Sex Is Not A Mere Function

When sex is segregated to the biological side of man’s nature, it is separated from man’s total being, and intercourse is reduced to a mere function.  It is extremely important to distinguish clearly between function and being.  Being signifies the very ground of man’s existence as a person of infinite value, with ultimate dignity as an end in himself.  A function is but an exercise of being, an activity by which man steps out of himself in order to perform some deed without ultimate significance.

William S. Banowsky, It’s A Playboy World, p.79

Love

Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.

Antoine De Saint Exupery

Should We Impose Our Ideas On Others?

Consider these propositions:

“Of course I don’t believe in murder — but I wouldn’t impose my ideas on others.”

“No, I don’t believe it’s right to steal — but I wouldn’t impose my ideas on others.”

“Incest is naturally abhorrent to me — but I wouldn’t impose my ideas on others.”

“Battering women and children is obviously wrong — but I wouldn’t impose my ideas on others.

“Using children for pornographic and physically immoral purposes is revolting to me — but I wouldn’t impose my ideas on others.”

“I certainly don’t approve of Hitlers’s extermination of six million Jews — but I wouldn’t impose my ideas on others.”

“I absolutely do not believe in slavery — but I wouldn’t impose my ideas on others.”

“Sure, I believe in equality for all Americans under our Constitution and law — but I wouldn’t impose my ideas on others.”

“No, I don’t believe in killing babies — but I wouldn’t impose my ideas on others who are willing to kill innocent, helpless babies before the little ones emerge from their mothers’ wombs.”

Do we believe in basic moral principles and yet do not believe they should be expressed and upheld by law?  How “tolerant” should we be of obvious wrong?

(Do these propositions reflect common sense — or morality, or justice, or humanity?)

From an editorial in the Chattanooga News-Free Press, 9/30/84

Government Indoctrination Centers ("Public School")

One of the remarkable self-indulgences of contemporary educators in the public schools has been the introduction into classrooms of programs which systematically undermine moral principles that have come down over the centuries, and which children have been taught by their parents.  These programs have usually been developed by intellectuals outside the field of education, extensively marketed by both commercial firms and non-profit organizations, and are often eagerly embraced by educators who have been taught in schools of education that their role is to be that of agents of social “change,” not simply transmitters of a heritage of knowledge.  These programs have a remarkable variety of names and ostensible goals, one of the earliest names being “values clarification,” though other names have proliferated after parents and others discovered what “values clarification” really meant in practice and raised objections.

The phrase “values clarification” is very misleading.  When parents tell their children not to steal or lie, or engage in violence, there is no ambiguity as to what they mean.  Ambiguity is introduced by programs which confront students with carefully crafted moral dilemmas, such as a situation where is ship is sinking and there are more people than the lifeboats can hold, so that decisions have to be made as to who is to be left to drown, perhaps beaten off when they try to climb out of the water into a lifeboat that is already so full that it will capsize if another person climbs in.  Because received moral principles do not always apply, the implication is that each individual should develop his or her own situational ethics to replace traditional morality - not only where traditional moral principles fail but in the vast range of more ordinary situations where there are no such dilemmas as those in contrived examples.

If such exercises seem remote from the purposes of a public school education, they are not remote from the philosophy introduced into education by John Dewey a century ago and promoted by schools of education to the present day.  Nor were they remote from the thinking by Woodrow Wilson.  Like so much in the vision of the anointed, this view of education exalts those who believe in it, and so it is not simply a set of testable hypotheses about social events.  Also like other aspects of that vision, there is not price to be paid by its promoters for being wrong, however large a price ends up being paid by individual students or by society at large.

“Values clarification” has been just one of a wide range of high-sounding names for classroom programs to re-shape the attitudes and consciousness of the younger generation. Other names have included “affective education,” “decision-making,” “Quest,” “sex education,” and many other imaginative titles.  Such titles are often simply flags of convenience, under which schools set sail on an “exciting” voyage in an uncharted sea of social experimentation in the re-shaping of young people’s beliefs and attitudes.  The ever-changing names for these programs reflect the need for concealment or misdirection, since few parents want to be told that schools are out to undo what the parents have taught their children or to mold those children to be what third parties want them to be.



Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p.111

Don’t Compromise

It is compromise on the little issues that leads to greater downfalls.  And who is to say that a little ignoring of civil law is not a serious sin in the sight of God? ...  Andrew Bonar said, “It is not the importance of the thing, but the majesty of the Lawgiver, that is to be the standard of obedience.”

