Suicide Bomber or Martyr

Are suicide bombers actually martyrs or are the extremists who blow themselves up defeating their purpose and hurting their cause? I'm sure you can already see where I'm going with this, but I did want to point out some of the important differences between people who are willing to die for a cause and those who are willing to kill (even themselves) for a cause.

• A martyr is an active and open member of a religion or cause that consumes his whole life and he is not willing to relinquish his faith nor give up his cause no matter what. 
• A suicide bomber might be coerced into action and tends to be more interested in the possible rewards or infamy that can come with the task.
• A martyr does not want to die and will do everything short of turning against the cause to stay alive to work for the cause another day. 
• A suicide bomber expects to die and may feel that death is the only way to have an impact in the world.
• A martyr maintains a loving nonviolent stance, praying for his enemies and forgiving his executioners. 
• A suicide bomber hates those who don't agree with his cause and would kill them rather than allowing them an opportunity to change.

If groups like ISIS think that creating Christian, Jewish, and moderate Muslim martyrs is going to advance their cause, they are miserably mistaken. God will not be mocked. Using religion as an excuse to hate and kill is the worst kind of blasphemy.

How to Stop Abortion

I'm firmly against abortion, but I'm politically pro-choice. Is that confusing? It shouldn't be. Making abortion illegal or refusing to include it in health insurance is not pro-life--it's like putting a band-aid over a bullet wound. It's treating the symptoms while allowing the disease process to go unchecked. And it doesn't work.

If society shows that we value children, maybe people will believe they have value. Right now our actions don't say it. These are my easy steps toward shutting down abortion clinics and making abortion a legal, but unused option.

1. Make both sexes equally responsible for the children they produce so men have incentive to use protection or remain abstinent. We have genetic testing to keep people honest if needed. 
2. Make all convicted rapists pay into a fund to support their children without granting them any right to know anything about children conceived in a crime and make payments and provide services to the children from that fund. (Castrating rapists is unconstitutional.)
3. Make adoption easier and cheaper. Yes, it is terrible to have a child end up with abusive parents, but when we have children aging out of the foster care system without a real family, it speaks volumes about how much we value children and it's not a nice statement. Who wants to bring a child into that?
4. Require minimum wage to be high enough that prostitution isn't a better deal for women than waiting tables or ringing purchases. (I'm sorry, but right now, it's hard to argue it.)
5. Provide health insurance so that parents can choose to work full-time, part-time or independently from home without having to worry that a sick child will throw them into a debt they won't recover from.
6. Raise the tax deduction for each child to an amount that reflects the actual cost of raising children. 
7. Add the amount raised by lotteries on top of what states pay for educating children. (The current model is to subtract regular funding for lottery funds, proving that we'd rather cheat our children than put the money where it was originally budgeted.) 
8. Fully fund and expand the Head Start program to provide educational daycare for younger children and before and after school care for children of parents who work outside the home.
9. Stop complaining about normal child behavior in public and support parents who are trying to raise their children to behave appropriately. Parenting is hard enough without your criticism.
10. Educate your children about the blessings of raising children while emphasizing the need to wait until they are in a position to raise children before having any, including both abstinence and birth control in the lesson while promoting responsible, moral and ethical behavior.
11. Stop judging. Maybe you'd do things differently if you were in her shoes, but you aren't and you really can't know.  Just stop. 

Fear is a Choice

Fear is a choice, people, and not a good one. Fear is the name of the demon who tells you to protect yourself and what belongs to you at all costs, rather than risk being hurt or ending up with less. Fear says "we got ours, let the rest of them suffer." Fear has people buying guns and ammunition for an imaginary war. Fear has people shooting one another as their perception of what is a threat melts into everythingness. Fear is NOT our friend.

Whether you know Him or not, the God from the Bible is our friend. He has another name that you may know Him by. According to 1 John 4:7-8  (Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God and he who loves is born of God. He who doesn't love others, doesn't know God for God is love.)that's right, God is love. If we love others as much as we love ourselves, we want what is best for everyone, and we don't go around killing people because they look scary. Or hoarding food, water or money because we want to be the last one surviving. We are kinder and gentler and happier.

In fact, according to the 18th verse of 1 John 4, when we work on loving others, it eliminates our fear. (There is no fear in love.  But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.) Think about it, if we really care about the people around us, we don't want to withhold any help we might offer them and, if we trust God to keep us safe in His will, we don't have to be afraid of anyone or anything.

Remember this if you forget everything else. God is love. If anyone tells you things that go against loving anyone, it isn't of God. If anyone tells you that you need to protect your own, it is that demon, Fear, and not of God. If anyone tells you that you shouldn't share every chance you have, it's not from God.

The only thing we have to fear is Fear itself. Avoid that demon with a passion and when he attacks you, go directly to your father, God, so that Fear can be abolished with love.

Where's the Christ in Christianity?

Who took the Christ out of Christianity? I'm so tired of seeing the people that I worship with following a brand of Christianity that is so full of hatred and judgment that I can't find even a hint of Jesus in it. I know many of them depend on their pastors and leaders instead of searching the scriptures to know which teachings are true, but how did the pastors and leaders get so far from the path of righteousness? When did they forget the basic truths of the Bible? The basic truths of history?

