Why Does God Allow Bad Things to Happen?

A car crash claims the life of a Christian college student on her way home, a faithful pastor receives a cancer diagnosis, a family is away on vacation only to receive the call that their house was destroyed in a fire.

One of the most common questions believers and unbelievers alike ask is why a loving and all-powerful God would allow bad things to happen. When many believers are asked this question, they freeze, not knowing what to say. Or they weakly reply, "Well, we don't know why bad things happen, but we need to trust God." But those of us who start with the right foundation, God's Word, have a solid answer that is based in the history of God's Word. But those who don't start with God's Word have a difficult time providing a satisfactory answer to this important and often emotionally charged question.

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Assurance of Eternal Security

While the believer may gain assurance of his salvation and know that he has been saved, the question may arise concerning the permanence of his salvation. Once genuinely saved by trusting in the merit of Christ's death on the cross for sin, can the believer lose his salvation? Is there anything we can do to lose our salvation? The answer is NO! Why? Because Scripture clearly affirms the fact we are protected by the power of God through faith. Faith brings us into a grace relationship with God as a gift of God through the merit of His beloved Son. We are saved by His record, not ours.

1 Peter 1:5 who by God's power are protected through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

Ephesians 1:6 to the praise of the glory of his grace that he has freely bestowed on us in his dearly loved Son.

Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 it is not from works, so that no one can boast.

The following seven approaches set forth the case for the believer's eternal security, "buckled up for safety" because of the power of God and the overwhelming sufficiency of the person and work of Christ.

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The anatomy of procrastination – and how pupils can beat it

Procrastination is more instinctive than you might imagine. The art of avoidance comes from our lower mammalian brain, which is equipped for survival. It's adapted to focus on what we need immediately, making it harder to focus on attention-demanding, longer-term tasks.

For schoolchildren, getting the brain to engage in tasks that are not recognised as valuable survival goals or potential sources of pleasure is even harder. It's not until our 20s that we develop the mature neural networks that override the lower brain's reactive responses. This means that young people may need help resisting distractions to achieve their goals. Here are some ways you can assist your students in breaking through the roadblocks of procrastination.

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A Father’s Urgent Plea to See His Son Freed From Death Row in Saudi Arabia

Ali Mohammed al-Nimr was arrested in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province in 2012 when he was only 17 years old. He was sentenced to death after a grossly unfair trial based on forced "confessions" allegedly after being tortured, and has recently been moved into solitary confinement. His uncle, Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, a Shi'a cleric and vocal critic of the authorities was also sentenced to death last year. In a piece written for Amnesty International, Ali's father recalls his young son and brother, who are both at imminent risk of execution. Please take action now to help stop Ali Mohammed al-Nimr's execution.

Every time I enter and leave my house through our garage, a bicycle in the corner catches my eye, shining brightly.

Looking at that bicycle brings back painful memories of my young son Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, who has been sentenced to death and is facing imminent execution in my homeland, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

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Hawaii’s Volcanic Origins—Instant Paradise

The biblical worldview changes how you see everything, even a "paradise" like Hawaii. If the Flood destroyed the earth, where'd these islands come from? Only catastrophic earth movements—a result of the Flood—can explain this string of jewels.

Mention Hawaii, and it conjures up thoughts of a tropical paradise. Pristine waterfalls, luxuriant creeping vegetation, and squawking, duck-like coots remind millions of annual visitors about the Creator's handiwork.

THE HAWAIIAN ISLANDS' LANDSCAPE IS A PRODUCT OF CATASTROPHIC FORCES UNLEASHED BY NOAH'S FLOOD.

But red hot lavas slowly moving across fields and engulfing roads are never far away. Indeed, the Hawaiian Islands are a string of active and extinct volcanoes that hint at a catastrophic past. No Garden of Eden, this charming landscape is a product of catastrophic forces unleashed by Noah's Flood. This modern-day "paradise" speaks unmistakably of God's recent judgment.

If the volcanoes that formed Hawaii's eight major islands had been formed before or during Noah's Flood, the Flood would have deposited sediments on their flanks. But they have none. So we know the volcanoes must have erupted following the Flood.

