Confession - To Others, or For Others?

 I heard of a curious Christian outreach attempt recently. They set up a tent at the local Renaissance Faire. In it, they claimed to offer 'confessions'. However, interested parties found that their idea of 'confession' wasn't encouraging other people to speak of their sins. Instead, they themselves gave a little speech confessing the sins of the Church and acknowledging that we often haven't lived up to God's requirements of us. The particular sin mentioned as one of the examples was The Crusades.

At the time, I was thinking several things that I was not saying, mostly because my thoughts start out pretty nebulous. I know when something sounds 'off' to me, but I rarely know why. I had to go home and think it over for a good while before I thought I had it. Their goals are laudable, and I can see why they thought this might be a good outreach message. But I'm afraid I do have some problems with it, and I think I know how to express it.

The first and most important thing to me is that this is actually not a Biblical practice. No, I'm not anti-Catholic. The Bible does encourage us to confess our sins to each other. But there are two very important factors to this practice. We are to confess our own sins, and we are to confess them to each other. These people, on the other hand, were confessing other people's sins, and they were confessing them to random strangers, with their target being unbelievers.

I'd encourage my readers to take a while and trawl through the letters of Paul in the Bible and the Letters to the Churches in Revelation. Yes, these documents were shared, compiled, and deemed worthy of mass production. However, when you read them, you will find that each church was addressed personally, especially in matters of sin. Paul did not tell the Ephesians what the Corinthians were doing wrong. Though the Church of Sardis was warned that they would not know the hour at which Jesus would come against them if they did not awaken, the Church of Philadelphia was told that it would be spared 'the hour of trial' completely. And there were even blessings offered to faithful members of each of the Churches who did not participate in the sins of the congregation.

Yes, we should encourage our brethren and gatekeep against sin, and we should have a certain level of identity with the Church Universal. But confessing sins is meant to be such a completely personal matter of responsibility that we are not even expected to bear the sins of our local congregation; just our own sin, if applicable, in being silent when we should have spoken, accepting what we should have objected to.

Now, in addition to not being a Biblical practice, there are other problems involved in confessing sins committed by other people, in other places, often before you were born. You have no personal stake in it, not really. You are adopting a sort of 'guilt by identity', but it is not based on anything you did or anything you could have done. Even more recent sins, such as the sexual sins admitted to by the Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, really aren't yours. You didn't listen to him knowing that he was doing these things. You didn't sweep it under the rug so that you could continue to lionize him (I hope). You didn't know he was doing it and keep your mouth shut anyway when you could have protected and affirmed his victims in the moment.

And there really isn't anything you're going to do about any of these sins. Let's be honest. You aren't going to cede Britain to the Muslims; if anybody does that, it'll be the (mostly non-Christian) British politicians themselves. You aren't going to dedicate all of your home church's tithes for the week to a victim of pastoral abuse in another state and another denomination. You aren't going to give up your house to a practitioner of witchcraft because of Salem. Neither should you.

As such, the idea of "confessing the sins of the Church" is largely performative in the same vein as "Native American Land Acknowledgements". The universities that start every event with a "land acknowledgment" are basically only engaging in self-abasement for the purpose of gaining the approval of others. They don't intend to actually give any of the land back, and they even object to naming halls or sports teams in historical acknowledgement of the tribal members who lived there. In my own town, there is a pre-DEI monument at a city park with four trees depicting four prominent chiefs from the tribe who gifted the settlers the land on which the park was built. Nowadays, the local schools will do Land Acknowledgements, but their students cannot name those four chiefs. 

Similarly, "confessing the sins of the Church", though kindly meant, really is a method of self-abasement in hopes of gaining popularity. The intent is good; they hope that people who are predisposed kindly to them will listen better, making them more likely to reach out to God and be forgiven. It isn't wrong at all to want this to happen, of course. We wish all sinners would be saved and healed. But if we lose our message in the process of our outreach, we can't do anybody any good. We need to still be the hard path, the uncomfortable choice, the place where the burdens of people's sin have driven them to beg for release and to be willing to "wash in the Jordan River" to be relieved of them, even though "the waters of their own land" are, in their eyes, better. But confessing "the sins of the Church" to strangers, taking on the collective guilt, works against this goal.

See, the Christian self-abasement of performative apology in today's culture and environment isn't about acknowledging the Church's historical imperfections as a path to moving forward in a relationship. The people who most loudly proclaim the Church's sins against it aren't doing so in order to correct the Church in hopes of better attaining God's promises. After all, as I pointed out earlier, these are largely sins which we did not commit and which we can do nothing about. Their intent in accusing us is to delegitimize the claims that God makes on them which they hate the most. After all, if we were wrong about the medieval-era Muslims, if we were wrong about the witches in Massachusetts, we could also be wrong about adultery. We could be wrong about homosexual behaviors. We could be wrong about abortion. They need us to be worse than they are, so that they can dismiss our deity.

They also need for us to come to despise our fellow Christians, and this is something that I have unfortunately seen several times in the past few decades. A Christian starts out with the best of intentions, apologizing to The World for the sins of The Church. But, of course, as I keep pointing out, the Christian hasn't actually fought in The Crusades or drowned a witch. So that Christian is lured away by the performative abasement technique which is part of a Secular Humanist philosophy. Now, according to Secular Humanism, that person is better than "those Christians" who have not yet abased themselves for these sins. Also, the practice of performative abasement focuses on sins, even sins that may have been long forgiven, and never sets you free from the collective guilt of your chosen identity. Which, of course, it can't. God never meant for you to seek forgiveness for other people's sins. And, in Secular Humanist philosophy, you aren't supposed to be set free from it anyway. You're just supposed to show your 'virtue' by an endless string of Sin Acknowledgments. (In a way, you're actually seeking 'salvation by works', in repeating the sacrament. But that could be a whole new post...)

Instead of drawing people closer, you are more likely to affirm any belief they have that Christianity has nothing new or good to offer them, nothing different than any other group of humans, and that anything sin we warn about, well... we're hypocrites anyway. It doesn't matter.

So what should we be doing?

Well, first off, don't take this as a call to stop speaking against the sins of the Church, especially when they are brought up. You don't have to abase yourself to say straight out that God isn't calling us to Holy Wars, that we shouldn't be drowning women for suspected witchcraft, that sexual abuse is wrong especially when the perpetrator is supposed to be in a position of authority in the Church. Members of the Church have done wrong things over time, and it's absolutely appropriate to call out those things as being wrong.

However, if what you want to do is a curious sort of 'reverse confessional' to pique people's interest, I believe it can be done correctly, even though confession is supposed to technically be to other believers. The key is to keep it small-scale and personal. You are not forgiven for The Crusades. However, you have been forgiven, and you have been forgiven sins that other people are hurting from. On top of that, there are still sins being committed within church congregations. You may not be part of it. You might be part of it. You might be excusing it, minimizing it. You might be approving of it when you shouldn't. Or you might have this in your past. Hearing that, for instance, you voted to approve a man in your church as an elder even though you knew that he had a secret child with another parishioner - and that was a sin for which you needed to repent and be forgiven - will mean much more than hearing that you're sorry that someone wearing a hat with a buckle dunked someone in water about three hundred years ago. There are so many sins being excused and minimized in modern society, as well as some sins being lionized and advanced, and too few people are just saying flat-out that they are, in fact, sins. Stating it outright can easily be taken as an attack.

But confessing it can give it the same power, while removing the defensiveness. It isn't brave to say that things are bad when even the pagans will agree that things are bad, nor is it brave to agree with them that the Church is bad. True courage is admitting where you, personally, went wrong, admitting that it was wrong, and daring to tell people in a world that preaches self-empowerment through excusing sin that you can be forgiven.

Story of a Diet

 So you've got a guy. He lives pretty well, does pretty well. And one day, someone offers him some candy.

As it happens, he hasn't had candy before. But the guy promises that it tastes great, and has very few calories, and is practically good for you, and it'll give him all these great feelings and such... and, you know what, the guy is right. He likes it. He gets some, and he starts eating it for dessert instead of pies, cakes, cookies, spiced fruit, and various other things he's used to.

His friends are a wee bit concerned, but not too much. After all, a little candy for dessert won't do any harm. But it isn't just a little after a while. He wants more, and then more, and then he starts to gain weight. His friends say, "Lay off the candy. It's just sugar." But he loves the sugar rush, and the way the artificial flavorings make his mind race for a while. So he has different ideas.

He finds some studies and warnings claiming that red meat is evil. It raises your risk of death. It has cholesterol, and that's bad. Candy doesn't have cholesterol in it. So he cuts all meat out of his diet, and in place of that meat, he eats candy.

I bet you can guess how that works - it doesn't. So, after citing similar studies about dairy, he gives that up, too, and he replaces it with candy. His friends are concerned, and they try to tell him that meat and dairy at least have vitamins and minerals in them. They tell him that a little fat and cholesterol won't hurt him, but the lack of nutrients will. But he'd rather eat candy than meat. It's quicker, easier, cheaper, more satisfying in the short-term.

Well, now he's doing even worse. His weight is still going up and he's starting to have tooth problems. But he has a new culprit - starches. Starches cause weight gain. Starches cause all these other problems, too. In vain, his friends try to explain to him that the risk of starches is that they break down into sugars, and the reason why the main problem is with refined and processed starches is that they break down more quickly into sugar. They try to explain to him that candy is already sugar, and trying to replace starches with sugar is just flooding your system more with what's wrong with starches. But guess what. By now, he loves the taste and feel of candy, and by now he's found that eating candy instead of meats and dairy means that he gets hungrier faster, and the lovely candy feeling fades faster, so he needs more candy and he needs it more often. So out the door go the starches, and it isn't long before the fruit follows, for the same reason... the sugars in it are 'bad for you'.

