What is Marriage?

Question: Is marriage simply a union between to people that love each other?
Answer: No.

To explain further, marriage is the union between one man and one woman that love each other and come together to have and raise children. There is no such thing as “gay marriage”, there are gay unions but within the true definition of marriage there is no such thing as “gay marriage”. Marriage is for procreation not for recreation, and it has the vital function of passing down morals and values to the next generation. Marriage is FOR children or for the propagation of humanity; and in no way is this possible for, or between, to people of the same gender.

Is gay marriage really best for society, or are we bowing to the pressure of political correctness forced on us by those only interested in themselves (homosexual activists)? What benefit will this social experiment of gay marriage have, or better yet we should ask ourselves what further damage this will have on the already lowered morals and values of the next generation. .

People may think this is equality, but really it is more like giving in to a child that is throwing a temper tantrum. It is not for the benefit of everyone, but for the benefit of a partisan group (to quiet down the raucous child in other words). This is not something that should be taught as acceptable to our children, but taught as a deviation from normal due to unknown traumatic experiences. I also don’t feel it is in the best interest of children to be adopted or raised by a homosexual couple either, nor do I believe that we should be teaching in a public education system that this lifestyle is either appropriate or acceptable.

Homosexual marriage does not strengthen society, it weakens it by saying that morals are relative and that self desires override that of society as a whole.


Bob

Being Strong.

"A strong man stands up for himself, a stronger man stands up for others". It's ok to encourage these principles to children in movies like "Barnyard, The original party animals", but heaven forbid that adults should act on them.

Just a simple thought for those of you that disagree with the efforts in the middle east.

Bob

Hate speech

Hate speech.

Ok so what truly constitutes hate speech? I’m going to be blunt; hate speech is not any opinion opposing the views of any group (whether they are called evil or not), hate speech IS when someone tries to garner support for physical violence towards another group. PERIOD!

Freedom of speech allows me to say that Islam is a religion of evil; it even allows me to say that Islamic Muslims will be going to hell when they die. Freedom of speech DOES NOT allow me to incite violence against this group, which is not only what I believe to be wrong but is also common sense. (Unlike the current Muslim threat of violence against Israel and countries that support it.) So what is hate speech? Obviously that which threatens bodily harm on someone or promotes actions against any other group, not that which tells them they are wrong or that a different way may be right.

Again I heard this on CTV coming from a Muslim activist group, and I guess all I can say is know what you are talking about before you go spouting off rhetoric that could damage ALL freedom of speech.

So let’s recap: Hate speech encourages violence; Freedom of speech allows opposing opinions. Did I make that simple enough?

Bob

Cultural relevance vs. Christian conservatism.

One CTV news report today focused on how a church in Moncton, NB was trying to be “culturally relevant” in their community by holding a heavy metal concert for the youth. Although I understand that they are trying to draw the youth into the church, what does it matter if you draw them in with worldly enticements?

What point is there to draw them into the church by worldly offerings and throw a few minutes of God at deaf ears? Do you really think it matters to kids if they have to sit through a few minutes of “religious stuff” to get what they want? In a word, no! Instead of a house of worship this church was turned into a house of the world; and instead of presenting God to these youths in an appropriate manner by the church’s actions they told them that their selfish desires were acceptable.

In today’s youth culture which includes bad parenting, over stimulation by media sources and intense peer pressures, I understand how some might see this as a justifiable action to get the youth into the church. But just getting them in is not enough. Yes, I agree that kids need to realize that they are accepted as they are but just accepting them without mentoring or discipling is a waste of time and energy. For a quick analogy it’s like throwing the jack and tire iron at a flat tire and expecting it to fix itself.

I also have issues with defiling a house of worship with something as obviously anti-Christian as heavy metal music. Look at Christ’s example of righteous anger at the money changers; it’s not much different than when you allow music designed to balk at traditional religious morals (it was created to antagonize parents and promote and proselytize a worldly set of immoral values). The church isn’t here to give people their worldly desires, what it is here to do is teach people about God. I’m not saying this can’t be fun and exciting but to be effective for God it can’t conform (through acceptance or even encouragement of secular desires) to a fallen world.

