When will we ever learn?

When you're under twenty one, or so, it can be really annoying to see older people dismissing your views as if you know nothing at all. And sometimes the oldsters who dismiss you can overlook something they need to know. Their rude disrespect or arrogant sense of superiority can blind them and cost them. But having said that, I'm old enough myself to see why it happens sometimes.
The same old things go around and come around.
I'm a nineteen fifties model. I was born in 1953, the same year the Korean War ended. I can remember newsreaders talking about President Eisenhower. And I can remember one of the catch cries from the time: "Ban the bomb." That was the anti nuclear activism of the day.
I can't recall the exact order or the times when the different politico-social fads went round, but in the sixties and seventies the Western world went through phases of concern about global crowding and famine, then pollution, especially in the very late sixties with acid rain. There was concern about heavy metal poisoning of soils, of water ways, all legitimate concerns, but the point is: these themes came and went, and then came again. There was even a global warming alarm sometime in the sixties. People were afraid the number of humans would generate so much body heat that they would raise the planet's temperature and it would start killing crops and causing starvation.
If you live long enough, you see the same things come and go and then come again. If it's the first time someone's heard it, they think it is new. They don't understand why older people are less impressed. To them (us!) it's a case of 'here we go again.'
I'm convinced the world will end, when Jesus Christ comes again. It will end when God decides the time has come. Nothing humans can do will stop that, nor should it if they only knew what was right. Nor will that day come any sooner than God decides, no matter how much humans think their behaviour changes things. So we have a finite span on this planet, no doubt; but it is rather vain for people to think it all depends on them.
How long before people get it?

It tells you something!
Thousands of refugees heading to Europe, trying to get a new life, are heading straight into the homeland of their supposed enemy - Christendom! It tells you something, doesn't it? If they wanted to live in an Islamic society, there are stable Moslem nations like Saudi Arabia which are closer. Many of them are living in Turkey after fleeing Syria, or other Islamic nations racked by war, and Turkey is a peaceful Moslem country. So why the West?
Could it be because Christian societies, or even societies with a Christian past, seem to be better places to live. Human rights are better protected. Toleration of belief and opinion are observed. The individual cannot be killed for changing religions, or stoned for (alleged) adultery. Women have the same legal rights as men and are not forced to cover their heads in public, or even their faces. In short, the West with its centuries of Christian tradition is a much safer and happier place to be. It's a cruel irony that so many westerners become jaded and depressed, amidst all that they have. They don't know how bad it can be. And they have been deluded by 'intellectuals' into rejecting the creed that gave us all so much, Christianity. But even so, the West attracts people from nations like Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, and India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, as well as some countries in Africa. Seeing all this, wealthy Moslems promise funding to build mosques for them in Europe. Not help where they are and rehoming, but mosques in the heartland of the enemy, Christian lands. And here's some news I found really heartening, reporting in one Australian newspaper. There are a number of Moslem immigrants in the West, notably Germany, attending Christian churches and wanting to become Christians. So the Islamic nations could not only lose some of the people they will need to rebuild their war-mangled countries, they could see some of those they call theirs becoming Christians instead. I pray it's true. I would rejoice in seeing new brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus redeemed for those who want to overthrow and enslave us, forcing us to bow to their religion and attacking ours. How marvellous if that all backfired, and instead of Islam colonising and invading Europe, Christianity took people from the Islamic world.  Some of the leaders of the Moslem world could do with asking themselves why it should be that their people want to move to the West, why Moslem style government does not appeal to those they need to populate what they think are the lands of the faithful.
God will be glorified, no matter how His foes try to bring down Him and His.
Come again, Lord Jesus.

You can't reinvent it.

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?

Something overlooked.

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.

It's not enough

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.

The worship of youth is the fear of truth.

"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

Message: still relevant.

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.

Renewal

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.

Distractions to see through.

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

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.

False distinctions

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 - 1

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.

Know what you're messing with.

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!

Fear

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 hand of God?

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

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.

Alchemists

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.

A new view

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.

Renewal.

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.

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

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.