ABORTION HAS ALWAYS BEING AN ISSUE

Extrabiblical Jewish Literature

Gene Veith recommends the book, Abortion and the Early Church: Christian, Jewish and Pagan Attitudes in the Greco-Roman World: by Michael J. Gorman. It turns out that, far from being a modern medical procedure, abortion was rampant in the ancient world. Especially in Rome. And Christians, as well as Jews, consistently opposed it, standing up for life from the very earliest days of the church.

The noncanonical Jewish wisdom literature further clarifies first-century Judaism's view of abortion. For example, the Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides 184–186 (c. 50 B.C.–A.D. 50) says that “a woman should not destroy the unborn in her belly, nor after its birth throw it before the dogs and vultures as a prey.” Included among those who do evil in the apocalyptic Sibylline Oracles were women who “aborted what they carried in the womb” (2.281–282). Similarly, the apocryphal book 1 Enoch (2nd or 1st century B.C.) declares that an evil angel taught humans how to “smash the embryo in the womb” (69.12). Finally, the first-century Jewish historian Josephus wrote that “the law orders all the offspring to be brought up, and forbids women either to cause abortion or to make away with the fetus” (Against Apion 2.202).

Contrast these injunctions with the barbarism of Roman culture. Cicero (106–43 B.C.) records that according to the Twelve Tables of Roman Law, “deformed infants shall be killed” (De Legibus 3.8). Plutarch (c. a.d. 46–120) spoke of those who he said “offered up their own children, and those who had no children would buy little ones from poor people and cut their throats as if they were so many lambs or young birds; meanwhile the mother stood by without a tear or moan” (Moralia 2.171D).

Early Christian Literature

Against the bleak backdrop of Roman culture, the Hebrew “sanctity of human life” ethic provided the moral framework for early Christian condemnation of abortion and infanticide. For instance, the Didache 2.2 (c. A.D. 85–110) commands, “thou shalt not murder a child by abortion nor kill them when born.” Another noncanonical early Christian text, the Letter of Barnabas 19.5 (c. A.D. 130), said: “You shall not abort a child nor, again, commit infanticide.” There are numerous other examples of Christian condemnation of both infanticide and abortion. In fact, some biblical scholars have argued that the silence of the NT on abortion per se is due to the fact that it was simply assumed to be beyond the pale of early Christian practice. Nevertheless, Luke (a physician) points to fetal personhood when he observes that the unborn John the Baptist “leaped for joy” in his mother's womb when Elizabeth came into the presence of Mary, who was pregnant with Jesus at the time (Luke 1:44).

http://theologica.blogspot.com/2009/01/abortion-and-early-church.html

• More than merely condemning abortion and infanticide, however, early Christians provided alternatives by rescuing and adopting children who were abandoned. For instance, Callistus (d. c. A.D. 223) provided refuge to abandoned children by placing them in Christian homes, and Benignus of Dijon (3rd century) offered nourishment and protection to abandoned children, including some with disabilities caused by unsuccessful abortions.

Bill Gothard's All Day Ministers Seminars that I went to for over 15 years. The teaching was, give solutions to abortions rather than fight abortions. We are not called to put up signs in front of a abortion doctors office, we are called to teaching the Word of God to the lost.

We need to start with our own field of influnece. Protest in front of the doctor's office is not the way to cut down on abortions.

ARE WE MISSIONARIES OR MISSION FIELDS

Christians or Pragmatists?

WE ARE CONFUSED WHAT IT MEANS TO BE "BORN AGAIN" because Americal is a melting pot of belief and mostly pragmatists.

How we understand incidents and events in our lives depends on how we view the world we live in. It depends on whether we think God is sovereign over life or if we think nobody is home in heaven.

Most of us are inconsistent about these things. Our viewpoint comes from the melting pot. We get mixed up. Our pot has a dash of faith and a dash of skepticism. We are at once Christian or religious and secular. We believe in God, He is in control, or He is sometimes. Our faith or belief has elements of superstition at some times and is tempered by sober science at other times.

