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Parenting

Have a child – change the world

In his best-selling book Atomic Habits, James Clear makes the case for committing to tiny changes in your life, for drastic change. “Here’s how the math works out,” he explains. “If you can get 1 percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better by the time you’re done.” The reverse is also true. “If you get 1 percent worse each day for one year, you’ll decline nearly down to zero.” With time, little changes cause exponential shifts.

That is exactly what is happening beneath the surface when it comes to the world’s fertility.

The challenge, simply put, is a lack of children. The world is aging quickly, with too few children to replenish the work force, let alone care for the seniors. We are on the brink of a population collapse.

Our opportunity is to welcome the gift of children even while the world isn’t.

The contrast between the two directions may hardly be noticeable in one year or even 10. But in 75 years (by the end of this century), it could result in a world filled with people who know the LORD. But that will only be true if Christians embrace new life, and raise these children with love and in the fear of the LORD. Unfortunately, God’s calling for us to do this is increasingly being shushed, including in Reformed churches.

The world is aging quickly

From the 1800s to the 1960s the average woman gave birth to 5 or 6 children. In the 6 decades since, the fertility rate has plummeted worldwide – in Canada, we’re down to 1.26 children per woman, and in BC it is even worse, at just 1 child per woman. That is even lower than China. To put this in context, for the world’s population to stay stable, the fertility rate must be 2.1.

This demographic challenge is widely recognized, but especially in some countries where fertility rates decreased a little sooner. For example, according to Pronatalist.org,

“at current birth rates, there will be six great-grandchildren for every hundred Koreans. This is equivalent to a disease that wipes out 94% of the population.”

And if we look at Italy, in just 30 years it is projected that 60 percent of Italians will have no brothers, no sisters, no cousins, no aunts, and no uncles.

In just the last year or two, the rest of the world has been waking up to the problem as well, as it’s become evident that decreasing fertility rates are far more widespread, and dropping faster, than previously thought. That includes countries like Iran, known for its hardline Muslim population, which has seen its fertility rate drop from 6.5 children per woman in 1982, to 1.68 in 2022. Two-thirds of the world’s population now have a fertility rate below replacement. Like Iran, the countries that have had high fertility are decreasing the fastest (1-3 fewer children per woman in just 20 years).

Most people still don’t see this as a big issue today because it feels like there’s no shortage of people. Indeed, the world’s population will likely keep growing for a few more decades as people live longer and we continue to experience the fruit of the higher birth rates that occurred in the 20th century.

But the effects of how the world is increasingly saying no to children will become far more acute soon. The first thing most people will notice is an aging population. The number of seniors in the world is expected to double to over 1.4 billion in just 30 years. Let that sink in. The number of seniors is projected to double in just 30 years!

Generally speaking, seniors need more care. Their health care costs increase substantially even as their employment income plummets. Normally we look to the next generation to step in, both through providing care for their parents and grandparents, and by becoming the new labor force to keep the economy moving. But in places like Korea, if there’ll be just 6 great-grandchildren to replace every 100 Koreans, how is that going to work out?

For those for whom fewer children has been a deliberate choice, efforts to change this attitude have so far been futile. According to the Globe and Mail, “no country has successfully reversed birth-rate decline.” And if that is true of individual countries, it is hard to be optimistic about the population of the world as a whole.

“Great civilizations are not murdered. They commit suicide.” These words are credited to the famed historian Arnold Toynbee, who wrote about the rise and fall of 26 civilizations. I believe it is fair to conclude that much of the world is committing civilizational suicide. Technology is allowing us to live according to our desires. What we are witnessing in the world today is, for the most part, not the result of sickness, calamity, or oppression. Much of humanity, and western civilization in particular, is choosing this.

The difference between the empires of centuries ago and now is that the challenge isn’t contained to a relatively small geographical area. Most of the world is succumbing, and the rest of the world is rushing even faster to join in.

There is no reason the Church has to follow course

In a world of birth control, having children is, increasingly, an act of faith that our life is a part of something much larger than ourselves. Perhaps this is why God’s first words to humanity were a command to “be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.”

One of our readers recently wrote to Reformed Perspective expressing concern that we’ve been trumpeting this topic, since fertility can be sensitive and personal. But this call to be fruitful and multiply isn’t just my opinion, or Reformed Perspective’s hobby horse. It is God’s commission to the world.

The goal isn’t political dominance, or to outbreed other religions. No, God has made it very clear from Genesis through Revelation that He is a God of the covenant. Already in the Bible’s third chapter we are promised that the seed of the woman – one of her offspring – would crush the head of the serpent. Likewise, most of us are very familiar with the encouraging words that “The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.” Fertility is the means through which God grows His kingdom. That kingdom includes both those who become Christians mid-way through life and the children of believers born into the covenant.

And this calling isn’t the burden the world believes it is – it is a blessing! Psalm 127 is well known and loved for good reason: Children are a reward. We are blessed if we have many!

Imagine the impact on the world if Christians embraced God’s gift of children! Deciding to pursue a spouse, and then get married, and welcoming the children that the LORD gives is exactly what this world needs. It is exactly what the Church needs. Having a child, or another child, and raising them with love and in the fear of the LORD can be one of the most impactful things you do for God’s kingdom.

I got a glimpse of this when I spent time in a couple of American towns, such as Lynden, Washington, and Sioux Center, Iowa this past year. It is probably the closest thing I have experienced to seeing the gift of life welcomed. These places are strikingly different from most Canadian towns and cities, even than my own home town. Families are everywhere. Kids are the norm. Playgrounds are busy places. There is something very special there. And it’s no coincidence that these are very “churched” towns.

That the world wants to reject children is no reason for the Church to follow! It only means we can be a massive light to the world by bringing new life into the world. Notice how sad faces brighten when a child walks by. That child is a light! Want to be missional? Bring new life into the world!

Our decisions are more impactful than we realize

Not only does God want us to reproduce, He is looking for multiplication.

Here too, in His wisdom, God has designed life in a way where the cultural mandate is very realistic for most people. My parents were married in 1971. Unlike most Canadians, they didn’t contribute to the fertility rate decline. They were blessed with eight children. Now if a couple has 8 children, and this is maintained for just 10 generations, how many descendants will they have in about 200 years?

Over 1 billion! That is almost twice as many people as in North America.

Now, I didn’t have 8 children, at least not yet. We have 6. If each generation had 6 children, how many descendants would there be in 10 generations?

Over 60 million! That is one and half times the population of Canada.

What about 3 children? Even with three children per generation, there would still be 59,000 descendants – enough to fill an NHL stadium three times over.

How about two children? Unfortunately, it is very well possible that we never get to 10 generations. The family line will likely disappear.

The point here is that a decision to have another child, multiplied over successive generations, can have a monumental impact on the world.

What is holding us back?

So, what do the stats tell us about the fertility rate of Christians compared to the world?

Our fertility rate is higher than the “nonreligious,” but only a little bit more – just over 2 children per woman in America, and about 2.7 worldwide.

Looking at the Reformed community, it is evident that the fertility rate has dropped significantly in the past few decades. We still have more children than our neighbors, but we have far fewer than we had not long ago.

And the difference is more apparent in urban areas than rural. When I was doing presentations on this topic to Reformed communities across Canada over the past two years, it struck me how rural areas responded to the message very warmly. In contrast, in the more urban areas, I was clearly walking on sensitive ground.

Yes, fertility is a sensitive topic. There is no way that I can understand the pain and heartache that many women and couples face daily because they aren’t able to have children, or because they have lost children. Likewise, there are many singles who would love to be married and have children, but haven’t been blessed with a spouse. Or their spouse is no longer with them. To add to this, many people grew up in homes where their parents had many children, but then failed to provide the care that those children really needed – the impact of this neglect can carry on for a lifetime. We live in a very broken world, and the curse of the fall is still being felt daily. There are very good reasons why many people can’t have children. Likewise, there are good reasons to not have more children.

The challenge with sensitive topics like this is that, out of love for the hurting, we might feel a pressure to just stay quiet. But we so easily forget that encouraging God’s people to marry and have children isn’t just some opinion that we can choose to hold to or not. It is, instead, God’s express command to humanity. We are silent to our own peril.

And whatever our situation, all of us can play a role in welcoming the gift of life.

1. Considerations for couples with children
If you already have children and wonder if you should have more, I heard one Christian couple recommend that you literally write out each reason you may have for not having another. And then, for each reason, put it in a column. Is this reason an example of faith, trust, love, or fear, or selfishness? Since this is a self-administered test, it’d be easy to skew the results however you might wish. So be careful to use it to evaluate your thinking, not simply justify it. Remember that one day we will all stand before the Judge of the universe and it is His standard that matters.

