To avoid filter blocks I am calling this deadly eye candy

I posted a commet today to the excellent web site called Sonspot. He wrote a short item on the dearth of visual sin and its effects upon the church. Here are my comments ..."deadly eye candy" is in all ways one of the worst of the plagues that are upon the "church" First you peek, then you sneak, and you end up a creep. The "eye is never satisfied." We must do like Job. We (the spiritual and righteous believer) must "make a covenant with our eyes." (Job 31:1) If you are into "deadly eye candy" you are unable to walk under any anoiting. You are correct in saying, "light" is snuffed out in this type of man's thinking. This undermines all power and conviction in the church and like secret abortion leads to compromise with the "false light" of the worlds wisdom. Thanks for posting this blog. You are in my "top 100" bolg list.
Bruce Harpel. ("Sprucegoose")
The name of Sonspots item is Desensitizing the Spirit. He is quoting another web site called All Things Possible. It just touches the tip of the iceberg that this subject brings up. I think I will muse over this and add comments about this subject on a regular basis. More to come tonight.

Tears of Joy

sprucegoose4
Originally uploaded by bruceharpel.

The purple index finger points to the tear filled eye of one person, still anonymous, who rises up to dare to burst forth and hope once again.

Setting Men Free

What a joyous day! I hung on last night until 3 AM hoping to see something of the elections in Iraq. It was just a tease. This morning, after my quiet time, I finally went to the blogs to see if there was any news. What joy! Powerline and others had photos of long lines and Shepard Smith on Fox is showing other visually impacting insights.

The people came out. Butchers who cut off innocent workers heads and indiscriminate bombers of women and children could not stop the yearning in the heart of man to live free. First it was a trickle then a flood. Men and women bursting out of their bonds and casting aside fear went to the polling places and stood in line for hours until they finally could simply have a voice in what they hoped for. Self-determination is a powerful drive. Hope is powerful motivation.

Oh, if only men and women everywhere could discern and see that they are also in bondage in the spiritual areas of life. Slaves to anger, fear, lust, power. These are the source of the individual bondages of man. The things that keep us from living free and letting our light shine. Our will, when in bondage, is to do the will of our spiritual captive who has come to “steal, kill, and destroy.” Who will set us free from such a life of self-destruction? Self-defeat? Futility? Meaninglessness?

God’s method of justice is not the same as mans. Mans drive for freedom causes him to take risks, cast aside fear and rise up to simply cast a ballot following a blitz of bombs, death and mayhem that drives the enemy back. God’s method is to turn up the anointing, the “light,” the “ring” of truth in individuals who walk in His presence until the darkness flees around them.

Mans methods lasts for a season, when they work at all. God’s method sets individuals free for eternity. “He who the Son sets free is free indeed.”

If our joy is with tears when man works his methods, how much more will our joy be when we see God’s ultimate plan exposed at its completion? And eternal freedom is coming, as sure as the dawn. Glory!

Machholz

Machholz
Originally uploaded by bruceharpel.

Tonight at 9PM the comet machholz is visable in the upper western sky. It is near (above) the constellation Cassiopeia when viewed from Minnesota. Here is a starmap to help you find it. It is at about 1 o'clock. It looks like a bright star in that area. If the skies are clear in your area why don't you take a look.

Hallelujah ! I have learned how to add photos. The Sprucegoose in Black and White

BruceBW
Originally uploaded by bruceharpel.

Wedding

It has been five days since I last published on this blog. I have been very busy. My oldest son was married on Sunday and I was tied up in the details. What a glorious wedding it was. The kiss at the altar was the first kiss. (A decision that my son and daughter-in-law decided upon at engagement. It was a "gift" to honor God. Out of their desire to have a holy wedding.) God showed up! The guests were affected and God's grace was there from the first notes of the pre-wedding worship time. I was undone and would have preferred to have just stayed in His presence and finished the wedding later but the music eventually ended and the ceremony continued. If the weddings of my two daughters in April and August are anything like this one I will be a blessed, blessed, father. Oh, how gracious is our God who saves us.

