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Book Reviews, Children’s non-fiction

The Moon is Always Round

by Jonathan Gibson
2019 / 32 pages

This picture book is a beautiful catechism truth wrapped in a heartbreaking story of loss. Author Jonathan Gibson places his son Ben as the lead character. Through Ben, we look outside at the night sky and see the moon in its different stages. Sometimes it’s sliced like an apple. At other times it's shriveled like an orange. But no matter what shape the moon appears to be, Ben knows that the moon is always round.

When Ben’s little sister Leila passes away at 39 weeks gestation, Ben must rely on faith, not sight. Although God does not appear to be good, his goodness extends even beyond Leila’s death. God is always good.

Short, simple phrases leave room for the reader to pause and contemplate the story as it unfolds. Kids will love saying along with Ben’s dad, “but the moon is always round” when Ben wonders if the moon has really changed. At the climax of the book, Ben’s dad asks him what that means. It feels natural for kids and parents to answer with Ben that “God is always good.”

While this book deals with heavy topics, simple sentences for big truths are what make this book profound. The book closes on a sweet note – a family picnic, a beautiful sunset, a full moon, and the words from Psalm 100:5: “For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.”

Children aged 4-8 will gain the most from Gibson’s simple catechism. Younger readers will love hunting for the yellow daffodils sprinkled inside the vibrant pictures. However, even older children and adults will be touched by this sweet, sad story honoring Gibson’s stillborn daughter, Leila.

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News

Tariffs as a dressing down: if it is about drugs we should listen

With a lot of bluster and bravado, President Trump has made good on campaign promises to impose trade tariffs limiting other countries’ access to the prized American market, especially if these trading partners are reluctant to go along with concessions and demands from the new U.S. administration. Canada has experienced the uncertainty of these tariff threats, causing unsettlement for businesses on both sides of the border, and raising ill feelings among Canadians towards their southern neighbor. Economists almost unanimously agree that tariffs are ultimately harmful for the overall market: certain domestic industries can benefit from these financial penalties on their international competition, but the resulting prices will hurt domestic companies that use these imports to make their goods. And eventually the consumers who pay for finished goods will see these new increased costs included in the price they pay. Christian economist David Bahnsen recently wrote that Trump’s key economic officials agree that tariffs are harmful: “I believe Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is essentially a free trader who knows in his heart and mind that tariffs are a cost on the U.S. economy paid by U.S. importers, and ultimately, consumers. I believe NEC chair Kevin Hassett knows this. I believe CEA chair Stephen Miran knows this.” If tariffs cause economic harm all around, why is the U.S. President insisting that he will impose them? It all seems to be based on extracting action, not promises, from trading partners that the U.S. has deemed to not be living up to their commitments. U.S. officials allege that Canada is too lax on border security, allowing aliens to enter the U.S. from Canada: “ is not confined to the southern border – encounters at the northern border with Canada are rising as well.” Trump’s team has stated that Canada is not doing enough to capture smugglers bringing fentanyl into the U.S. “There is… a growing presence of Mexican cartels operating fentanyl and nitazene synthesis labs in Canada,” stated a White House fact sheet. I spoke recently off the record with several U.S. border patrol employees in Washington State who indicated that fentanyl coming into the U.S. from Canada is indeed becoming a bigger problem. The Trudeau government responded to the tariff threats by promising to beef up border security and appointing a fentanyl czar, resulting in a delay, but not cancellation of the tariffs. At the time of this writing, the tariffs are still scheduled to come into effect in the beginning of March. Canadians as a whole have been offended by this aggressive talk from our normally friendly neighbor to the south: the U.S. anthem was booed at sporting events, and some consumers have threatened boycotts of American-made products. How should Christians view these developments? It is good to recognize that every government has the duty to protect its citizens and defend its borders: while Canadians may not agree with President Trump’s assessment of dangers coming from “up north,” we should recognize that as chief executive of his country, he has the right to ask for increased cooperation in fulfilling this essential task of protecting his country’s citizens. In Luke 14, the Lord Jesus illustrates negotiation between sovereigns in this way: “…What king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not first sit down and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand. And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.” While citizens might not appreciate the heavy-handedness of demands brought by a nation we consider our friend and ally, our government should respond positively to reasonable requests, especially if they are intended to increase law and order, and stop criminal behavior that is harmful on both sides of the 49th parallel....

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Economics

Tariffs are terrible economics: why Canada shouldn’t hit back

Free trade – free of barriers and restrictions – has, traditionally, been pretty exclusive to the Right side of the political spectrum. But now, with President Trump implementing tariffs on steel and threatening tariffs on Canada and Mexico, we’re even hearing the Left talk about the harms that tariffs could cause. And not just to Canada and Mexico, but to American consumers too. As the far-left stalwart Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (aka AOC) noted on X, “Remember: *WE* pay the tariffs….Trump is all about making inflation WORSE for working class Americans, not better.” But what is she talking about when she says Americans pay the tariffs it charges? Think of it this way. Imagine two towns located right next to each other – Town A and Town B – and each has a car mechanic. These mechanics are full-service: they go right to your house to do the repairs. The only difference between the two is that the car mechanic in Town A – let’s call him Arnold – is way cheaper, so not only do all the folks in Town A use Arnold, so do most of the folks in Town B. That, understandably, makes the mechanic in town B – we’ll him Bill – quite unhappy, as it really hurts his business. So Bill demands that his town put in a tariff of sorts. He wants a 25% surcharge on any “out of town” car mechanics. He argues that this surcharge will be incredibly beneficial – applying it to Arnold for the work he does in Town B will help fund Town B’s government. It will also help protect Town B’s homegrown car repair businesses – Bill’s – by making his prices seem more competitive. And, Bill notes, if he gets more business, the government will benefit from the taxes he’ll pay. Bill pitches his tariff/surcharge as a win/win all the way around. But Bill is forgetting someone – several someones, in fact. The surcharge will make Arnold’s prices higher. Any Town B clients who do continue to use him will now be paying 25% more. And any clients he loses to Bill will be impacted too, having to pay Bill’s higher prices for their car repairs, taking a bigger chunk out of their household budget than ever before. In other words, Bill is staying in business at the expense of the car repair consumers in his own town. That’s not win/win at all – that’s a win for Bill, at the cost of everyone else in town. This is what AOC meant when she said that Americans will pay the tariffs they charge. Canada rightly fears American tariffs on the energy and goods they produce. Those tariffs could hurt our producers badly. But hitting back at American tariffs with our own tariffs on US goods is only going to compound the pain. It might benefit some of our producers – whoever makes the goods that compete with imported American goods – but that benefit will come at the expense of Canadian consumers overall by making them pay more. Just like Town B’s car repair “tariff” hurt Town B’s citizens. Is there an explicitly biblical perspective to be brought here? Well, what about Leviticus 19:15? “Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.” God equates justice and impartiality, which prompts a question: should a government take actions that benefit some of its citizens – some producers – at the expense of other citizens, the consumers and producers who use those goods? Isn’t that partiality? God also speaks to this in His Golden Rule (Matt. 7:12). “Do unto others as you would like done unto you,” applied to the economic realm would mean that car mechanic Bill wouldn’t argue for his surcharge because he wouldn’t want that same surcharge applied to everything he buys. If Town A has cheap car parts, or groceries, or gasoline, he’d love to be able to benefit. The fact is, tariffs always hurt consumers, so no matter what the US does, let’s not let tariffs beget more tariffs. Instead of putting up trade barriers, there are actually interprovincial trade barriers that we could greatly benefit from taking down, as Pierre Poilievre has been highlighting recently. In  the video below Remy highlights one of the ills caused by tariffs – fewer choices and higher costs. ...

