Enemies of Evolution

Having previously studied for an honours degree in English Literature, and being a lover of books, I had come across Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, and his ideas, but until recently I had never heard of his brother Julian Huxley. It turns out that Julian was quite the academic. He was the grandson of Thomas Huxley, who was nicknamed "Darwin's Bulldog" for his ferocious support of the theory of evolution and I imagine it was at his grandfather's knee that Julian first began to absorb evolutionary ideas. Julian shone brightly. He was educated at Eton College, received his degree from Oxford University, lectured at Kings College London and became president of the British Humanist Association... amongst a long list of other achievements!

Julian Huxley fascinated me for a while and I started reading some of his work. Initially I was quite impressed by his thought processes - albeit that he often sounded quite arrogant. You see, when an atheist denies God, he also denies a moral absolute and consequently a moral lawgiver. If there is no moral lawgiver and no moral absolutes then who can say what is right and what is wrong? Why should we even care about such things? I've seen people try for some wriggle room on this one, but it’s a major sticking point in the atheist's argument and often they find themselves 'borrowing' from Christianity when they defend their personal ideas of morality.

The crux of evolutionary ideology is the survival of the fittest, so if you are going to follow this thought through to its logical conclusion then how can rape, murder, theft, adultery, lying and a host of other ‘crimes’ be wrong when a person is just doing whatever he needs to do to survive or get ahead? Trampling over other people in order to get what we want should be the first law of evolution and be essential to our make up. For example, if I want to be selected for a particular job promotion, what is to stop me from killing off all the others short-listed for the position? 

When I was debating this very point recently I was told that since we no longer live in the cave-man days we no longer have to kill or be killed. We have a measure of stability in our society and this allows us to to develop a pack mentality, so that it is no longer about what is good for the individual, but is now about what is good for the pack - or for society I presume. This apparently gives us room to care for people, to have compassion for our fellow human beings and even to show sympathy and empathy. I genuinely think it is a clever argument, but there is no denying that sympathy and empathy are enemies to evolution and could potentially destroy the 'pack' if we lose sight of the 'survival of the fittest' mentality. What would Huxley have to say about this?

Well, Huxley stood his evolutionary ground whilst promoting his humanist ideology. He claimed that humanism was a replacement for religion, but he made no bones about how we should further advance our society and didn’t shy away from the uglier side of evolution. In 1926 he published a collection of articles in a book entitled The Stream of Life. The articles had formerly been broadcast by Huxley over the radio - this surprises me, because I think it takes some gall to express his ideology publicly. Huxley told his audience exactly how we could improve the human race.

"But what are we to think when pity for suffering individuals leads us not only to preserve them, but to allow them to reproduce and so not only to lower the quality of the race, but to produce more suffering in individuals yet unborn? What is one to think of the misplaced kindness which, to give an actual recent case, takes an epileptic woman to hospital to be operated on to remedy sterility; or the sentimentality which rejoices at the 'happiness', so called, generated by the marriage of two deaf mutes?"[i]

Here, I think, would be an appropriate time to bring up the actual joy generated by 'the marriage of two deaf mutes' (although I would never choose to use the phrase 'deaf mute'). In the 1960’s a London Newspaper ran an article entitled: ‘Deaf Couple Marry’ which detailed the marriage of my own parents.

My parents met at a London deaf school where sign language was forbidden and deaf children who persisted in this deviant language were shunned by society, because apparently the ‘waving around’ of their hands made them appear mentally ill.

The education my parents received focused mainly on manual skills and speech therapy and therefore they left school with barely any education. My father had a qualification in woodwork and my mother a qualification in cake decorating. When they married my parents were not allowed to make their marriage vows to one another in sign language, but instead had to struggle to speak their vows orally to each other.

Despite their disadvantages they were hard workers and determined to build a good life together. Some years later my parents 'reproduced' two very healthy hearing children who went on to marry and have hearing children of their own. Their first grandson, Benjamin grew up adoring his grandparents and communicating with them in sign language. He was inspired by the determination and courage with which they faced life. Today he is in his 4th year as a medical student at Imperial College London - one of the top medical schools not only in the UK, but also in the world. Their second grandson, Joseph 17 is currently gathering work experience so that he too can study medicine - if this is what God wills, and guess what their 11 year-old grand-daughter wants to do? I am not saying that this means our family has more value than anyone elses, I am merely pointing out that doing away with the ‘undesirables’ is not progressive!

