Torture, Abortion, And Euthanasia

From: The Pen of Catholic World Report editor George Neumayr

“If torturing terrorists works — as the Obama administration had to admit grudgingly [last] week — is it okay? No, of course not, the chattering class proudly concluded. One wonders why. What do they care? Having already accepted abortion and euthanasia — which are nothing more than the expedient killing of the unborn and the elderly — why should the expedient torture of terrorists, a lesser evil, trouble them? Oh, that’s right: the terrorists are guilty and the guilty under the ministrations of modern liberalism never suffer. Pain in modern life is for the innocent. Terrorists, we’re told by pro-abortion liberals, suffer excruciating pain while the ejected unborn and euthanized elderly feel nothing. And even if the latter do suffer pain, say these liberals, that pain is worth it. After all, abortion and euthanasia sustain a pleasant and peaceful lifestyle for the strong. Let the dead bury the dead. … Obama’s liberalism is not an opponent of human rights abuses but an embodiment of them. The CIA restricts itself to methods far less ruthless than those permitted by the platform of the Democratic Party. When will Obama bring his own platform into line with the Geneva Accords? It is a little late in the day for Obama to worry about America’s moral reputation. Resisting evil even ‘when it is hard’ hasn’t interested liberalism for at least four decades. It rests on an ideology of expedient evil and crass utilitarianism.”

Augustine On Prayer

Quoting Saint Augustine:

The desire is thy prayers; and if thy desire is without ceasing, thy prayer will also be without ceasing. The continuance of your longing is the continuance of your prayer.

Elementary Thoughts: Attitude – Part 2

As parents, our words and actions wield a powerful influence for good or evil over the lives of our children. In one sense, all that we do in the process of rearing our children is similar to a farmer breaking up the fallow ground of his land and planting the seeds of a future crop. The fruitfulness of that crop is largely determined by the faithfulness of the farmer to prepare the soil, plant good seeds, and care for the young plants until harvest. Thus, also, the quality and productiveness of a child’s adult life is influenced greatly by the care we provide in his early years.

In Proverbs 14:4 we find this saying, “Where no oxen are, the crib is clean: but much increase is by the strength of the ox (KJV).” In other words, oxen tend to make a mess and someone is going to have to clean up behind them. Yet, the ox has a lot to contribute to the quality of life for the primitive farmer. Children too, tend to make a mess and someone has to be responsible for their care. Human beings, however, are infinitely more valuable than oxen and the contributions they can make to the quality of life on this planet are significantly superior. The problem implied in the proverb is that human beings are often influenced to make decisions that have important consequences in the future by the weight of their inconvenience in the present. One true sign of maturity is the willingness to give up the pleasures of the moment to achieve a greater goal or value in the future.

As I have previously pointed out, many adults in our society see the responsibility of rearing a child as an unnecessary inconvenience. They choose to not have children or, if they do, they reconfigure the requirements of parenthood to a model that offers the least resistance to their present self centered life style. As time proved, the mother mentioned previously was not asking for help in dealing with her son’s problems. She was shifting responsibility to the teacher for handling these problems at school.

The message communicated to the child by this action was twofold. The mother’s words devalued him because they implied that her son was a bad person. The implication of her words, that this was a problem that the teacher would have to deal with, meant to him that his mom was not going to waste her time trying to help him be successful at school. His perception of his worth, character, and ability was being distorted by his mom’s attitude about “cleaning up the mess” and providing the care he needed. He was being effectively discouraged from the hope of becoming a successful and productive human being. Instead of alerting the teacher to the problems her son was having that she and the teacher could work on, the mother shattered any vision that this child might have developed to improve his hope of success at school. (Continued tomorrow)

A Ruthless Extortion

Grover Cleveland

Quoting President Grover Cleveland:

“When more of the people’s sustenance is exacted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of government, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of a free government.”

Charles Spurgeon: A Man’s Preacher

From: The Pen of Phil Johnson

Spurgeon was a man’s preacher, and his ministry reflected that. He influenced men—and he is still influencing men from the grave. And even though he was criticized and despised and belittled in his own time for being too aggressive in his defense of the truth, notice that we still read Spurgeon, and his words are still absolutely relevant to our times. But everyone has utterly forgotten all the effeminate preachers of that era who at the time were absolutely certain that they were more “relevant” because they were more in tune with their own times than Spurgeon was.

You know what? They were wrong. And they were wrong for the same reason people are wrong today to follow whatever is deemed stylish. We ought to let Scripture, not the trends of secular culture, define for us what the church should be like.

The Bible says the church ought to be led by men, and every man in the church ought to aspire to be like the perfect man, Jesus Christ. And that involves, among other things, the manly proclamation and defense of the truth of Scripture; as well as aiming to be living reflections of the kind of character He embodied—including, of course, the fruit of the Spirit, courage, conviction, compassion, zeal for the truth, and the kind of gentleness that keeps those characteristics in proper balance, as opposed to nullifying them.

Read the entire article. . . .