The Most Amazing Event in History

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” – John 1:14 NIV


I am a Theist. I believe Theism is a more compelling explanation for the universe than Deism, Atheism, or Pantheism. Yeah, I know there's a brilliant physicist who thinks the universe created itself but he's out of his area of expertise (physics) when making that conclusion. If things can create themselves, then we can't rely on any scientific experiments, because we can't rule out that at least some of the data is a result of something creating itself without a cause.

I also think that a being powerful enough to create the universe is certainly powerful enough to interact with that creation.

The Incarnation of Jesus Christ involved God condescending to live a human life. Jesus Christ, eternally having a divine nature, took on a human nature.

His birth to a Jewish woman two thousand years ago is the most amazing event in history. His death on the cross is the focal point of human history, and without His death we would not have the resurrection to celebrate Easter Sunday, but without His birth we would not have His death, His resurrection, or the examples and teachings of His life.

We have a Lord who knows what it is to be human, to experience pain, and to die.

December 25th is located on the calendar conveniently near pagan celebrations, thus allowing for opportunities to reach out to pagans. We aren't sure of what the actual birth date of Jesus was. Like some other things about Christianity, including having many manuscript copies of the various New Testament writings but not the original writings themselves, I think that is part of God's plan. If we had those original writings they would be erroneously worshiped by some, and if we knew the actual birth date of Jesus astrology would be consulted in that regard.

We don't need Jesus' actual birth date. We know He was born, we know He was killed, and we have good reason to believe He was resurrected and still lives today. His teachings, His miracles, and many of His resurrection appearances were public, witnessed by many people, convinced and unconvinced. Contrast that with founding of various other beliefs systems, where the claim is one person had a private vision, dream, or other experience.

Jesus, our Lord, came into the world He created as a baby. That is the core of Christmas. Whether you believe it or not, I pray that you have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

Nobody Owes You a Job

Believe it or not, the purpose of a job isn't to be some scheme where a business charitably provides you with money, insurance, and other benefits.

A job exists because someone needs something accomplished, and you can do it for them either better, more efficiently, or less expensively than they could it themselves.

Your job is to make your boss' job easier. If your boss is spending too much time managing you or fixing your mistakes or otherwise reworking your work, or you are becoming more expensive than the value of what you provide, your boss is either going to replace you, do the work himself/herself, or not get that work done any more. Your boss hires you to free himself or herself up to do other things.

That's the way things work naturally. Regulations, laws, and union contracts may interfere with this, but do so to the detriment of progress and growth.

We all have something to offer others. They have something to offer us. Agreeing to voluntary exchange goods or services for other goods, services, or money need not require any involvement by anyone else, and most of the time outside interference shouldn't happen.

Nobody owes you a job unless they have voluntarily submitted to a contract obligating them to employ you for that length of time and you are upholding your end of the contract. You can offer something you have for something you want, and if you find someone willing to make that exchange, you can both get what you want.

When the need to do that work no longer exists for whatever reason, the job should cease. Sure, it would be nice to never have to worry about cash flow, to never have to look for another job, to never have to deal with an interruption of benefits, etc. But if your services no longer meet an existing need at the right price, the natural thing is for the job to end – at least for you.

Very rarely is that the fault of a President of the United States of America, Congress, or a business. It is just the way things are.

The solution? Make sure what you are offering makes your boss want to keep you around, or makes you valuable to some other boss.

Will He Be Forced to Participate in a Homosexuality Ceremony That Mocks His Faith?

Today, the Supreme Court of the United States heard a case that's exactly what we knew would come about if  marriage neutering advocates were able to get the Imperial Judiciary to do their bidding in fundamentally transforming marriage law, which they did.

"We just want to be left alone."
"Stay out of our bedroom."
"We support tolerance!"
"Nobody will be hurt."

Those were lies.

Politically expedient lies, and now the activists seek exactly the opposite of those lies.

One problem with establishing imaginary "rights" is that error begets error.

An obnoxious pair of maladjusted guys, perhaps motivated by hate, deliberately avoided going to many other cake makers and sought out a well-known devout Christian, who holds longstanding, sincere, mainstream religious convictions clearly protected under the First Amendment, and as a result, will not put his artistic expression to use in support of certain events, some of which have nothing at all to do with LGBTQQUIAPPCDEFGHJKMNORSTVWXYZ people at all.

This man was willing to serve these guys.

He simply wasn't agreeable to provide artistic services for and event they said they wanted, an event that he sees as mocking and violating his religious convictions.