I'd like to put this real life example to Julian Huxley and ask him how the marriage and reproduction of my parents actually weakened the human race and how, in the face of what they have achieved, he can justify his comments recommending that society should be 'segregating defectives in special institutions' and forcibly sterilising them.’[ii]

Growing up and studying World War II at school I realised that had my parents lived in Germany at that time they most likely would have ended up in the gas chambers since the ‘cleansing’ that Hitler and Nazi Germany practiced was in alignment with Huxley's eugenic ideas. Joe Boot, author of A Time to Search cites historical philosopher John Koster who wrote:

"Darwin and Huxley's picture of man's place in the universe prepared the way for the Holocaust...Darwin the scientist directly inspired Nietzsche’s superman theory and the Nazi corollary that some people were subhuman...People have to learn to stop thinking of other people as machines and learn to think of them as men and women possessed of souls...History doesn't need another one hundred million deaths to prove that scientific atheism is a form of mental illness.”[iii]

Eugenics is the logical outworking of evolution. I can see why on paper the ideas make sense and might sound like ‘progress’. I can also see why people who argue against this sort of ideology might be considered to be ‘feeble minded’ – something Huxley and the early proponents of evolution despised but what you see in the Nazi concentration camps is eugenics in action. The devaluing of human life flows from the atheist position of rejecting the teaching of the Bible that tells us that people are made in the image of God and therefore all life is precious. Instead life is expendable and killing of the defectives, undesirables and weak is to be applauded. The Nazi concentration camps brought these ideas into sharp focus and taught us that such ideas have consequences and these consequences would frequently come back to haunt us.

My grandmother, who was not a believer, told me that she was glad she didn't know that my mother was going to be deaf because if she had she would have made a terrible mistake and would have aborted her baby as an 'act of kindness'. My grandmother had no time for God, but she had unwittingly absorbed Darwinian ideas, which she didn’t fully understand but believed that they gave her license for her atheism. Millions of other people have hung their atheism on the same ‘respectable peg’ for as Richard Dawkins said, ‘Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.’[iv]

The teaching of Christianity is in direct contrast to the harsh demands of evolution leading to eugenic ideologies and it is no wonder that Hitler himself rose up to declare:

"I regard Christianity as the most fatal, seductive lie that ever existed.’[v]

I find it hard to believe that anyone would claim that Adolf Hitler was a Christian. I do not deny that he was born a catholic, but it is clear that Hilter’s intention was to wipe out Christianity.

"Altogether Hitler’s killing machine murdered 5 million Jews, and 7 million Christians — a little published fact that caused Jewish historian Max Dimont to declare that “the world blinded itself to the murder of Christians” by Nazi Germany.”[vi]

Why?

I have no doubt that many supporters of evolution do not hold to the extreme eugenic ideas of the likes of Huxley, or Hitler for that matter, but I truly believe that for the evolutionist there is not a lot of ‘wriggle room’ here. As Edward Simon said (1983), “I cannot deny that the theory of evolution, and the atheism it engendered, led to the moral climate that made a holocaust possible.”[vii].

I believe that the grace of God covered my family and that we are living proof that Huxley couldn’t have been more wrong – I absolutely do rejoice over the happiness brought about by the marriage of my wonderful deaf parents.

© Kim Sandy 2013

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[i] Julian Huxley (1926). The Stream of Life, cited by Boot, J. (2002). A Time to Search: Discovering meaning and purpose in life, Eastborne, Kingsway Publications, p.106.

[ii] Ibid., p.106

[iii] John P. Koster, Jr,.The Atheist Syndrome (1989), cited by Boot, J. (2002). A Time to Search: Discovering meaning and purpose in life, Eastborne, Kingsway Publications, p.111

[iv] Dawkins, R. (1989) The Blind Watchmaker, London, Penguin Books (this edition 2006), p.6

[v] Alolf Hitler, cited by Larry Azar, Twentieth Century in Crisis (1990), Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt, p.155.

[vi] Dimont, Max I (1994) cited by Bergman (2006) in ‘Was Adolf Hitler a Christian: A common objection to creationism.’ [online] available at http://www.trueorigin.org/hitler01.asp  (last accessed 22^nd June 2013).

