My Journal

When they found the same homeless guy, after being given a $100 boots from an NYPD officer, the shoes were gone. When asked, he said he hid them for they were too costly.

Some comments suggested he sold those shoes. Others frowned upon his greed to wish to get "a piece of the pie" for his fame going viral online. Most agreed that these people should be left to die..."No good deed goes unpunished".

Since the comments were from USATODAY readers, I am not too surprised at their  extreme "right wing" responses. Since other than quoting the 4 spiritual laws, most evangelicals of the southern bible belt are incapable of affecting the cultures around them.

But back to the topic: Do we solve our skepticism before we provide charity? Do we confirm a person's true need or deception first? If doubt remains, do we refrain from charity?

That charity is the homework, even from God. So how then can charity be a homework, if we have cleared all doubts and other necessary "homework: security, comfort, convenience, etc." on our side before we provide charity? When we go preaching on the streets to strangers, or give charity to the poor and weak, we do not do it for their benefit alone. Not even merely our duty. But most importantly, I believe God will ask us: What have "YOU" learned in His homework.

Therefore, this is more for our own benefit than others'. When we preach to those on the streets, we find the kind of lost love and responsibility in us. When we give charity, we find that it is more important to build a sincere and responsible relationships with people around us than merely be satisfied with "good" deeds.

When God made something we considered as charity, a duty (for we sinners, cleansed by God, are mere unprofitable slaves of God - Luke 17:10). We do charity, unselfishly and humbly, for our own growth, towards the glory of God.

With the advent of online programs like Coursera, MIT's Opencourse ware, etc. in addition to certain college dropout role models like Bill Gates, Zuckerberg and Jobs, many have been thinking twice about enrolling a fortune to these big easy debt creating institutes.

Due to economic crisis, many have used colleges as security. So many that it has set the supply and demand of the academic world to imbalance.

The wise and able would hold a "better than no degree" principle. The ambitious would read a bunch of bios from famous college dropouts.

I believe this world of education is changing, transforming into both incredibly convenient and scary reality. That the old fashion type of enrolling to a university for $40k a year will be outdated, many professors would be out of jobs. The only everlasting notion of education is back to that of Socrates' programs, teaching the truly sincere students and a view of payment as secondary, as philosophers in those days were known for their jack-of-all-trades.

This is nothing new. But it is good to note that it is popularly recognized nowadays, that health advices we hear from this person or that person based on this and that studies are a lot of times, wonka. Especially when they do not have a good source of reference.

I've heard Dr. Tong mentioned that Luther had thrown ink to the fake emanation of Christ on the cross, saying "I want the victoriously resurrected Christ, not the dead christ on the cross".

I have yet found anything source for this. Although, Luther is popularly known to have thrown inkwell at the devil during his time at Wartburg Castle to rid the distraction from the devil as Luther was working on Bible translation.

Enough with the vain, meticulously neutral position. I would just vote yes.

Thanks to this article by Mark Noll, which clears up some myth.

Excerpt:

Was Abraham Lincoln a Christian? In this article, excerpted from Books & Culture(one of ten magazines published by Christianity Today), Wheaton College historian Mark Noll probes the complex character of Lincoln's faith.

—Lincoln was exposed to Calvinistic Baptist preaching as a child and to a clamor of competing Protestant preachers as a young man. In a strange way, he seems to have been both absorbed and repelled by these early influences.

—As a young man, Lincoln expressed views that differed from Christian orthodoxy—perhaps a thorough skepticism or maybe only the hypothesis of universal salvation.

—Lincoln only once wrote directly about his faith. When opponents in a race for Congress in 1846 accused him of lacking faith, Lincoln penned these careful, noncommittal words: "That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christians in particular."

—Lincoln knew and quoted the Bible. Sometimes this quoting was only to find a striking metaphor, as in the House Divided speech of 1858. Other times the quotations were integral to the very substance of what he wanted to say. In 1864, Lincoln told a group of African Americans who had presented him with a Bible: "All the good the Saviour gave to the world was communicated through this book. But for it we could not know right from wrong."

—Lincoln valued prayer. Many instances are recorded in diaries and letters written before Lincoln's death where the president either allowed White House visitors to pray with him or solicited their prayers. There are also several accounts, though less securely based, of Lincoln himself praying.

—After the deaths of his young sons in 1850 and 1862, Lincoln was comforted by two thoroughly conservative Presbyterian ministers (neither of whom was given to overstatement). They testified that, after these traumatic experiences, they witnessed a deepening of Lincoln's faith.

—In Washington, especially after the death of his son, Lincoln regularly attended New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. Sometimes he even came to the midweek prayer service but remained in a side room out of view of the congregation.

—Lincoln did not practice what might be called a "Christian lifestyle." Historian Philip Schaff lectured to European audiences in 1865 on the meaning of the Civil War. He said that when Lincoln was assassinated on Good Friday at Ford's Theater, European pietists were aghast that he was not observing the Holy Festival (which, in their experience, only infidels neglected), while American evangelicals were aghast that he was in a theater (which, in their experience, was associated with licentiousness, secularism, and prostitution).

If the above matters have proved factual, the following stories have proved bogus:

—Lincoln almost certainly was not converted in a Methodist camp meeting in 1839 as the organizer of the meeting claimed in 1897.

—Lincoln almost certainly did not write to a certain judge during his White House years to affirm, "My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them." This "document" was first produced in 1924 by Joseph Lewis at the annual banquet of New York's Freethinkers Society.

—An 1883 book includes an oft-quoted testimony to Lincoln's personal faith. The author wrote that he had taken the words from a newspaper, which in turn extracted them from a letter Lincoln wrote to an old friend in Illinois sometime in 1864 or early 1865. The quotation ran, "When I left Springfield I asked the people to pray for me. I was not a Christian. When I buried my son, the severest trial of my life, I was not a Christian. But when I went to Gettysburg and saw the graves of thousands of our soldiers, I then and there consecrated myself to Christ. Yes, I do love Jesus." No corroborative evidence has ever been found to legitimate this letter.

So, what was Lincoln's religion? When the solid have been separated from the spurious, the stories show Lincoln's respect for God, his own personal sense of living under the authority of divine providence, and his eagerness to commit the Civil War to divine rule.

When it came to the war, Lincoln often displayed a higher, finer theology than did the nation's professional Christian theologians. Lincoln knew that God had not enlisted on either side. As early as 1862, he would write in a private memorandum: "In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party."

Still, what this account and the other stories do not show is a clear-cut profession of orthodox faith: his faith was genuine, but only partially Christian. That was the testimony of those who knew Lincoln best, including his wife, who said shortly after his death that he was "a religious man always" but not "a technical Christian."