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

Estimates had Americans betting a record $23 billion on Super Bowl LVIII, up more than a third from the $16 billion that was wagered in 2023. Among the betters was one Cardinal Pritchard, who shared that he’d made a wager in an article for the news site Not the Bee. Pritchard didn’t specify how much he bet, so it could have been trivial. What is notable is that he publicized it on a specifically Christian website and in making his admission there, he was acting as if it’s no big thing for Christians to gamble. The irony is that he did so in an article on the enormity of America’s gambling problem – Pritchard reported that an estimated 67.8 million Americans placed a bet on the Super Bowl, for an average of well over $300 a bet!

Gambling is a bad bet

Big, too, is just how common gambling has become – that works out to almost 1 in 5 Americans. Pritchard actually reported it as 1 in 4, but his math was off. Bad math is, of course, an ailment common to gamblers, who make the repeated mistake of thinking that this time they’ll come out ahead. But in a bit of computation that should be a part of every Christian high school math curriculum, if you engage in any sort of regular gambling the odds are going to get you in the end. Why? Because casinos and online sites take their percentage, so what’s paid out will always be less than what was paid in.

Thus one of the reasons Christians shouldn’t gamble is because it’s a bad use of the resources God has given us. It’s worse than what the one servant did in the Parable of the Talents (Matt. 25: 14-30) who buried the money his master entrusted to him, and didn’t even put it in the bank to earn some interest. How much angrier would his master have been if the servant had come back with half a talent, having frittered the rest away in gambling? Or if he’d come back with a debt of several talents?

Even when you win gambling is bad news

But what if you are an especially good gambler, defying the odds to actually win more than you lose? Would it be okay for a Christian to gamble if he could turn a profit? No, but for a different reason. When you win at gambling it is only because someone else lost. Whatever your gain, it is someone else’s pain. Sometimes investing is likened to gambling, but a key difference is that if I make money on a business investment, it can be as the result of that business doing something to benefit many others. A company like Costco grows in value because it opens more stores that serve more people some good values. Your gain as a Costco stockholder comes at the general populace’s gain too. But in gambling, you only win because someone else has lost. And that’s not loving your neighbor (Matt. 22:35-40).

Add to this the number of people who get addicted to gambling and lose everything. And then consider how, in Canada, provincial governments have a big hand in pushing gambling, and thus a big hand in destroying these lives.

While I couldn’t dig up the specifics for the Canadian Super Bowl wager numbers, gambling is big business in Canada too, as evidenced by the sheer volume of sports gambling ads on television. A peek at government coffers shows their own heavy dependence on gambling. Alberta, for example, is expecting to take in $1.5 billion in 2023-2024, or, more than $300 per citizen.

God’s people need to understand why gambling is wrong so we can steer clear of this entrapment. And in steering clear we can also be a good neighbor to others by “denormalizing” gambling. Just say no, for everyone’s sake.