This hasn't stopped they homofascist activist groups from saying that gay people were denied service based on their identity, which is a lie. The guys in question didn't suffer a bit.


Yet, this businessman has had to go through a long, expensive, time-consumer battle to defend his basic rights.

If SCOTUS rules the right way, the activists will liken the ruling to mass murder, and they will try to mess with someone else's livelihood, and they will keep going until they get a favorable ruling, because that's how they operate. If SCOTUS rules the wrong way, the activists will hunt and destroy the livelihoods of any similarly devout Christians that they can.

We knew things would get this way.

5. Parents and employees will lose any "opt-out" leverage they have when it comes to promotions of homosexual behavior or neutered marriage.

6. Religious organizations, congregations, and clergy will be pressured or outright forced to perform, host, and affirm same-sex "weddings", and will be prevented from presenting Scriptural teachings about homosexual behavior or marriage uniting the sexes.

Are we about there?

How about standing up to the activists and telling them they've done more than enough to degrade our lives and destroy good institutiona and programs?

The State of California

[I'm bumping this up because the new gasoline tax is about to take effect.]

I was born in California and have lived my entire life in California. The state has great climate and geography, natural resources, and human resources. Unfortunately, it is ruled unchallenged by gender-confused, big government, nanny state, unionist, environut reconquistadors, or, to be redundant, Leftists. Democrats have a supermajority in the state Senate and Assembly, and our Governor is a Democrat. These are not moderate Democrats, either. They are far on the Left. Not only is San Francisco city/county led by Leftists, but so is Los Angeles County and the City of Los Angeles. L.A.’s Mayor is itching to run for Governor or even President.

Illinois is having trouble and California isn't far behind. This is what the rest of the Union faces the more Left it goes.

Here are just some of the things going on in the state right now, that are getting closer and closer to driving me and my family from our home state.

Without DACA Trump Will Eat Your Children!

We seem to be in a perpetual state of bad political theater, panics induced by the media-activist complex, in which each and every thing people think President Trump has done is treated like some outrage. Quite often, the objections are completely bogus or entirely partisan. Yesterday it was the bleating over DACA.

To make a long story short, DACA pertains to illegal aliens who were children when they came here, most brought by illegal alien parents. Many of them (contrary to what the mob says,  it is certainly not all) don't really know any other country as home other than the USA. That's squarely on the people who brought them here. Make no mistake about it. They are in this situation because of the people who sent or brought them here, not because of Trump. If they want to blame a politician, they should blame former President of Obama.

President Obama could have worked with his Democrat-controlled Congress to pass laws dealing with "dreamers", to give them some sort of permanent legal standing, but he didn't. Then in 2011, he correctly said it was something he couldn't do himself; Congress had to do it, because of the Constitutional separation of powers.

But in 2012 he did it himself anyway, prompting a flood of children to head for our border for a few years. It was a crises and Lord only knows how many children didn't make it or were severely abused along the way.

Obama knew damn well his unilateral Executive action was 1) unconstitutional, and 2) reversible by the next POTUS.

Most of the elected officials with their bluster in the media over the last couple of days know this, but they figure they'll rile people up anyway, and the usual activist groups are all too happy to put on a show. It's theater of the absurd. So many of these loudmouths are fakers or liars, if they're not completely ignorant of what's really going on.
It's really clear that states are going to get the courts to rule against DACA, striking it down as unconstitutional, so President Trump rightly decides to drop it and calls on Congress to pass legislation. This isn't some wild policy change, or some nefarious action. It is exactly what any President should've done. Any threat to sue President Trump over dropping DACA is an empty threat, unless someone can find a judge so bereft of integrity who is willing to issue a ruling that will be definitely be overturned.

President Trump did NOT announce that "dreamers" are going to be deported. They're all still here, you'll notice. He simply announced that he's not going to engage in the futile exercise of defending an unconstitutional order, which was supposed to be temporary anyway even according to Obama, that gives some illegal aliens privileges over others. That's it. You'd think from all of the whining that Trump had announced "dreamers" are going to be rounded up and tortured to death.

Hey, I get it. People were fleeing hellholes of corruption, crime, failed big government, and poverty and felt like they didn't have time to waste, so rather than dealing with the hassles of our legal immigration system, people came here or sent their kids here, and so you have these people who came here as kids because they didn't have a choice in the matter and are now adults with "illegal alien" status, and most of them have been socialized as Americans, and they want to go to school here, work here, etc. and being illegal aliens makes that problematic, and especially if they have to go back to their country of origin (which is unlikely unless they've been really bad criminals), it'll be a real mess for them. I understand. It sucks.