1. The Biblical law was written to separate God's people from the rest of the world. Nowhere do we see the people of Israel imposing their law on neighboring peoples. We only see them obeying God's law in whatever place they were. We don't see them destroying temples to foreign gods or even fighting against the practices of human sacrifice and temple prostitution. They accepted that there were people in the world who had different (wrong) beliefs and value systems and they gave witness through the way they lived their own lives and through the way their God took care of them. They were proud to be the people chosen to receive the law and they tried to keep it.

2. Christ came into the world to save sinners. He told his disciples that the way to heaven was to believe in his sacrifice and to live so as to show the world that they believe. They were taught to share what they had with whoever needed it, to sacrifice their own wants for the greater good of the Kingdom of God, and to love God and one another. They were told to share the good news about Jesus with the people they came into contact with and to love them enough to make it real to them.

3. Jesus broke some of the traditional Jewish laws because they went against the principle of love that he taught. He healed on the Sabbath and forgave a woman caught in adultery because it was the right thing to do under the principle of love. That's how he set an example.

4. The early church had issues with church discipline that are being taken out of context and totally misread. The problem was not that there were unbelievers doing unspeakable things, the problem was that there were believers behaving just like unbelievers. The church leaders were instructed to remove these people from positions of power in the church and to separate them completely if they didn't respond well to correction. Nowhere are we told to "correct" unbelievers or to judge those who are not at least pretending to be Christians.

So why do people call themselves Christian if they are going to ignore the guiding principle of Christ? If we love God and the people He created, why are we so quick to condemn and so slow to show love?  If we believe that non-repentant sinners will be judged by God, why are we so anxious to judge them ourselves?

Where do we get the idea that we must match our secular laws to God's old testament laws? Hasn't God always expected His people to go above and beyond the secular law?  Don't we expect believers to be set apart and live under different rules? The Bible says "Don't conform to the things of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of the Spirit." If we aren't supposed to conform to their ways, why would we think they should conform to ours?

I don't believe it is right to end any life, but the whole abortion argument has gotten entirely out of hand.

And where did the idea that America is supposed to be a Christian nation come from? America is not and never has been a Christian nation. There may have been more believers at some time in the past, but the fact that our founding fathers included a check on the government that makes it unconstitutional to set up any state religion would suggest that no religion can lay claim. We do not have a state religion. We do not want a state religion. State religions don't work. If we are not free to not believe, we are not free to believe either.

Get rid of the persecution complex. It's not like we are being ordered  to pray to Nebuchadnezzar.
We're being told to let unbelievers behave as unbelievers and to let our own lives be different enough that people notice. That's pretty much what God told the Israelites, isn't it? That's sort of what Jesus told the disciples and what they taught the early church. Why is it so hard for us?

God is not an American Citizen, Jesus is still a Jew

We insist that we love our neighbors as ourselves and don't discriminate based on age or gender, but we want to guard our borders and only let in people who have enough money and an education because otherwise they take our jobs and go to our schools for free and receive health benefits that most of us don't have because we are neither rich enough nor poor enough. They sneak into Our country with the drugs that are being smuggled in and have the audacity to expect to be treated like humans.

Guess what? They are humans. They are not a lot different from the slaves that escaped to the North during the civil war--and the people who helped THEM were considered heroes. They aren't escaping human masters, but they are escaping the very real masters of perpetual and hopeless poverty. They are looking for a place where their children can learn and grow to want something better, and where that something better doesn't involve drugs or crime.

And because they look to the north and hear all of the propaganda about our great nation, they bring their families here--and are magically transformed into criminals. Should they land in almost any of our bigger cities, their children might still grow up to see crime as the only ticket out of poverty--so many of our own children do.

Because "illegals" can't demand any rights, they end up in jobs that don't necessarily pay minimum wage or that pay considerably less than comparable jobs. All the glitz of America is fools gold. It is no easier to move into the middle class here.                                                                                                                                                                                                              

Family Web Pages

Seems that I'm not the only one with a blogspot page. My nephew and his friends have created a poetry page at http://whaleriderspoetry.blogspot.com/ where there is some pretty good stuff--check it out. He has his own blog at http://wizardswisdom.blogspot.com

My brother has been working on a geneology page at http://www.jdevsoftware.com/family/

My book is available as an eBook through smashwords and is for sale at all of the major eBook outlets. It will soon be available as an app. I love smashwords. It will be available in print in October (planning to get it printed in time for our anniversary)and I will be building a website and other promotional things over the summer.

Live is busy.

Bonnie

This is the Way

I'm becoming more and more afraid. Something is happening and I am being tossed into the middle of it. I'm hearing The Voice and it doesn't make sense. Why me?

I spent most of the morning yesterday in my own Nineveh--hiding out from God. Not saying "no!" exactly, but stalling in hopes that the Voice would go away. I should have known better. I asked for a sign, but when I heard that I would have to do something to see the sign, I didn't. I'm not sure if I'm more afraid that this isn't real or that it is. Who am I? Why?

I keep hearing about miracles--do this and you will see a miracle--and I run away. If God wants a prophet, he should find one, not try to make one out of a housewife. And why waste miracles to prove something to me? Is my faith that small? I don't want a parlor trick, I want an explanation.

If God wants to do a miracle, why doesn't he heal Billie or put Troy's disability check into my checking account? Those are things I could appreciate. I guess that sounds pretty selfish, but I don't see God trying to prove anything to the general public. If He wants to make it personal, why doesn't He?

Why?