Internet

Demystifying ChatGPT

Lots of potential, but the output is only as valuable as the input ***** About a year ago, the research firm OpenAI made a version of its text-generation tools available for free use from its website. The chatbot, called ChatGPT, accepts a prompt from the user, such as a question or a request for a piece of writing, and responds with a seemingly original composition. If you have experimented with this tool, you may be impressed with its ability to produce natural-sounding English paragraphs – or perhaps you find it eerie and wonder what changes tools like this will bring. How large language models work To demystify what language tools like ChatGPT are doing, here’s a game you can try at home. To play, you’ll need to select a book and pick a letter of the alphabet. I’ll play along while I write. A) One letter I have a copy of Pilgrim’s Progress handy, and I choose the letter m. Open your book at random and find the first word on that page that contains your letter. For me, the word is mind. In the word that you found, what letter occurs immediately after the letter you were looking for, just as i comes next in mind ? That letter is your new letter. Now flip to a new page and repeat. The first i that I see is in the word it, so that means t is my next letter. Do it again. On the next page that I turn to I see t in the word delectable, so a is my next letter. So far my letters have been m-i-t-a. On my next turn, I find a in about and take the letter b. I then find b in Beelzebub and take the letter e. Finally, I find e in the word be, and since it’s followed by a space rather than another letter, this ends the game. Looking back, the letters of the game make the word mitabe. That’s not a real word, of course, but it’s not completely random either. The letter-level statistics of the English language led this process to make something that looks more English-like than we are likely to have gotten by grabbing six tiles out of a bag of Bananagrams. B) Two letters This game becomes more interesting if we level it up. Instead of looking for the first occurrence of our most recent letter, what if we searched for the first time our last two letters occur together? If my last two letters were be, then I would need to a look for a word like become and take c as my next letter. The effect is that we are using a larger context as we string out our sequence of letters. This version of the game is tedious to do by hand, but we can automate it using a computer. Drawing from the text of Pilgrim’s Progress and using two letters of context, an algorithm replicating this game generates the text: SETTERE HEY IST ING TO WAS NOR HOUT SAY SUPOSTIANY If we sift through the gibberish, we find five real English words – and the rest are at least pronounceable. C) Four letters If we try again, but this time with a context of four letters, we get: WOULD BUT THIS ONE COUNTRY AND SMOKE TO HAD KEPT Although this is nonsense, all the words are real, and shorter strings of words could make sense together. D) Nine letters Finally, if we level up the game to use nine characters of context, sentences begin to take shape: SO CHRISTIAN AND HOPEFUL I PERCEIVE IS AGAINST A WALL Grammar aside, this is remarkably close to real English. When it gets bigger still To get a layman’s understanding of how technology like ChatGPT works, imagine a great leveling-up of this game. Instead of being played on one laptop, it is run on giant server farms of leading tech companies. Instead of using Pilgrim’s Progress as a source text, it is trained on humankind’s entire digitized corpus. Instead of using a few letters of context, it uses a sophisticated model of human language. And instead of using a starting letter, the process is induced by a question or request from a user. When you enter a prompt into ChatGPT, you are really asking a statistical question: Based on information gathered from innumerable digital texts, what is the most likely response to this prompt? I tried giving ChatGPT the prompt: “Versify the first question and answer of the Heidelberg Catechism into common meter so that it could be sung by a congregation.” It responded with: In whom is all my trust and joy, My comfort and salvation? In Jesus Christ, the sinless One, The source of my redemption. My only comfort here on Earth, My only hope in heaven, Is that I am not my own, but His, For all my sins are forgiven. The meter is forced, but one has to admit that many would-be hymn writers have done worse. Benefits and risks of text-generators ChatGPT and similar tools that generate text or images are one example of advances in technology that use algorithms built from data rather than being human-handcrafted. You probably have used some of them: data-generated algorithms can identify faces in photographs, control autonomous vehicles, make medical diagnoses, and detect fraudulent transactions. One effect of this trend is that the technologies become more difficult to understand, even for experts, since the tools are often shaped by deep patterns in the training data that are beyond human perception. They exude something of a magical quality, especially when they are presented with evocative terms like artificial intelligence. Yet it is important for Christians not to attribute anything magical to unfamiliar technologies. Even without precise expertise in trending technology, we still can develop an informed awareness of the benefits and risks. 1) Output only as good as the input For one, technology generated from data is only as good as the data it is generated from. A tool like ChatGPT reflects the attributes of the texts that it is trained on. I gave ChatGPT the prompt, “Explain how the Auburn Affirmation affected the career of J. Gresham Machen” . It responded with a page and a half of text that got the basic facts right and read like an answer on an essay test. But what stood out to me was the uniformly positive terms it used when referring to Machen. He was a “staunch defender of conservative, orthodox Christianity,” to which he had “unwavering commitment,” making a “courageous stand against the Auburn Affirmation” and founding the OPC, “where he could continue to champion conservative Reformed theology.” No doubt readers will be sympathetic to this portrayal. But it is worth asking why ChatGPT would give Machen heroic verbs and adjectives while describing the proponents of the Auburn Affirmation in dry, factual terms. My speculation is that people interested enough in Machen to write about him have tended to be his admirers, and so ChatGPT is imitating the dominant sentiment in material about Machen. But does this pass the shoe-on-the-other-foot test? What would ChatGPT produce if we gave it a prompt for which most of its source material was written by enemies of the gospel? 2) Truth isn’t a particular priority Furthermore, the fact that these tools produce the most probable response to a prompt, based on the data they are trained on, means that truth itself is not a particular priority. I once asked ChatGPT who was the most famous person to play against the eighteenth-century chess-playing automaton known as the Turk (actually an elaborate hoax). The response mentioned Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin – each of whom did face off against the Turk at one point – but it went on to claim that “one of the most famous opponents of the Turk was the Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,” describing their chess match in dramatic detail. This appears to have been synthesized whole cloth – I can’t trace down any verification that Mozart ever encountered the Turk. One of my colleagues at Wheaton College, where I teach, described how he caught a student passing off a ChatGPT-generated term paper as his own work. The paper was more-or-less B+ quality, and its bibliography had respectable-looking citations. As it turned out, though, ChatGPT had made the citations up: the claimed authors were real scholars and the journals were real, but the articles themselves didn’t exist. This is what we can expect when the most probable response is not the most truthful response. 3) Temptation to students This serves to highlight the most obvious risk induced by ChatGPT and similar tools: it provides a new and perfectly convenient way to plagiarize. A student – or a professional writer, for that matter – can whip out a paper in seconds by giving a prompt to a free online tool. At present, teachers can use services that detect AI-origin of text (itself an application of data-driven algorithms), but we can expect that successive generations of text-producing tools will prove to be better at eluding detection. One can imagine an arms race ensuing between text generators and generated-text detectors, with teachers never being able to trust their students again. And what of the rights of the original authors whose work is used to train these tools? 4) Do away with drudgery On the other hand, it is all too easy to bemoan the potential harms in a new technology and to overlook how it can be used for good. Tools like ChatGPT can be used not only as a cheat for writing, but also as writing aides: You can feed it a paragraph you have written and ask it to polish it up – make it more formal, or less formal, or more succinct, or with a more varied vocabulary. It can act, in a way, as a smart thesaurus. Another colleague of mine told of a student who defended the use of ChatGPT in writing a paper as a natural progression from tools that are already accepted: If we use spellcheck to eliminate spelling errors and Grammarly to fix syntax, then isn’t it only wise to use the latest tools to improve our rhetoric as well? One may quibble with this student’s logic, but technological changes throughout history have automated menial tasks, allowing humans to focus on things that are more meaningful. After all, some writing tasks are so much drudgery. You do not want your pastor using ChatGPT to write a sermon, but perhaps you wouldn’t begrudge a businessperson using an automated writing tool that can turn sales data into a quarterly report. A Christian response Text-generation tools are part of a suite of data-derived technologies that have gotten much media attention and that seem to have the power to change society as much as the internet and smartphones have done, if not more. How should we live in light of advancements in science and technology? There are many ways Christians should not respond: we shouldn’t idolize technology or make a false gospel out of it – we should not share the world’s fascination for the next new thing or hope for scientific deliverance from life’s problems. But neither should we approach it with fear or regard it with superstition. I also would argue that it’s irresponsible to ignore it. First, to any extent that we use tools like ChatGPT, we should see to it that we work with complete integrity. This is in the spirit of Paul’s exhortation to Timothy that in his ministry of the Word he should be “a worker who has no need to be ashamed” (2 Tim. 2:15) – whatever our calling, our work should be worthy of approval. Students at any level of schooling should note their school’s and teachers’ policy on writing assistants and follow them scrupulously. The Christian school that my children attend has ruled that no use of ChatGPT is appropriate for any of their schoolwork, and, with admirable consistency, they have banned the use of Grammarly as well. Some of my colleagues have experimented with allowing limited use of ChatGPT as a writing aide in college courses, but with clearly-defined boundaries, including that students must cite to what extent ChatGPT was used. For any professional or personal use of these tools as writing aides, we should ask ourselves whether we are presenting our work honestly. Second, we should exercise a healthy skepticism toward material generated by tools like this. One use of ChatGPT is as a replacement for a search engine when looking up information. You can Google “how to keep wasps out of my hummingbird feeder” and receive a list of websites, each website giving advice about bird feeder maintenance; alternately, you can ask the same question to ChatGPT and receive a single, succinct summary of tips that it has synthesized from various sources. There is a pernicious draw to attributing authority to information delivered to us by computers. We should remember, though, that ChatGPT’s answers are only as good as the fallible human-produced text it is trained on. Moreover, for the sake of loving our neighbors, we should bear in mind that tools trained on data will reflect, if not amplify, the biases and prejudices of its input. Finally, if we use algorithms to manipulate text, we must treat the holy things of God as holy. In the experiment at the beginning of this article, I sampled letters from the text of Pilgrim’s Progress. When I do a similar experiment in one of the courses I teach, some students are curious what would happen if we sample from a book of the Bible. But I believe that is not a respectful use of God’s Word. Earlier I showed the result of asking ChatGPT to versify part of the Heidelberg Catechism, but I certainly do not advocate using AI-generated texts in congregational singing. One feature of ChatGPT is that it can imitate the style of an author or genre. You could ask ChatGPT to write a story in the style of the Bible, but don’t – that would be blasphemous. I find the Westminster Larger Catechism’s words about the sixth commandment – that it requires “a sober use of meat, drink, physick, sleep, labour, and recreations” – to be applicable to many other areas. Let’s pray for wisdom to discern the sober use of humanity’s tools in every age. The author is a member of Bethel Presbyterian in Wheaton, Illinois, and professor of computer science at Wheaton College. This is reprinted with permission of the OPC denomination magazine New Horizons (OPC.org/nh.html) where it first appeared in their January 2024 issue....

