Question: I have been diagnosed with cataracts, what does that mean?

Answer: Cataracts are not a disease, but rather a normal part of the aging process.

Answer: A cataract is a clouding of one of the focusing lenses in the eye. As this lens gradually becomes more clouded, blurred vision, glare (especially at night) and halos are the result. A more subtle change is a gradual decrease in the perception of color intensity.

Question: What is the treatment for cataracts? Read More»

• Try before you buy.

• Look for cell phone with a rating of M4/T4 and Blue Tooth Compatible, if you are going to use Blue Tooth accessories (www.betterhearing.org/hearing_solutions/cellphones.cfm.)

• Try cellphones from company owned stores as opposed to big box stores as they are required by the FCC to let you try them before you take them home. The ratings M4/T4 or whichever ratings are listed on the box. Read More»

In two decades of practice, I have seen almost everything, both the good and bad in parental behavior. By far, most of the parents of the children I’ve worked with, even the ones who have abused their children, were not evil people. They were often good people who deeply loved their children and they were doing the best they could within the limitations of their training and understanding of children. Even the best parents make mistakes - we all do. Other than deliberate abuse, neglect, and abandonment, the most common mistakes parents make can be grouped easily in to five categories. Read More»

It has been heartening to me the number of grandmas whose grandbabies have been diagnosed with autism. Whether at church or Curves or the Kroger, grandparents of autistic children come up to me with huge smiles and saying, “We have an autistic grandchild too and you’d never know it.”
I still have no idea what to expect – it’s hard having grandchildren who live 700 miles away. Samuel is a joy to our daughter and her husband, and most of those who know him. Read More»

Answers to your questions about life, religion and the Bible

Pastors get some of the most interesting questions from people they meet and people in their congregations. Here are some questions that I’ve gotten over the years of my ministry and via email for this column. Read More»

When I was a 25-year-old pastor I had better answers to the questions of life than I do now. When I took my first church at 23, I knew I didn’t know anything about almost everything. By the time two years had passed, I had all the answers.

Why do some people suffer? I could tell you. Why do bad things happen to good people? I had the insight. In fact, when a supervisor suggested I read a certain theologian, I declined. I knew what I believed. Read More»

Few things in life are as clear as the futility of a real debate on the clarity of America’s religious origins.

“Debate,” I said? Lay a finger, unsuspectingly, on The New York Times Magazine’s inspection of the attempt by so-called Christian fundamentalists to overhaul history textbooks, and you require treatment for first-degree burns.

I refer less to the article itself than to readers’ sulfurous responses to the claims of Texas State Board of Education members concerning the need they see for forthright teaching of the founding fathers’ Christianity. Yow-ee! Read More»

The snowball was the size of a grapefruit, or at least it felt that big when it slammed into the back of my head. With the force of a sledgehammer, it almost bowled me over. Snow then slipped down the inside of my shirt. The wetness brought with it the frigid hand of Old Man Winter.

I didn’t have to turn around to know who had hurled it my way. But turn around I still did.

The second snowball hit harder than the first. It brought me to my knees. Under a snow-covered cheek, my skin stung like a thousand bee stings, then suddenly went numb. This was war. And I was losing – losing badly. Read More»

If eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, incessant distractions are the way that politicians take away our freedoms, in order to enhance their own power and longevity in office.

Dire alarms and heady crusades are among the many distractions of our attention from the ever increasing ways that government finds to take away more of our money and more of our freedom.

Magicians have long known that distracting an audience is the key to creating the illusion of magic. It is also the key to political magic. Read More»

The Census Bureau estimates that the life cycle cost of the 2010 Census will be from $13.7 billion to $14.5 billion, making it the costliest census in the nation’s history.

Suppose you suggest to a congressman that given our budget crisis, we could save some money by dispensing with the 2010 census. I guarantee you that he’ll say something along the lines that the Constitution mandates a decennial counting of the American people and he would be absolutely right. Read More»