I can't believe this poll. We as Christians are called to a higher standard of living, and torture is never acceptable for us. Ever.
God has lovingly and amazingly given us the right to be called His children (1 John 3:1), entrusting us with His Good News of Salvation. We were called to change the world, not to conform to it.
We ought to be ashamed.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
How I can vote democrat and be anti-abortion
Ok, first things first. I am not "pro-life," and you aren't "pro-choice." There is nothing more insane to me than an argument where each side claims to be "pro" something, as if that gives them some sort of moral prerogative over the opposition. Actually, there is one thing that is more insane: being pro or con something other than what you're talking about. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who isn't for "life." Or "choice" for that matter. The sides in this argument are actually "pro-abortion" and "anti-abortion." I'm anti-abortion.
The problem with abortion is that people on both sides of the aisle have very deep convictions on the subject. People like myself, who believe the fetus becomes a living person at some point in the womb, feel that it's murder. Others, who don't believe the fetus is a living person until it is born, feel that preventing abortion is basically forcing a woman to suffer a medical condition--pregnancy--for 9 long months. All for something that isn't even a living thing.
And so we come to the great American impasse. Pro-abortion people will never back down, ever, no matter what, and anti-abortion people will never back down, ever, no matter what.
***
Having just outlined the problem, here's where the politicians have turned the whole situation into a catastrophe. We, as Americans, live in a two-party system. You either vote Republican, vote Democrat, or "waste" your vote (because independents are rarely able to muster the funds needed to run a successful campaign).
Politicians are smart. They've latched onto the abortion issue, knowing that there is a significant group of people out there who will vote on a candidate based solely on his or her position regarding abortion. Lets pretend I make it onto the ballot as the republican senate candidate from my state. All I have to do is say that I am "pro-life" and I will get a guaranteed set of votes. The democrat running against me will say that he is "pro-choice" and he will get a guaranteed set of votes. Those voters are now a given; my opponent and I will spend the rest of our campaigns attempting to woo everyone else.
This is, in my opinion, tragic. If you base your vote solely on someone's position on abortion, you are marginalizing yourself. You have given your vote away, basically abdicating on all other issues. Going back to my example, I, as the republican candidate, could betray my Moral Majority voters (who are more or less guaranteed to vote for me) in all other areas--the budget, the economy, global politics, porkbarrell spending, etc--and they'd still vote for me because, the way the problem has been set up, they do not have a valid alternative.
The worst part is that, in most cases, the elections you vote in have little to nothing to do with the legality of abortion. Abortion was upheld as legal (or, more accurately, anti-abortion laws were held as unconstitutional) in the landmark 1973 case Roe v Wade, in a 7-2 decision. Given the current make up of the supreme court, including George W. Bush's replacement of two justices, Roe v Wade could be overturned today with a likely 5-4 decision. But, the supreme court has chosen not to hear a case that would call the controversial decision into question.
The problem, then, is that the only other way to outlaw abortion is by a constitutional amendment. To do this, the proposed amendment would need to pass by a 2/3rds majority in both houses of congress, and then would need to be ratified by the state legislatures of 3/4ths of the states. Talk about something that isn't gonna happen!!
So I don't even worry about abortion when I vote. It's a non-issue. Just isn't going to go away. I wish it would, but with the divide on the issue being what it is, a constitutional amendment isn't going to happen, and with our very conservative (and very young) chief justice refusing to hear a case that would overturn the original decision, I don't expect it on the docket any time soon.
Stop letting politicians take you for granted. Hold their feet to the fire, and if they don't perform, vote for the other guy, no matter how he feels about abortion.
Edit:
I realized after the fact that I might not have been clear about how I feel about abortion. I hate it. It is a social evil and a form of violence that has no place in our civilization. If it were up to me, I'd wave a magic wand and make the whole stinkin' mess go away.
