Judge wears 'pussy hat' in court, probe launched

(BREITBART) — A short investigation was launched after a Travis County judge wore a pink, knitted “pussy hat” in her courtroom late in January causing, some to doubt her impartiality from the bench.
Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt started her session on January 24 by putting on the pink knitted hat that has become associated with the Women’s March protests held the day after Donald J. Trump took the oath of office to become the 45th president of the United States.
The judge’s shocking partisanship was first noted by Reddit users and soon caused residents to quiz Texas authorities as to whether or not a sitting judge is allowed to wear partisan political paraphernalia on the bench.




Read more  here.

Syrian Arab women battle IS, social stigma

 

Though fighting the most-feared members of the militant Islamic State (IS) group in Syria, hundreds of Arab female fighters are also battling with the disapproval of their relatives and society.

"I braved my tribal clan, my father, my mother. Now I'm braving the enemy," says 21-year-old Batul, who is part of an Arab-Kurdish alliance battling to capture IS's Syrian stronghold of Raqqa.

She is one of more than 1,000 Arab women who have joined Kurdish male and female fighters in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) alliance, according to a spokeswoman.

Read more: 'I joined the Afghan army to save lives'

Standing in the desert some 20 kilometres from Raqqa, Batul speaks passionately about her decision to fight IS, which holds the nearby village of Al-Torshan.

"My parents told me, 'Either you put down your weapons or we disown you'," she says, wearing an ammunition vest and a floral scarf around her shoulders.

Her parents have not spoken to her since.

 

 Batul, a 21-year-old female Arab fighter among the Syrian Democratic Forces, talks to a comrade of hers. ─AFP

 

Batul comes from the Al-Sharabiyeh tribe, one of the best-known of the Arab tribes of northeast Syria.

Her family views her as a rebel, who removed the headscarf worn by many Muslim women and refused her father's orders to pray in front of him.

But she is proud of the decision she took two years ago to join the Kurdish Women's Protection Units, more commonly known as YPJ, which is an all-female Kurdish military organisation and a key component of the SDF alliance.

Also read: Women soldiers: If the boot fits, why shouldn't they wear it?

"I joined the YPJ to liberate my homeland, but also to free women from slavery," she says.

"We must no longer remain cloistered behind four walls." 

Continued, here.

Why Does God Allow Suffering?

A one-year-old boy shattered his back falling down a flight of stairs. He spent his childhood and youth in and out of hospital. Gavin Read, the former Bishop of Maidstone, interviewed him in church. The boy remarked, ‘God is fair.’ Gavin stopped him and asked, ‘How old are you?’ ‘Seventeen,’ the boy replied. ‘How many years have you spent in hospital?’ The boy answered, ‘Thirteen years.’ Gavin asked, ‘Do you think that is fair?’ He replied, ‘God has got all of eternity to make it up to me.’
We live in a world of instant gratification that has almost entirely lost its eternal perspective. The New Testament is full of wonderful promises about the future: all creation will be restored. Jesus will return to establish ‘a new heaven and a new earth’ (Revelation 21:1). There will be no more crying, for there will be no more pain and suffering. Our frail, decaying mortal bodies will be changed for a body like that of Jesus’ glorious resurrected body.
Suffering is not part of God’s original created order (see Genesis 1–2). There was no suffering in the world before rebellion against God. There will be no suffering when God creates a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21:3–4). Suffering is, therefore, an alien intrusion into God’s world.
This, of course, is not a complete answer to the question ‘Why does God allow suffering?’ As we saw yesterday there is no simple or complete solution, but each of today’s passages gives us some further insight.

By Nicky Gumbel

YouVersion

Your Most Valuable Possession

 

Raj was one of six children born into a very wealthy Brahmin family - the highest caste in the Indian caste system.

At the age of twenty-three, Raj encountered Jesus Christ. His family disinherited him. They cut him off. As far as they were concerned he was dead. They even held a funeral service for him. Neither his parents, nor his brothers and sisters have ever spoken to him again.
For several weeks he wandered around the streets of Bangalore. He had virtually no food to eat. He walked all day and slept in the park at night.
He started a new life. He began to speak about his new-found faith. Through him, thousands of other people encountered Jesus. He went on to lead a prayer movement of over 3 million people. Then, for several years, we were privileged that he was the National Director of Alpha in India. He said to us recently that he has had a blessed life and that God has more than compensated for his losses. Although he left ‘everything’, in Jesus Christ he found the ‘pearl… of great value’ (Matthew 13:45–46).
Relationships are your most valuable possession. There is one relationship for which you were created. This is the most valuable pearl of all. It is worth selling ‘everything’ in order to get hold of it.

