Some Good (Friday) Linkage

Ed Stetzer takes a look at some of the marks of unhealthy organizations, Considering (and Surviving) Unhealthy Christian Organizations, part 1. I have to say that a lot of organizations, business and religious, that I have experience show a lot of these signs.

Along the same lines there is Steve Scott's Why People Blog Their Spiritual Abuse Stories. It troubles me to see so many people who have been terribly abused by the very people who are supposed to love and care for them. While some may give them the stink eye, these people need an outlet and the web gives it to them.

Robert Martin at Abnormal Anabaptist has two posts I liked, National Religion...Take Two and The Poor At The Gate.

Steve at From the Pew looks at why people blog about spiritual abuse, a problem that has always been epidemic in the church but is finally being given voice by the internet: Why People Blog Their Spiritual Abuse Stories. For every disgruntled ex-church "member" there seem to be hundreds of people who have been genuinely wounded by the authoritarian nature of the church.

Tom Ascol writing for Tabletalk writes about The High Calling of Women.

Maybe the best thing I read all week was this post from Bryana Johnson, Underage Dating: The Elephant in the Social Conservative Living-Room. Ms. Johnson writes for the College Conservative and calls out "social conservatives" that permit their children to be part of the underage dating culture while at the same time railing against immorality.

This was just such a great paragraph:

The trouble with underage dating is that it presents an entirely faulty view of what interaction with the opposite gender should be about. Rather than placing emphasis on building one strong relationship with one person at a stage of life when a marital commitment is feasible, dating encourages young people to pour their energies into consistently seducing other young people at a time when neither of them are capable of making any long-term commitments. Their “relationships” are destined to fail from the get-go because they are founded on unhealthy perceptions of love and not backed by any real necessity to stick it out.

That is one of the best summaries of the dating culture I have seen. Christian parent, don't put your kids through this. They are not "missing out" by not dating, they are avoiding a culture that builds really poor habits for later on.