Shared thoughts

We were warned.

2011-12-04T19:57:00.000-08:00

The Australian Labor Party, which is in government in Australia at present, has just changed its policy on same-sex marriage. It now supports it. Soon there will be a vote in the Australian Federal Parliament on whether or not to legalizes it.
This has been a controversy for a while now, with some states in other Western countries legalizing it, some nations in Europe recognizing same-sex marriage. Much of the opposition to the idea has come from members of the monotheistic faiths, Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Whatever their disagreements about other things, they concur on this: homosexuality is not just an individual variation like left or right handednes. It offends God.
Some practitioners of the faiths, calling themselves 'progressive', support homosexual marriage. All the arguments about minorities' rights, equality at law, love being the most important thing, have been voiced in support of homosexual rights. It raises the point here: God does not change to suit human fashion, God's Word does not alter to suit changing social views. God's Word in eternal and unchanging, and that is the reliability of it. We can know it now and always. If people believe that saying "This is the Twenty First Century" proves that everything has changed, they might learn the hard way that "there is nothing new under the sun." The Bible warns, and some secular history shows, that societies can become too self-satisfied with their own power and sophistication, become corrupt and implode from their own rottenness.
We might find that turning from God's Word does not usher in a new dawn of human well-being and joy. We have turned from God, scorned His guidance and sovereignty, and His blessing will pass from us. It would be shocking to see, but just as so many great empires and civilizations have fallen before, the modern world as we know it may collapse because human arrogance and blindness has become a trap for us and we led ourselves right into it. We thought we knew more than we did, and found out how little we knew. There may be a cataclysm into which we fall, or we may simply see a turning of the tide and a return to more Godly living, after some bitter lessons. That has happened before. Only God knows what He will do. One Christian friend remarked that she thinks this society is under judgement now.
Come again, Lord Jesus.

Vindication

2011-09-06T15:46:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the world has to admit that God knows what He's talking about when He gives guidance about how to live. I'll bet they hate it, too: the Christians being proved right. But it's happened again. Yesterday in Australia a major researcher, Professor of Law at Sydney University, announced that a decline in marriage is to blame for increasing neglect of, and suffering among, young people. One of the subtitles read: "Growing rates of abuse are rooted in the rise of one-parent families." In essence, the assertion is made that 'the well-being of Australian children and young people has declined alarmingly in the past decade, and plunging marriage rates are partly to blame.' I kept the article as a collectible. It's overdue news. Child abuse, neglect, self-harm including hospital admissions are caused by the increase in numbers of one-parent families, de facto couples. violent and unstable relationships and divorce. A critical number of young people have lived without both parents and/or been through family divorce by the time they're fifteen years old and it's hurting them. The researcher has national standing, and can't be dismissed by people who don't want to accept the findings. Patrick Parkinson calls for a review of government policies, to ensure marriage is not undermined - which I reckon it has been by the increasing economic and social pressure for both parents to work, and the general attituded that marriage in only a middle class convention rather than a thing that exists out of human need. The quote is made, "Governments cannot ignore the reality that two parents tend to provide better outcomes for children than one,and the most stable, safe and nurturing environment for childre is when their parents are, and remain, married to one another."
So who thought they could reinvent it all? Who were the social pioneers who thought women could and should be single parents, or same-sex couples could do the same thing as naturan heterosexual couples? Who thought divorce was perfectly okay,and families could exist in all sorts of patterns? I've heard the remark made that in Australia families get less government support than they do in some European nations. Political correctness and left-wing social pioneering attacked conventional marriage and tried to reinvent it all, and the result was hurt and damaged children and youth.
Of course marriage has to work, and for that to happen, people need to get away from the idea that their personal fulfillment comes first, they are the centre of their own universe. Have we lost the sense of living for others, and made life all about our own preferences? It takes a certain amount of unselfishness to make a relationship work, and people are busy complaining that life is not what they want. They aren't getting things their own way enough.Then because people can't get a relationship work on their own terms they end it, and insist they're doing nothing wrong.Jesus said, Whoever loves their life will lose it, but whoever gives their life up for His sake will find it. Life is best lived for others, not purely for oneself, and if you're going to have children accept that you can't have your own way all the time. I have had to remember that myself, as a parent of five, who had to make a conscious effort not to be selfish sometimes.
Returning to the point, God set things up to work a certain way. Man and Woman together make children and raise them together.
One single female parent I heard said she didn't want to share the parenting of children with a partner so she set out to be a single parent. Dare anyone call that selfish? We're supposed to applaud her for bravery, or something. But it turns out she's not clever, and we're seeing the results of that departure from God's way.
Come again, Lord Jesus.

What have you forgotten?

2011-08-11T07:01:00.002-07:00

The shocking events in England show what happens when a people forget their God. The riots, with burning and looting and now some deaths happen when people forget or do not know who they are and what they will answer for. True it may be that the rioters may be poor and desperate. But there are ways of dealing with that apart from engaging in spite and cruelty.
It's not only the rioters and trouble makers themselves. Britain's people have been set a shocking example by some of their leaders. The gap between wealthiest and poorest is partly a measure of who will work and who will not, but partly a result of greed. Failed bankers still got their huge bonuses. Those who can gain do so by any means they can, including dishonest use of parliamentary entitlements. Greed and self aggrandisment drive the accumulation of massive riches, and some of the rich would deny those below them all they can. So those in power, some not all, are seeing what happens when they don't care about others, and they insult God by thinking themselves allowed to show such contempt for other of His human creatures. But to blame them only is too easy. The communist explanation that poverty is the sole cause shows disrespect for the people rioting and looting. It implies that they can't take any responsibility for their actions. Some of the victims of those riots are claiming of the young hoods, "They've got no respect". And that's been said for years. People who do not know God are not reminded of their duty to treat other people properly. They lack respect for themselves, but they lack respect for others also. If they turned to Him, He would do what His perfect wisdom knows could be done to alleviate the wretchedness of life. But they would scorn such things. So who are these people who sought to drive Christianity out of schools and public life? Who are they who cut off the thing the human spirit most needs? Who said humans do not need God, their own wisdom and goodness are enough? How do they explain how a society without Christian influence falls apart like that?
Jesus said of them, If they stand between anyone and knowledge of God, it would be better if they had a huge stone tied around their neck and were thrown into the sea.
I'm praying for Britain, the lands of most of my forebears, that she will undergo a revival, a huge coming back to Jesus Christ. I can't listen to social commentators and politicians claiming they have the answer in their own paltry human wisdom. God be with you, Britain and all your peoples.

What have you forgotten?

2011-08-11T07:01:00.001-07:00

You can't reinvent it.

2011-07-23T03:17:00.000-07:00

Some time ago we heard about a couple in Canada who have a new baby and they are NOT announcing which sex the baby was born. The theory is, the child will choose their own identity, and decide for themselves which gender they are. Supposedly, we aren't born a particular sex, we're socialized into it, and to be free to decide who we are we should not be treated according to a gender type.
It sounds 'try-hard' to me.
Just for one thing, people have the physical characterisics of one gender or the other. We don't have either ovaries or testes because of the way we're raised, we're born with them.
Still, some people insist, we only learn to act "male" or "female" because we're treasted like one or the other.
That theory was discredited by the case in which Dr John Money surgically reconstructed a boy as a girl, thinking he would just grow up feeling like one. But he did not, and eventually had to be surgically reconstructed over again, as a boy.
If someone knows I'm wrong, please tell me. But I thought behaviour was in part influenced by hormones, and hormones depend on which gender we are cast from conception, whether we're XX or XY. In other words, we are set to be one or the other right from birth. So it is not an environmental thing, it is inborn.
This is the same mistake the marxists made, thinking they could reinvent human nature.
Tell me if I'm wrong. But I recall the Word of God saying, "male and female He made them" and we are meant to be one or the other from birth, society doesn't make us into it. God intends us to be.
We need to stop trying to reinvent what God has made, because we only make a bigger and bigger mess. God's design is sacred, human intelligence can't even properly understand it. Humans can't make other humans, they can only carry out the process of fertilization and gestation that God set up. We are getting above ourselves thinking we know better and we can improve on it. Where will it end?

Think what you're saying.

2011-06-01T23:18:00.000-07:00

Watching a T.V. comedy the other night, I heard one of the characters say, "It's just sex!" I'm thinking, did you know what you just said? How about saying "It's just a tsunami!"
They don't seem to get it. Sex is how new people get brought into the world. People forget that and treat it like recreation, of no big consequence at all. But that is what cause new life and every time a new baby is born, history changes. They might never be famous, or recorded in history,or have a wide impact on others, but the human race has changed, because one more being created in the image of God has come into it; and sometimes things will be shaken up in a big way.
That could be good or bad. Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Jack the Ripper, whoever he was, each made a big impact - not a good one. Mother Theresa, Florence Nightingale, Abraham Lincoln and WIlliam Wilberforce each made a big impact - a very good one. And it started when two humans engaged in intimate contact and a new life was conceived. Hardly a small thing.
Jesus once said that you don't take the childrens' bread and throw it to the dogs. There is a certain respect due to certain things. The importance of them needs to be properly remembered and appreciated. You are changing history when you cause the birth of a child, whether the fact is widely remembered or not. The momentous life ever lived on Earth, interestingly, is an exception: Jesus Christ was born of a virgin woman and no human sexual contact was involved. People try and call that an unimportant detail, but it's actually a very important one. It shows the unique and miraculous nature of Jesus. Any other human being was born because of that contact between a a man and a woman, and we'd do well to think what we're doing.
Of course some people find ways of separating sex from birth. A married loving relationship may well involve physical intimacy without wanting to have a child every year, too, but who dares stop a life once started from running its intended course?
Think what you're saying, characters and scriptwriters. "Just sex" is like saying "Just an earthquake". Sex causes birth, and once a person is born the world has changed. It may be a huge blessing, too. That depends on whether or not it is given to God properly. Some people just don't know what they're messing with! We all need to think what we're saying.

Be safe. Be Still, and know that He is God.

2011-04-30T20:51:00.000-07:00

It's bad news about the tornadoes ripping through parts of the U.S. We've had some calamities in Australia too, with major floods, and a shocking flash flood that made an inland tsunami ripping down a mountain side through a valley and killing several people in the city of Toowoomba and more in villages down the range from it. It was the sort of thing no-one expected, and it took several lives. It is too easy to say this when I wasn't caught in it, but if someone askes "Where was God?" the answer might be "Right where He should be, and if you asked Him He will be with you. Did you ask?" I hope I'm never in the middle of a major bush fire, flood, wind storm, shipwreck or any of these things. They serve to remind us that we have not got the world under control. We have not made ourselves so powerful that we are immortal. It is still a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God. And once in a while we may see just how much at the mercy of the natural world we are. So we need to remember who to turn to. God help us all. And all of us remember God.

Something overlooked.

2011-04-23T21:10:00.000-07:00

There are some fabulous films about the life of Jesus, which show the crucifiction, and his resurrection. They often render the Gospel fairly accurately, as far as I can see. "The suffering of the Christ" was one of the best ever, I reckon.
But none of them has ever shown one particular thing which would make awesome viewing if it was done properly.
In Matthew's Gospel, we hear the following, from Chapter 27 verses 51 to 53.
"At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.The earth shook and the rocks split. THE TOMBS BROKE OPEN AND THE BODIES OF MANY HOLY PEOPLE WHO HAD DIED WERE RAISED TO LIFE. THEY CAME OUT OF THE TOMBS, AND AFTER JESUS' RESURRECTION THEY WENT INTO THE HOLY CITY AND APPEARED TO MANY PEOPLE." (
My emphasis added.
I've never seen that part of the account included in any film made of the events. And if a film director ever did, can you imagine the effect? It would need to be done properly, so that it didn't look like a zombie flick or a take on 'The mummy walks,' but so that it made the point properly. The dead shall rise, not like a horror show but in the final conquest of death.
Imagine being there. You knew someone who died, you saw them dead, you knew there was no mistake. They were no longer living in the body.
Then you saw them, walking around, leaving footprints, with a pulse, and they spoke to you and greeted you. You received your dead back.
That was part of what it is all about. Jesus came back to like, having been provably deceased, and was seen. He shared food, spoke to people, and invited Thomas to touch Him and prove that He was real.
Awesome.
Come to that, remember what happened to Mary and Martha. They lost their brother Lazarus, and before he actually died they kept begging Jesus to come and heal him.
When Jesus finally arrived, Lazarus was in the tomb. Jesus called on them to open the tomb and the sisters said, "Don't, Lord. He's been dead four days and there will be a stink." Jesus insisted, and when they opened up the grave, Lazarus answered Jesus when He said, "Lazarus, come forward."
It could make the hair on the back of your neck stand up; or it could leave you right off the ground with exultation.
The dead are no longer dead. It is a stage, not a final condition. The grave is not the end.
Every human that ever lived will rise again, even if they've been dead so many centuries that their physical bodies have turned back to dust, been recycled through plants that grew, animals that ate it and whateve happens in the natural cycles. They will stand there, alive again. And then if they believed Jesus, they will be free from the limits and sufferings of the flesh for ever and ever.
Jesus started it, when He was abominably tortured to death, descended to Hell, and broke open its gates because the evil one could not keep Him there. And the escape route, the breakout from Satan's vile kingdom, passed to us all. We will rise, and we will see God face to face, 'Death, THOU shalt die'. (John Donne).
Donne wrote as a Christian in penning that line. And the Godpel showed it, centuries before.
The Resurrection will come. The Second Coming will be. Come again, Lord Jesus.

Are we due for another Tower of Babel?

2011-03-26T19:38:00.000-07:00

Actually, have we had several repeats of the same things since the original event? If I understand it right, the original event happened because human beings were getting an exhalted view of themselves. They thought they could be as mighty as God, and their tower was the way of showing it. So for their own good God cut them down to size by altering their languages. Then they could not collude together in a way that could bring trouble on them. The trouble is, ever since then people have still being building towers that collapse on them because they don't know enough or have the power to do what only God can do, and things which should be left to God. For a few examples, look at the sad case of the "Titanic." It was claimed that 'even God cannot sink this ship', and it turned out that without God's protecting hand, a block of ice could sink that ship. It was a horribly sad event, but it shows what can happen when mere human beings think they've outgrown God or risen to the stage where they can challenge Him. Back further in history, the Roman Empire grew to a state quite awesome by human standards, then Roman emperors thought they could call themselves gods. The end of the human empire was catastrophic. As Jesus said about the house built on sand, 'the wreck of that house was complete'. The Roman Empire was built on human vanity, not wise knowledge of the Almighty.
Just recently, a transplant surgeon claimed that head or brain transplants might be the next stage of medical progress. Knowing some Christians who have had organ transplants, I think it's wonderful when lives can be saved that way, but this has got its limits. How far do we go before we're into Dr Frankenstein? God made humans and there are major limits on what humans can do with what is not their design, not something within their understanding?
Have we already had several towers built on ourselves? Look around you and see what happens when humans use knowledge without wise conscience controlling it. The internal combustion engine is a great thing if it powers an ambulance that can get the sick to hospital fast, or even make travel easier and more wide ranging. But reckless use of it causes a pollution problem that could choke a city. The antibiotic saves millions of lives, but used for convenience it can lose its effect and allow the breeding of anti biotic resistant super-bugs, which are deadly.
So knowledge can be used to achieve great things, or it can be used to gratify human pride to to indulge themselves, and cause more misery than it saves.
The contraceptive pill could allow married people to have their physical relationship without ending up with more pregnancies than the mother could withstand. It was not meant to allow indulgent behaviour and turn God's gift into casual recreation.
The rifle can save life protecting people from dangerous animals, or it can become a means of intimidating and abusing others. It can be a way of procuring food, or a way of committing robbery or murder.
The modern western world can do things that people in the past would find unbelievable. But the knowledge we have can rebound on us, we can use it for indulgence rather than good, and find it is a two-sided gift.
A plastic surgeon remarked on the difference between healing plastic surgery that repairs damaged bodies, fixes disorders like a cleft palate, and cosmetic plastic surgery that indulges human egos. Any knowledge reveals part of God's handiwork and genius, but used the wrong way it can become a tower that falls on us and should tell us that we are always beholden to God.

God has no grandchildren

2011-01-23T19:38:00.000-08:00

We've been hearing about Amy Chua, who wrote "Battle Hymn Of The Tiger Mother", and before that 'Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior'. Ms Chua describes how she taught her children to be successful by driving them to it. She admits to things like throwing the home-made birthday card her daughter gave her, back at her and telling her it was not good enough. Ms Chua may not have realized quite how some parents from a Judao-Christian heritage would react to that suggestion, or she might not have come out and said it.
I'm not attacking or critisising Chinese people as such. My issue is with the idea that a parent should treat a child that way.
She claims she is doing what is best because she cares enough to be hard on her children. Some westerners go so far as to accuse her of child abuse.
Things Amy Chua include as methods of parenting are: no sleepovers, no play dates, never being in a school play, no T.V. or computer games,no choice of their own extracurricular activities, never get a grade less than an A, never be anything except the best student in any subject except gym or drama and never play any instrument except the piano or the violin. True, some western parents may let their children get away with too much and make too little effort to guide and restrain them, but the Chua approach sounds to me like an abomination. I'm thankful I never was treated that way.
It can backfire, too. One young man of Chinese birth now living in Australia stated for the press that he has lost his sense of attachment to his mother because he saw her as nothing but a taskmaster. Now living in Australia he feels he can be his own person.
Ms Chua also talks about threatening to give her daughter's dolls away if she did not practice her piano music.
She also admits, unless misquoted by the press,of threatening her daughter with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas and no birthday parties if she did not perfect this piano piece.
Underlying this approach is the belief in some cultures that the child is an extension of the parent - and this is where I believe Chua's approach is wrong.
Children are not just part of their parents. They are individuals in their own right, each of them made by God. Apart from Adam and Eve, every child is conceived and gestated in a woman's womb, and the mother feels it and possibly suffers by it. You can understand why she feels she has some claim on the child. Fathers too, unless they are wretchedly negligent, feel intensely for and about their children. I can talk. I'm a father, and I saw all five of ours being born.
But those children, all children, are intended to grow to adulthood and have their own lives. And they have their own connection to God. God has no grandchildren, only children. In the sight of God, ultimately our kids are our brothers and sisters in the Lord. We cease to hold authority over them and they seek God themselves without going through us. We must teach them, but then it is up to them, and they relate to God without us being involved. They are not just part of us, even if they look and sound like us, (which not all kids do!).
This is where I believe the Amy Chua approach is wrong, because it is exceeding the right and authority of a mere human being, even if they are a parent. The time comes when children do not answer to mothers or fathers, and do not exist to gratify the parent or do what the parent wants. They are separate, with their own need to find God and communicate with Him directly, not via their parents. And they must each seek GOD'S will for their life. It may not be the same as their parents' plans!
Recall that when Jesus called some to follow Him, one said 'first, let me bury my own father'. It sounds a bit harsh, but Jesus replied, "let the dead bury their own dead." The point here is, if you have to choose between your family and God, choose God. If your family would be a barrier between you and God, choose God. Your family cannot grant you Salvation.
And your family are only mere human beings. They cannot claim to know all God's plans for your life.
Not only Amy Chua but any human parent needs to know this. Bob Dylan was not a Christian when he wrote and sang, 'Your children are not your children', but what he said was in a sense quite true. Once they leave the nest as adults your offspring must live their own lives, and they best thing they can do is seek the guidance of the Almight in doing this. Human parents cannot always know what is best because they are only human. In childhood and youth, they should give guidance, but only with the proviso that they are only human and their understanding has its limits. We parents do not have lifelong ownership of children, and can't know the future, or what God only can see is best.
Another commentator, responding to Chua, pointed out that success does not guarantee happiness. Quite true. More to the point, success does not give you everlasting life, it won't even ensure that you live a long time on this earth.
I've been told that Japanese culture is also very success orientated and involves great authority by parents over children.
Japan is a society whose population is falling, not because the law requires it but because fewer Japanese want to have children, or even marry. That shows a loss of faith in the future or the worth of begetting new life.
I prayed for Amy Chua and her family, that they find Christ as Saviour. Anything else will finally be revealed as futility. Some humans who had collossal success and fame in this world are still dead. Statues, mentions in history, things and places named after them do not change the fact that their voices are stilled and their bodies turned to dust. Only their souls matter then. And where are they? Did William Shakespeare or Virginia Woolf get to Heaven by being famous? If they get there at all, it will not be because any other human being remembers their names. It will only be because God finds their names written in His Book Of Life.
No amount of talent or achievement in this world will cause that name to be written there. And parents cannot make the name be written there. They should clearly teach their children where the truth lies, but the children must live it themselves.
God has no grandchilden, only children. Success and achievement do not bring us close to God. Only following the words and one who in life was a carpenter, can do that.
Yes, that's right. In His human incarnation, Jesus was a carpenter, not a musical prodigy or champion sportsman, not a great financial success or anything else that the mere world reveres. But He is God. And He alone knows the way.

It's not enough

2010-12-17T00:44:00.000-08:00

A recently graduated high school student wrote to the Australian press, complaining that the school did not teach him things he needed to know. It taught acedemic subjects, but not, he says, how to handle life. You might reply that the school is not there to teach him all there is, his family and others around him have a role there, too. But still, I could see what he means. It reminded me of something I read in MAD Magazine, years ago. A father was saying to his son, "You need to work hard, son! Go to college, and get a good job!"
The son asked "Why?"
The father replied, "So you get paid good money, and then you can send your kids to college, and then they can get good jobs."
The son said, "Well, then what happens?"
The father said, "Well, uh, then they make money, so they can send their kids to college, so that they can get good jobs."
And so on. You see how the father hesitated, because he could see how it became a bit of a repetitive thing, a circle that kept repeating itself. And all he seemed to see was that you needed to get a 'good' job, whatever that is, and make good money, so you can....and that's it. The son was looking for meaning in life. Are we just like animals, which just live to produce offspring, provide for them while they grow to adulthood, so that they too can provide for their offspring, and so on....
The young letter writer could see that there is more to life than just working and earning, although of course those things matter. We need to live, and if we have children we should provide for them as well as we can.
But we don't live by bread alone.
If we don't exist just to reproduce and keep the species in existence, what are we here for.
As the old cliche goes, what is life about?
Back in the 1960s, the hippies and others wanted more than just the materialism that their elders seemed to live for. But then the generation before them remembered the Great Depression, and all the destruction of World War 2, and building up material security was important to them. It's a problem that they lost sight of something here: why are we on Earth? Is it just to survive and leave descendants behind?
Jesus said it first: Humankind does not live by bread alone. The body is not all there is. The soul has needs too, and those needs include a direction, a reason to live.
If I could get all the population of my country to hear ONE thing I said, that would be it. You exist because God caused you to be conceived, to be born, and to be alive today. He has a purpose for you life.
Ask Him what it is.
If the young letter writer did not see how his high school education showed him that, it shows that secular education has a major shortcoming. It does not deal with the matters of the Spirit. In fact thanks to some 'reformers' and 'social progressives' who try to get God out of schools, the school is not allowed to deal with things of the Spirit. And that is its shortcoming.
I can see why Christian schools are being set up. The fill a need that secular public schools do not. I can see why more parents want to home school their children. That way they don't have to leave the nurture of their kids to people who either deny God His place, or simply don't care, or who are not permitted to mention such things.
So who is going to tell them? Education itself is not enough. Evangelization is the life-blood of the human spirit, without which it can develop spiritual deformities and become distorted in what it seeks. It might lapse into hedonism, personal gratification, or it might get duped into bizarre forms of mysticism that come from Satan, although that being tries not to be seen doing it.
We do not live by bread alone. We are spirits in bodies for a time, not bodies with spirits.
Let no-one hide the fact.

"Time to confront the deadliest demon..."

2010-11-19T21:14:00.001-08:00

That title above is partly taken from an article that started me thinking. It is about youth suicide. According to the article, up to five Australian children attempt it every day. I don't know what that figure would be for the U.S, Canada, Britain, but it might be just as bad. And it's a demon, alright. It's pure horror. The writer says we must confront it, but his suggestion is that schools need to deal with it, through their curriculum.
He's right to be concerned, but it seems to me the problem goes back deeper than he believes and so does what should be done about it. The answer is not just a matter of teaching students, or children and youth generally, to rationalize problems and build defences against them. They need to be shown a different world view.
The clever modern thinkers who've had control of schooling for some years wanted to get God out of schools. We've all heard the thing about 'religion being a crutch', or a residual superstition from the past, and so forth. Not so clever, actually, because when people do not have any idea of a personal God to turn to, they have no hope in this universe except what they can find from themselves or other mere human beings.
The clever secular thinker talks about coming to terms with things, or playing the hand you're dealt, or making the best of it, and so on. My question: I've played poker for matchsticks, and I know, you can get dealt a hand that is no use at all. How do you play that? Shocking things can happen, that are quite beyond your control. Whether they happen to me or to people I care about, or complete strangers, how do you come to terms with the fact that life is just like that?
Not good enough. If live is worth going on with, there has to be more to hope for.
Someone once said that if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. That person knew just what he was saying. Human efforts and invention are not enough to keep up hope. We all die in the body sometime, some people too soon and very tragically. This life is not enough. I need to hope for and believe in something more. I need God. I have to know that He's there, and that He cares. He might not do just what I want, or give me just what I want, but ultimaletly, He's there and in the end He makes it right - for those who believe and turn to Him.
That is what young children and youth need to know. They need to understand they are not left to cope with all the rotten and tragic, cruel things that life can drop on them. God is there. They need to know that - and to know about God, so they don't get to thinking He's like the insurance company, you only call if you've got an emergency. Or the fire brigade - You don't have to talk to Him unless a crisis comes up. Stay in touch, daily.
That is where hope lies. I was not a Christian until just before I turned 25. In that first quarter century of life I heard it all about learning to cope, to accept things, to make the best of it, look on the bright side, yakkety yak. It wasn't enough. There was to much beyond control that could turn things bad.
We need to tell people that they don't need to despair because God is right beside them and has things under control. Life will have bad times but there is always hope, and always a direction if you look to God for it.
The world is not all that there is - and that's just as well!
That's what we need to tell kids, but the clever people in charge don't want that at all.
It is as if in claiming to try and help, they are cutting off the only real help there is. Wolves in sheeps' clothing. Or the blind leading the blind.
Just recently one of our sons told us he was grateful we brought him up to know the Lord. He can see what happens when people are not given that hope.
I'm grateful that the Holy Spirit reached out to me and made me see what I had to. There is no hope or real help anywhere except in God.
Kids need to know that.
And no-one should be able to keep the message from them.

Subtle tricks.

2010-10-22T19:38:00.000-07:00

Arsinoe was Cleopatra's younger sister, so history tells us. And Arsinoe was killed on big sister's orders, because she might have been a rival for the Egyptian throne. The same source describes how the boys in Cleopatra's family were disposed of, also. How vile and evil! If you asked most people what they know about Queen Cleopatra, they would probably say she was famous for her beauty and her tragic death after her lover died, not that she was a power-seeking murderer.
We know families don't always get on well, but fratricide is another thing. As we agreed, discussing it after, the society of Ancient Egypt included some dark and evil places.
It's the same elsewhere. The Ancient Greeks, of the Hellenic Age, had a very advanced civilization in the material sense. They learned and deduced some things about the world and our solar system which were later forgotten and had to be rediscovered hundreds of years later. Vert commendable.
They could also be grossly indulgent and entertain some perversions. Several times I've been told that Hellenic men took boys as 'lovers'. That's not homosexuality so much as pederasty, or paedophilia.
The Romans indulged in debauched evil, too. Burning people alive in the Colluseum, or having them set upon by wild animals, was a specator sport for the public at the time.
Yet we were taught at school that these societies were marvellous and admirable. History books and scholars talk about 'the wonder that was Ancient Rome' and 'the Golden Age of Greece', overlooking the Greek practice of keeping slaves. Egypt too is described as a place full of wonders, like the pyramids and Tutenkhamen's tomb.
A young learner could get the impression that the past was a breathtaking place, and it's only the present that is disappointing. And it is a subtle trick, to delude us about human nature and the state of the world. It pretends that human beings are much more admirable and upright than we actually are. I say 'we' because I'm not some exception.
Secular teaching of history therefore conceals an important truth, that a human must know to hear the call of God. Human history does NOT only show us what marvels we have achieved as a race, but also what depths of corruption we have often sunk to.
Teaching history the way we do can be mischieviously misused. Communists teach history to try and sell their ideology, by claiming everything before Karl Marx was bad. And secularists can use history to try and fool us that we don't need God.
This was what George Orwell meant when he said, whoever controls the past controls the present. Tell people that the past was what you want them to believe it was, and you can manipulate them into believing certain things about the present.
The concept of the 'noble savage' comes in here too. The idea was that at some time in the past, a human society existed which was perfectly harmonious and free from evil. If we can get back to it we can re enter the golden age of peace. That idea also tries to show that human creatures can be perfect if put in the right environment - and thus pretends that we are better than we are in fact, when you look at what actually happens.
I can see why the Christian schools movement has grown. There is a need to present knowledge and learing in a clear way, without attempting to idealize it. And Christian truth will show that, but not secularism. Secularism tries to pretend we are better than we are, and deny the need of a Messiah to save us.
I wonder where it will end?

An analogy

2010-10-05T05:29:00.000-07:00

When some people talk about Christianity, or any other belief, they give their ignorance away. I don't mean to be too harsh, just get right to the point. People discuss faith as if it was like being part of a club, which has some traditions and rituals, but it doesn't necessarily change your the members' world view. When they're not at a club meeting they simply live like everyone else around them.
This is the analogy that occurs to me. A convinced theist, or believer in God, and a convince atheist are as different as two mathematicians working with different number scales. If you work with a number scale of ten, then four fives equal twenty. If you work with a number scale of five, four fives equal forty. The same data yields a different answer if your analytical thinking framework is different. If a person really believes in the existence of God, then God is a factor in all things, all issues and all equations about life. God is always there and always has to be considered. And God can make the impossible possible. God can, if He chooses turn water into wine. So God has to be remembered in all situations. Someone I once knew said "This has nothing to do with God," when telling someone else what to do. They were quite wrong. It has everything to do with God. The advice they were giving was not in keeping with God's teaching. But they were saying that in the real world you have to be 'practical', by which they meant do whatever worked best, and never mind if it wasn't the Christian thing to do. There is probably a great deal of that. This person called themselves a Christian but left God out of some of their daily decisions in life. God was only for Sundays or for making fine sounding speeches about when they were in the mood. Their faith did not transfer into daily life.
That's not all. Some non-believers, or agnostics, don't understand why Christians get 'hung up' about certain things. They don't see why Christians have to make an issue out of things instead of just fitting in. That is to say, they don't realize how real God and His teachings are to those who really believe.
Even though I personally do not follow the teachings of Judaism, I must respect the right of a Jewish man to wear a yarmulka, if he feels that's important a part of his belief. Some people propose to ban such things in public schools, because the school is supposed to be secular. But a Jew does not stop being Jewish just because they are in a public school.
And a Christian does not stop being a Christian just because it is not Sunday and they are not in church.
That is why they sometimes cannot fit in with the world. Jesus Himself warned His followers of that. They may be rejected and victimised by the world.
In the same vein, some people say the church should 'modernise' to fit in with the community it wants to connect with. That is putting the cart before the horse. The community needs to change to follow the Word's teachings - or else be honest enough to admit that they are not doing so. To say the church has to agree with society is saying that the church has no real beliefs, it just reflects social or political fashion. But some people can't see that because they do not really know what they are talking about when they discuss faith.

Why are we born?

