Too Early to Know

I was reading Dear Abby this morning and a 16-year-old girl wrote in how she and another boy, one year older than her, like each other but the boy wasn’t ready for a relationship. This, of course, is driving the girl crazy.

Here’s what drove me a little crazy about this issue: she says the boy is a transgender boy.

If you prefer to watch a video, click on this link: Watch the video.

He is only 17 years old!! She wasn’t female long enough to even know what being a female is all about, and yet the parents, as well as the legal system, has allowed this child to sexually mutilate herself into himself and take mind-altering, as well as physiological altering, drugs just because she “thinks” she should be a he before she or he has even finished puberty!!

Now wait a minute…before anyone who is a member of the LGBTQ community jumps down my throat, this is NOT a judgment on your lifestyle or sexual/gender identification, or your rights.  That is not the issue here.

The issue is that a child of 16 or 17, and certainly one much younger, is not mature enough, either physically, emotionally or socially, to make a life-changing decision such as changing their gender. Even with psychological counseling, they are just too damn young and (life) inexperienced to make such a drastic decision.

We don’t let them drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes until they are 21, and they can’t even vote until they are 18. So if these simple decisions that are reversible during their lifetime are considered too difficult a decision for them to make until they are of legal age, why can pre-pubescent children be allowed to alter their gender?

I believe the parents who allow this should be charged with child abuse and the doctors should have their licenses revoked and charged with malpractice. No child of 16 or 17 is able to make a sound, mature and experienced decision about which gender they identify with.

And anyone who disagrees is, in my opinion, saying that only as a defense mechanism, without a care at all for the child’s welfare. They disagree only because they want to support an agenda that is not really being questioned here.

This country allows drag queens to read to toddlers in public libraries- libraries that receive their funding from the community. These innocent children are too young to even know what morals are, let alone have enough life experience to know what a drag queen really is. To them, these men are no different than a circus clown all dressed up. But there is a BIG difference- those men dressed as women are not clowning around.

I know gay people and have family members who are gay and have never once judged them, even though I know what God says and don’t agree at all with their lifestyle. But right or wrong, sinful or not, a sex change operation is such a drastic event that it must be prohibited until such time as the person requesting it is of legal age and has shown enough life experience and emotional maturity for a panel of experts to determine that this person is making an informed decision.

God has been removed from our courts and schools and replaced with politically correct sinfulness, moral depreciation, and fear of being labeled as someone not tolerant or compassionate.  I know prayer is a powerful weapon, but even in the Bible we read how both the Northern, and later the Southern Kingdoms had committed such horrible sins, and for so long, that God was past hearing their prayers and was on his throne of judgment.

I believe that America is in the same place that Shomrom was in after King Ahab, which a few hundred years later Judea was in after King Manasseh.

We have been sinning too much and too long for prayer to wash us clean, and the only thing left to us now is judgment.

God made us the way we are and if someone wants to change what God did, then they will have to deal with God on their own. And whether or not you believe in transgender sex operations, no one should be able to do that to themselves until they are at least of legal age, as well as having shown enough maturity, experience, and understanding of the consequences of their actions to demonstrate they really know what they are doing.

And no teenager can do that.

Thank you for being here and please subscribe. I welcome your comments and until next time, L’hitraot, wash your hands,  and Baruch HaShem!

Stand or sit: it’s all the same to Uncle Sam

If you follow this blog, you know that I rarely, if ever, get involved in political stuff. But the White House has gone too far, this time.

Within the past few weeks, the White House (i.e., President Obama) has issued a letter to public schools (you can “google” it) that says, essentially, if a student says they are gay or transgender they must be allowed to use whichever bathroom their gender identification makes them comfortable using.

In other words, we will now have 4-5 bathrooms available: one with an image of a man, one has an image of a woman, one is marked “Family”, one has a blue handicap banner, and the last one has a question mark on it.

No medical determination has to be submitted, just a letter from the parent saying Junior isn’t really Junior anymore.

OK- we know from the bible that gender identification issues, in whichever form it takes, has been around as long as gender has been around. It is as much a part of humanity as sin, and will continue to be around until the Day of the Lord is over. Once the final battle is fought, the new Jerusalem is lowered from heaven and all the saved are resurrected, I don’t know if we will even have gender. Maybe at that time we will be beyond gender, beyond sexual activity (that doesn’t sound like heaven, does it? But, well, maybe?) and all of this will be a moot argument.

But until then, we have to live with it. I don’t see this for anything other than what it is- a mockery of God. God made man and woman, separate, distinct and designed to help each other. It is how things are designed in this world- two of the same thing can’t become any more than double what they are- no synergy, no improvement, no change. Two men, two women- only that. Two of the same.

But put a man and a woman together, and you get three things, Not double of the same, but three distinct and unique things. Then you get four, and more and more and more. There is improvement, there is synergy, there is the working of God’a plan.

When we say ‘transgender’, ‘homosexual’ or whatever label we use as an identification that is anything other than what the person’s anatomy identifies him or her as, then we are making a mockery of God’s creation and insulting the Lord who:

“…created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27)

Wait a minute! It says He created them in His image- male and female He created them. Hmmmm??? Does that mean God is both male and female? Is God a transgender? I mean, He identifies Israel as His son but also as His bride, and He is often referred to in the plural throughout the bible. Maybe we should all be transgender, right? Perhaps we should all be mollusks because all mollusks are hermaphrodites. That would solve this whole issue, wouldn’t it? If we were all blessed with male and female anatomies, then there wouldn’t be domestic violence- I mean, really, who would beat himself up? There wouldn’t be rape, there wouldn’t be expensive shoes for women and cheap shoes for men (how come the government doesn’t pass laws dealing with why women’s clothing is so much more expensive than men’s clothing, huh?), and there wouldn’t be any issue with using separate bathrooms.

I don’t think God wanted humans to be clams. He made us human, He made us in His image, meaning above the animals and spiritually aware. His image has nothing to do with sex or gender, and if God had intended for us to be non-gender specific, He would have made us that way. Adam and Eve didn’t seem to have any issues with who each of them was, but somewhere down the line someone got confused.

I am not homo-phobic. I am not a hater of those who have gender identification issues. I am simply a person who believes that what God did was to make us separate so that we would complement each other. He made us to be men and women, and that is what we are. I believe those with gender identity issues are suffering from either a hormonal imbalance, or a mental/emotional issue that represents itself in gender identification. I believe that it is something that can be treated, something to be seen as an emotional or physiological imbalance, and something to be handled respectfully and compassionately.

I have close family members who are homosexual, and I love them. I enjoy being with them, and I don’t tell them how they should be and they don’t tell me. They know how I feel and I know how they feel, but we love each other because we are family, and I can love the person even though I  disagree with their choice of lifestyle. And, yes- I believe it is a choice. That should not insult or bother anyone who thinks it is normal. I choose to accept God, His word and what He says in the bible. If someone tells me they don’t, I am not insulted. That is the one thing that really gets my goat- the hypocrisy of people. If I disagree with someone, it’s horrible and wrong for me to do so, but it is perfectly acceptable for that person to call me a bigot and hateful just because I disagree with them. If they think apples taste good and I don’t like apples, does that make me a bigot? Am I apple-phobic if I say I wouldn’t eat an apple pie if my life depended on it?

The real issue here is that the government has rejected God, again. First we threw Him out of the school when we refused to allow people who believe in Him to say, “One nation, under God” in the pledge of allegiance. In fact, we got rid of the pledge, altogether. Then we threw Him out of the court system when the 10 Commandments were considered improper on a courthouse.

Now we are mocking Him by ignoring the most basic creation of God: gender difference. Sit or stand, it makes no difference to Uncle Sam, you can all use the same bathroom, and at the same time, too!

Do you have a young daughter? A son entering puberty? Do you feel comfortable knowing they may have to share a bathroom with a child of the (physically) opposite gender? Or, worse, at a public building like a Target department store (yes, I understand they have embraced this whole idea) your 13 year old daughter going into a bathroom where there may be a man who is 40?

Do the kids really understand? Children entering and going through puberty don’t even understand their own gender yet: how can they possible make the life-changing decision that it isn’t the right one?