Jerry Bridges, The Pursuit of Holiness, p.23

Homosexuality Is Harmful to Society

What community could survive economically, medically, or physically if all of its children grew up and adopted the homosexual lifestyle?  What parents hope their children grow up to engage in homosexual acts?  The moral and eventual medical, economic, and social conditions of the community are adversely affected by homosexuality.  These forms of harm clearly constitute a case of “hurting someone else,” a violation of the standard with which every rational person agrees.

Dr. Norman Geisler & Frank Turek, Legislating Morality, p.138

How Do You Dress?

Holy dress is appropriate dress.  It respects the purpose and place of dress in our daily lives.  It seeks not to offend.

Dress is a statement to God and to others.  Our dress identifies us with values and beliefs.  Clothes are not culturally neutral.  The challenge is to dress appropriately at work and play, at worship and school, to show others we respect them, but not to let the clothes define the person - even in California.


Quentin J. Schultze, "Culture Watch: Dress With Respect." Moody magazine, July/August 1995, p.29

Students Are Indoctrinated In Leftist Ideology

Woodrow Wilson wrote of his years as an academic administrator when he felt “I should like to make the young gentlemen of the rising generation as unlike their fathers as possible.”

This indoctrination can start as early as elementary school, where students are encouraged or required to write about controversial issues, sometimes in letters to public officials.  More fundamentally, the indoctrination process habituates them to taking sides on weighty and complex issues after hearing just one side of those issues.  Moreover, they are habituated to venting their emotions instead of analyzing conflicting evidence and dissecting conflicting arguments.  In short, they are led to prepackaged conclusions, instead of being equipped with the intellectual tools to reach their own conclusions, including conclusions different from those of their teachers.  In many colleges and universities, whole academic departments are devoted to particular prepackaged conclusions - whether on race, the environment or other subjects, under such names as black, women’s or environmental “studies.”  Few, if any, of these “studies” include conflicting visions and conflicting evidence, as educational rather than ideological criteria might require.

Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p.110

Pick the Right Job

Choose not that [employment] in which you may be most rich or honorable in the world, but that in which you may do most good, and best escape sinning.

Richard Baxter, Puritan, cited by Charles Colson in A Dangerous Grace, p.316

Marriage After Living Together Will Probably Fail

The National Marriage Project at Rutgers University recently released a report that agrees with prior studies which say that divorce is more likely to occur between people who lived together before marriage than between people who did not.  It is believed that the reason is partly because the commitment is not there due to the unconventionality of cohabitation, and the couples are more open to divorce.  A 1997 study by the National Center for Health Statistics reported that “27 percent of women who lived with someone before getting married ended up divorced within five years.”

Family News From Dr. James Dobson, 9/99, p.5

The Moral Law

The homosexual community has long argued that what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes is morally permissible and the government should stay out of it.  Notice the moral positions contained in that argument.  First who said consent makes something moral?  That’s an appeal to an absolute moral standard.  Second, keeping the government out of it is also a moral position.  It’s based on the principle that it would be morally wrong for the government to infringe on the autonomy of individuals.

But the government restricts the actions of individuals all the time.  No one argues that there shouldn’t be laws against murder, assault, or child abuse.  We all agree that those acts are wrong regardless of the issue of consent because not every act can be reduced to the level of preference.  In other words there are some issues that are objectively right or wrong, and others that are simply a matter of taste or opinion.  For example, murder is objectively wrong, but liking chocolate better than vanilla is simply a matter of preference.

To further drive home this distinction, let us ask these questions:  Would the holocaust have been morally permissible if the Jews had consented to it?  Was the mass suicide at Jonestown simply a matter of consenting adults exercising their rights?  Would there be nothing wrong with a father an his adult daughter consenting to have a sexual relationship?  How about three adults and the family pet?

If there is no objective right and wrong, we could not conclude that such activities are morally wrong.  We recoil at this suggestion precisely because there is a Moral Law — also known as conscience — pressing on us, which helps us conclude that some acts are undeniably and absolutely wrong.

Dr. Norman Geisler & Frank Turek, Legislating Morality, p.136

Children's Rights?

Advocates of “children’s rights” are advocating for rights that children themselves obviously will not be exercising, so this amounts to another way for third party surrogates to intervene in families, without having to pay any price when they are wrong.

Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p.109

Are You A Fixed Point?

When everything is moving at once, nothing appears to be moving, as on board a ship.  When everyone is moving towards depravity, no one seems to be moving; but if someone stops, he shows up the others who are rushing on by acting as a fixed point.

