Confessions of a Quirky Christian Artist

Since I'm sounding off on the hot topics of the day I figured I'd lay out my opinion on this issue as well. I don't think abortion is a Christian issue as it's been presented by both sides in the American debate. It's a philosophical one. It involves determining when a human life counts as a human life and deserves the rights afforded to every human. If you think an embryo qualifies as a human life, that is not necessarily based  on religion, though your religion may teach that. It's a judgement call. If you think a fetus is not human enough to have rights one second before it's out of the birth canal, but then becomes human one second later, that's not religious. It's a judgement call. The reason I'm 'pro-life' has nothing to do with religion. It's because I don't think we have a right to arbitrarily decide what a human life is.  I think it's clear that what we VALUE in human life slowly builds as an embryo develops, and i...

Part 1: Home I haven’t had this amount of stress since my divorce.  It’s pretty intense.  But the difference is I have a woman of godly character and grace and strength standing with me through it, and as a result it’s nowhere near as bad as the child custody trials I had to keep my kids safe.  So over the past couple years my oldest son has been getting more and more outrageous in his disrespect and disobedience.  It’s really funny when you talk to him and get the impression that we are tyrannical control freaks.  But we are so easy going, and all we ask of him is to be kind.  Seriously.  That’s it.  But because we follow through with restrictions for disrespect, he has lost every privilege he has ever had.  Though he could get them all back in a matter of months if he would just… be nice.  Complicating the issue are some scary psychological phenomena he has experienced.  He says he hears voices telling him negative thi...

When I was 14 I was sent to a special evangelical camp that was run by Focus on the Family.  It's purpose was to ensure that once the next generation of Christians entered college, they would have the intellectual and spiritual tools to maintain their faith in a hostile, anti-Christian environment.  They were there to shape our world-views and teach us Christian apologetics.  Besides a healthy dose of anti-Communist lectures, (I was there just as the USSR was starting to crumble.) we were taught about how terrible homosexuality was.  I'm sure at some point they told to hate the sin, not the sinner.  But all I remember was the vivid pictures one speaker was painting for us.  I don't remember where he got his information, but what he said surely impacted my perception powerfully.  He talked about gay bath houses, where people would roll around in each others feces.  And while I don't doubt such places exist, I'm very confident t...