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News

Saturday Selections – Mar. 16, 2024

Click on the titles below to go to the linked articles...

If $50/hr is a good minimum wage why not $100... or $1,000? (9 min)

A Californian legislator recently proposed raising the minimum wage to $50/hr, or approximately $100,000 US/year (or roughly $135,00 Canadian). And, as the video below shares, Batman himself thinks it's a great idea. But if $50/hr is good, why not $100/hr... or $1000?

These minimum wage proponents and transgenderism activists share one thing in common: both believe that wishing can make it so. But simply declaring everyone worth a certain wage doesn't change reality. Older employees, still skilled but slower than they once might have been, and lower skilled or inexperienced workers aren't going to be able to bring $50/hr in value to their employers. That means this minimum wage is going to price them right out of the labor market. And that's true of every minimum wage, no matter how well intentioned – they declares a minimum value for labor, and anyone who can't meet it, or can't meet it yet, is legislated out of any chance at a job.

Childless China: coercive population plan implodes

"Kenneth Emde of Minnesota, who came of age during the Swinging Sixties, recently explained why he is childless today. 'I was a college student when I read Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb,' he said in a letter published by the Wall Street Journal. 'I took it to heart and now have no grandchildren, but 50 years later the population has increased to eight billion without dire consequences. I was gullible and stupid.'”

This is a secular piece, so it doesn't make the case for how Emde could have known better. He needed to listen to the real Expert, who says in His Word that children are a blessing, not a curse.

On the cost of business subsidies, and the trouble with electric cars

The Fraser Institute was busy this past week, issuing two eye-opening reports. The first was on the $52 billion Canadian governments spent on corporate welfare in 2022. We can't agree on much in this country, but can we at least agree not to take money from some companies to prop up other companies? From 2007 to 2019, PEI, Quebec, and Manitoba spent all or nearly all of their corporate income tax revenue on business subsidies!

The second report was on the impossibility of meeting the new electrical demands that will come if all new cars from 2035 onward have to be electrical. We'd need the equivalent of 10 new dams, each of which, if history serves, would take 10 years to plan, another 10 years to build, and cost $16 billion each. So what happens if we have the cars but not the electricity?

March 16 is the 4th anniversary of "15 days to slow the spread"

In this look back a professor explains how he got fired from Harvard for refusing to be vaccinated (he'd already had COVID), and got fired from the CDC for being too pro-vaccine. Dissenting opinions, whatever the direction, weren't allowed and that came with a cost.

"Sweden was the only major Western country that rejected school closures and other lockdowns in favor of concentrating on the elderly, and the final verdict is now in. Led by an intelligent social democrat prime minister (a welder), Sweden had the lowest excess mortality among major European countries during the pandemic, and less than half that of the United States. Sweden’s Covid deaths were below average, and it avoided collateral mortality caused by lockdowns."

When the pope isn't Catholic

This is a lament from Canada's pro-life and mostly Roman Catholic media outlet LifeSiteNews, highlighting the ways the pope is targeting established Catholic doctrine. Roman Catholics dealing with a corrupt pope face a situation a little like Martin Luther, who wasn't looking to start a new church but was left with no choice once he was kicked out. We can pray that when orthodox Roman Catholics are kicked out of today's Roman Catholic Church, they'll finally stop putting their trust in this institution.

Bluey: the beach (7 min)

Our family just learned about a cute Australian dog named Bluey, and so far we are about 20 episodes into the first season. Our kids are older than the target audience, but the whole family is enjoying the accents, the energetic (and generally respectful) kids, and the super fun dad (mom ain't bad either). This is a current show, so I was wondering if it would take a turn for the weird some time soon. But so far so good, and from what I could read online, it does seem pretty solid. We found it on DVD from our local library, but some episodes can be watched for free online. This one will play everywhere except, unfortunately, Bluey's native land.

Internet, RPTV

Talking to teens: How does social media fit into a Christian worldview?

TRANSCRIPT Welcome to Reformed Perspective; I'm Alexandra Ellison. Did you know that in Canada almost everyone is on social media? About 89% of the population uses it, making Canada one of the most online countries in the world. Given the prominence of social media in our society it's crucial to understand how it's being utilized. For Christian parents it's especially important to be aware of their kids' online activities. In today's video, I visited a high school to talk with Christian teenagers about their experiences with social media. Q. 1 Are you on social media? If so, what apps do you use? Student 1: "Not too much but I am on YouTube and Messenger Kids." Student 2: "Not really. A little bit. I have Google Chat so I can text my friends; they live like an hour away from me so I don't get to see them too often, so I text them sometimes and sometimes do a video call with them." Student 3: "Yes, I am. I use Tik Tok quite a bit, as well as Instagram." Student 4: "Yes I'm on social media. Mostly Instagram and Snapchat." Q. 2 What are the benefits of social media? Student 2: "I get to talk to my friends. If I didn't have it I wouldn't be able to communicate with them too much." Student 1: "I get to catch up with my friends because I don't live close to them and I get to just be entertained and, um, find out a little bit about like movies that are coming out that I might like or just, um, stay current." Student 3: "I mean, it's entertaining. I also have communication with some of my friends as well via social media, so it's a good way to stay in contact with them. Also, with Instagram, I'm able to look at my family's posts to see what they're up to, especially if I'm not able to see them. I have a cousin overseas so I'm able to see what she's up to overseas, via her posts on Instagram." Student 4: "Most of the benefits are communications; I've been able to communicate with one of my Bible studies that happens on social media, and also a lot of my friends: church friends, school friends." Q.3 What are some of the negatives? Student 2: "If you are with a person, sometimes they're too busy with their phone to actually be with the person. When you're with the person they're too busy on their phone, not with you." Student 1: "There are a lot of downs to all of these different websites, so you need to be careful on them." Student 3: "I know people think that they can handle it, so it lessens my time doing other more productive things. As well, it does have things on there that one should not look at." Student 4: "The negatives of social media are distractions. Sometimes it can just be really distracting, like you want to go do your work and then you just get distracted looking at something on Instagram and then you get down a rabbit hole, down there for an hour." Q. 4 What should parents be aware of? Student 2: "Make sure that what they're watching is good content not bad." Student 4: "They should be aware of who their kids are following 'cause there's a lot of people who maybe seem like they're good people but then they give false information or just a lot of things that can be not honoring God on social media. Sometimes they post something inappropriate that you don't want to see in your feed, or randomly comes up. You especially don't be following those type of things." Q.5 How does your Christian faith guide you in using social media? Student 3: "My faith comes into play for what I'm looking at so that I don't look at the negative things. As well, it keeps me honest with what I'm looking at, and how I use my time on social media, and what I use it for spreading God's Word, or at least not getting into different areas of social media where they would be putting God down or just not following Him." Student 4: "Well, when I use social media my faith can come into play through communications with friends. Especially since I'm at a Christian school, so I can talk with Christian friends, have good conversations, as well as being able to have my Bible study that we have on Instagram. And we meet up and stuff, so it helps me communicate with others and helps me grow in that. And I think that's pretty good, to have that space to be open, when sometimes you can't communicate with others." Q.6 Can social media be used to glorify God? Student 2: "I think so. You can tell your opinion on your worldview; share your views of the world on social media." Student 1: "Well I would say they would have to be extremely careful, and pretty much not really interact with it that much at all. And maybe just talk about the Gospel and all the benefits and all the good things to spread the message because God wants us to spread His Word to the world. There are adults and other people that also do that on YouTube and other platforms, but young kids can also try to do that, to show that the youth also love God as well. But there are risks to that – major, major risks – because some people do, when they're on these platforms, they might get caught up with the fame that they might be getting, and more want what the public wants instead of what God wants them to want." Student 3: "I think that they can use social media to their benefit and to our benefit as Christians, as you can spread the word of God via social media to a large group of people especially if you have a large platform like these influencers do. As well, you can find communities on Facebook, for example, you can join a Facebook group of Christian people, whether they're doing a Bible study or they just talk about their views on Christ." Student 4: "Pages like I follow, a few that put a Bible verse a day, or follow like YouVersion, the Bible app. Ways like that. And then also through communication with other Christians, like if you're just find spaces through different apps, you can find people on things like Discord or Facebook. There's just many ways you can connect with others." It's important for us to reflect on the profound impact our digital interactions can have on our faith and our relationships. Just as we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, let us extend that love into the virtual realm remembering that every interaction carries the potential to glorify God. In a world often filled with noise and distraction if we do choose to use social media maybe use it as a tool for spreading the light of Christ for building up one another, and for fostering genuine connections rooted in love and grace. As we navigate the ever-changing landscape of technology, may our faith serve as a compass guiding us towards discernment and ultimately towards God's eternal truth. Thanks for watching this episode of Reformed Perspective. Make sure to subscribe and share this video with family and friends....

