In my work environment I am surrounded by some incredibly talented young people. (Increasingly I’m surrounded only by younger people, but that is another post for another day…)
These men and women are quicker in comprehension, more knowledgeable than me in numerous areas of social media, have better marketing comprehension then me and–sigh–the list goes on.
As I grew older in pastoral ministry I regularly ran across people more talented than I. In my last pastorate one pastor was far better than me at relationship building, another was far better at project planning and execution, another far more talented in music and management, and another was every bit my equal in preaching. Everywhere I turned I was faced with a team member who excelled me in some area.
Most all of us have some amount of ego that flinches when one better than us comes on the scene. Humility–preferring others over ourselves–is far more admired than practiced.
This is often seen in ministry when identity in Christ is too closely linked to calling from Christ. In such a scenario, an older person can feel their identity threatened when the calling of another grows more prominent, or the gifts of another are surpassing. Jealousy is usually the result.
A Kingdom mindset finds older believers rejoicing over the calling and gifts of younger believers. Nowhere is this more needed than in areas of Christian leadership. Christian leaders need to rejoice when others do well. They must repent from and reject jealousy, which are roots of evil works.
Below is a video of guitar virtuoso Phil Keaggy. It was shot before a concert. Keaggy is seated with another guitarist, James T. La Brie, who is clearly a fan. Keaggy is regarded, by those who know the subject, as one of today’s top guitarists and, perhaps, one of the greatest who ever lived. You do not even have to buy the Jimi Hendrix urban legend to hold that view. La Brie admits his nervousness, which is pretty easy to see with all the squirming he does.
What’s fun to watch, and instructive to older believers and leaders, is Keaggy’s supportive participation. La Brie starts with an instrumental he wrote. Quickly Keaggy provides guitar-body percussion, eventually playing along for most of the piece. La Brie then suggests a second effort, a Joni Mitchell song, and they play together again.
Through both of these, Keaggy makes no effort to overshadow his fan. At no point does he show anything but genuine interest and joy. I know less than zero about playing the guitar. This, however, is as much about leadership as about music.
If you are a younger person, what are some specific things an older person has done to encourage your leadership track?
If you are an older person, how can we avoid the pitfalls of jealousy toward younger, more gifted people who might ultimately take our positions?
Chelsea Welch is a former Applebee’s waitress, recently fired for uploading a picture of a receipt from her work. Said receipt had been issued to a party served by one of her co-workers. The paying customer, Alois Bell, a St. Louis area pastor, went well out of her way to avoid a tip.
“My heart is really broken,” Bell added. “I’ve brought embarrassment to my church and ministry.”
A spokesman for Applebee’s said it apologized to Bell for violating her “right to privacy” and confirmed that Welch “is no longer employed by the franchise.”
Look closely at the receipt and you will see the party of 8 people spent only $34.93 on the meal. That is an average of $4.37 each. Have you ever eaten at Applebee’s? Spending that little means
sharing meals or eating only appetizers. Typical menu entrees can exceed $11 each. The current special is 2 for $20. A party of three people eating a normal entree with tea or soft drinks can easily spend–before tip–as much as Bell’s entire party. [A friend suggested the $34.93 was only Bell’s portion, not the entire party. This seems to be the case. 2nd Update: A CNN interview claims the 18% was included in the total and charged to Bell’s credit card. The image does not seem to support the report. -MD]
Sad as it is that one server was chastised and stiffed by a customer, and Welch fired by her employer, I am incredibly thankful they brought this nonsense to light, and I’m compelled to write this open letter to Chelsea:
Dear Chelsea,
On behalf of some followers of Jesus Christ, I apologize. One dirty little secret of Americanized Christianity is how badly some of our tribe tip at restaurants. This is a terrible reality, but I am thankful you have brought it to light. Whether you realize it or not you have done us a great service.
Even though pastor Bell is embarrassed now, we should have been embarrassed for years. We have known about this attitude for a long time. Even though our Savior was generous, too many of us are stingy.
In fact, the excuse given–“I give God 10%”–is something I have heard in the past. After reading your story a friend of mine posted to Facebook about family members, both of whom are restaurant servers. They know servers must split tips with staff who do not work the floor. They know Sundays are the worst days to work, since many Christians do not order expensive drinks or tip well on what they do order.
Before the annual meeting of my own tribe social media becomes a flurry of reminders to tip well. I often wonder why the stinginess of many followers of Jesus is so well known it creates this cause for concern, but it remains so common.
I know it’s likely you made less than $3.00 an hour from the restaurant. If your former employer is like most restaurants your tips are part of your salary. Our chintziness is certainly no blessing to you.
It is obvious such poor character on our part is evidence that every negative thing you have heard about followers of Jesus might be true. Believe me that it is not a universal problem, but it is far too widespread. According to Yahoo you said, “I’ve been stiffed on tips before, but this is the first time I’ve seen the Big Man used as reasoning.” The “Big Man” is not the reason; He’s a convenient excuse for our own lack of generosity.
For many years my wife and myself have tipped 15, 20% or more on almost every meal. We have given gift card balances to our server far exceeding a regular tip. Only utterly awful servers do not receive good treatment. I dined with one pastor who left a $100 tip, well exceeding the cost of the entire meal. Many of us “get it.” I am so sorry you had to deal with one who does not.
Believe it or not, the God we (and pastor Bell) claim to serve is not chintzy, cheap or stingy. He is, in fact, extravagant. That we do not follow His lead when dealing with hardworking people in your field is to our shame.
I have no idea whether you will see this. The Internet can be a strange beast, so maybe you will. If you can email me through the “Contact” link above I will send you some money to help offset your loss of income. My family is not rich, so this will not be like that Nicolas Cage split-the-lottery movie. But, I will send you something. Please consider it a tangible apology for our pitiful habit in this area. Jesus is a lot better than how we tip.
Note: To get the context of this post it is necessary to read through the Introduction in Part 1 of this series. The basis for these two posts is the book Rachel Weeping: The Case Against Abortion, by James T. Burtchaell.
3. Discharge of responsibility and brutality from average people
According to Burtchaell,
A third theme that rises repeatedly from the Holocaust record is the denial of responsibility…The first way of putting it is for each person to account for his killing work by pointing out that he acted under law, having submitted his judgment to those empowered to make decisions of state. (pg. 157)
Or, as it has come to be known, “I was just following orders.”
As one defense attorney explained at Nuremberg:
If the experiment is ordered by the state, this moral responsibility of experimenter towards the experimental subject relates to the way in which the experiment is performed, not to the experiment itself. (pgs. 157, 158)
Even the commandant of Auschwitz who oversaw the most efficient extermination method of the Holocaust and one of history’s most gruesome, shrugged it off on Himmler:
I did not reflect on it at the time: I had been given an order, and I had to carry it out. Whether this mass extermination of the Jews was necessary of not was something on which I could not allow myself to form an opinion, for I lacked the necessary breadth of view. (pg. 158)
Though some promoters of abortion rights now accept moral responsibility, this is not universally acknowledged nor was it always the case. The former president of the National Abortion Rights Action League, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, wrote in 1974:
Certainly the medical profession itself cannot shoulder the burden of this matter. The phrase, ‘between a woman and her physician’ is an empty one since the physician is only the instrument of her decision, and has not special knowledge of the moral dilemma or the ethical agony involved in the decision. (pg. 211)
The doctor does not shoulder the burden? Is he or she not the one who inserts the vacuum, dismembers the child and evacuates the womb? Nathanson eventually did shoulder the blame and left the abortion industry.
Medical doctors were not the only ones who disavowed responsibility. Psychiatrists did as well.
Kenneth R. Niswander, professor and chairman of Obstetrics and Gynecology at ht eUniversity of California, Davis, insisted that there were virtually no psychiatric grounds for abortion…’If society wants abortion to be easier, it should have the courage to campaign for it honestly and not exploit the psychiatrist who, I contend, has no factual basis for being associated with the problem.’ (pgs. 213, 214)
Shifting of blame is not the only issue. How far can it be removed when so many people have become links in the chain of death?
Daniel Goldhagen’s 1997 international bestseller Hitler’s Willing Executioners (though perhaps too broad in assessing motivation) showed overwhelming evidence that the extermination of European Jews involved the energies and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of ordinary Germans. Noted scholar Hannah Arendt concluded “heinous evil generally, and the Holocaust in particular, were not executed by fanatics or sociopaths. Instead, these were the actions ordinary people who accepted the premises of their state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal.” She coined the now famous phrase: “the banality of evil.”
How evil can banality become? From Rachel Weeping:
There was Ilse Koch who had lampshades made of prisoner’s tattooed skin and Irma Grese of Auschwitz and Belsen, who was said to have bound together the legs of prisoners in labor so that mother and child would perish together….And there was Dr. Sigmund Rascher [who] was also detailed to Dachau, where he conducted aviator clothing tests by freezing prisoners to death, and trials of parachute function by suffocating others in high-altitude chambers, and experiments on blood coagulants by shooting prisoners and noting how long it required for them to bleed to death.” (pgs. 165, 166)
The perversity of the demonic Third Reich is an interwoven tale of family men who were doting parents, lovers of their wives, and kind to children. These, who were the very devil of Hell to six-million Jews and as many as 7 million others, could be angels when dealing with their own.
Perhaps one reason (besides overuse) comparisons to the Nazis tend to be rejected is the ash of the crematory covers so much of our memory. We tend to forget these “willing executioners,” to use Goldhagen’s term, could be our neighbors and co-workers. Indeed, in Nazi Germany neighbors and co-workers were exactly that.
But, if there is a better word to describe the diabolical efficiency of the mass slaughter of babies than “brutality” I would lean toward “savagery.” More than 55M children killed in the U.S. alone in the last 40 years while we simultaneously herald and ignore the documentary assertion that “life” is an “inalienable right”?
As Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York moved into high-volume abortion work (“pregnancy interruption service”), the director of nurses reported: ‘Most nurses find the destruction of life the very antithesis of what they believe…Nurses in delivery rooms had been accustomed to every conceivable effort to save babies, even those of one to three pounds, and they found that sometimes they were ‘salting out’ bigger babies than those they had worked to save. (pg. 215)
In case you do not recognized it, “salting out” is a euphemism for “kill.”
4. Once killing was initiated, killed continued indiscriminately
Burtchaell notes the expanding circle of victims the Reich was willing to include.
The killers do not, in fact, appear to have been discriminating. What characterized them is not so much a defensive readiness to destroy all major enemies of the state as it is a tempered willingness, once they had blood on their hands, to eliminate any person or group that constituted even a relatively mild frustration. (pg. 172)
What kind of progression do we see? “Mercy death” for chronic mental and medical patients, those with encephalitis, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, epileptics, polio, senility and more. What was initially wrought to those hospitalized was later expanded. In northwestern Poland the SS sent out mobile units for X-ray procedures. Anyone with TB was cured at an extermination center. Early Jewish victims, even before the Final Solution had been formulated, included the crippled, chronic bed-wetters or some with “badly modeled ears” (pgs. 172, 173).
“[Gosnell] regularly and illegally delivered live, viable, babies in the third trimester of pregnancy — and then murdered these newborns by severing their spinal cords with scissors. The medical practice by which he carried out this business was a filthy fraud in which he overdosed his patients with dangerous drugs, spread venereal disease among them with infected instruments, perforated their wombs and bowels — and, on at least two occasions, caused their deaths. Over the years, many people came to know that something was going on here. But no one put a stop to it.’’
The report goes on to describe a squalid operation in which hygiene was ignored, equipment was broken, and late-term abortions were routine. Pregnant women were treated with callous disdain, often left for hours, semi-conscious and in pain, on dirty recliners covered with bloodstained blankets. Untrained employees administered powerful drugs to induce labor, and heavy sedatives to keep women from screaming.
Time and again, the grand jury says, late-term babies were delivered alive — fully intact and breathing — and then killed. Gosnell “called it ‘ensuring fetal demise.’ The way he ensured fetal demise was by sticking scissors into the back of the baby’s neck and cutting the spinal cord. He called that ’snipping.’ Over the years, there were hundreds of ‘snippings.’’’
Planned Parenthood has made millions from the abortion services it provides. Riches at the expense of children’s lives. Riches made via the commission of genocide; blood money.
Abortion providers made enormous sums of money immediately following Roe. Often far more than doctors who practiced medicine the way it was intended…you know, to save lives rather than take them. Abortion, which, only years before, was reprehensible, came to the fore. The mythical “coat hanger in the back-alley” transformed into a highly lucrative cog in the wheel of capitalism.
Even in the early 70s the amount of money made from the abortion industry was staggering. Nathanson reported doctors in his clinic could clear more than $1,000 in each eight hour shift. Some worked double shifts as a result. In 1974 one Chicago doctor–by himself–billed Medicaid $792,266 for abortions for his welfare customers. One job recruitment effort promised $80,000 per year for 10 hours of work per week, while a single woman made up to $5,000 per week running a “counseling” facility. She was paid commissions from abortionists. (pg. 227)
It thus remains that honest, thoughtful people can disagree on the subject of abortion. But defenders of abortion-on-demand should admit that they share vivid, historical parallels with one of the most ruthless and efficient killing organizations in history. The parallels are real and demonstrable.
The comparison I have put forth is not emotionalism, nor a thoughtless invoking of Godwin. It is studied, factual evaluation. If the pro-choice camp insists on defending abortion, members should also be honest enough to acknowledge their philosophical kinships where ever the bloodlines lead.
My involvement with the Scouts is limited. I was in Cub Scouts for about a year. We met at Tony Wingate’s house down the street. He had a room full of styrofoam building blocks which were used to pummel one poor cub at the end of each meeting. Our “den mothers” were hopelessly outmatched.
I have known a few Eagle Scouts over the years including my uncle and a young man for whom I was honored to write a recommendation. Without question the Scouts have helped to create good citizens, teach skills, and allow older men to influence younger men. In many instances churches have been able to influence scout troops with believers involved at leadership levels.
My critique, it should be noted, is not toward the BSA’s decision as much as toward how followers of Christ might understand it.
In fact, the examination of sex abuse in Scouting reveals a long-standing paradox for the nation’s most revered youth group: For 80 years the Boy Scouts of America have given boys some of the best experiences of their lives, but for 80 years some men have used the Boy Scouts of America to have sexual relations with those boys.
“That’s been an issue since the Boy Scouts began,” said James Tarr, the nation’s chief Scout executive from 1979 through 1984.
More than 1,100 Scouts reported being molested by Scout workers over a single 19 year period.
If the two are equally problematic, why not equally speedy and earnest responses to each?
Why is it problematic for churches to host a gay-friendly organization, but not problematic when the organization was “only” hiding child abuse for nearly a century?
Are we seeing the reaction of people for whom gay-rights is the last domino standing, after which there are no more culture wars to fight?
Is their sense of loss greater than their sense of truth?
Why have Scout leaders not been called to repentance by evangelical leaders, especially those who are decrying the recent announcement?
Why do we not emphasize that the Boy Scouts are now–and always have been–a moral organization focused on good citizenship not a gospel organization focused on discipleship?
Do we even recognize the two are not the same?
Why are some fighting to save moralism, rather than drawing a distinction between moralism and the saving grace of God?
Why do evangelical leaders not acknowledge the words “morally straight” are ambiguous, open to interpretation, malleable, and not scripturally moored?
Are some evangelical leaders not blurring the truth when they gloss over this reality: the Scouts’ generic “God” is not necessarily the God of the Bible?
Which God is it that both evangelicals and Mormons can affirm without qualification?
If the Scouts are a Judeo-Christian organization why are more troops hosted by the Mormons than any other other single group?
Does our reaction to this announcement reveal confusion over biblical Christianity and civil religion?
Why would most Christians have no problem with this statement, “We have all the American values: the values of hard work, the values of integrity, the values of fairness and respect,” even though uttered by Bill Marriott explaining why his faith (Mormonism) does not interfere with his business?
Are we more concerned about the loss of Americanism than finding an authentic expression of a Christ-bought church?
If we are more concerned with an authentic expression of the church, why are we so afraid of a faltering culture since the church has usually shone brightest in the rubble?
Will we ever grasp that “reclaiming America” is not the same as “revival”?
Will we ever grasp there is no biblical mandate–or even a suggestion–that “reclaiming America” is a call on God’s people?
Have we misinterpreted the fall of Christendom as the work of Satan, rather than considering it could be God destroying our most grand, safe, and preferred idol?
In a surprisingly broad ruling, the three-judge panel rejected not only the NLRB appointments but any made while the Senate is in session but on a break. That could limit recess appointments to only a few weeks a year.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit also ruled that recess appointments could only be used for positions that become vacant while the Senate is in recess.
“If the decision stands, it would be a significant reduction of the president’s recess power,” said John Elwood, a Washington lawyer who was deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel from 2005 through 2009.
“This is a big, big decision for executive power,” Elwood said. “It is one of the most important decisions in decades.”
“I always just say I was scouted, but that means nothing,” Russell says in her talk. “The real way I became a model is that I won a genetic lottery, and I am a recipient of a legacy. For the past few centuries, we have defined beauty not just as health and youth and symmetry that we’re biologically programmed to admire, but also as tall, slender figures with femininity and white skin. This is a legacy that was built for me, and that I’ve been cashing in on.”
Everything that is happening in the Islamic community in Russia makes us think that we really are on the edge of the cliff. Russia’s geopolitical enemies are trying to use the Muslim factor as a method to destabilize the situation in the Russian regions.
Hacking collective threatens to make public classified material and that when Aaron Swartz killed himself ‘a line was crossed’
Hacktivist group Anonymous said Saturday it had hijacked the website of the US Sentencing Commission in a brazen act of cyber-revenge for the death of internet freedom advocate Aaron Swartz.
Swartz killed himself just over two weeks ago as he faced trial for hacking an online collection of academic journals linked to MIT with the intent of releasing millions of research papers on to the internet.
Well, here’s an unexpected collision of worlds. Republican governor, headstrong firebrand and national treasure Chris Christie is going to have a fundraiser hosted by none other than Mark Zuckerberg, the world’s most powerful bro.
Captain Katie Petronio is a Marine Corps officer with years of experience including tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. She is against women serving in infantry positions in the Marines, saying, “As a combat-experienced Marine officer, and a female, I am here to tell you that we are not all created equal, and attempting to place females in the infantry will not improve the Marine Corps as the Nation’s force-in-readiness or improve our national security.” [Emphasis added.]
Writing in the Marine Corps Gazette (the Professional Journal of the U.S. Marines) Petronio questions the source of this call to equality since, “I am not personally hearing female Marines, enlisted or officer, pounding on the doors of Congress claiming that their inability to serve in the infantry violates their right to equality.”
She provides some perspective:
Shockingly, this isn’t even a congressional agenda. This issue is being pushed by several groups, one of which is a small committee of civilians appointed by the Secretary of Defense called the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Service (DACOWITS). Their mission is to advise the Department of Defense (DoD) on recommendations, as well as matters of policy, pertaining to the well-being of women in the Armed Services from recruiting to employment. Members are selected based on their prior military experience or experience with women’s workforce issues. I certainly applaud and appreciate DACOWITS’ mission; however, as it pertains to the issue of women in the infantry, it’s very surprising to see that none of the committee members are on active duty or have any recent combat or relevant operational experience relating to the issue they are attempting to change. I say this because, at the end of the day, it’s the active duty servicemember who will ultimately deal with the results of their initiatives, not those on the outside looking in. [Emphasis added.]
In other words, this is a political agenda having neither the best interests of women, the Marine Corps or the country in view.
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is lifting the military’s ban on women in combat, which will open up hundreds of thousands of additional front-line jobs to them, senior defense officials said on Wednesday.
The groundbreaking decision overturns a 1994 Pentagon rule that restricts women from artillery, armor, infantry and other such combat roles, even though in reality women have found themselves in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, where more than 20,000 have served. As of last year, more than 800 women had been wounded in the two wars and more than 130 had died.
How long and how would a 125 lb. woman would last with such a load? [Image Credit]
equality and for recognizing the role women have, and will continue to play, in the defense of our nation,” said Democratic Senator Patty Murray from Washington, the outgoing head of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.
I am sorry. The purpose of the military is to demonstrate equality? I thought it is to provide for the national defense.
Susan Farrell, who served on a Department of Defense advisory committee that recommended that more jobs be opened to women, lauded the decision as representing “a chance for women to sink or swim on their own merits. That’s all women have ever asked for: a chance to be as patriotic, as giving of themselves, as the men are.”
It sounds like Susan is ready for more women to die.
Twenty years ago, Congress lifted the ban on women flying in attack aircraft, and now the Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force all have women pilots—although women don’t serve as special-operations pilots.
Female officers now serve on large submarines, and the Navy has plans to add female enlisted personnel on those vessels. The Navy also will allow women to serve on smaller classes of submarines.
I am not of the opinion women cannot serve or serve with distinction in the military. It is clear they have and can.
I do, however, question the wisdom of putting females, who are, in almost all cases physically weaker than men, in hand-to-hand combat situations. One struggles to fathom repeated instances in which a platoon of females, each carrying 40 pounds of equipment and facing an equal number of enemy males in close combat, emerging victorious time and again.
Certainly my egalitarian friends may cry foul; some may even call me “sexist” or “chauvinistic.” That is fine. I, however, do not consider it a remnant of faltering patriarchy that I am moved, even called, to protect my family, especially my wife and daughters. If we meet a gun or knife wielding mugger on the street I will put myself between them and the attacker until my lifeless body is prone on the sidewalk.
Contrariwise, if I happen to be walking down the sidewalk with a female who, owing to a need to demonstrate equality, inserts herself between the mugger and me, I might consider myself freed and run to live another day. Hey, equality is equality is it not? If she wants to be dead is that not “giving of herself”? Should I also be lifeless so “equality” is clearly demonstrated?
Yes, I delve into hyperbole. A little. Perhaps the logical, non-exaggerated conclusion should, in the end, be considered by those who want to be “equal.” Equal must be equal in the glory and the blood, in the show and the shame.
As the military considers sweeping changes for women in combat, the ongoing epidemic of rape in all branches of the service continues almost unabated. Repeated promises of “zero tolerance” are decreasingly believable with each new scandal. Reports the L.A. Times:
As of this week, 32 basic training instructors at Lackland are under investigation stemming from sexual misconduct allegations and 59 alleged victims have been identified by the base.
Maybe some of those idiots should be in her sights.
A report in mid-November found that a fractured command culture and “leadership gap” at Lackland helped fuel the scandal. Six basic training instructors at the base have been convicted of sexual misconduct dating to 2008 and nine trials are scheduled. Staff Sgt. Eddy C. Soto faces a possible life sentence at trial next week for the alleged rape of a female trainee.
Gen. Mark Welsh III, the Air Force chief of staff, told the House Armed Services Committee, Obscene images, songs and stories “will not be accepted as part of our culture.” Uh, huh. Tell us more, General.
The truth is only by devious intent or a full scale ground war could more women die in combat than currently are raped in the United States military. Estimates place the total number of female rape victims from all branches of the military at half-a-million. As in civilian life, many rapes are not reported and many that are reported are not prosecuted. Until early last year a significant number of victims had to report their attack to the very person who had raped them. That is not so much like civilian life. (Oh, and by the way, what better way to get rid of a potential witness to rape than to re-assign her to the front lines. Bible students might remember a guy named Uriah.)
Although some men are raped as well–usually by heterosexuals–women bear the brunt. If you have not yet seen The Invisible War you simply must take the time to watch it. There are several places to rent or buy it online. It may be available on Netflix now. The trailer is below.
Today our oldest daughter, Beth, turns 28. As I was reflecting on how our lives changed so drastically when we went from young, carefree, newly-married couple to “what do we do with this little being who is depending on us to get it right” I couldn’t help but think of a memory that is forever burned in my heart and mind as I sat in an oncologist’s office.
I love this woman.
Marty and I had only been married about three months when we found out I was pregnant. To say we were a little surprised would be an understatement. We certainly wanted children and had already planned our lives out to include several. We really believed God wanted me to quit my job and stay home with them as long as they needed me home. At the time, I had a pretty decent job (for the 1980s) but we certainly weren’t rolling in the dough since both of our salaries were needed to pay our expenses. Our plans were that we would save as much as we could for a couple of years, buy a small house and begin our family. Being pregnant after three months of marriage didn’t go along with “the plan.” Maybe God hadn’t gotten the memo about “the plan.” Nevertheless, we went on to have our beautiful, happy, precious little girl and were thrilled beyond measure. I did quit my job and Marty received a much better job that he began on my last day of work at my job. (Isn’t God funny like that? 🙂 No we didn’t have a lot of money. Yes, we were still in our small apartment. And, we were so happy that God didn’t get the memo about “the plan.”
Fast-forward a little over two years later: After several months of unexplained weight-loss, night sweats, and bone-wearying fatigue, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease. For those of you who don’t know, this is a type of cancer that is usually associated with lymphoma. I was diagnosed at stage 2. (Walking through that minefield of emotions of being diagnosed with cancer when you are in your 20’s with a two-year old is another story for another day.)
After some exploratory surgery and having my spleen removed, I was to begin 10 weeks of radiation therapy. Sitting in the doctor’s office that day going over what my life was going to be like for the next few months as I went through radiation and the recovery, my oncologist dropped the “Oh, and by the way, if you get pregnant during this time, we will strongly advise you to have an abortion due to the amount of radiation you will be receiving and the danger of letting your cancer continue if you choose to stop the treatment due to your pregnancy.” I don’t think I heard much else after that statement. My mind kept going back to “the plan.” Our plan of waiting two years. Our plan of having all of our ducks in a row before we ventured forward. Our plan that really didn’t include much faith in a God who has promised to provide for his children.
Sometimes you get a life lesson in a very unusual way that stays with you for the rest of your life. That day I learned something huge about God’s timing. We can’t see what is ahead. We can’t possibly know what is better for our life than God. The blessings He has for us are immense. What may seem poor timing on our part, is perfect when God is behind it. And isn’t it just like God to use a baby to teach us this?
Feel free to share your stories in the comments. Sonya will reading and interacting there today.
In the early days of the Internet, before what we now know as social media, people exchanged ideas in forums and Usenet groups. After observing many such discussions an attorney named Mike Godwin postulated an argument that has become one of my favorite things to spring from the entire online enterprise. He said, “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” In other words, the longer an online discussion goes–regardless of topic or scope–someone at some point will bring up a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis.
This statement is now known as Godwin’s Law, sometimes called Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies.
The problem Godwin highlights is most comparisons are glib involving neither a valid historical nor philosophical basis. Godwin himself says he wants people “to think a bit harder about the Holocaust.” If you have spent any time at all online you know Godwin’s Law to be true. At times I’ve seen a non-participant jump into a rapidly fraying thread with the single word “Hitler” or “Nazis.” By skipping ahead to the inevitable they demonstrate the degeneration taking place in the discussion.
But, what happens when a comparison to the Third Reich is warranted? Should it be ignored? Because the comparison has been worn out are there never appropriate parallels? So recklessly and mindlessly has Hitler been invoked to use the comparison almost automatically invalidates one’s argument. It is seen as an admission of a weak, unsupportable point of view. This knee-jerk reaction speaks both to the shallow analysis of the over-user and the intellectual laziness of the person who would dismiss the argument out of hand.
The very nature of the Holocaust demands earnestness of thought. Our concept of genocide, indeed the coining of the term, has arisen as a result of Hitler’s Final Solution. Raphael Lemkin, in his work Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (1944), coined the term by combining Greek genos (γένος; race, people) and Latin cīdere (to kill). Though other genocides have taken place in the last 100 years (i.e., Armenians, the Rwandan Genocide, and Srebrenica Genocide), “Holocaust” is generally reserved for the attempted total extinguishing of European Jewry by Hitler’s Third Reich.
One area of clear parallels with the Third Reich is the abortion-on-demand mindset in America. Children have been linguistically reengineered in ways that would make Orwell seem positively straightforward. Since January 1972 some 50 million lives have been artificially and often violently ended before birth in the United States. Comparison to the Nazis are real, valid and ongoing. These articles are only intended to start your own thinking process, not to raise every conceivable point. However, on this 4oth anniversary of Roe v Wade these ideas are worth our consideration.
Introduction
More than three decades ago Notre Dame professor James T. Burtchaell published a series of essays on abortion. Compiled into the book, Rachel Weeping: The Case Against Abortion, it remains a blistering assault on national pro-abortion policy. No less than the Los Angeles Times called it “a searing, impeccable documentation,” while the Library Journal said it offered “extensive information and profound reflection.” “Unassailable” and “unequaled” could easily be added.
Each is worth reading (the book itself should be added to every personal library), but the two historical essays comparing abortion to American slavery and the Holocaust should not be missed. I cannot emphasize strongly enough the power in these writings. Today we will look at abortion and the Holocaust.
Burtchaell is careful to distinguish arguments and process used by the Nazis from the Nazis themselves. In other words, he does not equate pro-abortion advocations to the Nazis in a direct parallel. He does, however, draw clear comparisons to the arguments and mindsets used in both cases to introduce scenarios beforehand thought improbable, impossible or unthinkable.
Ponder the Germanic scenario. There must be an answer as to why millions and millions of human beings died without hearing or trials. There were no hearing or trials because no victims were accused of any crime; they simply were not wanted. Burtchaell asks and answers.
Who did this to them? The SS, the Gestapo, the German Wehrmacht, military and civilian medical and hospital personnel, conscripts from subject countries like Lithuania and the Ukraine, the police of Germany and its tributaries, the governments of cooperative regimes, and the German government in its many ministries: military, Reichsbank, Propaganda, Interior, Transport, Economy, Food and Agriculture, Finance, Labor, Security, Foreign Affairs, and Justice. Many tens of thousands of people–mostly but not exclusively Germans–merged their wits and their efforts that many millions of their fellow humans–not as soldiers nor as criminals–might be destroyed. (pgs. 144, 145)
In Burtchaell’s mind there were “seven factors in the Holocaust which may help us to understand it as an archetype of massacre that is acknowledged only after the fact.” [Emphasis mine.] We will look at five of these in brief–two today and three in the next post.
1. Depersonalization of the victims.
Germany did not simply awaken one day to find its citizenry acquiescent to a genocidal culture. Many years of treating certain groups as sub-human or not human prepared the normal German to view Slavs, Jews and others as life not worthy of life.
