What Ifs

One of the hardest things in life is to not be plagued by the what ifs in it. Recently my son's bird, Nibbler, was hurt by his dog, Shadow. Yesterday Nibbler died from the stress of that incident. When he died, my son and I were both plagued with what ifs. What if we hadn't clipped his flight feathers? What if we had been quicker to get there when we heard squawking? What if we had locked the cage doors? (Nibbler had learned to open the doors and had gotten out.) Anyway, you get the idea.

I think that God wants us to look back at our mistakes or at problems honestly. I think he wants us to grow and learn through them. Not get stuck on the what ifs.

Today we will be having a small funeral for Nibbler so that the kids can say, "Goodbye." Then we will be moving on with a new bird.

The Church and Government Handouts

I went to a medical missions seminar this weekend. My mom and her husband were there too so I was especially glad to go. There were many interesting speakers. One of them was challenging those of us in smaller denominations with charitable organizations to go after bigger grants via the Faith Based Initiatives program that Pres. Bush started and Pres. Obama claims to support.

Many people in the audience seemed almost giddy with the prospect. I on the other hand felt a sense of dread. Is it really wise for the Church to be any more intertwined with the government than we already are? It is bad enough to be in contract with the government via 501(c)(3)'s. I really feel that we would be much better off if there were more free churches in the US. And now this link of money. It may be benign enough now. But once you start getting a million dollars here and there, it will be hard to turn your back on it once the rules change.

I am guessing that the rules will change but gradually. There will be baby steps in a direction until the 501(c)(3)'s board of directors feel uncomfortable. Then how do they live without these grants that they have become dependant on. They have lost connections with individual donors because more of their time is spent pursuing the government. Will they have the guts to say no thank you to a million dollars after depending on it previously?

I hope I am just being cynical and jaded. But I think it is a slippery road to start on. Stick with actual people who actually support your cause and believe what you believe.

Kiss

Kiss by Ted Dekker and Erin Healy is certainly a page-turner; I read the whole thing in a couple of days. I enjoyed the unique plot and its various twists (though you could see some of them coming if you were paying attention).

I think the point of this book is really needed in today's society. The point, as I understand it, is that you can either gain perspective from your mistreatment or problems in life or you can gain pain. The choice is up to you. I also really liked the theme of the truth being worth fighting (possibly dying) for. I found this refreshing in a society leaning more and more toward truth being relative.

The main reason that I cannot give this book five stars is I found the memory stealing abilities of the heroine a little unnerving. That is an ability that I would attribute more to a "bad guy". Shauna, the heroine does see it as stealing, but she feels she has no choice.

Also if you are looking for Christian fiction, this book may leave you wanting a little deeper spiritual emphasis. On the other hand, if you just want a good clean read with suspense and intrigue then I recommend Kiss.

White House Agenda

I have been reading over some of the Civil Rights agenda at www.WhiteHouse.gov. None of it is really surprising, but it is rather disturbing. Some quotes:

Expand Hate Crimes Statutes: President Obama and Vice President Biden will strengthen federal hate crimes legislation, expand hate crimes protection by passing the Matthew Shepard Act, and reinvigorate enforcement at the Department of Justice's Criminal Section.

This one is capable of bringing real persecution on the Church. Are we ready? (If you don't believe me read Janet Folger's Criminalization of Christianity or any other source about what happens when such laws have been passed in other countries.)

Support Full Civil Unions and Federal Rights for LGBT Couples: President Obama supports full civil unions that give same-sex couples legal rights and privileges equal to those of married couples. Obama also believes we need to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and enact legislation that would ensure that the 1,100+ federal legal rights and benefits currently provided on the basis of marital status are extended to same-sex couples in civil unions and other legally-recognized unions. These rights and benefits include the right to assist a loved one in times of emergency, the right to equal health insurance and other employment benefits, and property rights.

So much for the will of the people or the rule of law. How often are the people going to have to say, "We don't want this."