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Culture Clashes

How can everyone be wrong about the world?

Hans Rosling discovered that whether it’s world leaders or everyone else, we all share a tendency to overdramatize the state of the planet ***** How well do you know what is going on in the world? Let’s put it to a test. Without consulting the internet or someone else, give these questions your best shot: How did the number of deaths per year from natural disasters change over the last hundred years? a. More than doubled b. Remained about the same c. Decreased to less than half In the last 20 years, the proportion of the world population living in extreme poverty has… a. Almost doubled b. Remained more or less the same c. Almost halved Worldwide, 30-year-old men have spent 10 years in school, on average. How many years have women of the same age spent in school? a. 3 years b. 6 years c. 9 years In the 1990s, bald eagles, giant pandas, and snow leopards were all listed as endangered. How many of these three species are more critically endangered today? a. Two of them b. One of them c. None of them How many of the world’s 1-year-old children today have been vaccinated against some disease? a. 20 percent b. 50 percent c. 80 percent Worse than chimps The right answers are all C. How many did you get correct? If you didn’t get a great score, you are in good company. These questions come from Hans Rosling, the author of the fascinating book Factfulness. He made a quiz with 13 questions total, about different aspects of the state of the world – how we are doing as a planet. He asked about things like access to electricity, world population, and where people live in the world. Then he gave the quiz to nearly 12,000 people in 14 countries. On average they got just 2 of the 13 right. That’s remarkable when you consider if people filled in answers at random, they would have done better, getting a third of the three-answer questions right (averaging between 3 and 4 right). More remarkably, out of the 12,000 quizzed nobody got them all right. And just one person got 11 out of 12 right. Why? Is the problem that people aren’t educated enough? Rosling first thought this may be the case, but then he tested the most educated among us – medical students, teachers, scientists, journalists, business leaders, among others – and discovered that the majority still got most answers wrong and some did worse than the general public. Then Rosling realized that not only are people wrong about their understanding of the world, they are systematically wrong – they do worse than if they had no knowledge at all. As Rosling explained, if he went to the zoo to give the same quiz to chimpanzees, “the chimps, by picking randomly, would do consistently better than the well-educated but deluded human beings who take my tests.” Not only is the public consistently wrong, but their errors skewed in one direction – participants consistently underestimated the true state of the world: “Every group of people I ask thinks the world is more frightening, more violent, and more hopeless – in short, more dramatic – than it really is.” Why do we underestimate the good so badly? Since the mid 1990’s, Rosling devoted much of his time to exploring and explaining why we can be so wrong about rather basic facts about the world. At first, he thought that people’s knowledge simply had to be updated and upgraded – they just needed to get educated. So that is what he set out to do – Rosling developed some amazing teaching tools and brought them to TED talks around the world, in addition to board rooms, banks, and even the US State Department. He was excited to show everyone how the world had changed for the good. But it didn’t take long and his enthusiasm waned. “The ignorance we kept on finding was not just an upgrade problem. It couldn’t be fixed simply by providing clearer data animations or better teaching tools.” It was one gathering in particular that convinced him. He was presenting to thousands of the most influential people of the world at the 2015 World Economic Forum (alongside Bill and Melinda Gates). His listeners included heads of state, heads of UN organizations, leaders of multinational companies, and famous journalists. He asked them just three questions – about the true state of poverty, population growth, and vaccination rates in the world. Although 61 percent answered the question about poverty correctly, when it came to population growth and vaccination, the crowd once again did worse than chimps. That is when things crystalized for Rosling. He saw that the reason people were misperceiving the world was because they had a faulty worldview. “People constantly and intuitively refer to their worldview when thinking, guessing, or learning about the world. So if your worldview is wrong, then you will systematically make wrong guesses.” But he was also quick to explain that this isn’t the fault of media or fake news. Rather, he believes that it is inbuilt, and comes from how our brains have a tendency to “overdramatize” things. Look at the two lines on this page. Which is longer? If you’ve seen this trick before you know that they are the same length. But even with that knowledge, they still look different, don’t they? Despite what we know we can still misperceive. Rosling thinks something similar is going on with how our brains analyze the world – even when we know better, we can still fall for the “more frightening, more violent, and more hopeless – in short, more dramatic” misperception of things. Rosling proceeded to devote the rest of his life to this curiosity, and his book Factfulness flowed from this work. “Start to practice it, and you will be able to replace your overdramatic worldview with a worldview based on facts. You will be able to get the world right without learning it by heart.” Through the rest of the book, he trains readers to be aware of the various ways we systematically misperceive the world because of our “gap instinct, negativity instinct, …fear instinct” and more. Most of us would do well to learn about these instincts, which have us consistently underestimating the good around us. The Gap Instinct: Rosling calls it “that irresistible temptation we have to divide all kinds of things into two distinct and often conflicting groups, with an imagined gap – a huge chasm – in between.” For example, many believe that the developing world’s infant mortality rates will always remain much higher than ours. But whereas the global child mortality rate was 27% in 1950 (that’s the percentage of children who didn’t live to reach the end of puberty), now the very worst child mortality rate in the world is about half that, at 15% in Niger. Globally it is down to 4.3 percent (as of 2022). When it came to child mortality there was once a divide between the West and rest, but today that divide persists in people’s minds, and not in reality. The Fear Instinct: We have an inbuilt focus on the frightening, which makes it hard for us to see how things may be improving. So, when a hurricane hits, we might hear about how climate change is going to cause more and more of these, and what we don’t hear is how many fewer people died than in decades past. As they say, if it bleeds, it leads, so we hear lots about what is scary but little of what is reassuring and encouraging. The Negativity Instinct: Rosling shared that when people in 30 countries were asked, is the world getting better, staying the same, or getting worse, more than 50% picked “getting worse” no matter what country they came from (roughly 75% of Canadians said “getting worse”). Yet there are some huge improvements happening, including that the number of people living in extreme poverty – surviving on less than $2/day – has dropped from 50% of the world in 1966 to just 9% in 2017. If our decision makers in government and the Church had read this book before making decisions about Covid restrictions, we would all have benefitted. Then the fears that emanated from Covid and hospitalization projections would have been put into a much more reasonable context. But the implications go well beyond pandemics. I don’t think the world is prepared for the future we will face with half as many children being born per woman as just 50 years ago. Most people, including many in the Church, wrongly assume that the straight line of population growth will keep extending upwards. And they see that as a threat, with an ever-expanding population exceeding the planet’s ability to feed them all. But, as mentioned, even as population grows, fewer people are in extreme poverty. And just as a child won’t keep growing at the same rate through life, we’re seeing the birth rate take a sharp decline. The more informed worry is not overpopulation but a coming population collapse. Which worldview? As helpful as Rosling’s book is, he had his own misperception. He eventually recognized the importance of worldview, but he did so from a evolutionary vantage point. “The human brain is a product of millions of years of evolution,” he wrote, when answering why so many people would be consistently wrong. “We are hard-wired with instincts that helped our ancestors to survive in small groups of hunters and gatherers.” The beginning of wisdom Christians have a better explanation. That people would consistently overlook the many blessings around them and focus instead on troubles, many of them even imagined, is what sinful people do. A look through the Old Testament shows that God’s people are not immune to this ingratitude. But we are blessed to also have the answer. To fight negativity, fear, and ingratitude, we need only remember who God is. He isn’t just the God of the universe – He is our loving Father, the One Who knows who we are and has a perfect plan for our lives and for the future of the Church and the world. When we take this to heart, we can begin to get a glimpse into how this will change how we look at the world. Is it a scary place? Do we have reason to fear the future? Are things going to hell in a handbasket? Not at all. Those conclusions flow from a godless worldview, and perhaps also the worldview from some other major religions (like Islam), where their god is powerful but not a loving father. And they sure aren’t consistent with reality. By God’s grace, the world has been becoming a safer, healthier, more abundant place to live (contrary to what we would think if we only got our information from the news). But even if we face another war or pandemic, we can take comfort knowing that God “still upholds heaven and earth and all creatures, and so governs them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, food and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, indeed, all things, come to us not by chance but by his fatherly hand” (Lord’s Day 10, Heidelberg Catechism)....

