Hummm?

It is actually the case that rock star Alice Cooper is a confessing Christian. Indeed, Elke and I ran into him at an R.C. Sproul conference in San Diego about 18 years ago. Here is an interesting article that I simply post with no comment:

Alice Cooper, of “School’s Out for Summer” and “I’m 18” fame, was told that his show can’t go on in Finland.

Cooper and his band were booked to perform at Tampere Areena Oy, an arena in Tampere, Finland Dec. 11.

However, the owners of the arena cancelled the event when the supposedly dark nature of Cooper’s “Theatre of Death” show came to light.

Harri Wiherkoski, managing director of the arena said that "artists who express suspicious values from Christianity's point of view cannot be allowed to perform at the venue."

He also told reporters that his venue doesn’t “arrange concerts where Satanism or non-god-worshipping occurs."

Concert promoter Kalle Keskinen, said “We never imagined that a rock veteran who has performed in Finland in four separate decades without any problems and who has spoken in public of his own religious convictions would not be allowed to perform at Tampere Areena in 2009."
Keskinen said the concert will probably be moved to nearby Espoo, however this is contingent on Alice Cooper’s approval, he said.

Cooper, who is a practicing Christian, told Cross Rhythms magazine last year that he reconciles his stage persona with his personal faith without problem.

“As a Christian, I don't declare myself as a 'Christian rock star.' I'm a rock performer who's a Christian. Alice Cooper is the guy who wants to entertain the audience - it happens that he's a Christian. Alice (the character I play on stage) began life as a villain and he remains one. There's a villain and a hero in every Shakespeare play," he said.
" Alice is no more dangerous than a villain in a cartoon or a Disney film. We have fun with him. He snarls and wears make up. He's punished for his crime and he comes back on the stage in white top and tails. We put on a good show. I've always put limits on Alice because I believe there's a certain amount of Alice that's a gentleman. He'd slit your throat, but he'd never swear at you. And there's always a punchline; he may kill you, but he'll slip on a banana peel. I get right-wing Christians down on me and I always ask them the question: 'If I was doing Macbeth, would it be OK?' And they always say that's Shakespeare so of course. I say that's about four times more violent than anything I do on stage."

The Tornado, the Lutherans, and Homosexuality-By John Piper

This is from John Piper's blog today:

August 20, 2009

I saw the fast-moving, misshapen, unusually-wide funnel over downtown Minneapolis from Seven Corners. I said to Kevin Dau, “That looks serious.” It was. Serious in more ways than one. A friend who drove down to see the damage wrote,

On a day when no severe weather was predicted or expected...a tornado forms, baffling the weather experts—most saying they’ve never seen anything like it. It happens right in the city. The city: Minneapolis.

The tornado happens on a Wednesday...during the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America's national convention in the Minneapolis Convention Center. The convention is using Central Lutheran across the street as its church. The church has set up tents around it’s building for this purpose.

According to the ELCA’s printed convention schedule, at 2 PM on Wednesday, August 19, the 5th session of the convention was to begin. The main item of the session: “Consideration: Proposed Social Statement on Human Sexuality.” The issue is whether practicing homosexuality is a behavior that should disqualify a person from the pastoral ministry. The eyewitness of the damage continues:

This curious tornado touches down just south of downtown and follows 35W straight towards the city center. It crosses I94. It is now downtown. The time: 2PM. The first buildings on the downtown side of I94 are the Minneapolis Convention Center and Central Lutheran. The tornado severely damages the convention center roof, shreds the tents, breaks off the steeple of Central Lutheran, splits what’s left of the steeple in two...and then lifts.

Let me venture an interpretation of this Providence with some biblical warrant.

1. The unrepentant practice of homosexual behavior (like other sins) will exclude a person from the kingdom of God.

The unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 6:9-10)

2. The church has always embraced those who forsake sexual sin but who still struggle with homosexual desires, rejoicing with them that all our fallen, sinful, disordered lives (all of us, no exceptions) are forgiven if we turn to Christ in faith.

Such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:11)

3. Therefore, official church pronouncements that condone the very sins that keep people out of the kingdom of God, are evil. They dishonor God, contradict Scripture, and implicitly promote damnation where salvation is freely offered.