News

Saturday Selections – Mar. 2, 2024

Click on the titles below for the linked articles... How did we get the Bible? (12 min) Was the Bible authorized, or simply recognized, by the Church? 10 astonishing alien underwater photos Here's a Top 10 of an award-winning National Geographic photographer's underwater shots showing some of the amazing diversity of life God has crafted under the water's surface. For more, check out his website - it's in French, but you don't need to know that to appreciate his pictures. 10 diagnostic questions for your marriage Do you and your spouse laugh together? Kevin DeYoung's friend suggested that "the couple that laughs together lasts together." That got DeYoung thinking: "What are some other questions that can help diagnose the health of our marital life? Here are ten that may prove useful." 10 best evidences confirming a young earth The folks at Answers in Genesis have a lot here for us to chew on! Why the world is running out of babies "Only 3% of the world’s population currently lives in a country whose birth rate isn’t declining. ...Italy, Spain, Portugal, Thailand, and South Korea will lose half their populations by the end of this century." Why? Even protesters are blessed by oil Everyone instinctively understands that hypocrisy is bad – that's one of those truths God has written on our hearts (Romans 2:15) – but like many truths, it can be deliberately obscured. So showing that someone is a hypocritic isn't enough anymore. We need to spell out in detail the implications of their double standard. The spoof below highlights even oil protesters' dependency on all sorts of oil products in their daily lives. Until someone somewhere starts living without oil themselves, what we are all demonstrating (anti-oil protesters too) is the blessing of oil for meeting so many of our daily needs. The video is PG-rated for one mention, and one inference, of the word "ass" so don't watch it with the kiddos. ...

Economics - Home Finances

Tiny home contentment

As dusk was settling in on a foggy November day in BC’s Bulkley Valley, I parked my car on the driveway next to the home of Matt and Montana Slaa. String lights were glowing around their home, which overlooked a rolling field, and also came equipped with a stunning view of two mountain ranges. It wasn’t hard to find the entrance, as there was only one door. Matt and Montana, along with their daughter Gabriella, welcomed me into their tiny home. I had to be careful where to put my shoes, as there was no boot room or entryway, and I had a hard time reaching the hanger for my coat as it was about 8’ high. But it only took a few seconds to feel an overwhelming sense of coziness and tranquility, radiated by the character of both the home and my hosts. In an age where it has become a momentous challenge for young men and women to get into the housing market, I visited with Matt and Montana to discover whether their outside-the-box solution of living in a tiny home with children is a practical solution that others may want to consider, or more of a romantic notion than a practical one. When dreams and practicality unite With marriage, God joins two people into one. For Matt and Montana, that happened in the summer of 2020. Montana grew up in Smithers, the daughter of a school teacher and an artist. Matt’s family moved into the area as his father is a pastor who accepted a call to serve in a local Reformed church. “I always wanted to live in a cabin,” shared Montana. “It was right from when I was young. That was my dream.” The happy couple as they move in... Matt was in university while they were dating, preparing to become a teacher. They wanted to get married, but how were they going to afford that? “I felt like I had to come with a financial plan for Montana and her dad,” Matt explained. The problem was that he still had to do more studies to get his education degree to become a teacher. That itself would come with a big cost, as they were planning to move away and study for a year in PEI. They proceeded to estimate the cost of building a tiny home, using the money they had saved. They had a year and a half to plan the project, using software from SketchUp to design it around the materials they collected. “We did it very cheaply,” explained Matt. “Wood and windows we collected from someone who was getting rid of them for free.” At this point in the conversation, Montana kindly offered me a cup of tea. Since a coffee table doesn’t fit in the room, she pulled out a tall block of wood, which they use not only as a coffee table but also a dinner table (when it is laid down on its side), and a stool for their daughter to stand on when helping with the dishes. I learned that the Slaas didn’t experience tiny home living prior to jumping in with both feet. Most of their inspiration came from online research and books, but they “just learned along the way.” At one point they decided “we've seen what we want to see. So we stopped looking at ideas, and worked with what we had liked, to come up with our own plan.” They purchased a 20’ trailer to go under the home for about $5,000, and built the home 22’ long and 10.5’ wide. That is about the maximum width to still be road legal if it was ever to be moved. Since both Matt and Montana are tall, they didn’t bother with a loft but kept the ceiling vaulted, with a curved ceiling over their bed. Their bed is raised, with a lot of storage underneath, and space too for Gabriella to enjoy some quiet time. Windows dominate two of the walls, to take in the views of fields and mountains. Freedom from debt and materialism Spending more time outside was part of the appeal for the couple. The small quarters force them to get outside for more space. A highlight of each morning involves Montana taking Gabriella out to the chickens, which currently live in a greenhouse for the winter, to collect the eggs. I asked them what else inspired them about tiny house living. For Matt, a big motivation was the freedom that comes from building his own place and living mortgage-free. “That is what came first.” But he was quick to see that it provided so much more, including spending a lot of time together. “So many people, when we talk about tiny homes are like, ‘we can never live that close.’ But we love it.” The couple acknowledged that they aren’t naturally bent towards a minimalist lifestyle. But this home forces them to do with less. “We always say you fill the space that you have,” Matt said. “So every few months, we have to do a purge through all our storage space.” “There's so many things that you don't really need because you have something that works,” added Montana. “Just the other night we were talking about how we don't have an electric mixer, even a handheld one. It's going to be another thing that we have to put somewhere. I have one whisk and I use it for everything. We make whipping cream all the time.” They originally didn’t think they needed a toaster either, but decided that toasting their bread over the fire wasn’t a sustainable option. “We just learned to really love the idea that we can do it with less,” said Matt. “And then there's the financial benefit of that too. We started to save a lot of money.” Matt contrasted this with the year they spent in PEI, where they lived in a larger home that was 600 or 800 square feet. “We saw an espresso machine for sale, it's like, ‘oh, you should get that.’ And we loved it. But there were so many things that were like, ‘oh, we should get that’ or ‘we should do that.’ Just because it was possible. Before you know it, we had spent quite a lot of money doing all these things. And we had to sell a lot of it when we left, so that we can fit back into this.” Building from scratch Tiny homes have become popular, and it isn’t hard to buy them new or used throughout the world. I asked Matt if he had experience building homes before tackling this project. He always loved creating things as he grew up, and did some woodworking. But for the most part, he figured it out as he went and thinks most people can do the same. “I'm convinced that given enough time, and commitment to learning, you can do it.” That even included the wiring, though not without getting shocked once. Northern BC gets cold over the winter, and the Slaas’ walls are framed only with 2x4 lumber. Yet the home stays plenty warm thanks to a tiny wood stove. The stove requires very small pieces of wood, so they use less than a cord of wood each year. (A cord is 4’ wide by 4’ tall by 8’ long – equivalent to a pickup truck load piled high.) This is about 20 percent of what most homes in the area use. And the stove plays an important role in keeping the home dry, which can be a challenge for a small space with a few people breathing, cooking, and showering in it. Because the fire burns out after about four hours, the Slaas sometimes wake up to a cool home (about 12 ºC). But it warms up quickly again when a new fire is lit in the morning. Matt showed me their bathroom, complete with a compostable toilet. A small bin of wood shavings paper sits next to the toilet, to assist with the composting. I don’t notice any smell (an improvement over many bathrooms with flush toilets). They also have an on-demand hot water system for their shower, but the water has to be collected in a bucket so the showers aren’t long. Their total cost to build the home was about $15,000. That includes the trailer under it, the wood stove, and the propane water heater, which were the more expensive components. Prioritizing family With another baby due in the new year, the couple has started building a second unit, with about the same dimensions, next to this home. The plan is to connect the two dwellings with an indoor walkway – a four foot-wide hallway which will also be their new main entrance/ boot room. The added space will make it much easier to put the children to bed without worrying about waking them up, and Matt and Montana are also looking forward to an eating area. The new quarters won’t be built on a trailer, but this new unit can still be loaded onto a trailer if it needs to move in the future. A little help in the kitchen can always be had. The Slaas are realistic that this setup is not going to be too long-term, because they hope to have a big family, the Lord willing. That is why they are building the addition as a separate structure. “The idea is that, very easily, we can pull it apart. And it will be its own tiny home unit,” Matt explained. “We could sell it, or Airbnb it, or rent,” added Montana. “But we are determined to make it work as long as we literally possibly can. And even after that, we are quite keen to explore other options,” shared Matt. “I've looked at yurts that are almost 1,000 square feet. And they're $40,000 to $50,000. Why not?” I asked Montana what it is like to be a mom in a tiny home. “There's definitely things that you just do differently,” she explained. “Like sometimes I think, oh, it'd be really nice if I could get up more easily without waking up in the morning. So most of the time, I would just stay in bed with her until she wakes up because I don't want to disturb her. I get up, I sneak out of bed and then sit here, in the dark, so that she can keep sleeping, and I quietly just read and do really quiet things…. “As soon as you have kids, it is not about you. It's a sacrifice that you make. And it's a really good one…. “But then we just do our morning routine and eat breakfast together and then we try to get out of the house and go outside and do the chickens in the morning and that breaks up the morning for Gabriella. And she does get a little bit cranky in the morning. I think sometimes she just gets kind of bored.” Gabriella doesn’t get the boatload of toys that many other children experience, even in homes with less means. She plays with kitchen utensils and the kindling for the fires, in much the same way that kids play when their parents are camping. “So we've been really trying to teach her that it's okay to play or read a book by herself.” Gabriella also ends up doing a lot with Montana. “She'll stand at the counter on the stool with me while I make dinner or do the dishes, she loves to help with the dishes. She wants to do what I'm doing. And I think that it's a big difference to having a house with more rooms.” Montana admits that some things just don’t work in the tiny home, including her passion for painting. That’s hard to do with a little one in close quarters, so Gabriella will often go up to her oma’s house for an afternoon, which is on the same property. Hospitality can also be a challenge. “Generally, if we have people over, it's for coffee. Maybe a cup of tea and chat for a couple hours,” explained Matt. It doesn’t work well to have people over for a meal unless they can eat outside, which is seasonal and weather-dependent. Saving to buy dirt A look inside, with bed in the back, play nook underneath, and the wood burning stove to the left. They are also transparent that this is not meant to be an alternative to getting into the real estate market, but a step towards it. “This allows us to dream of and hope for a future in buying real estate, because we do hope to have our own property, hopefully with a good bit of land, that we can farm and garden and have lots of animals,” Matt shared. Because they live on someone else’s property, tiny home living allows them to save a lot of money. Some time ago they put a note on Church Social (a congregational app) to see if anyone would be up for having them park their home on their property, and were amazed that four or five families were willing. Their monthly costs for utilities total about $100, so they are able to save $20,000-$30,000 a year towards buying their own land, which they hope to do in about five years. “This lifestyle allowed us to go to PEI to go to school for entire year, not even working, and to be loan free and to come out so much further ahead than we could have,” shared Matt. “So financially, it's a no-brainer.” “If we had a $400,000 home we'd be struggling to buy groceries. That doesn't sound at all better than where we're at now.” Matt later added that because of this arrangement “we've never had any financial stress whatsoever.” This is far less expensive than renting. Most Canadian communities, including Smithers, have seen rental rates skyrocket to between $1000 and $2000 per month for a modest unit with one or two bedrooms. Matt noted the contrast: “If you live in your tiny house for a year and a half, it's paid off.” He also respectfully disagrees with those who challenge them that a tiny home won’t increase in value. “If you build it yourself, you can almost always sell it for what you spent on it if you're smart with it. And likely more. And you have an option of renting it out.” Matt emphasized the importance of keeping the costs down by working with what is available rather than insisting on a particular design. “We're not set on what's on our walls or whatever we're going to put on our ceiling. Something might come up that will work good for us.” “The fact that we built it ourselves makes a big difference too. We built it while we were engaged and it's kind of part of our marriage story, our love story. I think if you just bought a tiny house for $100,000 you wouldn't be that attached to it or invested in wanting to stay in it.” Matt explained that because tiny homes are built on a trailer, they aren’t subject to the rules that governments have about building structures on a property. It is similar to an RV being parked on a property. Contentment personified As I left their home and drove to mine, one word was impressed on me: contentment. In 1 Timothy 6: 6-8 we read that: “godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.” I also can’t help but be convicted at how much effort we put into pursuing possessions, caring for them, storing them, and then getting rid of them. Instead of giving us contentment, they so often choke us like thorns among the wheat (Matt. 13:22). “In a sense, we feel very wealthy,” Matt reflected. “We have so much more than what so many people have. And we're so thankful for how the Lord has directed us along this path and taught us to love it.” Pictures are thanks to the Slaas. For bigger pictures, read this article as it is featured in the Jan/Feb 2024 issue....