Blaise Pascal

Atheism Is Self-Centered Evil

Evil acts committed in the name of atheism are the logical outworking of atheism.  In other words, if there is no God, no standard of right and wrong, no ultimate judgement, then why not kill six million Jews to get what you want?  Why not have sex and then kill the unborn baby or leave the mother if you can get away with it?  Why not murder that kid for his Nikes?  Why not? …  Humanism has only taught people to pursue their own selfish desires.

Dr. Norman Geisler & Frank Turek, Legislating Morality, p.108-109

They Think Their Decisions Are Best

The vision of the left is one of surrogate decision-making by those presumed to have not only superior knowledge but sufficient knowledge, whether these surrogates are political leaders, experts, judges, or others.  This is the vision that is common to varying degrees on the political left, whether radical or moderate, and common also to totalitarians, whether Communist of Fascist.


Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p.104

Ladies, Don't Give Yourself Away

[Danielle Crittenden, in What Our Mothers Didn’t Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman, says] the modern combination of sexual libertinism and late marriage conspires . . . to deny women what they most want and need — a staple marriage to a faithful husband who will not abandon them or their children.  If young women withheld sex, young men would be far more inclined to marry in their 20s . . . an age at which women are at the peak of their allure and fertility.  These days, millions of women waste their 20s in a series of fruitless “relationships” with men who decline to “commit.”  After turning the corner of 30 or 35, when beauty and fertility are declining, desperation often sets in.  Panic is only exacerbated, Crittenden reminds us, by the presence of a new crop of 20-somethings providing free sex.

Mona Charen, The backlash picks up speed, Creators Syndicate, 1/12/99

Be Careful of Tolerance

Endless toleration may reflect an indifference to truth; but when we oppose something, we equally expose ourselves for what we are and cherish.  There is little value in opposing things for no other reason than the love of fighting; but on the other hand to oppose nothing suggests we are blind, foolish, or careless.

D.A. Carson, A Model of Christian Maturity: An Exposition of 2 Corinthians 10-13, p.112

The Government Is Not to Be a Nanny

If governmental institutions are constructed in a way that allow people to transfer the costs of their behavior, then immorality can spread as the less principled people among us seek to impose the costs of their immorality upon others.  This fact gives us a framework for the purpose of government.  That purpose is limited.  As the apostle Paul said in Romans 13, the aim of government is to punish wrongdoers who directly transgress against others in an effort to limit the infliction of pain.  It cannot, however, right all wrongs or eliminate all suffering.  In fact, the effort to do so might well result in institutional structures that allow the greater part of suffering to be shifted onto those who were not responsible for the action.

For instance, the poor suffer.  But why do they suffer?  There are many reasons.  If government aimed to eliminate all poverty through programs of income redistribution it would inflict the negative consequences of sloth, negligence, improvidence, and dissipation on those who had no hand in the imprudence.  Essentially, it says to folly that you may continue on your way unhindered by God’s law because you are relieved of having to bear the hardship promoted by your own behavior.  To be sure, poverty comes upon people for more reasons than these, but the alleviation of this suffering is best left in private hands by private choices by people who can assess firsthand the reason for the hardship.

Paul Cleveland, On Limited Government, “Worldviews” newsletter by the Apologetics Resource Center, Winter 2014, p.2

Our Government's Agenda?

Among the items on the agendas of the Fascists in Italy and/or the Nazis in Germany were (1) government control of wages and hours of work, (2) higher taxes on the wealthy, (3) government-set limits on profits, (4) government care for the elderly, (5) a decreased emphasis on the role of religion and the family in personal and social decisions, and (6) government taking on the role of changing the nature of people, usually beginning in early childhood.

Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p.101

The Nation's Worldview Is Leading to Our Collapse

If our country gets the wrong answer to the worldview question, then it will get the wrong answer to moral questions, as well.  And that’s exactly why our culture is where it is today.  We’ve allowed the atheistic worldview to take over without challenging its validity.  Homosexuality, abortion, and euthanasia are symptoms of a wrong worldview.  The correct worldview recognizes that life isn’t all about me! me! me! — it recognizes that we have a duty to others, as well.  We’re not here to simply please ourselves — to take the easy way out of difficult and inconvenient situations — but to bravely serve God and others as the Moral Law instructs.  The Moral Law mandates that we protect life, not destroy it.  Until we accept this truth and act on it, our nation will teeter on the brink of self-destruction.

Dr. Norman Geisler & Frank Turek, Legislating Morality, p.203, 1998

Hate Speech

Hate speech is verbal communication that induces anger due to the listener's inability to offer an intelligent response.


