Breakfast Links for 12/13/12 – Leave Your Snakes Home; Jedi Knights and Faith; Positive Negative Thinking

BREAKFAST LINKS 12/13/12:

Arlene Sanchez-Walsh, Patheos/Re-Generacion: “When I started teaching a class on global Pentecostalism this fall, I think the word was out that I was Pentecostal, and one of my students was stunned that I did not show up the first day of class in a long skirt, long hair, and no make-up–to which I added, that “I’d also left my snakes at home.”

Terry Waite, The Guardian: The Plight of Christians in Lebanon

Tim Dalrymple, Patheos/Philosophical Fragments: “I’m less disturbed by the 176,000 who ticked off “Jedi Knight” than the 14 million who chose “No religion.””

Elizabeth Evans Hagan, The ABP News Blog: Discerning God’s Direction

Roger E. Olson, Patheos/Roger E. Olson: “I propose that we, Americans and especially Christians, rediscover and re-value the power of negative thinking.”

Christy Thomas, The United Methodist Reporter: A Hand Up – Not a Hand Out

Joe Carter, Patheos/Joe Carter’s Commonplace: “The same secularists who think that playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City while listening to gansta rap has no affect on children act as if hearing “Merry Christmas” will turn little Johnny into a Pat Robertson clone.”

John Stossel, Real Clear Politics: Government Gone Bad

Richard Dahlstrom, Patheos/Fibonacci Faith: “Though waiting has fallen on hard times in our instant society, anticipation is still alive and well.”

Matt Miller, Washington Post Opinions: Obama’s Trump Card on the Debt Limit

Robert C. Crosby, Patheos/Robert C. Crosby: “I never knew a case where God used a discouraged man or woman to accomplish any great thing for him. Let a minister go into the pulpit in a discouraged state of mind, and it becomes contagious: it will soon reach the pews, and the whole church will be discouraged. … It seems as if God cannot make large use of such men.”

James Downey, PostPartisan: Too Big to Fail, To Big to Indict