Nature As Standard

For, if nature as it exists is the standard for men to live by, cruelty becomes equal to non-cruelty.


Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?, p.160

The Need of a Moral Standard

If there is no absolute moral standard, then one cannot say in a final sense that anything is right or wrong.  By absolute we mean that which applies, that which always applies, that which provides a final or ultimate standard.  There must be an absolute if there are to be morals, and there must be an absolute if there are to be real values.  If there is no absolute beyond man's ideas, then there is not final appeal to judge between individuals and groups whose moral judgments conflict. We are merely left with conflicting opinions. 

Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?, p.145

The Seed of Freedom

Christianity is the immortal seed of freedom of the world.


Alexandre Vinet (1797-1847), Professor of Theology.  Cited by Francis A. Schaeffer in, How Should We Then Live?, p.106

Totalitarianism Cannot Tolerate Christians

No totalitarian authority nor authoritarian state can tolerate those who have an absolute by which to judge that state and its actions.  The Christians [in the Roman Empire] had that absolute in God's revelation.  Because the Christians had an absolute, universal standard by which to judge not only personal morals but the state, they were counted as enemies of totalitarian Rome and were thrown to the beasts.

Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live?, p.26

Freedom Lost?

How long will this country remain free? Probably only as long as the American people value their freedom enough to defend it. But how many people today can stop looking at their electronic devices long enough to even think about such things?

Thomas  Sowell, “The New Inquisition.”

Abortion Is a Lucrative Business

Don’t let the ant-life activists fool you.  Abortion is a lucrative business, not a compassionate service.  In 2012 America’s abortion giant Planned Parenthood raked in $542 million of your hard-earned taxpayer dollars.  With your money they performed 327,000 abortions.  The Susan B. Anthony List, a national pro-life organization, published an analysis of Planned Parenthood’s annual report, which revealed abortion accounted for 93 percent of their supposed “family-planning” services.  Meanwhile, adoption referrals accounted for only 0.6 percent of their total services.

Chelsen Vicari, “Distortion: How the New Christian Left is Twisting the Gospel & Damaging the Faith, p.113  (2014)

The New Sexual Ethic

Before, it was stigma to sleep with someone before marriage or with a partner outside of your marriage. Today, college students are shamed as cowards and prudes for retaining their virginity on campuses across the country. Before, you kept your sexual activity quiet for fear of shame; today, you keep your sexual inactivity quiet for the same reason.

Before, the sexually moral judged the sexually amoral; today, the sexually amoral judge the sexually moral.

If you have a sexual ethic more solid than your average Jello mold, you’re free game for Millennial judgment.

Millennials are incredibly judgmental when it comes to sexuality—if you’re not doing something you’re a loser, and if you have convictions you’re a bigot.

Chris Martin, “Millennials Are the “Judge the Prude” Generation on Sexual Morality. “

Love Requires Truth

To stifle truth in the name of love is actually quite selfish.  Bruce Frohnen, law professor at Ohio Northern University, observed that, “‘Niceness’ is a rather shallow set of habits and attitudes more concerned with comfort than engagement, ease than excellence, contentment than striving to do one’s best…. Unfortunately, when truth comes to be seen as subjective, toleration becomes the chief virtue, and it comes to mean simply ignoring one’s fellows, in essence not caring what others do.”  To hide from truth to be perceived as “nice” does no one any favors.

Chelsen Vicari, “Distortion: How the New Christian Left is Twisting the Gospel & Damaging the Faith, p.172

On Removing Fences

Whenever you remove any fence, always pause long enough to ask why it was put there in the first place.

G.K. Chesterton.  Cited by Chelsen Vicari, “Distortion: How the New Christian Left is Twisting the Gospel & Damaging the Faith, p.165

Right Is Stronger Than Evil

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.  This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.

Martin Luther King, Jr, Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, 12/10/64.  Cited by Chelsen Vicari, “Distortion: How the New Christian Left is Twisting the Gospel & Damaging the Faith, p.165

Loss of Freedom May Be Subtle

I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations.

James Madison, “The Federalist Papers,” cited by Chelsen Vicari, “Distortion: How the New Christian Left is Twisting the Gospel & Damaging the Faith, p.132

Abortion Is Not A "Fix"

For many women abortion does not provide a “fix.”  Instead, it creates serious problems.  Hiding the threats abortion poses on women’s “reproductive health” is not justice.  It’s fraudulent and deadly.  Enough is enough.  The pro-life movement strives to educate women on the horrific consequences abortion can have on both themselves and their babies.  That’s why the pro-life cause is pro-woman.

