Dr Paul Allen

Cover of David and Bathsheba It’s never been easier to watch movies , and lots of them. Netflix , which leads the race as the top online streaming service, provides more than 10,000 movie options for its 40 million subscribers — and it’s flanked by formidable competitors like Hulu Plus , Redbox , and Amazon Prime . Considering the sheer crowd on this track, and each one’s continued efforts to specialize its features, the movie industry doesn’t appear to be slowing down. Add to this online surge the weekly box office numbers, and one thing is clear: a lot of us are watching a lot of movies. And let’s face it, they’re not all good movies. In fact, many of them are bad. And I mean bad in every sense — poor storylines, debaucherous scenes, shaky acting — there are plenty of ways it could go wrong. Which means, there are plenty of ways to ruin your evening by watching a movie. Therefore, we should think carefully before devoting hours of our lives to the screen, whether at home or in ...

Rev. Jonathan Edwards, a leader of the Great Awakening, is still remembered for his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Today in 1758 Jonathan Edwards died. He was 54 years old. It was a fever he had contracted from a small-pox inoculation just a month before. After weeks of worsening weakness and the recognition of his immanent death , he spoke his last words to his daughter, Lucy, who attended him. Toward the end he said, "As to my children, you are now to be left fatherless, which I hope will be an inducement to you all to seek a Father who will never fail you." There is so much to say of Edwards, of his vision of God , of his shortened life, of his influence. But consider for a moment this scene just before he died — a scene that took place this very day 255 years ago. We would think that Edwards, with the mind he had, must have been overwhelmed with the thought of leaving so many unfinished works . I mean, what ab...

Rare Cabbit - cat rabbit (Photo credit: @Doug88888 ) The heart of magic is misdirection. Sure, there are specially made tools of the trade. There is well-trained prestidigitation . There are moments of art and flourish. The magic, however, is to get the audience to look one direction while you do something decidedly ordinary in plain sight. That's how we start with an empty hat, and end up with a fluffy bunny. It is much the same in all manner of intellectual magic. If we can get our intellectual opponents to overlook the fact that we are bringing something out of nothing, we can wow them all the way to the bank. Consider first naturalistic science. Here we begin with one of two hats , both of them black. Some will say that all of reality was compressed into a point of singularity that existed from all eternity. Did you see what they did there? They explain the creation of the universe by presupposing the existence of the universe. We ask, "If you deny that God made e...

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Image via Wikipedia Some modern theorists believe that the world was created by nothing. Note the difference between saying that the world was created from nothing and saying that the universe was created  by  nothing.  In this modern view the rabbit comes out of the hat without a rabbit, a hat, or even a magician. The modern view is far more miraculous than the biblical view. It suggests that nothing created something. More than that, it holds that nothing created everything—quite a feat indeed! Biblical creation sounds better than the big bang out of nothing theory Related articles Why Does a Species Keep Perpetuating? (zazenlife.com) Evolve : Speed (milkandcookies.com) In A Data Driven World, Tablet Publishers Have An Evolving Toolset (readwriteweb.com) Evolve : Flight (milkandcookies.com) Down the Rabbit Hole and Back Again: An Interview with Vanessa Carlton (Feature) (popmatters.com) Can we escape from our biology and become more evolved? (ch1me.wo...

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HOW DO YOU SEE YOURSELF? A masterpiece or a mess? Survivor or struggler? Advocate or critic? Getting perspective on how God sees you might give you a new view of yourself! Our new series entitled: Who do you think you are, starts this Sunday 10am 18.9 at Hope Church Australia . Related articles Inclusion in Church, Australia: A Reader's Personal Story (queeringthechurch.com) 'Survivor: South Pacific' Premiere: Never Suck at the First Challenge! (VIDEO) (aoltv.com) Vote for Click for Community - Round 3 (colesonline.com.au) Tourism Australia to focus on luxury in next advertising campaign (mumbrella.com.au) WWE Survivor Series: Why Is WWE Being so Weird About The Rock's Return? (bleacherreport.com) Australian Records (ancestry.co.uk) My thoughts on the recently-concluded 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards. (thedoctorisinthebathroom.wordpress.com) Rydges Canberra Announces NGA Masterpieces Hotel Package (prweb.com) Help AFL strugglers with draw: Malthouse (news.theage.c...