But this attitude of entitlement-that-must-not-be-questioned needs to be dropped. There are still consequences to doing things outside the law. If your parents stole a bicycle, gave it to you, and you got used to riding it, it is still your parents' fault, not the police officer, if you have trouble claiming that bike as your own.

This idea that Americas are all supposed to bend over backwards because the parents of these kids did things outside of the law is insulting. Yeah, it would be a nice thing to do to pass legislation to allow "dreamers" with clean records to stay permanently (but NOT allowing them any edge over legal immigrants and naturalized citizens). But that shouldn't be tried until the border is secure, or we'll get another flood of children being shoved across the border.

You should listen to the audio linked at the ends of this entry (if it is still there) for a good overview of what has really happened when it comes to DACA.

A few other thoughts:

Anyone who refuses to distinguish between naturalized citizens and legal immigrants on one hand, and illegal aliens on the other, can't be taken seriously when it comes to matters of law.

Saying that "dreamers" or any illegal aliens commit crimes as low rates should be answered with "They wouldn't commit any crimes here if they weren't here!!!"

What's with people using the line "But these young people don't know these countries they'd be sent back to!" First of all, very few of them are going to be sent back to those countries. Secondly, they didn't know this country when their parents dragged them here. Nobody mentions that. The difference is they are adults now and have some control over their own lives.

Then there are the people who say today's American "whites" can be held liable for the evils of the past, but these "dreamers" shouldn't suffer for parental crimes

And notice some people pleading to keep DACA make it sound like Mexico and other countries are awful places. I thought it was racist to do that? At least according to them.

While some of these "dreamers" have jobs right now, that might not always be the case. After all, some of them might think marriage unites a bride and groom, or that men and women are different, or that men can't become women and vice-versa, which according to many people makes someone unfit for employment. So maybe they should all be quizzed before being granted immunity from deportation?

The 14th Amendment is generous enough when it is interpreted to confer citizenship of a baby that drops out of a woman who is a national of another country who illegally crossed the border ten minutes ago. It doesn't apply to children born on foreign soil to citizens of that country who've never been naturalized here.
Finally, it's great to see Leftists pause from saying how oppressive, xenophobic, & racist this country is to say it would be cruel to send poor illegal aliens of "minority" ethnicity back to their country of origin.

The Stupidity of Identity Politics

If you would have asked me if the President of the California NAACP would be in favor of expanding the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors or against it, I would have guessed "in favor". And yet, Alice A. Huffman has a commentary in the Pink Transgender Lady (a.k.a. Los Angeles Times) advising against it, which means I agree Huffman!

State Constitutional Amendment 12, or SCA 12, would allow California voters to amend the state’s Constitution to require that L.A. County expand its Board of Supervisors from five to seven members and create an elected chief executive position with outsize powers and no accountability to the board.

That means voters all over California would get to decide the structure of the Los Angeles county leadership. The Amendment would not change things in any other county.

Currently, all legislative and executive power of the Los Angeles county government (other than whatever powers are retained by elected Department positions such as Sheriff) flows from the five-member board, and the last time an incumbent running for re-election was defeated was in 1980. Members of the board kept getting re-elected until they retired, until statewide term limits were put in place. It is those terms limits that have likely been a major inspiration for the proposed Amendment, as state legislators would very much like to have more elected positions in which to land when they are termed out of Sacramento. There are over ten million residents in the county of Los Angeles, so even if the board had two more members, each one would represent well over a million people, and there's no doubt that a new elected executive would be a Democrat staging position for Governor or President.

What caught my eye, though was that people are touting "diversity" to support and oppose the Amendment.

I Thank God I Was Born in the U.S.A.

People risk and lose their lives trying to get here. People lie, cheat, and steal to get here and stay here. Me, I was blessed to be born here, making me a citizen simply by surviving Roe v. Wade.

So many people sacrificed and fought and worked to create and build and preserve this nation, from the explorers who made the journeys across the Atlantic and had to turn around and make the journey back, to the pilgrims and others who colonized here, to the revolutionaries who broke away from the monarchistic mother country and later set up the greatest Constitution in history, to the people who insisted that human beings should not be treated as property, to the people who went around the world to defeat Naziism and Soviet Communism. I thank God they did. I thank God my ancestors dared to come here.

I thank God I can choose my job, choose where to live, choose what to buy, choose my doctor, choose what to drive, choose to have as many children as I can, and openly worship Jesus Christ and study the Bible.