Pray For New Regents

The Minneapolis (Red) Star Tribune reports that there are 9 new applicants for four openings on the Board of Regents.
I hope that the ones selected are the most conservative and Godly of the group. Could you all pray for this selection process?
There are tough decisions ahead and we need advocates with wisdom not agendas.
Thank you for praying.

Pro-life March

When I came to the University of Minnesota in the winter of 1980 a very unexpected pleasant surprise met me. On the campus of the University of Minnesota about 100 pro-life students held a pro-life march around the mall area every year at noon about one day before the anniversary date of Roe vs. Wade. They carried signs, a coffin, and a trashcan representing the deaths of the innocent unborn children.

I had been actively involved in pro-life work for many years and had even gone so far as to be arrested and spent six days in the Atlanta jail once for crawling on my hands and knees (so no policeman would think we were dangerous) and blocking the door to an abortion clinic. I have been ticketed, sued, and threatened. I saw pro-life work as the work of every Christian and still do.

Those who were part of our group and myself participated in the campus march every year for about five to eight years until the event seemed to die off for lack of interest or leadership. After the event missed a couple of years I attempted to organize and hold the event myself rather than letting it just fall by the wayside. We notified all the student groups and hoped that they would all turn out as in the past.

Instead of the big group as in the past, there were only about 20 people other than the ones of our group that showed up. We held the event anyways. We changed the format to a more solemn and peaceful one of simply walking slowly around the mall with only one sign in the front and one in the back while we sang amazing grace. The signs were no way inflammatory. We simply want to remember the unborn this way each year in the “village” of our influence.

Over the years the numbers have fallen off to one or two from other groups along with about 1/3 of the numbers that we used to turn out of our own group. But we have not quit. This year though was the first year in 25 that I have missed. I have the wedding of my first child coming up today and we held rehearsal and the customary dinner Friday when the march was scheduled. I had to make a choice of focus. I missed the memorial and felt a sense of loss.

We will continue to do this each year as long as I can still walk. This year it was in a blizzard. Other years it has been as cold as –15. But it is not the weather that makes me sad. It is the lack of interest and the lonely role of the faithful few. But we will not forget. 45 million have died.

That is bloodshed on an epic level. The anti war crowd still do not get it. The whole three state west coast could drop off into the ocean and it would not match the loss of life due to abortion. You could take all of the dead of all of the wars in our countries history and it would not match the loss of life due to abortion.

I used to think that I cared about all of the unborn that have died. I found out in Atlanta that I do not care as much as I thought. I never want to go to jail again.

It is mostly non-Christian children that are being killed but a significant number are from Christian families. I would go to jail again to stop the abortion of a child I know but my convictions do not run as deeply for others. I have to face this every time I look at my face in the mirror about this time of the year.

What does the future hold? Will there be laws to totally outlaw abortion? I don’t think so anymore. There will be restrictions but not elimination. It is always a lot harder to gain back territory that is lost than it is to win it in the first place. But yet there is hope.

Stealth Christians

Many see our form of Christianity as polarizing and divisive. It is as if there is an element in life that wants to set the definitions and the rules of play to exclude strongly held (Christian) viewpoints. The opposition feels that if you are firm in your beliefs and you are not willing to stuff them into the closet and work as a “stealth Christian” then you are polarizing the battlefield and this is a bad thing. Really, there are many who think that this is the way to reach the world with truth. It is as if they think that “truth” by itself will be something that the world will run to if they only are given a chance to hear it. We are not called to preach “truth” we are called to preach “Jesus, crucified and risen.” I don’t believe in “stealth Christianity.”

Why is it a bad thing to hold your beliefs too strongly? I think it is good to know who is on your side and who is against you. There are multitudes that are in the “valley of decision” but you can’t get them to love Jesus by feeding them honey. They must “see” Him as He is. He is not just a cool Prophet.

