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Showing posts from December, 2005

There's an Idol in the House!!!

You remember when you sat down in your church, your car, or maybe even a friends' house, and then it came. The person to whom you were listening dropped a hundred pound weight on the balance of your mind in the form of a shocking quotation. Each of us no doubt has experienced it. I would like to recall an experience of mine from this summer at Junior Camp. The speaker was Ed Dunlop. If the name sounds familiar, you may remember him because he is a ventriloquist, in addition to being a youth speaker. He brought a message about television to the 4th-6th graders and their counselors. The statement went something like this: (loose quote with no meaning or emphasis changed/lost) "With the hours and hours of television kids watch a week (I think the amount was in the 20's), kids engage in less than 5 minutes of meaningful conversation with their parents in a week." When it first rang in my ears, I thought, "No way...impossible! Less than 5 minutes?!" After regurgi

The Value of Labels

This will be the second time I've posted regarding a quote from my General Psychology textbook. Regardless of your thoughts on psychology, these quotes are quality. In discussion about mental handicaps and disorders, the author of the book said, "Labels are debilitating at best." He is referring to the assigning of labels to kids or adults with seeming handicaps. He is not speaking of people who actually are mentally disabled, but rather of people who receive a label and consequently act a certain way because that is "who they are" now. The more I talk with Christians, the more this truth is apparent in Christian circles. It almost becomes a game of "Which came first: the chicken or the egg?" with their beliefs. Corresponding Question : Does our being a _____ make us believe a certain way, or does the fact that we believe a certain way (based on Scripture, I hope) make us have a certain label in others' eyes. For the sake of many things, I hope th