4. Jesus Christ controls the wind, including all tornados.

Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him? (Mark 4:41)

5. When asked about a seemingly random calamity near Jerusalem where 18 people were killed, Jesus answered in general terms—an answer that would cover calamities in Minneapolis, Taiwan, or Baghdad. God’s message is repent, because none of us will otherwise escape God’s judgment.

Jesus: “Those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” (Luke 13:4-5)

6. Conclusion: The tornado in Minneapolis was a gentle but firm warning to the ELCA and all of us: Turn from the approval of sin. Turn from the promotion of behaviors that lead to destruction. Reaffirm the great Lutheran heritage of allegiance to the truth and authority of Scripture. Turn back from distorting the grace of God into sensuality. Rejoice in the pardon of the cross of Christ and its power to transform left and right wing sinners.

...and, here is a news story on it

Orwellian Move by Amazon

NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE , NEW YORK
Sunday, Jul 19, 2009, Page 11

In George Orwell’s 1984, government censors erase all traces of news articles embarrassing to Big Brother by sending them down an incineration chute called the “memory hole.”

On Friday, it was 1984 and another Orwell book, Animal Farm, that were dropped down the memory hole — by Amazon.com.

In a move that angered customers and generated waves of online pique, Amazon remotely deleted some digital editions of the books from the Kindle devices of readers who had bought them. Digital books bought for the Kindle are sent to it over a wireless network. Amazon can also use that network to synchronize electronic books between devices — and, apparently, to make them vanish. An authorized digital edition of 1984 from its US publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, was still available on the Kindle store on Friday night, but there was no such version of Animal Farm.

People who bought the rescinded editions of the books reacted with indignation, while acknowledging the literary ironies involved. “Of all the books to recall,” said Charles Slater, an executive with a sheet-music retailer in Philadelphia, who bought the digital edition of 1984 for US$0.99 last month. “I never imagined that Amazon actually had the right, the authority or even the ability to delete something that I had already purchased.”

Antoine Bruguier, an engineer in Silicon Valley, said he had noticed that his digital copy of 1984 appeared to be a scan of a paper edition of the book. “If this Kindle breaks, I won’t buy a new one, that’s for sure,” he said. Amazon appears to have deleted other purchased e-books from Kindles recently. Customers commenting on Web forums reported the disappearance of digital editions of the Harry Potter books and the novels of Ayn Rand...

Amazon’s published terms of service agreement for the Kindle does not appear to give the company the right to delete purchases after they have been made. It says Amazon grants customers the right to keep a “permanent copy of the applicable digital content.” Retailers of physical goods cannot, of course, force their way into a customer’s home to take back a purchase, no matter how bootlegged it turns out to be. Yet Amazon appears to maintain a unique tether to the digital content it sells for the Kindle.

“As a Kindle owner, I’m frustrated. I can’t lend people books and I can’t sell books that I’ve already read, and now it turns out that I can’t even count on still having my books tomorrow,” Schneier said. Justin Gawronski, a 17-year-old from the Detroit area, was reading 1984 on his Kindle for a summer assignment and lost all his notes and annotations when the file vanished. “They didn’t just take a book back, they stole my work,” Gawronski said.

Defecting to Faith

Pastor Richard Bacon has posted that a new Pew Research study

reported that more than half of those raised in atheistic or agnostic families have abandoned disbelief. "The New York Times" described them as "defecting to faith." Only 13% of those raised Roman Catholic and 14% of those raised Protestant abandoned their childhood faith and there is no information whether they abandoned faith altogether or transferred to another branch of Christianity or another religion. Half of those converting to theism said they had unmet spiritual needs. And the other half? Perhaps they missed the holidays.

This is significant news and especially in light of the rise of "new-atheism".

My Aunt on the David Letterman Show

My late cousin is the infamous, irreverent comedian, Bill Hicks. He died about 15 years ago at the age of 32 from pancreatic cancer, and a few months before he died, he had been censored on the David Letterman show, meaning that they did not air his final comedy routine.

