expressing their beliefs, but we should be terrified that sin has wreaked so much havoc on humanity's morality that men can honestly believe that a day old rat has a more valid claim to life than a week old infant. Let's pray for these men, and pray most of all that God would be glorified through our public interactions with people who disagree with us and/or God. 

I want to highly encourage you to watch these debates. If you find them dry and boring at first, stick with it, because after each man presents his paper, they cross-examine each other, then respond to audience questions. D'Souza does a fantastic job defending the Christian faith and along with it an objective basis for morality. 

Given A Choice, They'd Want A Chance

That's the slogan emblazoned on the newest Abort73.com graphic t shirt. We mentioned this t shirt last week during the Collision gathering. Abort73 is offering this t for anywhere from $8.50-$20 on their flex-price system. We have an order form available downstairs where students can indicate which color and size t they want as well as what they want to pay for the shirt. We need to collect the money for these t's this coming Sunday as we'll be purchasing them on Monday.

You can check out these shirts here. We're making a group order to utilize the free shipping option for orders made in excess of $50. 

Mission Trip

Hey folks. We're getting some plans finalized for this summer's mission trip, and I wanted to pass along some of the details. I hope that your students have been talking with you about the mission trip, as we've been passing along details for several weeks downstairs at the Student Life and Collision gatherings. If not, here are the pertinent details that we have nailed down thus far. 

1. Trip cost is $120. This covers transportation, lodging, and food. Basically, everything that each student will need to participate on the trip. Each hotel that we are staying at offers various continental breakfasts. We will be packing everyone's lunch every day, and this will consist of a PB&J sandwich, chips, drink, and dessert (cookies or something similar). Dinner will be different each night, depending on our location and what's available locally. We will provide each student with $6 cash on the evenings when fast food is the only option.  On other nights, we will simply provide pizza (Deep-dish in Chicago for example) or some other meal. 

2. The following hotels will accomodate our group in the various cities: 

Detroit: Hampton Inn & Suites

Chicago: Days Inn 

St. Louis: Comfort Inn

Each hotel has been selected for it's proximity to our ministry locations, provision of continental breakfast, and value. We're not staying in lavish luxury hotels, but we're not staying in slummy hotels either. Each room will have 2 double beds with 4 occupants each. The adult chaperones (we're still working this one out- we'll get it resolved shortly) will be split up, staying in rooms with 3 other students. Some of the more responsible students will be in rooms without an adult, but the rooms have been reserved in a block, so we're all close together. 

3. Permission slips (these are available in the Crash Room) are due Sunday, March 29th, along with a $40 non-refundable deposit. We'll be having a meeting sometime in April to discuss the trip and the requirements for participation. The requirements will consist of weekly church attendance, participation in a pre-trip Bible study, attendance at preparation meetings, and participation in a service project (The dates and times for the preparation meetings and service project TBA). 

As always, feel free to contact Dustin at the church office or via email with questions. 

Islam Rising in Britain

Last month, the British government controversially refused entry to Geert Wilders, enforcing a ban it had placed on the Dutch parliamentarian for his anti-Islam film, Fitna. While Britain works to eliminate the “threat” from the critics of Islam, however, the British government is facing a far greater peril from the spread of radical Islam on its own territory.

The CIA reportedly has warned President Obama that Islamic extremists living in the United Kingdom are now viewed as the greatest threat to the United States. “Around 40 per cent of CIA activity on homeland threats is now in the UK. This is quite unprecedented,” one British official was quoted as saying in The Telegraph.

Further heightening the threat, these extremists are becoming ever more connected with overseas terrorist networks. Dozens of British citizens are believed to have traveled to Somalia, to fight alongside Al-Qaeda-linked Islamic militants seeking to seize the country from the current government. The Somali militants are reportedly receiving funding from the large Somali community in the United Kingdom. British Muslims have also been providing Taliban forces in Afghanistan with bomb parts, while others are thought to have joined the battlefield and fought against the British military.

Continue reading here...

No Place for Tolerance

THE West has become scared to criticise Islam and accepts death threats by Muslim extremists as normal, Cardinal George Pell has suggested in a speech in England.

The outspoken Catholic Archbishop of Sydney said laws intended to promote tolerance were being used to stifle debate, which was "fermenting intolerance under the surface".

