Chicken Stuff

It saddens me deeply that we Christians have fallen so head-over-heels into the deceptions surrounding gay marriage.  We seem to draw our opinions from facebook and Twitter and the on-line and on-air media.  (A dwindling minority actually reads printed news.)  What we don’t seem to do, is draw our opinions from this book.

So let me say as succinctly as I can what my views are on the issue, making specific reference to the firestorm surrounding the remarks by Dan Cathy of Chick-fil-a and the letter to him from the Mayor of Boston inviting him to take Boston off of his company’s expansion plans because he hates gay people.

First, there are only a few things I hate.  I hate sin.  I define it by what this book says. I don’t hate sinners.  I am one.  I hate lies, all of which come right from the mind of Satan, who is the king of liars.  I hate him too.  But that’s pretty much it.  Oh, and I hate intolerance.  The trouble is, we’re all intolerant in one way or the other.  That’s because we can’t seem to separate our hatred for lies from our hatred for liars.  It’s hard to do, but this book calls us to do it.

I believe that the universe did not just pop into existence on its own.  The scientists tell us it had a beginning.  I believe them.  Logic tells me there had to be a cause.  I believe the cause was the eternal, self-existent being we call God, who created everything, including you and me. The other thing I believe about God is that he has revealed himself to us in this book, which I believe to be without equal or peer as a guide for us as to how we should live.

I believe that God loves us, but that love does not mean allowing us to do whatever we please without consequence. God from the beginning allowed us free will.  He allowed us to decide for ourselves.  But our decisions always have consequences.  When we earnestly seek to understand what God wants of us – how he wants us to behave – the consequences are ultimate joy in our eternal home, Heaven.  But when we ignore God’s will, or excise parts of His Word so that we use only the parts that we agree with, we may say we are Christian, but we worship a god of our own creation.  And that god does not exist.

 Another decision we all make over time is whether we truly believe in God’s system of rewards and punishments for our decisions.  If we do, we take seriously the instructions contained in the Book.  If we don’t, we don’t read it much. We don’t study it.  The result is that we are christians in name only – little c.  Jesus himself said, in Matthew 7 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”

So, if you call yourself Christian, and if you expect to be rewarded on that day when you stand before Jesus himself, wouldn’t it be a good idea to really put some time and effort into understanding what his will really is?

Now let’s talk about tolerance.  So often we Christians are accused of being intolerant.  The gay rights crowd adds that we are haters and homophobes.  It dies not seem to occur to them that they are being intolerant of us.  God understands who is truly being tolerant and who is truly hating.  And He will judge.  Will he be fair?  Yes, but more than that.  See, He’s full of grace and truth. Trusting Him in this life as The Truth will mean that you will get a far better assignment in Heaven than you deserve. But the consequences for rejecting Him as The Truth will be dire.

Should we be more tolerant of the gay lifestyle?  Is it more loving of a person with a same-sex attraction to help them resist, or to tell them in effect, there’s absolutely no way for you to ever be happy unless you live out your same-sex attractions?  Let’s look at this question without some of the hyperbole that typically surrounds it.

If my child wants to stay out after dark, am I more or less loving if I say no?  If he wants to immerse himself in internet porn, am I more or less loving if I advise him on its dangers?  If my barely adult child announces that his girlfriend is moving in with him, do I celebrate?  Or do I have a talk about the value of things like delayed gratification and commitment?  If I tell my gay friends that I love them and want the best for them, am I being honest if I don’t tell them about successful organizations like Exodus International, which helps people deal with their unwanted same-sex attraction?

Do I mention the higher rates of suicide among gays?  Would it be more or less loving of me if I suggested that living gay may not be the key to happiness? Do I embrace their lifestyle choice by throwing a party?  Or do I just tolerate it?  If I love them (and the Bible is absolutely unequivocal that I must!) do I accept life choices I see them making without telling them that I believe they are in moral danger?

Have we forgotten that all of us have sexual urges, and that most of them should be resisted?  When I got married, I promised to cling to my wife and to forsake all other women.  I took that vow seriously.  Many of us don’t.  We jump in and out of relationships with other “partners” as if we never made the vows in the first place.  Are we fearing God when we do?  Do we honestly believe that we will be OK on judgement day, but the homosexuals will not?

All of us, the Bible assures us, have sinned and fallen short of the standard God laid out for us.  There is no escaping eternal punishment for those sins outside of commitment to follow Christ.  That may seem intolerant, but that’s what the Book says.  I am not your judge, God is.  But I am commanded to discern what is right and what is wrong, and to seek justice, love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.