[vii] Edward Simon, "Another Side to the Evolution Problem," Jewish Press, January 7, 1983, p. 248

Picture of Juilian Huxley: The work of art itself is in the public domain for the following reason: his image is in the public domain because its copyright has expired. This applies to Australia, the European Union and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 70 years.

The Slippery Slope of Progress

Recently I got into a debate with a sharp minded student who claimed that sexually, anything between two consenting adults was okay....anything. Sex before marriage, sex with multiple partners, sex between same sex couples...he was adamant. What goes on in private between consenting adults is their business and nobody elses. This statement fascinated me, 'surely you don't believe that?' I said, but he firmly stood his ground - he believed that ANYTHING between consenting adults was fine. Eventually, in an effort to make him reconsider his position the I asked, 'so, if a consenting mother wanted to have sex with her consenting adult son, you would say that was fine?'  His face dropped a little, and he immediately looked uneasy, but he held his position and looked me square in the eye while he  rather slowly and   unconvincingly answered, 'yes'.

You see, this is where moral relativism gets us. If we truly believe that there are no moral absolutes, and what's right for me is right for me and what's right for you is right for you, we end up with very vague guidelines for morality. We assume that as part of our social contract we are all on the same page and that we can all rub along nicely...but beliefs like this open the door for all sorts of craziness! How can you possibly say that incest is wrong if you truly believe that anything between two consenting adults is fine.

I thought about this for a while and decided that perhaps the student could have argued that incest was wrong because it is against the law. That would at least give him legal ground for repelling this act? But then I thought again...it was not so long ago that Homosexuality was illegal...what happened there? The law is not a long suffering or  loving parent - when its children flout the boundaries, the law just changes the boundaries. So by that token it would appear (call me a prophet if you like!) that on the basis of our society's belief that there are no moral absolutes, we would have to change our law to make incest between consenting adults fully acceptable. Anyone with anything to say against this would be shut down as sexually repressed, backward thinking, and biophobic - or whatever the phrase is that we will come to use to describe those against incest.

So again, society will be brainwashed into believing that maybe we were a bunch of sexually repressed fuddy duddies at the beginning of the 21st Century. Those of us who don't like being portrayed as the village idiot will have to toe the line.  So get ready people - you think it will never happen, you think intelligent moral people won't stand for it, but incest is making its way into your life and into head. Trust me.

The student I was debating with listened to me and then tried to wriggle out of his own argument by saying that perhaps incest would not be acceptable between family members because sex might be used as a controlling force, but I insisted that in this mother and son scenario sex was only  expression of love and so he had no choice but to concede - 'well in that case, yes' he said 'sex between a mother and son is okay then.' He left me utterly flabberghasted when he added, 'it's progress.'

So not even two weeks later I am stunned to find an article on the net where a father has been sent to prison for having an incestuous sexual relationship with his consenting adult daughter, but rather than skulk away in shame the pair are furious - this is their buisness and nothing to do with anyone else. In the same article twin brothers talk about their sexual relationship with each other as 'not harming anyone'...

Personally I believe that every single human being has a sense of what is right and wrong because God has written his moral law on our hearts, but Satan who is the God of this age, is true to form - getting people to question God. Is God right, why shouldn't you accept incest? Society - who says there is no God - can claim to be moralistic, but without a moral law giver you are left with moral relativism and this, as we can see, leads us into utter depravity. More brainwashing going on here?

"Although they claimed to be wise, they became utter fools." Romans 1 : 22

http://townhall.com/columnists/michaelbrown/2012/09/11/here_comes_incest_just_as_predicted

First Posted 15th September 2012

Getting off on the wrong foot

Love them or Leave them?

Sometimes I wonder why it takes ‘experts’ so long to see the nose on the end of their faces. I don’t wish to be rude but this week I have heard that a study has discovered that children who are happy at home do better at school. Well that stands to reason doesn’t it? Come on people.

Now the news tells us that the riots in England during 2011 are actually our fault…there are 500,000 ‘forgotten families’ out there.[1]

Issues such a poor parenting, difficulties with reading and writing, unemployment, and what to do with young offenders were all named as elements of the ‘complex causes’ for the rebellion and hopelessness we saw on our streets last year.