Better get ready, Folks- the end is coming up on us faster and faster every day.

 

Parashah Vayyera (And He Appeared) Genesis 18 – 22

Not much here- only the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, not to mention the Akedah, the binding of Isaac (traditionally read at Rosh HaShannah.)

There is also the second time Abraham “pimped” Sarah, when Abimelech took her to wife because Abraham (with Sarah’s agreement) said she was his sister, not his wife. Abimelech was the king of the Philistine city and his entire household was cursed with not bearing children because he took Sarah as wife.

There is so much written about the Akedah I am not even going to try to comment on it, but I do feel that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah has a lesson for us, something more personal than the story we read.

The people living in these two towns were wholly and unashamedly depraved. The bible makes sure we know that both young and old, meaning everyone, was depraved and sinful. I am not surprised, though; after all, doesn’t the society create it’s own morals? If you were alone in the desert, wouldn’t you form your own ideas about right and wrong? Look at modern cultures: some drink coffee, some drink tea, some nap in the afternoon and some don’t nap at all. Some believe that salad should be after the main course and others eat it first. There are many, many different cultural mores and values, not just about food and work, but about childbirth, capital punishment, education of the young, just to name a few. Lot offered his virgin daughters to the mob of men so they can gang rape the girls instead raping the guests in his house, the cultural ideal at that time being that to protect and care for a traveler was of the utmost importance. The care of a stranger was more important than protecting your own daughters from sexual abuse. We see this cultural standard also in Judges, 19.

Our society today, right here in the good old U S of A, is becoming more and more like Sodom. In the days of Sodom, people learned about social mores by observing their neighbors. There was no Face Book, Twitter or NetFlix to see what was happening all over. But today? We can see depravity as acceptable everywhere, in the newspapers, on TV, on our phones, and even inside the house of worship! How many of you have heard of “churches” that are pro-abortion? Churches that are specifically for homosexual and trans-sexual people? Churches that are abusing children, both physically and sexually? Churches? Places of worship? That’s what they call themselves.

Have you ever watched the History or Discovery channel specials on anything biblical? They debunk God, almost making it seem that He is a myth. I have more often than not heard references to biblical stories and lessons as being nothing more than passed down myths. The narrator refers to the “writer of these stories” as having made them up from existing legends. They show many biblical “scholars” who talk about the truths that God gave us in His word with cynical, disrespectful terms, as if they were referring to some fictional novel. And when they have someone who speaks of the bible with reverence for God, they make him or her look like some idiot, whose opinion is childish and uneducated; essentially they make faith-based obedience look like some uneducated, sect-like conditioned thinking.

Halloween is tomorrow- we give the kids candy because if you give no treat your house gets tricked. We know that the small children don’t understand anything about what their costumes and that day really represent, so we (myself included) condone, as it is, the demonic foundation of this day because we don’t want to hurt the feelings of the small children.

And what effect does that have? It plants a new seed of Sodom. This is how societies become depraved: little by little, one small concession to the mob mentality after another, until you have God thrown out of the courtroom, out of the schools, and even out of the places of worship.

Anyone who says they worship God cannot also acknowledge as acceptable those things God says are not.

God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. We need to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, too- not the towns of millennia ago, but the sinfulness and depravity that exists in our own hearts. Yeshua said that which goes into the body doesn’t defile us, but that which comes out of the mouth is what defiles us (Matthew 15:11), so exorcise that which defiles you. The words we speak, especially in anger, are straight from our hearts. We later apologize, and say, “I didn’t really mean it”, but isn’t that a lie? If we didn’t mean it, we wouldn’t have said it! THAT is the truth- what we say in anger or under stress is what is in our hearts. When we lie to the one we said it to we are really lying to ourselves because no one wants to face the truth of what is in his or her defiling, evil heart.

The towns and people of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by God, but we need to destroy the spirit of Sodom and Gomorrah in ourselves. When we call on the Holy Spirit we can get the spiritual strength to overpower our evil hearts. Eventually, the Torah will be written on our hearts, these hearts of stone will be replaced with hearts of flesh and we will be living Torahs, just as Yeshua is the living Torah.

Until that day, we need to work at destroying Sodom in us.