I mean, if you're not married, you aren't supposed to be having sex at all, but if you do, there are 80 gazillion forms of birth control: IUDs, condoms, diaphragms, "the pill," morning after pills (which are a whole other story), injectable hormone treatments, etc. We can't be held responsible to use at least one of them when engaging in sexual activity? Its no wonder that STDs are spreading at such an alarming rate.
As an interesting ending note, Norma McCorvey ("Jane Roe" from the landmark Roe v Wade case) is actually anti-abortion. The basis of her case was that she was impregnated due to rape, and as such, had extenuating circumstances and deserved the right to choose whether or not to terminate the pregnancy. The following was taken from the Roe v Wade page on wikipedia:
The problem with abortion is that people on both sides of the aisle have very deep convictions on the subject. People like myself, who believe the fetus becomes a living person at some point in the womb, feel that it's murder. Others, who don't believe the fetus is a living person until it is born, feel that preventing abortion is basically forcing a woman to suffer a medical condition--pregnancy--for 9 long months. All for something that isn't even a living thing.
And so we come to the great American impasse. Pro-abortion people will never back down, ever, no matter what, and anti-abortion people will never back down, ever, no matter what.
***
Having just outlined the problem, here's where the politicians have turned the whole situation into a catastrophe. We, as Americans, live in a two-party system. You either vote Republican, vote Democrat, or "waste" your vote (because independents are rarely able to muster the funds needed to run a successful campaign).
Politicians are smart. They've latched onto the abortion issue, knowing that there is a significant group of people out there who will vote on a candidate based solely on his or her position regarding abortion. Lets pretend I make it onto the ballot as the republican senate candidate from my state. All I have to do is say that I am "pro-life" and I will get a guaranteed set of votes. The democrat running against me will say that he is "pro-choice" and he will get a guaranteed set of votes. Those voters are now a given; my opponent and I will spend the rest of our campaigns attempting to woo everyone else.
This is, in my opinion, tragic. If you base your vote solely on someone's position on abortion, you are marginalizing yourself. You have given your vote away, basically abdicating on all other issues. Going back to my example, I, as the republican candidate, could betray my Moral Majority voters (who are more or less guaranteed to vote for me) in all other areas--the budget, the economy, global politics, porkbarrell spending, etc--and they'd still vote for me because, the way the problem has been set up, they do not have a valid alternative.
The worst part is that, in most cases, the elections you vote in have little to nothing to do with the legality of abortion. Abortion was upheld as legal (or, more accurately, anti-abortion laws were held as unconstitutional) in the landmark 1973 case Roe v Wade, in a 7-2 decision. Given the current make up of the supreme court, including George W. Bush's replacement of two justices, Roe v Wade could be overturned today with a likely 5-4 decision. But, the supreme court has chosen not to hear a case that would call the controversial decision into question.
The problem, then, is that the only other way to outlaw abortion is by a constitutional amendment. To do this, the proposed amendment would need to pass by a 2/3rds majority in both houses of congress, and then would need to be ratified by the state legislatures of 3/4ths of the states. Talk about something that isn't gonna happen!!
So I don't even worry about abortion when I vote. It's a non-issue. Just isn't going to go away. I wish it would, but with the divide on the issue being what it is, a constitutional amendment isn't going to happen, and with our very conservative (and very young) chief justice refusing to hear a case that would overturn the original decision, I don't expect it on the docket any time soon.
Stop letting politicians take you for granted. Hold their feet to the fire, and if they don't perform, vote for the other guy, no matter how he feels about abortion.
Edit:
I realized after the fact that I might not have been clear about how I feel about abortion. I hate it. It is a social evil and a form of violence that has no place in our civilization. If it were up to me, I'd wave a magic wand and make the whole stinkin' mess go away.
I mean, if you're not married, you aren't supposed to be having sex at all, but if you do, there are 80 gazillion forms of birth control: IUDs, condoms, diaphragms, "the pill," morning after pills (which are a whole other story), injectable hormone treatments, etc. We can't be held responsible to use at least one of them when engaging in sexual activity? Its no wonder that STDs are spreading at such an alarming rate.
