The Pastor's Perspective

    You know your preconceived ideas about someone or some group has a big impact on how you treat them.  Think about it: if you believe a person is a world-class expert, you listen to them with rapt attention. If you think they are a deceiver, you meet every word with suspicion . Sometimes its what they are wearing that can affect the way you treat them or it might be their accent.      Sometimes, however we can be surprised when our preconceived and sometimes ignorant ideas and notions are challenged. Sometimes if we will wait and listen we may just find that the expert is not all that reliable or that person you might have though was not all that bright may very well be brilliant. You see sometimes what we need most is a change in perspective.       In the 16th century, most people believed children born deaf were "simple-minded" and incapable of learning or even receiving salvation . But a Benedictine monk named Pedro Ponce de Leon ...

 A professor of theology once asked his students to get a sheet of paper and divide the sheet into three columns.  In the first column they were to write every passage where Christ is spoken of as God-Man; in the second column they were to write all the passages where Christ is spoken of as God alone; and in the third, all the passages where Christ is spoken of as man alone. The professor told the students that they needed to have this paper finished when they came back to class the following week.  So the students throughout  the weekend started rifling through the New Testament trying to find these different references for Jesus. The students found that first and second columns filled right up, but as to the third column, the one where Christ was mentioned as man alone, it remained blank. This was true for every single student. No one could find a single passage that even alluded to Christ being man alone.  So the students were a bit worried as they came into ...

       Since the early 1900's when Psychology was in its infancy. Psychologists had sought ways to try to test for intelligence. This had led to a number of different tests and methods.      In 1905 the Binet-Simon was the first to formalize a test for intelligence in children. Since that time there have been a variety of tests developed.      When I was in school I had been tested many times for my dyslexia and dyscalculia (a learning disability with reading and math).      Students today have to take a series of test that are designed to test where they are academically. High school students must take either the ACT or SAT. In order to join the military every, you will have to go through a series of test, one of which is the ASFAB.       When we talk about God and as we study the bible one of the things we can see is that God is in fact in intellectual being. God is in fact knowledgeable.   ...