Well, here now, 15 years later, and maybe because there is a major movie being made about his life coming out in the near future starring Russell Crowe, Letterman had my Aunt Mary (my late father's sister) on to apologize to her for censoring Bill right before he died.

I had never seen Letterman this apologetic and uncomfortable...it was really kind of strange. I don't really know how to read the whole thing...nor do I care that much to. I was/am no fan of my cousin Bill Hicks. One of my critiques of his work is that it showed a lack of reflection. In other words, sometimes things come into our minds...that sort of knee-jerk reaction that we all experience to one degree or another over this issue or that issue...but then, thankfully, we stop (or are stopped) from expressing that "first reaction". We think about it, read more on the issue, reflect intellectually on it, and very often we cool down and usually, on second thought, would not say what we initially thought we "should" say.

Well, it seems to me that that process was severely lacking in my cousin. And, just like the teenage, psuedo-intellectual, who has a few 'friends' around him that will affirm him in his 'insight', by a just-as-unthoughtful, "Totally man!", Bill spread his wares before a largely anti-intellectual audience that gets titillated by unvarnished vulgarity.

I am not saying that there were not funny instances and keen insights from him. He was clearly a passionate and articulate man. He was good at his craft. What I am saying though is, that to think that every thought 'you' think is worthy of public exhibition, is arrogant and ignorant. I wish certain thoughts would never cross my mind. I wish I could excise them from my brain. I am ashamed by things that I think...

...anyway, here is one of the segments from the show...

Happenings South of the Border, and Now, North of It...

I have a friend and former seminary classmate who is involved in training Special Forces and law enforcement agencies in hand-to-hand combat (while in seminary he foiled a would-be robber in a local store in Pittsburgh by breaking the perp's thumbs). He recently sent me an email explaining some of the reality behind the growing violence along the U.S./Mexico border. As most are aware, there are daily reports of grotesque mass murders to the tune of over 6,000 deaths in the Mexican border towns just last year. We continue to hear that these are "drug gangs" and that the local law enforcement and Mexican military is doing their best to fight them and get this under control. Well, has it ever concerned you that for all this "fire-power" the problem continues to escalate? Have you ever found yourself wonder just what kind of "gangs" these are that are able to walk all over the Mexican military? My friend's recent email explained a lot of this and I think it is important to get the word out.

We trained-that is, the U.S. by way of tax-payer's money trained-Mexican Special Forces at Ft. Benning here in the U.S. I believe the intention was good and noble, being that we would have an elite, U.S.-trained force on the Mexican side of the border, able to greatly hinder the drug smuggling into the U.S. But what has happen is that the drug cartels have bought these U.S.-trained, Mexican Special Forces and they are now aiding the smuggling of people and drugs into the United States. That is why they are basically operating unchecked in Northern Mexico and the Mexican military seems impotent to stop them. Here is a Wikipedia article that will basically back up everything I have said here, but with much more detail and documentation.

Also, and related, here is a report from MSNBC on the problem of Mexican Military incursions over the border onto U.S. soil. Two things about this are, 1) It is not from an overly biased source (e.g. FOX News), so keep in mind that this was reported through a "mainstream" outlet, and 2) Note that the female reporter that they are interviewing mentions the fact that there have been defections from the U.S.-trained, Mexican Special Forces to the drug cartels.

Many security analysts are contending that this growing problem along our southern border is a greater threat to the security of America than Al Qaeda.

Stunning Article by Atheist Matthew Paris: "As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God"

This is an amazing read. The original article is found here, but I have reproduced it in its entirety:

Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa's biggest problem - the crushing passivity of the people's mindset

Matthew Parris

Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland. Today it's Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there. Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean. I went to see this work.

It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities. But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I've been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I've been unable to avoid since my African childhood. It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.

Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.

I used to avoid this truth by applauding - as you can - the practical work of mission churches in Africa. It's a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it. I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.

First, then, the observation. We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village. In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers. The Christians were always different. Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them. There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world - a directness in their dealings with others - that seemed to be missing in traditional African life. They stood tall.

At 24, travelling by land across the continent reinforced this impression. From Algiers to Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, then right through the Congo to Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya, four student friends and I drove our old Land Rover to Nairobi.

