My Response part 1

to atheists...
i am sorry for the cruelty of christians.
i am sorry for the intentionally hostile attacks that have been sent your way.
i am sorry for the hurt that you may have received from angry christians.
to the world...
i am sorry for the violence of christians; for the ignorance of christians; and for the inability of christians to show you love.
to God...
i am sorry we have neglected you and misrepresented you in a world that needs you.

it is wrong to kill
it is worse to be unforgiving

revenge slips in making you the thing you hate;

war has been growing more and more unjustifiable
as people have shown their selfishness and pride more clearly

the dead are rarely the guilty ones

freedom

Could it be that this is not the ability to do what i want, but actually the ability to not do the things that i want to do?
I have imagined evils great and small with ignorant fancy, and it is by grace alone i have the power to resist the desires of my humanity.
I often see prisoners so entrapped with fulfilling every desire they have that they cannot see their own captivity.
It is in my freedom that i see so clearly that i am no beast, that i am more than instincts and urges. I see that i am in the image of one who is greater than this world and all its inhabitants.

we all want to be called. to feel destined to do something. to have this important task that overtakes us. a task that invades our dull lives. a task that gives us purpose. a task that consumes us so that we can act on impulse. a task that allows to justify the means for the end.

but none of us want this task. this task is almost impossible.
the truth is very few people can handle being set apart.

a parable

their was an american boy, who like other boys, grew up up made friends and began his pursuit of happiness. There was t.v. his old favorite from childhood, sports the new exciting active venue, and partying the trendy choice of most adolescents. He chose of course partying for the popularity it held among his friends. Amidst this new life of partying came alcohol. He starting to drink and have fun with his friends every weekend. He had a lot fun and was as they say 'happy'. He partied and drank whenever he could. He had so much fun every time he drank and when he was not drinking he thought about parties and drinking.
He began to have trouble having fun whenever he was not partying. He was never happy when there was no alcohol around. He started to criticize people who did not drink claiming they did not know how to really have fun and that they were never happy. And he made it so that people around him could not have fun unless they were drinking with him. He became an alcoholic miserable in solitude but difficult to be around sober, who was rarely happy.

i know this is a man's world because sex sells.
because it is a mans world it is likely to stay that way.
the real solution will not come with women in power but rather with men in reality.

Do contemporary church movements contribute to emotionally dependent Christians?
Yes.
I was pondering some questions recently like:
Why are worship services so much more popular than prayer meetings?
Why do churches today seem so much more consumeristic than Christ centered?
Why is it that Christians seem more and more high maintenance in their spiritual needs?

I think for a long time there has been a chasm forming in the mind of western Christians that separates spiritual activities and aspiritual activities. In this dichotomy Christians evaluate the former from the ladder on an emotional relevancy basis. Hymns, for example which not often sung emotionally, retain very little spiritual benefit. You will hear people say, 'that song just didn't do it for me' or 'i just couldn't get into the worship today.' Worship services have thus evolved to fit this new generation of consumeristic high maintenance Christian with dimmed light and loud music to simulate a elevated emotional worship experience. Charismatic preaching, intense visual media, and dramatic altar calls, have similar affects on the Christian church experience. I do not think any of these things are heretical or bad but the danger remain when Christians closely associate the spiritual aspects of their lives with highly emotional atmospheres of worship. The danger is when Christians have trouble being alone with God, when their Christianity is fighting for it's life in the lows between conferences or retreats, when Christians leave churches because of the music. The alternative is a holistically spiritual Christian. A Christian who is always interacting with God. A Christians who sees the need for God in every aspect of life, that is a Christian who can worship God free from the dependency on emotionalism.