The workers at the Fukushima plants are doing an amazing job, and they are to be commended for working very hard. However, since you have linked to this article which has been doing the rounds, it is worth pointing out that unfortunately there are several inaccuracies in its account of the radiation levels. In particular, no worker has received a dose of more than 200mS, counter to the article’s claims of 2-6S. Only short-halflife isotopes (I, Cs, etc) have been leaking, until some reports of Plutonium today, so the article was unfortunately sensationalizing the radiation risks. The journalist and the public are needlessly more scared of small doses of radiation than the much more deadly hazard of large objects falling on you, which has been the cause of all injuries so far.

Well done to these very dedicated workers, but radiation levels around the plant, in food, and in water, are elevated but perfectly safe, and careful bordering on paranoid monitoring at the plant is also preventing any harm there.

The sad part about PETA and the NIV committee is, the NIV committee will probably agree to make the changes.

Once PETA gets the specialist language changed, the gender advocates will jump back in and demand a third category of classification outside of “he” or “she”, and we’ll be right back where we started :)

Given that I’m currently taking statistics and psychology classes (where we’ve learned a lot about the malleability of studies and how the results are reported) as part of a master’s program in nutrition, I’m going to call a partial foul on this study, even though I agree with its hypothesis. The study only notes one independent variable - church activity involvement at least once a week. - and calls that “a high frequency of participation.” For it to be a more credible correlational study, they’d need to measure that rate vs. twice a week (don’t forget the snacks at community group!), three times a week (do baby/bridal showers count as a church activity if there’s a devotion??), etc., and then measure it against no involvement at all.

That being said, there’s no question that, at least in the evangelical arena, we don’t look much different from the world in this regard. To quote the Rev. Jimmy Buffet, “You treat your body like a temple, but I treat mine like a tent.” seems to be the prevailing wisdom.

re last post:

That’s a very good point about the scope of salvation. God’s plan of salvation includes building a new community of people in his image, who are working for him and being made new. Creation that is in Christ will be renewed. Its wonderful.

Yet that is only one theme in the New Testament. We should have a bigger scope and not limit ourselves. I would suggest reading about the biblical theology of “the gospel” and “the kingdom” in particular to show how these themes relate to Scripture. I also like the recent post by Trevin Wax, which highlights 3 strands we always need in talking about the gospel: see http://trevinwax.com/2011/02/22/3-ways-of-defining-the-gospel/ .

IMHO, the bible’s and God’s instructions about salvation are pretty strongly “centered” on individual people repenting and being saved from judgment. I think a study of the gospels will show this.. see all of Jesus’ parables about the “hiddenness” of the kingdom- it is largely unseen in this age; also, the way the kingdom breaks in is by the Word and Spirit; Jesus constantly highlights evangelism; central to John’s gospel is what we do about Jesus’ claims over us, and whether we are condemned or saved.

The letters of the NT all point to the reality of the final judgment, on the great Day of the Lord. Since they are addressed to believers, they focus less on the threat of judgment than the Gospels; yet the themes are all throughout. just a few examples:

- Paul’s focus on condemnation and the final judgment in Romans.. the book hinges on the role of justification. God’s work in recreating us/uniting us with Christ is also key in the book.

-his fear for the Galatians’ falling away into possible damnation.

-Paul’s insistence in several books that those who do not live righteously will not inherit the kingdom of God

-the Pastorals/Petrine epistles’ worry about false teachers and the damnation they will receive.

-The Letter to the Hebrews: whether or not the people would commit apostasy and be damned.

- And Revelation.

I would argue that there is a reason why Christianity hadn’t always emphasized the themes of new creation and renewal—probably because the themes aren’t often in the forefront of Scripture.

I though the PETA story was funny — but so many people have substitued animals for God, animals for kids, animals for real relationships…

David, www.RedLetterBelievers.com, “Salt and Light”

David - not funny or to be enjoyed. PETA have as their champion Peter Singer who is rabidly anti-christian. It is no laughing matter.