This speaks directly to the teachings that youth pastors are being taught in Bible school, which I feel are become far too liberal in their attempts to “reach” the youth. There is no substitute for sound doctrine and good theology, and I feel that the latest crop of youth pastors are concentrating too much on fluff ministries that are more acceptable to the secular masses. Showing youth motorcycle stunts in a church parking lot before this concert was also irresponsible and unacceptable; it just goes to even further encourage them in worldly behaviour which in this case is very dangerous. This youth pastor in particular even admitted that he wasn’t there to “convert you to my religion”, so I have to ask what was he there to do? Was he just there to enjoy the concert too? Was he there to do anything for God? Mark Moore (loosely titled youth pastor) even went so far as to say "Jesus Christ loves you. He does not care what you've done,", but if Christ doesn’t care what we’ve done why did He have to come to save us from our sins? This is not only bad theology; it is unscriptural and ineffective evangelism. Moore also said "It's easy to be an arm-chair critic and sit at home if you're 40 or 50, and say, 'I can't believe this is happening,”, but it shouldn’t be (and isn’t) that I can’t believe it’s happening but rather that it is unacceptable no matter what age you are. This is just another attempt to erode Christian values with a justification of reaching today’s youth. It is yet another current trend in the church to offer the world where we should rather be a “light in the world” (Matthew 5:16, Luke 1:79, Eph 5:8) set apart from it. The Ten Commandments are not all there is to being a Christian, and if that’s how you are living you are forgetting (or discounting) salvation and repentance; the only way to heaven.

“Culturally relevant” does not have to mean culturally accepting, or even worldly (culturally) encouraging; there are many verses that tell us that the world will hate us and God’s feelings towards those “of the world”, so we need to be careful of the message we are sending the youth. Remember we are to bring a message contrary to worldly views, values and desires, so to encourage and accept those things in a house of the Lord is unacceptable. (1 John 2:15-16, John 15:19, 1 John 4:5). 1 John 4:1 specifically tells us to be careful of false prophets, and 2 Peter 2:1 warns us of false teachers. If you’re preaching or teaching it, you should make very certain that it lines up with the Word of God and not just your theology based on your desires and interests.

Bob

Submission to the paper.

Recently I was affronted by a post submitted in the “Letter to the Editor” section of my local paper. This post stated that only “religious leaders” should be able to openly oppose homosexuality, and that the “rank and file” should not have this right. The reason this got my hackles up was that this writer was using the same freedom of speech to express his opinion that he wanted to take away from everyone else! I couldn’t imagine someone so stupid as to write something like this without thinking of the potential consequences of such an idiotic ideology, so I felt I had to write the editor myself to correct this egregiously stupid philosophy.

My letter went as follows;
______________

Although I only saw part of a quote from an editorial in your paper, "There is an argument to be made for allowing religious leaders leeway in criticizing homosexuality. Many religions have prescriptions against the practice and religious leaders should be permitted to publicly defend their religion's tenets. But extending that right to rank-and-file members of a religion goes too far.", I am amazed that anyone in a free country would try to take away anyone else's charter right to freedom of speech (Canadian Charter Right number 2 a & b).

It goes to show that this writer clearly doesn't value the freedoms the charter gives them, and believes if you aren't an authority you should not be able to voice your opinions (which really begs the question: what authority has the writer to say what he did?). I guess if his wish were the case, he would also not be able to voice the opinion he did.

If homosexuals have the right to voice their opinion that their lifestyle is ok, and they do, they have to accept every opposing opinion as well. You cannot say that one group's "rank and file" have the right to speak in advocacy of their beliefs, but that any opposing group doesn't have that exact same right.

This writer really needs a lesson in rights, and how they belong to everyone. If they don't believe that is the way it should be, then I guess maybe they should do as they themselves suggest and keep their mouths shut.

