Why abortion is a deal-breaker

One of the major points of controversy in the proposed national healthcare upheaval is the matter of abortion. Liberals ultimately demand abortion on demand, at any time, for any reason. Conservatives -(REAL conservatives, not Republicans who work the electorate to the right and then vote left)- see abortion as a non-negotiable moral issue, and can't understand how anyone could entertain compromise on such a matter.

This article says that "Twice now, abortion was almost a dealbreaker." http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091222/D9CO403G0.html

Since I have a very eclectic collection of friends, including liberals, Democrats, and a smattering of atheists and agnostics, I have been asked "Why is abortion such a deal-breaker for you?" I'll try to explain it.

Abortion opponents like to show pictures of unborn/pre-born babies in utero to show the humanness... little fingers and toes and beating hearts, and that is a major issue. If one believes that life begins at conception, rather than at birth, there's little difference between ending the life of a fetus at 5 months or a 5 month-old baby. 

But I think there's a huge elephant in the room that nobody likes to mention. My liberal friends refer to abortion as a "women's issue," but it's not an issue for any of the women in my immediate circle of friends. It's an issue for liberal women; dare I say, it's an issue for promiscuous women. 

Women who remain virgins until marriage, and then remain faithful to their husband for life are not out campaigning in favor of abortion on demand. It is women who are sexually active before marriage, and outside of marriage, who are the vocal advocates of abortion. (Let me pause while some of you regain your composure and pick your jaw up off the floor; believe it or not, there are, indeed, women who walk down the aisle in a well-deserved white bridal gown, have their first sexual experience on their honeymoon, and live in faithful commitment to one man for life. There are men who are equally innocent and faithful.)

The availability of abortion reduces the imperative to remain sexually innocent, because the consequences of pre- and extra-marital sex are provided a failsafe. For those of us who believe in a God who demands that we live within parameters of conduct he has clearly defined, we also believe that their are laws governing our behavior. Just as surely as Newton's Third Law of Motion demands that "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction," God's Law demands that sin has consequences. There are natural, human consequences that we suffer in our bodies, and eternal consequences if the sin is not covered by the blood of Jesus Christ. \

Abortion is an attempt to by-pass one consequence of sin by burying the evidence.

Posted via email from Kahu Gary's posterous

Before you jump on the advocacy science bandwagon

With age comes some perspective. Although it's trendy and fashionable to buy into the current hysteria about "Global Warming," within my lifetime I can remember scientists arguing (hysterically) the exact opposite view. There has been no substantial warming of the environment for the past 12 years. Period.

Want a dose of realism and perspective? Check out these links:

http://www.denisdutton.com/cooling_world.htm

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html

http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2009/12/back-when-global-cooling-was-rage.html

http://geology.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/33/6/437

Posted via email from Kahu Gary's posterous

Cornwall Alliance releases An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming

Cornwall Alliance releases An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming

Add your name--click here!

PREAMBLE

As governments consider policies to fight alleged man-made global warming, evangelical leaders have a responsibility to be well informed, and then to speak out. A Renewed Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Examination of the Theology, Science, and Economics of Global Warming demonstrates that many of these proposed policies would destroy jobs and impose trillions of dollars in costs to achieve no net benefits. They could be implemented only by enormous and dangerous expansion of government control over private life. Worst of all, by raising energy prices and hindering economic development, they would slow or stop the rise of the world’s poor out of poverty and so condemn millions to premature death.

WHAT WE BELIEVE

1. We believe Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence —are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory.  Earth’s climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history.
2. We believe abundant, affordable energy is indispensable to human flourishing, particularly to societies which are rising out of abject poverty and the high rates of disease and premature death that accompany it. With present technologies, fossil and nuclear fuels are indispensable if energy is to be abundant and affordable.
3. We believe mandatory reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, achievable mainly by greatly reduced use of fossil fuels, will greatly increase the price of energy and harm economies.
4. We believe such policies will harm the poor more than others because the poor spend a higher percentage of their income on energy and desperately need economic growth to rise out of poverty and overcome its miseries.

WHAT WE DENY

1. We deny that Earth and its ecosystems are the fragile and unstable products of chance, and particularly that Earth’s climate system is vulnerable to dangerous alteration because of minuscule changes in atmospheric chemistry. Recent warming was neither abnormally large nor abnormally rapid. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human contribution to greenhouse gases is causing dangerous global warming.
2. We deny that alternative, renewable fuels can, with present or near-term technology, replace fossil and nuclear fuels, either wholly or in significant part, to provide the abundant, affordable energy necessary to sustain prosperous economies or overcome poverty.
3. We deny that carbon dioxide—essential to all plant growth—is a pollutant. Reducing greenhouse gases cannot achieve significant reductions in future global temperatures, and the costs of the policies would far exceed the benefits.
4. We deny that such policies, which amount to a regressive tax, comply with the Biblical requirement of protecting the poor from harm and oppression.

A CALL TO ACTION

In light of these facts,

1. We call on our fellow Christians to practice creation stewardship out of Biblical conviction, adoration for our Creator, and love for our fellow man—especially the poor.
2. We call on Christian leaders to understand the truth about climate change and embrace Biblical thinking, sound science, and careful economic analysis in creation stewardship.
3. We call on political leaders to adopt policies that protect human liberty, make energy more affordable, and free the poor to rise out of poverty, while abandoning fruitless, indeed harmful policies to control global temperature.

