Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for March, 2011

Sane & Civil Conversation

Posted in Biblical manhood & womanhood, Citizenship, Culture Shifts, Faith & Practice, Life issues, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 7, 2011| Leave a Comment »

There are a lot of us who are afraid to speak up about “social experiments” gone bad.  Part of the reason is because we believe the lie that faith should be kept in a corner off by itself never to interact with science, psychology or real life.  But, separating faith from everyday life places civilization at risk.

Rather than letting “social experiments” — unnatural choices and behaviors — rule the day, it seems to me that we should be taking every opportunity to enter into sane and civil conversation.  In doing so, we shouldn’t be afraid of using the Word and Wisdom of the Creator.

I learned a powerful lesson last week.  A Christian who goes public with Word and Wisdom may discover that even non-believers come to many of the same conclusions as believers.  The old phrase “don’t tamper with mother nature,” while not Biblical, is logical and sensible.

God created men and women to be equal, but  not the same.  Nature agrees.  Biology agrees.  Psychology agrees.  So, whether we’re talking about girls who want to wrestle boys or two men/two women who want to marry, we’re talking about a “social experiment.”  A social experiment breaks away from what is natural.  Healthy.  Hopeful.  A social experiment may scream “equality,” but it denies the complimentary differences of male and female and, in so doing, leads civilization to destruction.

Christians are given ample opportunity right now to engage others in sane and civil conversation.  If we don’t, our children and grandchildren may suffer greatly.  Focus, for a moment, on the institution of marriage.  Marriage predates any known human government.  But, the U.S. government (specifically, the President and Department of Justice) have announced they will no longer defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

DOMA defines marriage in all federal laws as the union of a man and woman, and protects the ability of states to not recognize same-sex marriages from other states.  But, DOMA has been attacked by the very government that is supposed to protect this constitutional law.

I hope to post some sane and reasonable, but also civil and respectful, comments about marriage in the coming weeks.  Countless people out there — much smarter than me — have already offered “talking points” for those of us who want to engage our family, neighbors and co-workers in uncompromising yet gentle conversation.

For now, consider this: The social experiment of “gay marriage” goes against life itself.  I encourage you to do some research of your own.  Visit the web sites of Exodus International, Regeneration Ministries, The Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, and Focus on the Family.

Then, remember.  Sane and civil conversation — using science, psychology and God’s Word — salted with kindness and respect for others is always a good thing.

Read Full Post »

Jane Russell Opposed Abortion

Posted in Commentaries of others, Faith & Practice, Life issues, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 5, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Jane Russell was a Hollywood personality of my parent’s generation.  She recently died at age 89.  She was beautiful, but did anyone know what she thought about abortion?

John Smeaton, Director of The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), posted a blog on March 2 that explains why this Hollywood film star of the 40s and 50s spoke out against abortion.  At 19, she resorted to an illegal abortion which almost killed her and left her infertile.  Jane did not conclude that abortion should be legalized.  Instead, she said, “People should never, ever have an abortion.  Don’t talk to me about it being a woman’s right to choose what she does with her own body.  The choice is between life and death.”

I don’t pretend to know much about Jane Russell, but it doesn’t surprise me that her opinion of abortion was kept under wraps.  I wonder how many people know that Jane Russell founded an organization called WAIF (World Adoption International Fund) to help people adopt unwanted children from various parts of the world.  She, herself, adopted three children.

John Smeaton points out that Jane Russell isn’t the only celebrity to have “stuck out her neck by making comments in support of unborn children or the dignity of motherhood, for example:

  • Charlton Heston gave the introduction to Eclipse of Reason (1986), the second of the late Dr. Bermard Nathanson’s documentaries on the reality of abortion
  • Jennifer O’Neill, an actress from the 1970s onwards, now speaks out about her abortion experience on behalf of the Silent No More campaign
  • Justin Bieber, the 17-year-old pop star, last month said that he doesn’t “believe in abortion” because “it’s like killing a baby.”  (He was attacked for being “too young” to have opinions on abortion!)
  • Natalie Portman, who won best actress in this week’s Oscars, has been attacked for describing her motherhood as “the most important role in my life.”  She also described pregnancy as “a miracle” giving meaning and importance amidst superficiality.

Together with John Smeaton and the SPUC, Lutherans For Life, Priests for Life, The National Right to Life, and all individuals, organizations, and ministries that speak up for life, I encourage you to pray for courage to defend our littlest neighbor and his or her mother.  Jane Russell’s first and only child died at the hands of an abortionist.  Jane was hurt by abortion and could never again bear another child.  But, she was encouraged by the truth that choosing life is always better than choosing death.  And, so, she welcomed children into her life and home through adoption.

