Wednesday, February 28, 2018

England Win Second ODI.

England did well to level the ODI series with a 6 wicket win.
Chasing a miserable NZ total of 224 - courtesy of good bowling and exceptional fielding - the outcome was never really in any doubt.
The Kiwis, missing Kane Richardson, looked lethargic. England won the psychological battle.

Still Think Abortion Is Legitimate?

Does whether the baby is inside or outside the womb really create some kind of moral distinction?

No Comment Required!

BBC Media Action trains journalists and produces programmes that are broadcast in some of the world’s poorest regions. It is run separately from the BBC and is not funded by licence fee payers. Mail.

Truth Doesn't Always Beat Lies Because ...

“A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.” 
― William BlakeAuguries of Innocence

Not Just For Funerals!


Cannabis - Innocent Pleasures, Huh?

The cannabis market is almost completely dominated by the dangerous super-strength ‘skunk’ variety blamed for triggering psychotic disorders, a major study has found. Mail.

Birdie.


Labour - Absolutely Barking!

No free lunch' Labour's plan to nationalise water would cost £90bn and see UK debt SURGE. [Blogger: AGAIN!]

BILLIONS of pounds would be added to the national debt if a Jeremy Corbyn Government was to enact their election pledge to renationalise the water industry, a think tank has revealed.

By DAN FALVEY, Express.

Christians Lose Free Speech.

NY AG Faces Headwinds in Pro-life Free Speech Case

Feb 1, 2018
In a hearing this week in a federal lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman seeking to punish and silence pro-life and Christian speech on public sidewalks, U.S. District Judge Carol Bagley Amon told participants that leafletting is a “form of really protected speech” and that sidewalks are recognized as the “quintessential public forum.”  Attorney General Schneiderman filed the lawsuit in June 2017 with the intent to shut down pro-life and Christian speech on public sidewalks outside an abortion facility in Jamaica, New York.
Liberty Counsel represents one of the 14 defendants, Scott Fitchett, Jr., a pre-K teacher who has spent Saturdays peacefully sharing the gospel on public sidewalks wherever he goes, including outside the Choices Women’s Medical Center abortion facility. The Attorney General’s lawsuit against Fitchett is frivolous and has no basis in law or fact.
The judge’s questioning of Assistant Attorney General Sandra Pullman at the hearing in Schneiderman v. Griepp, focused on the Attorney General’s shifting definition of “harassment.” The State’s interpretation seemed to focus on the reaction of a listener to another’s speech, something that lined up with neither New York City’s harassment ordinance or the First Amendment. Pullman quoted the Webster’s definition of harassment as including speech that “annoys” someone, which is not constitutionally or logically actionable.
 Judge Amon took issue with the State’s targeting of what Pullman labeled as “annoying behavior,” saying that was vague, and challenging the state with a series of hypotheticals. The judge asked, “If a person followed a patient down the sidewalk, politely repeating, ‘You should consider keeping your baby,’” Amon asked, “would that be harassment? What if the protester stayed three feet away from the patient? What if someone followed you down the street, repeatedly telling you they liked your haircut? Would that be harassment?” Liberty Counsel.

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Jordan Peterson Speaks With Common Sense!


