Latest news with #Christlike
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Scholarship established in memory of deadly crash victim
WICHITA FALLS (KFDX/KJTL) — A Wichita Falls organization is helping to raise money for a new scholarship that honors the life of a man who died in a motorcycle wreck. RELATED: WFPD identifies motorcyclist killed in Southwest Parkway crash The William Heyen Memorial Scholarship for Exceptional Achievement in the Arts is awarded annually to a graduating senior at Wichita Christian School who has demonstrated outstanding talent, dedication, and Christlike character in the arts. The scholarship's namesake, William Heyen, graduated from Wichita Christian School in 2018. Heyen died from injuries suffered in a motorcycle crash on Southwest Parkway on Sunday, April 27, 2025. 'This scholarship honors his legacy by encouraging others to pursue their artistic gifts with excellence, integrity, and a heart that reflects God's love,' officials with Wichita Christian Schools said in a Facebook post. Community members interested in donating to the scholarship fund in Heyen's memory can do so on the 5Plus2 website. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hindustan Times
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
What We Need in Pope Francis' Successor
Pope Francis' great contribution was to present the Catholic Church as a lover of all people. He called it 'a field hospital after battle,' a refuge and place of repair. It must 'go to the peripheries, which are often filled with solitude, sadness, inner wounds and loss of a zest for life.' Many saw in him humility and simplicity. The photo I've thought of since his death is from a general audience a few months into his papacy, when he kissed and embraced the man whose head and neck were severely deformed by the tumors of neurofibromatosis. It was beautiful because it was Christlike. It mattered a great deal that he made clear—he underscored—that if you are in trouble, if you are trapped in circumstances from which there is no escape, if you are living an irregular life, if you have been told you must feel shame and the shame leaves you feeling unworthy, then come in, come in. None are beyond the love of Christ or unwelcome in his church. It is impossible that message didn't spread, didn't enter hearts, didn't change lives. That he was generally understood, at least in time, to be of the liberal part of the church, gave cheer, after two consecutive conservative papacies, to those in liberalism's precincts, and a sense of change and vitality to the church itself. Things, if they're alive, go back and forth. But if we are in mourning, it is dry-eyed. There is broad appreciation for the man and his efforts but not deep sadness at the end of his papacy. In its dozen years, Francis was often confusing, with striking impulses followed by unexplained silences, with a lack of doctrinal clarity. For me the whole blur culminated in the Synod on Synodality, essentially a conference on having conferences. His liberalism seemed uncertain except when it was aggressive, even belligerent, such as in his suppression of the Latin Mass. What's next? I find myself hopeful. When institutions weaken or recede, interesting things (some bad but some good, too) can fill suddenly freed-up space. Power blocs move. There will soon be a new presence, and possibly a fresh voice. Something good might come this spring, something that wakes us up. 'Hope springs eternal in the human heart.' Why shouldn't it? A great theme of the 20th- and 21st-century popes was one of grappling with modernity—not, as modernizers said, fighting modernity, resisting it, but encountering it, having a dialogue with it, coming to grips with the church's responsibilities in the conversation, meeting people where they are. My goodness, enough. It is played out. The world we live in is lashed by knowledge of the instability of its traditions and institutions, the inadequacy of its governments; it sees artificial intelligence coming and fears machines escaping the control of man; people see unaccountable autocrats lobbing nuclear threats; they worry for their children. More and more I think people know that no one will get through the future without deep faith in God. The church should go back to the beginning, shift from modernity to eternity, ask the world to train its eye on Christ. Tell it what his mother said at the wedding at Cana: 'Do whatever he tells you.' This is the time for a great teaching pope whose mission is telling the world the meaning of the faith, its history, how it came to its dogma, what it believes and why. How personal faith can come and be won, and what you do to hold on to it. The church must speak to the human heart, which is always hungry. It would be good if the soon-to-be-chosen pope could be summed up, 20 years from now, on his passing, with these words: The man who was in love with Jesus. Connected to which: When you're in love, you are happy. Your happiness shows. It is so important that the next pope radiate something like joy—the joy of knowing there is a God and he is good and he is always with us. Let the world look and think, 'He seems happy. He must know something.' Really, they should drop the stricken look. The coming conclave should keep in mind St. Philip Neri, patron saint of joy, sometimes called even the patron saint of laughing. Born in Florence in the 16th century, lived in Rome. A scholar and poet who studied philosophy, became a priest, founded great holy communities, fought Rome's corruption but always with good cheer. He loved the arts, loved music. The prostitutes and street urchins to whom he ministered loved him; it wasn't enough he converted them, he took them for picnics on the lawns of the rich and had musicians play. Rome's royalty and elites cared for him too. His general approach: leave outward, worldly things alone, reform your own heart, this, heart by heart, leads to external reforms. He kept a distance from ecclesiastical controversies yet was somehow a force in their resolution. 'Cheerfulness strengthens the heart and makes us persevere in a good life,' he said. 'The servant of God ought always to be in good spirits.' There were stories of his lighthearted holiness: A glum young man came to him for spiritual help. Philip told him, 'Sadness is no companion for the ones who wants to follow Christ. If you can't be joyful, at least be ridiculous. God can work with that.' A parishioner was upset at losing his hair. Did Philip know a remedy? 'Be holy, then people will look at your soul and not your scalp.' Someone asked if he could perform a miracle. He said yes, 'I just had a conversation with someone and didn't interrupt them. That'll do for today.' He is said once to have walked through the streets of Rome with a basket of oranges on his head, whistling and making faces. He told a friend the reason was he was coming to be known as wise. 'I need to remind them—and myself—that I'm not.' Joy, to him, didn't counter reverence, it was an expression of it. Wouldn't it be great if they chose 'the man who was in love with Jesus,' which love brought him transparent personal joy, which he transmitted into the world? The Vatican should shake off the gloom and sideline the Church of Endless Argument. As the nuns in America used to say, 'Christ is coming—look busy.' Bring a boost to this old world.