In the March 6 speech at Oxford University, he also attacked a global campaign of "bullying and intimidation" by secular groups trying to drive Christians from public debate and stop churches providing schools, hospitals and welfare.

"Many in the West have grown used to practising self-censorship when it comes to Islam, just as we seem to accept that ex-Muslims who criticise Islam and extremism, such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, require round-the-clock police protection," he said.

Continue reading here...

God or grades?

VLADIVOSTOK, March 11 (RIA Novosti) - Prosecutors in the Russian Far Eastern city of Khabarovsk have brought charges against a college lecturer who reportedly threatened to fail students who held religious beliefs.

The lecturer also "repeatedly demanded during philosophy studies in the Far Eastern state college... that the students change their religious ideas to atheistic ones," the local prosecutor's office said.

He is also reported to have stated that "believers can't live in normal society and should stay at home and exercise their beliefs there." Reports also say he called religious students "schizophrenics" and attempted to force them to leave his lectures.

The lecturer, who was charged with violating the students' rights, faces up to five years in prison if found guilty.

"Peaceful" Hindu religion?

NEW DELHI (Compass Direct News) – In an effort to stop conversions to Christianity in the eastern state of Bihar, a 25-year-old ailing man on Sunday (March 8) exploded a crude bomb in a church and shot the pastor.

Police Inspector Hari Krishna Mandal told Compass that the attacker, Rajesh Singh, had come fully prepared to kill the pastor, Vinod Kumar, in Baraw village in the Nasriganj area of Rohtas district, and then take his own life.

“However,” Mandal said, “believers caught him before he could do more damage or kill himself.”

The 35-year-old pastor was taken to a hospital in nearby Varanasi, in the neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh and at press time was out of danger of losing his life, according to a leader of Gospel Echoing Missionary Society (GEMS) who requested anonymity.

Continue reading here...

Taxes and Abortion

I don't believe that too many of you, readers of this blog, have written a check to the local Planned Parenthood office to finance their provision of contraceptive products and abortion procedures. I'm assuming that the majority of people that read these posts are pro-life, in thought (conviction) at least, if not in deed. Planned Parenthood has a reputation for providing reproductive counseling and abortion services to minors, including some cases where a crime may have occurred, without reporting it to the authorities (which is a crime itself- see this video, this video, and read this short story). 

(As a rather significant side-note, Planned Parenthood originated with Margaret Sanger's plan to eradicate minority and retarded babies through the science of eugenics- see this website, which contains numerous racist and hateful comments from Sanger directed towards minorities, mentally handicapped, and large families. I'll give you a sample: referring to blacks, immigrants, and ingidenous people, Sanger said that they were "...human weeds, reckless breeders, spawning human beings who never should have been born.")

Maybe you have contributed to some other organization that provides pregnancy counseling from a Christian perspective like StandTrue.com, Abort73.com, or your local Community Pregnancy Center.

In either case, you control where your money goes and what services your money does or does nor provide. You work hard, you earn a paycheck, and out of the charitableness of your heart you may choose to support a pro-life organization. If you tithe at this church, you are supporting the Middletown and Franklin CPC. For most of you, the thought of your money contributing to the destruction of human life, regardless of the stage of development, is horrific and certainly not something that you would support. 

With an Executive Order entitled "Removing Barriers to Responsible Scientific Research Involving Human Stem Cells" President Obama has rescinded Former President George Bush's ban on the use of federal funds for human embryonic stem-cell research. In other words, your tax dollars are now contributing to the destruction of human life. President Obama stated in his executive order lifting the ban on federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research that "The purpose of this order is to remove these limitations on scientific inquiry...and in so doing to enhance the contribution of America's scientists to important new discoveries and new therapies for the benefit of humankind." What this implies, of course, is that human life is not so valuable that it is worth preserving if there are scientific discoveries which require murder. 

While I applaud the President for his sincere desire to utilize scientific inquiry and discovery to benefit humankind (who doesn't want to find the cure for cancer?) a line must be drawn in the laboratory which stops scientific inquiry short of destroying human life. Where is the logic in this position: "We will destroy human life for the betterment of human life"? The President's executive order will function as a dictatorial fiat in opening the floodgates for scientists to pursue answers to their questions by destroying human embryos. The legislature has been bypassed. I understand that he won the presidential election, and as President he has the ability to write and sign executive orders at his discretion, just as Bush did while he was in office. I simply want you to be aware that our President is rapidly fulfilling his campaign promises to expand abortion rights, which will result in the increased number of abortions.