ENDORSEMENT

While our signatures express our endorsement only of this Declaration and do not imply agreement with every point in A Renewed Call to Truth, we believe that document provides ample justification for it. We call on scholars and experts to join us in signing this Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming.Any content

* Organization and title are listed for identification only, and do not imply organizational endorsement.

class="posterous_quote_citation">via cornwallalliance.org

Posted via web from Kahu Gary's posterous

Chaining technologies?

I love exploring technologies and figuring out how to leverage the free (or very cheap) ones. 

SHAMELESS PLUG: At the Hawaiian Islands Ministries Honolulu 2010 Conference, March 4-6, I will be leading a breakout session on the use of technology and social media for churches. Be there!

My latest quest is trying to figure out how to chain and combine a few telecom systems. 

Google Voice provides an inbound telephone number you can pass out to everyone. That number can be configured to ring your cell phone, your office phone, your home phone, or any combination of those... it can ring all three at the same time, if you'd like, and much more. http://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html

Skype is another, different, communications system that I like and use. It is a computer-to-computer voice & video connection, but adds the option to place phone calls to landline or cell phones. 

So here's the scenario: next April I will be in Korea for a couple of weeks taking some classes and participating in a leaders' meeting. Using my iPhone in Korea presents some technical issues, not to mention the possibility of a whopping ATT bill from downloading the hundreds of spam emails I get each day. What I would love is the ability to chain my Google Voice number to my Skype account, which would allow people to reach me in Korea any time my computer was on by calling my Google Voice number (which has a North Alabama 256 area code), and the call would seamlessly transfer to my Skype account, and "ring" wherever I was. Good idea, isn't it?

Except that the two services operate on different protocols, and don't play well together. If there is a way to make it work, I will find it, and I will post step-by-step instructions. (If you have a work-around, let me know!)

Posted via email from Kahu Gary's posterous

The complicity of the media perpetuates evil

via mrc.org

"The record compiled over 22 years by the Media Research Center demonstrates how some liberal journalists utterly failed to accurately depict communism as one of the worst evils of the 20th century, and often aimed their fire at those who were fighting communism rather than those who were perpetuating it."

Posted via web from Kahu Gary's posterous

Black Friday madness

Back when our children were young we planned our shopping excursion on the day after Thanksgiving like a military maneuver. We strategized the likelihood of which stores would have sufficient stock and the smallest crowds, drove all over the island of Oahu from sale, starting in the wee hours of the morning and ending at sundown... or way past sundown.

With no children in the home it is different. Our son, Josh, is married and living in Alabama and our daughter, Tori is 21. She lives at home with us, if you can call showering, changing clothes and sleeping here "living at home." Regardless, there are no desperate searches for the toy-of-the-moment, so shopping is far different now.

We look for one or two items we hope to find deals on, and hit one or two stores. Period. The early leakage of all the major ads for Black Friday make it so much easier. I'll save you the time: I GOOGLED so you won't have to!

Here are links to most of the major sites featuring Black Friday Ads in advance, along with some pre-BF sales and deals.

http://www.black-friday.net/

http://bfads.net/

http://www.2009blackfridayads.com/

http://www.dealtaker.com/blackfriday.html

http://www.blackfriday.info/

http://www.blackfriday.fm/

http://black-friday-sale-specials.com/coupons/

http://www.bfreedom.com/

http://blackfriday.gottadeal.com/

Posted via email from Kahu Gary's posterous

Turning points in life

For a week this February I experienced one of those eye-opening, paradigm-shifting, life-changing pivotal events that alter everything that follows in life.

I was among 29 pastors from Hawaii who traveled to the Philippines with Compassion International to see, up close and in real life, the effectiveness of the work of that organization. We went to Davao, in Mindinao, in the far south, where we visited the homes of some of the poorest of the poor... and I use the word "home" very loosely. One such home was barely bigger than the area rug in my living room, about 6' x 8'. That was not a room, it was the entire home, and it had a very low ceiling, no windows, and was pretty much a tiny, shabby box to house the family of five. They were crowded in among perhaps 100 such homes in a desperately poor community where, just feet from their doorway open ditch ran with raw sewage and huge rats scurried about.

The families 18-month-old girl was enrolled in a Compassion Child Survival Project, because infant mortality rates there are exceptionally high due to disease and poor sanitation. The family has no kitchen and no bathroom. They sleep on mats on the floor; and their doorway has a huge gap at the top and bottom for air circulation -- we saw rats running under other such doorways while we stood there.

I was a supporter of the mission and ministry of Compassion International before the trip, but now I am a passionate advocate not only for the organization, but for the people they serve.

The photo? I had the rare privilege of meeting face-to-face with Felma, the 9-year-old girl my wife and I sponsor through Compassion. She's a great kid, with a great heart and an awesome smile, and I want to help Compassion release her from poverty in Jesus' name. You can sponsor a child, too. Look at the Compassion.com website and do it today.

The only good rat...

...is a dead rat.
The recent wet weather has caused a rodent problem in the church
kitchen adjacent to our home.
Did I mention I hate rodents?
I have caught several mice with glue traps, but these are RATS.
Apparently the latest round of poison is working.