How Many Steps to a Better Life Now? No sooner do we preach a sermon last Sunday about the debate over whether or not the Bible is sufficient and authoritative over all matters of life, do we get a deluge of news items and controversies in the culture war this week, highlighting that very same world-view conflict.
First, the church of Oprah is actually being scrutinized by Newsweek over her holiness' advocacy of Suzanne Sommers unusual secrets to staying young. The cover story reports that "Each morning, the 62-year-old actress and self-help author rubs a potent estrogen cream into the skin on her arm. She smears progesterone on her other arm two weeks a month. And once a day, she uses a syringe to inject estrogen directly into her vagina. The idea is to use these unregulated "bio-identical" hormones to restore her levels back to what they were when she was in her 30s, thus fooling her body into thinking she's a younger woman."
Sommers also swallows 60 pills per day and practices "overall detoxification." If she drinks wine, she goes to her doctor to rejuvenate her liver with an intravenous drip of vitamin C. If she's exposed to cigarette smoke, she has her blood chemically cleaned with chelation therapy. In the time that's left over, she eats right, exercises, and relieves stress by standing on her head. Somers makes astounding claims about the ability of hormones to treat almost anything that ails the female body. She believes they block disease and will double her life span. "I know I look like some kind of freak and fanatic," she said. "But I want to be there until I'm 110, and I'm going to do what I have to do to get there." That was apparently good enough for Oprah. "Many people write Suzanne off as a quackadoo," she said. "But she just might be a pioneer." While I'm tempted to go with the former description as I'm reminded of her Three's Company character Chrissy, I'm thinking that this obsession with finding a biological fountain of youth is endemic with an attitude that says this life is all there is and we determine it's length and breadth.
Sommers and others with a similar worldview, omit God from the picture and ignore His sovereign rule as creator and sustainer of all life in the universe. While some people focus entirely on spirituality, to the neglect of their physical bodies, others focus so much attention on their physical bodies that they neglect spiritual growth and discipleship. 1 Timothy 4:8 informs us, “For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.” Notice that the verse does not negate the need for physical care. Rather, it says that exercise is valuable, but it prioritizes exercise correctly by saying that godliness is of greater value. To say nothing of the fact that it is God who "fashioned" all of our days and are written in His book (Psalm 139:16). More on this story Sunday at CCC.....
Are Pro-Lifers 'Facist?'
Hours after the Sunday morning shooting death of late-term abortion doctor George Tiller in Wichita, Kan., a Boulder Colorado physician — who says he could be the only doctor in the world still performing the procedure — said Tiller’s assassination was the “absolutely inevitable consequence” of decades of anti-abortion fanaticism.“I’m profoundly sad and I’m furious and I think the American people need to understand that we have a fascist movement in this country,” Dr. Warren Hern told The Colorado Independent on Sunday. “We don’t have to invade Iraq to find terrorists. They’re right here killing abortion doctors.”“Every doctor that does abortions has been under an assassination threat for decades,” Hern said. “The anti-abortion movement message is, ‘Do what we tell you to do or we will kill you,’ and they do. This is a fascist movement.”
Gee, I never thought being pro-life in my view equated me to being a Nazi-like facist! This view leads to the common fallacy that Christianity is cruel or false because of the Inqusition and the Crusades done in the name of Christendom or every Muslim should be condemnded because of extreme terrorism. To paraphrase the good doctor above, I'm more concerned about the ignorance expressed by abortion advocates, who while crying out about a rare case of exteme and inexcusable murder, turn their back on the more than 3,000 children being legally executed in this country every day. May God remove the scales from their eyes and be merciful to us all.
Gay Double Standards
Former Vice President Dick Cheney became the third national Republican figure to publicly approve of gay marriage this week, joining a former McCain campaign manager and President Bush's former Solicitor General Ted Olson, who is helping spearhead a legal challenge to Proposition 8 in California. Yet, Cheney also signaled his support for letting states ban gay marriage. Is it possible to hold both positions simultaneously? Absoutely, if you ignore scripture (2 Timothy 3:16-17) or leave your biblical worldview behind when thinking about issues - especially when they impact your family.
At a press conference this week, Cheney said, "I think freedom means freedom for everyone. As many of you know, one of my daughters is gay and it is something we have lived with for a long time in our family. And I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish. Any kind of arrangement they wish." So we can take this to mean should we have a child who wished to marry three or four people (regardless of their gender and age) it would be allright and good for everyone, as long as they consentually "wished" right? This kind of thinking doomed Israel when in the time of the Judges, "everyone did what was right in his own eyes" (Judges 21:25). While I symphatize with the former Veep's family conflict, we cannot form good public policy on personal and emotional whims absent from the wisdom of God's Word.
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