Tower of Babel revisited.

Centuries ago, the human race got together and started to build a tower, intending to reach the heavens. It was a power grab, an ego trip, an intended demonstration of human might and genius. The Scripture tells us that God saw it and knew the vanity behind it, so He thwarted the scheme by altering the language the humans spoke. Up to that time all people spoke one language, and we had since the landing of the Ark. Then after God intervened, different languages existed for the first time. That was the point from which the different languages spoken today all came from. This act of God was to prevent the race conspiring together in a way that was bad for them, because it involved challenging God. Some thinkers resent the idea of God setting us back, controlling us and setting rules for us, but then some people think the human species is better than it actually is. Given power, we too often use it vainly or foolishly, for our own benefit and vanity more than the good of all. The Tower of Babel was not built in an attempt to reach out to God. It was meant to challenge Him, an act of defiance or rebellion. Previously God had had to wipe out all the human race except Noah and his family, to put a stop to the depravity and barbarism that it had descended into. He was more forbearing this time and simply stopped people being able to conspire together. The trouble is, humans keep trying to build the Tower of Babel, in different ways, trying to equal God and deny that we need Him. It's being going on since the Ark landed - literally! In past ages, different races built up huge empires by conquering those around them, taking their land and using them as they chose. The Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Persians, the Romans, and on and on it goes. It's all about power, one tribe or people trying to safeguard and enrich themselves by controlling others. So it's still more of the same power grab and ambition to control, and be answerable to no one. It's still happening. The tragedy of this is that some things, benevolent in themselves, become attempts to take power which can be misused. It was a great day when human healers learnt how to inoculate people against diseases. Hideous things like smallpox, polio, diphtheria and a host of horrors like that could be prevented; and even less terrifying things like measles and chickenpox could be held at bay. All good! Why would we not prevent death and suffering where possible? It's just so sad that, given the power, some people were not grateful, they were arrogant. The attitude became "Who needs God? We can do it ourselves!" Bad idea. I don't believe that the God of the Bible is egotistic and cruel. Rather He is aware that human beings will always blunder into traps and bring pain on themselves or others if they know enough to be dangerous. Right from the beginning, the first two of our kind were told they could have and enjoy anything in the world around them except the fruit of one tree. That tree's fruit was, the knowledge of good and evil. To some people, that means God was trying to keep us ignorant so that He could control us. Another view is that God was protecting us from ourselves. If we don't want to be protected from ourselves, we don't have to be. God does not keep us in chains. He offers to keep us from harm we could bring on ourselves. If this idea outrages anyone, and that person decides they would rather die from doing their own thing than live without it, then I think they are mistaking what liberty really is. Liberty to kill yourself or others is not freedom, it is indulgence of the ego. We keep on trying to build our Tower of Babel. The pyramids, and mummification of the dead, were an attempt to beat death. The Roman belief that a person could be declared a god or goddess, and made immortal, was another attempt to beat mortality. When the Titanic was built, it was said "Even God cannot sink this ship." God did not sink the Titanic, as far as I can tell. Human vanity sunk it, by means of a natural phenomenon well known the that ship's builders. They knew the risk of ice bergs. They just thought they could escape that risk. The attempt to be all powerful came crashing down in horror. Antibiotics are a God send, I really believe. A doctor was enabled to find a way of counteracting infection, and millions of lives have been saved, possibly my own included. All good - unless some vain fool thinks, 'There we are, we don't need to pray to God for help and protection anymore. We have that power ourselves'. Thinking that, some individuals then thought they could trash the rules and do things that can expose them to infectious disease. For indulgence, thinking venereal diseases were 'so last century', people did what God urged them not to. Now we have on Earth, antibiotic resistant strains of STD. Weapons of defence empower people, rendering them safer than they would be without them. But weapons can be turned back against us. So the power we accumulate, the Tower of Babel we build, becomes another risk to us. The Twentieth Century was the century of the social sciences. Some intellectuals, or wannabes, claimed that we have worked out for ourselves what caused disease, mental and physical. We can deal with it ourselves, we have the understanding. So they reckon, 'Who needs God? That's an outdated superstition.' So what do we get? Mental health disorders become more common. The serial killer is a concept unknown before human technological change spawned large cities, with the problems that lifestyle can cause. We learn to fly, then find out international flight can spread disease more rapidly. We find out that we can travel to other planets, then realize we could come into contact with hazardous material from those planet. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that flying exists as a way of travel. The point here is this: never think we can equal the power of God, never think we will not need Him. That is a shocking mistake to make. Cryogenics is another attempt to beat death. Some people are now in suspended animation, the hope being that they can be returned to life and beat the limitations of the flesh. Scientists are finding ways to delay the aging process. Some of them even suggest that in the future we humans will be able to live for thousands of years. We keep on thinking we will do away with the need to acknowledge God. We keep finding that we need Him as much as ever, even though so many people hate to admit it. It will probably continue that way until the Second Coming.

