ABORTION: What I Believe

I’m going to start straying a bit from some of my more anecdotal writings to tackle a few of the most hotly-debated and controversial topics of our age.

Tonight’s topic is..... ABORTION.

DISCLAIMER: If either the Word of God or opinions that differ from your own offend you, stop reading this immediately! If you're not mature enough to handle the fact that not everybody thinks exactly as you think, you might want to go read something else.

I intend to write what I believe and, simply put, this will literally piss off all of the liberal hedonists of our otherwise great nation. Opinions, either for or against what I write, are always welcome, but know this ahead of time. Some of my opinions are most definitely gonna come off as caustic. This is because I feel very strongly about this subject and don’t take too kindly to cold-blooded killers.

And before I get rolling, if I happen to toss out a few Bible quotes (which I’m pretty sure I’m gonna), I’ll take them from the King James Version. Just thought you should know.

Without a doubt, abortion is an extremely sensitive topic and God knows this country has heard just about every reason under the sun that people have come up with to justify having abortions. In reality, however, none of those excuses hold water.

You read that right - NONE.

I'll start by getting the toughest and most challenging “rationales” out of the way first.

LIFE OF THE MOTHER IN DANGER: I am not a woman, so presumably, the easiest way to shoot down any of my opinions would be to simply remind me of the fact that I’m a man and will never know what it’s like to be a woman faced with the abortion dilemma.

Well, guess what. I might not have a uterus, but I have a brain and the right to use it as I see fit. I’m capable of rendering opinions and holding fast to my beliefs and I’m more than reasonably sure my beliefs regarding abortions wouldn’t change if I’d been born without my Y chromosome.

So, if it’s all the same to you, I’m gonna keep typing.

Or would you prefer it if I just stood idly by and allowed the slaughter of innocent lives to continue unopposed? I’d also remind everybody that “asking men to butt out of abortion issues” will only help the pro-life cause.

Why?

Because polls consistently show that more women oppose abortions than men do. If the opinions of all men are taken out of the equation, Roe vs. Wade would have never happened and abortions would still be illegal. Plus, the vast, VAST majority of abortion butchers ("doctors") are men, so you might wanna take that into consideration before you show me the door.

To the godless, the “mother’s life in peril” excuse is an easy out because their physical, earthly life is all they believe they’ll ever have, so it must be preserved at all costs. However, for those who truly believe in our Lord, not even this excuse works.

Here’s why.

Because an abortion is nothing more than the murder of an innocent human being; the extermination of a soul-bearing vessel. And absolutely no end justifies those means. When a stunt man signs on to participate in an action movie, he goes into it knowing full well that he’s gonna have to put his physical health on the line. He’ll need to sign all sorts of waivers to acknowledge this reality before they’ll even let him play checkers.

As such, a woman who allows for the possibility of becoming pregnant puts her own corporeal health at risk. Granted, most women are at least moderately prepared for some of those physical maladies, such as morning sickness, edema, respiratory difficulty and a whole host of other physical side-effects that comes with bearing new life in her womb, but there are more serious risks to consider.

As for the women who haven’t thought all of that through, well.... they’re not somehow magically absolved from this responsibility. Fortunately, incidents where a pregnancy will, with absolute certainty, cause the mother’s death, are far, far, far fewer than the media would have you believe, particularly in the United States where the vast majority of abortions are performed.

For those rare exceptions (where the mother’s life is legitimately in peril), committing an act of evil for the sake of accomplishing a perceived good is still unacceptable (see Romans 3:8). It is just as inexcusable to kill the baby to save the mother as it would be to kill the mother to save the baby.

And, on the subject of me not being a woman, I consulted my wife on this very matter not long before she became pregnant with our daughter. Guess what she said. If doctors told her that her pregnancy would surely kill her, she’d go through with it anyway.

Reason? She had a few, actually.

For starters, God is far greater and wiser than all of the doctors on our planet put together and she believes in the power of earnest prayer.

Secondly, she also believes that abortion is murder and knows that God would forgive her far faster than she’d ever forgive herself for choosing to extinguish the most innocent of life forms in the interest of self-preservation.

Thirdly, she prefers to be a good spirit for the Lord to being a living human being guilty of killing a defenseless fetus.

And finally, she is reminded of the words of Jesus in Mark 8:35 where He says,

“For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it.”

She’d rather lose her life for the right reasons than to keep it for the wrong ones. “So, what about cases of rape or incest?” Well, let’s do those next then, shall we?

RAPE AND/OR INCEST: Here’s the classic “Two wrongs don’t make a right” scenario. In short: Rape is a sin. Incest is a sin. Murder is a sin.