News

All votes are not equal

Come the next election, the House of Commons is set to add five more seats and see the ridings redistributed. These changes flow from a requirement in our Constitution to do this after each census, to try ensure that each vote in Canada counts about the same when it comes to electing Members of Parliament. Populations change from movement within Canada and immigration, and a representative democracy is supposed to account for this. Yet Globe and Mail columnist Andrew Coyne has shown that the new boundaries don’t come close to representing where Canadians live, resulting in some votes being worth far more than others. Some of his findings included: Labrador, the smallest riding, has just 27,000 people. Contrast this with Edmonton-Wetaskiwin, which has more than 209,000. Both ridings send one MP to Parliament, so a vote in Labrador is worth eight times as much. The average Alberta riding has more than 125,000 people. Contrast this with PEI, where the average riding size is 39,000 people. The four Atlantic provinces and the three northern territories have a population below 2.8 million, yet they have more seats than Alberta, which had 4.8 million as of the 2021 census. The smaller ridings tend to vote Liberal. A total of 43,848 votes elected six Liberal MPs in Newfoundland, PEI, and the territories. This is less than the average number of votes to elect a single MP in the six largest Conservative ridings. Canada’s population has grown by 10 percent since the 2021 Census, with three-quarters of the growth in Alberta, BC, and Ontario, which are all already under-represented in Parliament. This means that the new distribution is already far out of date, even before it takes effect. These inequalities resulted from a series of decisions by our leaders. One of the most significant was the “grandfather clause” of 1985 which decided that a province cannot have fewer seats than it had that year. The most recent redistribution decided that Quebec can’t ever get fewer seats. This means that the only remaining option to restore proportionality is to add seats. But for this to be truly fair, based on Labrador’s population, our House of Commons would need to grow from 337 MPs to 925! That is clearly unrealistic. But adding a measly three to Alberta and one to Ontario and BC doesn’t even come close to being representative. If we were aiming for genuine proportionality, they should be getting 24 new seats. It would be difficult to change the representation in the Senate, as a change to the constitution requires approval from all provinces. But Coyne noted that it could be done in Parliament: “the ‘grandfather clause’ and the rest could all be amended or abolished by simple act of Parliament. Or are we incapable of living up to the same basic democratic principles that apply in other countries?” Of course, other countries aren’t our ultimate standard. A better standard is the basic biblical principles of fairness, justice, and impartiality. As Proverbs 16:11 instructs, “a just balance and scales are the LORD’s.”...