By Nicky Gumbel.

YouVersion 

Nicky Gumbel: Soft on Crime?

Devotional

Soft on Crime?

Newspaper headlines frequently express outrage at judges who are ‘soft on crime’ and fail to impose the appropriate penalty for the offence committed.
When I worked as a barrister, I noticed that the legal profession did not respect judges who were regarded as too lenient. We expect judges to execute justice. We do not expect them simply to be merciful.
On the other hand, we do expect mercy in our personal relationships. A loving parent will be merciful to their child. We expect friends to be merciful to one another. Justice and mercy do not normally go together. We tend to see them as alternatives. We expect either justice or mercy, but not both at the same time.
Yet God is both a God who judges with justice, and also a God of mercy. How can he combine these two apparently contradictory characteristics? The answer is that the sacrifice of Jesus has made it possible for God to combine both justice and mercy.
When I first encountered Jesus, this illustration helped me to understand what Jesus achieved for us on the cross: Two people went through school and university together and developed a close friendship. Life went on and they went their separate ways and lost contact. One went on to become a judge, while the other’s life spiralled down and he ended up as a criminal. One day the criminal appeared before the judge. He had committed a crime to which he pleaded guilty. The judge recognised his old friend and faced the dilemma, which, in effect, God faces.
He was a judge so he had to be just; he couldn’t simply let the man off. On the other hand, he wanted to be merciful, because he loved his friend. So he fined him the correct penalty for the offence. That was justice. Then he came down from his position as judge and wrote a cheque for the amount of the fine. He gave it to his friend, saying that he would pay the penalty for him. That was an act of mercy, love and sacrifice.
The illustration is not an exact one. Our plight is worse – the penalty we face is death. The relationship is closer – your Father in heaven loves you more than any earthly parent loves their child. And the cost is greater. It cost God far more than money – he came himself, in the person of Jesus, and paid the penalty of sin.
God is not soft on crime. In his justice, God judges us because we are guilty. Then in his mercy and love he comes down in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ, and pays the penalty for us. Through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, God is both just and merciful.

Source: YouVersion 

 

How to Fight Fear

 

 

 

 

 

Devotional

How to Fight Fear

At one level, fear is healthy. ‘Fear’ is an emotion induced by a perceived threat. It is a natural human emotion. It is God-given. It is a basic survival mechanism. It keeps us alive. It protects us from danger.
However, there is also such a thing as unhealthy fear. The Greek word commonly used in the New Testament is phobos – from which we get the word ‘phobia’. This is unhealthy fear. It is disproportionate to the danger posed. It is ‘False Evidence Appearing Real’. It is when I catastrophise – overestimating the danger and underestimating my ability to cope.

Common phobias include fears in relation to health, finances, failure, growing old, death, loneliness, rejection, messing up, public speaking, flying, heights, snakes and spiders. They also include things such as, what is now called, FOMO – the fear of missing out, the fear of not being special.

In my own life I have experienced many fears – from a fear of heights to panic attacks and other irrational fears, fears about preaching and a fear of doing anything that might bring dishonour to the name of Jesus.
Whereas the Spirit of God does not produce negative fear, there is a kind of healthy fear – the fear of God. This does not mean being frightened of God. In fact, it means the opposite. It is an understanding of who God is in relation to us. It means respect, reverence, awe, honour, adoration and worship; and it could even be translated as love for God. It recognises the power, majesty and holiness of God Almighty. It leads to a healthy respect of God and is the antidote to all other fears and phobias we experience in life. Fear God and you need not fear anything else or anyone else.

It is no coincidence that as the fear of God has decreased in our society, all the other fears have increased. We need to return to a right relationship with God.

Source: You Version

 

John McCain Admits He Spread Trump Hooker Hoax

Jeremiah 5:28

Jeremiah 5:28: They have become fat and sleek.They have also excelled in evil matters.They have not taken up cases,such as the case of the fatherless, so they might prosper,and they...

British Government Affirms Christmas at Work

 

British officials are encouraging the country to put Christ back in Christmas—even in their workplaces.

“There are a lot of myths out there when it comes to dealing with religion at work. I want to put the record straight: It is OK to hold a party and send Christmas cards,” said David Isaac, chairman of the national Equality and Human Rights Commission.

This week, Christians and politicians alike welcomed Isaac’s assurance following the growing prevalence of more generic terminology in public and office celebrations, such as “season’s greetings” and “Winterval.”

“We have a very strong tradition in this country of religious tolerance and freedom of speech, and our Christian heritage is something we can all be proud of,” Prime Minister Theresa May responded. “We all want to ensure that people at work do feel able to speak about their faith and also feel able to speak quite freely about Christmas.”

