For the purposes of comparison, could you give me an example of a song that fits each of the following scenarios:

1) sounds like someone poured regular Coke on the microphone
2) sounds like someone poured Pepsi on the microphone
3) sounds like someone poured un-set jello on the microphone

I'd like some touchstones for understanding this rather specific metaphor.

Please and thank-you.

Is it too much to ask that we have our cake and eat it too?

Oh, so Concrete Academic is going after television now?! Nonsense!

Too bad we're not better at pushing the buttons that deliver a good dose of vitamin vitriol to the comments section. All the better to go about slipping something in there to get the masses thinking. Although, if we were that good at it, maybe we could be charged with dealing in mass production for comments.

It's interesting in a world that loves to feign a stance of knowing cynicism in the face of the Borats and Eminems of our media, that there are still mundane ways to rile people up, and there are outlets that make their money doing just that.

But seriously, furniture though?

I don't see it as a coverall for judgement, just a coverall for me making a call on how I think God will judge someone. I believe judgement of an individual is between God and the individual.

The focus of qualifying the text above appears to have centered around following the wrong religion, and implies that this somehow excludes people from mercy. And yet, I wonder if anyone here would choose crucifying Christ over following the wrong religion, if the attempt to be closer to God was genuine. Why would Christ forgive the crucifixtion and not the wrong religion?

I'm glad then, that the text above doesn't deny that punishment exists, only that there can be a tendency for some people to distort its emphasis and marginalise love in the process.

It might be ignorance, but is all ignorance unworthy of mercy?

If I'm living in a Pashtun village, or some other isolated area where all I've ever heard is Muslim or some other doctrine, am I excluded from mercy even though I've never heard a word of Christianity in my entire life? If the whole world that I know around me teaches me one thing, even though the truth is another, am I judged unworthy of mercy, even if I know not what I do?

As I struggle with my stance on the fence, I have to say this is probably as close as I come to leaning on a side. I love sports, played Rugby for a long time, but I never felt that God needed to be involved in that endeavour. I did pray before games, mostly just that I be kept mindful to put in my best effort for the team while being careful to watch that my efforts didn't effect the health of opposition players.

Indeed, if Matthew 6 had been written in modern times, perhaps we would have been exhorted to take no thought to who wins the big game, along with worring about food, drink, and clothing.

It's hard though, when I think about how worship in church has changed over time, especially in terms of worship expressed through song, there is much people could make about how some music is more respectful than others. There are heavy metal Christian bands, are they less respectful than one of those old school choirs?

In the end I think what is in a person's spirit is important. Only Dr. Frederick D. Haynes can answer between himself and God truthfully to that in my opinion. If only because I know that if I throw too much of the "O heavenly father..." honorifics into my prayer the rhetoric gets in the way of how I express myself, it's no longer me. There's a balance between the two. The standards of respectful address differ between people for various reasons, and imposing ones standards on the other can lead to a restriction of expression IMO. It's a fine balance though, because I know the content of Michael's third paragraph in his critique makes me feel uncomfortable as an initial reaction.

Don't get me started on paying for the front row. Down here some churches will go so far as to call those people kings and queens. What do you think churches should do to meet today's challenges though? How do you stay current with technology and being accessible without driving up the need for tithes? I have my own perspective, but I'd like to hear yours. With such a focus on churches and the idea that a large church shows a strong spiritual following, how do you maintain that without bringing a truckload of money into the equation?

I'm glad you brought up monasticism. I think if I'd been better built for monasticism, or at least that sort of lifestyle, then full-time ministry might've been an option for me. I think it would send a great message to be able to full-time minister and live on the bare minimum, and being able to say the joy of the ministry fulfills in a way that using tithes for personally enjoyed chattels never could. Plus being open about church finances, particularly disclosing what is spent on your living costs, would take away from some of the critiques often levelled by people on the outside looking in. I saw a news item on the general coordinating the military effort in Afghanistan, and he had a small, spartan room.

"What else do you need? He said."

Sent a message about a man dedicated to his mission.

Anyone remember how hard it once was to show a link between smoking and lung and throat cancer? In fact, one of the few things I took away from my statistics paper at university was how hard it was to show a definite link between the two because of all the other factors that could mitigate the results.

Yet these days in the media it's so easy to link one issue to the other. My favourite is violence in video games and/or TV. People with an agenda like to claim that depicted violence makes kids more violent, never mind that it might just be that the kids were already violent due to other factors and surprise, surprise, are more inclined to partake in violent media in the first place. I pick that one because cartoon violence has been around for many years, many of them without incident, but parents being absent in providing context to that violence has grown.

It's unfortunate that many news items are too short to really go into the details of these studys. They just tell you the implications, while sidelining the caveats.