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News

Saturday Selections – Feb. 22, 2025

My pretty pink tractor Tim Hawkins on a problem that I'm sure has happened to many a farmer. Mark Carney - the man who would be prime minister REAL Women of Canada have put together this thorough backgrounder on the candidate who seems most likely to win the Liberal Party leadership race. While this lobby group isn't offering an explicitly Christian perspective, that's their general, implicit worldview. You are more than your brain Materialists – those who say all we are is what we are made of – would say who you are is housed in your brain. All you are, is found somewhere in there. Except it isn't. Neurosurgeon Wilder "Penfield could find no part of the brain that, when stimulated, caused patients to think abstractly — to reason, think logically, do mathematics or philosophy or exercise free will." This isn't an article about the soul, but it sort of is. 10 questions to ask when evaluating a Christian college While you could direct these at the admissions department, it'd be even better to ask them to a recent alumni. As the author notes, college publications really put a spin on things, such that you can almost read in the worldview you are looking for. But when they are having a speaker tackle the topic of gender, is it really clear from the materials what he'll be saying, or are you making some generous assumptions? You really may need to ask someone who was there. (Not all the questions are gold, but I found 8 out of 10 really useful.) Greenland used to be green land President Trump's aspirations for this frozen, mostly unpopulated island have kept it much in the news as of late. But its real news value comes from recently reported findings that could calm climate hysteria. Turns out that Greenland was once green, which means the Earth must have been a lot warmer in the past – 14 degrees warmer, according to these guys. That said, the dates for this latest discovery are way outside of the timescale the Bible reveals – this is supposed to be a look back at between 250,000 and a million years ago – so that's messed up. But for secularists who abide with millions of years, they have some explaining to do as to why 3 degrees warmer would end the Earth today, but 14 degrees warmer didn't do so back whenever. And for Christians, we can stand on God's promise in Gen. 8:22 that the end the climate cataclysmists are predicting simply will not come: "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” 70 million people have seen The Butterfly Circus In this short 20-minute film, a limbless man (played by Christian apologist Nick Vujicic) is forced to get by as a circus sideshow. But that changes when he is recognized as beautiful by a rival circus owner, and welcomed to stay with this "Butterfly Circus." This is a PG film, in part because the backstory of one character involves prostitution (nothing sexual is shown – we just see her pregnant and being shown the brothel door). The other reason parents are needed is because of how the film could be misinterpreted by children. Young viewers (and old ones too) need to remember that the Butterfly Circus owner recognized the limbless man as beautiful at the start of the film. To say it another way, it wasn't anything the limbless man did, or potentially could do, that made him beautiful. We are all called to develop whatever talents God has given us, but it's not our abilities that give us value or make us beautiful. Our beauty and our worth come from God's valuation of us – what He esteems is valuable indeed! ...

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Adult non-fiction, Assorted, Book Reviews