We are at the same time Christians and card-carrying pragmatists. On Sunday we read our Bible. On Monday we are fatalists. We try to separate our Christian or church life from the rest of our life. We live by holding contradictory beliefs.

Living in contradictions can be exciting. Life is surely more than logic. But the contradictory life is a confusing life, a life of inconsistency and incoherence. Its bottom line is chaos.

We are inconsistent and confused because we fail to understand where Christianity ends and paganism begins. We do not know where the boundary lines are. Consequently we move back and forth across the lines, making an attempt at some new occupation or activity between darkness and light.

We are lost in our own culture, swirling around in the melting pot .

We're not sure whether we are the witnesses or the ones being witnessed to. We don't know if we are the missionaries or the mission field.

While we believe we are "Christians", what we don't know how that "faith" works out in the culture.

NOW THEY ARE GOING AFTER THANKSGIVING

NOW THEY ARE GOING AFTER THANKSGIVING

Thanksgiving Costumes -- Cute or Racist?

It's a tradition that's been going on for 40 years. Every November, Claremont, California kindergartners dress up like pilgrims and Native Americans for their annual Thanksgiving celebration.

But not this year. According to the Los Angeles Times, the Claremont School Board has decided to ban costumes that depict Native Americans at Condit Elementary School and Moutain View Elementary.

That means when kids show up for turkey and songs for their annual "Turkey Day" feast, they won't be wearing the standard fringed vests or pilgrim-style black hats with the giant buckles reenacting the (not entirely accurate) story of both groups sitting down for a feast.

1. 1Samuel 22:50 Therefore I will give thanks unto thee, O LORD, among the heathen, and I will sing praises unto thy name.
   
2. 1 Chronicles 16:8 Give thanks unto the LORD, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the people.
   
3. 1 Chronicles 16:34 O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good; for his mercy endureth for ever.
4. 1 Chronicles 16:35 And say ye, Save us, O God of our salvation, and gather us together, and deliver us from the heathen, that we may give thanks to thy holy name, and glory in thy praise.
   
5. 1 Chronicles 16:41 And with them Heman and Jeduthun, and the rest that were chosen, who were expressed by name, to give thanks to the LORD, because his mercy endureth for ever;


6. 1 Chronicles 25:3 Of Jeduthun: the sons of Jeduthun; Gedaliah, and Zeri, and Jeshaiah, Hashabiah, and Mattithiah, six, under the hands of their father Jeduthun, who prophesied with a harp, to give thanks and to praise the LORD.


7. 1 Chronicles 31:2 And Hezekiah appointed the courses of the priests and the Levites after their courses, every man according to his service, the priests and Levites for burnt offerings and for peace offerings, to minister, and to give thanks, and to praise in the gates of the tents of the LORD.


8. Ezra 3:11 And they sang together by course in praising and giving thanks unto the LORD; because he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever toward Israel. And all the people shouted with a great shout, when they praised the LORD, because the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid.


9. Nehemiah 12:24 And the chief of the Levites: Hashabiah, Sherebiah, and Jeshua the son of Kadmiel, with their brethren over against them, to praise and to give thanks, according to the commandment of David the man of God, ward over against ward.


10. Nehemiah 12:31 Then I brought up the princes of Judah upon the wall, and appointed two great companies of them that gave thanks, whereof one went on the right hand upon the wall toward the dung gate:


11. Nehemiah 12:38 And the other company of them that gave thanks went over against them, and I after them, and the half of the people upon the wall, from beyond the tower of the furnaces even unto the broad wall;


12. Nehemiah 12:40 So stood the two companies of them that gave thanks in the house of God, and I, and the half of the rulers with me:

OKAY HAVE A HAPPY AND BLESSED THANKSGIVING FROM CHARLES AND CHARITY WHISNANT

p.s. the dressed up puppy is from ROSEMARIE

CULTURE ATTITUDE TOWARD CHRISTIANS

PART FOUR

Religion: definition: Religion is used in this paper so here is the definition:

• "a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs."

