Over the last couple months this blog has been lighter on original content, largely because of our move to St. Louis. Even with a lighter publishing schedule, I have been publishing a lot of links and videos on grim matters and on matters of hope. My heart has been broken time and again over the last couple months as information has come out about the practices of Planned Parenthood. In these dark times, we must keep our eyes on the Cross.
Hope. Many people are seeking it. Some Christians have lost it. The tricky thing is to recognize where you find it. Hope found in the world will always fail. Hope found in the power of the Cross, in the Blood of Jesus, in the eternal life to come will never fail. While the total depravity of our world is heavy, I find hope in the One that can overturn the sinful nature of the hearts of Man.
This for me is why I do not keep my words, my faith, the Word of God to myself. Keeping this hope, this blessèd assurance, to myself would be the greatest form of hate and selfishness. So I publish. Many will be offended. Many will unfriend me, unfollow me, or cut off all communication with me. But many more will see hope for something better than this fallen world.
For the Christian, we must recognize that sexual identity is not consistent with the Word of God. Neither hetero- or homosexuality. The idea of sexual identity is a very recent concept. As Rosaria Butterfield says, sex is something you do, not a core element of your identity.
All of these are great responses to the lies we have been hearing for the last few weeks, but I thought I’d call out a few.
CLAIM #3- Planned Parenthood is the largest provider of women’s health services in the country and defunding it would harm women, especially women of low income.
IS IT TRUE? Nope. As Democrats For Life explains, the claim is only true if you include abortions. Community health centers provide care to ten times the amount of women that Planned Parenthood does if abortions are excluded (and Planned Parenthood doesn’t provide mammograms but community health centers do). Care for low-income women would go on without a hitch without Planned Parenthood. You can breathe a sigh of relief now.
Crazy that you keep hearing that “without Planned Parenthood, where would women go for crucial services?” yet the only service that Planned Parenthood offers that most of the other centers don’t is abortion. In fact, the other community health centers provide more services. Go figure.
CLAIM #4 The makers of the undercover videos are extremists! Or terrorists?!?!?
IS IT TRUE? So what. The implicit accusation here is that the videos are made by pro-life extremists and are therefore false. Unfortunately for defenders of Planned Parenthood, that violates fallacy of origins otherwise known as the genetic fallacy as well as the ad hominem fallacy. Students of basic logic know that this sort of claim is irrelevant in disproving the claims of the video makers.
Ah, the ad hominem. The easiest way to shut up the dissenting people. Easiest response? “So what.” Whether or not the attack on the speaker is true or false doesn’t affect the argument stated.
CLAIM #5- Planned Parenthood’s abortion services only equate to about 3% of what it does. The remaining 97% are “good” services that would be hurt if PP got defunded.
IS IT TRUE? False and the devil is in the details. As numerous sources have pointed out, including the NY Post among others, the figure Planned Parenthood uses to come up with that figure includes every single “service” it provides including handing out condoms, morning after pills, etc. It also separates out all the services it gives out to women who have an abortion thereby vastly inflating the number of services. A much better account of the percentage of what PP does can be ascertained by looking at its revenue stream. When you look at PP’s financial bottom line, abortion provides PP with at least 37% of its total revenue and probably much higher than that. Therefore, we can safely say that abortions are not a “minimal aspect” of the services that Planned Parenthood provides.
Yeah, love people that manipulate statistics to prove their point. Love it.
I do love Ted Cruz. “We do not have the right to force…” should be the motto of the US government. If a Christian business doesn’t want to serve someone for any reason, that should be their choice.
Instead of common thinking that our kids need to "sow their wild oats" when they are young, research suggests that the behaviors, addictions, and poor choices of our developmental years stay with us. God can always help us to overcome the baggage, but it's never an easy process.
Unfortunately more information has come out about Josh Duggar. The media loves to shred people and— using information from a website, specifically built to help people have affairs, that was hacked and published online— have jumped on the story of Josh Duggar having an affair. This is horrible and a major hit to his integrity has a Christian, even more for it to be happening in the public square. Often times, these things come out behind closed doors and families deal with them and no one ever hears a word.
We need to realize that this family needs our prayers more than anything. Our God is a god of mercy and grace, forgiveness and love. The desires of the Lord are that this marriage stay together, that forgiveness is sought and given. The lions are circling and waiting, pushing and prodding to make the opposite happen. We need to pray that this family circles around this young couple in prayer and as wise counsel.
As for us, we need to be reminded if our sin and the wages of sin over time when not confronted. Our children today are not only encountering sexual sin much earlier, but be encouraged by their elders to partake in it much earlier. We must talk with our children earlier than ever and warn them, coach them, and parent them. We will be the weird ones of the world, but we always have been.
None of us can afford to sit idly by. We must be diligent to coach our kids on healthy sexuality. We must tell them that it is precious, beautiful, and worth saving for marriage. We must share with them about the addictive dangers of porn. Beyond the "just say no" language of many, we have to have frequent, relevant and usually awkward conversations about what it looks like to choose God's best in a world that commonly chooses poorly.
I don’t usually share the entire comic when I share from Adam4d, but with this one, I need to. To all those that support Planned Parenthood, this is what you support. This is where you stand.
How do you prove the value of life by lining up on the interstate at rush hour? Last I checked, 1,800 black babies are aborted every day. This represents 30% of all abortions, while blacks only represent 13% of the U.S. population. Abortion is the #1 cause of death for blacks.
If black lives mattered, why is it only brought up when white police kill a black person?
In the 30 minutes that I-70 was blocked, nearly 40 black babies were ripped limb from limb, burned with acid, and some even sold for their parts like some perverted slavery.
But that is for convenience and by choice, isn’t it?
