Welcome to the slippery slope, please mind your step

I can’t take it anymore.  After a short stint of blogging I had hung up the old keyboard and decided to refrain from social commentary.  However, this whole transgender bathroom fiasco is about to make my head explode. I have seen too many news stories, blog posts and videos of people telling me that I’m a bigot because and narrow-minded because I don’t support transgender people’s choice to urinate in whichever restroom they choose.  I have also seen a number of posts and videos of people claiming they will shoot transgender people on site. What I have not seen is a lot logical argument from either side.  So let me, with my limited public school education, give you my perspective on this situation and why all the emotion in this debate needs to be replaced is facts and logic.

To what end?

I read one blogpost that said that Christian people just need to open their minds with regard to transgenderness (is that a word?  Pansexual is a word so let’s make transgenderness a word too).  How far do you want us to open our minds?  We’ve been told by some scientists and Lady Gaga that homosexuals are born that way. Even if you were born gay, you still choose how to dress yourself.  So if living as the opposite gender is a choice how far do we need go to accommodate people’s choices?  How far do you want us to open our minds?  And if you demand that we open our minds to accommodate people’s choices then I demand that you contemplate a world where everyone’s choices need to be accommodated.  

Here’s a link to a video (here’s written story as well) about 52-year Paul Wolscht who lives his life as an six-year old girl.  If you peel back his rhetoric for a second and you will see that this where we are heading once we accommodate people’s choices in order for them to be happy. The narrator states that Paul is not a cross-dresser, but discovered he was was transgender—which is a person whose gender is different than the sex they were assigned at birth.  Wait, what?  Different than what was assigned at birth? Is there proof, for this?  I’m sorry, but you will have to prove to us that this is not just a choice?  Is there a test?  Is there a brain scan that peers into someone’s brain and shows that they are actually a woman and not a man?  Does their DNA show double X chromosomes instead of an XY?  If there is no proof, then it is a choice and if it is a choice then how far do we have to go to support this choice?  

So again I ask you where is the end? If I can be a woman, can I be black?  Can I be Asian or Hispanic?  Can I be a monkey or a dog?  Where does it end? 

You can’t have it both ways

In the video about Paul he said that he would have guys come over to his house wanting to try on his clothes.  At one point he described how surreal it was for there to be a 300-pound man with a goatee asking if he could kiss him while wearing one of his dresses.  But wait I thought you were a six-year old girl named Stefoknee.  Isn’t that man kissing you committing child rape?

Let’s just Bruce the biker gets picked up the cops and is questioned about his whereabouts. 

Cop: Where were you last night?

Bruce: I was with Stefoknee at her house.

Cop: Did you have sex with Stefoknee?

Bruce: Yes

Cop: How old is she?

Bruce: She’s 6, no wait, she’s 52, no wait, she’s, I mean he’s 52.  

Paul can’t have it both ways.  Either he is a six-year girl or he’s a 52-year-old man.  He can’t demand that we treat him how he feels only when it is convenient for him, that’s not how life works.  Otherwise I would be a woman when it came time for my annual fitness test or if I wanted to apply for a small business loan or when I wanted to compete in sports.  

Safety is paramount

Many of the opponents of the transgender bathroom policy cite safety as their biggest concern.  They don’t want their daughters and wives in a public restroom with some dude dressed in women’s clothes.  Proponents of this policy argue that this concern is not valid because not all transgender people are pedophiles and rapists.  Okay fine, let’s concede that point.  In fact, let’s go one step further let’s say that all transgender people in America are fine citizens who have no ill intent.  Safety is still a concern, and here’s why.  

I would venture to guess that 99% of high school boys have at some time been curious to know what it is like to go into the girl’s locker room at school.  I was a high school boy and I wondered.  I’m not a pervert, but I sure as heck had hormones and I liked girls in high school.  But here’s the thing, I didn’t go into the girl’s locker room because I knew it was wrong and I had enough respect the girls in my high school to give them their privacy.

Now imagine a world where a boy can choose to go into the girl’s locker room simply because he feels like being a girl that day.  How about the locker room at your gym or college?  Forget all the well-meaning transgenders who are trying to find happiness, but now you have opened the door to scrupulous people who don’t mind exploiting a situation for their benefit and other people’s harm.  

This is why people are upset, it’s not because of hate or bigotry, it’s because they realize that there are bad people in this world who want to do bad things.  It’s true that a little blue sign may not stop someone from committing a crime, but when we relax social norms it gives the predators a place to operate.  And trust me there are predators in this world.

The numbers don’t add up

According to this New York Times Article there is an estimated 700,000 transgender people in America or .3% of the U.S. population.  The article also says that since 1936 only 135,000 people have officially changed their name and sex with the Social Security Administration. So here’s my take.  A person’s happiness should be subservient to the greater good.  If what makes a person happy puts other people at risk shouldn’t that person abstain from the behavior so as to not put others in danger? 