Internet

The challenge of keeping technology in its proper place

I grew up in a home without a TV. But we did have a Commodore 64, a primitive computer (pre-Windows) that we used almost exclusively for games like Test Drive, Pac Man, and Ghost Busters. My smarter and older brothers were quick to figure out that if we added an antenna, the computer monitor could also be used as a TV. Before long, we were watching Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday evenings. And then we were also hooked on some of the shows that came right after the hockey game, like Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. We never watched all that much TV but somehow, without any big decisions being made by my parents, the home without a TV had become a home with a TV. Similarly, I have been intentional about not getting onto social media. I have never signed up for a personal Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram account. But in the past 24 hours I have used Marketplace (a product of Facebook) to search for used bricks, Etsy to purchase plans to build a greenhouse, YouTube to figure out why our toilet isn’t working properly, Church Social to prepare for a care group gathering this weekend, and Spotify to listen to music while driving.  And that doesn’t include the swath of online tools I use for work daily, like Google Suite, Slack, and Zoom. So, in spite of the line I drew to not get onto social media, by using all of these digital tools I’ve somehow signed up anyways. A paradigm shift How do we move forward in a world where screens and social media use is hardly an option, especially when they can also be so toxic? Similarly, what are we to think of new technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), which creep into our lives, whether we are aware of it or not? In preparation for this issue of the magazine, which dives into how technology is being used in Reformed schools as well as understanding AI, I went to the most prolific reader I know, RP’s Editor Jon Dykstra, asking him what is the best book I can read on the subject. He pointed me to The Tech-Wise Family, by Andy Crouch. I wasn’t disappointed. Crouch brought practical and biblical clarity to these questions and more. But his book did more than that. It gave me a paradigm shift for how I was looking at the whole topic of technology in our lives. Allowable may not be helpful (1 Cor. 6:12) If we focus simply on whether something should be allowed, we often miss the point. It may have been possible to keep TV’s out the home before, but it is much more difficult to not allow screens today. Many Reformed churches which once discouraged TV’s now welcome screens in church and at home as gifts from the Lord. Andy Crouch offers a more helpful approach – putting technology in its proper place so that the things that should be our priorities, like family, friends, and faith, remain priorities. In a broken and depraved world, we so easily go from owning possessions like a phone, tablet, or gaming console, to being possessed by them. For example, sociologist Jean Twenge has shown that teen mental health has plunged since 2012, the year that a majority of Americans owned smartphones. And many senior readers, if they are honest, will acknowledge that their screen use has long crossed into the territory of becoming an addiction What does helpful look like? Putting technology in is proper place requires discernment, something that is more difficult than rules. According to Crouch, technology is in its proper place when: It helps us bond with the real people we have been given to love. It starts great conversations. It helps us take care of the fragile bodies that we inhabit. It helps us acquire skill and mastery of domains that are the glory of human culture (sports, music, the arts, cooking, writing, accounting, etc.). It helps us cultivate awe for the created world we are part of and responsible for stewarding. We use it with intention and care. On the last point, he adds: “If there’s one thing I’ve discovered about technology, it’s that it doesn’t stay in its proper place on its own; much like my children’s toys and stuffed creatures and minor treasures, it finds its way underfoot all over the house and all over our lives.” Take a moment to reflect on the technology use in your home and life. How does it align with the criteria above? Let’s also do this reflecting humbly, recognizing that the ultimate judge is not ourselves (we are very quick to justify what we like) but our God, who calls us to be faithful stewards of our time and gives us a high calling as a prophet, priest, and king (Lord’s Day 12, Heidelberg Catechism). Tech-Wise changed my thinking If you or your family struggles with managing technology, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of Crouch’s book, as he shares practical advice about how to prioritize character, shape our spaces with intentionality, structure our time, and apply all of this in the details of life, from our commutes in our vehicles to how we sleep. This was a paradigm shift for how I was looking at things like social media, including whether media organizations like RP should utilize platforms like Instagram when these mediums cause so many problems for their users. It has made me realize that I was being naïve, and even hypocritical, if I thought we were even able to “flick the switch” on social media. After all, a good case could be made that even apart from our Instagram and Facebook pages, RP’s online presence (complete with a popular app, videos, website, podcasts, and newsletter) could also qualify as social media. But it has also served to strengthen my appreciation for our board’s decision to prioritize this print magazine and our Real Talk podcast, over social media and video. Unplugged is different Since most members of the Canadian NAPARC churches also receive the magazine, we are able to bond, and sharpen each other, about what we find in these pages. For example, my church’s Young Peoples Society picks an article from it at each meeting for their discussions (checking off the first two criteria from Crouch already). This simply isn’t possible if each church member is plugged into their own source of information, oblivious to what others are reading or watching. A print magazine in particular engages not just our hearts and minds, but also our bodies (we have to pick it up, hold it, gaze at it, flip the pages). Our heart rate slows as we settle into a comfortable position and slowly work through the issue. RP’s team has also been intentional about trying to make the reading experience delightful, with nicely designed pages, space for large pictures, a captivating kids’ section and new sections like the artist profile. Our senses and hearts need to be fed along with our minds. Our hope is that this magazine, and to varying degrees all of RP’s resources, will strengthen your relationships with your brothers and sisters in Christ, will be used to start great conversations, will help you take care of your bodies and souls, and will develop awe for God’s creation. But reading this is a small part of your life. So do take more than a moment to consider how the other sources of technology in your home and life measure up to Crouch’s criteria. If you have someone else around you, consider reading Crouch’s criteria about whether technology is in its proper place and ask them for their thoughts, perhaps even about how you are managing technology. And if your device happens to ping while you are enjoying a conversation with them, ignore it!...

