Unlike some people, sex is not really my favorite thing to post about on the internet. But I've stumbled on a couple of articles about it lately that I thought were interesting enough to be worth bookmarking for future reference, and sharing with anyone else interested. In general both of these articles support Christian sexual ethics and contrast it with "modern sexual morality."
So here's the First Article: The Death of Eros
I don't go around talking about sex to everyone so it's hard for me to judge the accuracy of the information in the first article. However I would not be at all surprised if it were true, and am happy to grant that it likely is. The million dollar question, of course, is, if you read this and respond negatively, is that because of the possibility the article could be true? If you've rejected the Christian perspective in favor of feminism, "liberation" and all the rest, are you really content with your sex life? With your life in general? Only you can answer that; I don't presume to know.
A lot of comments could be thrown in here. Personally I believe we've hit a bit of a feedback loop involving a lot of other topics. I'm completely generalizing here so bear with me. I believe... and this is the toughest point to prove, and probably worth another whole post... I believe that feminism has resulted, over time, in a number of economic pressures that were less substantial 50 years ago. (Cost of living, worthless college degrees, and the rest.) The result of this is people marrying later. The result of people marrying later is they lack a sexual outlet before marriage other than fornication or porn use. The result of this is they are dissatisfied. Out of this dissatisfaction comes feminism, because it isn't hip to even consider the traditional Christian stuff as a possible solution. And so the cycle continues.
Now I know I didn't prove feminism raised our cost of living, and as I said, that's a topic for another whole post. But I'll just throw out two tidbits as food for thought. One, when women all decided it was more important to have a career than stay home raise kids, the inevitable result was that less competition resulted in lower wages for many jobs. (As an aside, that's a really inefficient way to run a family.) Two, one could argue a link between feminism and bloated and inefficient government programs, which are funded on taxpayer dollars--money a family can no longer save to better their own lives.
This article is also a bit of a strike at feminism within Christianity. A call is made for a return to traditional gender roles in society. Once again, no one should be allowed to scream at that unless you are truly content with your life. There was a time that would have rubbed me the wrong way.
Next article: It's past time to re-think modern sexual morality
The second article reads as more of a call for Christians to take a firm position on these matters and stop capitulating to the world to try to impress people. I don't expect anyone who doesn't value something close to Christian morality to agree with it but there it is. If you don't have some consistent basis for sexual morality then what do you have?
And you're welcome for getting that fabulous Paula Cole song stuck in your head. At least someone had this figured out back in the 90s....
Sunday, October 15, 2017
Wednesday, October 4, 2017
General update. It's been a while!
Well now, where were we?
It's been just over a year since I last posted on this blog. I have had mixed feelings about continuing it. I suppose what's really holding me back is the probability that if I really let out all my opinions about all topics then it would just be a matter of time before "Blogger" gets rid of my blog as a result of someone's complaint for content they deem offensive. Because that's the way I see things going now: conformity to liberal/humanist thought, mob rule, and all that.
I could just keep a copy of all these posts on my hard drive, so I could move it all somewhere else if this goes awry, but that's too much work.
But enough negative stuff. Maybe I'll just keep some of my opinions to myself to keep out of trouble. Winston Churchill once said (and I'm paraphrasing), "If you stop to throw a rock at every dog that barks at you, you'll never get where you're going." That sounds good to me.
Even more importantly, the book of Proverbs says there are times not to answer a fool according to his folly. That's kind of what Christian bloggers are up against any more just in general, all the time. Some of what liberal/humanist culture is throwing at us is just so dumb it hardly deserves engaging.
And then the other thing is maybe I have just lost interest in discourse. Let's pretend this blog gathers a following and I start getting a lot of comments. I'm glad this hasn't happened and it probably won't. But if it does, I doubt I'll feel inspired to engage those people in any way. It's much easier just to continue spouting off more opinions and get on with my life. It's not that I don't care--at least, not quite--it's more like, what am I doing with my time? Arguing with people I've never met, who don't share my basic presuppositions? Why?
Now having taking two shots at liberals I suppose anyone reading this thinks I'm one of those horrible mean conservative types. It's kind of looking that way, though I hate to pigeon-hole myself. (Where did that expression come from anyway?) Most importantly I like to think that I am analyzing each issue carefully and thinking them through according to my presuppositions. But like everyone, I don't know everything and I am still a work in progress.
With those rambling thoughts out of the way, for now I'll just offer a general update to a couple topics touched on in earlier posts.
We are still at the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. I think it is working out better than any other options would.
In particular I still feel completely burned out on "modern evangelicalism" and especially the music with which it is associated. I didn't anticipate how emphatically I would not miss it after leaving IBC, or how annoying I still think it is now. At the OPC we only sing hymns and psalms. We don't do enough psalms and I wish we would sing more. We'll have to work on that one. I accompany some church services on the player piano at the senior center. So that's fun.
Meanwhile IBC has written into their bylaws that they reject infant baptism and infants can't have faith. I can only surmise that they presume to know better than God or individual parents who has faith. We have a two year old girl who has definitely had faith from the very start. She loves going to church, talking about the Bible and always reminds us to pray at meals. It's pretty cute.
So we could say that watching my little girl's developing faith (possibly encouraged by being in the OPC) has made me less sympathetic than I used to be to the view that infant baptism should not be practiced. It's kind of up there with the other "I just can't take it seriously any more" features of lowest-common-denominator modern evangelicalism.
