Quote- Horace Walpole

"This world is a tragedy to those that feel, and a comedy to those that think."

Comments?

Evolution + Environmentalism= Bohemian Rhapsody

In the Western world (and also, though to a lesser extent, in the East) we're seen an uprising of a new religion- the religion of the environment. It's a fully-developed belief system, complete with:
- a god (Nature)
- a definition of sin (carbon footprints)
- a Law for Right (read:Green) Living
- a redemptive goal (become One with Nature. Hm... smacks of Buddhism a bit), and
- a punishment for the unredeemed (exclusion, alienation, etc. Also interesting to me, since the US and most Western countries operate on an individualistic guilt-based culture, as opposed to the shame-based cultures of the East. Seems to me the West is becoming more Eastern, evidenced by the incorporation of a shame-based penal system in this new religion. But that's a discussion for another post).

I love the environment, and I live as environmentally and humanly friendly as I can within my physical and fiscal ability. In fact, just this morning I found a baby lizard stuck to some painter's tape that I had left in the room we're redecorating, and I spent about half an hour freeing him from his unfortunate bondage. I even prayed for him as I was working his belly loose from the tape. Not to pat myself on the back or anything, but I'm just sayin'.

I won't even kill an ant in the house. I'll catch it and put it outside. And it bothers me when people (usually guys. Maybe we need to talk about this) kill or torment animals, no matter how small. I yelled at one of my guy friends recently for stepping on a spider. I do, however, make some exceptions to this: 1) If you're killing the animal to eat it; 2) If the presence of the animal presents an immediate danger- like I killed some black widow spiders at the preschool where I worked; and 3) If the 'animal' in question is a mosquito. For the most part, though, my parents brought me up to believe that all creatures, no matter how small, are God's creations and deserve our care and respect.

Being stewards of the earth is a huge responsibility. When God made Adam and Eve, He told them, "Hey, this is a present for you. Take good care of it, so that some day you can get the next thing." When my brother wanted a blue-tongued skink, Mom told him that he had to take care of his guinea pig (which she had been looking after) for at least a year before he could get another pet. That's the way stewardship works.

The fact that God gave us the Earth as our first thing to take care of is a huge compliment. It indicates God's immense faith in what we are capable of doing (of course He has faith is us- He MADE us). And if this Earth, which has scenes ranging from this to this and this and this, if this Earth is the test run for the Next Big Thing, then the New Earth is going to be way more awesome. And therefore a bigger responsibility.

However, as far as I've seen, the church's response to the new surge of environmentalism has been pretty sorry. I remember a couple of years ago one of the families I know was running tight on cash and the husband wanted to trade in their Suburban for a smaller, lighter, cheaper, and more fuel-efficient minivan. The wife literally had a fit. I saw her stamp her foot and say, "I want my Suburban." And these people were Christians.

We need to get our act together. I know of a lot of Christians that are starting to think this way too: that maybe we should take care of this Earth and of the people on it. That's a a great thing.

What really makes me sad is that Environmentalism and Evolutionism seem to somehow go hand-in-hand. Seriously? That doesn't even make sense.

Evolution is a violent, bloody, morbid process. It requires death in order to work. And it requires some species to die horrific deaths, either by starvation from lack of correct food, or by exposure to elements for which they are not prepared, or by methodical predation, or by asphyxiation from environmental events outside their control, such as a giant rock hitting the Earth.

And the thing about Evolutionism, or rather about Naturalism, is that in the End, the Universe wins. In the end, we don't get to even be there. Regardless of what we do now (whether we "save the planet" through Green Living or elsehow), eventually, humanity's card will be up, and we go extinct. According to some scientists:
- in several thousand years, a giant rock hits us again and obliterates all life except for Cockroaches, Dick Clark, and Cher,
- in 4-5 billion years, the Earth drifts far enough away from the sun to experience a heat death,
- in 20ish billion years, the sun goes Supernova or just puffs out like a dead candle
- a few hundred billion years, Earth and the whole solar system gets sucked into the black hole a the center of the Milky Way.
And if none of that gets you, then just think that everything in the Universe is drifting apart anyway, and Heat Death will eventually take over. Either that or we get sucked into The First Black Hole, the one responsible for The Big Bang.