When Dr. Eugen Haagen, professor of hygiene at Strassburg University, was receiving prison inmates in batches of two hundred to be injected with typhus, a question was raised whether some of the experimental subjects might be Alsatians. Haagen’s assistant explained reassuringly that “the experiments would not be conducted with prisoner but only with Poles” as “Poles really are not human beings.” Slavs, in the National Socialist racial scale, were classed as subhumans, Untermenschen, only one grade above Jews. (p. 145) Emphasis in original.
Also,
Himmler once cautioned his SS generals not to tolerate the stealing of property which had belonged to dead Jews. “Just because we exterminated a dead bacterium,” he said, “we do not want, in the end, to be infected by that bacterium and die of it.” (p. 147)
There are endless examples of dogmatic racial superiority and eugenics in Nazi Germany and well before. It was all over medical texts, psychiatry and psychology teachings, propaganda, and even math books.
Below is a list of words and phrases used in the “transformation of nomenclature for the unborn.”
The unborn has been designated as “protoplasmic rubbish,” “a gobbet of meat protruding from a human womb” (Philip Wylie); “a child-to-be” (Glanville Williams); “the fetal-placental unit” (A. I. Csapo); “gametic materials,” “fallopian and uterine cell matter” (Joseph Fletcher); “a part of the mother” (Oliver Wendell Holmes); or “a part of the mother’s body” (Thomas Szasz); “unwanted fetal tissue” (Ellen Frankfort); “the products of pregnancy” or “the product of conception” (HEW); “sub-human non-personhood” (F. Raymond Marks); “child Who-Might-Have-Been” (James Kidd); “so much garbage” (Peter Stanley)…”a collection of cells” (Malcolm Potts)…”potential life” (Mr. Justice Blackmun)…and “a non-viable fetus ex-utero” by the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. (p. 196, 197)
Two people read Nazi propaganda. The left column reads, “The Jews are our misfortune.” [Image credit]
2. Euphemistic language to cover torment
Speaking of language and the end result, Burtchaell notes, “The most common outcome was death, but, to avoid all open mention of death and its violent forms, official documents developed an elaborate, almost elegant, euphemy” (p. 152). Think Orwellian and you will get the idea.
I’ll forego the German and list only some English translations:
evacuation, resettlement, clean-up, labor in the East, cleansing, disinfection, special treatment, return undesirable, departed, special actions, forwarded for special measures, inoculated off, separately quartered, transit camp, bath houses, clean-up of the Jewish question. (pg. 152, 153)
And most well known of all the “final solution to the Jewish question.”
This pastel colored language of the grave–this whitewashing of tombs–did not appear only in words and phrases. It was found in the corridors of official life.
There was the 1933 Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Posterity (which affected prevention through sterilization or death); the Reich Committee for Children (which destroyed them); the Reich Committee for Research on Hereditary Diseases and Constitutional Susceptibility to Severe Diseases (which identified those to be eliminated); the Non-Profit Patient Transport Corporation (which conveyed them to the clinics where they would die); the Charitable Foundation for Institutional Care (which paid for it); and there was “euthanasia” and “mercy death” (which was what it was all about). (p. 153)
The Nazis, of course, addressed all issues of potential dilution to the master race including the crippled, retarded and infirm. “These victims were characterized as ‘useless eaters’ and ‘socially unfit.’ Their treatment, as one book described it, posed ‘The Problem of Abbreviation for Worthless Lives'” (pg. 154). Death as abbreviation; how lovely.
The same euphemistic obfuscation was present in the move toward legalized abortion and continues to this day.
Since publication of Rachel Weeping we can add others: “women’s health and reproductive freedom,” “private family matters,” “ensuring fetal demise,” “women’s rights,” and perhaps the most Orwellian of all: “choice.”
And where, exactly, might one go for “post-conception planning”? At the time of Burtchaell’s writing he knew of at least these:
In Pittsburgh there is Women’s Health Services, where the services have little or nothing to do with women’s health. In Florida there is the Orlando Birthing Center, which will handle second-trimester abortions but no births. In Leiden one finds the Center for Human Reproduction, which is concerned to arrest reproduction, as also the Water Tower Reproductive Center in Chicago. In Missouri, Parents Aid aids women to avoid being parents, while in Chicago “Family Guidance” guides people to prevent families. Pre-Term and Pre-Birth in Chicago preclude full-term births. (p. 204)
Be reminded: he is not saying these people are Nazis. He is saying the same “language as smoke screen to the truth” was used in both instances. Any convincing disproval is unlikely.
Next up: 3. Disavowed malicious intent, 4. Once initiated, killed indiscriminately, and 5. Found it an occasion to acquire wealth.
Vice President Biden, Mr. Chief Justice,
members of the United States Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow citizens:
Each time we gather to inaugurate a President we bear witness to the enduring strength of our Constitution. We affirm the promise of our democracy. We recall that what binds this nation together is not the colors of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the origins of our names. What makes us exceptional — what makes us American — is our allegiance to an idea articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago:
President Obama takes the oath of office.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Today we continue a never-ending journey to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time. For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they’ve never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth. (Applause.) The patriots of 1776 did not fight to replace the tyranny of a king with the privileges of a few or the rule of a mob. They gave to us a republic, a government of, and by, and for the people, entrusting each generation to keep safe our founding creed.