At this point, as anybody could guess, he starts getting more erratic. His doctor diagnoses him with Type 2 diabetes. His weight continues to grow. And he's got one final culprit left - the worst of all - and his arguments against it are even stronger than against the other foods. That culprit - vegetables.

Vegetables are what's really wrong with diet, he argues. Vegetables are worse than all else. He points to vegans and how many of them struggle to balance their diets. His friends try to explain that it's because of the lack of protein, iron, and other minerals in their diet and not because there's something wrong with vegetables, but he won't listen. He cites Eskimos and others who eat few vegetables and thrive, and they try to explain that Eskimos don't eat candy - they eat meat and fish, and the harsh environment means that their bodies make better use of such foods - but he won't hear it. They try to explain that what's wrong with his diet is the candy and the vegetables are the last thing he's got going for him, but he won't listen.

And he gets stuck on vegetables. When giving them up doesn't improve his health, he starts declaring that his problems are caused by people who eat vegetables. The only example he'll give of vegetables being problematic in a diet are vegans who don't put the effort into getting what they'd get from meat/dairy in other foods. He gets to the point where he's practically screaming it by reflex, his greatest enemy: "Vegetables! Vegetables! Vegetables!" He shuns his friends, because they eat Vegetables. He rails against society, because it allows Vegetables.

Unfortunately, this man does die young. He dies of malnutrition, while surrounded by good and healthy food. He dies obese, claiming that the only unhealthy people in the world are skinny.

First, he shunned religion and cultural tradition. in favor of socialism. Then, he abandoned principles of restrained and limited government and personal responsibility. Finally, he descended fully into communism while still believing that he was only dabbling in socialism, and his dying words were his rant against 'all that is wrong with this world'.

"Capitalism! Capitalism! Capitalism!"

Storing up skills

A few weeks ago, my daughter's Webelos troop set up to do Christmas caroling at a nearby nursing home. Now it's one thing to say that you're going to do caroling and another to actually do it. As it happens - I am not trying to boast or brag here, everyone there will agree with me - I was the only voice in a group of about twenty to thirty people who was strong, on key (no instruments), and could hold the melody well enough for the others to latch on. A week afterwards, there was another Christmas caroling event, this one with several good singers. One participant brought a violin, another brought a cello, and one had a few recorders with him and was using his alto. I asked permission to use his soprano, sat down to share music with the cellist, and started adding to the accompaniment.

I enjoy reading classics in literature from the time periods before we had computers, television, or even radio. The upper-class people, both men and women, in those times were practically required to learn a few skills that would make social gatherings more enjoyable and entertain their families in the evening. They memorized poems (or learned to read them dramatically from books), learned to play the piano, and practiced singing. The goal was to be able to make yourself pleasant in any gathering, expected and unexpected.

Many people think about skills in the New Year. January is, according to some calendars that gather names for every day of the year, "Hobby Month". Resolutions often take the forms of new skills to learn. If you ask them why they're learning these skills, they'll usually have a reason for it. They want to eat more healthy. They want to knit hats for babies and socks for people in third world countries. They want to know how to build a shed to save the cost of always paying someone else to bring their ideas to life. In many cases, people learn skills more readily and more easily when the stakes are higher. People who worry about the collapse of civilization, for instance, will learn gardening, first aid, mechanical work, and other skills that are less useful for the average person in this society than in the one they are preparing for.

In fact, that makes for an interesting mental exercise. Suppose civilization as you knew it collapsed, and you made your shaken way from the rubble of your neighborhood to a small settlement made up of survivors trying to rebuild. You entered, and the settlement leader asked you, "What can you do to make yourself useful?" Now you might be a highly-paid administrator of some sort, having come from a city where you made more than enough money to eat out every night and see every Broadway show. What useful skills are you going to bring into this new life of yours? If you were paying attention during the shows and have some theatrical skill, you could organize a troop to practice twice a week in the evenings and lighten the heart of your fellow settlers. Maybe you regularly fixed up your own beater of a bicycle thirty years ago in childhood, and you can make some repairs if you have the tools. Maybe you learned how to use a drop spindle at a county fair once and you think you still remember how to do it. Maybe all you can do is to say, "Well, I have good legs and a strong back, and I'm willing to pitch in and learn."

The Bible has an interesting bit in it, in 1 Corinthians 3. The Apostle Paul writes about building a work on a foundation that is tested by fire. If what you built lasts, he says, you will have a reward. If it is all consumed, you will still be saved, but as one who is escaping the fire. The Bible talks about rewards in Heaven and the New Earth in other areas as well, and I've heard some very odd conjectures about what those rewards will be. Some Sunday School classes in my youth presented the notion that you will receive a jewel in your crown for each person you lead to Christ, and you want many jewels in your crown, don't you? I reject that interpretation. We are responsible for living Christ and preaching Christ; we are not the ones who "save" people, and we cannot control their decision. So what is it talking about? I have a conjecture that I believe is supported by Scripture.

Think back to the question of what you would bring to a post-apocalyptic settlement. If you were as sure as some people that civilization was going to collapse, you would spend your time now learning how to plant and garden, how to forage for wild harvests, how to sew without a machine, how to cook without a stove. Well, if you are a Christian, you can be sure that you are going to die, that the old Heaven and Earth will perish, and that you will be given a new body and a new Earth without sin. Through prophesies about "the lion and the lamb" and "grass" as well as others, we can guess that the new Earth is not going to be totally alien to us. So maybe in this new year, you might ask yourself this: What kind of skills can you learn now, that will be of use to you in this new place?

"How To Get A Big Promotion And Drive A Lexus By Stomping On The Little People" will likely do you no good at all. How to play a video game will mean nothing in a world with no video games. Planting and reaping may be of use, though gardening is likely to be much easier in a world without weeds and thorns, which are clearly stated to be part of the curse of sin. How about "The practiced and ready desire to help others without looking for a reward"? How would that skill do in a world where the reward is going to happen? (It's never a sure thing in this world.) Perhaps "Being humbly willing to learn from people who have figured out a new skill before you have"? How about "Developing the discipline and willpower to finish what you start even when your brain and body are working as hard as they can against you"? Like exercising against tension, that skill is going to explode into brilliance once your brain and body are cooperating properly.

In this new year, I'd like to encourage you to think about what skills and works you might develop for the life that we know will last. Since I can sing in this world, I can bring entertainment to groups of people without television, cell phones, or radio. Since I can sew in this world, I have been able to customize garments to myself and other people - as part of my ministry, I once charged materials-only to make special skirts for a wheelchair-bound woman. In times past, being an "accomplished person" was part of being in proper society. How can you be an "accomplished person" when we start to roam the New Earth together?

Corporatism, Communism, and Christianity

I have to say it - we're in a bad place right now, as a country.

With a stagnant economy and hurting families on every side, the Democrats are heading towards nominating a socialist/fascist for the Presidency, and the Republicans have nominated a corporatist. With the Libertarians nominating a classless fellow, basically a liberal who wants to legalize pot, we haven't got a conservative running in the race.

So I think it's time to take a look and ask ourselves how this race and its result might impact those of us who are Christians.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that socialists are unhappy with Christianity. A socialist, at his or her root, believes that we can replace God with Government and do a much better job of taking care of everybody 'equally well'. Of course, we all know that it will fail, and we know why. A socialist government can't do God's job because they lack intricate knowledge of each and every person and the ability to tailor each person's life experience to his or her personality, ability, and greater benefit. A socialist government can't do God's job because they are as sin-stained as the rest of us... they have a sin-flawed notion of what is good, what is healthy, what is pure, and what is beneficial for us. Of course, in every socialist country, the government has been openly hostile towards Christians. This is true even in the "softer" countries dealing in "democratic socialism", in which Christians may be permitted to live in peace as long as they don't make any sort of decisions outside of their own homes regarding their faith when such a decision would conflict with the Absolute Power of the government. To a socialist, God is a competitor, and one that must be squashed (or, at least, the attempt made) by any means necessary.

In the history of corporatism, however, Christianity is tortured into a different role. Historically speaking, the greatest Christian-committed atrocities have occurred when a corporatist government cherry-picks and uses Christian principles in order to serve the government first, rather than the corporation. While the socialist tries to kill God, the corporatist merely tries to enslave Him and make Him do the government's bidding. The socialist insists that Christians abandon their religion, while the corporatist goes back to the age-old tribal method of trying to convince us that he bears the will of the gods (or, in this case, God) and we must obey him as we obey our Lord. The corporatist will pretend to be doing the will of God, usually by cherry-picking the parts of God's laws that he thinks will give him greater control over the people, and forcing them upon everybody by law.

Which is a greater threat to us? Robber barons are generally safer than moral busybodies, as C.S. Lewis pointed out in one of his most famous quotes. A robber baron (the corporatist) merely wants your wealth, while the moral busybody (the socialist) wants your heart, mind, and soul. We would think that it is better for us, certainly safer for us, to have someone who might use the government to persecute our enemies rather than a government keen on persecuting us. And yet... one of the strongest complaints that atheists have against us is derived from every instance in which a government tried to use the surface appearance of Christianity in order to implement its own goals, especially goals which are actually counter to the actual teachings of Christ. Caught in the quandary of socialism vs. corporatism, I have to ask... is it actually better for us to face open persecution, under which Christians have often been purified and Christianity has spread strongly (nothing exposes fakery and uncovers reality like difficulty), than a twisted form of 'Christianity', which might lead millions of people to Hell even as they are sure that they are headed for eternal paradise?