Canadian professor of psychology Jordan Peterson has risen to fame through an interview with Channel 4 which went viral. Tim Dieppe discusses the wisdom found in his new book “12 Rules for Life” which has become a bestseller. He finds that Peterson has great respect for the Bible, defends original sin, and proclaims a biblical approach to parenting. Peterson is unafraid to be counter-cultural. Christians could learn from his bold, and frank approach.
Canadian Professor of Psychology and Clinical Psychologist Jordan Peterson rose to fame in spectacular fashion last month after his Channel 4 interview with Cathy Newman went viral. At the time of writing it has now had over 7 million views. If you are not yet one of the 7 million then you really should watch it as he masterfully handles Newman in an extended discussion about feminism, transgender pronouns and some other subjects.
Peterson had already attracted a level of global attention for his very strong and brave stance on gender-neutral pronouns. He said that he would refuse to use such made up pronouns and would be prepared to go to prison for this stance on free speech. Peterson’s bold and skilful critique of political correctness has resulted in him becoming something like the intellectual equivalent of a rock star, with a large and growing fan club.
Peterson was in the UK to promote his new book “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos”, which topped the Sunday Times bestsellers for General hardbacks last week. Though Peterson is not (yet) a Christian, he has tremendous respect for the Bible and for Christian thinking. His book is full of biblical wisdom, and Peterson makes extensive use of the Bible itself. In fact, I would go as far as to say that Peterson’s use of the Bible is better than that of many Christians.
The need for rules
The book contains a delightful foreword by Dr Norman Doidge who explains the contemporary desire for rules to live by:
“The hunger among many young people for rules, or at least guidelines, is greater today for good reason... a generation has been raised untutored in what was once called, aptly, ‘practical wisdom,’ which guided previous generations. Millennials, often told they have received the finest education available anywhere, have actually suffered a form of serious intellectual and moral neglect.” (pxvii-xix)
Moral relativism is to blame for this, as well as the emphasis on tolerance which regards being ‘judgemental’ as the worst of sins.
Peterson’s rules came out of list he originally posted on the website Quora, which became one of the most popular answers on the site. He writes out of his own personal reflections and experience of life, and as a clinical and academic psychologist. His rules are wise, and frequently counter-cultural.
Peterson on the Bible
This quote sums up Peterson’s view of the Bible:
“The Bible is, for better or worse, the foundational document of Western civilisation (of Western values, Western morality, and Western conceptions of good and evil). It is the product of processes that remain fundamentally beyond our comprehension. … Its careful, respectful study can reveal things to us about what we believe and how we do and should act that can be discovered in almost no other manner.”(p104)
I reckon that is about as strong a statement as you can make without actually saying it is divinely inspired.
Peterson on Original Sin
The book has an extended discussion of the Garden of Eden story, drawing out many insights from its wisdom (p45ff). What struck me was his forceful defence of the Christian doctrine of original sin:
“Only man will inflict suffering for the sake of suffering. That is the best definition of evil I have been able to formulate. … And with this realization, we have well-nigh full legitimisation of the idea, very unpopular in modern intellectual circles, of Original Sin. And who would dare to say that there was no element of voluntary choice in our evolutionary, individual and theological transformation? … And who can deny that sense of existential guilt that pervades human experience?” (p55)
He continues, discussing the concept of mankind being in the image of God, and having been created in an innocent state.
“The original state of Nature, conceived in this manner, is paradisal. But we are no longer one with God and Nature, and there is no simple turning back.” (p56)
“So here’s a proposition: perhaps it is not simply the emergence of self-consciousness and the rise of our moral knowledge of Death and the Fall that besets us and makes us doubt our own worth. Perhaps it is instead our unwillingness – reflected in Adam’s shamed hiding – to walk with God, despite our fragility and propensity for evil.” (p57)
This is a remarkable statement. He wants people to consider whether the real cause of evil in the world is precisely that reflected in the Bible – humans have turned away from God.  Furthermore, he recognises that this concept of the Fall is crucial to understanding the Bible:
“The Bible is structured so that everything after the Fall – the history of Israel, the prophets, the coming of Christ – is presented as a remedy for that Fall, a way out of evil.” (p57).
Peterson grasps the wisdom of the Bible and defends a Christian understanding of original sin, at least in the sense that we are all by nature sinful beings, from his experience and knowledge as a professor of psychology. How come a non-Christian is defending this doctrine, which even many Christians tend to avoid. G.K. Chesterton quipped that the doctrine of original sin “is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved.” It is proven in the history of the human race – all humans (with one notable exception) have been sinful. This can only really be explained by the existence of a sinful nature.
The Ignoble Savage
The denial of original sin is bolstered by the myth of the noble savage. Peterson rebuts this idea which was popularised by Jean-Jacques Rosseau who believed in the corrupting influence of human society, whilst abandoning five of his own children to orphanages. Peterson points out that the homicide rate in the UK is about 1 per 100,000, and the evidence strongly suggests that humans have become more peaceful, rather than less, as time has progressed, and societies have become more organised. African bushmen were found to have a yearly murder rate of 40 per 100,000, which declined by more than 30% once they became subject to state authority. Some other tribes have had murder rates at well over 100 per 100,000 (p121-22). I would suggest that it is the influence of Christianity, which set the foundational moral standards for the West as Peterson acknowledges, which has been responsible for this improvement in morality.
Original sin is a fundamental doctrine of Christianity. Its denial is a rebellion against the universal experience of guilt that Peterson describes. Its denial also leads to devastating failures of parenting and education.
Peterson on Parenting
My favourite chapter of the book is the chapter on Rule 5: “Do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.” In our culture we all have stories of parents who are unable or unwilling to discipline their children. Peterson has some of his own:
“I have also watched a couple, unable or unwilling to say no to their two-year-old, obliged to follow closely behind him everywhere he went, every moment of what was supposed to be an enjoyable social visit, because he misbehaved so badly when not micro-managed that he could not be given a second of genuine freedom without risk. The desire of his parents to let their child act without correction on every impulse perversely produced precisely the opposite effect: they deprived him instead of every opportunity to engage in independent action. Because they did not dare to teach him what ‘No’ means, he had no conception of the reasonable limits enabling maximal toddler autonomy.” (p113-114)
Such an appalling approach to parenting appears to be a uniquely modern phenomenon. It is based on a denial of original sin.
“Scientific literature clearly indicates … that strict limitations facilitate rather than inhibit creative achievement. Belief in the purely destructive element of rules and structure is frequently conjoined with the idea that children will make good choices about when to sleep and what to eat, if their perfect natures are merely allowed to manifest themselves. These are equally ungrounded assumptions. Children are perfectly capable of attempting to subsist on hot dogs, chicken fingers and Froot Loops if doing so will attract attention, provide power, or shield them from trying anything new. Instead of going to bed wisely and peacefully, children will fight night-time unconsciousness until they are staggered by fatigue.” (p124)
This is basic biblical wisdom. Children are not naturally good. The opposite is the case.
“Children hit first because aggression is innate, and, second, because aggression facilitates desire. It’s foolish to assume that such behaviour must be learned. A snake does not have to be taught to strike. It’s in the nature of the beast. Two-year-olds, statistically speaking, are the most violent of people.” (p126)
Peterson on Punishment
What this means is that punishment of certain unacceptable behaviours is sometimes required. Peterson advocates the principle of “minimum necessary force” (p136ff). For some children, a glare will suffice, for others a verbal command, for others a flick of a finger, or time out, and sometimes a smack. Yes, Peterson advocates corporeal punishment within the principle of “minimum necessary force.” This is significant, because once again it is biblical (Proverbs 13:24), and counter-culture.
Peterson takes apart the widely quoted maxim that “hitting a child merely teaches them to hit.” Peterson responds forthrightly:
“First: No. Wrong. Too simple. For starters, ‘hitting’ is a very unsophisticated word to describe the disciplinary act of an effective parent. … Magnitude matters – and so does context, if we’re not being wilfully blind and naïve about the issue.” (p140)
As Peterson says:
“What’s the appropriate punishment for someone who will not stop poking a fork into an electrical socket?” (p139)
This child, and others who put themselves in dangerous situations, should be stopped by force immediately in order to protect their lives.
There is much more on this, and the stakes are high.
“If a child has not been taught to behave properly by the age of four, it will forever be difficult for him or her to make friends.” (p135)
Furthermore,
“The penalties for misbehaviour (of the sort that could have been effectively halted in childhood) become increasingly severe as children get older – and it is disproportionately those who remain unsocialised effectively by age four who end up punished explicitly by society in their later youth and early adulthood.” (p139)
The consequences of failure to parent are devastating.
Parents should come in pairs
Peterson sets out some principles for parenting, and states:
“Parents should come in pairs. Raising young children is demanding and exhausting. Because of this it’s easy for a parent to make a mistake. … Under such circumstances, it is necessary to have someone else around, to observe, and step in, and discuss. … I am not saying we should be mean to single mothers, … but that doesn’t mean we should pretend that all family forms are equally viable. They’re not. Period.” (p142)
Therefore, divorce is to be avoided:
“Was it really a good thing, for example, to so dramatically liberalize the divorce laws in the 1960s? It’s not clear to me that the children whose lives were destabilized by the hypothetical freedom this attempt at liberation introduced would say so. Horror and terror lurk behind the walls provided so wisely by our ancestors. We tear them down at our peril. We skate, unconsciously, on thin ice, with deep, cold waters below, where unimaginable monsters lurk.” (p119)
Stark, basic wisdom, so rarely expressed today.
The lost art of parenting
Peterson explains why modern parents fail:
“Modern parents are simply paralyzed by the fear that they will no longer be liked or even loved by their children if they chastise them for any reason. They want their children’s friendship above all, and are willing to sacrifice respect to get it. This is not good. A child will have many friends, but only two parents – if that – and parents are more, not less, than friends.” (p123)
“I see today’s parents as terrified by their children not least because they have been deemed the proximal agents of this hypothetical social tyranny, and simultaneously denied credit for their role as benevolent and necessary agents of discipline, order and conventionality. … This has increased parental sensitivity to the short-term emotional suffering of their children to a painful and counterproductive degree.”(p119)
Too many contemporary parents have fallen into this trap. They are raising undisciplined, immature children of the snowflake generation. We need to recover this lost art of parenting and unashamedly proclaim the biblical truths of original sin and the need for discipline to others in our churches and other contexts.
Tell the truth
It is refreshing to read Peterson’s frank wisdom, replete with references to scientific studies, and frequently biblical analysis. He is unashamed in his communication of basic truths. He is bold to speak against the culture. This week he is found urging Canadian parents to fight radical sex education:
“Keep them at home,” he suggested. “And take the consequences.”
He has already made clear his own willingness to go to prison for speaking the truth about gender:
“I’m not doing this, and that’s that. I’m not using words that other people require me to use.”
Rule 8 is “Tell the truth – or, at least don’t lie.” As I read this chapter I found myself convicted about my own level of commitment to speaking the truth.
“In the Christian tradition, Christ is identified with the Logos. The Logos is the Word of God. That word transformed chaos into order at the beginning of time. In His human form, Christ sacrificed himself voluntarily to the truth, to the good, to God. In consequence, He died and was reborn. The Word that produces order from Chaos sacrifices everything, even itself, to God. That single sentence, wise beyond comprehension, sums up Christianity.” (p223)
“It is axiomatic, within that tradition, that man and woman alike are made in the image of God. We also transform chaos into being through speech.  … Truth builds edifices that can stand a thousand years. Truth feeds and clothes the poor, and makes nations wealthy and safe.” (p230)
Christians have something to learn from Peterson’s courageous commitment to truth. Where are the Christians who are openly and boldly saying they will go to prison for speaking the truth? It may come to that. There are those who are losing their jobs already as our cases demonstrate. Jordan Peterson’s bold, and brave commitment to truth puts many Christians to shame. It is time for more of us to learn from his example and boldly and unashamedly expose the lies that contemporary culture promotes. Christian Concern.

