More thoughts on the gay issue that I so tired of hearing about...

Just left this comment at a blog I frequent,  Doubt it will see light of day, though;


Two thoughts: why does this topic seem to dominate the constant theme of folks like Al Mohler, as if there's nothing else in the world to talk about for evangelical Christians?  Is there really nothing else in the Bible to occupy our time and thought?

But here's another thought:  when we talk about homosexuality as being "subject to idolatry just as is money or possessions. With all of the emphasis we have today on sex it most certainly has become an idol to many..." are we really that much different in evangelical Christianity with the the ready acceptance that you can choose your family size and then just surgically sterilize yourself once you have 2-4 kids (the acceptable norm?)  This is just as much a sex issue, and one that should be talked about, not so taboo.  Like homosexuality, is the vasectomy-mindset really all that different?  Isn't this just redirecting the idolatry in a different direction? ("two kids was enough, and I've got other idols of self to serve, so off I go to the urologist...")  While homosexuality is constantly thrown about in discussions, no one ever seems to address the idolatry of deliberately limiting the blessing of family size in order to serve other idols of self.  Yet is Christians are honest with the Scriptures, the repeated message through the patriarchs and the OT is the blessing of children.  So if homosexuality is such a capital sin, why isn't deliberate childlessness/small families in evangelical families treated the same way?

I'm so sick of hearing about gay marriage...

Bah, I'm sick to death of the gay marriage issue in the headlines.  Just... give this topic a rest already, AP.  Is there nothing else to talk about?

I've ranted about this issue before, but here we go again - let me get this out of my system...

- Let the government define marriage however it wants.  I don't care, because I don't recognize the State's authority on my marriage in the first place.  One of these days, I will contact the state of my marriage and have them break the CIVIL contract of it, simply because I hate the fact I need to go grovelling to the State to get it's permission to marry in the first place!  MARRIAGE IS ECCLESIASTICAL, as far as I'm concerned (and as far as history is concerned.)  If the State wants to define marriage as a man and a head of celery, so what.  The State has already defined enough things stupidly (like our international policy, involvement in the UN, drone strikes against American citizens, etc, etc) that this doesn't make any real difference to me.  Give it 10 years, and Mormons will be petitioning to have polygamy legalized.  So what.

- The men who are most vocal about homosexuality are, themselves, men with tiny nuclear families of 2-4 children, so the logical conclusion is that they've willingly had their bodies surgically mutilated so that they can no longer have children.  So in other words, they too are practicing a distorted form of sexuality (much like a homosexual) in which their practice cannot yield children as the Bible commands (Gen. 1:28, the most ignored/warped/mutilated/misinterpreted verse in the entire Bible).  God commanded Adam, Noah, Jacob, etc to be fruitful and multiply, but that doesn't matter: what he really meant was, have 2 kids, put them in a private school, mutilate your genitals and spend all your time complaining about homos.  It's just as ridiculous as a 1-2 child family saying that they are "pro-life."  Yeah right....

The state has done far more stupid things than just approving gay marriage, and I don't care about all of the hoopla over this one issue.  The State is corrupt, bloated and disgusting, so who cares...

Concussion Research Can’t Be Ignored... by Christians!

I'm developing a new theory, along the lines of other theories of mine such as 'vasectomies kill men', and the theory is this:  Christians should not in ANY WAY be involved with the "sport" of football (with only the exception of being involved with the medical service to aid players brutalized, mangled and crippled in agonizing pain from the game.)

Concussion Research Can’t Be Ignored

(I saved this as a draft, too.  Lost interest, and frankly, probably won't ever finish this...)

Kid's eat free! (oh, but with a catch!)

"Kids eat free!"  Well, actually, TWO kids can eat free, because the average, normal family would never freakishly have more than two nuclear children, so we ONLY support giving a free meal to children who fall into the nuclear model of only two children.  Two parents = two children.  What, you had more than two kids?  You freak!  Don't bother bringing all of your children into our restaurant, because they won't get to eat for free!

Three kids!?  Freakish!
Four!?  Are you insane!!?
Five or more?  Call Obama!!!  Time for population control measures!