Don't overdo it.

Our Australian Olympic team has not been getting as many gold medals as some people had hoped, and there have been tears and recriminations over it. One of the swimmers cried after not winning gold, and said she felt she'd let people down. Others had cases of emotional meltdown, and back in the Australian press some commentators are saying "Why is this? It's not right!" and blaming our lifestyle for it. I'm thinking, hey, can we have a sobriety check here? Right, so I'm not an athlete. I didn't even represent the high school I went to. But even getting to the Olympics is quite a formidable thing. In all races, someone finishes last, never mind only getting silver or bronze. What would happen if anyone who didn't expect to win didn't take part at all? What sort of games would it be? A good number of entrants is needed to make the event happen at all. So how about we remember it needs all the field to make it worth watching or competing; and why would someone feel win or you're nothing? Be fair. There is the fact of being 'good sport', of course. Don't be resentful about not coming first. ( I had to get used to that, believe me). Then there's the plain fact, no-one should assume they have to win or be damned. And Australia, with a small population, shouldn't feel that we're all failures just because we don't win everything. Sport ceases to be sport if it imposes that sort of pressure on people, and the whole reason for reviving the Olympic Games as Pierre de Coubittan did in 1896 was to have a goodwill games, not a proxy war. I can't speak as an athlete because I've never spent the years of training and commitment it takes to get to an international event. I know that. But the athletes should not think I'm passing judgement on them, even the last placegetter did well even to get to the games. And no-one should feel like a failure because having even got to the games, they didn't win gold.

Home schooling: understandable.

Yesterday's news in Austalia reported that more parents are electing homeschooling. The reasons given included bullying, learning difficulties and dissatisfaction with the teachers. I'm nor surprised. School can be an evil place for some kids, they get picked on and harrassed all the time and the school either will not or can not do anything effective about it because the bullies are always 'poor kids with problems'. Then there's the matter of schools being used to disseminate current political ideas, which may well clash with parents' values and beliefs. It may be a good thing if the ability of government to try and control society through so called 'educational' propoganda is curbed. I can see exactly why some families don't want their childen under the influence of school and at the mercy of some of the other kids there. It's a shame because if school is well run and has the right ideology it can be a great sharing place and social contact environment, but it often degenerates into a psychological ghetto which people can suffer from being involved with. One of our children hated school because of the rubbish they had to put up with from the 'peer group' as it is called, and felt that the staff did not do anything at all. But then when teachers DO try to act, they can find themselves in trouble. The last day I ever spent teaching, I intervened when a boy was aggravating the girl sitting in front of him by joggling the back of her chair. When I told the boy to stop he glared at me and said: "I did nothing wrong!" I knew that if he complained the school would probably resolve the thing by saying I should have handled it differently. It is absurd. The underlying problem is that school is being used as an all-in processing works for anyone under 17, a place to keep them so they're not on the street and a place where what the parents should have done to bring them up can be done by the teachers. It doesn't work, but the powers that be keep saying the teachers have to be more effective, and talking about sacking some of them. It's a farce. Small wonder that some parents decide that learning and growing up can be a nicer process for their children if it's done a different way. One good friend I discussed this with stated that the home-schooled people she knew were not very socially competent. They hadn't had much contact with other kids. I wonder if what that means in fact is that home schooled kids are not so precociously adult before their time. They live in a more natural way, which seems wrong to people who are used to they way we do things, i.e. send kids to school, but that usual way might not actually be the best way. If I get the opportunity I migh talk to more home schooled people and see what they think about it. Whatever happens, I can see why some people do not like sending their children to school, and their kids do not like being there.

