A Tragic Irony Within The San Bernardino Shootings. You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

Posted on by metroupe

Several news outlets are posting memorial information about the victims of the cowardly murders in San Bernardino this week.  They are difficult to read, but worth the time, and help us to remember the human side of this tragedy. My heart breaks for these families.

I read this one and couldn’t get past the painful irony that is in the background of this man’s story.  Some in the media are working hard to overlook or minimize threads like this in favor of other narratives.

One of the victims was Nicholas Thalasinos:

“Thalasinos, who had been working as a health inspector, had a growth removed from his head just four days before being killed in the shooting, the Los Angeles Times reports.

“He had an incredibly good work ethic,” Ed Beck, the husband of one of his former colleagues, said. “The job of a sanitary inspector is certainly not the most glamorous of professions. He was passionate about it. He wanted to make sure people were safe.”

He has two adult sons.

“I want answers and I want them now, because now, it’s personal!” wrote friend Yael Zarfi-Markovich on Facebook.

He was a Messianic Jew who often defended Israel. According to the AP News Agency, he had got into a heated discussion with Farook [one of the shooters who was a radicalized jihadist] about whether Islam was a peaceful religion while working a few weeks ago.” (emphasis added)

Source: San Bernardino shooting: Who are the victims? – BBC News

Prisoners To Our Own Appetites. Now THAT Is A Story

Posted on by metroupe

Jail cell

This is an amazing account from Mark Buchanan. It is a strange story that illustrates how we are often prisoners to our own appetites.

“Thomas Costain, in his book The Three Edwards, relates a historical episode from the fourteenth century. Two brothers, Raynald and Edward, fought bitterly. Edward mounted war against Raynald, captured him alive, and imprisoned him in Nieuwkerk Castle.

“But it was no ordinary prison cell. The room was reasonably comfortable. And there was no lock on the door—not a bolt, not a padlock, not a crossbeam. Raynald was free to come or go at will. In fact, it was better than that: Edward promised Raynald full restoration of all rights and titles on a single condition: that he walk out of that room.

“Only Raynald couldn’t. The door was slightly narrower than a typical door. And Raynald was enormously fat. He was swaddled in it. He could not, with all his squeezing and heaving, get himself outside his cell. He might more easily have passed a camel through a needle.

“So in order to walk free and reclaim all he’d lost, he had only to do one thing: lose weight. That would have come easily to most prisoners, with their rations of bread and water.

“It did not come easy to Raynald. Edward had disguised a great cruelty as an act of generosity. Every day, Edward had Raynald served with the richest, sauciest foods, savory and sweet, and ample ale and wine to boot. Raynald ate and ate and grew larger and larger. He spent ten years trapped in an unlocked cell, freed only after Edward’s death. His health was so ruined, he died soon himself.”

Buchanan’s book “The Rest Of God” is delightful and full of great content and excellent writing. It explores something that is oddly missing from many discussions of the Sabbath, the issue of rest.

Buchanan, Mark (2007-03-11). The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath (pp. 165-166). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.

The Insanity of Using the Rights of Future Generations as An Argument For Abortion

Posted on by metroupe

 

I recently saw Planned Parenthood ReTweet this article (linked below) and I stared in disbelief.

PP insanity

Did they really just say that? That has to be someone pretending to be prochoice in order to make them look illogical…

Nope, they said it.

This is part of the insanity of abortion, that someone would try to make an argument for abortion by talking about the rights of children yet to be born.  Future generations must have the right to abort their children, even if they don’t have the right to exist. In this mindset, the right not to be pregnant trumps the right not to be killed.

But evidently we do have some responsibility to future generations? Are we responsible to them? We need to protect their rights?  On what basis? Which rights? If we don’t protect their rights, what happens?

“Will our daughters, sons and young neighbors have the same reproductive rights we have? Only if advocates of chosen childbearing tap the deep moral roots and emotions beneath abortion care.

“Picture a future in which children come into the world by design rather than by default. In this future, young women and men pursue their dreams and form the families of their choosing without the ever-present risk of a surprise pregnancy that plagues young lives today. Contraceptives almost never fail, and most pregnancies are healthy thanks to “preconception care” and prenatal care.” (emphasis mine)

She also writes about an imagined pro-choice future:“In this future, young women and men pursue their dreams and form the families of their choosing without the ever-present risk of a surprise pregnancy that plagues young lives today. Contraceptives almost never fail, and most pregnancies are healthy thanks to “preconception care” and prenatal care.” (emphasis mine)

Again, note the argument. We should be able to terminate a life in order to make sure that other lives are healthy.  It sounds caring, but it is diabolical. Can you imagine if this ethic was applied to any other element of healthcare? If you’re not healthy, we’ll put you down like a dog at the vet.  (Which by the way, we should note that dogs have more rights than unborn children. You cannot inflict any pain on an animal while euthanizing it. Not so with children.)  That ethic may work for animals, but not for humans. This sounds like a soft expression of eugenics to me. Taking the life of sick people in order to improve the lives of everyone else is BAD MEDICINE.

As always, the defense of abortion is shrouded in deceptive mask of euphemisms about our dreams and prosperity. Absolute insanity

Insanity abortion

Source: Claiming Abortion Care as a Positive Social Good—Four Steps to Change the Conversation and Win