More From The Banner — When Does Life Begin

“To assert that “an embryo is not a potential human life—it is a human life with potential” is comparable to asserting that an acorn is an oak tree or that an egg is a chicken. This assertion makes the already difficult conversations about embryos virtually impossible and loads unwarranted guilt on those who lovingly make informed choices that result in the destruction of defective or healthy embryos.”

—George Vander Weit Rochester, Mich.

George, it just this simple. We don’t know when life begins. We don’t know. Now, since we don’t know, we are, by necessity, in a position where we need to err on the side of being conservative. If we err with acorns, chicken eggs, or tulip bulbs, nobody is going to lose any sleep. However, if we err with nascent human beings and are destructive with those that God does count as human life, well then that is another story all together. Ignorance on this vital and important of a matter should be very patient in awaiting for enlightenment. Fools, however rush in where ignorant but wise people fear to tread.

I do agree however that caution does make the already difficult conversation about embryos virtually impossible. It makes it virtually impossible because it challenges the presuppositions of ignorance that are masquerading as knowledge. It makes it difficult because suddenly we now are in the position of having to consider the possibility that those conceived people already are stamped with the Imago Dei. If we consider that it is possible that conceived people already have the Imago Dei stamped on them suddenly we are no longer in a position to harvest them for vaccines, or skin cream, or replacement parts for when we get old and decrepit.

You say that you fear that people are going to be loaded with unwarranted guilt. But, again, George, you don’t know absolutely if that guilt is unwarranted. This is a presumption on your part. It may be the case that the guilt is quite warranted. Since we don’t know when life begins I think it is unwarranted of you to suggest that guilt in the destruction of healthy or defective embryos is unwarranted.

One of the mottoes for Doctors has been for centuries, “First, do no harm.” I think George, that motto might serve us pretty well on this issue. Since we don’t know when life begins, we should “First, do no harm.”

The Banner Pushes Homosexual Agenda Via Sentimentalism

“Where is My Son Welcome?

Some time ago I asked my oldest son a question that was very hard to ask. My wife and I had talked about asking him on occasion, and as I was talking with him on the phone late one night, it seemed to come a bit naturally. I asked him if he was gay.

Our son had grown up in the home of a Christian Reformed pastor—his father, me. As a pastor I had thought about and re-thought and sometimes spoken about and written about (in newspapers) the issue of being gay. I am certain that our son understood from me what most Christian Reformed people believe about being gay.

Our son knew he was gay for 10 years without telling anyone. How he must have struggled, wondering if his parents would still accept him if he came out. As I remember the few times he asked me for my personal thoughts on people who were gay, it breaks my heart to think that behind the questions was a growing knowledge about his own orientation.

How he must have struggled when, years later, I left him at a Christian college—but not before we had dinner with friends of the school. During that dinner we lamented the hardship caused to the school by the presence of a gay faculty member. How he must have struggled when his fellow students ostracized gays. Our son kept quiet.

He once did make a choice regarding his sexual orientation. In high school he chose to live a straight, heterosexual lifestyle. He thought he might never tell anyone of his orientation and still somehow have a wife and children. How much did he struggle when his dates with young Christian females did not create any sparks for him? Our son chose his sexual orientation and expression. But the choice did not catch. He remains gay.

The first setting in which our son was accepted as a gay young man was his “secular” medical school. The acceptance was immediate. What a sad contrast to his experience in the Christian community.

I believe that I am called as a father to love my son. God has placed him in our family. My wife and I are called to love and support him in every way. His brother and sister, along with many other relatives and friends, have been clear that they love him and support him. Our wish for him is the same as that for all our children: that he would live his whole life, whatever choices he will make, in the context of the grace of Christ. But if, in that context, he chooses a committed same-sex relationship with a Christian partner, a choice that does not conform to the expectations of most straight Christians, where will he be welcome?

First, we should note that Christians should have sympathy for those who have embraced any kind of sinful lifestyle. Growing up I lived with a destructive Father who embraced multiple significant lifestyle aberrations but until the day he died I never quit having sympathy for my Father. I can understand therefore Pastor Veenema’s sympathy for his son, who, like my Father, has embraced a significant lifestyle aberration.