Articles, Book Reviews

Scout makes a comeback with new audio streaming service

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

News

Saturday Selections – Feb 3, 2024

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

Internet

Use RSS to get RP delivered

Get all your favorite websites, blogs, podcasts and video channels sent to one place ***** Are you tired of repeatedly visiting your favorite blog only to find out that there haven't been any new posts? Are you tired of sifting through everything on YouTube to find what you want to see? Are you tired of going to one place for podcasts, another for videos, and another for news? And are you tired of having your email inbox filled up with all the updates for your newsletter subscriptions? Then RSS may be for you. What is RSS? RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication" and has been a part of the Internet for more than 30 years. It is the technology behind podcasts and most blogs, news sites, and other web pages that update content regularly. All these sites provide an RSS “feed” – it's often hidden, but still there in the background – that lists when a new post or video or podcast is added to that site. This RSS feed is really just a specially formatted document with information about each update on a site, with the date, title, author, etc., and even the partial or complete content of the post. This RSS document would be strange for you to read, but an RSS reader or aggregator is a piece of software that can read it easily enough. Once you set up your aggregator it can quickly check all the RSS feeds from your favorite sites and collect all the newest material into a single list for you to peruse, organized by the date on which items were posted, and including the associated images and content. Why use an RSS aggregator? Why would you want to consider using an RSS aggregator/reader? There are all sorts of reasons: So you can get updates for all your favorite Internet content in one place instead of having to go to your email inbox and all your favorite websites and apps to access their newest content. So you don’t have to give out your email address to all kinds of websites to get updates on their content. So you don't need to use social media to access most of what you're interested in. So you can often get updates on exactly the part of the website that you’re interested in instead of everything that gets posted. You can, for example, get just Reformed Perspective’s news feed, or choose just its book review feed, instead of getting everything. Another important consideration is that your RSS feed can't be controlled or filtered by social media companies or the government (unless they start completely blocking access to websites). Finally, you might want to make use of the RSS feed just because it is built into so many websites, and it’s there for you to access and use. Some aggregator software may charge for their service or include ads, but if you don’t want to pay for it, just use a free service, because the RSS feed itself is there already, freely available. Some RP examples Almost all blog sites, including ReformedPerspective.ca, include RSS feeds. For Wordpress sites like RP’s, it is as simple as adding “/feed/” to the end of certain web addresses. So if you wanted to get everything from RP, you would tell your RSS aggregator/reader to follow: https://reformedperspective.ca/feed/ Blog sites will often have separate feeds for the various categories and tags, so some options for RP include categories like: News - https://reformedperspective.ca/category/news/feed/ Book reviews - https://reformedperspective.ca/category/book-reviews/feed/ You can get even more specific by using one of our tags to get just the new posts on those topics: Pro-life - https://reformedperspective.ca/tag/pro-life/feed/ Christian film - https://reformedperspective.ca/tag/christian-film/feed/ Around the web It’ll work the same all over the Internet too, with sites like: Web comics: Once again, since this is a lot like a blog, it will likely have an RSS feed. Podcasts: These all use RSS, which is how Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, etc. know when there's a new episode. Our Manna podcast's feed is here: https://feed.podbean.com/RP-Manna/feed.xml News: Many news organizations also have RSS feeds. The True North Centre's main feed, for example, is at https://tnc.news/feed/ YouTube: YouTube makes it a little difficult to get to the feed nowadays, but most aggregators can find it for you if you paste in the channel URL. The feed URL for Pierre Polievre's channel, for instance, is https://www.youtube.com/@PierrePoilievre How to get started RSS aggregators can show you your content in various ways that might remind you of some email programs, grouping things by topic folders, or by date. The easiest way to get started with RSS is to use a service like Feedly.com or Inoreader.com. These popular services include a website, mobile apps, and even web browser extensions that make it easy to gather and consume your updates. Because they are popular, it’s also easy to find YouTube instructional videos if you need more help. Most of the services have free and paid service tiers, and as you might suspect, the free ones usually include ads. However, they do a lot of the work for you, so they're really the best option if you're just starting out with news aggregators. Feedly offers a free tier that allows users to group as many as 100 feeds into three separate folders of their own creation. So, maybe you want all news articles in one, the YouTube video channels you follow in another, and podcasts in the third. If you want to include more than 100 feeds, then you’ll need to upgrade to their paid tiers. There are lots of other services out there including more complicated versions – like TheOldReader.com, and even do-it-yourself options like FreshRSS.com and the built-in aggregator in the Vivaldi web browser (available at Vivaldi.com) – but these might be better suited to someone particularly techy who likes figuring things out for themselves. Mark Coolen is Reformed Perspective's own tech guru....

News

Saturday Selections – Jan 13, 2024

Click on the titles below to go to the linked articles... Were women dying by the thousands before abortion was legalized? (3 min) One of the big lies was that before abortion was legal, women resorted to dangerous back-alley abortions that killed women by the thousands. Even if that was true, this sidesteps the bigger issue that for every legal abortion, one person dies every time. And it isn't even true. The case against legal gambling (10 min read) Now that marijuana has been legalized, the Church is going to have to deal with it on a whole other level. It used to be only the kids willing to break laws who could get their hands on it. But with legalization, experimentation becomes a lot easier to do... even for the "good" kids. So, too, with gambling. It's always been an issue, but only for some. Now, it seems like half the commercials on TV are shouting about some easy online way to gamble away your money. The article linked above is an American secular argument against gambling, but the point is equally applicable to Canada. And a biblical case against gambling can be found here. 7 questions for COVID expert Francis Collins Collins was part of the efforts being made to censor COVID questioners, but in a clip making the rounds recently, he concedes that as a public health "expert" he was pushing conclusions based on only limited considerations: “...so you attach infinite value to stopping the disease and saving a life. You attach zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives, ruins the economy, and has many kids kept out of school in a way that they never might quite recover from. Collateral damage. This is a public health mindset. And I think a lot of us involved in trying to make those recommendations had that mindset — and that was really unfortunate, it’s another mistake we made.” If we were to become a post-family world (10-min read) South Korea is the leading edge of a post-natalist – no baby – world where, in the last 70 years, women have gone from having an average of 6 children each to now just 0.78. And where South Korea is, is where we are heading. Much of the blame for this demographic decline can be laid at the feet of the government, but the government is finding they aren't able to undo the damage they've done. This, then, is just another example of how desperately the world needs to hear the Gospel so they can know and love the Lord first of all, and then, so they can start seeing the world as He does. Only then will countries be able to repent from and overcome the selfishness their governments have encouraged them to embrace. Solar and wind are cheaper? (15-min read) Solar and wind are sometimes marketed as being cheaper than fossil fuels. If that were so, notes Alex Epstein, author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, then why would they need massive government subsidies to get people to use them? I appreciate Epstein for making his case methodically and carefully, but wish he'd call a spade a spade and use "lie" instead of "false generalizations." Eggs are a wonder of engineering The closer we look at creation, the more obvious the Creator's fingerprints... even in the case of a "simple" chicken's egg. ...

