Catch Mahmood!

Somehow, that seems like a good title for this:

As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad plans to speak in the opening of the United Nations General Assembly in New York next week, a major international evangelical Christian group based in Jerusalem plans to send a petition to the U.N. Secretary-General calling for the arrest and indictment of Iran’s president on charges of incitement to genocide against Israel. The petition from the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem (I.C.E.J.) has gathered signatures from tens of thousands of Christians around the world, as the group joins the chorus of prominent voices from many countries demanding that Iran’s president be brought to justice.

“We feel a profound and telling moral duty to speak out against the growing Iranian nuclear threat to Israel,” said David Parsons, media director for the I.C.E.J.

“The silence of most Christian clergy in the face of Germany’s horrific bid to annihilate European Jewry left a deep stain on the churches,” said the I.C.E.J.’s executive director, Rev. Malcom Hedding. “Yet from it has arisen a sense among multitudes of Christians today that we have an inescapable moral duty to earnestly speak out whenever another genocidal campaign threatens the Jewish people.

Have you signed the petition? I haven’t.

To my credit, though, I say (as a Mennonite), “Leave me out of it!” to this next piece as well:

The I.C.E.J.’s Hedding also slammed the leaders of certain Christian groups, among them the Mennonites and the Quakers, who plan to further honor Ahmadinejad by hosting him at a special reception during his visit to the U.S., in which the Christian leaders hope to engage in a “dialogue” with the threatening leader.

To read the entire article: Christian Group: Indict Ahmadinejad for Threatening a Holocaust

Worse Than DUI

Texting while driving “more dangerous than drugs or alcohol”

Texting behind the wheel is more dangerous than driving while under the influence of alcohol or cannabis, researchers said Thursday.

Research carried out on young drivers (aged 17-24) using a simulator found that reaction time slowed by 35% when they were writing or reading text messages while driving. In comparison, reaction time deteriorated by 21% for those under the influence of cannabis, and by 12% at the legal alcohol limit.

I’m no teenager (and only two of our five flesh-and-blood children are still teenagers), but I better remember this the next time texting while driving seems so urgent. 😯

But Not of the World

This may be about your fellow believers:

  • The world’s worst persecutor of Christians in the world is North Korea.
  • In Saudi Arabia, practicing Christianity can result in death by beheading or stoning.
  • Over 90% of China’s Christians worship in hidden, underground house churches to avoid government regulations and restrictions.
  • There is only one Christian church left in the Gaza Strip, and its membership has dwindled to less than 100.
  • Algeria is about a quarter of the size of Texas, and only 3% of the population are Christians.
  • There are 69 languages in Iran, and only three of them have a completed Bible. Iran is also the third worst persecutor of Christians in the world.
  • It is believed there are less than 500 Christians living in the Maldives.
  • Open preaching in Sudan is punishable by beatings or imprisonment.
  • Christians make up less than 1.7% of the population in Pakistan, and over 70% of them are the poorest of the poor.
  • It is estimated that there are 1,100 Christian missionaries living in Turkey.

Source document: OpenDoorsUSA

UK’s first official sharia courts

Of camels and noses?

UK’s first official sharia courts

Islamic law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.

The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.

Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.

Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims.

It has now emerged that sharia courts with these powers have been set up in London, Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester with the network’s headquarters in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. Two more courts are being planned for Glasgow and Edinburgh.

HT: Dunker Journal

Headlines…and Perspective

Before the headlines, something to give you perspective: It’s What Disciples Do

One-Year 64-Member Surge

Record 259 corporations honored for ‘gay’ support

The newly released Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index, which ranks hundreds of businesses on their “treatment” of employees who have chosen homosexual, lesbian, bisexual and transgender lifestyles, awards a record 259 corporations perfect scores, including newcomers Campbell’s Soup and Target.

The total in the 2009 report is up one-third from the 195 corporations so honored in 2008, according to the Human Rights Campaign, which explained that now an estimated nine million workers “are protected from employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression because of their employers’ policies on diversity & inclusion, training, health care, and domestic partnership benefits.”

The report notes that when the evaluation was begun in 2002, there were 13 corporations with such perfect scores – a total of 100 out of 100 possible – and that rose to 26 in 2003, 56 in 2004, 101 in 2005, 138 in 2006 and 195 in 2008.

If I were into boycotting, I would have to quit doing business with some outfits:

  • US Airways
  • Dell
  • Target
  • Campbell Soups
  • Visa
  • American Express
  • Bank of America
  • Best Buy
  • Chevron
  • Citigroup
  • Coca-Cola
  • Eastman Kodak
  • eBay
  • Google
  • Intel
  • JC Penney
  • KeyCorp
  • Levi Strauss
  • Macy
  • MasterCard
  • Microsoft
  • PepsiCo
  • Sears
  • UPS
  • Yahoo!

Wow!

Time to join the Amish or the Hutterites.

Or move to the Amazon.

Or forget the whole notion of boycotting.

The Poster

That’s the title of Andrée Seu’s latest piece over at WorldMagBlog:

There is an area in my house that, if you had a handheld radioactivity detector for spiritual intensity, would start ticking wildly as you approached. It is my daughter’s bedroom, and ground zero is a poster on her wall.

One day I had decided to go through all six rooms and dedicate them to God, asking Him to remove any defilement. (This is either madness or the creativity of the Holy Spirit.) I was inspired in part by shame over a wooden key rack in the kitchen that reads, “As for me and my house we will serve the Lord.” It has been a lie.

As I lifted my head from a prostrate position, I spotted the poster, a darkly beautiful woodland scene that seems to call to ancient legends and distant flute sounds, and whose colors and mood blend seamlessly into the forest décor of the bedroom. One hardly notices at first the two mythical female faces locked in a kiss, and then, if you look closer still, a trickle of blood leaking from the corner of their mouths.

You really ought to read the rest of it (the above excerpt is more than half of the entire article).

As a husband and father, I am challenged by her thoughts.

What music do I allow in my home?

What literature?

What radio stations?

What Web sites?

What language?

What “stuff”?

And why or why not?

And how shall I teach about it?

Many questions; few answers. 🙁

Private
Above all, love God!