American Genius, Ben Shapiro.

Wholly God: Holy God.


Maybe The Answer Is Easier Than I'd Thought.

I have frequently wondered what those two opposites, the left and Islam, could possibly have in common. This very morning, I have sussed out the oh-so simple answer.
Both are venomous and toxic in their scorn for and hatred of Jesus and all that He stands for.
There is surely nothing else to explain this very weird partnership.

Phew! Jesus, Wholly Man - Wholly God.



Farage SLAMS Labour.

Ukip MEP Mr Farage suggested those who voted for  and supported Labour in the 2017 general election had been let down.
Speaking on BBC’s Daily Politics, Mr Farage branded the move as a “complete sellout” from the Labour Party.
The Brexiteer also claimed it could lead to Labour in a few months time supported the prospect of remaining in “a single market.”
He said: “It’s the first step of a quite easy to see, a complete Labour sellout on the issue." Express.

Birdie.


Career Burn Out?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-5436949/Psychologist-details-FIVE-signs-career-burnout.html
Something I encountered in 1990 - it took a year's unpaid sabbatical to recover fully.

Monday, February 26, 2018

EU Desperate To Hold Onto OUR Money!

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/923786/Brexit-news-EU-UK-European-Union-Labour-Party-vote-latest-Jeremy-Corbyn

Italy. If Only ...

Italy’s eurosceptic 5-Star Movement holds SHOCK lead in opinion polls with only WEEK left.

ITALY’S eurosceptic 5-Star Movement is currently the leading party according to opinion polls, thanks - in large part - to disgruntled voters in its Southern towns - with only a week to go until the election.

By LELA LONDON. Express.

Birds Of Madagascar Will Be The Blog Feature For The Next Few Weeks Starting With ...


BBC Bias - Brexit.

CIVITAS PAPER LAYS BARE 18 YEARS OF BBC ANTI-BREXIT BIAS

Civitas paper lays bare 18 years of BBC anti Brexit bias
Readers of this site will need little persuading that the BBC’s coverage of Brexit is biased. The Corporation vehemently denies it of course, but since the referendum vote, they have been seemingly on an all-out mission to find every reason why leaving the EU is disastrous for the UK – and to avoid reporting the benefits.
Hillary Clinton, on a book plugging visit to London, claims the Brexit result was based on a ‘big lie’? Immediately it’s a BBC headline.  Wages aren’t rising in pace with the cost of living? Another ‘hold the front page’ moment ‘because of Brexit uncertainty’.
What is surprising, however, is the sheer scale of the Corporation’s failure to meet its Charter requirement of impartiality.  A paper by News-watch published today (January 26) by Civitas, based on a collation of research conducted into the BBC’s EU coverage over the past 18 years, chronicles the immense problems for the first time.
The report, The Brussels Broadcasting Corporation? – How pro-Brexit views have been marginalised in the BBC’s news coverage, can be read in full here: http://www.civitas.org.uk/content/files/brusselsbroadcastingcorporation.pdf
The paper also demonstrates that the Corporation’s complaints process is not for purpose. It is a self-serving mechanism for kicking impartiality issues into touch rather than dealing with them honestly, independently and robustly. The only remedy, it is argued, may be a judicial review or a public inquiry.
News-watch has been monitoring BBC output since the European Parliamentary elections in 1999. This work is based on rigorous academic principles followed by university media schools around the world. There are 38 reports covering hundreds of hours of EU output and 8,000 programme transcripts, and it is believed to be the largest systematic study of the media ever undertaken.
The key findings, which show that supporters of withdrawal from across the political spectrum have been severely under-presented, include:
  • Of 4,275 survey-period guests talking about the EU on BBC Radio 4’s flagship Today programme between 2005 and 2015, only 132 (3.2 per cent) were supporters of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU.
  • In 274 hours of monitored BBC EU coverage between 2002 and 2017, only 14 speakers (0.2 per cent of the total) were left-wing advocates for leaving the EU, and they spoke only 1,680 words.
  • In the same period, Tory pro-EU grandees Kenneth Clarke and Michael Heseltine made between them 28 appearances, with contributions totalling 11,208 words – over nine times the amount of airtime allocated to all left-wing supporters of Brexit.
  • In Today’s business news covering the six months after the EU referendum, only 10 (2.9 per cent) of 366 speaker contributions were from supporters of withdrawal from the EU. http://news-watch.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/News-watch-Business-News-Survey-.pdf
  • More recently, in October-November last year, of 68 non politically allied speakers in the Brexit-related coverage on on Today, 52 were anti-Brexit or pro-EU, and only 16 were pro-Brexit or anti-EU, an imbalance of worse than 3:1 – despite the Leave vote.
Of course, measuring bias is not solely about numbers. They are one factor among many in News-watch assessment methodology. http://news-watch.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/News-watch-Methodology.pdf
The News-watch reports also include detailed textual analysis which confirms that these blatant numerical imbalances are indicators of across-the-board bias against EU withdrawal.
Equally as disturbing is the BBC’s attitude towards this work. Over most of the 18 years, successive figures from the senior hierarchy have refused point blank to even consider the News-watch work. The one exception, in 2007, was a travesty http://news-watch.co.uk/today-programme-survey-and-response-to-bbc-independent-advisors-findings-winter-2007/
The Corporation’s stone-wall excuse boils to that they are the wrong kind of complaint because the internal BBC process deals only with issues arising from single programme editions.
The most recent dismissal of a News-watch report – about coverage of the EU and Brexit issues in  last year’s General Election http://news-watch.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/News-watch-2017-General-Election-Report-1.pdf – was derisory. Without providing any evidence, the BBC press office claimed that it ‘would not pass basic academic scrutiny’. The speed and content of their response suggested that they could not have properly read it http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/22/bbc-invited-third-pro-eu-eurosceptic-speakers-appear-election/.
Another key point in the equation is what the BBC have not covered in the Brexit terrain. The News-watch work has been championed in Parliament by a cross-party group of MPs which includes Kate Hoey and Kelvin Hopkins from Labour, Philip Davies and Philip Hollobone from the Conservatives and Ian Paisley from the DUP.
Sir David Clementi, the BBC Chairman and his predecessors, and Lord Hall, the Director General of the BBC, have refused to meet the group to discuss the bias issues – and have been unable to supply to it a single BBC programme since the referendum which has examined the opportunities of Brexit.
News-watch has been scouring the schedules to spot one – but in vain.