2010-09-11T20:50:00.000-07:00

Another TV documentary not long ago, about child beauty pageants and the children and mothers involved. The reviewer passed the comment that there was a certain sadness about it. Their reason? The little girls were involved in these beauty/talent/whatever contests because their mothers wanted them to be. It was supposed to be about the girls getting a great career launched, and a bright future happening, but the ones who pushed the issue were the parents, not the little girls themselves.
This issue goes back years. I recall "Dead Poets Society", one of the best films I've ever seen except that the ending was so tragic. It was the same thing happening. Neil Perry's father had an ambition for his son: "You're going to Harvard, and you're going to be a doctor!" Neil was not asked what he wanted to do, he was told, and when he showed interest in being an actor instead his father, enraged, was going to send him to military school to make sure he shaped up the way his father wanted. The parent reckoned the child came into the world to do what the parent wanted. That was the end of that.
Back further still, MAD Magazine did a satiric take on parents who want their children to become movie stars. In its usual ironic way, the magazine talked about a mother taking her son round all the talent agencies, and said: "Her son will have a movie career. He will succeed if she has to break every bone in his body."
Suffer the children.
It's probably as old as the human race. Parents have children to live out an agenda of their own. Children are born to be heirs to the family property, or to do something the parents want. In recent history, I heard a woman from a Communist nation say of her daughter: "She belongs to the state."
I've heard a father say, "I played football so my son's going to play football."
The examples could go on and on. The point is, mere human beings are claiming ownership of what is NOT theirs, at all.
Who makes children come to life? Can any human guarantee to to that? No way.
God causes people to come into the world. And God alone has the right to decide what they should be, not only because He made them but because He knows far better what is right in any case.
It must be pure horror to be the child of ruthless ego-maniac parents who want to live through their child. The kid is only there for them, they reckon - while insisting they 'only want what's best'. Yeah! A control freak is always good at justifying themselves.
One of the greatest examples of Godly parenting was by Hannah, mother of Samuel the Prophet. Mark you, her example is almost asking too much of a mother. She begged God to give her a son, and vowed to give her son back to God to serve. So when Samuel was only two years old he was given into the care of the Priest to learn to serve in the Temple. His mother only saw him once a year. It shouldn't have to be that hard for all Christian parents, but the point is, who really should decide what becomes of a child, and what they do in life. God. Not mere human parents; and least of all pushy parents who want the child to fulfill their ego-trips for them.
We have five children. Obviously we care a lot about what they do in life, but we can't make them something we decide. It would never work. The huge youth rebellion thing in the 1960s had a lot to do with youth resenting their parents trying to make them into something they did not want to be. One singer of that era penned the line, "your children are not your children," meaning that you don't own them. But that singer still didn't get it quite right. If people try living life just for themselves, they can become hedonists, completely self-centred, or just plain lost.
So we have this ongoing thing, mistake on mistake, and all the fallout. Perents and families trying to breed a child according to blue-print, a sort of made-to-order person; or people making themselves their own god and becoming like Gordon Gecko. Or just plain lost.
When Jesus said 'Give to God what is God's" He meant more than just tithes and money offerings.
Human children are God's. He make them. He alone can save them. He knows best what should become of them. And it is a very arrogant, foolish mistake to forget that.
Of course we have dreams about them. But we need to know who even invented dreams.
One of our sons is studying to become a pastor. His mother and I are glad of that. But he had to decide, under God's prompting, to do that. If we'd pushed and pushed him to do it because we wanted that, it could all have gone square-wheeled. The proverb saying "Bring up a child in the way you want them to go," meanst bring them up to follow God, not just your ambitions for them.
Once before I wrote a blog post about why I would never enter our daughter in a beauty pageant. I don't want to compare her to other children, and treat her like a showpiece for her family. That is NOT why God gave her into our care. Our task is to raise her in Christ, for Him and for her own sake, not to get human approval.
I must never forget that. God help and guide us all.

The worship of youth is the fear of truth.

2010-08-07T20:12:00.000-07:00

"Where do you go to, Beloved Son,
With your heart harshly troubled, my noble young one?"
"I must go to the world and bequeath hope and warning,
To tell fractured hearts that a new age is dawning,
There's hope, healing and fire, vile sin and great ire,
And a fearful judgement to come."
(Copyright Andrew Clarke)

Yesterday, reading a historical article in the newspaper, I read about Elizabeth Bathory. It's a problem that she had the same given name as my closest companion, my wife, because she has an evil history. Elizabeth Bathory was one of the people on whom the vampire legends are based, along with Vlad the Impaler, aka Dracula.
She was a princess in what is now Hungary, born in 1560 and being bricked up alive in a room in 1610. She had killed hundreds of young women, drunk their blood and bathed in it because she hoped it would preserve her own youth and beauty (Beauty? Physical only, by the sound of it!) Once it was discovered what she was up to, her accomplices were put to death but because she was an aristocrat she could not be. So they imprisoned her until she died, instead.
Some reports had it that she was descended from Vlad Dracula, the Impaler, who must be among the vilest and grossest human demon who ever blotted this planet God made.
The underlying thing is trying to cheat death. It's been going on forever. People want to avoid aging, and dying. Youth is made into an ideal state, to be worshipped, idealized and imitated in later life even if it can't be made to last into later life. Well, being human, I don't want to look or feel too old, admittedly. Who does? We want to stay fit, and active, and (I'll be honest) still a bit attractive to look at, for as long as possible. But past a certain point it just becomes an obsession, with results that can be either ridiculous or straight out evil. Some people have multiple face lifts and other surgery, trying to look twenty five when they're nearer fifty five, and can start to look like something Dr Frankenstein did on a bad hair day.
Or it can become a murderous obsession, like Princess Bathory, above.
People want to stay young, partly, because they are vain, or afraid that they will be left out of a society that idolizes youth. In doing that, they are being shallow. All life is part of the human continuum, and all of it is meant to be. I was glad to be young when I was, but now I'm fifty seven I can cope with being fifty seven. In fact, I have no choice, unless it becomes absurd self-deception.
People want to cheat death because they are afraid of what comes next. If there is nothing, then once they die they've got nothing left. If there is something, then what is it, they wonder.
They could find out, if they want to believe God's revelations. But that would require them to be humble, and humility does not come easily to people.
God's Word tells us, we WILL die. But that death is only of the body. And if what comes after is better, then clinging to life at all costs is not only futile but it can be self-destructive. You can cling to life and find out it is not only a fragile straw, but a spiky one that can let you down and pierce you. I wrote once before about people who knowingly laid down their lives because they felt they should die themselves rather than see others killed. They would rather die in good conscience than live in bad conscience. It's easier to talk about than to do, but that is how it is. It really IS better to die in good faith than live in bad. I hope I die painlessly in my sleep at a good age, but if I have to, I pray I can die in good faith rather than live in bad. God help me.
So there is the stupidity and pointlessness of thinking, this life is all there is. You can cling to what you will lose anyway, and behave badly towards others in order to cling to it, and find out it's just a sack of dust. But if you remember the soul, not just the body, then you know your existence does not end when your physical form stops breathing. You know that conscious life goes on. Then it matters where that life will be lived.
I'm very thankful the Lord found and called me. I'm very thankful the Lord found and called my wife and our five children. I can never stop thanking Him for that. Without that, I might be madly trying to preserve youth and life and making a complete fool or villain of myself.
Come again, Lord Jesus

If you want them to come, build it right!

2010-07-19T20:44:00.000-07:00

I saw a small flier about home schooling/unschooling in our town today. There seems to be a growing interest in it. I can imagine some teachers and senior education bureaucrates voicing their disapproval too, but there is a good reason why some people home school, or at least get their children out of state schools.
My only experience with schooling is in N.S.W, Australia, but it seems the situation is much the same in some other parts of the western world. The school is supposed to be there for everybody, but in fact it just does not suit some people at all. In this state schools teach a secular approach to life, and a tolerance of certain things, such as abortion, which contravene the teachings of Christianity and possibly other faiths as well. That is to say, the schools' position on some life issues is quite wrong to some people. Since we accept freedom of belief, and freedom of worship, the Christians can't impose their beliefs on others but others can't tell Christians - or Jews, or Hindus, or whoever we have - to their own. The state school system alienates some people by wanting them to keep their beliefs private while others are proclaimed as being 'right'. By whose authority are they right?
That's not the only reason why some kids do not want to be in schools, be they state or any other. Bullying has been a problem in school for as long as I can remember. Some individuals find a school to be a hostile place full of nasty hostility. In the last few years we've seen the pure horror of child or teenage suicide, the victim being driven to it by what happened to them in school. What's worse is, some school staffs appear completely unable to stop it - or is it unwilling, because it becomes so difficult?
Respect for the individual can involve accepting that they are different from a lot of people around them and need to live differently. I can completely sympathize with some parents who do not want their kids going to school, because they know just what hostile places schools can be for some people. There are times when school inmates gang up on a lone student like animals. That might be harsh, but look at what happens sometimes and try to be 'nice' about it. Come to that, this is just what sometimes happens. Excuses get made for the bullies, saying that they are victims themselves. Even is that is true, which I don't believe it always is, then saying it does not heal the injury done to the victims. It just gives people an easy way out. They excuse themselves having to confront the problem, and claim a superior social conscience at the same time.
If the community at large wants schools to be suitable for all, the community will have to run them properly. There needs to be effective measures taken against vicimisation that goes on, and an acceptance that kids do not have to deny their own beliefs and background when in school. Make schools work right, and at least some people who try to avoid them might like them better. That is NOT to say that everyone should go to school. Home schooling might really be better for a lot of individual kids. But for those who do go, they would be less off-putting if better supervised. Make them better, more people might like being there. Build them right and they will come to them.

Are you scared of it?

2010-06-26T20:53:00.000-07:00

Two newspapers in Australia have reported that their are 'concerns' over the way scripture, or Religious Instruction, is being taught in N.S.W. public schools. Volunteers from the community, as well as church pastors, take these classes as part of the legally mandated Scripture classes run in public schools in the state. A study by Macquarie University has been told that children are being told they will go to hell if they do not believe in Jesus Christ.
Does anyone dare write to the people running the study and tell them: bluntly, though it's not intended to be a threat, that is what the Gospel does teach. There is only one way for the human soul to be saved after the body dies. The soul is everlasting, and it may or may not be saved from permanent misery by separation from God; and that one way is to know Jesus Christ and believe in Him.
The complaint is that kids are being brainwashed, or scared, or something, into 'extreme views' of Christianity. Apparently the pure truth taught by the Christian Gospel is 'extreme'.
It might be that those teachers who put this across had in fact said that Jesus came to save the world, and die for us, rather than just trying to scare kids. Evangelism is 'the Good News', after all. But it is not extreme to teach about the threat of dying unsaved, unless you want to falsify Christian doctrine into a wishy washy thing about just being nice to people.
Suppose it scared kids to be shown what can happen if they drink and then drive, by telling them what happens in vehicle accidents? Should they not be told in case it makes them uncomfortable? What about the risks involved in unsafe sex? Should others keep silent in case hearing the truth upsets someone? In Australia, we have health warnings about skin cancer caused by too much exposure to the sun. Should we stop running them in case it upsets someone?
It is not compulsory to attend Scripture classes in public schools. No-one has to be there. But if the classes are about Christianity, should they not tell it like it is?
I had to grapple with this when I first became a Christian, at 24 years of age. It was not good to know that some 'good' people I knew were not saved. They needed to come to terms with Jesus, not just be well intentioned. I find it difficult to cope with. But if it's true, it is true. You can't escape an issue by denying it.
That is why some people do not want to hear the Gospel. It would confront them with things they don't want to have to admit or deal with. I can't make them, but they can't make me deny what Christianity is and dumb it down for their convenience. If they don't like hearing, what does that show? They might be afraid it's true? It's funny the way some people scoff at Christianity, yet get uncomfortable when ever it is discussed.
Are they scared of it?

Some deeds I admire.

2010-06-12T20:55:00.000-07:00

This could quite a list, but I'll stick to two particular ones. We all have our heroes, although we have to keep hero-worship under control, because it can be a misleading distraction.
Did you ever hear of Captain Oates? He was a member of Robert Falcon Scott's Antarctic expedition in 1911. They set out to reach the South Pole, hoping to be the first people to do so. When they reached the Pole they found that another group, led by Roald Amundsen, had beaten them to it. So, disappointed, they set off back to their base, and ran into trouble with fatigue and failing health. Captain Oates realized that his friends were being slowed down by him, because he was the worst affected, and that the others might lose their lives trying to save him.
So he walked out into the freezing cold, knowing he would die, to give the others a better chance. Apparently his last words were, (paraphrased) "I'm going for a walk, gentlemen. I may be a little time."
When I read that I couldn't think of anything else for nearly an hour. That took guts - and it took care for others to put them first, giving up his own life.
Another example was a soldier, Colonel O.C. Hannay. He was a Scotsman, and an officer in the British Army.During the South African War (1899-1902) he was given an order that he knew would cost the lives of too many of his men. The order was to make a mounted charge against a strong postition, which Hannay knew would have just got his men slaughtered. But he had his orders. His orders were "You are to charge the enemy position." Hannay took the view that, right, HIS orders were to charge this strong enemy position, even if it was suicidal.
So he obeyed his orders. He charged - on his own. He gave NO order to his men to follow him, and charged the enemy alone. He was shot down from his horse and killed, but he had saved his men from pointless slaughter.
That action was noble and brave. He gave up his own life to spare others.
Those two men could only save the bodies of others. They could not save souls. They must have cared enough about others to do what they could, whatever it amounted to.
The human race must look quite contemptible to God, with all the cruel and stupid things we do. You could wonder how much suffering we are worth going through for.
Crucifiction has been described by doctors as the most agonizing way to die. But Jesus Christ undertook to suffer it, for the sake of others. Not only that, but according to the Scriptures, when His body died His soul descended tnto Hell. He literally has been to Hell and back. But Hell couldn't hold Him. It had no claim because he was guilty of no wrongdoin.
Men like Oates and Hannay, and women too, have gone to death to save the bodies of others. I hope they were saved. Jesus Christ went through death to Hell itself,to save our souls.
Self-sacrificing heroes and heroines reflect the awesome example of Jesus Christ, because Humankind is made in the image of God and we can sometimes reflect His glory when we do what is right and good. But they can only save bodies. One only can save our souls, and He suffered hideously to do so. God be thanked. Come again, Lord Jesus.

Message: still relevant.

2010-05-22T19:56:00.000-07:00

Some books and stories stay in print because they tell the reader something that remains true. They might narrate a moving, sad tale which leaves the reader deeply affected. Such is the power of the language. But they might also be a warning against mistakes we should avoid.
If you read "Wuthering Heights", you remember the character Catherine, who is in love with Heathcliff but decides that she can't marry him. The reason she gives is that, even though Heathcliff is her soul mate, who she loves and needs, she can't imagine taking him into the sort of polite society that she mixes with. Catherine belongs to a landed family, with a certain social station, and Heathcliff was a homeless orphan her father found in the streets and took in. She just can't imagine taking him to a social function of some sort - he would not fit in. So she marries someone 'more suitable' as the saying goes; and just finds that all ends in tears. If you know the story then you recall that it all ends in tragedy, with Catherine dying in some sort of despair and Heathcliff mourning her for years, wanting to reach out to her beyond the grave and eventually dying himself. It is a bleak, heart-wringing story and it probably remains a classic because it gets to people. But it also reveals the human folly of the lead characters. They deny the deeper, spiritual side of themselves to fit in with human society's prejudices.
Catherine is a sympathetic character but she made a bad mistake trying to be married to one man and still closely bonded to another. Heathcliff, also a flawed character, marries another woman to get even with Catherine and treats her with great cruelty; and mistreats his son also.
The story would not be what it is if they all lived happily ever after, but lives would not have been spoilt if the lead characters hadn't given in to their own bad ideas.
It still happens today. It happens because people still give way to the bad ideas invented by humans and don't look for higher spiritual guidance in leading their lives.
Not long ago I read an article in which a Christian single woman argues that it should be okay for Christians to have sexual relationships outside marriage. Her reason is, she can't find a husband. So she hopes to have some sort of intimate relationship without one. I prayed for that woman that she finds what she really needs in life, but I'm wondering quite what that is!
I don't know her at all, but could it be like this? She can't find a husband because of human, worldly prejudices about what a suitable man should be?
It happens to men as well. An old friend I saw at a reunion was still single though he does not want to be because he can't get past daydreams about willowy blondes. He wants to meet a woman who looks like Jerry Hall or something, and in real life he never does.
So where's this going? Dating and matchmaking agencies have become a huge industry in recent decades, because there are people everywhere who 'can't find anyone'. I don't believe that the God revealed in Jesus Christ would leave someone languishing in loneliness because He didn't care. More likely He has to get through to them, that if they want a partner they should leave that to Him. It would sound a bit cute to say it, but God is the best matchmaker in the universe and you don't have to pay for His services. The thing to remember is: God's idea of your right partner might not be what you have been expecting. If that is the problem, change your approach.
One of my sons recently married, and the odds of he and his wife meeting they way they did would be a billion to one. Yet it happened.
My wife and I met rather unexpectedly, on a blind date arranged by someone I hardly even knew. Over thirty years later, God's arrangement is still working out.
So there it is. Do people not find the chance to marry for a long time because they are blinded by a predispostion of mind that their ideal other has to look like some sort of a poster pin up? (Or centre fold!) If they do,then they're being very shallow; and it won't work out anyway. The message is the same as it has been since the Scripture were written. "In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths." (Proverbs 3, verse 6.)
A man might dream of Liz Hurley, or a woman of Hugh Grant, and spend their life on a silly shallow dream. And all the time God can set things to right if you undertake His direction and allow Him to. As well as that, we all need to remember what they say, even if it seems corny. Physical beauty is only skin deep. It does not show you the whole person. Hollywood has a bit to answer for, giving so many humans this tinny view of what people should be like. The real answer comes from an eternal source.

Pharisees of today

2010-05-01T20:56:00.000-07:00

Jesus compared the pharisees to tombs, 'whited sepulchres.' They were clean and presentable on the outside but inside they were filled with corruption and decay. The same applies to any pretenders who claim to be better than they are by keeping up appearances, which is not the same as living up to them. And some of the best examples are the political poseurs who claim to show the rest of us the way.
What strikes me in particular is this. Some righteous, politically correct people have the most exhaustive social conscience, and make sure they tell others. They don't drink coffee if the beans were picked by exploited workers. They don't wear clothes made in a sweat shop. They don't buy things exported from a country with a government that breaches human rights. And when it comes to their sexual behaviour they have no scruples at all. Even if they are as good as they say, doing all the fine things to save the planet, their behaviour can be a betrayal of others and do huge hurt to those they claim to care about.
In Australia, a member of parliament from the Greens party, married with three children, has been caught having an affair with a member of the Liberal party. Both are married, and they represent different sides of politics. But they can both go behind their partners' backs and carry on with this thing in secret. Them and hundreds more. They say all the right things, claim to stand for what it good and then just indulge themselves, in a way that hurts those close to them and denies what they claim they stand for.
I have to remember my own sins, and the words "Judge not, that you be not judged." My own record will be no great credit to me on the Day of Judgement. But the longer I live the more believable are the words of the Prophets, and of Jesus Himself, condemning the vast sin of the world. It is a bad mistake to start thinking humans are not really so bad, and that the Christian Gospels are too harsh in what they say; and that a loving God would not condemn, and all that. Because if I look around me or inside myself it is not a pretty picture. God must love me all right, to not have abandoned me long ago. And that goes for us all, the more so the proud ones who think they will prove their worth while denying God. You can see people about to bring fearful wrath down on themselves, and they don't know it or refuse to see it. Like the pharisees, if they keep the outside clean and polished, what do they think the inside matters?
But you can't fool God.

Renewal

2010-04-21T00:29:00.000-07:00

When thinking about our own joys, I should remember the strife and trouble other people may be going through. Writing this, I feel thankful. I wish as much good on the life of anyone who reads this. But I've been absent from blogging for a time because we've been to Hawaii, to our son's wedding!
It sounds exotic, though what happened was this. Our daughter in law is American, our family Australian and to save either family having to make the whole journey across the Pacific the young couple chose Hawaii as a half-way point. So David and Melissa exchanged their vows in Honolulu. It was pure joy. Actually, when I say that, I was getting choked up at one stage. We began singing the opening hymn and I had trouble singing, shedding a few quiet tears. I couldn't help it! When you have children you realize how vulnerable they are and how badly they need God to help them with life, and to look to Him. Our son David is a Christian, and so is our new daughter Melissa. And so are her family. It is a huge blessing to find that your child has been led to God's choice of partner, and that as well as loving her we can love her family as well.
The ceremony itself honoured God. It was the subject of a lot of prayer. It was God's blessing on our son and our whole family, and on the bride's family as well. We have four other children, and we pray it is as good for them. We also have new people to remember in prayer, our daughter-in-law's family. We know that David and Melissa might end up living in the United States, where it's harder to get to see them; but if that's God's will, then it is for the best.
Seeing David and Melissa coming together and a new family beginning gave me a sense of renewal. That is what life in Christ involves. Renewal and new life. God be with them always.

Call a spade a spade.

2010-03-26T20:17:00.000-07:00

Not long ago I see a female person verbally attacking a man, telling him off and putting him down, and when he reacted in the same way she accused him of being 'afraid of strong women.' I felt like telling her there is a BIG difference between a strong woman and a bully. It is another case of calling something obnoxious by a fine sounding name in an attempt to make it better than it is.
I know some strong women. I've been privileged to be involved with several strong women, and none of them needs to be abusive, critical, loudly in my face or hostile. None of them tries to be intimidating to get their own way. That is a very important difference. There is some self-serving dishonesty in confusing the two, by calling one the name that belongs to the other.
One strong woman I know stuck by her husband and family, doggedly working hard to help keep the family's struggling farm going. She is my mother. Another strong woman has coped with a lot of grief and disappointment, been through two lots of cancer surgery, and still works while still being there for her friends.
Another strong woman has overcome a miserable childhood to work at her marriage and raise five children. I should know. I'm married to her!
None of those, and others like them, is a strident harridan who pushes people around and belittles them.
Some pushy, bullying women I know try to walk on a man's face and then accuse him of male chauvinism when he simply insists on not being treated that way.
A good woman is worth more than rubies, as the Bible says - and I don't mean that condescendingly. It is true. But let's get the definitions right. Strong need not be loud. Real strength is not the same as vindictiveness, or personal ego. Some female bullies, like male ones, have a problem with fear of their own. They are scared stiff that someone might see their uncertainty so they cover it up with bluster, and try to intimidate others with abuse.
For pure strength, look at the Messiah. He could have called the vengeance of God down on His tormentors, but he asked that they be forgiven instead. Strength and brutality are two utterly different things. We all need to know the difference.

"If God did not exist..." (Heaven forbid!)

2010-03-16T19:24:00.000-07:00

A philosopher once said, "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him."
I think it was Voltaire. He knew what he was getting at!
The Global Atheists Convention has just been held in Melbourne, Australia. One columnist who attended it said that it had worked a miracle on him. He describes himself as agnostice, but as he put it, "I've never felt more like believing in God. Especially the Christian one." He feels that way because of the way the atheists behave. As he put it, without God "...there's not much to stop people in our society from behaving like barbarians."
It was the most perfect illustration of what the philosopher mentioned above, was getting at.
Certain things were said at the convention that were utterly discreditable to those who said them. One speaker described Joseph Ratzinger as ' "the Pope Nazi' ', when in fact that man was conscripted into the Hitler Youth, it did not require allegiance to Nazism to be a member.
We have a Senator in Australia named Steve Fielding, also a Christian, who was described by an atheist speaker as stupider than an "earthworm".Yet another speaker asked if there were any believers in the audience, and when some put up their hands he rejoined by saying that he would speak slowly (so that they could keep up with him!). In other words, there were brutish and slanderous insults aimed at Christians for being believers. The journalist reporting went into more detail, which any one reading this could check by going to the site www.dailytelegraph.com.au and reading the full text.
My point here is that in challenging the Christians, the atheists do not set an example of better behaviout than the Christians. The atheists resort to the sort of spite and malice that they have accused Christians of. Instead of disagreeing while respecting the rights of others to their views, it seems they wish to intimidate believers out of stating their beliefs. This while claiming to respect freedom of belief. Figure that out!
And the underlying concern is, that a universe without God would be such a vicious barbaric jungle that it would probably render itself extinct. Human beings do not behave better when they reject the idea of Divine Justice or punishment. They feel free to do just as they please! It's been said many times, when people think they can get away with anything they sometimes resort to utterly evil behaviour if it suits them. They would not dare to if they knew they would be named, shamed and punished.
William Golding wrote "Lord Of The Flies" about a group of highly civilized schoolboys from an advanced western culture, marooned without adult supervision or social restraint. They became barbarians, with a dictator, acts of murder and cruelty, and they set up a grotesque pagan god - the pig's head.
Joseph Conrad wrote "Heart Of Darkness" to show what happens when sophisticated people from an advanced culture are in the jungle without the restraint of their culture and its beliefs, including the influence of the Christian church. They become just as savage as the people they say need to be civilized.
I once heard human beings described as 'theotropic'. That means they have an inbuilt instinct to seek God. The only question is, which god will they choose. Centuries ago, when the Israelites were wandering in the wilderness, Moses left them for a few days and they pressured Aaron to make them a god - the golden calf. They wanted a god who was convenient, who they could make look like they wanted and which would be there when they demanded.
History reports that one society trying to get rid of the idea of god set up a statue of 'the goddess of reason.' They had to have a focus of worship that was outside themselves. So atheists don't live without a god, they make one of their own intellect, or the writings of people who say what they want to hear. Or as Paul put it, a god of their own stomach - broadly speaking, their own apetites and desires.
So it seems if you want to see why we need God, a good place to start looking for proof is among people who openly reject God. For examples from history, look at Stalin's regime in the then U.S.S.R. where practicing a faith was forbidden and Christians persecuted. Mao's regime in China likewise tried to drive out belief in God, and set up the party and its leader in place of Him. Hitler's Nazi regime was hostile to Christianity. That is why people like Martin Niemoller and Diederich Bonhoffer were persecuted. They stood up for Christianity in a state that did not want to tolerate it.
If God did not exist this universe wouldn't either, but the 'rationalists' insist that several chance accidents, each of odds at several million to one, made it happen. That is the most wild folly I've heard. But people relying on their own 'reason and intellect' stand there and say it.
I'm terribly thankful that God does exist, that He reaches out to us and we aren't left madly trying to make sense of life and find something to believe in. As Jesus said, 'the truth will set you free.' We're free from being duped and bullied by those who try telling us they know everything and we should do what they say.

"You've got the wood on us."

2010-03-13T00:37:00.000-08:00

I was tumbling helpless, into flames of scorching fire,
Doomed to lasting torment by the devil's vile sword,
But a hand reached out to save me from a fearful fate and dire,
The only hand that could do so. The hand of Christ the Lord

The funeral was held for a young Christian man who'd died in a vehicle accident. It was a shocking sad business, losing him like that at 33 years of age, and his parents had already had some grief and trials to cope with. But the family are Christians, and they have the hope Christians all have: physical death is a departure from this world, not the end of existence. IT's a temporary separation between the person whose body has died and those left behind, who miss them. The minister conducting the service was a vibrant believer, and it showed in what he said. There was grief at that event, but there was hope too. And a large number of people were there, whose aquaintance or friendship with the man came from different times or parts of his life. So not all the attendees were Christians. One was a former school teacher and debating coach who came to pay respects.
That man is a communist. I get on well with him, because after years of arguing our different view points we respect each other. But as a communist, he definitely does not believe Christian teaching. Still, being at that funeral and seeing the people there made a deep impression on him. Near the end of the service, when the hearse had left, he said to me quietly, "I think you've got the wood on us." For those not familiar with that expression, it means having the edge. He could see that Christianity could uplift people in a way that a political ideology could not. The Holy Spirit can do what plain human inspiration cannot. I'm not gloating over him. It is itself a witness. Even an unbeliever could see how much difference it made to people that they believed Jesus, and His words, and held to the hope they gain.
Without that hope there could have been nothing but despair and an increasing weariness with life.
If I didn't have Jesus I would have become too bitter and depressed to go on living. If that family did not have Christ they could end up wishing for death themselves to be out of their misery.
I should have said to my friend, "We've haven't got the edge, Jesus gives it to us." I didn't think quickly enough, but then if I was meant to say that the Holy Spirit would have given me those words. They might have sounded too neat, or something. What I know is, the Holy Spirit showed an unbeliever something that day. I pray he took it to heart.

Which came first?

2010-03-07T19:12:00.000-08:00

The home schooling movement is growing in Australia, as well as the U.S., and I can see why! Working as a high school teacher for twenty five years, shows what the shortcomings are - not only with schools themselves, but also with the way society views them, and tries to use them.
God did NOT invent schools, He invented families. That has been forgotten by too many people who think that the school is an absolutely essential fact of modern life. It is not. It is a human innovation, and has all the shortcomings that humans' works have.
God gave families first responsibility for the care and nurture of children, and with that the right to be involved in what shape their education takes. That does not mean that all Christians should home-school. There are Christian schools, and Christian teachers in some secular schools, so that Christian content and perspective can be presented to kids who attend a school. But the paramount responsibilty for raising the young rests with families; and if Christian parents decide to home school, I can see exactly why. Some of the content directed at school enrollees is unsympathetic to Christians and their beliefs. One example is the modern 'rationalist' view that life began without the involvement of a Divine Being. Another is the idea that everyone makes their own moral decisions without being answerable to anyone but themselves. Then there is the teaching by secular schools that homosexuality is an entirely healthy individual difference. Christians should not be hostile to such people as homosexuals, in line with rejecting the sin but not the sinner. But they cannot be required to agree that it is a normal good thing if they believe the Bible's clear teaching on the subject. Some individual teachers are quite scornful and hostile to Christianity, and talk openly about trying to turn children away from it. They have no right to do so, but claim they have, and some others would agree. So there are good reasons why Christians may decide to avoid pernicious or hostile influences being directed at their kids.
From another angle, the expectations imposed on schools become quite ridiculous at times. Some parents take the view that if teachers know their job, they can make right anything that is wrong in the life of anyone aged 18 or under. They can make up for the deficit left by inadequate parents, that is! Very convenient for under committed parents who want someone else to do it for them!
Some months ago there were some racially based fights in southern Sydney. A senior officer in the Teachers' Federation stated that these riots drew attention to the role of the school in the community. The implication is that teachers should socially program all students so that they don't get involved in racial tensions. It is as if schools and teachers alone shape the attitudes and beliefs of all students. That is rubbish. Family background, peer group influence and personal experiences have a huge effect on the attitudes people develop. So it is unreasonable to require the school system to take care of all the business of raising children in a healthy way. By this means, schools and teachers are sometimes blamed for things they can't change. So secular society demands that schools take responsibility for raising children, instead of families. Too convenient! It saves parents the trouble of doing it themselves! This is especially the case with some parents who pay huge costs for expensive private schools, especially boarding schools, and expect the school to raise their children for them.
In addition to all this, some individual kids have a horrible time at school because schools can be emotional ghettoes full of bullying and unpleasantness. In New South Wales recently there have been suicides by kids overcome by the torment they endure at school. And the staff of schools are flaccidly useless in doing anything about it, in some cases because they cannot. Part of the problem there is, bullies have all the rights and none of the responsibilities. There is always someone thinking they are on the side of the angels when they stand up for malefactors, claiming that they are misunderstood or 'never had a chance', and so on. Meanwhile, the victims have to just cop it.
So too much is expected of schools, and there are good reasons why some people hate being there.
It is a feature of atheist societies, or totalitarian ones, that the role of parents and families is diminished and the role of educational institutions increased. This gives 'the state' more control over children, and more chance to indoctrinate them. And it never should have been either empowered to do that, or made responsible for doing so. Teachers neither have the right nor should have the responsibility to replace parents. The de-schooling of society can be a reaction to this: that too much has been handed over to schools for too long.
So I entirely understand why home-schooling is increasing. It may even be the way of the future. Other ways can be found for children to mingle with people their own age. It does not have to be at school. God did not invent schools. He invented families, and with them should rest the task of raisng children.

