Category: Abortion; homosexuality; same sex marriage; idolatry; pro-life;

PREPARE FOR CULTURAL ICE STORMS

PREPARE FOR CULTURAL ICE STORMS

Our rural Virginia county got hit hard by the recent ice storms. It wasn’t as bad as Texas, but many people who had generators were still running them and hauling “flush water” a week later. And good luck buying a generator if you weren’t prepared.

Another storm is coming, a cultural ice storm that, like Narnia’s Ice Queen, is already freezing free speech, intimidating the weak, and punishing dissenters. Most of us are unprepared. Rod Dreher is and his recent books, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post Christian Nation (2017), and Live Not By Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents (2020), will alert readers, all readers, not just Christians, to what’s ahead and help them develop a plan.

I know that sounds sensational. Alarmist rhetoric across media has made us wary of all warnings. But when all the signs indicate a storm is coming, it is time to ring the bell and make a plan.

Some recent examples: A friend and tenured professor at a state university tells me his department’s deputy director is pushing a diversity statement—Dreher calls it “a formal statement of loyalty to the ideology of diversity”—all faculty must sign. The situation is serious enough that he has retained legal counsel. The Virginia Values Act, which threatens freedom of conscience for all Virginians, was signed into law last July. Amazon just blocked the sale of Ryan Anderson’s When Harry Became Sally, the most scholarly, well-researched, and unpretentious book—every parent of a child in public school should read it—on the subject of transgenderism. School teachers tell me that their social media accounts are being watched, and somebody will punish them for any speech deemed out of line by school boards who are rapidly adopting state diversity guidelines. The Equal Rights Amendment will soon enshrine in Federal Law what the Virginia Values Act does on the state level. Attorneys who work in the religious freedom arena tell me that Christian business owners are increasingly at risk for business-destroying lawsuits. Politicians and policy wonks tell me the laws pursued by the left in general and the LGBTQ lobby, in particular, are meant not to secure equality of access—they already have that—but to “punish the wicked,” i.e., religious and other conservatives who disagree with them.

Meditate on that for a moment. It means using state and federal law to force agreement. Read thought police.

Dreher says, “As a journalist who writes about these issues, I often hear stories from people—always white-collar professionals like academics, doctors, lawyers, engineers—who live closeted lives as religious or social conservatives. They know that to dissent from the progressive regime in  the workplace, or even to be suspected of dissent, would likely mean burning their careers at the stake.”[1] He calls what’s happening “soft totalitarianism” and defines it thus:

Back in the Soviet era, totalitarianism demanded love for the Party, and compliance with the Party’s demands was enforced by the state. Today’s totalitarianism demands allegiance to a set of progressive beliefs, many of which are incompatible with logic—and certainly with Christianity. Compliance is forced less by the state than by elites who form public opinion, and by private corporations that, thanks to technology, control our lives far more than we would like to admit…Today in our societies, dissenters from the woke party line find their businesses, careers, and reputations destroyed. They are pushed out of the public square, stigmatized, canceled, and demonized as racists, sexists, homophobes, and the like. And they are afraid to resist, because they are confident that no one will join them or defend them.[2]

Samuel James, writing for Christianity Today, finds Dreher’s thesis unconvincing, commenting, “prophecy is tough work, and people who share the deepest religious and social convictions can nonetheless interpret all the moving parts differently.” I hope he is right. But Dreher’s cultural analysis has been dead on target so far.

Jesus rebuked his enemies by telling them, “You can read the weather, but you cannot read the signs of the times.” Rod Dreher has read the signs. Christians and others who believe in truth, reality, freedom, and justice need to prepare for what’s coming. Dreher’s insights are an excellent place to start.

[1] Rod Dreher, Live Not By Lies, p. 58.

[2] Ibid, p. 8-9.

7 PRO-CHOICE ASSUMPTIONS and why they are wrong

7 PRO-CHOICE ASSUMPTIONS and why they are wrong

The pro-life laws passed in nine states this year have released an avalanche of pro-abortion media, entertainment, and political pressure on lawmakers and voters alike. Some of the pressure is pure power play, like Netflix’s CEO’s threat to pull production from Georgia over its new law. But much of it comes from cleverly crafted messaging designed to play on our sympathies and sense of fair play.

It’s hard to be rational when our emotional levers are being pulled. But some common assumptions underlie most of these messages.  I’ve boiled them down to seven and attempted to provide answers from a biblical worldview. I hope you find them helpful.

First assumption: Man, not God, is the measure of all things. Life is only sacred under certain conditions, conditions chosen by man.

But if a thing is sacred only under certain conditions, then it is not sacred at all.

Second assumption: Because man is the center of the universe, society is able to optimize conditions for everyone everywhere at all times, and has the responsibility to do that for every unplanned pregnancy.

But are we really that powerful? Does anything in human history teach us that we can rescue everyone every time, especially when they don’t want to be rescued? And does our inability to achieve moral perfection in one area justify blatant immorality in another?  Does the fact that we are unable to optimize conditions for every person mean it’s OK to kill them?

Third assumption: that the natural environment is the most significant determinant of the well-being of children and that human beings can end war, spend the money on improving social well-being, and create environmental Utopia.

Three responses are required.

First, all reliable research shows that the most significant predictor of successful development for children is a home with a mom and a dad in a traditional marriage. That is true across the board, from criminally polluted Shanghai to environmentally pristine Washington State.

Second is another worldview assumption: that humans will one day stop fighting one another and all wars will end. Five thousand years of human history tell us otherwise. The best that can be hoped for is that the strong will protect the weak from the predators that have been with us since Tubal Cain.

Third, life has no value if the Utopian ideal for society cannot be achieved. This reveals the dark thread that runs through the entire pro-abortion argument: Anything short of perfection as we define it justifies death for the unborn.

Got a problem with the world as it is? Just kill the kid. Problem solved.

The fourth assumption: That somehow society is responsible to provide comprehensive and responsive healthcare, a decent standard of living and economic opportunity for everyone so that every child will be provided for.

In the real world, economic opportunity is created by entrepreneurial risk-takers who put their own well-being on the line to found successful businesses that employ others with a living wage and pay taxes that enable all the elements of a decent standard of living.

But if we somehow fall short of that Utopian ideal? Never mind, just kill the kid. They don’t have any rights anyway.

Fifth assumption: The LGBT argument for abortion. Pro-abortionists know that no one is arguing against moms and dads of any and all ethnicity having children. They know that Asian-Americans have the same rights as African Americans who have the same rights as every other American couple that wish to have children. But the LGBT argument for abortion says that if same-sex couples can’t have children then we’ve failed as a society and that justifies abortion.

The thing is, life is never born to two men, or two women. It’s a biological impossibility. A man and a woman are always necessary for the creation of a child. A child born of surrogacy is a child robbed of its ancestors.

But that’s OK, if we disagree with the LGBT agenda, just kill the child. They won’t know the difference.

Sixth assumption: we should stop spending money on war machines and the people that use them because they are only and always about ending life. They aren’t. In the right hands they are about protecting civilization by ending the lives of aggressors.

Again, five thousand years of history tell us one thing: nations that do not provide for their own defense cannot provide peace, equality, justice, education, healthcare, or a clean environment for anyone. They must be well-regulated and accountable to civilian authority and just-war ethics. But until Christ returns, warriors and the weapons they employ are necessary evils.

But in the pro-abortionist worldview, and in America since Roe v. Wade, the most defenseless of all have no right to be defended by anyone.

Seventh assumption: If we didn’t intend for a human life to be created, or if that life is somehow defective according to someone’s standards, then it’s OK to kill it.

This one requires four separate responses.

First, pro-abortionists don’t come right out and say this, but the way the argument is cast makes it sound as if most abortions are due to rape, incest, failed birth control devices, or some form of coercion i.e. religion. The facts are otherwise, and they know it.[1]

Second, pro-abortionists nurse a Utopian view of technology and a truly naive view of human sexual passion when they argue that birth-control methods can somehow be made 100% effective. Life has a way of overcoming every barrier and the effectiveness of all of them (short of surgery) depend on some level of self-control.

Third, pro-abortionists routinely recommend death for Down Syndrome children and others with birth defects. The reason is that they come with special challenges for the parents to raise and life-long challenges for the child to overcome. Granted. But have you ever asked the parents of a Down Syndrome child if they wish the child were dead? And are they somehow less than human because of their defects? Is that what makes it OK to kill them? I have friends who’ve lost limbs and been brain-injured in accidents. Are they somehow less human? Is it OK to kill them?

Where does it stop? That’s the real problem. It doesn’t end there. Once we decide one form of human is less-than-human and therefore disposable, we are only a step or two away from the Nazis, the Hutu’s, the Turks, and every other civilization that justified genocide.

Fourth, pro-abortionists pound away on the word choice, as if most of the women who get pregnant have no choice in the matter. But barring sexual assault, addressed above, all women have a choice in the matter. In fact, they have more than a choice, they have tremendous power in their relationships with men. But that power lies in an understanding of their person-hood and sexuality that has been systematically dismantled over the last sixty years.

This isn’t popular, but it is truth: Women have the power to demand mental, emotional, financial and physical support—in short faithfulness—from men in the covenant of marriage. Within that covenant, all their rights are protected, and all their children are provided for.

But the new sexual orthodoxy teaches women that sex is for play, marriage is optional, and babies are disposable.

And we wonder why depression and anxiety disorders are on the rise.

Abortion is almost never necessary. It is always a choice based on assumptions, all of them bad. Choose life.

[1] 1.5% of abortions are due to rape or incest. https://www.focusonthefamily.com/socialissues/life-issues/dignity-of-human-life/abortion-statistics

[2] http://www.breakpoint.org/2019/05/breakpoint-the-bedroom-and-the-pew

ABORTION SURVIVOR’S LAMENT

ABORTION SURVIVOR’S LAMENT

The details are vague now, so many decades hence. He sat on a curb or was it a granite ledge? outside the downtown clinic. Either way it was cold, barren, like his heart. The girl—yes, still a girl only 17—was inside, had disappeared into the sterile glass door of the nondescript building. She had found the place, or had he? He couldn’t remember. Either way, it hadn’t been there long, a new edition to the healthcare—cruelest euphemism—landscape. But he had found the money. Oh yes, that he clearly recalled. He found the two hundred dollars it took to end the life in her womb. In blind, self-centered cowardice he thought he was solving a problem, keeping their secret. But the cold reality of what he’d done began unconsciously seeping into his soul that day like the humid chill coming through the concrete. He paid the doctor to kill his son.

How could he have done that? How could he not see? The evil was obscured in those days. “It’s just a blob of cells,” they said. But he should have known.

Little did he know in 1977 that he was only a grain of sand in the mammoth cultural landslide that was the sexual revolution. Free love never was victimless. Roe V. Wade, that revolution’s greatest victory, remains the longest bloodbath in history with the longest trail of traumatized survivors.

Time moved on and so did he until about a decade later, when his first child was born. Something clicked, a window opened inside, and he began to see. Life is precious! He should have taken the blow, not the girl. Not the child. He should have taken the guilt and shame with her and provided for them both. That’s when he started attending the annual pro-life march downtown on January 22nd. It was the least he could do, the only thing he knew to do besides giving to crisis pregnancy centers, to publicly repent and repudiate his past. To do something about the future.

It wasn’t enough. At least, it hasn’t been so far. The Pro-Choice propaganda political action machine continues to cover the selfish cowards—yes you men, I’m talking to you not the girls, not the women; you are the ones God holds responsible to protect the defenseless and provide for your children—among us. It did so again this week when forty-four Senators refused to back the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, the one that requires doctors and nurses to save the life of a baby who survives an abortion.

How could they? How could they be so blind? So selfish? So cold and hard? How can the doctors and the nurses, sworn to “first do no harm” stand aside and watch them die? They can no longer hide behind youthful ignorance or scientific uncertainty. They know. They KNOW what we are doing. They know the landslide has killed millions of innocents and yet they refuse to protect and defend.

In his forties a young man walked into his life. Energetic, intelligent, eager to serve alongside and be mentored. It took a while because he was so busy with family and work, but finally it clicked. Another window opened. “The timing is about right,” he thought. “This could be my son.” A strange wave of grief and gratitude washed over him. “God you are so good to me. I don’t deserve this privilege, but I accept it as a gift from your hand.” Many more surrogate “sons” have come and gone since, and slowly the wound has healed.

“Perhaps,” he wondered, “perhaps now, with the evil so blatant that they celebrate infanticide, this new generation of brave young men and women will finally have done with the death dance. Perhaps now, if enough of us will tell the truth of what we did and what it cost and how merciful God is—perhaps now they will ignore the propaganda, listen to the still small voice of conscience, and end this revolution for good.”

I’M NOT GAY and you probably aren’t either

I’M NOT GAY and you probably aren’t either

Perhaps you find yourself among the many young men of our day who wonder whether you might be gay. Conventional wisdom points you in that direction. Some things you are feeling and experiencing seem to confirm that hypothesis. But you are also experiencing a good deal of confusion and anxiety over it. I’m telling my story today to offer you a different paradigm, a different way to think about yourself, in hopes that it will encourage you to embrace the creature God designed you to be. I believe that in embracing that design you will find fulfillment and joy in your life and peace in your soul.

If you have no confusion, if you have no anxiety, and if you find the perspective I’m offering offensive, then you should probably stop reading here. But if you are wondering, please read on.

My teen aged friends used to take bets on whether I was gay. The reasons seemed clear to them. I was not terribly aggressive or competitive. I enjoyed playing team sports, but I was never very good at it. For me it was more about camaraderie than competition.  I was and continue to be, unlike most men, a very verbal, expressive, emotive, empathetic and relational type of fellow. I am comfortable expressing what I feel and talking about where those feelings come from. I am easily wounded by harshness, and hate. I avoid conflict, preferring to smooth things over rather than engage in confrontation. I have a high emotional IQ and operate, like many women, with a decidedly developed sense of intuition.

That, however, wasn’t all that my friends had in mind as they gambled over my orientation. Some of my earliest memories revolve around music and dance. I sang, tenor not bass, and acted in musicals and plays from elementary school through college. I LOVED the stage. My dream was to grow up and take over where Fred Astaire left off.

None of those traits seemed to fit the accepted masculine mold of the time which was and still is to some extent, athletic, competitive, emotionally reserved, and “concrete / rational” in perspective rather than intuitive. You may also have noticed that “real men,” (a dubious phrase if ever there was one) are good at math, engineering, construction and carpentry. They enjoy hunting, fishing pick-up trucks and hot rods. They don’t like to read, unless maybe it’s Field & Stream or Car & Driver, they never write, and they would rather do things than talk about what they feel any day of the week. Heck, many of them are so divorced from their emotions they don’t even know what they feel.

Finally, and this is by no means an exhaustive list, my friends were betting on some of my behaviors and associations. When I was in high school certain behaviors were considered indicative of homosexuality. They seem silly now, but I’m not making this up. Does he cross one leg over the other like a girl? Or hang an ankle on a knee like a guy? Does he like to wear colorful clothes that match? Or T-shirts and jeans? Does he file his nails with his fingers spread like a guy or curled toward him like a girl? All those things were considered indicators of gayness and I was guilty on all counts.

But perhaps most important were my buddies. One of my best friends in High School was one year ahead of me and struggling with his sexual identity. I didn’t know it at the time. I just knew that he was my friend. He helped me get my first job and gave me a ride to it before I could drive. When he and two other friends went to a six-week, college credit, summer drama school in Alabama I went along and hung out with him and the director of the play we were producing. The other guys hung out with the technical team leader and his crew. I was still unaware that my older friend and the director, a high-school music and drama teacher from Dothan, Alabama, were practicing homosexuals. I just knew that they would smoke pot and get drunk with me and I thought that was cool. They were my friends.

I had more gay friends over the following years although I was often unaware of their lifestyle. What I was aware of is that I had more in common with these friends than other men. I enjoyed their company because we enjoyed many of the same things, music, the arts, and reading etc. When, after high school, I finally learned of my friend’s secret life I was deeply upset by it and lashed out at him in anger. I couldn’t have explained then why I was so upset. But looking back on it thirty years later I realize that I felt a deep sense of betrayal, and not a little bit of fear. For reasons I’ll cover later I was a deeply insecure young man. If my good friend was gay, what did that really say about me?

If you are like me, you are probably wondering two things: Where did those similarities come from? How come you didn’t turn out to be gay? The answers lie in two words: Nature and nurture.

Nature covers much of it. If men are from Mars and women are from Venus, then I’m on some planet between the two whose orbit is closer to Venus. The encouraging thing I’ve discovered is that I’m not alone. Many men, more than you might imagine, share the traits I’ve outlined above, often attributed to women. And many women share traits more associated with men. My guess is the ratio is something like 30/70, or, three in ten women have personalities and gifting traditionally associated with men. Ditto for men with traits associated with women. That doesn’t make us gay. It does mean however that we will often feel out of the loop, disconnected from most of our sex. If we take our cues from the culture, which is increasingly pro-gay, we may conclude quite erroneously that we are gay too.

One other aspect of our nature plays a major part in this drama, the power of which cannot be overstated: sex. The chemicals released in the brain during sex: dopamine, norepinephrine, oxytocin, serotonin, and testosterone have a supercharging effect on human emotional and psychological bonding. We might say that we “imprint” on the other person – be they male or female, photographed or in the flesh – in the sex act. I call it crossing the shame/ecstasy threshold. Once we overcome our inhibitions (shame) and experience our first sexual act (ecstasy), even if we were coerced or manipulated into it as a child by an adult or other child, or even if it was acting out as part of the consumption of pornography, we are forever shaped by it. The supercharging power of the chemicals released will drive us to seek that experience again.

I was exposed to heterosexual pornography at a very early age. I followed a heterosexual path into adulthood. Had I been exposed to homosexual pornography at that age the outcome might have been very different.

Nurture covers the rest of it. Copious research indicates that children need healthy emotional connections with both of their parents. That connection includes three important elements: respect, identification, and affirmation. The child needs to respect both his mother and his father; identify with the parent of the same sex; and be affirmed in that identity by that parent. They gain their understanding of who they are and how they will get along in the world based on the models they see at home and the affirmation they receive. Failing a healthy connection with one parent, they will seek it in the other parent. By that I mean that sons who cannot connect with their fathers will get their emotional needs met and learn to orient themselves to their world through their mothers. It is possible for a mother to take her son too much into her world where, bit by bit, he loses his identity as a man. It is possible for a father to take his daughter too much into his world, where bit by bit, she loses her identity as a woman. Or a boy might identify more with his mother because she is a stronger personality than the father. Or a daughter might identify more with her father because her mother wilts under the father’s overbearing personality. There are many variations on this theme, but the bottom line is that the balance and harmony of male and female in the home is lost and the sexual identity of the child easily confused.

It is a father’s job to help his sons orient themselves and find their footing in the larger world. But like many of my homosexual friends I had a dysfunctional relationship with my father. My dad loved his sons. But it was difficult for him to express it. (It will come as no surprise that he did not have a good relationship with his dad either). I desperately wanted his approval, but it was difficult for him to give. (Dad said I was “pretty” and threatened to put a bow in my curly brown hair). My father also had a real problem with anger. He often lost his temper and occasionally beat my brothers and me far out of proportion to our offenses. This alienated us from him. Identification was lost. Still, I think those incidents could have been overcome had he been able to establish a healthy emotional bond with his sons. He was getting there when his life was cut short in an accident.

Why did that not lead me into the homosexual world when so many in my situation have gone that way? Teenage heterosexual experience, as mentioned above, is certainly part of it. A powerful, life altering encounter with Christ at age 20, where I submitted my will to his and promised to obey him no matter the cost was crucial as well. The rest I attribute to a specific answer to prayer.

I lost my Dad when I was sixteen. That loss launched me into a period of great emotional insecurity. Over the course of the twenty years following God provided a series of healthy, responsible, godly, and mature men with whom I could identify and bond, who modeled healthy manhood for me, and who affirmed me. They gave me what I needed to become the man I am today.

If you’ve read this far then please stick with me a little while longer because I want to affirm you.

If you feel different from most of the boys and young men around you, if you seem to be attracted to other young men instead of young women, if you are wondering what the matter with you might be, you are not alone, and you are not gay. Even if your first sexual experiences have been homosexual and you feel that powerful chemically based pull toward that life, you are not bound to it. You can be free. Jesus Christ can set you free and can give you the strength that you need to change. He can empower you to resist the urges that you feel and bring the chemicals raging within you back under control. He can reshape your mind so that you can begin to see his world and his creation from his point of view. He can help you become the man that you were meant to be.

I stand ready to help you. There are other men in churches all over America who will do the same. I urge you, give your life to Christ and take the first steps to becoming the man you were made to be.

JUSTICE FOR JACK: Religious Freedom in the Furnace

JUSTICE FOR JACK: Religious Freedom in the Furnace

While sexual assault charges dominate the headlines, destroying careers and political prospects alike, the results of an assault on every American’s freedom of conscience are being weighed in the Supreme Court of the United States.

Jack Phillips’ Colorado bakery, Masterpiece Cakeshop, is named after his favorite Bible verse, Ephesians 2:10, “We are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things He planned for us long ago.” (NLT) Jack’s dream was to use his artistic baking skills not only to provide for his family and serve his community, but also to bring honor to God through his every day work.

Because of that conviction, Jack made it a policy not to create artisan cakes to celebrate things that ran contrary to his religiously informed conscience. All his customers were able to get custom made cakes for their celebrations with Jack’s nearby competitors, so Jack’s convictions were never a problem until two men asked for a custom-made cake for their wedding ceremony in 2012.

Jack’s legal team, Alliance Defending Freedom, explains what happened next.

“Jack offered to sell the men any pre-made cake in his shop, but kindly explained that he could not use his artistic talents to custom-design cakes for same-sex wedding ceremonies. Like millions of people across the globe and throughout history, he affirms the biblical teaching that marriage is the sacred union of a man and a woman. Designing a cake for them would force him to violate his conscience.

The men swore at Jack and stormed out. He endured weeks of threatening phone calls and emails. His family and his employees have also been abused.

But that was only the beginning. Jack received notice from the Colorado Civil Rights Commission (CCRC). He was being sued, accused of violating the state’s nondiscrimination laws.

The commission ruled against Jack, fined him, and tried to force him to violate his conscience.

“I haven’t singled out that one issue as something I won’t do,” Jack says. “I don’t make cakes for lewd bachelor parties; I don’t make cakes to celebrate divorce; I don’t make Halloween cakes, or anything involving witchcraft.”[1]

The CCRC also ordered Jack and his staff to design cakes for same-sex wedding celebrations, go through a ‘re-education’ program, implement new policies to comply with the commission’s order, and file quarterly ‘compliance’ reports for two years to show that Jack has completely eliminated his religious beliefs from his business.

In response, Jack stopped baking custom cakes, losing 40% of his business and laying off employees as a result.

Jack’s story is reminiscent of the biblical Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel chapter three. As Jack refuses to bow to today’s politically correct sexual orthodoxy, so those men refused to bow before a political ideology that exalted the creature above the creator. As Jack faces the loss of his livelihood and life-savings, Daniel’s friends faced the loss of their lives. As Jack stands on his biblically informed conscience before the most powerful court of our time, they stood resolute before the greatest power of theirs, saying, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”[2]

Yet Jack does not stand alone; we are in the furnace with him. His fate is ours. If the Supreme Court rules against him, then religious freedom will cease to exist in the United States. Your freedom to obey your religiously informed conscience in your business, your profession, your education, your children’s education and associations, your affiliations, and yes, even your church, will be confined to the dictates of the new sexual orthodoxy. You will be forced by law not simply to tolerate, but to celebrate things that conflict with your conscience before God.

What can you do? Four very important things:

First, pray. This is first and foremost a spiritual battle.

Second, take a stand. Let it be known that you support Jack. Write if you are able, share this post or posts from the organizations listed in the notes[3], or at the very least go on social media and say, “I stand with Jack.” Supreme Court Justices are human too. They read and your voice matters.

Third, give money. Order brownies from Jack’s bakery. Send him cash. Or send money to ADFLegal.org to help them fight.

Finally, be informed and informative. Share the sermon podcast, RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN THE FURNACE, listed here: http://www.fccsobo.org/files/fccsobo/Podcasts/September%203,%202017%20.mp3. Become knowledgeable on these subjects and learn to give a sound-bite on why the biblical worldview of human sexuality is good for everyone and why religious freedom is the fundamental freedom.

[1] Adflegal.org/jack phillips story

[2] The Holy Bible: New International Version. (1984). (Da 3:16–18). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

[3] Adflegal.org/jack phillips story

THE SELAH CENTER: New Help for an Old Problem

“We need to talk.” The message alarmed Tom because his girlfriend, whom he had dated since middle school, usually felt free to text anything. But this time she would only agree to meet in person. With his subconscious screaming, you know what this is! but his frontal lobe in full denial mode, he made his way to their favorite spot in the stairwell at the high school. The look on her face said it all, “I’m pregnant.”

If you can identify with the desperate situation in which these teens find themselves, and statistics tell us that about thirty percent of us can, you know what it is like to be unmarried, pregnant, or with a pregnant girlfriend, and totally unprepared. For over forty years the standard procedure for people in this situation has been to find the local abortion provider and “deal with the problem.” One in seven pregnancies still ends in abortion.

But a combination of improved ultra-sound technology, multiple stories of abortion-injured women, and Planned Parenthood scandals is causing more and more women to seek an alternative solution.

That’s the role that Southside Virginia’s newest crisis pregnancy service provider, The Selah Center, hopes to fill in ever greater ways as it observes its first anniversary in operation.

The Selah (pronounced Say-la) Center, located at 403 Virginia Avenue, between Pizza Pub and United Country in Clarksville, opened on May 26, 2016, has helped many clients in its first year with services including pregnancy testing, post abortion peer counseling, pre-natal and parenting care techniques for mothers-to-be. But Selah also provides male mentoring, peer counseling, and classes on finding a job, making and keeping a budget, and how to buy a good used car for future fathers.

The Center is also committed to the development of expectant moms as whole persons. Clients receive “Boutique Bucks” for each class attended that are then redeemed for diapers, wipes, bath items, children’s clothing up to 2T, and other baby care necessities.

Selah Center Executive Director, Christie Russell says, “Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that God would ask me to join Him in this work.” But Russell, who holds a B.S. in Global Marketing Management from Averett College, and a Masters in Biblical Counseling from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, said that over the years she had so many conversations with so many hurting young women, that when a speaker from the Tidewater Area issued a challenge to her congregation to open their own pregnancy center she found she could not say “No”.

With Transitions Pregnancy Services in Danville, and The Selah Center in Clarksville, Halifax County women and men now have two options for help during a crisis pregnancy. If you need help with a pregnancy, or you would like to donate, you can contact them at 434-362-2207, or find them on the web at theselahcenter.org.

PRO LIFE SUMMARY 2

“A woman has the right to determine what happens to her own body.”

“The pro-life view is religiously based, and religion shouldn’t have anything to do with public policy.”

Ever heard those statements and wondered how to respond?

This Friday, January 22nd marks the 43rd anniversary of the 1973 Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. Since then over 58 million babies have been killed by abortionists in America alone.

This scourge can be stopped, but not by staying silent about it. The tech-savvy millennial generation is already inclined to think outside the box of pro-abortion arguments handed down to them from 1970’s liberals. We need to continue to feed their skepticism with truth. The more confident we are as we talk with friends and family, especially the millennial generation, the more likely they will be to end it.

Here then is part 2 of the article Why Pro Life? by Stonestreet and Klusendorf. Find the link to the whole document, titled 21 DAYS OF PRAYER FOR LIFE, here at http://www.colsoncenter.org.

Watch for the summary TAKE AWAY TRUTHS at the end. DS.

WHY PRO LIFE? A SUMMARY part 2
By Scott Klusendorf and John Stonestreet

Reason #3: Logic Affirms Life
Either you believe that each and every human being has an equal right to life or you don’t.

Pro-life Christians contend that although humans differ in their respective degrees of development, they are nonetheless equal because they share a common human nature that bears the image of their Creator. Humans have value simply because they are human.

Secular critics like David Boonin provide a radically different perspective: Although you are identical to the embryo you once were, it does not follow you had the same right to life then as you do now. For Boonin, being human is nothing special:

On my desk in my office where most of this book was written and revised, there are several pictures of my son, Eli. In one, he is gleefully dancing on the sand along the Gulf of Mexico, the cool ocean breeze wreaking havoc with his wispy hair. In a second, he is tentatively seated in the grass in his grandparents’ backyard, still working to master the feat of sitting up on his own. In a third, he is only a few weeks old, clinging firmly to the arms that are holding him and still wearing the tiny hat for preserving body heat that he wore home from the hospital. Though all of the remarkable changes that these pictures preserve, he remains unmistakably the same little boy. In the top drawer of my desk, I keep another picture of Eli. This picture was taken…24 weeks before he was born.

The sonogram image is murky, but it reveals clearly enough a small head titled back slightly, and an arm raised up and bent, with the hand pointing back toward the face and the thumb extended out toward the mouth. There is no doubt in my mind that this picture, too, shows the same little boy at a very early stage in his physical development. And there is no question that the position I defend in this book entails that it would have been morally permissible to end his life at this point.

But here’s Boonin’s problem: If humans only have value because of some characteristic they possess in varying degrees, those with more of it have greater rights than those with less. Human equality is a myth.

Pro-life Christians have a better explanation for human equality. Our value is grounded in our common human nature, not a degreed property like self-awareness that none of us share equally and may come and go in the course of our lifetimes. When did you get that human nature? You got it the moment you began to exist—conception.

Reason #4: Our Founding Documents Affirm Life
Pro-lifers are often told the pro-life view is “religious,” and religious ideas should not determine public policy. But this is merely a dismissal rather than a refutation.

As Francis J. Beckwith points out, arguments are true or false, valid or invalid. Calling an argument “religious” is a category mistake on a par with asking, “How tall is the number five?”

Also, nowhere in the constitution does it say that believers are prohibited from bringing their ideas to the public square and arguing for them like everyone else. It’s one thing to say the state should not establish a church. It’s quite another to disenfranchise believers from participating in their own government. Some of our country’s most important documents – like The Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, and Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” – have their roots in the biblical concept of the imago dei. If prolifers are irrational and unconstitutional for grounding basic human rights in the concept of a transcendent creator, these important historical documents—all of which advanced our national understanding of equality—are irrational and unconstitutional as well. If God doesn’t exist, where do human rights come from? If they come only from the State, the same government that grants rights can take them away. If human rights are to be absolute, they must come from a source higher than the State. That’s what the authors of our founding documents believed: that every human being is “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” The first of these rights is the right to life.

TWO TAKEAWAY TRUTHS:
“A woman has the right to determine what happens to her own body.”
“True. But she doesn’t have the right to determine what happens to someone else’s body. I am the same genetic person I was in my mother’s womb, and so are you. Should you have the right to end my life because I’m inconvenient to you? Should I have the right to end yours?”

“The pro-life view is religiously based, and religion shouldn’t have anything to do with public policy.”
“False. Calling an argument “religious” is a category mistake on a par with asking, “How tall is the number five?” Some of our country’s most important documents – like The Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, and Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” – have their roots in the biblical concept of the imago dei.

SING OVER ME: Dennis Jernigan’s Journey

“How did this happen? What did we do wrong? Why didn’t we see it coming?” These and many other questions hound the parents of children who go off the rails in one way or another, none more so than the parents of children who “come out” as gay.

Dennis Jernigan’s parents did not learn of his immersion in the same-sex world until he had been delivered from it, but his autobiography, SING OVER ME (Innovo Publishing 2014), should be read by anyone who wants to understand how it happens and how same-sex attraction can be overcome.

Jernigan, whose songs and hymns are known and loved all across the evangelical landscape, has had over twenty years to heal and consider his life’s path, and tells his story in a way that is transparent and mature. Familiar patterns emerged as I read the chapters; patterns parents and loved ones should take note of, especially when raising artistically gifted and sensitive boys.

Rosaria Butterfield says that all sexual sin, hetero or homosexual, is predatory and she’s right. Jernigan’s story bears that out. Some of the forces that channeled him into same-sex attraction include: Adult male predatory behavior that initiated confusion, curiosity, self-doubt, and a fixation on sexuality in Dennis as a very young boy; bullying and being made to feel different from other boys; an untutored journey through puberty; homophobic hostility from other men that made it feel impossible for an adolescent to discuss his confusion with those who could’ve helped him; powerful identification with major female authority figures at critical periods in his life; more sexual predation and manipulation as a young man by trusted adult males who used him instead of helping him. The list is longer, but you get the point. It all leads to a confusion of identity that is sexually expressed.

According to Jernigan, many people feel trapped in the same-sex world and want to escape, but don’t know how. For Dennis, the path out of homosexuality wasn’t as complicated as the path in, but it was no less difficult. It too has a pattern, one that has nothing to do with man-centered schemes like “dating for the cure,” where people with same-sex attraction date the opposite sex in hopes it will effect an inward change. It won’t. In fact, the people who emerge victorious over this attraction find that the victory isn’t about sex; it’s about identity and love.

“It suddenly became apparent to me,” he writes, “that since childhood I had believed a vast number of lies about myself, lies planted in my mind concerning my sexual identity, my worth, my talents, my personality, my character, and everything about me … I could no longer trust anyone from my past to help me because I reasoned they were in the same predicament as I was. In that moment, I decided I would go to the Word of God, the manual, and to Father God Himself in intimate prayer and worship—not to discover who I was but rather to discover Who He was!”

Jernigan replaced lies about himself with truth and walked in the light about his problems with his fellow believers. He found acceptance, understanding and a commitment to walk with him among a few close Christian friends, and notably, he discovered the power and freedom of Spirit-led worship.

Not surprisingly, some people have condemned Dennis for this forthright autobiography, accusing him of trying to reinvigorate a waning music career by “coming out” in this way. But as the legal threat for refusing to celebrate homosexuality grows it becomes increasingly important for others who struggle with same-sex attraction and identity to hear from people like Dennis, and gain hope. May his tribe increase.