Adam J. West

“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” That old saying that simply means one should not be unappreciative for gifts. Yet, many are less-than-thankful about the “gift” described in the news recently as the “horse-for-beef scandal” now affecting Europe and the United Kingdom.

After nearly eight years as leader of the largest religious organisation on the face of the earth, Pope Benedict XVI has tendered his resignation in an announcement last Monday that startled the world. With his resignation set to occur on February 28, 2013, a new pope will soon afterward be selected by a conclave of Roman Catholic cardinals assembled at the Vatican in Rome. Observers are wondering what this unexpected and monumental change will mean for Roman Catholicism, and for the struggling European Union.

Your phone rings. You pick it up and say, “Hello?” A voice on the line says, “Hello... is your refrigerator running?” You say, “Y-yes.” The voice on the line, snickering, bursts out with, “Well, you better go catch it!” That “age-old” prank call is somewhat innocuous compared to what has played out recently in the news. What does the Bible say about this kind of humor?

The statistics are shocking. The average age at which a child is first exposed to pornography is between 11 and 12! Forty million Americans are regular visitors to Internet porn sites. In a typical month, 70 percent of American men aged 18–24 visit pornography Web sites. Twenty-five percent of all search engine requests—68 million a day!—are pornography related. This is an epidemic societal scourge!