Mike Adams, Why Islamic Fascists Get Away With Hate Speech,  22 October 2007

Cohabiting Does Not Lead to Good Marriage

If more and more people are hoping that cohabitation improves their chances of being happily married later, evidence is rapidly mounting that indicates they will be disappointed.  Columnist William R. Mattox, Jr., for example, cited recent research that challenges the wisdom of living together.  Results include:

*A woman who is living with a man is more than twice as likely to wind up as a victim of domestic violence (Washington State University researcher Jan Stets).

*Women who are cohabiting suffer from depression at rates more than three times that of married women (National Institute of Mental Health).

*Sexual anxiety is more characteristic of this less permanent living arrangement, rather than sexual freedom, and the absence of an enduring commitment tends to actually hinder sexual satisfaction (UCLA researchers Stuart Perlman and Paul Abrahamson).

*Couples who lived together and then married report less satisfaction in their marriage than other couples (National Institute of Healthcare Research).

*Cohabiting couples who then get married have a significantly higher rate of divorce than those who did not live together first (University of Denver researcher Scott Stanley).

American Family Association Journal, September 1998, p.9

A Good Marriage Is Not Luck

Dr. Laura, the radio shrink, read a letter the other day from a listener telling how tire she was of hearing her friends always say how "lucky" she was because she was still married to her college sweetie, had borne and raised wonderful children, kept a beautiful house with six goldfish.

She articulated her irritation with several blunt questions: "Was it luck that I married as a virgin, at great hardship to myself and my future husband?  That we put off marriage until we both earned our college degrees?  Was it luck that we decided against divorce because we were determined to work at remaining committed to each other and to our children?  Was it luck that after our first child was born, I became a full-time mother and a single income meant beans for supper almost every night?"


Suzanne Fields, "Stop the presses: Teens need love!," 9/11/97, L.A. Times Syndicate

Homosexuality Is NOT Good for Any Nation

For a gay rights law, we have to ask ourselves: Is homosexuality so important that we are willing to sacrifice our freedom to grant special protection to homosexuality?  I don’t think so.  Why should we lose our freedom to advance their choice of sexual practices?  Racial harmony is good for the nation and worth of some sacrifices.  Homosexuality cannot be construed to be good for our nation. 

Michael P. Farris, Where Do I Draw the Line? p.142

Where Is Moral Authority?

When any human court is the highest authority, then morality is reduced to mere power - either power of the government or power of the majority.  If courts and laws define what is moral, then neither laws nor governments can ever be immoral, even in principle. 

Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl, “Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air,” p.52.

Society Destroys What It Needs

In a sort of ghastly simplicity, we remove the organ and demand the function.  We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise.  We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.  We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

C.S. Lewis

The Fruit of Evolutionism

As the atheistic evolutionists buried God, they buried with Him traditional morals that protect human life as well.  Consequently, more people have been killed in wars and by genocide in the twentieth century than in all the previous centuries combined.  Only a small part of this can be attributed to more lethal weaponry; the contribution of evolutionary philosophy to the holocausts of the 1900s cannot be overstated.

Dr. Norman Geisler & Frank Turek, Legislating Morality, p.63

Choices

Life is built up of a series of interlocking decisions.  Failure at a relatively easy level frequently returns to haunt us.


D.A. Carson, A Model of Christian Maturity: An Exposition of 2 Corinthians 10-13, p.70

The Vision of the Left

If you happen to believe in free markets, judicial restraint, traditional values and other features of the tragic vision, then you are just someone who believes in free markets, judicial restraint and traditional values.  There is no personal exaltation inherent in those beliefs.  But to be for “social justice” and “saving the environment,” or to be “anti-war” is more than just a set of hypotheses about empirical facts.  This vision puts you on a higher moral plane as someone concerned and compassionate, someone who is for peace in the world, a defender of the downtrodden, and someone who wants to preserve the beauty of nature and save the planet from being polluted by others less caring.  In short, one vision makes you somebody special and the other vision does not. …

Perhaps the most fundamental difference between the left and the right is that only the former has even a rough definition.  What is called “the right” are simply the various and disparate opponents of the left.  These opponents of the left may share no particular principle, much less a common agenda, and they can range from free-market libertarians to advocates of monarchy, theocracy, military dictatorship or innumerable other principles, systems and agendas. ...

A rough summary of the vision of the political left today is that of collective decision-making through government, directed toward - or at least rationalized by - the goal of reducing economic and social inequalities.  There may be moderate or extreme versions of the left vision or agenda but, among those designated as “the right,” the difference between free market libertarians and military juntas is not simply one of degree pursuing a common vision, because there is no common vision among these and other disparate groups opposed to the left - which is to say, there is no such definable thing as “the right,” though there are various segments of that omnibus category, such as free market advocates, which can be defined.


Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society, p.98