pink or blue- does it matter to you?

The demographic group being referred to as “Millennials” are those who were born in the 1980’s and reached young adulthood around the turn of the Millennia. I read a recent article about how the majority (almost 2 to 1) of this demographic group thought there is nothing wrong with using the bathroom for the gender one “identifies” with.

Maybe that’s because they don’t have a 13 year old daughter going into a bathroom, followed by a 45 year old man.

There are other social “norms” that have been changed, such as same-sex marriage and open carry laws being relaxed. Yes, I know there is a difference between having a gun and being married to the same gender, but the one thing these changes in attitude represent is a devolution of society. It is not evolution, which implies an improvement, but it is devolution, indicating clearly a return to a worse condition.

Sodom and Gomorrah had no gender identification issues- everyone did anything with anyone. Rome, in it’s heyday of perversion, was the same way. There have been people who identify with the opposite (physical) gender since God first made gender, so what’s the problem?

The problem is you can put a square peg into a round hole if you jam it in there hard enough, but it will never fit right and neither the round hole or the square peg will ever feel fulfilled because they are not doing what they were designed to do. It’s that simple- round-to-round, square-to-square: anything outside of what the design is made to do should not be.

OK- so maybe I say I am a man in a woman’s body, or vice-versa, but what really makes a man a man, or a woman a woman? In the past it was the genitalia, but today it is more the emotional and mental state than the physical state. And therein lies the problem- since when has the human race ever demonstrated a sane, emotional state of being?

Hormones are what drives us, emotionally- too much Testosterone and you are an aggressive male, too much Progesterone and you are an effeminate male. This is all too evident when we consider that it is the hormonal treatments which are the essential first step in sex change operations. The genitalia are less important when it comes to gender identification than the hormones racing through our systems, and when we have an hormonal imbalance we have gender identification problems.

There is more to it than that, surely, but hormones are the foundation on which gender is going to be based, emotionally.

It is mostly in third world countries that we still see very harsh treatment of homosexual activity. We, uh…”civilized” nations (as we like to call ourselves) are more tolerant (accepting) of homosexuals, as well as of many other (previously called) abnormal, or degenerate, activities. So far, sodomy (sex with animals) still seems to be frowned upon, but give it time.

All of these societal changes are preparation for the rule of the Antichrist. I know that sounds very “religious”, but it is, like it or not, the truth of the matter. The Antichrist is not just against God, but against everything pure and good. Hedonism must have been the first evil that left Pandora’s Box because it has such a strong hold on nearly everyone. And, unfortunately, many, many things that are bad for us, spiritually, feel so good, physically. I guess that is really the definition of what living in a cursed world is: the good things are hard and the bad things are easy.

Personally, I do not want to be using the urinal with a woman next to me, and I really, REALLY don’t want to think of a young girl being in a bathroom with a adult man in the stall next to her. Call me old fashioned, but the bad people do what they want, and have no honesty in how they present themselves. If I am a man who likes to take advantage of young girls, I am going to stand outside the woman’s bathroom in the same way the lions hang around the watering hole. I guess if animals could talk, the lion would tell us he identifies with antelopes and feels he has a right to hang in the middle of the herd.

At least, until his stomach starts to grumble.

Look- I am not “bashing” anyone: all I am saying is that when you learn about carpentry (remember Yeshua was a carpenter) you learn to use a hammer to drive nails and a screwdriver to twist screws- you don’t bang a nail with the handle of a screwdriver or use a chisel to insert a screw. You use the tool in the manner for which it was designed, and when you do the finished product comes out looking, and performing, correctly.

Our society is not working as it should- true, it never did, but things are devolving at an alarming rate, which means that the End Times are just around the corner.

The real issue is not which gender you choose to identify with, but who’s servant you will be.

Empowerment or Excuse

Shabbat Shalom. I usually have a Parashah message on Friday but I glanced at an article in the morning paper and feel so strongly about what it said to my spirit that I am going to rant and rave today.

The article was about a group of women who wanted to protest the backing by the Governor of Florida of a law that will remove a lot of funding for abortion clinics by forcing the doctors to have stricter regulations on their licensing, as well as stricter demands for inspections of clinics and restrictions on how fetal remains are handled. The government says this law is to improve the quality of the existing clinics and protect the health of the women using them; the protesters say it will just close more clinics and that the Governor is a hypocrite.

It came to me, after all these years of Roe vs. Wade conflicts, that the real reason women who choose to have sex outside of marriage want abortion clinics has nothing at all to do with their empowerment or rights regarding how they treat their body.