Sorry But I Just Don't Find That Funny!


Light Of The World.

ODI Defeat In NZ.

On a slow, 'sticking' sort of pitch England posted 285. This seemed to be a worthy target to have set the home side under such conditions but England's bowling was a smidgin under par - and a critical missed chance in the deep by Jonny Bairstow contrasted with an excellent Kiwi batting display.
In the end, the match went right down to the last over and England were deservedly edged out in a hugely exciting game.

Corbyn To Break Manifesto Promises?


When Jeremy Corbyn stands up on Monday to announce his latest policy on Brexit he seems certain to break the commitments he made to Labour voters at the last election.
We know from the Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer that the new agreement Labour will seek will "do the work of the customs union", though we will have to wait for the Labour leader himself to discover which linguistic word game they will use to dress it up.
Either way, it is unlikely to save the blushes of the Shadow International Trade Secretary Barry Gardiner, who said that "in voting to leave the EU the British people voted to leave both the single market and the customs union." Telegraph.

Confess!

India Excepted - I Never Give To Beggars.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5432661/Cambridge-police-say-beggars-Ely-arent-homeless.html

Sunday, February 25, 2018

Do You Need Wisdom?


Evil Is Evil.


Birdie.


Nuclear Weaponry? - There Is Only ONE Sensible Approach.

A representative of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons is now addressing the European Parliament. I hope, one day, we can live in a world without nuclear weapons, but I oppose unilateral disarmament which could potentially increase rather than reduce danger.

Hollywood.


Can Christians Support Abortion? - NO, NO And THRICE NO!!!