In a Nutshell

Tidbits – January 2024

It was the best and worst of times "The Christian only has to endure this world, this is as bad as it gets for us. But non-Christians have to enjoy this world, this is as good as it gets for them!” – Kel Richards’ The Case of the Damascus Dagger Titles worth the price of the book I’ve read my favorite writing book a few times now, but in recent years, when I’m battling a bout of writer’s block, I don’t need to read it. I can just pull it off the shelf, take a good long look at the title there on the cover, and that’s enough: If You Can Talk, You Can Write. Here are a few other books with especially instructive titles. Everyone’s a Theologian – R.C. Sproul knows theology – the study of God – isn’t just for pastors, but for parishioners too. Why It Might Be OK to Eat Your Neighbor: If atheism is right can anything be wrong? – Sometimes a title can be too good. I haven’t read this one, and feel like, after reading this fantastic title, I might have gotten enough of the gist that I don’t need to. Fire Someone Today – This is a business book by a Christian businessman, Bob Pritchett, running a Christian company, and he found out that, while you want to do right by your employees, it is also good to recognize God does give out different talents, so sometimes firing an employee who can’t measure up is actually freeing them up to find out what they really should be doing. Amusing Ourselves to Death – Neil Postman’s oldie but goodie is still applicable in a time when social media contagions have folks amusing themselves right into cutting off healthy body parts. Do Hard Things: A teenage rebellion against low expectations – Two teens, brothers Alex and Brett Harris, wrote a challenge to teens to pull up their socks… and make their beds… and clerk for Supreme Court Justices. Oops! I forgot my wife – How many wives suffer from neglect? This one’s a humorous, fictional smack-down on the self-centered husband written by a counselor who wants to help them change. Just Do Something – Looking for God’s will for your life, and stuck in neutral trying to figure out what it is? Kevin DeYoung has some help for you and it starts on the front cover! Do Not Be True to Yourself – Another from Kevin DeYoung, gets right to the point. We were made to glorify God, not ourselves! Wolf in their Pockets – Occasional RP contributor Chris Martin wrote a book on smartphones and social media that’s well worth reading, but the title offers quite the refresher all on its own. National debt costs $3 a day in interest for every man, woman, and child In a Sept. 15 press conference, Christian Heritage Party leader Rod Taylor noted that: “…Canada is deeply in debt. The federal government owes about $1.2 trillion. A trillion is a thousand billion and a billion is a thousand million. Our current government is adding to that debt at the rate of $109 million per day. And what is that debt costing? $120 million every single day in interest alone.” With a population of almost 39 million, that works out to an average of around $100 a month or just over $1,100 a year that the Canadian government will have to take from every man, woman, and child in Canada, just to service our interest payments. Of course, they aren’t even managing that, which is why our debt continues to grow, increasing the burden for the next generation. That is not the sort of inheritance that the good man of Proverbs 13:22 is supposed to leave for his children’s children. A dozen deep thoughts A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine. Save a tree. Eat a beaver. Always remember that you are unique; just like everyone else. Few women admit their age; few men act it. Never answer an anonymous letter. Was the pole vault accidentally discovered by a clumsy javelin thrower? Two wrongs may not make a right, but three lefts do. If you try to fail, and succeed, which have you done? Can you buy an entire chess set at a pawnshop? If Americans throw rice at weddings, then Asians must throw hamburgers. Don’t think that you’re thinking. If you think that you're thinking you only think that you're thinking. 5 ways to improve instantly that require no talent If your basketball team tryouts are tomorrow, it’d be great if you could shoot 40% from the 3-point line. The coaches would love that! But that’s a skill that takes years to develop, so if you don’t already know how to do it, there’s not a lot you can do about it between now and tomorrow. But there are things you can do right now that don’t require any skill, but could get you noticed by a coach. These could make you a valuable member of the team instantly, and they go way beyond just sports. If it’s tough to keep all five in mind, then focus on couple, or three, for now. REALLY LISTEN – It’s one thing to listen, and another to engage your brain and interact with what your coach is saying. How many of your teammates are thinking through why the coach has you running this particular drill? If you know the why behind the what you’ll be able to make the most of your practice time, and your skills will grow. Listen with your brain! BE ON TIME – If you’re just 5 minutes late, but 11 teammates and a coach are waiting for you, you’ve just blown an hour’s worth of practice time (12 x 5 = 60 minutes). So respect your coach and teammates’ time by showing up just a bit ahead of when you’re supposed to. OUTWORK YOUR OPPONENT – A mediocre player giving 100% may be able to shut down a much more skilled player who’s going just 80. The trick here is that we often think we’re giving it our all, when we actually have a lot more in the tank. So analyze your effort. HAVE A POSITIVE ATTITUDE – There are professional athletes who make millions without ever getting on the court – they’re wanted just for their positive presence on the bench and in the locker room. GOOD BODY LANGUAGE – Show your positive attitude. Just as an athlete can show attitude toward his coach and teammates without saying a word, you can give them a boost by walking around with energy, whooping it up from the bench, and just keeping the energy flowing! Dad joke refresher For the fathers out there needing some new material… I asked the beekeeper for a dozen bees, and he gave me thirteen – he said the last one was a freebee. The Texan I dated broke up with me; she said I was just too un-American. I should have seen it coming a kilometer away. Yesterday I was painting the house with my son. He said, “Dad, can’t you just use a paintbrush?” My wife asked me if I’d seen the fish bowl. I told her, “I never imagined he could.” My wife really knows nothing about sports. When I told her I’d gotten a hole in one, she went and got me a pair of socks. I hear some people pick their nose, but I never got consulted. How do flat-earthers travel? On a plane. My wife is into philosophy. On our last date night, when I got the chicken salad she picked the egg salad just to see whose order would come first. I can’t keep up with the abbreviations kids use these days and my daughters are no help. When I asked what “idk” stood for, they all pretended not to know. When the mask comes off Laura Klassen’s pro-life organization Choice42 regularly saves babies from abortion by helping out their moms. And when a baby is born, the thankful mom will often share a pic with Choice42, to encourage other moms to make the same choice. But a curious thing happens when Klassen posts one of these baby pictures. Folks from the other side blow a gasket. But why? As Klassen notes: “Funny how whenever we post pics of babies saved from abortion, some people get triggered and feel the need to comment about #abortionrights or their general hate for babies. A simple ‘congrat’ will do. After all, these women chose their babies, and y’all are #prochoice, right?” Getting out of the friend zone Commentator Aaron Renn has coined “The Kathy Keller Rule” for all of those out there stuck firmly in the dreaded “friend zone.” As he explained it in his newsletter some years back, getting stuck in the friend zone happens, “…when one person wants more out of a friendship than the other person does…. one person wants to make the relationship romantic but the other person wants to remain friends.” While it isn’t always so, the “wants more” is often the girl, while “just friends” is typically the guy. There can be some cluelessness to this; the fellow might not be stringing her along on purpose. But intentional or not, he’s enjoying some of the joys of a real relationship – the flattering, even ego-boosting, attention of the opposite sex, and the convenience of having someone who’ll drop most anything to go see the latest movie with you – without having to actually give her much of himself. This one-sided exchange is only possible because there is what Renn calls an “asymmetry of intent.” He gives as an example, a story Tim Keller tells in his book The Meaning of Marriage, about Keller’s relationship with his wife. “Though we were best friends and kindred spirits, I was still hurting from a previous relationship that had ended badly. Katy was patient and understanding up to a point, but the day came when she said, ‘Look, I can’t take this anymore. I have been expecting to be promoted from friend to girlfriend. I know you don’t mean to be saying this, but every day you don’t choose me to be more than a friend, it feels as if I’ve been weighed and found wanting – hoping that someday you’ll want me to be more than a friend. I’m not calling myself a pearl, and I’m not calling you a pig, but one of the reasons Jesus told his disciples not to cast pearls before swine was because a pig can’t recognize the value of a pearl. If you can’t see me as valuable to you, then I’m not going to keep throwing myself into your company, hoping and hoping. I can’t do it. The rejection that I perceive, whether you intend it or not, is just too painful. “That’s exactly what she said. It got my attention. It sent me into a time of deep self-examination. A couple of weeks later, I made the choice.” Renn then proposes “The Kathy Keller Rule”: “Do not stay in a friendship where your desire for romance is persistently denied, but deliver an ultimatum (or ask the other person out on a date), exiting the friendship if the other person chooses not to reciprocate your desires.” I think this is great advice. Really great advice even. But I’ll also add, this isn’t out of the Good Book, so take it for what it is – some common sense to consider, but not an 11th Commandment to be obeyed without question. Just one issue? “If you're pro-life, you realize abortion is murder. How can you say ‘it's one of many issues’ and vote for a pro-choice candidate? What policy of theirs could be so good that it's worth allowing millions of babies to be killed?” – Seamus Coughlin...