Our nation is not perfect, but it is the best place in the world, and it does have the ingredients for further greatness. We must now implement the recipe to preserve and further that which is good and discard or change that which isn't. We must fight to make the government work to protect our rights instead of infringing on them. We must work hard to raise the subsequent generations with the morals and values that produce good citizens and aid in limiting government.

Our way of life is under attack – from enemies both foreign and domestic.

One way we can fight them is to declare our independence, and continue declaring it - our independence from: being governed by those not operating under our Constitution; the failed promises of politicians; the failed and restrictive programs of the federal and state governments; the tyranny of the minority; the activist judiciary; socialist labor unions; academics who hate America; media with a Leftist bias or that degrade our culture; churches that have become lukewarm; family and "friends" who are sociopaths, malignant narcissists, unrepentant evildoers, or enabling cowards.

Pray. Study the Bible, the Constitution, and history. Go to church. Get informed. Tell others. Vote at the ballot and with your dollar. Stand between evildoers and the innocent. Civilly disobey unjust laws, rulings, or orders.

Happy Independence Day and God Bless America!

Playing Dumb About the Traditional Family

Note: I am reposting entries I made over at The Opine Editorials. This one is from mid-2011...

Under the headline of "How traditional a family?", Michael McGough blogged at LATimes.com...

When conservative politicians talk about the "traditional family," it's usually by way of denouncing same-sex marriage. But former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania (though no supporter of marriage equality) uses the concept for another purpose: to critique contemporary child-rearing practices.

In 2005, Santorum was criticized for suggesting in his book "It Takes a Family" that working women should give up their jobs and stay at home with the kids.

Actually, the offending passage was gender-neutral: "In too many families with young children both parents are working when, if they took an honest look at the budget, they might confess that both of them don't need to, or at least may not need to work as much as they do."

Yes, that silly Santorum thinks that raising children actually means being present to parent, rather than letting hired help be the primary caretakers. Silly him! What's next? Expecting employees to actually work for their paychecks?

The idea that mothers are superior caregivers for young children is politically incorrect these days, but it's widely held by the social conservatives to whom Santorum appeals.

I don't know, I agree with the idea that is generally preferable that mothers do the early primary caretaking, but maybe it is because my breasts did not inflate with milk. Maybe it is different for other men? Seriously, there are many ways women are, literally, naturally more suited -  everything from bone structure to hearing to smell to hormones and so many more. You don't have to be a social conservative to hold such an idea, though when you realize that the social Left's insistence that there's no difference between mothers and fathers is a lie that denies such an obvious reality, it may lead you to social conservatism.

Those who fight against idealizing the traditional family play dumb or act like we can't define a "traditional family" or that only a minority of families were what we call traditional at any given time in history.

Religion, Atheism, and Morality

March of the Communists and Criminals

May 1 comes around every year, of course. Communists march as though communism hasn't killed 100,000,000 people. Criminals march and demonstate and riot while simultaneously claiming to be living in the shadows. Those who want a communist country should move to Cuba. Our immigration policy should benefit us before the illegal alien.

Previously:

Don't Base Laws For All on Rare Hard Cases

They're Making Our Point For Us

Truly Comprehensive Immigraion Reform

Twenty Five Years Since Infamous Murderous Riots in Los Angeles

I remember early 1990s Los Angeles well.

Rodney King was a criminal and druggie who was speeding and then attacked police officers. after his dangerous speeding drive finally ended. While the famous video looks bad, a jury in a state/county criminal trial found that the arresting officers did not violate the law (actually, they were split on one charge against one of the four officers). Having followed the trial closely, I didn't disagree with their verdicts. I do not believe the jury was racist. If there was a bias in the jury, it was probably a "pro police" bias.

You can disagree with me on that, and still agree with me on everything below.

Opportunists and murderous criminals subsequently rioted, doing far worse to innocent people than the officers ever did to King.

Under the guise of such things as "Rebuild LA" the response was to REWARD the neighborhoods where these rioters were raised and encouraged and defended with taxpayer money and money from businesses. Businesses can do whatever they want with their money; if I'm an investor I can object or pull out my money. If I'm an employee I can quit. If I'm a customer I can stop being one. Taxpayer money is another story. Large companies offered jobs to young people living in these neighborhoods, giving them preference over kids from neighborhoods that weren't full of rioters, making accommodations they'd never make for anyone else.