A modern parable

2010-02-11T22:30:00.000-08:00

Did you ever hear of someone who made themselves really evil, but some people still stand up for them? Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin would be two of the most abominable human devils the world has seen, but they both had devoted female partners and other followers loyal to them. And there are plenty of less famous examples: brutal, evil and violent individuals, gangsters, underworld figures, who have loyal friends and partners. Sometimes if a person is asked, how could they stand by someone like that, they answer 'You don't know them like I do.'
Well it might be good to see the good in someone, but it can be criminal stupidity to deny the evil that they do, as well.
Eva Braun married Adolf Hitler shortly before their deaths. It would be informative to know how she could be near someone who did what he did.
It seems Adolf Hitler was known for being kind to animals, and children - unless they were Jewish, Gypsy, or handicapped and consigned to euthenasia or the death camps. Josef Stalin had a loyal wife and several children. Did the woman who shared Stalin's home life know about the gulags?
The issue here is, can you relate to a person only according to their good side, or is it dishonest to do so? Does the bad they do exist inseparably with the good?
A classic modern parable here is Robert Louis Stephenson's work, "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde." The terms "Jekyll and Hyde" are now part of the English language. That story shows the tragedy of it. It came about that, when Mr Hyde finally met his end, Dr Jekyll died with him. It couldn't happen any other way. Because they were both parts of the same person, to stop Hyde doing what he did, Jekyll had to go down too. Edward Hyde did gruesome and foul things like stomp on little children. Henry Jekyll saved peoples' lives. But to stop Hyde killing people, Henry Jekyll had to be locked up (or killed) with him. It was impossible to have Jekyll without also having Hyde. And that is both the tragedy of the good in a person being destroyed by the bad; and the impossibility of only recognizing the good in any person, and denying the bad.
Hyde is a fictitious figure, and an extreme case, but the point still stands. A human can be destroyed entirely if the bad in them is too severe. Having a good side doesn't make it all right. In controlling Hyde, you must also lock up Jekyll, because wherever he is, Hyde is there too.
That story seems to me a modern parable. It shows something about the human condition and life. You can't let a person be seen only by their good side, and ignore the bad if it becomes too severe. We all have a down side, but most people keep it under control, or the world would be impossible to live in. But the sinful side can't be ignored. That is how it GETS out of control.
It shows something about the truth of God and Divine Judgement, as well. I believe R.L. Stephenson was a Christian, and his inspiration for the story may be from his faith. God cannot ignore our bad side and only see our good, because He is Truth. That is why we can't attain salvation by our own deeds and works. We have a Henry Jekyll side, but also an Edward Hyde side. The two are part of the one individual. You can't lock up Hyde without Jekyll being locked up as well. So God can't admit the Henry Jekyll to His kingdom without the Hyde entering at the same time. His solution? Take on Himself the punishment for what Hyde does in us all. Suffer excruciatingly on the Cross and bury it. Then the evil we do is paid for.
But simply on our own merits, we can't enter God's peace and kingdom because no matter how much Jekyll we might claim, we can't deny the Hyde. We have to be forgiven. We need to remember that.

What's happening?

2010-02-07T21:35:00.001-08:00

I wihs I knew what to think about the American Christian missionaries arrested in Haiti. The claim is that they wanted to rescue orphaned children from disaster and give them shelter and safety. The plan was to have them adopted in the U.S. If that is what they intend, then it sounds to be humane and good. But now the accusation is that some of the children were not real orphans, and the missionaries have been accused of child trafficking. Can anyone tell me what is happening? It's disturbing to see Christian brothers and sisters in distress, and being locked up in a country like Haiti could be a nightmare. Putting it bluntly, that nation has a bad reputation for corruption and it's in a state of chaos as well, after the earthquake-not that they can be blamed for that! So I've prayed that they will be upheld and that the truth will be fairly stated. That's the point, though: is it a case of Christians doing the Lord's work, and being persecuted by the world, which resents what Christians do sometimes. Or are they misunderstood, and being misrepresented? Or did those people really take some liberties with Haitian people that they should not have done?
It is a great humane calling to help those in need. There really are some Haitian orphan children who badly need such help. We have some young Haitians in Australia, adopted by Australian families, and two brothers recently expressed their gratitude for it. Still, it sometimes happens that those claiming to help get rather heavy-handed and presume to do things without making sure their help is wanted. So that is what I'm wondering: did these missionaries set out to follow God's calling and find their actions were misunderstood, or did they get carried away and overstep the mark?
I should pray for their well-being no matter what. I've made too many mistakes myself to reproach anyone else. It's just that I'd be glad to know what's happening. If anyone reads this and can tell me more, I'd be glad to hear. Blessings.

Forever

2010-01-21T20:07:00.000-08:00

All lives on Earth shall pass and end,
In few or many years,
But though the earthly bodies walk
No more this vale of tears,
The minds that know, the souls that feel
Lie not where our bones fall.
When Jesus Christ comes back to Earth
They shall rise, one and all.

Some mockers ridicule Christians for using what they call a euphemism, a word meant to make something more pleasant than it is. They describe it as escapism, saying that Christians are unable to face up to the fact of death. To them, it sounds brave and honest to call death by that name, and to talk bluntly about it saying that when you're gone, you're gone: get used to it.
The mistake is theirs. To say that someone has 'passed on' might sound gentler than saying 'died', but the reason for putting it that way is to be accurate about what happens. When a human spirit leaves that person's body, then the body ceases to function, and that can give the appearance of ceasing to exist if you only accept the existence of what you can see. But that spirit has not ceased to exist. It never will. That spirit has gone somewhere else. It waits, and at some future time the Maker of this world is going to come back to it, in One of His Three Persons. That person is God the Son, who we know as Jesus Christ. So it is actually saying it like it is when you talk about 'passing on'. The real essence of the person, their mind and feelings and consciousness, have passed on from this Earth to the next stage of their existence. So it is no euphemism. It is stark truth. I say 'stark' because some people don't want to know! It might be easier for the scoffers if they did cease to be at all. Then there would not be a time to stand before the Throne of God. There would be no need to have to admit that they rejected Him, and trashed the priceless gift He held out.
On the positive side, if people find comfort in saying 'passed on', the God bless them. Those who left this Earth in faith and believing are waiting down the line.
Like anyone else, I've been bereaved from time to time. The longer you live the more it has happened. So like so many others I can feel the pure joy of knowing that we will meet again, those of us still here and those of us who have fallen asleep in the Lord and are waiting. The time is coming when there will be no more pain of parting.
Human beings seem to think that what they can't see they don't have to think about. That might be why they think if they throw something in the sea it no longer has any effect on anything. "Out of sight, out of mind," is an admission of the mind's tricks on itself rather than a sensible statement of fact about life. But few people see their own brain, yet they believe they have on. Likewise we can't see our own heart, yet we know we have one. Okay, so the clever cynics believe that the existence of the heart can be proved. They then challenge the believer to prove the existence of God. Enter the Word in Romans 1 verse 20: "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen,". God's reality is clear if you look at the world with an open mind and heart.
That is why we worship and celebrate Him. He didn't leave us to perish and return just to dust. And He didn't leave us to suffer what we bring on ourselves. He rescued all who believe and gives us everything - without end. Forever.

Not the end.

2010-01-05T01:33:00.001-08:00

Though when death comes, and we decay,
And our bones scattered be,
Though they may lie beneath the sky,
Or covered by the sea,
When back to Earth Lord Jesus comes,
The Holy One descend,
Then all who lived shall rise and see -
The grave is not the end!

That's not a masterpiece, but it came to me recently. It's worth reminding myself. John Donne put it in far better form when he wrote "Death be not proude". He tells death to give up its pretensions. It is not a condition which captures people. It is an event which they (we!) go through. The spirit leaves the body. And when that happens, even though physical remains may be scattered and lost, the spirit remains intact and alive. It is immortal. Sometime in the future the day will come when Jesus returns to Earth, and then....
Some years ago I heard a body builder who did some male modelling say: "If you've got something, why not show it off? We'll all be dust in two hundred years."
He reckons, does he? Some people might be better off if we were only unfeeling dust. Then there would be no consequences to face.
When the souls of all who ever lived rise from bodily death, we stand before God and it will be known: who believed God, believed Jesus, and was given the collossal blessing of pardoning for all wrong doing? And who thought it was all rubbish, and ignored Jesus' calling? Come to that, who am I to get up on a high horse about it? The answer: someone who was saved, even though I did not deserve it; and the least I can do is tell anyone else who will listen.
We won't be dust. The greatest part of our existence will start then, and it goes forever. The grave is NOT the end. It is the beginning. So we need to get it right. We need to know how we escape the hurt anger of God asking,'what did you do with the life I gave you?'
I can still cringe inwardly thinking of some of the stupid, mean, selfish or plain nasty things I've done in life, and ask God for forgiveness. It's probably a good thing, so I don't get complacent and forget that I need pardoning - big time. And it would even be vain to talk as if my sins were worse than lots of other peoples'. But waiting beyond this life is either non-ceasing joy or non-ceasing regret. The grave is only the departing point from this earth. When the women went to Jesus' tomb to find His body the angel said that He was not there, because He had risen. Now Jesus is a special and unique case; but He made the way for resurrection, and in a sense it is true to say at any persons' grave that they are not there. The earthly remains are still there, but the real them, the spirit, their real identity is not. It has passed on.
A Christian brother I met recently shared this. The letters BIBLE can stand for
Basic
Instructions
Before
Leaving
Earth.
For our own good we need to know certain things before we do so: who Jesus is, and why we need to know and follow Him.
That way the grave leads to entry to God's Kingdom, not to rejection from it.
The grave is not the end.
That is why Jesus came - to tell us.
That's why we celebrate Christmas. He came to save us.
Blessings.

Check your focus.

2009-11-28T19:18:00.000-08:00

Someone was having a bit of a grumble about our church recently. They asked me if I felt there was enough leadership in it. Their view is that the church pastor is a leader and should lead.
I didn't have an arguement, just heard him out. But I've heard those comments before and it makes me wonder: do people sometimes get the focus a bit wrong, and look to the church, the human congregation and the pastor, for things that should come from the Holy Spirit?
Yes, a church pastor has a leadership role in their church, so do the elders. But it can be a mistake, I believe, if the pastor or any group within the church take too much on themselves in telling other people what to do. Some churches, especially those ones that might be called sects, have gained a bad reputation for being too heavy handed and controlling in their attitude to their congregations. They may be assuming an authority that only belongs to God. The human leaders of the church are there to teach and guide, but the ultimate Lordship is God's alone. And the most critical leadership for any Christian does not come from another mere human being. It comes from the Holy Spirit dwelling within you. The Spirit's guidance goes hand in hand with the Scriptures. If anyone claims they have been told 'in the spirit' to do or say something, and that something contradicts the teachings of the Bible, then it is a false leading. That is why we need both. But if human leaders gain or claim too much influence, too much power in running other peoples' lives then you get the Jim Jones mistake. It seems Jones acted and said things contrary to what the Bible actually teaches, and his followers did not see it because they looked to him for things that they should have found from the Written Word and the guidance of the Holy Spirit in prayer. Some more mainstream churches can lead their followers astray, also, when in an attempt to be 'modern' they compromise the Word.
The moral of the story is, do not mistake the mere human body of the church, its pastor or any one else for He who is not of this flesh and world. The leadership of a church should always be subject to that limit. Ultimately we do not rely on the human members of the church, although it is good to join in worship and seek the guidance of others where it can help. But too much emphasis on leadership in a church can lead people astray. I heard of one pastor who told some of his congregants that if they left the church they would break the bond with the Holy Spirit. He as good as said that they could only communicate with God through him. That man was, I think, going way over the top claiming that. And all humans are fallible and imperfect. No human should claim the mantle of God in holding too much power or authority over others. We need to remember that when we talk about church leadership. Its real leader is not the pastor, but the God who calls him and all of us too.

"Expelled": They just don't get it!

2009-11-17T22:34:00.000-08:00

Watching "Expelled" I recall one of the non-believers saying that he and other rationalists don't want to 'abolish religion' as he put it. What he thinks will happen is that science will gradually cause the disappearance of religion. In his words, let people have their religion if it means getting together and having fun. But as time passes there will be more scientific discovery and religion will just fade away. He talked about 'a little bit more science, a little bit less religion, a little bit more science, a little bit less religion' until it simply doesn't have any followers anymore. That speaker, and others like him, just don't get it. They do not understand what faith and belief mean to people. Perhaps he perceives churches as social organizations or old-fashioned cultural things that have outlived their use. In fact if a person has a real faith, a really genuine belief in God, then all science does is reveal more of the genius of God. Or when science tries to prove the non-existence of God it gets caught out breaking its own rules, namely accepting what the evidence shows honestly instead of using it to suit itself. Some of the laws of science, like the Laws of Thermodyamics, are evidence against evolution. One of those laws says that things tend to go from a state of order to a state of disorder. That is the exact opposite of what evolutionary theory suggests, that things become more ordered and complex.
If science was going to stifle interest in faith it would have happened decades ago. It did not because even though scientific investigation can explain HOW things happen, that does not explain WHY things happened. Finding meaning in life is not just a matter of understanding what happens, it also requires us to see a point to it. From a purely rational viewpoint, an atheist viewpoint, humans exist like animals to propogate their own species. All that they do just serves to prolong their existence so that they will have more offspring. A belief in God gives you a reason to go on existing.
Discoveries made seem to give humans more power, so that they can start deluding themselves they've made God unnecessary, or become as powerful. So then people learn the hard way to respect His place. When antibiotics were discovered, some humans thought they had the power to scorn God's rules. They could control disease. Instead, antibiotic resistant strains began to appear. With discoveries enabling contraception, preventing pregnancy and STDs, some arrogant unbelievers thought they could disdain the rules God made. Then they found out the hard way that contraception can leave people sterile when they want to conceive, and STDs became antibiotic resistant. When science learned what was needed to build the Titanic, some FOOL wrote 'Even God can't sink this ship'. History records how clever that comment was. So humans think they can displace God by learning the things they do, and find they are just as helpless before Him as their ancestors thousands of years ago. They just managed to hide the fact with all their technological rinky-tinks. How humiliating!
The longer we go, the more we have to face the fact that there are things we cannot do, and ways in which only a superior intelligence has the answers. But there, one of the atheist speakers in "Expelled" ended up admitting that there must be some intelligent design in the beginning of life - and said it must be from another planet! That's the old von Danniken stuff, "Chariots of the Gods."
Some people will talk about men from Mars before they accept the place of God in this universe. But to those who believe, the reality of God is only shown more and more by human attempts to scorn Him. Religion will not disappear in the face of scientific discovery. The more science finds out and tells us, the less it will have answers to the question "Why are we here?"
Jesus Himself said, some people will hear but not understand, see but not believe, because their wicked hearts are hardened.
Jesus is eternal. So is the Holy Spirit, reaching out to us. Science can't equal that. Scientific discovery will all become redundant when Heaven and Earth pass away, but Jesus' words do not pass away.

Self-contradiction

2009-11-09T21:56:00.000-08:00

I've finally seen "Expelled," after it came to the cinema here. So that's why it caused a stir! Scary stuff! People who dare even mention the idea of Intelligent Design find the thought police falling on them, and their jobs lost. A new version of the Spanish Inquisition, in which people were victimised for uttering ideas that those in power did not approve of. And here's the classic irony. The people behind the persecution claim to believe in freedom of thought and speech. Humbug!
How many cases were there? I'll have to see it again sometime and take notes. Academics, researchers and journalists found themselves in trouble because they even referred to the idea in passing. It's fear, partly. Some people who consider themselves the judges of what is right are scared rigid of the idea that there may be a God or any such being who could have made the universe and life in it take the forms that they did. There is no reason to be so ferocious about stifling an idea unless they are frightened of it.
The excuse used is that it leads to a belief in some 'religious' teaching, whether it be Christian, Jewish or any other. For that reason, they have to stifle any suggestion that life is not a gigantic accident and series of ongoing accidents called mutations. The opposition to religion is justified by saying that it creates division and starts wars. The claim there is that an atheistic, secular, 'logic and science based society is safer. Oh really? Did anyone here about the horrific human rights violations that occurred in the Soviet Union and the euphemistically misnamed "Peoples Republic" of China under Mao Zedong? The gulags? Mao's purges? The secret police state that existed in East Germany? So that is what the atheists do when they set up a society, do they? And that is safe?
I feel like telling some 'rational thinkers' who claim they offer a better way that people like them are the least likely to inspire my confidence. A world ruled by the hard-line leftists I've known would be a cold and ruthless place, lacking in the better, warmer side of humanity. That is to say, it would reflect them!
The problem is partly that to make a lie seem true you have to make sure everyone believes it. You can't have some bright spark speaking up and saying that the emperor has no clothes. So dissent has to be squashed if some dictator wants to set up their great new world based on science, rationality and atheism. Hence the blood on the hands of people like Lenin, Stalin and others. They spout about freedom of thought and proceed to deny freedom of thought.
It would alarm me if I didn't remember the words of the Psalm: "Do not fret because of evil men, or be envious of those who do wrong, for like the grass they will soon pass away." (Psalm 37, verses 1 and 2.) Again, "Do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their evil schemes." (verse 7) "For evil men will be cut off, but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land." (verse 9).
One of the reasons I became a Christian was a complete loss of hope that mere human beings could be relied on or make the world a good place - and that includes myself. I could see the weakness and sin in me.
Those who deny God His place will not only not succeed, but will earn His retribution.
As for our household, we will serve God. And may He shield and protect us.

Professing themselves wise...

2009-10-26T20:51:00.000-07:00

Cynicism can be a cheap imitation of wisdom. It means, by definition, to doubt the good of things. The cynic does not think critically and carefully like the sceptic, the cynic dismisses and derides things as worthless. The cynic may consider themselves too wise to be taken in and fooled into believing in anything. And the cynic may think themselves wise and yet become a fool.
To the cynic, anything uplifting or good cannot be true. For sure, sometimes it is necessary to look at things carefully so that we're not deceived. Satan is the arch deceiver. It ( I can't use a personal pronoun like 'he' for something so vile) had its first ever contact with God's children in the Garden of Eden by causing them to doubt God's Word. And the modern approach is to say 'How can a loving God let bad things happen?' etc. The answer is that God does not control us all like little puppets and a lot of the bad things that happen are the fault of humans who make or let them happen. They are not God's doing at all. And if God does not stop disasters like cyclones or earthquakes, that might be because humans choose to ignore Him. Also God does not promise a rose garden, He promises comfort and salvation. But the cynical approach of the 'enlightened intellectual' scorns the idea. They say it is too good to be true. They compare the idea of a loving God to the tooth fairy and Santa Claus. The cynic therefore will not afford themselves the joy that they could receive, and worse, they try to deny it to others.
To themselves, the cynics of this world are too clever to believe in such things. But if they were really so clever, they could see the awesomeness of God in the good things that do happen, even in the midst of the bad. Trouble is, that would be embarrassing to them. It seems clever to just rubbish it all.
So the cynic will let their own 'wisdom' stand between them and coming to know the living God. It is easier to be destructive and contemptuous because it excuses their own mean ungiving behaviour. One author I admire put it this way: "We cannot endure the goodness of God". (Glendon Swarthout in "Bless the Beast and Children."
So the cynic turns their face away from the wonder of God's love and grace, and thinks they are being clever to do that. As the Bible itself says, "Professing themselves wise they became fools."

Distractions to see through.

2009-10-16T19:43:00.000-07:00

Checking the ninsemen news, I hear about a marriage celebrant refusing to marry a mixed-race couple. The husband was black, the wife white, and they had to find another celebrant. His reason was, 'he always thinks of the children'.
It didn't quote any Christian principle. If it did, that marriage celebrant should be reminded of what God revealed to Peter as described in Acts chapter 10: God does not exclude any race from His Kingdom or His presence. We are ALL made in His image.
Racial prejudice is not from God. It is a vexatious delusion suffered or perpetrated by some humans.
The celebrant's stated reasons were that marriages between the different races do not last and the children of them are not accepted by either race. If anyone can tell me whether or not it's true that inter racial relationships fail more often than others, I can only say that I never knew that before. There should be no reason why people can't love and live close to those of other races - not if we see what is really human. About the children, I hope that's not true nowadows. Is that view a bit out of date? In Australia, and (I thought) the U.S. there are so many people who are 'biracial' that it's not an issue anymore. Please correct me if I'm wrong. But I blogged not long ago about Muhammed Ali visiting Ireland, because one of his great-great grandfathers came from there. And I'm sure it was reported recently that one of Michelle Obama's great grandfathers was white, as well. Come to that, who has NOT heard that the U.S. president has a parent from each race? So how do we get this attitude that such children can't get a life?
It is a shame that race has become such a huge issue. If you think about it scientifically, in purely genetic terms, race is just a matter of adaption to the environment that humans have undergone. It's well known that darker skin is an advantage in a very hot sunny climate. Narrow deep set eyes, as seen in some Northern Eurpoeans, are an advantage in a climate where there is cold wind. My own ancestry is mostly Scottish, English, and some German and French. People used to tease me about having small narrow eyes. And the reason is my ancestors lived in a cold windy climate and God is His wisdom gave them physical characteristics suited to that environment. In biological terms that is all race is: a physical type suited to the place where people of that type live. Or their ancestors did.
Of course different races, and nations, may have varying cultures. But culture is a learned thing. Far too much is made of race as a distinction or a barrier between people. It is regrettable. Nowadays, when the races are so widely dispersed and so mingled, it should be clear that we are all equally human. But for some reason too many people want someone to look down on. It is a distraction that Christians in particular need to see through. Racial characteristics are God's gift to His created beings so that they can cope with living in a certain set of conditions. They are NOT the way He decided to make some of them 'better' than others. It's easier to talk than to do, I realize. But correct me if I'm wrong. There is NO good Christian reason for objection to inter-racial relationships.

The past is another place

2009-10-01T21:22:00.000-07:00

All the raging over Roman Polanski brings a few interesting arguments to light.
As some people say, if Polanski was not famous and widely admired then there would not be so many people standing up for him. If he was an obscure person found years after getting away with what he did, few people would bother taking his side. So why does being talented and famous excuse something pretty nasty?
On the other side, people say he has suffered a lot in life already. True, but that doesn't help his victim to cope with what he did. Too much excuse making for the wrong-doer goes on already.
It's worth noting that the young victim's mother put her in that situation, where she was at the mercy of an adult who did this. Was the mother so fixated with making her daughter a show-biz success that she put the daughter at risk? So much for the shallow view of life that without being rich and famous life is not worth living.
My own ten cents worth is this: in some ways, Roman Polanski's behaviour was symptomatic of the seventies. If you recall the 1960s and 70s, or read about them, it wasn't all as good as some people say. What was called the 'sexual revolution' aimed to break down all taboos about sex, and 'liberate' people. What actually happened was some important social restraints were broken down. Very young people became sexualized. On the one hand, they were encouraged by parts of society to 'experiment', or 'find themselves', or 'discover their sexual identity', and all that. On the other hand, they were no longer considered off-limits for such involvement. Those who raised any objection were howled down as 'fascists' or sick repression cases.
Too see the seventies from inside, look at what they produced. One famous and widely read novel of that period was "Papillion", by French author Henri Charriere. In the novel, (though not the film), the narrator describes seducing his 13 year old sister in law. While living with Venezuelan Natives, he marries a woman and also has her younger sister. At the time, this was widely admired literature, considered a modern classic. The school where I worked had copies for student reading. Nowadays, that passage from the novel would be considered a glamorization of paedophilia.
A famous film of that era was 'The Summer of '42', in which a fifteen year old boy is sexually initiated by an adult woman. At the time this too was considered fine artistic entertainment about a young man's 'awakening'. Today, the female lead character would be considered criminal.
But that was the 70s. Anything except openly coercive rape was legitimate. It was 'liberated'. If a person regretted any sexual involvement afterwards, they were accused of being too 'hung up' or 'inhibited' and in need of getting used to it. I'm utterly sure there were people living in the 1970s who thought an adult enticing a 13year old into sex was simply 'liberating' them, helping them get free of their 'hang-ups'. That was the 70s. There were psychologists who had intimate relationships with their patients, and called it part of the therapy. There was a lot of interest in Sweden where, it was said, children as young as 13 sometimes had children and even married. That was the 70s.
So what Polanski did was criminal, right enough. But he might not have considered tyring it on in a different social climalte. I believe that some of the so-called 'progressive' thinkers of the time have a lot to answer for. They tried to tell us all that we should do whatever we wanted and 'be free'. The idea of ethical restraint in sexual behaviour was ridiculed.In that sort of climate, there were probably a lot more incidents like the one for which Polanski is indicted. Some of them involved female adults on male children. Some of those pointing fingers at Polanski now were probably jealous at the time that he did what some of them would have liked to. That sounds harsh, but it might be true all the same.
The 1970s was another place from today, and in some ways a much worse place. People in millions scorned the notion of God holding out guidance for living, thought they had better ideas and made a shocking mess. Polanski might only be a symbol of much that was wrong with that era.
We need to get back to God's way. When that gets forgotten, the results can be dreadful and the realization too late.

Which way is it to be?

2009-09-22T20:51:00.000-07:00

In Australia, some women are claiming the right to be front-line soldiers on the same basis as men. The claim is that they should be allowed to go into battle as combatants on precisely the same terms as male soldiers, as part of equal rights. There could be a problem here that some people have not considered.
If the world wants to prevent violence against women, women should not be put in situations where they could experience unavoidable violence, such as a combat zone. And nor should they behave violently towards men, if the man is not to retaliate. To put it simply, if a woman attacks a man she cannot blame him for defending himself; and in combat, she could find herself attacking a man, forcing him to fight back. This could give the female soldier an unfair advantage. If a man has been taught not to offer violence to a woman, or has a natural aversion to doing so, then he can't fight back against a female soldier the way he could do against a male one. It is sometimes possible in combat to clearly see and identify your adversary. A man realizing that the soldier in his line of fire is female may be less able to fight back against her. This gives the female soldier an illegitimate advantage. Of course, we can say violence should be avoided altogether, but so far no-one has found a way of preventing war. It only takes one side to insist on getting their way by armed or physical force, and their intended victim has to defend themselves. At least if we can't stop war we might limit the evil of it by restricting the way it is conducted. That is the basis of the Geneva Convention, with rules such as no killing of prisoners.
Some commentators say that women are less suited to combatant duty than men. That probably varies with the individual. Some men loath violence utterly. Some women resort to it very easily. The point here is that if violence against women is a thing we want to abolish, then women should not be in a situation where they would either inflict it or suffer it. For that matter, if it is worse for a man to attack a woman than to attack another man, the same applies in reverse. It is bad for a woman to attack another woman, worse to attack a man. Cross gender violence violates the special relationship that should exist between the two genders.
Equality in principle is not the same thing as being identical in practice. It may be that in some ways the two sexes are different and that should be reflected in the duties they undertake. Any thoughts?

False distinctions

2009-09-03T03:24:00.000-07:00

According to an Australian newspaper, Muhammed Ali has visited Ireland - to get in touch with some of his relatives. That's right - Muhammed Ali, the Afro-American boxer, is part Irish. One of his great grandfathers came from the town in Ireland, emigrated to the U.S., and Muhammed has traceable relatives there. It seems to me like one of the greatest things he has ever done. The reciprocal gesture would be if a prominent white sportsman who has in fact got some African ancestry to say the same thing. The bitter division between the races that sometimes arises overlooks the fact that in fact some people of each race have blood kinspeople belonging to the other. The same thing happens in Australia. Some people who identify as white do in fact have some Aboriginal ancestry. And many people who identify as Aboriginal are quite obviously part European (white, if you like). It is quite easy to see why the feelings of anger are there. Too much blood has been shed. There are reasons for the anger and hostility. But no good comes of it. It just causes the hostility to carry on. Apparently the Irish people in this town welcomed Muhammed Ali as one of their own migrant sons. Good on them! Why should they reject him on racial grounds! Now can someone tell people like Jeremiah Wright? Or Michael Mansell, or Jeff Clark?
These last two are Australian Aboriginal activist leaders, the second of them apparently the son of a Scottish migrant to Australia. Making a war over race simply means the hate goes on. We ARE one and the same race. God did not invent racial distinctions. Abram, later Abraham, was originally a Babylonian. He came fro Ur, of the Chaldees. And Peter was sent his vision, that God is no preferer of persons. We are all made in God's image. We need to remember that.

Stick to the plan - 2

2009-08-25T00:26:00.000-07:00

Certain ways of doing things have a natural logic. Doing them differently can be at least pointless, or even damaging. For a simple example: human beings are designed to walk on two legs, not four limbs or on their arms. To do so, unless you have a disability and can't use your legs, is pointless for a start and can be damaging to the body because the load-bearing is on limbs not intended for it.
This applies also to sexuality. There is a natural and right way for it to happen, and variations on it may not just be individual preferences. They defy natural logic or law.
Sexual relations have two intended purposes if approached in the right way: the affectionate bonding of the two participants and the conception of children. Even if someone is not convinced by Christian teaching, or Jewish, or any other, pure logic shows this: the only kind of sexual relations that meet these two purposes is, consenting sex between adults of opposite genders. Any other form fails to meet one or both of those criteria.
Sex between two people of the same gender cannot produce children. It is naturally illogical.
Sex between a human and an animal cannot produce children. Apart from the disgust it may cause, it is naturally illogical.
Sex between an adult and a child can be traumatic or injurious to the child. It does not cause affectionate and safe bonding between the people involved, so it does not serve both the two purposes intended.
Forced sex, or rape, is traumatic to the unwilling partner, and denies to notion of affectionate bonding. For that reason, as well as denying the victim's rights, it is a bad idea. It can hurt someone, so it should not happen.
Sex involving multiple partners can cause uncertainty about who the father of a given child is. It also denies the bond between two individuals, dissipating it among a group.
Sex among strangers, with no real connection, denies the idea of bonding between the people involved. It is physical intimacy without emotional intimacy, thus a clash with the ideal of affectionate bonding.
God made things a certain way. Trying to vary it leads to dysfuntion and adverse side effects. God makes rules for our sake, not to be a spoiler.
Stick to the plan.

Stick to the Plan - 1

2009-08-07T00:03:00.000-07:00

The saying goes, why reinvent the wheel? It makes sense, but that doesn't stop people trying to do things their own way - and messing up badly sometimes.
This is all pretty direct, but then life's like that. Things need to be said.
Back in the 1960s something happened which they call the 'sexual revolution'.
It was meant to bring in an era of universal love and peace, with everyone loving everyone else and no fighting, no being possessive and controlling, and so on.
It failed. In short, it failed because it tried to do things differently from how the Maker of all things meant them to operate. More specifically, it failed because what it expected to happen was simply impossible. Human nature did not allow it.
For the idea of 'universal love' to work, everyone would have to feel included. Everyone would have to feel that they got their share of the love. Nobody should be left out, and feel rejected and unwanted. As soon as someone was, then the 'revolution' was not doing what it claimed. It was not freeing everyone and making them all feel loved and happy. What happened in the 60s was, it simply degenerated into a lot of casual sex, and a lot of emptiness and resentment.
This is the trouble with casual or promiscuous sex, sometimes called 'free love.'
Some people attract far more partners than others, and have a queue waiting to get near them. Others are always waiting in a queue. And this draws attention to the fact that, in human terms we're not all equally advantaged in the way we're born. We're all equally human, and all equally valued by God, but we are not equally valued by each other. Some people are much more admired and respected simply because of the way they look or the talents they are born with. And they have suitors by the hundred. Others just don't turn heads everywhere they go. They only look good to those who know them and see the worth of them as people. And the 'sexual revolution' drew cruel attention to the fact! Instead of making us all free and fulfilled it made the problem worse. Some people had a wild time until it all turned sour because of the shallowness of it, others were constantly reminded that they did not attract others.
Add to that, the fact that casual sex was about using someone for one thing only, and not really connecting with them as anything more than a physical body. How ironic that the 'free love' advocates talked about reaching out to others, when in fact they were making human relationships incredibly shallow.
The race started out with a man and a woman. It was not a man and several women, or a woman and several men. It was one to one. And that was the template, the Divine Plan. People who thought they knew better had slogans like 'smash monogamy', and 'share the love'; and what they got was widespread divorce, anger, estrangement, lonliness, rejection - and an epidemic of STDs. So where did they go wrong to start with? They thought they could trash the way God set things out. What was also forgotten was that sexual relations sometimes have this side effect called conception- it leads to the birth or children. Yes, that comment is ironic. But people act as if intercourse was just like having a dance, or something, with no lasting consequence at all. Another thing they forgot was that it can be immportant to know who is father to a child, which might not be known if there has been too much 'freedom' in partnering. It has happened that people who do not know, accidentally form relationships with their own siblings.
God knew what He was doing. Who were these people who reckoned they knew better?
Stick to the plan.

