Links

Scripture as Witness to the Word of God

I always appreciate the insight and posture of Brian Zahnd, including his latest thoughts on Scripture:

The supreme value of the treasure that is Holy Scripture is that it is the divine witness to the Word of God who is Christ.

If you can’t see the distinction between Jesus and the Bible, you are very confused indeed! And not in a trivial manner either. Biblicism is a rival faith to Christianity. Oh, believe me, I have a high view of Scripture…but Jesus is Lord! It is Christ who rules the nations… not the Bible. Can I give an example of how this distinction might matter? Consider that the Bible does not give a clear denunciation of slavery, but the living and reigning Christ surely does!

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Portraits of children and where they sleep

jamesmollisonwherechildrensleep6

Where Children Sleep is an eye-opening project by photographer James Mollison that takes a look at child​ren from all across the globe and the diverse environments they go to sleep in. The series presents a portrait of each child or adolescent accompanied by a shot of their bedrooms. While some have a bounty of possessions and a lavish bed to rest their head on at night, the images reveal that some are not as fortunate.

A really fascinating concept and insight into children’s lives around the world.

See more here.​​

Loving your neighborhood on Halloween

Great thoughts…

You may still hate Halloween and avoid it at all costs. That’s fair. It’s not for everybody. But hey, it’s over now so you’ve got a whole year to mull it over. Give Halloween a chance. Be a blessing. Love your neighbor. Even if you think the whole thing is just awful. Jesus didn’t come to redeem a day. He came to redeem lives and all we have to do to be part of that is to love our neighbors. Not preach at them. Not throw Bible verses in the Halloween bag instead of candy. Just love them. It’s so easy. It’s so worth it. And seriously, it’s so much fun.

What are your plans for Halloween?

How to stop the world’s biggest companies from avoiding taxes

From the Washington Post:

Today, the Treasury estimates, as much as 70 percent of net business income escapes the corporate tax.

What this means is that there are companies of the same size with the same profits, in some cases competitors in the same industry, that are paying significantly lower tax rates — on average, 6 percentage points lower — just because they operate under a different legal charter…

These days, the business lobby never misses an opportunity to point out that the 35 percent corporate tax rate is the highest in the industrialized world. With state taxes, it’s about 39 percent. For other industrialized countries, the statutory rate averages about 30 percent.

What really matters to business, of course, is not the statutory rate but the effective tax rate — the percent of profits paid in taxes once all the deductions, credits and other complex provisions of the tax code are taken into account. What you don’t hear from the business lobby is that, in terms of the effective rate, the United States is slightly below the average of the big industrial countries, at about 26 percent. According to Sullivan, the claim that our corporate tax rate is crippling the competitiveness of American business is “vastly overstated.”

An orphan goes to church and asks someone, anyone to adopt him

Read this…

Davion always longed for a family. His caseworker took him to picnics, put his portrait in the Heart Gallery, an organization devoted to helping foster kids find permanent homes. But he had thrown chairs, blown his grades, pushed people away.

When he learned his birth mother was dead, everything changed. He had to let go of the hope that she would come get him. Abandon his anger. Now he didn’t have anyone else to blame.

”He decided he wanted to control his behavior and show everyone who he could be,” Going said.

So someone would want him.

The company behind Healthcare.gov

Healthcare.gov has definitely had it’s problems since launching two weeks ago.

While the Obama campaign pulled off a nearly perfect technical campaign, the president’s biggest initiative has failed miserably from a technical standpoint.

A friend on G+ just noted that he ran a WC3 validation on the site and the site was littered with errors – even in the meta tags. Doh!

The Washington Post takes a look at CGI Federal, the Canadian company that won the bid to develop the federal site.