Category Archives: Culture

Evolution: So Wrong It Is Right

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Never start an argument where your terms are not defined. Following that rule allow me to quickly clarify what I mean by the term evolution. Everything coming from nothing, all life evolving from non-life, the existence of only the material, and men being the direct relation to monkeys, are a few of the bordering concepts for my use of the concept of evolution. Certainly there is a type of evolution where by cultures develop, or organisms adapt to their environment, and I am not speaking of this type, but the type that stands in direct opposition to the historical Christian faith and view of the world. This type of evolution is so backwards, so illogical, so confused that it seems so right to so many people and they don’t even know why. Why would something so obviously false, so obviously mistaken have gained so much traction that even though historically it is very new, it is becoming the de facto basis on which much of human culture is being rebuilt.

Piles and piles of papers have been written on the subject and it isn’t in my purview to give a definitive case against evolution, but I will point out what I think are the clearest reasons it is false and why I think so many people believe it anyway.

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Abortion, Simply Wrong

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My argument is simple. My argument is clear. If we can kill babies in the womb, and babies are human persons, then we can kill anyone, anytime, anywhere for the same reasons we kill them. If we cannot kill anyone, anytime, and anywhere for those reasons, then we cannot kill babies in the womb, it is that simple. We now seem to believe that our personal desires are more important than even the life of another human, and if it will not stop with the unborn, then it will not ultimately stop with the born, for all human life is threatened when we threaten one unborn human life.

Are human beings worth protecting? Our society still seems to think so, as we still have laws against murder of human beings, and the violence done against them. And more importantly God seems to think so as well.

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Thoughts on Vaccines

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Certainly the topic of vaccines, especially when related to parental rights, can conjure up great emotions and red faces. Now I don’t expect this short article will really change anyone’s mind, but I’m not here to just change minds, I’m here to help people think more clearly, and if clear thinking changes minds, then so be it, but changing them directly is not my goal. There are a few questions related to this topic I want to explore and a couple of responses that I want to put forth. What I will be discussing is the following topics, should the government care about vaccines, are parents the only ones with a say, and what is the role of love for one’s neighbor (neighbor used as Jesus used it: everyone you come in contact with)?

Right off the bat in case you decide to read no further I want to put before you one simple consideration. Continue reading →

My Buddy Chance

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Many people call on his name or talk about him like they know him, but I know him and his name is Chance. Long ago his father Zeus sired him and his brother Nothing along with his sister Void. It took them many years to grow up and they all took different career paths. Nothing is very lazy and sits around all day being himself. Patiently, Void waits for others to fulfill her emptiness and when they approach she takes more of them then they intended to give her. It is my buddy Chance who really is the busy one and who really does all the work.

Upon the toil that no man knows, Chance brandished his mighty arm and beat the world into existence. Throughout the universe he rides the wings of the furious storm and makes sure that coin tosses are 50/50 heads and tails. He keeps the chance your airplane will crash at around 0.00001% and makes sure that when you play poker the royal flush you seek is only allowed to you at a 0.000154% probability. Yes, Chance is very busy, but yet he never seems to get tired.

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Would You Give Up Everything?

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A man came to me and asked me a very probing question, “Would you give up everything for an hour with Jesus, all your possessions, friends, family, hopes and dreams, and at the end your life?” Pondering deeply, almost without thinking, for thoughts were distracting to my current feelings, I considered deep in my soul both the pro’s and cons. Ashamed I was to not immediately have answered “Yes!”, but I have many idols to give up for Jesus, and considering their loss always gives me pause. Croaking, I tried to speak, but the wheeze swallowed my first words, so I tried again after a large gulp.

“Sir, would you be patient with me and grant me one request, that I might see a man at the end of his time with Jesus?”, I carefully stuttered now in trembling fear for offending the God whose servant this surely was. An eternity separated my shameful question and his accommodating reply. Slowly, or so it seemed, we strolled to the end of one man’s walk with Jesus and just before he died I looked at his face. No earthly comedian could engender such a smile, and no sun could shine so brightly as to mire his countenance nor contentment. Surely, this was a man about to die, and yet he couldn’t be more happy, content, joyful, and ready to meet God and any loss he might have suffered to be with Jesus didn’t seem to play any part in his final demeanor.

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I’m a Mark Driscoll

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Soiled by sin I am a Mark Driscoll, a Bob Coy, a Peter, an Adam, a David. What do I and these men have in common? We are all men created in the Image of God, yet we don’t want to obey and follow him by nature. Adam may have started this sin thing (or maybe it was Satan), but we definitely are keeping up with Adam in his absence. Stained by sin in Adam, we are not just sinners because of his sin, we are sinners because of our own sin too. Yet, I and all these men alike have tasted of the heavenly blessing in Christ, heard the Gospel preached, professed faith, and have responded in obedience to His Word, so why do we still fail? Besides the theologically accurate, “because we still are in sinful bodies” it is also because practically we take the Gospel for granted, ignore the means of Grace that Sanctify us, love the world too much, and ultimately because we don’t have the accountability of the Word being preached to us, by others and ourselves, quite often enough. Other voices and messages often take up the airwaves of communication and distract us from the most important message in the Gospel, yet not all these messages are bad just distractions.

