The Good Mother of Yesteryear Verses Good Mothers Today

 TODAY'S HELICOPTER PARENTS MAKE CHILDREN THE ETERNAL CENTER OF ATTENTION. It's a long haul from the way most of us in my generation were brought up. John Rosemond has been my hero for years; his advice is simple, straightforward and filled with wisdom and humor. Benign neglect and standing on your own two feet are unknown, seemingly cruel commodities in today's culture, yet it makes all the difference in how children turn out and whether they can handle the toughness life throws at them. As Rosemond says, when reality bites, it often has very sharp teeth.

The Mini-Bang Theory: Flash of Light At Conception

NAVAJO NATION PRESIDENT SLAMS EPA FOR BROKEN PROMISES ON DAMAGES FOR GOLD KING MINE SPILL
I AGREE WITH NYPOST: CARLY FOR HIS VP IS TED'S LATEST DESPERATE PLOY  

 IS THERE ANY NEWS MORE STUNNING THAN SCIENTISTS ACTUALLY SEEING AND DOCUMENTING A FLASH OF LIGHT AT THE MOMENT OF CONCEPTION?  It's not particularly surprising, but nonetheless stunning.  In keeping with the Big Bang Theory, it appears that all creation---ALL creation-- begins in the Mind of God the Creator followed by a bang and flash of light for all living creation.  How elegant.

Michael Walsh writes at PJMedia about it.  It's all miraculous and mysterious of course, but amazing that we are now able to view the light-filled miracle of life's first beginning and the Hand of God.


PERSONAL UPDATE: I have sold my condo of several decades after settling my lawsuit successfully. Even so, the developer destroyed our quality of life, privacy and large trees which will not come back in our lifetimes. So I sold my place to the first person who saw it at full price, as is. Over the next two or so weeks, I am in the process of moving and busier than 10 switch engines. For now, I am storing my furniture etc. outside Nashville, continuing to live at a good friend's country home outside White Bluff, Tennessee, as I have for the past two years, and will be going to Jackson Hole as soon as I can get away after Memorial Day....God willing.

Change is both scary and exciting but continued growth is unavoidable and the path to aliveness and adventure, so I'm managing my anxieties for the sake of this grand move and the next chapter of my life. Will be posting here at Webutante sporadically as I can.

 But enough about me... Thank you for coming by!

Sunday Reflection

DREHER:  GOODBYE PUBLIC SCHOOLS?
N.D. WILSON: WHY I WRITE SCARY STORIES  INSTEAD OF SWEET BOOKS FOR CHILDREN

THUS [CHRISTIAN] MISSION ... MAKES THE BOLD, fundamental assertion that the recipient culture is the authentic destination of God’s salvation promise ... Paul [answered] the combined demands of Jewish particularity in seeking messianic consolation and of Greek expectation of philosophical emancipation by affirming the Cross. ... He writes to the church at Corinth: “For the Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (1 Cor. 1:22-24) The gospel is thus recognized by both Jew and Greek as [both a challenge to and] a confirmation of their respective particularity ...

— Lamin Sanneh

SOURCE: Redeemer Pres, Manhattan

ROD DREHER: Gods and Monsters

Sunday Past--Gospel of the Upside Down Kingdom

ANOTHER WONDERFUL VIDEO FROM THE BIBLE PROJECT. Worth watching at least once and maybe several times.

15 Reasons Not to Trust the Latest Nutritional Study

IT'S GETTING HARDER AND HARDER TO BE ONLINE FOR LONG WITH  MORE AND MORE GOING ON IN MY LIFE OFFLINE.  I like it and feel my life is changing to a new chapter in so many ways.

Even so I will still post from time to time.

Here's a piece from Mark's Daily Apple on 15 reasons not to trust the latest nutritional studies.
 In my opinion, it's not just the newest nutritional studies we should take with a grain of sand, it's every kind of new study, as well as the latest political polls. They usually have a hidden agenda and some kind of axe to grind.  Take it away Mark:

Today, I’m going to discuss many of the reasons you shouldn’t trust the latest nutritional study without looking past the headlines. 1. Industry distorts the research. Last year, Marion Nestle looked at 152 industry-funded nutrition studies. Out of 152, 140 had favorable results for the company who funded it. An earlier analysis of milk, soda, and fruit juice nutrition studies found that those sponsored by milk, soda, and juice companies were far more likely to report favorable results than independent studies. The same things happens in cardiovascular disease trials and orthopedics trials. 2. Ego distorts the research. People become wedded to their theories. Imagine spending 30 years conducting research to support your idea that saturated fat causes heart disease. How hard will you hold on to that hypothesis? How devastating would opposing evidence be to your sense of self-worth? Your research is your identity. It’s what you do. It’s how you respond when chit chatting at cocktail parties. You’re the “saturated fat” guy. Everything’s riding on it being true. Scientists are used to being the smartest person in their respective rooms. It’s not easy to relinquish that or admit mistakes. Heck, that goes for everyone in the world. Scientists are not immune. 3. Correlation masquerading as causation. In day-to-day life, correlative events imply causation. You cut someone off, they honk at you. A man holds a door open, you thank him. You flip a light switch, the light turns on. We’re used to causation explaining correlations. So when two variables are presented together in a nutritional study, especially when it seems plausible (meat causes colon cancer) or reaffirms popular advice (saturated fat causes heart disease), we’re likely to assume the relationship is causal. Correlations provoke interesting hypotheses and tests of those hypotheses, but they’re very often spurious. Everything we eat is associated with cancer if we look hard enough. Does that actually tell us anything useful? 4. No control group. If you want to know the effects of an experimental intervention, you need a group of people that don’t receive the intervention. That’s the control group. Without a control group to compare against the group that received the experimental intervention, a clinical trial doesn’t mean much. You can’t truly know that the experimental variable caused the change without it. 5. Fake controls. The presence of a control group doesn’t make it a good study. The control group has to be a real control. Take this paper from last year claiming that oatmeal for breakfast promotes satiety. Sure, when you’re comparing oatmeal to a cornflake breakfast. It doesn’t take much to beat the satiating (non)effects of cornflakes. How would oatmeal compare to bacon and eggs, or a big ass salad, or sweet potato hash? This study doesn’t tell you that. 6. Small sample size. The smaller the sample size, the less impressive the results. The larger the sample size, the more meaningful the results and the more likely they are to apply to the larger population. That’s why the results of n=1 self-experiments are mostly useful for the person running the experiment on themselves and less useful for others; the sample size of one isn’t enough to generalize the results.....

Read the whole thing.

In Houston, With Villanova To the Movie Thriller Finish!

VILLANOVA BEATS NC IN BUZZER-BEATING UNBELIEVABLY THRILLING FINISH WHAT A GREAT FINISH, FOR THE NEW NATIONAL CHAMPIONS! And they didn't even have to go to overtime!

An Animated Explanation of God's Holiness From The Bible Project, And What It Means To Be Devoid of The Fear Of God?

 THESE MEN IN PORTLAND, OREGON ARE DOING GOD'S WORK AND AN AMAZING JOB OF EXPLAINING THE BIBLE. There's not a video I've watched that doesn't impress me. Also think they're worth supporting with our prayers and money.

 And on another related subject, what is The Fear of God?

There's a good piece on the absence of it at Challies.com: Scary stuff to lack the Fear of God.

Albert Martin’s The Forgotten Fear is a very good book on a much neglected topic. I reviewed my notes for it this week and was struck again by the urgency of the subject. 

In the book’s opening chapter Martin examines a series of texts related to the fear of God and, having looked at each of them, draws three important conclusions. What can we conclude in light of these pivotal texts found in both the Old and the New Testaments? 

First, I believe we are warranted to conclude that to be devoid of the fear of God is to be devoid of biblical and saving religion. It matters not how many texts of Scripture we can quote, or how many promises we may claim to believe. In the light of the texts of Scripture we have briefly considered (and they are but a sampling of many more), it is neither unkind nor unjust to assert that if you do not know what the fear of God is in your heart and life, you do not know experientially the first thing about true biblical and saving religion. That is a serious conclusion, but no less a conclusion can be drawn from these passages. Since Jesus Christ is the sum and substance of biblical religion, and since the Spirit given to Him and sent from Him is the Spirit of the fear of God, to be without the fear of God is to be without the Spirit of Christ. Romans 8:9 says that those without the Spirit of Christ do not belong to Christ. If such teaching is utterly foreign to you and leaves you completely baffled, you need to engage in some serious reflection. You need to examine the Scriptures and cry out to God, asking Him to teach you what it is to fear Him, for you see that if you are devoid of His fear, you have no true saving religion. 

The second conclusion we are warranted in making is this: one of the accurate measurements of true spiritual growth is the measure to which one increases in walking in the fear of God. The Bible speaks of Hananiah in Nehemiah 7:2 as a man who “feared God more than many.” His spiritual stature as a man who possessed spiritual maturity, wisdom, and godliness to an exceptional degree was in great measure due to the fact that he “feared God more than many.” 

Third, to be ignorant of the meaning of the fear of God is to be ignorant of a basic and essential doctrine of revealed religion. There are no doubt many in our day who are genuine Christians yet who are sadly deficient in their understanding of the concept of the fear of God. They are not strangers to the fear of God in their experience, but they are very unclear about the fear of God in their understanding. Are you such a Christian? Has your reading of this book thus far been like walking on ground unfamiliar to you? Since growth in grace is always joined to growth in knowledge (2 Peter 3:18), it is vital to give yourself to earnest prayer and study so that you might have a clearer understanding of the fear of God. This, in turn, will lead to your further Christian growth and development.