I do not have a good answer to this question at this time.

Judge not.... what?

I saw a lovely post up yesterday talking about how homeschooling is growing sharply in popularity. Of course, I, like many homeschooling parents, cheered at the news. We firmly believe in what we're doing, and it's good to see more people swelling our ranks; if nothing else, there is safety in numbers, and there are still people who want to prohibit us from making this choice.

This morning, however, I saw a comment on that post, something that I suppose I could have seen coming, because it seems to happen at least once in every single conversation about homeschooling that is thrown out where the public can see it.

"Well, homeschooling isn't the best for everybody. Some kids do better in public school, and some kids do better in private school."

Of course.

If you take the absolute worst that homeschooling has to offer and compare it to the absolute best public school ever, no doubt the public school education will be superior.

I am getting so tired of lifestyle/moral equivalency. You can't say that homeschool is simply better than public school. If you do, you're judging, on a personal level, every single person who has ever been public schooled as 'inferior'. If you truly aren't, they will all believe that you are, and treat you as if you are. People are so quick to judge other people. We are all sinners. We all have inferiority complexes. Those of us who can't accept that have to try to make ourselves out to be 'righteous' by proving ourselves to be more 'righteous' than other people. Then comes the attempt to make yourself better than others by proving that you are "less judgmental" than others. It's hard, though, to not be judgmental, when you aren't allowed to view yourself as a sinner who is not really any better than anybody else.

So instead you take the easy way out. If all choices are equally good, then you don't have to try to view someone whom you think is making worse choices as if they are, nevertheless, no less perfect than you are. Or perhaps you think that, if they judge your choices and you "don't judge theirs", that makes you better than them. I'm not 100% sure what's going through these people's heads. All I know is that they have decided that the only way for them to show moral superiority is to show moral equivalency, because it never occurred to them (or they simply could not accept it) to view themselves and everyone else as sinners in need of a Savior. Their righteousness is not in Christ, so they need to find it elsewhere.

Meanwhile, this hurts every single person who is honestly, humbly, willingly trying to learn the best way forward. Young men and women beg for sexual advice, only to be told, "Well, ya know, maybe it's wrong to sleep with him, but maybe it's not. It's up to you, I guess. Do what'll make you happy." And if the young person points out in exasperation that he or she doesn't know what will make him or her happy, the best these people can do is to kind of vaguely repeat their useless advice.

So let me be the one to tell it straight.

Homeschool is better than public school.

Also, a home-prepared lunch is healthier than McDonalds, breastfeeding is better than bottlefeeding, your clothing will fit better and last longer if you make it yourself (or, at least, don't buy it from a cheapy place like Walmart), a small sedan will put out less pollution than a minivan, and you really ought to use those wipes on your hands and the handle of the shopping cart before you go in.

Guess what.

I will pull on an old t-shirt and pair of jeans from Walmart, herd my kids into the minivan, head off to a homeschool field trip without once using wipes, and pick up McDonalds on the road.

What we need to do is to focus, not on pretending that all options are 'equal', but on not judging each other. After all, life isn't about doing everything 'right'. We can't, even if we want to. It isn't about doing everything 'the best way'. If you make that your goal, you will be so stressed out that your health will fail far faster than if you eat a McDouble once every few weeks, or even *gasp* carry about twenty pounds more after having your children than you did when you got married.

Life is about growing, about loving and taking care of each other, about learning to change our priorities, about understanding that "superiority" and "inferiority" mean nothing next to Christ's sacrifice and love for us. I know that's hard for non-Christians to take in, but I hope for your sake that your worldview can come up with something close enough to follow my example here. She who is without sin can throw the first stone. By all means, stand there and state clearly that homeschooling is better than public school. But don't stand there in Walmart jeans with your kid eating a Happy Meal in your minivan (or even eating whole wheat sandwiches in your minivan) and say that the public schooling parent is not as good a parent as you are.

And if someone asks you which is better, breast or bottle, you can say 'breast' without going crazy trying to prop up the ego of every single woman who didn't take that path. But if you know a woman with an infant who is bottle-feeding, you go over there with a good meal, send her to bed, clean up her kitchen, and prepare that bottle so that she can actually rest for more than two hours.

It's much harder to learn how to not judge a person when you are willing to accept that not all choices are equally good.

But it's much, much more rewarding.

Trump and the Liberal Conspiracy Theory

I don't make decisions like this lightly, but I do hold them lightly. I will not pledge right here and now that I will unquestionably not vote for Donald Trump if he is the Republican nominee. I will, however, state that, as the election currently stands, my decision is that I will not vote for him, even against Hillary.

Nobody is going to guess the real reason.

Oh, there are plenty of reasons that liberals like to talk badly about Trump. They accuse him of being racist because he has an immigration policy that legally-residing Hispanics love. They send people to his rallies to violently attack his supporters and then call his supporters violent when they defend themselves. They take half of what he says so badly out of context that it doesn't even resemble what he actually says. They seem determined to attack him in all the ways that will make his supporters dig in their heels and promise to stay with him forever.

I'm not even all that concerned about many of the attacks on the Right. This whole kerfuffle about his wife... I can take that in a candidate. I can even take a certain level of moderate politics in a candidate. After all, I voted for McCain over Obama, and then I voted for Romney over Obama, and I encouraged my friends and family to do the same.

So what has changed?

I believe that the leadership in the Democrat Party has, for decades now, desired to establish full-out government control along socialist principles, whether by Fascism or straight-out Communism. They want command. They want to be in charge. This isn't really the condemnation that it may seem like. Throughout history, the majority of higher-ups have desired control over larger groups of people. Everyone wants to be the king, the general, the emperor, the supreme leader. The unusual thing in human society has been a free society, a system in which the people are, as individuals, in control of their own lives. It is no accident that these societies have invariably been Jewish or Christian. You have to feel as if someone is in control and, if that someone is God, then it is wrong for you to subjugate your fellow man. (Even in areas where they have failed in this, the precepts of Christianity have been a correcting action that have caused Christians, not outsiders, to correct it.)

But I digress.

Socialism doesn't just happen. It takes sacrifice. Even on the face of it, it takes sacrifice that the people believe will yield benefits down the line. In implementation, of course, the sacrifice continues to strengthen and the benefits do not appear. The important thing is, people don't just take to socialism "because". They start by believing that it is a better system than what they have. Either they lose faith in that "invisible hand" in a free market (whether you believe in God or in the laws of nature), or they live in a system that is not a free market, or both. Socialism took hold in Germany under a war-torn country forced to make heavy reparations from a destroyed economy. Socialism took hold in Russia as a replacement for the iron hand of Imperialism; early Party members were fighting, not for a command economy, but merely for the allowance of sick days for workers. When socialists started trying to find ways to implement their system in the U.S., they ran into a problem... they could not easily convince anybody that socialism was better than what they had, because what they had was freedom, prosperity, and even the poorest considered themselves to be "temporarily embarrassed millionaires".

To peddle their system, they would have to change the one we already had.

Do I have proof that this is a conspiracy theory led by the leadership of the party? No, not really. I know this; though the "Red Scare" and McCarthyism went too far and was misused for witch hunts, history has vindicated McCarthy himself. Though most of the people he investigated were not foreign agents seeking to betray America to her enemies, they were dedicated socialists seeking to transform America into a socialist country over time. We've seen their efforts in the school systems (where they've been pretty brazen about their goals and plans) and in other areas of society. There's one in particular that I want to focus on today, and that is the effort to spread corporatism (what in the 18th century would have been called 'mercantilism') while redefining capitalism such that people believe that capitalism is really corporatism, and socialism is the other choice in the false dichotomy that they are working to set up.

We've seen this whenever Democrats have derided Republicans for being "pro-big business" for wanting to lower taxes or regulations on all businesses (because, of course, a big business makes more profits from it than a small business, even if the small business benefits at a much higher percentage). Then those Democrats tighten regulation and taxes, but they define loopholes for big businesses that support them, and declare this to be "their willingness to enable capitalism". They present the worst parts of corporatism to us, call it 'capitalism', and say that 'capitalism doesn't work'. I have been confused when I've watched movies like Robocop after being told that it's about the evils of capitalism, because it isn't about capitalism at all. It's about corporatism. (I've given you a few sketches here. I could probably write a book on this process and the harm it's doing.) And now we come to the crux of the reason why I don't think I can vote for Trump.

Trump is a corporatist running as a capitalist.

If Hillary wins because I vote for a third party, it's going to be bad. It's going to be tough. Short-term, it's going to be awful. But if Trump wins because I vote for him, then I have colluded in the Democrat effort to rebrand corporatism as 'capitalism'. In the short term, he will not be as bad as Hillary in most respects. In the long term, however, if he provides that last big push, if his reign in office brings us to the point where we truly believe the false dichotomy, the long-term ramifications will be far, far worse.

We will be choosing between Corporatism and Socialism.

And whichever wins, we will lose.

A Christian Nation when it suits us...

Back in the dark days before science and progress and all the things we prize so much, humanity was ruled mostly by a series of tribes led by a leader who claimed either direct godhood or speakership with godhood. 'For some strange reason', it seemed that the god particularly favored the leader in that it invariably gave orders resulting in the leader having whichever property, goods, and women he wanted. These ancient 'gods' also had a tendency to value peace while the tribe was doing well and then suddenly demand war when the leader wanted to expand his territory or saw another tribe as a threat. There is no doubt that this convenience had been noticed by other tribal members, but that little seed of doubt would remain... Human leaders can be toppled, but gods are quite a different story.

