Around the world people are afraid of the spiritual world, and try to manipulate the spiritual beings to get what they want. A few examples?

Shamans (witch doctors) operate with the goal of manipulating spirits for healing powers.

There's a Hindu sacrifice of 250,000 animals happening now in Nepal. The explanation? "If we want anything, and we come here with an offering to the goddess, within five years all our dreams will be fulfilled." (source)

This is something you might run into in various cultures around the world. But surely we wouldn't have a similar view of God, that he would be so easily manipulated like a genie who has to grant it's master wishes. God has no master, we'd never think in the same way.

However, the same attitude toward spirituality is plentiful in the church. As soon as we believe God is formulaic, we're doing the same thing - believing that we can manipulate the spirits - or in our case, The Spirit.

Have you ever heard something like "if you do these 6 things God will give you these 7 benefits"?

We say Christianity is supposed to be about a relationship, but we often live out the idea that God is ours to be manipulated by formulas. Look for this idea next time you're hearing spiritual teaching - are you being taught that you can and should manipulate the spiritual world?

I just received an email from my Senator, Michael Bennet about how wonderful he is for voting for the health care overhaul bill. Here is my response I've sent to him.

Dear Michael Bennet (or the staff that will read this letter if he has decided to delegate his responsibility of hearing from his electorate.)

Everyone wants healthcare reform. I haven't heard anyone say that the health care system is ideal. Whether it's the best in the world or not, it can be better - lots better.

However, rushing a bill through as fast as possible that doesn't even take effect until after Obama runs for re-election is a mere political move. Why not take a year to explore the options, and still have it start in 2014? When they've already decided to wait 5 years to implement the plan, why do we only have weeks to pass the bill?

In addition to the rush, it is also concerning the size of the bill. Will you read the bill? 2,000+ pages are not required to regulate insurance policy's pre-existing conditions clauses, or to expand the existing government insurance monoliths (medicare, medicaid, etc.). You must agree that the bulk of the bill is unnecessary, and if they were just trying to resolve these problems it would be an easy bill to pass.

The health care in the United States is wonderful. Every day news stories break about people from other countries coming to doctors in the U.S. and receiving better treatment. Thus the goal isn't about trying to get better health care - the only change would be to make it worse. We have the best doctors with the best technology in the world. The only change here would be to make it worse.

The goals must then be to 1) cover more people and 2) drive down costs. Government solutions have never worked. We already have government-run insurance monoliths in medicare and medicaid. Yet millions of people who qualify for these programs don't sign up, go to the ER for problems, and are lumped in with the "millions of uninsured" statistics. Government insurance also underpays doctors, and denies more services than private insurers. Further, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has run the numbers and is saying that the government run program will have a higher cost to the patient than a comparable private insurance run plan.

While government health insurance programs have not helped in the areas we're seeking to reform, free-market solutions have been proven to do just this. See Safeway's plan that has kept the same premiums for the last several years while the average premium increased 40%. (It's a group plan, so they legally have to accept pre-existing conditions, so that's great too.) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124476804026308603.html

Just because we Coloradans want health care reform, that does not give you license to do whatever you want as long as you say it's "health care reform." The changes in this bill are harmful, not helpful, and I will, for the first time, really become active in the next election based on your vote.

I will rally whoever I can to support you if you take a stand against this abuse of power, or I will work to hold you accountable by working against your upcoming re-election less than 1 year from now if you vote for this and in so doing, abandon your responsibility as our representative and choose party politics over your duty as our elected official.