Again, if you are asking me to not be so narrow-minded then I implore you to think about the ramifications of accommodating everyone’s choices in order to make them happy.  Do we really as a society want to go to that rabbit hole?  What happens when people ask to the lower the age of consent from 18 to 16 or to 14?  What if a man 40-year old man lives as a 12-year old girl and wants to wants to have sex with a 12-year old boy?  At what point do we devolve into looking at people as either the penetrator or the penetrated with no question of age or gender?  That is where we are heading if we don’t change course. 

The demise of our society will not be guns or the environment; the demise of the American society will be when we exchange moral absolutes for moral relatives.  

Leftovers, enjoy

L. Kyle

Fifty Shades of Stupid

Argumentum ad populum is Latin for “appeal to the people” and is an argument used by some for justifying their actions because it appeals to the masses.  Elvis famously titled one of his albums 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong as an example of this argument. This line of thinking can have grave consequences, because although 50 million people had bought Elvis records does it really make them right? 

For those of us that have kids at some point have probably heard the argument (or made it ourselves when we were kids) “well, all my friends are doing it.”  This argument is always used by children who in their stupid kid brain know that what they are asking for is ridiculous or harmful or against a parent’s wishes.  This argument is generally a last ditch attempt to convince a parent to relent.  However, the parent’s response is almost always “well if all of your friends [enter outlandish scenario], would you do that too?” This is a classic parenting technique which then renders argumentum ad populum ineffective.   

My question is this, at what point does argumentum ad populum go from being a silly argument  which parents easily refute to valid reason for adults to act like idiots?  This Valentine’s Day the movie Fifty Shades of Grey opens up in theaters.  The movie is based on the book of the same name and is part of trilogy.  The books have sold over 100 million copies worldwide and according some cinematic prognosticators the movie will be a blockbuster. 

I cannot comment on the content of the books because I haven’t read them, but from the water-cooler talk around my workplace the story seems to be nothing short of pornography with a tad more plot.  According to the Daily Mail one fifth of the 100 minute movie is filled with sex scenes.  But it’s not just the amount of sex that is drawing criticism; it’s the nature of the sexual content.  The books/movie glorifies sadomasochism and takes the practice from the seedy underbelly of society and puts it in the mainstream.

It’s almost nauseating to think that a book of this nature has sold 100 million copies and then the movie is set to become a blockbuster.  Our society has become the preverbal frog slowing being boiled to death.  We have sat around for so long slowing accepting the perversion of sex that it has gotten to this.  When I first heard they were making the book into a movie I naively thought that it would be a direct to video release with little fanfare and no real following.  I naively thought that the American people would at some point come their senses and decry a piece of trash like this. 

Like I said, I was naïve.  Now you have sex toys being sold at Target and hotels offering Fifty Shades of Grey package deals complete with bondage accessories.  If this movie is a commercial success, which it looks to be, there are many far-reaching implications for our society.

Understandably feminist groups have rallied against this movie because they fear that glorifying S&M practices will lead to more domestic violence and women will be humiliated through domineering practices. This movie is sending mixed messages to our kids as well.  They have been inundated the past decade with anti-bullying messages.  One organization’s tag line is “Hands and Words Are Not for Hurting.”  Now, they are going to have to modify it to “Hands and Words Are Not For Hurting Unless for Bondage.” 

In the end though, this movie glorifies the idea of sex without consequence.  It takes the most intimate expression of love between a man and a woman and demeans it to an act of savagery.  At one point during the movie trailer the protagonist says to the lead female actress something like “I’m not into romance.”  What he’s basically saying is “I don’t care about you as a person, all I see you for is a vessel for me to obtain physical gratification.”

Listen, I understand that pornography is a huge business and that sex in Hollywood movies is a staple.  I also understand that movies studios try and use the ‘shock factor’ in order to sell tickets.  This movie goes beyond the simple shock and awe technique.  This movie puts abnormal sexual behavior in the forefront for everyone to see and dresses it up as acceptable, nay, desired behavior.  This movie does more than simply cross the bounds of acceptability; it redefines the bounds all the while saying “100 million fans can’t be wrong.”

Fifty Shade of [Stupidity] may not be the raunchiest movie to be shown on the big screen or perhaps not even the most perverted.  The Sundance Film Festival is a staple of low budget independent films whose themes are just as provocative, but then very few of those films ever get viewed on the Today Show with Matt Lauer.  Proof again that Hollywood is trying to bring a certain amount of glitz and glamor to sexual perversion.

The magazine covers, the talk shows, and media blitz all do one thing; erode away at the Biblical model of sexual relationships—one man, one woman within a marriage relationship.  So much of our focus has been given to homosexuality that a story of a man and woman involved in sadomasochism seems tame.  In fact it almost seems romantic because they are wrapping it in the big heart-shaped box that is Valentine’s Day. 

But mark my words; more insidious things are to come.  It won’t be long now before orgies, bestiality and even pedophilia will be dressed up and made to seem acceptable.  If you don’t believe me just ask your grandparents if Fifty Shades of Grey would be acceptable in their day.  In 50 years time our morality is almost nonexistent.  The justification to destroy morality is done with the four little words “whatever makes you happy.” 