The equality commission also released Friday a new report on anti-discrimination law for British workplaces. The report assessed current government policies, finding mostly reasonable, balanced guidelines for religious expression in the workplace—though employers don’t always follow them.

Continued, here. 

Charles Templeton: Missing Jesus

Charles Templeton (1915-2001) first professed faith in 1936 and became an evangelist that same year. In 1945 he met Billy Graham and the two became friends, rooming and ministering together during a 1946 YFC evangelistic tour in Europe.


But by 1948 Templeton’s life and worldview were beginning to go in a different direction than Graham’s. Doubts about the Christian faith were solidifying as he planned to enter Princeton Theological Seminary. Less than a decade later (1957), he would publicly declare that he had become an agnostic.
In his 1996 memoir, Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith, Templeton recounted a conversation with Graham in Montreat prior to entering seminary:

All our differences came to a head in a discussion which, better than anything I know, “explains” Billy Graham and his phenomenal success as an evangelist.
In the course of our conversation I said, “But, Billy, it’s simply not possible any longer to believe, for instance, the biblical account of creation. The world was not created over a period of days a few thousand years ago; it has evolved over millions of years. It’s not a matter of speculation; it’s a demonstrable fact.”
“I don’t accept that,” Billy said. “And there are reputable scholars who don’t.”
“Who are these scholars?’ I said. “Men in conservative Christian colleges?”
“Most of them, yes,” he said. “But that is not the point. I believe the Genesis account of creation because it’s in the Bible. I’ve discovered something in my ministry: When I take the Bible literally, when I proclaim it as the word of God, my preaching has power. When I stand on the platform and say, ‘God says,’ or ‘The Bible says,’ the Holy Spirit uses me. There are results. Wiser men than you or I have been arguing questions like this for centuries. I don’t have the time or the intellect to examine all sides of the theological dispute, so I’ve decided once for all to stop questioning and accept the Bible as God’s word.”
“But Billy,” I protested, “You cannot do that. You don’t dare stop thinking about the most important question in life. Do it and you begin to die. It’s intellectual suicide.”
“I don’t know about anybody else,” he said, “but I’ve decided that that’s the path for me.”

Their trajectories had been chosen. 

Fifty years later, Lee Strobel had an opportunity to interview Templeton, who had just a couple of more years to live. He was in his 80s and suffering from Alzheimer’s, but still a clear conversation parter. In A Case for Faith, Strobel recounts the ending of their wide-ranging conversation.

“And how do you assess this Jesus?” It seemed like the next logical question—but I wasn’t ready for the response it would evoke.
Templeton’s body language softened. It was as if he suddenly felt relaxed and comfortable in talking about an old and dear friend. His voice, which at times had displayed such a sharp and insistent edge, now took on a melancholy and reflective tone. His guard seemingly down, he spoke in an unhurried pace, almost nostalgically, carefully choosing his words as he talked about Jesus.
“He was,” Templeton began, “the greatest human being who has ever lived. He was a moral genius. His ethical sense was unique. He was the intrinsically wisest person that I’ve ever encountered in my life or in my readings. His commitment was total and led to his own death, much to the detriment of the world. What could one say about him except that this was a form of greatness?”
I was taken aback. “You sound like you really care about him,” I said.
“Well, yes, he is the most important thing in my life,” came his reply. “I . . . I . . . I . . . ,” he stuttered, searching for the right word, ‘I know it may sound strange, but I have to say . . . I adore him!” . . .
” . . . Everything good I know, everything decent I know, everything pure I know, I learned from Jesus. Yes . . . yes. And tough! Just look at Jesus. He castigated people. He was angry. People don’t think of him that way, but they don’t read the Bible. He had a righteous anger. He cared for the oppressed and exploited. There’s no question that he had the highest moral standard, the least duplicity, the greatest compassion, of any human being in history. There have been many other wonderful people, but Jesus is Jesus….’
“Uh . . . but . . . no,’ he said slowly, ‘he’s the most . . .” He stopped, then started again. “In my view,” he declared, “he is the most important human being who has ever existed.”
That’s when Templeton uttered the words I never expected to hear from him. “And if I may put it this way,” he said as his voice began to crack, ‘I . . . miss . . . him!”
With that tears flooded his eyes. He turned his head and looked downward, raising his left hand to shield his face from me. His shoulders bobbed as he wept. . . .
Templeton fought to compose himself. I could tell it wasn’t like him to lose control in front of a stranger. He sighed deeply and wiped away a tear. After a few more awkward moments, he waved his hand dismissively. Finally, quietly but adamantly, he insisted: “Enough of that.”

By Justin Taylor, PhD, source, here.