Taking back the right.

2009-07-22T23:16:00.000-07:00

Apparently there has been an increase in home schooling in Australia. I'm told that's happening in the U.S. as well. The press reported yesterday that over 2000 children are registered as home schooled - which in Australia is a significant number, in a population of 22 million. And, the report adds, there are more who are simply not registered, the parents home school them without asking permission of the government.
I can see exactly why! After being a teacher for twenty-five years, I can see why parents decide not to hand their kids over to a school. In fact, without critisizing all schools and teachers, it may be a good thing. It could be called taking back what never should have been given away.
For a start, some kids have a really miserable time at school. Here is some horrible news. There is a school in Australia which has had four suicides in a year. Does that make the blood run cold? And all of them have been associated with cyber-bullying - abusive and cruel messages sent to a kid, or said about them and put about over the net. Can you beat that for rottenness? And bullying did not start with the invention of the internet or the mobile phone. I went to school back in the distant 1960s. Tormenting of some kids by others was horribly alive and well then. In fact it probably happened back in Hellenic Age, when the highly civilized Greeks had schools for boys whose parents could spare them from working at home.
It costs teachers, too. Those of us who try to stop it can find ourselves accused by the bullies of picking on them. They insist it's all a frame-up. They never did anything wrong at all. Sure, and the moon's made of cheese, as well!
That's not the only reason, though.
For as long as I can remember, people have been saying 'schools should be doing something about...' whatever problem has come up with kids. Whether it is teaching them road safety, teaching them the law, teaching them to drive (yes, I've heard that said!) the things traditionally done by parents have been shifted onto schools and their staffs. This can be a huge cop-out by parents who don't want to raise their own children, they want someone else to take care of that and they just enjoy the finished product. Or if they're not happy with the result, they blame the school. That's far easier than doing it themselves. But it is not how it should be. The proverb says "It takes a village to raise a child", which means that children grow up in a community of which all members help to care for them and show them how to get on with the world and be part of it. And God did not invent schools. God invented families. Children need families to care for them. A school is not the same thing, at all. A school, like a hospital, has a specialized function. A hospital is for health treatment and care - hopefully only for a limited time. A school is for education, and only for a limited time. It should not be the whole of a child's care-giving and nurture. In fact, a school, even if the staff really care, would be a poor substitute for a caring family.
There can be a more sinister side to it, in addition. Without getting into too many conspiracy theories, it really is true that totalitarian societies try to reduce the extent of family loyalty. They aim to fix the individual's allegiance on the state, or the leader of the state. People like Karl Marx derided the family. The Khmer Rouge, Cambodian communists, made of policy of trying to turn children against their parents. And years ago the hard line left in the West said things like "until you people are prepared to kill your parents, we will never change this society." (I think that was Jerry Reuben, before he changed sides.) Even without going that far, the family can be an focus of attachment that takes precedence over a person's allegiance to political leaders. And dictators do not like that.
There is a growing number of Christian schools in the English speaking world, because parents object to the secular state trying to teach their children things that contravene Christian teaching. For that matter there have long been Jewish schools, and in Australia there are Islamic schools being founded. Some people object because they say it divides society. Sure, it is not a good thing if a community fractures into groups hostile to those not of their own belief, or race, or anything else. But if a public school system tries to be all things to all people it can only end up not really including some. Secular thinkers, or the politically correct, teach things which Christianity and Judaism reject. And Christians, Jews and others do not have to give up their beliefs to please the state, or the self-appointed judges of what is right. So it is not only understandable that some families decide not to let the school system take charge and decide what beliefs to teach. It is understandable that some parents decide to spare their children the misery of being in a place where they will be miserable and feel victimized. And it is quite right if parents undertake to bring their children up themselves, NOT try to get a government agency to do it for them.
Some teachers I've known respect parents' rights, and just want to educate children in the curriculum in a pleasant environment. But some teachers I've known think it is their right to indoctrinate and programme children. They assume the right to contradict parents, undermine the family's attempts to pass on their beliefs to their kids and treat students as a captive audience for themselves. I do not accept their right to do that to my children, or anyone else's and I when I was teaching didn't claim the right to take kids' loyalty away from their parents. No-one has that right. So the schools system should not be a way of sweeping away parental right and influence, and setting up a society of politically indoctrinated subjects.
I can see why some people talk about unschooling society. The school has been used to substitute for parents, and as a way of getting kids away from the counsel of their parents. God did not invent schools. He invented families. Sure, kids may want to do things in groups so that the learning can be shared. And we all need to learn to get on with others. But families should be the ones in control, not a faceless government bureaucracy. And the school system should not be a way of messing with peoples' minds. It could be that we need more home-schooling.
Critics of home schooling say kids need to learn about the world. School does not necessarily teach people about the world, only that other people can be horribly cruel. Also, the world is full of things we try to protect ourselves from. The world is full of disease and danger. We try to avoid falling victim to them. The bad peer groups that exist in some schools might be another thing worth protecting vulnerable kids from.
I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't been a teacher. But God would have put me where I should be, no doubt. Things change. I wonder what education will be like in another hundred years.

The right stuff

2009-07-06T22:09:00.000-07:00

I had a joyful surprise one day, quite out of the blue. My daughter, then aged 7, was playing with her toy horses. Two of them, an adult and a foal, were close together, the big one was protecting and looking after the small one.
"That looks nice" I said, "the mother and the baby together."
She replied, "That's not the mother, this one is," and held up another toy horse.
"Oh, right," I answered, "which one is that?" meaning the one right beside the foal.
She replied "The father."
That was such a small thing, but I was exhilarated - clean over the moon. So that is my daugther's view of a father, a protector she is safe with! It got me thinking because then, as now, there were some news headlines about wildly abusive fathers, and it gets so bad that all male parents seem to be under suspicion. To know my own child does NOT distrust me and think of me with suspicion is a huge relief!
Like any parent, unless they've got serious issues, I like to think I've got the 'rigth stuff' as a father. It is not only bringing home the pay. Mothers do not only wash and cook, they also nurture. Fathers do not only bring home the cheque, they should protect and nurture. The trouble is, you can never feel perfectly sure that you're doing it right - until something like this happens, and it gives you a lift.
Just today there was news about another 'Josef Fritzl' type of pseudo-father. He made a sex-slave of his own daughter. How do you get to be such a freak that you'd do that?!
Some commentators, especially of the hard-line feminist (or female chauvinist) type say that fathers are not necessary. When you hear of a bad bad case like this one they play it right up to the max. But they choose to forget that there are some horror female parents around, too. Just listen to the news if you want to know how bad it gets!
Male and female He made them. Human children need two parents to be conceived and born, and both have a responsibility to make sure their children are cared for. That includes teaching them respect and self-control, and making them feel appreciated and welcome in the world. Or if you want to put it sentimentally, loved.
It is easy to see your own faults as a parent. I feel like a serious failure sometimes. But my wife and I pleaded with God to make us the parents we should be. We just had to make sure we listened. Perhaps with His help we got some things right.

Not sentimentality - science.

2009-06-20T21:28:00.000-07:00

Someone told me years ago why orphanages were closed down, and foster caring became the way of caring for children without parents. It was a bit of a shock! The mortality rate was higher among children brought up in orphanages than among those raised in family homes. The reason was, children need to feel loved. This is not just mush and sentiment - it is actual health science. Just having a balanced diet, a regime of exercise and all the material stuff was not adequate. To live, human beings need to have a reason to live. And the best place is in a proper home.
Now for a slightly different angle on the issue. An article I read told of a people complaining that they were lonely and could not find a partner. There just (they said) 'wasn't anyone out there.'
Right, so I can't claim to know all about them. But I've heard said, by someone who runs an introduction agency, that some of those searching for partners are just too hard to please! If male, they want a cross between Cleopatra, Queen Guinevere and Miss Universe. If female, they want a cross between King Arthur, Romeo and Superman. The expectations are not just unreasonable, they are plain shallow! The idea is that you draw up a set of specifications and the partner has to match them. They have to be what you want, like the man in "Pygmalion" who made a statue of his 'ideal' woman.
So to get to the point, is that approach really loving someone?
Love does not mean you have to be a doormat. It DOES mean that you care about someone for themselves, and not just because they please you. Loving a wife or husband does NOT mean they make a good trophy to be seen with, or a good social connection. It means you value what they are, warts and all. Because we all have some crinkles and imperfections. And if you get too picky and critical of others, you invite them to say, 'look in a mirror. Aren't you only human too?'
This is the frightening bit. It seems some people really do not know what love is. Now there is an irony! The word 'love' gets thrown around like a confetti at a mass wedding. People talk, sing or joke about it all the time. Do they really know what they mean? Mushy stuff all aside, love is something people need to live. And it is about giving to someone one, not just enjoying them for yourself. But some people do not seem to realize that.
So what is a good example? Try this. The human race has nothing that Jesus Christ needs, because He can make anything He wants any time He chooses. As He said, God can turn stones into bread, or into people, if He chooses. So why did He bother to go through Hell (literally!) to save us? Because He cared enough to suffer that, for us not for Himself. To give, not just take.
Humans need to get that. Loving is giving, not just getting what you want.
And I need to remember that too. To coin a phrase: lecturer, learn thyself.

You should see us now!

2009-06-09T02:46:00.000-07:00

In some ways life is good in the 21st Century. I love hearing about new discoveries in medicine, and new treatments for sickness and injury. I also like being able to travel several hundred miles or kilometres in a day, in a car. Horse powered travel might seem quaint but not everyone wants to take a week to cover the distance that takes a day with a powered vehicle. Some modern things are precious. But there is another side to it, maybe.
Centuries ago, even decades ago, more than half of the world's people lived on the land. They grew crops or raised livestock. Or they worked at trades. In each case, they actually made something, to use or to consume. Or they provided a service, for the direct benefit of others. Today, in areas like finance and investment, people do not actually make anything new, they manipulate things to their own advantage.
Tell me if I'm wrong. I'll stand corrected if need be. But is that right or not? Thousands of people do not actually make, grow or gather anything. They just mess about with what other people have made. They make huge salaries messing about with money, buying and selling shares or arranging loans to make their own profit without actually producing or value-adding.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not a communist. It is quite legitimate to work as a trader making things available to people who want to buy, and providing a service to those who need to sell and haven't the time to do their own marketing. I've got some small business ventures going myself. But it seems a huge amount of commercial activity is about getting hold of some money, thinking up things to do with it and getting a profit without making anything new. Nobody's car gets repaired. No new food crops are grown. No clothes are made. No person's health is restored. No new medications are discovered. No new houses are built. If you saw the film "Greed", that's what it showed. Find new ways of doing things with money to make more money, instead of making any new product or service.
Have I got this right? The world's financial wizards built this huge Tower of Babel out of paper wealth, and then it collapsed and caused shocking damage to millions of others. The ones who put it there were not the only ones to suffer.
Is this the heart of the problem? Instead of growing something, making something or providing a service the clever thing is to buy what is there already, transport it three times round the world, get others to buy shares in it and sell it for heaps more than it cost - without the ones who provided it getting much of the proceeds. Is this another way of getting further and further from the way God intended us to live and communicate with Him?
If this is wrong, I'll learn from anyone who can show me how. I need to learn, not just lecture to others. Now I think of it, when there is a recession going on people might have more important things to do than read my scribblings. But any and all comments are welcome.

Know what you're messing with.

2009-05-21T03:32:00.000-07:00

A columnist I read wrote something worth repeating today. Miranda Devine, in the Sydney Morning Herald, commented: "In the end, men's drives are not all violent and predatory. Most have a deep, possibly hard-wired, desire to be noble and chivalrous. That's why in situations such as the Port Arthur Massacre, so many men died shielding their wives or women around them."
In crises, people of both genders (and all races) sometimes show their best and you can see how they are, after all, made in the image of God - even if that image gets distorted and blurred by the downside of their human nature.
Devine is replying to a litany of bitter critisism about mens' behaviour and their attitude to women. The background to this is a major news story getting ongoing coverage in Eastern Australia: another sex scandal, involving a major Rugby League club.
It seems that in 2002 the team, Cronulla Sharks, were in New Zealand to play and after the game two of them pursuaded a young woman to accompany them back to their hotel room for sex. Then, the story goes, other players came to the room and joined in. At the time, the woman agreed to it; and according to some of her workmates, she boasted about it to them the next day. Years afterwards she came forward to tell a journalist that the experience had left her feeling used and abused.
It's gross behaviour, rightly enough. The men involved simply used the woman and probably regarded her another notch to mark up in their list of 'conquests'.
But in all the commentary, some women have been honest enough to say that they too treat men like trophies. Some (not all,not even most, but some) women treat it as bagging a trophy to have an encounter of that kind with male celebrity.
Dare I say that this is a really bad idea? Or is that 'being judgemental' etc etc?
A human being is not an article to be toyed with, some sort of plaything. Collecting celebrity autographs might be a harmless hobby, but collecting more intimate souvenirs of other human beings becomes a gross misuse of what was made by God, for God's purposes and which should be respected because the Creator should be. You would not collect a piece of the Mona Lisa to show off, because that is a misuse of a famous work of art. You would damage it for your own bad satisfaction.
It is worse to help yourself to part of a human being in a way which demeans them.
Most people agree that it is wrong to kill. What they don't always realize is, it is just as bad to damage something by misusing it. And they don't seem to get that using someone in some sort of ego trip is damaging because it makes them into a target, or a trophy if you can get them. And it is not just men who do this.
Some men try blaming women for their own bad behaviour: 'she led me on', etc. To do that is to deny responsibility for your own actions. So many things that people regret afterwards would not happen if we all just 'got it'; a human being is not a plaything or something to use for your own pleasure.
So here's the irony. Some 'modern thinkers' say that we're all too 'hung up' about sex, and should be more 'liberated' about it. Then when some individuals act in a 'liberated' way - do just what they feel like on the spur of the moment - it can end in anger and tears.
I could be accused of trying to impose my views on others here, but the reply to that is: look what happens around you, and see if what I'm saying is wrong.
If you wrote a history of bad ideas in human history, they would all have one thing in common. They ignored the guidelines and advice given by God's Word about how to live. The way I heard it put once is this: the Bible is the owner's manual for how to run your life. God is not just a spoilsport or dictator, He knows what will and will not work in trying to make life good. If you reckon you know better, you might find He knows better than people realize. Trust me! I've had some bad ideas, and found out after the event just how bad they were!

Remember where your help comes from.

2009-05-06T21:38:00.000-07:00

If anyone reads this, you'll soon see that it's not original, but it still might be important. If anyone out there is feeling frightened by the Swine Flu threat, and all the media hype about it,remember: things like this have happened before. And what was true then is still true.
Some utterly shocking and horrifying things can happen in this world - but human beings can be completley safe and protected from them.
God sees all and He cares. I can identify with people who are worried, because I'm a worrier myself. But there are answers, places to go for reassurance.
King David, who wrote the psalms, seems to have experienced the full range of human emotions, including fear. And he put his reassurance into words for others.
Psalm 91 says:
verse 2:"I will say of the Lord, "He is my refuge and my fortress,
My God in Whom I trust.
verse 3: Surely He will save you from the fowler's snare,
and from the DEADLY PESTILENCE. (emphasis added).

Several times in the last few years, it's been said that the world is 'overdue' for another influenze pandemic, like the horror that swept through it in 1918-19.
Add this thought to the global recession, and the wars happening now, and it would be possible to lose all hope. That is what the evil one wants: loss of hope, loss of faith in God. Despair. And the evil one should be denied that satisfaction.

"A thousand might fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you."
If you read more of the same psalm, you see it talks about the punishment of the wicked. It is not my place to howl at people about their sins being judged. It is just for me to be thankful that God cares and will uphold us.
We need not fear. We need only to watch. Whether the Lord comes soon or in many more years, He is not unaware or uncaring. Fearful things might happen in this world, but God has not forgotten or abandoned us.
For whatever it is worth, may I wish you all God's blessings. In all your ways trust Him, and He will make straight your paths.

It doesn't have to be this way.

2009-05-01T02:54:00.000-07:00

It's not good to be judgemental. I could find myself pointing the finger at others and forgetting my own shortcomings. But it's impossible not to be disappointed at some of the things you see.
Why did Mel Gibson have to go and do what he did?
It's his life, I can't live it. He doesn't answer to me. But if we have concepts of good and bad, right and wrong, we can't help thinking BAD IDEA sometimes.
Mel Gibson had been married to the same lady for thirty years. That is a real contrast to some prominent entertainers who seem to change relationships like they change fashion clothes. Also, Mr Gibson had stayed with the wife of his youth, the lady who was there for him before he was famous. Some people don't. When they start 'moving up' in life, they obtain a bigger better house, a bigger flashier car and a more ostentatious partner, to go with their new image. As a Christian, I found it inspiring to see this person avoiding all that. They had seven children - showing faith and hope in life, not giving way to the cynicism which goes with avoiding children because you fear for the future. And there was "The Passion Of The Christ". It was harrowing to watch, but it looked to me like a magnificent representation of the suffering and sacrifice of Jesus. It was said people actually became saved because the film made that much impression on them. So this seems like a human used of God to evangelise, share the Word and use his art to the glory of God instead of just his own vanity or profit.
There were problems. There was the time Mel was stopped for drunk driving and had a huge vent about Jewish people. NOT the right approach for a Christian. But we all have bad moments.
The latest thing is just tinny. Walking out of his marriage for a younger woman. Originality factor 0 our of 1000.
I don't judge this man. It just disappoints when someone who showed the world what a difference Christ could make, let it fall.
I'm in some position to comment. My marriage broke up - and we got it back together again. That was now 24 years ago. The relationship blew up and humanly speaking, we'd both had enough. There was no third party involved, except the evil one. Pressures beyond our control combined perniciously with our human shortcomings to wreck the relationship. What God led us to do is shown by Proverbs 3 vs 5-6:
"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight."
If the two of us had followed our feelings, we would have called it off. But we both felt we should do what the Lord's Word said. We did. And it worked. The credit belongs to God, not us. The point here is, a spiteful win for evil was taken from it and turned into a victory for God. Of our five children, three were born after we were brought back together. It's as if evil wanted to stop them coming into the world! This year the relationship has lasted 29 years. God grant it lasts all our lives. Now THAT is what God can do.
I can't make it my place to rebuke Mel Gibson. All I can say it, it need not have been that way. He apparently asked some bishops to pray for him. So he knows God is part of the equation. And it need not have ended the way it did. God invented marriage. He said we become one flesh. And what God has joined, no human should take apart. We become one flesh. That literally DOES happen when children are born. They literally do combine the physical identity of both parents, in one.
Tell me if you think I'm wrong. Tell me if you agree. I need the counsell and fellowship other Christians, be they male or female, young or old, whatever their race. We are all made in the image of God and He gave His Word to us all. We CAN avoid lapsing into the weak behaviour of the world. It may not be easy, but ALL things are possible with God.
The maker of a brilliant Christian film might have attracted the rage of satan. But he need not be beaten by it.

No one can take it away.

2009-04-24T21:28:00.000-07:00

When I was having a seriously bad time in life, long ago now, a friend gave me some precious words to read. What they say is pretty tough, but it tells me something as well. In the NIV they say:
"Though the fig-tree does not bud
and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will be joyful in God my Saviour.

The Sovereign Lord is my strength;
He makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
He enables me to go on the heights."

He's not making it easy for himself, is he! Could I live up to that? At least, in my own strenght? Not much! I love drinking good coffee, and tea and hot chocolate, and...alright, that's enough. I live eating chocolate, and good wholegrain bread, and Italian food like spaghetti. It's pure joy getting into a good bookshop and seeing what I can buy. I love having our house to live in, not a tent. I sleeping in the same bed as my wife, not out under whatever shelter can be found. In fact this list could go on for several pages, listing all the things there are in life to be enjoyed because they give physical comfort and relief.
The old prophet makes a good point, though. These nice things are good to have. Life would be shorter, harder and grimmer without them. I'm seriously glad to have good pain relieving medication, and anti-depressant medication when needed. It would be a tough call to live up to what is said above. But I don't think Habakkuk was boasting.
If I understand it rightly, he was in a situation where things could not get much worse; and he realized, with the help of the Almighty, that he did not need to despair. Anything of this world is ONLY of this world. What is physical in ONLY physical. And it can all be lost because material things always have a 'use-by' date and then they're gone. What we sometimes learn, even though we would rather not, is that we can actually survive without them.
That does not mean give them all up. If you don't eat at all you starve, right? And being underweight because of body image is a serious problem even in the affluent Western world. So we do need certain things.
But what the prophet is telling us is, those things do not make life. What comes of the Spirit gives life. Jesus added to that when He pointed out, "Humanity does not live by bread alone." He said that to the devil itself - Satan in person, when the evil one tried to take advantage of Jesus' suffering to get Him to do what Satan said. And Jesus threw it right back! He did not need ordinary bread to survive. He needed God. When the time came, when the time in the wilderness was over, God gave Jesus all He needed - and because Jesus waited until God gave it, in His time, it was much much more that He received.
I pray for homeless people, unemployed people left high and dry by the economic collapse. It would be too easy for me to leave my house, carrying my credit card which is backed up by a steady income and deliver sermons at people. But then our family have been through some bad times, too. And we learnt. We need the things of God. When it all goes square-wheeled on Earth, remember God - and the love of God is what cannot be taken away by the rises and falls of the world.

That which endures

2009-04-08T03:10:00.000-07:00

In Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" Romeo says of his friend Mercutio, "He jokes at scars that never felt a wound." In modern English, 'he makes light of things when he has never suffered anything like them.'
Well, the world's full of that. Just one example is people trashing Christians because they want to believe things that are 'too good to be true.' They want to believe that people who die in this life will be alive again, and perfectly safe, in the next. They want to believe that nothing good is really lost, only taken away from us for a while.
Right - you can trash me too for that. I really love to think that some day our family will see the child we lost, in Heaven. One day we will see people we miss because they have gone from this world; and in the next where they won't ever be taken away again. Who would NOT like to see that? And when people ridicule that hope they are denying that we ALL miss things that are lost. That's only human.
It is just as well that we CAN believe in that. Life would reduce you to despair otherwise. People who will not accept that hope must be good at denying their feelings about certain things, trying to pretend they handle grief and loss better than they do. And when things get bad, there can be a change of heart. After the Twin Towers horror, there was an increase in church attendance and things commitment to permanent relationships. When something can be lost, we realize we miss it and want to believe that there is something more than the fragile world. If you want to try and rely on the world for your hope and joy, you might as well trust in a papier-mache umbrella. Anytime at all it could crumble.
It's been a shocking few days! Several mass shootings, an earthquake in Italy...there's not point in going on. We get the point. I'm praying that Easter can still be a happy time for people. Whoever reads this, I honestly wish you peace and joy in Christ. We're being shown at a time like this that there really isn't any thing or one in this world you can totally and utterly rely on. It or they could be taken away, so easily.
I speak with respect for people's feelings. It's too easy to lecture here about things I don't appreciate the way other people do. But it must be faced up to. Some of the buildings, even a whole town, destroyed by the earthquake in Italy were examples of Renaissance architecture, valued parts of Europe's heritage. Losing them is not as cruel as losing the people who died, but to those who value the relics of the past then it's another blow. What has stood for so long and is valued, has been lost in a few moments. It would be cruel to speak lightly about it, and not recognize the distress here. But what does it show?
Nothing in this material world is forever. Thousands of people have been fascinated by things like the Coloseum, the Parthenon, the pyramids; and we're reminded that they can be gone in a few seconds. If you pinned your reason for living on them, then you're at risk! Trust me. I was not always a Christian, and it used to really hurt me when something I liked was lost, (even something no-one else could see any value in) or a person I was attached to either left the world altogether or moved so that they weren't around anymore.
I HAD to know there was more to believe in. Everything of this world passes away. Even if it's lasted hundreds of years and been known to generations, like the pyramids of Egypt, will be gone at some time. If that's all you see value in, then complete loss of hope is in sight.
Jesus said "Heaven and Earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away." We can see all things of the Earth passing away while we watch. Did you ever feel as is you were marooned on a little island that was gradually being eroded by the water around it, and soon you would be left with nothing firm to stand on? I've had that feeling! Just ONE hope exists.
The things of the Spirit are not swept away. The Word of God is forever.
Several times in the last few years, I found myself facing something seriously stressful over Easter. One was a crisis at work, another involved a person being injured. It could have 'spoilt the holiday' but it had the effect of pushing me back closer to God.
Is this what's going on now?
It's pure horror reading about the shootings, which happen when people lose hope and blow up in desperation and rage; the earthquake, the things we cannot control fall on us. I've never been in an earthquake. I was uncomfortably close to a bushfire once, and that was bad enough.
I won't make light of other people's hurts. What has to be remembered is, nothing in this world endures and can be counted on completely.
God is forever, and if He chooses to protect you miraculously you could be caught in a bushfire and not even scorched. Remember Shadrach, Meshak and Abednego? You could be dropped in the sea and yet survive. You could go get caughtin a fearful gunfight and yet survive. Or if you do not, then you cease to live in THIS body and this world, and go to another one. We believe (or I should say KNOW) that Jesus died in the body. Proof existed of His body's death. But He reappeared, completely alive and able to tell the disciple Thomas to examine the wounds for himself.
This is that which endures, He who endures. Jesus is forever and He takes hold of His own and prevents their destruction, even as every physical thing is passing away.
God be with us all.

Where the heart is

2009-03-28T19:38:00.000-07:00

I have been friends for years with a lady who doesn't blog, so she won't read this. That's good, because I have to say something that sounds hard, but I'm making a point. This friend has a face very like Ichabod Crane in 'The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow'.
She also has a heart of pure gold.
She has friends who value her because of the sort of person she is, not because she is stunning to look at.
As a study in contrasts, there is the 'Swedish countess' having a bitter divorce battle with a mega rich ex-husband, and claiming the millions of dollars offered her is not enough. Apparently she needs $4000-00 a month just for clothes, $600-00 for flowers, and some incredible amount for hair and skin treatment.
Can you get that? Most people do not spend in a year the amount she claims she 'needs' each month. It is astounding that someone can stand there and say that with a straight face. Is there something wildly over the top here?
Back to my friend: I can remember the time she spent being there for others who needed someone to talk to, and the amount of coffee she brewed for all the visitors who dropped in because she was always a sympathetic ear. Sometimes she was taken for granted, and not shown the respect she deserved, precisely because she never made herself hard to get on with. I should add, she is a believer in Christ.
If I had to risk my life for someone, and found the courage to do so, then those worth dying for would be my wife, our children...and a friend like this one I speak of. The world needs people who live and treat others the way they do.
Maybe I'm overlooking something. Could it be that this countess is actually pitiable because she has such a warped view of what matters in life? I can't say. This much is true, thoug: The world suffers from the greed of people who insist that they simply must have more money to live on in a year than most of the world's people see in a lifetime.
No doubt some persons think they become attractive and deserving of admiration because they're expensively dressed and made over, and have money to indulge themselves or their favorites. So could I be accused of jealousy here? Okay, I'll admit, it would be really handy to have more money than we do. But I would be embarrassed at myself if I was caught standing there claiming that I need FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS A MONTH for clothes!
Which of those two women would make a more trustworthy friend? Which of them does more to make the world a better place? Which of them more genuinely shows that humankind is made in the image of God? The one who wants to take, more and more, or the one who gives?
There might be some allegories in nature. Some flowers are quite beautiful to look at but toxic if touched. Perhaps God made things that way to serve as a lesson about life.
God knows true beauty. This is a case in point of "My ways are not your ways," says the Lord. Human folly can value and worship greed and vanity, and fail to appreciate what really matters. This is something I have to remember myself.
Women such as this friend of mine, and my wife, don't get mentioned in the news. But we see them around us in daily life. We would do well to appreciate them.
So appearances do NOT indicate true beauty. What matters is where the heart is, or what it is.

Fear

2009-03-21T19:02:00.000-07:00

I know where the expression "cold feet" comes from. I've felt it. When you have an attack of serious fear, there is a sensation of chilling in the feet and lower legs. It happened to me when I was badly affected by clinical depression, brought on by a constant sense of danger. It is not as though I had to go into combat or something, it only took 25 years working as a teacher in 'disadvantaged' high schools. One the one hand you have a duty of care to students, which requires you to prevent bullying (and quite rightly too) but on the other hand if you ever firmly instruct a student to cease and desist from bullying or other obnoxious behaviour, they are likely to accuse you of picking on them and threaten to complain to a lawyer. And the so-called
'leaders' of the school tell you it is your own fault it happened. "You should have handled it better". And just as women live with the fear of sexual assault, men live with the fear of being falsely accused of it. And some female high school students I had to work with were damaged, and dangerous. Staff were warned, they were capable of trying to lie adults into trouble. Men have been lynched because of lying accusations. After a quarter century of it, despite praying and seeking the help of God, enough was enough. Christians still bleed when they are cut, after all. Going through this must be God's plan for my life experience, which we know is not all a easy and convenient. We all have trials to face. This was one of mine. And it brought on depression and a sense of fear. Once when I was cooking a meal, while my wife was putting linen away, it hit me right out of the blue: a shocking sense that something terrible was going to happen. Part of it was the physical sense of 'cold feet'. Men are supposed to 'tough it out', according the the macho culture of the world. But men can be fools, and ignore the call of God. Happily for me I was called by God, so I did not have to deal with it alone. I would have gone under if I'd tried.
I'm putting it down in writing because some very valuable words came to me, and helped me through it. I'm very grateful for the Gideons Bible in our house, which suggests helpful reading for situations. That is how I came upon some favourite Bible verses. Psalm 56 says: "When I am afraid I will trust in you.
In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust,
I will not be afraid.
Whaat can mortal man do to me?"

Psalm 118:6 says "The Lord is with me, I will not be afraid. What can anyone do
to me?"
The cynical answer is that humans can kill you - but only the body, not the soul, and NOTHING happens to us that God does not allow and know we can bear. I need to know that!

There are numerous passages on this theme. One more worth mentioning here is from
Isaiah 26:3, "You will keep in perfect peace him whose heart is steadfast, because he trusts in You."

An important thing to note there is that the believer has to trust, and stick to God's path. There is an image from "Pilgrim's Progress" (I think) in which two leopards are chained on either side of a narrow path. The chains are such that they cannot reach anyone passing who sticks to that narrow track. They can lunge very close, so close that you could clearly see them and feel their hot breath, but they can't reach you if you just stick to the path. They can be seriously frightening. It can stress you; but if you remember to stick to the path, you are safe. The symbol is obvious. Extreme danger can threaten you, but not reach you. Nothing will overcome anyone except what God allows. No hurt can fall on one of God's followers that He does not know they can bear. If it comes to death, then it is because God's time has come. But the greatest difficulty is fear. Like depression, it is one of the evil one's ways of sapping the will to live and overcome. And it is an illusory threat from an enemy already beaten, although still dangerous to the unsuspecting. Even though it was not said in a Christian context there is truth in the saying of F.D Roosevelt during the Great Depression: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." As Jesus said, "In this world you will have troubles. But take courage. I have overcome the world." (John 16:33).

