March 8, 2010, Matthew Cochrane, From the Depths of the Web, March 2009
A new month brings a new series of links to the weird, strange, uplifting, and fascinating items from the depths of the World Wide Web:
First, I am very proud to announce that
Conservative21 won the
Sun-Sentinel’s BOB Award in the Politics category. Hurray! NCT hovered around the fourth or fifth position in the “Defies Categorization” category for the duration of the contest. Many thanks to all the readers who voted for C21 and NCT! The Lizard Master is already developing a
strategy for next year’s contest.
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Is the most dangerous place for a black child the womb? Catherine Davis, the Director of Minority Outreach for Georgia Right to Life, says yes.
Albert Mohler writes:
Catherine Davis is a woman with a message, and that message is getting harder to ignore. "Black children are an endangered species."
The Director of Minority Outreach for Georgia Right to Life, Davis is taking that message to the public, along with a massive public awareness campaign that has captured national and international attention. Drivers in the metro Atlanta area are seeing billboards that demand attention -- and are changing minds.
Her argument is simple and the statistics are irrefutable. She accuses abortion providers in general, and Planned Parenthood in particular, of targeting blacks for abortion. She told
The New York Times, "The impact of abortion has become so great that it has begun to impact our fertility rate."
Consider the chilling facts documented in the data. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 57.4% of the abortions performed in Georgia in 2006 were performed on African-American women, but blacks make up only 30% of Georgia's population. Nationwide, the pattern is similarly stacked against black babies -- black women have approximately 37% of all abortions each year, while blacks make up only 13% of the national population.
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Bill Streger, a pastor with Acts 29, the church planting network, reminds us that
uncool people need Jesus too:
It’s amazing how many young pastors feel that they are distinctly called to reach the upwardly-mobile, young, culture-shaping professionals and artists. Can we just be honest? Young, upper-middle-class urban professionals have become the new “Saddleback Sam”.
Seriously, this is literally the only group I see proposals for. I have yet to assess a church planter who wants to move to a declining, smaller city and reach out to blue collar factory workers, mechanics, or construction crews. Not one with an evangelsitic strategy to go after the 50-something administrative assistant who’s been working at the same low-paying insurance firm for three decades now.
Why is that? I can’t offer a definitive answer. It could be that God is legitimately calling an entire generation of young pastors to turn their focus to a small segment of the population that happens to look very much like they do.
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Kevin DeYoung wonders how this epic film didn’t win an Oscar last night. As do I, Kevin. As do I.
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More important than finding the right spouse is being the right spouse. Of course, compatibility and attraction are not unimportant, but every marriage will have struggles eventually. The feelings of puppy love don’t last (they deepen into something better, but they don’t last as they are). Don’t worry about finding the “one.” You’ll tie yourself up in knots and probably wait too long to get married. Look for a strong Christian and then use the brain God gave you to make a good decision.
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The
New York Times reports on the growing controversy swirling around Scientology and its former members:
Fifty-six years after its founding by the science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, who died in 1986, the church is fighting off calls by former members for a Reformation. The defectors say Sea Org members were repeatedly beaten by the church’s chairman, David Miscavige, often during planning meetings; pressured to have abortions; forced to work without sleep on little pay; and held incommunicado if they wanted to leave. The church says the defectors are lying.
The best part of the article details the billion year contracts members were forced to sign due to their belief in immortality. Everyone knows contracts never hold up after a million years though!
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John Piper offers some thoughts on
Numbers 7, one of the longest, most repetitive chapters in the Bible:
I just read
Numbers 7 on my annual way through the Bible. I read every word. It is one of the longest, most repetitive chapters in the Bible.
From verse 12 to verse 83 Moses describes the offerings that each of the twelve tribes of Israel brought to the tabernacle when it was first dedicated to the Lord.
But here’s the amazing thing. There are 93 words in the description of what each tribe brought as an offering. And all 93 words are repeated verbatim for each of the 12 tribes. Twelve times he says exactly the same thing. Twelve times! Exactly the same 93-word description for each tribe’s offering!
Why?
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Finally, George Will poking some holes in liberal talking points on health care:
