A popular 14-year-old boy was stabbed to death in a north London street after being set upon by a group of youths for "looking at someone the wrong way" in the latest in a string of fatal attacks on teenagers in the capital.

Some would say that men have got a great deal. They've got loads of choice and if their girlfriend wants them to propose, they can refuse to commit and just move onto the next girlfriend.

Liz Speed: What they are doing is not using their masculine muscle. They don't have to compete for a woman. If I don't use my muscle it won't develop, this state can erode their true masculinity. They're not using what God's given them in terms of their masculine drive - to go out and win a women for themselves, to push through the fear and pain of what it means to be in a relationship. They are missing out on the depths a committed relationship offers. I'm not angry with the men whom you are describing, instead I feel compassion.

Result: 16. Your score isn't an achievement, it just is.

Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen and his colleagues at Cambridge's Autism Research Centre have created the Autism-Spectrum Quotient, or AQ, as a measure of the extent of autistic traits in adults. In the first major trial using the test, the average score in the control group was 16.4. Eighty percent of those diagnosed with autism or a related disorder scored 32 or higher. The test is not a means for making a diagnosis, however, and many who score above 32 and even meet the diagnostic criteria for mild autism or Asperger's report no difficulty functioning in their everyday lives.

You scored less than 32. Make your own assessment of that

Asperger's Syndrome Test from OKCupid!

Like many people who had been married for several years, Dick was bored with his relationship. There was no passion these days. In fact, Dick and his wife hardly slept together at all. However, Dick had no intention whatsoever of leaving his wife. He loved her and she was an excellent mother to their children.

He knew full well what the usual solution to this problem was: have an affair. You simply accept that your wife satisfies some of your needs ans your mistress others. But Dick really didn't want to go behind his wife's back, and he also knew that she could not deal with an open relationship, even if he could.

So when Dick heard about Byte on the Side Inc. ('Even better than the real thing!'), he had to take it seriously. What the company offered was the opportunity to conduct a virtual affair. Not one-handed cyber sex with a real person at the other end of the computer connection, but a virtual reality environment in which you 'slept with' a completely simulated person. It would feel just like real sex, but, in fact, all your experiences would be caused by computers stimulating your brain to make it seem to you as though you were having sex. All the thrills of an affair, but with no third person, and hence no real infidelity. Why should he say no?

Why does infidelity bother us? Some people say it shouldn't and that it is only because we are culturally conditioned with unrealistic expectations of monogamy that it does. Sex and love are quite different, and we are fools if we allow a bond of affection to be broken by the biologically driven act of copulation.

If the desire of monogamy is an artefact of culture, it is nonetheless very deeply rooted. It is the experience of many who enter free-loving communes or try 'swinging' that they just can't help being jealous when others sleep with the one they love. The 'hang ups' we are blithely told to throw away seem to be more than just psychological aberrations to be overcome.

So if infidelity is likely to remain a problem for the majority, what is it about it that bothers us? Imagining how we'd feel about the prospect of our partner using Byte on the Side's services might help us to answer this question. If we would have no objection to the cyber sex, that would suggest that the crucial factor is the involvement of another person. Our most intimate relationship must be one-to-one and exclusive. Traditional monogamy is what we want to see maintained.

But if we would object to the virtual affair, that would seem to indicate that it is not the role of the third party which is crucial after all. What causes the hurt is not the turning to someone else, but the turning away from the relationship. On this view, when Dick turns on a computer to turn him on, he is signalling that he has stopped seeing his wife as the person with whom he wishes to express his sexuality.

An affair is usually a symptom of a relationship's existing problems, not the first cause of them. This fits this diagnosis of the source of the unease with Dick's virtual lover. For it is of course true, even before his has logged on to his stimulating simulation for the first time, that he has already stopped seeing his wife sexually in the way he once did. And so the virtual affair is not a means of dealing with the core problem, but of avoiding it.

In the real world, the reasons why infidelity bothers us are complex, and the person who objects to a virtual byte on the side may object even more strongly to a flesh and blood affair. What the case of Dick enables us to do is to focus our attention on just one aspect of unfaithfulness: the extent to which it is a turning away from our most valued relationship.