The fire will not die

2009-03-09T23:37:00.000-07:00

I just heard some bad news. Someone walked into a Baptist church, somewhere in the U.S. and shot dead the pastor who was preaching. So I've prayed for those who were bereaved by that murder, but it's impossible not to be downcast about a thing like that - and to feel angry as well. But there is something to remember here. What happened when that man died was not a defeat. It was a painful tragedy, but not a defeat for Christianity.
The evil one, aka 'Satan', wants to hurt Christians, and to destroy Christianity; and when you see it resorting to a thing like that then you know the evil one is getting desperate. (I say 'it' because I will not dignify the evil one with a respectful personal pronoun). Satan's usual tactic is to be guileful, to try and deceive people into ignoring the calls of God. It gives them distractions, or lies to lead them astray. If people are content and complacent, and feel no need to stay in touch with God, then satan is getting things arranged just nicely. That is when they are furthest from God. When a crisis arises, or a period of suffering, that's when the human reaches out for help and comfort from God. So the evil one prefers not to do it that way, it seems. Besides, since Satan is 'the father of lies' then doing things in an underhanded, dishonest way is the preferred modus operandi. It is as if Satan knows just how despicable a thing it is, and its actions are; and feels embarrassed at itself when seen too openly. So if people can be kept foolishly happy with amusements, distractions or indulgences like food, drink, money, ego-boosts, sexual indulgence, then all is smooth and sweatless for the 'prince of darkness'. We can't so easily see the potential evil in keeping people dulled and duped that way. But if something jars their complacency or spoils their party and humans see the need for God then the evil one loses its grip on them. It is better for Satan to act covertly without showing its hand too clearly. Therefore when something violent and terrible happens, we can see the evil of it straight away. And that alerts us to the need for God, to know Him and keep in contact. So to lash out and strike in this obvious way shows the evil one has run out of better ideas. What has happened is the making of a martyr.
Centuries ago, when the Romans were persecuting Christians, they defeated their own object. Some people would see the Christians dying in the Colosseum and realize: those followers of Jesus have got something worth dying for. Many of the spectators could see the power of Christianity - and turned to it themselves. The evil that satan drove the persecuters too backfired on it, and instead of destroying Christianity it enlarged it.
It is unfortunate that hurt and pain are sometimes what it takes to turn humans to God. But it seems that is what happens. After the attacks on the Twin Towers in 2001,
reports were that many people looked to God. They were reminded, rather terribly, how fragile life and the things of this world are. Sometimes it can be done another way, happily. The first Billy Graham crusade in Australia was followed by a measurable drop in the crime rate; a decrease in the number of births outside marriage; and (I think) a decrease in the incidence of suicide. So it need not take a cruel shock or pain to evangelize. It can be done by preaching, proclaiming the Word. But you can be sure the evil one saw what God was doing through Billy Graham and was frantic with rage. God did not allow Satan to strike Billy Graham and silence him. I can't know why some of God's people live to old age and others die early. I can't say why this Baptist pastor was not protected from the gunman. I'm not God, and there are many things I can't know. What I do think is, when satan does manage to take someone down violently it is because it cannot do so any other way. The evil one is forced out into the open, seen for what it is and not able to deceive by operating from the shadows. And the souls of the Christians will not perish, they're taken to be with God in the Kingdom. That is the devil's final defeat. What it would most like to have, human souls, it is deprived.
Come again, Lord Jesus.

A little learning...

2009-02-26T22:03:00.000-08:00

We know how the proverb goes: a little learning is a dangerous thing. That statement needs to be qualified. Learning is a very valuable thing. The difficulty arises when someone who learns a certain amount starts to think they know more than they do. (This includes me, I realize). What can be sad is when someone who learns a certain amount gets to think that they no longer need to show respect for what they once did.
It seems that the human race having learnt much about life and the world, and how to make it safer for them, has lost respect for the Creator. Having found technical understanding of things that once mystified and terrified them, they now think they can set themselves up as the masters of the universe. The analogy might be something like this: you learn to fly when the conditions are good, think you can fly safely at all times and then when you find yourself up in the air during a storm suddenly the shock realization comes that you knew less than you realized.
It gets more complicated than that. A doctor once told me something not everyone realizes. Back in the 1940s, human scientists discovered the use of antibiotics. They're a gift from God. Millions of people are alive today who could not have been without antibiotic cures for diseases. So far, great. The side effect wast this: when those medicines were developed, they greatly reduced the number of bacteria that existed in other life forms - and made room for virus to move into the cleared space. In the way that secondary growth moves when a forest is cleared, viruses moved in when bacteria were reduced in numbers. So now we have illnesses caused by viruses which did not attack so frequently when bacteria tended to stop viruses from being able to occupy a living host. Not that anyone should be blamed for that. What does deserve some reproach is this. Before they realized that, people began to think that they were safe doing things that were once dangerous. Instead of appreciating the blessing, people took the view that they could get away with things they once could not. Indulgent sexual behaviour was supposed to be safe because a cure was available for the diseases it sometimes spread. Then resistant strains began to appear, and we weren't so clever after all. It is too easy to think that science has the answer to everything. It can lead to disaster, thinking we can do whatever we want now that ways have been found to get away with it. In the environment, instead of treating the land and water with care, people exploit them and expect some expert to repair the damage afterwards.
From a slightly different angle, a secular society began to think human intelligence could achieve things that it never has before. A secular society tries to do with secular means what is only possible by spiritual means. My angle on this is education. Schools in Australia, and elsewhere also, are called on to 'process' the students in a certain way and shape them into good citizens, (whatever that means) and something their parents are pleased with (whatever that is supposed to be!). And here is the problem. A secular education can NOT transform and inspire a person in the way that only something spiritual can do.
From a Christian angle, I believe that the Holy Spirit is needed to lift a human above the limits of their fallible human nature. Nothing merely human can do that. In much of the world people demand that teachers take on the responsibility of influencing kids to become what they are supposed to be. They try to devise educational programmes and stragegies to make people brilliant, make them creative, change bad attitudes and behaviour issues - and find it all turns to ashes because nothing merely of this world can do what only things of the Spirit can do. It is a huge folly! Because we've found out so much about how to control the world and alter things for our own use, some people now think we can make ourselves a race of perfect citizens if we apply that knowledge through educational philosophies. They keep thinking this despite seeing some people who went to the 'best' (most expensive?) schools still becoming criminals or drop-outs with issues they're struggling with. Then the bitter complaint is made that 'schools are failing our children'. Schools and teachers should not have been expected to turn out some sort of a perfect product without the parents having to take on their responsibility; and what matter far more is, merely intellectual things should not be expected to achieve what only things of the spirit can.
Secular educationist want schools to evangelize and edify students, but in a secular way. They will not admit or cannot see that their is a spiritual part of a human which needs a spiritual approach. Human nature has become highly corrupted and unreliable. Humans need their second birth, in the Spirit, to become the best they can. That is why we need God. When agnostic or atheist thinkers try to re-invent people by other means, it is like trying to make a glider do what only a powered machine can. This was where the Leninists failed with their attempt to make the 'New Soviet Man'. They claimed that their society and its education would shape people into something better than greedy self-seekers, using Marx's writings as its inspiration. It failed - badly. To a lesser extent though the same thing happens in the West. A secular body of knowledge that does not include God tries to make people into something inspired and alive. It may achieve something in the short term. But ultimately the best that humans can do is like a robot compared to a living person. There is some similarity in appearance and behaviour, but no way can a robot do what a living breathing human can. Human brilliance cannot match the work of God. It is a modern tragedy that so many people have tried to replace God with the things of this world, and find it simply crashes and burns when the conditions become too severe.

The hand of God?

2009-02-10T22:21:00.000-08:00

News of the bushfires in Australia has reached the U.S. and Britain, we're told. It's good to know that Christians in those countries are praying for the people affected. The situation in parts of southern Australia is pure horror. The death toll could rise to 300, so that it's worse than the Bali bombing in 2002. In fact doctors who work in casualty hospitals, treating people injured in the fires, have said just that: they remember Bali, and this is worse.
Predictably, some people are going to say the usual things about 'How could God allow this to happen?'On that subject, one Christian dropped a controversial bombshell, reported in today's newspapers. Danny Nalliah sounds like a fearless Christian who says: "I must tell people what they need to hear, not what they want to
hear." That is the pure truth, but some people are not going to like it.
Specifically, what he said was this. The bushfires in the state of Victoria have been allowed to happen because the Victorian state government has decriminalised abortion. In Danny Nalliah's words, this has made Australians "an open target for the devil to destroy."
Danny Nalliah has suffered for his faith. About a year ago, he and another pastor from Catch The Fire Ministries were taken to court by a Muslim group who claimed that these Christians had insulted Islam. It turns out that what the Christians had done was explain some differences between Islam and Christianity, with the aim of showing Christianity to be better. Members of any faith group will do that so as to explain why they follow one faith and not another. It is not inciting hatred, and after a lower court found them guilty and awarded damages a higher court overturned the decision. A good thing too, I personally think. But Pastor Nalliah has upset quite a lot of people with his comment. He is also reported as saying that he dreamt of raging fires some weeks before these bushfires broke out, and woke up with what he called 'a flash from the spirit of God: that His conditional protection has been removed from the nation of Australia.'
God deals individually with Christians. The Bible is clear on that. Shadrach, Meshak and Abednego were kept safe in a fire hot enough to kill other people who even went near that fire to throw the three believers into it. (Divine retribution?) The judgement of God does not fall clumsily on everyone just because some of people in a community have brought it down. But then the Word also warns of a whole land suffering because its people have turned away from Him.
This is something I should say with care, because my own sin is enough for me to worry about before I point out other peoples'. But I'm wondering if my brother Danny Nalliah might be doing just what he says: telling people what they need to hear, even when it is not what they want to hear.
Australia overall is not a Godly country. There is a great deal of self-satisfaction and arrogance in people, and contempt for what they call 'holy rollers' Thousands of Australians only use the words "Jesus Christ" as an exclamation of some sort. The attitude is 'Nobody can tell me what to do'. Abortion can be a classic example of serving your own convenience without caring about the rights of another human, who exists even though they are not yet born. Could it be that this has gone way too far? And as one columnist pointed out, here as in America, people from every other religion can speak their mind but Christians should just keep quiet. I hear something like that is happening in the U.S. now, with attempts to prevent Christians praying in public although a similar ban has not been proposed for others.
I can see why God could become utterly exasperated with the attitude of the human creatures He made and blessed. Without claiming to know His mind on all issues, I can see how He might allow disaster so as to show people what happens when they ignore Him. He is not an insurance policy that you buy, put in a drawer and do not think about unless you need it. God should be remembered every day, and thanked ever day. A Salvation Army officer ministering to the bushfire survivors talked quite openly about praying. Hopefully what he says might make people think: did they care about God before the calamity came down on them? I pray for them as well. Natural or human-made disasters can fall anywhere without us forseeing it. I too am a sinner. But if anyone wants to challenge me with 'How could your God allow this to happen?', my answer is 'Did you ever bother talking to God before this happened?'
Danny Nalliah might be telling people what they need to hear.

Nature or nurture

2009-01-31T22:52:00.000-08:00

This question has been looked at closely before: which things are born into a human being, and which things do they learn? Is there a difference between instinctive behaviour and learned behaviour? It actually matters, because there are ways in which it might be good to change learned behaviour in a person, if they're inclined to be violent or prone to criminal acts like thieving. But there seem to be things in a person's character that can't be altered just by 'messing with their head.' That might be just as well, because if people could be programmmed like computers then the hidden persuaders could make puppets out of us.
The Marxists made this mistake when they set out to create the 'New Soviet Man' who would grow up in a socialist society and take on a different nature to people brought up in the societies of the West. The plan was to nurture people from childhood into dyed in the wool communists who would not question the system or dissent from the orders of their leaders. The upside of this, they claimed, was to stop people from living by greed and hostility to others. All members of a society would work together for the common good. The downside they did not like to admit was that it stopped people thinking as individuals and using some initiative of their own. They should simply follow their leaders. But all that aside, they did not see the distinction between learned behaviour and 'wired-in', instinctive behaviour.
The difference might be things like this. It is instinctive to drink when you're thirsty. You do not need to learn. What you do need to learn is to be careful what you drink. Avoid water that might carry infections or be polluted. In the same way, it is instinctive to eat when hungry. What is learned is, eating with cutlery instead of with the fingers, and not over eating. Also, we need to learn what is good to eat and what to treat with caution, such as too much fast food or junk food.
In trying to change human behaviour, the left-wing social planners failed to see what is instinctive in people. Marx critisised the family as a unit, and felt that family allegiance and attachment should give way to allegiance to the state. It didn't work, because among humans a bond with your family is a deep seated instinct, not just something learned. It is natural to feel protective towards your children. Even if you feel protective towards all children, your own are stil special. It is natural to want the protection of your parents when you're still young, and need adult help to deal with life. When people like Marx, Stalin and Lenin tried to teach people loyalty to the state instead of their own kin, it failed. A particular horror was the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. In the 're-education' camps set up after the communist take-over they called on children to turn against their parents and be loyal instead to the political leaders of the state. It led to one of the most abominable atrocities in history. Likewise, in the Soviet Union and Maoist China, thousands or millions of people suffered murder or imprisonment because they could not simply do as the leaders told them, as though they had no minds of their own.
So human nature is not just what other humans mould it into, like a piece of clay.
Human beings cannot live up to filling the role of God, being perfect leaders in whom we can put all our faith. When they try to do so the results can be Stalin, Hitler, Mao Zedong, or Jim Jones or Charles Manson. Each of those individuals caused utter horror in their failure to be what they tried to make of themselves. A close study of history might show that female people are just as prone to fail if they attempt to assume the role of God.
Human nature will show through attempts to change and programme it. Another example emerged when a feminist teacher gave her senior high school girls a psychological test intended to reveal their attitudes to life. This teacher did the test herself, and found the results revealing.
Each of the girls tested had a subconscious longing for a 'Prince Charming' or Knight in Shining Armour to come into their life, rescue them and be their hero. The teacher admitted, wryly, that according to the test she did too.
This is NOT to say that women are all helpless, needing a man to give them a life. It IS a revelation that women and men are made to have a certain type of relationship. By Christian teaching, God made the man first, then the woman as a companion; and directed the man to CARE for the woman, love and nurture her, not exploit her. If the themes of the gallant knight and the damsel waiting for him feature so much in folklore and literature, it might show that the male and female are meant to care for and need each other. Hostility between them and competition between them are not the way it should work. Social programming that teaches either of the genders to view each other the wrong way has a distorting affect on human nature. It attempts to change it in a way that goes against the grain. It is a perversion of the Maker's plan for men to exploit women and use them in a predatory way. It is also a perversion of the Maker's plan for women to see men as an enemy who have to be fought and overthrown. In that respect just as Marxism failed having first done much damage, hostile feminism will fail after first causing great damage. Too many attempts have been made to replace God and try doing things another way. Each time they crash and burn, and cause a lot of hurt in the process.
Come again, Lord Jesus.

Irony abounding.

2009-01-16T19:11:00.000-08:00

In the U.K., the news says, atheists and 'free thinkers' have hired advertising space on buses to say: "There is probably no God, so relax and enjoy your life."
It is impossible to say in a few words how utterly self-contradicting and absurd that statement seems to me. It is meant to be wise and reassuring, 'freeing' people from worry. In fact, to think that there was no God would be one of the most terrifying things imaginable. To relax and enjoy life you would have to feel secure in the knowledge that help was available in certain situations.
If there was no God, who is there to turn to and seek help from? Would they care to tell me what they think about that? If they say 'human intelligence and people' they invite me to point out just how disastrously unreliable and wrong-headed human beings have shown themselves to be, so often through history.
I once asked a militant atheist who he put his trust in, what did he feel he could rely on for guidance and answers to problems in life. He said "Myself, and a select few others."
I could have told him that he was one of the people I would be least able to trust and feel safe in the hands of! Like so many hard-headed 'intellectuals' I've known, that man had quite a ruthless attitude to those he disapproved of. Given the chance, he would have run the world in a way he was sure was right, and look out any one who disagreed and got in the road. That was what happened in the regimes of people like Hitler, Stalin, Lenin and Mao Zedong. The leader and the little in-group round them made all the rules and everyone else had to just do as they were told. If the leaders got something wrong, no-one had better dare to critisize. And there is the irony. The ones who consider themselves fit to run the lives of other people are the ones who least inspire my confidence. To be that sure of themselves is a danger sign for a start. Note that I'm saying 'sure of THEMSELVES', not sure of what they believe. Such people feel they can assume the power of God to decide how life must be for everyone else.
It should be obvious that certain things are absolutely beyond human control and help. Can anyone prevent a tsunami? How about the emergence of new diseases, to which there is no cure? What about drought, or a collision between this planet and a meteor, or any other such thing that no human can prevent? It could be rather hard to 'relax and enjoy life' when there are so many uncertainties and dangers, that no human can protect us from.
It is an old saying, that 'there are no atheists on a sinking ship'. In other words, you can be complacent and think 'who needs God' when everything seems to be going well. When it all goes bad, and no human power can change the fact, how does the clever atheist handle that? If we live or die by blind chance, and there is no real fairness about life, how can you relax?
Atheists trying to sweep away belief in God make me think of ants trying to be elephants. They simply make themselves look ridiculous.
Of course, we all have a right to our beliefs. I won't start trying to persecute atheists. But do they know just how LITTLE they impress me with what they think is their cleverness?

What is 'Man'?....

2009-01-01T21:20:00.000-08:00

I've never been good at New Year's Resolutions. It might be better to have some New Year's Reflections.
According to a news item, a study has showed this: that promiscuous men are better at perpetuating their line of descent, because they have more children than men who do not "sleep around."
That's not exactly news. I knew a man who had nineteen children (yes, that's right, nineteen) - by nineteen different mothers. That's a stark contrast to the Duggar family, who just had their eighteenth child, born to the same two parents who maintain a committed monogamous relationship.
It sticks in my mind, this reported study, because it compares human beings to animals, in describing something as "successful" behaviour. That men who recklessly take multiple partners, and leave them pregnant, might mean their genetic legacy is well and truly passed on the the future, but that is NOT the mark of a life well lived if they've been the proverbial 'dead-beat dad' to their offspring. I blogged once before about the danger of applying standards of animal behaviour to humans. Animals settle issues by fighting, their frequently kill their own kind and in other ways too, act in a way which is unlawful or unethical in humans.
One danger with these men who beget numerous children by different partners: the number of children who are half-siblings to others they do not know could lead to accidental cases of incest or inbreeding. If any one child of a man does not know who all his others are, they are at risk of meeting them unawares and forming a relationship that is biologically unsafe. That's not just speculation. A case of that was reported some years ago, too, in Australia. A woman found that her husband had the same father as she did. He had moved from relationship to relationship, or between one-night stands, and that was what came of it. Then there was the woman who had five children by five different fathers, and did not know where any of those men were now, or what other children they might have. Same risk! Not a clever way to do things!
It all tells me something. I was not always a Christian. Having made the commitment when I was nearly 25 years old, I see more and more evidence that God knows what He is doing making the rules for living that the Bible sets out. The world sometimes admires a 'stud' who is good at getting numerous women to mate with him. But the world can be terribly stupid sometimes. A woman might boast about having numerous partners. The problem could be visited on their children, who may not have a proper father figure to be there for them; and who may not realize who they are related to. So God's laws are not just a lot of kill-joy stuff. The way I heard it put, the Bible is an owner's manual for how to use your life. The man I referred to above, he of the nineteen children by nineteen mothers, had one daughter going to the school where I taught. His daughter did not want to know him at all. He attempted to be in contact with her and she vowed she would go where he would never find her. That girl was an angry, dysfunctional person; and her biological sire was an unemployed hanger-about living off social welfare. It would not be right to condemn the children for the way they came into the world. The point is simply this: having a lot of offspring is not in itself proof of some sort of success. Human beings are not a species of animal. Success for a man in begetting descendants, lies in making sure his children are well cared for and given the right sort of start in life. Part of that comes from having a proper father figure.
So it seems this prolific breeder of a man made junk of his own life by living it in a self-denigrating way. Rather than being a success story he became of victim of his own bad attitude, that to move between partners and build up his number of 'conquest'
was the way to go. People can be victims of their own bad habits.
In that vein, it's worth pointing out that a rapist may beget children, but only in a dastardly way, the same as a thief or con-artist who becomes rich. It is true to say that rape actually has two victims, although one brings it on himself. A rapist can destroy himself, not only by getting into serious trouble with the law but because his own bad attitude consumes him. Sex is not meant to be a predatory thing, like bagging a trophy or scoring a point over someone. To some wannabe 'studs' it seems to become like the Native American idea of counting coup: proving that you can get near to someone despite their attempts to stop you. If a person, male or female, starts to make their sexual behaviour predatory that way, to 'nail' a person as a sort of personal triumph, they can warp their own psyches and leave themselves unable to have a happy relationship. Bad habits can destroy a person. So without seeking sympathy for rapists, or serial seducers, or philanderers, it may be a certain poetic justice that they find themselves losers because they can't be anything better. I should add, the man with nineteen children has no partner. If he wanted to have a happy caring relationship with a woman, it may be something he no longer can do. Dumping women and moving on has left him unable to do anything better.

Alchemists

2008-12-16T14:27:00.000-08:00

In the Australian state of Victoria, it was announced that instruction in atheism will be run alongside the usual religious instruction, or 'school Scripture'. One letter writer to the national press promptly applauded it as a good idea and made the usual comments about all the harm done by organized religion. They referred to the Crusades of the Middle Ages, and other cliched examples.
Another writer replied that just as much or more harm had been done by attempts to run society on atheist lines. They referred to Communist societies, such as what was called "The Peoples Republic Of China"; and the Soviet Union. The blood shed by those regimes in attempting to subdue their populations is at least as horrific as any thing that can be attributed to 'organized religion'. Of course it is worth pointing out that just because a person or faction call themselves Christian does not make them so. "By their deeds you will know them" needs to be kept in mind. But if someone believes that a human community is better run by an atheist philosophy, could they please explain why the attempts to do so ended up in such appalling disaster?
Karl Marx called spiritual faith 'the opiate of the masses'. He admitted, tacitly, that hope of something beyond this earthly life caused people to endure suffering. It was his view that instead those people should struggle to change them. He needed to be told that Christian reformers have been involved in humanitarian reforms and campaigning for centuries. And his idea, of running a society on the idea that 'there is no God' led to the monstrosity that we remember by the deeds of Stalin, the writings of Solzhenytzen, the millions of deaths in prison camps or at the hands of the secret police. More recently the deeds of Mao Tse-tung have been held up to the light, and found to be less ideal than his supporters claimed. China too suffered under a dictatorship in which a mere human tried to take the place of God, and get people to put their faith in humans and their notions.
The alchemists of times past believed that you could turn some elements into others. They spent hundreds of hours trying to turn lead or iron into gold. We now believe that to be impossible. They might as well have tried fishing in a bucket of water. You could try that for centuries and not catch a thing. If this seems like an odd change of subject, here is what I'm trying to say: human beings cannot be made into anything resembling God. They do not have the wisdom, the incorruptible nature and the power. Yet an atheist society tries to put mere human beings in that place, the role of God, as the entire source of authority and guidance in running the world. It really is a form of alchemy - trying to turn something into something else that it never can be. And the results are pure horror.
The course in atheism mentioned above will apparently try to teach people this: there is no evidence for the existence of God. It would be one incredible irony if that backfired! People who had never thought about it before might look at the world and see very good evidence for the existence of God, in the things not made by humans; and good evidence for human sin in the harm done by human beings. But that remains to be seen. The issue is that from one generation to the next the same mistakes get made, and the same bitter outcomes arise.
In the distant past, humans became carried away with their own greatness, built the Tower of Babel and suddenly found themselves all divided. That was only the first attempt by homosapiens to make themselves the greatest thing in the Universe. And it was not the biggest disaster of the lot, either.
If the chief end of Humanity is 'to worship God and enjoy Him always', the most idiotic mistake possible is to try leaving God out of it and enjoy our own achievements. Even if someone does not believe that quote above from the Westminster Confession, can anyone show that human beings have managed to run anything without corruption or blunders when they leave it all to themselves?
God will be known in the same way that gravity causes things to fall downwards. It is inevitable. So here's praying that the bad idea above will be turned against its designers.

Closer to home

2008-12-13T18:44:00.000-08:00

To get his idea for "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde", Robert Louis Stephenson didn't have to delve too far into the fantastic. He only needed to see what happens when some people have too much to drink. I'm not a complete teetotaller, no way would I suggest complete prohibition (look what happened when it WAS tried) but it's easy to see why some people are. If you want to see someone change their behaviour, quite scarily sometimes, watch what happens when someone can't handle drink.Come to that, it's probably just as well I never became too fond of it myself.
Back in the single partying days, I recall thinking there were about four things you could count on seeing at a party where the drink was flowing. There was the 'sad' drunk, who became maudlin or depressed and started crying all over the place, or threatening to end it all, and other people had to run around restraining and consoling them. (Could have been a bit of attention-seeking?). Then there was the 'sick' drunk who threw up in an inappropriate place, so someone has to clean it up. Then there was the 'silly' drunk, who tried playing chicken with cars on a busy road or proving they could jump from the top floor of a building. And lastly was the 'aggressive' drunk who wanted to fight everybody in sight. I once had to help subdue a guy, normally as quiet as a mouse, who pulled out a knife and swore he was going to carve someone up. Fun!
You've heard all the theories, about whether people just say what they really think when they're drunk or whether the alcohol distorts their mind. I don't know what the truth is, but this I do know: it can seriously scare you seeing the way some people carry on just because they've taken in something which is quite legal to sell. So I'm not suggesting banning it altogether, but it's easy to see why some people do! Lives get lost, either by stupid behaviour or aggression loosed when someone has had a few.
I blogged on this subject once a few months ago. The alcohol manufacturing industries must seriously hate the thought of a Christian revival. It would reduce their business to a fraction of its present rate, and cut into the amount of work for casualty surgeons, nurses, tow-truck drivers, ambulance paramedics, lawyers, police, glaziers replacing broken windows, auto-repair businesses... costly little habit, that drinking!
It is boring to become a self-righteous moralist, telling other people how to live. And I need to mind my own manners, not comment on everyone else's behaviour. But I had to say: if you want to see a real-life Jekyll/Hyde transformation, you only have to be around when some people start drinking.
It tells you something if people have to soak away their senses to cope with life, too. There must be something missing. God help us to see what it is.

A new view

2008-11-27T19:10:00.000-08:00

I don't buy many films or DVDs to keep, but if I did one would be "Shallow Hal". Okay, I know it's a comedy, but it still has a message worth getting. If you've seen it, you know what I mean. Hal is just that - as deep as a rain puddle, is the way one character puts it. He wants to strike up relationships with glamorous women, purely because he thinks they look good so that is his definition of 'good' altogether. Then he is hypnotized and programmed to see the real worth of people. Whoever wrote this had a clever idea, and I offer them my compliments. When Hal sees the inner worth or true beauty of people, they appear to be attractive physically. So he meets and chats up a succession of women who look good to him, because they have likeable personalties and good hearts. The significant one is Rosemary, played by Gwyneth Paltrow - the proverbial glamorous blonde. But in real life, unseen to Hal, Rosemary is collossally overweight, which is shown by the way chairs collapse under her and the huge amount she eats. But she has a good heart, and so to the mentally re-geared Hal she looks beautiful. By contrast, a nurse he meets when Rosemary takes him to visit kids in a burns unit is a cold-hearted harridan, and a grasping gold-digger; and to Hal she looks like a grizzly witch, since that is her inner quality. In 'real life' that nurse is physically attractive, but the real her is ugly because she is a selfish unloving user. Hal sees that in her while hypnotized, and sees the beauty of several other women who deserve to be appreciated. For that matter when Rosemary introduces him to two friends who do overseas aid work, kind hearted and noble young men, they look handsome and poised, even though in physical appearance they are not. One is obese, the other has an unfortunate skin condition.
It's a brilliant idea, even though the film is comic. What would people look like if you saw their character in their appearance, instead of the superficial persona they cultivate.
But trouble is ahead. Hal has a pal who is still as shallow as ever. He rejects a girl because she has oddly shaped toes. Can you beat that?
When Hal's pal, who can't handle the new way Hal does things, gets the hypnotic trance lifted everything is confusion. Hal doesn't even recognize Rosemary, or several other people who he remembers as looking good. This leads to terrible hurt for Rosemary, although it comes out happily in the end. He meets up again with several people he does not know when he sees only their physical appearance. Finally he figures it out and takes up with Rosemary because what he saw in her as a person is still there even if her appearance is not what he thought. Lesson learned. So it's a romantic comedy, good for a laugh, but I call it a gem!
It's worth switching for a moment to William Butler Yeats, a literary poet. One of his poems is a prayer for his daughter. He says, let her be not SO beautiful that it goes to her head and she becomes selfish and conceited. Good point!
Obviously physical attraction exists for some purpose. God made it such that we are attracted to some and not others. But it should never be a person's value, whether or not they are glamorous to look at.
I recall a happy moment some years ago. A girl I taught is short and tubby with a bulgy face, and not what many people would call good looking. But she has a warm kind heart. The last time I saw her she had her usual kind smile - and a husband and child, which I know she wanted. Good one! Some days the world looks like an okay place after all!
It would be incredible to see what would happen if you could really undergo what was done to Hal, and see people without being influenced by their appearance. Come to that, I've had a friend who was blind, and he was married. He did not have to see his partner physically to appreciate her.

"All God's Children"

2008-11-10T18:58:00.001-08:00

This is the only film review I've done and might be the only one. But it seems a special case.
"All God's Children" seemed to be a little known film in Australia, I don't know if it received more notice in other countries. It is not overtly Christian or religious, as the title might imply. What happens is this.
The film opens with two boys - one white, one black - stealing a school bus. The the alarm is given, and the audience finds out that it is a type of bus in which the brakes do not work until the engine is warmed up. The boys, not knowing that, are at risk of a serious accident.
The next thing we see is the bus crashing!
After that the action goes into flashback, so that we pick up the plot. It is set against the background of the "bussing" experiment in the U.S. when the government intervened in school enrollments. This was to prevent some schools having only students from middle class or wealthy backgrounds, and others only students from poor backgrounds. The plan was to have a racial and socio-economic mix in each school, and to transport students by bus if necessary to get them to schools outside their area.
In the film, these two boys are staging a protest against it. That is why they stole the bus. The government plan would have the effect of sending them to different schools, and as well as being friends they make an excellent combination on the school football team.
Then the action returns to the present. Police have found the bus crash, with ONE badly burnt body in it. Tests will be needed to learn which of the two it is. The other boy has escaped from the crash, and gone missing. That notches up the tension. The characters in the film, and the audience, are waiting to find out which of the boys has died.
There is quite a lot in the film, revealed through the dialogue. It would get away from the point to go into too much detail about that. As the plot develops, the audience is introduced to both sets of parents, black and white. The dialogue reveals the perspectives of each on the issues of race and education.
At the final moment of the film, we hear that scientific testing has revealed which of the boys was the one found dead in the bus.
The last thing the audience hears is ONE of the mothers crying heartbrokenly, having learned that she has lost her child.
But the audience never finds out which of them it is. And that is the point that we are confronted with.
Does it make it any better, which one of them it is? Isn't is just as bad, either way?
I can't remember the names of any cast members except ( I think) Richard Widmark. The film was made back in the 1970s. It seemed to receive little acclaim, but I thought it made an excellent point. We are ALL God's children. Race does not change our value. Neither, it could be added does gender. But that would be another story.

The demon lover.

2008-11-03T22:26:00.000-08:00

Along with dragons and fairies, one of the figures in myths and folk-songs is the 'demon-lover'. This is the cruel spirit who entices a woman or man to their destruction by wooing them when in some sort of disguise, so that their unhappy victim is carried away and realizes too late that they are doomed. It's a cruel type of tale, but like other things in folklore it reflects reality. Apart from mourning the sadness of it, those tales serve as a warning. They can be an allegory of real life.
This is just one true-life story I've heard about a 'demon-lover'. It happened in New Zealand some years ago. I should point out, the race of the people involved is irrelevant. It's just that there was a detailed newspaper report about it.
A troupe of musicians was touring New Zealand. They were African, playing some sort of traditional music. At one of the places they performed, a girl in the audience was carried away by the overtures of one of the musicians, and went home with him for the night. The woman was a Maori, which is relevant for this reason: she identified with the African man, seeing him as part of a dark-skinned race that had been mistreated by white people in the past. In her own words, she felt she had found a soul-mate.
The two of them slept together that night. The travelling musicians moved on the next day. Whether or not the girl was hoping to hear from him again I can't recall. What followed was, she found that she had contracted HIV from him.
That was bad enough. More was to follow. There was an inquiry, with a view to prosecuting the man for knowingly endangering others by having unprotected sex. At the inquiry it came out that there were half a dozen women, from parts of New Zealand, also infected by the same man. It seems he was a deceptive charmer. Part of the cruelty of it was that each of the women had felt the same way: they had met a man who they immediately felt close to, and identified with.
It was observed by the journalist that the women were all in some way vulnerable. Either they were lonely, or came from a disadvantaged background, or their appearance was such that not a lot of men would be physically attracted to them. All of them had fallen into this wretched trap - thinking they'd found a man who cared, and finding that he had wrecked their lives.
It's not only men who do the damage and women who suffer it. One case reported from Queensland in Australia, and one from Ireland went the same way. A woman stranger came to a town, proceeded to entice as many men as she could into having sex with her, and it turned out that she was HIV positive. She passed it on to some of the men who fell for her trap.
The demon lover is part of real life. On the one hand, I can feel deep sympathy for the victims. They succumbed to a temptation that many humans find hard to resist: finding love, or at least some momentary affection. On the other, this shows how people can be destroyed by letting themselves be duped. The people who sprung these cruel traps committed what could be called crimes of spite. But the ones who fell for them could be called fools to themselves. Is that too harsh? Don't worry, I'll admit now there was a time when I could have gone down that way. Before I was a Christian, and aware of God's counsel to all humans, I might have been duped by a woman who seemed to like me - especially when I was lonely and unsure of myself. Once I became a Christian, then I was no longer such a sitting duck for the 'honey-trap'.
It's a miserable thing to see that happen to those New Zealand girls, and yet it is avoidable. If they knew that their value comes from God, and not another human flattering them, they need not have been cut down that way. If those Australian and Irish men knew that God valued them, they should have known better than to let themselves be drawn to their own ruination that way. Some people still don't get this. They still try telling us that to get a life, grab everything that's going. Have fun. Live for the moment. Go out for a rage and don't worry about what could happen. And it can end in misery. If my son or daughter was one of the victims of that sort, while I could cry for them I could be incredibly angry with them too. They should have known better.
Pray that people hear and respond to the Word of God. It won't only save the human soul, though that's reason enough. It can stop vile things happening in this life, to the physical body, as well.

Some ironies.

2008-10-30T23:03:00.000-07:00

A famous chilldrens' author stirred things up in Australia not long ago. She said that putting children into day-care from a very early age is a form of child abuse. This society will look back on it, she says, and wonder how the people of the time could do such a thing. Mem Fox is her name. She wrote a childrens' story called "Possum Magic". Predictably, some commentators went for her like attack dogs. She questioned one of the critical claims of feminism, namely, that there must be a way of having children without having to care for them all day yourself.
I know it's not for me to tell everyone else their conscience, but what she says seems right to me. The idea of having someone else effectively bring up your child for you is just like what aristocrats and wealthy people used to do in the past. They had nannies for them, and the parents got on with their elite society lives while a hired woman cared for and nurtured their children. So while people today despise the idle rich or unjustly privileged 'nobles' of the past, some of them are doing just the same thing that those people did: hiring others to raise their children.
Doing that can have unexpected consequences. There is a story about Winston Churchill, Britain's famous Prime Minister during World War 2. Young Winston was cared for by a nanny, like most children of his class. Years later, when his mother died, it hardly affected him, and he was appalled at himself for not feeling more grief. Then shortly afterwards his old nanny died, and then he grieved!
You see the point? Winston's attachment was to his nanny, not his natural mother. The reason was, his nanny had given him the moment-by-moment attention and mother-type love that a child needs. Hence, it was her he was bonded to.
This is an age when parents like to talk about giving their children everything. Yet something they don't always give is themselves, because they are too busy having 'careers'. I'm not just talking about mothers here, it goes for fathers too. Bringing home the pay packet is important, but so is being there for your children.
And here's another irony. Just as socialism is losing ground in the world, fewer nations call themselves communist or socialist and run their economies that way, a socialist idea is becoming widespread. A major socialist aim is to diminish the family as a focus of loyalty and attachment. Get people away from their families, and the influence of parents, because their allegiance should be to the state. The Marxists specifically critisize the family as a unit. If people draw support and comfort from their families, and are influenced by them, they are less attached to the state and less obedient to it. When the communist Khmer Rouge took power in Cambodia, one of the things they tried to do in 're-education' camps was sever children from their families. Since the socialist state wants the complete obedience and commitment of all the citizens, it gets very jealous if people put other people before the demands of their political leaders. Whether it's Mao, Stalin, Big Brother or any one else, the socialist-communist state wants to be Number One to all. And a person's attachment to their relations compromises that. A socialist objective is to get children away from their families as much as possible. It's best if they do most of their living outside the family and home. Hence it is a socialist approach to have early day-care, long day-care, preschool from an early age, and getting the school to do as much as possible for and with kids. That way they are away from home and parents, and (the socialist hopes) under the influence of adult instructors and supervisors who can direct their development. So how ironic that some of the most capitalistic anti-communist societies in the world are doing just the same: getting their children involved in things outside the home as early as possible and as much as possible. I can see exactly why some parents home-school their children. That way the kids know exactly where they belong, and who is there for them. That way parents can stop someone else from taking over their children and undermining the parents' values. I can see why the Christian churches run schools. They support the parents' beliefs, and teach children that there is something much bigger and better than 'the state' to put their trust in. (Thankfully!)
It's not for me to tell people their conscience. I know some people put their children in day care because they are struggling to support them, and need to work. But there could be something wildly and badly wrong with what some people in western society do with the very young. It is assumed, according to humanist/socialist theory, that a secular and materialistic approach to childcare is adequate. The future will show what the results are, but by then it could be too late.

By their words..

2008-10-24T22:34:00.000-07:00

A columnist in Australia reports on some of the vitriol directed at Sarah Palin. I'm wondering if some of the hate-mongers who attack her know they are alienating people,
arousing sympathy for the ones they attack.
Since I don't live in the United States, it's not my place to say who the nation's elected leaders should be. That is for Americans to decide. What I'm talking about is the spite involved in a bumber sticker saying 'Abort Sarah Palin', or the comment from one Australian feminist that Sarah Palin was 'very, very dangerous. There's something wrong with her....she's post-feminist'. The point here is, the people who say that would no doubt insist that they support freedom of speech and belief; rights and freedoms for all; and then savagely attack those who exercise their freedom to believe something they disagree with. It's as stupid and obvious as a person calling themselves a vegan and then eating a beef-burger.It makes mockery and hypocrisy of the fine words they speak when they want to win friends and influence people. One feminist hard-liner was quoted as saying 'My head almost exploded from the incandescent anger boiling in my skull,' when hearing what Palin had to say.
The same sort of thing goes on in Australia. A certain Professor Wayne Sawyer apparently said that English teachers in Australia were not teaching critical thinking, because John Howard kept getting re-elected Prime Minister. In other words, he claims that anyone who thinks clearly would not vote for Howard's party. That is straight out argumentum ad hominem: attack the person instead of their argument. It is an intellectually dishonest way of contesting with someone. Rather than present arguments that rebutt their arguments, attack them personally. When being taught about flawed ways of contesting an argument, that was one of the classical examples shown to me. You can't beat their argument fairly, so attack them instead. A professor of English of all people should know that. And here's the irony. The people calling Sarah Palin dangerous are themselves dangerous. That they harbour such vicious spite against her for saying what she thinks, reflects on them. That a senior academic can forget all his own training to lash out at those he disagrees with, shows the frailty of human learning, and the unreliability of education as a way of making people 'good', whatever you consider that to be.
I've seen this before, too. The political left throw terms like "fascist" at people whose views are unlike their own. In so doing they exhibit a fascist attitude themselves: they deny freedom of thought and demand obedience to their own ideology, which is the classic tenet of fascism with its demand for complete obedience.
Some time ago now, I realized that one reason I looked to Christianity for answers was that the humans who most loudly claimed to be good were often the ones with the most hatred inside them. And there goes that irony again! A frequent attack directed at Christians is that they pretend to be better than they are. Nothing beats a 'progressive' political activist, with all their self-righteous claims to social conscience, for harbouring malice while claiming to care so much about humanity.
I've forgotten who it was who said: "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him", but that says it all. When human beings try to run something relying entirely on their own wisdom and supposed goodness, the results are like disastrous. Feeling that they must get their own way, people resort to the bitterest rage when opposed. God and Jesus Christ be with us. We're doomed otherwise.
Speaking of words, which is the title of this post, here's an example of the misuse of language. A person is a traitor if they pretend to believe or do something, and then do another to attack those they pretended to side with. Sarah Palin has been called a traitor to women, by feminists (claiming to speak for ALL women, which is an arrogant presumption) because they say she is letting them down. Did she in fact ever claim to believe the things the feminists believe? Or was she always right upfront about what she believes? If so, she is NOT a traitor, she is an honest advocate of her own beliefs, which she has a perfect right to. Misuse of a term is the classic example of intellectual dishonesty - and betrayal of the principle that we should all speak the truth. The attackers are condemned out of their own mouths.
It must be a bitter disappointment to put your hopes in politics and politicians. They will always only be human. The more I hear angry people demanding my support or obedience, the more I know I can not trust or aid them.

Through a glass, darkly.

2008-10-09T14:22:00.000-07:00

What some people call "girls behaving badly" was the theme of a T.V. documentary recently. The girls are called "ladettes" or "yobettes", because they carry on the way some young men do, and aim to beat the men at their own game. So the night out consists of having a lot to drink and carrying on with wild behaviour. Baring their breasts from a bus window, shouting out lewd comments and chanting 'let's get boozed and let's get laid' is all the go. When two of these girls are interviewed by the show's presenter, one of them tells us that she punched a hole in the house wall in rage when her mother refused to give her money to go out raging for the night. Another one, explaining why she does it, ends up in tears and admits "I'm in trouble. I need help". You can ask why is it that girls get critisised for behaving that way when boys are shown more tolerance. Excuses get made like "They're just sowing their wild oats" or "It's just youth" and more of that kind. The point here is that the girls are out to beat the boys at their own game. And they are suffering for it the way some boyss do.
Some of the girls, it emerges, have been badly treated by boys. So they get their own back. They can do it too. They can treat boys like disposable sex objects. Use someone like a chicken drumstick you buy at a fast food shop. Eat what you want and treat the left overs as garbage. They can get drunk and pick fights. They can trash everyone around them, and themselves. And if anyone complains they get ridiculed and attacked for being a puritan moralist who just resents anyone else having a "good time".
Then the other side of the picture involves. Some of them have started to suffer liver damage and brain damage from all the drinking. Some of them have been infected with STDs and they can't even remember where they contracted them. That happens with men too, of course. The issue is, some girls seem to think it's a good idea to copy them.
So that's how they want to prove something. It's how they get a sense of self. Girls set out to out do the boys, and don't stop to ask: who said the wild boys had the right idea about how to live? In both cases, the issue can be a lack of hope for anything better.
If you want to see the harm done by living purely for this world, there it is. To have an identity and a sense of self-worth, you have to show off and get the attention of others in the quickest and easiest way. The only value you place on yourself is the value other people seem to place on you. And some of those others only value what they can get some use of, or amusement from.
If people get their sense of worth from God, they do not need the approval of others. If someone really knows that God cares about them and values them, they do not have the same need to get social approval or prove something by making a reputation. So they are not so prone to damage themselves by trying to be the biggest rager of dare-devil in the world. And they might live longer that way.
That is easy to say. If you want human company and friendship, it's difficult not to try and get the attention and applause of other people. But then, which people do you want to get noticed by? If it's the 'fun crowd' who do all the raging, what happens if they also demand self-destructive or denigrating behaviour from you?
I've been there myself. This is not some wise old man who knows it all, it is a survivor of mistakes made in taking a foolish, misguided approach to life. But I was never so desperate that I would let other people gull me into making a complete wreck of myself. Even before actually becoming a Christian, I had some sense of a God who cared. There was something in the universe apart from blind chance and the approval of other human beings. That saved me from destoying myself.
One of the most miserable cases I heard of was this: a young man wanted in to a gang. Their rite of initiation was that you had to climb out of a train window; crawl across the roof of the train and back in by a window on the other side - while the train was moving. He tried to do it, fell and broke his neck. He is now quadraplegic. That was the price of trying to be part of the crowd he thought were cool. And zillions of people can comment about how foolish it was, and yet people still do it. Another case was a girl who became wildly promiscuous because she thought that was the only way to get boys to like her - or at least notice her. This is not news. People have known about this for centuries. Trouble is, it keeps happening.
So am I right in thinking that this happens when people do not have a sense of God caring? They think that impressing certain people is the only way to get a life? Or they think 'life's a bitch and then you die', so what's to be lost by taking chances?
For years the so-called 'liberated thinkers' have been trying to eliminate the influence of Christianity from the western world. The trouble is, they have nothing better to replace it with.

Price or value?

2008-09-29T05:55:00.000-07:00

A British churchman stated the opinion that pregnancy termination cheapens human life. I think he's completely right. If a child can be cut off from the living because the natural parents (or one of them) don't want that child to be born, the idea is that people are only allowed to live if someone else has a use for them. That idea can actually be a threat to everyone. If you believe that life is sacrosanct, then you would not assume the right to terminate the life of the unborn, or anyone else either. To accept the idea that it's okay to kill the unborn is to say that a life can only continue with the approval of others. From that point on it is value judgement who lives and who does not. Think about it. If you claim the right to end a life at all, then rather than seeing life as sacred in principle, you're imposing a valuation on it. Some can live, some cannot, depending on the approval of others. And that view of life can carry over into a loss of respect for human life generally.
Some years ago it made the national news when a crowd of street gang hoods bashed up a female jogger and nearly killed her. One of the gang, under arrest, said: "So what? She weren't nothing." He saw no value in that woman, so he had no remorse for attacking her. That is the bad attitude, whoever the woman was. In fact,she was a professional with skills and eductation, but she didn't matter to him. And the point is NOT that she mattered more for being a skilled professional, but that she is human and should not be treated that way. You could safely bet your life that gangster would care if someone he cared about was attacked. Whoever he values or cares about should be protected. And that is the problem. That is a classic example. He could risk killing someone he saw as "nothin'", while caring about his own. Life only mattered in some cases, not all. That attitude is reflected in saying that a child can be snuffed out because others do not accept their right to life.
I do know that pregnancy can cause shocking distress to the mother. The woman I love most in the world suffered through pregnancy, physically from sickness and emotionally from depression. And that is even in an intact marriage when the children were loved and wanted. It must be far worse when the pregnancy is not wanted. Right. So there are reasons why a woman could wish that it would end. I respect peoples' right to their feelings. But it is still true to say, sometimes a principle has to be suffered for. I could claim that I've done that myself. And the truth is not just what suits us anyway. So there we have it. If life is not inviolable, then there will be times when it will be taken by those who do not see the wrong in doing so. Killing the unborn because it suits others to do so is saying that life can be ended for the sake of others. If you go down that road, and it becomes the general attitude of a society, then the day could come when someone decides to kill you because they do not accept your absolute right to live. Talking of gang culture, one gang had as its condition of membership: 'Take a life, make a life.' To be in the gang the member had to kill someone and get a girl pregnant. The attitude is that you can put someone else out of the world and replace them with someone of your own 'making', in a sense. A world where too much of that happened would be a nightmare of murder and carnage. That extreme example is the same in principle as saying that some children may be born and others not.
There is the case of self-defence. But killing in self-defence is a desperate last resort, not a calculated decision to attack and slay someone else. Also in that situation the person who needs to be defended against is the cause of the problem for attacking in the first place. It is not the same as ending the life of someone helpless.
There is the case of euthenasia. I could understand why a person may wish to die if they are terminally ill and in pain and distress. If that is their decision I can't argue. The point there is, they are not imposing on anyone else. What they want to do applies to them only.
Who presumes the right to take away the life of anyone else? And if you claim that right, might someone claim it against you?
A human being has an identity right from conception. From that point on their gender is decided, as is their physical appearance and the inborn parts of their character. It is too self-serving to say they are not human because they have not been born. Life has started, and a lack of concern for its right to continue can carry over into a lack of respect for life of anyone at any time or place.
I respect the rights of others to their views. But that is how it seems, inescapeably, to me.

Renewal.

2008-09-16T00:38:00.000-07:00

Featured in a television interview was a woman named Bettina Goering. If you recognize the name, you're quite right. Bettina Goering the grand niece of Hermann Goering, one of Hitler's henchmen and a leader of the Nazi government that did so much evil during World War 2. She talked herself about being of 'the bloodline of murderers.' In some ways the tone of the documentary is optimistic, because she is engaging in conciliatory dealings with a Jewish woman, helping to undo the cruel things done by her great uncle among other. But the point that struck me was what she said about herself, being related to someone who did such evil. It was as if that reflected on her. I don't believe that is fair, when those things happened before she was even born.
It can be right to learn from the misdeeds of the past. But it can be horribly wrong to condemn whole families for them.
Where this leads for me is, blaming a person for where they come from, or any other circumstances of their conception. Years ago I heard a debate about 'termination' of pregnancies. One speaker suggested that they could understand a woman choosing it if she was pregnant as a result of rape. Now I know that I can't dictate conscience to a woman who has suffered a horror like that. I'm not going to claim that I can understand another person's situation when I've never been in it, and never can be. What I do have to say is this: you cannot blame a child for the circumstances of their conception, just as you can't blame them for their relatives.
Someone once said a thing that struck me as quite shocking at the time - but it is actually quite true.
They said that any one or all of us could be living today because of an act of rape. Any or all of us could be descended from some utter monster. In either case, we cannot be blamed, and condemned, for the ancestry we come from or any other circumstance of our conception.
Does that sound shocking? Is it an insult to our parents to suggest it? No, not necessarily. Consider this.
Any human being draws their existence and identity from EVERY ancestor we have. It works thus: Obviously if our parents had never met, or something was different in the past from what is was, we would not have been conceived. And the same applies to our grandparents, and so on back as far as the human race goes. If someone travelled in time and intervened in the life of our great-great-great grandparents, so that they did not have the child they did have, then the whole line of descent would change from there down. If you could change history back as far as Emperor Claudius of Rome, and disrupt the relationship between two people such that one of their children was not born after all, then the entire line of descent from that point down through the centuries would alter. Thousands of people who do exist would not. Others might exist in their place. And that could eliminate the existence of any one of us.
Now calculate the number of your ancestors. We have two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents... and even allowing for marriage or child bearing between relatives like cousins, which can reduce the number, our ancestors number millions. To check that, simply keep multiplying two by two. Ten generations back we each have 1024 direct ancestors - and our identity comes inseparably from every one of them. Ten generations, at three or four each century, only goes back to the times of Queen Elizabeth 1 of England, William Shakespeare, the early European settlements in what was then called 'the Americas'. Now keep going back to the times of Queen Cleopatra of Egypt, Julius Caesar. The number reaches millions.
What could there be among all those ancestors who yielded our existence? If one person in every million is conceived in an act of rape, the probability is that we have several such ancestors. And what sort of people could be included among them?
This is the risk you run if you research your family tree. It's a natural thing to do; but it can turn up some things that are less than flattering. Back in the 'Dark Ages', a vile barbarian raiding a village might have committed some abomination on a female villager, and from thence came the line of descent which led to ...me? How do I know where I came from? And if it came to light that a great humanitarian, or someone you love, was descended only three generations back, from an act of rape, incest, prostitution, are you going to condemn them for that?
Now look at something that might change the whole view of it. When the Israelites were taking the city of Jericho, they had help from a woman named Rahab. Rabab was a 'harlot', a prostitute. In a city alread squalid and corrupt, she was one of the least respected. And yet it is recorded that she became an ancestress of the Messiah, in that one of His human parents descended from her.
We can't know who all our ancestors are. We can't know what unloveable acts might have led to the bloodline that we're descended from. We CAN know that we each have a human identity that comes from God.
The saying goes that "God has no grandchildren". That means we each can call ourselves His children, with no generational separation - and we have our lives from Him. We need not feel blighted by what is in our human ancestry. If it turns out to be something we can't be proud of, that shows no-one need be proud and count themselves better born that others. Our worth lies in our being beloved of God, not what we do ourselves, not the forebears we might claim. And no-one need be condemned for which humans they are descended from. God can renew any and everyone, and make them what He knows they can be.

The grim stealer-further.

2008-09-15T23:37:00.000-07:00

I don't know if people would want to talk about this. Sometimes it helps - each to their own. When I got caught in the grip of depression, it lead to some quite bizarre forms of empathy.
I can imagine myself in situations quite unlike the real life I lead. For example: I used to dwell on what it would be like for a slave: someone abducted, sold into bondage, and forced to do whatever the person who 'owned' me chose, no matter how exhausting, demeaning or hateful. It could break the spirit. And the bitter reality is that human creatures have had to live that way. That thought used to impose on my mind and become a morbid obsession which I could not shake off. Other times the situation on my mind was that of a person whose marriage breaks up, and who loses their home, their contact with children, and who suffers a blow to the heart that can leave them psychologically winded and flattened. It is how some people find themselves derelict, living on the street. Another scenario was being left seriously disabled. If you've seen that film "Born On The Fourth Of July", in which the soldier is left paralysed, you might remember the line: "Who's going to love me?" in the sense of making a marriage with him. It could be derided as self pity if you were callous enough to deny the sheer pain expressed in that comment. The point being, what a shocking and heart-breaking thing to happen to someone. And I would go on and on beating myself up imagining things like this, and descend in a black pit of despair at the thought of it. I can think of just one positive: it was a way of sharing to some extent in the hurt and suffering of others, which is what a human should sometimes do if they are going to call themselves a caring member of the race.
The danger lies in the feeling so overwhelming you that you go down yourself. I do not believe I was ever dangerous to anyone except myself. It would not have been my reaction to go mad and kill my family or some pure horror like that. What did happen, which was scary, was that I became careless of danger. On a really bad morning, driving to work so bleak that I hardly knew what I was doing, I nearly caused a serious accident. I pulled out of an intersection in the path of a truck, which only narrowly missed a collision. The driver yelled wildly at me, I heard it because the two vehicles passed so close; and it was a reminder that I was putting stress on others. That truck driver did not deserve the trauma of being involved in a major, possibly fatal, accident. So I needed to get a grip and think of others. The condition is much improved now because I'm out of the job that was driving me over the edge; and because the doctor found an anti-depressant medication that works for me. But the entire experience was shocking. It was impossible not to feel bitter and bleak about everything. What I might have done without the help of God is desert my family, run off somewhere trying to escape the misery, thinking that somehow I would find a new and better life somewhere else. It would not have worked. There would have been too much hurt to the ones I abandoned. Knowing that would have spoilt any attempt to be happy somewhere else. Now that the foulest moments are past,
I'm seriously thankful I didn't lose it to that extent, or let myself give in to selfishness. And yet the thing can blind you to reason sometimes. The 'grim stealer' can lacerate your mind and distort your perceptions, horribly. Another odd reaction was that I used to want to eat things I normally never touch, like licorice. Then there were the night sweats, as if I had a high fever; and the nightmares, the worst of them literally sickening. The thing I need to be glad of is that I was got past it. Last night's T.V. viewing narrated the suicide of a teenage girl who could not get past it. That's another bitter theft: a bright young life stolen. I wish that I could do something like the ghosts of Christmas past, Christmas present and Christmas yet to come in "A Christmas Carol". It would involve taking people on a journey, showing them what can happen if....and showing them that there will be better times ahead, if they wait it out. The wretched thing is, the victim can lose hope. It can be a huge rescue operation if instead they can be sustained until they get past it. Effective medication is a God-given life saver. It can also make the critical difference if the sufferer knows that other people understand and care. Happily for me I had a family and friends, and congregation members, who did understand. But some people, including some I worked with, could only make futile cliched comments about 'trying to get your mind on better things' or ( I got to hate this one!) 'implementing strategies to counteract it'. (Useless!)
Every age seems to have a particular scourge that afflicts it. The list would be too long to compile here, but some examples are the plagues that hit the world in the Fourteenth Century - bubonic plague, which killed a third of the people between India and Iceland. The rest of the world was then unknown to European chroniclers. We can't know what happened there. There were appalling wars which ravaged entire populations, as well. Historians and commentators have said much about them. One particular blight of the late Twentieth and early Twenty First Centuries is clinical depression - the grim stealer which can leach the will to live out of the human heart. I owe a debt of gratitude to friends and loved ones who helped me through it, and to Christian faith. Without that, I could have lost any sense of hope and the will to fight on through it. It is easy to see why that old fable has Satan gloating that depression is one of the deadliest weapons.
I should finish by saying: anyone who has been there for a depression sufferer, and aided them in getting through it, has done a fine thing that could have saved a life. May God commend you for caring.

Where the power is.

2008-09-11T20:52:00.000-07:00

Soldiering has been described as the world's oldest profession. That may not be true. Farming might predate it. But then it depends on what you describe as a profession. True it is though that conflict between humans has existed since the beginning of the human race. The first murder in Biblical history happened in the first generation to be born, when Cain killed Abel. As soon as human beings grew in numbers enough, the individual quarrel grew into a group quarrel. Soldiering itself, the bearing of arms, may serve the noble purpose of protecting those who need it. It is not in itself a bad thing. The issue lies in what is done by soldiers, and why. Watching the events of the world, one of the most enduring things in human history is warfare. In some cases, the background to a conflict can seem to be perfectly ridiculous. That is why Jonathon Swift wrote "Gulliver's Travels" about the peoples of Lilliput going to war over which end you should open an egg. It is just about that stupid sometimes! As we sit here now, there is centuries old bitterness between the Protestant and Catholic communities in Ireland; and every so often someone stirs the pot by celebrating the victory in the Battle Of The Boyne, which was fought in - wait for it - 1690! Over three hundred years, and the feelings are still kept alive. That's not even the worst I've heard. Conflict between the Albanians and Serbs in the province of Kosovar links to a battle which was fought in the 1400s (or was that the 1300s?)
There is a traditional emnity between the Greeks and Turks, dating from a time when Turkey held Greece as part of its empire. And this list could go on.
Stopping a fight is almost like finding the foot of a rainbow. No matter how near you seem to get it's always further off. So blood keeps getting shed, between people who've never personally quarrelled at all, because of what started between the distant ancestors. You can see the problem in microcosm when there is a quarrel or fight between two individual people. Each one feels that they have to get back at the other for something the other did; and each time they get their own back, the other person then has to get square for that; and so it can go on forever.
The only way to stop it is for both parties to agree to stop right there; and that means one side has to let the other get away with the last hit. All this is obvious. I'm not saying anything amazingly deep pointing that out.
The key to it is: someone has to agree not to retaliate, but to forgive. That can be terribly hard when you see cause to be bitter and angry about the hurt done, especially if it involves lives lost and vile cruelties carried out. I know that even from my own relatively safe life. But the inescapeable truth here is that you can only have peace either when both sides have been bled dry, or when they decide to forgive and end it that way.
To some people this is weak talk. They would say that it is cowardly to run away from a fight. And I know myself sometimes the only way to survive, and protect others, IS to fight - defensively. I've done some military service. There may well be a need to take up arms. But sometimes the braver thing may be to find a peaceful way, because the very thing we want to save may be lost otherwise. Now consider this:
if there had been more conciliation, and forgiveness, after the First World War, it is possible the Second World War might have been avoided. Look at the histories written on the subject. At the end of WW 1, those nations on the defeated side were treated very harshly. Some of what was done might have been well and good, but Germany in particular suffered by the Treaty Of Versailles which ended that war; and the seeds were sown in that for World War 2: Germany, among others, regaining national pride.
That is a macro example. Micro examples can be seen in disputes and feuds between individuals. Conflict goes on because one or both, or all sides, will not forgive. People may underestimate the depth of Christian teachings and precepts. They are not just nice things to make life happier and safer for wimps. Lives by the hundreds may depend on them. Forgiving those who offend you does not have to be a forfeiture of your rights. It can be a way to stop a wretched bloodbath that will blight the lives of dozens, or thousands, even those you most care about. The Nazi leaders who led Germany into W.W. 2 managed to bring destruction on the things they loved most: their nation and its people.
Forgiveness does not preclude legitimate justice. If the hunt for Nazi war criminals, or other war criminals such as those from the Yugoslavian war continue, fair thing. People should not feel they can get away with abominations. But the exercise of justice is not the same as revenge, which begets revenge in turn, and becomes vendetta.
The Bible's teachings are more profound than some people ever realize. They are not the easy way out for wimps. They are the way to save everything worth saving.

The Critical Difference

2008-09-08T06:35:00.000-07:00

Sometimes social commentators discuss human behaviour by comparing it with the behaviour of animals. I've heard it said that because some animal or bird species have multiple sexual partners, then it may be a natural and healthy thing among human beings. That happens with horses for example. It also happens among some higher primates like apes. Another variation says: animals often have different mating partners and produce offspring by them. Therefore this may be a healthy evolutionary trend if it happens among humans. One commentator even remarked that sometimes homosexual behaviour can be observed among non-human organisms. Therefore it is just a variation in the behaviour that occurs in nature, hence there is nothing wrong with it.
There is a flaw in this entire type of argument. Certain habits and actions observed among animals are at least undesirable, even illegal among human beings.
For one thing, disputes among animals are usually settled by combat. Even herbivorous
creatures of a supposedly non-aggressive type engage in combat. Deer, for example, the sweet looking creatures who inspired the character of Bambi, fight at times. Stags have their antlers for a reason. They serve as weapons when contesting with other stags. Bulls fight, so do rams. Even kangaroos, the model for some soft toys, engage in battle and sometimes do each other serious injury. The way one male gets the right to mate with a female is by fighting off rivals. Likewise with cattle and sheep, especially in the wild. And this is among the plant eaters that do not kill other creatures to eat. By the time we get to lions, pumas and other carnivors, the nature of their conflict can be really bloody. According to one nature documentary chronicling the behaviour of lions, sometimes a new male will take a pride of females from an older one, by killing him or driving him off; and kill the cubs of his among the females of the 'harem' he has acquired by force. Now imagine if humans lived this way. You might admire the strength and power of lions, but would you want a human male killing another man and thereby taking his wife (or wives) without their approval, and wiping out that man's children? If I'm being too obvious here, go back to the point. Is animal behaviour a suitable pattern by which to assess what is good among humans?
On the subject of mating and rearing of the young; among animals it is common for the female of the species to be solely responsible for that. By contrast, humans tend to agree that fathers should be involved, not leave it all to their childrens' mother. So what happens among animals is not an example for humans to follow there either.
As far as I've ever found out, animals do not care for their elderly and keep them comfortable. Neither do they nurture and support those born with disabilities. Offspring born without normal capabilities do not survive among bears, cheetahs or even higher primates like gorillas and baboons. The mother may merely abandon and reject them, or they may even be killed. That has been observed among lions - the killing of a lame female, who had just abandoned her cub, and the killing of the cub as well. This is not a happy subject to discuss. The point is, what happens among non-humans is by no means some indication of how we should live unless we abandon what we like to call our humanity.
One study of primates observed that sometimes among a clan of apes, there will be group sexual events in which the members not only multi-partner, but the young are involves as well. Among humans we call this paedophilia.
I could go on and on. The point is what animals do is not necessarily an example of healthy or safe behaviour if applied to homosapiens. I wonder if some of the 'clever' commentators who talk about it realize this? If they don't, they are not as smart as they claim. If they do, then they have a view of humans different from that taken by many others.
The evolutionary thesis is that the strongest survive and thus beget superior offspring like themselves. Among humans, this translates as applauding the actions of 'high achievers' even if they walk on the faces of others by getting ahead. Not in every case, admittedly. Some high achievers are admired for their work in medicine, finging ways to preserve and improve life for all. But the triumph of pure strength was the way advocated by Adolf Hitler. And consider this: in a society which rejected people with a handicap, what would have happened to Franklin Delano Roosevelt? If humans are a distinct class of creatures, not just sophistated higher primates, then what happens in 'nature in the wild' is a study in what NOT to do, not an example to follow.
Admittedly, we humans kill to eat. Even vegetarians consume other living things, because plants too are life forms. The difference is that usually humans buy their meat or fish in a shop, they don't always catch and cut it up themselves. But then we have rules about avoiding gratuitous cruelty in the process. Humans are expected to show consideration for the suffering of anything that lives, and try to minimize it. Does any other life form do this, as a rule?
An atheist would argue that we are products of evolution, and it is right that the strong dominate and inherit the world. Christians believe that we are created, by a compassionate Deity, and should show respect and care for all the created things around us. It seems obvious to me which of these two approaches offers most hope for a good world.

