The question …
I recently received an email note from a friend. She wrote:
"I am curious if anyone knows of some Christian articles dealing with internet flirting or cyber sex … I just can't seem to find anything that I can relate to or identify with, and I know that there must be some other folks who have encountered the same thing."
Not just a guy thing …
Indeed, there are a number of articles online dealing with this issue. Reviewing them reveals something interesting, if not downright scary. Pornography usage and cybersex traditionally have been viewed as a "male problem," because men are thought to be more easily excited by what they see. But now women are at risk too.
Why so many problems begin with frustrated desire
Every day, headlines assault us with troubling news. These recent titles from a local news website are just a small sampling:
- Two Shotgunned to Death [source]
- Joyriding Gang Member Slain; Crash Injures Family [source]
- Local Soldier Dies in Afghanistan [source]
- School Gets Tough on Commencement Outbursts [source]
- Wife Gets $184 Million in Divorce Ruling [source]
From international to household warfare, roadway to classroom outrage, and mortal to financial loss, such stories reveal our fallen, human propensity to sin.
The cause of these impulsive, sinful outbursts is no secret: When we want what we cannot get, we lash out.
What causes fights and quarrels among
Greed is the surprising accompaniment to almost all our sins.
We all like lists. They help create organized presentations, and they are easy to remember. Perhaps that is why God chose a list format to present some of his most well-known laws. But what if we took that list — the Ten Commandments — and reduced it to its essence? What basic sins would we identify? One hopelessly alliterative preacher condensed the Decalogue to a clever three-point quip: man's chief temptations are "gold, girls, and glory." Gary Downing, in his article "Accountability That Makes Sense," agrees, calling them "the three issues with which we all struggle: money, sex, and power."
But perhaps we could distill even further, to a sort of grand unifying sin: greed. It is the misplaced love and desire that drives broken
These are a few of the things I've recently found interesting, but don't have the time to properly blog on. I don't necessarily like or agree with the links here, I just think they're interesting. And just in case you do, too, enjoy.
(You can view past Del.icio.us links here or subscribe to my Del.icio.us feed here. 
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I just resurrected this from my email archives from April of this year. But I thought some of you might find still find this interesting to read.
As some of you may know, I worked at HQ from 1991 to 1999 and during that entire time the HQ leadership had been working at "re-engineering" corporate structure (I think they were calling it "re-entrenchment" or some such euphemism, to avoid panicking the huddled masses), and re-evaluating our overall church culture. I know that at every General Council a report is presented evaluating the overall spiritual climate of the Fellowship, but I think there's been a particular pointedness to the internal naval-gazing ever since Margaret Poloma came to HQ to research her book, The Assemblies of God at the Crossroads: Charisma and Institutional Dilemmas.
I understand a lot of hand-wringing occurred after that
