Newspaper Bible Commentary

The newspapers of today are becoming more and more the finest commentary that I know of on the Bible.  In them we see the utter artificiality of the life lived in darkness.  There is nothing real there at all, but something has been erected and put up; it is all man’s work, man makes it.  And so life goes on, and it is called civilisation.  But the Bible calls it “the works of darkness”!

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “Darkness and Light: An Exposition of Ephesians 4:17-5:17,” pg.383

As a Man Thinks, So He Is

We have got an adage which reminds us that “As a man thinks, so he is.”  It is absolutely true, although we often tend to forget it.  Everybody today who is alive and doing this or that is proclaiming exactly what he or she thinks!  Everybody is a philosopher, everybody has got a philosophy of life, and we show what our philosophy of life is by the way in which we live.  Our actions always correspond to what we think and what we believe.  Therefore, if people are living a superficial, bubble kind of existence, they do so because that is the sort of mind they have.  It is their failure to think that causes them to live a superficial kind of life.  And this leads me to say that the problem of immorality or vice or crime can never be tackled directly.  Conduct is the result of the point of view, so you can never deal with conduct directly.  To try to do so is the fatal blunder of every non-Christian system.  And we are seeing the failure on all hands.  Men refuse to recognise the fundamental principle that as a man thinks, so he is.  Therefore, it is of no use trying to control his behaviour if his thinking is wrong.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “Darkness and Light: An Exposition of Ephesians 4:17-5:17,” pg.383

Chemical Imbalance Depression Is Rare

Doctors bought the story line that all depression results from a chemical imbalance in the brain and therefore requires a chemical fix—the prescription of an antidepressant medication.  This is absolutely true for severe depressions, absolutely false for most milder ones.   The proof of this pudding is that psychotherapy is just as effective as medication for milder depressions, and neither has a big edge over placebo.  Millions of people take medicine they don’t need for a diagnosis of MDD that they don’t really have, on the false assumption of chemical imbalance.

Allen Frances, M.D, "Saving Normal," p.155

Teach Daughters Modesty and Teach Sons Against Lust

Parents need to explain to their daughters how easily a man is aroused sexually by a woman’s body.  They need to know, because many of them do not understand what happens to a man. … They also need to explain to their sons that although women’s clothes, or lack of them, can be a stumbling block to a male, it is not an excuse for them in relation to what their mind does with what they see.  Job had an answer for this problem:  “I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a girl” (Job 31:1, NIV).  As Christians, males should have a covenant with their eyes and be reminded of this when lustful thoughts come as a result of what they see or hear.

Ken Ham, “The Lie,” pg.61

The Male Carries the Family Memory

In Hebrew, male and memory share the same word: zachar.  This may be why so many cultures continue to remember the family name through the male line only.  It may also be a reminder that marriages work best when women consider themselves to be joining their husband’s family just a bit more than having husbands join their own.  Taking a husband’s name is not only the highest compliment a woman can pay a man, it also ensures that each family is remembered into the future through the line of its males.  This is yet another way God has created a role for the male to compensate for the indispensable role that nature created for the female.  This is a gift of God given uniquely to humans.  

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," pg.185

Defend the Truth

Is it not obvious that, just as it is a crime to disturb the peace when truth reigns, it is also a crime to remain at peace when the truth is being destroyed?  There is therefore a time when peace is just and a time when it is unjust.  Weaklings are those who know the truth, but maintain it only as far as it is in their interest to do so, and apart from that forsake it.

Blaise Pascal, cited by Gary Gilley, "Postmodernism, Part V: Confronting Postmodernists"

Addictions Are NOT Diseases

By adopting this notion of addictions as diseases and those addicted as victims, the Psychology Industry encouraged people to believe that the problem is not of their own making, thus excusing the behavior, increasing the readiness to accept the diagnosis, and sanctioning forced treatment as an alternative to incarceration or job loss.

Dr. Tana Dineen in, “Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry is Doing to People,” pg.162

True Safe Sex

Real Education

HT to J.L. Pattison

Marriage IS About Children

If marriage is not about children, what institution is about children?  And if we are going to redefine marriage into mere coupling, then why should the state endorse same-sex marriage at all?  Contrary to what homosexual activists assume, the state doesn’t endorse marriage because people have feelings for one another.  The state endorses marriage primarily because of what marriage does for children, and in turn, for society.  Society gets no benefit by redefining marriage to include homosexual relationships, only harm, as the connection to illegitimacy shows.  The very future of children and a civilized society depends on the stable marriages between men and women.  That’s why, regardless of what you think about homosexuality, the two types of relationships should never be legally equated.