Stones and sticks

2008-09-02T20:02:00.000-07:00

An newspaper article I found today goes into my collection of 'keepables'. It demolishes the old saying about "sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me." That saying is not true, at all. The little rhyme is taught to kids as a way to deal with it when others torment them with name-calling; and it's humbug. As the article says, ( and didn't we all know it!)the pain from emotional bullying lasts longer and can be re-lived more than that from physical bullying.
In Australia this last few weeks there have been suicides by high school students who were victims of bullying, much of it emotional rather than physical. Some schools are getting a serious wake-up call. They will have to act on the issue rather than taking the convenient way out, telling students to 'just ignore it', or teaching them that silly little rhyme. It should not be news anyway. The body may bruise, even be quite badly injured, but the physical body does not register emotional as sharply as the mind does. Children may suffer hundreds of bruises and grazes, even broken bones, having accidents like falling off bicyles, or swings, or simply falling over when running around. Playing sport can leave you with sprains and fractures. They heal. I don't recall someone being permantly traumatised over a broken arm or leg. But they can be rendered angry, miserable, withdrawn and self-rejecting because by ridicule or rejection by their peers. One victims' support group states that social pains causes more lasting hurt than physical injury. They mention the case of a 13-year-old girl who can't look at her mobile phone texts because for two years she was sent bullying, threatening ones.
No-one can judge all others by themselves, and that includes me; but from personal experience I know this: a broken collarbone, physically painful for several days, was not as bad a thing as feeling scorned or rejected by people who you thought were friends; or simply targetted for trashing by people at my high school who couldn't get a life any way except by dumping on others, including me. You get better at coping with it; but psychological pain can damage more than much physical pain or injury.
It seems that words can make a much bigger difference than blows. When someone says "Words can never hurt.." etc it might be worth asking them why do we have slander and libel laws?
Taking a slightly different tack:if it came to a choice between greater and lesser evil, which would be easier to cope with? Being slapped, even punched; or being back-stabbed or emotionally tormented, by someone who was clever at it? It might be an individual thing.
So the tongue can be a weapon, and we all need care how we use it. That being said, there is a need to safeguard freedom of speech. There is a balance needed there. It comes down to the motive: why do we say what we do? To say what we feel needs to be said, or out of anger? There is a big responsibility involved in using 'only words.'
Of course there is an upside to this, as well. Just as we can be hurt by words, we can conquer and overcome with words. If we have a truth to speak, and speak it plainly, the word can prove mightier than the fist, just as it's said: "The pen is mightier than the sword".
If you doubt it, look at this example. The most shocking brute force was used to destroy the body of Jesus Christ. Crucifiction is thought to be the most agonizing way known to kill a human. But even as Jesus body was (temporarily) destroyed, His words were not. Followers of Jesus have died in the body for their beliefs. But His words have changed the world, and still change lives and situations; and the worst that the most cruel villains on Earth can do cannot stop this. Jesus did not use weapons, He used words. And all the armies of the world could not and can not stop Him.

Who do you need?

2008-08-31T02:41:00.000-07:00

This is a rhetorical question - anybody knows the answer. It's just meant to make a point. Who do you need most? An ambulance officer who might save your life if you get injured, or a pro golfer? A fire fighter who might rescue you from a burning building, or a 'soul' singer? A rescue squad member who might get you out of a crashed car, or a rock and roll star? Next obvious question: who gets paid the most, and gets adored and idolised by thousands?
Who did anyone need most in the past? A T.V. presenter, or their mother? A star football player, or their father? You get the point here!
My grandmother once said, looking at a newspaper report about Elizabeth Taylor's facelift surgery: "Your mother is worth ten of her". I agreed. I could have said "Make that twenty." The same would be true of my wife. But this in not running a celebrity actress down as such: I'm just getting some priorities right. There's no reason for me to be hostile to someone like Elizabeth Taylor. But she did not help me to get a life - my mother and father did. And that's just a small personal example.
Of course people know this. Also, it's easier to make an idol out of a singer or actor, or sportsperson, because you don't live close to them and see their real, fragile humanity. It's natural enough to be impressed by what someone does, and become a bit of a fan. But it might be a good idea to remember who you're going to need. Is it a friend, who has always stood by you and cared if you had troubles, or a screen idol who might find it a nuisance if you went up to them and wanted something from them? That's if you could get near them!
I wondered about trying to write a satirical novel in which everyone in the world wanted to be a celebrity. Just imagine: we all want to be famous, and make it the whole point of our lives. And to find a way of setting some sort of record, people have to find the most obscure things to do, just so that they're the first. To get into the record books, the newspaper or attract television coverage, you need to find something that hasn't been done before. Just imagine - someone decides to be the first person to kayak across the English Channel, or across the Straits of Florida. They might set out to be the first person to roller-blade right across the U.S or round the coast of Australia. Another idea might be to walk backwards between the West and East coasts of your home country, and someone else decides to do the same in reverse. In each case they're the First To Do It, so it's instant fame! This list could go on and on. In fact someone might set up a business collecting unique or unusual ideas, ways to set some sort of a record or get attention, and get rich selling the ideas because they've already thought of them and put the list in print. Meanwhile, there is a critical shortage of nurses. What would happen?
Would it make people stop and think? Or would they suggest passing laws compelling certain people into certain jobs, as used to happen in the former Soviet Union?
To some extent, it's actually happening. Several English speaking countries have had to run recruitment campaigns outside their own borders trying to find qualified nurses. Just now, I'm told, there is a shortage of teachers. Also, there have been advertisments trying to get more fire fighters. Note what they have in common, those occupations. They're all essential, but none of them are glamorous. You've seen a calendar or a magazine cover featuring sporting stars, perhaps? Have you seen one featuring obstetric nurses? And if you watch television, do you ever run across a show like "American (or Australian) Idol"? That seems to be what people dream of becoming - because it's shown to them as the greatest thing to be.
There is a precedent here. Jesus Christ was the son of a carpenter and a stay-at-home mother. Such descriptive comments of Him as survive, do not portray Him as being glamorous. He was not born into wealth or high social circles. He was not a person who would have attracted hangers-on trying to get a bit of his 'cool' and wealth. But that is the person God chose to make Himself into when He took a human identity and walked on Earth. Does this tell us something?
I don't suppose we can change the world. The celebrity culture will endure. But had we better remember who matters before we find that they're not there?

Why I would never enter my daughter in a beauty contest.

2008-08-26T20:21:00.000-07:00

It's not for me to say beauty contests should be banned - this is a free society, or supposed to be. Child pageants are a little different from adult ones because the child is entered by their parents. It may not be their own choice. Still, I won't presume the right to say they should be abolished. But I'm quite sure I would never ever have entered my daughter in one. The reasons are pure and simple: my daughter has a value that is NOT subject to some kind of assessment by a panel of judges, and she should NOT be made to feel less worthy than some other girl because when she is compared with them she wins no prizes.
Last night's television included a documentary segment on these 'little Miss sunshine' type of things - the sort that JonBenet Ramsay was involved in. There were brief interviews with some of the little girls who did not win anything. It was quite cruel to see the look of sad bewilderment in the faces of some of those little kids who had just been made 'also-rans' by this contest, which they had probably spent hours, days, weeks preparing for. We would not do that to our daughter.
Of course, you might challenge me by asking: if I was sure she would win, and it turned out she did win, might that be different? Okay, I should examine my conscience about that a bit. Would it thrill me to see my little girl made to feel like a winner? Answer: "Yes, but... there should be a better way than that." It would not be a good thing if she valued herself in terms of beating other contestants in an exhibition of looks and grooming, or trained deportment of the sort that could be considered personal flaunting. It cannot be a good thing for a person to make a life out of 'look at me, aren't I wonderful'.
It's an old cliche to talk about 'not judging by appearances'; 'looking beneath the surface for the real person', and so on. But it's also quite true.
The good things in my life include 29 years of marriage to a woman who is beautiful to me, but in her childhood was overshadowed by her younger sister, who was considered the beauty of the family. I would not swap my wife for her sister, for one minute. Other privileges of mine have included the friendship of several women who were never going to make a career out of modelling; but they had warm kind hearts of the sort that the world needs. Among them, the female people I've liked and appreciated as friends, have the following list of things that would count against them in a beauty pageant: crossed front teeth, buck teeth, flat chests, short thick legs, eye sight problems that require them to wear thick glasses, a lisp, being a clothing size 20, frizzy hair that could never really be styled...and I could go on. The point is, those women are my friends. They cared, and I was better off in life because they were there for me. Some more widely admired women seem to have little time for anything except themselves and what they want. That is not to say that a woman with an attractive face or elegant figure can't have a good heart as well. It's just that physical beauty is really just physical, and to mistake it for likeable character is one of the oldest and stupidest mistakes in history.
Of course, some people do not make the mistake. They quite deliberately value a person for the way that person looks. The cynical attitude is that someone who looks good might be good to be seen with. Just as some men are said to have 'trophy' wives, some women look for husbands who are a social asset. It must be a rather empty way to try having a relationship! That someone gets admiring looks, and it makes people jealous of you to be seen with them, does not mean you can feel safe and complete being in their company. You cannot have a heart to heart talk with them. What that tells us is, that to be hooked on personal appearances makes you a slave to them, and you have to spend your whole life keeping them up; and if the loneliness and stress of it proves to be too much, well..is that why some celebrities have such disastrous personal lives? I won't mention names; but the media devote hours and pages to scandal stories about singers, film stars and celeb sports people crashing and burning. It's either alcohol abuse, drug addiction or having serial relationship break downs. The pressure of being seen and watched, and having to keep up an image, must be seriously destructive. The interest in celebs' problems might be a bit to do with jealousy; but being glamorous, and living by it, comes with it's own set of problems. Right, now someone could tell me I'm into sour grapes- I never had the chance to get a life by being a glamour celeb. My reply: I've got a life that works quite well without it. And it seems the better way to go. So my wife and I would tell our kids the same thing - and for that reason, we never entered them in beauty contests, baby photo competitions or any of that. There are much better things to do. They don't need to feel like failures for not being Mr Universe or Miss Australia. Their value is God given.

The Maker's Instructions

2008-08-20T23:10:00.000-07:00

You might have heard a story like this one before: two parents wanted to avoid raising their kids within stereotyped roles. So they gave their son a Barbie doll for Christmas, and their daughter a set of toy trucks. Within a short time the girl had named her toys Daddy truck, Mummy truck and Baby truck. And the boy had taken to holding the doll by the body, bending the legs so that they pointed like a gun barrel; and he ran around aiming it and things and 'shooting' them. Well! It looks as if those two kids had their own ideas about things! They didn't just go along with someone else trying to tell them how to act. So could it be that the differences are not just learned - they are inbuilt. That might be part of the great design from a higher source than human social engineering.
When I was very young, it seemed that girls were silly - and I know that young girls can find boys annoying, too. I once said something like "Who invented girls?" Well, it was pointed out to me that if there were no girls, I would not have a mother - or a grandmother, or a great grandmother, (at that time I still had a living great grandmother), because girls grow up to be women. You'd think I would have figured that out for myself! But then, we all have to learn. More than that, none of my friends would have mothers either. So we would not exist! Just as well someone took the trouble to point that out to me!
Well, we've all heard what can happen when parents are too set on having boys, not girls. A society that rejects girls can make itself extinct! In some cultures, the ones mentioned were India and China, there has been female infanticide - the killing of baby girls because they are not wanted. Can you get the pure horror of that?Another report said that couples try to learn the gender of their unborn child, and terminate the pregnancy if the child is female. How high would that rate on a list of history's Worst Ever Ideas?
Underlying that is the idea that males are somehow 'better' than females. There are cultural issues, like the demand that a girl's family pay a dowry when she marries. Why would a man expect to be paid to marry a woman?! Be careful what you say, though. You might get a lecture from the politically correct about respecting other cultures!
On the subject of sexism, it's just as foolish to argue that females are better than males. The two are obviously in some ways different, but equally essential.
Apparently, a well known feminist writer said this: 'masculinity is superior to femininity'. From that came the idea that women should live and act more like men, because it made them stronger. It was a better thing for them to be. That's another entry for the list of extremely bad ideas!
WHY is maleness better than femaleness? What would happen if the world had either no feminine girls, or masculine boys? I can't see how it would be worth living in, and maybe it wouldn't last long anyway! Some planned societies, like the early communist regimes, tried to abolish the different gender roles. Those societies did NOT become the way of the future. Does that tell you something?
The saying goes, "Vive le difference!" (Long live the difference.) The differences between the two are meant to be there! And the thing to get your head round is, two things can be different without either one being better. The world needs BOTH! It is a critical problem: human beings think one thing superior to another, without seeing that one can't exist without the other.
In those countries where infant girls were rejected, there is now a serious problem: too few women, so that many men cannot have partners. Parents who were determined to have sons might have to stop and figure that out. Why did they think someone else had to have daughters, but not them? And just how could you reject your own child, for being a girl? My wife and I only have one daughter. Sometimes I wish we could have had about five - as well as our sons, NOT instead of. But that would be greedy. We know people who can't have children. I must not be ungrateful for what we do have.
One good news story from recent times: a Christian church group is undertaking to have abandoned baby girls from overseas brought into our country for adoption. Good on them too! It would be the right thing whichever sex the abandoned babies were, it just happens that so many of them are girls because of this shocker idea that female children are worthless. And it's NOT just fathers who think that. By all reports, mothers too can reject female babies because they only want to have sons. As an aside there: equally cruel is a parent who rejects a child for being male, because they wanted a female. But it seems infant boys are not so often abandoned - or worse.
I'd better be careful here. If God decided to strike every doer of bad deeds, I'd be going down! But may I still say: if you want evidence that God is real, one of the many evidences of that is the birth of a baby - including a girl. And if you want evidence showing the fallen state of the human race, then try this: some humans can actually reject a new born child because they only want a son, not a daughter.
What a piece of work is a human! We could spend hours listing great achievements; and as long listing great mistakes or bad deeds. One point to make, though: wherever Christian missionaries went, a practice they tried to stop was female infanticide. The modern politically correct view is that they barged in and messed up other cultures. It could be that many individuals now living only exist because one of their female ancestors was saved, by the intervention of those Christians. The Word says: "Male and female He made them." It was not a human idea. Humans cannot improve on it!

What matters?

2008-08-12T03:39:00.001-07:00

Did you ever see something like this? Someone who is supposed to come from an under privileged home, but they wear a Stussy cap and other brand name clothes. I can remember seeing that going on. Of course, sometimes it looked as if the brand name shirt was the only bit of clothing they had. It looked as if they slept in it! So instead of a number of clothes, cheaper to buy but not 'cool', they own one item of status gear and nothing else! Something strange is going on here. I know there are people who are hard up, there really is such a thing as poverty. The concern is that people might be compounding the problem because they get hung up on silly ideas about how to spend what they do have. It comes to a question of, what really matters?
Do some people get so caught up on image that they try to get their hands on a few things that are fashionable and supposedly give them status, and go without more important things?
In other words, what are they trying to live for? It could be really cruel if they get made slaves to the idea that without certain accessories, they deserve no respect.
When I was teaching, you never stopped hearing about what terrible problems some kids were supposed to have. Then a woman who had worked overseas, in a rural area where some kids hardly had enough to eat, said that kids in the Western world didn't know when they were well off. Some peoples' idea of poverty is not having cable T.V. It's true, life can be made too easy and people can become indulged, and jaded, like the proverbial spoilt kid crying for the moon. Whatever they have, they still want more. But then: when someone is surrounded by material things, and everybody boasts about what they've got, then having possessions can seem to be the meaning of life. Did we give people reason to think that wealth and trophies are what give them worth, and if they don't have them then life is not fair to them? If it works that way, then the message is: to have any self-respect they've got to have things, and show that they have them. That is the only way to get a life!
This is not original, I know. Thousands of people talk about 'the meaning of life'. But it's a continuing problem, like crimes of violence. So we don't have much choice but to keep thinking about it. What do people live for? Is it just to keep up with the 'trendies', the 'cool group', the smart set or whatever you want to call them? If that's how it is working, then people who fall for it are trapped on a treadmill that won't get them anywhere - because there will always be someone who has more, and it will torment them to know they haven't made it until they've got the same. Deadly!
So how can that be changed? Once again, this is not original. As the Scripture says, "What benefit is it to gain the whole world, and lose your soul?" The human being needs something to live for apart from the material world and its trappings. If that's all they can see, then like the horizon, what they want will always be out of reach. Don't worry, I know we need some material things. I love to eat, and more importantly, my children have to eat so I'd better make sure the food is there. The same goes for their clothes, and more besides. But life is more than that. It has to be! And realizing that is important. Failing to realize that can happen when people try to leave things of the spirit, the factor of God, out of the equation when they try adding up the sum of life. I can't tell everybody else how to live. They have the same right to their views as I have to mine. But is it right or not that, figuratively speaking, "Humanity does not live by bread alone." The body is not all. The spirit too has needs. Is the modern western world seeing that and telling its children in time?
Any thoughts and comments? I'm still learning.

The grim stealer

2008-08-12T00:41:00.000-07:00

Someone told me this story once. You might call it a modern parable or didactic joke. There's a telling lesson, though. It goes like this: Satan owed this human a favour. So he offered them their choice from his range of tools. They could pick out one they wanted and keep it. The person looked over all the evil tools that the Devil owned. They were all the various means that the demon had and used to torment people, or try to destroy them. After a while, the human saw two outstandingly ugly looking ones, really cruel things. When the human asked for one of those two, the demon promptly went back on its word (as to be expected from Satan). "No!" he said, "you can take any other you choose, but not those. They're my cruellest."
"Why?" the human asked. "What are they?"
The demon replied,"One of them is despair and the other is depression!"
A grim tale, with a point to make. Suffering is made even worse when you lose hope. Short of completely giving up, one of the cruellest forms of suffering is depression.
What is worse, it gets under estimated. That's why it is described as such a pet weapon of the devil! People suffering from depression are sometimes just get told to 'get over it' and if it's real clinical depression, the sufferer can't simply shrug it off, just as they couldn't shrug off asthma or diabetes. There is an actual biochemical cause. That's why medication can actually work (fortunately). Trust me on that: I've had depression!
I know, there is such a thing as self-pity or laziness, whereby a person just drops their bundle and won't help themselves. But that's not necessarily the same thing.
There's a cruel irony here. Depression is a modern epidemic. The sales of medication for it are huge, I've been told. Yet it is much rarer in what we call the developing world, or third world. I've read that suicide is almost unknown in some places which are called 'backward', or at least not highly modernised. In those places the population still suffer from diseases largely eliminated in the West. They live without the technology and convenience that Westerners take for granted. Just as obesity is rare in places where people struggle to get enough to eat, depression is much less common in places where people have to keep busy just getting through each day.
The harsh view of that is to critisize people for being spoilt and weak. But that could be seriously untrue and unfair. The more advanced and regulated a society becomes, the more it both hems people in and puts pressure on them.
Consider this: it can be good for a human to have to work for things instead of just taking them for granted. You learn to appreciate something if you understand what is needed to obtain it, by such ways as growing your own vegetables or building your own shed or house. The trouble is, that's not always possible. Depending where or how you live, there may not be the chance. You may not have ground available. Building laws may stop you erecting a structure. So your society can coddle you with convenience and protective rules, and actually stifle part of the spirit. Then the added effect is, people are told they've got it too easy.
That has it's analogy in physical health. We all want kids to have clean living conditions and good nutrition. Yet if children grown up in such a sanitized environment their immune system never gets challenged, or worked to make it 'fit', and that leaves them more prone to things like asthma. Just as we need some exercise and fatigue to get fit and strong, we need some exposure to dirt and disease so that the body learns to fight them off. That's a cruel irony, it really is! Try to make things good, and find that it's backfired! But that's an analogy. Returning to the point, the cruel irony of depression is worse when people are materially secure.
There could be another dimension here, too. When the world around us has been made so good in the material way, it is expected that we will be perfectly happy and achieve great things. So then we have the issue with people feeling that they are critizised, and that they don't measure up. No matter what they do or how they try, they get told that they should be better because 'You have it so much easier than we did' - that being the sort of thing some older people say to younger ones. But having it easier is a double edged sword. It's good for people to be given some responsibility, and some challenges to face. But then there are times when that too gets denied people. In the past children had to help with the running of a home, or farm, because water had to be got from a well; washing done by hand; food prepared from scratch, such as peeling potatoes or shelling peas; and you had to walk to school. The adults needed help from the younger ones - and for that reason children or youth felt useful, because they were obviously doing something important. But now with technology, urban living and all of that there are fewer ways for school age kids to make themselves useful. So there is less chance to make yourself useful, while more is expected of you. Cruel irony!
The problem doesn't end there.
When you become adult, the world is a seriously demanding and sometimes cruel place. People feel judged, compared with others, and more is expected of them because now that we don't have to struggle just to survive, there is time to find fault with others. It can be cruel when a girl feels bad about herself because she does not look like the models in magazines - as if she should! But that's what happens when society has time to set up idealized images, instead of just being glad they're alive. Boys can suffer because they don't have a macho or athletic look about them. Having a brain -or more importantly, a good heart - is not as vital as looking good.
So society chews up peoples' self image, and makes some of them feel inadequate. Added to that, even when we're more likely to live longer because health care is better, there are uncertainties like unemployment, loss of income and loss of your home, and all that.
That could be the trap. The world is supposed to be better, but it can still be hard and ungiving to some people. For all I know, the state of the environment could be a cause of depression. It's well understood after all that various forms of pollution, or bad diet, damage the health. A lot is still not known about mental health. It might be found in the future that environmental factors can cause depression. Or social factors, which we don't yet recognize as being damaging, could be a problem. It's already well known that some people growing up suffer badly because they don't get respect or appreciation from those around them. That is where depression can start. I won't call depression 'the black dog' because dogs can be loveable animals and don't deserve to be insulted by such a comparison. I'll call depression the leech, or the 'grim stealer' - it can drain us and steal part of our life.
This foul disease might be to our age what smog was to an earlier one - a by-product of the way we live. I can't say. There's a lot of study involved. I'm quite sure that the problem is partly a spiritual one. Satan is real, and looking for a chance to savage God's created beings, especially humans. And Christians incur the demon's anger most of all. For that reason, Christians may suffer attack and be hurt by it. And the cruel complication is this: when genuine sufferers are told they are weak or ungrateful, that makes the thing worse. It's like punching someone on a bruised spot.
I can't speak for everybody else, so I'll just get on my own case. There were times when I needed to keep things in proportion and not let them get me down so much. I didn't always appreciate it when I was well off, and needed to be told: look on the bright side, count your blessings, whatever way you want to put it. Sometimes that was right, too. But there was a time when that condition got me! And it's no help someone getting on your case telling you to 'snap out of it.' I needed medication! I've found out - you can struggle and fight, try to counsel yourself out of it, and it's still there. And it's not just weakness. Some people who go down have shown they can achieve a lot. They can put up with a lot. But only so much. You could not call Samson weak when someone deliberately attacked him through his vulnerable spot. He was only human, after all. We all have weaknesses.You can't fairly call someone weak because they get cut down by things beyond their control.
So that's my take on it. I'll gladly hear if anyone wants to comment. I'm well aware that I don't know everything. Any thoughts?

It's true!

2008-08-11T04:53:00.000-07:00

This might sound like mushy sentimentality, but there is some actually hard science behind it.
People who marry, and have children, tend to live longer than those who stay single and do not have children. People who stay married tend to outlive those who divorce. That's not an absolute. It's not to condemn people who don't marry or have children to shortened lives. But it's been found to be generally true. At the same time, another group who often live long lives, are nuns.
You've got two extremes there. People in relationships which produce children, so they involve being sexually active; and those who have no intimate physical or romantic relationships, and don't have children.
So what do they have in common? They both put a great deal of their lives into caring about others. Caring about other living things is a kind of loving - not the romantic sort with melting moments in the moonlight, but to give and care about another is to love them. Marriage involves certain stresses. So does having children. To keep a relationship going and raise children well you have to care about someone apart from yourself and put them before you at times. In a different way, the nun's vocation involves giving her life over to the care of other people. Despite living in quite opposite ways, they both have to extend themselves to be there for those around them instead of just doing their own thing and pleasing number one.
This is not a critisism of people who divorce. Members of my own family have been through it. A person's marriage might end without it being their fault. A divorced person might still be a loving and giving individual. The general trend, with exceptions, is that living longer happens for people who have a relationship which involves caring for others - and having someone to care for. Come to that, keeping a pet or companion animal also seems to be good for people. The same applies. There is a living creature there who needs your attention, and needs you to do some giving.
That could be for a several reasons. If you have to care about someone else, or something else, then you have less chance to dwell on your own issues and let them get you down. Also, if you want to be there for others, you have a reason to keep going. Part of survival is the will to live. You have a will to live if you feel needed.
It sounds corny and mushy to say things like 'It is more blessed to give than to receive', (groan, roll the eyes) but some things are true even if people trash and ridicule them. If a cynical or miserable person can't see that, it may be tragic for them, or it might be they should quit trying to spoil it for everybody else. The thing is, it might be FACT that a human mind and spirit get stronger and their health is better if they give, instead of just trying to take.
Christmas, or family times like it, can be great when you're a kid yourself. They can lose their sparkle for adults, because they get 'same old, same old' and they mean having to be polite and putting on an act; then they can become exciting again when you have children of your own. Kids opening their Christmas presents can be a real ball!
When the strain gets to you, it can seem that having children involves a load of trouble. But when you see the good side, then it's 'everything old is new again'. Our kids loved making mud houses in the yard, going to the zoo or fauna reserve, ridng tricycles and bikes, hiking, going to theme parks, having rides at carnivals, all the things we did - but for them it's new. You can catch the mood from them. Recall taking children to the movies. They loved it. And it's fun when they're having fun. Life renewed. I can remember when our eldest boy went started school, hoping it would be good. I recall taking our daughter to her first ever dance, worrying how it would work out for her and being glad when she enjoyed it. The same goes for things like teaching them to swim. Later, it's teaching them to drive. The point is, they need you. You make yourself live up to it. It'a a way of 'getting a life'. You don't live THROUGH your kids, if you do things the right way. But if you live FOR them, you've got more to live for.
The same goes for your spouse. I don't depend on my wife, or she on me. It's just that there is a lot more to live for if we've each got each other.
Could it be that our species is made that way? It is good for your heart and lungs if you exercise them. In the same way, is it good for your spirit if you extend it to others?
It might sound like mushy sentiment, but what if it's real? To care for others is good for yourself. That might be one of the most important ways that humans are made in the likeness of God.

It didn't work out that way!

2008-08-08T05:42:00.000-07:00

This is a fairly ugly subject. But if we face up to the bad things in the world there is more chance they can be changed.
If you ever read "The Catcher In The Rye" then you'll remember how Holden Caulfield became really depressed thinking about the woman working as a prostitute. I share that feeling entirely. It's just bad and cruel for a person to be used that way.
Today's news report: "More slaves are alive today than were shipped out of Africa for the Atlantic slave trade during the last millenium, says Kevin Bales, an American academic on modern slavery". That is the Sydney Morning Herald, August 8th.
What he tells us is that some of them are 'working' (that is, bonded) in the sex industry. They are children or young women deceived into travelling overseas on work visas, some of them knowing they were going to be put to work as prostitutes but some not knowing - and being held in their 'workplace' by threats of violence, often not being paid. Of course this is not news to any one who follows current events. Neither is it news that this is a vile way to treat people. When the subject comes up of 'mans' inhumanity to man', the things often referred to are the holocaust, the massacre of native peoples by invaders to their country and war generally. It is just as evil to think of someone being forced to submit to repeated violation of this kind a slave, and a sexual assault victim as well. But there's no need to tell anyone that - we know. The angle I'd like to look at is this.
When people argue for the legalization of prostitution they say that if it's legal it can be monitored and supervised, so that certain standards are kept. Make it illegal, they say, and you just drive it underground so that the people working in it have no lawful protection. And it looks like that argument is pure rubbish - because even when it IS legal, there is still gross mistreatment of some of those involved in it. Could it be that prostitution is just an entirely bad idea?
Bales, the academic being quoted, says something else worth noting. The problem exists partly because people will will buy what what is being sold. If it sickens you to think of people-trafficking happening, say that to people who go to 'sex workers'. After all, some of those who do are quite open about it. And sometimes women hire men for that purpose, too. If no-one would buy sex, the whole filthy racket would collapse. But to stick to the point, it does not seem to work to make the thing legal. Allowing that gross 'industry' to exist openly does not guarantee that the 'workers' involved will be protected.
It must be a rotten sad thing if someone can't find a partner to love and share certain things with. If the only individuals who went to a bordello were lonely, that would be sad as much as wicked. But from what I've been told, that's not how it is. From time to time a scandal breaks about someone powerful and wealthy - and married - being caught out buying call girls. There's something amiss there. Do some people get their thrills being able to treat the partner they are with as a captive, not a person for sharing with?
Whatever it is, there are good arguments for not making prostitution legal. As soon as something is allowed by law, that can be taken as meaning that it's respectable. And of course it can be shown that outlawing something does not mean it won't exist. When governments tried making alcohol illegal, a huge illegal trade in it began - Prohibition and the Roaring Twenties, all the gangsters and all that. Likewise, narcotics like marijuana and ecstacy are illegal, but people still obtain and use them. But to legalize something might mean that the use of it increases, and if it's a bad thing then reducing the use of it is good. And to come back to the point: there seems to be something evil about prostitution, such that it will always involve mistreatment of the people involved. The damage can be to the 'customer', as well. I can's speak from experience - that is one mistake I did avoid, when younger and a lot sillier - but it's been reported that using sex-workers can become a compulsive, and the habit can ruin people.
If a thing is bad, you don't make it better by legalizing it. Sometimes people try to say there is nothing wrong with that trade. We can all have our opinions! It seems to me that paying for 'love-making' is like paying someone to pretend they are your friend: it's not real, and how long can you kid yourself?

