How to Share Your Faith Using Ugly Betty

How to Share Your Faith Using Ugly Betty

Does sweet and sincere win out over stylish and sexy in the real world? Millions of viewers tune in each week to root for sweet, unsophisticated Betty Suarez on Ugly Betty. ABC 's comedy series follows the ups and downs of life for unfashionable Betty as she makes her way in the high-glamour fashion mag world. Winner of two Golden Globe awards, Ugly Betty gives viewers a glimpse of what happens when sincerity and determination are matched against snootiness and superficiality.

Betty's been hired as assistant to the irresponsible, womanizing, editor-in-chief, Daniel Meade, who is being groomed by his father to take over Meade Publications. She's been hired by Daniel's father for the assistant position precisely because she's not sexy and glamorous - and therefore will not be a temptation. Daniel's not too happy about the new arrangement, to say the least. The show follows Betty as she pits her sincerity, hard work, and determination against the hostility, office politics, and maneuvering she encounters at work.

America Ferrera, who plays Betty, commented in a recent interview, "This show is not about being ugly at all. More than anything it's just about looking past what you see. Achieving that image is not all that we're on this planet to do." So how about you? How do you deal with the whole 'image' thing? Do you spend a lot of time and effort perfecting your outer image?

As a Christian, there's nothing wrong with expressing yourself through your clothes and hair and the look you choose to fit 'you'. God Himself is creative and artistic. One look at a sunset or a mountain tells you that He loves to express Himself and He uses beautiful things as part of that expression! And since you are made in the image of God, being creative and expressive should be part of who you are.

But the whole image thing can easily get messed up when clothing and image choices move from expression to obsession - when you find yourself spending huge amounts of time and money on outer appearance. And when you care more about your look than who you are on the inside or what God is calling you to be about with your time and money. Jesus had a lot to say about this very subject in Matthew 6:25-34:

If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it follows that you don't fuss about what's on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to him than birds.

Has anyone by fussing in front of the mirror ever gotten taller by so much as an inch? All this time and money wasted on fashion--do you think it makes that much difference? Instead of looking at the fashions, walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best--dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them.

If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers--most of which are never even seen--don't you think he'll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I'm trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God's giving. People who don't know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. (The Message)

Or check out these verses from 1 Peter 3:3-4:

What matters is not your outer appearance-the styling of your hair, the jewelry you wear, the cut of your clothes-but your inner disposition. Cultivate inner beauty, the gentle, gracious kind that God delights in. (The Message)

Teen talk is loaded with references to appearance, and Ugly Betty can be an easy opener for taking the conversation deeper. So try using some of these questions to move the conversation with your friends toward God-talk.

• What do you think of Betty Suarez?
  • Do you admire her?
  • Feel sorry for her?
  • Identify with her?
• Do you think sweet and sincere wins out over stylish and sexy in the real world?
• How important is your outer image to you?
• Do you think some people pay so much attention to the outside because they are empty on the inside?
• Where do you get your sense of value from, your outer looks or who you are?
  • Share with your friends how your relationship with Jesus has helped you understand that you are loved and valued by God for who you are and not for what you look like or what you've accomplished. The Good News is that God's love is unconditional!
• Do you agree with America Ferrera's statement "Achieving that image is not all that we're on this planet to do"?
  • Share with your friends what you believe you were put on this planet to do. For help with this check out the Soul Fuel You Don't Have a Clue .

Whether it's a compliment or a dis, comments on appearance flow freely everyday in teen conversation. Look for ways to take the talk to a level that's more than skin deep!

I Changed My Gender!

With all the heat . . . is there Global Warming?

Is the Earth Warming?

Well – the first Earth day (1970) had the radical environmentalists proclaiming that the next Ice Age was upon us (The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years," he declared. "If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age." Kenneth Watt ") and that our human populations would starve to death by 1980 . . . now the same groups are screaming about Global Warming (Algore et al) . . . (the last time I checked, a little warmer temps were a good thing – especially compared to a global ice age.)

Regardless – there is so much junk science and hyperbole surrounding this issue that you really have to check your preconceived ideas at the door and look at some facts. 