I then hear Christians nobly wanting to take up some of the blame – it's our fault for not impacting our communities. The solution? They want us to offer more to the less educated and poorer families. Let’s give them education, lets give them debt advice, literacy classes, job interview skills and help with their CV’s…

Please don’t get me wrong – my heart aches for the desperately miserable and futile lives that some people have but what we really have to ask ourselves is do they care?  This week I read an article about a man who sawed off his own foot because he didn’t want to go to work![2] Rather extreme? You haven’t heard the full story yet! He then takes his foot and cooks it in the oven just in case anyone tries to sew it back on again. When the medical team reach him they rush for the foot and find it too burnt to do anything with.

Now, who’s fault was that?

Christian’s have got to realise that no amount of job club help will change the heart of this man. No amount of counselling can turn a bad parent into a good parent. No amount of ‘hand holding’ can stop an ex-offender from returning to his or her old ways. So what do we do?

Well it seems that Christians (in general) do two things:

1.  They do nothing. They retreat into their churches and moan about the state of the world and how wicked it has become. They think up strategies to keep the lead on their roofs and the lead in their hearts! They ‘preach the gospel’ in the good old fashioned style that they were brought up with. Thee’s and Thou’s and then they worry about the wrong sort coming into their church (Personally I don't think they have much to worry about!). While we were on holiday we attended a church in the UK only to find all the doors locked – despite the fact that the notice board announced a 10.30am service every Sunday. We left, but my husband returned again that evening at 6.30pm for the evening service. The same thing happened but this time as he tugged away at the door handle the door opened and a gentleman asked him what he wanted. After a short discussion the man at the door allowed my husband (a pastor!) to come in saying, ‘we have to be careful, you can’t be too sure who you’re letting in these days.’ THAT my friends should make you weep. 

1. But we’re not all like that. Some of us are so desperate to shrug off the stuffy middle-class respectable Christianity that is so off-putting that we go the other way entirely. They did ‘services’ and ‘bible rallies’ – we do ‘projects’ and ‘community action.’ Reading classes, parenting classes, counselling, housing, homelessness….we have a finger in every pie and we feel soooo  much better for it.

Do you know what, its not about us feeling good! It’s about us feeling UNCOMFORTABLE. This world is not our home – why do we expect it to be such a polite and nice society when it has rejected God and rejected the only real Hope it has? Should this world be better off because we’re here being salt and light? Sprinkling our fairy dust over everything we touch? Making everything better?

Doesn’t  your heart bleed for the mess we are in?

THINK ABOUT THIS. If a woman rejects Christ what will she teach her children? If those children grow up with no regard for their creator or for their souls then what will that do to their characters? What will become of their moral values? If those children grow up to have children of their own then what will they teach their children?

Do you not understand that … “There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.” (2 Timothy 3 : 1 – 5).

I’m not saying do not help them – its obvious they need help – but how do you help them?

I recently heard of two Christian brothers who took clothes to the very poor and needy of society. This was meant to be a gift of great love and compassion – instead it turned into a brawl where the men themselves were pushed aside as people 'helped themselves' to the clothes. (Lovers of themselves…ungrateful…without self control).

I recently heard of a church who set up a centre to help the homeless in our society but was ripped off so many times that they have been forced to stop giving out money or gifts. The help that they now offer (non-financial) is scorned and rejected ( brutal, proud, without love slanderous).

A young drug addict asks a pastor to borrow £20 so that he can get to his job interview and when the pastor refuses he is abusive. When another young man asks to borrow £20 to go to a job interview the Pastor gives him the money and the young man spends the next six months avoiding him so that he doesn’t have to pay the money back…

A woman stands outside the church complaining that she has no food to feed her kids. She asks for money but the church take five bags of shopping to her house. She is disappointed. There are no children in the house – they have apparently been removed by social services – but she’ll keep the food anyway and come to church next week. She is never seen again.

You see – there are lots of projects and groups set up by society to provide social action. What makes Christians think they can do it better than anyone else?  It’s not really ‘help’ that most people need. In fact if you give them ‘help’ they get annoyed…unless it’s help getting a flat (can you pay the first months rent?) or in keeping a flat (can you pay the arrears?) or in getting a car (can you find me a brilliant car for next to nothing….and erm, could you pay for it to?) or in entertaining their kids (I love this bible club, can’t you run it every day for the whole of the summer holidays) they will take all that you give provided you don't give them Christ (how dare you shove your religion down my daughter’s throat. She’s praying and talking about Jesus now – you’ve got a cheek!). They are happy for you to help with their children’s education, (You’re a maths teacher aren’t you – can you help my son pass his 11+?) and they would be so grateful if you would 'bend the rules' and help them with their children's education (I know I haven’t been coming to church that regularly  but I promise to come from now on, can you sign my daughter’s form so she can go to that nice church school around the corner?)