No woman will set things right by answering one act of evil with another.

When a woman becomes pregnant, she’s already a mother whether she wants to be or not. The difference is whether her pregnancy will end with a living baby or a dead one. Regardless of how a new life is created and regardless of the physical health of this life, we’re talking about an innocent soul.

Are we (as flawed and sinful humans) qualified to gauge the value of a human life based on its physical state and/or the circumstances surrounding its creation?

Do we have the right to end that life because of what we think the child might grow to be or what other people will think or say about that child?

I say no..... and, near as I can tell, God agrees.

Certain sexual acts that lead to a conception can be as ugly as Satan himself, but the soul that God provides is still pure. With even the most debilitating and grotesque birth defects, humans can still live, love, pray and worship. They can lead productive lives and they can inspire people to do great things.

Unless, of course, they’re murdered before they ever get the chance to take their first breath.

As for victims of rape, we’re dealing with the same basic truth. Rape is an extremely ugly act of evil, second only to murder. I understand how a woman can loathe her rapist, but can a woman really loathe and despise her growing fetus, regardless of how she got it?

Only if she fails to realize who is innocent and who is guilty in this act of rape.

The growing baby certainly didn’t commit any crime, so why does s/he have to receive the death penalty? Will killing the baby heal the anguish that the woman is suffering as a result of the rape?

Surprisingly (or maybe not surprisingly, depending on what you believe), the vast majority of women who abort babies that are spawned from rape or incest actually come away from the experience feeling even worse. Many of these women go from having to deal with being raped to having to deal with being raped, plus their newly-acquired post-abortion trauma. And yet so many people out there assume that erasing the baby somehow erases the trauma.

It doesn’t.

In fact, if there was ever anything that had a halfway decent shot of healing some of the woman’s post-rape trauma, it would be taking care of the baby. There’s also the very real risk that the raped woman who has an abortion might actually sustain physical damage. It is said that three to five percent of women who have an abortion are left sterile. Still others suffer complications, such as infection, uterine and cervical tearing and a host of other maladies. Still others who manage to become pregnant wind up having miscarriages as a result of the permanent damage done to the woman’s body as a result of the abortion.

It’s almost like having God tell you, “No dice, lady. You had your shot. I blessed your womb and you murdered my creation.” So, now this woman has the rape, the abortion and her sterility to deal with. Doesn't sound like an equitable deal to me.

Quick Story: A thirteen year old girl was raped back in 1896 and became pregnant. She delivered a girl who would later become a Broadway sensation; a famed African-American Jazz and gospel singer by the name of Ethel Waters. Wikipedia the name. It's an interesting story; one which would have never existed, had Ethel been aborted.

HEALTH OF THE BABY: Now we get to an abortion rationale to which I can relate. Some women choose to have an abortion if there’s a chance their baby will be born with some sort of physical abnormality or mental retardation such as Downs Syndrome. Sometimes, the mother aborts due to a disease that she has that she fears will be transmitted to the fetus (i.e.: AIDS). So the baby is aborted as an act of perceived mercy so that he or she won’t have to live a terrible life.

Again, however, we don’t have the right (at least not under God’s law) to decide these things for ourselves. You don’t know God’s plan any more than I do. For all we know, the child who would have been born as (Heaven forbid) a Harlequin baby just might have had a positive and lasting effect on the few who would bear witness to his brief existence. Maybe witnessing this baby would somehow draw souls to Jesus. We can’t possibly know what God’s grand design is, so we must continue to treat every baby and potential baby as precious, because every one of them IS precious in the eyes of God.

And I said that this “health of the baby” excuse is relevant to me because my wife and I were faced with a health dilemma in the first months of her pregnancy. After preliminary blood tests were done, the doctors said that there was a fair chance that our baby would be born with Downs Syndrome. That was disturbing to hear, for sure, but what I found even more disturbing was that our counselor’s first suggestion was to abort the baby.

Because there was a chance our baby MIGHT have Downs Syndrome.

I acknowledged my wife’s legal (though not God-given) right to choose by saying the following, “I know it’s my wife’s decision, but if it were left up to me, I’d say there’s no way in hell I’d ever consider aborting this baby. He or she will be loved no less, regardless of how s/he is born.” My wife told the counselor that she agreed with me 100% and that she would love this baby with all of her heart no matter what.

Then the counselor offered us a chance to have an amniocentesis done to confirm with 100% accuracy one way or the other. This procedure had a 1/100 chance of miscarriage. We said that “one in one hundred” is a gamble that neither of us was willing to take. Sure, most women might have either gone ahead with the amnio or fretted out her remaining months.

My wife chose a road not often traveled.