 I have read the “guilty as charged” piece in the Baptist press.  There is not one single solitary reference to gays, or LGBT or gay marriage.  There are references to traditional family, which Cathy says he and his company support.  That’s fodder for a firestorm?

Well, maybe it was Mike Huckabee’s inflammatory comments in response?  Nope.  No reference there to gays, gay marriage or LGBT there either.

Could it be that somebody is a little hypersensitive?  And could it be that the news media is so anxious to find the next “man bites dog” piece that it fuels the fire when there is no fire?

Let’s be clear about one thing.  The Book teaches us that “a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.”  Genesis 2:24.  This union produces children, and in 100% of all births since Adam and Eve, there was one man and one woman involved.  It is also an absolutely irreplaceable component of a healthy society and culture.  Every place on the planet where you see a declining birth rate, you see a nation or culture in decline.  And where you see fewer people getting and staying married, you see a declining birth rate.

What’s more, the family, with a Mom and a Dad who are there with the kids, and who love them, provide for them, teach them the way they should go, and who never leave, is the original department of health, education and welfare.  If we as a society had any sense, we would be doing all we could to support and promote this kind of family culture.

That may be controversial, but it’s the truth.

Seek Justice

Our Supreme Court has handed down a ruling that will not only be the basis for trillions of dollars spent in the name of fairness, but will literally be life vs. death for more than a few people.  In short, there is some good, and some not so good.  And they did it with the thinnest of razor thin margins.  Technically, it was 5-4, which is thin enough, but John Roberts, who “defected”, found it constitutional on one basis, and unconstitutional on another.

So I want to make two quick points.

First, why must we submit ourselves to the dictates of such a flawed system?  In a trial by jury, the jurors must deliver a unanimous decision, or there is a mistrial.  The Supreme Court is a lot like a jury, in that their decision determines guilt or innocence, and therefore the rightness of their decision is critical.   No rightness, no justice.  So why don’t the Supremes have to render unanimous decisions?  If they were unable to render their decisions unanimously, wouldn’t they be telling congress in effect ‘The laws in question, that you have passed and that are currently on the books, are flawed.  They cannot be defended clearly and without controversy or dissent on constitutional grounds.  Clean it up, and if it is necessary, we will reconsider it.’

Further, the decision handed down, irrespective of the fact that it was opposed by 4 of the 9 jurors – er, judges -  is final, non-negotiable, and was arrived at in closed-door negotiations that leave us guessing as to whether the process was fair and balanced, or whether it was unduly dominated by the most assertive or the loudest among the judges.  Does not the fact that it was not unanimous point to the likelihood that there is significant resistance among the voters as well?  If there is, even a final decision on the constitutionality of the law will not end the resistance to it.  It will continue to be debated in the public square, in the press, and even (as to various aspects of it, not it’s overall constitutionality) in the courts.  Why not send it back to congress and make them get it right?

Can’t we challenge the constitutionality of the court as it now stands?  Should we continue to allow them to decide on such sweeping life-and-death issues on a 5-4 basis?  Should appointments be for life?  Should the decisions made by the individual justices not ever be subjected to review by anyone with the power to remove them or punish them for illegal or inappropriate conduct?  Are they gods, that they are accountable to no one?

My second point it this:

While I applaud the ideal of providing access to affordable healthcare to everyone, this bill did nothing to address the biggest fundamental flaw in our current system – we have no reason to care what our care actually costs.

We almost never pay for healthcare directly.  By so linking health care and health insurance, we have removed the consumer’s incentive to care about what care costs.  When was the last time you inquired about the cost of a particular treatment protocol or a surgery or a medication?  When was the last time you went shopping for health insurance?  Doctors?  Hospitals?

The President and the Congress did more harm than good when they passed this monstrosity.  It’s biggest error is in failing to give you and me the opportunity to shop around.

What’s wrong with gay marriage?

I came across a quote from Voltaire recently that says

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

How true.  It was demonstrated by Nazi Germany, and it is being demonstrated all around us, as we now accept all kinds of absurdities without even being aware of their status as such.  The two biggest by far – the two with the most far-reaching and inevitably horrific consequences (abortion and gay rights/gay marriage) – are those that fall under the overall categories of sexual rights.  The right to have sex – however we choose to define it – with anyone we choose, regardless of gender or marital status, is now understood and one of those inalienable rights, and something to which we are entitled.  We have stopped being shocked by even the most lurid descriptions of atrocities.