Coming soon:  Free dinner for all men who can prove they had a vasectomy!

Tax break for Vasectomy?

I wonder if Obamacare will someday give tax breaks for men to get vasectomies? Seems like the type of stupid thing that this administration would do. I suppose this is more of a brief, Twitter-style thought, but then again, I hate Twitter and won't use it, so suppose I have to put this thought here...

Responding to an Anti-Anti-Vasectomy Site

Here's a letter I wrote to an anti-anti-vasectomy site, responding to this site, that I doubt will see print, so posting it here instead.

Hey, I doubt my email will see print, but I'll write and send it anyway just for the therapeutic effect it gives me.

Bottom line: seriously, the entirety of your 'response' site sounds like pharmaceutical propaganda, but in this case, Big Urology propaganda. My unfounded-yet-likely suspicion: enough prominent urologists are talking together one day over beers, lamenting their profits affected by Kevin Hauber's site (or perhaps doctors find themselves getting far too many pestering questions thanks to his site) so -- enough is enough! -- break out the propaganda machine! Pool funds and get a professional, "medical sounding"-response site together, and get it out there, with the same efficiency of the vaccine industry getting the counter-autism propaganda online (only the top pro-vax articles seem to get the top search engine hits!) Urologists scramble, assemble funds, perhaps a call made to an ivy-league buddy or two, and the big money comes rolling in for a professional-looking, objective-sounding website ("be sure to include text like 'no book to sell' so that no one will suspect any ulterior motives to this site...")

But seriously, the polish used to refute Kevin's documentation seemed strained: using tactics such as marginalize the studies that support chronic issues and dismiss everything else in a cheerful ad homonym wave, and do what you can to steer around and away from the chronic page issue. Make his site as fringy and anecdotal-sounding as possible. Let's stamp out his documentation and research with our impressive-sounding, big-budget research. Chronic pain.... let's make this sound minor, dismissive, something to elicit the collective shrugging of shoulders, and let's watch the business come flooding back in again. Besides, EVERYONE takes a pain-killer when they first wake up, right, so why not someone damaged by a vasectomy?

If you think about it, vasectomies probably mark the singular reason a man would go to a urologist in the first place. So if there is skepticism of the safety of this procedure, you take away from that business, and what else would there be to give urologists business? A periodic, rare health issue with the reproductive organ? No, I see the big picture going on here. A well-played counter-move by a not-so-well-meaning group of urologists who need business.

But for what it's worth, frankly, it's not just Kevin Hauber's site that has dissuaded me from ever getting my manhood components mutilated, nor does it have anything specifically to do with philosophical or religious purposes. For me, it's all about cold, clear reason. If there is an elective operation that could potentially cause, no matter how small the likelihood, chronic pain in the region of my manhood, for every day for the rest of my natural life, then there is no way on earth would I get this operation. The other side-effect stuff that Kevin lists, that the anti-anti-vasectomy folks like trashing the research of, is secondary: I'm more concerned about the lingering, ongoing pain. My heart goes out to any guy who got the operation, experienced endless pain as a result, then when questioning the doctor received little more than a pain-killer prescription and a shrug. If there's the prospect of pain, then there's no possibility of getting this operation for me. At least with a barrier, I don't have to fear living each day with pain for the rest of my life.

Rational Neo

Al Mohler and 'Can Christians Use Birth Control?'?

Mohler's article on Christians using birth control. Worth reading, but a couple things missing. Why no mention of sexual sterilization, such as vasectomy, which EVERY man in the church seems to get these days after two children. I mean, Mohler makes this point:

"Therefore, Christians may make careful and discriminating use of proper technologies, but must never buy into the contraceptive mentality. We can never see children as problems to be avoided, but always as gifts to be welcomed and received."

Erm, right... but 2-3 gifts are enough, then let's just "return" the rest of those gifts, I suppose. If children are gifts, then why do so many men take the initiative to mutilate their genitals surgically to avoid more than a very small number of gifts? It's disheartening to me when I read the works of a seminary professor or evangelical leader that I really respect, but then in the profile blurb in their book it mentions that they have just one or two children.... or no mention of children at all. Why isn't this more foundational and important to them?