Expand Adoption Rights: President Obama believes that we must ensure adoption rights for all couples and individuals, regardless of their sexual orientation. He thinks that a child will benefit from a healthy and loving home, whether the parents are gay or not.

I feel so sorry for the poor kids that will be effected by this should it go through. God intended for kids to have a mom and a dad.

Promote AIDS Prevention: In the first year of his presidency, President Obama will develop and begin to implement a comprehensive national HIV/AIDS strategy that includes all federal agencies.

OK, Mr. President. Here is a plan for you that will actually work. Promote abstinence outside of marriage and monogamy inside marriage. That is the most fool-proof way to not get HIV/AIDS.

And under the Women part of the agenda we have these tidbits:

Supports a Woman's Right to Choose: President Obama understands that abortion is a divisive issue, and respects those who disagree with him. However, he has been a consistent champion of reproductive choice and will make preserving women's rights under Roe v. Wade a priority in his Administration. He opposes any constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court's decision in that case.

Preventing Unintended Pregnancy: President Obama was an original co-sponsor of legislation to expand access to contraception, health information, and preventive services to help reduce unintended pregnancies. Introduced in January 2007, the Prevention First Act will increase funding for family planning and comprehensive sex education that teaches both abstinence and safe sex methods. The Act will also end insurance discrimination against contraception, improve awareness about emergency contraception, and provide compassionate assistance to rape victims.

The first part is no surprise. Pres. Obama was against banning partial-birth abortions for goodness sake. Comprehensive sex education is one of the many reasons that my kids will not be attending gov. schools. The "discrimination against contraception" makes me wonder if he means to force companies to pay for abortions and morning after pills, etc.

Expanding Early Childhood Education: President Obama has been a champion of early childhood education since his years in the Illinois legislature, where he led the effort to create the Illinois Early Learning Council. He introduced a comprehensive "Zero to Five" plan to provide critical support to young children and their parents by investing $10 billion per year to create: Early Learning Challenge Grants to stimulate and help fund state "zero to five" efforts; quadruple the number of eligible children for Early Head Start, increase Head Start funding, and improve quality for both; work to ensure all children have access to pre-school; provide affordable and high-quality child care that will promote child development and ease the burden on working families; and create a Presidential Early Learning Council to increase collaboration and program coordination across federal, state, and local levels.

People, please don't hand your babies over to the State to be raised. Watch out for "zero to five" education to become compulsory like K-12. The earlier the gov. can get your kids the easier time they will have in transforming them into their likeness.

Ah, the Irony

I have to applaud the Catholics for their unflinching devotion to protecting the unborn. Here is a commercial that CatholicVote.com recently released.




HT:Religion and Morality

Cornwall Alliance

I recently read a paper by the Cornwall Alliance entitled "A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Response to Global Warming". It is written in response to the Evangelical Climate Initiative's "Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action" which I have never read and know almost nothing about. I found the Cornwall Alliance paper to be very interesting. I would like to share some quotes from it, but invite you to read the whole thing here.

Recently sixty topic-qualified scientists asserted that "global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural noise."

It is very unlikely that warming in that range [5.4 degrees F] would cause catastrophic consequences. Why? Among other reasons, because CO2-induced warming will occur mostly in winter, mostly in polar regions, and mostly at night. But in polar regions, where winter night temperatures range far below freezing, an increase of 5.4 degrees F is hardly likely to cause significant melting of polar ice caps or other problems.

Even if the recount strong warming trend (at most 1 degree F in the last thirty years) is entirely manmade (and it almost certainly is not), and even if it continues for another thirty years (as it might), global average temperature will only be at most 1 degree F warmer then than now.

Through the twentieth century [1900's] it [sea level] rose about 0.18 meter (7.08 inches), and there is no reason to think the natural forces driving that rise will cease.

