If Behavior is Okay, Why Treat It?

If a two-year-old says, “No,” rather than obeying, apparently that is to be accepted since he is a child.  If this behavior becomes a problem, a label from the DSM-IV is placed on his behavior, which gives further credibility to accepting the behavior and not correcting it.  Yet the same culture that labels behavior also attempts to change that behavior with chemicals, while avoiding personal responsibility. 

Robert D. Smith, M.D., The Christian Counselor’s Medical Desk Reference, pg.151

This is Essentially What the USA has Become

Slipping to Moral Ruin

Morality in this civilization can’t be defined with any confidence; every behavior has public defenders, however bizarre or diabolical, as the whole society slip, slip, slips down that slippery slope into catastrophic moral ruin.

Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.132

The Wife is NOT Inferior

The teaching [of Ephesians 5:22-31] is that the initiative and the leadership are ultimately the husband’s, but the action must always be co-ordinated.  That is the meaning of this picture — co-ordinated action but leadership in the head.  There is no sense of inferiority suggested by this.  The wife is not inferior to her husband; she is different.  She has her own peculiar position, full of honour and respect.  That is why the man is later to be told to cherish and to nourish and to love and to care for, and to respect and honour his wife.  There is no inferiority involved.  What Paul is teaching is that any Christian woman who realizes all this will love to please her husband, to be useful to him, to help him, to aid him, to enable him to function.  She will not cavil at saying “and obey” in the marriage service.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Life in the Spirit in Marriage, Home & Work: An Exposition of Ephesians 5:18-6:9, pg. 124-125

Mothers and Fathers Both Important for Children

Both mothers and fathers help little girls grow to be women and little boys to be men.  Anthropologist Suzanne Frayser explains this is constant in all human societies:  “Each process compliments the other.  The boy can look at his father and see what he should do to be a male; he can look at his mother and see what he should not do to be a male.”  Frayser continues, “The importance of contrast in gender roles and specification of gender identity may be clues to the psychological importance of sexual differentiation in all societies.”  Girls and boys who grow up with a father are more familiar and secure with the curious world of men.

Girls who are close to their fathers

• have healthier relationships with boys in adolescence and men in adulthood.  This is because they learn from their fathers how proper men act
• have a healthy familiarity with the word of men.  They don’t wonder how a man’s facial stubble feels, or how it feels to be hugged by strong arms.

This knowledge builds emotional security and safety from the exploitation of predatory males.

Boys who are close to their fathers

• are more secure in their masculinity and less likely to be violent.
• have their masculinity affirmed and learn from their fathers how to channel their maleness and strength in positive ways.

Fathers help boys and girls understand proper male sexuality, hygiene, behavior and work in age-appropriate ways.

Mothers help boys understand the female world and develop a sensitivity toward women.  They also help boys know how to relate and communicate with women.

Glenn T. Stanton and Dr. Bill Maier, “Marriage on Trial: The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage and Parenting,” pg.117-118

Animal "Rights" vs Human Rights

In a religious worldview, either Jewish or Christian, there are very few rights for humans, let alone for animals.  God’s system is one of obligation and responsibilities rather than rights.  I am sure that like my wife and I, you too have discovered that raising your family in a culture of many rights and few obligations elicits a whiny kind of selfishness from your children.  On the other hand, teaching all members of a family of their respective obligations means that everyone both gives and receives in an atmosphere more conducive to nobility and joy.  The same is true for society.  Not surprisingly, secularism promotes a culture of many rights and few obligations, extending the notion even to animals.  By arguing that ultimately we must resist any use of animals whatsoever, secularism approaches its philosophical goal of animal-human equivalence.  Obviously the deeper purpose for this equivalence is not to grant animals the self-discipline of humans but to seize for humans the freedoms of animals.

Now there is a seductiveness to regarding ourselves as animals.  It allows us the indulgence of never evaluating our behavior.  After all, animals do not agonize over life.  They eat what they fell like eating.  They mate when they feel like mating.  Being a human means constantly analyzing whether every proposed action is something we really ought to do.  If I could be persuaded that I am merely an animal, my life would change dramatically.   There are many things I have never done that I would instantly start doing.  There are other things I regularly do which I would cease.  Oh, yes, becoming an animal has its appeals.  It means the abandonment of all notions of conventional morality.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," pg.143-144

The Holocaust Could Have Included YOU

The Holocaust will I believe retain its position as the symbol of ultimate evil for as long as Western civilization endures.  How it will be interpreted, and what lessons will be drawn from it, are different questions altogether.  Apart from the obvious insights that people who are hateful and cruel to Jews will be hateful and cruel to others as well; that people who have bizarre fantasies about the Jews will have bizarre fantasies of other sorts; that society is not automatically progressing toward higher and higher planes of civilization; that technology is not an unmixed blessing; that mankind is not basically good, what else can we conclude?