If an evangelical writer is going to address birth control, he needs to address not only the disregard that Christians seem to have for children today, but also the blase attitude they have to going to a creepy doctor to have their bodies willingly mutilated without fear of

Squinty Whistles Reborn as Ultraconservative, ESV-only, Pro-life, anti-PowerPoint Revivalist Pastor

Squinty Whistles, late 19th-century mountain man and corn bread enthusiast, has been thawed and revitalized in a secret new Mexico lab, and once he came to his senses, and sprouted a massive beard, suddenly vaulted into a calling of a revivalist pastor of a most unusual persuasion. His followers, known affectionately as "Whistletarians", have been following him as he leads a series of revival crusades across the Midwest. His key tenants include

A radical new idea to preaching: Squinty actually does the incredible... he stands up, opens the Bible, and actually TEACHES from it! No stories, no jokes, no idiotic personal reflections, no puppet shows, but he actually opens the Bible and explains it to people! An incredibly novel idea!

Also, Squinty holds to strict ESV-onlism! (Although the NASB is fine as well. KJV is cool, too. And he doesn't mind the NIV. The Message is strictly forbidden, though)

Strict credo-credible-baptist. No sprinkling water on angry, unrepentant babies, or even on smug, just-doing-it-because-youth-pastor-said-to pre-teen kids, but rather it's adult-only baptism featuring a full-submersion (for an extended 5-10 seconds to make sure the candidate is completely dunked) and only done when the baptismal candidate can make a completely credible, convincing, realistic and plausible profession of faith and genuine repentance. None of this 'unguarded baptismal' stuff.... that's just as idiotic as sprinkling water on a baby and calling it a "sacrament" (and where, Squinty wonders, is the actual word "sacrament" found in Scripture, or was that just whimsically dreamed up by some goofy Pope? It's an "ordinance", papists. Call it what it is.)

Strictly guarded (literally) elements of the Lord's Table. And when I mean strict, I mean that there's an elder standing at the table, guarding it with a tazer. And if anyone comes up who is not a church member, and has not met with the session and again provided the aforementioned genuine profession of faith, they get the loving reprimand of a 50,000 zolt zap.

Hymns alone are sung, but not the stuffy kind. The only rule is that the hymns must be completely Scriptural, and they must not contain any one word/verse that's repeated more than 10 times. Those aren't Christian hymns: those are tortuous exercises in monotonous chanting

Squinty holds to a literal, universal interpretation of Leviticus 21:5, "'They shall not make any baldness on their heads, nor shave off the edges of their beards, nor make any cuts in their flesh." Squinty has a handsome head of hair, and the edges of his beard are vibrant, but most importantly, he holds to a strict antivasectometarian viewpoint, that Lev. 21:5 is saying that "cuts of their flesh" applies to the vasectomy scalpel of the urologist

Squinty also quotes from I Kings 18, regarding the priests of Baal: "So they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears, as was their custom..." It is also the custom, he notes, that urologists slash at the vas deverens of men with swords, attempting to make them shout louder. "The priests of Baal aimed to serve a false god," observed Squinty, "no different than men today who go to urologists in order to serve their own false gods of self, indulgence, and convenience. Two kids was probably all the priests of Baal had as well."

Squinty is fiercely pro-life, and demands that all members of the church be as well. "Well, of course we are, pastor!" "And how many kids do you have?" "Well, two, of course, pastor... how else would we afford the over sized SUV and the annual Disney trip?" At this Squinty goes on an impassioned explanation of the Scriptural emphasis on the blessing of children, from Gen. 1:28 through the life of Israel and explains, clearly and slowly, that blessed is the man who fills his quiver with children, and two or three arrows in a quiver would be a pathetically lacking arsenal. He then drives home the pro-life thing: "How can you be pro-life, and yet only be pro-two lives, when you could easily have more, or easily foster care or adopt more. What, you think if you asked the church to raise up a fund to help you adopt that no one in the church would rise up to help support you in that goal? You can't say that you're TRULY pro-life unless you prove it with your actions and actually LIVE a pro-life life with lots of lives..."