In memory of Jane Russell and her stand for life, please consider giving a donation to your local caring pregnancy center.

 

Read Full Post »

Just Say “No” to Planned Parenthood

Posted in Citizenship, Culture Shifts, Faith & Practice, Life issues, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 5, 2011| 2 Comments »

Want to help make a difference?  Join other voices on March 8 and call or e-mail your Senators.  Respectfully urge them to defund Planned Parenthood.

Why?  We have known for years that Planned Parenthood (PP) is the largest abortion provider in the country.  It endangers the health of women.  Recently, Live Action Films exposed PP officials aiding and abetting individuals posing as criminal sex traffickers seeking abortions for underage girls.  You can view  the YouTube by visiting Live Action Films, Concerned Women for America, or The Susan B. Anthony List.  (See below.)

PP uses our tax dollars to do its work.  But, on February 18, the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to defund PP.  In anger, PP has thrown down the gauntlet and is using its significant war chest to batter members of Congress into submission.

Do you realize that PP:

  • Is a $1-plus billion business that rakes in one-third of its budget from government grants and contracts at both the state and federal levels?
  • Makes an $85 million profit?
  • Fails to report many cases of sexual abuse and statutory rape involving girls under the age of 16?
  • Aggressively advises pregnant girls under 18 on how to avoid telling their parents about visiting their abortion clinics through a process known as “judicial by-pass”?

On February 18 — and with all common sense — members of Congress voted against giving our $363 million (tax dollars) to the largest abortion provider in the country.

Years ago, two other members of Lutherans For Life and I “toured” PP in Des Moines, IA.  I have no doubt that many who work at PP truly believe they are helping women.  That day, during the tour, our “guide” expressed thankfulness that young girls, married and unmarried women, and even older mothers could be “helped” by way of an abortion.  Today, I could share with you countless stories of friends and acquaintances who were “helped” by PP, but then fell to depression, eating disorders, alcoholism, sexual promiscuity, and anger.  Some distanced themselves from God.  Others wrote letters to their aborted children asking for forgiveness.  All confess to me that abortion did not improve their lives; rather, quite the opposite.

A woman entering a PP clinic in 2009 was 42 times more likely to have an abortion than to receive either prenatal care or be referred for adoption.  Through its “award-winning” website, Teenwire, PP normalizes teen sexual activity, peddles their “family planning” services, offers homosexuality as a “choice” and form of birth control, practically ignores the physical and moral consequences of abortion, scoffs at the psychological consequences of abortion, and actually helps build a wall between parents and children.

So, on March 8, please call your Senators and respectfully encourage them to defund Planned Parenthood, the taxpayer-funded organization that does not respect women, protect children, or  honor the Creator of Life.  You can find more information by visiting Concerned Women for America, Susan B. Anthony List, Focus on the Family, and The Family Research Council.

Then, please pray that we all have mercy on our littlest neighbor — the unborn child — and his or her mother.

After all, Jesus Christ calls us to mercy, not sacrifice.

Read Full Post »

An Agnostic Responds (Hope Abounds!)

Posted in Biblical manhood & womanhood, Commentaries of others, Culture Shifts, Faith & Practice, Identity, Life issues, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 3, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Did I get carried away with too many blogs about girls and wrestling?  Just when I was beginning to think so, I received a surprising e-mail from a man I’ve never met.  This gentleman (I’ll call him Bill) has a PhD in biology.   Apparently he pays close attention to any and all discussions of boys and girls on the mat.  Somehow, he found ezerwoman.

It’s important that you hear from this gentleman, not only because he agrees that “equal” does not mean “the same,” or that he encourages me to continue mentoring Biblical manhood and womanhood, but because he proves that Christians help build bridges for the benefit of the human race when we ask questions that help people think.  When we enter into dialogue on moral and ethical issues.  When we appeal to what was once called “common sense.”

This gentleman wrote,  “I am an arrant agnostic — a self-styled poet-philosopher-canary-priest-with my spiritual roots in nature.  But I could not agree more vigorously with your objections to the decadence — as in Roman — of allowing (or more accurately) of forcing boys to wrestle girls.  I have been following this issue for at least ten years.”