And for more than two hundred years, we have.
Through blood drawn by lash and blood drawn by sword, we learned that no union founded on the principles of liberty and equality could survive half-slave and half-free. We made ourselves anew, and vowed to move forward together.
Together, we determined that a modern economy requires railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce, schools and colleges to train our workers.
Together, we discovered that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play.
Together, we resolved that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune.
Through it all, we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all society’s ills can be cured through government alone. Our celebration of initiative and enterprise, our insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, these are constants in our character.
But we have always understood that when times change, so must we; that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges; that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action. For the American people can no more meet the demands of today’s world by acting alone than American soldiers could have met the forces of fascism or communism with muskets and militias. No single person can train all the math and science teachers we’ll need to equip our children for the future, or build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores. Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation and one people. (Applause.)
This generation of Americans has been tested by crises that steeled our resolve and proved our resilience. A decade of war is now ending. (Applause.) An economic recovery has begun. (Applause.) America’s possibilities are limitless, for we possess all the qualities that this world without boundaries demands: youth and drive; diversity and openness; an endless capacity for risk and a gift for reinvention. My fellow Americans, we are made for this moment, and we will seize it — so long as we seize it together. (Applause.)
For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it. (Applause.) We believe that America’s prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class. We know that America thrives when every person can find independence and pride in their work; when the wages of honest labor liberate families from the brink of hardship. We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American; she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own. (Applause.)
We understand that outworn programs are inadequate to the needs of our time. So we must harness new ideas and technology to remake our government, revamp our tax code, reform our schools, and empower our citizens with the skills they need to work harder, learn more, reach higher. But while the means will change, our purpose endures: a nation that rewards the effort and determination of every single American. That is what this moment requires. That is what will give real meaning to our creed.
We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity. We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit. But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future. (Applause.) For we remember the lessons of our past, when twilight years were spent in poverty and parents of a child with a disability had nowhere to turn.
We do not believe that in this country freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few. We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us at any time may face a job loss, or a sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm. The commitments we make to each other through Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, these things do not sap our initiative, they strengthen us. (Applause.) They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great. (Applause.)
We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. (Applause.) Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires and crippling drought and more powerful storms.
The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition, we must lead it. We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries, we must claim its promise. That’s how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure — our forests and waterways, our crop lands and snow-capped peaks. That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That’s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.
We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war. (Applause.) Our brave men and women in uniform, tempered by the flames of battle, are unmatched in skill and courage. (Applause.) Our citizens, seared by the memory of those we have lost, know too well the price that is paid for liberty. The knowledge of their sacrifice will keep us forever vigilant against those who would do us harm. But we are also heirs to those who won the peace and not just the war; who turned sworn enemies into the surest of friends — and we must carry those lessons into this time as well.
We will defend our people and uphold our values through strength of arms and rule of law. We will show the courage to try and resolve our differences with other nations peacefully –- not because we are naïve about the dangers we face, but because engagement can more durably lift suspicion and fear. (Applause.)
America will remain the anchor of strong alliances in every corner of the globe. And we will renew those institutions that extend our capacity to manage crisis abroad, for no one has a greater stake in a peaceful world than its most powerful nation. We will support democracy from Asia to Africa, from the Americas to the Middle East, because our interests and our conscience compel us to act on behalf of those who long for freedom. And we must be a source of hope to the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the victims of prejudice –- not out of mere charity, but because peace in our time requires the constant advance of those principles that our common creed describes: tolerance and opportunity, human dignity and justice.
We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths –- that all of us are created equal –- is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth. (Applause.)
It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began. For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. (Applause.) Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law –- (applause) — for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. (Applause.) Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote. (Applause.) Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity — (applause) — until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country. (Applause.) Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia, to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for and cherished and always safe from harm.
That is our generation’s task — to make these words, these rights, these values of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness real for every American. Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life. It does not mean we all define liberty in exactly the same way or follow the same precise path to happiness. Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time, but it does require us to act in our time. (Applause.)
For now decisions are upon us and we cannot afford delay. We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate. (Applause.) We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect. We must act, knowing that today’s victories will be only partial and that it will be up to those who stand here in four years and 40 years and 400 years hence to advance the timeless spirit once conferred to us in a spare Philadelphia hall.
My fellow Americans, the oath I have sworn before you today, like the one recited by others who serve in this Capitol, was an oath to God and country, not party or faction. And we must faithfully execute that pledge during the duration of our service. But the words I spoke today are not so different from the oath that is taken each time a soldier signs up for duty or an immigrant realizes her dream. My oath is not so different from the pledge we all make to the flag that waves above and that fills our hearts with pride.
They are the words of citizens and they represent our greatest hope. You and I, as citizens, have the power to set this country’s course. You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time — not only with the votes we cast, but with the voices we lift in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideals. (Applause.)
Let us, each of us, now embrace with solemn duty and awesome joy what is our lasting birthright. With common effort and common purpose, with passion and dedication, let us answer the call of history and carry into an uncertain future that precious light of freedom.
Thank you. God bless you, and may He forever bless these United States of America. (Applause.)
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