Women wear head coverings in the church as well, because, as Squinty puts it, "Quit fiddling around with I Cor. 11 and making it say things it doesn't. 'Covering' isn't long hair, nor is it a wedding ring. Those are the lame Eve-style excuses whispered by pastor's wives to their husbands so that they wouldn't tell their church to do what the Bible actually says to do. Covering should be worn because it's tied to the creation order, it's done on behalf of the angels, and it goes against the proto-feministic rage of this era (aka "the spirit of the age"). Stop making excuses and do it!"

Finally, Squinty maintains that any church that incorporates PowerPoint is violating some Levitical law, but he hasn't quite pinpointed it out.

The Squinty Whistles campaign is slowly growing in momentum, and Squinty himself hopes to soon become a regular contributor of this blog, with regular messages and a handy guide to theological definitions and what not. Stay tuned!

"Clingin' to their Guns n' Bibles!"

This post at Cripplegate had me thinking that I need to publish this old-trib-times post again:

The topic above is about the American revolution, but I'm going to hone in more specifically on Christians who wield the sword, which would include Christians who would have taken up arms in a rebellion such as this one. I've written about this before, and will likely write about it more, as living in Texas, this is a topic I hear (sadly) in a lot of churches out here. Cling to you guns and your Bibles, and there's nothing wrong with being a well-armed brother in Christ, right? Hey, if someone breaks in, you've got every right to take the intruders life! No need to subdue him, or call the magistrate, or even hold him at bay until the police arrive... if he breaks in, he's dead meat, right?

But no matter how you slice (or shoot) it, the fact remains that if you are a Christian who carries a gun, and you for some reason shoot and kill a person, you are left with:

- No chance of a life transformation of the person you killed.
- No possibility of the gospel reaching them.
- Just twisted, non-christian justice from a carnal weapon.

So much for Matthew 5 and Christ's commandment to "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." What about the Christian testimony of humility, forgiveness, generosity, giving and love? How can anything in Christ's message of the beatitudes in any way be construed to give a killing loophole, premeditated or otherwise? And as a wise man once observed, how can a Christian claim to be pro-life and yet support killing another person? (and how can one claim to be pro-life if he only has 2 kids and a vasectomy?.... but that's another post for another day.)

Making exception clauses to kill for any reason puts into dangerous papist territory, of warping the love of Christ into directions of Rome's senseless violence and killing at the behest of an antichrist pope...

I read recently about some of the gun-totin' churches and it makes me more and more convinced that the Anabaptist have it right. Their Schleitheim Confession (1527) offers a section that makes perfect sense of the Christian attitude towards guns/swords/killing weapons:

"Now it will be asked by many who do not recognize (this as) the will of Christ for us, whether a Christian may or should employ the sword against the wicked for the defense and protection of the good, or for the sake of love.

Our reply is unanimously as follows: Christ teaches and commands us to learn of Him, for He is meek and lowly in heart and so shall we find rest to our souls. Also Christ says to the heathenish woman who was taken in adultery, not that one should stone her according to the Law of His Father (and yet He says, As the Father has commanded me, thus I do), but in mercy and forgiveness and warning, to sin no more. Such (an attitude) we also ought to take completely according to the rule of the ban."

Another thought is how gun-totin' Christians seem to abide by a cheap grace, that doesn't call the believer to abandon all, but you can STILL hang on to that last bit of carnality and tote a gun. Recently I've been reading Bonhoeffer's "Cost of Discipleship" and one of this continuing theme is an abandonment of all for the sake of the cross, even, potentially, your own life and security. As terrible as it sounds, if someone comes to you and wants to kill you - especially for your faith - you need to be ready to die for it. Not cling to a chunk of killing metal to destroy a foe with. Kill a man, and he dies in his unbelief. You sent him to hell with no prospect of the gospel or eternal life at all.

