I am taking this blog in a slightly more personal direction because it doesn’t seem like people like to read my arm chair theology anyway but I still like writing it so it may come up occasionally or I may just keep it private, I haven’t really decided as of yet.  Anyway I make the look of the blog a little brighter and hopefully a little brighter over all.

According to the Tax foundation, a non-partisan group. Tax freedom day will not happen for most of us for a few more weeks. Tax freedom day is the day you would be done paying taxes if you paid every penny you earned from January 1. This year it is April 23 as an average. You can check out their site for more information and your states specific freedom day. But think about it, if we had to pay every penny we made to the government until we had paid our taxes we wouldn’t be done until almost 4 months into the year.  It is longer than it takes us to pay for our housing, food, health care, and recreation.

You know when my family was spending more than we took in I had a few choices, get a new job, demand more money or cut back on spending.  If you can’t demand more money from your boss, and you can’t find a new job you have to cut back on spending.  I wish the government didn’t have the power to demand more money from it’s bosses (us) and would realize there is a need to cut spending so we could all hold on to what we earn.  Think of what you could do with an extra 4 months worth of pay a year.  I bet you could spend it better than uncle Sam.

The Tax Foundation

Imagine if you will the scene at a grocery store where a woman has a two hundred and fifty dollar bill. She hands the cashier three hundred dollars to pay for said bill and when she receives her fifty dollars of change she shrieks “Oh, I have fifty dollars. I am so glad for this time because now I have more money.” The cashier and those around her look at her peculiarly as she dances away thrilled with her new found fortune.

This would be a strange event would you witness it but daily this time of year. People are thrilled to get their tax refund without realizing that it is nothing but change from a bill they have been paying all year. Only in this case the government holds your money all year so that they can earn the interest on it instead of allowing you to spend it on what you wish. This was started to bring in extra money to pay for WWI but has continued because according to the Department of Treasury:

This (withholding) greatly eased the collection of the tax for both the taxpayer and the Bureau of Internal Revenue. However, it also greatly reduced the taxpayer’s awareness of the amount of tax being collected, i.e. it reduced the transparency of the tax, which made it easier to raise taxes in the future. (History of the U.S. Tax System. U.S. Department of Treasury. Retrieved on 2006-10-31.)

Ask many people how much they pay in taxes and they have no idea or even worse they may say “None, I got a refund this year” not even realizing they have merely gotten change from a bill they have been forced to pay without their knowledge or even consent.

According to the Tax Foundation people work from January 1 until April 30 just to pay their taxes, one third of our labor is just to pay the taxes on that labor. And this date is getting latter and latter every year, but most people never realize it because they have been drugged with the chemical of withholdings. Wake up and pay attention to the amount of money taken from your pay check, the thousands in income tax, the hundreds in social security (you will NEVER see again), and hundreds more in other taxes.

Why boys should be allowed to play with toy guns | the Daily Mail

For those of you who haven’t had a chance to read it yet, I suggest you start with this article. And if you have time watch the video’s the one with Greg Hawkins almost had me jumping out of my chair and screaming “YES, thank you!!!” but I was at work.

Basically, Willowcreek has discovered that the popular model of church which says “participation in church activities produces disciples” just ain’t so, that simply being part of churchianity doesn’t make you any more of a disciple (defined by WC as one who is characterized by their love of God and love of people). They have done surveys of 31 congregations including their own and have found 5 segments of the church population — Exploring, growing, close, centered and stalled. Their discover it that the church is really only doing well meeting the needs of the ‘early’ explorers and growers but as people grow enough in their relation ship to ‘centered’ on Christ they are more dissatisfied with church and they either leave or ’stall’. Oddly enough they also discovered that those people who have their lives centered on Christ are the most likely to be dissatisfied with church and looking to leave.

I couldn’t help but screaming “Duh!” it is the way I have felt about the local church for quite some time, but perhaps when one of the worlds most influential churches says it someone will listen. This probably has been one of the best things I have read in quite some time, and it may very well change the face of many local churches.

Please make time to watch the videos linked in the article or here because I believe this may be world changing.

Greg Hawkins short version (3 minutes)

Greg Hawkins Long version (13 mintes)

Bill Hybels Video

Key finding of WillowCreek Study — If you can’t watch the videos.

• Walking down the hall at work I am accosted by signs with factoids about the work being done by the United Way.  Now I don’t give to them due to some moral disagreements but the issues they discuss are volunteer groups keeping streets safe, calls to food banks, kindergarten kids in trouble, and I can’t help but think that if the church was doing its job these things wouldn’t be necessary.
  

• The more I think about the quote “It is easy to sound prophetic from the margins but what we need is people who are prophetic from the center” the more I truly believe it.  It quote was from John Piper talking about the loss of the Gospel as the central theme of sermons in America.
  

• I found out that “LOST” isn’t coming back until May but it will run straight instead of that crappy 8 week break.  And that it will only be going for 6 seasons, it is good to know that there will be some finality.
  

• It is simply amazing how much paperwork you have to do in corporate America.  When the paper work takes more time than the actual work you are doing the paperwork for something is wrong.
  

• “The Big Bang Theory” is probably the best new show I have seen recently, it seems that since I became a father I don’t want to watch Law and Order CSI or any of those more serious drama shows, and most comedies haven’t struck a chord with me but this show is great.  It will probably hit with the same crowd that watched “Frasier” because many of the jokes are based on intellectual and geek issues, if you get a chance check it out, if you really get a chance DVR it and pause it on the producers “vanity card”.
  

• Sorry I have been out of blogging for a minute, our family has had a great deal of drama over the last week.  Heather’s purse was stolen our of our van at Blockbuster but a few days later the dufas threw out her wallet but missed the dumpster and it was found by the apartment manager so we got everything back but our cash and debit card which we had already canceled.  Ironically, most of the cash that was still in her wallet was our charity money so we decided God wanted us to give to this guy money so we are just thankful to have all of her other stuff back.

This article points to a great deal of factors that point to the consumer growth in America.  I can’t help but wonder if Christians have bought into this idea of stuff and bigger is better at the cost of the gospel.

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