One of the radical innovations brought into the world by Judaism and then Christianity was a knowable God whose precepts did not change, and to whom every man, especially leaders, were answerable. King David was punished by God for exercising his 'divine leadership' in order to take Uriah's wife for himself; King Ahab was punished by God for taking Naboth's vineyard. Under God, a leader cannot claim divine right to what he pleases. This goes on to modern times... when religion has gone wrong, even Christianity during some historical ages and in some parts of the globe, at the center you can often find a human being using it in order to gain personal power.

Socialism, whether its pretend-private form (fascism) or outright state-control form (Communism), by necessity sees Christianity as a threat. Socialism, especially liberal socialism, teaches that the world can be made a paradise as long as everybody agrees to follow the rules laid down by the human beings who created it. This devotion to the State (and hence, they argue, to the community - though the State, which speaks for the 'god' of the community, seems to deliver edicts that benefit the State more than the people... how about that?) must be paramount, and any secondary devotion to the family or another god must be suborned or destroyed. This was touted as a brand new thing, a non-religious (and therefore, somehow, pure) type of government meant to bring us into a new age, but scratch the surface and you will find the same old pagan tribalism as before.

That brings us to today.

Now the role of homosexuality in our society and our attitude towards refugees from the Middle East are really separate issues, and I do honestly believe that those on both sides of both issues should be wary of this argument being produced and spread by liberal Democrats. Have I been the only one to notice that, when 'gay marriage' is being discussed, we are a 'secular nation', yet when Syrian refugees unwittingly harbor terrorists, we suddenly have a 'Christian duty' to let them in with current vetting (or lack thereof) procedures?

Never mind your feelings about gay sex or Muslim terrorists for the moment. Ask yourself this. Are we a Christian nation, required to follow Christian edicts on aiding the needy equally with Christian edicts on forbidding sexual immorality? Are we a nation which, for cultural effect even among those who do not follow Christianity, has public schools offer prayers to the Christian God? Are we a nation that imposes a religious litmus test for leadership?

Or are we a secular nation? Do we follow the desires of our Christian forefathers to make this a country in which, as Christianity does demand, we permit only voluntary conversion? Is this a place where an atheist can have equal access to government programs and justice? Is this a nation which does not ban practices which, though they may offend God, do not cause imminent harm to innocent bystanders? Do we approach national security and response to violence, not directly as followers of a Lamb to the sacrifice, but with a no-nonsense desire to safeguard our borders first? Do we examine social welfare programs based on their cost, their merit, and their effect on our freedom, rather than enshrining a religious zeal in government procedure?

If the Democrats do not want this to be a Christian Nation, then they cannot appeal to Christian duty when trying to push for open borders or social welfare programs. If the Democrats do want this to be a Christian Nation, then they cannot use the government to force people to accept gay sex as identical to marriage, or to refer to decorated trees on public property at Christmastime as "mitten trees", or to ever, in any context (even the correct one), make reference to the "separation of Church and State".

When Democrats vie for a "secular state" in permitting the social issues they wish to promote, and then turn around and demand our "Christian duty" in government-controlled, government-mandated practices they wish to demand, they are the same as the leaders of the ancient tribalism, declaring themselves to be God (or God's direct servant) and using claims of divine power in order to force us all to follow flawed human beings as if they were perfect.

Why should this be a Christian nation?

Talk about a hot topic, especially today. What does it mean, to be a Christian nation? Is this a Christian nation? We can run the gamut, from those who believe that everyone in this nation should be taught Christianity and Christian morality in public school, and that laws should be made to enforce Christian morality, to those who believe that the Founding Fathers weren't really Christians at all, and that the most important thing is to never make any law that supports any other religion's morality at all. (Unless it happens to also support the morality held by the person who is arguing the point, of course.)

Forget all of that for a moment.

There are a few very important things that Christianity in particular, more than any other religion, brings to the philosophy that created this nation and this nation's government. They won't be found simply by attending the right kind of church for the right number of years, or swearing your oath on a Bible instead of a Koran, or even being able to quote Bible verses without sticking your foot so far down your throat that you can kick your own a-.........butt. These are principles that are simple and easily observable in the Real World, yet, in the U.S. political party which has basically repudiated God altogether, at least one of the most important is being forgotten.

Human beings are corruptible.
Government is made of human beings.
Thus, government is corruptible.

I'm going to pick on Bernie Sanders again, because he represents the epitome of this claim. Business owners, he argues, can be corruptible, because their mission is greed. (It isn't. But that's another topic.) The government, on the other hand, can be safely trusted with any amount of power.

Let me give you an invaluable little tip about socialism. When socialists, even purveyors of "democratic socialism", use the term "the people", what they really mean is the government. This makes sense, actually, doesn't it? If the government officials are elected by the people, that means that they speak for the people, right? Therefore, they practically *are* 'the people'. What's good for them is what's good for us, because they are us.

The reason why this mindset becomes a problem, the reason why socialism in all its forms has never yet worked, is because it assumes that government representatives are able to represent The People purely and perfectly. However, each representative is his or her own human being, and human beings are corruptible.

Our government was set up the way it was in hopes of reducing and decentralizing power, because it was set up by people who understand the Christian notion that man is corruptible. They practically counted on corruption in politics. The reason for separation of powers was the hope that corruption could be cornered and countered, and not given the power it needs to metastasize.

This is similar to the dual-hydraulic system in automotive brakes. You could just have one brake line with one cylinder, to make your brakes work when you press on the pedal. Instead, you have two. Why? If you lose one brake line (this happened to me a few months ago, actually), you will have weak braking power instead of no braking power. The hope is that both lines won't go at the same time, and generally, minus deliberate sabotage, they won't. The Founding Fathers never assumed, as the Democrats do, that they could create a government with no failure points. They simply tried to design a government which could have failure points without destroying the whole.

Bernie Sanders is advocating for simpler, more streamlined systems with higher government control, more centralized, to reduce the number of steps between us and our government. He believes that it will be less expensive and easier to run a country if all citizens must answer to the Federal Government in as many parts of their lives as possible. The Federal Government gives you your health care. The Federal Government handles your college education. His problem is that he really does believe - or at least preach - as if the government is the only human invention that is incorruptible.

He isn't the only one on my hotseat today, as you may have guessed from my allusion to Bible verses. Obama has been using executive orders in an unprecedented way, to circumvent a Congress which he complains is "too slow" and may not believe that his way is the right way. He is basically doing the equivalent of speeding up automobile production and making vehicles less expensive by outlawing the dual-hydraulic system instead of, say, loosening Federal restrictions on which types of extra peripherals a car might contain or, perhaps, ending Federal taxes on auto manufacturing employees.

I'm sure it sounds like a great idea.... until the inevitable corruption hits, and someone has to slam on the brakes.

What makes Christianity important in this nation? One of the most important theological guidelines is, increasingly, one of the most neglected - human beings do not become incorruptible just because they work for the government.

Don't we know that by now?

Everyone knows what I'm talking about

McCall's has a new dress pattern up, called simply "Princess dresses". It doesn't have the Disney mark on it. It does not use the word "Cinderella". Clearly it must be 'not' the dress worn by the live-action Cinderella in the new movie. McCall's has a habit of doing this, and to be honest, it makes me giggle. Last year, we had 'not' Elsa, a dress with a sheer upper bodice and a train that started just under the arms. Before that, we had 'not' Merida, a princess-seamed green dress with white elbow and shoulder puffs.

Well, I'm about to do it to you guys. I am about to make one of those posts where everyone knows what I'm talking about, but I am going to get pretty far before identifying it plainly, and I am not going to delve into the details at all. Frankly, I don't need the details to make my point.

King David, despite being described as a man after God's on heart, did some pretty dreadful things. He lusted after a woman who was not his wife. He sent for her and had sex with her. Then he got her husband killed, when her husband refused to help cover up for her pregnancy. That is arguably pretty dreadful stuff with pretty permanent results. Of course, he did not escape punishment. God sent a prophet to explain why he had done wrong, and the child died. Was this 'enough' punishment? Was it within the statute of limitations? Should God have allowed King David to learn his sin through a prophet he already knew, instead of, say, sending in someone who was unconnected to the King? What about their second son, Solomon? Was God wrong to have given Solomon the kingdom? Was it a sign that David had not 'repented enough'? King David and his son have been dust for thousands of years.

Should we forgive King David? What crime has he committed against us?

There is another man who has been dust for slightly less time. His name was originally Saul of Tarsus, but he was renamed "Paul" after his conversion. He wrote an awful lot of the New Testament and spoke clearly on a variety of sins and evils, including most of the New Testament verses against homosexual behavior. Although he did not engage in homosexual behavior as far as we know, he did hunt down Christians and kill them before his conversion. He considered himself the very best Pharisee of Pharisees at a time when that was basically the most pious thing you could be. He was even celebrated for his piousness. He had to understand that he was doing wrong, and change his ways.

Does Paul's sin make his lessons on sinful behavior irrelevant? Should we take his writings seriously?

Both of these issues are making the rounds in recent days, due to the revelation of actions committed by a young man when he was a teenager. This should indeed be a controversy, but it should be an entirely different kind of controversy than the one I see floating around article comments and chat rooms. This should be a dialog about the problems that lead to inappropriate sinful behavior and the proper criminal justice system response when the perpetrator is underaged. Instead, it has become a two-prong argument, and both prongs seem geared specifically towards targeting Christianity rather than the actual sinner.