We slept under the stars, so it was important as we reached the more populated and lawless parts of the sub-Sahara that every day we find somewhere safe by nightfall. Often near a mission.

Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away. They had not become more deferential towards strangers - in some ways less so - but more open.

This time in Malawi it was the same. I met no missionaries. You do not encounter missionaries in the lobbies of expensive hotels discussing development strategy documents, as you do with the big NGOs. But instead I noticed that a handful of the most impressive African members of the Pump Aid team (largely from Zimbabwe) were, privately, strong Christians. “Privately” because the charity is entirely secular and I never heard any of its team so much as mention religion while working in the villages. But I picked up the Christian references in our conversations. One, I saw, was studying a devotional textbook in the car. One, on Sunday, went off to church at dawn for a two-hour service.

It would suit me to believe that their honesty, diligence and optimism in their work was unconnected with personal faith. Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were. What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man's place in the Universe that Christianity had taught.

There's long been a fashion among Western academic sociologists for placing tribal value systems within a ring fence, beyond critiques founded in our own culture: “theirs” and therefore best for “them”; authentic and of intrinsically equal worth to ours.

I don't follow this. I observe that tribal belief is no more peaceable than ours; and that it suppresses individuality. People think collectively; first in terms of the community, extended family and tribe. This rural-traditional mindset feeds into the “big man” and gangster politics of the African city: the exaggerated respect for a swaggering leader, and the (literal) inability to understand the whole idea of loyal opposition.

Anxiety - fear of evil spirits, of ancestors, of nature and the wild, of a tribal hierarchy, of quite everyday things - strikes deep into the whole structure of rural African thought. Every man has his place and, call it fear or respect, a great weight grinds down the individual spirit, stunting curiosity. People won't take the initiative, won't take things into their own hands or on their own shoulders.

How can I, as someone with a foot in both camps, explain? When the philosophical tourist moves from one world view to another he finds - at the very moment of passing into the new - that he loses the language to describe the landscape to the old. But let me try an example: the answer given by Sir Edmund Hillary to the question: Why climb the mountain? “Because it's there,” he said.

To the rural African mind, this is an explanation of why one would not climb the mountain. It's... well, there. Just there. Why interfere? Nothing to be done about it, or with it. Hillary's further explanation - that nobody else had climbed it - would stand as a second reason for passivity.

Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I've just described. It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal groupthink. That is why and how it liberates.

Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.

And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.

The War In Gaza: A Biblical Perspective & Plea

Here is a letter from a minister in Beirut who knows what he is talking about...

...please take the time to read it.
_____________________________________
Until now I have refrained from sending out a missive on the tragedy of Gaza. This will be brief, for I plan to write a comprehensive assessment of the Middle East situation later.

I am livid over the unchristian statements of those perverters of biblical truth known as Christian Zionists. John Hagee, Benny Hinn, Pat Robertson, Hal Lindsey, and a host of others of that ilk, have little or no understanding of the biblical hierarchy of values, the role of Israel in prophecy, and Middle Eastern history, especially its history for the last 100 years.

Benny Hinn recently made a statement in an interview with Benjamin Netanyahu that epitomizes the twisted thinking of all Christian Zionists. He said, "The future of the United States depends on America's treatment of Israel."

Instead of stating biblical truth, he mindlessly mouthed this watchword of Christian Zionist ignorance, which is based on a radical misunderstanding of Genesis 12:3. The truth is that the future of the United States depends on America doing the right thing, which means getting back to the Gospel of Christ and consistently demonstrating the impartial justice and even-handed compassion to all people that the Gospel requires. Anything other than that is an implicit denial of the one true Gospel given by the one true God who "so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him might not perish but have everlasting life."

Putting Israel above justice and love, as Christian Zionists do, is blatant idolatry. Israel treats the Palestinians as sub-human, as its Zionist founders have done from the time they conceived the establishment of the state of Israel by displacing the indigenous inhabitants of the land, which they succeeded in doing in the late 1940s.

I do not condone terrorist attacks perpetrated by anyone, including Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians. All hatred and murder are evil. I am also opposed to all antisemitism--recognizing that both Jews and Arabs are semitic--and I am equally opposed to the destruction of the state of Israel and to the destruction of the Palestinian people.