Necessary Endings

Finding the courage to let go in business, church, and family ***** Why did my dad’s tomatoes and cucumbers always flourish? I used to think it may have something to do with the tobacco smoke from his pipe, which he puffed while tending to them. But the success carried on even when the days of the pipe ended. I got my answer some years ago when my dad checked out our greenhouse and noticed lanky cucumber bushes with little fruit. He showed me how to identify “suckers” and shoots that needed to be pinched off. For a new gardener, it seems strange, even shocking, to cut off healthy branches and flowers. But whether it is cucumbers, apple trees, or flowers, God designed many plants to produce more buds than they can sustain. Plants have limited energy, so without pruning, that energy goes towards growth that literally isn’t fruitful. I was looking for cucumbers, not huge cucumber plants without fruit. In other cases, sick branches or dead branches need to be removed, as they will hold back the plant or tree from flourishing. Contrary to popular thought, nature doesn’t do best when left alone. Through these plants, God is teaching us something about our own lives and the causes we invest in, including in business and the Church. We need deliberate pruning – we need to make endings happen. That is true for all stages of life, but especially as we feel the effects of age. Endings are necessary As much as we value beginnings and growth, God has made endings a natural and important aspect of life, even before the Fall into sin. There is day and night, and a season for planting, watering, harvesting, and cleaning up so that it can start over (Eccl. 3:1-2). Accepting endings, and making them happen at times, is the design that God wove in the very fabric of our lives. “In your business and perhaps your life, the tomorrow that you desire and envision may never come to pass if you do not end some things you are doing today.” That is how Christian psychologist and business coach Dr. Henry Cloud opened his book Necessary Endings. This book gave direction and encouragement when I had to make some hard endings a few years back. But the value of it keeps resurfacing as I notice how much we can struggle because we resist endings: • We hold onto possessions that have no more use to us; • Teens refuse to end their childhood, and continue doing little to help the family; • Young adults grow older but fail to launch, continuing to be cared for by their parents; • Seniors don’t deal with past hurts or ongoing sinful patterns because they have resigned themselves to who they are; • Spouses endure abuse because they think they have no choice. In some cases, endings seem to be even a bigger challenge for Christians: • Committees and societies continue longer than they should because the people involved are simply fulfilling their term, and don’t think it is their place to end something that others started; • Poor performance by people in positions of authority (pastors, elders, deacons, volunteers, school board members) can carry on perpetually because others feel that if they speak up, they will be seen as the problem, inviting unwanted conflict and stress into their lives; • A church member can take advantage of the kindness and care of their congregation year after year, without consequence; • Church leadership can struggle for years with following through on church discipline because of the desire that things will turn around. Dr. Cloud pulls no punches in response to scenarios like these. Endings are crucial and “your life and business must face them, stagnate, or die.” He explains that we prune our lives for the same reasons we prune plants. 1. “If an initiative is siphoning off resources that could go to something with more promise, it is pruned. 2. “If an endeavor is sick and is not going to get well, it is pruned. 3. “If it is clear that something is already dead, it is pruned.” Why aren’t we pruning? This is a proven formula for flourishing. So why do we sometimes have such a hard time doing it? An obvious reason is that endings often require confrontation and some pain. Cutting away an apple tree, or pulling flowers off a plant, doesn’t feel good. There are no immediate rewards. We convince ourselves that the status-quo is a better option than change. But the problem with this approach is that we are being led by our feelings rather than reality. It is wishful thinking. Dr. Cloud compares our reluctance to make necessary endings to getting an infected tooth pulled. It isn’t a pleasant experience. But it is so important to get done. “We all hurt sometimes in facing hard truths, but it makes us grow…. That is not harmful. Harm is when you damage someone. Facing reality is usually not a damaging experience, even though it can hurt.” Another reason why we may not be making necessary endings in our lives is because we don’t know what we are aiming for, or pruning towards. We are drifting with the current, reacting to whatever comes our way. This makes sense for our unbelieving world, which struggles to understand what it means to be a human being, man, woman, parent, or senior. The world isn’t interested in following God’s blueprint. It isn’t sure it even wants the cucumber plant to produce cucumbers. Unfortunately, it is also an issue for Christians, even though God gives very clear direction for our lives. We struggle with disciplining our children in response to behaviors that need to stop, even though the Bible makes it clear that God has entrusted parents with this task. We let teens have the responsibilities and expectations of children even though an entire Bible book was given to them to chart a path of responsible living (see Proverbs). And even church leadership can have a difficult time seeing through commands like 1 Corinthians 5:13 to “expel the wicked person from among you.” When we refuse to prune, not only are we making growth more difficult, we are also getting in the way of the beautiful plan that God has for our lives, the church, and society. Perhaps another reason why Christians may feel uncomfortable with this talk of pruning is that it seems to clash with our calling to love even our enemies, or to care for the vulnerable. As we read in Isaiah 42:3, the Lord sustains the weak: “A bruised reed He will not break and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out.” This is where we need to realize that the pruning metaphor has its limitations. The point of this article, and Dr. Cloud’s book, is not at all to cut away people who have weaknesses. Caring for the vulnerable is one of the goals we are pruning towards and aiming for. We are pruning away what hurts the vulnerable. For example, a church committee that has long passed its expiration date will continue draining the time of its members, and cut into their capacity to help those who really need help. And a person or family who is taking advantage of the care of others in the congregation because they keep asking for help (when they could be taking care of themselves) is preventing the congregation from caring for those who really need it. If all of this sounds like it is based on worldly motivations for productivity, it may help to remember that our Lord Jesus Christ spoke strongly about this: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful” (John 15:1-2). He was also willing to leave an area and move on. For example, in Mark 1 we read how Jesus went to a solitary place to pray. When his disciples came they said “Everyone is looking for you!” To this, Jesus replied “Let us go somewhere else – to the nearby villages – so I can preach there also. That is why I have come.” Proactive pruning I have written elsewhere how I learned the hard way (through burnout) that life produces too much to sustain. Unfortunately, I had to feel significant pain to pull the pruners out. The problem with waiting until something crosses a line is that it unnecessarily leads to lasting hurt for ourselves and others. My lack of pruning may have seemed to benefit my family (as I was fixing up our home and property) and employer in the short-term, as there was a lot of growth, but it ending up hurting them both. As we age, it is critical that we make pruning a normal and healthy practice of our day-to-day living. As with a cucumber plant or apple tree, this pruning should be done before there is obviously a problem. Proactive pruning also means that we have to let go of meaningful relationships that we once had, even though there is nothing wrong with them. Dr. Cloud points to brain research that shows we seem to have capacity to manage 140 to 150 relationships. As we grow older, our circle will grow quickly. Trying to juggle 300 relationships in a meaningful way is a recipe for doing a horrible job with all 300. So we will only be able to take on new ones if we are pruning old ones. Settling in a new community will mean having to let go of wonderful people from your old home that meant so much to you. Serving on the school board may mean having to give up that weekly visit you treasure so much. And yes, this also means that some people that we used to send a Christmas card to may no longer get it. It doesn’t mean that we no longer care for these people. Rather, it means we are investing in the relationships that God is calling us to in this time and place. Like a cucumber plant, we are directing the limited energy or “juice” we have to the fruit God wants to see. It also means pruning off parts of our lives that haven’t been fruitful, even if we really hoped they would be. A successful business like Starbucks will still regularly shut down hundreds of stores. Dr. Cloud notes that often “when that occurs, the stock prices go up.” That is because the business community understands that pruning isn’t a sign of weakness but of health and strength. The fact that a church plant isn’t growing to the point where it can sustain itself is a reason to consider working towards an ending, not to stop planting churches, but to try again somewhere better. More fertile ground may be waiting, but your next effort can’t start until the other has ended and sufficient resources are freed up. This is also why it was so important that Christian aid organizations have come to realize that simply giving more money, food, and supplies to people in need isn’t necessarily a blessing. In fact, it may be the very thing holding back people from making the changes necessary to succeed long-term. Sometimes the best way to help a person, family, or non-profit is to stop giving them what they are asking for. They won’t make necessary changes until you stop enabling them to carry on as they are. The wise, the foolish, and the evil Throughout his book, Dr. Cloud coaches the readers to figure out if endings are necessary and how to make them. He teaches the reader to get realistic, and even get hopeless if they expect change while carrying on the same way, so they’ll get motivated. But I found the most value in a chapter he devoted to figuring out how to discern whether the process of change is even worth it. For example, “how do you know when to invest the effort with someone to work on making things better and when should you tell them that you are done talking about it?” He does this by explaining that there are essentially only three categories when it comes to people’s character: the wise, the foolish, and the evil. Although his audience isn’t all Christian, he explains that these Scriptural categories are proven true in all fields of life, including business, psychology, and law. It is critical that we understand whether the person we are dealing with is wise, foolish, or evil, because it will determine the track we take and whether an ending is necessary. A wise person recognizes truth for what it is, takes it in, and adjusts themselves accordingly. When corrected, they listen and change their life. As a result, they improve every day again. They are motivated to change, and are willing to show genuine remorse when they need to. When dealing with a wise person, communication goes a long way. They are eager to be trained or coached. Talking helps. A fool doesn’t adjust to the truth. Rather, they adjust the truth so that they don’t have to change themselves. He or she isn’t the problem. Others are. They are defensive, they blame, and talking to them doesn’t help at all. Instead, it creates conflict and division. “At this point it is time to change the conversation from trying to get them to change to talking about the fact that no change is happening and that is the problem…. Roger, this team and the environment we want to have around here are important to me, so I can’t allow your abusive behavior to ruin it anymore.” Adding consequences is often required. “Dave, I want to live in a sober house, and since you have chosen to not do anything about your addiction, I won’t be living with you anymore until you get treatment and get sober.” The key with dealing with foolish people is to end the pattern. “You cannot control them or get them to change. What you can do is create an ending to the effects their refusal to take responsibility is having on you or others.” Although we would love to think otherwise, there are no shortage of fools in our lives. Apart from God’s grace and the working of His Holy Spirit, we are all fools. But we have been born again, and it is important that we act accordingly. Finally, there are evil people, who intentionally want to hurt you. An evil person is the “kind of person who likes to bring others down, is intentionally divisive, enjoys it when someone fails, and tries to create the downfall of others or of the company is to be protected against at all costs.” As Christians, we can be guilty of a living in a pretend world. We see numerous examples of evil people in the Bible, including among God’s covenant people (e.g., Old Testament Israel or the New Testament Church). But we act as if there are no evil people in our families, schools, or churches today, even when the evidence is clearly stacked against us. Untold pain has been caused by tolerating wicked abusers in our circles, simply because we foolishly assumed that if they came from another Reformed church, they must be trustworthy. Parents, elders, and school boards must have the courage to do whatever is necessary to protect God’s children from these wolves in sheep’s clothing (see Matt. 7, 1 Cor. 5). It's time for change Is God looking to you to make a necessary ending? Will you prayerfully consider this? It may be the beginning of a whole new life. A transition begins with an ending, not a new beginning. We don’t just become an adult. We first stop acting like a child. At this point I should add a caution. Some people are so motivated to see things change that they are too eager to prune. Pruning isn’t something to be done carelessly. It takes discernment. If you attack an apple tree with a chainsaw without knowing the right season or method (something I’m guilty of), your tree may die. The goal of this article, and Dr. Cloud’s book, is not to pursue endings for their own sake. Rather, it is to nurture flourishing lives. As such, if you are eager to see an ending, it would be good to first search your heart to discern what is motivating you. Dr. Cloud is a Christian, but the book is written for a broader audience. If we go to Scripture, we can find even more wisdom and perspective as it relates to the importance of endings. God makes it clear in His Word that our lives, and all history, are progressing towards an ending: our impending death and the judgement we will face before His throne. Whether it is through the pain of burnout, disease, or old age, God is reminding us that our lives on earth won’t carry on forever and we shouldn’t pretend they will. He has given us a blueprint to show us how He wants us to use the time He has given. And He also warns us to “keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come” (Matthew 24:42). But Scriptures also show that God is not a harsh boss who is only interested in the bottom line. Our works aren’t going to satisfy Him. Thankfully, because of the good news of Jesus Christ’s victory over death in our place, death isn’t an ultimate ending. Rather, it is a door to a whole new life of joy. Once again, we see how endings are necessary and open the door to a new life. May our willingness to make endings here reflect the confidence we have in the new life that is waiting. ***** Necessary Endings: The employees, businesses, and relationships that all of us have to give up in order to move forward by Henry Cloud 2011 / 238 pages It is one thing to see the need for pruning, and another to know how to do it. The idea of ending an activity that has gone on for years, or cutting someone out of our lives, can be scary and needs to be managed carefully. Space doesn’t allow me to summarize all of Dr. Cloud’s advice so I’m going to instead encourage readers to get a copy of the book to discover the wealth of wisdom he shares. This includes topics like “having the conversation: strategies for ending things well.” And if you find it difficult to read a whole book on the topic, it is also available as an audio book. Perhaps you can listen to the book with someone else who would be blessed by it....