As a Pastor’s wife I have been used and abused and kicked myself many times. I've been caught out more times than I can tell you. My heart wants to help but I have come to realize that people are like slot machines….they promise you a big jackpot, but all you end up doing is feeding the machine and losing all your money!

So what do we do?

WEEP FOR OUR SOCIETY.

Jesus looked at Jerusalem and wept. He didn’t set up a project…well no, actually he did in a way….’Go into all the world and preach the gospel, baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son and the Holy Spirit.’ This is what our society needs! They need the Saviour!

Do you not understand that if a man finds Christ he finds purpose?

Do you not understand that if a woman finds Christ she becomes a new creation?

Do you not understand that it is Christ who changes the heart and mind of a person?

Do you not understand that the Holy Spirit convicts and changes people so that they turn their backs on their old ways and embrace the values of Jesus?

I say this with conviction because I come from a family that was radically changed by Jesus Christ. My parents found Jesus when I was 3 years old. My parents are both deaf and left school with a certificate in cake decorating and a certificate in woodwork. My father used to sit me on his knee and tell me bible stories from a big green book. He made them exciting and wonderful. Whenever he learned a new story from the bible he would tell it to me. I can remember sitting down one day at about 5 years of age when my dad decided we should start thanking God for our food. That Christmas my mother packed up all my old toys and we gave them to a charity raising money for children in Africa who had no food. Christ changed our thinking and our attitudes. When we went on holiday Dad said we had to leave our caravan spotlessly clean when we left – so that people would see that Christians are thoughtful people. When I accidentally came home with a packet of crisps that I hadn’t been charged for, Dad walked back to the shop with me so that we could tell the shop-keeper and pay for them. When I grew up and had my own son he one day came home from Tesco on the day that they introduced scary self-service tills. Keen to have a go he scanned all his items and came home – without paying. He had forgotten that bit! When he went to give us the change he realized he still had the £20 that we had given him so we went back to the store to pay. The manager said ‘are you mad? You could have gotten away with that….but erm….well done for your honesty.’ That manager had a job, he clearly had intelligence and had done well to become a manager but his values were not Christ’s values. Scratch the service of every 'decent' person and you’ll find you don’t have to go very deep before you find a deceitful rebellious heart.

CHRIST can change a society – if you want proof of that you only have to look at what happened in the Welsh revivals….pubs closed down, crime went down, churches were fit to burst…

Please Christians – don’t try to patch up society – however well-meaning you may be. It’s like putting a plaster on the stump where the guy just cut his foot off! People need Christ. Love them by all means – but love them enough to tell them about the Saviour.

Do you mind if people rush out of your church at the end of the morning service so they can have a quick smoke? Do you go out of your way to welcome the ex-offender who has found Christ in prison. Will you welcome him into your fellowship without telling everyone to watch their handbag? What about that nice young couple who tell you so cheerfully that today is the anniversary of the first day that they moved in together? That 18 year old pregnant girl – do we really want our teens mixing with her? What will you do with that young man who tells you he couldn’t get to church last Sunday because he stayed up too late sniffing cocaine and was in not fit state that morning?

 LET THEM IN….You CAN be sure of who you let in these days, they will be broken, damaged, people who have lived lives without Christ. Do not expect them to be squeaky clean and respectable… When they tell you things about themselves that would make your grandmother’s hair curl, understand that this is what a life without Christ looks like. Your challenge my friend, and your ultimate privalege will be to see what a life transformed by Christ looks like. Have you seen it happen yet?

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[1] BBC news, 27^th March 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17525873

[2] Sky News, 26^th March 2012, http://news.sky.com/home/strange-news/article/16196733

First Posted 28th March 2012

Brainwashed?

Just who is being brainwashed?

When I was a teenager I began to tell my grandmother about Jesus Christ. I didn't hammer her with my belief, but as we would talk it would come up naturally in conversation.  Her response was to tell me that I take after my great-great-grandmother who was also 'religious' and then, when I pointed out that faith in God was not something that could be passed down through our genes, like eye-colour or  height etc, she told me she thought Christians (including me) were actually brain-washed.