She continued carrying our child in blissful ignorance. She saw our baby for what she was and is: a blessing from God.

And where I come from, you don’t turn down a gift just because you don't like the way it's wrapped.

In short, the pregnancy ran its course and our daughter was born… perfectly healthy and free of Downs Syndrome, praise be to the LORD. If, God forbid, the baby dies in childbirth, then that means that God brought your baby's soul home. And make no mistake - that is God’s right to do so. We as humans do NOT have the right to release a soul; not even our own.

If the baby is found to have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, then that’s the mother’s fault and perhaps raising said child would serve as a permanent reminder of the dangers of alcohol consumption. In fact, virtually any drug can adversely affect a fetus. You might think Prozac’s the way to go, but trust me, your baby won’t agree.

Now, this next set of excuses falls under the general category of, “You should have thought of that before you spread your legs.” Let’s begin:

I JUST CAN’T AFFORD A CHILD: Here’s a news flash: The majority of parents on this PLANET can’t "afford" the child(ren) they have, but you owe it to your own flesh and blood to do everything you can to try and make it work. Contrary to popular belief, quality of life is NOT defined by whether or not you have an iPod.

If there’s one lesson I learned by working in a supermarket as a teenager, it’s that our government can help you out quite a bit if you ask. WIC checks, food stamps, welfare… you name it.

If you truly can’t afford to keep your child’s heart beating (regardless of whatever help you might get from the government, your family or, dare I say it, the father of the child), then adoption is always an option. Sure it might be emotionally painful, but giving up your baby for adoption isn’t a sin.

Murdering your child, however, IS.

Besides, if my daughter turns seven and, God forbid, we can’t afford her anymore, that doesn’t give me the right to shoot her ass, does it?

I DON’T WANT TO BE A SINGLE PARENT: And to think there are millions of people out there who think the notion of “no sex before marriage” is unrealistic and ludicrous. Trust me, I was one of them. I had sex WAY before marriage, used condoms, the whole nine. But with all of that, I knew in my heart and soul that if I had ever gotten anybody pregnant, abortion would not have been an option - at least not with me.

This is merely ONE of the reasons why abstinence is the absolute best option for anyone who is not rich enough, not old enough or not mature enough to have a baby. But damn, it’s just so easy to have sex, isn’t it? Most people who engage in sexual intercourse have at least a passing knowledge as to how a baby is made, yet so many unwanted pregnancies occur each year. Proof positive that with all of our technology, we’re no smarter now than we were thousands of years ago. These are usually the same enlightened clowns who think that gay marriage is just A-OK.

It’s like watching apes use an Etch-a-Sketch.

I’M TOO YOUNG TO HAVE A CHILD: Then you were too young to be having sex, weren’t you? Again, if you can’t handle the blessing God gave you, give your child to someone who IS ready to carry the burden. Odds are, the prospective parents you choose won’t look at your baby as a "burden." at all. And fear not, because I’m fairly certain the waiting list of loving couples who are anxious to adopt is at least a couple of years long.

Yes, the emotional pain of having to give your child up for adoption might be tremendous, but take solace in the fact that, at the very least, you’re giving your child a chance to live his life. No matter how you try to spin it, the majority of pregnant “children” aren’t victims of their pregnancies - they’re participants.

I DON’T WANT OTHERS TO KNOW I HAD SEX/GOT PREGNANT: This is pretty much THE... MOST... IMMATURE reason in existence for killing an unborn baby. Occasionally, the glittering princess gets knocked off of her pedestal. Life sucks that way sometimes. You might not want everybody to know that you got “knocked up,” but guess who already knows.

God knows.

And what’s more, God knew you’d get pregnant EONS before you even existed.

“Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.”

Jeremiah 1:5

Remember that no pregnancy can ever be hidden from God.

“For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.”

Psalm 139:13-16

PARENTS/BOYFRIEND MADE ME ABORT: This is a LIE, because nobody can make you have an abortion, even if you’re pregnant at the age of twelve. Granted, it’s tough to make a monumentally mature decision at that age, but like I said, that’s yet another reason why a girl should wait until marriage before having sex.

Most states need the consent of at least one parent or guardian if a minor wishes to have an abortion, but the state must also have the full consent of the minor before terminating her pregnancy. If a minor faces threats by one or both of her parents (or even her boyfriend) to “have an abortion or else,” she can go to the police or the courts for help.

She needn’t give in to threats, though even I’ll admit that the average 12 year old pregnant girl probably has neither the maturity nor the composure to think rationally enough to invoke all of her legal rights. It doesn’t make the abortion any less wrong, but odds are that even abortion opponents won’t come down too hard on a scared child who caves into pressure by adults with far stronger intimidation tactics.