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Saturday Selections – Feb. 15, 2025

Charles Darwin's birthday was Feb. 12, so for this edition we are marking that event by featuring a collection of very different rebuttals. Click on the titles for the linked articles. Your cells are constantly being recycled and repaired... even as they keep running Every day your DNA experiences 10,000 lost letters of code in every single cell of your body. Your body is like a library of information... that's constantly on fire. As fast as the environment burns down your DNA, a host of DNA "librarians" in your cells builds back what was being burnt down. That means that, right from the beginning, our DNA needed these repair mechanisms. But these mechanisms need all sorts of DNA to be formed. It's a chicken and egg dilemma – which came first? Both need to have been in place from the beginning, and couldn't have evolved one at a time. Better science without Darwin When you presume that all the life around us came about by random mutation, acting without design or purpose, then you're not liable to look to Nature for brilliant design. And devotion to Darwin might have you falling for all sorts of mistakes, like believing that much of our DNA is just junk left over from our previous evolutionary incarnations. Or you'd be liable to look for and try to point out flaws in our design. But you'd be wrong. What if, instead of looking to Nature for bad design, scientists starting looking to it for Inspired design? That's what the field of biometrics is all about – looking to Nature for inspiration, because of the brilliant engineering on display. Evolution can't explain why we blush Does blushing make you fitter? Nope. In fact, an argument could be made that this honest unconscious reaction might put someone at a disadvantage. That's why Darwin was perturbed by it, because even blushing exposes the insufficiency of his evolutionary theory. The astonishing self-organizing human embryo You start as a single cell that then subdivides into all sorts of other different types of cells. But how does the one decide to become all the others? "...how exactly does an organism without any central control self-organize?" The more we learn, the more apparent it is, that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. The Darwin devotion detector Some years back author and scientist William A. Dembski crafted a test that paired statements – one devoted to Darwin, the other not – that could be used by a person to gauge how devoted or not they might be to Darwin. I think this 40-question test could be used by Christians in university to confront classmates willing to listen (interested opposition, not fingers-in-their-ears fools) to expose to them their blind devotion to Darwin, and how it isn't anything to do with science. Here's one pairing, as an example, with the first showing Darwin devotion, and the second lining up better with reality. Darwin’s theory of evolution is as well supported scientifically as Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Putting Darwin’s theory of evolution in the same league as Einstein’s theory of general relativity is an affront to the exact sciences. The age of the arches As the article above notes, Arches National Park has about 2,000 natural rock arches, with roughly one collapsing each year and none forming. So, unless there were  millions of arches to start, that makes it seem that these are not the millions of years old they are purported to be. And the article below highlights how they were not formed as they were purported to be either. ...

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The peculiar blessings of Covid