For years it hurt me that she thought I was brain-washed. She wasn't an educated lady, but she was streaks ahead of Richard Dawkins in her assumptions that I (and others like me) were simply deluded.

So am I brainwashed? Bearing in mind that those being brainwashed often don't know it, I want to look at the evidence - who is being brainwashed and who is qualified to make judgements?

Brainwashing normally occurs in one of two ways. Firstly it occurs through subliminal messages - where something is repeated so frequently that you begin to believe it.

Okay - so its true - I have heard from about the age of 3 or 4 that there is a God and that this God created our world. However, as an adult the bible tells me not to believe everything I hear. I am not to take everything at face value, but am to ask questions of it and seek out the truth (I'm not sure this is typical brainwashing strategy).

The apostle Paul said 'Test everything. Hold on to what is good' ( 1 Thessalonians 5 : 21).  The bible tells me I am not to put my brain in my backpack and go skipping through life blindly ignoring every question that is raised against God, or accepting every statement made in the name of God. Jesus tells me I am to ‘Love the Lord [my] God with all [my] heart and with all [my] soul and with all [my] MIND.’ This is the first and GREATEST commandment! (Matthew 22 : 37 - 38). I am not even to accept everything that a preacher, apologist or teacher says without being careful to check that this is indeed what is right: Jesus said: 'Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.' Matthew 7 : 15. I am not even supposed to rely on my own judgements and see myself as the fount of all knowledge - setting myself up as judge over what I personally like and don't like, over what I personally agree with or don't agree with. The bible tells me not to 'rely on my own understanding.' (Proverbs 3 : 5).

So, repeating something to me over and over again is not going to be so effective if I am constantly checking it out. However, it strikes me that my grandmother, an atheist constantly believed all subliminal messages put to her that there was no God without ever stopping to question whether this was true or not, without ever checking anything for herself. When I asked her what she believed about the Universe and where it came from she told me that it had always been here. The bible told me that this could not possibly be true. The bible told me that in the beginning God spoke the world into being...

Today science backs this up. Science used to believe that the world was eternal - it had always been here and always would be. Scientists now know that the universe almost certainly had a beginning and that it will almost certainly come to an end, what they don't know is WHY the universe began, and they are still guessing at how. I think I know! The bible says God 'said' let there be... Oh yeah, that's a bit childish isn't it. What, God said the magic words did he? Uh, no...stay with me here!  The DNA code in all living things is a language code...God introduced language into the Universe, logic, reason and sense in all that he had made. The bible says God 'spoke' - DNA shows us his language!

I then asked my grandmother where we came from and she told me - with a wink - that we came from monkeys. I asked her if she truly believed that and she said she did. She couldn't explain evolution to me, she had no idea how or why it was supposed to work, but if everyone believed that this is where we came from who was she to argue with them. She refused to check it out, refused to consider any alternatives, refused to think about anything concerning God - but it would be laughable to think that she had been brainwashed...wouldn't it?

The second way that brainwashing works is through reinforcement. Here wanted behaviour is rewarded and unwanted behaviour is punished. Okay lets think about this. If you wanted to brainwash someone into being a Christian it would be mighty difficult, because doing the right thing seems to get you nowhere in this world. A little bit of tax evasion, a little white lie, a little bit of gossip - the odd lustful thought...its what makes the world go around isn't it? How about indulging in the passions of the flesh...that's fun isn't it. Who wants to deny themselves anything? So, how is wanted behaviour being rewarded then?  Being a Christian sounds like hard work and certainly doesn't make you the life and soul of the party. This world does not reinforcing the Christian's behaviour, because everyone can see that its the last thing anyone wants! And yet the Christian hangs on - having tested everything they are holding onto what is good (even though at times it seems to make life a lot harder). My grandmother once told me that if I wanted to get ahead in the world I'd have to give up my God malarky.

But is the atheist receiving any subliminal messages based on reward and punishment? Well, possibly yes! Daily they see that those who make it big in this world are those who do not believe in God - the successful celebrity, the rich businessman, the model, the singer, the actor....they don't need God do they? They receive messages  from their idols, in their newspapers, on the radio, on TV, in Holywood films, in soap operas, in music, in art, in literature, in philosophy... they receive the same message, again and again, that there is no God. The message is that they don't need God, he's not there, he never was and he never will be, but they never stop to question the truth of the matter because when they look at the Christian, they are bombarded with a different message. The Christian is a mealy mouthed kill joy who is a pain in the neck everywhere he or she goes. They see how Christians are portayed by the media - Christians are never seen as amazing or cool. Here the atheist sees that life without God is good - and life with God is boring and miserable.

