Smuggling Bibles into China? No need.

The Sinophile: Smuggling Bibles into China Mike Falkenstine says, "There is a need to smuggle Bibles into China in the same way that we need to smuggle cans of soup into America."

Brilliant Theologian Says We Aren't In a Free Society Anymore

VirtueOnline: Britain is no longer a free society - Bishop Nazir Ali Though the Bishop is talking about the UK, his concerns and observations parallel our North American context. The US is so divided right now over these fundamental issues relating to human dignity. Lord have mercy.

Churches and Marital Relations

Indiana Church Behind Provocative Sex Billboard - FoxNews.com Church Tries to Ignite Married Couple's Sex Lives - ABC News As I have blogged about previously: Here are the stories of a couple more churches making news because of their sermon series regarding marital relations. The last ones I posted about were in the UK. I wonder what effect this will have on the culture long term.  Will they change their views about the church's theology and belief about married sex?  I'm sure many evangelicals are embarrassed by these churches.  Yet, the way that media outlets report on them, they still view the church as having the destructive, dysfunctional puritanical attitudes that were dominant in Christendom from the Middle Ages to as recently as the 20th century.  They're still surprised to hear such a positive message from the church, or to hear anything at all. Christianity has preached a lie about marital relations for years or just been silent, and even to this day the wider culture still thinks we hold to those untruths. The culture still thinks that the church believes that sex is bad, dirty, something to avoid, only for procreation, etc.  I wonder if it will help the spread of the Gospel with the church having a different (hopefully more Biblical) message on sex.

Sin and Science

Why is sloth sin?  A fascinating response by a psychology scholar:  Procrastination and The Science of Sin | Psychology Today "Sloth is a sin in the sense that we feel the weight of the moral blame for not living up to our commitment to ourselves to act as we intend. It falls into the category of sin, as opposed to some less important moral failing, because it contributes to a failure to live life fully." What interests me is the this article being part of a larger trend, that connects science with the concept of sin.  Though less so in this article, many are explaining away sin via behavioral and neuroscience explanations, and thus, removing culpability. Elsewhere, the explanation is that the Biblical writes simply weren't as enlightened as we are about physiology and psychology.  What they called sin, we are supposed to understand as a genetic predisposition or evolutionary design.  Just another little insight to the culture that needs to be addressed from a Biblical worldview from preachers and Biblical scholars and ethicists.