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Equity: The Thief of Human Potential

So many good things said in this video.

The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie.

Joseph Schumpeter

Thomas Sowell talks about the difference between traditional justice and cosmic or social justice. He also addresses how those that push this new form of justice use smear attacks against anyone that disagrees, which in turn makes many that really should be joining the conversation back away in fear.

The whole society is a victim because you are not going to be able to attract into the public arena people who value their privacy and value protecting their families from humiliations if in fact disagreements become simply grounds for smears.

Thomas Sowell

Campfires

There is something about sitting by a campfire that soothes. There is something about sitting by a campfire with an instrument in hand that imbues. Yesterday we lit the firepit— a nice addition to our lovely home, complete with a grilling top— and grilled up tons— 5-6 pounds, really— of meat. We like having food for the days ahead. After dinner, storytime, teeth brushing, after the kiddos went off to bed, as the sun went down, I went out with my mando and sat by the simmering coals. Just enough warmth and light.

And I sat in awesome wonder.

June 24th was a major victory. A battle won in a war long-waged. Just one victory— albeit a large one— in a war that is not over. But that is just the background, really. That victory is not ours, it is not a moment to pat ourselves on the backs. As Bill Maher’s guest stated clearly, this was just luck. A “happy accident”. Had Ruth Bader Ginsburg retired under Obama, this may not have happened. Had Hillary Clinton won in 2016, this may not have happened.

Here we are. A “happy accident”, just luck.

But I don’t believe in luck. I believe in sovereignty. I believe in a Living God seated on a celestial throne. I don’t believe in accidents. I don’t believe in mistakes.

But the world does.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?

Psalm 8:3-4

One of our elders at church preached yesterday morning from Psalm 8. Two words are used in verse 4 to describe mankind. “What is man (enosh)” and “the son of man (ben adam)”. Enosh often points to our mortality and frailty, while ben adam means “son of dirt”.

All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return.

Ecclesiastes 3:20

In Genesis, the Creator makes us from dirt. Adam, the name of the first man, is literally dirt, which the Creator breathed life into. And the world doesn’t believe much different today. Our universe is one big accident. Your very existence is a chain of events, not driven with purpose, but with no direction whatsoever.

And your life? Meaningless.

The world has no definition of what life is. When it begins. When it ends. What is in between the beginning and the end is without meaning. Enjoy it while you can, get out of it what you want, and expire into the nothingness at the end of this.

It’s no wonder that the world rages against anyone that says that one shouldn’t live a specific way or enjoy certain pleasures. Why stop one from doing so? It’s all meaningless anyway. The void doesn’t care.

But.

For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.

Psalm 139:13-14

You weren’t made without purpose. You are not an accident. Nothing is. Our Lord, the Maker of the universe, the Creator of the stars and worlds untouched, the One that knows the number of hairs on your head, yet holds the Sun in his hand: He made you for a reason.

Oh Lord, my God
When I, in awesome wonder
Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder
Thy power throughout the universe displayed

Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee
How great Thou art, how great Thou art

I sat by the fire last night. Awesome wonder. As darkness crept over the earth. I considered. As the light of my fire glowed. My soul sang. His majesty is great, His power mighty, and His sovereignty complete. He has a plan. Every step is known. And He is owed the glory.

And He somehow cares for us. Despite us being mere mortals, frail. Despite us being made from dirt. He cares. He hears us. He is with us.

O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Psalm 8:9

The Election Doesn’t Matter

The election doesn’t matter. I mean, it does in the short term. Very short. What matters is not who you vote for, though that does matter, but who is your Lord. You want change? You see hate rising? You see depression, racism, poverty, and worse?

Yeah, Man is capable of great evil.

All men.

Every single one.

Not just Democrats. Republicans too. And independents.

Christ is the answer.

Not the next politician with their oft empty promises. Not the seminars on anti-racism. Not the lectures on tolerance. Not the new racist business label on Yelp.

Christ is the answer.

On the other side of Biden winning the election is evil people in power. On the other side of Trump winning the election is evil people in power. Socialism? Evil people. Tolerance training? Evil people.

We cannot solve things without solving the true issue.

The human heart. Every one of us is a sinner. No one is good. And no matter what we do, we cannot be good. We just can’t. We can’t help but be a sinner. To be evil. To do bad things.