Interestingly, the Christian receives the same message. A message that warns that if they continue with his 'delusion' they will be unpopular and unwanted -  they will be laughed at, ridiculed and despised. But despite receiving this message, despite realising that they will no doubt suffer for their faith in Jesus Christ, they hang on because they have tested the truth!  It does not seem like a classic case of brainwashing to me. I wonder if its the atheist who is brainwashed then? What does the evidence suggest to you?

First Posted 4th September 2012

Zero Tolerance

Okay, so here's another thing that I can't understand. Why is it that in this day and age of 'tolerance' we simply do not understand the word tolerance?

To tolerate something means to put up with it even when you do not agree with it. The Oxford English dictionary defines it as:

allow the existence, occurrence, or practice of (something that one dislikes or disagrees with) without interference.

As a Christian I have been accused of being intolerant because I believe sex before marriage is wrong, believe that homosexuality is wrong, believe that there is only one way to Heaven and that all religions do not lead to God etc etc...and yet, I have friends who live together, have friends who are homosexuals, have friends of different faiths...I am willing to tolerate what they do even though I do not agree with them. I am still able give them space to continue in what they do, even though I do not believe it is okay. I am still able to remain on speaking terms with these people and respect their life choices.

Yet look what happened today...

I belong to a facebook discussion group where a group of CODA's (children of deaf adults) get together to discuss - well, to discuss life as CODA's . As you can imagine we have lots of things in common and can laugh and cry together over things that people outside of our group and life experience may not be able to understand. We were all getting along nicely until a guy published a (very) short video clip about his work as an interpreter in a church and woaaaaahhhhhhhhh ... suddenly the group are all claws, their fur is standing on end, they have arched backs and they're walking sideways!

A light had been suddenly switched on and everyone was running for cover! There was such an outcry. People were saying the clip was 'inappropriate', that it was 'preachy' and just 'too much'. The offending poster was told that this 'wasn't the place' and then someone added that his work had nothing to do with us being a CODA. Well for him, and for me (as it happens), it had everything to do with being a CODA. He was raised as a child of deaf parents and he is now using his sign language skills in church as an interpreter to make church accessible for deaf people. The same is true of me.

There were plenty of CODA's in the group who had become interpreters in schools, hospitals, courts etc - and this was all fine. There were plenty of CODA's who published short video clips of jokes or songs that they had signed...this too was okay. One guy spoke about getting interpreters in for his civil partnership ceremony and no one blinked an eye, but to discuss your work in a church was 100% NOT okay. Someone said, 'lets leave politics and religion out of this - it only causes arguments.' I was amazed. During my time in the group we had discussed whether or not Obama was a good president, we discussed the current American elections, the riots in London England, we had discussed the way society (government in particular) doesn't understand deafness...there had been plenty of politics! Whilst I did not agree with everyone on every topic I was willing to listen to other opinions and be polite where I disagreed, it was all very grown up - but when the name of Christ was raised the reaction was not one of tolerance. It was ZERO TOLERANCE.

These people think they are tolerant because they 'tolerate' sex outside of marriage, they 'tolerate' homosexual sex, they 'tolerate' swearing and getting drunk etc - BUT THIS IS NOT TOLERANCE - what they really say is 'I find nothing wrong with it so its okay by me.' You only need tolerance when you DO NOT AGREE with something.  The first time these people come into contact with something they do not agree with - in this case Christianity, or talk of Jesus Christ, we find out exactly how tolerant they are!

As a believer in Jesus Christ, I do not wish to be INTOLERANT - I may not agree with you over certain issues, but I should do this with kindness and gentleness.

To tolerate something is not to agree with it. To tolerate means to love or respect someone even if you don't agree with them.

So whilst I am practicing tolerance - but being called 'intolerant' - I am being attacked/shut down/silenced by those who claim to be tolerant.

I thought I'd test my theory...I posted a bible verse to the CODA group. My verse came at the end of a long list of comments on the site where people aired their views about the inappropriate Christian who had 'spammed' their wall with his offensive video. I wrote: Ephesians 4 : 2 we should live 'with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love' 

They deleted me from the group.

Interesting.

First Posted 20th September 2012