Happy Friday! Here's a super-sized roundup of links for your weekend reading pleasure. The Right Stuff 30 years later, benefits of procrastination, separation of church and state, marriage and religious freedom, and much, much more.
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Last week, Dr. Albert Mohler addressed the students and faculty at Brigham Young University on the critical issue of marriage and religious freedom. An excerpt:
The moral revolution we are now witnessing on the issue of homosexuality is without precedent in human history in terms of its scale and velocity. We are not looking at a span of centuries, or even the length of one century. This revolution is taking place within a single human generation.
I would argue that no moral revolution on this scale has ever been experienced by a society that remained intact, even as no moral revolution of this velocity has yet been experienced. We can now see more clearly where this revolution began. It is virtually impossible to see where it ends.
But, for the first time in the experience of most Americans, the moral revolution revolving around marriage, the family, and human sexuality is now clearly becoming a religious liberty issue. The rights of parents to raise their children according to their most basic and fundamental theological and moral convictions are now at stake. Courts have ruled in some jurisdictions that parents cannot even “opt out” their children from sex education driven by moral revisionism. Legislatures in California and New Jersey have made it illegal for mental health professionals to tell minors that there is anything wrong with homosexual sexuality, orientation, or relationships. Parents are put on notice. How long will it be before the moral authority of the secular state is employed to allow children to “divorce” their parents? How long before the logic of sexual revolution and sexual self-expression leads to parents being told what they must allow and facilitate with their own children when it comes to sex, gender, and sexual orientation? The logic of moral change by legal coercion is already fully on display in many modern legal debates. How long will a respect for parental rights and religious liberty hold back the flooding river of this moral revolution?
Read the whole thing.
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A 95 year old World War II veteran who was a POW of the Burma Railway (made famous in The Bridge on the River Kwai) has come forward to tell his story. This is a fascinating account and I'm glad he decided to write a book. I hope it will be available here in the U. S.
Procrastination is a bad thing - or is it? Perhaps it doesn't necessarily need a cure.
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Seven obstacles to enjoying Sabbath rest. By the way, I disagree with the premise that it's not a mandate for Christians. I believe that the creation account from Genesis 1 as well as the Ten Commandments makes it clear that it is mandated.
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A historical examination of why we separate church and state (Hat tip: Acton Institute Power Blog)
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It's been thirty years since The Right Stuff first appeared on movie screens. Here's a look back at the film that helped Hollywood shake its "Vietnam Syndrome".
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The first automated library in the U. S. has opened in Norman, Oklahoma. It's kind of a Redbox for books. While on one hand this seems like a neat idea, I am not sure that I'm comfortable with the idea of not being able to browse for books.
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In defense of Disney princesses:
Disney movies aren’t telling girls that they should limit their aspirations to becoming princesses (although young women sometimes do become one, so be ready); they are teaching them to adopt the values of Disney princesses: kindness (Snow White), compassion (Ariel), intelligence (Belle), humility (Cinderella), courage (Merida), and determination (Tiana), among others. These are worthy attributes for boys as well as girls, but the point is that Disney isn’t steering girls toward being future trophy wives – it’s promoting values that make you a decent person, regardless of your career or lack thereof.****************
It's Friday. Trevin Wax has some advice on what you should be saying at the end of the work week.
I'm writing this post on a Friday. It's been a frantic week, with a higher-than-usual number of meetings to attend, decisions to make, content to create, and people needing a response.
When I leave my office this afternoon, I will be leaving behind an inbox full of emails awaiting response.
There are editorial tasks I hoped to cross off my list this week. Unfortunately, they have risen in defiance of my careful agenda and have chosen to stubbornly persist into next week's to-do list.
hen I leave, I'll have my laptop bag strapped on my shoulders, but it's all the stuff I carry around in my mind that will weigh me down. The blogs to write, curriculum to edit, writers to enlist, the teams I lead, the contacts I need to make...
And like I do every week, I will whisper to myself as I walk out the door: And God saw that it was good.
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