Breakfast Links: Debate Scores, Crowley Admits Mistake, Al-Qaeda Rising, Why God Loves Play, and Email Murder

Links For 10/18/12:

Ryan Holmes: Why It’s Time to Kill Email

Timothy Dalrymple: We Need Better, Not Less, Religion in Politics

USA Today: Debate a Split Decision

New York Times Editorial: Obama Turns It Around

New York Post Editorial: Mitt Wins on Points

RealClearPolitics: Crowley Says Romney Was Mainly Right about Libya Terrorism Critique

Adelle M. Banks: Evangelicals for the Pill

Peter Brookes: Al-Qaeda Again on Rise

George Jonas: Sanctions Won’t Stop Iran

Ron Sider: War, Pacifism and a Third Option

Fyodor Lukyanov: Remembering the Nuclear Red Line

Quotations —

When Christians Get Depressed: “My raw material may be shoddy – my genetic code seemingly designed for depression – but God is using it to transform me. My pride was my downfall, but my faith is my salvation.”

Brave Small World: “Applied to theology then, to observe is to be disturbed by God. It is to have your eyes opened, your heart transformed, you spirit moved, your mind changed.”

Social Media and Privacy: “In years past, if I were at a dinner party at your home, I would not take a photo of you, print multiple copies, and then send it to all of my friends without first asking your permission. Why, then, would I think it’s okay to do this digitally?”

When Sunday School Is for Mommies: “So what has been coming out of Mommy lately?”

Why God Loves Play: “From God’s perspective, play is not a distraction from “real life.” Play is so important partly because it prefigures the final state of affairs: the joy of the celebration of God’s kingdom.”

Religion and Wooing Voters: “Church affiliation has always been the way people in my hometown have identified themselves. California has the Crips and the Bloods. Georgia has the Baptists and the Methodists… It’s a way of saying there’s me, then there is you. Us and them. Blacks and Whites. Christians and Muslims. The Anointed and the Anti-Christ…Wearisome rhetoric devised to divvy up property rights to heaven.”

But Leave It There: “It’s ironic. People are always accusing politicians of being hypocrites, but in this instance we have a large segment of the population actually demanding it of them. “Go to church all you want, but leave it there” has nothing at all to do with separation of church and state.”

Your Money Or Your Life: “All this talk about ‘stewardship of God’s resources’. Jesus didn’t talk like that. He said, ‘It is very difficult for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. That is to say, ‘It is very difficult for a rich person to be saved.’ or to put it another way, ‘It is very easy for a rich person to go to hell.’”

Evangelization Needs Profanity: “Our example is Jesus. A very rude houseguest sometimes. The Rabbi who humiliates you in front of friends and company, then dies for you afterwards. This is love. Total madness. Christ.”

A Candidate’s Religion Counts: “A good voter will take religion into account. A bigot will consider religious views with littler or no political bearing and refuse to vote for a man who has ideas he thinks are “weird.” Such a bigot misses the fact that his “weird” is another man’s normal.”