Thoughts on the First Day of the Year, What We Should Focus On This Year

 A new year begins. Some make resolutions, which are often nothing more than a wish list for wanting to indulge in what is thought of as beneficial behavior. Bottom line is we should always eat healthy, do the best we can at work, treat people right and all the rest as a matter of life style every year. We should strive to do all things better every day. Maybe instead we should look back at the past year, and see what we fell short on, and work to improve those.

My personal life was good last year; only made one bad decision I can think of, and paying a bit of an emotional price right now. My church has spent the last year healing from some bad things that happened the year before. Prayer and good leadership is bringing us about and getting us back on track as far as we treat each other. All our programs this past year that feed the poor, missionary work, outreach and the rest were still taken care of, with a lot of success. That's Love, Hope, Charity at work.

Expanding further, I can only hope some more people come to their senses to refute the bad things happening in politics and culture. Kids being suspended from school for using their thumb and index finger to form a pistol. A five or six year old kid gets suspended for sexual harassment for kissing the hand of his "girlfriend".  Homosexual sex is being taught to elementary school kids, and the heterosexual family is being diminished and diss'd because it's homophobic or something.

The war on men, emasculating them. Pay attention to commercials and it's the male that is always the stupid one, and a child or woman corrects him. Actually in this country (and world wide)  masculine men, traditional family, Christianity, personal responsibility and all the rest are under attack. The State will replace all that has worked throughout civilization. Congress critters and other politicians and their paymasters know better than us how to live our lives. We can see what the destruction of the family, by secularists and atheists, have brought. Lower college entrance exam scores, increased high school dropouts (and monstrously ignorant and stupid "students"), higher out of wedlock births with attendant teen pregnancies, higher rates of violence and juvenile delinquent activity, higher STD rates to name a few things rotting the base of our civilization.

Another note on politicians and their paymasters. They advocate that massive debt to the tune of $trillions is a good thing. We have two or three coming generations being born into debt. There may be times when debt is unavoidable, but having it as a lifestyle or as an economic policy is nothing less that disastrous. The Bible teaches economic policy. Just read the account of Joseph and the principles he applied to get Egypt out of economic disaster. 

The "elites" are no more than bullies, and if you don't "get it" and conform to their notions, they will destroy you. Bakeries and photographers shut down; they tried and shut down Chick-fil-a and Hobby Lobby and several businesses. That would have thrown hundreds out of work if they were successful at closing down those larger companies. It's not enough that one has different values and belief system than the "elites", but you must be destroyed. So much for tolerance. They're still trying and destroy Sarah Palin, advocating shitting and pissing in her mouth, or mocking Mitt Romney's family for adopting a black baby. BTW, let's drop "African American"; it was the sole concoction of racist and race hustler Jesse Jackson. An intolerant hate monger if there ever was one.

Ultimately, Christians need to stand up, be forceful, and advocate for manly virtues, the virtues of heterosexual marriage, good education and the rest. May I be so bold to say we need to educate Leftists, Secularists, Atheists, about what sin is. When I saw the attack on "Duck Dynasty" personality Roberts for his using the term "sin" to describe certain behaviors, we Christians needed to stand up and say what "sin" is. Sins are those things that distance us from God. There are things that work. Happily in this case, there was enough of a backlash to make things right. Roberts got his job back, but more on freedom of speech than on the deeper issue of working to diminish or remove sin from our lives.

I said in my previous post that scripture, Old and New Testaments, are the best guides for living. Here's what scripture says about the family.

"...God sets a father in honor over his children; a mother’s authority he confirms over her sons." (Sirach 3:2). We have pretty much rejected this.

"Wives, be subordinate to your husbands,  as is proper in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives,  and avoid any bitterness toward them. Children, obey your parents in everything,  for this is pleasing to the Lord." (Col 3:19-21) This is a seriously misunderstood verse about women; it doesn't mean what secularists and atheists that are the elites and bullies say it does. Sadly many Christians don't understand either. I guess this is another blog that needs to be written.

"Put on, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another… put on love,  that is, the bond of perfection. And let the peace of Christ control your hearts…And be thankful." (Col 3:12-15) This has been replaced by cohabitation and divorce...those are not a solution to relationship problems.

"Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, as in all wisdom you teach and admonish one another, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God." (Col 3:16) The rules and guides for living found in scripture, a record of things that have worked for thousands of years are rejected and replaced by Elitists that live in the meme, in the moment advocating the materialist values of their anti-Semitic, anti-Christian world view. It doesn't work. It has a 100% failure rate 100% of the time. The things that work bring us closer to God. Reject the natural order of God, the rules and behaviors that work and we get the mess mentioned above.  

When we talk about sin, we know what Leftists, Secularist, Atheists  are rejecting what works, and the  result of that thinking destroys family, faith, hope, charity, liberty. It's destructive and demeaning, mean and intolerant. They think that taking out notions of sin and tradition and replacing it with laws and rules, forcing behavior through those, rather than providing wisdom and guidance for a sinless heart and loving behavior as the best way. No. Fails every time. Some powerful men rejecting the natural order of things with their own laws and rules will always lead to the morass we live in now. Parents and children must find a church so all can communicate with all generations, give and get guidance and wisdom. A counterculture that only benefits. 

