Posted by Anthony on March 17, 2010
My ministry will be hosting an online apologetics conference this May with the theme of ‘literary apologetics.’ The general idea is to impact the culture in intentional ways to pave the way for better reception of the Gospel of Christ. So culture is on my mind.
Something I’ve been pondering for awhile is this: Is the culture war over? And did we lose it?
I part company with those who seek to Christianize the culture as though this in itself is a noble goal. It seems to me that this would in effect merely make our culture a ‘white washed tomb.’ More important than the culture are the people within it and their state of mind and eternal fates. Nonetheless, people are strongly influenced by the culture at large whether they know it or not or admit it or not. An unfriendly culture will make it harder for people to receive the Gospel.
I believe that. To an extent. I note, however, that the Christian Church itself exploded into existence within a culture that was not yet, by virtue of the fact that there wasn’t a pervasive Christianity to Christianize, Christian. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by Anthony on March 11, 2010
In my last entry I felt compelled to clarify that I was married- and that, to a woman, and not a pillow.
I felt this need because of this article I just read talking about a guy in Korea marrying… well, a pillow.
Far be it from me to prohibit anyone from living out the rest of their lives in a committed, monogamous relationship. But I do have some questions.
Q. Does the pillow consent? If consent is no longer one of the important elements constituting real ‘marriage’ where does it end? Will people be marrying shoes next? If shoes, why not toddlers? WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by Anthony on March 10, 2010
I’ve been thinking about the culture wars lately. I have a real problem with Christians who seem to be driving for a change in the culture just for the sake of having a ‘holy’ culture. I think we’d have to call that a legalistic culture. I believe that the Christian church should be about something more than creating white-washed tombs.
On the other hand, the nature of ‘culture’ is that it perpetuates itself, feeds itself, fuels itself. The culture is the air we breathe and the water in which we swim. It has the ability to mold us into its image, and once so molded, we mold others in that same image. Resistance isn’t exactly futile, but it is difficult. Conformity to the culture is the path of least resistance. It would behoove us, therefore, to ensure that the culture is not toxic. If the culture is healthy, the path of least resistance will more likely result in healthy beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by Anthony on February 5, 2010
Randall Terry, a prominent pro-life activist released a press release a few minutes ago that says among other things,
“‘Choose life’ is a ‘pro-choice’ message; it presumes it is ethically and legally legitimate to choose murder.
This is nonsense.
I do agree with him that we have as an ultimate goal the end of legal abortion and also that the Tim Tebow ad will probably be fairly ‘warm and fuzzy’ but it doesn’t follow in the slightest that it is implicitly a pro-choice assumption.
My wife and I have a story very similar to the one that Terry is denouncing. He says,
“The ad will be warm and fuzzy; Mrs. Tebow will talk on camera about how her doctor advised her to abort her pregnancy because of health risks; she will say something like ‘I just knew I couldn’t do it; I was going to have this baby no matter what.’ She will refer to prayer or her faith.
It is the part where Mrs. Tebow says she “was going to have this baby no matter what” that is most similar to the situation with my wife and I. We were told that our daughter had spina bifida and were given the ‘option’ to ‘terminate.’ We declined. (Read more: http://www.wechoselife.com).
If Mr. Terry is to be believed, we made the absolute wrong decision, here. Since abortion was legal, there was no value to choosing life. By choosing life and refusing to take part in a silent holocaust, we were, in fact, presuming that it is ethical and legitimate to choose murder.
This is absurd; dare I say, it is stupid.
I said before that it is an ultimate goal that abortion on demand be outlawed. However, there is something to be said for the notion that we could make the law unnecessary by persuading people to… choose life. Obviously, that is not realistic: nor is it realistic to suppose that if we outlaw abortion, abortions will end.
You see, we definitely need both. We need to restore a respect for life in the law of the land but we also need to change hearts. Mr. Randall seems to think that a strategy of changing hearts is an ethical compromise- which is nonsense- but I do wonder how he hopes to change the laws without first changing hearts.
Seriously. Mr. Randall, you need to think about that. How is it that you want to make abortion illegal without a population containing a critical mass of people who believe we should choose life- even if the government is willing to allow you to do otherwise?
It is head splitting to imagine that in Randall Terry’s mind all these people who chose life actually were endorsing a pro-choice position. I wish I would have known that before. Maybe at the ultrasound we just would have said, “Ah well. We don’t want to legitimize the pro-choice perspective so I guess you just gotta kill her.”
Asinine. Mr. Randall, think.
Posted by Anthony on
There is just something about this Tebow Superbowl ad that seems to have really gotten under the skins of the pro-abortionist groups like Planned Parenthood and others. I think its because they perceive that their whole agenda has been called out and they were left rocking backwards on their heels. A lot of the pro-choice groups are crying foul that we have to be ‘exposed’ to something as damnable as a story about a mother who was advised to have an abortion… but chose not to… in “contravention doctors’ orders” (ala Rachel Maddow).
Apparently, such divisive matters should not be presented to us during the Superbowl… far better to focus on what unites us: clever beer commercials and scantily clad women and the occasional wardrobe malfunction.
I think I know what is really going on, why they are so hostile. I think it is because they understand that their agenda can only be furthered when it happens under the radar. The worst thing in the world, from their perspective, is that the topic be out in the open. Like the cockroach and termite, their only hope is that no one notices while they do their nasty work, for if someone did, out would come the spray. And light is the medium by which they are spotted.
I was recently invited to be a columnist on a Christian news site called the CypressTimes. One of my first articles was on this very topic. Here is a snippet: WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by Anthony on February 2, 2010
I am deeply disturbed by the Obama administration’s decision to try the 9-11 terrorists in civilian courts, whether in New York City or anywhere else.
My jaw dropped when Holder and Obama began offering their justifications. They clearly thought that they were being reassuring but they made it much worse. For example, in response to the argument that going through the civilian courts… you know, giving the terrorists status under the Constitution of the United States… meant leaving open such possibilities that these terrorists could get parole or even declared innocent, it was replied, essentially, “Not to worry, there is no chance that a guilty verdict won’t be returned.”
Oh? Then why have the trial at all? If you can assure us of a guilty verdict before the trial itself how is this not actually a show trial?
There are any number of tweaks to the system that will have to be made in order to have a fair trial under the Constitution. For example, how are we to provide the accused a fair jury of their peers? Do we need to import people from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan to find men like the accused? Also, wouldn’t a change of venue be in order? If I was the defense attorney I’d ask for one, and since I wouldn’t expect anyone in America (excepting those who write for the Huffington Post, but again, they aren’t rabid Islamicists, so not exactly peers) to feel less than outrage over the attacks, I would ask for the trial to be moved to Europe, or Pakistan or failing this, back to Gitmo.
Now we note, in passing, that these men haven’t had their Miranda rights read to them. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by Anthony on November 23, 2009
Courtesy of the Drudge Report today I’m treated to an article about a person who had been diagnosed as being in a coma who actually had been fully conscious for more than 20 years.
The idea that somebody could be misdiagnosed as being in a ‘vegetative state’ takes on significance when we remember that in some corners this is an excuse to kill the person. Think Terri Schiavo.
In the article, it is hard to blame the doctors for their misdiagnosis as it appears from the article that the technology to verify that Rom Houben was actually conscious has only recently been around. In truth, there could only have been ‘blame’ if in fact Rom had been ‘terminated’ despite being conscious. Would we have ever learned this if some ‘humane’ and ‘compassionate’ person or entity had decided to pull his plug? Obviously, no.
As the article illustrates, people have woken up from comas and ‘persistent vegetative states’ before. Perhaps a great many more would do so if we didn’t whack them as soon as we tend to do. Maybe it just takes the brain that much longer to heal, or re-wire, and we rarely see it only because of our impatience.
We continue to discover that for as much as we know about human biology and the brain we also learn how much we don’t know. We also learn that we frequently make mistakes. Big ones. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