Then we have the political stuff. I have pretty much zoned out of politics as much as one can while staying on Facebook. But once Trump won, after I got over my initial shock, I found that I really just don't care that much what goes on in national politics. As I predicted, even while I was absolutely not a Hillary fan, Trump continues to be hard to take seriously. To a large extent he seems to have morphed into a typical idiot politician who listens too much to his advisers and fails to keep most of his promises. Only he's more obnoxious than usual. On policy it's just the usual republican stuff, nothing new. I could post more about that later; we'll see if I feel inspired to do that. I'm certainly not on board with all things republican at the national level.
I voted for Darrel Castle. I don't think he is perfect or even that great. I also don't think the Constitution Party is that great. It tends to attract nutcases.
Heck, I don't think the US constitution is even that great, at certain points. It has started to read like a document that embraces religious pluralism by failing to prohibit it. I'm not sure where the Bible says I ought to get behind that. Historically some "covenanter" type Presbyterians have put forth a view that "dissenting" (i.e. by not voting) is better than voting, because we don't want to vote for someone who has to take the constitutional oath of office while constitution allows for religious pluralism. This view continues to make more sense to me as time goes on. It's worth thinking about, anyways!
I'll leave you with that. Where will I go next with this blog? You're guess is as good as mine.
It's been just over a year since I last posted on this blog. I have had mixed feelings about continuing it. I suppose what's really holding me back is the probability that if I really let out all my opinions about all topics then it would just be a matter of time before "Blogger" gets rid of my blog as a result of someone's complaint for content they deem offensive. Because that's the way I see things going now: conformity to liberal/humanist thought, mob rule, and all that.
I could just keep a copy of all these posts on my hard drive, so I could move it all somewhere else if this goes awry, but that's too much work.
But enough negative stuff. Maybe I'll just keep some of my opinions to myself to keep out of trouble. Winston Churchill once said (and I'm paraphrasing), "If you stop to throw a rock at every dog that barks at you, you'll never get where you're going." That sounds good to me.
Even more importantly, the book of Proverbs says there are times not to answer a fool according to his folly. That's kind of what Christian bloggers are up against any more just in general, all the time. Some of what liberal/humanist culture is throwing at us is just so dumb it hardly deserves engaging.
And then the other thing is maybe I have just lost interest in discourse. Let's pretend this blog gathers a following and I start getting a lot of comments. I'm glad this hasn't happened and it probably won't. But if it does, I doubt I'll feel inspired to engage those people in any way. It's much easier just to continue spouting off more opinions and get on with my life. It's not that I don't care--at least, not quite--it's more like, what am I doing with my time? Arguing with people I've never met, who don't share my basic presuppositions? Why?
Now having taking two shots at liberals I suppose anyone reading this thinks I'm one of those horrible mean conservative types. It's kind of looking that way, though I hate to pigeon-hole myself. (Where did that expression come from anyway?) Most importantly I like to think that I am analyzing each issue carefully and thinking them through according to my presuppositions. But like everyone, I don't know everything and I am still a work in progress.
With those rambling thoughts out of the way, for now I'll just offer a general update to a couple topics touched on in earlier posts.
We are still at the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. I think it is working out better than any other options would.
In particular I still feel completely burned out on "modern evangelicalism" and especially the music with which it is associated. I didn't anticipate how emphatically I would not miss it after leaving IBC, or how annoying I still think it is now. At the OPC we only sing hymns and psalms. We don't do enough psalms and I wish we would sing more. We'll have to work on that one. I accompany some church services on the player piano at the senior center. So that's fun.
Meanwhile IBC has written into their bylaws that they reject infant baptism and infants can't have faith. I can only surmise that they presume to know better than God or individual parents who has faith. We have a two year old girl who has definitely had faith from the very start. She loves going to church, talking about the Bible and always reminds us to pray at meals. It's pretty cute.
So we could say that watching my little girl's developing faith (possibly encouraged by being in the OPC) has made me less sympathetic than I used to be to the view that infant baptism should not be practiced. It's kind of up there with the other "I just can't take it seriously any more" features of lowest-common-denominator modern evangelicalism.
Then we have the political stuff. I have pretty much zoned out of politics as much as one can while staying on Facebook. But once Trump won, after I got over my initial shock, I found that I really just don't care that much what goes on in national politics. As I predicted, even while I was absolutely not a Hillary fan, Trump continues to be hard to take seriously. To a large extent he seems to have morphed into a typical idiot politician who listens too much to his advisers and fails to keep most of his promises. Only he's more obnoxious than usual. On policy it's just the usual republican stuff, nothing new. I could post more about that later; we'll see if I feel inspired to do that. I'm certainly not on board with all things republican at the national level.
I voted for Darrel Castle. I don't think he is perfect or even that great. I also don't think the Constitution Party is that great. It tends to attract nutcases.
Heck, I don't think the US constitution is even that great, at certain points. It has started to read like a document that embraces religious pluralism by failing to prohibit it. I'm not sure where the Bible says I ought to get behind that. Historically some "covenanter" type Presbyterians have put forth a view that "dissenting" (i.e. by not voting) is better than voting, because we don't want to vote for someone who has to take the constitutional oath of office while constitution allows for religious pluralism. This view continues to make more sense to me as time goes on. It's worth thinking about, anyways!
I'll leave you with that. Where will I go next with this blog? You're guess is as good as mine.
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