Strongly held beliefs are not politically correct. They are out of fashion. Tolerance is the new code word for “you are holding your beliefs too firmly.” But is the enemy willing to yield? Are they willing to admit to the validity of conservative truth? Of course they are not. They instead are vocal, unyielding, and mocking of the truths of the biblically grounded Christian. They are only open to everything else.

Truth, by definition, cannot, once obtained, be compromised. It is truth not opinion. It is God who establishes truth, not journalists or scientists. Truth and wisdom are precious and should not be yielded cheaply or lightly. What light you have should be worth dying for or you really have no light at all.

We can be kind, gentle, and loving, but we cannot compromise the truth that sets men free. There is a God and He establishes all truth. This is not a faith statement. It is truth. Amen?

China

I think China is the next big thing to rise into world politics and not the EU. I suspect that China will set the agenda during the next 20 years. At the end of the next 20 years China will be positioned as the only world power that can match the US on the world stage. Why you ask? Because China has the military structure to be a mover and shaker and the EU does not. Diplomacy can only go just so far before it bumps into battleships, aircraft, and tanks. The projection of power cannot just be economics. It must have its war machine to back it up.

Recently the US has been the power to back up the economics of most of the western world but it will not be able to keep it up for long. I expect that China will slowly match the US step for step. In China, there are potentially over 206,000,000 men fit for duty in the military. This is two thirds of the whole population of the US. In China, military service is compulsory with a 2-year commitment when an individual turns 18. There are currently 2.8 million men in uniform. The US has 1.3 million. China exports more arms per Gross Domestic Product than the US so the war machine infrastructure is there.

But China and the US are decreasing their military. China by 28% and the US by 37%. We will run out of military before they will. Most of the world’s military growth is in the African and Islamic countries. Still China has the ability to turn up the heat very quickly.

China needs oil just like the US does. It is already beginning to shop the worlds oil markets to supply its rapidly growing economy. With it’s growth comes an unquenchable appetite for more oil as the reserves decrease. They have gone to Russia to bargain for their reserves in Siberia but lost in a bidding war with Japan. As it is, there is the equivalent of a pipeline on the wheels of a railway between China and Siberia.

What happens when the cheap oil reserves are gone? Never fear, there is enough oil to supply the whole world into the next century but the only question is, “at what cost.”
Cheap oil will be gone soon. Maybe as soon as 20 years from now. That’s when the players will reshuffle the deck. In the meantime the chess game goes on. And the US has its players in the middle of the known reserves. Popular politics says we will move our forces out as soon as we can. Power politics says we have our pieces right where we want them. Even the Caspian Sea has American troops near by.

Yet, is a conflict inevitable? Maybe not, if the US is willing or able to do without oil 20 years from now. Technology anyone?

Mac vs. PC

18 reasons why you should ditch your PC and get a Mac.
http://www.fireandknowledge.org/archives/2005/01/18/why-you-should-ditch-your-pc-and-switch-to-mac/
Check it out on the Fire and Knowledge web blog.
But you will have to copy and paste the URL until I figure out how to post a hyperlink.

Martin Luther King

Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, TN while I was living there. My introduction to southern culture was impacting after having lived in mostly Northern Midwestern cities for the part of my life that led up to my move to Memphis in 1964. I was not ready for the blatant outward and obvious prejudice I ran into when I arrived. At the theater there were two entrances. One in the front under a smart marquis for whites only and the other around the side and down the street that only led to the second balcony. This was the “colored” entrance. They also had their own concession counter and bathrooms. Laundromats were for whites on one side and blacks on the other side behind a wall. They had separate entrances also. White and black drinking fountains. “White only” signs were on the doors to restaurants, clubs, schools, bowling alleys, and roller skating rinks. It was a different time then.

It is not that there wasn’t prejudice up North. It is just that it was subtler. But tension was high that spring in Memphis. The garbage men were on strike. All they wanted was the minimum wage everybody else in the U.S. had. Garbage collection in Memphis was a black only job and the pay was very sub-standard. So they went on strike. King came to town to show support for this event. Then they killed him.