But Christ.

You need Christ to redeem you and His Spirit to burn out all that wretchedness from inside you. Christians aren’t perfect, but they are being perfected and have submitted to the God of the Universe to get better, to be made better.

And that is all that can make this world better. The only thing.

So the election doesn’t matter. Who you vote for doesn’t matter. The thing that matters is that you take a knee. Ask for forgiveness. For redemption. Salvation. Ask the Maker of your soul to do what He has promised to do. To scoop you up, clean you off, and welcome you into the Kingdom of God.

How to Give a Portion of Your Amazon Purchases to Pro-Life Organizations via Lifehacker

LifeHacker has a great article on how to automatically donate a portion of your Amazon Purchases to pro-abortion organizations, so I thought I’d share it with a little help for those of us disgusted by the killing of babies and want to help women and children in need out.

If you’re an Amazon customer and you’re disgusted with the onslaught of [babies], you can set your account to directly support [pro-life] organizations.

Through Amazon’s “Smile” program, you can choose from more than a million non-profit organizations that are qualified to receive a portion of Amazon’s sales in support of their mission.

The AmazonSmile Foundation donates .5% of the purchase price from eligible orders (that’s 50 cents for every $100 you spend), which admittedly is not much. But it does add up; Amazon reports that charities have received nearly $125 million, as of February 2019.

To set up your Smile account, go to the “Accounts and Lists” drop-down menu on Amazon’s homepage and then click “Your AmazonSmile.” From there, you can’t browse a full list of charities, but you can search for an organization to support by entering its name in the search field.

If you are in the Saint Louis area, I highly recommend searching for “Mosaic Pregnancy & Health Centers” in Granite City, Illinois, a great local organization that helps women.

When you’re placing an order, eligible products will be marked “Eligible for AmazonSmile donation” on their product detail pages. For your order to count, you have to place it through smile.amazon.com rather than the regular Amazon homepage.

Go make a difference and support women and children in tough situations.

Does Gender Determine Whether You’re More Likely To Be Pro-Life?

Many U.S. political leaders may think of abortion as a key “women’s issue,” but it is not an issue about which women have substantially different attitudes than men.

Gallup, June 2018

44% of women identify as pro-life. Look at the comment threads on major news pages and you’ll see just as many women as men speaking out against abortion and in support of these recent heartbeat laws.

Gender is not an indicator of whether one will support abortion or not. Worldview is. Religion is.

Don’t let the talking heads stir up a division that doesn’t exist.

Missouri’s Abortion Bill and Down Syndrome

This morning I’m reading more about our neighbor state’s abortion bill, which passed the Senate last night. This part makes me so happy to see:

Other provisions in the wide-ranging abortion bill include a ban on abortions based on race, sex or a “prenatal diagnosis, test, or screening indicating Down Syndrome or the potential of Down Syndrome.”

KMOV

Outlawing the systematic eradication of children with Down Syndrome is one of the most appalling things going on in the US. We literally have tests early in a pregnancy to detect potential “defects” that then the doctors use to persuade mothers to kill their children. This bill outlaws that practice. I couldn’t be happier.

Outrage Over Alabama

Seeing the outrage reminds me of how outraged individuals were over losing the right to own slaves.

A lawless president has inspired lawless legislatures. Our laws are crystal clear the government cannot come between a [man] & [his property].

[This] will cost Alabama [men] their [livelihood], and threatens the [property] rights of [men] across the country. We must fight back, and our next president must act to enshrine [slavery] into law.

57% of voters think [slavery] should stay in place, poll says

CNN

You know what? Sometimes the law is morally wrong.

Slavery was legal. 100%. No question. It was legal. But it was morally wrong. So we fought to overturn that and free slaves to give them the same rights we held to be self-evident.

Those are the same rights that the unborn have. Not the same rights they deserve, not the same rights they will one day get: the same rights that they have. We are infringing on their pre-existing— not made-by-the-government— rights. Just as we were the slaves. Exactly the same.

Truth matters. Words matter.

Truth matters. Words matter. Without meaning, words are pointless.

When you hear “school shooting”, yesterday is what comes to mind. And yesterday was terrible. Seventeen dead. And it took just minutes for the media to start talking about ways to prevent this, both sides having their piece, their take. Before the bodies are even buried, before most parents even knew their kid was one of the dead ones, we are calling half the country evil for supporting gun rights.