Can you claim to be “born-again” when you won’t allow others to be born in the first place? Here’s how abortion strikes at the heart of the Christian faith.
Catholics and evangelicals are often told how obsessed we are with so-called “culture war” issues like marriage, religious freedom, and abortion. If we’d only stop being so political and focus on proclaiming Christ, say some, we’d win a lot more converts.
But this isn’t how a Christian worldview works. The Scriptural premise, that God made human beings in His image, naturally leads us, as it has Christians throughout history, to protect and cherish those who bear that image. Ignoring evils perpetrated against bearers of the divine image denies what we know to be true about God. In other words, a distorted view of human beings always goes hand-in-hand with a distorted view of God.
Take, for example, a new book by self-proclaimed “born-again” Christian, Willie Parker titled, “Life’s Work: A Moral Argument for Choice.” As Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission describes, the book is a would-be manifesto on the morality and even godliness of abortion.
Parker, an OBGYN, has performed countless abortions. He describes working a circuit of Planned Parenthood clinics in the South, performing abortions “over and over, like the athlete who goes to the gym after practice to shoot three-pointers.”
And as the recipient of Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger award, it’s clear Parker has made the fight to keep abortion legal a major life goal. But unlike most pro-choice activists, this OBGYN tries to root his case for killing the unborn in his Christian faith.
Citing writers like C. S. Lewis (who would definitely take exception), Parker argues that abortion is consistent with Christian love. He even claims that Jesus Himself would have been an abortion supporter. In a 2015 New York Times piece, Parker recasts Christ’s beloved parable of the Good Samaritan as an endorsement of the so-called “right to choose”:
“It is the deepest level of love,” he writes, “that you can have for another person, that you can have compassion for their suffering and you can act to relieve it. That, simply put, is why I provide abortion care.”
Not surprisingly, Parker radically dehumanizes the unborn to reach his conclusion that killing them is an act of love. To call a fetus a “baby,” he argues, is to “anthropomorphize” the entity in the womb. Even liberal women do this, he complains, when they come in for ultrasounds and hear their babies’ heartbeats. He can’t understand what he calls the “fetishization of motherhood and children.” Little wonder for someone who compares killing the unborn to practicing basketball.
But he also finds it necessary to depersonalize God along with His unborn image-bearers. Parker chides believers for viewing the Almighty as a personal Being Who judges the living and the dead, calling this a “tendency to anthropomorphize God.” And the idea of conception or birth as “a miracle,” he writes, “does an injustice to God.” He prefers, instead, to view life as a “process.”
As Russell Moore points out, Parker’s willingness to strip the unborn of their identity has led him to strip God of His identity. Let me be clear: there’s nothing biblical—and therefore nothing Christian—about Parker’s views about either God or man. And so, there’s nothing Christian about his views of or participation in the killing of innocent unborn life.
And Parker’s Judas routine just makes matters worse. Only his thirty pieces of silver takes the form of fawning endorsements from Cecile Richards and Gloria Steinem, both of whom are more than happy to gloat, “See, you can be a Christian and support abortion.”
But moral issues like abortion are inseparable from the core beliefs of Christian worldview, like the imago Dei. To embrace abortion requires rejecting what God has revealed about both Himself and about humanity.
Parker and other self-proclaimed Christian abortion supporters may claim they’re doing “life’s work.” But what they preach is no good news at all. It’s a gospel of death.
Further Reading and Information
Christian Abortion Supporters: Preaching A Gospel of Death
The Apostle Paul warned the followers of Christ not to give place to those who oppose the truth, like the commentary’s example of those who embrace a culture of death. Instead, we are to be aligned with the life-giving gospel of Christ. Breakpoint.

No Thanks.


Saturday, February 24, 2018

Justin Welby - Well Said!

Islamic rules are incompatible with British laws, claims Archbishop of Canterbury.

ISLAMIC rules are incompatible with British laws which have developed over 500 years and sharia law should never become part of the British legal system, the Archbishop of Canterbury has declared. Express.

Doctor-Assisted Death.

http://www.breakpoint.org/2017/06/breakpoint-michelle-carter-doctor-assisted-death/

Red Cross Abusers. Give To CHRISTIAN Charities!

More than 20 Red Cross workers were sacked or quit after cases of sexual misconduct.


More than 20 workers at the International Committee of the Red Cross were sacked or quit their roles following cases of sexual misconduct.
The charity said it was "deeply saddened" to report the figures and admitted it should have been "more vigilant" in preventing the behaviour.
It found that, since 2015, 21 staff members were either dismissed for paying for sexual services or resigned during an internal inquiry.
A further two staff workers suspected of sexual misconduct did not have their contracts renewed.
The Swiss-based charity, which was set up in 1863 to help victims of war, said its decentralised structure means it is "difficult to accurately compile overall figures".
It is the latest organisation to admit to misconduct among its workers following the outcry sparked by the Oxfam sex scandal. Telegraph.

The Political Left Understands Little.

The ongoing fight against the Jewishness of Jesus. By  Michael Brown , CP Op-Ed Contributor Thursday, December 28, 2023 iStock/Wirestock You...