That night a neighbor in our apartment complex came over and knocked on my door. He came to give me a pistol. He thought I would need it to defend myself before the night was over because the tension for a black revolution was over the top. Shear ugly hate and rage was everywhere. I was puzzled by my neighbor’s viewpoint. He was a good reflection of most normal Memphis white citizens that night but I didn’t run with their crowd.

I handed his pistol back to him and told him that I didn’t think it would come to that. He looked puzzled and went back home. I went back into my apartment and watched the events on TV and wept. It seems like murder and hate was everywhere. Viet Nam, assassinations, weathermen, panthers, and other ugly Americans.

The “summer of love” came next. Most of my generation just wanted it all to be over. I imagine that this is a little bit how it must feel in Iraq these days. Ugly hate and rage. I pray tonight for them and their upcoming election.

Honor 101

At the University of Minnesota about 5 years ago, there was a Chinese couple who were interacting with a number of Christian groups. They seemed to be true believers. They upheld all of the creedal tenets of historical Christianity. Naturally, we asked them if they wanted to take the next step and be baptized and they said “no.” We were startled.
“Why not?” Their answer was to be a revolution to our worldview.

They said they did not want to be Christians! We replied, “why not? You believe everything that Christians believe. You are in our minds already a Christian. Why would you not want to get baptized and be a Christian?” But they were insistent. They simply would not yield and follow up their faith with baptism.

Later we found out why. The term “Christian” was a negative and pejorative term to them. They heard us saying, “don’t you want to be baptized and become a Westerner?”
To them Christian meant to be a profane part of western culture. The dishonoring culture that we are used to was anathema to them.

They come from a culture where honor plays a very important part. We come from a world that has a street word for its dishonoring ways. By now all of us know what it means to “dis” someone. It means to disrespect them. Our kids disrespect their parents and our citizens disrespect their government, teachers, bosses, and employees. If this is what Christianity is then they wanted nothing of it.

We learned a lot that day. Maybe I will write more on this later.

Learning Curves

I am working on learning the technology involved in doing blogs. I was born before TV and ballpoint pens. In a day and age in which there were penny candy stores just about everywhere. Things move pretty fast now days and it is hard to keep up.

I am a Mac man. Not because of any special technological reasons but only because it was the simplest for me to learn. It supplies all of my needs and I am more media oriented than scientific. I only need about 5 programs to do all the things I do so I am not current on any others. But I am trying.

Blogspot seemed like a simple way to start so I launched this blog using their template. Then I looked at other blogs and I felt like I must be underachieving. They have pictures, graphs, hotlinks, yada, yada, yada. Everything has a learning curve. And I think it must be really skewed in a direction that I am not going. Yet !

Creative Creation

From the disclaimer stickers that were found to be unconstitutional in Cobb county Georgia,

“This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.”

to the rejection of the book “Of Pandas and People” in Dover, Ohio, the ACLU is hard at work stopping the insidious encroachment of religion into the schools of America. “Your intelligent design theories are religious because the people who espouse them are Christians.” Or at least that is what their argument looks like to me.

They say, “when we dare to teach anything other than evolution as a theory of origins we are teaching a theory that implies a creator.” But is that really true? Intelligent design simply recognizes the problems with a theory that believes that the complexity of life came from random and natural processes. It denies that it was chance. It points out organization and patterns that imply the necessity of another explanation. You fill in the blanks.

But this is what chaps me… There is no science in the philosophy of evolution. There is microevolution. Yes, finch beaks change over time based on the needs of the species. But there is simply no evidence that a polly-wog becomes a crocodile over time no matter how much time you give it to happen. None. Zilch. Nada.

Even the pictures in the textbooks are fakes. Gypsy moths do not land on the bark of the trees. They are always on the leaves. No pigmy four legged antelope ever changed into a full size horse. It is just a drawing. Even the images of the “gills” on an embryo or the tail on the same are just drawings. The real thing does not look like that at all. Those illustrations are drawn by the same imaginations that make faces out of clouds. They are not photos of the real thing. The real thing looks entirely different.