CHEAPER TO ABORT THAN TO HAVE A WELFARE BABY: Well, if your interest is in saving the tax payers some money, why not go the full nine? Let’s kill all potential AND realized welfare babies? Why stop at fetuses if the almighty dollar is what’s really at stake? Let’s just start wiping out the children who are already straining my tax dollars? If we allow morality to take a back seat to thrift, this is the logical route.

Clearly the idea of rubbing out kids is preposterous but, as far as God is concerned, so is the idea of wiping out unborn children.

MY BODY, MY CHOICE: Hmm, catchy…. but wrong. It ain’t always your choice just because it’s your body. After all, last time I checked, you can’t legally sell your body for sex, nor can you legally ingest cocaine, so why should it be legal to destroy the contents of your womb?

Plus, at least with the first two examples, it really IS only your body. With abortion, it’s your body AND your baby’s body. So, why doesn’t your unborn child have a choice? You certainly have a choice. You can choose to remain abstinent or roll the dice and have sex. That is your choice, but with any gamble, there's a chance you may lose and you have to be prepared to live with that choice. And speaking of choice, I’ve been seeing the term “anti-choice” thrown around a LOT lately to describe “pro-lifers” such as myself. To anybody who chooses to label somebody like me as “anti-choice” just because I value the life of an innocent unborn child, I have just one thing to say to you.

GO F**K YOURSELVES!

Seriously, go f**k yourselves, you evil prick bastards!

Do you really believe that you will somehow make ME look like the evil one if you’re the ones condoning the murder of innocent fetuses? Do you somehow think that by changing the words, you’ll somehow change the action? If anybody is anti-choice, it’s the "pro-choice" movement for the simple fact that YOU AREN’T GIVING THE BABY A CHOICE.

You are completely denying the unborn baby any say in its own fate. The baby doesn't get a choice on whether he gets to live or die. You'd rather subject an innocent, defenseless fetus to a barbaric death than take responsibility for your own pleasure-seeking actions. Would you like me to start calling you “pro-murder” crusaders?

No?

Then shut the f**k up!

IT’S JUST A BLOB: Ohhh, nothing gets my blood boiling hotter than this little pearl of faux-wisdom. I’ll have you know that the STRONG MAJORITY of aborted fetuses already have arms, legs, hands, toes and a beating heart before they’re butchered to death. Just because it’s little doesn’t make it any less human. Yet, people try to kid themselves by calling a fetus a blob so that they won’t feel guilty about killing it.

I couldn't even begin to quantify the amount of joy and love I had for my daughter when she was no bigger than the size of a grain of rice. Do you think she was "just a blob" to me?

Hell no!

In the very first day when sperm meets egg, all of the baby’s genetic information (including gender, hair and eye color) is determined. And in the fetus’s twentieth day, the beginnings of the brain, spinal cord and nervous system are already established.

Yet, we always hear the same irrelevant bullsh*t questions being asked like, “When does life begin?”

Yes, it may take several weeks before the fetus has any shot of surviving outside of the mother’s womb, but make no mistake – life begins at conception. Once the sperm cell has penetrated the woman’s egg, life has begun. This is not up for debate. This is FACT.

How do I know this?

Because dead cells are incapable of mitosis (cell division). One cell becomes two, which become four, which become eight, etc. If the original zygote were not alive, this process simply would not be possible. Yet, people attempt to grade the worthiness of a fetus to live, based on how much time its been growing in the womb. It's the earliest form of elitism that we humans are exposed to in our lives.

If you've been in the womb for more than 24 weeks, you're deemed worthy enough to live and worthy enough to receive protection under the law. If you've been alive for 23 weeks, we can legally kill you.

Yeah, okay. Tell me this world's not going straight to hell.

THE PLANET’S ALREADY OVERPOPULATED: So, why the f**k are we spending billions of dollars a year on finding ways to lengthen life spans? Why do innocent fetuses have to pay the price because a band of idiots thinks the planet is full?

Wanna save some money? Cut funding for medical research and let humans die whenever their bodies decide to fall apart. F**k finding a cure for cancer, AIDS or whatever. Spend that money on ammo and guns and let's start shooting whoever's not worthy of living in our eyes.

And while we’re at it (....and we apparently see nothing wrong with murdering innocent fetuses), let's snuff out the elderly folks, too. I got nothing against old folks, but let’s face facts. Murder is murder, but at least the old timers have lived their lives. Plus, God knows that the golden oldies are using up way more resources than fetuses are, so you’ll save money there, too.