God's glory and our responsibility to appreciate that glory are trivialized by our culture.

• Trivialized by requiring that we change the scale of our thinking and the perspective from which we think about the earth and the events that have taken place here. We are expected to see that praising God is but one of a number of possible responses of the otherwise non-religious, objective events of reality.

• We are supposed to realize that Biblical history even Jesus himself——is but a tiny element of the history and composition of the universe as a whole. Our religion is just our spin on that tiny part of the universe that happens to fall within our naive range of experience. Salvation in Jesus Christ is but one of a myriad of issues and topics we could choose to pursue. Glorifying God is not viewed as an intelligently engaged or enlightened response to the real world. It is merely a personally meaningful way of ordering our very limited range of perceptions and experiences. So we're told.

Seeing the Bible as something capable of articulating reality is scorningly deemed old world guilibility. This is because, of course, the Bible was generated on the human scale and from within the human frame-of-reference. Its language is restricted to a narrow range of experience from within those dimensions.

As our knowledge and awareness goes beyond these primitive restrictions, we're better able to frame questions and concerns to fit our more comprehensive grasp of reality. We can step back and appreciate the diversity of perspectives from which to view the real world. (In my own denomination, there was an officially sanctioned traveling sideshow designed to teach this very thing. It is so sad to see Calvinists who once worked so hard to give our religion cultural expression now being satisfied in merely giving our culture religious expression).

God created this universe to serve his purpose. And he has chosen to speak to us on the human scale and from within the human frame-of-reference. It is here at the center of things that God revealed himself to us in his Son-revealing himself in a fullness and clarity unprecedented in all of the universe, at any possible scale or from within any possible perspective. The earth isn't important because of where it is in the universe. But because this is where Jesus came. The events of the Bible aren't important because of where they fall in the line of history of the universe. But because those events have to do with Jesus.

The best place to begin understanding the real world is with the fear of the Lord and in departing from evil. This is true for both the scientist and the carpet cleaner. What we Christians are about has everything to do with reality. Not just some personally meaningful, fringe realities. But the very heart of reality itself.

You see, Genesis 1 is not a artless conceived account of things. There's no reason why it would have been written differently if it were written today instead of in Moses' time. We should not confuse our assessment of our cultural sophistication with the wisdom of God. And we ought not presume that God had to condescend to the ancients but not to us. As if we have gotten beyond where they were so that we don't need to listen to what Moses says in Genesis 1. We haven't. Maturity isn't measured by cultural technology. For we in western culture are no more grown up than any son of Adam or daughter of Eve has ever been. The 'darkness' of an age is not determined by its religious devotion, but in what it does to either acknowledge or to conceal reality. Reality that was created by God to glorify God.

The fact that God did not choose to send Jesus to the expanse center of the universe, or to reveal Himself only to particle physicists does not make the history of redemption incidental to reality. Nor does it make our interest in the things of God merely an arbitrary choice out of a whole universe of possible interests.

Our religion deals with what the Creator says is important and significant in the universe he made. If we look elsewhere, our grip on reality will be compromised. The Holy Spirit, through Moses, wrote Genesis to introduce us to God, the Maker of the real world. We ought not presume to rise above His condescension to us.



Drafted by Charles E. Whisnant 02 18 07 Posted O4

REALITY AND THE SCIENCES IN CHRISTIAN BELIEF

Part Three

Our culture seems to think that its sciences actually see behind the stage-set that most of us think of as reality. They can see behind it, what props it up and what makes it seem to be something it's not. Even God himself is seen as part of this facade of reality. The sciences have gone backstage and know what's real. This is just plain nonsense.