Most recently Mark Driscoll reminds us of the false belief in our Christian Culture: that Pastors are more mature, don’t need to be pastored, don’t need to be shepherded, don’t need accountability, don’t need to be submitted to others who will call them on their sin, and are better serving God when their external fruit is magnificently evident to all. Every pastor (and Christian) should read Dangerous Calling by Paul David Tripp http://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Calling-Confronting-Challenges-Pastoral/dp/1433535823 as he explains many of the reasons why we as Christians fail and why so many pastors struggle with sins in-spite of our placing of them on a pedestal, and the most scary thing is most pastors believe their own press, and the result is the list of men I provided.

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Forget or Forget?

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It is interesting to me how quickly we forget. Like a fish that forgets it was just feeding, so our own memory lapse could end in our own destruction. Perhaps we should consider ourselves all on the Amnesia spectrum somewhere between minor and sever, this forgetfulness is so epidemic. Why is forgetting such a problem? Forgetfulness is the root of all sorts of evil, malcontent, and otherwise degenerated thinking.

Depending on how one understands the story, it sure seems that Adam and Eve quickly forgot God’s words to them about the tree and perverted them into a memory that benefited their own desires, or so they deceived themselves. Consider further the Children of Israel in Egypt, they complain to God for 400 years about their slavery, and right after God responds and displays His power in ten miracles, a cloud and burning pillar of fire followed by a sea being parted, they almost immediately forget God can command nature and how horrible slavery was and begin believing that they will die for lack of God’s provision and wished they were back in slavery. Yikes!

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Why Common Core Will Fail

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Call me ignorant, a pompous blow-hard, or dim-witted if you like, but I think Common Core is the best thing ever to happen to public education, and sadly it is going to fail. Common Core will die, murdered in the night by its jealous cousin, who, like all jealous cousins, is overly emotional, highly volatile, prone to over-exaggeration, and is a bit of a conspiracy freak. It is sad to think that something good can be killed by good intentions gone awry because of ignorant fear and mass-hysteria, but that is what we are seeing right now with Common Core and I think will lead to its doom. As its corpse is dragged out of the room, its jealous cousin will dance a jig as our education system stutters back its advancement a few decades. To begin let me explain, apart from the hysteria and misinformation that abounds, what Common Core really is, who the detractors are, and where are they mistaken or confused.

As a caveat, and in the nature of full disclosure, I fully am basing my position on what Common Core claims to be, and those teachers inside the system that have experienced it first hand. I am fully aware that I might be being lied to, and that Common Core might change from what it is now, or detractors might be able to change its course, which will all affect the validity and benefit of my analysis. Therefore I am going to proceed, since I have not seen or received any substantive and convincing information or critique (as of yet) to the contrary, as if what my research has turned up is based on truthful participation from the Common Core framers, and the assumption that they will stay further true to their promised word.

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Bad Beard Behavior

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I do not know if you keep up with the news like I do but this trend of “men-wear-beards” is really starting to bug me. First it started out with men wearing beards alone and in secret afraid to share their lifestyle choice with others. It was a hard time for these men. They couldn’t help it that they wanted to grow and wear large, full beards. It was just how they matured as men and how they were raised: “real men grow and wear beards, son”. But it was a shameful secret that they had to hide from others because so many people just don’t understand beard wearing men.

Many decades past in America, and the beard growing men started becoming more accepted in society, they no longer had to feel so ashamed to share their beard growing secret with others, they were finally able to come out of the closet, so to speak (closet is referring to their having to hide their beard growing). Soon this wave of acceptance from the culture at large emboldened these men and their supporters, until we have reached our current state of affairs and why I just had to write this blog to get it off my chest.

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What Do Christmas Decorations Mean

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What do you tell your children when they ask you: “why do we decorate for Christmas”? I know many people haven’t really thought about it much. Obviously the most simple answer would be something akin to: “because its tradition” or “we have always decorated”. This simple answer is like answering the question of, “where did the universe come from” and responding with: “aliens”. It doesn’t actually answer the question because then one can ask a further question: “where did the aliens come from” or in our case “why did this tradition start”.

Wouldn’t you like to know what the decorations mean so you can tell your children why we decorate? Well I cannot tell you what they mean objectively because God hasn’t given us any objective revelation as to what they should or do mean, however I can tell you what I will tell my children when they ask me that fateful question: “daddy why do we decorate?”

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