Science - Creation/Evolution

My dog ate the evidence for evolution

3 evolutionary theories that are based on the lack of evidence for evolution ***** There are plenty of great, readable books that expose the many problems with evolutionary theory. These include Gordon Wilson’s Darwin’s Sandcastle, Change Laura Tan and Rob Stadler’s The Stairway to Life, and Marcos Eberlin’s Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose (just to name a few). But what about something shorter? My daughter is sometimes allowed to take a notecard full of key facts with her into a test. That’s what I was looking for: not a book-sized rebuttal, but something short enough to remember and use. That meant it couldn’t involve stacks of studies and countless facts to counter the evolutionists’ mountain of materials. Those facts can be had, and include revealing quotes, like this infamous admission by one of the world’s leading evolutionary biologists, Richard Lewontin (1929-2021). Back in 1997 he acknowledged that it wasn’t the evidence that drove evolutionists to accept evolution, but their ideology: “Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. “It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.” As impressive as that admission is, it’s just one guy. I was after something bigger, and also simpler – an argument where, even if I didn’t recall all the details, I might still be able to recall and relay the gist of it. What I found are three instances where evolutionists have accidentally acknowledged the lack of evidence for their theory. That acknowledgement comes, not from anything they’ve said, but instead by the “sub theories” they’ve offered to explain away the missing evidence. And what’s the evidence for these “sub theories”? Only that Evolution needs them to be true. This is akin to the student who, to explain why he hasn’t handed in his homework, claims his dog ate it, and when he’s asked for proof that his dog did indeed chow down on the assignment, he points to what’s missing: “My dog must have eaten it, because my homework’s not here, right?” As his teacher knows, the missing paper isn’t proof at all; the boy is simply presuming the very thing – that he actually wrote a paper – he was being asked to prove. And when he resorts to this kind of logical contortions, all it really evidences is that he has nothing better to offer. I think the same is true in the three evolutionary examples that follow. The most compelling evidence on offer is only the lengths evolutionists are willing to go to, to prop up their theory. Two pillars When it comes to the Theory of Evolution we all know the basics: once there was no life on this planet, but then simple cells formed in the primordial soup. After millions of years, and through the process of natural selection, these simple cells eventually spawned more complex cells and even more complex organisms, until finally we arrived. Greg Koukl has called this the “Molecule to Man Hypothesis.” And as Koukl also noted, if we’re going to take this nice story seriously, then evolutionists would have to prove two key things: 1) That life can come from non-life 2) That transitions from one kind to another do happen. These two ideas are so pivotal to evolutionary theory that if they can’t both be proven, then Evolution wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. 1. Life from non-life The Stanley Miller experiment (also known as the Miller-Urey experiment) consisted of a closed system with tubes connecting a heated water (ocean) chamber down below, with a gaseous chamber above, with sparks simulating early Earth lightning.        One of the problems with the Stanley Miller experiment is that it turns out amino acids come in left-hand and right-hand varieties – mirror images of each other – and the experiment produced equal quantities of each.         But our bodies don’t use both. Living creatures use the left-hand sort, and just as you can’t fit your right hand into a left glove, the cell can’t use right-handed amino acids – they aren’t a good fit. In fact, their presence can harm cells, and at a minimum, they would need to be sifted out. That means, even before the first cell ever formed, there would need to be some sort of mechanism present which could separate the righties from the lefties. That separation can be done in a lab through intelligent intervention. But who or what could do the selecting on early Earth after that lightning bolt blasts out that first batch of amino acids? Cells don’t exist yet, so there are no cellular mechanisms present to do the separating – there’s nothing in place. It’d be more accurate to say the Stanley Miller experiment didn’t produce building blocks of life so much as a muddled mess. The idea that life came from non-life used to be known as Spontaneous Generation. Maggots, it was thought, were spontaneously formed in dead rotting meat, and many believed that mice and flies were formed the same way. After a bit of investigation this was shown to be untrue. Today the idea persists under a different name: Abiogenesis (literally life from not life). Everyone knows maggots could never spontaneously form from non-living matter, but what if the organisms being formed were much simpler? What if it was only a single cell? And what if we gave it millions and millions of years to develop? Could it happen then? Well, if you read the scientific literature you’ll hear that yes, under those circumstances abiogenesis could happen, and indeed did happen. However, even though scientists are very sure it happened, even they’ll admit they haven’t worked out exactly how it happened. But isn’t evolution supposed to explain the “how” part? To be fair, they do have a variety of interesting ideas, but all of their proposals have serious problems. Let’s take a look at the best-known example – the Stanley Miller experiment in 1953. Though it happened 70 years ago, this experiment is still getting in the news today, because it was so influential. For decade upon decade the experiment has been cited in textbooks as proof that life could arise through a series of random chemical reactions. It’s so pivotal, that many a time it is presented as the proof for life from non-life, with no others given. So what happened in the experiment? Miller subjected a mixture of chemicals to an electric spark. The mixture of chemicals was supposed to mimic Earth’s early atmosphere and the electric spark was supposed to represent lightening. A week later, Miller discovered that some amino acids had been formed, which was significant because amino acids are a vital component of living cells. It should be noted though, that amino acids are not living themselves, but are merely a necessary component of cells. So they are a basic building block of life in much the same way that steel is a necessary building block for cars. These amino acids were presented as proof that life could arise from random chemical interactions. Consider for a moment how overstated this claim was. Miller hadn’t shown how life could be created from non-life, he had only shown how one necessary component might be formed. Going back to the car analogy, this is akin to someone zapping a rock of particularly pure ore and then declaring that the puddling blob of molten metal that results proves a car could come about by chance. Overstatement aside, there were other significant problems with the experiment and its results. For example, at one point many evolutionists thought that Earth’s early atmosphere was in some ways the opposite of what we have today: they believed back then it was hydrogen rich and lacking oxygen. Why? Well, at least in part because they needed it to be that way; oxygen would have interfered with the chemical reactions that they needed. And yes, to work, Miller’s experiment required a lot of hydrogen and absolutely no oxygen. But today even evolutionists will concede that our environment has always had oxygen in it. And that means that the amino acids could never have formed here on Earth via anything remotely resembling Miller’s method. The fix: extraterrestrial life from non-life So here’s where things get interesting. Put yourself into the shoes of an atheistic scientist who knows that Abiogenesis couldn’t have happened here on Earth. What “logical” conclusion will he be forced to draw? That’s right – life must have originated on some other planet first, and then come to Earth! This idea is known as Panspermia and while it’s not evolutionists’ consensus position, that it is seriously discussed at all only emphasizes the problem that evolutionists have with life arising here on Earth. The only “evidence” for Panspermia is that life exists here on Earth and it seems impossible for it to have started via evolutionary processes on Earth… therefore it must have started elsewhere. So Panspermia – this theory of an extraterrestrial origin for life – is actually an acknowledgement that evolutionists can’t explain how life could have arisen on Earth. 2. Transitions from one kind to another Things don’t get any easier for evolutionists when it comes to transitional forms. Evolutionary theory says that molecules evolved into man over millions of years and via millions of tiny changes. So when we start searching through the fossil record we should come across literally millions of transitional forms as one species turned into an entirely new one. Now, depending on which side of the creation/evolution debate you are talking to, the fossil record either doesn’t provide any examples of these transitional forms, or there are museums’ worth of such fossils. The Archaeopteryx has often been mentioned as a transition between dinosaurs and birds, and you can go to Creation.com or AnswersInGenesis.org, to learn about how it and other supposed transitional forms fails as a true transition. (The short summary: if birds evolved from dinosaurs or reptiles, then feathers must have evolved from scales and their wings must have evolved from arms. The Archaeopteryx has true wings and detailed advanced feathers, similar to those of bird species today. It only seems fair that when evolutionists are asked for transitional forms between reptiles and birds they should have to produce the half feather, half scale versions – the true transitional forms. The Archaeopteryx is at best a questionable example of an intermediary stage.) But what I want to highlight is the kind of argument evolutionists have to resort to if they acknowledge that there aren’t good examples of transitions. How would they explain away that lack of evidence? The fix: transitions few and far between Well, if someone absolutely refuses to believe in Creation, what “logical” conclusion will they be forced to come to? Then evolution must have happened in quick spurts, leaving few evidences of transitions in the fossil record! This theory is called Punctuated Equilibrium and was first proposed by Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge in 1972. Again, this theory is not based on the evidence, but rather the lack of it: we’re missing the transitional forms that would be needed to prove Evolution, but since Evolution must be true – that presumption is beyond question – then Evolution must not need transitional forms all that badly after all. Punctuated Equilibrium is an acknowledgement that evolutionists don’t have the abundance of transitional forms they expected to find. It’s also worth noting that until Gould and Eldredge, the lack of transitional forms was not really acknowledged. As Gould put it in 1977, “The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of palaeontology.” Creationists were pointing out the lack of transitional forms long before Gould and Eldredge…but secular scientists don’t listen to creationists. 3. The Anthropic Principle At this point we should see the beginnings of a pattern in the Evolution/Creation debate. And the Anthropic Principle only makes that pattern all the more evident. The phrase “Anthropic Principle” was first coined to describe the amazing way in which our universe seemed to be designed specifically for human life. For us to live here on Earth it seems we need physical constants, laws, and properties to fall within certain narrow ranges. In Designer Universe: Intelligent Design and the Existence of God, authors Jimmy H. Davis and Harry L. Poe give these three examples: Protons and electrons have to have just the right charge. Atoms are composed of two charged particles: a positively charged proton and a negatively charged electron. The proton is 1,836 times larger than the electron and yet these two particles have exactly equal charges. If the two charges weren’t exactly equal in magnitude, if say, there was a charge difference of only one part per billion, all the pieces of your body would fly apart. Our Sun has to be just the right type of star. The Sun is not a typical star, being bigger than 95 per cent of all other stars. These smaller stars aren’t as hot so a planet would have to orbit much closer to stay warm enough. But at closer distances the rotation of a planet becomes locked so that one side always faces the star. This would cause one side of the planet to freeze and the other side to burn (sort of like our moon, or like Mercury). Additionally, our sun is a single star. 70 percent of stars are estimated to be binary or multiple star systems. It is hard to imagine how habitable planets could exist in such systems. Jupiter is just what we need, just where we need it. Jupiter turns out to be in just the right orbit and the right distance away to protect Earth from bombardment by killer asteroids or comets. Jupiter’s large size and high gravity makes it act as an asteroid and comet catcher. Some other stars have Jupiter-like planets orbiting them, but in most cases they are either in the wrong orbit, or are too near the sun, or may be spiraling inward toward the sun. While our Jupiter is necessary for life on Earth all the other “Jupiters” detected so far would prevent life from living in those systems. These are just a few examples of the anthropic (man-centered) nature of our universe. When you add all the factors together that would have to be just so for life to exist in our universe it turns out the odds against life are astronomical. The odds are so amazing even evolutionists are astounded. This makes the Anthropic Principle a powerful piece of evidence for a universe Designer. The fix: An infinite multiverse But imagine you are an atheist and evolutionary scientist who has been confronted with the Anthropic Principle and the astronomical odds against life in this universe. What logical conclusion are you going to be forced to draw if you want to remain an atheist? That’s right – if the odds are infinitely stacked against life in any one universe, wouldn’t the odds even out considerably if there was an infinite number of universes? This universe would then just happen to be that one universe in a million billion where the odds all worked out in our favor. This multiverse theory has become a staple in Star Trek and Marvel superhero movies, but once again there is no actual evidence for it. None at all. It’s another evolutionary story used to fill in for a lack of evidence. Thus the Multiverse Theory is an acknowledgment of just how implausible it is that an undesigned universe would be so well-suited for life. One last example I'll include one bonus example of an evolutionary theory based on a lack of evidence: the Oort Cloud. This is a theorized cloud of icy planetesimals that are said to be on the outer fringes of our Solar System. This cloud is beyond the limits of our current observational technology, so how do we know it is there? Because evolutionists need it to be. We still have comets, and if our Solar System is 4.6 billion years old, as the evolutionists presume, then any icy comets passing around the Sun should long ago have melted away. So, the continuing existence of comets would seem to be evidence of a Solar System that is much much younger – just thousands, not billions of years old.. But, no, evolutionists see them instead as evidence of a comet breeding ground way, way out there, where billions of icy chunks will sometimes bump into each other in just such a fashion as to direct an ice ball inward towards the Sun, starting a new comet. So the evidence for the Oort Cloud is lacking, and based only on the fact that evolution needs it to exist. Conclusion I haven’t tried here to provide facts to counter the evidence for evolution. Instead what we’ve explored is how evolutionists themselves have highlighted the lack of evidence for their theory by coming up with theories to explain away that lack. Evolution’s two pillars – life from non-life, and species’ transition to new species – were supposed to have lots of proof to back them up. But evolutionists have had to come up with “sub theories” – Panspermia and Punctuated Equilibrium – to explain why that proof is missing. And these sub theories are themselves supported, not by evidence, but by the lack of it. When Christian scientists pointed out the amazing odds against a universe supporting life, evolutionists answered this evidence with another unsupported story – the Multiple Universe Theory. Finally, the Oort Cloud is yet another example of evolutionists, instead of relying on evidence, turning to stories that already assume Evolution is true. Reflection questions What are the two pillars of evolution? Explain "Abiogensis." Is it possible? Explain "Panspermia." What does the theory of Panspermia show? What problem is there with the theory of transitional forms? What is meant with "Punctuated Equilibrium”? Why have evolutionists come up with the idea? What is the "Anthropic (man-centered) Principle”? What is the "Multiple Universe Theory"? A version of this article was first published in the January 2003 issue under the title “The Science is underwhelming.”...