Babies being ripped from the womb in pieces and their bloody parts reassembled on a table to make sure ‘we got ‘em all’ – then throwing them in the trash, or grinding them up in the garbage disposal or incinerating them:  I can say that with the full expectation that it will cause barely a ripple, barely even be noticed by more than a half dozen people.  Yet that is the common practice in your friendly neighborhood abortion clinic.  Wasn’t there a time when news of this going on would have been the next day’s banner headline, and the people involved in the practice being perp-walked off to jail?  Those days are long gone.

We have believed the absurdities.  Now we are committing the atrocities.  And more are coming, each more horrifying than the last.

Today – a most lamentable day – the governor of Maryland will not do as Chris Christie did recently.  He will instead join the rising tide of misguided “leaders” who have believed the lies about being gay and will sign the legislation just passed by the legislature recognizing gay marriage in the state of Maryland.  Maryland residents are reportedly about evenly split on the issue, even though Maryland is one of the most lopsidedly Democratic in the nation.  So it’s not strictly a political issue.  Something tells us it will be problematic.

What about you?  Could you answer the question “How does my gay marriage hurt you?”  Read one woman’s well-informed views on the issue on her blog Friday 5: Helen Alvaré. Here’s an excerpt:

“How does my gay marriage hurt you?” Every single argument you had to make in order to make your gay marriage legitimate in the eyes of the law is one that had to discount the importance of the male-female relationship, ignore completely the good of children, and is at the heart of poverty, high rates of imprisonment, educational failure and intergenerational cohabitation among our most vulnerable communities. That’s how it hurts other people. Children and communities on the edge.

There are many other ways it will hurt us all.  One day your little boy, now only a kid, will tell you “I’ve decided I’m probably gay, and I’ve decided to come out.”  Or, I have met a wonderful man, and we’ve decided to get married.  I’d like you to give me away as the father of the bride.” Or maybe we read about a couple (Jill and Jane) who approach Jill’s father and tells him they want to have a child, but don’t want just anybody’s sperm, so they want him to donate the sperm that will impregnate Jane.

It will happen.  Of that I am absolutely convinced.  Voltaire was right.

The religion called Secular Humanism

The United States of America was founded on Christian principles.  It was not founded on Muslim, or Jewish, 0r Hindu or on secular principles.  It was not even founded on principles of a Judeo-Christian ideal.  The founders – the framers and signers of the Constitution, almost to a man, were believers in one faith.  And that faith was none other than the one that professed Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, God in human form.

We have done our level best to obfuscate that fact.  Our government-run school system, having been greatly influenced by John Dewey, set itself in opposition to any but a secularistic, humanistic view of any and every academic subject.  Our schools therefore teach history with all manner of religion – and the followers of faith disciplines – pushed completely aside, as if the validity of their viewpoints did not even rise to the level of credibility as being worthy of mere mention.

The result is that there are now several generations of citizens who have never heard the truth – on this matter and many others.

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Could Muslims have written that?  Could secular humanists have written that?  Could anyone other than a Christian (or perhaps a Jew, but clearly these men were not Jewish) have written that?  The answer is self-evident.

Yet here we are.  We are trying to adapt the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to fit our secular-humanistic worldview.  We will not succeed.  Either we affirm the words “created” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”, or we will find a way to eliminate them from the American lexicon.  They are wholly incompatible with a secular or humanist view of life.

Today we are engaged in a war being waged on two fronts:  The redefining of what it means to be human, and the redefining of the most important institution on the planet: marriage.  God’s design, according to the Holy Bible, is that human life is made in the image of the Creator, and that it is sacred.  We are commanded not to murder.  Yet to date in this country alone, we have taken the lives of over 50 million humans, and we do so in the same way that all societies do:  We simply deny the humanity of the ones slaughtered.

Jews are not really people, the Nazis said.  When the world finally woke up, 6 million of them were dead.

Fetuses are not really people, we continue to say.  So we’ve passed 50 million, and we’re still counting.

And meanwhile, we have bought into the lie that Satan (who is delighted to have so many people who deny his very existence) has us convinced of: That gay people are born gay, that they can’t and/or shouldn’t try to change, that there’s nothing wrong with being gay, and that in order to let them pursue their own happiness, we need to let them marry.  Every part of that is a lie, each part more pernicious than the last.

What is wrong with us?  Can we not see that no culture on Earth, since the dawn of man, has ever tried to redefine what it means to be married?  Can we not see the consequences for us, for gay people, and for our society, if we try to redefine it?

