This map from Forbes (of all places!) is…well, you’ll just have to see it for yourself.
They rate America’s cities on the Seven Deadly Sins. Congratulations, Memphis, for being number one in three out of seven. Maybe next year, you can win wrath…
This map from Forbes (of all places!) is…well, you’ll just have to see it for yourself.
They rate America’s cities on the Seven Deadly Sins. Congratulations, Memphis, for being number one in three out of seven. Maybe next year, you can win wrath…
People are always people, no matter where they are or when they lived. Anyone else notice the amazing lack of differences in this ancient story and ours?
From last week (Tuesday, to be exact) in Numbers 25, Israel falls into idolatry again with their Moabite neighbors (page 191). Look at the order of events:
We’re often fools for the trades we make. People trade family for work, friends for things, and eternity for a moment. The children of Israel, just like us today, made one of those bad deals. They were enticed by the promised pleasure of the Moabite women who offered them sexual favors, and their pleasures were cheapened and standards were lowered. Were it not for God’s mercy, they could have lost everything! After proximity provides opportunity, pleasure (1 John 2:15-17) provides the bait concealing the hook.
The final step is the tough one: do we repent, or do we continue? This time, the Israel repented, but each time this cycle repeats, the chances of repentance and real change get smaller and smaller. Lewis once said that the human heart is a lot like concrete: on that rare occasion that it is broken and moistened by tears and is finally pliable, if a real change isn’t made, the only likely outcome is a hardening that will become more and more permanent. Softening the heart becomes more difficult with each passing attempt, and before long, we’ve become nothing more than another Pharaoh, an instrument by which God will display his power, instead of an instrument for whom God will bring blessings.