Giving Answers (1 Peter 3:15)

"To what can I compare this generation?  They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others:  'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.'  For John [the Baptist] came neither eating or drinking, and they say, 'He has a demon'.  The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Here is a glutton and drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and "sinners."'  But wisdom is proved right by her actions."-- the words of Jesus (Matthew 11:16-19; see also Luke 7:31-35) Most people don't realize that to be tagged a "friend of sinners" was a slight toward Jesus.  We have taken the name calling as a badge of honor and used it to say that as believers, we too, should be "friends of sinners".  However, this is a dangerous misunderstanding of how Jesus responded to the insults to both Himself and to His cousin, John the Baptist.  I am afraid that American

My family went with another family to see "The Last Jedi" a few months back.  After the movie was over, there was endless critiquing by my family concerning the movie.  Needless to say, we didn't like it.  It isn't that we hated all of it, but the errors that it made were, in the end, unforgivable. I have been a collector of Star Wars books for years.  I don't own every book that has been made, but enough to respect the universe that the creative authors of the series have created.  One of the things that became established after 40 years of fiction development is the character of each of the fictional individuals represented in the series. Going into the movie, we all knew that creative license would be taken by the filmmakers as Disney was trying to build their own history of Star Wars that was going to deviate from what had been written before.  The first of the new trilogy "The Force Awakens" definitely changed the history from the books, ho