We have enough problems already with illegitimacy in America.  We don’t need to make matters worse.  Unfortunately, if we go the route of other countries and approve government-backed same-sex marriage, we will likely get the same results—a significant rise in illegitimate parenthood and all of the social problems that come from it.  Children will be hurt the most, but so will you.

Frank Turek, “Correct, NOT Politically Correct,” ppg.51-52

Free College?

The existing subsidies of college have led many people to go to college who have very little interest in, or benefit from, going to college, except for enjoying the social scene while postponing adult responsibilities for a few years.

Whether judging by test results, by number of hours per week devoted to studying or by on-campus interviews, it is clear that today’s college students learn a lot less than college students once did. If college becomes “free,” even more people can attend college without bothering to become educated and without acquiring any economically meaningful skills.

Thomas Sowell, The Lure of Socialism

Who Has Sexual Intercourse?

Webster’s New Riverside University Dictionary defines “sexual intercourse” as “n. Coitus, esp. between humans.”  When we flip to the front of the dictionary we find “Coitus” defined as “n. Physical union of male and female sexual organs.”  A dictionary is not a legal document, but it conveys a culture’s common understanding of what something is, and therefore isn’t.  Human culture has not seen homosexual erotic genital stimulation as sexual intercourse.  It is something else.

Glenn T. Stanton and Dr. Bill Maier, “Marriage on Trial: The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage and Parenting,” pg.49

Are There Examples of Homosexual Marriage in History?

Today's post is a continuation of the thoughts from yesterday's post.

Some people say that a few societies have experienced same-sex marriages, and that is true in a very narrow sense.  But examples are extremely rare and have typically been strange anomalies and never have been normalized as parts of society.  … Some powerful kings and rulers have taken mates of the same sex.  The most prominent example is the Roman emperor Nero, who along with marrying another man also murdered people routinely and appointed a horse to the Senate.

After extensive research throughout a large body of anthropological writings, we have only been able to find two incidents where a culture tolerated some form of same-sex “marriage.”  As you will see, these two incidents are far from what is being proposed by some activists today and far different from what marriage actually is.

*Women “marriage” in Dahomey.  In parts of West Africa in the early twentieth century, there is an anthropological report of women “marrying” other women.  But closer examination reveals the larger picture and context.  The anthropologist explains that a “barren woman will formally marry a young girl and hand her over to her husband with a view to bearing children.”   The younger woman lives in separate quarters, and the relationship between the two women is not sexual or even emotional.  It’s a business deal.  The hiring woman, if she is not married, will pay men to have intercourse with the girl in her quarters in order to bring forth offspring.  Rules were established that if the girl runs off with one of her sires, the resultant offspring belongs to the financing woman.  These are not homosexual relationships.  They are business contracts to produce children.

*Native American Berdache.  The only other case of such same-sex “marriages” in a culture is found across Native American aboriginal tribes.  Relationships between two men were allowed where one man was seen as a berdache: a “part woman-male” or “he-she” male.  When these unions developed, they took place with wealthier males and always in the context of an already existent heterosexual--and usually polygamous--marriage that had produced children.  A berdache did not have an emotional relationship with his “husband” but was a secondary worker-spouse.  The berdache presented himself as a woman and joined the women in their work.  This change from man to woman was attributed to a special vision experienced by the berdache.

Two masculine men would never marry, and two berdache would not marry.  Their roles were never confused.  Sex between masculine males was taboo.  Sex between a male and his berdache was rare and curiously seen as either a spiritual reflection or an object of humor among other male peers.  It was never a part of normal tribal life.  Males would routinely tease and ridicule other males with berdaches because the berdaches had reputations of being highly productive workers, eager to please.  He could hunt, cook and clean.  He did not get distracted from his work with pregnancy, nursing and childcare.  The men would never tease the berdache directly, because he was not seen as a man.  Among the Mohaves, the kidding could get so bad that many men would sent their berdaches away to never return.  Long-term sexual relationships with a berdache was discouraged.  They were seen primarily as workers.  In addition, the husband-berdache relationships were notoriously unstable.  