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Advaita Vedanta and Quantum Physics

Mankind’s first forays into physics, the understanding of the physical world, has always been led by the desire to find the most fundamental elements from which all others can be derived.

The first forays into physics, the understanding of the physical world, were made by the Vaisesikas of India, who formulated the concept of ‘anu’, the atom. Pythogoras after his visit to India formulated a similar concept in Greece, the concept of the atom.

This concept continued unchanged into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries till Rutherford broke up the atom into nucleus and electrons.

This finally has been broken down by quantum physics. Unlike the previous theories, the quantum theory has a far more solid base. Its equations and theories have always been supported perfectly by experiments. There is hardly any other theory which has been experimented more and which has achieved such absolutely perfect results.

Quantum physics breaks down the protons, neutrons and electrons of the atom into further subdivisions, called sub particles. This arrangement of sub particles is called the ‘standard model’. The sub particles and their interactions in the standard model has been proven irrevocably by numerous experiments.

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Graham Oppy on the Kalam Cosmological Argument

Graham Oppy has emerged as one of the kalam cosmological argument’s most formidable opponents. He rejects all four of the arguments drawn from metaphysics and physics for the second premiss that the universe began to exist. He also thinks that we have no good reason to accept the first premiss that everything that begins to exist has a cause. In this response, I hope to show that the kalam cosmological argument is, in fact, considerably stronger than Oppy claims, surviving even his trenchant critique.

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Tell President Obama the US Must Do More for Refugees

For centuries, the United States opened its arms to refugees whose lives had been torn apart by war, and those ruthlessly hounded because of who they are or what they believe in. But today, the people of Syria are suffering these hardships on an unimaginable scale, and we're still waiting for US leadership on the biggest humanitarian crisis of our time.

->TAKE ACTION NOW<-

As the pictures of this week have shown, many Syrians who have survived their government's barrel bombs or the knives of ISIS have died trying to find security. By contrast, the world's richer countries have only opened their doors for a tiny fraction of Syria's refugees. Since July 31, 2014, the United States has processed just more than 1,000 Syrians for resettlement. Without US leadership, the international community will never meet the United Nations' goal of resettling 380,000 Syrians.

The refugees cannot go home. In the refugee camps, many are barely surviving on as little as 50 cents a day. Syria's children are becoming a lost generation – traumatized and out of school, working to support their families.

http://blog.amnestyusa.org/us/tell-president-obama-the-us-must-do-more-for-refugees/

7 Things You Shouldn’t Say to People in Therapy

You may judge, but therapy saved my life.

My best friend and I are constantly playing phone tag. But there's one person who promises to have my undivided attention once a week, no matter what: Dr. R, my therapist.

For the past 2.5 years, we've spent 55 minutes every Tuesday evening together, and for that, I'm grateful.

My adventures in therapy began during my sophomore year in college, when I walked into my campus's mental health center after a close friend suffered a mental breakdown.

4 Ways You're Sabotaging Your Life

We were so alike, I knew that if I didn't do something, my fate would be similar. Now, five years later, I consider that decision the best choice I've ever made.

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2015/09/01/7-things-you-shouldnt-say-to-people-in-therapy/

Don’t Underestimate the Doctrine of Providence

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair, conscious of the tension in the little room. I'd guessed this conversation was coming, since the people now sitting in front of me had seemed unhappy with my pastoral leadership for a good long time. I wasn't sure what would happen now, but I was afraid it might end badly, with hurtful words spoken and their bitter departure from our church. I mention this moment not because it's unusual in pastoral ministry—every pastor experiences such meetings sooner or later—or because it had a miraculous and uplifting outcome, but because I recall my own heart in that conversation. I claimed to be Calvinist, but I wasn't living like one. I was thinking little of God's role in this conversation—and much of the people sitting across from me.

A Doctrine to Cherish

In the years since, I've come to cherish the doctrine of God's providence and to draw strength and encouragement from it. I've begun learning what a difference it makes in the Christian life. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin underscored the high stakes of believing or rejecting this doctrine: "Ignorance of providence is the ultimate of all miseries; the highest blessedness lies in the knowledge of it."

http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/dont-underestimate-providence#When:05:00:00Z

We are with Global Proclamation Congress-Come join in 2016 !!