As an interesting ending note, Norma McCorvey ("Jane Roe" from the landmark Roe v Wade case) is actually anti-abortion. The basis of her case was that she was impregnated due to rape, and as such, had extenuating circumstances and deserved the right to choose whether or not to terminate the pregnancy. The following was taken from the Roe v Wade page on wikipedia:
It was my pseudonym, Jane Roe, which had been used to create the "right" to abortion out of legal thin air. But Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee never told me that what I was signing would allow women to come up to me 15, 20 years later and say, "Thank you for allowing me to have my five or six abortions. Without you, it wouldn't have been possible." Sarah never mentioned women using abortions as a form of birth control. We talked about truly desperate and needy women, not women already wearing maternity clothes.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Why gay marriages don't bother me as a Christian
I heard a sermon a very long time ago wherein the speaker turned my whole world upside down. He asked a question, and as far as I'm concerned, he could have just stopped talking right then and there, because he had us all by the jugular.
His question: "Why do we spend so much time trying to get sinners to stop sinning? Sinning is what sinners do. We ought to be trying to save them."
Wow. I don't know if the profundity of that reached anyone else in the room, but it hit me like a sack of bricks.
This is partially why I am so bothered by the "Christian Republican Agenda." Gay marriages have to be stopped! Pornography must be outlawed! Public profanity of any time should be purged! Stop sinning everyone!!!
I think the problem is that we forgot who our true enemies are. We aren't enemies with homosexuals, pornographers, or whatever. Our enemies are the "principalities and powers of the air." (Eph 6:12) Our spiritual enemies, the devil and his kin (yes, I believe there are such things as demons), don't care about getting people to sin--all they want to do is keep people from accepting Jesus as their savior. Everything else--the self-destructive living, the sins, etc--will come naturally.
We don't like being told to reach people with the gospel. That's hard work! It's much easier to give our sinners a shave and a new set of clothes--let's polish those turds!--than it is to change them from the inside out. And yet, this is the example our Lord set for us when He went and ministered to the dregs of his society.
Now I'm not saying people should be allowed to do whatever they want. There are some sins that victimize others, and these need to be outlawed. For instance, let's consider murder. Murder is a sin. But murder hurts others, and so our government has to do something about it. But there are also sins that that either victimize only ourselves or don't victimize anyone (like homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, drinking in excess, etc). Those sins may be distasteful, but so what? A sinner sins, it what make him or her a sinner! Don't get upset about their sinning, get busy reaching them with the gospel!
So gay marriages. Don't care. Let the sinners sin, its what they do. While everyone else is busy trying to keep them from getting married, I'm going to try and reach them with the good news of Jesus Christ. Nuts to politics.
His question: "Why do we spend so much time trying to get sinners to stop sinning? Sinning is what sinners do. We ought to be trying to save them."
Wow. I don't know if the profundity of that reached anyone else in the room, but it hit me like a sack of bricks.
This is partially why I am so bothered by the "Christian Republican Agenda." Gay marriages have to be stopped! Pornography must be outlawed! Public profanity of any time should be purged! Stop sinning everyone!!!
I think the problem is that we forgot who our true enemies are. We aren't enemies with homosexuals, pornographers, or whatever. Our enemies are the "principalities and powers of the air." (Eph 6:12) Our spiritual enemies, the devil and his kin (yes, I believe there are such things as demons), don't care about getting people to sin--all they want to do is keep people from accepting Jesus as their savior. Everything else--the self-destructive living, the sins, etc--will come naturally.
We don't like being told to reach people with the gospel. That's hard work! It's much easier to give our sinners a shave and a new set of clothes--let's polish those turds!--than it is to change them from the inside out. And yet, this is the example our Lord set for us when He went and ministered to the dregs of his society.