People think that God is prude and that he limits their fun, but God created all things, including sex.  He never intended to limit our fun, but He gave boundaries to enjoy ourselves without bringing harm.  Sex does have consequences despite what Fifty Shades makes you think.  Besides STD’s there are many unintended consequences of sex; broken hearts, failed marriages, emotional disorders, eating disorders, substance abuse, rape and sexual assault, sexual exploitation, just to name a few. God doesn’t want to spare us from the momentary pleasure of sex; He just wants to spare us from the long-term unintended consequences of sex outside of marriage. 

One hundred million fans can be wrong, no matter how loud they cheer.

Leftovers, enjoy.

L. Kyle

You can't draw that!

“I believe in a God who doesn’t need heavy financing” is what Erwin M. Fletcher said in the movie Fletch Lives!  You know, I have to agree with him.  I also don’t believe in a God who is easily offended or a God who needs me to stick up for Him.  Sure, I may get a little bent when Bill Maher says that my God is ruthless, over-bearing, homicidal, and a homophobe.  I did get a little hot under the collar in college when a professor told me that a crucifix in a jar of urine was art.  I don’t like “Buddy Jesus” or Jesus Christ Superstar or assertions from Richard Dawkins that I’m diluted for believing in God.

But at the end of the day I don’t lose sleep over it. I would be lying, however, if I said that I never wanted to punch Dawkins or Maher, but given the chance I know I wouldn’t.  Even if they were in front of my house with blasphemous depictions of Jesus Christ I wouldn’t assault them.  I certainly would not go to their place of employment and mow them down with automatic weapons.

I suppose I don’t quite understand what drives a person to massacre others over a couple of cartoons. Is the god of Islam that fragile he can’t beat-up a couple of cartoonists in the streets?  The god of Islam must be so puny that he can’t take a little lampooning and his followers must murder those who make fun of him. 

Doing evil things in the name of their god is not the story here.  The story in my pea-sized brain is that people in our Government and media are hasty to distance these killers from Islam even though these criminals are more than willing to call themselves Muslims. However, they would be more than happy to associate every gun-toting, right wing wacko to the Christian faith.

It’s like our Nation has an inability to say that this has anything to do with Islam or its followers.  Howard Dean, the former presidential candidate, came out and said that the Paris attackers are not Muslim; that they were “as Muslim as he is”.  What?! Not Muslim?  Then what the heck were they? Buddhist?  Atheist?  Wiccan? Hey Howie, I’m pretty sure if you ask them they will say they are Muslim.

Two years ago Jay “the Carn” Carnie, former (half)White House press secretary, scolded the same cartoonists who were killed this week for running cartoons which might be offensive to Muslims.  What about all the other religions these cartoonists made fun of?  Did Carnie say that they shouldn’t run offensive Darwin cartoons because it might offend the Atheists?  Did Carnie warn the world that Christians would be offended at blasphemous caricatures of Jesus?  Nope he didn’t.  You know why? Because liberal America for some strange reason believes that Islam is the religion of peace and Christianity is full of trigger happy psychos.

 

On January 7, Jimmy Kimmell had Bill Maher on his program.  Bill decried the recent shooting and said that millions of Muslims supported these killings.  Mr. Kimmell tried to rebut his comment by asking “do you really think that millions of Muslims support this violence?”  What if it was some crazed gun-toting redneck from the Bible-belt who shot up a bunch of people, do you really think Kimmell would have the same rebut? Or do you think that he would agree that millions of Christians support this type of violence?

 “Darn right L. Kyle those dang Christians are always killing innocent abortion doctors and blowing up abortion clinics in the name of their God!”

I’m glad you brought that up average liberal American.  According to Salon.com since 1993 there have 17 attempted murders of doctors or staff members at clinics and eight murders.  I’m not minimizing the murder of anyone, but eight people murdered in 20+ years is a far cry from 12 people gunned down in one day.  Not only that, but not all of the people killing abortion doctors or bombing abortion clinics claim to do in the name of God. 

At the very least if Christians are killing abortion doctors they are doing in the defense of human life…not because their God was made fun of.

So why the double standard?  Why does our current culture eschew Christians and defend Muslims? 

“Because you dang Christians hate gays and hate women and don’t want nudity on television!”

Um…so do the Muslims.  Just look at Iran, Saudi Arabia and a host of other countries that follow strict Islamic laws.  Some countries put gays in prison, force women to dress in burkas and restrict media access so that they don’t see nudity and other Western culture

. 

“Well it’s because you Christians are so intolerant! Prop 8, L. Kyle, Prop 8 dang it!”

Um…I wonder if there is a Harvey Milk day in Iran? 

Look, I’m not defending all the actions of Christians in this country.  I don’t agree with or like the actions of most Televangelists or the parishioners of the Westboro Baptist Church.  But I also don’t agree with Bill Maher’s comment that “all religions are dangerous.”  People have and will forever do evil things in the name of God, Muhamad, Allah, Satan or barking dogs. 

