All human righteousness...

I'm really saddened by what's happened regarding Bill Cosby, and Rolf Harris here in Australia. If the allegations are not true, and it's a huge diabolic deception, then it's shocking that such a thing can happen in the modern age. If the allegations are true, it's really rotten and sad that people whose work I loved as entertainers have turned out to have such evil hidden sides. When the accusations first began I didn't know whether they were honest or whether some pathetic parasite had tried to get a life by claiming victimhood and hoping to get their hands on some money. Unless the judicial systems and investigative mechanisms in two advanced countries are a disgrace, the accusations of sexual assault and indecent interference must have some substance. All I can say is, I hate that it should be true and find it drives me away from belief in human goodness.
The first time I saw Bill Cosby, on a T.V. variety show in the 1960s, he was doing Junior Barnes and the snowball. It was a delight. I rolled around on the floor laughing. Clean humour, laughing at the human condition and human behaviour. Pure gold in a world which relies on smut or laughing at hurt and calamity, it seemed to me. Rolf Harris likewise. He presented songs like Jake the Peg, with comic antics accompanying, or daft comic songs like "Tie Me Kangaroo Down", and it was just innocent fun. I'm thinking, we need more like this; or is the world too cynical and mentally toxified for it?  There was hope for our society while it could appreciate this sort of entertainment. So then it comes to light, unless we're being horribly deceived, that both these people have an evil hidden nature.
So I'm reminded, again: never put complete faith in a human being and treat them as larger than life, and talk about 'role models'.  Mere human beings are not all as seriously evil as some cases, but we all fail some test at some time. I knew about myself, very early in life, that I could fail. I'd make careless mistakes that could have caused calamity. The problem was compounded by the fact that I was told other people could do everything right, which just made me feel like an even bigger waste of space. Then with time and maturity I could see that no-one's perfect; but some people are held up as examples to others, or at least as what we all should be if we could be. Then it happens, again and again. The celebrity crashes and burns. The idol has feet of clay - or soft mud, even. So I can't ever assume that any mere human person can be completely relied on.
SO  I need Jesus Christ. I'm confirmed in my belief that the Bible gets it right when it says, all human goodness is sadly short of true rightness.
If some spiteful left winger or social justice warrior was glad to see the two people I've mentioned fall, then I say to them: don't think that makes you look any better to me. You too are only human. You too would cringe if The Truman Show was real and a record of your life was shown to the world. That's a scary thought for anyone, now I think of it. The only way a person would not be bitterly ashamed of some things that could be known about them is if they are psychopathic, and have no conscience or sense of wrong doing.
I need to be forgiven. We all do. Bill Cosby does. Rolf Harris does. And while we're on that subject, keep going, and list every human that every lived.
Thank you for being my Redeemer, Lord Jesus. I pray millions more turn to you, admitting their need.
To anyone who reads this, my best wishes for the  year 2017 A.D.

So we're useful after all.

We're living in the technical age, so they keep telling us. Teach your children to code, to use computers. We must be the clever country, and learn all about computer applications. It goes on and on. Okay, I'm glad to have the use of computers and technology, Facebook, blog sites, web pages and all those things. But my area is arts. The two things I did best as school were English and History. The way people talk sometimes, those areas of study are a waste of space. No, we insist, those of us who prefer history and literature to maths and physics.  Literature and history deal with ideas, debates about ethics, about right or wrong. It's not only about HOW to do things. It's also about WHY do things, or even SHOULD we do them. Knowledge without conscience is a dangerous thing. Michael Crichton expounded an important idea when he wrote "Jurassic Park". One of his characters explains that knowledge too easily gained is like inherited wealth, the people who gain it do not properly respect what it took to gain it and they sometimes use it recklessly and dangerously. Since we now learn in a few hours what took people like Isaac Newton years to learn, the human race uses the power that comes with knowledge without proper respect for that knowledge. It's not so hard to understand. If you are good at painting or engraving, you can be an artist or a forger. The difference lies in your personal ethics and conscience. So we keep insisting that our areas of study have a place, but it doesn't seem that people take much notice sometimes.
Then in the newspapers I read something quite stark, which should be a bit of a warning.
A high proportion of the killers fighting for ISIS, or Daesh, have high educational qualifications - ins the sciences. They've studied and learned, they know HOW to do things, and that makes them dangerous, because they do not have a good conscience in WHAT they do with what they know.
So those of us who believe philosophy has a place, who say it's important to study history and see how the past shapes the present, and how things happen; and read the ideas of writers who aim to enlighten through their literature; we stand vindicated. Knowledge is not all it takes to make a good world. Conscience and understanding are needed too. It's now enough to know how to do things. We must also think about why we do things, or what we should do with what we know.

God has no grandchildren

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.

Subtle tricks.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Stick to the plan - 2

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

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.

You should see us now!

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.

Where the heart is

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.

A little learning...

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.

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.

The demon lover.

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.

The Maker's Instructions

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!

It didn't work out that way!

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?

Small is beautiful?

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.