As the new year begins this day, Jews and Christians must be more vocal, and push back against the intolerant elitists, bullies and liars that are destroying civilization while saying they are saving it.

Homosexual Marriage, Traditional Marriage, or Marital Contracts

In 1996 Obama stated he was for gay marriage. Following that he began running for various political offices. Then he said he was for the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman, and supported the Defense of Marriage Act. Then he instructed the Justice Department not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, adding his views of gay marriage were “evolving”. No they weren’t, he has always been pro gay marriage. At best this was a cynical political ploy, and his announcement a few days ago that he endorses gay marriage happened just before a major fund raiser with Leftist millionaire actor George Clooney and his Secularist groupthink multimillionaire Hollywood elitists. In the following days entertainment types were falling all over themselves proclaiming how historic this was, and how brave he was.

Not so much. He was already a proponent of homosexual marriage, and his statement doesn’t change a thing. Thirty states, voted on by citizens, have amended their state constitutions stating marriage is between a man and a woman. Leftist judges are trying their hardest to overturn these, ignoring the wisdom of the people and the Constitution. They must, since the Left must break down the structure of the society they are trying to dominate, to create a vacuum into which they can insert themselves.

This is in part the continuing attack on Christianity that is a Leftist hallmark, and definitely one of this Administration. Think of how the language has changed. We now talk of “traditional” marriage. When did that start? Marriage has become only a contract.

Jennifer Morse:

"First, contracts are limited, but parenthood is a status. Contracts are of limited duration, but parenthood is forever. Second, and more importantly, the child has been objectified. Instead of being a gift, the child is treated as a product or an object. ... Good intentions do not suffice to overcome the structural tendency for "contract parenthood" to objectify children far more often and deeply than natural parenthood.
... Biological parents, married to each other, have a great advantage: they both have a connection with the child. They've both got skin in the game, literally. When they are married to each other, they have made a commitment to work together to build a common life. The children are their common project.  This is not so for the child of an anonymous gamete donor.
Finally, the deepest reason why society has obligations to children is that this is the only position that is truly consistent with the idea that people deserve freedom, rights, and dignity in the first place.  Nature and Nature's God endowed us with certain inalienable rights."

The sanctity of communion between marriage partners, of becoming “one flesh” has been removed. God’s law, natural law, recognizes the union of man and woman is for procreation, then for the raising of children. We’ve reached a point where anyone can enter into a contract, then contract to acquire or purchase children, and if it doesn’t work out, well, just dissolve it, and rewrite the contract for the children. This is self serving and selfish.

Now marriage is separated from the idea of children. I’m reminded of a statement I heard some years back; ‘this generation likes the idea of children, they just don’t like children’. The result being there’s no stable environment for child rearing. Sure plenty of studies have come out saying children brought into same sex marriages or civil unions are just as well off as those in “traditional” cross sex marriages. These are “scientific” studies, and are supposed to be untouched by bias. How many times over how many years have scientific facts been proven wrong, refuted? Human nature is constant, and what’s in the hearts, souls and minds can’t be measured.  Here are some results of other scientific studies. The divorce rate has doubled since the institution of no fault divorce. 85% of abortions are outside of wedlock, and is being re-termed “selective reduction”. The break up rate for homosexual couples is one and a half to two and a half times higher than heterosexuals. Infidelity rates are higher for homosexual relationships. There are higher STD rates and higher suicide rates with homosexual relationships. Those are measurable, but are emotional stability and mental mindset as measurable by science?

Back in the 1960’s and ‘70’s the homosexual community had a legitimate gripe, and that was social shunning and civil/legal discrimination. Much work and time was taken to overcome that, and civil unions were finally legalized, and with few exceptions by intolerant people, accepted. Now, pushing to redefine marriage to include whatever anyone wants it to be, is a step too far. Don't care who you choose as a lover, this is an attack on the foundation of civilization, putting selfish desires ahead of what is good for society. Cross sex marriage and the raising of children is what has worked since the dawn of civilization, and the selfish notion of each individual can decide what it is, is short sighted and destructive.

Now we’re at a crossroads. Do we define marriage based on what Joe Biden has said?

“Look, I just think that the good news is that as more and more Americans come to understand what this is all about, it's a simple proposition: Who do you love? Who do you love? And will you be loyal to the person you love? And that's what people are finding out, is what all marriages at their root are about, whether they're marriages of lesbians or gay men or heterosexuals.”

Is it only about two people loving each other, and for that they get recognition and benefits from the State? What about three or more people saying they love each other? Or is it the communion of two people, who from that love produce loved children? Mutual love, mutually producing loved children, or are children an abstract acquisition? Is it about children and their well being, or about meeting the desires of adults?

James Schall:

We are not a culture that never understood what a human being was in his nature and in his destiny.  Rather we are a culture that, having once known these things, has decided against living them or understanding them.  Indeed, we have decided to reject most of them, almost as an act of defiance -- as an act of pure humanism -- as if what we are is not first given to us.

Given to us by God, not by the State. 

Alan Keys on Marriage

http://youtu.be/BMYBl2uzXEw

Some "moderator". Asks a question then argues. Often people don't hear what another is saying, only take a piece of the conversation, process their argument and attack. Sad. Worth getting past that, and listen to what Keys says.