News

Saturday Selections – Jan 6, 2024

"Let the fire fall!" (6 min) Two fantastic fire shows, just miles apart, point us to the incredible showmanship of God. Tucker Carlson on building a home library (10 min read) Your digital editions can be edited without your permission. They can't do that to paper. Rainbow blowback: African countries are turning away from the West over its LGBT agenda ...and consequently, they are turning towards China. 2023 Word of the year: Authentic Authentic got the Merriam-Webster Dictionary's 2023 "Word of the Year" top prize, but for a usage that is entirely unauthentic. "Be your authentic self" is an affirmation meant to encourage someone to continue to act the gender they say they are rather than the gender they actually are. Should scientists lie to us for our own good? Materialist evolutionists argue the universe has no purpose, but some of them admit that could leave folks feeling really depressed. So they wonder if that purposelessness might be something to lie about – wouldn't it be better if folks pretended or were deceived into believing life has meaning? That they are asking this question shouldn't surprise us: if there is no purpose, then there also isn't any reason to prefer truth over feelings. But, that they are asking the question also highlights the incoherence of their own purposeless worldview. If there really is no point to life, then there also isn't any reason to prefer people being happy over people being depressed – shucks, if we're just chemicals in motion, why would anything at all matter? So no, dear scientists, it isn't good to lie to people. It is good to abandon incoherent worldviews and turn in repentance to the Creator who made you with a purpose: to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Yes, I am "anti-abortion" We don't need to shy away from being labeled anti-abortion. We just need to explain why. ...