Video: https://vimeo.com/127281918

What: The Global Proclamation Congress for Pastoral Trainers (GProCongress) connects, unites and strengthens pastoral trainers in order to better deliver training to the world's 2 million-plus undertrained pastors.

Who: The GProCongress, convened by RREACH, is for anyone involved in formal and non-formal pastoral training of any kind, anywhere. We expect attendance of up to 5,000 pastoral trainers working in 200 countries, including individuals, churches, organizations and institutions.

How: This specialized gathering will fulfill its purposes by providing opportunities to Build Community, Explore Opportunity, Discover Resources and Receive Encouragement. To carry momentum created by the GProCongress into the future, attendees will commit to training, on average, 25 pastors a year for the following four years (2016-2020).

Why: Pastoral health is systemically enhanced by better delivery of more pastoral training with coordinated follow-up. Healthy pastors lead healthier churches, and healthier churches are more able to reach their communities for Christ.

Anticipated Outcome: The measurable outcome is 100,000 connected, united, strengthened pastors and 20,000 more pastoral trainers ministering in 200 countries by 2020.

When: June 15-22, 2016 (follow-up: June 23, 2016-December 31, 2020)

Where: Bangkok, Thailand

Click to visit site

Stress Is Your Brain Trying to Avoid Something

Stress exists in every workplace, and all of us have probably tried a few trendy stress-management approaches. But rather than trying the latest fad, it may be more effective to understand how stress works and where it comes from, so that you can create your own methods for dealing with it.

Stress is an emotional response; like all emotional responses, it emerges from the functioning of the motivational system. Your motivational system engages goals and gives them energy so that you can pursue them. Simply put, when you succeed at your goals, you feel good, and when you don't succeed you feel bad.

Stress is a negative emotion, so the first thing we can see about stress is that it reflects a goal you are not currently achieving.

https://hbr.org/2015/08/stress-is-your-brain-trying-to-avoid-something

Do Supreme Court Decisions Move Markets?

Stock traders might want to start paying a bit more attention to the Supreme Court.

That's according to one research report published this week that says Supreme Court decisions moved the market value of publicly traded companies by a net $140 billion between 1999 and 2014.

But unlike economic data or other typical market-moving news, there is often an hours-long time lag in trading around Supreme Court decisions. The implication, according to the report, is that there might be arbitrage opportunities for savvy traders willing to sift through complex legal rulings.

"This is not a market that's particularly well understood, so it's taking a lot longer for traders to sort it out," said Daniel Katz, an associate professor at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law, who was a lead author on the report, which was produced by a four-person team including another law professor and a legal analytics consultant.

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2015/08/26/do-supreme-court-decisions-move-markets/?mod=WSJBlog

Killer facts: The scale of the global arms trade

• A definitive figure for the value of international conventional arms transfers is difficult to calculate with precision. In 2010, the total value, as recorded in national statistics, was approximately US $72 billion. Since then, it is estimated that it the arms trade has been approaching US $100 billion annually. [Source: Solutions, "The Arms Trade Treaty: Building a Path to Disarmament", 2013] 
• The annual authorized trade in small arms and light weapons exceeds US $8.5 billion. More than 1,000 companies from nearly 100 countries produce small arms and light weapons. [Source: Small Arms Survey]

http://blog.amnestyusa.org/justice/killer-facts-the-scale-of-the-global-arms-trade/

Chelsea Manning: “Why Speaking Out Is Worth the Risk”

Chelsea Manning is serving a 35-year prison sentence for leaking classified US government documents to the website WikiLeaks. From her prison cell in Kansas, Chelsea tells us why speaking out against injustice can be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Why did you decide to leak documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

These documents were important because they relate to two connected counter-insurgency conflicts in real-time from the ground. Humanity has never had this complete and detailed a record of what modern warfare actually looks like. Once you realize that the co-ordinates represent a real place where people live; that the dates happened in our recent history; that the numbers are actually human lives – with all the love, hope, dreams, hatred, fear, and nightmares that come with them – then it's difficult to ever forget how important these documents are.