THIS BABY WILL HAVE A TERRIBLE LIFE ANYWAY: Oh, really? You can tell that already? Wow, and I thought Nostradamus died hundreds of years ago.

What is this? Gattaca?

So now, apparently, abortion is a mercy killing to save the unborn child from a life of misery. Well, if that’s the case, let’s wipe out the kids who are already miserable. If abortion is humane if done to prevent misery in the unborn baby’s life, then certainly it’d be that much more humane to knock off the kids who are living in poverty, starving or are having the sh*t beaten out of them on a daily basis, right?

Come to think of it, didn’t slave-owners use that exact same rationale to justify keeping slaves? After all, the slaves weren’t starving to death in a third-world country anymore, because we “rescued” them, brought them to America, gave them a full day’s work, food, water, clothing and shelter, right? Yet, few Americans today would argue in favor of making slavery legal again, would they?

DON’T LIKE ABORTIONS – DON’T HAVE ONE: Another cute, yet merit-less bumper sticker. It’s what people say when they can’t adequately defend their pro-choice (anti-life?) position. Although it should be noted that this message does have a ring of truth to it. The mistake we make is asking the wrong person for their opinions on abortion.

We really oughta be asking the unborn child this question.

“Hey, little one. Comfy in there? Gooood. Hey, here’s a question.

How would you like to be ripped to shreds, ground up like hamburger and dumped in a landfill?

What? No?

You WOULDN’T want that? Well gee whiz, I guess we shouldn’t kill you then, huh?”

I’m sure there are plenty of other “reasons” to have an abortion, but I think I’ve made my point. Besides, addressing these common excuses is only serving to make me more cynical and sarcastic. My very simple point is that abortion cannot be justified under ANY circumstances.

Politicians, judges and layfolk can argue this until Armageddon, but abortion is one of the worst possible sins a human being can commit, no matter how they try to spin it. God can forgive this sin, mind you, but not if you’re trying to convince yourself that abortion is anything other than what it is:

MURDER.

My Take on Ephesians 2:8-9

I’ll start off with a little disclaimer:

I’m not a theologian.
Never have been.
Probably never will be.

Then again, the fact that I don’t zap people with a magic wand or fight dragons doesn’t disqualify me from reading a Harry Potter book or having an opinion about it. So, with that said, I want to take a look at a Bible passage that has literally caused several hundreds of years’ worth of arguments between Catholics and Protestants:

Ephesians 2:8-9

If you have a King James Bible handy, grab it. If you’re like most people, you’ll probably wind up coughing and/or sneezing from the dust you kick up by moving your Bible from wherever it’s been, but no matter. Here’s how my Bible reads:

“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.”

Some Protestants have taken these words and used them to explain that just doing good things won’t get you into Heaven, but that faith in Jesus is, by itself, sufficient. Some Catholics will go on to read the next verse (10), which says,

“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”

To the average Catholic, this translates to needing to do charity work or perhaps volunteering some time to work for the church. In short, we need to do good deeds because faith in Jesus isn’t sufficient. I believe both sides are a little off the mark. I’ll explain with a visual image that seems to make sense (…at least to me).

Let's say you have a small table and, in the center of that table, sits an empty glass. You’re thirsty and you have a pitcher of water. Pouring water on the surface of the table won't fill the glass, right? All you'll do is make a mess and waste water. Furthermore, you won't be able to quench your thirst by drinking from that glass because, duh, it'll still be empty. At best, you could grab some paper towels, wipe down the table and maybe clear off some dust. That’s the most you could hope to accomplish with a wet table and an empty glass.

However, by filling the glass with an abundance of water, you'll not only have a full glass to drink, but if your glass can't contain all of the water that it's receiving, it will overflow, spilling water on the table. Both examples will get the table wet, but if your primary goal is to quench your thirst, then pouring water on the table is relatively pointless. On the other hand, a glass that is overflowing with water will, by cause and effect, make the table wet.

So, how does God tell the difference between true Christians and people who just say they’re Christians?

Well, only God can answer that question for sure, but if it were up to me to spot the true, blue Christian, I’d look for the dude with the wet table AND the full glass.

Why?

Because God made that table wet… and in my opinion, this is how people will know if you have the love of God in your heart. If the symbolism’s throwing anybody off, think of the water as representing God’s love and the glass as representing the human heart. The spilled water on the table represents your good deeds which, like the water on the table, you can do regardless of whether or not Jesus resides in your heart.

What finite human heart can contain the infinite love of the LORD? None can, so if God has filled your heart with His love, He’s not just gonna give you enough to satisfy your own needs. He’s gonna give you enough love to spread the wealth and actually make you WANT to love and help others. By filling a man’s heart with God’s love, the good deeds that are now within his heart to want to do are actually a very positive after-effect. If you truly have Jesus in your heart and soul, you’re just moved from within to do good for others and it's not something you have to fake.