Assorted

Behind the scenes: the editorial cast and crew of RP

When my class did job shadowing for a couple days, it wasn’t hard for me to answer what I’m interested in. If you were to stop by my house almost anytime, you’d find me in my room, behind my laptop, working on a story. Fiction writing enthralled me when I was just four years old, and I’ve been writing ever since. So who did I want to follow around for two days to experience what it’s like to work in their field? I quickly scribbled out writing/editing as the first thing on my paper. I got the opportunity to learn about writing and editing at the office of Mark Penninga, the executive director of RP and also my uncle. I showed up that first morning eager to see what he would be able to show and tell me about his work. Now if I’m not writing, I’m probably watching and analyzing films. I’ve seen over 45 hours of The Hobbit behind-the-scenes footage, which is why you won’t be surprised when I compare Reformed Perspective to the behind-the-scenes of a movie. So what really goes on behind the scenes at Reformed Perspective? Who are the editing cast and crew? During my job shadowing experience, I got to conduct some interviews and dig a little deeper into the answer to those questions. It all began in 1982 Jon Dykstra is the editor of RP. The organization was started in 1982 as a monthly magazine and relied on subscriptions to stay afloat, printing about 1,500 copies of each issue. Much has changed since then, but the mission remains the same: “to explore what God’s up to anywhere and everywhere,” explains Jon. While others have been part of the crew for a year or two, Jon joined in 1999, back when the magazine sometimes still received hand-written submissions. Both easy-going and spirited, he is one of only two full-time workers at the magazine. He started out as a part-time editor, but his passion for the project and increased workload led him to where he is today. While there’s lots of variety in his job, he mainly edits other people’s articles and often writes book reviews from his home office in Lynden, WA. For fifteen years he was the sole full-time magazine staff member (talk about tiring!) yet he enjoys his work, although maybe not the overflow of emails he deals with every day. “Words have such flavors,” he explains, “that when you’re writing someone and you’re not talking to them, there’s a lot of different ways they can misunderstand what you’re saying.” Words do have flavor. Jon is a big fan of wearing shirts with interesting pictures or phrases on them, such as a saying to defend the unborn, to get the conversation going. For over 23 years, he has been riding the RP roller-coaster of ups and downs, but the pressing need for articles written from a Reformed angle and the great opportunities with RP kept him motivated. Also, “It’s just fun … God is powerful, He’s gracious, and He’s just fun,” says Jon. His experience has led him to give this insightful advice for aspiring writers/editors: Appreciate getting beat up (find someone who is willing to critique you), be an observant listener, it’s about stealing (imitating) from the best, and finally, write, write, and write some more! Big changes; same mission Mark Penninga is the executive director of Reformed Perspective. He’s filled with dedication and passion for the mission of RP. He joined the organization when it was struggling financially, coming in with ideas on how to get the magazine back on its feet. Now, RP prints about 10,400 copies each issue and is available not only as a magazine, but as a website, podcasts, videos, and more. The concept of being online helps fulfill the idea of being a light to the world (Matt. 5:14). He has plenty of thoughtful advice for those who are into writing and editing, such as: Writing is a tool, meant to fill a need and to serve a bigger purpose. As Christians, that purpose should be an expression of love for our neighbor and for God; we have “a message of love … writing is a means to communicate that hope.” When motivated by a purpose, your writing will show more passion, conviction, and meaning. Don’t expect to get it right on the first try, rather, keep at it. “Try, try, and try again,” he says. Turn off your distractions and focus on writing. A phenomenal amount of work goes into writing articles for RP. Some of the articles are submitted by people like you and me, while most are written by the crew. Imagine sitting behind a desk for hours, researching by means of the Internet, books, and phone calls, to create an accurate article from, as you can probably guess, a Reformed perspective. As I am writing this, my uncle is sitting in the room next to me, typing away. He’s in his cozy office in Smithers, BC, sipping a warm cup of tea from a large “Reformed Perspective” mug. Gentle strains of music float through the air, a mix of worship songs and background piano. Every once in a while he takes a break to gaze out of the large window at the snow-dusted peaks of Hudson Bay Mountain, enjoying the afternoon sunlight streaming through the glass. It takes a team But Mark and Jon aren’t the only ones breaking a sweat for the company. Marty Van Driel balances his full-time job as the CEO for a trucking business in Bellingham, WA, with being the assistant editor for RP. According to Marty, “the greatest joy is when it’s done.” I think most writers can testify to that. Marty loves telling stories to his grandkids, and says he especially loves telling stories in a way that relates to how we can serve God as Reformed Christians. To ambitious writers like myself, Marty has two pieces of advice: Writers write. As he phrases it, don’t get “stuck in a brain fog.” Discipline is important. Set a goal to write every workday and then stick with that goal. His second piece of advice is this: Keep yourself grounded in God’s Word. There is nothing more important than the Bible and it’s crucial to keep this in mind. “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ” (Col. 3: 23-24). About a year ago, Jan Broersma from Langley, BC, joined the team at RP. Markings of red and blue cover her papers as she circles punctuation errors and notes details to doublecheck. She is the warm, friendly copy-editor for RP. Copy-editors focus on the technical, like tone, grammar, and factual correctness. Jan has always enjoyed writing, and decided to pursue a B.A. in English with some Creative Writing after high school, and then worked as a writer and editor before having a family. When her youngest child started Kindergarten, she had more time on her hands, spoke to Mark, and was able to get a job working part-time for RP. She loves the variety of the job. Here is her advice to aspiring writers/editors: explore professional writing programs at college if you can, and if writing is what you love to do and is a talent God has given you, then it’s worth pursuing. Trust God will guide you. Conclusion After a peek behind the scenes of Reformed Perspective, I’ve realized it has come a long way since it first started. The only way that is possible is through generous donations and a hard-working group of people. The editorial team alone is composed of four dedicated individuals each using their unique, God-given talents to praise His name. So open up that magazine on the coffee table and you can learn so much about God, His kingdom, and how we, as stewards, are to live. And… cut!...

Top 10 RP articles of 2023

Is it a little too ironic that two Top 10 lists are there at the top of our list of our Top 10 articles of the year? Shucks, who doesn't like a good Top 10 list, especially when one celebrates good movies, and the other celebrates fantastic fantasy novels. And here are the rest, starting at #10 and counting up to top article of the year. If you're interested in past year's lists, be sure to check out 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, and 2017. #10 – Why do we suffer? Buddhism vs. Christianity This is likely the most popular article – at least online – that RP has published, with more than 50,000 views on our old website, and still challenging people each year again on the new one. What's the appeal? The stark, clarifying contrast between Buddhism's "answer" to suffering and the only real comfort to be had, from God Himself. #9 – Is Creation worth fighting about? “In the creation vs. theistic evolution debate, there are a lot of Christians who aren’t prepared to pick a side. They aren’t loyal to 6 days or billions of years, perhaps believing they need a theology or science degree to be qualified to take a stand. They don’t want to be forced to pick one team over the other. However, when the question is ‘Does this matter?’ then not picking a side is still picking a side. Refusing to choose is only legitimate if this is no big thing. So is it really no big thing… or is it huge?” #8 – Calvin’s Institutes: Which edition should you read? We aren't supposed to judge a book by its cover... but we do. And even more so, we judge it by its font, layout, and, in this case, translator. So, with three main translations of Calvin's key work, here's what you need to know to pick the right one for you. #7 – Infant baptism vs. believers-only baptism: what's the main difference? Wonderfully concise, here's a key, often-overlooked argument. #6 – 20+ Christian fiction suggestions for your 10-15-year-old boys There is some great fantasy fiction out there, so if you're trying to keep your boys interested in reading, here's a list of 20 books, most of them fantasy, that'll grab their attention (and might make for a great last-minute present). #5 – Christianity explains everything…including Reincarnation Yes, the Christian worldview explains even reincarnation. First published back in 2020, this article didn’t make that year's Top 10, but has every year since then. #4 – Is recreational marijuana sinful? First published back in 2017, this remains every bit as relevant even with marijuana now legalized in Canada. #3 – Christian fantasy after Tolkien: a Top 10 If your kids are just gobbling books, and have already worked their way through Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings and Lewis’s Narnia, then what’s next? Here's a Top 10 list of Christian fantasy novels – some more obviously Christian than others – that they can check out next! #2 – The truth matters: analyzing the facts beneath the "mass burials" at residential schools Back in 2021, a report of more than 215 possible graves at a Kamloops residential school prompted the Canadian flag to be lowered to half mast across the country for months. But to this point, no bodies have actually been unearthed. That matters, because, as Mark Penninga argues, truth is important for reconciliation. #1 – Top 10 films on PureFlix right now The title of this one was a bit of a misnomer, as 20 films were recommended, 10 for mom and dad, and another 10 just for the kids. This was published way back in January, but updated again just a couple weeks ago so it should still be current....

