In The Story of Christian Theology, theologian Roger Olsen writes:

A popular misconception—perhaps a Christian urban legend—is that the United States Secret Service never shows bank tellers counterfeit money when teaching them to identify it. The agents who do the training, so the legend goes, show bank tellers only examples of genuine money so that when the phony money appears before them ...

Seatbelts can be a hassle. Some people just don't want to be bothered even when the law requires them to buckle up. According to the Associated Press, a New Zealander named Ivan Segedin took it to an extreme. The police ticketed him 32 times over five years for failing to use his seat belt. Even though this was costing him big money, Segedin refused to buckle up. Finally, instead of obeying the law, ...

Pastor Mike Breaux tells the following story of when his daughter Jodie answered God's call to go into missions work:

During her junior year of high school, Jodie struggled to find a faith of her own. She wanted to know in her heart that all of what she'd been taught to believe was true and that Jesus Christ was real. Honestly, she was headed down a dark road. But God pursued her down that road. She ...

A new religion invented by a Massachusetts psychologist has been gaining popularity over recent years. Called "Yoism," this system of beliefs is based on the "open source" principle—where the general public becomes a combined, creative authority and source of truth. One example of the "open source" phenomenon is the successful online encyclopedia known as Wikipedia.

Yoism operates and evolves ...

Radical Islamic clerics are undermining the World Health Organization's efforts to vaccinate children in Pakistan. Whenever vaccines are handed out to aid the country in its fight against disease, clerics spread rumors that the medicine is actually an effort to sterilize children. They call the medicine "infidel vaccines." The idea fashioned in the minds of whoever will listen is simple: "The health ...

In the fall of 2005, Oprah Winfrey entered her 20th season as the celebrated host of The Oprah Winfrey Show. In those two decades, she has amassed over $1.4 billion, assembled a U.S. television audience of more than 49 million viewers each week (not including her broadcasts in 122 other countries), and informed her viewers on matters ranging from genocide in Rwanda to the best-tasting oatmeal cookies. ...

A new, highly efficient system is being used by San Francisco and New York City to detect the presence of toxins in a city's water supply, a possible sign of a terrorist attack. They have found that the best tool for monitoring such threats are bluegills, those little fish so many catch on a lazy summer afternoon.

According to an article by the Associated Press, a small number of bluegills are kept ...

Scotland Yard recently conducted a private exhibition of forged paintings for art dealers. The objective was to send a warning to their select audience about the sale of forgeries, which some experts estimate make up 40 percent of the art market. The sale of these fakes can undermine the value of the genuine articles.

The forgeries at the exhibit were created with remarkable proficiency. Reliance on ...

When I was a teenager, I became fascinated, appalled, and grieved by the literature of the Holocaust … One scene that haunts me is a picture from Auschwitz. Above the entryway to the concentration camp were the words, Arbeit macht frei. The same thing stood above the camp at Dachau. It means, "work makes free"—work will liberate you and give you freedom.

It was a lie—a false hope. ...

Losing PlayStation privileges or being confined to a room would be hard enough for most children, but at the tender age of ten, Sajani Shakya almost lost her status as a living goddess. In the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal, living goddesses—called Kumari—are chosen from the same Hindu caste as Buddha and worshiped as deity. As Sajani soon learned, with the elevated status came elevated expectations. ...