The ad nauseam repetition of the Christian Zionist refrain that "there are no Palestinians and there never was a Palestine" not only shows their ignorance about linguistic usage but also reveals their biased attempt to negate the personhood, dignity, and human rights of the majority of the people who lived in the land that the Zionists occupied in the twentieth century. Like all movements with an ungodly and perverted agenda, they find it necessary to make semantic and linguistic accommodations to suit their own agenda.

Since some will erroneously think that my perspective is partisan in favor of Palestinians and Arabs over against Israelis and Jews, I urge you to read the balanced, brilliant essay of one of the most highly qualified people in the world. He addressed the Israel-Gaza tragedy just last week. He is a Jew who served in the Israeli army and is now an Oxford professor of international relations. His name is Avi Shlaim, and I hope you will read every line of his brief essay. If you want to understand what is happening there today, you must understand why it is happening, and Professor Shlaim does a masterly job of explaining the context of this enormous Gazan tragedy. Here is the website where you can read his essay [DR: I am not endorsing this essay...but it is an interesting read].

Whatever one's views about prophecy may be, let us believe and act like Christians who represent the love of Christ for all peoples. Although loyalty to Christ does not exclude legitimate patriotism, it does entail the repudiation of the worship of Caesar in all forms. God's ultimacy and absolute claim to exclusive worship must never be subordinated to anything--any ideology, movement, institution, or state, including the state of Israel.

As Christians, we must earnestly and unswervingly seek to treat all people impartially according to the righteous standards revealed in the Bible. So-called Christian Zionism, which has aligned itself with anti-Christian, political Zionism, is an ideology and movement that blatantly contravenes this fundamental truth.

Compassion for Christian Zionists leads me to attribute their wrongheadedness not to evil but to ignorance. It would be hubris for me to claim that they are ignorant but I am not if the issue in question were complicated and subtle. But biblical teaching on this matter is so simple and perspicuous that even a child can understand it: God first, not Israel first.

God first means that His character and His ethical standards must not be compromised for the sake of Israel but must stand in judgment over Israel, the United States, and every other nation.
The obtuseness that prevents the understanding of this plain, biblical truth is enough to boggle the mind.

Christian Zionists can only be understood as the victims of long-term indoctrination in an aberrant eschatology. Contrary to the belief of many, that aberration is not advocated by dispensationalism or supported by it. Christian Zionists have abandoned normative dispensationalism and have replaced it with a radically warped reinterpretation of it.

I have sought to explain this in detail in other papers--which were sent to some of the main leaders in Christian Zionism--and so far no Christian Zionist has even attempted to refute my thesis. Like Ephraim (Hosea 4:17), they are joined to their idols and refuse to relinquish them. How sad for the proclamation of the Gospel of Christ and the witness of Christians to the world, which is often confused and alienated by the unloving, chauvinistic voices of Christian Zionists.

Let us stand firm for the cause of Christ,

Mark Hanna
January 14, 2009

Leaving & Cleaving

Over the weekend I was in Grand Rapids, MI to preside over the wedding of my friend, and former congregant, Sean McDonald. It was a beautiful wedding and I am grateful to have been a part of this wonderful day in the lives of Sean and Laura.

A couple of other bonuses over the weekend were getting to see Rob Wieland, also a member of our congregation in Colorado Springs, but now studying at RPTS in Pittsburgh, PA, and Philip Loden, who has been at Colorado School of Mines in Golden, CO for the past 4 years (Philip is also a member of the congregation). The three of us were hosted marvelously by the Rev. Ray Lanning household, and were made to feel at home throughout the course of the wedding festivities and business.

Sean and Laura requested that I preach from Ephesians 5:22-33—that classic marriage text—and I found it a frustrating exercise to try to prepare a “homily” on one of the most profound texts in all of the Bible. Nonetheless, I limited myself to a few points that could be drawn from the text, but there is much more to be mined from this treasure trove...

I began by noting that it is impossible, and unbiblical, to separate theology from practical living, and that in this text, in fact, Paul has grounded all of his practical instruction about marriage upon the foundation of Christology. That is, marriage is ultimately to be a reflection of the person and work of Jesus Christ—the husband loving his wife as Christ loved the Church, and the wife submitting to her husband even as the Church submits to Jesus Christ.