Labels: affair, cyber sex, sex, thought experiement

Had any men walk into lampposts lately? Caused any accidents while standing
near traffic lights recently! Just read you're post. In a way I'm a little
puzzled that you seem surprised that men react to beauty. I guess you must've
experinced this before. I'm sure you know that men will stare at a big busted
woman longer than the bible.
Maybe you're surprised that christian men are
the same as worldly men, that seems just as unlikely as well. Unless you\'re a
new christian. Or you could be saying this in the hope of changing men. Hoping
they read your post and amend their ways? Now this seems more likely. Hey don't
you know you can't change men?! Only the love of a pretty woman can do
that.
All The Best,
NAME(Only Joking)
PS I'd be really interesting if you could share with me some of you're
experiences in this area. Like when you've no photo up do you get a different
kind of email.... ?)

Men walking into lampposts? Negative.
Accidents at traffic lights? Negative.
More emails without a photo than with? No different.
Surprised that Christian men are no different from worldly men? No, but
it's a shame.
Hoping men will change? Always! ;-)
Seriously though... it was summed up for me in thelondonpaper last week, in
a column called 'Don't just tell me I'm beautiful':"It actually forces negative
awareness - as if the superficial aspects are all that we embody. And eventually
it turns into a lot of pressure. As men, you're looking to do right by us -
complimenting us all the time etc. (bless your cotton socks) - but that's when
we end up spending half an hour in the toilet when we're only in the pub with
you. We're worried that this one time, if the make-up melts, you won't think
that we're 'stunningly cute' or 'dazzling' any more. And in a cheesy, Shallow
Hal kind of way, all I'm suggesting is that maybe you should consider
complimenting a girl for her sense of humour, her outrageousness or her
spontaneity - pulling the focus away from how a woman looks to the way she is as
a person."
Couldn't have put it better myself!

• If I'd seen a side of him I didn't like, then why am I so upset about it? Because for a few months up until that night we went clubbing it had seemed as though he was warming to me, that things might go somewhere. And suddenly the rug was pulled from under my feet. With no warning.
• It's not her fault. It's not his fault. None of us can help who we fall for (and I'll state here and now - I was not going round saying I was in love with him: I fancied him, liked him, respected him, thought there might be some potential). And I deserve someone who is actually interested in me, likes me... loves me. And I should be spending my time, emotions and love on that person (whenever he turns up - if at all).
• The poor girl! She probably doesn't have much of a clue about how I was feeling. She bowled over, trying to be nice and friendly to someone she kinda knew - and was hit by the ice age! Not exactly grown up and adult of me. Or Christian.
• I was reminded of a time about 3 years ago when I liked a guy in my old church and we could all see the start of something between him and the girl he is still with now. I was on prayer ministry duty at church and she was waiting to be prayed for. I was sat in my chair hoping to ignore it, but no one else went forward. I guess you can predict the rest of the story... Yes I prayed for her (thankfully not about him!) and had to do it again a few weeks later. Before I left my last church, the 3 of us were good friends! So, stranger things could happen.

"How do we befriend our inner enemies lust and anger? By listening to what they are saying. They say, "I have some unfulfilled needs" and "Who really loves me?" Instead of pushing our lust and anger away as unwelcome guests, we can recognize that our anxious, driven hearts need some healing. Our restlessness calls us to look for the true inner rest where lust and anger can be converted into a deeper way of loving.

There is a lot of unruly energy in lust and anger! When that energy can be directed toward loving well, we can transform not only ourselves but even those who might otherwise become the victims of our anger and lust. This takes patience, but it is possible."

Henri Nouwen Daily Meditation February 3, 2007

'Reconciling and making peace'
from Given for you, a fresh look at communion, Eleanor Kreider, page 97

"'A people of peace'. That's how early Christians saw themselves. From earliest times a major theme of the Eucharist was the miracle of unity among believers of divergent classes, languages and cultures. Christ who is our peace has made unit by breaking down the dividing wall of hostility. Christ makes a new humanity possible, bringing people into reconciliation within himself and with each other. This is the greatest affirmation of Ephesians 2:11-21.

"Reconciliation is at the heart of the gospel. When gospel and peace are pulled apart, terrible things can happen, as we have seen in countries where Christians have preached a personalised salvation and have not emphasised that the gospel has everything to do with how to live out national or clan identity.