Further, "Of the costs to the Netherlands, Bangladesh and various Pacific islands [i.e., the places at greatest risk], the costs of adapting to changes in sea level are trivial compared with the costs of global limitation of CO2 emissions to prevent global warming."

Further, those who warn of more frequent heat waves should even more fervently herald less frequent severe cold snaps. The death rate from severe cold is nearly ten times as high as that from severe heat, implying that global warming (assuming that it reduces coldsnaps as much as it increases heat waves) would prevent more deaths from cold than it causes from heat.

Malaria was common throughout Europe and even into the Arctic Circle even during the Little Ice Age and continued common through the end of World War II in Finland, Poland, Russia, around the Black Sea, and in thirty-six of the United States, including all northern border states from Washington through New York. It is not temperatures that are most important for malaria control but elimination of suitable breeding grounds and the use of pesticides to lower the population of malarial mosquitoes and keep them out of homes.

The resurgence of malaria in some African and Asian countries correlates not with changing temperatures but with the banning of DDT and shifts to less effective disease control methods, and it costs over a million premature deaths annually.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) concluded in a study announced in November 2005 that "the tropical multi-decadal signal is causing the increased Atlantic hurricane activity since 1995, and is not related to greenhouse warming."

Rising CO2-presumably what drives global warming-enhances agricultural yield. For every doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration, there is an average 35 percent increase in plant growth efficiency. . . . Consequently their ranges and yields increase.

In 2004 Science published the results of a study by Naomi Oreskes claiming that "without substantial disagreement, scientists find human activities are heating the earth's surface." But an attempt at replicating the study both found that she had made serious mistakes in handling data and, after re-examining the data, reached contrary conclusions.

Because energy is an essential component in almost all economic production, reducing its use and driving up its costs will slow economic development, reduce overall productivity, and increase costs of all goods, including the food, clothing, shelter, and other goods most essential to the poor.

Rather than focusing on theoretically possible changes in climate, which varies tremendously anyway with El Nino, La Nina, and other natural cycles, we should emphasize policies-such as affordable and abundant energy-that will help the poor prosper, thus making them less susceptible to the vagaries of weather and other threats in the first place.

The world's poor are much better served by enhancing their wealth through economic development than by whatever minute reductions might be achieved in future global warming by reducing CO2 emissions.

By condemning the world's poor to slower economic development by raising energy prices, the ECI asks the poor to give up or at least postpone their claims to modern technology that is essential for a better future for themselves and their children. It tells them they must not expect to have fossil fuels, electricity, or even eco-tourism (because jets emit greenhouse gases and cause climate change). Other environmental activists tell them they must not use hydroelectric or nuclear power to generate electricity, because of fears of damming rivers and risks from handling nuclear wastes. So the world's poor must remain indigenous, traditional, and poor- or as Leon Louw has put it, must continue living in "human game preserves," so that affluent Westerners can visit them in their quaint villages.

A program that can only be done by government mandate is by definition not a program that the market deems cost effective. We believe the market is a better judge of cost effectiveness than bureaucrats and politicians.

The very fact that such higher-cost technologies are not widely used in rich countries testifies that they cannot be widely used in poor ones. Fossil fuels, then, should be seen as a proper stage in energy development, far safer than burning wood and dung (smoke from which claims 1.6 million lives per year), and a means of enabling the economic growth that eventually can make even cleaner technologies affordable.

Commuted

Hat tip to JR at a Keyboard and a .45 for letting me know that Pres. Bush commuted the sentences of Boarder Patrol agents, Ramos and Compean. Their sentence will end in March of this year. I know their families are so happy. I am glad, too.

I think that this also speaks about Pres. Bush. It shows his moderate-ness. He didn't pardon them, he commuted their sentence. He didn't commute it until the very last day he was in office. So to President Bush I say, "Thank you" with a little" good grief" mixed in.

JR also has posted this very good video about the US Republic. I really enjoyed it, and I hope that you will to even though it has little to do with the rest of this post.