But then I went to the quote from Genesis 2:24, “A man shall leave his father and mother and holdfast to his wife.”, and then Paul's astounding statement immediately afterwards, “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” In other words, Paul is saying that the ultimate referent in that Genesis 2 passage is actually Jesus Christ and His bride the Church.

I then developed the idea of leaving and cleaving being something bigger than a single-sided action of the child—or in this case—the Son, but rather that it involved and involves the Father or parents also. Indeed, it was at the cross that this leaving and cleaving ultimately happened, and it is fascinating to note that Psalm 22:1, which Jesus quotes while hanging on the cross—“My God! My God! Why hast Thou forsaken Me?”—and particularly this word “forsake”, is the exact same verb as “leave” in Genesis 2:24!

Thus at the cross there was the most profound and mysterious “leaving and cleaving” that happened...and it involved not only the Son leaving the Father...it involved the Father forsaking the Son. Now, words and human minds fail us here. This is holy ground and almost too deep to make comment on. But somehow, as Athanasius said, “Remaining what He was, He became what He was not”.

...anyway, I struggled with the right words at this point and even made an unfortunate comment, with unintended consequences, of Christ leaving His “native” relationship with the Father (which Rev. Lanning corrected me on). I should have just brought us to the vastness of the mystery and called for a time of gazing with our hands over our mouths...

Big Wave!!!

A friend sent me a link to this article about a massive wave caught in Western OZ:

There are two more shots here

Not Too Funny...At All

So here is the story today...

WINSTON-SALEM N.C. (AP) — Golfer John Daly was taken into custody Sunday morning by Winston-Salem police after he was found drunk outside an area Hooters restaurant. Police said in a statement Wednesday that said officers went to the restaurant on a medical call. When they arrived, Daly was being treated by emergency workers after losing consciousness. While at the restaurant, police said Daly "appeared extremely intoxicated and uncooperative," refused repeatedly to be taken to the hospital and was asked to leave the restaurant by several workers. Daly was taken to the Forsyth County Law Enforcement Detention Center for a 24-hour stay, until he was sober.

...but here was the story 'yesterday'

Daly once claimed that he drank a fifth of Jack Daniel's every day during the year he was 23 years of age, and the various reported incidents include being removed from a British Airways airplane by airport security for harassing a flight attendant while drunk. He has entered into various alcohol addiction programs, including the Betty Ford Clinic, at least three times, and has experienced three divorces since becoming a professional golfer.

Fame? Fortune? Success?

"What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and yet loses his soul." Jesus

Top Hamas Leader's Son Converts to Christianity

The son of a top Hamas leader has converted to Christianity and prayssomeday his family will also accept Jesus Christ as their savior, an Israeli newspaper reported. "I consider Islam a big lie," said the son of one of Hamas' founders. Mon, Aug. 04, 2008 Posted: 05:11 PM EDT