The point is that there is a large sentiment that Christianity is bad and Islam is good despite the mass killings, bombings, and terror sprees committed by Muslims.  People always say that those people “are radical Muslims” and not all Muslims want to behead people and partake in jihad. 

The word radical means “of or going to the root or origin; fundamental.” So by the strict definition these people terrorists in Paris are Muslims.  They are going to the root or origin or fundamentals of the teachings of the Muhammad.  Muhammad taught to kill those that would not covert to Islam.  Those who don’t subscribe to this teaching are the ones in danger of not being Muslims.

On the other side though, ‘radical’ Christians are the ones truly loving people without lopping off their heads.  Radical Christians claim to love Jesus and follow His teachings. The problem with Christ’s teaching--to those who are not Christians--is that it exposes that people are in need of a Savior.  His teachings tell us to die to ourselves and put others needs above our own. In fact Jesus said that in order be a true follower of His that you need to “pick up your cross and follow Him.” He tells Christians that they will face trails and persecutions.  Shoot Jesus even knew that people would make fun of Him and us, but we need to pray for those people instead.    

Perhaps those in the media should examine side by side the teachings of Muhammad and Jesus.  They would find out that Muhammad preaches death and destruction and Jesus preaches graced and forgiveness.

Leftovers, enjoy.

L. Kyle

Guess what kids...

…Santa Clause is not real (and neither is the tooth fairy).  You can thank me later for letting your kids know the truth.  Now you are free to explain to them the real reason for Christmas. You’re probably not surprised that I didn’t lie to my kids about Santa Claus.  Actually, my parents never tried to pass off Santa as real either, so I guess you could say it runs in the family. 

Now before you turn me or my parents in for child abuse let me explain the problem with Santa Claus, and in a broader sense the commercialized, waterdown, poltically correct version of what we call Christmas.  Before I begin let me explain to you that I’m not history major.  I’m not going to lecture you on the historical basis for Christmas or argue that Jesus was born in some other month and Christmas is really a pagan holiday, but I am going to argue that the current version of the December 25th holiday robs us of celebrating what was the greatest gift given to mankind. 

The first problem I have with our current version of Christmas is Santa Claus.  I won’t go as far as a church in Georgia telling people that Santa Claus is Satan, but he’s pretty close.  Have you ever thought much about the logic of Santa Clause?  I’m not just talking about some person squeezing his fat body down chimneys, riding in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer and delivering gifts to all the boys and girls in the world in one night. 

I’m talking about that flipping list he keeps.  How nerve-wracking to kids, constantly worrying if they were naughty or nice. What’s more is that Santa never gives the criteria for naughty or nice.  In all the Hallmark Christmas movies about Santa Claus he never tells us flat out what it takes to get on the nice list.  Is the standard set in stone?  Does it change?  What happens if I spill the milk on Christmas Eve, lie about to my parents and blame it on my brother?  What then?! Am I out, the day he’s supposed to show up?!  I couldn’t live with this kind of pressure.

“Oh come on L. Kyle, don’t be such a party pooper, of course kids don’t worry about that.”

Don’t they?  If a kid believes that some fat and jolly guy delivers gifts to them wouldn’t they worry about what gets them on the ‘nice list’?  What about kids who constantly hear from their parents that they are failures?  What hope do they have? Kids believe in Santa because they have faith; faith that mom and dad are telling them truth, faith in things unseen.  And it’s because of that faith that I want them to know the truth about Christmas. 

The second problem I have with December 25th is how water-downed it has become. Christmas should be a time to celebrate that God came down from heaven, down to humanity.  The God of the Bible isn’t a god who sits afar off, inaccessable, but He is a God who loves us so much that he came to us.  He came to us to provide relationship with Himself.  The fact that the Creator of the Universe came down to us is cause to celebrate.  It is a time to gather with our families and celebrate God’s goodness.

But the falacy with our culture is that the meaning behind the Hol(y)day is being stripped away.  God established feasts and festivals for the Nation of Isreal to hold every year so they would not forget what He did for them.  Likewise we should celebrate Christmas not just to buy stuff or have family dinners, but we should celebrate so that we never forget that God Himself came down to us, not to condemn us, but to bring us life. 

The meaning of Christmas is being stripped away not because political correctness, but people want to strip all refernces to God away from us. 

“No L. Kyle, I just don’t want to offend someone who may celebrate Kwanzaa or another holiday, that’s why I say ‘Happy Holidays’”

Nope. If that was the case then December 25 would not be a holiday in this country.  You see, everyone still wants to get the day off, everyone wants to get gifts.  Retailers plan for Christmas, they depend on Christmas to survive.  Our society still wants a day off and to give and get gifts, but it just wants to do it without mentioning God. 

“What about Easter L. Kyle, not a huge fuss over that.”