Sincerely
Bob
________________

I was alerted to this situation by an article from Lifesite news (view full article here). I understand that this was only the writer’s opinion, and he’s welcome to it, but the sheer hypocrisy of it is astounding. If everyone would take a little more time to logically and rationally work out their opinions before they opened their mouths, we would have a lot less people of the out there that look like idiots.

Opinions are like armpits; everyone has them, and a lot of them really stink.
Bob

Family values

In recent posts I have mentioned Family Values, but I don’t think I’ve explained my views on dynamics behind this issue. Family is not just a bunch of people who live together, but a support system to develop productive and resourceful future generations.

Now I’m going to step out of the generally accepted “politically correct” view, and tell you how I think a family should be run. The “PC” view has the man and woman as equals, (for that matter the current trend is to even treat the children as equals) but I see this as way to appease the militant feminist instead of strengthening the family as a whole.

Whether you believe that the traditional view of men as the head of the house or not, the truth is that this is how it was meant to be. Current trends have the children dictating their desires to the parents (with fear of outbursts as a motivation); this is a warped family unit that is not functioning for the benefit of those children, but to create as little friction as possible for the parents. I call this “namby pamby” parenting, as it is usually done by weak parents with lowered self esteem, those that cannot handle confrontation, those lacking parenting skills, and/or those with a worldly set of values.

Look at the family as a ship, there is only one captain (the father) and his is the final say. This captain is responsible for EVERYONE on his ship; his duty is to see that the ship runs smoothly and that all of his crew is safe. I see the wife as an XO (this is the executive officer, next in command on the ship). But even though the XO answers to the captain, they still have a set of experiences and skills that the captain draws on to make the best decision making the XO invaluable to the captain. The children are the crew, anywhere from raw recruits with no knowledge or experience (babies) to junior officers such as Lieutenants (teenagers) with much more knowledge, experience and responsibility. You could never run a ship with two captains; just like you could never run a ship with a raw recruit as the captain. When everyone in the family lives up to their responsibility that is when the ship will run smoothly.

This is not a direct parallel, but an analogy as an example of the way I see a strong family structure to be. It is our job as parents to raise our children in such a way as to prepare them for life on their own, and be able to properly take care of their own children. This means teaching them morals and values which society scoffs at (love, integrity, righteousness, compassion, and the importance of traditional family), and not accepting the eroded values of the world we live in.

This means men have to be men and women have to be women, and you can’t let the lines of these roles become unclear or you end up with a weak family which in the long run will cause the children suffer the consequences. Men have to stand up and accept their familial responsibilities in a respectful way, and women have to let men lead without feelings of inferiority (because they are not). Men and women were created for different roles, that much is apparent by physiology, but this in no way goes to say that one is inferior to the other.

Whether you like what you’ve read or not, you should think about what and why you believe what you do with an open mind to what I’ve said. There are a million ways to disagree with what I’ve said, and there just as many justifications. But in all honesty if you are not treating your spouse and children with the appropriate respect (and respect is everyone’s responsibility), those relationships will fail no matter how you run your family.

(This was written at my wife’s prompting, after a discussion on the relevance of youth pastors in the church.)

Bob

Suicide bombers, Islam's temper tantrums.

I just came to the conclusion that suicide bombers are like little children throwing temper tantrums.

Look at how the mentality is the same. Both the child throwing the tantrum and the suicide bomber are doing everything they can to get what they want, and in the bombers' case if they can't get what they want they take the stand that "then they don't want anything". I'm sure you can picture your child crossing their arms and pouting when they don't get their way, the only difference is that suicide bombers will kill people to get what they want.

Sure it's simple, but the similarities are incredible.

Bob

A safe school part 2.

Feminism at it's finest. The beating of a 14 year old girl by two other girls on a school bus is another new trendy type of violence. Girls now see themselves as having to be just like boys (a feminist ideology), and since they see boys as violent and irrational (not knowing really how men and boys really are, or why) they are starting to act out with violence.