Irony! And cultural shifts.

If I understand what the term 'cultural shift' means, one that we're seeing at the moment is this: schools are being called on to do what families used to do. I don't think it is a good idea in principal and it isn't working in practice anyway. It is ironic because so many people who reject communism, as I do also, are being taken in by a Marxist idea: diminish the importance and role of the family and replace it with a government instrumentality, the school.Marxists wanted that to happen because the family could be an alternative source of influence from the state, and a rival focus of loyalty. Marxism, like all one-state ideologies, wants the complete allegiance of the individual, and the means of capturing and holding them is the school, a government organ with teachers required to teach the party line and see to the indoctrination of all its students. The family should not be allowed to interfere with that. According to that outlook the Khner Rouge, when they ran reeducation camps after the capture of Cambodia, instucted children to sever the bond with their parents. The same was reported from the Soviet Union in the past. Families must not be an obstacle to the state's complete hold on the loyalty and obedience of the individual. Ironic then that in non communist societies, people want to call on the school to bring their children up for them, thereby surrendering to the school the chief role in influencing their child's development. This may not be the conscious intention, but it can be the result of calling on the school to teach their children discipline. I've heard a parent saying "I'll be glad when they go to school, so they learn some discipline." In other words, that parent does not want to take responsibility for teaching their child discipline, the school should do that. How oftern have people said, "Schools should be doing something about it", when any problem is raised concerning children or youth. Parents should not have to do it themselves, they say. I can see where the 'deschooling society' movement comes from. In response to the increasing influence of schools in child raising and development some people want to take back the parents right and duty to raise children themselves. Schools should teach the curriculum, not take over as surrogate parent. Some teachers eagerly put up their hand and try to assume this role. A favourite teacher cry is 'there's nobody else there for them!" which can be quite untrue, and insulting to some parents that a teacher should arrogate the role of mentor and chief caregiver. Even when the child is neglected, and the school is forced to make provision that should come from home, the result is not as good as a good home should make it. Whether you believe in God, as I do, or nature, God or nature set up the family as the means of raising children and inducting them into adulthood. In better times the church was largely involved here, and still is in some families or communities. Those who have tried to undermine the role and influence of the church failed to put anything better in its place, and are now left howling about 'schools are failing our chilren.' Schools are only failing children if the family failed them first, by failing to send them to school properly reared, provided for and ready to respond to school the right way. Schools and their staffs should not be expected to replace parents, and the attempt to make this happen is a failure.

A delusion exposed.

The news recently reported that one of the pioneering 'gay marriage' couples have just broken up. I don't want to be unkind about people going through a relationship breakdown, because it hurts, but I'm thinking: after all the fanfare, all the fuss made about how legalising or legitimising homosexual marriage, the celebrity couple who got the limelight have come apart. Of course that happens to straight couples, too. We couldn't help hearing all about Kim Kardashian's marriage because it was everywhere in the media. And it lasted under a year. The thing that strikes me is the futility of it all. Advocates of same-sex partnerships being called marriage act as if this was a breakthrough into a golden age. All it does is expose the pointless claims made by people that they've found a great new way of running society, and it turns out to be no big deal at all. Another news item that struck me came from a column in The Sydney Morning Herald, in which the writer said: (paraphrased): Western society has had little success in recreating, or replacing, the institutions which have declined in the past few decades, the family and the churches, and people are left without a sense of solidarity or belonging to something which connects them and gives them a sense of self. People feel adrift and lost without these things, and the supposedly clever social pioneers who ridiculed them have not come up with anything better, so they've left a hole where there used to be solidity and security. It's more of the same. People claim they know a better way to run the world, and find they've made things worse by junking some of the things that people needed - such as stable family relationships, and the acknowledgement of God in people's lives and conduct. It's a lie, a hatful of humbug. The supposedly progressive ideas are a delusion, and we need to get back what we failed to appreciate when we had it: a society in which, to many people at least, God and His teachings were properly honoured and followed.

We were warned.

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

Vindication

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