The Politicization of Religion
In today’s Wonder Land from OpinionJournal, Daniel Henninger takes a look at the current scandals in the finance and baseball world and wonders where moral values have gone.
There was a time when an internal yellow flag would slow down most people heading into an ethical hairpin curve. Now lots of people seem to roar through the yellow flags, and mass media being what it is, we all get to participate in every scurvy detail of these bouts of moral collapse.
Secular society attempts to protect itself by deploying various bilge pumps. Sports has
drug-testing; business and politics have heartless prosecutors. Entertainment has Oprah imposing a Maoist public shaming on publishing titan Nan Talese. None of these solutions is the answer. The possibility of doing things unprecedentedly new now in technology, science and finance arrives so fast that it’s tough for the grinding wheels of law and procedure to keep pace. Dr. Wadler notes that in the future it’s likely that implanting genes will enable a pill or a cream to turn various growth factors on or off, avoiding injections. “While the technology will help patients,” says Dr. Wadler, “unquestionably it will fall into the hands of people determined to cheat.”
Some cite the almighty dollar. But there is nothing fundamentally wrong with reward for performance. Cheating is cheating, at the local playground or a packed ballpark.
The problem, it is no revelation to say, is a generalized weakening of the codes used at least since Moses to keep societies intact, to suppress the virus of rampant lying, cheating and chiseling. People used to learn this stuff; now many don’t. Where’d it go? How about this answer: Politics killed ethical formation.
He points the finger at sex as the cause of the current religious wars. I think he’s right. From abortion to gay marriage, from XXX domain to playboy, America has a problem with sex with one side wanting “privacy” to do what they please, and another saying that these things are wrong.
Just yesterday there was an article talking about America’s conflict with cheerleaders– sex symbols or leading cheers? How far is too far in terms of dress? How much is it like strippers on the field?
To follow the above author’s point of view, the problem is that the place that people were suppost to learn morals, the church and home, have been politicized. Since the church speaks against abortion, it’s villified– and we don’t want people going there to learn the basics of right and wrong. It’s not just sex, but it’s also Creation/Evolution.
I believe the problem is guilt and people not liking to believe there is anything wrong with them. The problem with moral standards is that they convict people. There is a right and wrong. I don’t agree with this author that it’s all about sex– I believe it’s all about pride
and getting what I want with no responsibility or guilt attached. I believe that people are under the mistaken impression that if they somehow continue to villify the message bearers, somehow that will taint the message and they won’t feel that they are doing wrong.
I ask this author, how can a church or anyone teach that anything is right or wrong if they are constantly told it’s not. That’s why I argue so hard for principals that are above government control. That’s why the founders wrote in the Declaration of Independance that there were laws/freedoms that superceed all human law. These laws can’t be
changed by people– they are meant to show that we are all sinners in need of a Savior.
This thing is bigger than politicians, it’s the work of someone much brighter than our brightest minds, and it’s working well to decieve this nation into falling. The question is not will politicians quit politicizing the church, but will people begin to have a changed heart and to know that getting rid of or silencing the messangers of moral truths won’t stop the truths themselves. The only way to eliminate that guilt is to get right with God.
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Water from the Tap?
In case you thought that the water from the tap that is free from your local fast food place was better than the soda, this latest writing from News of the Weird will set you straight.
Seventh-grader Jasmine Roberts became a celebrity of sorts in February when her hometown Tampa Tribune published results of her winning science-fair entry, which concluded that the drinking-water ice of several local fast food restaurants contains more bacteria (including some E. coli) than the same restaurants’ toilet water. She used a laboratory at the University of South Florida’s Moffitt Cancer Center, where she is a volunteer assistant for a professor. [Tampa Tribune, 2-13-06]
That will get you to pass on the ice, or at least get some water from their toilet!
Whose Space?
The Internet has a bounty of potential, but is also a scary place. No longer are we as a family and children safe inside our walls, but the predators have come inside. They are good, too, preying on new feelings, emotions and desires, and feeding a self-image that is not real. Predators feed on what they have always fed on, our desire to be liked, to think we’re smart, etc.