You might be wondering why I link abortion with the stem-cell research that the President is encouraging. Here's a rough answer: What is an abortion, as it pertains to human life? Dictionary.com defines abortion as "any of various surgical methods for terminating a pregnancy." What is a pregnancy? Pregnancy occurs when a zygote (union of sperm and egg) successfully implants itself in the uterine wall. At the most basic, elementary level, the process which begins when sperm meets egg results in human life. The embryo is simply a baby at an unrecognizable stage of development. So, according to my rough understanding, the destruction of an embryo for scientific inquiry is no different than the destruction of an embryo for convenience, for "choice." Ergo, destroying an embryo for scientific inquiry is an abortion. The snuffing out of life. Murder. 

As always, Al Mohler offers insightful commentary on this issue here. 

Ryan Anderson at the Weekly Standard has a thoughtful critique here. 

Justin Taylor provides a summary of essays and articles responding to the president's executive order here. 

Any thoughts? Feel free to post comments if you have any further insight or perspective on this issue. 

Shepherding a Child's Heart Conference

Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Washington recently hosted author, counselor, and father Dr. Tedd Tripp for a parenting conference. Dr. Tripp's book Shepherding A Child's Heart is one of his most popular and you can find it on Amazon.com. Dr. Tripp's concern is that "Parents tend to focus on the externals of behavior rather than the internal overflow of the heart. We tend to worry more about the "what" of behavior than the "why." Accordingly, most of us spend an enormous amount of energy in controlling and constraining behavior. To the degree and extent to which our focus is on behavior, we miss the heart."

Here is the advertising blurb for the conference from the Mars Hill website:

"Everyone wants to be a great parent—the biggest responsibility of parenthood is teaching your children to love Jesus with all of their heart, soul, and strength. For parents with children of any age, Dr. Tripp's insightful, biblical teaching provides perspectives and procedures for shepherding your child's heart into the paths of life."

Mars Hill has made the audio and video from the conference available for free, and you can access Dr. Tripp's talks on their website here.

Not yet being a parent, I found his first talk (the only one I've had time to listen to thus far) informative and encouraging. I'm thankful for men like Dr. Tripp who in the providence of God's loving care for His children have published books and given talks to aid the Christian community in their attempt of raising children in the instruction and admonition of the Lord, and I hope that you might take the time to listen to his talks and benefit as parents from some godly counsel.

Mission Trip

Here's the scoop for mission trip: we need to have a confirmed number of participants nailed down by the end of March so we can begin reserving places to stay and establishing the work projects that we'll be doing in each of the various cities. Because of this, we have 1/4 slips of paper that parents must sign and return with a non-refundable $40 deposit by Sunday, March 29.

We are still working out the details of final cost, adult chaperones, and the like, and we know that you will want to know this information before you allow your child to sign up for the mission trip. We will do our best to nail down that information by Sunday, March 15, to give you ample time to consider all the variables of this summer's mission trip.

The details that we do have nailed down are the following:
- July 9-17 are the dates for the mission trip.
- Detroit, Chicago, and St. Louis are the cities that we'll be visiting and ministering in.
- Sign up deadline (with accompanying $40 non-refundable deposit) is due Sunday, March 29.

Once we have a confirmed number of participants, we will begin making preparations for pre-trip training. We are unable to do that prior to the signup deadline because the number of students that are going on the mission trip will determine what ministries we can plug into while in Detroit, Chicago, and St. Louis.

If you have any questions, please contact Dustin at the church office, on his cell, or via email.

One thing you can start doing now to help us prepare is to pray:
1) that God will prepare the hearts of people that we'll come into contact with in the various cities
2) that God will prepare the hearts of the mission trip participants for the work that they will be doing as well as for their own spiritual condition before Christ
3) that we will raise the sufficient funds to enable all students who want to participate to do so.

Thanks for checking in- I'll post new information for this trip as I get it nailed down.