It was obvious that Bill had carefully studied the most physically intimate of all contact sports.  He offered many sane and sensible reasons why boy/girl wrestling is a terrible idea.  He is concerned that civilization is wounded by such foolishness.  He wrote,  “I believe in self-sacrifice for others, in kindness, in consideration for others before myself.  I remember the mantra of our YMCA boys’ camp:  God first, others second, me third.  Today, as we watch boys and girls in violent combat on wrestling mats, that mantra seems to have become ‘Me first, me second, me first.'”

Then, he really caught my attention.  “The values you mention in your blogs are simply ignored in our modern culture,” wrote Bill.   “Even as an agnostic biologist, I think your Christian values are essential to any civilization that wants to live above the animal level of material-sensual gratification.”

I thanked Bill for taking the time to write me.  He responded with a second e-mail, explaining that he had become a writer after leaving the scientific community.  But, after some time passed, he wanted to get back in touch with biologists.  For a few months, he subscribed to the blog of an evolutionist.  Bill found the site “instructional in professional matters,” but disappointing in its Christian bashing.  “Christianity was dismissed as sheer stupidity without any redeeming value.” Bill explained to me that he felt “uncomfortable in this steady current of arrogant meanness,” so he unsubscribed.  He didn’t agree with such hatred being poured upon an institution (Christianity) “that embraced all of life, from birth to death, from reason to faith, from beauty and goodness to ugliness and evil.”

Then, wrote Bill, “this wrestling incident occurred, and because the young man cited his Christian faith, it catapulted the small, cloistered world of wrestling into the national spotlight and presented to view the grotesque, distorted values that have evolved there.  It seems like a microcosm of society at large and the moral decadence we have enshrined as moral good.  And against all this, the best aspects of Christianity began to emerge from the smoke — the dignity, the calm, the pure, measured decency of 2000 years of Christian ‘evolution’ (can’t help myself!).  Anyhow, just wanted to express this to you.”

Thank you,  Bill.   You remind me that Christianity is needed in this hurting world as much today as yesterday.  I’m so sorry that we Christians do such a poor job of following Jesus Christ and are more easily influenced by false teachings.

But, I am encouraged to stay the course by a secular biologist who sees that good and evil, right and wrong, morality and decadence really do exist.  Each rises from a core belief.  Each has a consequence.

Read Full Post »

Honor Killing

Posted in Biblical manhood & womanhood, Culture Shifts, Faith & Practice, Identity, Life issues, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 3, 2011| Leave a Comment »

In January, a trial opened for Faleh Almaleki.  Mr. Almaleki is an Iraqi immigrant accused of murdering his 20-year-old daughter, Noor.  Noor’s father was upset that his daughter dressed and behaved like a Westerner.  He was angry that she was about to marry, not the man he had chosen for her, but an American.  And, so, on October 20, 2009, he ran over her with his Jeep in a Peoria, AZ., parking lot and injured her so badly that she died.

Noor’s father killed her because she had dishonored her family.  Her murder is called an “honor killing.”  It is justified by Muslim tradition.

Abigail R. Esman, a self-defined “liberal,” wonders why her liberal peers, journalists and activists, are not reporting this “honor killing” as well as thousands of others.  Esman writes, “U.N. statistics of 5,000 honor killings per year are generally recognized to be grossly understated.  In the Netherlands alone, the official number of honor killings per year stands at 13, or more than one every month — and that does not include the growing trend of ‘honor suicides’ — girls and even boys who take their own lives knowing that if they don’t do it, others will, that they’ve been marked for death.  In England and Germany, the numbers are about the same.”

Esman continues, “These are not — as often is claimed — your standard cases of domestic abuse.  Honor violence, unlike the domestic abuse we know, is often supported, sanctioned and even encouraged by the local Muslim community.  Indeed, parents frequently feel they have no other choice.”  (The Washington Times Weekly Edition, 2/14/11)

There is another way.

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.  Therefore, choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying His voice and holding fast to Him, for He is your life . . . (Deuteronomy 31:19-20).”

Jesus Christ does not call us to “honor killings.”  He calls us to honor Him with our defense of human life, no matter the circumstances.  No matter the failures or disappointments.  No matter the inconvenience.  No matter the embarrassment.  After all, He died in our place — to remove the failures, disappointments, inconvenience, and embarrassment. To remove the stain of sin.

We disobey our Father with our daily sins, but He does not attempt to kill us.  Instead, He has mercy on us.  His mercy is new every morning.  It is given and shed for us.

Jesus sacrificed Himself on our behalf.  We are created, loved, and redeemed by God.  We are treasures of great value.  For this reason, Jesus says:

Love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12).

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts