CHICAGO, IL (February 26, 2016) — Many Covenanters routinely share links to social media articles and videos with one another that Covenant News Service believes may be of interest to others. Each Friday we post five of them. Following is a sample of those submissions—their inclusion does not represent an endorsement by the Covenant of any views expressed.

Engineer Suffered 30 Years of Guilt over Challenger

Shame and forgiveness are both powerful forces. In this case, forgiveness wins out for a man who blamed himself for the spacecraft’s explosion in 1986, even though he repeatedly warned superiors not to launch the Challenger. “It’s going to blow up,” he told his wife the night before the launch

From the article, Bob Ebeling, who is now 89 and in hospice care, said, “That was one of the mistakes God made….He shouldn’t have picked me for that job. But next time I talk to him, I’m gonna ask him, ‘Why me? You picked a loser.’ ”

But after people and former colleagues heard about the shame he has carried for all these years, he finally began to experience a lightening of his burden. His daughter calls it a miracle.

The Digital Dirt

How does the tabloid TMZ website/TV show seem to be everywhere there’s a celebrity, and why is it increasingly breaking real news stories? Is the smug Harvey Levin, who apparently never feels shame, the next Ben Bradlee, legendary former editor of the Washington Post, as one media commentator suggested? Or is he, as another declared, the “high prince of sleaze”?

From the article: “TMZ resembles an intelligence agency as much as a news organization, and it has turned its domain, Los Angeles, into a city of stool pigeons. In an e-mail from last year, a photographer reported having four airport sources for the day, including ‘Harold at Delta, Leon at baggage service, Fred at Hudson news, Lyle at fruit and nut stand.’”

Love and Credit Scores

Pastors often use personality tools like Prepare-Enrich, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), or the Enneagram during premarital counseling to help couples consider their futures. In fact, it might be more advantageous for the soon-to-be-wed to ask for their credit scores. Nothing is determinative, but the more couples are willing to face issues of differences in credit scores, the more likely they are to succeed at their relationships.

From the article: “For every additional 93 points or so in a couples’ average credit score at the beginning of a relationship, their odds of separating during the second year of their courtship dropped by 30 percent. On the other hand, if the gap between a couple’s individual scores is greater than 66 points at the start of their relationship, the couple is 24 percent more likely to split up within their second, third or fourth year.”

Girl Scouts Face Opposition from St. Louis Archbishop

Archbishop Robert J. Carlson said in a statement that churches should consider withdrawing support from the Girl Scouts because their support of transgender rights and homosexuality as well as other stands put them at odds with Catholic teaching. Agree or disagree on the particular issue, the idea of encouraging people not to participate in something because the business or group reflects values perceived to be harmful is one that is practiced by people of all religious and political leanings.

From the article: “He instructed pastors to discuss alternatives for the Girl Scout troops that meet on parish property. He also disbanded the archdiocese’s Catholic Committee on Girl Scouts, which sponsored Catholic programs for the scouts, and formed a new entity called the Catholic Committee for Girls Formation that will include alternative youth leadership programs.”

The Baffling Reason Many Millennials Don’t Eat Breakfast Cereal

I had declared a moratorium on stories about millennials, but this one was too good to pass up. Even if millennials were to start attending church, they probably won’t be working in the kitchen any time soon.

From the article: “The dream of all these companies is to capture the all-powerful and elusive millennial eater, who just isn’t all that into cereal for breakfast. It’s just too much work, for one thing. Almost 40 percent of the millennials surveyed by Mintel for its 2015 report said cereal was an inconvenient breakfast choice because they had to clean up after eating it.”