The "King David prong" can be summed up as a movement I have seen in recent years geared towards punishing people for the 'sin' of "Not Living Up To Our Expectations". In it, someone is judged, not by whether he acknowledges his sin as wrong or tries to justify it as right, but whether he has dared to hold himself to a standard that he has violated with his behavior. In this 'brave new' situation, you are better off to keep your (and others') expectations low, to ensure that you do not fail, than to aim high and miss your mark - even if your actual shot lands much higher than it ever would have managed were you to keep your expectations small. These are the people who excuse the sin of people like Bill Clinton and Lena Dunham because the perpetrators maintain that they have committed no crime, but do their best to drive out any pastor who has admitted to adultery, acknowledged his error, and asked for forgiveness. This is the exact opposite of what Christianity should be about.

Think about yourself for a moment. Never mind other people's sins. Think about your expectations of yourself. Think about other people's expectations of you. Because I am a Christian and because my sins are generally not severe in modern society and not obvious to a casual onlooker, some people have this notion of me as this perfect sweet excellent woman, and I hate it. If I try to note that I'm not really all that wonderful, they take it as modesty. In this present day, I am downright afraid to have people take that view of me. I never know if they are going to turn virulently upon me, if I should have a sin revealed that actually horrifies them... not for the sin itself (and utterly regardless of my response to it), mind you, but for the new, manufactured 'sin' of "Not Living Up To Their Expectations".

Why do you think God used King David? Why do you think God went after Saul of Tarsus? Why do you think God chose the Israelites, a group of such unruly, stubborn, imperfect people that they kept getting showed up by pagan Romans who had more faith in Christ than the very people who had been awaiting His arrival? Do you think maybe God wanted to teach us that He can make perfect where we stumble? That God can use people who don't "Live Up To Expectations"? Christianity is not about a bunch of perfect people talking about the way we should live. Christianity is about a bunch of sinners finding out that God is patient and loving, and that His laws come from Himself. That leads us into the other prong.

We could call the second prong the "Saul of Tarsus prong". In this particular case, it centers around homosexual behavior, but it could really be used for any convenient sin. Unlike the "King David Prong", this one primarily springs from non-Christians, and it, too, misunderstands what Christianity is for.

Paul's writings show that he was very aware of his own sins and failings. Despite that, he wrote an awful lot about what was sinful and what wasn't, and what was proper behavior for a Christian and what wasn't. Did anybody ever question the appropriateness of a man who used to drag off Christians to their death in saying that the 'stronger brother' should not burden the 'weaker brother' and the 'weaker brother' should not condemn the 'stronger brother'? Why would anybody listen to someone with a "thorn in his flesh" when he says that all have sinned and that eternal life comes through the grace of God? We certainly hold people up to a similar standard today. Should a man who committed adultery (and repented of his sin) be allowed to teach about marriage? Should a woman who had an abortion be allowed to run a pro-life organization? Should a teen who got out of a gang be allowed to tell other teens how to stay out of gangs?

The whole point of being a Christian is that you are holding yourself to God's standard. You are failing to live up to God's standard. You are repenting and receiving forgiveness for your sins against God's standard. Here's another way of putting it. Would you go to a dentist who has cavities? Well, perhaps instead of looking at his mouth, you should listen to his words. If he tells you that the American Dental Association recommends that you brush twice a day, should you decide that the American Dental Association is wrong because he doesn't brush twice a day and he has gingivitis? Of course not! In fact, making that conclusion is, in debate, called "ad hominem" - it is what happens when you attack the bearer of news rather than the originator. So should someone who has engaged in sexual sin and repented of it be allowed to become the bearer of God's news about homosexual behavior? Of course! (And here I finally drop the name.) Josh Duggar does not speak against gay 'marriage' according to Josh Duggar's authority. Josh Duggar speaks against gay 'marriage' according to God's authority. Of course, it's so much easier to pound Josh Duggar into the ground than to go up against God... but you must be aware that Christianity is a place for sinners who repent, for people who miss the mark and wish they hadn't, for people who know that they are sick and are seeking out the Physician. If you want a religion of "perfect people" who are telling you "how to turn yourself perfect", go seek out Scientology. God's Law is about what works. Christianity is about what happens to you when you realize that you can't do it by your own power.

And eventually, when you stand before God and He says, "Why didn't you listen to me?" it will do you no good to say, "Because I didn't like the looks of the bearer of Your message."

The Rape Exemption

This was my response in a Facebook page for the group Ladies Against Feminism. The topic was Rep. Akin's 'unfortunate' comments, and I am pleased to say that we managed to shift the conversation from screaming about "legitimate rape" to an actual debate on the rape exemption in a proposed ban on abortion.

We had been debating for some time with a couple of feminist women who have been, predictably, proceeding from the viewpoint of secular humanist atheistic feminism. I made a response that I rather liked, and so I post it here for 'everyone' to enjoy:


The problem here is that we are proceeding from a radically different point of view. I could see how, if you do not believe in anything beyond this life, sacrificing yourself for another human being may seem like a flaw rather than a virtue. We Christians, however, follow a God who chose to sacrifice His only Son so that we could have life and have it to the full. Our God is based, not on temporal pleasure, but on love... and that love includes temporal sacrifice for eternal pleasure. Therefore a woman carrying her baby to term, even to give it up for adoption and never see it again, is virtuous.

We also are mostly pro-life... that means that we believe that a human life is created at the moment of conception, a human life as worthy of respect as any human baby, toddler, child, teen, adult, or elder. We do not determine whether a human being deserves basic human rights based on his of her size, age, race, gender, or contributions to society. It follows naturally that we believe that abortion puts to death a human being. That doesn't mean that abortion is Always Evil. Just that its benefits must be stacked up against the detriment of causing the death of a human being.

Given that, I know that from your viewpoint you would never have meant to say this... but your statement did sound as if you will proudly murder someone whether it's against the law or not, because you want to, and you should not be punished for murder because you're a woman - and this is what feminism means. Coming from our viewpoint, I'm sure you can see why feminism seems far more cruel to us than it does to those who do not believe in according basic human rights under the same situation.

Finally, we are not feminists. Rather than trying to claim that women and men are equal in physical form and meant to take identical roles in biology and society, we merely believe that women and men are to be treated equally under the law and are equally capable of petitioning God, with roles in society and biology that are very different, but equal in importance and honor. Therefore, we are very aware of a woman's role in nurturing life and giving of herself to join as partners with God Himself in bringing that life to an eventual state of autonomy. Women are tied strongly to Life in this way... it's no wonder that women have so often been the peacemakers in a society. The women of Sabine and Liberia both created peace and prosperity by joining up, confronting their men, and demanding a cease of hostilities.

As such, Life is our privilege and our business, and carrying a child to term, even an unexpected one, even a child of rape, is bestowing our gift upon the world. It is our privilege to turn something terrible into a blessing. In this way, even outside of our Christian view of sacrifice, giving life and love where there was none is, again, virtuous.

Even so, many of us *are* in favor of a rape exemption for an abortion ban. But we personally would choose life and encourage other women to do the same

The Sin Lists

So yet another angry group of people have decided to "refute the Bible" by printing a huge list of supposed "sins" according to the Bible in an attempt to make God look like an unreasonable idiot who doesn't deserve to be even thought about, much less followed. Unfortunately, they have outright distorted and sometimes lied about what Scripture says, so I have chosen to take their list of "sins" and explain what it's all about.

- Eating shellfish - This is one of the Old Testament rules on what creatures are and are not good to eat. However, there is no punishment listed for not holding to these rules, and they were arguably abolished in the New Testament with Peter's dream, in which God offered him "unclean" animals to eat and told him that they were now clean. I'd like to add, though, for the sake of completeness, that the animals labeled "unclean" in the OT are now known to carry an increased risk of food-borne illnesses.

- Wearing clothes made of more than one fabric - Again, this is a cultural requirement only. It has no punishment listed, and it is not labeled explicitly as "detestable" or an "abomination".

- Getting raped (this only goes for the ladies, but you can smooth things over by marrying your rapist, so…) - This one is an outright lie. The verse says that if a man *seduces* and lies with a virgin, that he can make it right by marrying her, unless her father refuses the marriage. In that case, he has to pay her three years' wages on the middle-class level. These days the payment would be approximately $180,000. Of course, seduction is not rape.

In fact, if a married woman has had sex with a man outside of the city, it is assumed that she was raped and so she merits no penalty whatsoever. The man, however, is put to death. There is no actual Biblical law regarding the punishment for rape.

However, we must remember that the Old Testament Law was a restraint, not the be-all and end-all of the country's laws. In a time when killing someone carried the punishment of your death and the death of all your friends and family, for instance, the OT law limits the punishment to the murderer. So to see what God's society did for rape, we have to look at the actual documented incidences of it. In every situation in which rape occurs, either the perpetrators were killed (sometimes very painfully) or the Bible makes it clear that their lack of punishment is in itself abhorrent. God does not treat rapists gently.

- Trimming your beard or sideburns - Cultural requirement only. It has no punishment listed, and it is not labeled explicitly as "detestable" or an "abomination".

- Getting remarried - Not according to the Old Testament, and in the New Testament it is only listed as a sin if your previous marriage was dissolved by what would now be called a "no-fault divorce".

- Planting more than one crop in a field - Cultural requirement only. It has no punishment listed, and it is not labeled explicitly as "detestable" or an "abomination".

- Having a wet dream - The term "unclean" is often misunderstood by non-Jews and non-Christians. Both Judaism and Christianity recognizes that we frequently fall short of the goal of utter righteousness. In other schools of religious thought, such as Secular Humanism, proving your own righteousness is very important. In Judaism and Christianity, it is not.

