Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

[Daily Times Herald]

Suspects in an attempted burglary at a Carroll apartment Friday night weren’t too difficult to identify.

A resident of 1844 Randall Road called 911 to report two men with their faces painted black were trying to break into an apartment.

Moments later, Carroll police officers pulled over a car matching the suspects’ vehicle a couple blocks away and found the two occupants with faces blackened by a permanent marker.

Read more here.

[From me]

What were they thinking? Can you imagine the conversation while they used a permanent marker on their faces?

What do you think?

[Fox News]

A blue, cross-like design emblazoned on T-shirts at Penn State University has some critics seeing red.

The shirts — intended to foster school spirit — sport a vertical blue line down the center with the words “Penn State White Out” emblazoned across the chest, forming a design that some say resembles a cross. The back of the shirt depicts the same blue line obscured by the words, “Don’t be intimated … It’s just me and 110,000 of my friends.” Roughly 30,000 of the shirts have been sold.

Penn State says it has received six complaints about the shirt, including one from the Anti-Defamation League’s Philadelphia branch, from people who say it connotes a Christian cross. The logo design also has become the focus of controversy in the student newspaper, “The Daily Collegian,” which has received several letters to the editor on both sides of the issue.

Michal Berns, a junior majoring in media law and policy, said she refused to buy the $15 shirt because of its religious connotations.

“At first glance, you don’t necessarily think that’s what it looks like, but when you look at it more, it does look like a cross,” Berns told Foxnews.com. “That’s the reason I didn’t purchase it.”

Read more here.

[From me]

O please!

What do you think?

[Washington Post]

Could Rifqa’s father in Ohio really kill her for leaving Islam to embrace Christianity? Has the 17-year-old read too many fundamentalist Christian Web sites? Or is it all just teen dramatics? Those are the questions swirling around the 17-year-old Ohio girl who became a Christian several years ago and sought shelter with an Orlando pastor after she feared for her life because, as she said, her father is bound by his Islamic faith to kill her.

Her parents deny the charges, and are fighting in courts in both states to bring Rifqa home. The case has become a cause celebre among conservative Christian groups, Muslim activists and, of course, politicians.

Gov. Charlie Crist (R) said, “The first and only priority of my administration is the safety and well-being of this child.” Marco Rubio, Crist’s opponent in a GOP primary for a U.S. Senate seat, also urged state leaders “to use every legal tool at their disposal to properly evaluate Rifqa’s best interests.”

“The case in Florida began as a television event,” said Craig McCarthy, a former attorney for Rifqa’s mother in Orlando. “It could have been dismissed on Day One.” As courts in Orlando and Columbus, Ohio, wrestle over which state has jurisdiction, Rifqa remains in Orlando in foster care. On Tuesday, an Orlando judge ruled Rifqa should return to Ohio, although no timeline was set, and when she does return she will remain in foster care.

The girl arrived in Orlando after connecting with the wife of an Orlando pastor on Facebook. The pastor and his wife took Rifqa in after “they realized that she was someone who really believed her life was in danger,” said Mathew Staver, the founder and chairman of the Liberty Counsel, an Orlando firm specializing in religious litigation. Staver represents the pastor and his wife, Blake and Beverly Lorenz. The teen was placed with a different foster family after the couple contacted authorities.

A Florida Department of Law Enforcement report found no evidence of any threat or abuse against Rifqa and said her allegations are “based on her belief or understanding of the Islamic faith and/or Islamic law and custom. [Rifqa] stated that she believes Islamic law dictates she must be put to death for her abandonment of the Islamic faith.” Her father, Mohamed Bary, denied making any such threat, according to the report, but he told investigators that when he confronted Rifqa about her conversion in June he lifted a laptop to throw it but reconsidered, thinking about how much money he had spent on it.

The case has put Muslim groups on the defensive. Islam condones no such killings, said Babak Darvish, executive director of the Columbus chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Darvish said the girl’s parents are distraught about her behavior. They moved to the United States from Sri Lanka when Rifqa was a child so that she could receive better treatment for an injury that left her blind in one eye, he said.

Darvish accused some conservative Christians and politicians of using the story to stoke anti-Muslim sentiment. “They’re trying to use this case to further this extremist political, religious agenda,” he said.

Read more here.

[From me]

It is easy to jump to conclusions because of some radicals in any religion or political stance. The people of Westboro Baptist in Kansas don’t speak for the majority of Christians. Just as the radicals in Islam don’t speak for all of Muslims. What if the roles were reversed and a child left Christianity and became a Muslim? What would you think if you weren’t allowed to see your child? What if your child claimed you would kill them because they became a Muslim? I think we had better think this through because if the US becomes like the rest of the world, Islam is growing. We may see people who aren’t friendly towards Christians in office and if we make it easy to take kids away from their parents it could happen to Christians too.

What do you think?

[Pew Research]

Asked if young people today have as strong a sense of right and wrong as they did, say, 50 years ago, only 18% say yes, while 79% say no according to a 2005 Pew Research poll. This is about the same margin recorded in surveys since 1998, but a substantially more negative reading than was recorded in surveys decades ago. In a June 1952 survey, for example, nearly six-in-ten respondents judged that youth of that era were as sharply attuned to right and wrong as their forebears.

Read more here.

[From me]

If you look at the media today, bad is good. In movies and TV you don’t have many heros–you have the anti-hero. None of these findings are surprising to me.

What do you think?

[Fox4KC]

A North Carolina woman sees Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in this pork chop.
It might not be worth as much as a grilled cheese sandwich said to bear the image of the Virgin Mary, but a North Carolina woman believes she’s found a well-known Christmas character in her pork chop.

Sue Church stopped by the FOX8 studios on Tuesday morning to show us a pork chop that resembles Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Some have suggested the meat actually resembles the antler-wearing dog in How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Read more here.

[From me]

I’d go with the dog from The Grinch…

What do you think?

[HT] Steve Thompson