Whatever the Cause of Death, humans don't make it. Don't listen to all this Will to Survive stuff that you read about. The truth is, in the Naturalistic paradigm, Humans aren't present at the End Times. And honestly, if there's a never-ending cycle to the universe, our presence here is of very minimal importance anyway. In the Grand Scheme of Naturalism, what we puny humans do here on Earth really has no effect on anything. Freddie Mercury put it best:
Nothing really matters
Anyone can see
Nothing really matters
Nothing really matters to me.

The Evolutionist's response to Environmentalism should be, "So? We're all gonna choke in a few billion years anyway, so what's the big deal?"
whereas the Christian response should be, "Heck yes, let's care about the Earth. After all, it's our trial run for the next one."

But it doesn't seem to be working out that way. Wonder why...

Cool Quotes

One of the blogs (Stacy from Louisville) I read recently asked people to put down their current favorite quotes. Mine was a reference from a sermon I heard,

"The 'go' in 'go, therefore, and make disciples...' actually means 'go about your business'. Go, be a lawyer and make disciples. Go, be a CPA and make disciples. Go, be a teacher and make disciples. Go, do what God has called you to do. And make disciples." --The guest preacher in church on Sunday

But a bunch of other people put up cool ones as well.
Here are my top ten favorites from that list...

-Humility is like underwear -essential, but indecent if it shows. Anon.

-"The perfect church service would be one we were almost unaware of, our attention would have been on God."C.S Lewis

-“I’m really excited about being part of a church that does not want to be a clubhouse with a cross on top.” Unknown

-"If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to Hell over our bodies. If they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees. Let no one go there unwarned and unprayed-for." Charles Spurgeon

-"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?" Abraham Lincoln when accused of being two-faced.

-"You can kill us, but you can't hurt us." Justin Martyr

-"Nobody worries about Christ as long as he can be kept shut up in
churches. He is quite safe inside. But there is always trouble if you try and let him out." G. A. Studdert Kennedy

-"Defend the Bible? I would just as soon defend a lion. Just turn the Bible loose. It will defend itself." Charles H. Spurgeon

-"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

and the one that started it all...

-"Smite his cheek, and he turns you the other; slap the dignity of the house of prayer, however, and he turns over a table."

He Is....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDEh7Rj5Di0

Redefining Marriage

This post has been a long time coming. With Proposition 8 looming, I feel it's finally necessary to address the issue of homosexual unions and why marriage is, and needs to be, between one man and one woman.

You probably already know that most of the outcry for homosexual marriage is from the standpoint that traditional marriages get some economic and legal benefits that other unions don't. Joint tax returns, exemptions on property tax, next-of-kin status... stuff like that. And if society is going to recognize their unions as acceptable, then maybe they should receive those benefits.

But that doesn't make their union a marriage.

What is marriage?
Marriage is defined by society, not the law. Whatever a society chooses to recognize as marriage then becomes the definition. It should be noted, however, that even in societies that tolerated homosexuality, a same-sex union was never considered an acceptable environment for rearing children. In cases where one or both parents were missing, close relatives or society in general would step in to provide those children with the appropriate role models.

It is a demonstrated tendency -- as well as the private experience of most people -- that when we become parents, we immediately find ourselves acting out most of the behaviors we observed in the parent of our own sex. We have to consciously make an effort to be different from them.

We also expect our spouse to behave, as a parent, in the way we have learned to expect from the experiences we had with our opposite-sex parent -- that's why so many men seem to marry women just like their mother, and so many women to marry men just like their father. It takes conscious effort to break away from this pattern.

So not only are two sexes required in order to conceive children, children also learn their sex-role expectations from the parents in their own family.
Orson Scott Card, Homosexual "Marriage" and Civilization

What we need
Let's talk for a moment about biological needs. And we're going to pretend that we only know about the primal needs. Men need to mate. Women need someone to be devoted to her. The best way to approach these needs is by monogamous unions. "Polygamous systems always result in surplus males that have no reproductive stake in society" (OSC again).

Civilization is based on the idea that people will sacrifice their own base instincts and desires for the common good. Or, at least, for the good of their children. Historically speaking, the societies that have given the most males and the most females a chance to successfully mate (and thereby have given their children the greatest chance for survival to adulthood) have been the ones that lasted the longest.

