Terry Pruitt's Blog

So I finally began to read last month's Mission Frontiers magazine. I did not want to since it was about people walking away from Christianity, walking away from faith. It is not an article or two, but this is the second issue on the subject, there are multiple articles about it. To say the least, I did not want to hear it. But as I read the articles, they were more engaging than discouraging. It was not that the authors were presenting solutions. An article by Ruth Tucker called " Great is Thy Faithfulness: Some Reflections on the Loss of Faith " was particularly good. I think some people who walk away from the faith are simply those with more courage to state what they believe than those who simply want to fit in though they have adopted a secular world view. What do I mean by a secular world view? My informal definition would be that there is nothing supernatural. No miracles. No angels. No devil. No life in eternity. Simply what you see in the here and...

The CBS Numb3rs episode which aired last Friday night, called “ Atomic No. 33”*, made me start thinking about the use of the word “cult”. They used the word in Numb3rs to say that the FBI has a list of cults that they watch for violations of the law. I'm wondering if the FBI really does have such a list. If they do, should it really be called a cult list? It really does not matter if the organization claims if it is religious or not. It also does not matter if an organization is deemed by others to be religious or not. What does matter is if the group is breaking the law. However, if a law enforcement group such as the FBI does maintain a list of cults, then what is the criteria? I would suspect the criteria would be abnormal control of the members, abuse of members and/or illegal practices. What do I mean by abnormal control? I mean draconian methods of control such as pressuring members to giving up of all possession, requiring fasting and causing sleep deprivation....

A Muslim writer, Al-Muhajabah, has an article The Veil in Christianity , I would assume it to be directed toward his fellow Muslims as a defense of Muslim practices and possibly as a way of showing of Christian practices do not line up with our own Scriptures. I may be wrong in assuming this because there is also indications of a desire for multi-faith dialog. It was also reprinted in the Pakistan News website Pakistan Daily . The Pakistan Daily edition is how I found it in my Google News daily news cruise. 1 Corinthians 10:3-10 is a highly problematic passage about head coverings for women during worship and the husband being the head of the wife. We Christians who regard the Bible as God's Word must deal with the passage by asking if the passage must be taken as a prescription for women and men in all cultures and all ages or is the passage dealing with a cultural situation that must be interpreted. Al-Muhajabah in interpreting 1 Corinthians 11:3-20 takes this as prescripti...