The following is by no means an exhaustive list, but is simply provided as food for thought.

Making gay marriage the law of the land will:

• Eliminate all legal and financial advantages currently available to married couples.
  • Every household will want the advantages offered by being “married”, and since the status is open to any two adults regardless of gender, even non-gay same sex room-mates will consider its advantages.  It will only be a matter of time before all of the advantages are simply eliminated
  • Once they are gone, and given that our culture already sees marriage as completely unnecessary for the establishment of a household or the raising of children, the reasons to be married under any definition all but disappear.
  • The logical next step is the removal of any and every restriction under the law of any restraint on what a household with children can consist of. That means communal living will be commonplace, with adults having sex with children, other adult members of the same or other households, and obviously either in private sexual acts between two adults, or in groups. Children will be encouraged to observe, and when they feel it’s right, go ahead and participate.
  • Meanwhile, the rights guaranteed under our constitution’s first amendment go out the window.  Most people in our country understand that there are some countries whose fundamental beliefs are completely incompatible with ours.  Take India, for example.  The dominant religion teaches everyone that sins committed in a previous life must be paid for in the current one and that therefore those who are poor, oppressed or discriminated against, must be treated as inferior.  Hinduism is therefore incompatible with our system of laws. because our constitution says that all people are created equal.  It is impossible for our laws to embrace both views of life.
    • Secularism holds that this life is all there is, and that there is no supreme being.
    • Therefore, man is the supreme judge of man, and makes up his own rules.
    • Secularism holds that the moral principles made up by man are superior to those given to people by God.
    • Secularism therefore sets itself above the “Creator” who according to our Constitution, endowed man with certain “inalienable” rights.
    • The inevitable result is that followers of the God of Christianity, the God of Judaism, and the God of Islam are forced to behave in a way abhorrent to them, and will increasingly find themselves ostracized, discriminated against and persecuted
  • Children will be taught this new definition of marriage in public schools, and will be given no moral ground to stand on if they are taught something different at home. Parents who disagree with the new law of the land will therefore have only two choices: go along to get along, or arrange an alternative private or home school alternative. Inevitably, however, that option will disappear, as all will be forced to abide by the new definition, religious objections notwithstanding.
  • Believers of all major faiths including Muslims, Christians, and Jews will be forced therefore to choose whether to obey the law of the land or the Law laid down by God according to their Holy Scriptures.
  • Those who do not agree with this new definition of marriage as a genderless institution existing for the benefit of adults – not children — will be treated under the law just like racists and bigots, and will be punished for their beliefs.
  • Eventually those who realize their rights have been trampled upon will look for a place to live where they will be free to live according to their convictions. Ironically, that place was once the United States of America.

Perhaps most importantly, shifting the focus of our marriage laws away from the interests of children and society as a whole, and onto the desires of the adults involved in a same-sex relationship will result in the most profound long-term consequences. Such a paradigm shift says to children that mothers and fathers don’t matter (especially fathers) – any two “parents” will do. It proclaims the false notion that a man can be a mother and a woman can be a father – that men and women are exactly the same in rearing children. And it undermines the marriage culture by making marriage a meaningless political gesture, rather than a child-affirming social construct.

When marriage ceases to have its historic meaning and understanding, over time fewer and fewer people will marry. We will have an inevitable increase in children born out of wedlock, an increase in fatherlessness, a resulting increase of female and child poverty, and a higher incidence of all the documented social ills associated with children being raised in a home without their married biological parents.

Ultimately, we as a society all suffer when we fail to nourish a true, thriving marriage culture founded on the truth experienced by virtually every civilization in every nation since the dawn of time – marriage is the union of one man and one woman.

Tidal Wave Headed for Abortion-ville

180 Movie is a Tsunami Headed for Abortion-ville

November 17, 2011

A New WAVE in the Pro-Life Movement is About to Land on the Abortion Industry

It’s called the 180movie.  And it is having an amazing and powerful impact on the abortion issue.

Click on one of the links above and check it out for yourself.  You can watch the entire movie free, and with no strings attached.

Prevaricator in Chief

President Obama is an exceptionally gifted prevaricator.  He’s not the only one, of course.  He has many, many fellow prevaricators on both sides of the isle and in both houses of congress.

They can’t help it.  We make them do it.

Remember the song “The Snake?”  A tender-hearted woman sees a near frozen snake.  She takes him in a cares for him, and it revives.  But as she holds it tenderly, it gives her a vicious bite.

I saved you,” cried that woman

“And you’ve bit me even, why?

