Evolution is such a funny thing. While I think it works on a small level, science is so set to make it work on the large scale that they crack me up. For example, according to this BBC article, a scientist seems to have figured out how dinos learned to fly and turn into birds. I quote:

[F]light may have evolved in two-legged dinosaurs that flapped their feathered fore-limbs to climb slopes.

What it misses is why the feathers were there in the first place. What evolutionary edge did they provide before flight? I guess none but once the dinos found they had them, they put them to good use.

Here is one chilling reason NOT to join the Orthodox Church!

With one notable exception: "I [Jesus] am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep." - Jn 10:11 (ESV)

He [God] is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption. - 1Co 1:30 (ESV)

Is that not an incredible truth? Christ is our righteousness. We know that, He lived the perfect life we couldn't and died the death we should have. He alone is our righteousness, no problem here (unless you're Roman Catholic and then you have to do funny things with texts like this and then claim that only the Church can interpret them correctly).

Jesus is our sanctification. How about that one! "Sanctification" can mean various things in the New Testament from our status as holy to the process of being conformed to the image of Christ. Either way, Jesus is our sanctification. Not "yielding" not "cooperating" not "trying harder" but Jesus. He is the one who is our holiness and it is He who makes us holy.

Jesus is our redemption. When you take bottles in for recycling and get cash for them, it is called redeeming them. It is a buying back. Jesus is our redemption. He was the price for us to be bought back from slavery to sin to slavery to God. It isn't Jesus and our sincerity or Jesus and our forsaking the world or Jesus and me. He is our redemption, my contribution is only my sin.

I just wish I believed these precious truths more fully and actually acted like they were true. When we're tempted to doubt that God really loves us or even cares, when we believe that He is favoring us because we did this or denied us that parking spot because of that thought, we need to hold on to this. Jesus is our righteousness, sanctification and redemption. And that is because God is the source of our life in Jesus. No us.