Children Are In Danger Outside Married Relationships

The most recent study conducted by the US government reports that a child living with mother and her boyfriend are [sic] around eleven times more likely to be emotionally, verbally, physically, and sexually abused compared to children living with their own married parents.  And  children living with their own cohabiting mother and father are four times more likely to be abused in all these ways compared to children living with their married mother and father.  So both biology and marriage matter significantly for child safety in the home.  (However, children living with married adoptive mothers and fathers, of course, tend to be from very healthy and positive homes.)

“Children living with a caretaker other than two biological parents are at greater risk of child maltreatment,” according to a special issue of the Journal of Comparative Family Studies that addressed family violence.  Children living with an adoptive, married mother and father are far less likely to face danger.

According to a study published in the journal Pediatrics, children residing in a home with nonbiologically related adult were eight times more likely to die of maltreatment than children living with two biological parents.

Glenn T. Stanton, "The Ring Makes All the Difference," p.79

We’ve Given Up Freedom

We have come to substitute civil government for God.  It has happened almost imperceptibly.  We gave away our freedom in exchange for earthly satisfactions that really can’t satisfy, and now we’re fundamentally changed.  We now really believe that civil government exists to save us. … tyranny must inevitably result, and the true liberty that is Christianity will come under attack. … We are rushing headlong into world government, a world religion and a world economic system complete with a one-world currency, and people who expect to enjoy the freedoms the West once provided are going to learn another way of living.

Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.48

No Moral Standards?

Don't Let Liberty Slip Away

"Stolen" from J.L. Pattison

About Patrick Michael Murphy

I’ve previously posted a few citations by Patrick Michael Murphy’s book, “How the West Was Lost,” and will be posting more.  However, I want to have a caveat about his theology.

Murphy’s work on social and historical issues are right on the money, which is why I like to cite him, but his theology is a wee bit off, especially when it comes to Satan and the demonic realm.

First, he refers to Satan as “Lucifer,” which really bothers me.  Satan’s name was NEVER Lucifer, and yet people like Murphy claim that was the name he had prior to becoming Satan.  I prove otherwise in my article on my apologetics blog.

Murphy also teaches the false idea that Adam first owned the earth and then transferred the “title” to Satan when he sinned, and then Jesus had to get the title back.  Scripture says God owns the earth, and always has (Exod. 19:5; Lev. 25:23; Deut. 10:14; 2 Chron. 19:11-12; Ps.24:1; Ps 50:10-11; et al).  In his chapter, “Eternal Pathology,” he says that everything else we know about Satan and the demonic realm comes from experience, but experiences should NEVER be the source of our theology, because we easily deceive ourselves.

Part of Murphy’s misunderstanding is that he believes demons may not be the same thing as fallen angels, so he ends up with a whole new category of spiritual beings.  Then he thinks that God would cast such creatures into Hell, “given the opportunity” —  as if God needs an opportunity?!?! 

Murphy’s belief about the “sons of God” in Genesis 6 being fallen angels is fine as far as I’m concerned, but where he goes with it is bizarre.  Whether or not the Nephilim are the offspring or just “giants” and spoken of in the same text (the text does NOT say the Nephilim were the result of the mating, rather it just says they were there in those days), they were certainly human  or half-human and would die in the Flood, yet Murphy says that at the Flood they had no place to go at death and so went into the “air” as disembodied spirits which are now looking for bodies to inhabit!  This is so extra-biblical!

His other bizarre idea has to do with sex and God.  Now, all through Scripture God uses the analogy of marriage to describe His relationship with Israel or the Church, in that He is the husband and Israel/the Church is the wife, and to worship idols is analogous to adultery.  However, the analogy never implies that sexual intercourse is a type of our relationship with God, as Murphy claims. His whole chapter, “Sex & Eternity” runs in this fashion to where it becomes really creepy.

In this book Murphy also states that God took a risk creating man, but that makes God to be more human-like; God never took risks because He KNEW what would happen — He knows the end from the beginning.

Finally, some of his ideas seem to come from the Hebrew Roots Movement.

SO, while I cannot recommend Murphy as a teacher on any theological subject, his book does a really good job of explaining how the Christian worldview came to collapse and be replaced by the horrible humanist worldview our culture now lives (the book was written in 2005 before same-sex fake marriage was forced on this nation, and before the whole “transgender” movement brought in even more sexual corruption — it would be interesting to see an update to include these movements).  I will link his name to this article in all my citations from the book.