Doing good deeds because you think they’ll help earn your way into Heaven is like dumping water on your table and leaving your glass empty. If your heart lacks the love of the Lord, then the good deeds you do are relatively worthless in the spiritual sense. God will see your empty glass and know that the water on the table didn’t come from Him.

I’m not saying that this is the correct interpretation of Ephesians 2:8-9, but it’s the one that makes the most sense to me. Much like the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians, the Ephesians passage reminds me of just how pointless it is to have faith without good works or conversely, to do good works with no faith. The full and complete Christian will have both and I doubt either Catholicism or Protestantism would argue with me on that.

Mary, the Mother of JESUS

One of my favorite comedians (Richard Jeni) used to speak of false syllogisms in his routine by explaining that “...if the first two parts are true, then the last part has to be true.” He remarked how cool that was because he could just hang out in his dorm room, get high and “…make up true sh*t all day.” He used a common example of, “God is love, love is blind, therefore…. Ray Charles is God.”

A similar syllogism has been used by Catholics for a very long time and it’s caused quite a bit of debate over the years. Catholics call Mary the “Mother of God.” Why? Well, God is Jesus, Mary gave birth to Jesus, therefore…. Mary gave birth to God and is His mother.

Well, that’s a great way to sum things up, but since it takes such a great mental effort for many people to understand how Jesus and God could be one and the same, you can’t possibly expect people to just swallow that Mary is the mother of God without hearing a few confused grunts. I mean, pretty much everybody would agree that Mary was the mother of Jesus because Jesus was the human manifestation of the One, True God.

So, is Jesus equal to God? Is Jesus a part of God? Is Jesus the whole embodiment of God?

Well, those are some mighty tough questions for a mere mortal such as myself to answer, even if armed with my favorite Bible and all of the blog space I could ever possibly want. Yet, that's not the most befuddling question of the hour. Here’s where my true confusion sets in.

Say you’re a Catholic, right? With all of the crap that Catholics catch from pretty much the rest of the freakin' planet, wouldn’t you want to eliminate whatever non-essential arguments you could, if for no other reason than to free up more time to tackle the essential ones?

I would think that Catholics would just be content with saying that Mary was the mother of Jesus. I mean, not only is that a true statement, but let's face it - who’s gonna argue with that?

Somebody who doesn’t believe that Mary or Jesus ever existed? How many of those people exist? Like seven? Meanwhile, the rest of the world is pretty much in agreement with the fact that Mary gave birth to Jesus. Protestants would agree. Baptists would agree. I daresay Mormons, Jehovah’s witnesses and even Muslims and Jews would agree. Yet, Catholicism takes it to the next level. The syllogism is invoked and, BINGO! Mary is the Mother of GOD…. and people are up in arms.

Now, I’m all for fighting for what I believe in, but I’m also a big advocate of fighting the fights that need fighting. Put another way, I don’t engage in conflicts that I could easily avoid while maintaining the integrity of my core beliefs.

As for the reason why some have a problem with the "Mother of God" title? Well, I would imagine it might have something to do with the fact that God pre-existed Mary, wouldn't you think? Like I said, you can write several theses on Jesus and God being the same or being different and you may never resolve the issue.

One question that haunts me in that long-standing debate is that if Jesus and God were the same, why would Jesus pray to God or ask Him to spare Jesus from the cup of suffering He was about to endure as seen in Matthew 26:39 and Mark 14:36? If you read it, you'll see that the last part of Mark 14:36 says, “…nevertheless, not what I will, but what thou wilt.” If Jesus is separating Himself from God, why wouldn’t we do likewise?

Anyway, that’s pretty much my reasoning for avoiding a title such as “Mother of God” for Mary without getting into a thesis of my own.

So, taking the example that God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are all one and the same… we still refer to them with different names, don’t we? Water, much like God, can exist in three forms: The original state of water (the liquid), steam (the gas) or ice (the solid). Well, steam and ice are still water, but we don't CALL them that, right? One of the reasons why we have different names for them in the first place is so that people can tell which FORM of water you're talking about when you broach the H2O topic.

Simply put, steam rooms aren't called water rooms and ice cream isn't called water cream. The Titanic may never have sunk, had it hit a waterberg, though the same might not hold true for a steamboat if we referred to it as a waterboat.