History

Christmas Truce

There’s a lot of things you think of when Christmas comes to mind. Christmas tree, Christmas pudding, Christmas presents, Christmas lights, Christmas services, Christmas carols. One of the words you don’t tend to connect with Christmas is truce. What’s a “Christmas truce”? It sounds like a feuding family that makes up for the holiday season. Yet in 1914, the phrase Christmas truce had power, perhaps more so than any of the other phrases that you typically associate with Christmas. Ground to a halt The First World War had started a few months earlier, and after significant early victories by Germany that pushed France to the verge of defeat, the war had ground to a stalemate. The Allies and the Germans faced off over hundreds of miles of trenches that stretched from the Swiss border all the way to the English Channel. The two sides faced off against each other with their respective trenches separated by a no man’s land. If you raised your head above your trench just a bit too much, someone in the trenches opposite would probably shoot you. If you were ordered out of your trench to attack the other side, well, you were likely shot before you could make much progress across the area between the trenches. The no man’s land was a forbidding area, littered with the corpses of soldiers. This stalemate had gone on for months. Many of the men had signed up for a brief bit of adventure fighting the enemy, thinking everyone would be home for Christmas. It didn’t quite work out that way. Soothing music As Christmas approached, the war ground on, slow, deadly, and lacking the purpose and enthusiasm it had once had. Yet, Christmas Eve that year was different than what anyone might have expected. Gunfire, according to reports, ceased around noon that day. Both sides of the conflict had received cards and small presents from home. For English troops this included a present from Princess Mary, a tin with tobacco, cigarettes, or sweets, among other items. The Allied troops on the Western Front heard Christmas carols floating across no man’s land. The Germans sang Silent Night, in German, of course, and the Allies responded with The First Noel. In one place, the English were alerted to the truce when a German voice called out in English, “English soldier, English soldier; a merry Christmas, a merry Christmas!” What was seen up and down the line was Christmas lights, and small trees. A man displaying Christmas lights on a small tree makes himself vulnerable because his enemy now has a clear target to aim at. Yet the English troops didn't take advantage of the German vulnerability, apparently because it was Christmas. A present exchange Despite the objections of the officers, both sides emerged from their respective trenches, meeting in the middle. They shook hands, and exchanged some of the small presents they had received from home. Communication had its problems, but a number of the Germans had worked in London before the war started, and that helped things along. There is even talk of at least one game of soccer starting up between the two sides, though this is hard to confirm. Though it’s not known for sure if it happened, it’s fascinating to imagine soldiers who had shot at each other only a few hours earlier now trying to score goals on each other. Reason for the season As strange as all this is, what you really have to wonder is why. Why did this happen? There have been spontaneous truces in all kinds of wars, but those tended to be localized and were generally a chance to help the injured or recover bodies of fallen comrades. This time was a bit different. At about the same time, more than a hundred thousand soldiers scattered over hundreds of miles put down their weapons and not only tolerated their enemies picking up their wounded from the battlefield, but actually went and celebrated with them, singing songs and giving gifts. Some have suggested that the truce was due to war weariness, since this long, grinding war had been going on for months with little progress and little hope of ending. If that’s all that was involved, surely there would have been more truces on the Christmases of 1915, 1916, and 1917 as the war seemed less and less hopeful and more and more soldiers grew weary of it. The only explanation I can find that makes sense to me is that this was a different time, when Christmas meant more than good feelings, time off from work, a lot of food, and time spent with the family. This was a holy time that was about the celebration of the birth of a Savior who promised to alleviate our sufferings and reconcile us to God. Christmas Eve was a “night the angels sang,” and so Pope Benedict XV urged that at least on this night, “the guns may fall silent.” Maybe some stopped shooting because the pope asked them to, but I suspect many more, this early in the war, simply couldn’t ignore the incredible significance of Christmas. While it’s hard to shoot someone at any time, it seemed impossible to shoot someone on the night when God Himself came to live among us. To learn more History.com's "Christmas True of 1914" Imperial Warm Museums' "The Real Story of the Christmas Truce" TheSmithsonian Magazine's "The Story of the WWI Christmas Truce" Sabaton's Christmas Truce, below, is a unique account by this heaven metal band. James Dykstra is a sometimes history teacher, author, and podcaster. This article is taken from an episode of his History.icu podcast, “where history is never boring.” Find it at History.icu, or on Spotify, Google podcasts, or wherever you find your podcasts. Picture at the top of the page was originally published in "The Illustrated London News," January 9, 1915, with a caption that read: "British and German Soldiers Arm-in-Arm Exchanging Headgear: A Christmas Truce between Opposing Trenches….Saxons and Anglo-Saxons fraternising on the field of battle at the season of peace and goodwill: Officers and men from the German and British trenches meet and greet one another. A German officer photographing a group of foes and friends."...

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