Joseph Keysor, “Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible,” pg.435-436

The View From the Liberal Zookeepers

One popular tactic used by champions of the welfare state is to slander those who have worked diligently for their success.  The slander has worked, leading to a public perception that the rich got that way by stealing from the poor.  This perception includes that wealth-producing activities are unseemly and that free-market economic activity causes, rather than cures, poverty.  Just as it is wrong for a zookeeper to allow one elephant to eat considerably more than another, so it must be wrong for the government to allow one human or company to acquire or possess significantly more than another.

This view is consistent, of course, with the Leftist view that humans are merely another species of animal.  Secularists believe, if they stop to actually think about it, that humans contribute little or nothing to the satisfying of their needs.  Like animals, they can only exist on what is already available.  In other words, humans consume.  Therefore, isn’t it only proper of our Beltway zookeepers to equalize distribution and consumption?  Unfortunately, our nation’s politically correct (but morally incorrect) answer is to take from those who seem to have too much and redistribute the proceeds to those who seem to have too little, just as a responsible zookeeper would do.

In the view of government bureaucrats, entrepreneurs who create and market new technology and products in our country are very smart animals, but animals nevertheless.  By some form of skullduggery, under cover of darkness while the zookeepers were not watching, these entrepreneurs somehow seized more that their “fair” share.  They are obviously depriving others of that to which they are entitled.  After all, there are only so many bones, fish and pieces of meat available in the keepers’ bucket.

Thus our government zookeepers attempt to repair their mistakes by the vigilant taxation and prosecution of companies which have been “too” successful.  To gain votes, politicians often encourage those who have made self-destructive decisions in their lives to feel scorn for those who deployed self-discipline to become productive.  There is no better way than to exhibit a revulsion for what I call ethical capitalism.  Today we hear people referring to the 1980s as a period of moral depravity.  These individuals consider the miracle of economic enterprise to be the human equivalent of dogs fighting over a bone.

When America followed the biblical blueprint, it was clear that buying, selling, owning property , and being successful in business should evoke no psychological discomfort.  Economic activity is another way in which we satisfyingly distance ourselves from the animal kingdom and justify our humanity.

But if we continue to accept the godless alternative, then indeed we do not differ in kind from monkeys or other animals, only in degree.  Animals do not create wealth, they merely seize the commodities they need; people obviously do the same.  They may employ more sophisticated methods like bonds, debentures, taxation, and penalization of success, but it is seizing nonetheless.  Is it merely coincidence that those who most strongly advance evolution as the one and only approach to our origins are also those who most strongly oppose the free market?

Clearly, morally sensitive people must decry this activity.  If God created us and touched us with His abilities, then we are qualitatively different from animals.  Our ability to speak and to create is unique.  Therefore, animals plunder but people profit; the creation of wealth is an expression of our godly origins.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," pg.227-228

The Need For Fathers

Studies of crime indicate that one of the strongest predictions of crime is fatherless families.  Princeton University sociologist Sara McLanahan found in one study that boys raise outside of an intact nuclear family were more than twice as likely as other boys to end up in prison, even controlling for a range of social and economic factors.  Another review of the literature on delinquency and crime found that criminals come from broken homes at a disproportionate rate: 70 percent of juveniles in state reform schools, 72 percent of adolescent murderers, and 60 percent of rapists grew up in fatherless homes.

W. Bradford Wilcox, “Reconcilable Differences: What Social Sciences Show About the Complementarity of the Sexes and Parenting,” Touchstone 18, no. 9 (November 2005): 32,36.  Cited by Ryan T. Anderson, “Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom,” pg.28

Kindergarten?

When Germany’s [Friedrich] Froebel invented Kindergarten, it was not a garden for children he had in mind but a garden of children, in which the state-appointed teachers were the gardeners of the children.  Kindergarten is meant to protect children from their own mothers.

John Taylor Gatto, “What’s Really Wrong With Our Schools?” pg.16

ADHD Diagnosis Is Based On Behavior Only

The diagnosis of ADHD, as in most psychiatric problems, is not based on changes in the body but on behavior.  Even though it is vigorously defended as a disease, there is no proof of any physical abnormality in the body.  The medications do not correct any known deficiency or physical abnormality.  Medication is not a cure.  When there is improvement in behavior, which appears to be a direct result of medication, this gives the impression the problem is solved.  If the behavior does not improve or gets worse, the dosage is increased.  When this fails, a different medication is considered.  However, the medication does not deal with the cause of the problem.  It does not help the child learn self-control.  The underlying thinking and motives of the child are never addressed.  It is easier to put a child on a medication than to take the time to nurture and help build character in him.