Of course not because Easter falls on a Sunday during the Spring.  Most of us already get Sunday’s off and retail isn’t dependent on the success of the Easter shopping season.  It’s almost laughable when Target advertises huge discounts for “holiday shopping”.  Or when retailers tell us that there only so-many days of the “holiday shopping season” left.  Do they think we are that stupid?  No they just want to strip God from our culture. 

According to the Education World website (go figure) December is a month of Multicultural Holiday Celbrations.  Here is their list:

Ramadan

Eid al-Fitr

Saint Nicholas day

Eid’ul-Adha

Fiesta of Our Lady of Guadalupe

St. Lucia Day

Hanukkah

Christmas Day

Three Kings Day/Epiphany

Boxing Day

Kwanzaa

Omisoka

Yule

Satumalia

Other than Boxing Day, which is celebrated in the UK, none of these holidays have gift giving as one of their major components except for Christmas.  Yet the “holiday shopping” season is supposed to multi-cultural.  But what are people shopping for?  Christmas gifts or “holiday gifts.”  And why does the mult-cultural shopping season end on December 24th?

It seems to me that people want all the pleasantries of Chirstmas without the meaning of Christmas.  “Give me gifts and a day off,” some would say, but don’t tell me about the real meaning behind it. 

The sad thing about this whole deal is that God gave us His Son as a gift and our society wants us to forget that.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." John 3:16

Leftovers enjoy.

L. Kyle.

Down the rabbit hole we go...

…and much like the world that Alice encounter, the world we live is starting to make very little sense.  Take this story which broke in February about a California High School senior who is named Pat (fitting name) who claims he is a girl trapped in a boy’s body.  In a normal world Pat’s claim would not be that big of deal, but in California his claim lands him a spot on his High School’s girls’ softball team. 

Under California’s newly enacted law Assembly Bill 1266 students will have access to facilities, sports teams and programs that are consistent with their gender identity, not necessarily their biological composition. 

So that’s it then; all a person has to do to have access to opposite gender facilities and teams is claim they are a girl or a boy.  Do you believe now that we are in a different world?  Are we not, in fact in a Bizzaro world here?  And the absolutely maddening part is that people in the media don’t even bat an eye.  In fact in few news stories I have read refer to Pat as ‘she’!!!

Take a more recent story of a family who was given an award because their daughter wanted to be a boy and the parents not only complied with their daughter’s instance, but e-mailed their friends to tell them the good news.  Insanity!  First, that the parents would cave into their child’s demand and second because there is an award for such things (of course the award is in honor of Harvey Milk so what do you expect?).

 

The parents claim that a large percentage of children with ‘gender identity’ issues end up committing suicide.  Which if you ask L. Kyle, it sounds like LGBT community bullied the parents into this.  The LGBT community wants us all to think that ‘transgender’ is a real thing rather than just an excuse for people to behave in whatever manner makes them feel good.

The champions of the gender identity issues have not stopped to think about the ramifications of these decisions.  All they see is perceived equality for sexually deviant behavior.  When I was growing up the big push was not to have sex before you were married, but it was always implied that boys would be married to girls.  Now days it’s not a question of having sex before you are married (that’s a given), but what gender you want to have sex with and even more, what gender do you want to be! 

The maddening part of all this is that people in our nation are just nodding their heads and going along with this garbage.  What was the school board discussion about Pat’s request like?  Did anyone stand up and say “No amount of make-up or frilly clothes will change this boy’s DNA?”  And that’s really the point; a person can lop off parts of their bodies and take hormone pills, but it will not change the fact that women have two X chromosomes and men have one X and one Y.

But we’ve gone nutty with perceived gender identity issues. TIME magazine this month has transgender issues as their front page cover.  People are getting awards for dressing their girl up as a boy.  And the speed at which these issues are being brought to the forefront of society is astonishing.  It’s almost as if there is an agenda beneath all of these actions. 

Oh wait, there is an agenda.  And this agenda is being built on the backs of young people like Ryland and Pat who are confused about life.  And this agenda is more sinister than it appears.  Simply put, this agenda is pure evil.  This agenda will stop at nothing short of stripping every last piece of morality from American culture. 

Oh, L. Kyle, you’re such a right wing loon!

That may be, but look where we have come from.  It wasn’t too long ago that sex was regarded as something only for marriage between a man and a woman.  I’m not naïve, sex outside of marriage has been around in America forever, but at the very least it wasn’t celebrated and at best it was discouraged.  Now days even the staunchest conservatives and many Christians see pre-marital sex as okay.  In fact in a recent poll 61% of Christians say that they would have sex before marriage.

Okay, so change the views about sex outside marriage, check. 

Now that the agenda had won that battle it moved on to homosexuality.  That one has been a little tougher, but through clever use of language and with a little help from science, homosexuality has become more widely accepted.  After all, if science can say that a person’s sexual orientation is part of their DNA then we can equate sexual preference to race, gender and eye color.

Homosexuality widely accepted, check.