If you are open to having more children, first confirm that your spouse is as well. God wants us to be faithful to the marriage and baptism vows that we have made, which means we have to have the physical and emotional capacity to love and care for our spouses and the children He has given us. The goal is not to have as many children as possible.

If, based on your feelings right now, you think there is no way you can have more children, it likely isn’t wise to take measures that would prevent you from changing your mind a few years from now. It is amazing how much our situation can change in just a couple of years. We can only see and feel this moment. God may have something very different for us in the future. I have had people pull me aside to tell me how much they regret taking steps to prevent more children. And I’m sure you are aware of many families who thank God almost daily for every child He has given them.

2. A thought for couples without children
If you are a couple who has decided that you want to wait with getting married, or wait with having children until you have reached certain milestones that have to do with studies, career, or finances, how does this align with this passage from James 4:13-17:

“Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.”

The world promises that women can make plans to have it all – they can plot out their career track and after they are established then they can have their children. But as many women have discovered too late, fertility declines sharply in a woman’s thirties. We never know what tomorrow might bring us.

3. Singles
The number one reason for the declining fertility rate is that more women are childless. This is also evident in the Church. I have been struck time and again by the number of quality girls in Reformed churches who are age 20, then 25, then 30, and guys still haven’t snapped them up yet. I see groups of young adults where the guys and girls seem to prefer to hang out as singles rather than to date, get married, and start a family.

Single young men, it is your responsibility to find a girl and start a family. This takes courage and effort. But you can do it! What are you doing to make this a reality? If your fears, career, or your hobbies and sports are keeping you immobilized or too preoccupied, make changes starting tonight. Ask God to give you eyes to see a godly woman who could be a great wife. And when He shows you one, ask her out on a date!

Young women, are your decisions about career and studies making it harder for solid Christian guys to meet you? Are your standards for guys aligning with God’s will or your own?

Both guys and girls, if practical things like the cost of housing is keeping you from getting married, my encouragement would be to prioritize marriage. Trust in the LORD’s provision, and be open to changing some of your expectations if need be. As Christ tells us, “seek first His kingdom and righteousness, and all these will be yours as well.” If the cost of housing means you think you can’t get married or have children, consider moving to a new community where housing is less expensive, or be content with renting for the time being.

4. Everyone else
If God hasn’t given you children, or if you won’t be having more children, you can still be a massive help simply by looking beyond yourself and loving your neighbors, young and old alike. This can be through your job (we need teachers, nurses, and truck-drivers), and on the side (catechism teachers, baby-sitters, and coaches), and in hundreds of other ways.

Changing the world, while being sanctified

A lot of people are trying to change the world through activism, political engagement, and missions. These things matter a great deal – in fact, they flow from our identity as prophets, priests, and kings. But we can get so caught up in good things that we neglect our most basic callings.

One lesson that I have learned is that the greatest blessings I have are not the things that I have worked the hardest to make happen. They are the gifts that God freely gives. After high school I studied in university for 7 years and received a diploma, then a degree, then a Master’s degree. I then worked for 15 years and gave that job my blood, sweat, and tears. Around that same time, my wife and I worked very hard to tame a wild piece of land in northern BC to be a place where we could raise our family.

What has come of these things? All of them I have given away or would be willing to. My wife and I sold that land a few years ago because it was too difficult for me to stay on top of it with my other responsibilities. And I left that job about a year later. And if my degrees were taken away from me, it would make almost no difference in my life or to anyone else. But it is very clear to me that what matters the most is my marriage to Jaclyn, my six wonderful children, the many blessed relationships I have in church and beyond, and most of all, the promises of God.

These things are not a result of my effort. They are a gift from God. But I had to be willing to accept these gifts willingly and to prioritize life accordingly. It takes courage to ask a girl out, to leave a career to prioritize raising a family, to be open to having more children when there are already toddlers around our legs. Like many of you, I was scared about the prospect of having more children and about seven years ago the epicenter of a burnout I experienced was when our sixth child was born. It isn’t easy. But I wouldn’t trade these gifts for anything. There is incredible pressure in our culture for women to be something more than a mom. Yet a mom can have a monumental impact on this world for centuries to come. A career may come with perks like money and recognition, but these things can disappear overnight. Your offspring will change the world and will live into eternity.

As we get older, we go to more and more funerals. They are always hard, but I also can’t help but be convicted every time again when I go to a funeral. I get such clear perspective on what matters most in life. At a funeral, does it really matter if someone really nailed that hobby, or built up a successful business? Only if these things were a blessing to others. So many of the things they worked so hard for are not even considered at the funeral. What matters most is whether they loved their family and others, and whether they loved the LORD.

I don’t think I’m the only one who doesn’t know what is best for myself. I need to follow God’s Word, even if it clashes with how I feel – my fears, my ambitions, my desires. That is true for all of God’s children.

If you made it to the end of this article and still aren’t convinced, consider these two questions:

1) To Whom do you (and me) owe our own existence?
2) Shouldn’t we trust the One who made us to know what’s best for us, and best for the world He’s placed us in?