Anyways... back to uncleanliness. It is understood by Jews and Christians to be an inevitability rather than something to be avoided and feared at all costs. In addition, not all uncleanliness in the OT was a result of sin. Many times, it was a simple protection in the society. Any emission of semen made the man "unclean until evening", which was really a pretty lightweight requirement. Interestingly, the people who laugh at the Bible for requiring a man to wash his clothes after discharging semen all over himself are silent when it comes to the rules regarding diagnosis and treatment of mildew and mold in homes and clothing.

- Eating rare meat - Only meat that is rare enough to actively bleed. This had two uses. The first was hygenic... even today, we recognize that there are enough blood-borne illnesses to make drinking it a risky proposition. Secondly, the Old Testament is meant to teach humankind the importance of shed blood for forgiveness of sins, because that's the method Jesus had to use. For that reason, blood is especially sacred.

- Touching a dead animal - Cleanliness issue. The person has to wash and is "unclean until evening", meaning basically a temporary quarantine. He couldn't stick his hands inside an animal that died out in the field (this didn't refer to butchering your meat, by the way) and then proceed to knead bread for supper. Remember that the high death rate in childbirth a few centuries ago came from doctors who did not wash their hands when going from the morgue to the delivery room.

- Menstruating and/or earning your “red wings” - Issue of cleanliness, as with the semen, with an extra ritual required due to the blood, as described in the "rare meat" section. I'd like to add that the punishment for sex during menstruation was exile, not death.

- Getting a tattoo - Do not cut yourself or make marks on yourself for the dead. Whether this applies to all tattoos or just putting a permanent representation of your dead relatives on your skin is up for debate. It's also worth noting that people back then used to slash themselves with knives (and sometimes kill their own children) because they believed that their gods would not listen to them unless they suffered enough. God did not want His people developing that mindset about Him.

Hope this helps the next time someone starts spouting laws that they don't understand.

Christianity in General

Reading other people's thoughts (not just the commenter on my post, but others as well) on Obama's Christianity leads me to decide that I should have a post that clearly defines what I do and don't view as being Christian.

I'm pretty inclusive and exclusive at the same time. I do believe that every denomination except for the very fringe has Christians in it. Sometimes you have Protestants who believe that Catholics are not Christian, or Catholics who believe the same of Protestants. I do not make that distinction. You can be a recognized member of the Catholic church, or any other denomination, or none, and that may or may not mean that you are an actual Christian.

What I define as Christian is what some call 'born-again', though I don't like that terminology because I don't believe that you have to be able to look back at a specific time when you Made Your Decision For Christ. I don't believe that you have to read off a Sinner's Prayer script. I don't believe that you have to have spoken in tongues.

However, a Christian has come to a knowledge of his own sin and his need for Christ's sacrifice on the cross in order to pay for that sin. Furthermore, as a follower of Christ, this Christian can be seen to change for the better over time, becoming more like what God would have him to be. Christianity starts where most religions end. Most religions end with the success or failure to obtain eternity/paradise. Christianity deals with what happens once you've acquired it.

Christianity necessitates growth. Whether you attend a "high" church or a "low" church, whether you have an altar or a podium, statues everywhere or no decoration, whether your Communion has real wine or grape juice, a real Christian will be changing every day. He will be becoming less selfish, more compassionate, wiser with his words, and stronger in God's truth. The process may be slow at times and fast at others. God may be leaving some faults until later, or even strengthening weaknesses that are not visible to others' observations. Still, over all, over time, you will see a certain humility and honesty in the behavior of the committed Christian.

Simply attending a church doesn't make you a Christian. Even being able to spout out the theology of a particular denomination doesn't make you a Christian. I know atheists and self-described witches who have more theological knowledge than the average Christian. What makes you a Christian is living it, having accepted Jesus's gift on the cross and been declared righteous in God's eyes. What makes you a Christian is having your name written in the Book of Life.

Obama's Christianity

When I re-started posting regularly in this blog about a week or so ago, I hinted at an answer I was writing in a forum, where I feared condemnation for my bold way of saying things. I'd like to address that answer and that issue today. It is the issue of Obama's religion.

I enjoy reading the articles written by a Canadian conservative columnist, David Warren, and part of today's article, perhaps, says it all:

U.S. President Barack Obama is reported to be attending church again, and shows a "fresh start," by persistently misquoting from the Book of Genesis, chapter four. "I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper," he suggests it says. Check out the original. It is a scene in which no sisters appear, and the brothers in question are Cain and Abel. In particular, the intellectual leap from "you must not murder your brother," to "you must create and sustain a vast and ponderous welfare system, that is funded by taxing him and borrowing the rest from China," is not Biblical.

Obama claims to be a Christian. He attends church (sometimes). He reportedly reads his Bible every day. Isn't that enough to prove your Christianity? It may be enough to prove that you are an adherent of most religions, to attend service and read the holy book. Christianity, however, is so much more than what you do. Christianity is what you are. You don't become a Christian just by reading a book and attending a service. You become a Christian by repenting of your sin and following God, taking His worldview as your own, and disregarding all others. A maturing Christian changes over time. Humility replaces pride. Self-sacrifice replaces selfishness. Honesty and sincerity rule your speech and mannerisms. You strive for a higher goal, and the ends can no longer justify the means.

Now I do not have the authority to judge who is going to Heaven and who is not. I cannot tell you if Obama's name is written in the Book of Life. Ultimately, that is not my decision. Many Christians are aware of this, and many will not even say what I am going to say, because they are afraid of being labeled as 'judgmental' which, like 'tolerance', is a neutral quality that has been redefined to carry a decided connotation.

However, many parts of the New Testament make it clear that we Christians of the New Covenant have a bound duty to judge on Earth. Being mindful that we were once all of the terrible sinners who are now coming to repentance, we are only to judge those who are "inside" (claim to be Christian) and only upon a decided lack of fruit from their supposed adherence to the Church. Specifically, if one is engaging repeatedly and unrepentantly in sin, we are told to speak to him alone, then take a friend, then bring it to the deacons and elders, with excommunication as the final and most severe of punishments.

We were given this power in order to ensure that the insincere were excommunicated before they sullied the entire religion, before Christianity could mean nothing, before our detractors could claim that Christians were no more likely than anyone else to avoid cheating, stealing, divorce, sexual immorality, etc. In that, the Church in the United States has, in many denominations, failed.

Supposedly, Obama has attended a Christian church for many years. However, I say now and boldly that a preacher who says "God d**n America", who puts racial politics before the blood of Christ, is no Christian preacher and his sermon is not that of a Christian church. As for Obama himself, he has consistently made decisions and given speeches that strongly push the tenets of Secular Humanism while giving lip service to Christianity. If this is some front for his real, true, Christian self, then he will have to face God for what he's done... and his fate will be lighter than if he is indeed pretending to be a Christian while living in pride, selfishness, and greed. In the end we will know his fate, and I hope it will not be what it seems to be right now.

I have heard some people bitterly announce that conservatives believe that liberals themselves are unable to be Christians, and the reason why we doubt Obama's Christianity is merely because he is a Democrat president. Let me lay that to rest right now with a personal story. One woman from my church, a friend of my mother's, is very liberal. She honestly believes that Obama is the best thing to ever happen to this country. She thinks W Bush is a crook and a villain. But you know why? She honestly thinks that liberalism is the best way to feed the hungry and help  the poor. She isn't out for some class retribution, and she couldn't care less about racial politics.

She and her husband are out there, in the city, bringing poverty-family children to Sunday School, helping their families get the food and services they need. She and her husband are out there in the January night, freezing cold, in the dangerous parts of town, with  no paparazzi, no teleprompter, no reporters, no cameras, no recognition... giving donated coats to street prostitutes.

I don't care if she's a liberal. I don't care if she's a card-carrying Communist. I'm proud to count her as a Christian, and I'll see her in Heaven.


Obama, on the other hand... May I be wrong. I do not want to see him burn for eternity. I honestly and sincerely do not, regardless of what his misguided policies are doing to my family and my country. However, unless he shows some signs of change, personally, regardless of his politics, I cannot in good conscience claim him as a fellow Christian.

Being Bold

I watched The Dark Knight on our new Blu-Ray player tonight. The player was a Christmas gift to the entire household, and it is gorgeous. I loved the visuals and the sound. I do believe that it is an excellent movie, though not for children... it is rated PG-13, but it really should have been rated PG-15.

During one part of the movie, Joker has threatened to kill people each night until Batman gives up his identity and turns himself in. At a press conference, Harvey Dent tries to convince the people of Gotham that they don't really want to insist on this. He tells them that Batman will have to answer to his vigilante behavior, but he must answer to the people of Gotham, not to a madman. He must answer in their own timeline, not under threat by a terrorist.

After the movie, I settled down to check my emails and forum posts, and found myself typing a comprehensive response to the question of whether a certain political figure was a Christian. As I explained how Christianity was more than just attending church, how a Christian over time sees humility replace pride and self-sacrifice replace selfishness, I was already catching myself cringing over my own words. "I am not fit to sit on the judgment throne, but we were given this power on Earth, judgment and excommunication, in order to prevent the insincere from making God's power seem meaningless." (Those were not my exact words, but it was the gist of what I was saying.) Even as I typed, though, I caught myself cringing. My debate opponent was definitely going to accuse me of pride, I thought, and thereby argue that I am not a real Christian if this political figure is not.

Then I remembered the movie, and from that I have this message to give to Christians at the close of the year.

Those who are working against Christianity have been steadily redefining words and changing labels. This is not only a Christian-Humanist thing, but a liberal-conservative one as well. You redefine compassion and accuse your opponent of having none, so that he supports socialist programs in order to appear to the people to have compassion. You redefine pride, so that  you can keep your opponent from speaking out boldly for fear that people think he is prideful and thus a hypocrite. If you can accuse him of hypocrisy, you have won the debate, even if the facts are on his side.