However, the general cultural insistence on the use of medication continues even without evidence of long term benefits.  A respected textbook for pediatricians gives further insight:

“Despite short term improvements with stimulant medication, there is little evidence that stimulants improve retention, retrieval of information, or control of anger.  There is marginal evidence that stimulants significantly enhance academic performance.  Peer interaction is not favorably altered with long term drug treatment.  The increased likelihood of developing delinquency later is also unaffected by stimulant medication usage.  The long term benefits of these medicines have not yet been established.”

Robert D. Smith, M.D., The Christian Counselor’s Medical Desk Reference, pg. 148

Thoughts or Feelings?

The West grew out of a firm grounding in thought, the realm of philosophy and logic.  This New Civilization is completely different; it is a world view sloshing around in the squishy realm of feelings.  This difference changes everything.  If you doubt what I’m saying, there is an easy test that anyone can use to demonstrate that it’s true: simply ask a random sampling of young people what they think about, say, the war in Iraq, or the future of Social Security.  My guess is that at least 90% of the time, their reply will be a report of how they “feel” about these issues.  It is so unconscious that they are unaware that they can’t distinguish between thoughts and feelings.  This is a linguistic indicator of the larger, internal reality that marks the New Civ.

Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.93

The Christian and Nature

It is only a Christian, in the last analysis, who can really enjoy nature.  The Christian sees nature in a different way from the man of the world.  There is a newness about it.  He does not merely see the thing in and of itself, he sees the great Creator and the wonder of His ways, the variety, the colour and the beauty.  In other words, being a Christian means that your whole outlook upon life is enriched.  It does not matter what it is, every gift that man has, and which he manifests, can only be truly appreciated by the Christian.  He sees with a greater depth, he has a fuller understanding.  That is to say, the Christian message not only adds to what we had before but it greatly enriches what we had before, and give us a deeper insight into it.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Life in the Spirit in Marriage, Home & Work: An Exposition of Ephesians 5:18-6:9, pg. 116

Differences Between Mothers and Fathers, and Why They Are Needed

Fathers and mothers prepare children for life differently.  Dads tend to see their children in relation to the rest of the world.  Mothers tend to see the rest of the world in relation to their children.  Think about it.

What motivates most mothers as parents?  They are motivated primarily by things from the outside world that could hurt their child. …  Fathers, while not unconcerned with these things, tend to focus on how their children will or will not be prepared for something they might encounter in the world. …

Fathers tend toward helping children see that particular attitudes and behaviors have certain consequences. … Mothers are more likely to try to soften the blows of these life realities on their children.  Fathers are more likely to help children prepare for the reality and harshness of the real world, building confidence and problem-solving skills.  Mothers are more inclined to help protect and comfort against the world, offering security.

Glenn T. Stanton and Dr. Bill Maier, “Marriage on Trial: The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage and Parenting,” pg.116

Cohabitation Greatly Affects Children

Delinquency levels and problems in school are higher among adolescents in cohabiting, stepfather families, when compared with married families and true single-parent families.  Compared with their peers with married parents, teens in cohabiting homes had 122 percent greater odds of being expelled from school and delinquency.  Delinquency rates are much lower for teens living with a truly single mother than with a cohabiting mother.  And youths with cohabiting parents are 90 percent more likely to earn lower grades and have lower expectations of attending college. …

The respected Fragile Families research project, conducted at Princeton and Columbia Universities, teaches us that “children born to cohabiting parents have more aggressive, withdrawn and anxious/depressive behaviors at age three than children born to married parents.”  Age three!  The negative imp ace is measurable early in a child’s life.

Glenn T. Stanton, "The Ring Makes All the Difference," p.83

Christianity or Darwinism?

If all the world followed the teachings of Christ there would be no wars, no jails, no armies, no police, and no poverty.  There would be no crime, no prostitution, no alcoholism or drug abuse, no mental illness, no suicide.  There would be no abortion, no homosexuality, no pornography.  Since people would have inner peace they would be content with simpler lives, and there would be less waste of resources and destruction of the environment due to the manufacturing of innumerable trifles and superfluities.

If, however, everyone lived according to the principles of Darwinism, the world would become a hellish nightmare.  Ruthless egoists would trample on the weak and consider it their moral and scientific right to do so.  The death of weaker human beings through disease, famine, or strife would be considered as ordinary and natural, even beneficial and essential to progress.