There's only one way out of these ongoing trends in violence, but it means self sacrifice and conservative morals (Family and yes I dare say it, Christian morals). This is something I don't see happening in the near future, because most people are selfish and immoral; and that means the rise in violence from girls and shootings in schools will only increase (and escalate).

So again I ask; what are you doing to help ensure safety in our schools (or for our children)?
Bob

A safe school?

Here's a question to all of you out there that send your children to public school; Are you doing everything you can at home to make the public schooling environment safe for everyone else?

Now you’re probably asking “What does he mean?” or “What can we do to make schools safer?” or maybe even “Why do we have to do anything to make schools safer?” Well if you asked the latter question you are in serious denial of your parental responsibility, but if you asked the first questions you understand that your actions affect your children’s social behaviour.

What I’m really talking about is actual parenting. Not just having kids and shipping them off to daycare and then public school, but personal parental interaction with our offspring. It’s up to parents to pass down morals and values to their children; this is not the school’s job, nor is it the job of their peers and/or friends from school. It’s about taking the focus off ourselves and our own desires and doing what’s best for them, which is spending time with them ourselves. Get to know your child, once you know them you are able to help them when they are struggling with things that might make them suicidal or even, God help us, homicidal.

I have a real problem with feminist groups that devalue the incredible task of raising children, in favour of seeing equality as “the same pay for the same job” as men. But the truth of the matter is that mother’s who choose to stay home and dedicate their lives to raising moral, upright children are far more successful than any female businesswomen. What the stay at home mom has done is ensured that the next generation will be properly raised by someone with a vested interest in them instead of shipping them off to satisfy their own ambitions.

I’m not saying that there aren’t single mothers out there who go against the “mom at home” scenario, but if the fathers had been raised with stronger family values there would be no need for this scenario.

Society says that school is the best thing for our children, but the same system that is considered best for our children is also where they are most vulnerable. Just look at the problems with daycare abuse, school bullying, and now the increasing rash of school murders. Is this truly best for our children, or just more convenient?


Look out for everyone’s kids by taking care and knowing your own.

Bob

Irrational does not mean illogical

Yet another day goes by with reasons and excuses for Robert’s shootings of the young Amish schoolgirls. No matter what caused him to do this, there is absolutely no justifiable reason or excuse to make this in any way acceptable. But we need to look at it logically even though Roberts himself may not have been thinking rationally.

One theory touted by the media is that the death of Robert’s premature child changed him which psychologically contributed to his attack. The failure of the logic here is that Robert’s should have been more empathetic to others who have lost children, and not sent him into a murderous rage (and more specifically to kill only young girls). Whether or not the death of his daughter made him mad at God, or anyone else for that matter, it is illogical for this unfortunate event to lead to murder.

The second theory, based on the information released from Robert’s suicide note, is that he had molested minor children in the past and was having dreams of doing so again. Again this is not the catalyst to the murders he committed, but at this point it is conceivable that the guilt may have turned suicidal. Had it been simply that he was guilt ridden; he could have chosen suicide without the need for murder, but it did turn to murder, and apparently almost repeat pedophilia.

The fact that Roberts went to the school was a testimony to how he succumbed to the pressure of his depravity; and when he couldn’t fulfill his lusts (either by interruption or inability), in either aggravation and frustration (or both) he turned the gun on his intended victims. Finally he felt his only option was to take his own life, knowing that after taking such offensive actions as murder and pedophilia (admitted in a suicide note and attempted by the paraphernalia he carried with him) he could never face his family or community again.

What I’m saying is that the death of Robert’s premature daughter more than likely had absolutely nothing to do with his actions at the school, but the fact that he was a pedophile did. Roberts may try to justify his actions in his own mind by bringing up his grief, but it was his lack of willpower and/or self control led him to the school for what he wanted, and this is indicative of the current societal values which elevate self over others.