The way I see it, after riots, I'm willing to support residents and businesses seeking to relocate and rebuild elsewhere; the last thing I want is to reward rioters.

After the riots, the feds came in and did a "civil rights" trial against the police officers. Two of the four were subsequently convicted, and of course the jury couldn't possibly have had in their minds "We'd better convict or the city will burn," right???

I'm not aware of any of the convicted former officers subsequently beating up any people, regardless of skin color. But Rodney King kept committing crimes and being a danger to others, generally wasting his life and his sizable settlement check, and died relatively young. His autopsy results indicated he died from accidental drowning, and that a combination of alcohol, cocaine, marijuana, and PCP found in his system were contributing factors.

The officers who arrested him in the famous incident had said they suspected he was on PCP, based on his behavior (including being able to fight off the officers), so it was interesting that all those years later (and after rehab programs) it was still found in his system.

We're fortunate King didn't do more harm than he did. He easily could have killed people with his behavior.

There are still blighted areas in the rioter neighborhoods 25 years later. Of course there is! Even with incentives from misguided government, why would people rebuild a business or move their business in to a place where people burn businesses down, steal, assault, and murder?

If Friday Was Good, Sunday Was Spectacular

A carpenter, with questionable parentage, from an unremarkable town, walked the countryside. He attracted followers, keeping twelve with him and three of those especially close as he spoke to groups large and small. He was part of an oppressed group - a Jew in a Roman-occupied part of the world. He said and did things that confounded the dominant religious authorities of the day. People flocked to him for a miracle. There was something he claimed that was outrageous to his fellow Jews: He was God. Arrogance? Insanity? Fraud? From a man who urged people to forgive each other and love each other?

For thousands of years, it had been pounded into the minds and hearts of the Jews that there was ONE God and that He was spirit, not an idol that could be kept in a room. He was a unique, personal being, not a "force" or something we all could be or have if we meditated enough.

And yet here was a Jew, this guy who was extremely familiar with the Scriptures – including the ones that said there was just one God - walking around claiming to be God. He wasn't part of the recognized system of priests and religious leaders, so he posed a threat to them and their comfortable, established way of doing things. This guy even had the nerve to disrupt their moneymaking schemes.

Enough was enough!

They handed this guy over to the Romans and demanded that he be executed. He was a threat to the religious leaders, and since he'd claimed to be a king, he must be a threat to the Romans, too. Furthermore, anyone claiming to God was being blasphemous, right? The Roman leader, while spooked a little, didn't find anything wrong with the man, especially after the man explained that his kingdom wasn't of this world. Yet the Romans needed to keep order, and people were demanding that this "king" die. The "king" was taken and scourged - whipped so brutally that his skin was shredded. That wasn't enough. The people wanted this "king" to die. And so this carpenter, who had worked with wood for years to make useful things for other people, was forced to carry the very wood he'd be nailed to so that he could hang on a cross bleeding and losing his ability to breathe.

This man who'd preached loved and forgiveness, who had urged people to turn from their sins, who had healed the sick, who had done some controversial things but never anything wrong, was beaten and executed, all in excruciating pain.

That was what we now call "Good" Friday.

If that was all that happened, most of us would never have heard of Good Friday. Someone may have mentioned this carpenter in an obscure list of Jews who claimed to be the Messiah, but most of us would never have heard of this Nazarene.

But it wasn't all that happened.

On Sunday morning, once the holy days and feasts were over, some people who loved this carpenter were returning to care for his body as a final sign of respect.

The body was gone, though. Nobody ever found the body. To their shock, this Jesus, who had been scourged and killed, was alive and well - very well - though he still had the holes in his hands from the nails and the hole in his side where a spear had shoved into him to make sure he was dead. He talked with them, they embraced him, they felt him, they ate with him. He'd come and go as he pleased over the next several weeks. Finally, having done what he'd set out to do, he was taken away in a "cloud"... probably a description of what appeared to be a blindingly bright light.

Because of that Sunday when Jesus was first seen alive after being killed, we now have Good Friday. Why is Friday "Good"?

It is no coincidence that Jesus was executed during the Passover season (the Last Supper was a Passover Seder). Many years before, when the Jews were enslaved in Egypt, there was a night when they slaughtered lambs "without defect" and placed the blood of a lamb on their doorways. Overnight, when the Lord passed through Egypt with righteous judgment, the firstborn of every household was struck down - but the Lord "passed over" the homes with the blood. The Jews were subsequently freed from their slavery.

