Blog
MEDIA & ETHICS
We’re living in strange times. As a virus sweeps through the world, people’s stress level has reached a boiling point, and many are fed up with the status quo. People of color and their allies are fed up with racism and police brutality.
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
It sometimes takes an extraordinary amount of courage and patience—and maybe even what some would call grace—to allow someone else to live and see and operate in the world based on a reality that you as an individual just might not understand.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
Watching a condemned person die by hanging was once a public spectacle. Today, that is not the case—there is no entrance fee, and witnesses are not allowed to throw vegetables or cheer. But most often the witnesses are hostile to the person. After all, this is the ultimate punishment, and the condemned will finally pay for their crimes with their lives. The families of victims will finally have their revenge, or simple closure of that which began with harm done to their loved one.
COMBATING BIGOTRY & HATE
That Scientology is fun is one of those things that’s so obvious and normal to those who actually know and practice it that it almost goes without saying. But my last blog on the subject seems to have struck a chord with readers, so I thought I would do a follow-up and use a little contrast.
TOLERANCE
Do people have prejudices? Unfortunately, absolutely. Do we have the right to broadcast our personal prejudices to others, and in a hateful way? I think not.
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
As I dug deeper into his website I discovered a 28-minute video clip of a talk he gave several years ago at the Messiah Lutheran Church in Weldon Spring, MO. The talk was on Christian-Muslim relations. He was speaking passionately about increasing understanding between these two religious traditions. Turns out this is what he does. He says his calling is to increase the level of religious literacy in the world. Greater understanding paves the way to greater tolerance. He goes on to say that for him it’s more than work—it’s a divine inspiration.
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
Fear breaks down a man’s sense of brotherhood. Make a man afraid, and he takes refuge in superstition.
MEDIA & ETHICS
Juvenal, the ancient Roman poet, had a phrase for it: “Bread and circuses.” By that he meant keep the rabble distracted from their woes with entertainment of the grossest kind .
RELIGIOUS LITERACY
In doing these things He sat in council with Adam. “Lord,” said Adam, “will You not grant us a gift—a miracle that happens not just once, but throughout eternity, as a daily reminder of Your grace and of Your presence in each person’s heart?”
SCIENTOLOGY RELIGION
This month, the world marks the 70th anniversary of the publication of Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, the landmark bestseller by L. Ron Hubbard.