These relationships are nothing like same-sex unions that are being proposed today.  No society has ever had anything similar to the contemporary idea of homosexual marriage.  And there are very good reasons why no society has ever done this, and these reasons are not rooted in restrictive religion or authoritarian government but in natural law.  

Glenn T. Stanton and Dr. Bill Maier, “Marriage on Trial: The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage and Parenting,” pg.50-52 (2004)

Same-Sex “Marriage” Never Normative In History

There is not one human society, advanced or primitive, civilized or uncivilized, where homosexual marriage has existed as a normative part of family life.  Homosexual marriage hasn’t emerged in any human culture until the last few years.  It was early 2001 that the first country on earth legally recognized marriage between same-sex couples.

Let’s look at the record of human history.

Early anthropologist Edward Westermarck, author of the groundbreaking, three-volume History of Human Marriage, explains that as we examine all human civilizations, we always see some basic characteristics:

Marriage is generally used as a term for social institution.  Marriage always implies the right to sexual intercourse: society holds such intercourse allowable in the case of husband and wife.… At the same time, marriage is something more than a regulated sexual relation.… It is the husband’s duty . . . to support his wife and children; . . . the man being the protector and supporter of his family and woman being the helpmate and the nurse of their children.  The habit was sanctioned by custom, and afterwards by law, and was thus transformed into a social institution.… [T]he functions of the husband and father in the family are not merely the sexual and procreative kind, but involve the duty of protecting the wife and children, is testified by an array of facts relating to peoples in all quarters of the world and in all stages of civilization.

Another celebrated anthropologist, Margaret Mead, illustrates the cultural universality of husband-wife/father-mother pairing in her work Male and Female: 

When we survey all known human societies, we find everywhere some form of the family, some set of permanent arrangements by which males assist females in caring for children while they are young.… [T]here is the assumption of permanent mating, the idea that the marriage should last as long as both live.

And a founding father of anthropology, Bronislaw Malinowski, in Sex, Culture and Myth observes: 

In all human societies the father is regarded by tradition as indispensable.  The woman has to be married before she is allowed legitimately to conceive…. This is by no means only a European or Christian prejudice; it is the attitude found amongst most barbarous and savage people as well…. The most important moral and legal rule concerning the physiological side of kinship is that no child should be brought into the world without a man--and one man at that--assuming the role of sociological father, that is, of guardian and protector, the male link between the child and the rest of the community.  (T)his generalization amounts to a universal sociological law . . . and is indispensable for the full sociological status of the child as well as of its mother.

Glenn T. Stanton and Dr. Bill Maier, “Marriage on Trial: The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage and Parenting,” pg.48-50 (2004)

Sex Is A Spiritual Act

Sex has a powerful emotional aspect, because although sex is a physical act, God meant for it to be a joining of the soul and mind and moral conscience and all the other intangibles about two people.  That’s why premarital sex can leave us feeling good for a moment, and not just physically.  It gives us an emotional rush.  But when the wave of good emotional feeling is over (however long that may take), bad emotions set in.  When we deal in the moral realm, we are faced with moral consequences.

Even though sex and love both have strong emotional components, those components are not the same.  Rather, they are parallel; they cannot be one until two people have been made one through the commitment of marriage.  In that context, sex and love can be expressions of the same emotions.  Marital sex becomes a model of God’s provision and selfless giving, drawing us closer to each other and to Him.

Josh McDowell and Dick Day, "Why Wait?" p.256

More Problems of Cohabitation

In regard to problem areas, it was found that cohabitors experienced significantly more difficulty in their marriages with adultery, alcohol, drugs and independence than couples who did not cohabit.   Apparently, this makes marriage preceded by cohabitation more prone to problems often associated with other deviant lifestyles—for example, use of drugs and alcohol, more permissive sexual relationships and an abhorrence of dependence—than marriages not proceeded by cohabitation.