John the Baptist referred to Jesus as "the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world." Jesus was the ultimate Passover Lamb "without defect" who shed his blood to free all of us from our enslavement to sin. That Friday was Good because it is the day that our sins against God were paid for... by someone other than us!

But that Sunday...

We've all dealt with death in our lives. We've all had loved ones that have died. Thousands of years of recorded history tell us that dead people stay dead.

Yet this miracle-working carpenter was seen alive after his death. People touched him, talked with him, ate with him. They stuck their fingers in his wounds.

Being modern people, we are understandably skeptical of this. We don't have video proof. But what we do have is history, and the testimony of those who were there. Good Friday had left the followers of Jesus afraid and feeling defeated. They had shown themselves to be cowardly, and their leader was dead.

If Easter (Resurrection) Sunday did not happen, how did such people go on to change the world? Unless they actually encountered a resurrected Jesus, these people would have no reason to face ostracism and martyrdom to proclaim that resurrection and spread the teachings of Jesus. It is easy to deny the truth to save your life. Would people be willing to give up everything they had and die for something they knew to be a lie? No way!

So what does this all mean for me today? It means that I have a way to be right with God, because even though I have done things against Him, Good Friday was the day that those sins were paid for. I am forgiven. I also have someone who is my friend, my advocate, someone who knows what it is like to live life on Earth and knows what it is like to feel pain, suffer loss, and to die. And that Someone has promised me that if I follow Him, everything will be okay. Death is not the end. He has conquered death, and someday death, pain, and sorrow will be taken away from me. He has backed up His "blasphemous claims" with action, showing them not to be blasphemous at all.

He doesn't want me to cut the heads off of people just because they don't believe in Him. He doesn't want me to fly airliners into skyscrapers to kill people going about their lives. He wants me to do things like love others and take care of the needs of others. This is why so many have built hospitals, universities, and charities in His name.

It isn't about going to church regularly. It isn't about trying to convince people that my life is perfect. It isn't about making sure I can retire wealthy. It isn't about getting everyone else to see things the way I do. It isn't even about keeping a checklist of rules and sticking to that checklist. It isn't about "getting it right" on my own before I can approach God, because that will never happen.

It IS about having a peace with God, knowing that He forgives the horrible things I've done and may yet still do if I simply ask Him to, having sincerely repented. It is about having fellowship with that Nazarene who rose from the grave and still lives, because He deserves my allegiance and because He did life right.

There are people who believe that everything is an accident, a series of extremely unlikely coincidences. Sunsets. Surf. Waterfalls. Roses. Redwood trees. Chocolate. Wine. Galaxies. Eagles. Puppies. Kittens. Sex. Newborn babies. Mozart. DaVinci. Those are all accidents? I don't think so. All of the complexity in the cells of our own bodies, all of the symbiotic systems of the natural world, where organisms depend on each other for survival. Those all "just happened"? I don't think so. The world is beautiful and amazing, and it is not accidental or inconsequential that a Jew who was without sin and claimed to be God suffered and died at Passover and then rose from the dead.

Yes, there is something broken about the world, as evidenced by all of the suffering. But the fix is in. The victory was demonstrated almost 2000 years ago. I can't ignore that. That has to have an impact in my life, how I view life, and how I live life. My Lord humbled Himself, suffered and died for me. And then, He beat death, and someday, He's going to kick death - and its parent, sin - down the stairs, and shut the door on them. The world won't be broken anymore. I can't know everything about what the future will bring, but as long as I'm holding on to Him, I'll be in the best company there is. And since I love Him, as long as I'm around, I should seek to love others, meet their needs, and follow His lead.

May you have a Joyous Resurrection Sunday.

The Good Thing About Good Friday

Unless you are living under sharia law and are kept ignorant of such matters, you know that this coming weekend is the weekend during which Christians especially commemorate the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The books of the Bible claim that that both of these events were historical events - that they actually happened.

If both of these events did actually happen, then they are the most significant events in all of history.

The resurrection of Jesus is not a mere resuscitation of a man destined to later die and decompose, but rather a restoration of life to His dead body and a transformation into a glorified state in which He will never die again - eternal life. He is the first and so far only human being to resurrect to eternal life.

It was the resurrection of Jesus that confirmed the significance of His crucifixion. As C.S. Lewis put forth, Jesus was either "a liar, a lunatic, or Lord".  Since then, "legend", as in never having existed, has been added to the "possible" choices by the scholars and philosophers who seriously discuss these matters. The assertion that Jesus never really existed requires ignoring or "explaining away" quite a bit beyond just the books of the Bible, it also requires a discounting of the non-Christian references to Jesus in Roman, Jewish, and Gnostic writings, and an alternate explanation for the emergence of a sect of Judaism into the Christian church.