God used even this evil for good ***** In the early spring of 2020, Christian pastors from across Alberta sat on a telephone townhall with Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and Chief Medical Officer Deena Hinshaw. On the call – which had been scheduled to offer Alberta’s religious leaders an opportunity to ask questions about Covid-related regulations – pastors shared opinions, asked for medical advice, and requested clarification on the government’s early pandemic guidelines. Uncertainty about the future of the pandemic and its effect on in-person worship dominated the conversation. In the months following the townhall, as pandemic restrictions became more hotly contested and closely enforced, pastors and other church members reckoned with deep theological questions about the nature of human embodiment, the importance of in-person worship, and the efficacy of the Lord’s Supper. In addition to such practical theological questions, Canadian Christians – like their non-Christian neighbors – faced a litany of disappointments and devastation over the course of the pandemic era. These included cancelled weddings, cancelled funerals, the death of loved ones from Covid, the death of loved ones from suicide, frayed family relationships, and crushing financial hardships. As a result, many Christians – and most non-Christians – now view the pandemic as a long international nightmare which must never be repeated, and which would best be forgotten. This response to the human devastation of the Covid pandemic is natural. And in many ways it might even be healthy: a desire to constantly relitigate past events at the expense of tackling present problems serves no good purpose. However, underneath the severe difficulties of the Covid-era are surprising proofs of God’s covenant-keeping faithfulness – proofs that should make Christians rejoice in God’s sovereign activity during the Covid pandemic, and should produce hope about God’s activities amid today’s often-grievous cultural developments. Nothing to do but be renewed For some, the hated pandemic restrictions became the means through which God saved their soul. Allison, a young government employee from Alberta, spent much of the pandemic in the United Kingdom, unable to return home. As a result, she stayed at the house of a kind friend who invited her to watch livestreamed worship services. Convicted of her sin and curious about the God proclaimed in the sermons, Allison’s atheistic thinking began to fall apart. Renewed by the Spirit, she embraced the gospel. Today, she is a member of a local church in Calgary, having rejected the godless ideology of atheism and instead now embracing the whole counsel of the God who purchased her with His blood. Jared, a young data scientist from Hong Kong, was unable to find work at the height of the pandemic. Forced to change plans, he moved to Canada to pursue his education and career in a new country, eventually taking a job in Calgary. With no immediate social connections in his new city, Jared started consuming hours of YouTube content and the site’s algorithm eventually led him to Christian apologetics. Intrigued by arguments defending Christianity, he was learning as much about the Christian faith as he could, and soon turned to Christ for salvation. He now faithfully serves his local church where he is beginning to teach theology classes to fellow church members. As Covid spread throughout the world in March of 2020, God carefully laid the foundation for Allison and Jared’s conversion. Long before patient zero, God had chosen vessels of mercy to be converted during the pandemic and ordered the decade’s darkest circumstances to bring His chosen sons and daughters into the marvelous light of His grace. Public education exposed A second proof of God’s covenant-keeping faithfulness during the pandemic is the dramatic expansion of Christian school and homeschool participation in Canada. As school buildings closed, and mom and dad began to pay closer attention to the public school content that was now being streamed into their homes, parents didn’t always like what they were hearing. Some then responded by homeschooling their children, or by placing them in faithful Christian schools. As a result, both homeschooling and Christian school registration rates skyrocketed in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic. Jeff Park, the Executive Director of the Alberta Parents Union, commented that, during the Covid pandemic, parents, “…saw hostility to their values, and less competence than they had always assumed. Public trust in public schools took a big hit, especially for people of faith.” According to Park, “God meant for good – to wake up the sleeping giant of Christian parents and save their children from godless indoctrination.” God is using the previous difficulties of school closures to help Christian parents think more deeply about their children’s education. And He is causing many to ask deep questions about the kind of education that will most benefit the souls of their children. Conclusion The Lord grieves the death, division, and persecution of His people. However, He is never surprised by such occurrences. As Christians braced for the unknowns of a viral pandemic in early 2020, God had already prepared for the salvation of men and women who previously cursed His name. As congregations bitterly disputed about distancing requirements, God applied His pruning to strengthen the unity of His church. As governments made school closure decisions, God established the steps of Christian families. In 2020 – despite the fears of many of His people – the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not falter in His promises to the church He’d bought with His own blood. He used a virus to build and strengthen His chosen assembly, against whom the gates of Hell have not prevailed. And if God’s faithfulness did not falter through some of the most dramatic world events of the modern era, should we not also have joyful confidence that He will use every other sin and disaster that besets Canadian society for the good of those who love Him? None of this lightens the tragedy of death, the pain of unhealed division, or the grievousness of sin. It does, however, offer a small glimpse into the eternal perspective. As we approach today’s news – war in Ukraine, war in Israel, a society in rapid moral decline, skyrocketing inflation – we must not do so as those without hope. Instead, we do so with the expectation of eternal joy and with a lasting confidence in the wisdom of an Almighty King who will one day split the sky and prove forever that what man meant for evil, God meant for good....

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Young Canadian defends Scripture to the world

Things can change quickly when you have the courage to seize an opportunity, and are blessed by God. 33-year-old Wesley Huff is serving as the Central Canada Director of Apologetics Canada, while doing his PhD in New Testament at Wycliffe College in Toronto. Although he is well-respected by the relatively small audience plugged into the work of Apologetics Canada, that was about the extent of it. That is, until a few months ago. Last fall, Huff agreed to a last-minute request to come onto a podcast the next day to debate Billy Carson, someone who is well-known worldwide, but for all the wrong reasons. Carson is a proponent of New Age teachings and argues that ancient texts disprove the deity of Christ. It wasn’t long into the podcast before Huff humbly and respectfully dismantled Billy Carson’s arguments. Reflecting on the debate later, Huff said that what surprised him was that he expected a rebuttal from Carson. But there wasn’t one. “People like Billy are confident in the way that they say things, but that confidence isn’t always backed up by the reality of the evidence and so confidence and competence are not the same thing.” It went so poorly for Carson that he sent a legal “cease and desist” letter, to try to prevent the podcast from getting released. But it went public, and got noticed – it’s had millions of online views. One of the people who noticed it was Joe Rogan, who runs what might be the most popular podcast in the world. Earlier, in 2024, he’d interviewed Billy Carson, and seeing Wes Huff dismantle Carson got his attention. On Christmas Eve, Rogan sent an invitation to Huff to come down to his studio in Texas within the week to do an interview about the historical accuracy of the Bible. “There is no way I could have orchestrated any of the events leading up to this moment,” Huff told Faith Today. “I could not have gotten myself on Joe Rogan's podcast by my own volition, and so beforehand, I was really trying to just trust, leaning not in my own understanding, but leaning on the fact that this is a situation that the Spirit has designed.” The interview with Rogan went for over three hours and has currently been seen 5.9 million times on his YouTube channel (not including so many other clips and versions). Huff’s personal YouTube page went from relative obscurity to 482,000 subscribers. Huff shared with Faith Today that the interview with Rogan is an indication that people are warming to Christianity. “Seven to 10 years ago he was mocking Christianity and religious perspectives to now, I think he himself has seen that there has to be more.” Although he has been inundated with requests for more debates, Huff shared on his personal YouTube channel that he will be declining almost all of them as his priority is to keep serving as a husband, father, student, and employee....

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Saturday Selections – Feb. 8, 2025