The agenda hasn’t stopped there; after all homosexuals can blend into society and the agenda can’t have that.  Ah!  Transgender, that’s the next thing to have accepted.  Now, not only should we accept homosexual activity as normal we need to also accept men dressing and acting as women and women dressing and acting like men.  And we can see that the agenda is gaining ground.  So much so that boys like Pat are being called ‘her and she’ all because they say so.  Watch the first 30 seconds of this clip and tell me that this is not the same thing.  Lunacy!

So what is the next stop for the agenda?  Think about what’s left people!  Once we deviate from the standard of sexual relationships, which is one man, one woman in the bounds of marriage, everything will become acceptable.  How much further will the Godly people allow this to go before we rise up and challenge this agenda?

Sex with animals?  Will that be enough?  What happens when the agenda comes for our kids?  And it will.  Ney, it already has.  The agenda is already teaching our children in elementary school about sex and sexuality.  When our teachers should be teaching reading, writing and arithmetic, they are teaching our kids about sexuality. 

This agenda is winning and it is gaining ground and quickly.  It has already consumed pop culture, it’s taking over our education institutions and worst of all it’s sweeping through our churches. 

Edmund Burke said that all that has to happen for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.  So, good men and women are we going to do nothing and watch our children and this nation be consumed by an evil agenda?  Or are we going to stand up and fight.  That doesn’t mean holding signs that say, “God hates fags”, but it means getting our knees and praying for God’s mighty hand to work in this great nation.  It means evangelizing the lost and disciplining those who are Christians already.  It means setting aside our watered-down Christianity, which is more concerned with our own prosperity, and truly living for Christ, which means accomplishing the Great Commission.

Go therefore and make disciples (Matt 28:19).

Left overs enjoy,

L. Kyle 

The Truth

Here’s what I know to be true.

This world and all that is in it was created by an intelligent being.  There is no other explanation about how we came to be here.  Evolutionary theory is incorrect because there is less proof to support this theory than there is proof to support the existence of a Creator.  How do I know this?  Ask any evolutionary biologist where we came from and they cannot, nay, will not, give you a definitive answer.  Even the mighty Richard Dawkins when asked “where did we come from?” he simply said “I don’t know.”  Well, if Mr. Dawkins and the rest of them are unwilling to give a definitive answer then I am unwilling to believe them.

If I was created by an intelligent being then that being must be sought out.  There is no other choice.  The One who gave me life must be found so that I can bring Him worship.  If I was created then I cannot worship myself because the creation cannot worship itself.  So who created me? Certainly the One who created me would be divine, no He would be Holy, because if He was not Holy then He would be like me and I cannot worship something that is like me. 

 I was meant for worship.   I was given a voice to sing, hands to create, the ability to love; I was not just meant to worship, I was built expressly for it.  That is why celebrities are paid so much money and adorn magazines and billboards.  That’s why the manliest of men will worship NASCAR, or football or hunting or fishing.  They may not call it worship but they give it their time and attention, their thoughts and their actions.  All of those people, all of those things want my worship.

So if I was built for worship then who do I worship?  Do I worship Muhammad?  No, he was just a person like me.  Do I worship Buddha?  No, he too was a man just like me.  Zeus? Poseidon? All the Greek and Roman gods?  No, they were not divine, they were fallible just like me.  Joseph Smith?  No, he was just a man.  Mother Nature? No, she was created just like me and the creation cannot worship another part of creation.  So I cannot worship men or religions whose central character is a person.  I cannot worship nature or other created things because they are like me.

Who is worthy of my worship?  The God of the Bible; He is the only one who is Divine and Holy and worthy of my worship.  Because I must worship, I was created for it.  But God in His divinity did not create me to be a robot. He created me to worship Him and love Him.  The only true love is love freely given, which is why God created me with free will.  He wanted so much to love His creation and for His creation to love Him that He was willing to risk the creation not loving Him back.  He gave His creation free will so that His creation would give its love freely.  Without free will there is no true love.

God does not command His creation’s love.  He gave His creation a choice from the beginning.  He told His creation to follow Him to avoid evil and man would live in perfection, as God Himself is perfect.  Man was with God face to face; face to face with the Creator of the universe with no death, no pain, no tears, no war, no hurt, just perfect peace living in fellowship with a perfect God.  This is what He intended for us; this was His plan.  If only we would have followed His plan we would still be there.  But, alas, we choose poorly.  We gave up perfection for the knowledge of evil.  We gave up heaven for the chance to taste the forbidden.  We choose poorly.

We were banished from perfection.  We were no longer perfect so we could no longer dwell with perfection, just like the darkness cannot dwell with the light.  God is Holy and we are not, so our fellowship with God was broken.  With the knowledge of evil we gained the full understanding of all that is opposite a Holy God.  Not only did we gain knowledge of evil, but we now experience the full weight of evil.  God was perfect in His promise.  He promised that by obtaining knowledge of evil, we would certainly die. So we took on corruptible flesh; flesh that gets sick and diseased.  Flesh that puts its own lusts ahead of anything else. 