Maybe it would be different if someone broke into my house, and then I'd think differently, right? Or maybe, like the Apostle Paul, I make full use of my citizenship to Rome, pick up the phone, call the magistrate and have them do their job. This is still a republic, and I do render to Caesar, so perhaps I should leave the defense to the magistrate and instead focus on how I can show love and forgiveness to others, even those who might want to do me harm. I think our military and police protection is wonderful, and I pray for those who protect and serve that God has put into office. I'm just not convinced that a Christian should be in an office that could potentially mean the taking of a life.

Yeah, I'm in a minority, but as I was told years ago by a pastor, if there's something you are convicted right or wrong, verify it by weighing it against the word of God, and that is what I've done... and truthfully I can't read the Bible and see how anywhere there is any sort of instruction to carry a weapon and take a life. Jesus taught forgiving over and over. He taught compassion and care of others, never killing. Christians should not carry the carnal sword, but should instead gird themselves with the sword of the spirit, and with the love of Christ.

Extended Breastfeeding, the Duggars, and Taboos

The recent Time magazine article on extended breast-feeding (along with the over-hyped cover that I won't bother posting the image of here - like it's much different than any ridiculous Jennifer Lopez would wear to an award show) was an interesting read. Time magazine is usually just a bastion of liberal bias nonsense, but I'll give them credit for this story (albeit done in with a deliberately-sensational cover image.) This is an important topic, and it it reminded me of my other blog thoughts on the Duggars that I'm going to repost here, slightly abridged:

I've been thinking more about the Duggar phenomenon and, in particular, Michelle Duggar and her comments and practices regarding breastfeeding. I read once her remarks regarding what she considered the "myth" of breastfeeding infertility, and how it was something she didn't believe in (regardless of the fact that I've known quite a few people: nurses, doctors, midwives, LaLeche League consultants, etc, who would completely disagree with her information.) The fact is, breastfeeding, when done regularly and consistently following birth, delays the return of menstuation. It is a wonderful design that God put into place to naturally allow for the spacing of children. And let's be honest: had Michelle Duggar been correctly informed about breastfeeding and infertility, there would likely be no Duggar television show or Discovery channel royalties, etc. A natural pattern of infertility and spacing would have left the Duggars with a much "smaller" family of, likely, 9 kids or so, as opposed to the 20 they have.

I do admire this family (although I think it's crazy that they let their privacy be invaded by cameras, and allow themselves to so openly receive the spite and venom of the anti-family folks of the mainstream) and I think there are many things about them that I really admire. But at the same time, I think Michelle is mistaken about breastfeeding and infertility, and while she is very blessed to have been able to have so many healthy deliveries, the fact is, breastfeeding is not only the means to offset fertility, its also the way that a woman's body physically RECOVERS following the physical ordeal of pregnancy, labor and birth. God designed the woman's body to nurse her young AND to heal itself, as well as to give the newborn an unrivalled healthy diet (that cannot be matched by anything out of a can of formula.)

Which leads to the point I'm trying to get to: I think that breastfeeding is something of a taboo subject (or a sensational topic to be exploited as done by Time magazine's cover), and while I think that most women COULD nurse their children, I think that many don't, either because they don't want to, or they've been misinformed by BAD doctors and bad advice to think that they don't need to.

Speaking as an informed Dad here, I know it can be an exhausting experience physicially for the woman and requires commitments of time. It's also difficult, and I'm led to think that many women find it hard to do, thus it becomes less a matter of "I can't" and rather one of "I don't want to." I belive that its the rare woman who has a legitimate medical reason why they can't. But rather, far more likely, they've just received bad advice from "lactation consultants" at a hospital, or bad advice from a doctor or a nurse, or bad advice from a family member or friend, or a quacky woman's magazine, or television show, or infant formula propaganda. Or worse, the woman gave into the drug-pushers at the hospital during labor and, sadly, the drugs (such as epidural) complicated the initial breastfeeding experience, or brought about a drowsy baby unable to nurse, or required an extensive hospital stay comlicating th initial nursing timeframe, causing the baby to not be able to start nursing initially, etc, etc.