Michael D. Newcomb and P.M. Bentler, “Assessment of Personality and Demographic Aspects of Cohabitation and Marital success,” Journal of Personalty Assessment, 44 (1980): 11-24. cited by Glenn T. Stanton, "The Ring Makes All the Difference," p.61

The Destruction Of Language Destroys Society

George Orwell said, "But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought." Gore Vidal elaborated on that insight, saying, "As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate." And John Milton predicted, "When language in common use in any country becomes irregular and depraved, it is followed by their ruin and degradation." These observations bear heeding about how sloppy language is corrupting our society.

Walter E. Williams, “Sloppy Language and Thinking”

Avoiding Poverty

Avoiding poverty requires three things: finish high school; marry before having children; marry after the age of 20.  Only eight percent of the families who do this are poor, while 79 percent of the families who fail to do this are poor.  Children from married homes are more likely to do all three things and less likely to raise children who are in poverty.

Gregg Jackson, “Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies,” p.247

Entitled?

Particular individuals or groups can be given many things, to which politicians say they are "entitled," only if other people are forced by the government to provide those things to people who don't need to lift a finger to earn them. All the fancy talk about "entitlement" means simply forcing some people to work to produce things for other people, who have no obligation to work.

Thomas Sowell, “Toxic Words”

The Age Of Polymorphous Perversity Is Destroying Society

Civilization cannot survive the triumph of the age of polymorphous perversity, because the idea of polymorphous sex is hopelessly incompatible with the very notion of civilization itself.  Civilization is based upon order, respect, habit, custom, and institution—all of which are rejected outright by the age of polymorphous perversity.

Looking at the history of Western civilization, William and Ariel Durant argued that one of the first achievements necessary for the establishment of civilization is the restraint of sexuality.  As they put it, sexuality is like a hot river that must be banked on both sides.  Sadly, what we see in the latter half of the twentieth century is the unbanking of that river.

Pitirim A. Sorokin, founder of the department of sociology at Harvard University, argued that heterosexual marriage is the foundation of civilization itself.  You simply cannot build or maintain civilization without heterosexual marriage, and without heterosexual marriage being understood as the norm.  Unless heterosexual marriage is protected by law, custom, and habit to the exclusion of every other arrangement, civilization is impossible.

R. Albert Mohler, Jr., “Desire and Deceit: The Real Cost of Sexual Tolerance,” pg.155-156

Don’t Medicalize Sadness

Sadness should not be synonymous with sickness.  There is no diagnosis for every disappointment or a pill for every problem.  Life’s difficulties—divorce, illness, job loss, financial troubles, interpersonal conflicts—can’t be legislated away.  And our natural reactions to them—sadness, dissatisfaction, and discouragement—shouldn’t all be medicalized as mental disorder or treated with a pill.  We are usually resilient, lick our wounds, mobilize our resources and our friends, and get on with it.  Our capacity to feel emotional pain has great adaptive value equivalent in its purpose to physical pain—a signal that something has gone wrong.  We can’t convert all emotional pain into mental disorder without radically changing who we are, dulling the palette of our experience.  If we can’t tolerate sadness, we can’t experience joy.  Huxley’s dystopian Brave New World shows how quickly pain-free translates into brain-dead.

Allen Frances, M.D, "Saving Normal," pg.141-142

Why Should Darwinists Care About Suffering?

I have not yet found reference to groups of Darwinists in America or England saying that their philosophy compelled them to be concerned about suffering and starving people in other parts of the world.  What a joke.  Darwinism is fundamentally, necessarily, and essentially inhumane.  If people starve to death or perish from illness or violence, that’s just the way life is.  We are only animals after all, with no immortal souls, no spark of the divine, and nothing in essence to distinguish us from the beasts.  We don’t get excited if other animals are dying—why the unscientific species bias in favor of people?

Joseph Keysor, “Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible,” pg. 221

God Determines Right and Wrong

It does make an enormous difference when children are taught from the earliest age that God is Creator and that He has determined what is right and wrong.  The rules come from God and, therefore, they must be obeyed.  It is impossible to build any structure without a foundation, but that is what many parents are trying to do in the training of their children.  The results of such attempts are all around us — a generation with increasing numbers rejecting God and the absolutes of Christianity.