Macroevolution is what the textbooks push. Slime turns into the human brain over (Now lets see… Hmm? … Nobody will believe thousands, or even millions, let’s say) billions of years. There is no natural mechanism for that. There is only a philosophical one. And in this game, time is the solution to everything.

Basically, science has no business saying that it can explain how life came to exist. It is the work of philosophers and theologians. The only reason I can see for doing so is to eliminate the possibility or need of a Creator, and that for less than scientific reasons. But I guess we are all so highly evolved now that the idea of a Creator is seen as immature. 8,000 years of the history of man and a Creator is simply just not cool. We are smarter than that.

If this continues current scientists will become the scandal of the future. The only clear thinkers will be those who can reason from a Creator. All the rest of the pseudo-scientist- philosophers will have lost all of their “creativity.”

Christian vs. Muslim

Last night I sat in our living room and talked with my two youngest sons and two of their friends since kindergarten. My two youngest and their friends are between 18 and 20. We were just hanging together as a family.

The thing about this night is that nobody was playing play station 2 or watching TV but we were all up and together and discussing current events and one of the new classes that one of the young men was taking now that the spring semester had started.

It was a religion class in a secular Jr. college. The junior colleges are full of new Muslim immigrants. And they are very active evangelizing and proselytizing off of the radar screen in this venue. They even actively pass out tracts. Imagine what would happen if a Christian were to pass out tracts in the halls of these secular colleges. They would be stopped immediately.

Why the kid gloves with Muslims? It is because they bite. If Christians evangelize Muslims they will complain to the authorities who then will run to their aid to protect them. And if they are stopped for doing their own evangelizing they will protest the oppression of their religious freedom. Thus they are winning the secular war.

The bureaucratic leadership of the secular institutions is by definition working just to eliminate waves. They have no personal opinion or agenda except to “keep the peace.”
Thus, the political strategy of a winner would be to be the “squeaky wheel that gets the grease.” But Americas feminized Christians are not like that. They would never be so rude as to complain. “We are about the good news of Jesus, not controversy,” they would say.

Thus they increasingly are marginalized out of the secular marketplace. And religion classes no longer support the Christian worldview. They have become recruiting grounds for Islam.

When the professor went around the room asking each student what their “religion” was our young friend said he didn’t have a religion. He saw religion as dead. He said he simply believed in Jesus Christ. The teacher freaked and two Muslim girls tried to evangelize him after class.
Amen? Or oh my?

Breaking Up Is So Hard To Do

Because of the break-up of the family there are more and more foster kids these days. The supply of broken kids outstrips the demand for foster parents. So Florida and other states go to the same sex relationships to supply foster parents. Usually these 2nd team people came from broken homes also. Is this the blind leading the blind? Do both fall in the ditch?
At least these states hold on to the sanity that one man, one woman, is the best home to raise kids in. And it seems the Supreme Court also still holds to this simple sanity. But for how much longer?

Free and Righteous

"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."  This famous quote was from British statesman Edmund Burke, who was born January 12, 1729. Considered the most influential orator in the House of Commons, Burke stands out in history, for as a member of the British Parliament, he defended the right of the American colonies to be free and strongly opposed the slave trade. Edmund Burke stated: "What is liberty without... virtue? It is... madness, without restraint. Men are qualified for liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites."

Consumer reports

World Net Daily reported on the fact that the Consumer Reports CEO and president is none other than past Planned Parenthood director for Maryland, James A. Guest. And he just cannot help himself. He just had to use the supposedly "unbiased and impartial "consumer magazine as a platform for his greatest passion, killing kids. No, I am not going to parse words here. These guys always seem rabid to me and their advocacy proves it.