Of course Junk Science is nothing new . . . there will always be experts and politicians and activists who try to change public opinion and ultimately try to change public behavior.  I just want the truth.  Check out this quote on global warming referencing the current heat wave we’re experiencing.  People have such short memories and we’re so self absorbed that if we’re hot today – then the entire globe must be hotter at this time in history!  I’ve highlighted some salient points.   If you want to read the entire article – then go to A Bit of History for Global Warmers

“People sweltering from a heat wave in the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. might find cold comfort in the fact that the temperatures of the past few days are not the hottest on record. That "honor" belongs to a summer 76 years ago -- decades before the controversy over "man-made global warming" began.

"From June 1 to August 31, 1930, 21 days had high temperatures that were 100 degrees or above" in the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area, Patrick Michaels, senior fellow for environmental studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, told Cybercast News Service. "That summer has never been approached, and it's not going to be approached this year."

Between July 19 and Aug. 9 of that year, heat records were set on nine days and they remain unbroken more than three-quarters of a century later. "That's hot," added Michaels, who also serves as professor of natural resources at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va.

The summer of 1930 also marked the beginning of the longest drought of the 20th century. In 1934, dry regions stretched from New York and Pennsylvania across the Great Plains to California. A "dust bowl" covered about 50 million acres in the south-central plains during the winter of 1935-1936.”

Some people believe that “the ends justify the means.”  Meaning that getting people to change their opinion or behavior is worth lying or exaggerating or hurting people.  I prefer to have the truth.  Everyone has an opinion and a point of view, but as much as is possible we should be given the truth and then people should be able to make their own opinions . . . that’s freedom. 

Unfortunately, some people are not satisfied with just presenting the truth.  They feel the need to impose their opinion on other people so they use the courts and heavy handed politicians and the Media by using hyperbole.

Check out this article Earth Day - then and now for more information on the some of these predictions from the radical environmentalists:

1.     The population of the world will starve in ten years

2.     Pollution will kill all of us who don’t starve

3.     DDT and other chemicals will kill the few who are left

4.     Non-renewable resources will run out (Oil, coal etc) (ironically they oppose cutting down trees which are totally renewable – I renewed some in my yard last weekend)

5.     Most of our animal species will be extinct in our life times (we won’t be here to see them anyway)

So how did all the doomsday activists get it all so wrong?  I contend that they were blinded by their agendas.  I also think they made some critical errors:

1)    They believe that the end justifies the means

2)    They really believe that technology is bad

3)    They think more people on the planet is bad

4)    They see human beings as the problem

5)    They think rich people are inherently evil and are selfish

6)    They don’t see technology as having any hope for solving the problems of pollution or population or disease.

(They sound remarkably like democrats)

Check out this quote from the article:

How did the doomsters get so many predictions so wrong on the first Earth Day? Their mistake can be handily summed up in Paul Ehrlich and John Holdern's infamous I=PAT equation. Impact (always negative) equals Population x Affluence x Technology, they declared. More people were always worse, by definition. Affluence meant that rich people were consuming more of the earth's resources, a concept that was regularly illustrated by claiming that the birth of each additional baby in America was worse for the environment than 25, 50, or even 60 babies born on the Indian subcontinent. And technology was bad because it meant that humans were pouring more poisons into the biosphere, drawing down more nonrenewable resources and destroying more of the remaining wilderness.

We now know that Ehrlich and his fellow travelers got it backwards. If population were necessarily bad, then Brazil, with less than three-quarters the population density of the U.S., should be the wealthier society. As far as affluence goes, it is clearly the case that the richer the country, the cleaner the water, the clearer the air, and the more protected the forests. Additionally, richer countries also boast less hunger, longer lifespans, lower fertility rates, and more land set aside for nature. Relatively poor people can't afford to care overmuch for the state of the natural world.

So – what do you think?

How long will we let other people do our thinking for us?

How long will we let other people’s opinions shape our thinking?

What is the truth?

Who will you listen to?

Moral Equivalence

Moral Equivalence is a natural outgrowth of Postmodern Thinking . . . we've been seeing the results for years . . . everything has to be "fair" - which means equal . . . no matter if things are the same and no matter why people live in different situations . . . things should be equal.  Look at the "no tolerance" rules for fighting in schools . . . it used to be that the aggressor was punished . . . but now a kid who is just defending himself is considered fighting too and they'll both be kicked out of school . . .

