Persecuted Christians

Persecuted Christians

I recently heard a respected priest speak from the pulpit about persecuted Christians being slaughtered in the Middle East, particularly in northern Iraq right now. He prayed that the people would “hold onto their Christian teachings.” The word slaughter, in this case, means the killing of great numbers of human beings, and from what I hear on the news, it is being done in the most awful ways. People have been killing one another for their religious beliefs for a very long time. The end result of this senselessness is, quite obviously, that there are a lot of dead people. Lives are ruined, families are destroyed, society is harmed, the human race is diminished. Our response? “Hold onto your Christian teachings?!” Can we do better than...

Masters and Minions

Masters and Minions

Are you a master or a minion? In the Despicable Me world, minions are “naive and impulsive with little self control.” In the real world, minions are also naive and are controlled by others. In the real world, people who are in control (of themselves and/or others), I will call masters. As you can guess, I would recommend you not be a minion! You are a minion if you allow others to dominate you. If others compel you by an unverifiable belief system or by religious guilt, or by lording power over you in some other way, then I am here to help you make the shift from minion to master. Priests, pastors, and religious (brothers, sisters) all consider themselves to be masters. They are in charge of their minions and exercise power over them –possibly...