Teens Who Murder Over Loss of Phones, Video Games

While I'm not a gamer myself in the technical sense of the word, I do enjoy playing certain video games on occasion. Growing up, my first video game system was a Sega Genesis that was given to my family by a neighbor when he upgraded to a Sony Playstation system. This was a big step for my parents, to allow us to have a video game system. They understood the potentially addicting nature of video game playing, so they set and enforced strict boundaries for me and my siblings. Call is quirky, nerdy, or horribly archane, but my parents (thankfully) limited our combined video game, internet use, and television watching to one hour per day.

They monitered our usage of these electronics constantly, setting timers to alert us and them when we had used up all of our allotted time. After that timer dinged, my siblings and I knew that it was either time to go outside and run around or find another inside hobby, such as reading or building a LEGO castle. The limits that my parents places on our media usage helped establish in our minds that there is much of life to be enjoyed outside the electronic world. Currently, there are at least three additional media forms that are vying for the attention (time) of teenagers than were at my disposal in the late 80's and early 90's. The cell phone, the portable gaming system, and the digital music player (which are no longer used for just playing music) are now virtually ubiquitous, and each places demands on the daily schedule of teens.

I say all that not to condemn those who play for more than an hour per day (although I do believe this could be an appropriate limit set by parents). I do believe that boundaries should be set regarding the time spent with various electronic media, and I mention all this to preface this story:

When a 13-year-old Buffalo, N.Y., girl decided to exact revenge on the grandmother who took away her cell phone, authorities say she planned carefully.

Jermea Simmons allegedly waited a week, then packed her clothes, doused her house with lighter fluid and set it ablaze while 10 members of her family slept inside, including her 8-year-old sister who suffers from cerebral palsy. Her step-grandfather didn't make it out alive.

Continue reading here...

Notice especially these two sentences: "...experts say a small subset of young people are ill-equipped to balance their electronic life with the real world. When their whole world is wrapped up in text messaging or video games, being cut off leaves them frantic."

I know that it sounds ridiculous to many of you that teens could possibly be reduced to a mentally frenzied state by the removal of their phone/ipod et al, but this is a real and dangerous trend, and one that can be avoided if appropriate steps are taken to monitor and limit teenager's use of electronic media.

Lastly, please don't misunderstand my point: I'm not suggesting that if your teenager is a gamer or is constantly texting his/her friends, that you should sleep with one eye open and remove all lighters from their reach if you take away their devices. I'm bringing up the fact that maybe it's time to ask some questions about how much time we allow our teenager's to spend using electronic media.

New Poll Reveals Teens Think Violent Behavior Acceptable

While today's teens are learning the Three "Rs" of Reading, Writing and Arithmetic in school, new research shows that many are justifying violence to practice a fourth -
Revenge. In a youth culture where violence is often believed to be acceptable, these and other findings not only present disturbing implications for school safety, but for the workplace as well, say experts.

A new poll of 750 teens from Junior Achievement and Deloitte and conducted by Opinion Research shows that more than one-in-four teens (27 percent) think behaving violently is sometimes, often or always acceptable. More students thought violence was acceptable than was cheating (19 percent), plagiarizing (10 percent) or stealing (3 percent). And fully 20 percent of respondents said they had personally behaved violently towards another person in the past year, and 41 percent reported a friend had done so.

Continue reading here...

Free Online Access to ESVSB

So, a few days after I mention the esv study bible, they announce that they are, for a limited time, offering free access to the study bible online. I won't list all the details of their online bible study access here, but trust me, it's pretty sweet. You can check out the ESV Study Bible website here, and register for the free limited time access here.

Here is their announcement from the ESVSB Facebook group:

Crossway is pleased to make the ESV Online Study Bible available free--for anyone and everyone--for a limited time through March 31, 2009.

For full access and free trial use of all the Online Study Bible features, users can create a login and password at www.esvstudybible.org/online. Email information will not be shared, nor will there be any obligation to purchase.

Crossway invites you to share this information with others--with the hope that many will benefit from this online resource and further experience the timeless truth of God's Word as a powerful, compelling, life-changing reality.

Limited Edition Abort73 Tshirts- $5

Hey guys- here's a link to a special pre-sale at Abort73. They are pre-selling a limited number of their "Love Lets Live" tshirts at flex pricing, which means you get to name your own price for the shirt! For $5-$15, you can support the ministry of Abort73 and get a message out into your schools and communities!!