Christianity, Entertainment

Celebrity Christian’s Coming Out Of The Closet: Chris Pratt

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Most Christians in Hollywood have to stay in the “Christian Closet” so that they can get mainstream work in feature films. But there are some Christians that are extremely proud of being a Christian, and they will NOT hide who they are or what they believe in.

A very inspiring Christian celebrity is Chris Pratt!

Chris Pratt became a devout Christian after an interaction with a stranger in Hawaii when he was a teenager. “He was like, ‘I stopped because Jesus told me to stop and talk to you. He said to tell you you’re destined for great things.’ My friends came out, and I was like, ‘Hey, I’m gonna go with this guy.’ I gave my soul to Jesus within, like, two days. I was stuffing envelopes for his organisation, Jews for Jesus,'” Chris Pratt told Esquire of the meeting.

The Guardians of the Galaxy star surprised fans in 2017 when his acceptance speech for Choice Sci-Fi Actor at the Teen Choice Awards was filled with Christian undertones. He also often mentions his religious beliefs on Instagram, such as when he announced his engagement to now-wife Katherine Schwarzenegger, saying, “Proud to live boldly in faith with you.”

Age: 39

Birthplace: Virginia, Minnesota, United States of America

Profession: Actor, Singer

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Christian Beliefs, Christianity

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Abortion, Christianity

Kentucky Denies Planned Parenthood Abortion License, Says it Broke the Law

The administration of Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin on Friday declined to grant a license to Planned Parenthood to perform abortions at its Louisville clinic, asserting it previously violated state law by performing illegal abortions.

The letter from Adam Meier, secretary of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, says the clinic performed 23 abortions between December 2015 and January 2016 without a license. Bevin, a pro-life Republican, was sworn in as governor Dec. 8, 2015.

Cabinet spokeswoman Christina Dettman told the Courier-Journal newspaper there was a “clear statutory basis for the denial as stated in the letter sent to Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky.”

Planned Parenthood says the previous administration of Democrat Steve Beshear – who is pro-choice – had allowed it to perform abortions while an inspection was conducted. It acknowledges it did not have a license.

The Bevin administration in 2016 sued Planned Parenthood, asserting that the organization was “placing its patients at extreme risk to their health, safety and lives had an emergency occurred.” That lawsuit is still pending.

U.S. District Court Judge Greg Stivers had given the Bevin administration until Aug. 19 to make a decision on Planned Parenthood’s application for a license, according to the Courier-Journal.

Planned Parenthood criticized Meier for denying the license.

“While Governor Bevin is once again on the wrong side of history, we will continue to fight this decision and the slew of unpopular decisions that take away reproductive health care and abortion access in the commonwealth,” Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky CEO Chris Charbonneau said Friday. “This decision shows the true motive, which is to purposefully place undue burdens on pregnant Kentuckians.”

Kentucky has only one abortion clinic, Louisville’s EMW Women’s Surgical Center. It performs more than 3,000 abortion each year.

If granted a license, the Planned Parenthood clinic would become the state’s second abortion clinic.

Source: christianheadlines.com

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Christianity

Pope Francis Sparks Debate After Saying Lord’s Prayer Should be Changed Because Satan, Not God, ‘Leads Us into Temptation’

Pope Francis has sparked a debate after saying he wants to make a change to the Lord’s Prayer, arguing that the current form wrongly implies that God can lead humans “into temptation.”

The Pontiff said the Roman Catholic Church should adopt a better translation of the phrase in the Italian version of the Lord’s Prayer, as the current phrasing, which is the same in English and many other languages, is theologically incorrect.

“That is not a good translation, because it speaks of a God who induces temptation,” the pope said in a television interview on Wednesday night.

“The French have changed the text with a translation that says ‘do not let me fall into temptation.’ I am the one who falls, but it isn’t He who throws me into temptation and then looks on to see how I fell. A father does not do this; a father helps us get up immediately.”

“The one who leads you into temptation is Satan,” he added, “that’s Satan’s role.”

Instead, the prayer should adopt a translation similar to, “when Satan leads me into temptation, give me a hand,” Francis said.

The Lord’s Prayer originates in Matthew 6:9-13. The key verse in question is 13, which, in the NIV translation, reads: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” It is a translation from the Latin vulgate, which was translated from ancient Greek by Saint Jerome in the late fourth century.

The Rev Ian Paul, an Anglican theologian, told The Guardian that changing the phrasing of the Lord’s Prayer would make traditionalists nervous.