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Pornography

A church response is needed to stop the porn crisis

Parental controls are not enough ***** Over the past several years, I have spoken in dozens of Christian communities to thousands of students and parents on the issue of digital porn addiction. Ten years ago, many parents thought the warnings about the digital porn threat were well-intentioned, but exaggerated. These days, most people are aware that porn use is swiftly becoming a norm in Christian communities. Not a single Christian high school I have spoken at did not have a significant number of students struggling with pornography. Protecting your home doesn’t protect your kids So, how do parents take steps to effectively porn-proof their homes? Many parents try to do just that. They install internet filters. They monitor the devices their children have or have access to. They use Covenant Eyes, Qustodio, or other accountability software. But time and again, frustrated parents tell me that their children have been exposed to explicit content anyways, because the parents of the friends their children hang out with do not take these precautions. Additionally, parents who actively monitor the internet access of their children by not giving them a smartphone face constant fights with their children if they are among the few who do not have one. The reality is that if Christian communities are going to respond effectively to the crisis of porn addiction among the young, it will take a community response. Yes, it is essential that individual households ensure that internet access is both restricted and closely monitored. But this is clearly not enough. In fact, secular governments are for the most part ahead of church leaders in recognizing this reality, which is why American state legislatures, the UK government, and other governments across Europe are grappling with the problem of how to keep pornography away from children. They recognize that this is a social problem requiring a robust collective solution, and Christian communities must recognize this, as well. Christian communities are, for the most part, lagging behind secular leaders in recognizing this problem and considering collective solutions. This needs to be “all in” In a recent essay in First Things titled “Parents Can’t Fight Porn Alone,” in which they make the case for government restrictions on digital pornography, Clare Morell and Brad Littlejohn explain why communities need to work together: “Pornography’s addictive properties raise the stakes. Not only are children ill equipped to make rational choices about whether to consume a product, but their developing brains are more likely than adult brains to become hooked, with lifelong consequences. Adults may abuse alcohol, tobacco, and porn (indeed, for porn, there is no good “use,” but the law cannot suppress every vice), but they are less likely to become addicted if the first exposure occurs after age eighteen, when their brains are more fully developed. And the addictive qualities of porn make a mockery of parental controls: Once a child has encountered porn for the first time (perhaps through a friend, or on a parent’s device, or before the parents realized they needed to put controls on the child’s device), his or her brain will be programmed to hunt for it again and again, so that any and every loophole or glitch is an opening to ongoing porn consumption. “Too often, portals to porn come in the form of friends. For many American children, the dark journey with pornography begins on the school bus, at recess, or even at youth group. Even when parents set up content-filtering regimes for their own families, they cannot control what other families in their communities are doing. With 95 percent of teens carrying around mini-computers in their pockets, it is all too easy for a peer with an unfiltered smartphone to expose another child to pornography. An Oxford Internet Institute study thus estimated that for a single child to be shielded from online pornography in any given year, at least seventeen households in his or her network (and possibly as many as seventy-seven) would need to be employing filters.” Porn is looking for them Re-read that for a moment: At least seventeen households in the network of a single child need to be monitoring and restricting internet usage in order to protect him or her from online porn for a single year. And as I emphasize in my presentations, it doesn’t matter whether your kids are looking for porn – if they’re online, porn is looking for them. As Morell and Littlejohn put it: “Today, the average home has multiple internet-connected devices: smart TVs, laptops, iPads, gaming consoles, and smartphones for every member of the family, not to mention school-issued devices. Each of these ‘smart’ technologies may have hundreds of individual apps, many with their own in-app internet browsers, which means there may be thousands of points of entry to the internet in a single home. A minor using Snapchat, for instance, can reach Pornhub in just five clicks without ever leaving the app. “The abundance of portals requires several different parental control solutions, few of which are intuitive or wholly reliable. Apple’s Screen Time filter, one of the best, requires seventeen steps to set up properly, has been known to stop working without warning, and even when fully functional can be hacked by tech-savvy teens. Better-designed third-party parental control apps are barred from accessing and regulating many of the most popular – and dangerous – apps, such as Discord, Snapchat, and TikTok. And if a parent, recognizing that no one solution is comprehensive, tries to install more than one external control app on the same device, the apps will often conflict with one another. “Parents thus find themselves losing the arms race against Big Tech and Big Porn. This is dire, since children do not need to go looking for pornography; it finds them on social media. The porn industry has adopted the social media influencer model, with porn performers promoting their content on platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, X, Facebook, and Instagram, in order to entice users (many of them minors) to click through to their own sites.” Unsurprisingly, many parents despair. Plenty of parents eventually give up, worn down by the begging and badgering of their children and the lack of community support for their decisions about smartphones and internet-capable devices. If all the other kids have them, they can’t be that bad, right? Porn has been around forever, and most people turned out okay, didn’t they? If we are taking this problem more seriously than our community leadership, we’re probably being paranoid or going overboard, aren’t we? It is far easier to cave, cover our eyes, and hope for the best – but this invariably has devastating consequences, many of which I detail in a comprehensive chapter in my recent book How We Got Here: A Guide to Our Anti-Christian Culture. A growing problem If we are to protect our children from being exposed to explicit content and developing porn addictions – and again, I emphasize that this is a significant and growing problem in every Christian community I have visited – we will need to work together. Christian communities should treat pornography addiction with the same level of seriousness we would apply to a wave of addiction to other drugs. Pornography is more insidious because its effects, at first, are less visible – but they are no less destructive. They rewire and fundamentally transform the mind, alter our ability to relate to the opposite sex, and profoundly poison our ability to have healthy relationships. Thus, community leaders should address the pornography crisis head on. Yes, parents should ensure that every internet-capable device is locked down and monitored. But we must also work with other parents and ensure that the networks we are a part of are pulling in the same direction. (As the American psychologist Dr. Leonard Sax put it in a presentation I attended recently, it is the task of parents to find out if the household their child is visiting has unrestricted internet access.) Christian schools should develop and enforce rigid policies on smartphone use at school and, ideally, cultivate a community with a collective standard that recognizes the dangers of giving teenagers smartphones to begin with. We are all in this together, and we cannot protect our children from pornography if other parents are not willing to do the same. Time to catch up Again, secular experts are ahead of most Christian communities on this issue. Intellectuals such as Jonathan Haidt (The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness) are driving a new consensus: Giving a child (and that very much includes teenagers) a smartphone (or device with unfiltered internet access) is one of the most damaging decisions a parent can make. Morell and Littlejohn are right: Parents cannot do this alone. But they shouldn’t have to, either. Christian communities are lagging behind secular governments and experts on this issue. It is time we caught up. This is reprinted with permission from TheBridgehead.ca where it was first published under the title “Parental controls are not enough: A community response is needed to stop the porn crisis” and where Jonathon Van Maren blogs and also hosts a regular podcast....

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In a Nutshell

Tidbits – February 2025

Are there little green men? While there seems no biblical reason to preclude finding simpler life on other planets – plants and even animals – Christians have good reason to doubt we’d ever find intelligent life. It’d be hard to fathom how they would have fallen in Adam’s fall, and how they could be saved in Jesus’ crucifixion, if they don’t share the same human nature both shared. So, then, what are we to make of the many claims of alien encounters? In his book Alien Intrusion, creationist Gary Bates makes the case that some of these were probably demonic encounters instead, with the fallen angels masquerading as aliens. Bates makes a good case, noting how many of the “abductees” were heavily into the occult at the time, which may have opened them to demonic possession. In a recent article, a secular writer, Ron Unz makes a very different case, also compelling, that it is all, or at least largely, pure bunk. He writes: “Sightings of UFOs and aliens have been reported for decades, but the only solid evidence provided usually consisted of a few blurry photos, unable to convince anyone except true believers and sometimes even plausibly accused of being faked. “However, that situation would have completely changed in 2009 with the release of the Apple iPhone 3GS, which introduced the feature of video recording. So for the last fifteen years, the vast majority of Americans have always been carrying those sorts of smartphones, which double both as still cameras and easy video recording devices. If a noteworthy UFO or some strange alien creature suddenly appeared, within seconds a powerful photographic or video record could be produced, documenting that reality in extremely convincing fashion. “Consider, for example, that immense UFO – larger than three football fields – that allegedly hovered over the heads of those five solid Maryland citizens at their dinner-party. If smartphones had existed in 1976, three or four of those individuals would surely have produced a convincing video record of that remarkable encounter, and with exactly the same scene captured from several different angles by such camera footage, a fabrication would have been impossible. Those Maryland eyewitnesses could have sold their collection of videos to our television stations for tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the reality of UFOs would have immediately become accepted worldwide. Yet although Dolan claims that America alone has ‘something like 10,000 genuine UFO sightings each year,’ absolutely nothing like this has ever happened.” His take? “I personally regard this argument from silence as absolutely conclusive evidence against the reality of such UFOs.” Christ or chaos Whether it’s folks on the cusp of becoming Christian, like Jordan Peterson seems to be, or outright atheists, like Richard Dawkins, there are a lot of people who like the notion of being “culturally Christian.” That’s the trappings of Christianity – the order, work ethic, inherent human worth, equality of the sexes, do-unto-others-as-you’d-like-done-to-you morality, and more that are the fruits of Christianity – but without having to actually bow at the feet of Jesus as Lord and King. Canadian apologist Wesley Huff took on this notion in a recent appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience. “I have a friend, Andy Bannister. He's out in the UK, and he says if you take Christ out of Christian, all you're left with is Ian. And Ian's a great guy but he’s not going to save you from your sins.” Again! Again! Again! A child never tires of being thrown in the air. In Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton wondered if, in this endless sense of wonder, they were more God-like than somber adults. “It might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. … It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.” There are no atheists In his book Choosing My Religion, R.C. Sproul argues that “...I don't think too many people who have a firm hold on reality can technically be called atheists. Recently a man came to believe in God at a meeting of atheists. The speaker declared that he was going to give God three minutes to prove Himself by striking him dead. The man stopped speaking and stared at the clock on the wall. In perfect silence one minute passed, then two and at least three. As the deadline passed there was an audible exhalation of air throughout the room. People had been holding their breath. ‘I knew in that moment that we were a bunch of hypocrites. There wasn't a real atheist in the place,’ the man said.” There are no atheists II Romans 1:18-20 says that there are no true atheists; everyone, at some level, knows there is a God. As Paul puts it, "since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen... so that people are without excuse.” Sye Ten Bruggencate gave an illustrative example of this deep-down knowledge by sharing a conversation he had while doing street evangelism. “This fellow, in his fifties, he comes up on his bicycle. And he tells me that two of his brothers committed suicide. He said that after his brothers committed suicide, he swore at God. He was angry with God. “He happened to have a book on Hinduism on his bicycle that he had picked up at the dollar store just a day or two before. And you could tell that he'd read through it, because he wanted answers, or so he said. He said, ‘You know this Brahman, this oneness of being, I can get into that. I like it. This makes a lot of sense to me; I could get into Hinduism.’ “So I said to him, ‘Tell me, is that the God you were angry at when your brothers committed suicide?’ “He started crying. “People know... they know God exists.” Choosing to be blind A question every creationist has to confront at some point is, “How can so many very smart people be wrong about evolution?” One answer is provided in Ezekiel 12:2 where God describes Israel as a rebellious people that "have eyes to see but do not see, and ears to hear but do not hear." We’ve all been this willfully blind and deliberately blind sort at some time, and if you don’t recall it in yourself, you’ve surely seen it in kids – your son, standing there with a cookie in his hand, insisting that he doesn’t, in fact, have a cookie in his hand. Richard Lewontin once explained how this choice to be blind has also been made by secular scientists when it comes to evolution. To be clear, this is no creationist talking here: “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 an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.” Limited RAM I was recently talking to someone who explained that they knew quite a bit about the Middle East, though “I can’t recall most of it right now.” I loved the way he put that. It’s one thing to have just the right response stored away somewhere in our brain, and quite another thing to be able to pull it up at just the moment we need it. I think many of us have this same problem – we might have an adequately-sized "mental hard drive" but it seems most of us have limited RAM storage. "Banned" books Cartoonist Eddie Eddings made this provocative suggestion on his blog: “When you see a display of ‘Most Banned Books’ at a bookstore or online – ask them why they didn't include the Holy Bible. It is not only the best-selling book of all time – it is also the most banned.” Wit and wisdom of Thomas Sowell Thomas Sowell is a 94-year-old American economist who may or may not believe in God – he never talks about Him – but who most certainly has a keen understanding of human nature. What follows are a half dozen quotes that highlight his biblically-aligned insights into man’s fallen nature. “What the welfare system and other kinds of government programs are doing is paying people to fail. Insofar as they fail, they receive the money. Insofar as they succeed, even to a moderate extent, the money is taken away.” “What exactly is your ‘fair share’ of what someone else has worked for?”“Much of what are called ‘social problems’ consists of the fact that intellectuals have theories that do not fit the real world. From this they conclude that it is the real world which is wrong and needs changing.” “One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.” “There are 3 questions that would destroy most arguments of the Left. The first is, ‘Compared to what?’ The second is, ‘At what cost?’ And the third is, ‘What hard evidence do you have?’” “How long do politicians have to keep on promising heaven and delivering hell before people catch on and stop getting swept away by rhetoric?” ...