"New Testament Christians expressed the miracle and the delight of their Spirit-inspired unity in a unique gesture - the holy kiss, also called the kiss of love (1 Peter 5:14).

"It isn't clear whether this kiss was a part of an 'order of service' with well-developed theological understandings. But it does seem significant that the theme of peace is closely associated with the kiss in three of the five mentions in the New Testament letters. Churches were intensely concerned for fostering reconciled relationships. Love and unity were primary foundations for their life together.

In early Christian written liturgies, the kiss appears just after the readings and prayers, at the bread-and-cup ceremony. The explanation for this position was Jesus' admonition to leave one's gift at the altar, if relationships are bad, and make things right before resuming worship (Matthew 5:23-24). This kiss was called 'the kiss of peace' or simply 'the peace' and functioned in several ways. It was a hinge in the service between the prayers and the Eucharist proper. It was an expression of unity and love among the people. And it was provided an opportunity, on the spot, to make things right.

"Eventually the peace became stylized and clericalized. In some places its essential meaning was abused. In medieval England the peace was passed in a thoroughly hierarchical sequence, from the priest through the nobility, gentry, and eventually to the common folk. The poorest woman was the last to receive.

"The good news is that the ancient kiss of peace has reappeared in 20th-century Eucharistic worship. Why not! The peace greeting is one of the genuinely 'primitive' elements of Christian worship. Just because it's early doesn't mean it's good or necessary. But the kiss (greeting) of peace is important because it reminds us and dramatizes for us a central truth about the Christian faith, about Jesus' work of shalom, peace - Jesus is the Lord of peace - we are to be his people of peace."

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13)

Hope. You cannot live without it. The question is: What have you placed your hope in? It’s easy to give the glib answer and say your expectations rest in the Lord. I recently discovered, much to my chagrin, a subtle error I was making in this regard.

For several years I prayed for a certain route of deliverance about a disturbing issue in my life. I thought my hope was in the Lord—I trusted Him to fix my problem, didn’t I? But one day I was forced to ask myself, “Do I want the Deliverer more than I want the deliverance?” The thought gave me pause. Yet if I truly want the Lord above all else, then I have Hope indeed. And in Him, unfulfilled dreams can live right alongside peace and joy. ~ Ruth

Comfort Cafe

So what is Hope? What is hope in God? And how do we live with our unfulfilled dreams? How do we cope? How do we hand these over to God? How?

How do we cope when we walk into church to find there the woman who the guy you like spent a whole evening talking to - and pretty much ignoring you? When you know (through Facebook) he's been chatting with her, seeing her (not necessarily like 'that', parties and stuff)? And when your vicar's 4-year-old who previously would come and chat to you, doesn't want to know you 'cos she's sat with this new girl? I tell you... the love of a 4-year-old being lost. That surely hurts the most!

Find your place
'...OUR GOAL IS TO MEASURE UP TO GOD'S PLAN FOR US...' 2 CORINTHIANS 10:13
Da Vinci only painted one Mona Lisa. Beethoven only composed one Fifth Symphony. And God only made one version of you. He custom-designed you for a one-of-a-kind assignment. 'How can I discover mine?' you ask. Your ability reveals your destiny! '...If anyone ministers, let him do it as with the ability which God supplies...' (1 Peter 4:11 NKJ). When God gives you an assignment, He also gives you the skill-set. To discover your assignment - study your skill-set! Your ease with numbers. Your love of computers. Your gift for interior design. Others stare at blueprints and yawn; you read them and say 'I was made for this.' Heed the music within, then dance to it! No one else hears it the way you do. Look back. What have you consistently done well? What have you loved to do? Stand at the intersection of your desires and your successes, and you'll find your uniqueness. 'The Spirit has given each of us a special way of serving others' (1 Corinthians 12:7 CEV). Away with this depreciating 'I can't do anything', and its arrogant opposite, 'I have to do everything'. No, you don't! Paul said, '...Our goal is to measure up to God's plan for us...' Don't worry about skills you don't have and don't covet strengths others do have. Just maximize your God-given gifts! '...kindle afresh the gift of God which is in you...' (2 Timothy 1:6 NAS). If you're not sure what God has called you to do, get down on your knees and ask Him to reveal it to you. And when He does, pour yourself into it!
UCB Word for the Day 23 March 2007