Ain't Complicated

Bible, Cellphone, Census, Caskets

No. I. Am. Not. Connecting. Them.

So if you came here hoping to read the conspiratorial concoctions of some unhinged kook, go away.

😯

No! No! No! Please stay. Read this. Read more. Bookmark. Subscribe. Comment. Facebook it. Tweet away. Trackback. Ping. Email. Go viral.

Introductions aside, this post archives some current event reflections.

1

This post was simply going to be a verse fragment from one of the verses read by our bishop during his message yesterday morning. But I couldn’t find it in the passage I thought it was in! 🙁

2

Thanks to Facebook, I remembered to turn on my cellphone this morning.

3

I decided I better fill out Census 2010. So I opened the envelope I got a week or so ago. Thankfully, before I put pen to paper, I read this: “This Census must count every person living in the United States on April 1, 2010.” So I stuck the census back in the envelope and tossed it on a pile.

4

I got a phone call from someone I respect highly. Would I like to start a new business? I wouldn’t have to worry about the financing. Just the marketing. Selling casket kits.

Good day?!

Health Care Reform

Some questions and comments reflecting on health care reform -- #hcr --

Some comments and some questions, none of them intended to be political even though they reflect on and about a political issue:

If I take health care and turn it into real he chat, I have reformed it. Too bad I didn’t improve it. Or deliver on its promise and purpose.
Most of the time I forgot to pray.
I am amazed to witness a political majority going against the will of the citizen majority. Now to see on what else they defy and withstand the will of the people.
The bill barely got enough votes to pass. Four fewer and it would have failed. For such sweeping, generational changes…oh, never mind.
I am still kinda stunned that anyone would vote for and thus put their name to legislation without at least reading it first. I’m guessing the majority of those who voted for it will eventually be surprised at something they supported.
Why does it take so long to kick in? Because it really isn’t about health care. It’s about kidnapping the health issue to expand control…and test the limits of the tolerant populace.
Will any court have the integrity and spine to rule against it?
More alarming to me than actual passage of the bill was that they seriously and publicly considered not voting for it directly. Such a disposition bodes no good for the country nor for the rule of law. We are in greater peril than I realized heretofore.
Do they know better than the people? Quite possibly.
Who gets exempted from having to abide by it? And what’s the significance of that?
How does it treat the most vulnerable?
It’s been six days since passage of the bill and about four since President Obama signed it. As a result of this bill, who has health care now that didn’t then?
What are the unintended consequences?
And perhaps more importantly, what are the hidden intended consequences?
And what’s with the provisions in it that have nothing to do with health care?
Maybe it would have been better to take all that non-existent money and plowed it into Social Security before it finishes collapsing. Too late. Oh well.
Christians, a message for you: God is the Sovereign One. That hasn’t changed. And never will. Keep your trust in Him and fear not. Set your affection on things above. Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. And pray.

Under Siege

Another Christian executed in Somalia

Earlier this month, underground church leader Madobe Abdi escaped an attempted kidnapping in Somalia.

Compass Direct News reports Islamic militants caught up with him March 15 and murdered him. What made his death more alarming is that Abdi was an orphan raised as a Christian rather than a convert from Islam.

Islamic militants have hunted leaders of the underground church movement as a means of discouraging others from responding to the Gospel.

Is it working?

1,000 attacks on Christians in 500 days

A study shows that in 500 days, there were 1,000 attacks on Christians in India’s Karnataka state alone, reports Compass Direct News.

India has not exactly been known for its peaceful attitude toward Christians, especially after several months of attacks in Orissa state in 2008. At that time, attacks were predominately made by Hindu extremists, as they appear now to be in Karnataka. Karnataka, however, never seemed a likely target for Christian persecution.

“[Karnataka] is not in that area of India where you would expect there to be as many attacks,” says Dave Stravers of Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Mission India. “It’s in the south; the northern part of India is where more of the radical Hindus live. One of the reasons it’s not surprising, however, is that this is one of the places where the church is growing faster in India.”