This is also a good example of how even the man or woman next door may be suffering with temptations like this, and the outcome shows how unable they feel to seek help. So why is it they feel unable to seek the help they need? Is it because of the judgmental attitudes of our society (both worldly and religious)? Is it because they really don’t want help, or maybe they think they don’t need it? Is it that they feel to guilty or self conscious about admitting they have a problem? (These are rhetorical questions for reflective purposes).

I don’t really know, and would it really make a difference even if we did? What we do know is that we have to live with the reality that we will deal with people like this, and that no where is truly safe. So what do we do? I gave an outline in my last post on how we need to raise our children with appropriate morals, but that is not even going to be enough especially when these offenders don’t see even death as a big enough deterrent to stop them from committing their crimes. Maybe if they understood that death will not get them out of paying for their crimes, it would change the way they act. But this is what happens when you live in a society that criticizes belief in God and moral behaviour; you feel like you will get away with it if you kill yourself.

So maybe the world views of “self gratification, look after #1, if it feels good do it, and it’s my life to do what I want” are wrong after all, and society need to take a good look at how destructive this view is before it is to late.

The real reason for this heinous crime will never be known, but we need to look at this as more than just a sad story of something that happened to someone else because this could happen to you, me or anyone just as easily. We all need to look at the way we raise our children, and we need to look at the values our children are adopting from a society that doesn’t care about them.


Bob

A sign of the times.

A truly sad social commentary played out recently in the Amish community in Lancaster. It is inconceivable that anyone would enter a school and shoot children, and it is particularly heinous in a community of known pacifists. (Murder in any form is never acceptable, and when the act is perpetrated on a group known not to defend themselves physically it is like shooting fish in a barrel and particularly reprehensible.)

Shooting children has seemed to become acceptable in some people’s minds, whether it is kids shooting other kids or now even adults shooting children. It goes to show that these people (both types of murders) care for nothing except their own desires, no matter how abhorrent or malicious. Self has become the focus instead of community; and I know this is not my first diatribe on the subject of selfishness, but it is an issue that people need to hear about for the betterment of life for all of us.

I guess what disturbs me most about this is that there will be people out there that will try to figure out why Roberts did this, but that really doesn’t matter now. What does matter is seeing the upward trend of violence (especially that perpetrated against children), and trying to find a solution for all of society. Of course this is impossible; first off because what will happen is that there will be reactive measure put into place (band-aid mentality) and it will be accepted as being fixed. But no matter what security measures are put in place, it is no substitute for proper parenting with family, community, and moral values. Secondly it is because society as a whole is unwilling to change its belief that the individual comes first, to that of one where the community (or others) should come first. (For example, look at these common sayings. "If it feels good do it", "If you don’t like it, change it", and even in music you find lyrics like this one from Sloan’s song titled "If it feels good do it"; "If it feels good do it -Even if you shouldn't". Even look at modern business practices; you are encouraged to step on whoever it takes to make it to the top, instead of giving your neighbor a hand up when he’s down.) And thirdly, it is because we have devalued human life right from the stage of conception. When our own governments condone the murder of the most innocent of human beings at their most vulnerable time of life, the message they send to the immoral masses is that anyone else’s life is not as important as yours.

This is why I say that the current shootings are a commentary on society, because society shares the responsibility with the offender for encouraging this mentality of self importance. When we elevate the importance of self over the importance of community welfare, we come up with situations where eventually the individual will feel violence is legitimate because what they want is more important than anything else. This type of logic does not take into account the wants or needs of others, and only that of the individual. It is a self defeating way of thinking, because if all we think about is what we want (and then fall in with the current trend toward violence to achieve those goals) we will eventually kill off the human race.

I pity the family of Charles Roberts, because the children will have to grow up knowing their father murdered completely helpless children, his wife will wonder how the man she loved could ever do something so amazingly terrible and how will she ever explain it to her children, and his parents will ask themselves where they went wrong.

But in the end this falls on no ones shoulders but Charles Carl Roberts, and even though he took his own life he will face a justice far mightier than anything here on earth.

Bob