Violating our rights
When court judges decide that they can create new laws and make vast, sweeping changes to the law, everyone's constitutional rights are violated. We live in what was intended to be a democracy, where vast changes to our social structure would be made only by consent of the people.

However, in Massachusetts, Vermont, California, and a handful of other states, the judicial system has taken it upon itself to also legislate- a function which it has no business sticking its nose into.

I'm also reminded that there is currently no law preventing homosexuals from being married. Nowhere in the constitution nor in any federal statutes or state laws is marriage ever limited to a man and a woman (actually, the idea that we have to define it as such in California this year shows just how misunderstood our marriage laws have become). Thus far, only societal restrictions (and not even written ones) have prevented these unions from occurring. However, homosexuality has become more and more acceptable in US culture, and so now more homosexuals are declaring their unions valid.
So,

In order to claim that they are deprived, you have to change the meaning of "marriage" to include a relationship that it has never included before this generation, anywhere on earth.

Just because homosexual partners wish to be called "married" and wish to force everyone else around them to regard them as "married," does not mean that their... wish should be granted at the expense of the common language, democratic process, and the facts of human social organization.

However emotionally bonded a pair of homosexual lovers may feel themselves to be, what they are doing is not marriage. Nor does society benefit in any way from treating it as if it were...

...Just because you give legal sanction to a homosexual couple and call their contract a "marriage" does not make it a marriage. It simply removes marriage as a legitimate word for the real thing.

If you declare that there is no longer any legal difference between low tide and high tide, it might stop people from publishing tide charts, but it won't change the fact that sometimes the water is lower and sometimes it's higher.

Calling a homosexual contract "marriage" does not make it reproductively relevant and will not make it contribute in any meaningful way to the propagation of civilization. (OSC again)

Why is it that it takes years of careful planning, permits, code inspections, and intensively-researched environmental impact statements just to add a runway to an airport, but a couple of "progressive" judges can redefine and reorder the fundamental unit of society without any sort of political recourse?

Okay, so I've said my bit. A little disclaimer: I want to say that I have some friends back home who are homosexual, bisexual, or transgender, and they're great people. I'm not against them at all. I love them dearly. When you read this essay, you can disagree with me if you want. That's okay, I still love you.

You'll find that many of my ideas are just rewordings of this essay. Also for reference, here are some links to a study and a few awesome articles.

Also By Orson Scott Card:
The Homosexual Relationship
Judicial Activism, Libertarianism, Federalism, and Gay Marriage
Upholding the Constitution

Ten Arguments From Social Science Against Same-Sex 'Marriage'

Moderation wins again.

Usually I like Focus On The Family's "Boundless" Webzine. But lately I've been losing respect for one of their staff writers, and the company theology she seems to promulgate.
In a recent article entitled "Mind the 'Single-Minded' Church," the author discourages churches from creating singles-oriented ministries and encourages them to continue "setting up" singles so that they can marry more quickly.
Never mind for a moment the fact that she pretends to make her article scientific by quoting various sociological researchers at various lofty universities. Never mind that she makes rather vague claims and "supports" them with cut-and-paste quotes that could quite easily have been taken way out of context.

Let's focus on the premise from which she approaches singleness. Over and over, she emphasizes (not just in this article, but also in numerous others) that it's okay to want to get married. Which is fine. I have no problems with that.

But then she often implies that if you have any inclination or desire to get married, then you probably should. This idea is one which has been spread all over the church like wildfire, that if you are meant to be single, you'll have no desire to marry. Ever.
It's another example of just slight hypocrisy in the church. We feel free to tell people getting married that it won't be a cakewalk. "It's going to be hard," we say. "Sometimes, you won't even like the person you're marrying." And so married people are prepared for what's ahead. They know that the road is littered with ruts and big sharp rocks.
But singles are told a different story. We're told, "If you have no desire to marry whatsoever, then (and only then) are you meant to be single." And it is obviously communicated to us (though few people are brash enough to just come out and SAY it) that if we stay single too long:
1) There's something wrong with us, and
2) We might NEVER find someone (I mean, really... you ARE getting older...)