Sounds kind of like this war between Israel and her neighbors . . . Israel has been repeatedly attacked . . . just for existing.  Israel has had numerous innocent citizens targeted by terrorists and neighboring governments on countless occasions . . . yet the world can't seem to make a moral distinction between Israel's actions and those who target her men, women and children.  Israeli soldiers wear uniforms and do not hide among their populations . . . the terrorists use women and children as shields.

Read this article by Victor Davis Hansen to see how we are in the same moral quagmire that we were in before the 2nd World War.

The Brink of Madness A familiar place. By Victor Davis Hanson When I used to read about the 1930s — the Italian invasion of Abyssinia, the rise of fascism in Italy, Spain, and Germany, the appeasement in France and Britain, the murderous duplicity of the Soviet Union, and the racist Japanese murdering in China — I never could quite figure out why, during those bleak years, Western Europeans and those in the United States did not speak out and condemn the growing madness, if only to defend the millennia-long promise of Western liberalism. Of course, the trauma of the Great War was all too fresh, and the utopian hopes for the League of Nations were not yet dashed. The Great Depression made the thought of rearmament seem absurd. The connivances of Stalin with Hitler — both satanic, yet sometimes in alliance, sometimes not — could confuse political judgments. But nevertheless it is still surreal to reread the fantasies of Chamberlain, Daladier, and Pope Pius, or the stump speeches by Charles Lindbergh (“Their [the Jews’] greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government”) or Father Coughlin (“Many people are beginning to wonder whom they should fear most — the Roosevelt-Churchill combination or the Hitler-Mussolini combination.”) — and baffling to consider that such men ever had any influence. Not any longer. Our present generation too is on the brink of moral insanity. That has never been more evident than in the last three weeks, as the West has proven utterly unable to distinguish between an attacked democracy that seeks to strike back at terrorist combatants, and terrorist aggressors who seek to kill civilians. It is now nearly five years since jihadists from the Arab world left a crater in Manhattan and ignited the Pentagon. Apart from the frontline in Iraq, the United States and NATO have troops battling the Islamic fascists in Afghanistan. European police scramble daily to avoid another London or Madrid train bombing. The French, Dutch, and Danish governments are worried that a sizable number of Muslim immigrants inside their countries are not assimilating, and, more worrisome, are starting to demand that their hosts alter their liberal values to accommodate radical Islam. It is apparently not safe for Australians in Bali, and a Jew alone in any Arab nation would have to be discreet — and perhaps now in France or Sweden as well. Canadians’ past opposition to the Iraq war, and their empathy for the Palestinians, earned no reprieve, if we can believe that Islamists were caught plotting to behead their prime minister. Russians have been blown up by Muslim Chechnyans from Moscow to Beslan. India is routinely attacked by Islamic terrorists. An elected Lebanese minister must keep in mind that a Hezbollah or Syrian terrorist — not an Israeli bomb — might kill him if he utters a wrong word. The only mystery here in the United States is which target the jihadists want to destroy first: the Holland Tunnel in New York or the Sears Tower in Chicago. In nearly all these cases there is a certain sameness: The Koran is quoted as the moral authority of the perpetrators; terrorism is the preferred method of violence; Jews are usually blamed; dozens of rambling complaints are aired, and killers are often considered stateless, at least in the sense that the countries in which they seek shelter or conduct business or find support do not accept culpability for their actions. Yet the present Western apology to all this is often to deal piecemeal with these perceived Muslim grievances: India, after all, is in Kashmir; Russia is in Chechnya; America is in Iraq, Canada is in Afghanistan; Spain was in Iraq (or rather, still is in Al Andalus); or Israel was in Gaza and Lebanon. Therefore we are to believe that “freedom fighters” commit terror for political purposes of “liberation.” At the most extreme, some think there is absolutely no pattern to global terrorism, and the mere suggestion that there is constitutes “Islamaphobia.” Here at home, yet another Islamic fanatic conducts an act of al Qaedism in Seattle, and the police worry immediately about the safety of the mosques from which such hatred has in the past often emanated — as if the problem of a Jew being murdered at the Los Angeles airport or a Seattle civic center arises from not protecting mosques, rather than protecting us from what sometimes goes on in mosques. But then the world is awash with a vicious hatred that we have not seen in our generation: the most lavish film in