Monarch butterflies are freaky cool  (7 min) We know that caterpillars become butterflies – two creatures in one! – but did you know that Monarch butterflies themselves have two entirely different life spans? One generation lives just weeks, and the next will live months, long enough for them to make the journey from Canada to Mexico, a route they have never traveled before. That's three creatures in one! Who will you believe about spanking? Big-name psychological groups say spanking is harmful. But that says more about them than about spanking. Sooner or later, babies will be too precious to abort More people die from abortion than all other causes of death combined – abortion may have accounted for 52 percent of all deaths in 2021. Michael Cook thinks the consequences of this slaughter will be such that shrinking nations will have to turn their backs on abortion... or disappear. "Devil with a bluegrass, bluegrass, bluegrass, devil with a bluegrass thumb" Being able to laugh at yourself is grace indeed! Origin-of-life challenge: $10 million, just lying around (10-minute read) Since 2019, a $10 million prize has been available for anyone who can produce “a purely chemical process that will generate, transmit and receive a simple code.” This is a key tenet of evolution – that unguided processes can create and transmit information – and evolutionists have not been able to put up... so we should rightly regard them as having been shut up. Tariffs: why Canada shouldn't hit back  Free trade – free of barriers and restrictions – has, traditionally, been pretty exclusive to the Right side of the political spectrum. But now, with President Trump threatening tariffs on Canada and Mexico, we're even hearing the Left talk about the harms that tariffs could cause. And not just to Canada and Mexico, but to American consumers too. As the far-left stalwart Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (aka AOC) noted on X, "Remember: *WE* pay the tariffs....Trump is all about making inflation WORSE for working class Americans, not better." But what is she talking about when she says Americans pay the tariffs it charges? Think of it this way. Imagine two towns located right next to each other – Town A and Town B – and each has a car mechanic. These mechanics are full-service: they go right to your house to do the repairs. The only difference between the two is that the car mechanic in Town A – let's call him Arnold – is way cheaper, so not only do all the folks in Town A use Arnold, so do most of the folks in Town B. That, understandably, makes the mechanic in town B – we'll him Bill – quite unhappy, as it really hurts his business. So Bill demands that his town put in a tariff of sorts. He wants a 25% surcharge on any "out of town" car mechanics. He argues that this surcharge will be incredibly beneficial – applying it to Arnold for the work he does in Town B will help fund Town B's government. It will also help protect Town B's homegrown car repair businesses - Bill's – by making his prices seem more competitive. And, Bill notes, if he gets more business, the government will benefit from the taxes he'll pay. Bill pitches his tariff/surcharge as a win/win all the way around. But Bill is forgetting someone – several someones, in fact. The surcharge will make Arnold's prices higher. Any Town B clients who do continue to use him will now be paying 25% more. And any clients he loses to Bill will be impacted too, having to pay Bill's higher prices for their car repairs, taking a bigger chunk out of their household budget than ever before. In other words, Bill is staying in business at the expense of the car repair consumers in his own town. That's not win/win at all – that's a win for Bill, at the cost of everyone else in town. This is what AOC meant when she said that Americans will pay the tariffs they charge. Canada rightly fears American tariffs on the energy and goods they produce. Those tariffs could hurt our producers badly. But hitting back at American tariffs with our own tariffs on US goods is only going to compound the pain. It might benefit some of our producers – whoever makes the goods that compete with imported American goods – but that benefit will come at the expense of Canadian consumers overall by making them pay more. Just like Town B's car repair "tariff" hurt Town B's citizens. Is there an explicitly biblical perspective to be brought here? Well, what about Leviticus 19:15? “Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly." God equates justice and impartiality, which prompts a question: should a government take actions that benefit some of its citizens – some producers – at the expense of other citizens, the consumers and producers who use those goods? Isn't that partiality? God also speaks to this in his Golden Rule (Matt. 7:12). "Do unto others as you would like done unto you," applied to the economic realm would mean that car mechanic Bill wouldn't argue for his surcharge because he wouldn't want that same surcharge applied to everything he buys. If Town A has cheap car parts, or groceries, or gasoline, he'd love to be able to benefit. That fact is, tariffs always hurt consumers, so no matter what the US does, let's not let tariffs beget more tariffs. Instead of putting up trade barriers, there are interprovincial barriers we could greatly benefit from taking down, as Pierre Poilievre explains below. ...

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Christian education

Growth in independent schools and homeschooling

“The public school has become a counter-church. It is a powerful institution for the purpose of squeezing out of our children the worldview of the Bible and saturating them with the worldview of Pelagius, Rousseau, or whoever. The school where the Bible is banned has become a weapon of defense as well as of offense for the spirit that resists God’s Word against the spirit that embraces that Word.” Those are the words of Abraham Kuyper over a hundred years ago as he discussed the “schools question” in the Netherlands. His concern over the state of public education was the main catalyst behind his concept of sphere sovereignty. Rather than schools being controlled by the government (or even the church), he envisioned an educational system where schools were truly independent. While Kuyper’s philosophy of education took hold in the Netherlands, the idea of independent schools – and homeschooling – took far longer to take hold in Canada. But one positive social trend in Canada today is the growth of homeschooling and independent schools over the past fifteen years. The “School Enrollment Growth in Canada from 2007-2023” graph charts these changes based on data from Statistics Canada for Canada as a whole and the four provinces in which most Reformed Christians in Canada live. Note the stagnation of the public school system – what Kuyper labeled the counter-church – and the growth of alternative forms of education. Over the last fifteen years, enrollment in the public school system increased by only 6% across Canada. It even declined slightly (-2%) in Ontario. The significant increase in Alberta is mostly due to the rapid growth of Alberta’s school age population. The growth of independent schools Independent schools, on the other hand, experienced four times the growth that public schools did across Canada. British Columbia and Ontario experienced the largest increases at 32%. The trend toward independent schools is accelerating. Not only are independent schools growing, they are growing faster and faster every year on average. For example, in the first three years of this data (2007-2011), the average annual growth rate of independent schools was only 0.2%. In the last three years of this data (2020-2023) the average annual growth rate was 1.3%. And altogether that does add up. Some of this growth is due to existing independent schools getting bigger. Depending on where you live in Canada, perhaps you can see this growth firsthand in your local Reformed school. But some of the growth is from brand new Christian schools. One example that has ties to Reformed churches is a new classical Christian school, Compass Community Learning Centre, in Langley and New Westminster, BC. This Christian school opened their doors a few years ago to provide Christian families with a thoroughly Christian education a little closer to home, in a more communal setting, and using a classic teaching pedagogy that focuses on grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The growth of homeschooling What stands out the most in the graph above is the growth in homeschooling over the past 15 years. A lot of this growth is due to the impact of COVID, government restrictions on public schools, and the adaptation of independent schools in 2020. Prior to 2020, the number of homeschool students grew by an average of 6.3% per year, which was far more than the growth in independent schools (1.5%) and public schools (0.4%). But in the first full school year during COVID, the number of homeschooled students more than doubled, growing 107% in a single year. And while many (35%) of those students eventually returned to public or independent schools, by the end of the 2022-23 school year, many more students continued on the homeschooling track. In the coming years, we will see whether those students stay within the homeschooling track or also choose to go back to a more conventional form of schooling. Why this growth is cause for gratitude This growth in independent and home schools is a win for two reasons. First, it is a win for the principle of parental involvement in education. Virtually every reference to teaching or raising children in Scripture describes parents – not professional teachers – as the educators of their children. For example, right after the second giving of the law, Moses commands: “And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deut. 6:6-7). Now, this doesn’t mean that only parents are allowed to teach their children. As humanity developed and specialized and as knowledge expanded and became more complex, parents needed help with their responsibility to educate their children, leading to the creation of schools. There, professional teachers do much of the actual work of educating children. But it shouldn’t be that parents hand off the education of their children to others and wash their hands of the matter. That responsibility ultimately remains with parents. (And there is a whole body of evidence that suggests that the more involved a parent is in the education of their child, the better that child will do at school.) Public schools, however, have increasingly wrested this authority away from parents in all sorts of ways. The centralization of power in a provincial ministry of education limits the authority of local elected school boards. In much of eastern Canada, elected school boards have been eliminated entirely. Some public schools withhold information from parents about their children, such as if they are socially transitioning at school. On the other hand, most independent schools strive to deeply involve parents in the education of their children. Many independent schools simply wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the passion, time, money, and involvement of parents. And, of course, homeschooling is the most direct form of parents taking responsibility for the education of their children. Every child that is removed from the public school system and attends an independent school or is homeschooled is a win for the idea that parents – not governments or even schools or teachers – are the primary players in education. Second, the growth in independent schools and homeschooling is a win for Christian education. Public Catholic schools aside, public schools are secular schools. For example, the BC School Act requires that: “All schools and Provincial schools must be conducted on strictly secular and nonsectarian principles. The highest morality must be inculcated, but no religious dogma or creed is to be taught in a school or Provincial school.” Teaching a Christian worldview or the Bible as truth simply is not possible in most public schools. But it is possible to base education around a Christian worldview in independent schools and through homeschooling. Now, not every independent school is a Christian school. Not every homeschooling parent is a Christian parent. While the data on what percentage of independent schools and homeschooling students are Christian isn’t easily accessible, a 2016 Fraser Institute report found that 38.5% of all independent schools were Christian schools. They enrolled 37.1% of all independent school children. And yet, the existence of a wide variety of independent schools and homeschooling movements helps give Christian schools and Christian parents the freedom to educate their students and children in the fear of the LORD. The larger, the more diverse, and the more pluralistic the independent education and homeschooling sector is, the safer Christian schools are from the overreach of a post-Christian government. And so, while there may be many disappointing developments in public schools across the country, one bright spot that we can thank God for is the growth of independent schools and homeschooling across our country....

