Frustration

Forgive me while I vent a bit, but I feel like I've reached my limit. I am truly surrounded by people who refuse to think. As anyone who's read much of this blog can tell, I like to address topics a little deeper than who I think should be voted off of American Idol. Yet it seems that I'm surrounded by those whose desire (or capacity) for intellectual stimulation is practically non-existent! I long to have people around me who are not afraid to converse about serious topics...even if they don't agree with me (actually, they tend to provoke better discussions because I'm forced to address points of view I may not have previously considered.) And while I'm on a rant, I'm getting fed up with the non-thinking, anti-intellectual dunderheads who deny the basic laws of logic and can't put a decent argument together to save their lives (apologies to Tony Woodlief, if he's reading...I'm not certain if the grammar in that sentence is quite correct.) They have no qualms about claiming all sorts of "gray areas" in the realm of morality. News Flash: There's more black-and-white than you think if you get down to the principle of the subject being addressed. They also show no reticence in denying the principle of non-contradiction. My world is definitely a non-thinking, post-modern, entertainment-driven world and it is a lonely place for someone who loves great ideas and deep thinking. For goodness sake, I have to listen to internet radio programs and on-line speeches to get the stimulation I desire! But where's the interaction?? I can't speak with or question a voice in my ear!

Please, please, please...if you're reading this, send me some encouragement that there are still some thinkers I can interact with. Thinkers who aren't afraid to stand for what they believe is true and are able to defend it well. Don't abandon me to solitary confinement in this hell of shallow post-modernism.

Low View of Marriage

I've been stewing about this for a couple of months now and am in the middle of writing a much longer piece about this topic, but I've decided to give a short preview here just to get some of the ideas out and let my readers here (both of you) something to chew on. Actually I was listening to R.C. Sproul's broadcast from last week regarding the sexual revolution. He's making some of the same points I'm going to be making in my longer piece; this being primarily that once anything of a moral nature is divorced from God's plan for it, that thing loses its meaning and is made a commodity to be traded in on a mass scale to/with whomever has a desire for it.

In the case of sexuality, when parents have "the talk" with their children they tend to give non-biblical reasons for maintaining chastity until marriage. Rather, the reasons given for abstaining from sexual conduct revolve around fear of pregnancy/disease and/or loss of reputation. Sproul rightly points out that all of these possible consequences of the sexual act have now been aleviated by modern medical science, either through contraceptives (some of which also guard against disease) or through medical treatment. And the idea of a loss of reputation has been turned completely upside down as those who abstain are now the ones being ostracized.

This same idea extends to marriage. Since the concepts of love and marriage have been taken out of their original biblical context they have been redefined in terms of pure emotion and contractual obligations. As I'll elaborate on in my longer article, the church need not be so concerned about preventing a redefinition of marriage -- that has already taken place. The church today needs to be about recovering the definition of marriage by bringing back the biblical views of love and marriage. And this must begin in our own homes with our own children. When you have "the talk" with your kids, make sure what you say is grounded in God's word and not just selfish practical reasons! Make sure they see sex as a gift from God and that God's parameters for the exercise of that gift are set within the context of marriage. When they're ready to talk about marriage, make sure they know that this also is not only a gift from God but a sacred vow that must be taken seriously...not only after the wedding but (just as importantly) before the wedding.

Hillary Spelling Goof

Maybe she should get Evan O’Dorney (13-year-old national spelling bee winner) on her PR team. I wonder if she can spell “Potato”? (Remember Dan Quayle?)