Wall Street Journal
24-04-2025
- General
- Wall Street Journal
What We Need in Pope Francis' Successor
Pope Francis' great contribution was to present the Catholic Church as a lover of all people. He called it 'a field hospital after battle,' a refuge and place of repair. It must 'go to the peripheries, which are often filled with solitude, sadness, inner wounds and loss of a zest for life.' Many saw in him humility and simplicity. The photo I've thought of since his death is from a general audience a few months into his papacy, when he kissed and embraced the man whose head and neck were severely deformed by the tumors of neurofibromatosis. It was beautiful because it was Christlike. It mattered a great deal that he made clear—he underscored—that if you are in trouble, if you are trapped in circumstances from which there is no escape, if you are living an irregular life, if you have been told you must feel shame and the shame leaves you feeling unworthy, then come in, come in. None are beyond the love of Christ or unwelcome in his church.
Yahoo
24-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
LDS Church Apostle Jeffrey Holland dedicates Toronto Ontario Temple
TORONTO () — President Jeffrey R. Holland, the acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, rededicated the of the Sunday afternoon. 'Today we are happy to break the lock on the Toronto Ontario Temple and its grounds, to have what we pray will be a continuous flow of faithful recommend holders in this renewed opportunity now open to us,' Holland said to those assembled both in person and across several different digital means. What are Latter-day Saint Temples? Holland told members in attendance that they should take the time to rededicate themselves to the promises of Christlike living. For many Latter-day Saints in Ontario, having President Holland there was what some called 'a beautiful moment.' Following a recent health scare, Holland commented that he is pleased with the improvement of his health. 'I felt great. I am so happy with some improvement in my health, or at least in my movement and the conditions of my health,' President Holland told the Church Sunday. 'I was very, very happy about that and happy to be back in Toronto.' Originally announced in 1984 and finished in 1990, the Toronto Ontario Temple was the second to be built in Canada and the first on the east side of the country. It is currently one of 11 Temples announced, under construction, or in operation in the country. Odette Yu has served in the Toronto temple for over a decade and told the Church that this was 'everything and more than I expected.' 'It was my first time being in the dedicatory session. It was everything and more than I expected. The temple felt different. We've been here during construction. We've been here for the open house. But it was different when the dedication took place. We could feel there was a difference in the temple,' she said. Her husband, Steven said this was probably their most powerful experience in the temple. 'We can hardly wait to serve the Lord here in His holy house,' he said. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
I'm a Christian. Don't force educators to teach the Bible.
