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The Huffington Post had an article out a few days ago about LGBTQ kids and suicide. And it’s alarming. [First of all, a note. The data is from 2011, which means that this information is seven years old. I don’t know how much things may have changed since then. Also, the data for trans people was too small to be analyzed. Moving on.] LGBTQ people 18-30 who claimed to be religious were far more likely to be suicidal or to have attempted suicide recently than non-religious LGBTQ young people. In addition, for heterosexual people, religious activity actually was protective against suicidality. And, not surprisingly, suicidality was higher for LGBTQ people than heterosexuals. I have a 23 year old

So here’s something interesting. In Connecticut, from 2013 to 2016, 36% of the kids who were removed from public school to be homeschooled were in families that had been reported at least once to the Department of Children and Families for suspected abuse or neglect. How many of these families were removing their kids from school to avoid further contact with the state? How many of these families were legitimately homeschooling? Connecticut is one of 11 states with no oversight of homeschooling. When we were homeschooling, I really liked that Wisconsin had very little oversight of home education. We signed a paper every year that we were covering a certain list of subjects and that was it. B

Exodus 4:1-5 Moses answered, “What if they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you’?” 2 Then the Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?” “A staff,” he replied. 3 The Lord said, “Throw it on the ground.” Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it. 4 Then the Lord said to him, “Reach out your hand and take it by the tail.” So Moses reached out and took hold of the snake and it turned back into a staff in his hand. 5 “This,” said the Lord, “is so that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has appeared to you.” We had a guest speaker at church this Su

Micah 7 Micah 7 was part of my Bible reading a few days ago. There are three parts to Micah 7: Lament, Israel will Rise, and Prayer and Praise. Micah wasn’t afraid to lament what was happening to Israel. He could see that Assyria was rising in power and that Israel would be displaced from their land. Lament is something we don’t do well in evangelicalism. We prefer triumphalism! After all, Jesus came to “seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). Some quarters of evangelicalism specifically preach a “health and wealth” gospel - I’m looking at you Joyce Meyer and Joel Osteen. But that’s not what the Bible teaches us. Jesus came for our salvation from sin and to show the world a better way to li

Evangelicals want very much to prevent abortions. After all, abortion is taking away a unique life. Guess what? We know how to lower the abortion rate! Colorado lowered it’s teen abortion rate by 50% and it’s abortion rate among 20-24 year old women by 20%. So, what did Colorado do? A private donor allowed Colorado to deveop a program to increase women’s access to family planning clinics, train health care workers, and provide long-acting reversible progestin contraceptives (LARPs) free of charge. LARPs are either implants in the skin that last 2-5 years or they are intrauterine devices with progestin that can last up to 10 years. Many women find these preferable to oral contraceptives becau

I’m pro-life. People take that to mean that I believe that abortion is wrong. And that’s true. Abortion is wrong. But, pro-life means so much more than that. I believe in a consistent ethic of life. If you Google this term, you’ll find a lot of Catholic writing on the subject and very little evangelical writing, but I challenge evangelicals to take a long, hard look at our ethics of life and consider how consistent we are. Abortion is wrong because it takes the life of a unique human being. Once that blastocyst has implanted in the uterine wall and we can detect it with a pregnancy test, it is wrong to disrupt it. Pro-life people are often accused of being pro-birth because our protection of

It's time for all the fun links that I've found while wandering the internet this week! * A documentarian went to West Papua New Guinea to make a movie about a primitive tribe, but found quite a surprise when he got there. * What do some Protestants think happens after death? Is Purgatory a thing? * Alex Jones is off the charts crazy! * When you're king, you can change the name of your country. * The UK went more than two days without using coal for the first time ever! * Islamophobia in the heartland. Deep sigh. * A lovely tribute to former First Lady Barbara Bush. Any thoughts? Catherine

Book Review Still Evangelical: Insiders Consider Political, Social, and Theological Meaning Ed. Mark Labberton Still Evangelical is a collection of eleven essays from writers across the evangelical spectrum. They range from Shane Claiborne of The Simple Way to Jim Daly of Focus on the Family. Evangelicalism has taken a beating in the public eye recently. After the election of Donald Trump, many people questioned the role of evangelicals in politics. Others have wondered about our role in the immigration debate with the recent “Muslim Ban” and southern border wall. And then there are the perpetual issues with evangelicals refusing service to LGBT brothers and sisters. And we get asked if we a

It’s Earth Day, 2018. It’s a time to celebrate nature and consider our role in the natural world as well as how we, especially as Christians, can steward this beautiful and amazing earth. Today, Answers in Genesis - the Young-Earth Creationist organization - is rerunning their Earth Day column from 2009. What do they have to say? Plenty. Let’s get one thing out of the way. The author (John Upchurch) insists on equating everyone who accepts the validity of evolution with philosophical naturalists. He first uses the term evolutionary naturalists, but then uses just the term evolutionists. It appears that he doesn’t understand that there are a great many of us who are comfortable being philosop

Countries are considered to be “free” if they are democracies. And democracy is considered, among most people, to be a good thing. The United States of America is a democracy. Well, technically a democratic republic, but you get the idea. But, Pat Buchanan no longer believes in democracy. Really. A couple of days ago, Mr. Buchanan blogged about recent events in Hungary. He was writing about the rise of Viktor Orban and his Fidesz Party, which is far right and autocratic. They now have enough votes to rewrite Hungary’s constitution to limit its involvement in the EU and reduce immigration from Africa and the Middle East. Mr. Buchanan continues to critique the liberal democracies of the West f

