The goal this year for the blog is to have more entries than last year. In 2012, I posted 11 blog entries, 3 more than in 2011. With a little focus and effort, I should easily be able to make this year the bloggiest year ever for me. Not that it's some huge accomplishment; my all-time high for blog posts in a year is 37.
So as not to make this post a "filler" post to pad my numbers, I'll actually include some substance. Here's a list of what I'm reading(and have read recently):
- The Furious Longing of God (Brennan Manning) - In classic Manning style, God's love for us is explained through story, insight, and numerous quotable blocks of awesomeness.
- You Lost Me: Why Young Christians are Leaving Church...and Rethinking Faith (David Kinnaman) - 18-29 year-olds are the leaving the church (and sometimes the faith) faster than any other age group. Kinnaman's book explores how why people are leaving (and why he categorizes them on a spectrum of exiles, nomads, and prodigals).
- The Most Misused Verses in the Bible: Surprising Ways God's Word is Misunderstood (Eric J. Bargerhuff) I enjoyed almost every chapter in this book. His chapter on Acts 2:38 was an embarrassing exercise in begging the question (in this case, he assumed Calvinism; therefore, any hint of the individual's faith that isn't caused by God is horrific).
- Shock and Awe (Episode #1) (Celebrity Pastor) - I laughed hard several times while reading this satirical look at what it means to be a pastor at a new church and how to effect change in the local congregation. He gives 7 principles to his leadership style; "Principle #5: Be Awesome First, Apologize Later" is a good example.
I can't even begin to imagine what it was like inside of Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14th last year. The whole thing should never have happened, and everyone agrees that it was a horrible tragedy. That being said, I hope what I'm about to say doesn't sound callous or disrespectful to the families suffering after the shooting.
There is another tragedy occurring every day in America, and it, too, involves precious children. According to the Guttmacher Institute, there have been over 50,000,000 induced abortions (not counting spontaneous abortions, aka miscarriages) between 1973-2008.
However you look at it, that's an unbelievable amount of people, more than the populations of Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming combined. How many scientists, consumers, doctors, artists, inventors, writers, poets, future Presidents, innovators, communicators, etc. have been lost to abortion?
Remember, what is conceived is from the moment of conception a genetically independent human being. All that is required for the embryo to become an infant/toddler/kid/teen/adult/elderly person is time and food. The difference between an adult and a toddler is development and age. The difference between a toddler and a newborn is development and age. The difference between a newborn and an embryo is development and age, not anything genetic. Yet it is legal to kill a baby before she is born because of some arbitrary and subjective definition of viability says the human embryo/fetus is not really human until it completely exits the mother's body. According to this logic, the older you are, the more human you are, and the more worthy of life you are. So the elderly are the most deserving of life, and babies and toddlers are the least deserving of life. Does this not sound insane?
Abortion will never cease to be about the baby. A woman's body and choice are secondary to the legal status of the human offspring growing inside of her. The most dangerous place in the world for a child to be is inside of her mother, statistically speaking.
