Hi, all.

First off, I apologize for not spending much time in this space over the past couple of months.

If you've followed my blog activities (and inactivity!), you know that on October 22, I accepted a position as marketing and media director at one of the Assemblies of God's 100 largest churches. I was thrilled not only to have a job but to be in a position that required top-notch creativity and performance from many areas of my skill site — and many areas I was eager to acquire new skills in.

As marketing and media director I designed several promotional and in-house printed pieces, I wrote press releases, I worked with vendors, I approved and gave guidance for the video and broadcast editing (though not much of that because

Hi. My name is Rich and I'm a tortured artist.

The Confession

Well, really, I'm more tortured, than artistic. And it may be argued that the artistic is more artifice than artful. But I try, nonetheless.

Folks who don't know me well (meaning just about everybody) don't realize I have this creative half that doesn't wield its powers in the company of friends and coworkers until long after we meet. In fact, not knowing myself as well as I ought, even I remained largely unaware of this need to create until the beast was unleashed during my final year of high school. My more "public" facing personna tends to be bookish, I suppose — and there's a good reason for that: I'm rarely without a book. Even in good company.

Not quite a misanthrope…

As long as I'm in the

The other day I reposted an article I wrote for CTLibrary.com titled, "Violence In, Violence Out." A couple responses provided sufficient motivation to write a lengthy response--which I summarily decided should be a blog entry instead. To follow the conversation, check out the original post.

Marc V. (also known under the blogonymn, "Spudlet") wrote:

I’m wrestling with the statement about people having “a God-given, hardwired aversion to killing another human being”. I think it falls more in the basic survival instinct: if I kill someone, then the same could happen to me.

Hi, Marc, thanks for the comment!

I'm not a student of psychology or Col. David Grossman's field, "Killology," but what he says rings true. I tend to believe the aversion to kill another human is a hardwired part of our natures ... after all, it's the ultimate insult to the imago dei within, and while "instinct" can be explained by evolution, this kind of hard-wiring

Yesterday my blog stats tripled. Nay: quadrupled. With six new random comments on my previous Justin Berry post (“Justin Berry: From ‘camwhore’ to water-baptized witness for the State”), I figured there’d been another major media piece on Berry’s recent lifestyle change and cooperation with the Feds. Little did I know that both Justin Berry and Kurt Eichenwald had appeared on the local media-diva’s talk show: Oprah. And I didn’t even Tivo it.

The links to the Oprah show content follow my comments.

“She can not take it any more, Captain!”
One thing concerns me, even more now that I’ve seen Justin’s hollow-eyed, thousand-yard stare in the Oprah.com screenshots: Justin is ripe for a meltdown-burnout-crisis. There’s a scriptural injunction against “laying hands” on anybody suddenly—it’s not a proscription against Pentecostals praying for strangers, and it’s not advice about

My employer, Christianity Today, posted an interesting and important editorial:  “Deadening the Heart: Killer video games are no 'safety valve'—quite the opposite.” Here’s an excerpt:

Good teachers know three things that contribute to effective learning: active participation, rehearsing behavioral sequences rather than discrete acts, and repetition, repetition, repetition. Video games employ all three. In addition, the vast majority of the gaming scenarios (like the random killing of prostitutes) fail to show the real-life consequences of violence. Perpetrators go unpunished. In short, violent games can deaden us to the horror of violence and stimulate our native sinfulness. It shouldn't surprise us that all media shape us, which is one reason Paul exhorts us to think on things that are true, honorable, pure, lovely, commendable, and excellent (Phil. 4).

Some say these are just games, and that we shouldn't take them