Entries from May 2009 ↓

• Almost wheels down. #
• Gotta love West Wing. Don’t know how many times I’ve seen some of
  these episodes, but something new every time. #
• “Clarity is the antidote to anxiety.” Nice. I like it and I think
  it’s true. #
• I’ve become more and more convinced that people in ministry have a
  strange numeracy deficiency where they over-count everything good … #

• Incredibly full day today, which also includes a slab spent at the
  COCWA Ministers Retreat in Mandurah. Got the whole pastoral team … #

This is just plain disturbing. According to a CNN piece, “the more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.”

“More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 percent of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified — more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.”

I don’t want to believe it, but I’ve had enough conversations with certain types of Evangelicals to know that it has the ring of truth, and it’s very disturbing because it couldn’t be further from Jesus.

Torture is stupid, not just on moral grounds, but because it doesn’t generally work. The CIA has some interesting case studies of Vietnam-era examples of the manifest failure of torture to provide anything other than extraordinary examples of the human ability to adapt itself to survival.

• Freo continues to disappoint me, even when they win. Losers. Only
  thing worse would be being an Eagles supporter… oh man! Super … #

• Just off the phone with Vodafone. Don’t like people fixing things but
  not explaining why they went wrong to start with. #

• May 1 is a fairly significant date for me. Started at Warnbro Church
  9 years ago. Quite a different place back then. Still a long … #