Things You Don't Hear in Every Discipleship Group (But You Will Hear in Mine)

We have some great discussions in the discipleship group I'm co-leading this year. I appreciate the honesty and the engagement level of each one of the guys. But we're all a bit quirky (who isn't, once you get to know them?), so some unusual things can get said during the course of the evening. Here's a gem from last night:

I almost feel like, "If none of this is true, how come I'm not eating people?"

Indeed.

Photo: Jeffrey Dahmer, murderer, necrophiliac, cannibal. A prison video of him professing a newfound faith in Christ can be found here (5 minutes).

Pop Quiz - Capital Punishment in America

Which country performed the most executions in 2006: China, Iran, or U.S.A.?



How many executions did the U.S.A. perform in 2006 (to the nearest 100)?
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Got your answers in mind?


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Would it surprise you to know that China performed 7,500-8,000 executions, Iran 170, but the U.S.A. only 50? From all the attention that the death penalty gets in this country, from the protestations of Amnesty International and the condemnations of "civilized" countries like the U.K. (which doesn't practice capital punishment), you'd think there was a judicial bloodbath going on here. (These statistics come from Amnesty International, by the way - via The Economist's issue of 4/28/07.) In a country of 300,000,000, with about 16,000 murders per year - around 600 of them in NY City, alone - wouldn't you expect the rate of capital punishment to be higher?

And for another point of interesting perspective: worldwide, there are approximately 46 million abortions per year, representing 1 in 4 pregnancies (3 of 4 in Romania and Shanghai, 2 of 3 in Russia). In the U.S., the number is around 1.3 million (3 of 4 pregnancies in New York City).

There is in fact a bloodbath going on, but it's not through capital punishment.

Elimination, Selective Reduction, Deletion - Murder?

If you can read this GetReligion post without being repulsed and at least a little sick, then you deserve my admiration or pity. The Washington Post article it's mostly about discusses the murder of selected fetuses when the mother is carrying more than one at a time. Pregnant with 3, but only have room at home for 2 more? There are doctors who can help you with that.

It's astonishing to me that the Washington Post would run an article such as this, which hardly helps to forward the pro-choice agenda. Here's an excerpt that gives you an idea of what you're getting into:

Evans prepared two syringes, swabbed Emma with antiseptic, put the square-holed napkin on her stomach. Then he plunged one of the needles into Emma’s belly and began to work his way into position. He injected the potassium chloride, and B, the first fetus to go, went still.

“There’s no activity there,” he said, scrutinizing the screen. B was lying lengthwise in its little honeycomb chamber, no longer there and yet still there. It was impossible not to find the sight affecting. Here was a life that one minute was going to happen and now, because of its location, wasn’t. One minute, B was a fetus with a future stretching out before it: childhood, college, children, grandchildren, maybe. The next minute, that future had been deleted.

Evans plunged the second needle into Emma’s belly. “See the tip?” he said, showing the women where the tip of the needle was visible on the ultrasound screen. Even I could see it: a white spot hovering near the heart. D was moving. Evans started injecting. He went very slowly. “If you inject too fast, you blow the kid off your needle,” he explained.

If a nation ever deserved God's judgment, isn't it ours?

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(Please read the whole GetReligion post here.)