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Pro-life - Euthanasia

Euthanasia changed the abortion battle

Dozens of pro-life volunteers spent the summer talking to strangers about the unborn ***** In 2016 euthanasia was legalized. That was also the summer I did my first pro-life internship with the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform (endthekilling.ca). After that I was involved for several years, and then, after a bit of a break, I returned – my sister and I interned for the summer. We spent our time door-knocking, having conversations, and showing abortion victim photography in the streets of Calgary. One heart at a time One young man I talked to said abortion was okay earlier on in the pregnancy, and in difficult circumstances. I agreed with him about how difficult those situations would be, and then I asked him to consider a girl who ends up in a difficult situation once the child was born. I asked if he thought we could ever kill that child, because of her situation. Then we talked about the humanity of the preborn – that if abortion ends the life of a biological human being, then it’s a human rights violation. At the end of the conversation, he agreed that abortion was never okay, and he took a pamphlet with resources to share with his friends. That was one of three conversations I had during that one hour of activism. And throughout the city about 20 other activists were having similar conversations! So many people change their minds when they see the signs and hear the arguments. And many of them end the conversation saying, "Thank you for being here." Euthanasia changed things It's still shocking to me how many times we hear "I had an abortion," "My girlfriend had an abortion," and "I drove my friend to the abortion clinic." Everyone has been affected in some way or another. I’m also stunned that we live in a society where so many people think it's better to die than to live through suffering. There's so much need for the gospel. We can show the inconsistencies in pro-abortion logic, and when we do, even the most philosophical nutcases will agree (at least in theory). But when people don't even value themselves, how can we expect them to value other human life? This summer is showing me clearly what a hurting society we live in – and how that brokenness has progressed even since I started in 2016. When I first did pro-life work, euthanasia rarely came up, which is why I clearly remember one instance where it did. A man came up to me and shared that he had helped his mom get euthanized in the Netherlands, when it wasn’t accessible in Canada. It was a good thing, he argued, because she hadn’t wanted to be a burden on the rest of the family. I was shocked. Now, eight years later and euthanasia is widespread. A few months ago, a friend shared with me that his grandma chose MAiD – and she had considered herself a Christian. They used to meet us halfway We’re no longer just talking with people who think it’s okay to kill preborn babies; we’re talking with people who want to be killed themselves if their life no longer seems worthwhile. Beliefs are a bit different person to person, but the equation goes something like this: a person’s life is worth living, if (and only if) they have awareness of what’s going on around them, they aren’t suffering, and they aren’t a burden to society. One of our strongest anti-abortion arguments concludes: “If we’d never kill a born person for (X) situation, why is it okay to kill a pre-born human for the same situation?” The underlying principle is that we don’t kill people, regardless of situations. The foundation of our pro-life arguments is built on two premises: 1) that the pre-born are human 2) and that killing humans is wrong. Now we’re having a rising number of people challenge the second premise. If life has no meaning death becomes attractive Why should we be surprised when a generation that’s okay with killing babies decides that it’s also okay to kill parents? Abortion and euthanasia are symptoms (and certainly not the only serious ones) of materialism and abstract spiritualism. You live for personal happiness, you don’t judge, and have only personal morals and religion – don’t impose those on others. It’s an echo of an earlier time when “everyone did what was right in their own eyes” (Judges 21:25). The root issue here is a loss of values of our nation; virtue itself is no longer a virtue, and suffering is seen as the ultimate evil. Victor Frankl talks about suffering in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, where he reflects on his time during the Holocaust. He observed that some people shut down while others became more determined to live, and he found that meaning (purpose) was the ultimate difference. For some, meaning was the literal difference between life and death. With Medical Assistance in Dying, the messages are clear: “Your life no longer has meaning. You are a burden to society and to your family,” and “Your value is dependent on your circumstances.” Where does our worth come from? If materialism is the secular religion of our day, then the message of the Gospel stands in sharp contrast. That contrast is highlighted in Dr. Goligher’s book, How Should We Then Die? where he brings the discussion back to whether human beings have intrinsic or extrinsic value. Do we have value based on our humanity, or do we assign value based on age, circumstances, and usefulness? As Christians we know that we're made in God’s Image. That’s why we know that we have value and purpose in every stage of our life. And we know to treat others according to that intrinsic value. Christians also understand that pain and suffering are often a means to refine and shape us. In our suffering, there’s meaning and comfort that we ultimately cannot lose. Our society lives for pleasure and comfort, but it is also craving purpose and meaning. And because it can’t find meaning, it’s not shocking that we find ourselves in a culture of death. Going all Prophet Nathan on them (2 Sam. 12) While doing activism, I met a woman named Janice. Her sister had died of a terminal illness a few years ago, and she cried as she said, “They wouldn't let her have MAiD, so I had to watch her suffer.” I had nowhere to go but the Gospel, and I was able to bring it in. Logic and truth are also essential and effective in ending abortion – I've seen the fruits over and over again. Our nation’s moral conscience can only be numbed so much; the Law is still written on our calloused hearts (Romans 2:15). We might obscure the Law and justify ourselves, but everyone still knows that it’s wrong to kill innocent humans. To show that abortion is wrong, we draw out an analogy that makes it real. I often say, “I know of a baby named Laura. Laura’s mom was on drugs while she was pregnant, but she thought she could handle it. After Laura was born, her mom realized she couldn’t handle it, and she abandoned her. Now, just a few months old, Laura is suffering from neglect and from drugs in her system. She may end up in foster care her whole life. Would it be okay to kill Laura to spare her from a difficult life?” When this picture is drawn, murder is harder to justify. In the same way, it’s much more difficult to justify abortion after looking at an abortion image, and much easier to justify it if the discussion is kept in the abstract. This is the reason everything gets covered in euphemisms – euphemisms help us to forget what we are actually talking about. With euthanasia, we can use the same type of argument. We appeal to cases where it’s clearly wrong, and use that to show our listeners that they are creating a hierarchy of value. “You’re saying that there’s one category of people to whom we should offer help, and another group that we can kill.” And if there’s one thing this culture likes, it’s equality. So, there are ways to humanize the victims and to change minds. It’s a heart issue In pro-life apologetics, we recognize some conversations as “heart conversations.” When we deal with a heart issue, we check in with the person and hear their story. We show them that we care. And then, gently but with full truth, we bring the conversation back to abortion – they can't heal until they acknowledge the wrong. The reality is that every person you and I ever talk to has a heart issue; we’ve all hurt and been hurt. And what sin is heavier than killing your own child or grandparent? That's the burden of guilt weighing down on our nation. And who else can take away this burden, than the One who died to save us? As Christians we convict and grieve, but we aren't stuck there – we can share the Gospel of redemption and forgiveness. My brief encounters on the street are one step in pointing people to a higher morality and a higher purpose. Most often it’s a first step, but sometimes it’s a later one. But especially in a world where it's so countercultural to just love your neighbor, we have a profound opportunity to show the difference of living with the Gospel. Conclusion Early Christians in Rome were set apart by the Gospel they preached and by the Gospel they lived. In that culture, it was normal and socially acceptable to abandon babies outdoors so that they would die of exposure. There was no question on the humanity of those children but in Rome a child that wasn’t wanted didn’t have value. Value was assigned, not inherent. Where were the Christians? Rescuing those they could and raising them as their own. Eventually, culture changed so much that exposure became a crime. When I walk through downtown Calgary, there’s little that makes me think of Rome. On the surface, we’re extremely civilized. But our values aren’t too different – we just hide it better. Whether we’re headed for destruction or revival, our calling as Christians is clear: Be salt and light; defend the orphan; share the Good News. To find out more about the work of the Canadian Centre for Bioethical Reform, or if you want to investigate spending a summer working for them, go to EndTheKilling.ca....

