fear

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Life Is Still Fatal

I usually post something original, witty, engaging, and perhaps insightful on my blog. However, I happen to be in Washington visiting our granddaughter and her parents, and I have my priorities.

Therefore, instead of taking the (considerable) time to write something new, I’m re-posting one of my favorite articles. It originally appeared April 6, 2010. Perhaps you haven’t seen it. I hope you find it witty, engaging, and insightful, if not quite as original as it was the first time around.

Then I’m going to go hold a baby. Blogs can wait. Babies can’t.

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Fear-Mongering

Not today!

It’s 9 a.m. The weather prediction for the rest of today reads… “Cloudy. Snow in the afternoon. … Highs 24 to 30. North winds 10 to 20 mph.”

I’m looking out my window at a pure blue sky, the sun is shining, and it’s already 30°. At least today’s forecast is more accurate (they did say 50%, not 100%) than one last summer that confidently proclaimed sunny skies and high temperatures, while outside a chill wind drove the pouring rain horizontally. You’d think the weather folks would look out their window before hitting that “publish” button!

Meteorologists are easy to pick on, but lots of people predict all sorts of things—cataclysms, wars, epidemics, economic disaster or economic recovery—usually with a tremendous amount of self-assurance. In fact we’re so sure we’re right, we invite the media to the show.

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It’s the End of the World

We’re all heard the hype about the Mayan Calendar ending on December 21, 2012. Did they just run out of rock? Or did they know something? (Then again, we may have the date wrong—see this article on the Discovery News site.)

Of course, most sensible people don’t believe the Mayans predicted the end of the world. Plus, being Bible-believing Christians, we prefer to take God’s word over that of an ancient pagan mesoamerican people group.

Still, the end of the world is coming.

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Door-to-Door Seed Sowing?

Picture this: two extremely “clean cut” young men on bicycles, dressed in nearly identical blue suits, skinny ties, white shirts. They’ve each got a leather binder under one arm, and they’re pedaling from house to house, knocking on doors.

At this point, you’re probably pretty confident that I’m talking about either Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons. Both groups are noted for their determined door-to-door evangelism. Perhaps as a result, the Jehovah’s Witnesses can be described as the fastest-growing religion in America (as a percentage of their relatively small membership[1].)

Most evangelical churches don’t expect their members to knock on doors in an effort to win converts. (I’d look pretty awful in a navy blue suit, not to mention the mandatory haircut.) But I vividly remember my freshman year in college, when two upper class students from Campus Crusade came to my dorm room. An ardent atheist at the time, I’m embarrassed to confess that I wasn’t exactly cordial.

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Doomsday

According to twice-wrong Harold Camping’s most recent prediction, the world will end on October 21, 2011.

If that isn’t a good day for you, how about October 16? I was recently alerted (by a caring friend who was quite serious about this) to the impending destruction of the earth by a small, nondescript assemblage of ice and dirt that is currently heading for the core of the solar system. That’s right. On October 16, 2011, on its way out to space again, the comet Elenin will pass by Earth at a distance of “only” 21 million miles. (By comparison, Venus is 23.7 million miles away.)

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