Let me say this, first, about right to life: I do not believe anyone should have sex if they are not married (and I mean to each other- sex between married people is still wrong if they are each married to someone else.) Let me also say that I was just as guilty of this sin, called fornication, as anyone else ever has been or will be. Before I was saved I had no problem with it, at all; in fact, when I was single (and before I knew the Lord) I not only was interesting in nailing anyone who was willing, but their marriage status was not a concern. That is different now, of course.

The bible is absolutely clear that fornication is a sin- it is not implied, or hinted at, or hidden in between the lines- according to Strong’s Concordance there are some 36 references throughout the bible against fornication. It’s a sin, plain and simple. What I really can’t stand to hear is the childish and irresponsible whining of people who choose to commit a sin and then say that it isn’t really a sin.

DUH!! If the bible says it is a sin, it is a S-I-N; what part of , “This is a sin” don’t you understand? Yet those who do what they want, feeling (to some degree, to their credit) a level of remorse, will not admit to their sinfulness and weakness but instead will rationalize it away by saying that what they did is not really a sin. At least, it shouldn’t be.

I took your possessions but that isn’t really stealing. I hit you in the face five times but that isn’t really assault. I shot you thirty-five times times in the head, but it was an accident.

Oy!

Fornication is a sin, and the abortion clinic argument is not about empowerment- it is about excuses. Abortion does not support a woman’s right to control her own body- it is a way to avoid the accountability of making a mistake. It is her “get out of jail (pregnancy) card” that she can throw on the table when her sinful actions have resulted in a new life that she is not willing to be responsible for.

The demand to allow abortion is, at it’s core, the demand for the right to commit murder and thereby avoid the consequences of a sin.

How can you avoid the consequence of a sin by committing another one? Any sin, no matter how “big” or how “small”, is a sin in God’s eyes. Fornication (from a human viewpoint) is less of a sin than murder;  murder made it to the Top Ten Hit list of sins, whereas fornication is low on the charts. That said, abortion clinics are the way that someone who chooses to fornicate can avoid the consequence of that action.

I do not want you to think that I am judging those who have sex outside of marriage- as I said, I was as guilty in my youth as anyone today. I am not judging people who fornicate when I call it a sin: I am simply defining what the bible says their actions are.

What I am ranting about is the irresponsibility and immaturity, both emotionally and spiritually, of people who demand to be allowed to have an abortion when they have failed to take the proper precautions or who become pregnant and don’t want to deal with it.

Didn’t your mother ever tell you when you first learned the attraction of matches: “If you play with fire you will get burned.”

Sin is a fire: it burns us, it consumes everything it touches, and it leaves scars. Yeshua can remove the scars and without Him, we have no hope. Abortion cannot remove the scars.

What this boils down to is sin if you want to- that is your choice. But stop trying to cover it up and excuse it away. If you fornicate and get pregnant, then deal with what you have done. I have heard from people that have had that “accident” and found they love that child as much, if not more so, than the “planned” ones. If you want to fornicate, do so- you were given, by God, free will to choose to commit sin. And you were also given, by God, the sacrificial death of His son to let you escape the eternal consequences of your sin. Mind you- I said the eternal consequences, not the physical, current consequences. A murderer can be forgiven murder through Yeshua, but he or she will still have to go to jail. Sin always has consequences on Earth which we cannot avoid.

I believe that abortion clinics are wrong and should be outlawed; not as a means of denying women the right to control what they do with their own body, but because they represent an escape from accountability. And, yes, I also believe that legal abortion is state-authorized murder.

We purposefully sin but don’t want to be held accountable. Fine. Live that way, make your excuses, use science or philosophy, make arguments about rights to control your body and empowerment, but it is all a smoke screen and misdirection. Abortion has nothing to do with empowerment or rights- it is all about lack of accountability and escaping the consequences of one’s actions.

If you fornicate and get pregnant, do your duty to the life you created and then give the baby up for adoption so someone who is not blessed with fertility can raise the child with the love you don’t have for it. Abortion is wrong, adding sin upon sin, and abortion clinics are state-authorized slaughterhouses. It’s that simple, it’s that easy to understand, and it’s that terrible.

Stop rationalizing your sin and own up to it, people! At least have the guts to admit you made a mistake and then show the maturity and strength of character to finish what you started.

Real empowerment doesn’t come from excuses- real empowerment comes from personal accountability.