Funny thing is, without knowing these facts, I had decided about 3 months ago not to renew my subscription again after at least 15 years as a subscriber. I just didn't like the tone of the magazine anymore. It was starting to seem too preachy about 2 to 3 years ago and I had had enough. Now I know why. I wouldn't be surprised if the money was gone and all the new executives have "golden parachutes" for when the ride is over. Corporate morals are at an all time low. There is even a backlash going on spiritually in the personal and corporate lives of many of my friends who have become Christians and found the corporate world too corrupt. Christian faith support groups are springing up everywhere. If the corporate world in America has any hope it is with these groups.

But then really, doesn't everybody have a bias? There really is nothing neutral in life. It is either for God or against Him. There is a small grey area of people who are for God but not committed. Jesus says this group will not soon be against Him.
But even they will have to make a choice by in by. Why do we go on with this masquerade of neutrality?

Free Speech, Squeek Up

I think my perspective on free speech came not from the 60’s although I admit I sat up that night of the riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 68 and just wept. My perspective was developed in 1982 when we put up a banner on a large “frat house” on fraternity row. The banner read, “Jesus Christ Is Lord of the University of Minnesota.”
A bit presumptuous, I admit, but this is what we believed then and it is what we believe now. Simply put, Jesus is the one and only true Lord of the Universe. And I am not in the least embarrassed to say so. It is just clear plain Christian doctrine. “Jesus Christ Is Lord” is simply the first historical Christian creed. It was all the doctrine the early church had for over 200 years.

Well, predicatively, you would have thought we set off a small and dirty nuclear device in the midst of a peaceful nation. The University newspaper The Minnesota Daily ran editorials and letters about the event for weeks afterward. There were those who wanted to debate the issue and there were others that simply angrily demanded that we remove the sign at once. We did neither. About a week later a march was organized and the media was alerted. Like clockwork, at around noon about 15 people from other belief groups came and marched on the sidewalk in front of our building. Some were wearing saffron robes and others dressed in various religious garb for the good of the camera opportunity. They carried signs that said, “Buddha is Lord” and “Krishna is Lord” (respectfully nobody carried a “Jesus is not Lord” sign) and “unfair” and “we protest” but overall the demonstration was peaceful. It was near zero so after the TV crew left we invited the protesters inside and had a fire and cookies and hot chocolate.

They asked us why we put up the sign. I said it was because it was what we believed. They said it made them mad. I said that’s too bad. I invited them to put up signs of whatever they believed and that I would respect their right to do likewise. I said I expected them to respect our rights. We parted cordially. This is an example of true free speech in America. America is one of the few places on the globe where this sort of exchange can go on. But it is disappearing fast. As fast as you can say, “feminized nation.”

But there are those who would saddle free speech like a donkey and make it their beast of burden to carry their agenda all the way back to the dark ages. Their idea of free speech is that they alone will have the right to speak freely and everybody else must restrict their free speech so that they are not caused any undo frustration by it. Free speech is only for the PC. Everybody else must be sensitive.

Well, let’s all run up our own flags and see if anybody salutes them, that is what I say.
If your god is god, let him light the fires of the altars. If our God is God then He will light the fire. Fair is fair. Right?

What's next?

What is next? Fornication was popularized in the 50’s and 60’s with advent of birth control. Adultery was common and along with it came no fault divorce in the 70’s. Homosexuality began to break into the mainstream in the 80’s, homosexual rights in the 90’s, and now homosexual marriage and adoption in the new century. This has all happened in my lifetime.

In 1968 at Memphis State University (now the University of Memphis) an English professor friend of my social group came out of the closet and announced publicly that he was gay. The University immediately fired him. He bounced around in the local scene until he was drawn off into the Atlanta bathhouse scene. In Atlanta he contracted AIDS and later died. For a season he lived in my house. I lost track of him when I moved to Minnesota and never knew the final story. It was a very sad experience in my life. He was a friend although he was out of work and was a very needy friend.