Yet, as much as I loved my Father and had sympathy for him, I would not have shown him any love if I had excused his behavior as just an alternative lifestyle. In the same way we do not show the homosexual community any love by excusing their behavior as just an alternative lifestyle. Homosexuality is a sin that attacks God by directly attacking the image of God upon man. The ontological differences between male and female, reflecting God’s ontology do not exist in a homosexual relationship. As such the coupling of two men that are engaged in the act of sodomy is an attempt to deface the image of God by attacking an aspect of that image that makes them distinctly male and uniquely human. The sin of homosexuality by attacking God, results, as all sin does, in destroying the person who has embraced it. Should we allow our sympathy and pity for sinners to eliminate the necessity of calling for repentance we turn sympathy and pity into vices masquerading as virtues as a sympathy and pity that do not and can not call for repentance are emotions that damn the person who has need to repent by coddling them in their sin.

Second, there is a subtle presumption in this article that homosexuals don’t choose their homosexuality. Now, very few Christian social scientists would contend that a person wakes up some morning and decides to be homosexual, just as very few people wake up and decide to be kleptomaniacs are in more severe cases mass murderers. How it is that our fallen-ness exhibits itself from person to person or why our fallen-ness exhibits itself in the way it does from individual to individual is anybody’s guess, but all because people aren’t epistemologically self conscious about selecting their besetting sin doesn’t mean that on some level choices weren’t made along the way. People are responsible for their sinful behavior and this includes my Father and it includes Pastor Veenema’s son.

Now some will argue that homosexuality is genetic but there isn’t any hard evidence out there that supports that claim that doesn’t come from “scientists” who have a homosexual axe to grind.

Third, I will be the first to admit that the way societal and cultural taboos often operate are cruel and mean spirited. But having admitted that we also must admit that there is a certain generosity in the cruelness and mean spiritedness of societal and cultural taboos. That generosity is found in the fact that the purpose of the cruelness and meanness often is to send a message to other individuals in the culture who might be tempted to pursue a cultural taboo that someone else has violated not to trespass in that direction. Those who violate cultural taboos are punished with the kind of ostracization that Pastor Veenema speaks of in reference to his son and though there is a certain cruelness to such a practice there is also a certain warning for those with eyes to see how they will be treated if they tread this direction. If we tear down negatives that surround taboos, at the same time we tear down the taboo and communicate that acceptability of the behavior that the negativity surrounding the taboo was serving as a “keep out” sign in order to reinforce the taboo.

Fourth, it must be clearly said that if Pastor Veenema’s son chooses “a committed same-sex relationship with a Christian partner,” then Pastor Veenema’s son is no longer living in the context of the “grace of Christ.” Homosexuality is a sin. Galatians 5 teaches that those who live in the lifestyle of sin will in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. It is the soul of sympathy and pity to speak such words to those caught in the web of sin. It is the soul of enmity and hostility to refuse to speak such words to those trapped in sin.

I have sympathy for Pastor Veenema. My heart goes out to him. I know what it is to live with a loved one who chose personal destruction over the fullness of life created by grace. But Pastor Veenema does his son, nor his church, nor his God, any favors, in the midst of his anguish for his son, to try and subtly suggest that the Church can embrace those as members who have no heart for repenting in light of God’s clearly revealed Word.

If I could I would fill the church with repentant homosexuals as members. If I could I would fill the church with repentant homosexuals who still struggle against that besetting sin as members. But I find nowhere in Scripture that allows me to fill the Church with homosexuals that expect the Word to be reinterpreted so as to codify their lasciviousness and lust. To believe and confess anything else would be terribly hateful to such people.

Adler & Bernays

“Anyone who has done any thinking, even a little bit, knows that it is painful. It is hard work-in fact the very hardest that human beings are ever called upon to do. It is fatiguing, not refreshing. If allowed to follow the path of least resistance, no one would ever think. To make boys and girls, or men and women, think-and through thinking really undergo the transformation of learning-educational agencies of every sort must work against the grain, not with it….

Not only must we honestly announce that pain and work are the irremovable and irreducible accompaniments of genuine learning, not only must we leave entertainment to the entertainers and make education a task and not a game, but we must have no fears about what is “over the public’s head.” Whoever passes by what is over his head condemns his head to its present low altitude; for nothing can elevate a mind except what is over its head; and that elevation is not accomplished by capillary attraction, but only by the hard work of climbing up the ropes, with sore hands and aching muscles. The school system which caters to the median child, or worse, to the lower half of the class; the lecturer before adults-and they are legion-who talks down to his audience; the radio or television program which tries to hit the lowest common denominator of popular receptivity-all these defeat the prime purpose of education by taking people as they are and leaving them just there.”

Mortimer Adler
Invitation to the Pain of Learning

Adlerian Psychology is utter tripe. I just wanted to get that out of the way before I made commentary on this quote.