Nonsense or not though, that's where we are. And such depreciating of the human scale and the human frame-of-reference has taken its toll on Biblical thought in our culture. Obviously, Biblical Christianity doesn't come about by looking at the subatomic scale of things. Nor does it originate from considering large scale motions in the universe either. So it stands to reason that unless our Biblical thought is actually revealed to us by God (which is patently absurd to our culture, and therefore not a real option at all), then it must have been dreamed-up at the human scale——the naive scale of things. And, in fact, and Christian religion is widely regarded as the outcome of efforts by human imagination to cope with reality rather than to actually understand and articulate it.

Religious belief is assumed, thereby, to have no more grounding in reality than does our imagination. Our religious belief is reduced to mere personal and social conventions——categories imposed upon reality——rather than being intelligently engaged articulation of reality like science is supposed to be. Again, you just aren't required to know anything specific about reality to have a religious belief. Christian belief, religious, or isn't thought to be anchored in reality but in second-hand, remote impressions of reality.

To understand reality, we're expected to turn to our culture's sciences rather than to the Bible. Because human consciousness is at arm's length from what is real, it will be impossible to live out our lives in an engaged, intellectually responsible way if we rely on Biblical belief. So we're told, anyway. And this attitude has a profound effect on what is considered acceptable as far as Genesis 1 goes. Obviously, we can't understand it in a straightforward manner. That's so unrealistic!

Genesis One: (John MacArthur has done a great service on teaching on Genesis One: (more on a later post, or thread.

We Christians should know better than to buy into this cultural deception. But I wonder sometimes. Hence this digression from Genesis 1. Reality is not at the limit of atomistic reduction of things. We don't find reality by smashing things into pieces until, at last, the pieces won't break anymore and then call that "reality". Nor do we find reality by flying off into space to see what we look like from way out there.

It ought to be plain enough from reading Genesis that "reality" is what was made to be viewed and experienced on the human scale and from within the human frame-of-reference.

• God did not place our consciousness at the wrong scale or within the wrong perspective. What we know as "reality" is the venue God created for his own glory.

That's not just some sort of biblical spin that we put on an otherwise inert, non-religious object called the universe. The universe is actually a thing to display the glory of God. And because this is so we'll never find the bedrock of reality——that which is irreducibly real——by scientific inquiry. There isn't a more accurate scale on which we can perceive reality than the human one. Nor is there a more accurate temporal or spatial frame-of-reference that what we find ourselves in. For centerstage in the theater of reality is our Lord Jesus Christ.

• This certainly does not mean that science says nothing about the universe. But a scientist does not, by his work, get as close to reality as he would if he understood Scripture and faithfully responded to God.

The more he moves away from the human scale and the human frame-of-reference, the more he moves into incomprehensibility. Over the years some amazingly ridiculous claims about reality have been made based on the apparent behavior of subatomic particles. Again, the assumption being that this subatomic thing gets us to the real-ness behind the impressions of our scale of experience (our "reality"). But, in fact, our culture isn't understanding reality better.

Reality is becoming more and more incomprehensible. And as the absurdities multiply, so does our confidence that we understand more and more about the universe and the nature of reality!

It's awfully easy to lose sight of the centrality of Christ and the fit-ness of Scripture to substantively articulate reality. Our culture seems to have so much knowledge. And the way that such knowledge is presented to us doesn't help any, either.

• For instance: from millions of miles out in space, a camera was turned so that we could see what we look like from way out there. The earth looks like a bluish dot in a sea of darkness and stellar light. And we were given expert commentary on what we were seeing. What we saw is powerful evidence of our insignificance in the grand scheme of things. Just see for yourself. All of which trivializes man and the events that have taken place on earth.

Drafted by Charles E. Whisnant Didn't we like our Science teachers.