Now, I am not the kind of 'bold' Christian who says anything on my mind without softening, without thought. Some people are eager, for instance, to walk up to anyone on the street who appears to adopt a homosexual identity and declare that this person is going straight to Hell. I do not. However, others try very hard to act accepting, to hold their tongue when they should speak honestly and carefully, because they do not want to be seen as intolerant. They fear that society can no longer tell the difference between integrity and pride, between humility and hypocrisy. They fear being seen as prideful and hypocritical if they act in simple, honest, genuine boldness.

Speak and be bold. Let God alone tie your hand or still your speech. Be plain and honest in your dealings. Speak the truth, not with anger or harshness, but with love. When you do keep silent, when you do cushion your words, when you do choose your battles and decide that a certain time is not the time to fight, do it for love and concern for the other person. Do not do it out of fear for your own reputation.

Show true humility. It is pride that makes you want to appear to fit the new definition of humble. Avoid hypocrisy. Do not fear being labeled as a hypocrite. This generation is inundated by definitions and ideas which are as shallow and weak as artificial flavoring in an artificial meal. You can satisfy yourself with it unless you are exposed to the real thing. People will know, deep inside, when they see the real thing. The charges of hypocrisy, or pride, or ruthlessness, will not stick if you hold to the truth of humility, strength, and honesty. You do not need to meet their definitions out of fear.

Even someone who has heard only their side for an entire lifetime will know what's real when they see it. Christians must be bold in God, humble in God, honest in God, and compassionate in God... and properly represent the truth.

Response to Feminism

I was pointed to a link this morning on a definition of feminism. It sought to strip away the history of the feminist movement and present the concept fresh, with nothing clinging to it. I read through it, and I discovered the problem, the snag, the reason why I still cannot call myself a 'feminist' despite its attempt to stick to a single core concept that the author no doubt hoped I could support.

Here is the link: http://tomatonation.com/culture-and-criticism/yes-you-are/
I will be quoting from it and responding as a member of the group Ladies Against Feminism, who seek to live by, in the words of the main site, a "strong, intelligent, biblical view of womanhood."

It starts with a definition.

feminism n (1895) 1 : the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes 2 : organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests — feminist n or adj — feministic adj

  This is how far I got before I spotted the first problem. Can you spot it? No doubt, legal equality of the sexes is a good and proper thing. God Himself set this up in Ancient Israel, in which women had equal status with men in criminal and property law. A woman's testimony was as good as a man's. When this was perverted in exile, Jesus restored it to our attention by having His resurrection first viewed by two women instead of two men. They satisfied the legal requirement for two witnesses.

However, this definition doesn't even mention legality. It mentions politics, economics, and society. Politics is a touchy subject. At one time, the vote was held by male property owners. This wasn't for the purpose of disenfranchising women. After all, the grown sons still living in their father's household could not vote, and the wife cast the vote in her husband's absence. This was a means by which the vote was given only to taxpayers. Remember that this was before the income tax. That being said, I think I can tentatively agree with political equality of the sexes. If a male in a certain situation can vote, a female in an identical situation can vote.

Economic equality is a different matter entirely. It assumes separation where there should be cooperation. With the breadwinner/homemaker model, the man earns and his wife saves. Before the Industrial Age, the husband and wife worked together on a farm or at a business, and it did not matter if one "earned more than the other" because the money all went to the same place. Of course, now that the man might work for one employer while the women works for another, "equality in economics" ignores the simple and wonderful fact that women bear and nourish children with their own bodies. This interruption in a career will result in economic inequality of outcomes if it is approached with equal opportunity or, if you wish to have equal outcomes, requires unequal opportunity. The only way to provide equality on both ends is to neutralize the woman's ability and desire to bear children. I cannot agree with this.

Social equality has problems of its own. As mentioned above, women bear and nurse children. They have different standards of physical modesty, different allowances made in pregnancy and breastfeeding, and are properly treated differently in a respectful society simply by being female. Of course, I acknowledge that I share with the feminists a desire to prevent situations in which a woman is assumed to be less intelligent or less capable for being female. But I would not like to see her treated no differently than a man in society.

This brings me to another problem, which could merit a post of its own. One of the people responding to the link in hopes of helping us to understand feminism said the following:

Feminism is not about "being men" - it is about refuting the concept that men are "default humans".

 What, pray tell, is a "default human" and should we be striving for it? This is another problem with feminism. They appear to be making women like men and men like women because they are striving to create in one person an entity that represents the best of masculine and feminine, usually by stripping out the defining traits of both. This is the "default human". This I reject. Man is delightfully male, better than the "default human", complementary with the female, with strengths inherent in his masculinity. Woman is delightfully female, better than the "default human", complementary with the male, with strengths inherent in her femininity. The wonder of biblical womanhood is that it acknowledges not the "default human" but the "complete human", a man and a woman pair-bonded for life, bringing the fullness and richness of both sides to the table. This ties into the other part of the article that gave me trouble.

See, once the article is done with the definition, it spends most of its time defining what feminism is not. It isn't the clothes you wear, or the job you do, etc. This makes some sense, because this definition of feminism is meant to strip out what makes people male or female, and clothing is part of what distinguishes male from female. The bodies are different. Even a woman's jeans are different from a man's jeans in form, jutting out in some areas and not others. But that's beside the point. Here it is:

The definition of feminism does not judge your lifestyle. You like girls, you like boys, doesn't matter.

It has nothing to do with your sexual preference or your sense of humor or your fashion sense...

Ah, but that is the point. That which makes you female echoes through every single cell in your body, and informs everything you do in one way or another. Since I am a "Lady Against Feminism", I guard my sense of humor and do not indulge in jokes that tear down men. I seek modesty and attractiveness in my fashion. True, I can pull this off in jeans or dresses, but even when I dress in jeans and a t-shirt I am still doing so in a feminine manner. This is still off the heart of it, though, so let me say it right out.

The definition of feminism does not judge your lifestyle. You like girls, you like boys, doesn't matter.

They are not talking about the friends you make. They are talking about sexual preference. This is perhaps the largest example by which we can understand feminism and the desire to make us non-gendered beings. It doesn't matter. You 'like' girls, you 'like' boys, it doesn't matter. However, biblical femininity cannot work that way. This is not out of some 'hatred' for homosexuals. This is not even a matter of disapproving of the homosexual lifestyle. This is simply how femininity and masculinity works. When you see each person as richly male or richly female, you cannot pretend that pair-bonding two richly-female or richly-male people can result in that "complete human" which we seek. (May I add something here? When feminists scoff at us for seeking a man to make us complete, they are doing exactly what they claim to abhor, considering the male to be the "default human". We understand that our men also seek us to make them complete, and therein lies equality.)

In short, I must reject this "Yes You Are" philosophy of feminism, even shorn of its history and more radical statements. I can advocate equal rights under the law in a constitutionally-limited government. I cannot advocate that the childbearers of society be treated exactly the same as the non-bearers in matters of economics and sociology in which they are meant to be complementary. Likewise, I cannot advocate the "default human" stripped of a sexual identity. My choice is that of the richly masculine and richly feminine, pair-bonding to become the "complete human". I simply believe that it is a better solution.

The Name of Jesus

Indiana Jones, facing a minefield-trap with marked stones: The name of God.... Jehovah.

Henry Jones: But in the Latin, 'Jehovah' starts with an 'I'...

Indiana Jones: J... (takes a step and almost dies)

In one of the forums which I frequent, there was recently a discussion about a Christian Mythology claim brought forth by one of the members. The claim is that Jesus spent His early adulthood traveling to India to learn Buddhism from the monks. This is cited for the similarities between Jesus's morality and that of Buddhism, which entreats you to do revolutionary acts like caring for the poor and treating people decently.

Of course, there are numerous problems with the claim, among them the fact that it is very difficult to shoehorn Joseph of Arimethea into his proper role within the myth as secret favorite uncle (or great-uncle?) to Jesus. The problem that taught me the most, however, is the scroll that supposedly proves that someone of Jesus's description learned at the temples at around the time of His lifespan. This person carries the Arab/Indian name "Issa".

I thought I had seen that name before, and I was correct. "Isa" is widely and incorrectly cited as the "Arab name for Jesus." It is, in fact, the Muslim name for Jesus. Arab Christians call Him "Yasu".

Now some people might ask why that makes any difference at all. What is the importance of what Arab Christians call Jesus? We don't even have His name perfectly translated from the Aramaic. Jesus comes from the Latin "Iesus", which comes from the Arabic "Yesua/Yeshua", which is a diminutive of the Hebrew "Joshua/Jehoshua".

Ah, but there's the problem. "Yasu" translates nicely to "Yesua", and the Arab Christians have a very close form of Jesus's earthly name. "Isa/Issa", however, correlates far more strongly to another Hebrew name: "Isaac/Isaiah". (Some scholars say that "Isa" may be closer to "Esau".)

To veer into the realm of pure conjecture, I would like to ask this: Why do Muslims refer to Jesus as if His name was Isaac or Isaiah? There is, of course, the obvious conclusion: Muslims would say that Mohammed was correcting problems in the New Testament, while Christians and Jews would say that Mohammed was working off a flawed memory of old Biblical lessons, citing that earlier Muslim scholars were quite certain from his wording that Isaac and Jacob were both meant to be sons of Abraham. For the scroll from India, I would submit that the fact that it was not Jesus's name suggests that another man, either an Arab named Isa/Issa or a Hebrew named Isaac, Isaiah, or Esau once traveled up to India and learned from the monks there.