Experience and Innocence

2008-08-07T02:45:00.000-07:00

Condescension can be a seriously annoying; and it can be a hindrance to things. Think about what is called 'the generation gap'.Older people get condescended to for being set in their ways, and younger ones get cricisised for not knowing anything. It might be that older people might at least do what they do quite well, because they know it thoroughly. Also it might be that younger ones might come up with some better new ideas because they're less in the habit of doing things in a set way. It is a constant problem.
Some older people condescend to younger ones when they claim to be sticking up for them and their rights. They can be too quick to make excuses for them, or not listen to them, rather than give them credit for knowing what they may well know. It may be kindly meant in some cases. Also it's not right to be too hard on people. And it's not fair or reasonable to expect a 12 year old to know what an adult should know. But it can also be insulting to say that someone 'doesn't know any better' when they do. That can apply to a sense of right and wrong. It can also apply ideas about life and improving the world.
That being said, younger people can also be condescending to older ones. A 60 something man once complained, "I've been through two bankruptcies, a war and a divorce, and my grandson says 'You don't know what life's about!'"
So what can we make of that? Well, the grandson has the sort of things on his mind that you would do at age 12, or 14, whether male or female. I won't try giving too many examples. It's a while since I was that age. A fourteen year old would have a better idea. The point is you can see why the grandson figures life is not about the sort of things that a sixty-year old thinks of. But then, the 60 year old has got past some of the things that the 14 year old is still dealing with. So in a sense neither is wrong. They're at different places. To be fair to the older person, they've had to deal with things their grandchild has not had to deal with yet. But to be fair to the grandchild, they're still having to deal with things that no longer bother the older person. The whole world can't be 60 all at once, and it can't be 14 all at the same time. It needs both. The problem is they don't always realize it.
I read and assessed this assignment once done by Year 12 students, which was to write their autobiographies. Aged about 17 or 18 they set out the history of their live so far. Truly, instead of being a slog that had to be got through it was fascinating. When we gave them back I said, and meant, that it was really good to see the open-hearted way they wrote about things. I wrote my own as well, to demonstrate how to do it; and mine was more edited and guarded, because I was way older than 17; and I'd have to admit, it showed. They were better at thinking 'out of the square' as the saying goes. I was better at putting things in a neat and considered way; but theirs made a more original read.
Some of those younger students had clear cut ideas about right and wrong which could be called 'naive'. But those ideas are also uncomplicated. So if the younger thinker reckons that things are clear cut, the older thinker can make the mistake of complicating the issue because they want to see it a certain way. I've caught myself doing that. It can happen that you overlook certain angles before you learn to see things in greater depth. It can also happen that people become cynical and give up certain principles because it's easier that way. Two mistakes, both of them serious.
I said this before, without repeating myself too much; younger minds can be more wide-ranging and able to look at things as new. So they might see an angle that's been overlooked before. The down side is, that their focus can be short lived, and they may not see a thing through as well as someone older who has decided what things they are interested in, or committed too. It can be a mistake for either to trash the other.
Consider this. Leonardo da Vinci worked out a design for helicopter-type machine back in the 1400s. At the time, it could not be made to work because there was no adequate way to power it. But 500 years later the idea DID work, and very well too! When young Leonardo came up with his idea, did some people think he was a fruit loop full of air-headed ideas that could not work? Possibly, I don't know. The thing is, his idea was a good one. It just couldn't be made to work in his lifetime. It's less known, but an inventor designed a set of gears back in the 1700s that could not work at the time because the right sort of super-hard metals were not available. Now the ideas does work, with steel alloys that have been discovered since.
Centuries ago, some doctors thought of blood transfusion. The idea itself would work, just so long as we know about blood groups and rhesus positive or negative. It's not good to think of some of the failures that could have happened because healers tried to transfuse blood without knowing all that they needed to. But it's a good thing that the whole idea was not rubbished because it couldn't work at the time. When some extra things were found out, the idea did work. Good thing too! Now suppose a young, innovative thinker came up with an idea, but could not make it work until more was known about it. An older, deeper thinker took up the idea and found out the extra needed to make it work in practice. Good outcome, right?
Of course, not every new idea is good. Trust me! I can recall a few of the bright notions I came up with when aged about 13, or even 17, and I just have to admit...no,
it's better to forget that one! There was just too much that I hadn't learned.
Then again, sometimes an idea gets trashed because the wise elders can see the problems, they might have seen the idea come up before and not work - but this time round, it might because we know more than we did last time it was tried. As with Leonardo's helicopter, right?
I hope I know better than to get impatient with someone younger than me,when they get enthusiastic about something that I think is 'old hat'. Also, I hope they understand if I quite honestly think I've seen it before.
Talking about work places, I've heard someone complaining that being the only under 40 in their place of employment was boring. The other ones just talked about different things and thought they had certain issues all figured out. Understood. But then I've been in a workplace where every one was young - and it was like a bottle full of blow-flies. There was plenty of noise and movement, but it didnt' really go anyway. No-one had a clear idea of what to do. Lack of experience meant some of the energy was wasted.
So there's a place for both. As the Bible says, one body with many members, each with their own function. The critical issue is that each sees the others' angle on things. It would quite literally be the end of the world if there were no more young people, renewing things. It could be a hazardous world if their were no steady experience heads who knew certain answers without having to learn them over again, the hard way.
Now for the hard part. How do we get everybody to see things from other peoples' angles and keep the peace?

Innocence and Experience.

2008-07-31T20:41:00.000-07:00

It seems that when you're younger, your brain is more flexible and can extend over more things at once; and when you're older, the brain's focus is narrower but you can think more deeply. It really is true that when you're younger, like under 15 years old, it is possible to watch television and read at the same time. Parents have trouble believing it, but in fact that's how it is. I can remember doing my homework in front of the T.V. and being able to take concentrate on both. Kids can have a conversation and listen to music at the same time. Young brains and minds are flexible enough. Then as you get older, you are able to concentrate in more depth, but distractions are harder to cope with. The brain, or mind, is like a camera lens, if I've got it right. The wider the field of focus, the shallower the depth. Narrower focus goes with greater depth.
It makes sense. It fits in with the idea of an Intelligent Designer making the human creature the way he or she is made. When you're young, there is a huge amount to take in and think about. You need to set the mind to 'wide' to take it all in. Without meaning it rudely, a younger mind is more 'easily amused' because everything is new. Then when you get a few years behind you, it's not so simple to find something that keeps your interest - but then you can do more with what you like, because you can think about it more deeply. All that's helpful, because you get the chance to find out what you like and stick more with it. So what all that says is, young minds are 'easily amused' because they're checking out the world, and there's a lot to check. Older people have sorted out what they like and don't like or what interests them and what doesn't. So being 'an old stick in the mud' can really be knowing what you like and what you think. It shows in clothing fashion. You see the different ideas come, and go, and come again; so sooner or later, if you've got a mind of your own, you work out what you like. Trust me - I've been around for a bit. In my life men's ties have gone wide, narrow, wide and narrow again. Women's skirts have gone short, long, short and long again. Back a few years men kept their hair short. Then the 60s happened, and it was long hair on men. Now it's short again, even to the head-shave look. Well, it's a free society! Make your own choice!
It's a pity that over 40s and under 25's don't always realize: if you're over 40,
well, you were under 25 once. In fact, you were much younger than that, obviously. If you're under 25, well guess what: if you live a good long life, you'll be over 40 for at least half of it. So look on the bright side. When you're younger, trying new things can be a real thrill. It's part of getting to know yourself. When you're over 40, or 50 or however long you get, then certain things are settled. You can focus more deeply about the things that you've decided are important or interesting to you.
Like a lot of people, I sometimes think 'if I could have my life over again...' etc. Sure, there are a few mistakes I could avoid, especially things like hurting other peoples' feelings or just being a selfish idiot. But then you learn from your mistakes, as well (or if you don't that really IS being a blockhead).
There was this song in the 70s by Cat Stephens, called "Father and Son". One of the lines goes 'From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen.' Right! I've had that feeling, too! Everyone on your case wanting to give you the benefit of their experience - or just big-note themselves because they're older. Sometimes you have to do things and find out for yourself. It's important for everyone to remember that. Then again, there are some mistakes that cost too much to make. It can be horrifying when someone finds out the hard way what happens if they drive recklessly.
It's not true that youth is wasted on the young. That is the time when you learn by taking in a lot, and checking out all that there is to see. Older people might sometimes forget that you need your childhood and youth to learn things. Then from the other side it can be really hard to see somebody making what you are sure is a bad mistake. You can't help wanting to stop them.
It's a problem. My personal answer is, I'm glad God is there to keep things under control. The rate of wasted lives would be horrific otherwise.

Three score and ten

2008-07-26T19:57:00.000-07:00

It's important to understand what someone means and not be misled over a word. This is the same sort of thing I was getting at in the last post. A cynic or a suspicious mind can mistake what is meant when someone says the 'like' children. It need not have any bad undertones - you can simply be glad that children, and teenagers, and young adults exist because you appreciate them for what they are. I badly wanted to have a daughter. So it was pure joy when Liz (my wife) and I had a baby girl. Now if someone said I was glad because 'I like little girls' that could be misunderstood quite badly. In fact, you can just appreciate little girls, or any young children, simply because they are truly amazing. They are new life, and a renewal of humanity. When a baby is born, their eyes can look clear and bright because they are all new, there's been no wear and tear. None of this means older people are any LESS valuable. I could write just as much about the value of greater age and experience. For me it's easier to have a deep conversation with someone my own age, because we've got more in common. The best friends I have are of my age group. But I won't be one of those people who trash on 'the young' all the time. Then again this is not meant to condescend, either. I hate condescension. But just now, this post is written in appreciation of youth - starting with, but not only about, my own kids.
One time I gave my oldest son and his friends a lift down to the movies, and just watched them all crossing the street; and I really liked just watching all of them and thinking, it's good that they exist. Like any parent, I'm proud of my kids and it gives me a buzz just seeing them. It's good that they've come into the world. The same goes for all of our kids. My daughter too; I see her with some of her friends, and it's a good feeling to know that those girls were born and came into the world. It's got nothing to do with being attracted to them in a sexual way at all.
And feeling that way, I can appreciate other peoples' children as well, not by sticking my nose into their lives but just understanding why other parents are glad of their kids.
You can get the same feeling reading peoples' blogs. Younger ones, they can show a lot of enthusiasm and imagination, and it can keep you interested for hours.
Sometimes young children, or teenagers, can show a resemblance to older family members. It can be a warming reminder that life goes on. Obviously, unless you believe in reincarnation (which I do NOT) then finding that a young girl resembles her beloved and now deceased great grandmother is not the same as actually having that person back. But it can show that what is good in a person does not have to be entirely lost when they pass on.
It can be silly to idealize something right over the top. Pity someone who can't cope with being over 40 and they have to go on with the denial stuff; stacks of money spent on cosmetic surgery and being Ole' Fifty five trying to act twenty five. Getting older usually means you can sort certain things out and not agonize so much over what to do. Things get more decided. It's possible to be quite content when you're over 40. But any age has its good and bad side. Someone once said they wished all people could be born 26 years of age. Mistake! Childhood and youth are part of getting a complete life. What can really upset you is seeing what could be so good, wasted and spoiled. I hate seeing what some narcotics can do to people - such as reduce them to depression and self-destruction! Bad, bad, heartbreaking! But it isn't always that bad. So let's hope we can all get our three score and ten - 70 years.

What's in a word?

2008-07-22T00:13:00.000-07:00

This might sound rather sentimental, but the thought has been in my mind for some time. It's not original, I realize. So here it is: English is valued as a versatile language with a huge vocabulary, but it shows one striking shortcoming. It has only one word for 'love'. The early form of Greek had eight. I can't remember the words themselves, but there is one for love between friends, of a strictly non-erotic nature, such as existed between David and Jonathon. I can't recall if there is one for platonic affection between a man and a woman, wherein they feel strongly for each other but have no physical attraction. There are other words for the love between family members. It definitely is a problem at times trying to use one word, and a very emotive one, for several different things.
I very much wanted to have a daughter, not in place of our sons but as well as. So I'm very aware of my daughter's femaleness, but definitely NOT in the same way that I appreciate my wife's femaleness. It made the family more complete and balanced
to have a female child as well. In fact I could wish we'd had more girls, but the house was crowded with five children as it was. No doubt we had the number God knew to be right for us.
I've had good friends I could say I loved as friends, but not in any sense as homosexually. That's not a bash at homosexuals, merely my statement that I'm not one.
Despite serious friction with my father at times, I can see a lot of good in him, and that too could be called a form of love. But the word doesn't always sound right to use in that context. The same goes for my mother.
What to do about it I don't know. Perhaps understanding that the word can mean different things is enough. Could it be though that sometimes people don't like using that word 'love' because of its connotations of eros, man-to-woman love, instead of specifying the bond between people of another sort?

Ecumenism - necessary?

2008-07-19T21:27:00.001-07:00

Ecumenism, the idea or uniting the whole Christian Church, might not be necessary or at least not the only way to go. Some thinkers regard it as an ideal to work towards.
Others are utterly determined never to let it happen. It may not actually be a good idea, given the limitations of human creatures.
The Bible talks about the unity of the believers. That's a good idea in itself. But it can only happen when there is real unity of belief, not by forcing agreement on some of the members of a church just for the sake of having one big group, instead of several smaller ones.
When I was new to Christianity the question bothered me a bit. Aren't the Christians supposed to be united. But a wise preacher put it this way: when there are several churches, you have to keep going back to the Bible to see what it actually says. In my case I needed to sort out the issue of baptism by immersion: was that what God actually called on His followers to do? Going over the question by looking at what is actually in the Scriptures meant that I gained a better insight than I had before. The different positions taken by different denominations mean that if you want to know about them, you check out what's actually written in the Book. It made sense to me then and it still does. When there was just one huge Christian church, it was possible for that church to tell its humble members, 'just do as you're told. Leave the thinking to the ones in charge'. In fact there was a time when ordinary people were not allowed to read the Bible themselves. Only the ordained priests were considered capable of understanding it properly. The result was that some serious errors or even deliberate malpractice crept into the picture. One particular Catholic monk saw the problem, blew the whistle on it and started the Reformation. Now the Bible is available in each person's own language, you can see for yourself and not have to rely on someone else to tell you.
It may be that different doctrines answer different needs, so long as they don't actually conflict with the Word. Some Christians I know find it important to be baptised by immersion. Others do not. Some like the formality used by the Anglican or Episcopal church. Others prefer not to have set prayers used in the service. Some prefer to kneel in prayer, others to stand. Some churches sing hymns, others only psalms. As far as I can see, none of those things conflict with worshipping in truth. They're just different forms of spiritual expression. God made us all individuals, and there can be different ways of doing what is still the right thing with the right outcome.
So we might not need one all-in super church. In fact we might be better off without one. Inter-church fellowship is important, but we can be friends without having to be housemates. I'll happily listen to anyone else's take on this. After all, we can all learn from each other.

Small is beautiful?

2008-07-19T20:06:00.000-07:00

People are concerned about a possible split in the Anglican Communion, all the Episcopal type churches that look to the Archbishop of Canterbury as leader. They make is sound like a complete disaster, but if it did come to that, it might not be altogether a bad thing.
Look at it this way. When Christianity first appeared, emerging among the Jews of ancient Palestine, the worshippers met in small house churches. They were usually outside the temple, and the synagogue. Jesus used a borrowed room for the Last Supper. The Christian Church as it then was, the body of believers, did not have a large formal infrastructure. There were no great processions of dignitaries, or massive majestic buildings. Jesus Himself said that the believers themselves are His house, the house of God, not some building.
I'm not suggesting that all Christian cathedrals, churches and minsters should be torn down. No way. They were built out of devotion to the Christian faith and to the glory of God. What I am suggesting is that there can be problems when the organized church becomes too centralized, and too structured under a hierarchy of human leaders. Human beings are only human, after all. No one of us should imagine that we can take the role of God in teaching or instructing others. Those called to teach need to teach purely from the Bible, not their own authority. Doing that can lead to the disaster seen in Jim Jones some years ago - and others besides.
If a large church split, and in its place there were small locally based house churches, then they might not have the influence that a large organization can have. But things would be more like they were in the days of the apostles, when post-Crucifiction Christianity was first coming into being.
One advantage of a large structured church is that it can share its resources, and do more with them (if the members are so inclined). It's easier to set up and run hospitals, schools, shelters for the homeless and welfare agencies like St Vincent de Paul, or the St John's Ambulance Brigade, with a large group of people who have money, labour and other things to contribute.
A disadvantage of a large church is, that bad ideas can be imposed on a large number of people. In the Middle Ages there was really only one Christian church, that which was centred on Rome. In those days the church taught that the world was flat and the Earth was the centre of the Solar System, with the Sun revolving round it. The Bible does NOT say those things. They come from the Ptolemaic science and cosmology of the ancient world, specifically Egypt. The scholars and thinkers of the time made the honest mistake of working those things out because that's how it seemed unless you had the advantage of modern equipment like a telescope and background knowledge which had not been learnt then. But the mistake the Medieval church made was to add those things to its body of Holy Writ - the things that the church taught as the Word Of God. In other words, they added things that are not in Bible to what they called the Word of God as revealed to humanity. They disobeyed the command the Bible makes not to add to what it says. They compromised the teaching that the Bible alone is God's Word. Thus a wrong, mistaken idea was imposed on the entire Christian world of the time.
The large churches of the world, such as the Anglican and Roman Catholic, have done some marvellous works. Try working out how many children have been educated, sick people cared for, homeless fed and sheltered and unsaved people evangelized by the societies they have set up and run. A small local congregation might not be able to do the same. So there is a good side to huge global churches. And there are some good things which could be shared when Christians communicate widely.
The argument is also used that small groups of Christians, isolated from others, can lapse into error without guidance. It's an overused thing in movies that a group of hillbillies out of touch with the world get carried away by mad satanic ideas. Things like "Children Of The Corn" use that in their plots. In might happen less in reality than it does in stories made up by people who want to discredit Christianity. And it can only occur if the people involved let it happen because they become proud or stubborn. A single Christian living alone can be kept from error if they read the Word of God honestly, and pray for the Holy Spirit to guide them. The do not need an archbishop or other dignitary to tell them what the Word says if God reveals it to them. Having said that, I know that Christians are encouraged to worship together and keep company to help care for and guide each other. But what is called 'strong' leadership, or authoritarian leadership, can have the effect of imposing bad teaching on huge numbers. As Jesus said, the leaven of the Pharisees can ruin a whole loaf.
It is in God's hands whether a large, influential church divides into smaller ones. I can't claim to know what's best. I can claim to know that it is NOT good to have unity by compromising the truth. If a church allows some of its members to carry on with practices that are not Christian, just to include them, then it is losing its integrity. If some Episcopal Church in the U.S. are disobeying the Bible by ordaining clergy who practice homosexual relationships, then it is futile to try and keep the Church together by allowing error or disobedience to God's Word.
The world is so huge that we can't have personal acquaintance with all the rest of its people. It's good for a Church in Alaska to have some fellowship with one in Scotland, or Australian Christians to have contact with African ones or anything you like. But Christianity existed before the whole world was known to the people of any one part of it. Some evidence exists that there was a Christian community in India since long before European missionaries went there. The Indian Christians received the Word without needing the big churches in Europe to get involved. Contact is good, but it is not essential. Human leadership has it's place but only under God. The Holy Spirit's guidance is the critical thing for believers.

The truth comes out.

2008-07-14T23:40:00.000-07:00

A news item today says that while the recession takes hold in the U.S. because of the housing market slump, there is an increase in marriage breakdowns. A divorce lawyer is quoted as saying: "One client was worried his wife might leave him if she found out that his net worth ahd fallen from $U.S.20 million to $8 million after he huge losses on property and other investments." It sounds almost beyond belief, but this is a respectable news paper, not a scandal rag.Then a psychotherapist comments:
"...money can become an addiction that masks the reality. When that goes, reality has to be faced and accusations start flying."
Certain things never get learned, it seems. The saying 'money can't buy happiness' is old and considered corny by some people, and yet it seems to be true.
Wouldn't a person be embarrassed at their exposure as such a bare-faced gold-digger? Apparently not.
So how does a relationship even start between people if it's going to fall apart just because they can't paper over all their problems in life with big spending? What happened to love? Perhaps it was never really there; yet it seemed to be, so...?
Sentimentality aside, it could be that some people never learn what love is. They've never known proper love. A child that does not hear people speak does not learn to speak. A child who is never loved never learns what it really is to love.
If that sounds appalling, ask the question: does every parent love their child, or do some of them nurture their child and treat them possessively, and control them in the process? They teach them, or drive them, to achieve, and to get things for themselves, but not to feel accepted and cared about unconditionally. Even saying this gets a groan nowadays from a cynical society. It's not exactly profound, because it's been said before, long ago. The trouble is, people are not learning.
There are still people who do not have any use for other people except their own gain. No matter how often it's said, that greed and selfishness are ugly and self-destructive, they still rear their heads in the lives of people all around us. What does it take for people to learn?
I've had to ask myself, too: how good is my heart? How much can I give without wanting something in return?

World Youth Day

2008-07-14T20:54:00.000-07:00

World Youth Day happens this Thursday, so already the Pope is in Sydney and all the security measures are happening. And what else? That's right, you guessed - protesters! There's one crowd that call themselves the No Pope Coalition, or sentiments to that effect. There are protesters handing out condoms to people attending the event at Randwick Race Course, when the Pope appears to the crowd. Some are wearing T-Shirts saying "There is no God." And all the rest. If anyone objects, they immediately start up about 'the right to protest.'
I know about the right to protest, I've exercised it myself. What I believe in is the difference between protest and harrassment.
If the protesters, or nuisances causing harrassment, hand out condoms it seems they are telling Catholics to defy the Pope. It could almost be said that they are trying to tell other people what their conscience should be.
The thing is, no one is forced to be a Catholic in the modern Western world- or at least no adult is. And the crowd celebrating with the Pope look to be mostly adults, not accompanied by large numbers of young children. They are there by choice. If they choose to practice the teachings of the Catholic Church, then trying to tell them not to seems like claiming you know better and are presuming to inform them. Either that, or it's just baiting them.
The right to protest can be used wisely and honestly or, in my humble opinion, it can be used cynically to cause aggravation. I'm not Catholic myself, although most of my close friends at high school were (I don't know if that's just coincidence or not.) If someone wants to tell me why the Catholics can't just have their event in peace, I'll listen to what they say at least. The big whinge is that it's disrupting the running of Sydney, with extra traffic, roads closed off and extra police powers for security. But the same applied when Sydney hosted the Olympics, and there wasn't nearly so much grumbling then. It's as if some people think sport is more deserving than religion. ( Actually, that is just what they do think!)
I do not deny the right of people to protest. It just seems to me that it is sometimes misused. Some people never organize anything themselves, they just wait until someone else does and then hang around it being a nuisance.
Part of respecting freedom of belief means that you respect the right of people to express their beliefs. So I wouldn't try to stop the protesters making their point, but I feel like telling them to go and get a life.

The worst and the best.

2008-07-13T22:46:00.000-07:00

I could not finish reading "Uncle Tom's Cabin." It just upset me too much. The fact that it's a work of fiction makes no difference. It deals with real life. The sheer cruelty and bloodiness of it was more than I could keep taking in. The same was true watching parts of "The Shawshank Redemption" when the sadistic warder was belting a helpless inmate with a night stick. I had to look away, in disgust and rage.It could be partly because there was a period of clinical depression in my life (under control now) but knowing that this sort of thing DID happen can make a person sick at heart.
The same goes for hearing about human trafficking - people abducted and used as sex slaves, until they either die from some disease or become self-destructive. The sheer evil of hurting and ruining someone else's life that way! It seems rather harsh that God destroyed all life on Earth once before, but at times like that it's possible to understand why! The wicked are swept away, and the suffering are put out of it, and perhaps their souls were saved anyway! Some people look at this state of things and say 'how could there be a god' to which my reply is 'how could PEOPLE do such things, and no wonder a caring God is infuriated by it! Because PEOPLE do it, God does not. And if rage at these things arises from a God-given sense of what is right and wrong, then to feel this way might be sharing in the sufferings of Christ. The Three Persons of God must be appalled at what humans sometimes sink to (and I'd better not forget that my wrong doings needed to be paid for at Calvary as well) and sometimes it calls for divine retribution.
So, from the worst to the best: having said all the above, it's a huge inspiration and comfort to hear the witness and thoughts of Christians. In the same world, the same country, even the same town, you can see the worst of vileness from humans, in such things as human trafficking and drug dealing. On the other you can see the light of God reflected in witnesses. It comes out in their actions, too. Some Christians have gone to places they might not have wanted to be at all, because there was a need that they could meet by being there. Some work in occupations chosen for the benefit of others, not for their own glory or gain. Whatever they do, many show by what they say that they care and would wish the human race suffered less. So I can lose all faith in mere human beings, myself included, even though I have friends and family I love and appreciate. Then I can regain all hope by remembering that humans are still made in the image of God, and when they will let the Holy Spirit enter their hearts and minds they can reflect what is good in the Universe, as well.
The contrast can make your head spin. From seeing how God decided to wash the whole planet clean, sparing only the people and creatures He called onto the Ark; to seeing how Jesus could face up to and suffer the crucifiction, to save us.
When peope want to make something good, they are echoing the creativity of God.It might be in something small in itself; but it is still the impulse to make something good, the opposite of destruction and cruelty. Everywhere you go on the internet, you find knitting and crochet enthusiasts; artists; film makers, and writers.
And stay-at-home mothers reflect the nurturing impulse of God. Fathers who care do that as well; but without getting into schmaltzy sentiment about it, I'm offering my respects to women who see their way to being there for young children in a full-on way like that. Having been an involved father, I know how demanding the care of a child can be. No-one need try to tell me parenting is easy; and mothers seem to carry a lot of it.
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote that novel because she looked at a horror in the world and had to speak out against it. Some people run collections or do volunteer work because they want things to be better. Myself, I've done a little bit of a lot of things without being brilliant at any of them. I wrote the one novel I have in print so far, because something in the world roused me and I had to show how things could be better. I don't believe that "Outcasts Of Skagaray" will change history the way "Uncle Tom's Cabin" did. But the feeling is the same. When you see something cruel and wrong, and want to change it, then you show the divine spark that found its full expression in God the Messiah, or God the Son, Jesus Christ. We can't claim to be equal to Him, but we can take inspiration from knowing that when we want to put something good into the world, we are following His example. Sometimes, it seems to me, you can save yourself from despair by doing what little it seems that you can to change things.

Authors who put the case

2008-07-12T20:32:00.000-07:00

Some books do not entertain so much as teach by confronting us with something. Two novels I can think of make for stark reflection, but they may have an important lesson. "Lord Of The Flies" is about a group of school age boys marooned on an island without any adult or cultural supervision or control. "Heart Of Darkness" is about Europeans involved in colonial trade in Africa, during the 1800s. In both scenarios, the people involved lapse into savage and barbaric behaviour. The boys on the island begin quarreling, they divide into two hostile groups and some of them become murderous in their treatment of others. They also invent a god for themselves and a 'beast', an enemy figure they are meant to be united against.
In 'Heart Of Darkness', the Europeans, supposedly a civilizing influence on the Africans, become savage and cruel themselves. The image of the 'whited sepulchre' is an obvious Biblical reference.
It would be a mistake for me to stand here in judgement and make comments as if I was one to talk. So whatever I say is about humans myself included, not my condemnation of others.
The self-preservation instinct is natural to any living thing. It's the only way they will survive sometimes, if we think to keep ourselves safe and get for ourselves the things we need. Problem is, the difference between self-preservation and selfishness is not always easy to decide on. You can look at these two books, or at a situation like the air-crash survivors in the Andes Mountains about whom "Survive" was written (they ate the flesh of their dead friends to avoid starving) and ask yourself, what would you do in the same situation? I would have to admit that I've been inclined to try and get away with things for my own benefit.
That's the problem. The saying goes, "if you don't look after yourself, no-one else will."
Could it be that this is where humans need to turn to something greater than themselves? There are situations and dilemmae they do not have ready or workable answers to, and only a greater power and intelligence can resolve this?
The Humanist view is that humans are naturally good and want to be their best possible selves. That does not explain why given the chance, one human will so often try exploiting another. It can be quite sobering sometimes to find out of someone that they did things you never thought they would. As the comical expression goes, "I didn't think you had it in you." But they did.
Study of the National Socialist era in Germany shows that some of the war criminals, who did the most appalling things, were affable 'normal' people at other times. Even Hitler himself was seen to be kind to children and to love his dog. I've seen a photo of some German army personel who were the staff at a concentration camp,
and who also had a camp orchestra. The picture shows them hamming it up for the camera and looking just like a crowd of good natured friends, ordinary people. Yet when at work, they were engaged in mass murder.
From a Christian perspective, we are told to love people but not to idealize them. History seems to show that human nature is not reliable in keeping itself from cruel or even murderous behaviour. Hence the Christian teaching that we need God to be with and within us. I may never find out what I might have been capable of if put in certain situations. I like to think that there have been times when I could have done something selfish or cruel and chose to do something better. But what seems important to say is, we ought not to fool ourselves that we're better than we are.

2008-07-12T02:43:00.000-07:00

A journalist wrote today that some people want religion banned from the public domain. That is, they want less debate about it and to suppress the expression of opinion by those who practice a faith. The writer put it this way: "..they do not support religious toleration because they believe that religious convictions are the cause of so much serious and enduring harm in the world."
For one thing, this attitude clashes with freedom of belief. It is dangerous. The worst dictatorships in the world's history have tried denying people freedom of belief; and apart from being evil in principle, it never works in practice. All that comes of it is misery, strife, and the eventual collapse of that dictatorship. No way should a person be forced to practice a religion. You can't truly force someone to believe something anyway. It is pure humbug to try that. And no way should a person be denied the right to their beliefs in living a faith. To do that denies a human their humanness. It is trying to stop them thinking and feeling. But all that is well known. I'd like to put a slightly different angle on the issue.
I did not become a Christian until I was nearly 25 years old. That was after growing up in the 1960s and 70s. That was the time of the Vietnam War, Woodstock, the murders of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, Timothy Leary suggesting that LSD should be put in water supplies so that everyone was on a permanent drug trip. That was when widely followed rock singers like The Beatles went into experimenting with mind-altering drugs, and the big spiritual thing was eastern mysticism. There was any amount of publicity given to gurus and yogis teaching transcendental meditation; workshops in 'communing with the cosmos'; and the hippy idea of free love. Living in the Western world at the time, you saw all that. There were huge race riots in parts of the U.S. and big changes in Europe and Australia. And at the end of it all, there was a huge sense of "Yeah, right...what now?"
Richard Dawkins wrote "The God Delusion" and claimed to have shot down the whole idea of belief in God. Clever people have been ridiculing Christianity for years. And I'm telling them that I became a Christian because it had answers that they did not have.
Compare them to the Gospel, and they just can't match it.
What I'm saying next is not meant to be hurtful to any particular person. And it applies to me as well. The fact is, no human I ever knew could stack up against God as someone to put your trust in. It's not likely that someone like Richard Dawkins would ever bother speaking to me, but if he did I could say "You just haven't got it!"
All human individuals fail at some time. That goes for their ideas and teachings as well. The thing that rises above them all does what none of them can, is what we see in the God as revealed in Jesus Christ.
I will respect anyone's right to believe what they choose. Be an atheist, a Hindu, rationalist, take your pick. That is your right, to believe what you want. But never try persuading me by scorning Christianity. The more people try that the more they reveal their own smallness in the face of it. I respect others' beliefs, but they need not waste their time trying to tell me they've got something better. I've seen a lot and that's where I've ended up.

So we know - do we?

2008-07-10T07:08:00.000-07:00

Someone showed me an intriguing mental exercise once. They wrote a shape on paper, basically like the letter H - except the way they wrote it was with plain straight lines, no font or style, and then asked "What is that?" One obvious answer is that it's the letter H. That is, if you use the same Alphabet that we do in English. To someone who spoke and wrote Russian, and used the Cyrillic Alphabet, it would be the letter that signifies the sound 'N' If you write the name "Nicholas" in Russian it starts with what we use as the letter 'H'. Right. So suddenly it's not so simple. Then again, it could be a drawing of rugby football goalposts. It could be a picture of a tree trunk with a piece of rope tied round it. And without going on too long, the point is this: what you make of it depends on what your mind has already been trained to see it as.
If someone said to you, "Ich bin auschlander. Nicht verstehen" then you might not know what to make of it at all - unless you speak German, in which case you know that it means: "I'm a foreigner. I don't understand." (Apologies if my spelling is not perfect in German).
Try this: (and again, the spelling could be a bit wonky) "Shin,a'weel, a'nish."
If it means nothing to you, that's not surprising. I've been told that it is a Gaelic phrase, from Scotland, meaning "That is the way that it is," said as a fatalistic expression of acceptance or exasperation.
You know what it means if you speak the language. The point here is that you have to know some things before you can understand others. And for that reason, it can be quite wrong to say, "The facts speak for themselves." What happens is, the facts speak according to what you already know.
And people can be misled. The people of Ancient Greece were intelligent and inquiring; they sought to find the explanations for things; and they theorised that waste material and rubbish gave rise by spontaneous generation to flies, because that was how it seemed.
More recently, it was believed that stomach ulcers were caused by stress or bad diet, and diet was the only way to correct them. Not long ago, researchers found out that they can be caused by a bacterium, and can be treated with a specific medicine. It was good too, because for years people afflicted with ulcers had to live on this bland miserable diet of things like boiled fish. I can remember one of my aunts having to live that way. Not fun! But here's the point. Very intelligent and qualified people were mistaken in what they believed.
I could admit to some of the dopey mistaken ideas I've had at times, too, but then I'm not an expert who got believed by thousands of others.
It was once believed that if a human being travelled at over forty miles an hour it would kill them.
It was once taught that the Earth was the centre of the Universe. The best minds of the time thought they had deduced that, and it was accepted as knowledge.
Once it a while, what all the best and brightest told us has been found out as incorrect. It's worth keeping in mind. Of course, we have to rely on some things we're told or learn, or we can't get on with life. But sometimes what is "Truth" seems to undergo change.
I wonder if one day it will be shown that the human species did NOT evolve from other life forms?