blestou

[blestou @blestou]

@ProfMJCleveland My kid just scored perfect on ACT. Our entire focus is on how he can best be equipped for life given the available options. The "elite" schools are not a part of the conversation at all.

[Shane Pruitt @shane_pruitt78]

A Biblical response to those who say, “I am the Church, therefore I don’t need to gather with the Church”:

The Greek word translated “church” in the New Testament is ἐκκλησία (ekklēsia).

Literally, ekklēsia means:

-An assembly
-A gathering
-A congregation
-Those who have been called out together

The word is formed from:
ἐκ (ek) = “out of”
καλέω (kaleō) = “to call”

Because of its etymology, many people say it means “the called-out ones.” While that idea fits Christian theology, most Greek scholars point out that the word’s actual usage in the first century was simply “an assembly” or “a gathered congregation.” Interestingly, this means that words are defined more by how they are used than by the literal meanings of their component parts.

The New Testament uses ekklēsia in two primary ways:

1. A local gathering of believers
“To the church of God that is in Corinth…” (1 Corinthians 1:2)
“The churches of Galatia…” (Galatians 1:2).

2. The universal body of Christ
“Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her.” (Ephesians 5:25).

It referred to people assembled together under the lordship of Christ.

A good definition would be:

The New Testament word “church” (ekklēsia) literally refers to an assembly or gathering of people. In Christian usage, it describes the assembly of those who belong to Jesus Christ, whether a local congregation or the universal body of believers.

This also helps answer a common misconception:

While believers are the church, the New Testament consistently portrays the church as a people who gather (Hebrews 10:24–25; Acts 2:42–47).

The biblical emphasis is not merely on being individual Christians, but on being an assembled community under Christ’s authority.

Therefore, you’re not BEING the Church, if you never GATHER with the Church.

[Katy Faust @Katy_Faust]

What did you think was going to happen after we legalized #GayMarriage?

That same-sex couples would finally be able to visit one another in the hospital? Inherit property? Make medical decisions? Many of those legal protections were already available through powers of attorney, contracts, and other legal arrangements.

What #Obergefell enabled was something else.

It accelerated the legal replacement of biological parenthood with intent-based parenthood.

It made it easier to detach children from their mother or father and reattach them to biological strangers so same-sex couples could be "equal" to husband-wife couples.

It conditioned an entire culture to repeat, “Love makes a family,” by threatening them with social isolation if they refused.

It permitted scrubbing “mother” and “father” from parentage laws and replacing them with "gestating" and "non-gestating" parent in the name of non-discrimination.

It made politicians afraid to defend the importance of mothers and fathers because genderless families had been upheld by the country's highest court.

The lasting legacy of #Obergefell has not simply been the redefinition of marriage. It has been the unmaking of the American family by erasing mother and father, both in law and culture.

Children deserve better. @MakeKidsGreater

[Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh]

🚨 Sec. Marco Rubio just NAILED IT:

"One of the criticisms you sometimes hear of communism is that it 'sounds good in theory, but it never works in practice.'"

"That's actually NOT TRUE. Communism does NOT sound good in theory. The world that envisions for all of us is small, flat, gray, leveled of all exception, drained of all that is good and noble in the human soul."

"The world that envisions is a world without courage, a world without creativity, or ambition, a world without heroes, or glory, or great causes to strive towards, without a world without miracles, without men who rise above the rest to do incredible and extraordinary things."

"And the world communism envisions is a world without God."

"For these architects of revolutionary violence, the towering achievement of our civilization, for them, it's an unbearable humiliation, a reminder of what they cannot do and a reminder of what they cannot be. So they choose instead to destroy." 💯

[Seamus (FreedomToons) @seamus_coughlin]

Guy living in Ancient Rome: That's not "roman architecture" lol that's just how buildings look

[Shane Pruitt @shane_pruitt78]

If students can handle learning algebra, chemistry, geography, literature, & history...

