When Bar Charts Go Bad

I can see that the creator of this chart is trying to do something imaginative, but something also tells me that substituting the bars in the chart with pictures of condoms will probably turn people off. Well, that, and the fact that it looks like a chromatography experiment.

Private Medical Data Exposed

Privacy hacks don’t always come from the internet. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of somebody leaking the right information to the wrong snail mail address at the right time.

Georgia’s largest health insurer sent an estimated 202,000 benefits letters containing personal and health information to the wrong addresses last week, in a privacy breach that also raised concerns about potential identity theft.

Securing your mail is a good way to keep identity theft away, but when it gets mailed to the wrong person, what can you do?

What’s in a Name?

There’s a lot of objectionable language in the media, and I think that the prevalence of it has spilled into society. I hear a lot more people cursing out in public than I ever did when I was a kid. And, by a curse, I would include abuses of God’s and Jesus’ names. With acronyms such as “OMG” (and its vulgar variations), it’s getting to the point of ridiculousness. While most network Standards and Practices departments prohibit the language of damning things in His name, how long before even that is allowed and commonplace?

I would go so far as to argue that if you don’t wince or react negatively to His name being used in vain, as the Ten Commandments state, there is something wrong with you as a Christian. To me, even blurting out his name as an interjection is offensive, unless you are calling upon Him for help. While I wouldn’t start beating offenders over the head with your Bible, sometimes you can politely curtail the sewer of language.

Having children, this is easy for me. I tell people I don’t want them speaking that way around my kids, and if they continue to speak in an abusive way, I will talk to someone in authority in the store, restaurant, ball park, etc. to have them removed. Sometimes, they don’t even notice that there’s kids around them. Other times, they go elsewhere to curse. Whatever. The point is that they know that it’s not appropriate to speak that way in public.

There are, in fact, 210 different names of God throughout Scripture, adding incredible richness and depth to our understanding of God’s identity, worth, and character. Which is exactly why He takes it so seriously when we degrade His name by using it as though it weren’t sacred and lowering it to mere casual conversation as though it were ordinary.

The exclamation, “Oh my God” should be an urgent prayer, not a verbal exclamation point. When we lower the name of God to drag it through a moment of anger or to use it to intimidate or manipulate, we have taken God Himself and lowered Him from His holy position. His name is intrinsically locked into who He is and what He is like. To put it simply, when we hit on His name, we have hit on Him. No wonder He is offended.

So, what’s in a name? If you’re talking about God, the answer is everything!

By the way, this is my 100th post. That’s not such a big deal, because my own blog has about 1100 posts, but I like celebrating milestones where I can. Earlier this month, I celebrated my first anniversary teaching with Indiana Wesleyan. The end of August is my 35th birthday. My daughters birthdays are next week and the end of the month. Good times.