In contrast to that and 20 years later, my oldest daughter started a new student group at the University of Minnesota while earning her nursing degree. She called it “Women of Virtue.” People used to rage at her. They would get livid because she would claim to be a virgin. She just simply thought that there would be others at the U that would have some of her same goals. There were always a few young ladies that joined in her meetings over the years. The group still met up until just months ago. Imagine the audacity to think in the 21st century that anyone can be “virtuous.”

Where do we go from here? The answer is pedophilia. The last of the “innocents.”
The lust for “strange flesh” will continue until we are outraged. The tribe of Benjamin in the Bible was a good example of this. The Levite whose concubine was raped and abused unto death in the book of Judges in the town of Gibeah was chopped up into pieces and express mailed to all the other tribes before they were shocked from their slumber and took action.

Does some little child have to be raped to death by a gang of citizens before we speak up.
Where is the outrage? I think it is intimidated back from speaking because most of the people in America are compromised by their own lack of virtue. As I sit here tonight one of the headlines is about child sex tourism in Asia. Last year 11 Americans were arrested for this selfish and outrageous disregard of the preciousness of a child. And we are off to a good start this year with the one arrested last night. Arrested because they left the country with the intentions of raping children. This is the tip of the iceberg. But the public is silent so that it can enjoy its porno and sin in its own special little way.

You know… “judge not lest ye be judged.” Lord have mercy on us.

Social Security and Slow Population Growth

As I draw near to 65 and Social Security "benifits" I am quite amused by the crisis that has come to the US. There is talk about authorizing trillions in new debt. Others say we should juggle benifits. Still yet, Bush has said that we need to privatize a protion of Social Security. All of these are ideas that might need to be put to task if we as US citizens are to have our "entitlements" in our old age.
I have a family of 7 and I have often said to them that they are my best bet for social security benefits. And I think this is a good example of what is wrong. We have been killing our kids. 45,000,000 in the last 31 years. This is more than the population of the entire West coast. California alone is the sixth largest economy in the world. Thats a lot of cash that could be used to support parents in their old age.
And don't even get me into the area of "birth control" Zero population growth is not a smart idea. Look at Europe. They have been rejecting kids now for a long time. They even have to import people from the world in order to run their economies. There are not enough worker bees. So they get them from places that have an abundance. And where is that you ask? It is from Muslim countries. Muslims reject birth control and abortion. They really believe that they are to be fruitful and multiply. They see the idea of less kids as stupid.
Let's see now... we kill our kids to be "smarter" world citizens while they have as many kids as they can .... to be "smarter" world citizens. Who is winning? Already Canada, and many European countries are considering implementing some areas of Sharia law. This slope seems to be pretty slippery to me. I think I will try to walk a more straigh path. As for me and my family, we are going to have kids. If things keep up like they are there will not be any government left to supply the "benefits" promised to me in old age. Social Security was nothing more than just another tax. As a preacher I opted out of it years ago. That is when I began to see my kids as REAL social security.

Wellstone Signs

What is with the people in Prospect Park and other cobalt blue areas of Minnesota ? Some of them still have Wellstone signs in their yards long after the tragic Senate race years ago. Bumper stickers still say Wellstone and some even say WWWD? or "What would Wellstone do?" Isn't there a law about the prompt removal of yard signs after political events? As the great blog site, Little Green Footballs, said yesterday there are still Kerry/ Edwards yard signs and bumper stickers everywhere. It's kinda like not taking your Woodstock bumper sticker off of your VW mini bus that has long since rusted away. Were these events really that memorable? Kerry/ Edwards ? WWWD? My goodness that idea really does not sit well with me. He was a real nice guy but not nearly someone who I would consult on the issues of life. I bet if I looked closely enough I would find peace symbols hanging from the rear view mirrors on some of their cars. Hey haven't you heard? John said "The dream is over."

Marriage vs. Holy Matrimony

The Rev. Jed Smock considers the University of Minnesota to be one of the top three radically liberal universities in the United States. And he ought to know because for the last 30 years he has visited them all while open air preaching in their central mall areas. The other two are the University of Wisconsin in Madison and UC Berkeley in California. It is no wonder then that we at the University of Minnesota are at the forefront of the movement to legalize same sex marriage.