The statistic being quoted by many last night and this morning is that in 2018, a year that we are only some forty days into, has seen eighteen school shootings, referring to the reporting from a group called Everytown for Gun Safety. That is truly an appalling number. 18 school shootings. When you hear “school shooting”, yesterday is what comes to mind. And yesterday was terrible. Seventeen dead. But yesterday is not what Everytown is calling a school shooting. They are counting all shootings at schools or involving schools. Truth matters. Words matter. Without meaning, words are pointless.

So what does this reporting from Everytown mean? Eight of those eighteen resulted in no injuries or fatalities. Two were suicides, one in the parking lot and one in the bathroom at a school. One was a gun fired unintentionally, no one hurt. Of these eighteen incidents, three people were killed— not including the two suicides— and roughly 30-35 were injured, according to The Daily Wire.

We all wish that yesterday was one bad day out of a million good days. We all wish we had a billboard that counted the days from the last school shooting and it had been at 30 years. But when “we include suicides, accidental discharges, purposeful shootings without injuries, and purposeful shootings without only ‘superficial’ wounds” as school shootings on par with what happened yesterday our words lose meaning. We become numb. Yesterday was just another school shooting. That was the new normal. But it isn’t. It isn’t the new normal.

Truth matters. Words matter. I hope that you agree.

In the Shithouse

As Republicans defend President Trump’s language once more, I stand over here as a conservative without a party. These fake, ambulance-chasing Republicans are trying to defend a sitting president using language we wouldn’t want our children repeating. I said after the election that I couldn’t vote for President Trump because ”I couldn’t explain that to my daughter”. I can’t agree with them. This language is inappropriate for a world leader to be using to describe our allies.

But the Left wants this— too— to be about racism. It has to be about one of their -isms or -phobias. It always has to be. Why? Is it because victim identity is the new sacred? Had he called Norway, a predominantly white nation, a shithole, would so many Leftists be offended? Would they think he’s talking about race?

I don’t agree that this is about race. No, I think this is a case of a man that lacks control of his tongue. He described a poor, third-world nation as a shithole. He described a nation, not the people. Yes, there are, to quote a tweet, brown-skinned people living there. But it’s a nation that you see no one aside from missionaries choosing to spend their vacation days on.

So you might read the above and think I agree with the term as an adequate word to describe these nations, if one is not the President of the United States. And you might be right. But my church sends a lot of money to these nations, bringing food, water, and the Gospel of the Living God to these people. My God redeems prostitutes, dines with tax collectors, and makes the poor rich. The shitholes are just as much His as are the bastions of freedom and wealth.

In my opinion, is not our government’s job to raise these people out of poverty, clothe them, feed them, and give them water. But, Christian, it is yours.

Tribalism and Roy Moore

Roy Moore lost, not because Alabamans are stupid. Roy Moore lost because Roy Moore was a terrible candidate with child molestation allegations hanging round his neck. Moore should’ve been better vetted, one. But also abandoned when credible allegations came forth. Because it turns out some Republicans couldn’t stomach voting for a man accused of getting handsy with an underage girl. Yet this is somehow surprising to red-eyed morons convinced just being against the Democrats is a winning strategy. Roy Moore lost because too many egotistical Republicans in high places overestimated the power of tribalism: “Moore has an (R) after his name, ergo #MAGA and screw the libtards!”

Just “being against the other tribe” didn’t work in Alabama. It won’t work nationwide in 2018 either. Or 2020.

Courtney Kirchoff

Conservatives, you had better hear this. I know many that voted for Roy Moore did so because of the two-party system, because of the “lesser of two evils”. But many more did so because he was a Republican. But running as a Republican shouldn’t be enough.

We are a party of ideas. We are a party of ideals. This man had heavy allegations hanging from his neck. Same with Trump. It’s why Trump was close to not winning. Literally anyone could have beat Hillary. But we picked the most polarizing, most offensive, worst candidate in recent history.

We need to learn to vet our candidates better and when shit comes out, we need to push them aside. Trump’s famous recording should have been that moment for him. These allegations, once credible, should have been the moment we pushed Roy aside.

We will lose in 2018 and 2020 if we do not get away from tribalism.