Ken Ham, “The Lie,” pg.37

Dad Is Not Optional

For molding, guiding and teaching a child, the wise mother knows how invaluable a father is.  The Hebrew language imparts tremendous insight on this subject. …

A profound insight to reality is disclosed by there being no singular word in Hebrew for “parent.”  The word, horim, only exists in the plural.  An individual is a mother or a father; an individual can valiantly try to fill both roles, but being parents is possible only for a couple.  We should not really speak of “single parents.”  You can be a single mom and you can be a single dad, but it is foolish to think you can be single parents.  This is a painful reality for the valiant moms and dads who do their best to raise children without a spouse.  Feeling and even exhibiting compassion and support for these Americans is highly appropriate.  Converting their predicament into normality buy using language (single parent) that disguises reality is misplaced compassion.  It may help elevate the self-esteem of single moms, but it may also contribute to an increase in their numbers by pretending that dads are superfluous.

While trying to be helpful to those who have either embraced the lie or been victimized by it, we must protect the future by telling the truth.  Parenting is an activity similar to the one that conceived the child in the first place; it is incomplete when done without the active, loving, principled participation of a partner of the opposite sex.  When a child is bereft of a father, he is, according to the Bible, considered an orphan.  All those biblical commands to be kind to the widow and orphan refer not to a child who has neither mother nor father, but rather to the widow and her child.

As the traditional “till death do us part” marriage has been traded for serial marriages or no marriage at all, undesirable patterns have evolved.  Statistics about youth and young-adult crime are staggering.  An overwhelming proportion of those who have been in trouble with the law did not have loving fathers involved in their upbringing.  How much more does one need to know than that?  Children who are to become assets to society need to be nurtured and instructed by both a mother and a father.  In other words, “father” is not the title one earns for impregnating a woman; any male animal can impregnate.  Being a father is far more complex and demanding.  Without one, children, particularly boys, stand a pretty good chance of hurting their community more than helping it.  Everyone already knows how easy it is for boys raised without a father to become neighborhood predators.  What is less known is how frequently girls raised without a father become the prey of those young predators.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," pg.179-181

Why Should Darwinists Be Moral?

What Darwinists cannot do is give us a reason why we ought not simply copy nature and destroy those who are weak, unpleasant, costly, or just plain boring.  If all moral options are legitimate, then it’s acceptable for the strong to rule the weak.  No moral restraints would protect the feeble, because moral restraints simply wouldn’t exist.

Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl, “Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air,” pg.160

Economic Equality Is An Impossibility

In trying to come up with alternatives to the welfare state, even some staunch conservatives have created plans that exempt low-income people from paying taxes, or plans that provide some basic income to all, making it unnecessary to work. But exempting anyone from responsibility and reciprocity as members of society risks disaster for those individuals and for society.

Egalitarians never seem to understand that promoting economic equality in theory means promoting resentments and polarization in practice, making everyone worse off.

Thomas Sowell, Random Thoughts

Danger of Trauma Debriefing

In one study of 106 people given trauma counseling right after being involved in car accidents, it was shown that their long-term recovery was adversely affected.  Those individuals who received one-hour debriefing sessions including a detailed review of the accident, the encouragement of emotion expression and an evaluation of the person’s perception of the accident, experienced greater emotional stress, physical symptoms, and worse quality of life than those not counseled.  The principle researcher, Professor Mayou, concluded that: “psychological debriefing is ineffective and has adverse long-term effects. It is not an appropriate treatment for trauma victims.”

Dr. Tana Dineen in, “Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry is Doing to People,” pg.162

Same-Sex Fake Marriage and Children

[David] Blankenhorn and [Stanley] Kurtz also understand the causal connection between the law, attitudes, and behavior.  That’s why they argue so forcefully against same-sex marriage.  Blankenhorn asserts that anyone concerned about the welfare of children cannot be a supporter of same-sex marriage.  He writes, “One can believe in same-sex marriage.  One can believe that every child deserves a mother and a father.   One cannot believe both.”  Why?  Because, as data from other countries show, “redefining marriage to include gay and lesbian couples would eliminate entirely in law, and weaken still further in culture, the basic idea of a mother and a father for every child.”  Blankenhorn goes so far as to say that he is amazed at how indifferent gay activists about the negative effects of same-sex marriage on children.  Many of them, he documents, deny that marriage has anything to do with children.

Frank Turek, “Correct, NOT Politically Correct,” pg.50

Our Culture of Evil