In God’s providence the article that this quote came from was sent to me after spending a day studying the history of psychotherapy and propaganda in America. In that study I was introduced to Edward Bernays (1891-1995), considered one of the most influential men in America in the 20th century. Bernay’s propaganda techniques emphasized bypassing people’s reason and manipulating them by going after their unconscious fears. Now, I give no tuck to the Freudian idea (Bernays was Freud’s nephew) of the “unconscious,” but Bernays’ used that idea to transform America’s political conversation as well as its approach to advertising. What I think was really happening in Bernays’ work was not the capturing and manipulation of unconscious fears but rather Bernays was using symbols that were already packed with a great deal of a-priori conscious but un-articulated meaning that Americans embraced. By manipulating symbols Bernays was able to bypass the explicit nature of communication for a implicit communication and thus created a whole new era of social manipulation in the fields of advertising and political conversation. In short what Bernays was doing is he was taking the symbols of America that non-epistemologically self conscious Americans embraced and he was playing with them to achieve mass propaganda and mass manipulation.

The cure for Bernays’ manipulative technique, which is still a tool that is used to manipulate, is found in Adler’s quote. The reason that Bernays could succeed is that Americans don’t want to engage in the hard working of thinking — and if that was true in early 20th century America (Bernays hayday) how much more true is it today. Only the hard work of thinking can aid Americans in seeing through the smoke and mirrors legerdemain that modern propagandists (and their name is legion) use to continue to manipulate people.

As long as we continue to be a people who think that education should be “edutainment” (a combination of entertainment and education) and that reading should be FUNdmental (a recent slogan to get kids to read) or that our news should be “infotainment” (a combination of entertainment and information) we will continued to be cork-screwed as a people. Thinking and education is hard work, as Adler tells us and anybody who doesn’t realize that or that can’t accept that is testifying that they are not educated nor do they spend any time thinking.

To finish, I also want to use this quote to make a couple of points about the Church.

First, all that money you are paying your minister is being paid to him so he can engage in the hard work of learning God’s truth and thinking God’s thoughts after Him. He isn’t being paid to be a social butterfly or a CEO of a growth industry. He isn’t being paid so he can be one of the entertainers who give you “relgiotainment,” and he is not doing his job if he doesn’t make your head hurt by insisting that you think. Part of the reason the Church is floundering is that Bernays’ techniques have come into the Church. The Church has become a propaganda center where people are manipulated into supporting a product that can’t give what it promises.

Second, if you have a Pastor, who makes you break out your dictionaries then break out your dictionaries and thank God for him. It is true that the Pastor has a responsibility to help you understand. He should take the time to explain thoroughly difficult concepts and words but he should explain them as if he is explaining them to adults. As such you must do the work of helping the Pastor help you understand. The Church in America has spent the last 100 years serving as a co-dependent upon the School systems dumbing down of America. The only way that this dumbing down process is going to be reversed is if Pastors quit talking baby talk in the pulpit. Remember, Adler’s words, “nothing can elevate a mind except what is over its head; and that elevation is not accomplished by capillary attraction, but only by the hard work of climbing up the ropes, with sore hands and aching muscles.”

Laymen if you want to see through the manipulation and propaganda that is going on in this culture you must learn how to think and be willing to do the hard work of thinking. One way to aid you in this is to find a Church and Pastor that is willing to treat you like adults and who are already engaged in the hard work of thinking.

Obama Re-making America

President B. Hussein Obama’s recent move to provide massive mortgage bailout funds is another example of theft as it steals from the producers of society who pay their mortgages month in and month out in favor of those who can’t pay mortgages on houses they should have never been given loans on. This policy is nothing but a “house give away” welfare program and is an example of Obama keeping his campaign promise to “Joe the plumber” to spread the wealth around. This is classic re-distriubtionists economics and is a violation of the Eight Commandment.

Everybody knows that 275 billion is a drop in the ocean of bad mortgage debt. What the 275 billion will inevitably do is save the houses of those are currently in the worst mortgage debt situation while sacrificing those with mortgage problems which are not as severe and will only reach a critical state after the 275 billion for the welfare mortgages have been sopped up by the welfarists and cheaters. This means we are going to be rewarding those that took out loans they had no business receiving and now have been in houses beyond their means for a few years at the expense of those who took out reasonable loans and who have been in homes 10-15 years.

