Looking at the norms displayed around us, it is blatantly obvious that chuches have done a poor job of proclamation.

Who would have ever dreamed that some churches would be promoting same sex marriage?!

But then, in my present church, one of the elders is now engaged to the wife of another Chrstian.

That is what happens when Christians sit silently and allow key Christian basics like “love” and “forgiveness” to be squeezed into the world’s mold.

For the record,I think the substance was excellent; I just had nothing to add!

Anthony, I agree that impact as a verb can be good and doesn’t always have to refer to physical force or dentistry, and I like your example — those people ARE getting “hammered.” But it’s *overused* in situations where “effect” would be better; that’s not to say there are no situations where “impact” is better. People go around talking about things like the “impact” of prices on the budget — in that case, why not just say “effect?” The only reason is that people just say “impact” all the time without thinking.

You think of dentistry, but I think of the countless times I have been assigned with the task of inspiring donors to “make an impact on the poorest of the poor” or thanking them for doing so. As far as I know, it has never conjured up in their minds the image of a hammer impacting a starving old man in the skull.

Reformed Christians often refer to Genesis 1:28 as the Cultural Mandate. There is nothing especially earth-shaking in this; it is simply affirming that, as God’s image-bearers, we shape the world around us and adapt it to a diversity of uses.

Or, it really is earth-shaking as the first command of God to our historical parents, Adam and Eve, and their progeny, and carries heavy significance with God’s purpose and intent in creating them in the first place. The Hebrew word radah carries the idea of rule, subdue, dominion. This command has never been nullified, thus still in effect, and was confirmed and expanded to Noah after the great universal and global Flood (Gen. 9:6-7).

It goes by another name, ‘The Dominion Mandate’, but has possible bad connotations with ‘Dominion Theology’, and thus ‘Cultural Mandate’ is preferable? In either case, in my opinion, was not only not ‘not especially earth-shaking’, but acted as an amelioration of the effects of the historical Fall, and a major motivation for the scientific research, exploration, and discovery of God’s created order in our world. Immensely earth-shaking.

Sorry for the pedantic rant, but if just a few of us hold out, then maybe….