In a Nutshell
Tidbits - February 2019
Satire, impactful satire
Turnabout is fair play
Rebutting a secular argument can be as simple as applying its logic more broadly. Samuel Sey (@SlowToWrite), a Reformed black blogger, gave a pro-life example of this with his January 14 tweet:
Her: "You're a man. You can't say abortion is wrong!"
Me: "If a White cop wanted to shoot me in my face, would you defend me?"
Her: "Yes, I would."
Me: "But you're White. You can't say racism is wrong"
Her: O_O
Me: "My gender, your ethnicity, doesn't mean we can't speak up."
Who do you want to know better?
In a holiday ad (for Spanish speakers) the furniture giant IKEA gathered several families, seating each clan around a large table where a holiday feast was prepared with all the trimmings. Then a quiz started: if a person answered the question correctly they could stay and keep eating, but if they got something wrong they had to leave.
Initially, everyone found the quiz easy, correctly answering questions like:
- What animal filters can you find on Instagram stories?
- Can you demonstrate the “swish swish” (or “floss”) dance?
- What is the latest Instagram feature?
- Can you finish a lyric from this current song?
- What does this text message abbreviation mean?
- How did this celebrity couple meet?
But when the questions became more personal the answers stopped coming:
- How did your parents meet?
- What exactly is your dad’s job?
- What degrees does your grandma have?
- What’s your son’s favorite group?
- What’s your wife’s dream?
- What has your mother been studying recently?
Some family members tried to guess the right answer, but one after another, sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, grandparents too, had to get up and leave. Finally, there was one solitary figure remaining, a lonely grandpa. A teen daughter summed up the embarrassment everyone felt: “What I’ve discovered is that I don’t know as much about my family as I do about some celebrities.”
There was a happy ending. Everyone was invited back to the table, but this time smartphones were placed in a box in the middle of the table and the lid was firmly affixed.
If only…
“You’ve heard about the merger that’s coming next year between Facebook, YouTube and Twitter? It’s going to be called YouTwitFace.”
Don’t give your kids smartphones. Let them use yours.
In a mid-December Facebook post on his page, Tedd Tripp shared a strategy for parents wondering how to guide their children in the area of smartphones. While Christmas has passed, his advice is just as valuable for the new year. This is what he wrote:
Don't give your kids a smartphone for Christmas! Do your kids need a phone? Are they ready for a smartphone? If so, I have a suggestion, don't give them a phone. Let them use yours.
Here is the conversation you want to have, "I have a phone here, it is my phone, I bought it, it is on my plan and I would like to let you use my phone. Here are the conditions... "(whatever conditions you deem appropriate) "as long as you honor these conditions, you can use my phone. Oh. and since it is my phone, I have the passwords and I can look at my phone whenever I think it is appropriate. If you can accept these conditions, I would love to have you use my phone."
Think about it. Once I say, "Here, I bought you a phone." Whose phone is it? So, don't give your kids a phone, let them use yours.
Our children’s mentors
“We cannot continue to send our children to Caesar for their education and be surprised when they come home as Romans.” – Dr. Voddie Baucham
To disagree is not bullying…and everyone knows it
“ argue that anything short of full acceptance is homophobic bullying. That means unless you affirm and approve of all LGBT+ lifestyles, you are a bigot, a phobe and, yes, a bully.
“The Christian, by contrast, wants to say that it is possible to be anti-bullying of all forms without necessarily affirming everything about them…..
“Of course, we all recognize that the Christian position is entirely legitimate. None of us have to affirm all the views and practices of Islam, for example – nor do we have to attend pro-Muslim marches – in order to be clear that we don’t think Muslims should be bullied. Most people would agree that it would be entirely wrong, not to say untrue, to call me an Islamophobe because I won’t affirm my belief in Allah as the one true God and Mohammad as a prophet….. But to insist I affirm it or else I am bullying them, everyone who isn’t a Muslim evidently agrees that is nonsense.”
Déjà vu all over again
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) lived 100 years ago but the quotes below seem to show that the time and culture he spoke to was not all that different from our own.
- “We are learning to do a great many clever things… The next great task will be to learn not to do them.”
- “Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God.”
- “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”
- “The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.”
- “These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own.”