________________________________

The son of a top Hamas leader has converted to Christianity and prays someday his family will also accept Jesus Christ as their savior, an Israeli newspaper reported. Masab Yousef, son of West Bank Hamas leader Sheik Hassan Yousef, revealed for the first time in an exclusive interview with Haaretz newspaper that he has left Islam and is now a Christian. Prior to the interview's publication last Thursday, Yousef's family did not know of his faith conversion even though he is in regular contact with them. "[T]his interview will open many people's eyes, it will shake Islam from the roots, and I'm not exaggerating," Yousef, who now resides in the United States, said. "What other case do you know where a son of a Hamas leader,who was raised on the tenets of extremist Islam, comes out against it?" Yousef, who is now 30-years-old, was first exposed to Christianity eight years ago while in Jerusalem where out of curiosity he accepted an invitation to hear about Christianity. Afterwards, he became "enthusiastic"about what he heard and would secretly read the Bible every day. "A verse like 'Love thine enemy' had a great influence on me," Yousef recalled. "At this stage I was still a Muslim and I thought that I would remain one. But every day I saw the terrible things done in the name of religion by those who considered themselves 'great believers.' "I studied Islam more thoroughly and found no answers there. I re-examinedthe Koran and the principals of the faith and found how it is mistaken and misleading." But with Christianity, Yousef said he could understand God as revealed through Jesus Christ. He said he could talk about God and Jesus for days, but Muslims are not able to say anything about God. "I consider Islam a big lie," said the son of one of Hamas' founders. "The people who supposedly represent the religion admired Mohammed more than God, killed innocent people in the name of Islam, beat their wives and don't have any idea what God is. "I have no doubt that they'll go to hell. I have a message for them: There is only one way to Paradise - the way of Jesus who sacrificed himself on the cross for all of us." Four years ago, Yousef decided to convert to Christianity but did not let his family know. He still helped his father with his political activities,and his father only knew his son had Christian friends. "I felt responsible. It was better for me to be there rather than a gang of fools who would poison his mind," Yousef explained. "I tried to understand those people, their thoughts, in order to change them from inside by means of a strong person like my father, who admitted to me in the past that he does not support suicide attacks." Yousef described his father as a moderate Hamas leader. But even before his encounter with Christianity, Yousef had already become disenchanted with Hamas and Islam while being imprisoned at the age of 18years old for heading a youth Islamic movement at his high school. He described the Hamas leaders he met in prison as people with "no morals"and "no integrity," although they hide their corruption better than Fatah party members. "Nobody knows them and how they operate as well as I do," Yousef said, recalling how the family of Hamas members killed by Israel were forced to beg for financial assistance while the leadership "abandoned" them and "wasted" tens of thousands of dollars a month only on security for themselves. "Then (in prison) I understood that not everyone in Hamas is like my father. He's a nice, friendly man. But I discovered how evil his colleagues are, "Yousef said. "After my release I lost the faith I had in those who ostensibly represented Islam." Hamas is considered a terrorist group by the United States, Israel, and many Western countries. The group has publicly vowed to destroy Israel. Now Yousef, the eldest son of Sheikh Yousef, says he "admires" Israel. "You Jews should be aware: You will never, but never have peace with Hamas," Yousef stated. "Islam, as the ideology that guides them, will not allow them to achieve a peace agreement with the Jews. They believe that tradition says that the Prophet Mohammed fought against the Jews and that therefore they must continue to fight them to the death." He denounced the "entire" Palestinian society as one that "sanctifies death and the suicide terrorist." "In Palestinian culture a suicide terrorist becomes a hero, a martyr. Sheiks tell their students about the 'heroism of the shaheeds (martyr).'" Yousef highlighted that Hamas was the first to use suicide bombers as weapons against civilians. "They (Hamas) are blind and ignorant. It's true, there are good and bad people everywhere, but Hamas supporters don't understand that they are led by a wicked and cruel group that brainwashes the children and gets them to believe that if they carry out a suicide attack they'll get to Paradise," he said. The Muslim-turned-Christian says he does not think Islam will survive formore than 25 years because the truth about Islam will be exposed given the mass communication available in the modern age. For his part, Yousef says he hopes to "open the eyes" of Muslims and "reveal the truth" to them about Islam and Christianity with the goal to "take them out of the darkness and the prison of Islam." "In that way they'll have an opportunity to correct their mistakes, to become better people and to bring a chance for peace in the Middle East," he said. Yousef, who has taken the biblical name of Joseph, said he dreams of one day becoming a writer to tell his personal story and about the Middle East conflicts. "But at the moment, at least, my ambitions are only to find work, a place to live," Yousef admits. "I have no money, I have no apartment," said the son of the Hamas leader who left behind properties in Ramallah to find true freedom. "I was about to become one of those homeless people [in the United States]," he confessed, "but people from the church are helping me. I'm dependent on them." He also dreams that someday he can return to his homeland and his family will accept Jesus Christ. "I know that I'm endangering my life and am even liable to lose my father, but I hope that he'll understand this and that God will give him and my family patience and willingness to open their eyes to Jesus and to Christianity," Yousef said. "Maybe one day I'll be able to return to Palestine and to Ramallah with Jesus, in the Kingdom of God."

Ethan Cole: Christian Post Reporter