Chelsen Vicari, “Distortion: How the New Christian Left is Twisting the Gospel & Damaging the Faith, p.119

Abortion Isn't Cheap

It makes little sense for the Left to blame the abortion rate on the high cost of birth control.  Abortion is not free.  Far from it!  One abortion at Planned Parenthood costs between $300 and $950.  After an expectant mother’s first trimester, abortion is even more expensive.  Yet birth control in the form of condoms are free at any Planned Parenthood clinic.  And Walmart, Target, Sam’s Club, and Kroger pharmacies all sell contraception at nine dollars for a month’s supply.


Chelsen Vicari, “Distortion: How the New Christian Left is Twisting the Gospel & Damaging the Faith, p.116  (2014)

Contraception vs Abortion

Sidestepping the contentious public abortion debates…a whole host…on the evangelical Left assert the myth that the way to end abortion is by passing out taxpayer-funded contraception like it’s candy.

Nice try, but the research and data are against them yet again.  Planned Parenthood’s own think tank, the Guttmacher Institute, surveyed more than ten thousand women who had abortions during 2000 and 2001.  The study found that a mere 12 percent of the women cited limited access to birth control as the reason for their pregnancies and subsequent abortions.

Another study was conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to better gauge the reasons for teenage pregnancies.  To do this, the CDC surveyed teen girls aged fourteen to nineteen with unintended pregnancies.  Only 13 percent reported having trouble obtaining birth control.

It’s not just an American problem either.  Researchers in Spain analyzed the use of contraception and abortion rates between 1997 and 2007.  What they found was astonishing.  During that decade access and use of contraception increased to 80 percent, yet abortion also increased—by a whopping 108 percent.  Essentially greater access to contraception led to a false sense of security.  When contraception failed, as often happens, the baby was aborted.

Chelsen Vicari, “Distortion: How the New Christian Left is Twisting the Gospel & Damaging the Faith, p.115-116 (2014)

Consequence of the Pill

The pill helped birth the sexual revolution, which altered society’s moral standards by removing pregnancy as a natural result of promiscuity.

Chelsen Vicari, “Distortion: How the New Christian Left is Twisting the Gospel & Damaging the Faith, p.100

Strong Lies

By mixing a little truth with it, they made their lie far stronger.

C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle: The Chronicles of Narnia.  Cited by Chelsen Vicari, “Distortion: How the New Christian Left is Twisting the Gospel & Damaging the Faith, p.75

Children Need Mom & Dad

American children are at risk in carefully documented ways when they are raised in any household but a married mom-and-dad family: They make worse grades, are likely to drop out of school, more prone to getting into trouble, have greater health problems, are more likely to experiment with drugs and/or alcohol, and will likely engage in early sexual activity and thus be more likely to contract a sexually transmitted disease, have an abortion(s) and/or teen pregnancy. 

Janice Shaw Crouse, “Five Myths About Same-Sex Marriage.”  Cited by Chelsen Vicari, “Distortion: How the New Christian Left is Twisting the Gospel & Damaging the Faith, p.66-67

If Marriage is Private?

Marriages loses its shape and purpose by being transformed into an individual freedom.  If it is just a private and personal decision the logic leads not to gay marriage, but to the abolition of marriage as a legal status.

Maggie Gallagher, “Why Libertarians Should Oppose Same-Sex Marriage,” cited by Chelsen Vicari, “Distortion: How the New Christian Left is Twisting the Gospel & Damaging the Faith, p.65

The Church Dropped the Ball on Marriage

The church stopped defending marriage when fast-and-loose, no-fault divorces became fashionable in the church.  We did so when adultery, premarital sex, and cohabitation were no longer condemned from the pulpit.  We let go of the family unit when dads walked out on their families and left fifteen million US children fatherless.  That was when the church dropped the ball on marriage.

Chelsen Vicari, “Distortion: How the New Christian Left is Twisting the Gospel & Damaging the Faith, p.65

Jesus Addressed Homosexuality

It is naive and a desperate grasp at straws to argue that Jesus was only supporting one man and one woman in regards to the adultery question.  Jesus was speaking to a Jewish rabbi in front of a Jewish crowd regarding sexual morality.  And the Jews’ context for sexual immorality is found in Leviticus laws which states plain as day that homosexuality was wrong.

Kenneth Erwin III, personal communication with Chelsen Vicari, cited in her book, “Distortion: How the New Christian Left is Twisting the Gospel & Damaging the Faith, p. 63

America Has Ceased to Be Great

I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers—and it was not there…in her fertile fields and boundless forests and it was not there…in her rich mines and her vast world commerce—and it was not there…in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution—and it was not there.  Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power.  America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.

Attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville and cited by Chelsen Vicari in, “Distortion: How the New Christian Left is Twisting the Gospel & Damaging the Faith, p.31

When Sin is Called Sickness

Sin is the core issue on which the Church is commissioned to speak.   We can no more have a gospel without sin that we can have a gospel without Jesus Christ.  To evade sin and responsibility is not new, but it is dangerous.  By suggesting there is another explanation for troubles and difficulties, the devil deludes us and sabotages the gospel.