It has formed into a cycle that is repeating itself everyone. Men (especially) or women get online to try to find someone showing skin. They praise someone that is cute, and encourage them as they show off more and more. These children/young adults glory in the fact that people are paying attention to them, that people are telling them their pretty. Little do they know that these men are those that they would not want anything to do with in person.
The cycle continues as the men continue to heap their praise, the women continue to show more skin, and get hooked on the rush of being approved of for their body. They begin to think of themselves as a “sexy” being, and push an image that is more and more risque to continue their fix. Just like any sin, you can never have enough.
This is where we pick up with Rebecca Haglin’s article this week:
“Kiss me”, “Touch me”, “Feel me”, “Rape me” – the invitations flashed across the photo of a scantily clad young woman on one of the most popular teen Web hangouts in the world – MySpace.com. Techno-hussies and innocent children just enjoying the latest method to socialize with their friends are falling victim because they are sharing very personal, often provocative and trashy information on MySpace.com, which is quickly becoming a sexual predator’s playground.
So rampant are the reports and allegations linking sex-crimes and even murder to activity on MySpace that producers at “America’s Most Wanted” are looking into the connection.
She then lists multiple connections, but do I really need to scare you with that, when I can show you this from her article?
Kids and adults alike have got to understand that their information on MySpace can viewed around the world by anyone at anytime, but the danger lies in the fact that although the Web is “world wide,” it is also very local. Here’s what I mean: I typed in my zip code on MySpace, and in seconds up popped 75 pages, with 40 entries each, of 18 to 30-year-old single women who said they are seeking a relationship – and every one of them lives in my zip code. It’s important to note that I only searched for entries with photographs – and boy, did I get photographs – one was just of a girl’s breasts; most were provocative; and virtually everyone of them appeared to be between 12 to 25 years old. (MySpace claims only those 14 and older can use the site, but all a user has to do is lie about their age).
I wanted to get a taste of the potential immediate threats, so I clicked on the Justice Department’s website, which provides detailed information on registered sex offenders (i.e., those who have already been caught, convicted and released back into the public – in other words, only those we know about) and entered local zip codes. The results were more than disturbing: Up popped the names and faces of 10 convicts who live in my neighborhood, and scores who live in my town. Now you realize how easy it is for perverts, convicted or not, to find your child.
Been a While
It was not my intent to be gone from this for such a “long” time.
There have been many things going on along multiple fronts that have
required my attention, plus I don’t know that I have much to say at the
moment. Here’s some of the things that I’ve been thinking about:
Where does the Supreme Court get the right to throw out state’s laws. I know they have been doing it for a while now, but this latest thing
regarding the death penalty for teens under 18 just shows them
overstepping their bounds once again. Who are these five people to say
that they know better than the voters about the trend of morality in
the country? And how often are people of this age penalized in this
way? What’s the process– and by this I mean, how difficult is it?
Shouldn’t there be the ability to punish a mass murderer or cannibal
that happens to be 17? How is it that a girl that is under 18 has the
ability to figure out whether she will kill her baby, but a 17 yr old
cannot be responsible for killing others?
How is that more
and more of the next generation of the United States is being raised by
grand parents? Perhaps this isn’t a bad thing in the sense that it
means that life expectancy is greater, but it does show the priorities
and what the government has done in destroying a normal family life.
Look around, and you can easily find mothers who are unwed, living
together with someone without the benefit of marriage, two people
working and giving their kids to daycare and grandparents to raise…
What is up with our society? And to top it all off, I could save money
in a flexible spending account to pay for “child care” that’s outside
the home and not have that money taxed, but if I raise the kid myself
all the money’s taxed.
Why are churches seeing such struggles
lately? I’m involved in searching for a new pastor for my church
because of problems with communication and general church government.
My father’s involved with a problem with church government and what
happened to one of his friends. It seems that the church is being
attacked more successfully than ever before– or is it that I just
notice it more?
Are there more diagnosis of cancer now because we didn’t know how to diagnose it before?
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