Assorted

Gambling as the new norm? Christians still need to say no

Estimates had Americans betting a record $23 billion on Super Bowl LVIII, up more than a third from the $16 billion that was wagered in 2023. Among the betters was one Cardinal Pritchard, who shared that he’d made a wager in an article for the news site Not the Bee. Pritchard didn’t specify how much he bet, so it could have been trivial. What is notable is that he publicized it on a specifically Christian website and in making his admission there, he was acting as if it’s no big thing for Christians to gamble. The irony is that he did so in an article on the enormity of America’s gambling problem – Pritchard reported that an estimated 67.8 million Americans placed a bet on the Super Bowl, for an average of well over $300 a bet! Gambling is a bad bet Big, too, is just how common gambling has become – that works out to almost 1 in 5 Americans. Pritchard actually reported it as 1 in 4, but his math was off. Bad math is, of course, an ailment common to gamblers, who make the repeated mistake of thinking that this time they’ll come out ahead. But in a bit of computation that should be a part of every Christian high school math curriculum, if you engage in any sort of regular gambling the odds are going to get you in the end. Why? Because casinos and online sites take their percentage, so what’s paid out will always be less than what was paid in. Thus one of the reasons Christians shouldn’t gamble is because it’s a bad use of the resources God has given us. It’s worse than what the one servant did in the Parable of the Talents (Matt. 25: 14-30) who buried the money his master entrusted to him, and didn’t even put it in the bank to earn some interest. How much angrier would his master have been if the servant had come back with half a talent, having frittered the rest away in gambling? Or if he’d come back with a debt of several talents? Even when you win gambling is bad news But what if you are an especially good gambler, defying the odds to actually win more than you lose? Would it be okay for a Christian to gamble if he could turn a profit? No, but for a different reason. When you win at gambling it is only because someone else lost. Whatever your gain, it is someone else’s pain. Sometimes investing is likened to gambling, but a key difference is that if I make money on a business investment, it can be as the result of that business doing something to benefit many others. A company like Costco grows in value because it opens more stores that serve more people some good values. Your gain as a Costco stockholder comes at the general populace’s gain too. But in gambling, you only win because someone else has lost. And that’s not loving your neighbor (Matt. 22:35-40). Add to this the number of people who get addicted to gambling and lose everything. And then consider how, in Canada, provincial governments have a big hand in pushing gambling, and thus a big hand in destroying these lives. While I couldn’t dig up the specifics for the Canadian Super Bowl wager numbers, gambling is big business in Canada too, as evidenced by the sheer volume of sports gambling ads on television. A peek at government coffers shows their own heavy dependence on gambling. Alberta, for example, is expecting to take in $1.5 billion in 2023-2024, or, more than $300 per citizen. God’s people need to understand why gambling is wrong so we can steer clear of this entrapment. And in steering clear we can also be a good neighbor to others by “denormalizing” gambling. Just say no, for everyone’s sake....