If I want to have my glass of water with ice, I'll ask for ice - not water. Mary gave birth to Jesus, so YEAH, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that Mary is the mother of Jesus. Ice and Water might both be H2O, but I'll confuse fewer people if I say I'm going ice skating instead of water skating and I'll raise fewer eyebrows by referring to Mary as the mother of Jesus than I would if I were to refer to her as having given birth to GOD.

I know that Catholicism won’t change a bit, regardless of how many blogs I write about it, but that’s my take on the matter. Calling Mary the Mother of Jesus instead of the Mother of God isn’t me trying to diss her – I’m just telling it like it is…. as clearly as possible. Is that so wrong?

Seriously?

ATTENTION: Agnostics & Atheists

It's funny that, regardless of how many generations pass since His crucifixion, the name of Jesus still evokes great anger in people, particularly agnostics and atheists.

I had the good pleasure of meeting an old friend from my high school for lunch a few months ago. During the lunch, I mentioned that some acquaintances of mine had been saying negative things about me on account of what I believe. I, of course, don't have any problem with people who have a different opinion about Jesus or the merits of Christian living, but it's very telling of a person's character when they can't face me and rant about me to my face. They choose, instead, to make calumnious comments to other people of like-minded perspectives until they've reassured themselves that they're right and Christianity is wrong. They allege to have read my words, yet their feeble paraphrasing efforts only serve to twist them to mean something completely different.

Again, I don't mind if people don't believe in Jesus or consider those who do to be "a little overboard", "Jesus freak" or whatever…. but c'mon! At least muster the backbone to voice your disapproval to my face. All they do is make themselves look incredibly insecure. It's really quite pitiable. Though I never asked for this, my friend defended my beliefs and, as I came to discover, he's actually quite adept at shutting people down pretty quickly when they twist someone else's words to mean something that was never said (…turns out, he's now an attorney. lol).

I wonder what Jesus represents to these haters. Someone says, "I don't believe that Jesus was the Son of God" or "I don't believe that Jesus ever existed?" Fine! You're entitled to believe that if you want, but many of us who live our lives according to how the Bible tells us we should live believe differently.

If you don't believe that Jesus said a certain thing, that's fine... but the fact that you can read these words on a page means that SOMEBODY existed long enough to think and say or write them down, so ask yourselves this question: What harm would following the advice within these pages do to me, regardless of who wrote them?

Honestly?

What? Wouldn't be able to drink yourselves into a coma every Saturday night? Guys, are you afraid that reading the Bible will force you to stop bathing in Drakkar in the desperate hope of finding your next meaningless one-night-stand? Ladies, afraid you'll have to stop dressing like cheap dimestore whores to placate some wretched man's wildest sexual fantasy every weekend?

Yeah, taking the words of the Lord to heart does have a tendency to clean a person's act up in more ways than one... and even if you don't believe in God, at least love yourselves enough to learn from the words that have been passed down for several centuries. Think they're antiquated our outmoded? Well, guess what. We still have homosexuality, rape, murder, gluttony, greed, sexual promiscuity and a whole host of other evils that tear us apart as a people.

Can you honestly tell me that we'd even be trying to find a cure for AIDS if people bothered to live and love as the Lord instructed? Think we'd be fighting this ridiculous battle against gay marriage if everybody learned something from Sodom and Gomorrah? Hell no!

Do you disagree? If so, try this: Instead of gathering together with other atheists and agnostics, tickling each other's ears with words of reassurance, why don't you try venting to a Christian, then hearing him/her out in return?

Oh, and one more thing for the atheists of the world: If you're right and we're all wrong, you won't be able to gloat about it when we're all dead.

If we're right and you're wrong, I'm afraid you've got an awfully long swim in a certain fiery lake. Everybody believes in God and Satan in Hell.

Think about it.

Free Will vs. Predestination

First of all, thank you for taking the time to visit and read my babblings and rantings. I am NOT a theologian by any stretch of the imagination, but I love God and love writing about my beliefs. I´m confident that not everybody will agree with what I believe, but that´s cool - just as long as you keep in mind that these are the convictions of just one man - ME.

So...... I thought I´d tackle a particular difficult topic in my debut blog.

I should start with my disclaimer - that being that, decoding the mysteries of our Lord is not exactly my area of expertise. I mean, how could it be? I´m only human, right? However, I do tend to mull over some of life's most perplexing questions from time to time when the mood hits me. Concurrently, I usually wind up with at least one possible answer to the question in my head. The answer never satiates me, but it does satisfy me to the point where I can wait patiently for the true answers to be revealed.

Lately, I've been thinking about FREE WILL.

Some time ago, I was speaking with a non-Christian about free will and he asked me something along the lines of, "If every single person has a predetermined fate, then where's the free will in that?" Well, I gotta admit - it's an excellent question to ask. No doubt, it's already been asked millions of times throughout the ages, but hey..... why not take a stab at it myself and see if I can come up with something feasible?