Turkish history, “Valley of the Wolves,” depicts a Jewish-American harvesting organs at Abu Ghraib in order to sell them; the Palestinian state press regularly denigrates the race and appearance of the American Secretary of State; the U.N. secretary general calls a mistaken Israeli strike on a U.N. post “deliberate,” without a word that his own Blue Helmets have for years watched Hezbollah arm rockets in violation of U.N. resolutions, and Hezbollah’s terrorists routinely hide behind U.N. peacekeepers to ensure impunity while launching missiles. If you think I exaggerate the bankruptcy of the West or only refer to the serial ravings on the Middle East of Pat Buchanan or Jimmy Carter, consider some of the most recent comments from Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah about Israel: “When the people of this temporary country lose their confidence in their legendary army, the end of this entity will begin [emphasis added].” Then compare Nasrallah’s remarks about the U.S: “To President Bush, Prime Minister Olmert and every other tyrannical aggressor. I want to invite you to do what you want, practice your hostilities. By God, you will not succeed in erasing our memory, our presence or eradicating our strong belief. Your masses will soon waste away, and your days are numbered [emphasis added].” And finally examine here at home reaction to Hezbollah — which has butchered Americans in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia — from a prominent Democratic Congressman, John Dingell: “I don’t take sides for or against Hezbollah.” And isn’t that the point, after all: the amoral Westerner cannot exercise moral judgment because he no longer has any? An Arab rights group, between denunciations of Israel and America, is suing its alma mater the United States for not evacuating Arab-Americans quickly enough from Lebanon, despite government warnings of the dangers of going there, and the explicit tactics of Hezbollah, in the manner of Saddam Hussein, of using civilians as human shields in the war it started against Israel. Demonstrators on behalf of Hezbollah inside the United States — does anyone remember our 241 Marines slaughtered by these cowardly terrorists? — routinely carry placards with the Star of David juxtaposed with Swastikas, as voices praise terrorist killers. Few Arab-American groups these past few days have publicly explained that the sort of violence, tyranny, and lawlessness of the Middle East that drove them to the shores of a compassionate and successful America is best epitomized by the primordial creed of Hezbollah. There is no need to mention Europe, an entire continent now returning to the cowardice of the 1930s. Its cartoonists are terrified of offending Muslim sensibilities, so they now portray the Jews as Nazis, secure that no offended Israeli terrorist might chop off their heads. The French foreign minister meets with the Iranians to show solidarity with the terrorists who promise to wipe Israel off the map (“In the region there is of course a country such as Iran — a great country, a great people and a great civilization which is respected and which plays a stabilizing role in the region”) — and manages to outdo Chamberlain at Munich. One wonders only whether the prime catalyst for such French debasement is worry over oil, terrorists, nukes, unassimilated Arab minorities at home, or the old Gallic Jew-hatred. It is now a cliché to rant about the spread of postmodernism, cultural relativism, utopian pacifism, and moral equivalence among the affluent and leisured societies of the West. But we are seeing the insidious wages of such pernicious theories as they filter down from our media, universities, and government — and never more so than in the general public’s nonchalance since Hezbollah attacked Israel. These past few days the inability of millions of Westerners, both here and in Europe, to condemn fascist terrorists who start wars, spread racial hatred, and despise Western democracies is the real story, not the “quarter-ton” Israeli bombs that inadvertently hit civilians in Lebanon who live among rocket launchers that send missiles into Israeli cities and suburbs. Yes, perhaps Israel should have hit more quickly, harder, and on the ground; yes, it has run an inept public relations campaign; yes, to these criticisms and more. But what is lost sight of is the central moral issue of our times: a humane democracy mired in an asymmetrical war is trying to protect itself against terrorists from the 7th century, while under the scrutiny of a corrupt world that needs oil, is largely anti-Semitic and deathly afraid of Islamic terrorists, and finds psychic enjoyment in seeing successful Western societies under duress. In short, if we wish to learn what was going on in Europe in 1938, just look around. — Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author, most recently, of A War Like No Other. How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.

National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZDBhMzg5Mzk4NjQ5MjM5OTJhZjRjMWQ4OWMzNDhmMzk=

America's war with Islamic fanaticism didn't start on 9-11