This morning my son asked me if many people did not pay back their student loans. I said yes, many continue to pay (locally, the loan system is run by the tax department, and our taxation system is brutally simple, and elegantly efficient). I commented that one of the things you now need to talk about when you are courting a girl is how big her number is… and by this I mean debt. This means it is good to avoid US college graduates — the son added that debt is not the only reason: the USA is no longer a free country, and getting trapped in their bureaux is quite unwise.
Then I found this: and putting an ikon (from florence) of last centuries martyrs up made sense.
My opinion of this Hobby Lobby case is that the government’s real aim is to force Christian churches, groups and businesses to offer abortion as another service in a health insurance plan. They have no respect for religious liberty or conscience. They just want to make sure that no Christian can judge because we would all be complicit in the mass murder of millions of unborn children. There would be no one on the outside who could claim to stand in judgment over the pro-abortion people. That’s why it’s so important to make evil taxpayer-funded. That normalizes it and removes the stigma from the people who take advantage of it. “The whole society paid for this, so I don’t need to feel guilty about it – it’s normal”.
We are under pressure, but as yet, our lives are not at risk. We now have to subvert the state and teach against the memes they proclaim: It has not yet reached the point where we have to actively disobey the laws, and accept incarceration. Or worse.
And in these days, we have a duty: to warn while we can.
16If I proclaim the gospel, this gives me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel! 17For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward; but if not of my own will, I am entrusted with a commission. 18What then is my reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel.
19For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. 20To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. 21To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. 22To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. 23I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.
24Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. 25Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. 26So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; 27but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.
On the issue of running, I will make but one comment, as it is heading into autumn here. There is a story told by kiwi coaches: it involves the runners from the 1960s, Peter Snell, Murray Halberg, and the next generation (Dick Quax, Rod Dixon, Lorraine Moller). When it was cold and dark and raining and windy, they thought their competitors in England or Kenya were in summer and training, and continued to train.
For me, this blog is more like training than preaching. I do this every day — because if I miss, then something feels wrong: unlike running, which I can now do but two or three days a week as my body breaks down if I push mileage — I carry too many injuries from the decade of 12 workouts a week. And, as a coach adjusts training for each athlete, including monitoring for overtraining (I was self coached, which is one reason I had so many injuries) so those of us with faith will practice the disciplines of the faith in different ways.
But we must bear witness to Christ in our lives, using words when needed. And that includes not being party to the institutionalized evil of the State: the end game for any state includes oppressing those of faith, and my fear is that the USA is at present in the end of a cycle.
Let is pray for revival, for the alternatives will cause.blood, tears, sweat and pan
I’m not sure that it’s a decision that they are aware of or a plan that they have to force Christians to support evil. More than anything it is about the power of the state to force you to do their bidding and to think their “correct thoughts”. Those who worship the state have a visceral reaction against any objections to their evil that was quite clearly spelled out when Paul wrote, “To the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things?”. Their father Satan does have a plan but for the most part these people are just reacting on a gut level and not planning out or scheming to have Christians buy into the evil.
But I would avoid like the plague American women and especially those that claim to be Christian as from my experience they are so pickled in the most toxic form of American feminism that it will be nothing but heartache and misery being married to one. And you can bet that once they’ve become bored with you they will find some excuse to divorce you and hold any children you may have had with her hostage to whatever whims of revenge or financial needs she may have.
Well, I live in NZ. We have our own feminists: I used to be married to a woman who truly drank the Churchian Kool-aid. It is not only American women who are like that — but in NZ the laws have been made fairer, primarily because too many politicians found themselves frivorced.
There is basically no alimony in NZ, and child support is by a formula, and run by the tax department with the option of opting out of this by mutual consent . Which is what I did as the parent with day to day care of the boys, by the way.
The other thing that Obama and his coterie do not understand is that there will be a pushback. One of the reasons that the Left in NZ is basically broken is their last PM (Helen Clarke) was quite competent and was pushed (by the Greens) into banning smacking, knowing this would blow back at her. She needed the votes at the time.
You push too hard, and people will ignore you, and your ideology will be discredited for a generation.
These rulers will fail and fall. Do not let them take you down with them.