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News

Saturday Selections – Jan. 18, 2025

Click on the titles to go to the linked articles... Motorized machines in your cells? Yes there are! Kinesin are "motorized transport machines" that transport materials around the cell to their proper locations – that's why they are known as the "the workhorses of the cell." Oops, I locked my wife in the chicken coop! This is Ray Comfort with the most original plug for a gospel tract that I've ever read. Why true charity can only blossom under capitalism This article starts with some $10 words, but makes the point that: "If a pickpocket robs Peter to pay Paul, the pickpocket is not being charitable. And neither is Peter, because he had no choice in the matter." It is not care if the government does it – it is compulsion. And if the government has to do it because no one else will, that only shows the extent of that uncaringness. As a single man, I felt little pressure to get married. I wish I had. (10 minute read) Not all are called to marriage. But in a culture that hates marriage, marriage needs its defenders... and nudgers. Also important here is the idea that Christians can defend one thing without then becoming guilty of denigrating the other – ie. that marriage is being defended does not mean that those who are single are necessarily being attacked or shamed. Some singles are being called out, but only those who are being passive about it. Life passes us by – we bury our talents (Matthew 25:14-30) – when we don't make choices. 10 fantastic books to understand Genesis The producer of the documentary Is Genesis History? has 10 books to recommend for doing a deep dive. Buy dirt (4 min) A celebration of family, marriage, hard work, and blowing up your TV. And dirt. That too. ...

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Gender roles

Striving to be godly men

A men's conference that had to turn hundreds away can now be watched online ***** I don’t think I can quite grasp the measure of tension that must have seized the hearts of those three young men on the morning of November 2. Months before they had together hatched the concept of a Men’s Conference pitched to encourage men to provide support to one another in the abundant strife of this mortal life. They’d cobbled together a web presence to push out the concept, had highlighted the featured speakers and invited expressions of intent to join the effort. Slowly momentum for the event had grown. A few dozen said they’d come…, then a hundred, two hundred…, five hundred – and ultimately more than 750 men from across Ontario (and beyond!) raised a finger to commit to coming to Smithville to attend the 2024 Strive Conference! But the venue could seat only 550; the three spearheading the initiative had to tell more than 200 men that they were placed on a waiting list. Why would three family men expend the effort to organize a Men’s Conference? Why seek to capture its purpose under the term Strive? And why would so many men give up their normal Saturday routines to seek encouragement to strive together? What was this huge interest saying? This was autumn 2024. For months and years already Christian straight men had been told to sit down and shut up; it was time for women to give leadership, for people of alternate sexual orientation to shine, for minorities of all sorts to take the reins. How were the sidelined meant to respond to that signal? The three men who birthed this Strive Conference saw the need to encourage men to push back against this effort to emasculate Christian men. As the autumn of 2024 unfolded, awareness grew across our civilization that men needed to dare to be men. Instead of sitting down placidly and passively, men should boldly strive to be the men God created us to be. More than 750 men from some 14 denominations understood the need and sought encouragement in the battle. But planning a conference is one thing. Making sure it runs smoothly is another, especially when attendance demonstrates the Strive concept hit a nerve. Would the plans deliver?? I dare to say that Scott, Dan & Kevin had to be men to handle the nervous tension that invariably dominated their collective persona that morning. Strive The term “strive” appears in numerous passages of Scripture in the context of encouraging Christians in the battles of faith. The passage that featured in this Strive Conference was Phil 1:27f, where the apostle Paul instructed his readers: “Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel, and not frightened in anything by your opponents.” The concept of Christian men battling alongside each other in the face of serious opposition lies at the heart of God’s will for His people as we live in our present world. Such striving needs encouragement, equipping, arming. Three speakers had been lined up to open the Word of God for us listeners eager to understand better how we can best strive side by side to be the men God wants us to be. Speakers Dr Will denHollander, professor of New Testament at the Canadian Reformed Theological Seminary, started us off with an address under the promising title: “Be Complete: the Word of God for the Man of God” (asking our attention for 2 Tim 3:16f). On the basis of that Scripture, he drew out that the “man of God” has all the resources he needs to “be complete, equipped for every good work” – for the Lord God has given us a God-breathing Bible that prepares us to handle all the hard questions of our day. The obstacle we face is not a lack of resources to handle the battles of life but is rather that we too often choose to give some other activity greater priority over reading and wrestling with God’s divine Word in the face of today’s challenges. So we end up floundering in the dark in the midst of those challenges, unable to function as the men of God we otherwise can be. The speaker’s public admission to his own personal struggles added considerable credence to his encouragement to us to be men of the Word – both personally and side-by-side. Dr. Ian Wildeboer, pastor at Mercy Christian Church in Hamilton, followed with an address that could not help but hold the attention of today’s men: "Men in covenant with God: Guarding our hearts and those we love from Sodom." He ably laid a finger on the fact that Lot chose to live in Sodom and made his decision on the basis of present-day comforts. The potential price to his family did not seem to play a role in making the decision or in sticking with it. We cannot get out of our world, but we can certainly take responsibility for how living in our world impacts our families. Here was a challenge to us to have our eyes wide open to the abundant attacks of our families and how we men can best strive side by side to protect those whom God has entrusted to our care so that in turn they flourish in God’s service. After a hearty lunch of pulled pork on a bun capably served by a number of ladies from the John Calvin Christian School in Smithville (and the bonus of lots of valuable heart-to-heart conversations among the attendees), a third talk followed; Rev Al Besuyen, pastor of Zion United Reformed Church in Sheffield, encouraged us to “Strive for Godliness in our leisure time.” Speaking from personal experience, he pressed on us that misuse of leisure time can become a trap that takes us to places where we cannot strive side by side as men of God. He urged us to recognize that the time we receive has purpose: it’s not for self and personal preferences but is opportunity to serve the other in service to the Master of all time. In service to others we’re also making ourselves available for another to encourage ourself. A panel discussion followed the three speeches, under the capable leadership of Rev Rolf denHollander from Living Light Canadian Reformed Church of Grimsby. As he pulled the material of the day together with the assistance of the three speakers, perhaps the most unforgettable moment was when a brother, once a slave to alcohol, expressed the fervent hope that soon he could drink the wine new in the kingdom of God with Christ himself. Till then, total abstinence. Yes, it’s a fight, one in which we need one another. His public testimony was distinctly an inspiration to many. Singing Interspersed throughout the day were multiple opportunities for the assembled men to sing the praises of the God in whose service we battle. 550 men on their feet, under the leadership of capable musicians using various instruments – it truly was momentous, stirring, most heartening. And then the accompaniment ceased… and 550 men were on their own, side by side leaning into the privilege of raising voices and hearts to God Most High with eager abandon, each line building on the previous in volume and joy and enthusiasm – as here and there men reached up a hand to dry an eye at the sheer beauty and majesty of together delighting in the God whose servants we may be. To so many of us Ps. 150 will never be sung the same again. Example In concluding remarks, a grateful participant made mention of the fact that God’s first words to the man Adam was the instruction to guard and keep the garden – for God knew there was an enemy out there intent on hijacking God’s world. Where Adam failed, Christ Jesus did not. Now the task still to guard God’s world remains. Organizers Dan and Kevin and Scott set us an example in doing precisely that, striving side by side to pull off an excellent conference! The 550 men then headed out in all directions. I dare say the conference sparked in every participant a renewed determination never to sit down and shut up, but instead to stand tall together in the battle, striving side by side in struggles against pornography, gambling, alcohol misuse, drug abuse, slothfulness and countless other vices seeking to emasculate men of God. May Strive 2025 be just as successful. Information on the 2025 Strive Conference will be posted to www.StriveMensConference.com as it is developed. ...