Over the years, people have tried to explain away the resurrection, attacking it as impossible (as if they have ultimate knowledge that God can't ever have performed miracles), a hoax, or a legend.

Hoax theories have included such claims as "Jesus didn't really die on the cross, he merely passed out", "the disciples stole his body", and even "Jesus had an identical twin" to explain away the basic documented facts of the death of Jesus on the cross, the empty tomb in which He had been buried, the appearances of Jesus alive after the crucifixion, and the rise of early Christianity among a group of Jews.

But for it to be a hoax, it would have been a hoax perpetrated by a powerless group of ordinary people who then maintained the secret of the hoax in the face of hardship, persecution, and death. We've witnessed the willingness of people to die for what they believe to be true, but would a group of people be willing to die for what they knew to be lie, when they could save their skins by recanting?  Plus, why didn't the non-Christian Jewish authorities ever record that Jesus had a twin? As for the "legend" theory of the resurrection, it requires an elaborate alternative explanation for how a group of ordinary Jewish people started Christianity in the first place and why they would do it in the face of opposition from the Jewish and Roman authorities.

I'm convinced that both events – the crucifixion and the resurrection - happened, and that changes everything.  Jesus' resurrection proves Him to be Lord. It means that Jesus is Messiah, Christianity is true, Jesus is God, and Jesus is Savior, and all of us who follow Him have been forgiven of our sins and will fellowship with God, having eternal life.

Nothing could be more significant.

Have you asked Him to be your Lord and Savior? Have you cast your sins and burdens at His feet and bowed down before Him? It's the best decision you could ever make.

More on this can be found here:

http://www.christiananswers.net/dictionary/resurrectionofchrist.html

Wrong Turns on the California Roads

What a surprise! Unions of engineers and laborers who rely on taxpayer dollars want higher taxes and fees to "fix the roads" in California, and the Leftist Democrats who literally control the state like the idea of higher fees on automobiles and higher taxes on gasoline and diesel.

Mind you, the fuel is already taxed to build and maintain the roads, but the fund has been raided by politicians and what's left has often been spent on underused transit projects.

Over and over and over again, Californians have been taxed with promises of "fixing" one thing, only to have the money go elsewhere.

Not this time, say the Democrats, like Lucy offering Charlie Brown a chance to kick the football.

They claim that the law they just adopted will amend the state constitution to ensure these new taxes and fees will go to the roads. Ah, but 1) they sneak in "and transit"; 2) even if they stick to this, they'll simply redirect the existing taxes and fees away; 3) there's always a loophole that allows the money to be redirected.

To add to the nefarious nature of this, the increase is tied to inflation, so that means the pain for the taxpayers will never ease, and since raising fuel taxes causes inflation, it's a vicious cycle. Gas taxes go up, inflation goes up as a result (because just about every good and service we use has transportation costs), and so gas taxes go up again.

This is what happens when your state is completely controlled by Democrats. Every statewide office is held by a Democrat and the Democrats have enough of the needlessly bicameral legislature that they can do whatever they want. And they do. So as the socialists, unionists, and reconquistadors who control Los Angeles and San Fransisco run Sacramento, everyone else in the state has to bend over and take it.

The War On Women

Thank Chance I'm a man. I'm so glad I'm a man. And I didn't have to announce to anyone that I was now a man, nor did I have to undergo surgical procedures or get hormone treatments to "become a man". (Somehow I survived circumcision and was still able to have a happy, pleasurable sex life, too.) Why am I glad to be a man? Because there's a war on women, of course. A war! It must suck to be a woman. According to what I see on Facebook, Twitter, and political news coverage, women live in deep, constant, crippling, fear every minute of their lives that a U.S. Senator or perhaps a Vice-President (or every other male who isn’t androgynous or feminine) is going to break into their home, rape them, and then force them to carry a life-threatening pregnancy to term and then they'll be punished with raising a child, even perhaps having to cook for it and clean up after it. And the only way to prevent this is through federal funding, programs, and requirements ensuring that women do not have to pay for their own contraception, and, if they get pregnant, using federal tax dollars to pay for abortion, including a ninth-month partial birth abortion. Should the child somehow be born alive, it is war on women to provide aid to that child to keep it alive. War, I tell you! Can't you see it???