There would be swift social breakdown as well.  People who followed their own instincts without regard to God’s law (as Darwin recommended) would become involved in all sorts of deviant social behavior.  Crime and immorality would abound, and the family would disintegrate.  In short, there would be much of what we see today, only more so.

Joseph Keysor, “Hitler, the Holocaust, and the Bible,” pg.392

Family Economics

In America, a family’s net worth is very much tied to its cultural vision.  A family that is future-oriented scrimps and saves for education and investment, while a family that is present-oriented tends to spend on consumer goods.  It is no accident that the common features of both traditional Judaism and Christianity include a dislike of debt, a scorning of luxury, and a desire to prepare and provide for the future.  This has not only built strong families and eventually large family fortunes, it has also contributed to America’s economic strength.  It is a model worth emulating, regardless of one’s religious persuasion.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "America's Real War," pg.223

The Need For Mothers AND Fathers

The complementarity of male and female parenting styles is striking and of enormous importance to a child’s overall development…. [F]athers express more concern for the child’s long-term development, while mother focus on the child’s immediate well-being (which, of course, in its own way has everything to do with a child’s long-term well-being.) … [T]he disciplinary approach of fathers tends to be “firm” while that of mothers tends to be “responsive.”  While mothers provide an important flexibility and sympathy in their discipline, fathers provide ultimate predictability and consistency.  Both dimensions are critical for an efficient, balanced, and humane child-rearing regime.


David Popenoe, "Life without Father: Compelling New Evidence That Fatherhood and Marriage Are Indispensable for the Good of Children and Society," pg.145-146.  Cited by Ryan T. Anderson, “Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom,” pg.27

Parents and Teachers are Natural Adversaries

Parents and school personnel are just plain natural adversaries.  One group is trying to make a living; the other is trying to make a work of art called a family.  If you allow yourself to be co-opted by flattery, seduced with worthless payoffs such as special classes or programs, intimidated by Alice in Wonderland titles and degrees, you will become the enemy within, the extension of state schooling into your own home.  

Shame on you if you allow that.  Your job is to educate; the school teacher’s is to school.  You work for love, the teacher for money.

The interests are radically different: one is an individual thing, the other a collective.  You can make your own son or daughter one of a kind if you have the time and will to do so.  School can only make them part of a hive, a herd, or an anthill.

John Taylor Gatto, “What’s Really Wrong With Our Schools?” pg.6-7

The Brain is NOT the Mind

One important biblical and anatomical concept to keep in mind is that the human being is both material and nonmaterial.  He has a physical body, which can be seen, and a spirit or soul, which is nonphysical and cannot be seen.  The brain is material and the mind is nonmaterial.  The mind uses the brain, but it is not the brain.  The brain can be diseased and sick, but not the mind.  If the brain is damaged, the mind is not sick.  With brain damage, the damaged part is no longer available to the mind, and thus function is altered.  But the damage can be demonstrated.  This is not a mental condition, but organic brain damage.

Robert D. Smith, M.D., The Christian Counselor’s Medical Desk Reference, pg. 96

Socialism is Tyranny

In the modern era, whenever socialism has come to a society it has always been regarded as irreversible, and the new regime has always demanded complete submission.  This is true across the entire range of degrees of socialism, from outright communism to the milder forms, programs like the National Health Service in England, or Social Security in America.  Yet the idealists who have consistently defended and rationalized even the horrors of the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Viet Nam and all the rest of the nightmare regimes of the 20th century, never seem to notice the contradiction.  Socialism is by definition tyranny, and a tyrant who can’t be overthrown and who demands that every individual abjectly submit, can in no way be characterized as representing a civilization with “a passion to throw off tyranny.” 

Patrick Michael Murphy, “How the West Was Lost,” p.89

Feminism Has Led to Matriarchy

Feminism has led to aggressiveness on the part of the wife, the mother.  She is setting herself up as an equal, and undermining the influence of the father in the minds of the children.  The unhappy result is the totally false and wrong approach to the whole question.  I do not say this in a spirit of criticism.  We are seeing this increasingly in this country [England], but to nothing like the extent to which they are see it in the United States of America.  There, you have what may more or less be called a matriarchal society, and the man is becoming increasingly regarded merely as the one to provide the dollars, the wage-earner, the man who brings in the necessary money.  The woman, the mother, is the cultured person, and the head of the home; and the children look to her.  This false unscriptural view of man and woman, and father and mother leads to a matriarchal society, which, it seems to me, is most dangerous.  The result is, of course, the growth of crime and all the terrible social problems with which they are grappling in that country.  Then, because they influence every other country through their films and in various other ways, this attitude is being spread throughout the entire world.  A matriarchal society with the woman as the head and centre of the home is a denial of the biblical teaching, and is, indeed, a repetition of the old sin of Eve.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Life in the Spirit in Marriage, Home & Work: An Exposition of Ephesians 5:18-6:9, pg. 113

Children Need Fathers

A scientific review of over one hundred published studies on the benefits of child-parent relationships summarizes: “Overall, father love appears to be as heavily implicated as mother love in offsprings’ psychological well-being and health.”  A father, as a male parent, brings unique contributions to the job of parenting that a mother can’t.