Do not think this policy is accidental. Obama has promised to remake America. Obama’s vision of America is basically a cultural marxism vision of life. The cultural marxist vision of America is one that champions putting the bottom rail up top. The cultural marxist vision believes that those who are members of the middle class are there by way of fraud and oppression of the lower classes. Obama’s vision is to switch these economic classes so that the bottom tier is on top of the currently higher rail. Cultural Marxism also believes that the middle class ethics need to be replaced with a more bohemian and relative ethic and so I look for this administration to continue to pursue the kind of educational policies that Obama championed when he worked with William Ayers crafting curriculum for Chicago Public schools.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MTgwZTVmN2QyNzk2MmUxMzA5OTg0ODZlM2Y2OGI0NDM=

“However, Kurtz’ report provides a very interesting look at the early political life of Barack Obama. He had already entered politics at the time he joined the CAC, and even at that stage had allied himself with ACORN, which has found itself at the center of more than a dozen voter-fraud investigations. Obama also allied himself with Ayers and helped the former Weather Underground fugitive push forward with his plans to radicalize an entire generation of schoolchildren in the area through the CAC. Note well the parallels to community organizing that play out in the activities of the CAC, and recall again how Obama claims that activity as a major qualification for the presidency.

Ayers wanted teachers trained to instruct against “oppression” and to push schoolchildren towards political beliefs Ayers valued — apparently valuing them higher than actual education. Barack Obama agreed, and for several years worked in close partnership with Ayers to implement that educational policy. Even had Ayers never tossed a single bomb, this kind of educational philosophy would likely raise eyebrows with most parents, who desire a real education for their children and not some sort of political indoctrination camp. With the context of Ayers’ violent radicalism, however, it makes the CAC even worse — a breeding ground for future Weathermen, ready to follow Ayers’ lead when the time comes for the revolution that Ayers and his wife (and co-terrorist) Bernardine Dohrn to this day desire.”

The key in following Obama in the years ahead is his promise to “Remake America.” Obama envision an America where the precepts of racial and cultural marxism prevail over the nation and this will be consistently pursued in the name of equality and egalitarianism. The fact that his policies thus far are consistent with that goal should not surprise anyone.

Ask The Pastor

Terri Schoolteacher wrote,

“1. I am not sure what the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, has to do with Barack Obama, other than another opportunity to blame him for something. Canadian PM Stephan Harper supports it to.

2. Working in a school, I WISH the state would step in and save some of these kids, because THEIR OWN PARENTS can’t, or don’t make good decisions for them. Just because you do, doesn’t mean all do.

3. I am actually doing a unit of the UN Rights of the Child resolution with my class right now, and we are studying this document. And yes, there are parts that make me pause, but we have to remember that we have a very western view of things. That some of these things are in there because of the nature and of the vast number of countries and governments in the world. While maybe there is a bad instance, you should not blame the entire document, or the world leaders for supporting the overall theme.”

Dear Terri,

1.) Having worked with social workers over the years in cases where difficult family situations exist I can tell you that, generally speaking, a child is better off suffering at the hands of their family then the suffering they go through at the hands of the state when the state seizes them.

2.) The fact that other liberal leaders (and all leaders in the West are liberal / statist) support the UN doesn’t mean that Christians should support the UN’s Convention on the rights of Children. You can not come to truth by counting noses — not even the noses of the “leaders” of the West. If every leader of the West were for the UN’s Convention on the rights of Children it would provide no cover for people who believe the state has no business having jurisdictional teeth over the family.

3.) I would say that any child being in a government school is proof either that their parents don’t love them or that their parents are terribly confused over what constitutes parental responsibility. Consider Terri, when parents send their children to government schools they are basically putting them up for adoption to be raised by strangers. In light of that I don’t know why we would start picking on some subset of those who are unloved.

4.) If we have a very Western view it means we have a very right view of things. Non Western views of things come from countries where they burn widows with their deceased husbands or limit the population to one child per family or kill their wives by chopping their heads off.

5.) Of all the things for children to learn why in the world would any teacher worth her salt spend any time studying a UN resolution? How about studying the travels of Marco Polo or the impact of Christianity on the West or the rise of the Reformation or the development of the Long Bow or stirrup and the impact those technologies made upon the world, or any number of other things that might make for real knowledge?

I do blame the entire document. Lock stock and barrel. It is an attempt on the part of the global governance crowd to steal children from their familial jurisdiction. It is the same kind of thing that Hitler youth and the Stalin communist club were subjected to.

Terri, please keep in mind that as a government employee that you have a real interest in seeing this treaty pass.