Tag Archives: newsweek

Christian worldview

Roundup

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Adam Carolla’s R-rated — but right-on — rant — This comes with a language warning, but it is interesting to hear his perspective on the OWS crowd.  They are the Sticker Generation, who grew up with an outrageous sense of entitlement because they were always told how wonderful they were, whether those assessments matched reality or not.

They aren’t succeeding in life so they covet and want to destroy those who have succeeded.

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Wow, this was stupid 50 years ago and hasn’t gotten any smarter: KENTUCKY CHURCH BANS INTERRACIAL COUPLES FROM BECOMING MEMBERS & LEADING WORSHIP. As Glenn points out, there is only one race in the Bible, the fallen human race.  Skin color is morally neutral.

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An extreme Green guy found that living out his worldview was tough and irrational, such as when he spent 5 hours traveling to do what would have taken 40 minutes in a car.

There are those who question the point of this exercise to begin with. “Why make your life harder when it won’t make a difference anyway?” they ask, adding a virtual eye roll that would make even the most jaded 14-year-old proud. “Policy is the only solution to the world’s climate crisis, not individual action.” To them I say: Well, yeah.

He admits how awful it is but welcomes the government forcing everyone to do it that way.  Sadly, he doesn’t see the unintended consequences that will come with the government control, not to mention that the bureaucrats themselves won’t be obligated to follow the rules they make.

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Sadly, Ohioans are finding out that they were misled by the unions on Issue 2. Being persuaded by multi-million dollar ad campaigns and fear-mongering won’t help when these cities have to balance their budgets.  Paying extravagant union wages and benefits will mean the loss of jobs and services — the very things the unions said would happen if they lost!

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Newsweek admits the obvious: America is in the grip of sex addiction — They even concede that not all homosexual participants were not “born that way.”

Shockingly, the Newsweek article does acknowledge a reality that is normally unthinkable for the liberal mind: that homosexual behavior might be related to a sex addiction. A sex therapist tells Newsweek, “We see a lot of heterosexual men who are addicted to sex and, because culturally and biologically women aren’t as readily available to have sex at all times of the day, these men will turn to gay men for gratification.”

I imagine the LGBTQ community is up in arms over that.

Although Newsweek admits that the “digital revolution” has much to do with the situation through the provision of easily-accessible hard-core pornography, it fails to state another obvious point: that the culture of the United States and other western countries is saturated with a “softer” porn that is potentially just as deadly.

Americans are bombarded, day in and day out, with insidious messages about human sexuality. Movies, music, television shows, video games and advertising glorify a superficial, hedonistic, promiscuous, and selfish concept of sexuality. Quite often, these themes are accompanied by overt acts of violence and rape.

Newsweek however, doesn’t seem to notice a connection between the false concept of human sexuality pushed by the entertainment business and advertisers and the nation’s increasingly destructive obsession with carnal pleasure.  Instead it takes a more “moderate” approach, parroting the American Psychiatric Association’s insane notion that sexual perversion is only a problem if it violates your personal standards of normalcy.

Lots of bad things happen when people make up their own standards.  It reminds me of the theme of the book of Judges: “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

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How many World AIDS Day presentations talked about how incredibly risky gay sex is?  If you really love people you’ll at least warn them that their odds of contracting syphilis or HIV are over forty times higher than average.

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Roundup

Roundup

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9 out of 10 dogs prefer to be house-trained using Newsweek – great write-up about the “biblical” pro-“same sex marriage” bit in the “news” magazine.  The Newsweek article was so poorly done that I didn’t bother reading it all.   Therefore, I missed this gem:

In its entry on “Homosexual Practices,” the Anchor Bible Dictionary notes that nowhere in the Bible do its authors refer to sex between women, “possibly because it did not result in true physical ‘union’ (by male entry).”

Seems that all these Bible experts — the author, her editor(s) and the good folks at the Anchor Bible Dictionary — never read Romans 1, one of the most big picture chapters in the whole Bible and the key text on homosexuality in the New Testament :  Romans 1:26–For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature.

Yep, no mention at all.  Do you think they’ll print a retraction?  (That’s a rhetorical question.) The author and Newsweek are like a self parody.  Sadly, much of our biblically illiterate culture and churches will nod their heads at the article.

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Ever Wondered What a UAW Contract Looks Like?  