[…]

“What’s happening in Karnataka is perhaps a little bit ominous because a Hindu political party has control of that state,” says Stravers. “Even though these attacks are not legal attacks, nevertheless when a Hindu party gets in power, it seems to encourage the unruly elements in the country to undertake this kind of violence.”

And I feel bad because our pet hen died this afternoon….

Perspective. How we all need good perspective.

Three Facebook Settings

Got Facebook? Have you adjusted your user privacy settings since December?

Whether you have or not, this may be a good article for you to read.

In December, Facebook made a series of bold and controversial changes regarding the nature of its users’ privacy on the social networking site. The company once known for protecting privacy to the point of exclusivity (it began its days as a network for college kids only – no one else even had access), now seemingly wants to compete with more open social networks like the microblogging media darling Twitter.

[…]

Considering that Facebook itself is no longer looking out for you, it’s time to be proactive about things and look out for yourself instead. Taking a few minutes to run through all the available privacy settings and educating yourself on what they mean could mean the world of difference to you at some later point…That is, unless you agree with Facebook in thinking that the world is becoming more open and therefore you should too.

Source: The 3 Facebook Settings Every User Should Check Now

How Privacy Vanishes Online

Balance Them!

Privacy

Social Media

OK, I know. I’m spitting in the cyber wind again.

But I refuse to accept the premise that privacy no longer matters.

Or even that privacy is more public than it used to be.

Yet people often dole out all kinds of personal information on the Internet that allows such identifying data to be deduced. Services like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr are oceans of personal minutiae — birthday greetings sent and received, school and work gossip, photos of family vacations, and movies watched.

Computer scientists and policy experts say that such seemingly innocuous bits of self-revelation can increasingly be collected and reassembled by computers to help create a picture of a person’s identity, sometimes down to the Social Security number.

[…]

In social networks, people can increase their defenses against identification by adopting tight privacy controls on information in personal profiles. Yet an individual’s actions, researchers say, are rarely enough to protect privacy in the interconnected world of the Internet.

You may not disclose personal information, but your online friends and colleagues may do it for you, referring to your school or employer, gender, location and interests. Patterns of social communication, researchers say, are revealing.

[…]

His advice: “When you’re doing stuff online, you should behave as if you’re doing it in public — because increasingly, it is.”

Source: New York Times

You really should read the parts I left out.

Slavery USA

In the “Land of the Free” and the home of Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution?!

According to the International Justice Mission, human trafficking is the third most-profitable criminal activity in the world after drugs and weapons. Seldom do people stop to notice the implications of that statistic for the United States.

The number of trafficked victims in the U.S. is rising quickly. Ten years ago, there were approximately 50,000 slaves in the U.S. Now there are over 300,000. Modern day abolitionist and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship evangelist York Moore says people know about the issue, but few see it as a real problem.

“What’s most concerning to me is not the proliferation of the persons involved or the profitability of this illegal enterprise,” says Moore, “but specifically the increasing tolerance that I think I’m seeing in people.”

Source: Mission Network News

Genocide Ignored…Where?

Yeah. What country is referenced below?

“UN employees reported that over 3,300 villages have been burned to the ground,” says Klein. “It’s surpassing what happened in Rwanda and Darfur, and yet nobody seems to notice.”

Despite the nearly unprecedented conditions, the Word of God continues to permeate through the region. Klein says that even children in the Vision Beyond Borders orphanages pray for the soldiers that killed their families. Klein says the Lord is in fact using this time to draw many away from witchcraft and animism and toward Christ.

“Even in the midst of [so many] horrific things going on, the Gospel is going forth, and many people are coming to faith in Jesus Christ.”

Klein is excited that the Gospel is moving forth, but he urges the Christian world to do something for their suffering and ignored brothers and sisters.

“A lot of these Karen people feel like they’ve been abandoned.”

Source: Mission Network News (But I challenge you to first guess the country as a comment below.)

Then remember to pray for these folks and those who minister to them.