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Sparrow blessing

Mao’s “Four Pest Campaign” shows why a nation’s leaders need to be humble about their expertise, and about what they attempt ***** Most mornings I waken to the sound of sparrows chittering and chattering. Approximately twenty to thirty little house sparrows have a sun-up inclination to alight on one of the cedar bushes right next to my window. These sparrows used to reside in my laundry poles – winter and summer. They had their babies there and they slept there. They also poked out their gray, brown heads and white cheeks to assess me as I walked by on my way to the chicken coop every morning. Perhaps they now resent me as I cut down one of the laundry poles last summer. Feeling guilty about cutting down the laundry pole home, I fill the bird feeder with lots of seed. I have named eight of the songsters – Sam, Pete, Al, Rudy, Rembrandt, Ollie, William and Simon – and their daily, simple notes of joy give me pleasure and comfort. A father who loved sparrows My Dad told me that when he was a little boy, he learned to sing Psalm 84, especially verse 3, with great enthusiasm. He sang the Psalm in Dutch and the translated version of verse 3 reads: Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. My Dad, who was a wonderful story teller, went on to relate that he thought the word altars, which in the Dutch language sounds a lot like lanterns, meant that sparrows would eventually make their homes in the lanterns lining his street. Consequently, dressed in short pants and a blue jacket, he would stand for long periods of time underneath the street lanterns. He would crane his neck and gaze up at these lamps, hoping to see sparrows lay their babies in the lights. It never happened, but he was convinced for a long time that it would happen. The Chairman who hated them In 1893, seventeen years before my Dad's birth, Mao Zedong was born. Growing up to become the first chairman of the Communist Party of China (1935-1976), as well as being the founding father of the People's Republic of China, Mao had absolutely no respect for, or understanding of, the Psalms. Neither did he love the sparrow, that fifth-day creature which God had set in the sky to be a blessing to mankind. In 1958, the year my family immigrated from Holland to Canada, Mao Zedong, Marxist dictator of the world's most populous country, decreed that all the sparrows of China were to be killed. Ostensibly to help China leap forward economically and socially, he began a “Four Pests Campaign” (1958-1962) to eradicate, among other animals, the Eurasian tree sparrow. The Chinese Chairman, an unbelieving little man who did not comprehend that the sparse hairs of his head were numbered by God, did not know what he was doing. His proud slogan was: “Man must conquer Nature.” And, because of his campaign, the vast country and grand country of China, instead of leaping forward, began to leap backwards into famine and death. Matthew 10:29-31 tells us: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.” That is to say, God's people are of more value than the sparrows; that is to say, God works all things out for His people's good. He cares for them. Besides the tiny, chestnut-crowned sparrow, three other animals were targeted in an overall elimination crusade. These three animals were the mosquito, the rat and the fly. Mao's reasoning was: mosquitoes cause malaria; rats cause the plague; and flies are a general nuisance. Sparrows were included at the tail end of the elimination list because they ate both grain and fruit. Chinese poster declaring war against the four pests: mosquitos, flies, rats, & sparrows Government didn’t know best Mao enacted a law in 1959 which made it mandatory for Chinese citizens to participate in the offensive against this common little bird, the sparrow. He had no idea that this little song-bird helped plants to grow. When the sparrow ate from plants, it passed on the seeds in its droppings. Mao didn't have a clue that these small twitterers also served as food for other larger birds and mammals, nor that they helped provide necessary fertilizer with their excrement for the plants on which they fed. Neither did the Chairman know that sparrows ate harmful insects. With the enacting of Mao's law to kill the diminutive sparrows with their kidney-shaped, black ear patches, the Chinese ecosystem and environment took a downward turn. The Chinese people took to arms. They were forced to do so. All over the country people banged pots and pans together to prevent the little birds from settling into their nests. The little “pests” were about twelve centimeters in length and weighed less than an ounce. There were numerous posters declaring war on the birds. Young boys and men fired at the midget flyers with guns and slingshots. Yelling and screaming crowds beat trees with long, wooden poles. As soon as any little creature perched anywhere, worn out by the riots below them, they would be harassed to such a point that they would drop dead from exhaustion. Exhilarated by what they thought was a great leap forward and constantly praised by the authorities for their diligence, people collected dead birds and tied their petite brown bodies together, forming feathery ropes of destruction. One small light in this fowl massacre was the Polish Embassy in Beijing. They refused to engage in the killing of the sparrows. A refuge for the remaining sparrows, the embassy was eventually surrounded by zealous Chinese citizens, who shouted and shrieked continuously. In the long run, the sparrows hiding in this small space also died. The Polish personnel cleared their area of dead sparrows with shovels. Instead of sparrows, locusts Psalm 102:7 reads: “I lie awake, I am like a lonely sparrow on the housetop.” There were many lonely birds after Mao's feather massacre. No census of them was taken prior to their demise. But it is estimated that there were perhaps some six hundred million of them. Hundreds of millions were eliminated through Mao's campaign. The year after the murder of these birds began, insect infestation of field crops increased, the locust being the main predator. The locusts multiplied and ate everything in their path. Grain production collapsed and a famine began. All the places in which sparrows no longer chirped and chipped, had no cereal output. The Great Famine which ensued is not allowed to be spoken of in China. Rather, this desolate time is referred to as the “Three Years of Natural Disaster” or the “Three Years of Difficulties.” Yang Jisheng, (1940-  ), Chinese journalist and author, wrote a book entitled Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962. First published in Chinese in 2008 (and translated into English in 2008), it chronicles the Great Famine and the Great Leap Forward. Although he was, for a time, a loyal Communist, the Tiananmen Square massacre destroyed Jisheng's faith in the Party. Mao’s arrogance killed tens of millions The horror stories chronicled by Jisheng are brutal and graphic. He records, among many, many incidents: a teenage orphan killing and eating her four-year-old brother the death of 44 of a village's 45 inhabitants and the consequent insanity of the last remaining resident, a woman in her 60s the torture and beatings and live burials of people who declared realistic harvests, who refused to hand over what little food they had, and who stole scraps or simply angered officials Jisheng wrote regarding his research: “I didn't think it would be so serious and so brutal and so bloody. I didn't know that there were thousands of cases of cannibalism. I didn't know about farmers who were beaten to death. People died in the family and they didn't bury the person because they could still collect their food rations; they kept the bodies in bed and covered them up and the corpses were eaten by mice. People ate corpses and fought for the bodies. In Gansu they killed outsiders; people told me strangers passed through and they killed and ate them. And they ate their own children. Terrible! Too terrible!” Devoting fifteen years to documenting this terrible famine, Jisheng catalogued a three-year catastrophe that is estimated to have taken 36 to 55 million lives across China. At the end of his campaign against the four designated pests, Mao Zedong ordered the vendetta against sparrows ended, replacing it with an operation against bed bugs. Eventually, the People's Republic of China had to import 250,000 sparrows from the then Soviet Union to stop the ecological disruption. After the sparrows had settled back into the country, the locust population was brought under control once more. Over a period of three years, it is estimated that one billion sparrows, 1.5 billion rats, 100 million kilograms of flies and 11 million kilograms of mosquitos were annihilated throughout China. Ecological and economic disaster jeopardized the very fabric of the country. Even as Nebuchadnezzar before him, Mao was deluded into thinking that he owned nature. Mao (in)famously quipped: "Make the high mountain bow its head; make the river yield the way." The truth is that Sinai and Jordan laughed at him and God held him in derision. Where is this mass murderer now? Conclusion In this day and age, when so much misery and terrible economic disaster looms and threatens to undo us, we do well to remember the sparrow blessing, the blessing which Jesus gives to all who acknowledge Him: “But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.So everyone who acknowledges Me before men, I also will acknowledge before My Father Who is in heaven, but whoever denies Me before men, I also will deny before My Father Who is in heaven.” – Matthew 10:30-33...