When I was getting ready to come to Kenya, so many of the old ladies in my church said, "Hey, maybe you'll find someone in Africa," with a little wink. Find someone. These ladies didn't know my recent past. They didn't know that in the two years since I'd decided to go to Kenya, I'd had my heard broken twice, dated a couple of real jerks, and had a close friend, heart-torn by a broken engagement, kill himself. They didn't know that I was trying to get AWAY from all this "find someone" business and wanted only to find God in the midst of social pressures.
I came to the wrong place for that, though. African community is rooted in marriage so if you don't marry and start making babies as soon as possible, you're no longer a productive (reproductive?) member of society.

Anyway, Boundless Webzine right out says that "we believe marriage is God's design for most believers," and with that they quote Matthew 19:11-13 but never with any commentary on it. Funny, because I've seen that same passage used to defend the idea that people should stay single if at all possible.

But aside from that, I don't think we need to make such a big deal about singleness. Or marriage. Being able to tolerate either one is a gift from God (The Bible never says- but does imply- that singleness itself is a gift). Wherever you are in life is a gift, and God provides contentment in whatever stage of life we are.

So what's the big deal about wanting to be married? Is that bad?
No, not at all. And the church needs to stop its bickering. Just because you're single now, doesn't mean that you will always be.
I had a friend a while back who, when she was 13, was called into the ministry. But in the vision she had, she was ministering with her husband. So, fourteen years later, she, at 27, was still waiting to start ministry until she found a husband with whom she could minister. For more than half of her life, she had been waiting!
But here's the thing. We're called to wait on the Lord, not on husbands. We're called to ministry, regardless of our current marital status.

What's my solution?
I think the church needs to adopt an ambivalent stance toward marriage. Neither "you should get married" nor "you should stay single." Only God can tell you that anyway. Instead, the attitude of the church should be, "Whatever stage you are right now, how can we help you minister to the best of your abilities?"

Dear World,

I'm so sorry.

Can I just apologize right now for the jerks that so many Christians have been to you?

I'm sorry that I break off contact with you when you're going through a life transition and you need me most.
I'm sorry I ignore you when you're standing with your cardboard sign at the freeway offramp.
I'm sorry that I sit in my warm home protecting my way of life while you freeze outside.
I'm sorry I mocked you for voting Democrat.
I'm sorry that I pretend not to have any spare change so that I don't have to deal with the fact that I am afraid of you.
I'm sorry that I think putting a check in the offering plate absolves me from offering you a hot meal.
I'm sorry for polluting the sky you sleep under with my overpowered SUV.
I'm sorry for advertising on my shirt companies that mistreat people around the world.
I'm sorry for killing the plants, animals, and people that God calls me to protect by buying the cheapest coffee on the shelf.
I'm sorry I shop at stores that mistreat their employees.
I'm mostly sorry for thinking that I'm better than you.

Christians are called to live in another world. A world that reflects the values of the Kingdom of God. The early church lived in a manner where there was no one in need among them. And we should still be living that way.
But we slacked off. We let our corporeal desires and needs take over and we forgot the greatest commandments: to love God, and to love others. And if we really did love others as much as we love ourselves, we certainly wouldn't let them go hungry.

Oops.

Christians should be the most eco-friendly, the most socially responsible, the most demanding of corporate accountability, the greatest peace advocates. And yet, we're not.

Somewhere along the way, someone taught us that the US is a "Christian" nation, and so we got confused. We thought that if we could be good "Americans", then that translated over and made us good Christians too.

Again, oops.

So now we live in a world where the average American consumes as much as 520 Ethiopians per year. Where we buy cheap food that is harvested by people who aren't paid enough to feed their own families. Where driving a nice car is more important than the people who were mistreated while building that car in the factories in Myanmar. Where people harvesting cotton to make our clothes are exposed to toxic chemicals that kill thousands worldwide.

I can't promise to change the world.
But I can promise to change myself.

So now it begins. And it's not easy. I have to ask where everything comes from. I have to commit to buying only brands that support my values. I have to find ways to save energy. I have to commit to treating people like Christ. I have to love everyone, regardless of their lifestyle and circumstances. I have to change.

This is the beginning of my new life. We'll see how it goes.

Love,
Kath