“The word in question is peirasmos [from New Testament Greek] which means both to tempt and to be tested. So on one level the pope has a point. But he’s also stepping into a theological debate about the nature of evil,” he said. “In terms of church culture, people learn this prayer by heart as children. If you tweak the translation, you risk disrupting the pattern of communal prayer. You fiddle with it at your peril.”

M J C Warren, Lecturer in Biblical and Religious Studies at the University of Sheffield, said there are “two major issues” with Pope Francis’s call to change the Lord’s Prayer.

“In attempting to remove any implication that God has some hand in evil, the Pope not only overlooks the many biblical examples where God works with Satan to test his followers and even his own son, but he also ignores the plain meaning of the Gospel text,” she said. “A more consistent understanding of God actually requires that wording, begging God not to lead a worshipper into temptation.”

Others, however, said the suggested modification makes sense, though it’s unlikely to actually change.

“I’m not aware of any plans to change the translation in the English-speaking world but you can certainly see the logic of doing so,” said Austen Ivereigh, the pope’s biographer.

“It is not God who tempts us into sin but the enemy of human nature. But tradition and familiarity are also important factors in weighing up any decision to modify a translation.”

Source:
https://www.gospelherald.com/articles/71698/20171208/pope-francis-sparks-debate-saying-lords-prayer-changed-satan-god.htm

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Christianity, NFL

Tim Tebow’s Fiancée Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters Shares How Sister with Disability Reflects God’s Faithfulness

HOLLYWOOD — Tim Tebow’s fiancée, 2017 Miss Universe Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters, has shared how her younger sister who was born with a disability continually reminds her of God’s goodness and love.

Nel-Peters’ 13-year-old half-sister, Franje, was born with subtotal cerebellar agenesis, a rare condition that has left her without a cerebellum. She has the intellectual ability of a three-month-old baby and can’t walk, talk or eat and is fed through a tube.

During the red carpet premiere of “Run the Race” in Hollywood, Nel-Peters told The Gospel Herald that her sister is her biggest inspiration – and evidence that God has a plan, even amid difficult circumstances.

“She is the light in my life,” the 23-year-old said of her sister. “She is my absolute biggest motivation and inspiration in life. Though I’ve never had a conversation with her because she’s not able to speak, I know that she’s been used in so many ways to be an inspiration in so many people’s lives and to motivate so many people.”

“God has a plan and a purpose with everything,” she added. “We don’t always understand and we don’t always know what it is, but that purpose is there and that plan is there.”

Flanking his fiancee’s side, Tebow told GH that in order to overcome trials in life, it’s important to understand the grace of God.

“And not that it’s easy, but we can get through it with the right perspective,” the Heisman Trophy-winning football player said. “Understanding that God’s always at work in our lives and the good and the bad, and He can use all of it.”

“A lot of times we just think, oh, He’s going to use the platform. And He does. But He also uses the heartache,” Tebow added. “My sister, who’s been a missionary for the last 13 years, always says to me, ‘God, will never waste pain that’s given to Him.’ And He never does. So when we go through those heartaches and the tough times, we need to give it to Him and say, ‘God, this sucks, but I know you’re going to use it.'”

“A lot of times, He uses that heartache more than He does the good times,” the former NFL star concluded.

“Run the Race,” the story of two high school brothers trying to overcome their mother’s death and father’s abandonment, highlights the importance of family, the power of sacrifice and forgiveness, and what it means to rely on God’s goodness even amid the difficulties of life.

Previously, Tebow, who executive-produced the film alongside his brother Robby, told GH that he hopes the film encourages young people to “not run away from God, but run to God because He loves them like crazy.”

“It might feel sometimes like you’re alone and it might feel sometimes like the world is really hard,” he acknowledged. “But there is a God that loves you so much and He wants to know you and He wants to have a personal, intimate relationship with you.”

The athlete added that running the race of life as outlined in Hebrews 12:1 means there’s a finish line – but the goal isn’t winning or taking first place. Rather, it means living a life of significance -and that’s defined by God.

“‘Making it’ changes when you know God,” he said. “Knowing God means okay, it’s not just about what the world says. It’s not just about material things. It’s not everything I thought it was. Now it changes to more purpose and meaning and significance.”

“Run the Race” stars Mykelti Williamson (FENCES, FORREST GUMP), Frances Fisher (TITANIC, UNFORGIVEN), Tanner Stine (NCIS), Evan Hofer (Kickin’ It), and Kelsey Reinhardt (Transparent). For more information, visit RunTheRaceMovie.com.

Source:
https://www.gospelherald.com/articles/71939/20190226/tim-tebows-fiance-demi-leigh-nel-peters-shares-sister-disability.htm

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Christianity

‘In God We Trust’ Signs to Be Posted in Every Louisiana School This Year

Every school building in Louisiana must display the nation’s motto, “In God We Trust,” under a new law that goes into effect this school year.

Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards signed the law last year. It passed the state Senate, 33-6, and the state House, 93-12.

Social studies classes also must teach students about the national motto by fifth grade under the new law.

The law is popular, even among some administrators.

“I still feel strongly that America is a Christian nation,” Shelby Ainsworth, principal of West Monroe High School, told WAFB 9. “I want our high school youngsters exposed to as much as that as possible.”

The law says, “each public school governing authority shall display the national motto in each building it uses and in each school under its jurisdiction.” The minimum requirement is that it be a paper sign.

A Democrat, Sen. Regina Ashford Barrow, was the bill’s lead sponsor. She told WWL last year that America has suffered morally by taking God out of public schools.

“We have seen a moral decay in our schools and in our community because we have taken this out of our school system,” Barrow said.

She was inspired to promote the bill, she told WWL, by the governor’s prayer breakfast and by the senate’s practice of praying.

“Every day before we begin to do our business here at the capitol we always acknowledge Him by prayer,” she said.

Barrow rejected criticism that the law violates the Constitution’s prohibition on government establishment of religion.

“We’re not pushing God on anybody; we’re incorporating it as part of the history of our nation,” she told USA Today. “It’s our national motto, for goodness sake. If it’s good enough to be on our money, it’s good enough to be in our schools.”

The United States, she said, was “built on a Christian foundation.”

“We need to make sure the children know that and pass it on to the next generation,” she said.

South Dakota and Kentucky have similar laws, as Christian Headlines previously reported.

Source:
https://www.christianheadlines.com/contributors/michael-foust/in-god-we-trust-signs-to-be-posted-in-every-louisiana-school-this-year.html

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Christianity

WHITE PROGRESSIVES ARE MORE RACIST AGAINST MINORITIES THAN WHITE CONSERVATIVES

What’s the definition of racism? Well, it seems to me that a person is racist if they treat people of a different skin color differently than they treat people of their own skin color. So, if a white person treats a black person differently than they do a white person, then the white person is a racist. Because they’re discriminating on the basis of skin color. So, who are the real racists? Conservatives? Or Progressives?

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The Yale School of Management reports on a new academic study that provides the definitive answer to the question:

According to new research by Cydney Dupree, assistant professor of organizational behavior at Yale SOM, white liberals tend to downplay their own verbal competence in exchanges with racial minorities, compared to how other white Americans act in such exchanges. The study is scheduled for publication in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

[…]Dupree and her co-author, Susan Fiske of Princeton University, began by analyzing the words used in campaign speeches delivered by Democratic and Republican presidential candidates to different audiences over the years. They scanned 74 speeches delivered by white candidates over a 25-year period. Approximately half were addressed to mostly-minority audiences—at a Hispanic small business roundtable discussion or a black church, for example. They then paired each speech delivered to a mostly-minority audience with a comparable speech delivered at a mostly-white audience—at a mostly-white church or university, for example. The researchers analyzed the text of these speeches for two measures: words related to competence (that is, words about ability or status, such as “assertive” or “competitive”) and words related to warmth (that is, words about friendliness, such as “supportive” and “compassionate”).

[…]The team found that Democratic candidates used fewer competence-related words in speeches delivered to mostly minority audiences than they did in speeches delivered to mostly white audiences. The difference wasn’t statistically significant in speeches by Republican candidates… There was no difference in Democrats’ or Republicans’ usage of words related to warmth.

More testing confirmed the patronizing white supremacist attitude of whites on the political left:

They designed a series of experiments in which white participants were asked to respond to a hypothetical or presumed-real interaction partner. For half of these participants, their partner was given a stereotypically white name (such as “Emily”); for the other half, their partner was given a stereotypically black name (such as “Lakisha”). Participants were asked to select from a list of words for an email to their partner.

[…]The researchers found that liberal individuals were less likely to use words that would make them appear highly competent when the person they were addressing was presumed to be black rather than white. No significant differences were seen in the word selection of conservatives based on the presumed race of their partner.

Conservatives aren’t racist at all – they’re color blind.

One of the reasons why I get along so well with white conservatives is that they don’t patronize me with low expectations, the way that white leftists patronize non-whites. The view of white progressives is similar to the view of white supremacist racists – they think that there is something defective about people like me because of our non-white skin color.

White supremacists and white progressives agree on this: that non-white people aren’t competent enough to make our own decisions. We need help from big government in order to do what whites can do without help. We need to be told what to think for our own good, and shamed if we step out of line. It’s amazing to me that white racist progressives are seen as “compassionate”, when they are the ones who actually believe in the racial inferiority of non-whites.

Source:
https://winteryknight.com/

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Christianity

NEW STUDY: COUPLES THAT DELAY SEXUAL ACTIVITY EXPERIENCE HIGHER QUALITY RELATIONSHIPS

Before you begin reading this article, we wanted to let you know that opinionated Christians are being paid up to $100 for a single opinion.

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Back to the story…

[T]wo recently published studies call into question the validity of testing sexual chemistry early in dating.

My colleagues and I published the first study a few years ago in the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Family Psychology. This study involved a national sample of 2,035 married individuals who participated in the popular online couple assessment survey called “RELATE.” We found that the longer a dating couple waits to have sex, the better their relationship is after marriage. In fact, couples who wait until marriage to have sex report higher relationship satisfaction (20% higher), better communication patterns (12% better), less consideration of divorce (22% lower), and better sexual quality (15% better) than those who started having sex early in their dating (see Figure 2). For couples in between—those that became sexually involved later in their dating, but prior to marriage—the benefits were about half as strong.

[…]These patterns were statistically significant even when controlling for a variety of other variables such as respondents’ number of prior sexual partners, education levels, religiosity, and relationship length.

The second study, by Sharon Sassler and her colleagues at Cornell University, also found that rapid sexual involvement has adverse long-term implications for relationship quality. Using data from the Marital and Relationship Survey, which provides information on nearly 600 low- to moderate-income couples living with minor children, their study examined the tempo of sexual intimacy and subsequent relationship quality in a sample of married and cohabiting men and women. Their analyses also suggest that delaying sexual involvement is associated with higher relationship quality across several dimensions.

They discovered that the negative association between sexual timing and relationship quality is largely driven by a link between early sex and cohabitation. Specifically, sexual involvement early in a romantic relationship is associated with an increased likelihood of moving more quickly into living together, which in turn is associated with lower relationship quality. This finding supports Norval Glenn’s hypothesis that sexual involvement may lead to unhealthy emotional entanglements that make ending a bad relationship difficult. As Sassler and her colleagues concluded, “Adequate time is required for romantic relationships to develop in a healthy way. In contrast, relationships that move too quickly, without adequate discussion of the goals and long-term desires of each partner, may be insufficiently committed and therefore result in relationship distress, especially if one partner is more committed than the other” (p. 710).

The rest of the post talks about two reasons why this works: improved partner selection and prioritizing communication and commitment.

That’s two studies, and there’s a third. Dina sent me this article from the UK Daily Mail about a new study showing the importance of chastity for relationship quality and stability.

Excerpt:

New couples who jump into bed together on the first date do not last as long in relationships as those who wait a new study has revealed.

Using a sample of almost 11,000 unmarried people, Brigham Young University discovered a direct correlation between the length and strength of a partnership and the amount of time they took to have first have sex.

The study showed that those who waited to initiate sexual intimacy were found to have longer and more positive outcomes in their relationships while those who couldn’t help themselves reported that their dalliances struggled to last more than two years.

‘Results suggested that waiting to initiate sexual intimacy in unmarried relationships was generally associated with positive outcomes,’ said the report authored published by the U.S. National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health.

‘This effect was strongly moderated by relationship length, with individuals who reported early sexual initiation reporting increasingly lower outcomes in relationships of longer than two years.’

The study examined four sexual-timing patterns: Having sex prior to dating, initiating sex on the first date or shortly after, having sex after a few weeks of dating, and sexual abstinence.

Each one of these fields yielded different results in relationship satisfaction, stability and communication in dating situations.

Here’s another recent study that shows that if a woman has more than her husband as a premarital sex partner, her risk of divorce increases.

His findings:

Using nationally representative data from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth, I estimate the association between intimate premarital relationships (premarital sex and premarital cohabitation) and subsequent marital dissolution. I extend previous research by considering relationship histories pertaining to both premarital sex and premarital cohabitation. I find that premarital sex or premarital cohabitation that is limited to a woman’s husband is not associated with an elevated risk of marital disruption.However, women who have more than one intimate premarital relationship have an increased risk of marital dissolution.

Here’s another study that makes it even more clear.

Findings:

Data from the 1988 US National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) were utilized to assess the impact of premarital sexual activity on subsequent marital stability. Among white NSFG subjects first married in 1965-85, virgin brides were significantly less to have become separated or divorced (25%) than women who had not been virgins at marriage (35%).

[…]The lower risk of divorce on the part of white women with no premarital sexual experience persisted even after numerous intervening and background variables were controlled.

This study supports what the Bible says about chastity and premarital sex:

1 Cor. 7:8-9:

8 To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to stay single as I am.

9 But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

The idea of “burning” here has to do with sexual desire. Here Paul tells all unmarried people that if they cannot control their sexual desires, they need to get married. Why? Because Paul assumes that one cannot fulfill this sexual desire outside of the marital bed. While Paul would love for them to remain single (1 Cor. 7:7), he believes that sex outside of marriage is a destructive sin and cannot be used as a gratifying release of our sexual passions.

Although young people like to complain about “manipulation” and “controlling” when they are approached with facts, presenting evidence is really the only way to persuade them. Although they may respond with anecdotes to refute studies, studies are important because they represent LOTS of data points, not just one or two cherry-picked cases. Hit them with the evidence before they make the wrong decisions.

Source:
https://winteryknight.com/

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Christianity

DOES BEING A VIRGIN BEFORE MARRIAGE AFFECT MARITAL STABILITY?

What is the point of a man being a virgin?

OK, I just wrote this part out in one fell swoop, and I am not sure if it is all relevant, but…

I wanted to consider the question of whether women should value the property of virginity in men from a Biblical perspective. Men have specific things they are supposed to do based on the Bible’s specifications. First, they have to be able to provide for the family financially. Second, they have to be able to protect the family from threats, including threats from false worldviews that lead to damage and destruction. Third, they have to be moral and spiritual leaders, nurturing their wives and children in moral values, moral duties, and their relationships with God.

Biblical men make good decisions all along their lives in order to satisfy these Biblical goals. In order to be a good provider, they study math and become engineers, which is hard and requires self-sacrifice. In order to be a good protector, they study science apologetics, philosophy of religion and the historical Jesus, which is hard and requires self-sacrifice. In order to be a good moral and spiritual leader, they guard their chastity and learn how to behave chivalrously, which is hard and requires self-sacrifice.

What women need to do is to do the research on everything including marriage/divorce/parenting, just like the research I talked about above, and generate a seriously Biblical set of criteria for choosing men that seriously satisfies the requirements for Biblical manhood. Women cannot expect good behavior from bad men. And they should actually affirm, approve, and encourage good behaviors in men – and not be resentful about having the obligation to build good men up with words and gifts.

What women need to do is to understand the behaviors that lead to stability and fidelity in a marriage – and that means studying research. Saying “I already know about the damage caused by divorce” is useless – it’s the knowledge of the evidence that changes how a woman makes decisions about men. Personal preferences can be changed at any time, but knowledge doesn’t vary depending on how you feel at any given moment.

For example, to test men for apologetics knowledge, it’s really easy – just ask them what the significance of cosmic microwave background radiation is, what chirality is, what the significance of 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 is, and what is the difference between the deductive and inductive problem of evil. If they can’t answer all four of those then you can’t marry them. Biblical manhood concerns are not check-boxes on the marriage application form – they’re long-form essay questions. Judging the man’s ability to do silly stuff, like get a tattoo or clown around in a bar, is just not relevant to making the marriage serve God. A woman’s personal preferences don’t decide here – evidence decides. (So long as the goal of marriage is to serve God, instead of to make women happy)

Men have a very specific role in marriages. They have to be able to teach the children about theology, apologetics and morality. When it comes to morality, women should not just believe what a man says. Instead, women need to look at what a man does. Specifically, she should look at what a man does representing his worldview, faith and morality to people who disagree with him. Go to his non-Christian co-workers and ask them what the man has told them about theology, apologetics and morality. Ask them for the reasons and evidences that were used in debates with them. That’s how you know what a man really thinks – it’s about what he is willing to say to people who he would rather not upset. Where standing up for the truth is really going to hurt his career and make him less popular. That is the true measure of his faithfulness. Not how well he speaks, sings and prays in church. What matters is whether he puts God above his own selfish needs for advancement and popularity. Is he willing to choose Christ over his own selfish desires? What is number one in his heart?

And finally, if a women chooses a bad man because she knows nothing about how to choose a good one, and hasn’t done any research about what a man has to be able to do to make a marriage stable, then she needs to stop blaming men and taking responsibility for her own poor decision-making. Choosing a man just because he makes you feel happy is not the best way to have achieve a stable marriage. You need to have better criteria than that, because you are going to answer for it later, especially if things go awry.

Evidence creates knowledge and knowledge binds the will

OK now back to the real topic of the post: the use of evidence to support Biblical moral values.

I like having evidence. I hate having to take stands for Biblical morality without evidence. If I can use the evidence for the Big Bang, the fine-tuning, the origin of biological information, the Cambrian explosion, the habitability fine-tuning and irreducible complexity to argue for theism, and then argue for the resurrection based on early sources and minimal facts, then I should have the exact same quality of data when defending moral values. If the Bible says something, I should be able to look at the best research and find that the Bible is correct.

You have to persuade a person during courtship by making them read and write about things, and dump them if they won’t do it. People can say anything during a courtship – make all kinds of promises and then suddenly just turn selfish and break them all. If they haven’t studied and tested these things out, because they think they know everything already, then you really can’t expect good behavior. It’s a crapshoot unless they’ve seen the evidence.

Source:
https://winteryknight.com/

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Christian Beliefs, Christianity

PRO-LIFERS SHOULD NOT CONDONE PREMARITAL SEX AS A PATHWAY TO MARRIAGE

Professor Mike S. Adams is pro-life, but he posted something on Facebook that I must disagree with.

He posted this:

Over 80% of post-abortive women said they would have had the baby if the guy had been supportive. Five guys find out their girl is pregnant: The first two pressure abortion, the third walks away or was never present, the fourth sticks around for 80 to 120 days, and the fifth steps up totally. This not a woman’s problem. It is a lack-of-manhood problem.

Mike has about 5000 friends, and 44 of them liked it. I would think that most of these people would call themselves pro-life conservatives. But I don’t think what he posted promotes the pro-life cause.

I replied to him with this:

Mike I could not disagree more. It’s a woman’s problem unless it is rape, since the woman consents to sex with a man she is not married to. In fact, the cause of abortion is YOUR opinion – namely, the opinion that women should not be obligated to be chaste or to think rationally about who they are having sex with. There is a path to marriage that goes through courtship, and that path has a name: self-control. Stop enabling the poor choices of women, because we have to stop the murder of unborn children.

Many of Mike’s friends supported him. So I wrote this:

Wow. I had no idea that so many of Mike’s friends think that the Bible is a pack of lies when it says that fornication is morally wrong. I guess you guys aren’t Christians then, since you feel so free and easy about revising the Bible when you feel like it.

If fornication is wrong, it’s wrong for women AND men. And you don’t fornicate and then expect happy outcomes from it. There is a word for a person who sins and then expects a good outcome. A FOOL.

Then Mike replied to me:

Sorry Wintery. Where I come from the man leads and is, therefore, responsible.

I replied to that with this:

Mike, I agree with male leading – IF the man is a Christian. But the men that these women chose are not Christians. And you can’t expect men to act morally unless they have a theistic framework that grounds morality.

Women should not be told, by you and others, that they can choose to have sex with immoral men and then expect the immoral men to act morally. That is just enabling abortion by justifying a lack of prudence and wisdom. Instead, we should be holding women accountable to choose men who WILL control themselves.

We should not be supporting the fantasy view of love that says that recreational sex magically leads men to commit to protect, provide and lead women for life. That view is neither wise nor Biblical. On the contrary, recreational sex leads men to NOT commit. Women have to learn how to select men, to evaluate them for marriage, and to make them prove themselves. We need to tell men AND women that sex before marriage is morally wrong. And we need to be convincing by showing them how recreational sex does not lead to stable marriages, and puts children, unborn and born, in harm’s way. Telling the truth about the danger of premarital sex is the best way to stop the killing of unborn children.