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Saturday Selections – Jan. 11, 2025

Music as the fingerprints of God (6 min) George Steiner here is lecturing on the wonder of music and is not trying to argue that music points us to God. But he does believe it points us beyond materialism – our response to music shows that we are more than what we are made of. " speaks to us that there is something else which, paradoxically, belongs to us profoundly but somehow touches on a universal meaning and possibility that we are not only an electrochemical and neuro-physiological assemblage; that there is more in consciousness than electronic wiring." Evolution can't explain eggs This is a bit of a technical one, but even if you get only the gist, you'll understand just how amazing the seemingly simplest things around us really are. It's only because we take God's engineering for granted that we can overlook the wonder that is an egg shell. Evolution has to explain how they could come to be in some step-by-step evolutionary process? As if. Trudeau is gone, so who is going to replace him? The Liberals are about to run a leadership campaign, but have this worry: "One of the key concerns that is out there is that the party could be prone to something approaching a takeover, or could be prone to a lot of people who don't give a hoot about the Liberal party who might be termed single-interest activists signing up and having a very real impact on the selection of our next leader." Is anyone plotting a pro-life takeover? Should we be? Abortion was the leading cause of death worldwide in 2024. And it wasn't even close. 45 million unborn babies were aborted last year – so relayed Jonathon Van Maren. That number is more than the population of all of Canada. In the US abortion accounts for 60% of all African American deaths. To put this number in a different context, COVID killed approximately 7 million in total over 4 years and in response we shut down the world. Six times more die each year from abortion and no notice is paid. Who will stand up for the unborn? Will you? Will any politician? Will you vote for a politician who won't? The danger of being a sermon critic As Tim Challies explains, if you focus on what you think should have been there, you run the risk of missing the fruit that is there. Amazing information packed inside you (12 min) This video makes the point your DNA coding is more incredible than even the most complicated computer code, but it also kind of reduces us to just that information.... as if we could make a human if we only managed this same level of programming. So, as you watch, recall that we are more than our matter, being both body and an immaterial, eternal soul.  ...

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Assorted

How to be happier

Keep long lists, and short accounts ***** As I pad down the hallway to my home office, sometimes I’ll look down and remember that the laminate planking I’m walking on was laid down with the help of friends. I’m not the best with a hammer or saw, so while I did some of the sweating, my friends brought the skill. I was so very thankful at the time, and now whenever I remember it’s a warm feeling still. As of late I’ve been remembering these friends more often because of a curious book. It’s about a guy who set out to personally thank every person involved in getting him his morning brew. There’s the barista, of course, but a farmer had to grow the beans, and then there’s all the people in between – it turns out there are an astonishing number of people involved in a simple cup of coffee. Who picks the blend? How many are involved in the actual roasting? Someone had to design the lid (there’s quite some engineering to it), and then there’s the coffee cup sleeve – there wasn’t always a sleeve – and when we remember that coffee is about 1 percent beans and 99 percent water, then there’s a whole municipal water department to thank too. And who makes the pipes that carry the water? We haven’t even gotten into the boats and trucks involved and all the crews who man and make them. A long list to be thankful for This guy wanted to personally thank everyone involved but quickly realized that might amount to millions. So he narrowed it down to the one thousand most directly involved. G.K. Chesterton said that, “When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude,” and this book was an eye-opener for just how many blessings I’ve been taking for granted. If thousands – millions – are involved in making a cup of coffee, how many could I thank for everything I find even on my short journey from bed to shower each morning? How many designers, engineers, miners, and factory workers were involved in making the Kindle that wakes us up each morning? And what about our bedding, the bedroom carpet, bathroom tiles and that long-shower necessity, our tankless water heater? I normally clomp past it all, but I could choose to start each day just looking around in amazement. As Chesterton reminds us, “gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” The author of this book is a sometimes-blasphemous atheist (which is why I’m not sharing his name - I don’t want to promote him) but even as an atheist he recognizes that his disposition to grumpy ingratitude isn’t good… for him. “…gratitude is the single-best predictor of well-being and good relationships, beating out twenty-four other impressive traits such as hope, love, and creativity. As the Benedictine monk David Steindl-Rast says, ‘Happiness does not lead to gratitude. Gratitude leads to happiness.’” But why is thankfulness next to joyfulness? He doesn’t seem to know, but we do. God created us to glorify Him and then gave us innumerable reasons to do just that. And because He loves us, He so fashioned mankind that when we do what we were made to do, it is good for us. And He’s so gracious that even when we do a half measure, thanking the people around us, but forgetting the God Who made us, it is good for us still. Sometimes we need a Jordan Peterson or Elon Musk – someone outside the Church – to remind us of what we have, and what unbelievers don’t. I was struck by that here, when this author shared, “…I’ll occasionally start a meal by thanking a handful of people who helped get our food to the plate. I’ll say, ‘Thank you to the farmer who grew the carrots, to the truck driver who hauled them, to the cashier at Gristedes grocery story who rang me up.’” This fellow is “praying” to people he knows will never hear him because he feels such a need to express gratitude. To quote Chesterton again, “The worst moment for an atheist is when he is really thankful and has no one to thank.” When I look around the dinner table at the food that’s there once again, and the family gathered around, and when I really stop to think of all I’ve been given here, my heart can’t help but swell, but now there’s another blessing I can bring to my giving, loving Father – I can thank God that I can thank God! Keeping short accounts But if Christians have so much to be thankful for, why aren’t we more joyful? Why am I too often grumpy, sullen, and short to the people God has gifted me? Part of it is that we take so much for granted. We easily forget what we have, so there’s something to keeping a thankful journal. Around Thanksgiving each year my wife gets some notecards and encourages us each day to draw something we’re grateful for, and then we put the cards up on the hallway wall. It’s quite the display by month’s end. But even more of it is taking for granted the biggest gift we’ve been given: forgiveness. In his booklet How to Maintain Joy in Your Life, Jim Wilson shares how, upon his conversion, he experienced joy liked he’d never had chasing after the world’s substitutes. But as this Navy midshipman set out on his Christian journey, he found that joy diminishing. And it continued diminishing for the next three years. Sitting in the stateroom of an American destroyer stationed in the Sea of Japan, he was struck that for the 3 years since his conversion he hadn’t really been confessing his sins. Oh, sure, he’d confessed some sins, but there were many he hadn’t taken to God for all sorts of reasons. When he confessed his sins, God forgave him, and once again he started feeling that same joy. Guilt is a weight. But, thanks to Jesus, it’s one we don’t have to carry. Guilt is also God’s way of getting our attention. As it says in Hebrews 12:11: “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” Jim Wilson was trained by that discipline, but like the rest of us, he was a slow learner. “I would again disobey, get disciplined, and lose my joy. This time, instead of not confessing, I would confess after a while… ten hours, a week, 2 weeks.” Eventually he realized that he didn’t have to wait to confess his sins – he could “keep short accounts.” Then, instead of a series of ups when he was forgiven, and downs when he wouldn’t go to God (or at least not yet), he started to experience ongoing joy. “Sometimes I went for a while before confessing, but generally I would confess right away or within a couple of hours. I’m not saying I have not sinned in those years…. But I have a low tolerance for discipline. I do not like it. As long as I am unrepentant, the discipline stays on me, the hand of the Lord is heavy. I can remove the discipline of the Lord by repenting now.” For those of us who’d prefer to stay miserable, he concludes his booklet with a list of what you can do instead of confessing your sin. You can justify, excuse, or hide it. You can blame someone else, procrastinate, or stand on pride. A favorite for many is “generalization,” where you readily admit “mistakes were made” without really getting into the dirt of what you did. But tricking yourself doesn’t trick God, and you can’t enjoy Him if you are hiding from Him. Conclusion If you want to be happier, it isn’t complicated. Open your eyes wide, and see the world as it really is. There are troubles, but then there is God, and He continues to bless us beyond any measuring. And the biggest of those blessings is that we can know for certain – we can count on Him – that when we come to our Father with our sins, He will always and forever forgive. That’s got me a little verklempt but I can assure you, they are happy tears....