The Hate of Christian Intolerance of Other Gods

It is significant that one of Chamberlain’s (and Hitler’s) chief objections to the Jewish concept of God was its “intolerance.”  This is one of the main objections to traditional Christianity currently being raised by secularists today.  To state that there is one true God, whether Jewish or Christian, and that to believe in him and obey him is the only right way of life condemns all other religions and human endeavors.  This excites the animosity of those who, like Chamberlain, rely on themselves alone.  The humanists (whose views may be expressed in religious language) hate to be told that their views are wrong.  Thus they despise the intolerant people who presume to assert that there is only one way.  This is because of their guilty consciences, and because of fear that their lives are based on a false foundation.  As Jesus said, “The world cannot hate you: but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the worlds thereof are evil.”

Joseph Keysor, “Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible,” pg.350

Dare Mighty Things

Far better to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt, “The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses”

A Living Wage But Wage Equality?

When Government Silences Opposition

Absent Fathers

While the national poverty rate is 6 percent, the poverty rate for female-headed households is 30 percent.  Among black female-headed households, it jumps to 50 percent. ...

Fatherless children display more antisocial behavior, do worse in school, and are twice as likely to drop out than children from intact families.  They are more likely to use drugs and become sexually active at an early age.  Approximately 70 percent of juveniles who end up in long-term correctional facilities grew up without a father at home.

Even health rates are affected.  A study by the Department of Health and Human Services found that after controlling for age, sex, race, and socioeconomic status, children from broken families are twenty to forty times more likely to suffer health problems than children living with both parents.

A Dangerous Grace, by Chuck Colson with Nancy R. Pearcy, p.195-196

This book was copyrighted in 1994, and I daresay the statistics are most likely worse today, since our educational system and the entertainment media do everything they can to encourage young people to become sexually active outside of marriage, which very often leads to children without fathers.  Additionally, the media preaches marriage as something less than binding until “death do us part,” which encourages extra-marital relations and the destruction of the family unit.  With the push for same-sex marriage, the institution of marriage itself is seen as something that can be twisted into just about any relationship one desires, eliminating the need for family unity.

It’s a very upside down world where fathers are given no impetus to be a part of their children’s lives.

Dead Fathers Still Father

Being left fatherless through death is totally different from being fatherless due to a deliberate choice of the father or mother.  Interestingly, studies show that when fathers are away for unavoidable purpose such as war, children do not suffer to the same degree as when the father chooses to leave or is shut out from the family unit.   Of course an orphaned child suffers, yet Mom feels comfortable talking about the father.  She might say, “Your father would have been proud of you.”  Although physically dead, these fathers live on in their families.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," pg.186

Invasive Civil Government

Throughout its history, America was the place people fled to when they wished to escape from invasive government.  When faced with a social or cultural problem, Americans did not think of civil government when solutions were being sought.  What attracted people to these shores was the fact that we governed ourselves.  Because civil government has undergone such monstrous expansion in our time, we have forgotten this.  Most people don’t even know that family and church are governments, tasked to handle social problems, because their roles have been handed over to civil government.  We used to know this, though, and throughout our history charity was always a natural outgrowth of the Biblical morality of private citizens.  When confronted by the social ills brought on by poverty, people banded together and created hospitals and schools and every other kind of charitable institution that could possibly help.

All of this changed when the South was destroyed.  The very fabric of American life was torn by the War Between the States, and it could not be repaired: a new garment would have to be made, and civil government would be doing the making.

Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.39-40

A Reason for Marriage

The universal definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman is no historical coincidence.  Marriage did not come about as a result of a political movement, discover, disease, war, religious doctrine, or any other moving force of world history—and certainly not as a result of a prehistoric decision to exclude gays and lesbians.  It arose in the nature of things to meet a vital need: ensuring that children are conceived by a mother and father committed to raising them in the stable conditions of a lifelong relationship.

Chief Justice John Roberts, Obergefell vs Hodges, dissenting opinion

The Ease of Self-Deceit

Nothing is easier than self-deceit.  For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.

Demosthenes, Greek philosopher

Self-Delusion

Man is by nature so constituted that he would rather give himself up to Satan in the snare of the most idiotic self-delusion than to do honor to the truth, which humbles him for his good.