You know your bite is poisonous and now I’m going to die”

“Oh shut up, silly woman,” said the reptile with a grin

“You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in!”

Point being, we know they are going to bite us.  It’s in their DNA!  And in so doing, we become their enablers!

Similarly, politicians seen to have prevarication in their DNA.  Some of them are not very good at it.  They’re the ones who just give it to us straight.  Unfortunately, they’re also the ones who tend not to get elected much.

Maybe that’s what Jack Nicholson’s character in “A Few Good Men” meant when he said

YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!

It seems to me he was right.  We can’t handle the truth.  How else would you get your brain wrapped around the fact that we let them get away with it on such a regular basis.  We brush it off, saying ‘Oh, that’s just politics.’

But where is it written that we should reward such high-stakes deception? When the President says

“The American people are sold,”
“The American people are sold, I just want to repeat that.  You have 80% of the American people who support a balanced approach. 80% of the American people support an approach that includes revenues and includes cuts. So the notion that somehow the American people aren’t sold is not the problem. The problem is members of Congress are dug in ideologically.”

Mr President, where did you get that 80% number?  Point us to the source.  Give us the actual facts, and forget about the ‘splainin’.

As a matter of fact, sir, please tell us why is is that you think you can look us in the eye and just lie through your teeth?  Have you no shame, sir?

But we don’t do that.  We let him get away with it.  We let them all get away with it.  It’s really more of an indictment of us, than of them.  We know they’re snakes.  Yet we take them in, and we want them to  return the favor.

SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSs!

God is pro-choice

God told Adam and Eve to eat from any tree in the garden but one.  He told them to choose.  They chose badly, of course, but the choice was theirs.  The result, of course was catastrophic.  We today are inheritors of the corruption they gave birth to on that fateful day.  Have we improved on the situation?  Have we made things better by our innate goodness, or our intellect?  I’ll leave you to decide on that one.  You choose.

As for me, I choose to believe that without trust in God’s goodness, we have no chance of choosing wisely in important matters.  Take abortion, for example.  We choose to have sex before marriage – lots of it – and we forget that God’s design for sex is not solely about giving us something pleasurable to do.  We make babies when we have sex.  When we try to prevent the babies without denying ourselves the sex and fail, we want the right to make sure the birth does not happen.  The result is that we choose a remedy for our first bad choice that is far worse.

Why does God allow us so much latitude?  Why allow us to choose, when we make so many bad choices?

One possibility is that being made in the image of God requires us to have free will.  And like newborn babies, we have to learn that there are consequences for bad behavior.  Sadly, way too many people wrongly assume that once they grow up (or graduate, or get married, or have some other rite of passage) they have life all figured out, and they can discontinue the learning program.

I assume that some of my Christian brothers and sisters will rebuke me for  taking a pro-choice position.  But think about it.  What evidence do you see that God relies on the law of the land to set things right?  For that matter, what evidence is there that He relies on His own law to set things right?  He established “The Law”, but He knew from the beginning that man would choose badly.  So His plan of redemption from the beginning recognized and acknowledged that we would never get it right.  We need a savior – we’ve needed one from the very beginning – because we had to be saved from the consequences of our own bad choices.

The pro-choice lobby today has co-opted something that was God’s idea and twisted it to mean that we are against something, when what we are for is far more important.  We are for life, because God is for life.  It’s time we reclaim the territory ceded to the enemy, however.  We are pro-choice, because God is pro-choice.  He knows that we will often choose badly.  But that is His plan.  It’s been that way from the beginning.

Abortion is wrong.  It is the absolutely wrong choice nearly 100% of the time.  But it is the decision of those who make our laws that it is legal in the USA.  Shouldn’t we be focusing on helping those around us understand the difference between justice and legality?

Dr. Martin Luther King wrote that some laws are unjust.  He said that “An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.” Though the highest court in the land, the U.S. Supreme court has proven that it is perfectly capable of ruling unjustly, the good news is that we can still choose.

Scientists are now nearly unanimous in the view that a human life begins at the moment of conception.  It follows, therefore, that abortion is the taking of a human life.  Most abortions boil down to choosing whether to kill the baby or radically alter one’s life.  It is an incredibly gut-wrenching choice.  It is made far less so if the reality of the first choice is hidden.  That’s why Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers do not want pregnant girls or women to see an ultrasound of their babies.

It is a baby.  The secret’s out.

So, as for me, I am pro-choice.  And I am pro-life.  I think that’s what God wants.  What do you think?