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Eight Signs You Need Counseling
Just the word, counseling, often has a negative effect on people, I have noticed. If you want to cause a defensive reaction in someone, suggest gently and without any judgment, they would benefit from counseling. Immediately they hear only something is wrong with me. Then wait for the litany of various reasons why counseling will not work or has not worked in the past. Counseling is too expensive, time-consuming, and doesn’t help them. They know someone who went to counseling and boy, did that counselor mess them up. I have even heard the excuse that God, as our Wonderful Counselor, did not endorse other counseling, despite the many verses in…
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Human Trafficking and the Bible
I remember when Pretty Woman came out in the theaters. Many loved the romance while others lamented the impossibility much less the improbability of a prostitute and a tycoon falling in love. Reading reviews, it was my first exposure to the “hooker with a heart of gold” trope. I remember Saturday Night Live spoofing it with their rendition of a respectable business man falling for a herpes laden, drugged out prostitute. Some Christians, if I remember correctly, were infuriated by the movie. After all, it seemed to glorify human trafficking. I was twenty two at the time and thought Richard Gere was cute and Julia Roberts was funny. Now twenty…
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A Miracle of Healing: Belief not Required
I do not watch a lot of television. My parents got rid of theirs when I was in the fourth grade, and it forever weaned me from passive entertainment. I became a reader instead. So it was with some desperation that I found myself watching, of all things, the 700 Club on CBN past midnight nearly thirty years ago in the living room of my apartment on the campus of the university I was attending. The host spoke of a healing miracle. Nearly six months previous I had been in a fairly severe car accident. While I was stopped at a red light, I was rear-ended by a car going…