The medical model of sin is dangerous because it damns people.  It undercuts social morality.  In a day of high crime and antisocial behavior, calling sin sickness undermines the individual's responsibility to control his behavior.  The disease model actually inflames behaviors.  It legitimizes, reinforces and excuses sinful behaviors and attitudes in believers and unbelievers alike.


David Tyler & Kurt Grady, Deceptive Diagnosis: When SIN is called SICKNESS, p.57

Primary Purposes of Marriage

God has weaved marriage into human nature so that it serves two primary purposes throughout all societies:

* Marriage always brings male and female adults together in committed sexual and domestic relationships in order to regulate sexuality and provide for the needs of daily life.  Wives help men channel their sexual energy in socially productive and non-predatory ways.  Husbands help protect women from the exploitation of other males.

* Marriage ensures that children have the benefits of both their mother and their father.

Together, these two aspects of marriage have been the means by which we build strong human communities, generation after generation.  As anthropologists tell us, these primary needs shape the family and social norms for all known societies.


Glenn T. Stanton and Dr. Bill Maier, Marriage on Trial: The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage and Parenting, p.22-23

Truth About Planned Parenthood

The truth is that from its very inception Planned Parenthood has sought governmentally imposed population control measures -- mandatory measures carefully designed to deny women and their families the freedom to choose.  Over the years it has proposed that authorities implement such things as "compulsory abortion for out-of-wedlock pregnancies," federal entitlement "payments to encourage abortion," "compulsory sterilization for those who have already had two children," and "tax penalties" for existing large families.

George Grant, Immaculate Deception: The Shifting Agenda of Planned Parenthood, p.56

With Sex, How Far is Too Far?

The law of diminishing returns confronts a teenager with a basic question:  How far is too far?  You have gone too far the moment you cannot righteously satisfy arousal.

In other words, when you create in someone a desire you cannot righteously fulfill, you have gone too far.  If a man creates within a woman who is not his wife a desire for sex, he has defrauded her.  He has violated her person.  Not being her husband, he cannot satisfy those desires within God's righteousness.

Josh McDowell and Dick Day, "Why Wait?" p.77-78

Homosexual Agenda Is Destruction of Marriage

As one observer of the homosexual movement has warned, "Gay activists are sexual Marxists.  Legitimizing same-sex unions is a warm-up act.  Ultimately they want to eliminate any barriers, any signposts, that limit or channel the exercise of human sexuality."

It actually seems that the more radical the homosexual activist, the more blatantly honest they are of their goals.  They do not necessarily want marriage so that they can take advantage of its benefits.  They want marriage so they can take a wrecking ball to the institution.

For example, homosexual activist William Eskridge says that he hopes gay marriage "will dethrone the traditional family base on blood relationships in favor of families we choose."  Michelangelo Signorile has told activists "to fight for same-sex marriage and its benefits, and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely . . . to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution . . . .  The most subversive action lesbians and gay men can undertake . . . is to transform the notion of 'family' entirely."  This means marriage will be no better than anonymous sodomy in a bathhouse. . . . . 

Once marriage and monogamy are redefined, they both become insignificant.  It is the goal of radical homosexual activists to redefine both, and end up with a situation like parts of Europe where both marriage and the family have become meaningless.


Alan Sears & Craig Osten, The Homosexual Agenda, p.96 (2003)

ADHD Does NOT Exist

When the National Institute of Health held a special conference concerning the diagnosis and treatment of ADHD in 1998, they issued a summary statement of their findings.  They concluded there is no independent, valid test to diagnose ADHD.  This means there is no objective measurement for diagnosing ADHD.  You cannot draw blood and find it.  You can not perform a CT scan and see it.  There is nothing you can objectively find to prove a diagnosis of ADHD.  Nothing has changed. There is still [2008] no proof of disease.

David M. Tyler, Ph.D and Kurt P. Grady, Pharm.D,  ADHD: Deceptive Diagnosis, p. 13

Everything Is Going "Soft"

For under the smooth legal surface of our society, there are already moving, very lawless things.  We are always near the breaking point, when we care only for what is legal, and nothing for what is lawful.  Unless we have a moral principle about such delicate matters as marriage and murder, the whole world will become a welter of exceptions with no rules.  There will be so many hard cases that everything will go soft.

G. K. Chesterton, As I Was Saying, p.267.  Cited by Ravi Zacharias in "The Real Face of Atheism," p.65

Heroes

We all can't be heroes; some of us have to stand on the sidewalk and clap as they go by.

Will Rogers

America Has Lost the "Propitious Smiles Of Heaven"

The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained.

George Washington, Inaugural Address 1789