T.W. Krummacher

Government-Created Rights

When civil government creates a new category of “rights” that cost money, and the owner of the “rights” has none, this can mean only one thing:  the government must force unwilling citizens to finance those new rights.  Which implies the evocation of the state’s ever-present threat of violence: the doctors and pharmacists will either be pressed into service by force, or the sick guy’s neighbor’s will be taxed to pay his medical bills.  There is no third way. . . .  

Everyone knows what governments do to those who defy their commands:  they seize your assets and confiscate your house, and if you refuse to be forced out of your home, they will send in the police.  If you refuse to be arrested, they will escalate the use of force.  Ultimately, if you stand your ground long enough, they will kill you.

This is why we should be very, very careful about calling nice ideas fundamental rights.  Civil government, ultimately, is violence.

Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.33-34

Right to Medical Care?

Anyone who examines what a “right” to medical care implies will immediately discover that it’s really a demand for forced labor.  Medical care requires other people to provide goods and services: doctoring, medicine, hospital stays and laboratory tests.  All these things cost money.

Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.33

Rights

The astonishing thing about God-given rights is that they cost other people nothing.  We all have them, at no cost, and no action is required to activate them.  When another person presumes to usurp them, it is called “sin,” because we cannot lose rights bestowed by God; to be murdered or enslaved, or tormented or robbed, is not to lose the right to pursue happiness, to property, liberty, or life.  The rights remain ours even after some sinner has impeded our ability to exercise them, because only God has the authority to revoke rights He has given.

The New civilization we occupy has transformed the concept of “rights,” and it all began with the denial of the right to private property.  All the new “rights” our society has “discovered” in the last century depend on other people giving up their rights.

Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.32

Psychologizing Conformity and Mediocrity

By contending that man’s inhumanity to man can be controlled by psychological means and by claiming that shame, unhappiness, pain, guilt and sorrow can be overcome, the Psychology Industry casts people as needy consumers thereby robbing them of opportunities to learn from mistakes, face betrayals, take risks, meet obligations and comfort each other.  Whether in recovered-memory therapy or short-term cognitive therapy, psychologists seek to impose their view of how people should think, feel and act, generally ignoring the implications of their opinions and coercive techniques, and the conformity and mediocrity they are imposing.

Dr. Tana Dineen in, “Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry is Doing to People,” pg. 269

The Slavery of the Slums

One last comment before moving on: slavery was bad.  But what we have today is worse.  The slum districts of our big cities are much worse for the individuals in them than the typical slave’s life was in 1830.  We have vast numbers of employed and underemployed and unemployed citizens who are slaves of the dehumanizing forces that have ruined America….

Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.25.

Homosexuality Denigrates Women

One of the most remarkable aspects of contemporary societies' acceptance of homosexuality is the lack of outcry from and on behalf of women. I say "outcry" because there is certainly much quiet crying by women over this issue, as heard in the frequent lament from single women that so many single men are gay. But the major reason for anyone concerned with women's equality to be concerned with homosexuality is the direct correlation between the prevalence of male homosexuality and the relegation of women to a low social role. The improvement of the condition of women has only occurred in Western civilization, the civilization least tolerant of homosexuality.

In societies where men sought out men for love and sex, women were relegated to society's periphery. Thus, for example, ancient Greece, which elevated homosexuality to an ideal, was characterized by "a misogynistic attitude," in Norman Sussman's words. Homosexuality in ancient Greece, he writes, "was closely linked to an idealized concept of the man as the focus of intellectual and physical activities...The woman was seen as serving but two roles. As a wife, she ran the home. As a courtesan, she satisfied male sexual desires." Classicist Eva Keuls describes Athens at its height of philosophical and artistic greatness as "a society dominated by men who sequester their wives and daughters, denigrate the female role in reproduction, erect monuments to the male genitalia, have sex with the sons of their peers…"

In medieval France, when men stressed male-male love, it "implied a corresponding lack of interest in women. In the Song of Roland, a French mini-epic given its final form in the late eleventh or twelfth century, women appear only as shadowy marginal figures: "The deepest signs of affection in the poem, as well as in similar ones appear in the love of man for man..." The women of Arab society, wherein male homosexuality has been widespread, remain in a notably low state in the modern world. This may be a coincidence, but common sense suggests a linkage. So, too, in traditional Chinese culture, the low state of women has been linked to widespread homosexuality. As a French physician reported from China in the nineteenth century, "Chinese women were such docile, homebound dullards that the men, like those of ancient Greece, sought courtesans and boys.”