Don’t know Singer - try this:http://www.bethinking.org/resource.php?ID=302“Animal liberation and vegetarianism

Singer distinguishes human beings in the biological sense from persons, who are rational and self conscious beings. He has no basis for seeing human beings in a different category from other animals. In general, humans have more intelligence and greater self-awareness, but some humans lack these faculties. In the newborn they are undeveloped; in the severely brain damaged they are lost; and in the dementing they are fading day by day. They are humans, but not persons. Some adult animals, however, are remarkably intelligent. They are persons, though not human.

More important for Singer is the division between sentient creatures, which can experience pleasure and suffering, and non-sentient creatures which cannot. Most - but not all - humans come in the first category, as do many animals. Hence the protection afforded to persons should be extended to such non-humans. The division between these categories is not always obvious.[10] Some animals even seem to demonstrate a moral awareness by altruistic behaviour. He cites dolphins helping injured dolphins to breathe, wolves taking food back to the pack, chimpanzees calling others when they find ripe fruit, and gazelles putting their own lives at risk by warning of predators.[11]

The focus of Singer’s concern about animals is the human tendency to think in terms of species. While sexism and racism assert the superiority of one sex or race over another, speciesism asserts that humans are superior to other animals. Such discrimination, in Singer’s view, is indefensible.[12] His philosophy not only rules out all cruelty to self-conscious, sentient beings, which includes adult mammals, but also rules out their killing. Fur coats and leather shoes cannot then be justified, and neither, in general, can eating meat.[13] If animal experimentation can ever be justified, then it must be equally justifiable to perform such experiments on severely mentally-retarded human adults, or normal infants who are not aware of what is being done to them. [14]”

and this:

His broad perspective

Singer is an atheist who very easily dismisses Judeo-Christian ethics as being out of date and irrelevant: ‘We have no need to postulate gods who hand down commandments to us because we understand ethics as a natural phenomenon.’[3] He asks, ‘What do I think of as a good life in the fullest sense of that term? This is an ultimate question.’[4] The choice is ours because, in Singer’s view, ethical principles are not laws written up in heaven. Nor are they absolute truths about the universe, known by intuition. The principles of ethics come from our own nature as social, reasoning beings. So he writes, ‘We are free to choose what we are to be, because we have no essential nature, that is, no given purpose outside ourselves. Unlike say, an apple tree that has come into existence as a result of someone else’s plan, we simply exist, and the rest is up to us’.[5]

His principle reason for rejecting the Christian God is the existence of suffering in the world. In particular, he dismisses the idea that mankind is distinct from other animals by being ‘made in the image of God’. Hence the ‘Sanctity of Human Life’ argument, which hangs on that distinctive, goes out of the window. All that remains are ‘Quality of Life’ issues. This leads him to the utilitarian principle of ‘The greatest happiness for the greatest number’, which undergirds so much modern political thought.[6] Pleasure (or, rather, ‘preference satisfaction’) becomes the greatest good; suffering and pain the only evils. Utilitarianism, therefore, invites an examination of the consequences of our actions, studying the effects of our choices on others. Our actions themselves have no intrinsic moral value - what matters is what happens. Our intentions count for nothing; the starting point is preference not idealistic motivation. Reducing ethical choices to a concern for personal preferences and useful consequences sounds like a simplification of life’s moral dilemmas. However, the ethical process involved in arriving at such a decision can be extremely complicated. He writes:

I must, if I am thinking ethically, imagine myself in the situation of all those affected by my action (with the preferences that they have). I must consider the interests of my enemies as well as my friends, and of strangers as well as family. Only if, after taking fully into account the interests and preferences of all these people, I still think the action is better than any alternative open to me, can I genuinely say that I ought to do it. At the same time I must not ignore the long-term effects of fostering family ties, of establishing and promoting reciprocal relationships, and of allowing wrongdoers to benefit from their wrong doing. [7]