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Canadian economy stank it up under Trudeau

With the Justin Trudeau era (almost) over, it’s time to assess his record. In a January 9 article posted to The Hub, Lakehead University’s Professor of Economics Livio Di Matteo compared current Canadian economic conditions with 2015, when Trudeau was elected as Prime Minister with a majority government. Di Matteo’s conclusion? The Canadian economy is in much worse shape now than a decade ago, especially in six key areas: GDP, job growth, interest and inflation rates, and the federal deficit and debt. Canadian Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per person grew more slowly than other capitalist countries. For comparison purposes the figures that follow are in US dollars. In 2015, Canadians produced about $43,600 per person, compared to $57,000 for the Americans. We were producing approximately 76% of what they were producing, by this economic measure. As of 2023, the World Bank Group has Canada at just above $53,400, or almost $10,000 more than eight years ago. But over those same eight years the US per person GDP has grown to $82,800, an increase for them of about $25,000. So instead of producing 76% of what Americans do, we’re now at about 65% of our largest trading partner’s productivity. On the jobs front, an almost identical percentage of Canadians were unemployed in 2015 and as of November 2024 – just under 7%. However, this statistic conceals that a larger slice of the population is working in the public sector than ever before: 21.1% as of 2023, versus 19.7% in 2015. Interest rates in Canada have increased from very low in 2015, when the Bank of Canada rate hovered just below 1%, to around 3.5% at the end of 2024. Higher interest rates contribute to slow business growth, and an increased cost of living especially for people looking to buy a home. Inflation rates have recently eased from a high of nearly 7% in 2022, to just under 2% in 2024. However, Di Matteo points out that “from 2015 to 2024, the All-Items Consumer Price Index grew by 26 percent.” This Index is another inflation measure based on the rising cost month by month, year by year, of a basket of goods and services. That 26 percent is a far cry from the slow growth of the economy overall. According to the Trudeau government’s own account, they spent $63.1 billion more than they collected in revenue in the fiscal year ending March 31 of 2024. As Professor Di Matteo shares, “over the terms of the Trudeau government, the net federal debt has nearly doubled rising from $701 billion to $1.35 trillion.” Di Matteo reminds readers that when you borrow, you must also repay: the cost of servicing Canada’s national debt is increasing at an alarming rate. “Debt charges are expected to reach $53.7 billion in 2024-2025, or about 10 per cent of federal spending.” Solomon alerts us in Proverbs 14:23 that “in all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty.” We pray that future Canadian leaders will be better stewards of the great resources that God has given us. Picture credit: paparazzza / Shutterstock.com...

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Christians don’t retire

Retirement is unbiblical. Before you think that I’m accusing everyone over the age of 65 of unbiblical behavior, let me lay out the case for why Reformed Christians should be wary of the concept of retirement. God created men and women to work – He placed Adam in the Garden of Eden to “work it and keep it” (Gen. 2:15). This was an application of the cultural mandate to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion” (Gen. 1:28). Although the fall into sin made work toilsome (Gen. 3:17-19), God continues to call each and every person to work and to labor for His Kingdom. Now, this work is not just paid employment. Paid employment is work, but caring for children is work too. Doing chores inside the house and out in the yard is work. Volunteering is work. Serving and ministering to others is work. Going hard six days a week Throughout our entire lives we are called to work six days of every week, with the gift of regular rest on every seventh day. And Scripture is full of rebukes for those who shirk work. Proverbs calls upon the sluggard to consider the industrious ways of the ant (Prov. 6:6-11). In the parable of the talents, Jesus condemns the servant who buried his talent in the ground, exclaiming, “You wicked and slothful servant!” (Matt. 25:26). In 2 Thess. 3:11-12, Paul warns against idleness, having heard that some “walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.” Beyond just providing for ourselves and our families, a Christian is also called to “labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need” (Eph. 4:28). We are called to work as we are able, for the good of ourselves, our neighbors, and ultimately for the glory of God. Worldly view of retirement But our wealthy, twenty-first-century culture has invented the concept of retirement from work. Public policy and cultural expectations encourage people to work until they are 64 years and 364 days old and then quit working entirely on their 65th birthday. From that day on, our culture promises that life can be one of leisure, full of exotic vacations, games of golf, and doting on grandchildren. It is some sort of horrible, evil thing if people have to work past 65. It is this caricature of retirement that I suggest is unbiblical. There is no biblical precedent for retiring from work or picking an arbitrary age to stop serving in the Kingdom of God. Perhaps some will push back and say that rest is good and biblical. And so it is. But perpetual rest on this side of glory is not. The fourth commandment, although the emphasis is on rest, still commands “six days you shall do all your work.” That is the pattern that God gave from creation. Our eternal rest doesn’t start when we reach the age of 65. That rest is only to be found in the life to come. From one line of work to another And so, to those who are retired from their paid employment or whose retirement is on the horizon, Reformed Christians should encourage each other to look around for ways to consider laboring in God’s Kingdom as they are able. Perhaps that is paid employment. Perhaps that is looking after grandchildren. Perhaps that is serving more in the church or volunteering in the community. (And it is worth repeating as you are able. The diminished health and energy of old age can and do limit opportunities for service.) There are any number of suggestions for service that could be made, so I’ll just make one from my personal experience. This is for the older men in the church. My home church in Abbotsford is very blessed to be a young congregation. It is literally overflowing with families and young children. As beautiful as that is, it comes with challenges too. One of those challenges is that many of the potential office-bearers are young and haven’t served as office-bearers before. I just finished my first term as a deacon and, aside from one experienced brother, the other five of us were first-time office-bearers in our twenties and thirties. We all served to the best of our abilities, but doubtless our youth and inexperience shone through many times. It is in situations like these that retired office-bearers have a perfect opportunity to mentor, advise, and encourage younger office-bearers, perhaps going along on visits, joining with a younger office-bearer in prayer over his task, sharing book recommendations, or offering their expertise and advice on difficult situations. The opportunities for service throughout retirement are endless. But the central point is that we view our entire lives as devoted to service of the Kingdom of God. Not just our first 65 years....

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