Some things cannot be taken by force without losing the very essence of what makes them worth having. A butterfly pinned is no longer a butterfly; its wings, once free to dance on the wind, become nothing more than colored paper. A river pressed into a pipe is no longer a river, but a stream in chains, stripped of its wild song. Wonder cannot be ordered into existence, nor can love be legislated. And faith — true, living faith — once wielded as an instrument of law, becomes something brittle and false. I did not grow up in a Christian home. Quite the opposite. My family was poor, trying to provide for six people on a yearly income of $20,000. Our home was marked by heartache, by brokenness, by something hollow where life should have been. Where God belonged, a longing for possessions took His place — an odd type of idol, not present in reality but worshiped nevertheless. If we could just get more, maybe things would be different. But more never came, and even if it had, I doubt it would have been enough. It was public school, and the freedom it provided for students to embrace whatever religion they wanted, that led me to a friend who invited me into the family of faith. Looking back, I see now that my teachers had something different about them, something I couldn't name at the time but recognize now for what it was. Most of them weren't in it for the high social status that comes from being a teacher, for the six-figure salaries, the company cars, the respect reserved for kings and queens. No, they were in it for something deeper — something selfless, caring, humble, something profoundly Christlike. They were there to serve, to give, to instill in children like me the ability to think, to read, to understand, with the quiet conviction that all of life — including our spiritual lives — would be better for it. I didn't know it at the time, but my teachers were ministering to me without ever explicitly stating their faith. And that's what I observe now as my own daughter is in the public school system. I remember the first day I took her to kindergarten. As a Christian parent, I was nervous. This was our first child to reach school age, and I'd heard all the horror stories — stories of critical theory being slipped into lesson plans, of ideas that burden young hearts before they even have categories to make sense of them. I sought counsel from friends, prayed about it, but still, I walked uneasily into that school on Meet the Teacher night, unsure of what I would find. Opinion: Poor math and reading skills in our public schools must improve — and quickly And what I found was worse to my intellect than I cared to admit: I was wrong. I did not find teachers eager to fill children with the empty promises of ideology. I found teachers overwhelmed by the sheer number of students in their classrooms, stretched thin by a lack of resources but resolved to pour out their energy for the good of my child. To my surprise, I found a large presence of people who radiated Christian compassion without coming out and saying it — servants' hearts ready to labor in love for the benefit of children. They weren't there to indoctrinate. They were there to serve. To teach. To care. And as I stood there, watching them kneel beside my daughter's tiny desk, showing her where to place her name tag, I saw something I hadn't expected: God's quiet presence, not in policy, but in people. And that is exactly how faith flourishes — not by force, not by mandate, but by quiet witness, by a life that speaks louder than words, by truth that is lived before it is preached. The Bible is the source of all true life, but it is not a vaccine that can be injected into society by sheer force of policy. It is not a plate of vegetables we can set before children with the command: Eat, because it is good for you. If it is to be embraced — not as a mere text, but as the wellspring of life — it must be received willingly, volitionally, in accordance with the freedom we all possess to search and to choose. Opinion: Oklahoma's AG: Transparency is the heart of democracy And that means persuasion. The Bible is not upheld by compulsion, but by truth made evident, by history that speaks louder than skepticism, by the endless scroll of those who have found life in its words — kings and beggars, scholars and children, the broken and the whole. It must be presented to the next generation not as a cold requirement, not as a moral chore, but as a feast for the soul — a dish so fragrant, so craveable in every sense, not merely sweet but rich and hearty, deeply satisfying. It is not meant to be tolerated but desired, not meant to be swallowed but savored. And for that to happen, it must be discovered, not dictated. Now, let me be clear: I am not saying there is no place for Christianity in government. I believe there is, and I believe we need more of it. But its presence is something deeper, something more subtle, something that cannot be written into lawbooks or printed onto classroom walls. It is not in the compulsion of religious mandates but in the quiet work of justice, in a care for human flourishing that transcends the bonds of materialism and greed, in a fierce advocacy for the weak, the poor and the marginalized. It is not a government-issued faith, but a faith that transforms government — not through coercion, but through goodness. And most of all, it is a presence in power without the corruption of power, a kind of leadership that rules not to be served, but to serve. This is why we have freedom of religion — not simply to ensure that all beliefs are protected, but to protect faith from the rough hands of government. The same hands that uphold justice are not fit to uphold the sacred. A judge may rule with wisdom, but he cannot order a man to believe. A law may punish wrongdoing, but it cannot shape the heart toward goodness. Romans 13 tells us that government has a role — to restrain evil, to keep the world from falling into chaos — but it was never meant to bring heaven to Earth. That is not its work. It cannot give life to the soul. It can only make a world where life may take root and grow. History bears witness to what happens when faith and government become entangled. Every time faith has been wielded as a tool of conquest, it has been bruised and twisted into something unrecognizable. Whenever rulers have clothed themselves in religion as a means of control, the result has been the same: faith reduced to force, beauty exchanged for power, truth lost beneath the weight of politics. And here is the question we must ask: If today's leaders may mandate one book, what stops tomorrow's from mandating another? If we welcome the government's hand in enforcing the Bible, what will we say when that same hand enforces something else? If we give the state the power to decide which faith must be taught, we also give it the power to decide which faith must be silenced. Faith, like fire, moves best when left free. The Bible does not need government backing to endure. If it is what it claims to be, it will stand on its own. And those who seek to share its light should do so as it was always meant to be shared — not by force, but by love. Not by compulsion, but by the quiet, steady witness of lives transformed. A butterfly pinned is no longer a butterfly. A river confined is no longer a river. And a faith imposed is no longer faith at all. Brian Montgomery is a licensed occupational injury examiner in Oklahoma, with significant experience in both insurance and ministry. A native of Cyril, Oklahoma, Brian holds a bachelor's degree from East Central University and a master's degree from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Teaching the Bible in OK schools is a slippery slope | Opinion
