Androgenous males

Limbaugh had some thoughts on a CNN story about some research being done here and in UK about how women who take the pill for prolonged time like androgenous men and vote liberal.  Gosh, I have no idea whether this is right and can't critique the research--I know very little physiochemistry. 

But I do have an observation about churches.  I happen to favor ordination of women but am troubled over the fact that so many denominations that do, have a bunch of wussy male pastors who conclude liberal theology.  What causes this, I dunno.  Perhaps it is abandonment of male leadership trying to accomodate the women.  Perhaps liberalism and feminism go hand in hand because women are  more concerned about security.  Perhaps liberalism was there first and the rest of the notions follow the liberal view.  I dunno. 

I do know that liberal women have 1.3 children on average while conservatives have 2.4.  Average the two and add in a lot of immigrants who have larger families and you get USA with a birth rate of roughly 2.0, just the amount to sustain.  And I leave it to the reader to figure out for themselves whether the reason lib women have fewer kids is ego, desire for an Escalade rather than another child, or health concerns. 

It also explains why liberal men seek to be androgenous.  If you want to get the girls...  And why the Obamagirl is who she is.  And why all those women turned out to vote Clinton, "Oh! He's so cute!"

It's such a great way to pick the leader of the free world.

Witches and War on Faith II

We are waiting for one of our renters to move and today was a good sign. She had a big poster on the front door that said, “The Witch Is “IN””.  Now the poster is taken down.  Maybe the witch is out!

            I remember sitting alongside one of our exchange students who was taking American History at our high school.  He had trouble with the history texts because historians write in flowery cliché-ridden style, unlike, say, the chemistry or algebra book.  And his English being devoid of all those expressions made History class difficult.  It was the first part of the year so colonial America was the topic.  There in big boldface was the story of the Salem witch trials. Indeed, 21 women were put to death in those trials, but my exchange kid looked up at me and said, “That was nothing for that era.” He is utterly correct.  During the same period in Europe, the bubonic plague was sweeping the country and people theorized that vampires bit people at night or witches cast spells causing the Black Death.  From late 1660’s to early 1720’s, 500,000 people were put to death for suspected witchcraft in Europe.

            The thing I noticed about the History text’s story was that it was never noted how the Salem trials stopped.  It ended when two pastors went to the Massachusett’s judges and demanded it stop.  The judges then went to church  and publicly repented tearfully over what they had done.  We see this story over and over again.  When justice by the government was not right, Christians step in.

            Such is historic revisionism of the left.  The real story was that the church was not responsible for the witch trials and made them stop.  The leftist texts of today blame Christian Puritans as fanatics who perpetrated the trials.

            Let me give another example. Benjamin Rush.  Ever heard of him?  No? He was listed by the other couple hundred leaders of the Revolution as instrumental as Washington and Jefferson.  They were the Big 3.  The painter of the day whose 4 pictures of the founding fathers are in the US Capitol  (signing of the Constitution, etc.), William Trumbull always put Rush in the foreground with Washington, Franklin, Jefferson and Adams.

            Rush was an educator from Pennsylvania who founded 5 colleges (Good grief! You’d think that would get him at least an honorable mention with the NEA.) He started the first medical school in the colonies and was the head medic of the troops under Washington. Washington called his service indispensible and that it saved the Revolution because the soldiers were so poorly equipped.  Rush was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was a strong Christian and an abolitionist of slavery. By 1776 he had spread his beliefs to abolish slavery to 4 other states—MA, CT, RI, VT.  And he is voice of the original Constitution that had scheduled an end to slavery by 1807.  (Good grief! You’d think the NAACP would be howling at those textbook writers about his deletion.) He was a strong Christian of extraordinary witness.  When 7 colonial states, in 1762, adopted an initiative to share the gospel with the Indians and print bibles, the British King, head of the Anglican church was suspicious, especially of Pennsylvania Quakers who were constant dissidents in England.  He outlawed mission societies and Bible societies.  (Samuel Adams and others got so mad that this motivated them to join the movement to revolt) This move ticked off the colonists more than anything else, because they knew from experience that a Christian Indian was a good neighbor rather than a threat. Rush was the center of the controversy. 

            After the Revolution, Rush went on to found the Sunday School Movement in America, a mission to educate kids who were  forced to work long hours during the week by giving them schooling on Sunday.  He was among founders of  the American Bible Society.  Why?  First was personal revelation that this was God’s will for him to print Bibles.  Second was a besrock belief that society would become more civilized as a result of it.  His chief ally in the Constitutional Convention was Pennsylvania Governor Morris who was the most active speaker of the Convention and the guy who actually wrote the majority of it.  So a lot of the “consent of the governed”, “separation of powers”, and “inalienable rights” were the ideas of Benjamin Rush. He told the post-Revolutionary French they needed to teach religion in their schools. (Not so well accepted since the French revolution had guillotined or forced atheistic conversion of nearly 10,000 clergymen and forced another 20,000 to flee the country so that by the time of Napoleon, France was basically without churches.) Not so well accepted by liberal revisionist historians either.

            Adams and Jefferson were political rivals and founded Federalist and Republican-Democrat factions among the early leaders—and grew to be enemies.  One night Rush had a dream that both men would be friends, that they would be remembered both as heros of the founding in the future, and they would die on the 50^th anniversary of the Declaration.  He approached them both to resolve their differences.  They did and began to write back and forth constantly in one of the most touching and studied correspondences in our history.  And on July 4, 1826 both the two old friends died stunningly on the same day, 50 years to the day after the announcement of the Declaration to the public.

            I was thinking of getting one of those bumper stickers that say, “Rush is Right” (Ahem! Guess who Limbaugh was named after.) and then putting another sticker in front of it that says “Benjamin”.  Do you think any of those highly intellectual nuanced liberals will understand it?  Hello!  Is the Witch still in?

War on Faith

First they debated the economy and then we had the townhall and finally we will have a foreign policy debate.  You notice how the beltway organizers never get around to a social issues debate? We’ve been told there is a War on Women. I think there is a bonafied War on Faith.  The media doesn’t speak the language of Christianity very well and they’d shrug it off if at all possible. They were probably thankful when the Republican nominee had a controversial denomination overagainst Obama’s. 

That doesn’t make what has happened any less serious.  38 church denominations have joined the Catholics in resisting the mandate of Obamacare, complete with morning after pills and abortion.  The disdain that Obama and his administration have for religious faith is staggering and ominous.  They did it to a Lutheran church school in Minnesota as well.  In arguments before the Supreme Court, the Justice Department said that churches have no right to discriminate for the tenents of faith in to hiring and firing workers.  That is, the Christian school should be coerced to not take action against say, teaching Wiccan.  Nor could a church a discriminate in hiring if an atheist applies for the pastor’s job. Good news: SCOTUS struck down Obama’s interpretation 9-0. Now think about that.  Among the 9 were atheist Kagan and former ACLU head Ginsburg.  When those folks don’t agree, Holder and Obama must be rather radical.

In recent years there seems to be a war against Christmas.  The tactic that is being employed is the denial of any Christian expression or symbolic imagery on State property.  This extreme version of Separation of Church and State differs from the founding fathers who simply sought to remove the State’s influence from religious observance.  Extreme Separation holds that expression of faith should be confined to church buildings and that outside in the public square, it should not be tolerated.  Of course this is in direct affront to Christian belief.  Jesus never told us how to build a church building, how to worship, or even what day to worship on.  He did, however, teach how people of faith should live their daily lives.  Christians are the Good Samaritans.  Faith is out in the streets.

Now I know that some people are squeamish about politics in the church and talking about faith with a neighbor. This is precisely the attitude that Mussolini and Hitler utilized to silence the church in the most Catholic and Protestant countries of  Europe.  The National Socialist platform: 1. Faith could be expressed within the church walls but politics is not to be allowed.  2. Outside in the public domain, politics is to be expressed but no faith.  Hence Hitler charged Bonhoeffer, rightfully according to Nazi law,  with speaking politics within the church and faith outside.

 If Obama’s actions seem at odds with our nation’s tradition, it might be worth asking where did that heritage come from?  The school kids are being taught that all the founders were diests. But the Declaration of Independence is a Judeo-Christian document if ever there was.  “Endowed by the Creator” could never have been written by an atheist or an agnostic.  It even violates dieism which holds that God simply “set the clock” and does not thereafter participate in the universe.  How then the endowment?  Would a Hindu with a caste system or a Muslim with dhimmitude say, “that all men are created equal”? Would a Muslim whose Koran demands an apostate be killed in the name of Islam say that “among these are Life…” Clearly Jefferson wrote those words, not as a dieist as some suppose, but as a Christian though he had some peculiar personal beliefs. What then?  Were the founders actually Christians?

Right after the Revolutionary War but before there was any Constitution, the state of Virginia toyed with the idea of supporting pastors with state money.  James Madison, former Lieutenant to Washington showed up in the Virginia House to speak against the practice.  His 1785 text, Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments explains how the signers of the Declaration conceived church and state.  In it, he noted that a Relationship with God is the foundation of a Christian walk.  “Religious belief impresses itself directly on the mind in such a way that we can speak of it as not altogether voluntary--not a matter of willing choice, but of compulsion in light of the evidence that both reason and revelation  in place before us.” That is, faith is initiated by the Almighty making a religious conscience an ‘unalienable right’ which God, not the government, bestows.  He goes on to say that this profoundly differs from the opinions of men, because these can be changed by self or other men.  Moreover, God is Truth, and we pledge ourselves to follow that Truth.  Here he links the pursuit of Truth with the rights even of an atheist.  An atheist has at his core the right to pursue truth apart from the dictates of other men.  Thus, as Madison puts it, Truth and “Religion is wholly exempt from the cognizance of political authority.”

The bedrock principal of our liberties is the Liberty of Faith. This is echoed in the Vatican’s Dignitatis Humanae of 1965, “Our freedom to fulfill our duty to God must be untrammeled because that duty is both first and last for us…” Religious freedom is grounded in the very dignity of the human person.”

If I may put this in redneck language, “If you have a relationship with God, who am I to stand in the way of you and He? Or the way you talk about it in the street.”

Religious communities form an essential element in the civil societies.  So if government is the servant of men endowed by their Creator with a relationship, the right of assembly is also unchallengable.  Bingo!  First Amendment. 

But somewhere along the way God and Truth have become nothing and relative truth is the new norm. “Government is the only thing we all belong to,” I think they said at Barack’s convention.  Or as Rev. John Neuhaus noted, “the disestablishment of religion leads to the establishment of the state as church.”

 He ought to know.  He lived under the Nazis.  Do we?

Debate Moment

Debates are filled with tons of sayings and thoughts, but what people seem to remember is a striking moment.  How's that for making a debate somewhat pointless?  And yet, humans being human, hang onto the trivia.  JFK looked loose and Nixon didn't.  Reagan said "there you go again." but Al Gore couldn't even sigh, the non-verbal equivalent of what Reagan said. 

And ever it has been.  My favorite "moment" from a debate occurred in 1519.  Lutherans and Catholics have long since agreed to disagree on the sacraments.  Catholics believe the bread and wine transformed into the real presence of Christ's body and blood with the pronouncement of the sacrament (Transsubstantiation). Lutherans believe in a real presence but that it occurs simultaneously with ordinary bread and wine and must be made so by the faith of the recipient(Consubstantiation).  Transubstantiation was the teaching of the church in 1519 and a small consubstantiation minority disagreed, among them such notables as Luther of Germany and Wycliffe of England. 

The debate was the Luther-Eck Debate but it really got that name by happenstance.  John Eck, champion of the learned Dominicans challenged Luther's buddy, Carlstadt to debate church practice.  The Dominicans hated Luther and other members of the Catholic Reformation. Knowing Luther couldn't keep his mouth shut, they set a trap for him by challenging his less intellectual sidekick, Carlstadt to a debate and hoping to draw Luther into it and get him to commit heresy by some unguarded thing he would say. 

Carlstadt was getting his clock cleaned by Eck.  Eck had memorized councils and church writings and scripture galore.  But when they got on the topic of communion, Luther, seated in the front row and unable to take it any longer, suddenly shot up to his feet and asked Eck, "If a mouse is running back and forth along the railing eating crumbs during communion, is he eating bread or is he eating God?!"

I can imagine all eyes looking at befuddled John Eck, who reportedly couldn't answer such an odd question.  All his great scholarship hadn't prepared him for an earthy but brilliant Luther who could think up puzzles no one else had considered.  "Okay, John, whatta ya say to that?" And of course this question captures the debate squarely, for if consubstantiation, then the mouse has no faith and thus eats only bread.  But if Transubstantiation, then he is eating the body of Christ. (say, aren't you glad we don't have mice running around churches anymore?)

Bottom line: Eck won the debate, but no one remembered.  All of Germany was chuckling about Luther's audacious question.  There were no newspapers yet, just letters and certain pamphlets exchanged.  But it is clear from comments, that Germany had found a national hero who wasn't scared to stand up to Rome.  It was something of a debate "moment" heard round the world.

Egyptian free speech

The Muslim Brotherhood took over Egypt and is calling for USA to censor any criticism of Islam.  Listen to Yussuf Qaradawi, the leading cleric of the Brotherhood as he addressed the massive protest crowd in Cairo, "We say to the US: You must take a strong stance and try to confront this extremism like the Europeans do. This [anti-Islamic film] is not art. It has nothing to do with freedom of speech. This is nothing but curses and insults. Does the freedom to curse and insult constitute freedom of speech?" Interestingly enough, there were no curse words in the film except those from Muslims.  Just facts about Muhammad’s yen for wives (Youngest was 6 years old).  Is that insulting to a Muslim?

Both the actions of the Egyptian prosecution and Qaradawi's sermon prove incontrovertibly that the two policies the US has adopted since September 11, 2001, to contend with Muslim hatred for the US have failed. The Bush policy of supporting the democratization of Muslim societies has failed. And the appeasement policy adopted by Obama has also failed.

 

Moreover, the Brotherhood has issued a fatwa, a kill-on-sight order for the producer of the film.  Ashoush, cleric who wrote the fatwa stated, "Those bastards who did this film are belligerent disbelievers. I issue a fatwa and call on the Muslim youth in America and Europe to do this duty, which is to kill the director, the producer and the actors and everyone who helped and promoted the film. So, hurry, hurry, O Muslim youth in America and Europe, and teach those filthy lowly ones a lesson that all the monkeys and pigs in America and Europe will understand. May Allah guide you and grant you success."

Just between you and I, I think it’s about time we recognize that the reason for Islamic radicalism IS Islam.  Bush operated under the bad assumption that Muslims riot and kill because they don’t have representative government. Once they have democracy, they would stop calling for death to the West.  It didn’t work. Islam calls for death to the West. Obama thinks they hate because America has acted badly and insulted them in the past.  Hence his insistence that an obscure movie was at fault.  But any 5^th grader could see that the movie, who no one seems to have seen [you think those guys rioting, own computers, watch YouTube and have seen the video?] was just an excuse.  Barack, are you smarter than a 5^th grader?

The Quran demands submission to Islam by brute force or otherwise.  Speech against the religion isn’t tolerated.  The riots against USA took place in 20 countries--Al Qaeda wasn’t there at every location. America represents Christianity, unlike the blasé attitude Europeans take of religion.  USA is the enemy.  It’s not just Al Qaeda that wants us dead.  It’s the Islam, Stupid.

“Cut off their heads and cut off their fingers.” “Kill the infidels wherever you find them.” (Infidels=’unfaithful’= any faith which shares in divine scripture but doesn’t submit to Allah=Christians and Jews) ¾ of the passages of the Quran deal with violent technique in conquering the world for Allah.  Jihad.  Holy War.  It can also take place by deceptive talk as well as by the sword.  The Arabic word for “war” also means “deception”.  Lying is no big deal. Neither is killing.  Neither is stealing what belonged to infidels. Does this seem like a creed diabolically opposed to the 10 commandments to you?

And it is totally opposed to the United States.  Islam could live with Europe [for a time], so long as they submit to Islam.  But America’s founding principle is Judeo-Christian: God seeks a relationship with each person.  Who then am I to interfere with God and your walk with Him? Thus we are founded on the bedrock that the Creator has given us unalienable rights, liberty of our faith chief among them. Free speech expression of beliefs a close corollary.  Islam and America are directly opposed. 

I don’t know if this means we shut down the embassies and take their declarations of war at face value.  But it wouldn’t be far wrong.  Just keep the modern equivalent of Stephen Decatur at ready. Semper Peratus. Semper Fidelus.

Obama ahead?

I still find it hard to believe that Obama may win this.  I’ve been reading the leftist stuff and they are cooing about how Clinton “told it how it was” about the economy, Romney is unlikeable and rich, and Obama seems sooooo smart.  Hmm.  Taking this one at a time, did Clinton and the Obama convince most people that Bush caused the recession?  That’s a new one on me. I thought recessions were caused by overspeculation, not Presidents.  Millions of bad decisions by individuals acting like lemmings cause recessions.  The last recession was caused by overspeculation in housing.  So did Bush teach all those people to say, “House prices will always go up, always go up, always go up!” ?  The recession of 2001 was caused by overspeculation in stocks, especially tech stocks, which began to decline from an S&P high of 1570 in March, 2000 to eventually reach a low of 713 in October 2002.  So did Clinton teach all those idiots to say, “The economy is so good.  We may never have another recession. The Dow will soon reach 30,000.”? That’s the kind of talk we heard, evidencing the frothy markets. And you wouldn’t normally think of blaming a President for a lousy recovery, except that Presidents (and congresses) can put debt and regulations in place that scare the business community.  That’s what we have now.

 

But it may be that Obama has hoodwinked a majority of voters.  Too bad for America.

The Left is also all abuzz about how Romney is not seem trustworthy.  So then we find out that Obama has a son out of wedlock which surfaced at the Dem convention and that Bill Clinton is telling us all about trust in his speech.  You know the single mothers loved and trusted Bill and now they love and trust Obama.  Would it be too out of place to say this is why they wind up single?  I do see part of their argument, however.  During the primary I noted that Romney was such a proud guy.  He doesn’t admit much guilt and is stiff and formal.  But considering that our debt bomb is headed for  detonation soon, I would say we need an accountant with a sharp pencil to mark through a lot of budget items.  Whether my accountant is a warm, personable guy who winks and flirts is not my concern.  I want him to get the numbers right. Clearly, Romney will do that better than Obama.  Evidently the bozos are out to hire an accountant with a good pick-up line.  As for me and my house, I am invested reasonably well against the possibility of debt-bomb/stagflation. But it won’t be pretty when it happens.  And then comes inflation/taxation as we try to make amends.

 

 

Smart guy, Obama, could not figure out that it was a terrorist attack that took out our ambassador for nine days.  Then suddenly the assessment changed 180 degrees. Best assessment that the attacks were not spontaneous riots is provided by Chris Mudd.  He asked me how many US flags I could round up if I went around Ponca City and bought them all.  Well, I dunno, maybe a hundred total.  “They claimed the mob in Cairo burned 20,000 US flags.  Now that takes a bit of advance preparation, given that it is Egypt and you are trying to find a US flag, right?” Is Obama’s “smart” foreign policy anything like proposing shovel-ready projects when nothing was shovel-ready? Smart like Fast and Furious? Have we brought Iran, Palestine and N. Korea to the negotiating table yet? And then there’s the lost Hope of Changing Washington.  And how a lowering sea level would come and the race card would vanish. Smart?

 

Do people actually drink this Kool-Aid? If so, it is not America’s finances that will collapse, but our Americanism.

What is marriage

We attended Steve’s son and daughter-in-law’s wedding Saturday and Diana’s brother preached.  I had to laugh,  Pastor Dyer had all the Baptists convinced he was a Baptist because of his causal to the point delivery and yet the Lutherans were thrilled to hear him explain marriage as designed by God.  And all the guys from the call committee at our Lutheran church wanted to immediately vote to call him.  Ha!

 

Here are several points and a few I would add myself about marriage.  We may think sitting at a wedding is just a 30 minute casual church affair and the groomsmen may think that if they can tolerate the money suits, the bridesmaids smile and look cute in their dresses, then it will soon be over.  But this wedding  is holy ground because wherever God’s Word is, that is holy ground (think Moses).  God put two people together just as he noticed his bride in the church on earth and noticed that he had the groom by his side in heaven.  And he put the two of them together.  Marriage is like the church’s relationship with it’s Lord and the church is like a marriage.  Do you doubt this? Then look at Genesis 2:7-18.  Adam was surrounded by all of creation and had a perfect relationship with God.  Yet astoundingly God says, “It is not good for man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” Now how could busy and spiritual Adam possibly consider himself alone, but God knew he was missing something special and specific. It was not good that he be alone spiritually, emotionally, socially or physically.  And 2:18 ends with the solution of a “helper”.  Those who know their Hebrew note that the word can also be translated “compliment”—like two puzzle pieces that fit in each other’s voids perfectly.  And the two represent the fullness of God’s character. The Hebrew scholars tell me that the words for "man" and for "woman" is the same word, just masculine and feminine endings. 

 

Astoundingly, God doesn’t create a woman and let her roam around until Adam finds her like the animals.  In Gen. 2:21-24 He causes a sleep to befall Adam, takes a rib and makes it into woman.  And then He brought her to Adam.  Talk about an arranged marriage! And she is so close to him, so complimentary to him that a man will forsake his family to become one with the woman.  In a similar manner, God brought his Son to mankind when they were yet evil and sinful, died for them and brought mankind together with His Son in the Holy Spirit.  Pastor Dyer asked the congregation to pray for the newlyweds and made them swear to it.  (Which caused my Baptist friend to say, “hey, Baptists are wary of oaths but this time we were convinced.”) And the groomsmen and bridesmaids were charged with supporting this new couple.  And the family came up to gather around Chris and Amy and pray in front of us great cloud of witnesses. Wow!

 

Man alone completes a woman and woman alone completes a man.  I know this because Jesus said it in Matthew 19:4-6.  Love is the centerpiece of the relationship. (So much for loveless arrangements and shacking up) It takes a man and a woman, not 2 men or 2 women or 3 women and a bunch of kids.  (So much for “gay marriage” and the nanny state as dad) Children do not complete a family, they come to it and expand it.  The husband and wife are the priority relationship and other relationships are subject to it.  Hey, I didn’t say this.  Jesus did.

 

It was a good thing Diana’s bro stopped when he did.  Otherwise we were about to storm the popular culture.  A friend told us, “It was like renewing my vows.” A pretty powerful homily, a pretty powerful belief, I would say.