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Saturday Selections – Aug 29, 2026

More unintended consequences

We need government because we needs laws, and the administrators of it. But law is a blunt instrument, inflexible, applying to all, and not able to take into account the differing, unique circumstances of a country's millions of citizens. So yes, we need laws, but we need laws put in place with restraint, by a humble government that recognizes it isn't the answer to every problem, and recognizes that trying to be everyone's answer – trying to be God – will have it causing more harm than good.

Alberta government worried that someone else will hurt its citizens, so decides to do the damage itself

"If there was a big red button that I could push that would stop online gambling, I'd push that button, but that button doesn't exist."

So said Dale Nally, the government minster in charge of Alberta's new online gambling market. He knows gambling entraps a certain percentage of players – he knows it is hurting Albertans – but rather than act as a government should, to try to protect those under its care, the Alberta government is looking to gets its share of the profits.

I heard an argument like this made by William Wilberforce's opponents. He wanted England to stop trading in slaves. His opponents argued that if England stopped, it would only mean that France would move in to fill the gap and  garner the profits. Maybe so. But what it would also mean is that England would stop stealing human beings. The evil might continue... but England wouldn't be the one committing it. That's how turnarounds start – with someone being first to say no. Would that Alberta would learn that lesson.

Canada's culture of death will push death by organ donation

If the doctors are going to kill you anyways, what does it matter if they do it with a lethal injection, or by taking out your heart, liver, and whatever else might benefit someone waiting for a transplant?

That is an argument you'll be hearing soon and often in the coming years. And if you grant the initial premise – that doctors murdering patients is good and not evil – then everything else logically follows. If our lives are our own to dispose of as we wish, then if some people choose to die by organ donation so they can benefit others, then who are we to say otherwise?

But our lives are not ours to dispose of as we will. They are entrusted to us by God, but still His, and not ours. Thus euthanasia is not only murder but theft.

It's idolatry too, putting human autonomy in His place. And like any idol, the false god of human autonomy is a liar. It won't deliver what it promises. With death by organ donation will come predictable abuses – patients being pressured to end their lives for the sake of others, which isn't autonomy at all. This next round of abuses will only add to those already happening. When your family and the healthcare system makes it clear they'd like you better off dead that's not autonomy, that's abandonment. And what is it when the elderly and disabled looking for care are told repeatedly about their euthanasia options?

The only brakes we can put on our descent down this slippery slope is found in the firm foundation of God's Truth and His Word. The world needs to hear that we are not our own, and that our worth comes not from what we can do, but in Whose Image we are made. Too Christian for some? They'll think so but we shouldn't. We know God has made this world, and He defines reality. And we know too that when we defy reality, it won't go well for us, or our culture. So let's present the antithesis – show them how things will go without God, and with.

Australian anti-conversion therapy bill targets the Gospel

The heart of the Gospel is a message of conversion. We don't have to be enemies of God because Christ's blood can wash us clean.

And because the Gospel is about conversion, that means that any of the anti-conversion bills that have been presented and passed around the world, including Canada and now Australian's Tasmania – bills that ban in various ways any efforts made to convert those caught up in LGBT-related sins – are aimed at standing in the way of the freedom that sinful people can find only in Christ.

When we see these bills we're rightly worried about the persecution they are promising, but we recognize them as the affront they are to God, calling evil His gracious gift of replacing a heart of stone with a heart of flesh (Ez. 36:26).

By what standard?

ARPA Canada highlights another instance of what happens when a country loses its Christian underpinnings. This past year, Finland’s Supreme Court concluded that Finnish MP Päivi Räsänen’s was guilty of hate speech because she'd written that homosexuality was a “sexual deviation” and a “psychological disorder.” As ARPA Canada writes:

"Although Räsänen wrote the pamphlet to articulate her Christian beliefs, the Court treated her statements simply as false claims about homosexuality that contradicted modern scientific data. In the Court’s view, that harm justified limiting her free speech. The Court concluded that Räsänen’s stated views on homosexuality were false because most medical experts would disagree. But whether homosexuality ought to be regarded as healthy or disordered is not a question science can settle on its own. It also depends on a prior understanding of human nature and the purpose of human sexuality."

And where do we learn the purpose of human sexuality? How do we rightly understand human nature apart from God's Word? When we won't turn to God then we aren't left with neutrality; like in Räsänen’s case we get good declared evil and wickedness declared righteous.

What this highlights for God's people is our pressing need to be the light (Matt. 5:13-16). Our culture is losing its Christian underpinnings, and the Church is too often offering up "common sense solutions" instead of presenting God's way as the solution. No matter what we might sing on Sunday, our reluctance to proclaim that same truth the other six days of the week shows we don't really believe God's Word is powerful (Hebr. 4:12, Is. 55:11, Jer. 23:29). When Christians won't dare publicly side with our Maker, we need to understand there is only one other side we can be on – there is no neutrality (Matthew 10:32–33).

Leanna Crawford's Still Waters (Psalm 23) 

This one gave me chills.... :)