News

Saturday Selections – Feb. 10, 2024

Click on the titles below to go to the linked articles... Remy: Look what you made me do A serious point can be had from this goofy parody of a Taylor Swift song. Both the original and this version are about denying responsibility, though Taylor was denying her own responsibility and this time it's about criminals and the State denying their responsibilities. Our governments have inserted themselves into most aspects of life – healthcare, childcare, education, agriculture, tourism, job creation, arts, entertainment, recreation, media, and more – but how are they doing with their actual God-given responsibility to bear the sword to punish evildoers (Romans 13:4) and rescue the oppressed (Ps. 72:12-14)? What does it mean to tell your spouse, "I love you"? As Valentine's Day approaches, the world has one definition of love to pitch us, and the Bible has quite another. Doctors admit puberty blockers aren't reversible With Alberta's Premier Danielle Smith facing heat for banning puberty-blocking hormones for children 15 and under, this article couldn't be better timed. Be sure to share this one widely, especially if you live in Alberta. In related news, even the New York Times is willing to admit that transgender surgeries are getting pushed on confused kids. Sex outside marriage has triggered an international bloodbath While the numbers are estimates, more than half of all deaths in 2023 may have been due to abortion, largely performed on the babies of unmarried women. So, in other words, chastity can save lives. Millions of lives. The tattooed generation While some tattoos are meaningful – maybe a Bible text or a spouse's name – many others, as this article declares, "permanentize trivial things." And as such, that sort are a metaphor for a generation which also "trivializes permanent things." This isn't a Christian article, so while it is on to something, it doesn't understand that the Devil always wants us to make big of little and little of big (Matt. 23:23). How to say forbidden things on YouTube Whatever your thoughts on the thing, Prov. 18:17 highlights why they shouldn't have restricted our ability to talk about the thing. ...

Articles, Book Reviews

Scout makes a comeback with new audio streaming service

Entrepreneurial spirit meets Christian family values with tech startup Whillo.com ***** Reformed Perspective’s last issue featured a back cover ad that caught my eye. It introduced Whillo.com, a new audio streaming service featuring books like Scout and Wambu that were read to me by my father when I was a boy, and which I have since read to my own children. But weren’t these books rather “niche” to the Dutch Reformed community? Who would have turned them into audiobooks? Would the quality be any good? Streaming music and audiobooks continues to grow in popularity, also among Reformed households in Canada. But this was the first time I had seen a specifically Christian streaming service, let alone one that would feature classic Dutch Reformed books that many in the newest generation likely have not heard of, like Anne de Vries’ Journey Through the Night series. I have my own entrepreneurial itch, so I set up a Zoom meeting with Whillo’s founder and owner Layne van Rhijn to learn more about this new service and the vision behind it. From drones to audiobooks The van Rhijn family. Layne and his family live in Diamond City, Alberta, just outside of Lethbridge, and are members of a local Netherlands Reformed congregation. He works full-time as a paramedic firefighter. One of the perks of the job is that he gets regular blocks of time off. With an entrepreneurial spirit and a propensity to get things done, he has turned this time “off” into a number of vibrant business ventures. It started with his interest in, and growing collection of drones. He started an online drone store out of his garage, expanded into a store, and then eventually sold that company to an investor. This was followed by a new venture, focused on the used market for commercial drones. “So I built an app for drone traders, like an Auto Trader for selling used drones,” shared Layne. That has grown to become a marketplace for used drones throughout North America and quickly led to many more opportunities. “So then we started doing apps and different websites for clients.” Over time, he grew a portfolio of companies which provide income streams and he continues to grow and scale them. In 2021 Layne and his wife Melinda created Whillo, “to scratch an itch….We have three young kids ourselves, and are always looking for good audio content for them. And we found ourselves proof-listening a lot.” A librarian at their local Christian school then expressed interest in putting good books online in audio form. So Layne put together a proposal of what it would take, with them providing the tech help and the librarian (also an aunt) helping with the narrating. As Layne explains: “Initially, we were going to keep it small and kind of internal, and then it started growing on its own. So then we actually did a proper app and have grown it from there.” Growing an audio library Whillo was more difficult to get off the ground than Layne expected. “You can't just use any book, right? You have to use something either in the public domain or set up licensing agreements. So we were initially quite limited in what we could do.” They began to grow their collection with licensing agreements, and they also started hiring professional narrators from across the world. A skim through the catalog of Whillo’s website reveals over 200 audiobooks, many of which are for children and largely unknown beyond Dutch Reformed immigrants and their children. Layne noted that “we’ve significantly expanded our teen/adult selection over the past months and the more recent books we’ve added are well known across Christian circles.” I downloaded the app on my phone to give it a try, as our family was about to embark on another 12-hour road trip. This allowed our family of eight to listen to two books for about four or five hours total. I was pleasantly surprised by the listening experience. I guess I expected an amateur reader, or someone with a Dutch accent, but was treated to a professional and dynamic reading, comparable to what I get with a mainstream resource like Audible. But I also quickly learned that my children didn’t share the same interest that I had in most of the books available on Whillo. And looking at the music selection, it was apparent that it would be a hard sell for me to have my family listen to the entirely classical and choral genre. In recent decades, a lot has changed when it comes to the music being listened to in many Reformed homes, including in my own. Overcoming obstacles But Whillo has found a receptive audience not just with some conservative Reformed families, but among conservative families from other Christian traditions as well, including the Mennonites and Hutterites, and have noticed a large uptick in traffic from various homeschool groups. Layne’s expectation is that it will keep growing in content and reach. For example, it can become a place where choirs and musicians can get their content out to those who will appreciate it. He acknowledged that choosing content is incredibly difficult as there is no shortage of differing opinions of what is appropriate or good. Another challenge is the sheer cost, as some of his larger titles require between $2,000-$5,000 each to produce, and then half of the proceeds from subscribers go to royalties. But the enterprise has recently crossed the line where it is being profitable, and is also beginning to attract larger publishers like Youth With a Mission (YWAM). Over 33,000 hours have already been streamed since last January, when Whillo began tracking, with about seventy percent of the listeners coming from Canada. “It's been the hardest business, by far, that I've ever tackled. And I didn't expect that at all. Every part of it has been hard and but also very rewarding.” Layne cited examples where he receives emails or message from families who tell them how much they appreciate it and listen to it. “It keeps us going.” You can check out Whillo’s selection at Whillo.com. Picture courtesy of Layne van Rhijn....

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Saturday Selections – Feb 3, 2024

Click on the titles below for the linked articles... Make more babies! I don't share enough good news, so here's a fun one. This is a diaper company taking the sort of stand that any self-interested diaper company should logically take - give us more customers! But with all the doom and gloom about population these days, it's probably brave for even a diaper company to come out in favor of babies. While they hang their baby endorsement on a statement from agnostic Elon Musk, there's also an uncredited voice-over recognizable as American's favorite pastor, Billy Graham (or, possibly, his son Franklin). So while they could get bolder – let's explicitly proclaim God's truth as God's truth – these folk are certainly taking some baby steps in the right direction! The price of legalized pot Way more teens are smoking way more marijuana than 10 years ago. And what they're smoking is way more potent than what was around a generation ago. And it's costing many teens their mental stability... Euthanasia normalized by manipulation under the Trudeau government (10 min read) There's been some good news on the state-sanctioned suicide front this week. On March 17 the "eligibility" of death-as-medicine was going to be expanded to include the mentally ill too. Rising costs have made it impossible to find a home? If that left you depressed, the government might have helped, not with more affordable housing, but a prescription of lethal drugs. But on January 29, the federal health minister announced they would suspend, at least for now, this expansion. You can read more, and what to do about it at the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, and ARPA Canada. To find out how we ever got here, read the longer article, from REAL Women of Canada, linked above. Barbara Kay: on "Grave Error: How the media misled us (and the truth about residential schools)" "''Canadians deserve to know the truth,' Federal Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre told reporters earlier this week, regarding 2021 claims made — but never investigated — of unmarked graves at the Kamloops, British Columbia Indian residential school." And there's a new book out highlighting how the media, and some of our elected leaders, steered us wrong. A 21st-century Peasants’ Revolt World traveler and sometime RP contributor Jonathon Van Maren was in Europe this past week to report on the massive farmer protests going on. How we got here - a  transgender documentary (12 min) How did transgenderism shift so quickly from a fringe movement to something taught in our public schools and affirmed by almost all our political leaders? This documentary gets to some of it. While narrator Christopher Rufo doesn't frame it in specifically Christian terms, what he highlights is how transgenderism is seen by its proponents as more than simply surgery, more than a personal decision, more than a struggle some small minority have to deal with: leading proponents view it as an all-encompassing worldview from which we are to interpret all else. Susan Striker, one trans proponent, spoke of his transgender manifesto as a "secular sermon." That gives us all the clue we should need as to how best to counter this movement. Not with Rufo's equally secular response, in which he's left confused enough to refer to Striker with female pronouns. No, what's needed is our own sermon of sorts, but a spiritual one. We need to lead with the facts as God as defined them, that He defines our gender. ...