Chelsea Manning: "Why Speaking Out Is Worth the Risk"
http://blog.amnestyusa.org/us/chelsea-manning-why-speaking-out-is-worth-the-risk-2/

Alvin Plantinga's Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism

Plantinga's book is a semi-popular treatment of the conflicts, real or perceived, between science and religion, broadly construed. Because these disciplines are so broadly construed, the Christian who is interested in apparent conflicts between science and biblical Christianity will likely be somewhat disappointed in Plantinga's treatment. In the two chapters on "Evolution and Christian Belief," for example, one will find no engagement whatsoever with the biblical text; the discussion is restricted to the compatibility of theism with evolutionary biology. That is because Christian belief is taken to be what Lewis called "mere Christianity," which does not include any specific creation account. So while the Christian reader may be readily convinced of Plantinga's claim that no conflict exists between theism and evolutionary biology, he may still be left wondering how the biblical creation stories are to be properly interpreted and to what degree the evidence of evolutionary biology is compatible with that interpretation.

Read more: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/where-the-conflict-lies-science-religion-and-naturalism#ixzz3ji62vd8H

8 Creative Techniques to Cope with Painful Emotions

Many of us have a hard time coping with negative emotions. This makes sense. "Painful feelings like anxiety, sadness, anger and shame tap into the parts of our brain that are connected to survival," according to Joy Malek, M.S., a licensed marriage and family therapist. For instance, the anger we feel when we're hurt is the same as the flight, fight or freeze response we experience when our survival is seriously threatened, she said.

We also tend to learn very early that getting mad or crying is not OK, said Meredith Janson, MA, LPC, a therapist in private practice in Washington, D.C. who specializes in expressive arts therapy. "As a mother of a toddler myself, I see every day how children can easily become overwhelmed by their feelings of sadness, frustration and anger. There is a temptation to distract the child or to cheer them up in order to make all the 'fuss' stop."

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New Law School Courses Explore Nietzsche, Guns and Bible

A trip to a shooting range, a deep dive into Nietzsche and an exploration into what's ailing American cities. These are among the adventures that law school students can look forward to this fall.

The law school curricula is always evolving. There will always be courses on torts, property, civil procedure and other core subjects. But other offerings reflect the passions and problems of the day. Law Blog takes a look at some of the more unorthodox ones on the schedule this coming academic year.

• New York University's Barry Friedman is teaching a new course called "Democratic Policing" that looks at the "deep difficulties with policing in the United States" and the "failure of democratic processes and accountability."

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China Sees Red: Christian Protest Puts Hundreds of Crosses Back in Public

Several churches held a prayer service outside a government office yesterday, holding up crosses and banners that read, "Can't remove the cross in our hearts," reports the Union of Catholic Asian News.

The cross dispute is "destined to become one of the 'pain points' in the history of the [Chinese] church's development," wrote Lude Wang in a Pushi Institute for Social Scienceanalysis highlighted by ChinaSource.

"At its core, the Zhejiang Cross Dispute has revealed that in light of the backdrop of a new society, neither the church nor the state has sufficiently prepared to enter into a mature and constructive dialogue; nor have they shown a readiness to settle their differences and conflicts on the basis if the rule of law," she wrote. "How the church will coexist within a community holding different values to itself is an urgent question."

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Pope Francis: Climate Change A 'Principal Challenge' For Humanity

Pope Francis today issued a sweeping 184-page papal letter, writing that climate change is a global problem with far reaching environmental and social consequences — especially for the poor. He blamed apathy and greed and called on developing countries to limit the use of nonrenewable energy and to assist poorer nations.

"Those who possess more resources and economic or political power seem mostly to be concerned with masking the problems or concealing their symptoms," Francis wrote of the impact of climate change in the encyclical titled "Laudato Si," or "Praise Be."

He called on humanity to collectively acknowledge a "sense of responsibility for our fellow men and women upon which all civil society is founded." And he wrote that climate change "represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day."

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