Of Great Concern

I saw an article today that told of the Ontario Minister of education telling the Catholic school board that they cannot teach pro-life, even though they are a religious based school and it is part of their faith.  Whether you like the catholics or not you have to see that this is a matter of great concern.  The idea that any religious group should be told by the government that they cannot teach their faith should concern us.  It would be different if this was a matter of a group that was teaching "hate" or "violence" but this is not related to teaching against the laws of our country.  

This is another evidence that these supposed laws like ones about "abortion" are actually now being used to restrict freedom and not to grant it.  So instead of such laws that are contrary to the Christian faith, allowing those who have a different belief to not be restricted in this area, instead now faith groups are going to be restricted unless they teach what the government says is ok.  This sounds really scary.  

Not only is this a poor precedent but this particular issue is of great importance.  The teaching of the sanctity of life and the precious gift of children is deeply rooted in the Bible.  Yet our society has decided that human life is not very important, it can be thrown away like trash.  Yet we have groups that seek to preserve and conserve the eggs of birds and their nests, we have scientists that look for signs of life in strange places and even on other planets, they would see the smallest microbe and proclaim life, yet a child that has not yet been born does not rate as life.  This is a sad state and a matter of great concern.

Our politicians went out on a limb to attempt to re-open this discussion and I applaud them.  Yet many groups claimed they did not respect women due to wanting to make sure life is properly defined.  But what about the unborn female?  Currently there is no protection for the unborn female in Canada.  A family with a background that puts greater value on male children can elect to have a female child aborted.  This is a horrible situation, that we would allow gender selection in our country is so very scary.

We need to be a people who really think these things through, the decisions of that past did not see the big picture and now we are in a situation that should give us Great Concern!

Preacherman

Control?

I recently engaged in a short discussion about a statement that was made about how "No one is in control and that is cooler anyway" (Adam Savage).  Today's post is in response to this idea that a foundational concept for one to be an Atheist is that there is "no one in control".  There are significant issues with this type of thinking which I will attempt to expose here.

The first big issue we find with this line of thinking is one of basic logic.  Do we understand what it means to "be in control"?  Some words that might help us understand "being in control" would be: authority, power, ability, role and responsibility.  For someone to have "control" they first need to have the role, responsibility and authority to exercise such control.  I cannot just decide that I am in control of a business that I walk into.  I cannot just decide to hire and fire the employees or change the prices of product and services.  I do not own the business and therefore would lack the role, responsibility and authority to wield such power.

In the same way we must realize that if no one is in control then no one has authority or power to make decisions and change things.  If we embrace such thinking then we have no purpose for life and no ability to make the world a better place.  As soon as you make a choice, you are taking the authority, responsibility and the power to make that choice.  At that point someone has to be in control.  Either you believe you are in control and are making your own choices or you believe God is in control and are following His directives.  But whichever it is, someone must be in control in order to make something happen.

I am at work today either because I decided I wanted to go to work or because my boss told me to go to work.  Either way you want to look at it, if I am at work today it is because a decision was made and had some authority behind it.  If I am not at work today then it is because with the same level of authority a decision was made for me to stay home.  If no one was in control then it would not matter, work or home, me or my boss, who cares, it is meaningless.

But with God, and He is in control, things have meaning and hope.  We are not here just putting in pointless time.  Rather we are here to live our lives with purpose and meaning, you were created for a great purpose and you can find it by getting to know the One who made you.  The answer to the meaning of life can only be found in knowing the One who gives life and purpose to all things.  Is this God of creation in control?  Yes He is.  But not in a way that you may think.  He does not make us as "robots" but rather He is powerful enough to make us with the ability to make choices and even come up with crazy ideas that forget Him.  The fact that there are Atheists that believe no god exists, is no surprise to the true God.  He is patient and wants you to recognize your selfish condition, we call it sin.  Sin is everything we do that is not in obedience to God.  Sometimes it is easy to see because our sinful behavior hurts others or destroys our life.

Jesus, being God, came to earth in the form of a human and lived without sin, then He died, giving up His life freely for us, to pay the penalty for our sin.  Now we need to repent of our sinfulness and accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior.  This is how we are to get to know the Creator.  Through Jesus, the Son of God.  This is where purpose and hope are found, this is Christianity.  Christians are not afraid of or opposed to science, rather we believe that science must be understood with proper logic and not with pre-disposed thinking that has been bound by those who fear the idea of God.  If you want to know a little bit about how so many have been mis-led even in institutions of higher learning, just watch Ben Stein's movie Expelled.  It is a very revealing look at how closed our institutions are to open discussions about Truth and letting science be properly defined and defended and not limited by fear.

God has no fear of science, Christians should have no fear of science but modern science seems to be afraid of Christians and the idea of God.  Twisted isn't it.

Preacherman