God loves His creation despite our poor choice.  His plan was for us to commune with Him for eternity because He is eternal.  He is, He was and He will always be.  His plan is still for us to be with Him for eternity, but we could not be with Him because He is Holy and we are not.   

He made a way.  He is perfect and in His perfection He made a way for us, His creation, to be with Him once again.  Our poor choice, our sin, caused death and the only way for us to know the cost of our choice would be the shedding of innocent blood.  Innocent blood covers our sin.  So God set aside a people who would know Him by His nature.  They would understand their sin through His written law.  They would receive atonement for their sin through the shedding of innocent blood.  They would forever know that their sin was covered because an innocent animal would be sacrificed and their blood spilled so that man could commune with a Holy God.

Shedding of animal blood was only a shadow of what was to come.  In order for us to truly be with God again a perfect Man would have to shed His blood so the sin would once and for all be forgiven.  But who?  Once the well of human life had been poisoned it will forever be poisoned and no man is perfect.  So God in His infinite Mercy stepped from eternity into time, from His perfection and put on corruptible flesh. 

Jesus.

He was able to do what no other man could do.  Jesus, the God Man, the embodiment of perfection in human form lived as God intended.  He was perfect in word and deed.  He had to be.  In order to fulfill the law, to live as God intended us to live, Jesus had to be perfect.  And in His perfection He would right the wrong done by man.  He would bring us back into fellowship with Father God.  He demonstrated God’s perfect love of humanity.  Jesus demonstrated that above all God wants communion with His creation.  God wants communion and fellowship with us so much that He sent His only Son to walk among us and lay down His life for us.

Jesus gave his life freely.  No one took His life.  He was not surprised that the religious leaders wanted Him dead.  He was not ambushed.  He was not bamboozled, duped or tricked.  He gave His life freely.  He was beaten, bruised, nailed hands and feet to a Tree for His creation. For me.  The weight of all the sin committed against a perfect God was placed on the Son of God while He hung there.  Every sin every person has ever committed and will commit.  Murderers, rapists, tyrants, liars, thieves, fornicators, drunkards, gossipers; every person born and every sin committed, piled up Jesus’ shoulders.  The sin of the world was as much placed on Jesus as Him taking it on Himself.  His innocent blood made right all of the wrongs done to God. 

That is God; that is love.  God loves us so much. He wanted us to be where He is that He devised a plan to make us perfect once again.  He stepped down to us, did what we could not do.  He does not demand anything of us.  He has given us a gift.  He placed our salvation from this dying world within our grasp.  All we have to do is reach out and take it. Claim the gift as our own.  Accept the gift which God has given us through Jesus’ sacrifice.  Take it and we will be with Him in eternity at the end of this life.  Leave it and we will be forever separated from God.  God loves us so much that even after His Son’s sacrifice He offers free will. 

The choice is ours, we must claim this gift of salvation.  We must admit that we are hopelessly lost, condemned to die because we were born into sin, because we know evil and we have embraced evil. That makes us unclean; we are no longer Holy and perfect as God is perfect.  Only by accepting Christ’s sacrifice can we enter into God’s perfection at the end of this life.  We were meant to live with God eternally.  We are eternal beings, only this shell is dying, but the spirit inside this shell will last forever.  Christ died so that our spirits would live eternal with God in Perfection as God intended.

I have claimed that gift.  I accept what Jesus did for me. I had to.  I had to know the God who created me and in order for me to know that, I had to accept who I was.  I was a sinner.  I am a sinner.  Cut off from the God who created me.  I was cut off, until He came and took my place.  I was sentenced to die and Jesus took my place.  I owe Him my life. 

What can I do then?  Return to the prison from once I came?  Certainly not!  I must live a life which honors the life given in my place.  I must find out how Jesus lived, the things He spoke the deeds He did.  I must find them out and live my life according to His example.  Not because I must earn my way (that is already paid), but because of Love.  God’s love for me put His Son on that tree and so my love and my life is the only acceptable way to honor Him.  I will do what I was created to do.  I will worship the God who created me.  I will worship with my words and my deeds. 

And I will show all those around me that God wants to commune with them just as much as with me.  I must tell others about the gift.  That is what I am supposed to do.  I am supposed to wake the dead. I am not to condemn the dead.  Who am I to condemn the dead?  Was it I who created this world? Was it I who was perfect from the beginning?  No.  I was dead in my sin like everyone else.  Until I accepted the free gift, until I claimed Jesus’ death as my own death. 

Now I am alive, no longer dead in sin.  And because I am alive I must show those who are dead that they too can be alive.  God has shown me His compassion and therefore I must have compassion for those around me.  I was dead too.  My sin was no worse or better than theirs.  Who am I to judge their sin?  I cannot judge the sin of the dead?  I am only alive because of Jesus’ sacrifice.  But I cannot be silent.  I cannot sit by and let the dead perish without telling them about life.  I have to show them there is life, because what God gave me, He gives to all of His creation.

I know these things to be true.  God created me.  I was created to worship God.  I could not worship God because I was dead.  Jesus gave me life.  I will honor Jesus with nothing less than my life.  I will tell others about Jesus. 

Face of Evil

The events of this past week (April 15-20, 2013) have been exhausting and very frustrating.  I feel horrible for the people whose lives were lost in this senseless tragedy.  And I, like most, waited with baited breath to see these two men apprehended.  But watching the news coverage of these types of events is exhausting.  I don’t mean to be shallow, but I lament these events not only for the loss of life, but the also for the incessant news coverage and the tireless speculation. 

The events of this week bring into question the necessity for the 24-hour news.  Just because we have the technology to bring live coverage of a helicopter hovering over a Best Buy doesn’t really mean that we need to show a helicopter hovering over a Best Buy.  Although this was certainly the most visible news story of the week, what else did we miss this past week? 

There are two stories that failed to break into American homes amid the constant news about the Boston Bombings and the trip to Cuba by Jay-Z and Beyonce. 

Story 1: Scientists found life on Mars.  According to the report the Mars Rover identified a cluster of living cells multiplying rapidly.  It is unknown at this point if the living cells are human, animal or plant life.  Needless to say NASA and other agencies are scrambling a team of people who can make the journey to Mars to protect this life and study it.

Story 2: Police found the remains of what appeared to be thousands of human babies at a farm in rural Pennsylvania.  The suspects are still at large, but Federal Investigators are calling this a place where religious group sacrificed children to an unknown god.  The group and its leader have not been identified, but investigators have a few leads.

Wow!  Those stories didn’t make the cut, presumably because of the Boston Bombings and the whereabouts of Jay-Z.  Incredible really, life on Mars and some wackos sacrificing live babies!  How can this be?  Well I will tell you how it can be.  It didn’t get reported because I made up those stories; those stories are not real.  But do you know what story is real which has not yet made national headlines?  The story of Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia abortionist and what is being deemed by the few media outlets that did pick up the story, as a “house of horrors.”

Face of Evil - Kermit Gosnell

The testimony, which is coming out in the trial, is that Mr. Gonsnel (I refuse to call him a doctor) performed late term abortions, nay, murder, by snipping the spinal cord of babies born, not “fetuses” in utero, but babies alive an on the table.  He is charged with 7 counts of first-degree murder and one count of third-degree murder of an adult patient. 

One of the clinic staff testified that a baby was still alive after a botched abortion and put into a toilet where she said it was swimming in the toilet trying to get out. Another clinic staff member grabbed the baby and snipped its spinal cord to kill it.    The prosecution also showed that the drain pipes were so clogged with discarded babies that the clinic had to remove the toilet to unclog the drain! 

So why haven’t news agencies covered this trial in more detail?  I’m mean, remember how much attention the chick from Florida received after being accused of murdering her daughter and burying her not far from her house?  This man is accused of murdering seven babies, one adult and the only thing we get are one and two minute segments from the big news networks.  The Boston Bombings killed 2 adults and one child and wounded more than 180 people.  Sad. Tragic. But this jack wagon murders hundreds of children and nothing?! 

Some news agencies claim that the details are far too horrific to cover.  Hogwash!  The news media showed hours of bombing footage and bloody people being treated by emergency workers.  They refuse to cover this trial because it’s about abortion, plain and simple.  It makes a woman’s right to choose convenience look like what it really is…murder.

The frustrating part is that if scientists did find a cluster of cells on Mars they would move heaven and hell to get there to save it, to study it, to protect it.  We would have CNN covering it painstaking detail.  Wolf Blizer would probably be flown to Mars himself to give us the play by play.

Could you imagine if there was a religious cult out there sacrificing children?  Wall-to-wall news coverage.  Wes Craven would turn it a feature film and Lifetime would turn it into a made-for-TV movie or even a mini series.  There would be public outcry and the Department of Justice would not rest until the cult was taken out and the leaders prosecuted to the fullest extent. 

But you see, this is happening.  Science has found a cluster of cells that are alive and go from a mass of living cells to become a full-grown human.  Only the cells are not on Mars, but in a woman’s womb.  And there is religious cult out there sacrificing babies by the millions all in the name of their god…themselves. 

Those people who choose not to follow an established religion can be categorized as Humanists.  Humanism is just a fancy term for saying “if it feels good, do it.”  And for some, abortion feels good.  Well, maybe not the procedure, but the sex that led to it, or the drug use, which led to the sex feels good.  Imagine a world where you can have as much sex as you want, with whomever you want without the pesky consequences of having a child.  Welcome to world brought to you by Planned Parenthood.

It is unfortunate that many of us have grown up hearing only about the risks and dangers of expressing ourselves sexually. While those risks are real, it is also true that having sex play — with or without a partner — can be a positive and powerful force in our lives. It helps us create connections to other people and it helps us enjoy our world.

- Planned Parenthood

Leftovers enjoy,

L. Kyle