HOW DO YOU SEE YOURSELF? A masterpiece or a mess? Survivor or struggler? Advocate or critic? Getting perspective on how God sees you might give you a new view of yourself! Our new series entitled: Who do you think you are, starts this Sunday 10am 18.9 at Hope Church Australia . Related articles Inclusion in Church, Australia: A Reader's Personal Story (queeringthechurch.com) 'Survivor: South Pacific' Premiere: Never Suck at the First Challenge! (VIDEO) (aoltv.com) Vote for Click for Community - Round 3 (colesonline.com.au) Tourism Australia to focus on luxury in next advertising campaign (mumbrella.com.au) WWE Survivor Series: Why Is WWE Being so Weird About The Rock's Return? (bleacherreport.com) Australian Records (ancestry.co.uk) My thoughts on the recently-concluded 63rd Primetime Emmy Awards. (thedoctorisinthebathroom.wordpress.com) Rydges Canberra Announces NGA Masterpieces Hotel Package (prweb.com) Help AFL strugglers with draw: Malthouse (news.theage.c...

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Image via Wikipedia Many Christian readers, upon discovering additional layers of meaning in the Narnian stories, immediately jump to the conclusion that the Chronicles are allegories.  These same readers would be surprised to learn that C. S. Lewis denied multiple times that the stories are allegories. The Narnian Stories Are Not Allegories But it is not, as some people think, an  allegory  (“Letter to Sophia Storr,” in The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis ,  vol 3, 1113). You are mistaken when you think that everything in the books ‘represents’ something in this world. Things do that in  The Pilgrim’s Progress  but I’m not writing in that way ( Walter Hooper ,  Literary Criticism , 426). Lewis defined allegory as “a composition (whether pictorial or literary) in which immaterial realities are represented by feigned physical objects, e.g. a pictured Cupid allegorically represents erotic love (which in reality is an experience, not an object occupy...

Image via Wikipedia Malaise is a mercy that feels yucky. Malaise is that feeling you get when you’re getting sick but you don’t quite know it yet.  It’s a vague sense of dis-ease . Your energy is draining. You just want to lie down. Emotionally, you might feel discouraged, irritable, depressed, or cynical for no identifiable reason. You ask yourself, “What’s the matter with me?” Precisely what you’re supposed to ask. Malaise is the early warning system God designed for the body. It’s telling you something destructive is attacking your bodily systems. It’s a messenger running ahead of an invading enemy alerting us to get our defenses in place. The soul also has its diseases and they are more deadly than the body’s. Soul diseases attack our belief systems. Corrupted beliefs can be very serious if left untreated. They grow and spread, wreaking destruction in us. And when contagious, as they frequently are, they harm others. Such diseases can result in soul-death . Mercifully, there...

Image via Wikipedia Malaise is a mercy that feels yucky. Malaise is that feeling you get when you’re getting sick but you don’t quite know it yet.  It’s a vague sense of dis-ease . Your energy is draining. You just want to lie down. Emotionally, you might feel discouraged, irritable, depressed, or cynical for no identifiable reason. You ask yourself, “What’s the matter with me?” Precisely what you’re supposed to ask. Malaise is the early warning system God designed for the body. It’s telling you something destructive is attacking your bodily systems. It’s a messenger running ahead of an invading enemy alerting us to get our defenses in place. The soul also has its diseases and they are more deadly than the body’s. Soul diseases attack our belief systems. Corrupted beliefs can be very serious if left untreated. They grow and spread, wreaking destruction in us. And when contagious, as they frequently are, they harm others. Such diseases can result in soul-death . Mercifully, there...

Image via Wikipedia On the nightstand of a woman in your church, there’s a Christian romance novel and a Bible . Does that matter? On the Kindle of a teenage Christian woman in your congregation’s youth group, there’s a “young adult” fiction bestseller. Should that concern you? A new book by Boston University researchers Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam,  A Billion Wicked Thoughts , offers a disturbing look at how Internet search engines reveal much about the sexual and emotional desires of men and women, and how they differ. The research confirms in some ways what almost everyone knows: men are visually engaged, attracted to youth and sexual novelty, and are thus vulnerable to visual pornography. The research explores further what the commercialized romance industry tells us about what it means to be a woman (at least in a fallen world). Women are much less likely to be drawn to visual pornography (although more do so than one might think), but are quite likely to be involved in such ...