I like to look into both the physical and spiritual world when making conjecture, and I wonder sometimes if there is something preventing or, at least, discouraging certain types of heresies from comfortably using Jesus's name correctly when assigning Him to their belief systems. Why would I think that? Well, in the face of overwhelming evidence of Jacob's parentage, modern Islamic scholars have changed their minds from earlier times and now lay out the same Abraham-Isaac-Jacob line as the Jews and Christians. Nothing, however, seems capable of turning them from referring to Jesus as "Isa", even though I have known Christians to choose readily and without censure to refer to Jesus as "Yeshua".

Lack of Hatred

I can't believe it took me this long to realize this. I must be going senile. Perhaps I can blame this 'failing' on my pregnancy. Then again, as I haven't specifically seen anyone else writing about it, perhaps we have all simply fallen into a certain level of taking things for granted.

This morning I was getting ready for the day while talking to my husband, who was also getting ready for his day, and it occurred to me to wonder about the community response to President Obama rescinding the Mexico City Policy. This policy, for those of you either hiding under a rock or not involved in the abortion debate, prevented the U.S. from funding abortions overseas. This is a definite blow for those on the pro-life side, and so controversial among many Christian and/or conservative groups that he even signed it secretly and off-camera.

So I sat down to chat with a friend of mine. "Hey, you hear more from the mainstream media than I do," I typed. "Over this past week, have there been an upswing of stories about pro-life violence against pro-choice groups/people/abortion clinics/abortion doctors? White powder sent to clinics, people trying to enter a clinic being knocked down and beaten, things like that?"

"Not that I've heard of," he answered.

I told him that it was interesting, but also what I'd expected to hear. He wanted to know why, and I pointed out that the Mexico City Policy had been rescinded a few days ago. "So?" he responded.

"That's the second interesting thing I noticed," I typed.

See, when the gay activists don't get their way, they go on a rampage. They threaten, they cause violence, and they not only boycott places, but they prevent other patrons from entering. Interestingly, nobody's surprised when they react this way, and I have heard more than once the phrase "I can understand their anger." However, when pro-lifers don't get their way, nobody goes on a rampage, and nobody is surprised.

The same thing happens when Christians are marginalized in the media. When Muslims are marginalized, the protests invariably start. Places are set on fire, people are injured or killed, guns fired, knives used... it's not a pretty picture. Parts of Europe refuse to even criticize Islam anymore for fear of seeing death and destruction. However, people are allowed to speak downright blasphemously about Christianity without fear, because Christians do not respond with violence, and nobody wonders why.

In many cases, groups that used to claim their way as the peaceful solution are bullying their way into society merely by making people afraid of the violence that they'll visit upon us if they are not given their way. Meanwhile, the groups marginalized in society as mean and violent and evil are simply remaining civil... and what's more, nobody's surprised by it!

A Christian celebrating Christmas

Every year I hear the same debate, an old debate about whether or not Christians should celebrate Christmas. Personally, I know what I do, and I don't mind what others do. I see it as something that each person should be able to approach to their own conscience. The issue is not a limiting issue to me. Those who celebrate Christmas in all it's religious and secular glory, those who stick to the religious only, and those who bypass it altogether as a 'pagan festival' may all be perfectly good Christians, and I don't have a problem with any of those choices. However, I would like to address a certain argument against Christmas (and Easter) and offer my take on it.

Though there are people who have decided calmly in their own mind and conscience to avoid Christmas and Easter, there are others who end up confused by one main argument: the pagan/secular additions. If someone decides to not celebrate Christmas because he does not feel comfortable about honoring Jesus's birthday on a day that likely isn't His birthday, so much the better for him. However, sometimes their zeal in spreading their opinions leave Christians in-between, unwilling to abandon their traditions, but now viewing them with an unnecessary measure of guilt. I do not believe that God intended us to feel terrible about treating each other with charity and love because some elements of Santa Claus's history included a conglomerate of pagan beliefs. For this reason, I would like to give you something to consider as you ask yourself whether it's sinful to put candy canes on your tree or exchange gifts.

Everything that God made is inherently good. Those of you who want to talk of original sin, please hold on for a moment and give me time here. Everything God made is inherently and originally good. Anything that Satan uses has to be twisted to be made evil. Food is not sinful, but gluttony is. Sex is not sinful, but it can be misused to terrible effect.

The key here is 'originally and inherently'. Satan poisoned everything just a little bit, even us. I like the way C.S. Lewis put it in the book Screwtape Letters, in which a demon argued that God claims ownership of all under the claim that He created it, while Satan seeks to claim all under the banner of conquest. We all know that there is a spiritual war between the forces of God and Satan, and we all know the eventual outcome.

Now consider what happens during a war. One side advances, and captures an enemy fort. What do they do? If the fort is rotted, if the food is utterly poisoned, if the place is booby-trapped, they will probably raze it to the ground. However, most of the time this is not the case. The food is just as good, the fort nearly as strong, and they run up their own flag and begin to repair the fortifications.

Jesus has made it clear that we are made of good things, once enemy fortifications, now with God's flag run up and the original usefulness turned once again to good. I would submit that the same is true for Christmas. Sure, there are many people who fall into materialism and spend the holiday buying things they can't afford for people they hate, but God's flag has been run up in Christmas Cantatas. Christmas and Easter are often the only times that the non-devout attend church. That's an opportunity to run up God's flag. There is a lot of love and generosity among good people that peaks around Christmastime. When I hear of over 500 people making a commitment for Christ at the Word of Life Florida Christmas show, I see God's flag fluttering over the fortification that once involved nature goddesses and ancient superstition. I could not call that an evil thing.

So what is my advice, in the end? If the 'pagan elements' trouble you such that you prefer to not partake with a clear conscience and without the burden of guilt, by all means, do as you see best! But if you have heard over and over about the evils of this holiday, but you still love to honor God through your traditions during this time, do so without guilt! You are flying God's flag on an enemy fortification that was originally built by God.

Jesus doesn't mind you giving presents to each other on His birthday, even if you get the date wrong. Candy canes aren't going to send you to hell if they remind you (and you tell your children) of the shepherds who came to see that extraordinary baby. And whether it be turkey, ham, or steak, it's an awfully good meal, isn't it?

Christianity and Tolerance

I'd like to notice something here. With the exception of fearful sheep who claim to follow Christ because they either hold a church membership (all too easy these days) or those who are trying to prove themselves obsessively through a cult mentality, Christians on the whole tend to be more tolerant of other religions than anyone, especially secular humanists. There are a couple of reasons for this, and I'd like to set them out while I'm thinking of them.

Christianity is based on love of all people, regardless of their looks, religions, jobs, and sin. When you truly love as God loves, or rather as much as you are able given your flawed human form, you will not despise members of another religion. You may feel sorry for them, and you will likely wish you could, as Jesus said, gather them under His wings like a mother hen protects and warms her young, but you won't despise them. You won't want to kill them. You won't consider this world a better place without them.

(This doesn't have to make everyone total pacifists. It is terrible but true that in this fallen world one man may have to be killed to protect others. The instructions given to soldiers was not to lay down their arms, but to be content with their salary and not oppress the people they protect.)

There are some people I term 'hyper-Christians' who have their hearts in the right place, but irk those who hate them by focusing so thoroughly on this love that they badger people continuously in hopes of saving any of them, for honestly no other reason than that they would not have anybody fall to destruction. They are different than the 'gotta-catch-them-all' Christians who do so as some kind of sick attempt at a spiritual 500-Saved-Club. God doesn't work with numbers that way, and that leads me to another reason why Christians tend to be tolerant.

Christianity is a matter of devoting your whole self, body, soul, and mind, to God. Nothing less will do, and nothing more is required. Unlike religions where all you have to do is say a phrase and complete the appropriate rituals, or learn your sayings and 'mean it', there is no way to be a lukewarm but genuine Christian. Those who don't care much will fall away, and those who do care will end up in the right direction. Therefore, despite what happens when Christianity (or any religion) meets Power-Hungry, you cannot force conversion and have it stick. Conversion must be not only self-initiated, but anyone pushed into it or led by the nose will invariably end up as rocky or weedy soil. (Those of you who don't know what that means, there's a parable, ask and I'll tell it.)

Christians have a strong base on which to stand when they stand on their faith. Most people who get confused about it are easily confused by shallow tricks (like the old 'how can a loving God disapprove of homosexual acts' etc.) that are easily defeated with an honest understanding of the Bible, rather than an attempt to crowbar it apart. The accuracy of the Bible and support for it's claims surpass the proofs of many historical events that children are taught in school. I could go on, but I don't mean to get into all the proofs here... search them out for yourself. My point is that Christians don't have to shut their ears to any information about any other religion for fear that, as the Nip and Tuck webcomic put it so nicely, their 'worldview will throw a piston rod'. The point of many other groups, particularly gay rights and abortion rights groups, is not only to deliver their message but to silence opposition due to this fear.

These are the three attributes of tolerance from Christians: A sturdy base of faith, a true love for those not of their religion, and an understanding that faith in God must be real and never forced.

From that comes an unprecedented tolerance for those of other beliefs that surpasses the majority of other religions, including Islam, which is beat out for last place in the tolerance game by Secular Humanism because even the most extremist Muslim-led country will allow other religion adherents as second-class citizens.

I continue to study the Quran out of curiosity, unafraid that I may risk eternal damnation by finding something that makes more sense than what I already believe, or that I may find my own religion to be faded and threadbare in comparison. I haven't thrown a piston rod yet, and from what I've read so far, I seriously doubt that I will!

I do plan to do more on that series.. it is not over. For the time being I have been doing spring cleaning, homeschooling, gardening, and basically managing the household, a job that has rather overtaken my free time for a while.