What's been going on around here? * SNOW!!! So much snow! It started last Friday night and didn't end till early Monday morning. We got about 20 something inches. There are huge piles and drifts around our house and around town. * With the temperatures climbing to the 50s and snow drifts several feet high, we are surely entering the Season of Mud! It's the time when the entryway is perpetually dirty and muddy, shoes are messy, and I can't mop fast enough. * Despite the keto diet, I've had headaches this week. What should I expect, though, when Mother Nature is clearly off her meds?! * I stopped to get gas today and had the front door of the car very close to where the water was dripping off

Book Review - The Critical Journey Janet O. Hagberg and Robert A. Guelich The Critical Journey: Stages in the Life of Faith is a book about spiritual growth. The authors describe how we grow as Christians through six stages. I read this book about ten years ago and found it quite helpful. Reading it now, after spending a good bit of time in Stage 4 and The Wall, I found even more useful insights. According to the authors, we start our faith journey in Stage 1, where we first recognize our need for and the existence of God. We progress through Stage 2, where we learn more about God, and Stage 3, where we become more productive Christians. Stage 4 is called The Journey Inward and includes some

Last week, John Oliver on the Late Show did a segment on Crisis Pregnancy Centers. You know what those are, right? They are the alternative to abortion clinics. Christian organizations set them up to provide women with the information and alternatives to abortions. And they can be great!! My husband used to be on the board of a CPC and they did a lot of good work. But, the pro-life movement and CPCs can have problems, particularly with honesty. We get so caught up with trying to get women to continue their pregnancies that truth gets left by the side of the road. It can start with the name. Many centers try to avoid sounding like a Crisis Pregnancy Center and many actually want to sound like

Tonight, the local high school had a presentation by 5 Stones, an organization dedicated to stopping sex trafficking in Eastern Wisconsin. The 5 stones stand for awareness, education, prevention, networking, and collaboration. Tonight’s presentation was to educate parents and community members about the problem of sex trafficking in our area and how we can help stop it. What is sex trafficking? It is when a minor is commercially sexually exploited. I live in a town of 2000 people. We can’t possibly have sex trafficking around here, can we? Absolutely, we can. There is a strip club less than five miles down the road. Are all those young women of age and consenting? We are about a 45 minute dr

Here's some stuff that I've found on my travels around the internet this week: "Free-range parenting" has become more popular among middle-class families, but poor families come under scrutiny for the same kinds of parenting. It seems like a double standard is in place. A good story about the Dickey Amendment, the reason why the CDC can't do real research about gun violence. The story of the Roma, the "gypsies", the most discriminated group in Europe. Liberty University refused to allow the student newspaper to cover the Red Letter Christians' revival last week. There's a White House Bible Study. It's very evangelical and very conservative. Republicans and Muslim-bashing. It's not good. I do

TGC recently put out a post called “3 Ways to Deny the Resurrection (Without Being a Liberal)”. Well, I read it because, hey, I’m a good Christian and I don’t want to deny the resurrection. First off, I should tell you that TGC is The Gospel Coalition. They’re known to be pretty conservative and some of their contributors are conservative Calvinists The next thing I noticed was the addendum to the title: Without Being a Liberal. I really hope he’s talking about being a theological liberal. I know a number of political liberals who are Christians and are very on board with the resurrection. The first two ways to “deny the resurrection” are very similar. They are “do you have a disproportionat

Investors Business Daily posted an article last August with the headline that the US has “3.5 Million More Registered Voters than Live Adults - A Red Flag for Voter Fraud”. Really? Have there been millions more vote casts than people in the US? Actually, no. Let’s see what is going on. Nowhere in the article do they ask why there are so many more registered voters than there are actual live people. And that’s the crux of the matter. Are people going around registering illegally so they can vote illegally? No. The answer is quite simple. People register to vote in one state and then move away and register to vote in another state without asking to be removed from the first state’s voter rolls

* I am back home in Wisconsin!! Just in time for a massive winter storm! * I treated myself yesterday to a pedicure while waiting on the airport concourse in Atlanta. I could never understand having a spa in an airport. Now I do. And I have sparkly silver toenails! * My cats have had mixed reactions to my return. Rory made sure that she had plenty of lap time with me today. Rhapsody has been stand-off-ish, but that's typical for her. * Today's library trip netted me 5 more books that I have requested over the last week. I won't be bored during this winter storm. * While I was in the airport spa, I sat for a good 45 minutes to an hour in a massage chair, which I loved at the time. Unfortunate

Freedom is my word for the year. Chronic migraine seems to have taken away much of my freedom. Chronic migraine means that I have headache almost everyday and I have migraine 2-3 times per week. Because of this, I don’t work outside the home anymore. Our family tends to take very short vacations, if at all. I feel like my life has had a circle around it that has been slowly made smaller and smaller. Things have been constrained. Instead of getting up and going to work every day, I get up and decide what I’m going to do based on how I feel. Paradoxically, though, chronic migraine has given me one important freedom. I’m free to come down to Georgia (until two years ago, it was Florida) to take

This weekend is the “Stronger” Men’s Conference in Springfield, MO. It’s billed as a conference to “empower and motivate men to live out God’s view of manhood and be the best husbands, fathers, and leaders God has called them to be”. To that end, they will hear speakers, worship together, hear members of the Philadelphia Eagles football team, and watch MMA fighting. Just what Jesus would do, right? In general, I have no problem with men getting together to spur each other on to be better Christians. And, if they have interests in common, so much the better. The issue I have is that so many Christian men’s conferences and women’s conferences purport to show men and women how to be Godly Men a