The debate has been raging here now for the 25 years I have been on this campus. Thus many of us have begun to work through all of the muck of bias, tradition, and indignation surrounding this very touchy subject.

First let me begin by stating that I still hold to the wisdom of a 4000-year tradition of marriage being an exclusive right of one man and one woman. Society has always supported this as the definition of “marriage.” There is little to no history of the successful accommodation of any other standard. But take a look this excerpt from Imprimis as quoted in Jack Sonnemann’s blog at http://www.ausfamily.org/index.html

Civil Unions: Compromise or Surrender?
by Midge Decter
Author and Social Critic

The term "civil marriage" or "civil union" has become a euphemism for both the legal and social legitimating of homosexuality. In the current public conversation the phrase no longer means the wedding of a man and woman conducted by a civil authority - a town clerk or a justice of the peace or a judge. In that old sense of the term, of course, every legal marriage is a civil one, because the ministers and priests and rabbis who conduct weddings according to the established rites of their respective religions are at the same time acting with full civil authority to do so. The fact that so many of the fully sanctioned marriages in recent years have turned out to be too casual and thin-blooded to hold out for very long against the trials of real life is nothing to the point. For while the number of easy-come, easy-go marriages in our midst speaks to the failure of spiritual education in this great, rich, lucky, but somewhat spiritually impoverished land, there has not until now been any kind of real assault on what marriage is supposed to mean: one man, one woman, formally and officially joined in the hope of becoming a real family.

Today what is being called "civil marriage" is a kind of trick of language, a term used as a political euphemism for surrendering to the most recent demand of the homosexual rights movement.

Copyright © 2004 Reprinted by permission from IMPRIMIS, the monthly journal of Hillsdale College (www.hillsdale.edu)

Now I am not so sure I agree with all of the logical processes hinted at in the above quotation, but I do believe it opens up the basic bottom line of the debate processes set in motion through the words “civil union.” Is it a marriage license that legitimizes a marriage or is it the sacerdotal function of the Church? Marriage used to be called “holy matrimony.” You rarely hear those words used to describe marriage these days.

What is “holy matrimony?” Can a “civil authority” perform such a marriage or is it solely a process of the (Christian) church? In order to qualify for legal benefits, including but not in any way limited to inheritance rights, child adoption, and employment benefit packages, it is almost universally necessary for one’s “union” to be recognized by the “civil authorities.” My “credentials” are on file in Hennepin County here in Minnesota and as such I am a delegated civil servant with the authority to perform unions, marriages, or even holy matrimony. But can the other “civil authorities” of the state perform “holy matrimony?” Of course not! “Holy” is not a secular term.

Holy matrimony will (should?) always be the work of the church. But, with so many different denominations and doctrinal approaches, it seems that even the definition of “holy” is up for grabs. (Yet somehow I don’t think that God is confused on this issue) Any way you look at it, you can be married or you can be MARRIED. One marriage is about benefits conferred by the state and business. The other marriage is about benefits conferred by a Holy and Loving God.

I think I am ready to concede the worldly benefits to the world and reserve the eternal benefits for Holy Matrimony. I personally would never perform a marriage for any reason less than eternal holy values. Civil unions are bound to continue to become a temporary part of the civil landscape, and I think “why not?” To try to go against the tides of secularism and demand that the world be Christian is asking too much. Only Christians should be Christian. Non-Christians pay taxes, work on the corporate farm and are just as deserving of worldly benefits as anybody else. Let them have their portion. But they can never enjoy the benefits of eternity without dealing with God and His Holy Word.

What I foresee, is a growth in “civil unions” (i.e. civil marriage) with all temporal benefits ascribed. But holy matrimony continues to be a thing that only God supplies to people who are in agreement with Him with invisible benefits, so to speak. “The just shall live by faith.”