If you have a Bible and happen to be reading through the book of Romans, you'll see words like "predestined," "chose" and "elect," even though that same book also holds people accountable for their own choices (…or failure to choose). Elsewhere, we read and learn that each individual is expected to choose whether or not to believe in the Son of God. John 3:16 is probably the most well-known example of this basic truth.

In Matthew 7:26, we learn that people can choose whether to be foolish or wise and, in areas such as John 20:30-31 and 2 Timothy 3:15, we read various instructions on the way to salvation. From there, we're left with our own choices to make. Reject His words…. or choose to obey them. Our love for Him manifests itself through our obedience to His word.

"Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him."
John 14:21 (NIV)

So, if it's God's will that nobody should perish (2 Peter 3:9), then it must be someone else's choice that separates us from God, right? After all, how could God hold us accountable for our choices if we never had to free will to choose our path to begin with? Simply put, a fair God would not impose His ordinances and expectations on those who are not free to make their own choices.

Now, if what I've just written is true, then how can Scripture be so clear to say that God already KNOWS who's going to be saved?

"For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren."
Romans 8:29 (KJV)

"Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied."
1 Peter 1:2 (KJV)

Personally, I try to wrap my head around passages such as the one in Ephesians 1:4 and always wind up with a headache. I mean, could our good LORD really have chosen us "…before the foundation of the world"? It makes me wonder if the mysteries of predestination and free will can ever be fully understood by our finite minds. Well, if Romans 11:33-36 is any indication of what we can expect with regards to full comprehension, the answer is a resounding NO.

As I tend to do with many of life's greatest mysteries, I have oversimplified the answer with an analogy that suits me. It doesn't do the mystery justice, but like I said, it'll hold me off until God reveals the truth to me. So, I see free will and predestination this way:

Have you ever watched a home movie, either your own or someone else's? Perhaps if you're handy enough with a camera, you've even filmed a home movie, like a family reunion or a barbecue or something. Anyway, you film your family doing all of the things that families do and when you're done, you've got a tape to watch, right? Someone pops your tape in the VCR and the first images appear.

You now have your family on film and you can watch their crazy antics as many times as you want. You say to your friend, "Oh, here's where Uncle Al spills his fruit punch all over Aunt Alice's dress. Watch this." You knew he was gonna spill his fruit punch because you've already seen it. You saw everything that your family did, heard everything that they said.... yet nobody on that film was controlled to the point where they weren't allowed to make any choices. Everybody moved and talked and acted in their own way. Their words were their own. Their actions were their own. Their blunders were their own. You caused nobody to do what you wanted them to do, yet you can watch that tape, knowing how it'll end.

So, how can you know all of this? Well, that's an easy one, isn't it? It's because you don't exist inside the tape. You live OUTSIDE of the tape. You MADE the tape and you can see what happens, but you're not living INSIDE the video itself. Now, imagine as you're reading this explanation right now, God is on His favorite easy chair and He's watching a video of you reading what I've written. You decide to log off and go to bed. God knew you were going to do that. As freaky as this thought might be, imagine that we're all on tape right now! We're on God's tape. Now, we really ARE inside of a video -- His video!

Now, if our timeline is like a reel of film, then we must conclude that God is timeless, which is to say that He exists outside of the fabric of time. He had no beginning and He will have no end, yet we can't say the same for that tape… or our existence, can we? God is an infinite Being, watching finite humans living their lives.... the way THEY choose. You can't fiddle with that VHS tape to prevent Uncle Al from spilling his fruit punch. And if you could prevent mistakes…. or sad happenings or tragedies, you could affect free will. With that power, you could even take free will away altogether. The difference is that God doesn't take that away from us. He lets us be free to make our own mistakes.

Have you ever heard people ask questions like, "Where was God on 9/11?"

I wonder what these people expected to get for a response?

For certain, God allows tragedies to occur. He allows us to experience the good and the bad. Yet, anybody who wants God's help in their lives can have it. He left us an instruction manual. It's as if God said, "I won't interfere with your free will. However, if you ever DO want Me to point you in the right direction, read this. It's a basic user's manual to happier living."

That's our Bible.

The answers are laid out. The choice to read or disregard it is still ours to make.

That's our free will.

In the end, I believe our role is pretty basic. We must choose to be obedient to the LORD and, in all likelihood, leave issues such as predestination, foreknowledge and free will up to God to explain to us when He feels the time is right.

Feel free to comment if you´d like to lend your input.... and I hope you enjoy the musings of the Guileless Vituperator.