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Understanding the war in Gaza

On October 7, 2023, the terrorist organization Hamas launched an attack on Israel from Gaza that killed about 1400 Israeli civilians. Hamas also took over 200 hostages. The brutality of the attack was staggering, and there are reports of Hamas terrorists recording videos of their own gleefulness as they committed atrocities against Jewish women and children. In Western countries, thousands of “progressives” began demonstrating in the streets and posting messages on social media in support of the Hamas attacks. Then, as Israel counterattacked into Gaza to prevent further Hamas aggression, progressives demanded that there be a ceasefire to halt Israel’s military advance. In the view of such progressives, the Palestinians of Gaza are an oppressed people under the colonial rule of Israel. But such a view doesn’t understand the history of the region and the current situation. Correcting misinformation To correct the misconceptions, Dr. Willem J. Ouweneel, a prominent evangelical theologian in the Netherlands, quickly put together a small book to help Christians understand the big picture. This book is called Israel and the Palestinians and it was published by Paideia Press within weeks of the terrorist attack. First of all, it’s important to understand that Palestinian Arabs are not the original occupants of the land who were subsequently dispossessed by Jews. Yes, there have been Arabs in Palestine for centuries, and there were Jews living there too for an even longer time. As Ouweneel explains, “There have been Jews living in the Holy Land virtually continuously since the arrival of Israel under the leadership of Moses (about 3,200 to 3,400 years ago).” Yes, many Jews were expelled by the Romans in the first and second centuries AD, but some Jews always remained. It was their original homeland, after all. Arab and Jewish Palestinians The Muslims conquered Jerusalem in 638 and much of the rest of the Middle East during the seventh century. For centuries thereafter the area, revered as the “Holy Land,” remained under Muslim rule – except for a brief interlude when the Crusaders held control. In 1917, during World War One, the British seized it from the Ottoman Empire. Between the two world wars, while the British administered this territory, large numbers of Jews came from other parts of the world to live there. Both the Arab and Jewish residents were known as “Palestinians.” The idea that only Arabs are Palestinians developed later, especially after Israel became a country in 1948. That is, the claim that there is a specifically Arab Palestinian national identity is very recent historically. Palestine partitioned As the number of Jewish people in Palestine surged, their potential military strength grew correspondingly. Tensions between Jews and Arabs increased. The British therefore tossed the “Palestinian issue” hot potato to the United Nations (UN) for a solution. A UN commission proposed partitioning Palestine into the modern country of Israel and an Arab Palestine territory, and this proposal was adopted by the UN. The Jews were jubilant that they would get their own country and they formed the State of Israel on May 14, 1948. The Palestinian Arabs refused to establish their own country, partly due to pressure from neighboring Arab countries. The Arab leadership wanted every inch of Palestine. Those neighboring Arab states immediately launched an all-out attack to wipe Israel off the map in 1948. However, the Arabs lost this conflict, known as Israel’s War of Independence (1948-1949), so Israel was successfully established. The Palestinian Arabs ended up with nothing, because the country of Jordan took control of the West Bank and Egypt took control of the Gaza Strip, both of which territories had been assigned by the UN to the Palestinian Arabs. Ethnic cleansing? At the formation of Israel, about 700,000 Arabs fled the new country and became refugees in surrounding Arab countries. This was encouraged by the Arab states, but Ouweneel notes that “the Jews themselves may have contributed to this Arab departure by intimidating them.” At the same time, though, “around 850,000 Jews were expelled from the surrounding Arab countries. These were Jews whose ancestors had often lived in those Arab countries for centuries.” They were welcomed in Israel. So, it seems that to some degree, there was a form of ethnic cleansing on both sides. Israel is an officially Jewish state, so Arabs who live there “are, in a sense, second-class citizens.” Nevertheless, they enjoy the same democratic rights as Jewish residents. Indeed, there “is no country in the Middle East where Arabic speakers have as many rights as in the land of Israel.” The main point, though, is that Israel is not some sort of Jewish colony in Palestine. Jews have lived there for millennia. Furthermore: “throughout history, there have always been more Jews than Muslims living in Jerusalem. In 1860, when Zionism did not yet exist, there were 11,000 Jews compared to 6,500 Muslims, and in 1906, there were 40,000 Jews compared to 7,000 Muslims. At all times, Jerusalem has been more of a Jewish city than an Arab one.” Muslims cannot accept Israel According to Ouweneel, the bottom line is that the root of the conflict is religious. Muslims believe that since they conquered Palestine in the seventh century, it is and must always belong to the “realm of Allah.” In other words, “it is inconceivable that Jews would ever have their own state in an area that has become part of Allah’s world. This is an abomination to many consistent Muslims, both within and outside the Middle East. For seventy-five years, these Muslims have fervently desired that the state of Israel come to an end as soon as possible.” It is with this in mind that the chant “From the River to the Sea, Palestine must be free” can be properly understood. It means that “all Jews must be expelled (or better yet, killed) from the land, only then will Palestine truly be ‘liberated.’” Due to the deep-seated religious basis of this conflict, then, Ouweneel believes there can be no lasting political solution. The Jews believe strongly in defending their country, and consistent Muslims believe strongly in wiping it out completely. There’s no middle ground. Peace only through Christ However, peace would be possible if both Jews and Muslims in the region turned to Christ. As Ouweneel writes, “The solution is for Jews and Arabs to be reconciled with God individually, in Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 5:18–20). Then reconciliation with each other will follow naturally.” So, while it’s easy to sympathize with the Israelis rather than their opponents, there is no room for hatred. “We must learn to see in the face of every Muslim a potential Jesus-believer." Indeed, some missionary organizations are reporting that thousands of Muslims are turning to Christ right now. Conclusion Israeli forces have continued to push into Gaza to root out Hamas terrorists. Unfortunately, many civilians are dying as result. Civilian casualties are much higher than they need to be because Hamas uses them as human shields by operating out of schools and hospitals. From the Israeli perspective, if Hamas is not destroyed, its terrorists will continue to commit atrocities against civilians in Israel. Thus, to protect their own people, the military operation in Gaza must continue, despite the unfortunate civilian casualties. Every country has a right to self-defense, and Israel is no different in this regard. Hamas launched its attack on October 7, and Israel is fighting back. Those who are outraged by Israel’s military operation should reflect on the fact that this entire episode is the result of a massacre of Israeli civilians by Hamas. Oct 9 march in New York two days after the attacks with a sign touting the slogan "From the River to the Sea." (Picture credit: Lev Radin / Shutterstock - Top picture credit: Below the Sky / Shutterstock)...

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Saturday Selections – Jan 27, 2024

Click on the titles below for the linked articles... 80's "kids'" movies aren't how you remember them Those classic 80s kids' movies that you remember so fondly? Turns out they aren't kid movies at all - woah! There's a strange blessing that comes with understanding stuff was wacky back in the day too (Eccl. 7:10). We can remember how God was with us in the middle of that craziness, and be reassured that He's able to sustain us in today's clown world too. "Be fruitful and multiply" is not religious bumph. It’s how civilizations survive. The West is facing a coming economic implosion due to its low birthrate. And we don't seem to get it. What is Critical Race Theory? Samuel Sey offers this succinct explanation. Brits take Canada to task for state-sanctioned suicide (10 min read) This is a really good summary of how Canada has flung itself down the slippery slope, offering death as the medical treatment for more and more conditions. And while this is a secular article, they almost get to the root of it: they recognize that autonomy is a lie, and death isn't medicine. What they miss is that our lives are not our own to dispose of as we wish – the author doesn't acknowledge life as a gift from God entrusted to our stewardship. "In less than a decade, Canada has gone from legalising assisted dying in the tightest of circumstances – for adults suffering from terminal illnesses, for whom death was imminent – to offering suicide as an alternative to life’s woes. It amounts to a cautionary tale of the deep inhumanity, the cruel disregard for human life, that is unleashed when you introduce state-assisted death." We owe so much, just the interest is going to cost Canadians almost $2,000 a year Whenever you borrow, you're actually taking from future you, which might be fine sometimes if you really need to (for example, it's tough to buy a house without borrowing any money). But when it comes to massive government debt loads, what the previous generation borrowed is hitting us now, and if we keeping going along this route, then we'll be taking from our children. 8 fossil fuel facts: the other side (6 min) While we often hear about supposed downsides to fossil fuel usage, we rarely get the upside. But if we aren't taking that into consideration, then we aren't really counting the cost (Luke 14:28-30) of going "carbon free." This is a secular presentation but it presents the other side of the argument that we most often don't hear but need to (Prov. 18:17). ...

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