Here’s an example to make the point. We do not blame bears for mauling campers. Bears are bears, and they were bears before the campers showed up in their cave. We ought to blame the camper for choosing to wander off the trail and into the bear’s den in order to PET THE BEAR. Wild bears may eat free food that is offered to them, but they are not going to let you pet them and hug them. Women, like campers, need to be responsible. They need to choose the right man for marriage. They need to exercise self control. They need to make the man prove his ability to commit and support a family BEFORE they have sex with him. No one hires an employee without understanding what job they need done and then making sure that the candidate they choose can do the job. And that’s what we need to tell women.

Obviously, I was a little upset when I wrote that, but I hope it wasn’t too bad.

So what’s the point I was trying to make by being critical of Mike? I think the problem we have today is that men who are pro-life are unwilling to hold women accountable for their own poor decisions about sex and marriage. Basically, conservative and/or Christian men think that women don’t need to think through what choices are most likely to avoid abortion and most likely to achieve marriage. These men give tacit approval to the popular trend of trying to achieve marriage through premarital sex (or cohabitation), when the research shows that these behaviors do not result in long-lasting stable marriages. In fact, sex out of wedlock is a good way to get into a situation where an abortion will occur.

In my view, Mike is ainadvertently encouraging women to get into the situations where they will be pressured to abort by reinforcing the idea that there is nothing wrong with their plan to achieve marriage by having premarital sex (or cohabitating), and then expecting men to respond to their pregnancy by MARRYING them. Mike seems to be telling women that it is normal for them to expect that marriage will follow from premarital sex with men who have not been vetted for the roles of provider, protector and leader As if marriage is natural for men who don’t even have jobs and who are surrounded by women willing to have sex with them on the first date. Any man who will have recreational premarital sex with a woman is exactly the kind of person who will not commit to lifelong providing and fidelity – he is having sex before marriage because he wants recreation, without the commitment and self-sacrifice that marriage requires. Rationally speaking, it makes no sense for men to buy the cow, and to keep buying the cow with 40 years of labor, when they can get the milk for free. And that’s what we need to tell women – think with your minds, not with your emotions.

Here is an interesting statistic from Relevant Magazine:

[A] recent study reveals that 88 percent of unmarried young adults (ages 18-29) are having sex. The same study, conducted by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, reveals the number doesnʼt drop much among Christians. Of those surveyed who self-identify as “evangelical,” 80 percent say they have had sex.

[…]In addition to having premarital sex, an alarming number of unmarried Christians are getting pregnant. Among unmarried evangelical women between the ages of 18 and 29, 30 percent have experienced a pregnancy (a number thatʼs actually 1 percent higher than among those who donʼt claim to be evangelical).

According to the Guttmacher Institute, nearly half of all pregnancies in America are unintended. And of those, 40 percent end in abortion. More than 1 million abortions occur in the United States each year. But perhaps the most disturbing statistic for the Church: 65 percent of the women obtaining abortions identify themselves as either Protestant or Catholic (37 percent Protestant and 28 percent Catholic). Thatʼs 650,000 abortions obtained by Christians every year.

Christian women are not told that premarital sex is wrong by many Christians and conservatives – and out of that refusal by “Christians” and “conservatives” to take a stand, we get 650,000 abortions per year. We need to have more courage to tell women to be more self-controlled and responsible when they choose who to have sex with, and when to have sex. We need to tell women to make good decisions that lead to stable marriages. We need to tell women to study these issues and to support policies that produce strong, moral men who are willing to marry – for example, by reforming education so that our schools produce men who can find jobs, perhaps by having more male teachers in the classroom. We need to tell women to support policies that make marriage more friendly for men, like abolishing no-fault divorce, and promoting shared parenting. Christians in particular need to counteract the views of love and romance that are prevalent in popular culture with a view of relationships built around chastity and love. Although many people today are uncomfortable with moral absolutes and moral judgments, it would be a good be a good idea for women to promote these things, so that the men they are choosing from are more moral.

In the end, I agree with Mike S. Adams in one respect. Abortion may be caused by a lack of manhood problem. Only the lack of manhood doesn’t come from the men that women choose to have premarital sex with. The lack of manhood comes from men who refuse to hold women accountable for their own free foolish decisions that put unborn children in harm’s way. In addition to the abortion problem that results from those foolish decisions, there is also the explosion in out-of-wedlock births to weigh in the balance. Again, the more people tell women that they should expect men who engage in recreational sex to commit to marriage after premarital sex (or cohabitation), the more fatherlessness we get.

Source:
https://winteryknight.com/

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