July 4, The Nobel Peace Prize, And The Ongoing Cause of Thickening The Thin ...

The Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo. The price of chemistry, physics, medicine, literature and economics are handed out here in Stockholm, during an annual ritual of formal speeches and banquets. At the Nobel Museum much less formal, you can buy an assortment of souvenirs tchotskes Nobel, like chocolates round in coatings of gold medals that mimic Nobel. My purchase was a book called Words of Peace, a collection of excerpts from Nobel Laureates of Peace. "Peace is a never-ending process, the work of many decisions by many people in many countries.It is an attitude, a way of life, a way to solve problems and resolve conflicts. It can not be forced on the smallest nation or enforced by the largest. He can not ignore our differences or overlook our common interests. It forces us to work and live together. "" The greatest human progress in recent generations has been achieved by the application of human intelligence to the management of the material. Now we face a more difficult problem, the application of intelligence to the management of human relations.Unless we can move forward in this area too, the same tools that the intelligence of man has created can be the instruments of destruction.

Who Forgives God? – Held to Answer

Harold Camping’s Rapture flopped, but Michael Tolkin’s didn’t.

While the media and Internet posters had fun with Camping, Tolkin’s 1991 movie, “The Rapture” was thought-provoking. It left viewers arguing, not laughing.

In “The Rapture” a young woman named Sharon (played by Mimi Rogers) spends monotonous days working as a telephone operator and cruises L.A. by night looking for casual sex. The emptiness of her life wears on her. After a series of coincidences and dreams, she embraces Jesus Christ as her Savior. She marries Randy (David Duchovny), a man she met on one of her nightly cruises, who also becomes a born-again Christian. Four years pass, and they now have a little girl, Mary. Her husband works, Sharon is a stay-at-home Mom, and life is good.

Then her husband is murdered. At first Sharon shrugs off her grief – it’s all part of God’s plan.

“Will we see Daddy again?” Mary asks her mom.

“Yes … when God takes us to heaven,” Sharon replies.

At church, a child known only as The Boy, has the gift of prophecy and has been receiving messages about the Rapture.

“God wants you for His special purpose,” he tells Sharon. He quotes from the Book of Revelation: “And the woman fled into the desert where she had a place prepared for her by God.”

Like one of Camping’s followers, Sharon walks away from her home, packing lightly for herself and daughter.

In the desert, surrounded by eerie Joshua trees with their human-like arms, Sharon and Mary pitch a tent. The days go by, the weeks go by. Their food runs out, and then their water. Mary wonders when God will come.

“I miss my Daddy. … Mommy, I want to go to heaven. … Mom, I’m hungry.”

In her sleep, Mary cries out in a trance. “Mom, you have to make up your mind, now!”

Sharon drives her daughter to a burned hill, and together on their knees, they pray. “If God loves us, He’ll understand,” says Sharon, just before she kills her daughter to send her to heaven.

The mother doesn’t kill herself. Suicides can’t get into heaven, she tells a deputy sheriff. “You can get into heaven if somebody else kills you but not if you kill yourself. Life is some kind of punishment, isn’t it?”

She can’t love God anymore. “He broke His promise. He let me kill my little girl.”

In jail, Sharon’s cellmate has found God and preaches to her: “You have to trust completely in God. He’ll forgive all your sins.

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