It's That Time Again in Anaheim

It seems every couple of years, or even multiple times per year, something riles up the people who have nothing better to do than assault, destroy, block traffic, and whine. Anaheim is a big city, and they do have these clownish agitators, taggers, and gangs, too.

Let's take a look at what is going on. The Orange County Register had a report about an incident partially recorded on smartphone video.

YouTube videos surfaced Wednesday that purport to show a Tuesday altercation in Anaheim with several juveniles and an off-duty Los Angeles police officer who discharged a firearm during the scuffle.

It is important to note that this is NOT an Anaheim police officer, This is an off-duty LAPD officer who was in Anaheim.

The confrontation began over ongoing issues with juveniles walking across the officer's property, Wyatt said.

STAY OFF OF PRIVATE PROPERTY WHERE YOU AREN'T INVITED. No trespassing, no confrontation. Simple!!!

Two Weeks Under Trump

Under the headline "Yes, All This Happened. Trump's First 2 Weeks As President" (which allows writer Jessica Taylor to throw in things other people did and associate it Trump), we get a recap from National Public Radio.
She starts off noting the claims about Inauguration crowd sizes, and returns to it a few times (because Trump and his reps kept addressing it). I can believe Obama's crowd was larger. His Inauguration was especially historic, and Washington D.C. and some nearby areas have a high percentage of Democrats and government employees who directly benefit from enlarging government, as Obama promised to do, and African-Americans who felt a connection to Obama because his father was African.

It's not like Trump was promising you can keep your doctor. If he was lying, it's a rather silly lie.

The biggest news happened when Trump met that evening with both Republican and Democratic congressional leaders, reviving his unfounded claims that there were between 3 and 5 million illegal votes cast in the 2016 election that caused him to lose the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton.

It's probably a hyperbolic statement. Trump should have left it at noting that there were probably some illegal votes cast, and, combined with the fact that if the process of electing the President was based on the popular vote he would have taken a different strategy, and he would have won a legitimate popular vote.

The fact is, California, which is where Clinton got her high numbers, 1) has millions of illegal aliens; 2) gives driver's licenses to illegal aliens; 3) has a "motor voter registration" program. Is it far fetched to think that there was significant voter fraud?

If You Don't Want Babies Slaughtered You Have to Grow OSHA or Something

You've encountered this in different forms, probably, but we'll deal with this specific example for now.

Notice they don't deny that elective abortion kills innocent humans.

Instead, they try to either silence pro-lifers or co-opt them into Leftism by listing off a bunch of other things these Leftists CLAIM must be part and parcel with being pro-life.

Yes, "chemical" spills (I assume they mean toxic substances) into water can kill people. Dumping of toxic substances into the water support is already banned, and I don't know of elected or significant Republicans who are trying to make it legal.

Gun rampages anywhere are already illegal, too, and again, I don't know of any Republican who is trying to make them legal.

Not Marching in Lockstep

A letter from "Adele":

I am in such a discouraged funk about our culture lately. The argument about birth control versus the freedom of religion was the straw that broke this camel’s back! Any discussions about the subject I hear are always women vs. the big bad everyone else. So, here goes...Hey women’s libbers; Hey Planned Parenthood, Hey liberal media...STOP using me as your ploy!! You never asked my opinion so stop speaking for "women" and start speaking for "some women".


You don't speak for me. I am an American; I am a voter; I am a mother of 5; I am a wife and I am a doctor. I do believe the freedom of religion is more important than the birth control pill. I do believe our constitution and it's amendments, fought for by the blood of our fathers, sons and brothers is vastly more important than an employee being forced to pay for something that will allow our sisters, daughters and friends to continue to perpetuate a "safe sex equals freedom" culture: A culture that has left us with an amoral society where young women think 'shacking up' is an integral part of a relationship. A culture where dismembering a 5, 6, even 9mt old baby in a mother’s womb while alive is considered a choice and not murder.


So, all of you who are fighting for the 'cause of women', who are standing up and banging the podium women must have the freedom of choice...ask me my choice! Stop speaking for me! You have made it so when I hear the words 'women’s health' I cringe because I know I am about to be grouped into some ideal that is against every core of my being. Do not group me with your ideals; do not include me with your rhetoric. If you are so concerned about choice then stop stifling mine!


Personally, I think these groups should held accountable for slander. No where in the media do you hear the words "some women". This means I have to be looked at as agreeing simply because I am a woman. I would like a group to speak for all men and see what happens.

That is one of many great letters you can find at DrLaura.com. Good job, Adele!

[Bumped up due to current events.]