Christmas Greetings!

http://www.news-press.com/article/20081125/NEWS0104/811250380/1075

The Christmas season is upon us—the stores are becoming packed with busy shoppers, the air is crisp, and the nights are beginning to glow with the lights strung on buildings.  I cannot help but begin to really think about what this time means as a person and as a Christian.  It is a time to be spent with family and friends, a time to give thanks, and most importantly, a time to reflect and give celebrate the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ. However, I think Christmas has become less and less a celebration of Christ.

After living in England for 18 years, political correctness has always been prevalent—especially in the last few years.  England has become a country so dedicated to making everyone feel at home and feel respected that it has lost its distinctiveness and uniqueness. It was once a country with long held traditions such as the royal family with power, a political empire, and many other things all backed up with the Christian faith. But today, even Christmas is no longer Christian.  I fear that America is headed is a similar direction.

I cannot help but think that it will continue to head in this direction with the new dominantly Democratic Congress and with Barack Obama in the lead.  It seems as if the true liberal mindset has a hard time dealing with a Christian state, but with the liberal Democrats in charge, I feel that they will try their hardest to bring that separation of church and state to an unnecessary (and ungodly) level.  After reading the article above, it is obvious to me the path that America is on.   President Elect Obama has already told us that he wants to make immigration easier and wants to incorporate other religions into the American culture—actions that parallel those taken by England not long ago.  All of this “political correctness” and not wanting to offend those of other cultures and religions is going to lead to getting rid of the Christian environment around CHRISTmas altogether.  It is becoming the Holiday season instead of the Christmas season.   No one will be allowed to endorse Christmas, just the holidays in general.  But what is the holiday actually established for?  It was established to, as well as give gifts and enjoy time with your family, remember the birth of Jesus Christ, to combat the pagan holiday.  You can play semantics and change the name.  You can use all the rhetoric in the world—but it is still the Christmas holiday.

It is also ironic to me that the people who have a problem with Christmas actually enjoy the benefits of paid holiday from work. You don’t see them complaining about that, do you? I think Americans have come believe it is okay to pick and choose what they want out of things and then discard everything they do not like about something, even if it is the entire meaning of it in the first place.   And maybe not just Americans, but western culture in general.  When did we come to think this is okay?  Even as Christians?  Where did we go wrong?

Now, if you don’t like our religion and what our political representatives stand for, then that is fine. You have ‘the right to choose’ but people always fail to see that. You have a choice to leave:  if you don’t like it, go back to the country that you came from (where you didn’t have freedom of speech or any due process) and get told what to do. Don’t come to a country that people are happy with, and try and change it. It was perfectly fine before you came, and now you’re here, respect it. Live by our rules and live with the laws and customs that were established before you were here. Also, you’re more than welcome to have your religion and have a place to worship, but let us do what we’ve done since immigrating here. You want respect and tolerance of your religion, yet you do not give the same respect back to Christianity.  

And to the people who are Americans but are atheist or disagree with core American beliefs and values—still be respectful and grateful.  You have the ability to speak your mind, to vote in this democracy, and to live a life of choice because this country was founded on Christian principles—there is no way around that.

So in the end—give me back my Christmas.   Give my brothers and sisters in Christ back their Christmas.   Let the joy that permeates November and December be genuine to its main purpose.  Let us give thanks for all that we are blessed with—a wonderful country where we can worship our God and Saviour.

 

We can be both ‘Pro-choice’ and ‘Pro-Life’

Most of us reading this blog are Church of Christ’ers and have been brought up in or around it. Now a few may be of other faiths but the majority are Church of Christ itself. Now, for you incase you aren’t, ill give you a quick summary of our beliefs. In our theology within the Church of Christ, we believe in free will, or the Arminian approach as apposed to the Calvanistic view of predetermination and predestination. We believe that God puts us on the earth, and we have the choice in whether to believe in Him and live our life accordingly, or to reject it. The result of either choice is Heaven or Hell, and we can have the choice of those two, through the acceptance of grace, or rejection of it.

Now God isn’t the one who makes all of our decisions for us, otherwise we’d be saying that God makes bad things happen to people. That is not what I, and the majority of C of C worshippers, believe. If we believed that God made everything happen, and His will always happens, then it would be saying that, for the sake of this argument, an unmarried teenager gets pregnant. In my opinion, that couldn’t be further away from what God wants, or what His will is.

Liberals, believe that a woman should get a choice with what happens to her body and if she doesn’t want to be pregnant and have her body take that kind of toll, then she should have the right to get rid of the unwanted child. Now, I agree that the woman should get a choice. No doubt in that at all. But that choice is made before the baby is conceived. She does get a choice, and she made a bad decision. Now obviously, it goes 50/50 with the guy who she has sex with but it is partly hers. For this article, I am talking about the cases of consensual sex, not the other extreme circumstances.

I don’t know how people can sit there and think that a girl, who has gone through consensual sex and she has had the choice to have sex, should have a second choice. If she’s not smart enough to say no, then how should she get to make an even bigger decision in regards to a baby’s life. She did, and does get a choice. As soon as that baby is conceived, her choice and rights are taken away from her. She had her chance and it’s too late. We cannot always have a back up there to take care of us. If life was like that, no one would be poor, no-one would be sad, no-one would be starving, and so on. It doesn’t work like that.

Being pro-life supports that the child, who was conceived through its parents choices (which they do get, if you didn’t hear me already), and that the child should have the right to live, seeing as it wasn’t the baby’s fault. We cannot have the right to kill a baby, because of someone’s inability to control his or her urges. How did you learn to not touch the red-hot hob on the cooker? By touching it once. You didn’t touch it twice. But you did get a choice, and probably got told by your parents to not touch it, right? It’s the same thing.

A lot of the time we get caught up and religion gets shaped or bent around our political beliefs. But should it? Our religion should form our political beliefs. Two of my big 3 political standpoints are based off my religion. Against abortion and against Gay marriage. The other is low taxes, just for your information. We need to make sure that a lot of small agreements with a candidate don’t get us caught up in us ignoring the big picture. Obama’s overwhelming support on the middle class, or his support in making the ‘American dream’ available to people from other countries, or his support in pulling out of the war may make you want to support him. But what does our religion say? Does it say that we need to take a stand against things that aren’t of our faith, such as Abortion and Gay marriage? If so, we need to ignore all the small policies that we agree with and take a stand on the few, but important policies that define us in our faith.

The War on Terror

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,444088,00.html

After reading the article above, it got me to thinking about the War on terror and what we need to do. ‘Change’ candidates are all about looking back and seeing how things were handled since going into Iraq, but that is quite irrelevant now. The American troops, along with British troops and others are there, and we need to look at the possibilities about how to handle the future.

Now, just to state, I didn’t agree with going into Iraq in the first place. I thought there were better countries, for lack of a better term, to go into. Iraq wasn’t the most threatening country, but nonetheless, its done and we need to look forward.

Lets see what the Candidates both are proposing to do, in relation to Iraq.

Barack Obama: He is proposing to slowly withdraw 1 to 2 brigades each month, which would mean that military forces would be out of Iraq by the summer of 2010, 7 years after the war started. He also wants to put an end to the war as soon as possible.

John McCain: He firmly states that we need to stay in Iraq until Al-Qaeda is firmly stopped within Iraq. The troops need to stay there until the Iraqi forces can support themselves against the terrorists.

Now, both of these sound good on the surface. Actually, Obama’s plan sounds much better. Safer, cheaper, and like we’re helping the Iraqi people out by letting them get on with their own lives. Funny how liberals would love to let the Iraqi people control their own lives and have their independence. Wait, do liberals want independence or not?

We need to make sure, now we’re already in Iraq and Afghanistan and whether we like that fact or not, that we make sure we leave them both as stable as possible. Barack Obama says that we can be gone by the summer of 2010, after being there 7 years, and it will be stable enough for them to live in. Easy for him to say, seeing as he wont be living there.

If you haven’t heard, the number of Al-Qaeda insurgents in Afghanistan is on the rise, and we have been there 7 years. Afghanistan is still not safe after 7 years and a lot of fighting, so what is to say the same will happen with Iraq?

And I love the statement from Barack Obama “we need to end the war as soon as possible.” Really? He did go to Harvard didn’t he? That’s an incredibly smart statement. I think everyone agrees with that, but not before its safe for the Iraqi/Afghan people to live regular lives, which would be a first for them. Freedom.

I know that it costs a lot of money to stay in Iraq and Afghanistan but by liberal standards we need to make sure, regardless of costs, to help everyone out. So, lets finish Iraqi freedom and actually make them free. Not leave them hanging. Remember Vietnam?