All 22 (Whomping!) Pounds of UAW Rules and Regulations.   I’ll tell you this much, those 2,215 pages don’t include much regarding efficiency and competitiveness. ”

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Anybody heard of GoodShop?  You enter your school or charity then shop online at mainstream stores like Amazon, Best Buy and hundreds of others, then a percentage goes to the charity.

They have a similar site called GoodSearch that donates about a penny per search to your designated charity and uses the Yahoo search engine.

I picked World Vision as my charity.

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Che Chic: The Twisted Hero Worship of Mass Murderer Che Guevara — Note to celebrities: Think first, then worship.

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Bible

Three of a kind: Jack Black, Newsweek and theologically liberal Christians

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three-of-a-kindThe pro-“same-sex marriage” crowd is pretty angry about Proposition 8 passing in California.  They are doing everything possible to sway public opinion.  They may win, but the question is whether authentic Christians will hold fast to the truth. 

It is sad yet amusing to see such theoretically different sets of people in agreement about the “flaws” of the Bible:

  • Jack Black and other Hollywood stars create a video mocking Christians and the Bible.  (Side note: If you can watch the whole video, notice how the sodomy simulations all had woman in back instead of men.  That was obviously scripted for a reason.  Did they think using a guy would be too graphic?  It seemed kinda homophobic to me.)
  • Newsweek – “Opponents of gay marriage often cite Scripture. But what the Bible teaches about love argues for the other side.”  It was deeply biased logical fallacy-fest of pure advocacy that didn’t even pretend to offer a counterpoint. Among other things, it trots out the false comparison to black Civil Rights.  But of course, skin color is morally neutral and sexual behavior is not.  It also used the “Jesus didn’t say anything about homosexuality” line, which only has about seven serious logical errors. 
  • Theologically liberal / pro-gay theology Christians  — they’ve been doing this the longest, but it is most irritating with them because they claim the name of Christ.  At least Jack Black doesn’t pretend to be a Christian.

In short, we’ve got Bible lessons from non-believers.  So what will we do? 

Here’s my advice: Don’t get angry, get educated.  Or get angry and educated.  Are these people irritating and blasphemous?  Yep.  But we should use these current events to point people to the truth.  Just do like they did in the Book of Acts: Share the truth with those who are interested. 

For starters, respond to the shrimp / shellfish argument.  It is full of holes but is appealing to many because so few bother to study the passages. I address five serious problems with it in Flaws of the Shellfish Argument.  Here’s the short version: There were different Hebrew words translated as abomination. They were used differently in the individual verses and were used very differently in broader contexts. The associated sins had radically different consequences and had 100% different treatments in the New Testament.  So the Jack Black / theologically liberal types are simply wrong.

From the Jack Black video:

The “Christian” characters: “Doesn’t the Bible say these people are an abomination?”

Jack Black as Jesus: “It says the exact same thing about this shrimp cocktail . . . The Bible says a lot of things . . .”

The “Christian” characters: “We ignore those verses.”

Non-Christian characters: ” . . . you pick and choose.”

The irony is that we accept all the verses as the word of God.  The ones who “pick and choose” are the Dalmatian Theologians who think the Bible is inspired in spots and that they are inspired to spot the spots, or that God is changing spots or adding spots (and, oddly enough, only telling them).  They quote what they like then dismiss what they don’t by saying thinks like, “the Bible doesn’t say which books belong in the Bible, so we just don’t know what parts belong.”

The literalists are the ones like Jack Black & Co. who don’t read in context. 

A summary of what the Bible really says about this topic:

  • 100% of the verses addressing homosexual behavior denounce it as sin in the clearest and strongest possible terms.
  • 100% of the verses referencing God’s ideal for marriage involve one man and one woman.
  • 100% of the verses referencing parenting involve moms and dads with unique roles (or at least a set of male and female parents guiding the children).
  • 0% of 31,173 Bible verses refer to homosexual behavior in a positive or even benign way or even hint at the acceptability of homosexual unions.
Again, don’t get angry, get educated.  Or get angry and educated.  These people are throwing all sorts of nonsense like this at the real church.  How will we respond?  With “dignified” surrenders, where we just opt out of the conversations?  Or with the truth?
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Here’s a thorough analysis by James White.

Also see: Problems with pro-gay theology and Responding to pro-gay theology 

Al Mohler had a good response to the Newsweek article.