DOES THE SUN RISE AND SET DAILY

Part Two

Another example of this culturally directed use of science in education was the insistence by our science teachers that the sun doesn't really rise and set. We were supposed to think in terms of the earth spinning on its axis as it orbits the sun. You know, like those wall charts with the sun at the center and all the planets going around it in elliptical orbits. That's the way things really are. We were supposed to realize that such an out-in-space perspective on things articulates reality much more correctly than our terrestrial perspective ever could. And, indeed, there are some special, technical situations where an out-in-space frame-of-reference is more useful than a terrestrial one. Like sending a spacecraft to give us a closer look at Jupiter and Saturn. Useful or not though, it is a bit much to claim that such an out-in-space perspective is more accurate that our usual, terrestrial one is, just because there are some uses for such a perspective. On the whole, there are comparatively few such uses in the life of humanity. Here again though, we were taught that because our everyday frame-of-reference is naive, we need science to give us the correct perspective on reality.

Now, don't get me wrong. What I'm saying is not anti-science. It would be silly to sit here and deny subatomic phenomena or our galactic environment. And, in fact, I'm not trying to do that. I am taking exception though, to the cultural imposition of a particular, supposedly "scientific" attitude toward reality which is really a philosophic attitude. An attitude that insinuates that our human scale of reality is somehow less real than the subatomic scale of things——that our scale of experience is merely a second-hand, statistical impression of what's real——just because someone in a lab coat discovered subatomic structure in things. It simply does not follow that if we identify subatomic structure in a desk, for example, that the desk we see is less real than the particles and forces we don't see; as if the whole desk is nothing more than its subatomic parts. Or, more to the point, that "reality" is nothing more than a label to identify the furthest limits of our atomistic reduction of things. And that since only the sciences can "see" this reality, it is to the sciences that we must turn if we are ever to understand reality at all.

It's silly to insist that it is inaccurate or primitive, to talk about the sun rising and setting. Of course the sun rises and sets! It's not a matter of accuracy, but of being consistent with a particular frame-of-reference. And from here on earth, the sun rises and sets. It really rises and sets. There's nothing more realistic about an out-in-space view of things. The problem is that when "reality" is defined according to the prevailing theoretical view of things, then every time someone in science comes up with new numbers or a new spin on old numbers, we are expected to react by changing our whole view of what reality is.

Drafted by Charles E. Whisnant Post #196

CULTURE ATTITUDE TOWARD CHRISTIANS

WHAT ABOUT SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE

Part One

Do we need to know sciences to understand the Bible? Is it Reality or Science:

• This cultural attitude toward Christians and what we believe is nowhere more evident than in that part of our culture interested in things "scientific". Not that science is the only cultural activity where this attitude exists. Nor can it be said that everyone in science shares such an attitude. They don't. It's just that in public institutions that are passing on our culture, science holds a special place. A place that has made it the most powerful and authoritative cultural tool in our society's rejection of God. It hasn't caused that rejection. But it is being used to legitimize that rejection just the same.

• For decades now, we have been taught that reality lies beyond our everyday, human faculties. And that the sciences offer our only objective interface with reality——the only way for us to really get in touch with the way things are. In school, to drive this lesson home, we were told that the desks upon which our elbows rested were not really what they seemed to be. They were really made up of mostly "space" (referring to the 'spaces' in the atomic and subatomic structure of the material that makes up the desk). It was supposed to follow that our confidence in the solidness of desks was, therefore, something of an illusion——a sort of crude approximation of reality. What we were so sure we knew about our desks was really just an impression derived from our rather dull senses and their inability to precisely engage reality. Thinking of the desks as "solid" is as close to reality as we can expect to come, left to ourselves. Through the sciences though we know better. (Oh, we may still talk about "solid" desks if we want to. But only as a naive convention of language. Because the desks aren't really solid, after all).

• This lesson was supposed to impress upon our young minds that we need science in order to correctly articulate reality. And that it is through the sciences, rather than religion, that we actually come to understand reality. And further, that it is upon the sciences, rather than religion, that we must build engaged and relevant and responsible lives for ourselves, especially if we intend to be practical about things.

Drafted by Charles E. Whisnant