Glenn T. Stanton and Dr. Bill Maier, “Marriage on Trial: The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage and Parenting,” pg.113

Married Couples Spend More On Children

Careful research also shows that marital status determines how parents spend the money they do have on their children.  Cohabiting parents spend significantly less of their income on health care and education, but more on outside child care.  They also spend substantially more on alcohol and tobacco for themselves compared with their married peers.

Glenn T. Stanton, "The Ring Makes All the Difference," p.81

Modernity in America

Modernity’s central challenge to America is focused in America’s crisis of cultural authority:  Modernity creates problems far deeper than drugs, crime, illiteracy, AIDS, broken families, or the plight of the inner cities.  It creates a crisis of cultural authority in which America’s beliefs, ideals, and traditions are losing their compelling power in society.  What people believe no longer makes much difference to how they behave.  Unless reversed, this hollowing out of beliefs will finally be America’s undoing.

Os Guinness, Dining With the Devil, pg.18

Homosexuality is a Corruption of Humanity

In respect to a man’s sexual powers, which are unitive and generative by nature, the one whose state is best would be a man as husband and father, just as for a woman it would be as wife and mother. This is how we know that homosexual inclinations are privations and that homosexual acts are disorders. It is not a matter of “who says.” Homosexual behavior cannot actualize sexual potential because homosexual acts can be neither unitive nor procreative. Like a withered limb, congenital deafness, blindness, or a genetic predisposition to alcoholism, homosexual inclinations are not part of what a human being is in his essence. These are accidental, not essential properties. In each case, there is something missing that out to be there. For instance, the limb ought to be able to move in its full strength, the ear ought to be able to hear, and the eye to see. The further a thing is from its perfection, the more defective or “corrupt” it is—just as blindness is the furthest defect of the eye. A privation of the good cannot itself be good. In fact, as St. Augustine said, evil is a privation of the good.

Robert R. Reilly, “The New Gnosticism of the Homosexual Movement,” The Catholic World Report.

The Homosexual Dethroning of Truth

The success of the homosexual movement can only be achieved by dethroning the primacy of truth concerning man’s nature and end. By substituting the primacy of will for the primacy of reason, we may be sure that the supremacy of force will follow. Most likely this is what the late Francis Cardinal George had in mind in 2012,when he said, “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.”

Robert R. Reilly, “The New Gnosticism of the Homosexual Movement,” The Catholic World Report.

The Gaystapo Is A Reality

I do not think it is a stretch to point to Nazi Germany in 1935 as an analogy to current events and their similarly Gnostic nature. That is when the Nuremberg Laws were passed, stripping Jews of their German citizenship and forbidding marriage between non-Jews and Jews. No doubt, there were still many fine and upstanding people in Germany at the time, including many Catholics, but from then on they had to keep their mouths shut about the Nazi racial superiority teachings because they were state law. I am sure there were many people opposed to the race theory of history who said to themselves, as people do today regarding homosexual “marriage,” “well, this is a losing issue. Let’s leave it alone and move on.” They were probably too frightened to consider what they were moving on to, just as people today avoid thinking about the consequences of the complete denial of reality involved in homosexual “marriage.” Anyone who thinks that we are involved in a denial of reality any less profound than that of 1935 Germany is kidding themselves. Success for the homosexual dream requires the obliteration of the real and the removal of those who insist on the existence of reality.

Robert R. Reilly, “The New Gnosticism of the Homosexual Movement,” The Catholic World Report.

Homosexual Totalitarianism

As a society we have moved from the point where the rationalization for homosexual misbehavior has been accepted as normative to the point where that rationalization will now be imposed and enforced, legally and by social forces at large, on everyone. If you speak out about this, you most likely will lose your job or your business and, most certainly, your social standing. You may be sued. You will become an embarrassment. These have become new forms of censorship, with a strong dose of self-censorship already at play. “This movement,” libertarian journalist John Stossel said, “has moved from tolerance to totalitarianism.”

Robert R. Reilly, “The New Gnosticism of the Homosexual Movement,” The Catholic World Report.