Now I'm not saying people should be allowed to do whatever they want. There are some sins that victimize others, and these need to be outlawed. For instance, let's consider murder. Murder is a sin. But murder hurts others, and so our government has to do something about it. But there are also sins that that either victimize only ourselves or don't victimize anyone (like homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, drinking in excess, etc). Those sins may be distasteful, but so what? A sinner sins, it what make him or her a sinner! Don't get upset about their sinning, get busy reaching them with the gospel!
So gay marriages. Don't care. Let the sinners sin, its what they do. While everyone else is busy trying to keep them from getting married, I'm going to try and reach them with the good news of Jesus Christ. Nuts to politics.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Welcome to my blog!
Hi to everyone! Welcome to my blog; I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
This blog is all about about cognitive dissonance. I am a Christian. And not just the Christmas/Easter type, I'm a real Christian, with real convictions and beliefs in moral absolutes. I am also an American citizen, born and raised here in the good ol' US of A, of voting age (29, actually). That means that I have an obligation to my country to vote.
This is where things get difficult. See, in the US we have a two-party system; in any given election, there are only going to be two viable candidates (anyone can run of course, but if you aren't in one of the political parties, you're gonna lose). The Republican party has done a fairly good job of convincing people that they were the "Christian" party since the 1980s, but with the recent landslide election for Barak Obama as president in 2008, which included many evangelical Christians, its clear that people are finally seeing past this facade.
See, the problem is that the Republican party isn't the "Christian" party. At least, its no more a Christian party than the Democratic party is. Here are some of the reasons the Republican party is not Christian:
This blog is all about about cognitive dissonance. I am a Christian. And not just the Christmas/Easter type, I'm a real Christian, with real convictions and beliefs in moral absolutes. I am also an American citizen, born and raised here in the good ol' US of A, of voting age (29, actually). That means that I have an obligation to my country to vote.
This is where things get difficult. See, in the US we have a two-party system; in any given election, there are only going to be two viable candidates (anyone can run of course, but if you aren't in one of the political parties, you're gonna lose). The Republican party has done a fairly good job of convincing people that they were the "Christian" party since the 1980s, but with the recent landslide election for Barak Obama as president in 2008, which included many evangelical Christians, its clear that people are finally seeing past this facade.
See, the problem is that the Republican party isn't the "Christian" party. At least, its no more a Christian party than the Democratic party is. Here are some of the reasons the Republican party is not Christian:
- The majority of our deficit spending has been under Republican leaders. The Bible, however, tells us that the borrower (the US) is the slave of the lender (largely other nations, such as China and the UAE) (Prov. 22:7).
- The basic Republican fiscal policy is to give upper class citizens tax breaks, with the idea that this will prompt them to spend more, making everyone wealthier. This is a far cry from the Biblical concept of finances, which teaches that we ought give our "first fruits" (10% of our income) to the church, set aside 10% of our income in "the store houses" (aka a savings account), provide for our families, and use the rest to give alms (aka helping the poor).
- Under the Bush/Cheney administration, we engaged in two wars, one of which was unprovoked (Iraq). During this war, we tortured our prisoners of war, including the barbaric process of simulating drowning sensations called "waterboarding." Several prisoners were subjected to waterboarding over 200 times. Our Savior, Jesus, handled His enemies a little differently: "For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many." (Mark 10:45)
- Abortion is absolutely incompatible with Christianity. Many don't realize this, but abortions date back to ancient times. Didache, a church patriarch in 150 AD, declared "do not murder a child by abortion or kill a new-born infant."
- Homosexuality is a sinful lifestyle, directly forbidden by Lev. 18:22. This said, we as Christians are taught to not just tolerate others, but love them--even those living in sin. Gay bashing or harming homosexuals in anyway is absolutely wrong. But we as Christians still declare the immorality of homosexual behavior, along with everything that goes along with it (homosexual marriages, homosexual couples adopting, etc).
- More liberal leaning Democrats tend to want to repress all public Christian speech, especially that which condemns immorality. We as citizens of this nation have an obligation to stand up for our right to freely practice our faith and freely speak.
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