As far as Michelle Duggar goes, I do respect this family, but I just wish she had been better informed about nursing. I have a suspicion she was just misled by a quacky, drug-pushing meidcal provider (in the show, the Duggars are quick to go along with whatever their doctor's say without question. "Time for tubes in the ears? Sure, doctor". And just for argument sake, I'll grant that, maybe she couldn't nurse the first one. But same thing for the second? And the third? .... And the nineteenth? At some point over this time, someone who cared should have gone to Michelle and said, "Look, you're not giving your body the time that it needs, the time that God designed it to have, in order to HEAL between pregnancies. Have you considered going to a LaLeche League meeting, to speak to one of the leaders there to get some advice on how to adequately breastfeed? Maybe they can give you the help and support that you need to do it this time? Maybe they can help answer your questions and uncertainties? Maybe they can help show you the proof that, yes, breastfeeding does indeed offset fertility." In a way, I think this is somewhat selfish of Jim Bob to not at least use some sort of non-abortifacient barrier following childbirth, if only for a short amount of time, to give his wife's body time to heal. Yes,I know, birth control isn't natural, but neither is infant formula.

And yes, mastitis happens, and can happen bad, but LaLeche League women know all about assisting and supporting with that as well (often without liver-damaging drugs, but with herbal cures and natural options). And I'm not just speaking hypothetically here - I've actually been to LaLeche League meetings (Dad's go to them too. Dad's SHOULD go to them to support their wives, actually. To miss out on this opportunity to support your wife - then you're a loser, Dad.) These groups are a wealth of information that you don't get from most western medical doctors. The experience and knowledge of the women leading these groups is so rich, that any woman having a child should consult with them to know how to get started with nursing. Michelle and Jim Bob should go to one of these on their show, but instead they waste their time at... Weight Watcher meetings?

Or... is this all just a big taboo subject that no one wants to hear? Breastfeeding is too much trouble, it's too painful, and it takes too much time, so just get a bottle and don't bother with that LaLeche League stuff, right? Besides, in the movies and on television, EVERY woman, immediately following birth, sticks a bottle in the baby's mouth, so if Hollywood says that's how it should be, then maybe that's how it should be? Even in churches today, breastfeeding is often frowned upon in the church. Who wants a fussy baby there in the sanctuary with the mother? They can both go back to the "cry room" and separate from the rest of their family. Of course, how often in the church today are nursing mothers segregated, yet women can wear tops as low-cut and exposing as they like, and no problem there at all. Wear what you like to church and no one minds but, erm, don't feed your baby in public, if you please...

Animosity towards breastfeeding what I expect from Hollywood, or pharma-pushing medical doctors and hospitals, but sadly, it's not what I like to see being reflected in a Christian family like the Duggars. They are setting a excellent example of what a Godly family should be like, and I respect much about them (plus I respect that Jim Bob hasn't been surgically mutilated like every other vasectomied man in the world), but in terms of the example of large family size at the cost of foregoing breastfeeding (and not allowing the mother's body to recover between births), I think they're ultimately setting a bad example.

Figuring out a system here...

So I'm cleaning house of posts at my old haunt, and will hopefully be reposting a lot of the stuff over here. But thinking about it, I might actually fine-tune and re-write a lot of the material, as reviewing so many of my posts I see that they were hammered out in frantic 10-minute intervals late at night when I wasn't thinking clearly (as evidenced by the nonsense of my posts.) Of course, that does tend to lend to their hilarity.

So anything here that seems redundant or gives you an odd sense of deja vu, it just means that I copied it over from my other blog.

Antivasectometarianism.... or.... a new home

A new home, but the same erratic nonsense...

I'm grateful to Fishhawk over at The Trib-Times for humoring a lot of my diabolical and often nonsensical posts for so long, but I think I pushed the envelope just a few too many times with my comments about Calvinism, cosmetic surgery, perverted tanning salons, sterilizations, Big Pharma, The Duggars, and far too much chillwave music to do any good. So after repeated warnings to clean up my act and be more responsible, I thought it was the best to move on, and dedicate one site specifically to my nonsensical ruminations. For the record, Fish was a good sport, and he's a great guy, and his blogs are definitely worth checking out.

But as for my nonsense, it will start showing up here. Don't expect much to change - if anything, there is no longer the sane voice of Fish to hold me in restraint, so things might get odd...