They can also handle learning about sin, Christology, justification, repentance, faith, sanctification, & the Great Commission.

Don't dumb it down, disciple them up! They can handle it!

[Shane Pruitt @shane_pruitt78]

If you're going to believe the parts of the Bible that speak of God's love, you must also believe the parts that reveal His design for marriage, relationships, and living in holiness.

[blestou @blestou]

@amnesty You are lying. We know you are lying. Stop lying.

[blestou @blestou]

@AndrewTWalker Also the casual shift from "sex" to "gender".

[blestou @blestou]

@JennTown17 @JeffreyPWiesner That is a silly standard and not how real life works. If you are an exception then, bless you, and I hope your church is supportive of your family.

[blestou @blestou]

@NAACP I condemn the NAACP for promoting the abuse and mutilation of children.

[Greg Lukianoff @glukianoff]

Disappointed to see this using the “conservative pounce” formulation.

I’m Gen X. All of us, including liberals like me, were there when we watched a nation filled with brilliant people put its best minds to making socialism work. It was an unparalleled disaster — not just economically, but environmentally, and certainly from a human rights perspective as well.

The fact that we now have people on both the right and the left who think Lenin was on to something, or that “real socialism has never been tried,” is mind-blowing. It represents a massive generational failure of our K–PhD system. They didn’t learn the history, philosophy, or economics that would have prevented them from falling for the same midwittery that too many of our grandparents fell for.

Sure, it sounds nice. Utopia always does. But it was a colossal disaster that we must not repeat.

So no, Axios. The news isn’t that the GOP is sounding the alarm. It’s that more genuine liberals aren’t.

[AG @AGHamilton29]

Everyone should be terrified that many Democrats are openly embracing a broken and economically illiterate ideology that destroyed countless countries and led to the death of over 100 million people in the 20th century.

[blestou @blestou]

@tgyazld15pc @Garrett_Archer I have gaming PCs for my children b/c they are cheaper for processing power needed to run various engineering software.

We waste millions of $ in public ed and folks are upset that the “worst” ESA “abuses” are collectively under $25k.

Ridiculous. Can you even hear yourself?

[Shane Pruitt @shane_pruitt78]

Some things were Bible truth before they were political statements. Don’t back down.

[blestou @blestou]

@JamesVeriton @Heminator Article II, Section 1, "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America."

[blestou @blestou]

@michaelwhittle If you have to stop acting as a church in order to "practice the sabbath," you are doing church wrong.

Maybe you should find a new church. Maybe you should work for reform. But either way, this is a red flag that something needs to change.

[Eve Keneinan 𝛗☦️ن @EveKeneinan]

Atheists really need to pick a lane.

Without God, the gods return.

And nobody sane wants that.

God renders the gods null.

It's not even hard to see why. If God is, then gods are merely creatures, perhaps powerful and splendid ones, but they don't merit worship, ever, nor are they intrinsically holy — that depends solely on their disposition toward God, whether they, the gods, properly worship God.

Since God truly is, the gods are truly null.

But a waning of the sense of the reality of God, a dark and atheistic time like ours, "the eclipse of God" one philosopher put it, will cause us to lose our sense of the nullity of gods, and many new idols will be erected.

The "New Atheists" thought that if you could remove God, you'd get an age of reason. But that isn't what happens. When you remove God, you remove any ultimate reason for things. And if you do that, you poison reason at the root, which renders it delirious.

The delirium of reason breeds monsters.

Old gods and monsters stir and wake, old cracked idols ponderously rise as golems.

Belief in God is one of the greatest goods in the world, and one of the many reasons is that it keeps the gods in check.

It also has the great advantage of being true, but even if you don't believe in God, for some strange reason, you should most definitely want to live in a society that does.

[blestou @blestou]

@sarahsalviander Yes, you don’t *really* know who is a Christian right now. Some people even fool themselves. Those who endure to the end are saved.

That doesn’t make genuine Christian fellowship impossible, but we are expected to use discernment and consistently apply the gospel.