Dr Paul Allen

The Bible reveals some things to us that are “hard to understand” ( 2 Peter   3:16 ). We recognize some of these things in our experience, but when we try to define or explain their essential nature or how they actually work, we find ourselves utterly perplexed. Take, for instance, the Trinity. Relating to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is, in many ways, much easier experienced than explained. A child can believe in, interact with, and trust the triune God , but the combined power of the greatest theological minds of the past two millennia have not been able to explain triune mechanics. We know it works, but we don’t know how. Or consider the coexistence of God’s universal, absolute sovereignty ( John 1:1 –3; Ephesians   1:11 ; Hebrews 1:3) and human personal accountability for our moral choices (Matthew  12:36 ; Romans 2:2; 2 Corinthians   5:10 ; Romans  9:14 –23). We know this reality by experience. We can all point to God’s sovereign interventions in our lives that go w

(Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Facebook has never been more addictive. In 2013, it was 63% of Facebook users who checked in daily. In 2014, that number shot up to 70%. If you check Facebook day after day, you join over 864 million others with the same compulsive routine. For many of us, Facebook is a kind of addiction, a default habit that is now rewiring our brains. Ofir Turel, a psychologist at Cal State Fullerton , has the research to prove it. To make his point, he says Facebook addicts driving a car are more likely to respond faster to a push notification alert on their phone than to street signs. “That’s the power of Facebook,” he said. Turel co-authored a study showing Facebook addiction engages the same impulsive regions of the mind as drug addicts , but with one significant difference. Facebook addicts, unlike compulsive drug abusers, “have the  ability to control their behavior, but they don’t have the  motivation  to control this behavior because they don’t see t