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Assorted

The pot experiment has been a disaster

If marijuana definitively destroys lives, should we be free to smoke?  ***** A few weeks ago, Dave Portnoy of Barstool Sports publicly supported a measure that would legalize marijuana in Florida. “As an adult,” Portnoy said, “I should be allowed to smoke weed, watch football, and eat pizza on Sunday regardless if I’m at home in Mass or Florida.” To which, Matt Walsh replied: "Can you point to any state or city in the country where life has been, in any way, measurably improved after legalizing marijuana? Where are the legalization success stories? Give me just one please." After the rushed social experiment by many states to legalize marijuana, we know the answer to this important question. Study after study has demonstrated that legal pot has been even more disastrous than predicted. The most obvious consequences have been in basic safety concerns. Legalizing pot correlates with a rise in auto crashes, as well as property and violent crimes. Also, despite the fact that this is now a multibillion-dollar industry, legalizing pot has grown rather than reduced the black market. Promises of health benefits have also proven to be more smoke than substance. Pot’s most devastating impact has been in the arena of mental health, which has declined to epidemic levels in the U.S. This is largely due to the increased potency of pot that is sold today, which is significantly stronger than what was passed around at Woodstock. Analyzing medical data from 6 million people, researchers in Denmark found that up to 30% of schizophrenia cases among young men could be linked to marijuana use. Though advocates and lawmakers have worked to “decrease the public’s perception of its harm,” as the study’s lead author said, they have misrepresented the reality. Other studies also have shown a clear link between marijuana use and psychosis. For example, according to a report at CBS News, "eople who smoked marijuana on a daily basis were three times more likely to be diagnosed with psychosis compared with people who never used the drug. For those who used high-potency marijuana daily, the risk jumped to nearly five times." In other words, pot isn’t a victimless crime and, given its social impact, cannot simply be reduced to a matter of personal freedom. Not only are cannabis users more likely to start using opioids, but the National Academy of Medicine reports that using pot “is likely to increase the risk of schizophrenia and other psychoses; the higher the use, the greater the risk.” Between 2006 and 2014, emergency room visits for marijuana-induced psychosis tripled to 90,000. Most troubling of all is the link between pot and teen suicide. According  to Colorado state statistics, the drug was found in the system of some 42% of teens who had taken their own lives, a rate nearly twice that of alcohol and four times that of any other substances. Colorado consistently ranks among the worst states in terms of suicide rates. Critics will quickly argue that correlation does not imply causation, but connections like this must be investigated. If nearly half of stroke victims took the same medicine, would we wonder if there was a link worth our consideration? Why the reluctance to connect the dots when it comes to marijuana? Since suicide rates have risen every year that pot has been legal, we’re far past giving the benefit of the doubt. Of course, if lawmakers took up Matt Walsh’s challenge, they’d have to reconsider and recant their promises of personal liberty, not to mention millions of dollars for education and better roads. The science here is all but settled. Pot is bad for individuals, and it’s bad for society. The kind of freedom Portnoy is claiming ends in slavery, a slavery to one’s own passion. It is a freedom from rules and restraint, not a freedom for the good life. True freedom is a necessary means for human flourishing, but as Chuck Colson often noted, there is no true freedom without virtue. A freedom that wrecks the mind, puts families, children, and neighbors at greater risk, and contributes to general social degradation is not freedom. It’s license built on selfishness. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to Breakpoint.org. This is reprinted with permission from the Colson Center....

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Politics

Top 10 political wins in recent years

Reformed Christians spend a lot of time discussing and resisting bad policy developments. We have much to lament when it comes to public policy in Canada in the last few decades. But we often forget that we’ve had some wins too. And so, the ARPA Canada staff brainstormed more than two dozen political wins in the last decade or so and voted on which were the best. Each staff member gave 10 points to their top pick, 9 points to their second pick, etc. Here’s the consensus on the top 10 political wins in Canada in recent years. #10. Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Initiative (18 pts) In 2010, Canada played a leadership role in the Maternal, Newborn and Child Health Initiative (MCHN), a joint project among several developed countries to end the preventable deaths of newborns and children in developing countries across the world. Canada committed $6.5 billion to this endeavor. While that program itself is a laudable pro-life policy action, it was a victory in another regard. In almost every possible measure, Canada has succumbed to the sexual revolution, and to the pro-abortion advocates, as evidenced by the fact that we are the only democratic country in the world not to have any laws against abortion whatsoever. There was enormous pressure for the Harper government to include funding for abortion in this program. But they resisted the pressure and excluded funding for abortions in developing countries. #9. Reversal of Alberta’s gay-straight-alliance policy (26 pts) In 2017, Alberta passed Bill 24, An Act to Support Gay Straight Alliances, which required all schools to establish a gay-straight alliance club upon the request of any student. The legislation deleted the requirement that parents had to be notified if their children joined the club. It also required schools to “immediately grant permission” to any activities and events initiated by the club and threatened to revoke the funding and accreditation of independent schools who failed to establish these clubs. Christian schools and Christian parents were rightfully alarmed by this legislation. They fought back. And they won. Just a couple of years later, a new government deleted the worst of Bill 24’s provisions via Bill 8 (2019). #8. National Strategy to Combat Human Trafficking (30 pts) After the landmark Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act was passed in 2014 (see #1a), the Canadian government realized that simply having this good law against prostitution wasn’t enough to stop the horrendous crime of human trafficking. Far too many women and girls were being trafficked into sexual slavery in Canada. And so, in 2019, the government created a National Strategy to Combat Human Trafficking that ran from 2019-2024 to provide greater focus on enforcing the existing law and helping trafficked women escape prostitution. The strategy promoted greater cooperation among various federal government departments and even provincial and local police forces. #7. Removal of hate speech offences from Canada’s Human Rights Act (37 pts) Free speech has long been under attack in Canada. Many of the most egregious violations of free speech in our country happened under the hate speech provision of the Canadian Human Rights Act. It was relatively easy to bring a successful hate speech complaint. Many of the complaints brought to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled against Christian speech and let non-Christian speech off the hook. For example, musicians were found not guilty of hate speech for a song that repeated “kill the Christian,” but Christian ministers and activists were found guilty of hate speech when criticizing homosexuality. Given that this hate speech law broadly violated our society’s guarantee of free speech and was often aimed squarely at Christians, we rejoiced when this section was deleted from Canada’s law in 2013. #6. Improvements to provincial drug policies (39 pts) Tens of thousands of Canadians have died from illicit drug use in the past decade. These tragedies sparked many calls for provinces to change their approach to drug policy. British Columbia went perhaps the furthest, effectively decriminalizing the possession of a wide variety of illicit drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine, handing out “safe supply” of drugs on the street, and even allowing the public consumption of these drugs. But in recent months British Columbia has begun to realize the errors of this approach to drug policy and has changed direction, recriminalizing the use of illicit drugs in public and promising to require those who are unable to escape their addiction to go into treatment programs. Another province, Alberta, has adopted a robust drug recovery program policy in response to this growing crisis. #5. Manitoba’s conscience rights legislation (39 pts) In 2016, right after the legalization of euthanasia across Canada, Manitoba passed legislation to ensure the conscience rights of health professionals not to participate in euthanasia if the practice violates their conscience. This legislation trumps any policy that a medical regulatory body might try to impose on its members. In many other provinces, medical regulatory bodies have policies that require health care professionals to provide an effective referral for euthanasia even if they don’t want to participate in euthanasia themselves. For many Christian doctors and nurses, effective referrals amount to aiding and abetting a suicide so these referrals violate their conscience. Manitoba is the only province that has passed legislation to protect the right of such health care practitioners to follow their conscience in this matter. #4. Saskatchewan Parents’ Bill of Rights (41 pts) Last year, Saskatchewan passed a comprehensive parents’ bill of rights in education, becoming the first province in Canada to do so. Other provinces have some statements and protections of the rights of parents in legislation, but none go as far as the new Saskatchewan bill of rights. Among other things, this legislation guarantees the right of parents to act as the primary decision-maker for their child’s education. This includes requiring that parents be informed on a regular basis of their child’s attendance, behaviors and academic achievement in school, be informed of any sexual education in the classroom, and give consent before a school uses a student’s newly preferred name or pronouns. #3. Delay of expansion of MAiD to mental illness (82 pts) Euthanasia was first legalized in Canada in 2016. Over the last eight years, through a combination of court rulings and new legislation, Canada’s euthanasia regime has become increasingly permissive. It has often seemed like Canada’s euthanasia laws only change in the wrong direction. Thankfully, it is still illegal to euthanize someone who requests MAiD on the basis of a mental illness alone. While the government had planned to legalize this earlier this year, significant pushback led Parliament to delay this expansion until 2027. That might not seem like a huge policy victory. But this delay does protect Canadians with mental illness from euthanasia for four years longer than the original legislation intended. Furthermore, 2027 is after the next federal election and the party currently leading in the polls (the Conservatives) has vowed to entirely cancel this planned expansion. #1b. Alberta’s new gender identity laws (85 pts) Next up, we have the suite of laws newly introduced (but not yet passed at the time of writing) in Alberta to combat gender ideology in the province. Three separate bills aim to: ban medical transitioning for minors under the age of 16 require the consent or notification of parents for their children to learn about gender and sexuality in the classroom or change their gender identity at school limit women’s sports to biological women only While all three bills could be improved in various ways, they are by far the most ambitious steps taken by any Canadian government to reverse the spread of gender ideology. While New Brunswick and Saskatchewan (see #4) took steps in this regard, Alberta has gone further with its changes to the education system and, if these bills pass, will be the only province in the country to significantly limit medical transitioning for minors. #1a. Canada's revised prostitution law (PCEPA) (85 pts) Tied for the top of the list is Canada’s new prostitution law, the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, commonly known as PCEPA. It was passed in 2014 after the Supreme Court of Canada struck down Canada’s existing prostitution laws. The original prostitution laws criminalized almost every part of prostitution except the actual act itself. So, while prostitution itself was legal, it was illegal to advertise the sale of sex, operate a brothel, or profit from someone else’s prostitution. When the Supreme Court struck down these laws, Parliament seized the opportunity to adopt a very different policy model. Canada’s old laws treated prostitution as a public nuisance to keep out of public view. But PCEPA treats prostitution as a form of sexual exploitation, which better accounts for the ugly realities of prostitution. This new law criminalized both the sale and the purchase of sex, thus publicly condemning prostitution in every circumstance. However, it gave individual immunity to prostitutes to better enable them to seek the help of police and other community services to escape the abusive system of prostitution. PCEPA is both a good and durable law. Originally introduced under the Harper government, the legislation has survived several court challenges. The Trudeau government hasn’t touched the legislation, despite the Liberal party officially favoring the legalization of prostitution. PCEPA is an important piece of legislation that was intentionally designed to help women escape prostitution, enable law enforcement to crack down on pimps, and discourage men from purchasing sex. Note: this list only includes laws passed by the federal Parliament and provincial legislatures, and policies that the Prime Minister or Premier have the power to enact. A top ten court decisions would be an entirely different list!...