While traditional Judaism is not as egalitarian as many late twentieth century Jews would like, it was Judaism — very much through its insistence on marriage and family and its rejection of infidelity and homosexuality — that initiated the process of elevating the status of women. While other cultures were writing homoerotic poetry, the Jews wrote the Song of Songs, one of the most beautiful poems depicting male-female sensual love ever written

Dennis Prager, “Judaism’s Sexual Revolution: Why Judaism (and then Christianity) Rejected Homosexuality.”

Judaism Put the Sex Genie Back in the Marital Bottle

When Judaism demanded that all sexual activity be channeled into marriage, it changed the world. The Torah's prohibition of non-marital sex quite simply made the creation of Western civilization possible. Societies that did not place boundaries around sexuality were stymied in their development. The subsequent dominance of the Western world can largely be attributed to the sexual revolution initiated by Judaism and later carried forward by Christianity.

This revolution consisted of forcing the sexual genie into the marital bottle. It ensured that sex no longer dominated society, heightened male-female love and sexuality (and thereby almost alone created the possibility of love and eroticism within marriage), and began the arduous task of elevating the status of women. . . .

Judaism placed controls on sexual activity. It could no longer dominate religion and social life. It was to be sanctified — which in Hebrew means "separated" — from the world and placed in the home, in the bed of husband and wife. Judaism's restricting of sexual behavior was one of the essential elements that enabled society to progress. Along with ethical monotheism, the revolution begun by the Torah when it declared war on the sexual practices of the world wrought the most far-reaching changes in history.

Dennis Prager, “Judaism’s Sexual Revolution: Why Judaism (and then Christianity) Rejected Homosexuality.

Nature of Wealth

People who want to redistribute wealth often misunderstand the nature and causes of wealth. Tangible wealth can be confiscated, but you cannot confiscate the knowledge which produced that wealth. Countries that confiscated the wealth of some groups and expelled them, destitute, have often seen the economy collapse, while the expelled people became prosperous again elsewhere.

Thomas Sowell, “Random Thoughts: 2016 Elections”

Who is Your Role Model?

Much can be determined about a nation’s ideals and future welfare by the character of its models.  Who are the most admired people in America?  Spiritual leaders, civic leaders, altruistic social reformers?  Hardly.  The heroes and idols of America are actors and actresses, jetsetters and yacht owners, entertainers and rock stars.  With a glass of wine or a joint in one hand, and somebody else’s mate in the other, they prance, jiggle, curse, and swindle their way into the hearts of Americans.  Our homage to such celebrities tells us as much about us—and our probably destiny—as it does them.

Randy Alcorn, “Christians in the Wake of the Sexual Revolution,” pg 153-154.

War is Not the Ugliest Thing

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things.  The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling, which thinks nothing is worth a war, is worse.  A man who has nothing which he cares more about than his own personal safety is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free unless he is made free and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

John Stuart Mill, cited by David Jeremiah in, “Turning Toward Joy,” p.45

Politically Correct Propaganda

In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is…in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.

Theodore Dalrymple

The Right to Bear Arms Prevents Tyranny from Government

As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article [2nd Amendment] in their right to keep and bear their private arms.

Tench Coxe, “Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Constitution,” under pseudonym “A Pennsylvanian.”  Philadelphia Federal Gazette, 18 June 1789.

Congress Has No Power To Disarm

Congress have no power to disarm the militia.  Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American . . .  The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state government, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.

Tench Coxe, Pennsylvania Gazette, 20 February 1788.

An Armed Populace Prevents Military Rule

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe.  The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States.

Noah Webster, “An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution,” 1787.

I'm For Morality

The Atheists Own Your Kids in School

Children spend the majority of their waking hours in school. Parents invest a good portion of their life savings in college education and entrust their offspring to people who are supposed to educate them. Isn’t it wonderful that educators have figured out a way to make parents the instruments of their own undoing? Isn’t it brilliant that they have persuaded Christian moms and dads to finance the destruction of their own beliefs and values? Who said atheists aren’t clever?

Dinesh D’Souza, What’s So Great About Christianity

The Reason for Militia

What, sir, is the use of a militia?  It is to prevent the establishment of a standing Army, the bane of liberty…. Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.”

Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, on floor debate over the Second Amendment [I Annals of Congress at 750 {August 17,1789}]