Signs and symbols
Four rappers team up to take on the tendency among some Christians to look outward for God’s direction, rather than turn to His Word.
This won’t make it onto everyone’s playlist, but give it at least one listen-through and you’ll find it worth your time.
There were no atheists at Nuremberg
“When confronted with atrocities of such scale, humanity instinctively appeals to an objective moral standard. Abstract academic debates about relativism sound impressive in seminar rooms. They sound absurd amid the piles of shoes at Auschwitz. Nuremberg stands as a modern vindication of the moral law of God—the natural law…. Atheism and moral relativism are powerless in the face of Nazi atrocities. ”
Guarding against a conspiracy mindset
Christians shouldn’t be naive about the reality that conspiracies do happen. We know there is indeed an Enemy working behind the scenes to oppose all that is good and right – Satan is active, and brilliant too.
But so often conspiracy theories are akin simply to gossip, tearing down leaders, including godly men in the Church, based on nothing more than mind-reading, what-ifs, and connected dots that could be connected other ways too, if we were charitably evaluating others as we would want to be evaluated.
IVF somehow gets worse
IVF has far more to do with death than the creation of new life – by some estimates 4 embryonic children are destroyed for every IVF baby eventually born, and another estimate puts that number ten times higher, with 40 babies destroyed for every baby born.
And now an already eugenic enterprise looks like it may be more so. As the head of an “IVF screening company” put it:
“The vast majority of parents in the future are not going to want to roll the dice with their child’s health. They’re going to see it as taking the maximum amount of care, the maximum amount of love. In the same way that they plan their nursery, plan their home, plan their preschool. … I think it then becomes about stewardship. It becomes about how do I make a responsible choice for my family.”
She has also said, on many occasions, “Sex is for pleasure…IVF is for having children.” Will screening embryos become an expectation? It is sure to become more available and then, for a world already callous about unborn life, it is sure to lead to yet more bloodshed.
Christians pro-lifers know that no matter how someone is conceived, they are made in the very Image of God (Gen. 9:6) so we are not dehumanizing children or adults conceived by IVF when we critique how they were conceived. So should Christians have any part in the IVF industry at all? I’d argue, with one exception, no we should not.
Even if we use IVF by the least objectionable way possible (and the most expensive, such that it is rarely done this way) in which one child is conceived at a time, never frozen, and implanted no matter what “fitness grading” it might have received, we are still going to be participating in an industry that doesn’t normally operate like that at all. This is an industry bathed in bloodshed. The doctors have killed hundreds and thousands, and going to them isn’t just akin to having an abortionist as your doctor, it’s exactly that. Further, every child who is born by this process becomes PR for the whole process – the children these doctors successfully birth are their legitimization for all the children they destroy. Do we really want to go to abortionists for help with anything?
That exception I mentioned? Snowflake adoptions. The callousness of others has led to the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands and quite possibly millions of embryonic children, abandoned by their parents to frozen storage. It is a loving couple who adopts one of these, freeing him or her to be implanted into an adoptive mother’s womb for a chance at continuing to develop and grow. May God bless these couples’ rescue operations, which reflect God’s own greater gracious rescue in adopting us all as His sons and daughters.
Does a key verse in Genesis show the Flood was coming in 120 years, or people wouldn’t live longer than 120 years anymore?
Genesis 6:3 reads: “Then the Lord said, ‘My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years’…”
The controversial answer to the question of “Does child labor help poor children?”
When my grandfather was sick, my dad, in his teens, had to work to help support the family. It would have been wonderful if he hadn’t needed to – he’s a smart guy, and I can only imagine what kind of scholarships he might have earned if he could have devoted himself to just school. But, if a law would have been in place banning him from working, that wouldn’t have upped his chances for college. It would only have meant that he and his whole family would have been wondering how they were going to make ends meet.
We don’t like child labor, but a law banning imports from countries where child labor is allowed wouldn’t stop them from working. It would only limit their options, and likely drive them into far less desirable work. The Left acts as if wishing can make things so, on everything from personhood (the mom’s decision determine whether it is a child or not) to gender (a boy can be a girl if he wishes it so) to economics (don’t judge our jobs program by results, just by our intentions). As Christians we know we have to interact with the world as it is, not simply as we wish it was. And that means that, for countries that aren’t yet as rich as we are, families may well need their children to contribute… and we shouldn’t hurt those families by getting in the way.