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Interview with an artist

Jason Bouwman is finding hope in the desert

Antelope CanyonOil on birch panel | 12X16May 2024Antelope Canyon in Page, AZ. is possibly the most famous and most photographed slot canyon in the west, maybe the world. Surreal and enchanting. The abstract symphony of shapes beckons one deep into the canyon’s serpentine walls and across the narrow sandy stage where time-sculpted stone twirls gracefully in delicate light. Jason Bouwman is a familiar name to many of us from his devotionals Just Thinking (available as a free e-book here) and Still Thinking (which can be purchased here) that sit on our shelves. Then there’s his coin designs for the Royal Canadian Mint, to this very “Interview with an Artist” column where he’s profiled many other Reformed artists, Jason has had many projects we might have seen. But let’s get to know the man behind the work a bit better, as well as his latest venture, the Arabah project. Jason Bouwman is an artist whose personal philosophy is to “live artfully.” He’s done that by working in visual communications, through his company Compass Creative, as well as through illustration, graphic design, and landscape painting. And it is the latter being featured in his latest series of desert paintings. It can be challenging for a creator to decide what their next big focus will be, but Jason knew a project focused on desert landscapes was next after he realized he’d been returning to the southwestern landscape throughout his whole life. From a cross-country road trip with his sister and parents to his honeymoon in California and Arizona, the deserts worked their way into his consciousness and his soul. “I've been in a season of life for which the desert seems to be an especially fitting metaphor for what I've been experiencing,” he says, “and so I wanted to explore it for personal reasons too.” He explains, “There’s a feeling one gets when staring out that horizon under an endless sky that I still can’t explain. The desert is a place of jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring, otherworldly beauty. The plants and animals that inhabit this otherwise inhospitable landscape are some of the most inventive and resilient organisms you’ll ever see – as are the people who live there... I have also come to see the desert as a metaphor for certain seasons in my life – those seasons which have been disorienting, confusing, obscure, dry of emotion and seemingly directionless. Those times in life when I’ve been tested, challenged, humbled, brought low, brought to the end of myself so that I might experience more of God and His power and provision.” Evening Drive with MikeOil on gessoed panel | 10X10June 2024I saw this scene on a road leading west out of Mount Pleasant, Utah early one evening. There was something nostalgic about it. It reminded me of photographs I used to see in National Geographic. It reminded me of a road trip our family took out west when I was a boy. It reminded me of Sunday evening drives down country roads with my parents. I shared some of that with workshop instructor Michael Workman and he said; “Paint that!” So I’m calling this “Evening Drive with Mike” “Arabah” is referenced in the Bible. It describes a region of the Negev Desert bordering on present-day Israel, and deserts are a frequent landscape in biblical stories. The Arabah project mirrors the Exodus journey the Israelites took through the desert. The desert can be challenging, but it can also be beautiful, and Jason wants viewers of this project to be able to see both the struggle and the possible blessings found there. After all, as Jason says, not all wandering is a waste of time, and God’s own people were led through the desert, but not without purpose. This project was also a little different because he has been collaborating with his daughter, Jamie, which Jason finds very rewarding. She brings a very different set of skills as a filmmaker, which gives this project a different dimension. “I'm often more excited about what she's doing than my own work.” The goal is to create an art exhibit, a coffee table book, and a short film. Jason and Jamie have already been invited to show a few sneak previews at various events. A big thing Jason’s been thinking about lately is the role of community, and the role the support of others can have in an artist’s life. “I've been blessed by a community of people and patrons who are willing to take risks along with me in creating something new…. They invest time listening to my ideas and concepts, providing feedback about what they think is valuable or not (to themselves and the rest of the community), and commit to purchasing work before they see it completed.” Both the patron and the artist benefit from this connection, the artist from the support and the patron from being able to participate in the art’s creation. This is something all Christians might be able to relate to, even if we’re not artists – the support and feedback from brothers and sisters around us are so important in doing the work God calls us to do. Learn more about the Arabah Project and Jason’s other works at: JasonBouwman.com and Instagram.com/jaybouwman. BoundariesOil on canvas | 24" X 36" | 2023Growing, maturing and healing necessarily involves establishing boundaries. But unlike physical fences, human boundaries need to be communicated and respected to be effective - not least of all by ourselves. “Shaken, pushed around and mishandled but still longing to trust. This is faith too” - Justin McRoberts...

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Assorted

6 on Anxiety

“I have anxiety.” How often do we hear this phrase nowadays? And most of us can relate to it. There’s so much to be anxious about in our modern world, with so many things changing all around us. But one thing that doesn’t change, and the one thing Reformed Perspective aims to focus on above all else, is the God Who is our Rock in the midst of the storms. It can be so hard to let Paul’s words “do not be anxious about anything” sink into our souls. But article after article, published through RP’s many years, repeats this simple biblical message. And they pair that biblical foundation with our authors’ personal experiences of how challenging and how peaceful the act of putting these words into practice can be. Be encouraged through these reads below! You can click on each heading to go to the linked article. Learning to be anxious for nothing Mark Penninga shares his own journey through anxiety and burnout. He shares the highlights of his years of learning, counseling, and slow change in the hopes of helping other Christians along the way. He explores how care and concern for others is a good thing, but can cross a line into bearing cares and concerns we were not meant to carry. Anxiety and the triumph of hope: 3 biblical counselors explain anxiety In this interview, three biblical counselors bring their wisdom to explain anxiety and how we can approach it. They give insight into whether anxiety is more common in the Church, and how Christians can sometimes experience it differently. They also give some practical tips. Do not worry… Sharon Bratcher suggests that one root of worry can be our pride, and gives some suggestions for addressing that particular root of anxiety. Technology and our anxious hearts One of the biggest causes of anxiety is our use of technology. Even pastors see this come up in their congregations. Reuben Bredenhof explains why technology can cause such anxiety in us, and how we can recalibrate our relationship to technology in the light of God’s word. Just how bad is the teen anxiety epidemic? While adults are anxious, teen anxiety has been described as an “epidemic.” How bad is it? According to the stats, it is far more common, and there are many reasons for this. This list of factors may help teens and parents sort out what might be contributing to anxiety. Gezellig: cozy, restful What’s the opposite of anxiety? In Dutch, there is an untranslatable word, gezellig, which captures the idea of coziness and restfulness. This concept can be a helpful guide to slowing down in our fast-paced and restless world. Anxiety is a challenge, but we hope these articles give you encouragement and a place to start your journey to the peace God promises us in His Word!...

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