olde_fashioned

I get emails every day, including one of BibleGateway's "Verse of the Day" subscriptions. Today's was some interesting food for thought that I couldn't put out of my mind, so I'm posting it here.

As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother's womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things. - Ecclesiastes 11:5 (NIV)

We are all guilty of wondering, and even questioning why God allows certain things to happen. Why do bad things happen? In a word, because of sin. But God is supposed to protect us from these things, right? Why would He let people die, evil seemingly prevail, babies be murdered by their own mothers simply because they exist? Why does a professedly loving God allow war, famine, sickness, misery, abuse, torture, death? We, in all our profound wisdom, pass judgement on what we cannot see or even hope to understand, because it flies in the face of our earthly "wisdom".

I certainly don't have all the answers, but I do believe that all these things are not God's fault. He is faultless, blameless, perfect, or else He is not God, there is no salvation, no heaven, no Jesus dying for our sins, and we are in serious trouble. We are fallen, finite, and sinful beings. Evil exists on this earth because we let it. Every day we do something we know we should not do, myself included. And if we are not capable of preventing ourselves from committing something as simple as a "white lie", then who are we to judge the God on His standards?

If you're reading this and any of what I said touched a nerve, or intrigued you, then I would strongly advise you read Ken Ham's book How Could A Loving God...?, which answers the above questions and more significantly better than I could ever hope to.

Also, please remember my journal is not the place for your personal railings against my God. Respectful conversation is always welcome; vitriol is not.

So, last night while perusing my friends-list, I saw this entry in one of the communities I watch. After reading what quickly revealed itself to be a thinly-veiled assault on the concept of Intelligent Design as well as Christianity, THIS EXCERPT actually made me angry.

Let me show you why. A few quotes from the above linked pages for illustrative purposes -- please note that this is the author's idea of a good opening line for another one of those Jane Austen "mashup" books that have been so prevalent lately (ala Pride & Prejudice & Zombies):

In the beginning was the Word—also known as a very big banging marvelous sort of Expletive—a circumstance wherein God created the universe.

So God creates life out of nothingness by uttering a "very big banging marvelous sort of Expletive"? Hmm, interesting. I seem to have missed that portion of Scripture -- must make note to bring up at next Bible study!

.The latter ["the upright great apes called humans"], created most in His Image, immediately proceeded to “ape” for all they were worth—in other words, to create in turn—and were directly responsible for the manufacture of virtue and taste, style and erudition, and henceforth the knowledge of Good and Evil...

I suppose it's pointless to mention that Good and Evil already existed before man had knowledge of it?

To provide this teeming Creation with some modicum of order and supervision, God also created angels and demons and nephilim, and occasional great serpents and dragons, all of which he initially imbued with common sense—the one precious and infinitely rare faculty that the rest of the Creation was sorely lacking.

Now while I'm the first to point out the idiocy of most members of Creation, "in the beginning" it was not "lacking". Anyone who actually bothered to read the Scriptures might actually notice that according to God it was all "good", and since God is perfect and without fault, this means if He says so then His creation was too. (That was before the introduction of sin brought about by man, but this isn't my main thrust, as the excerpt's point of view is that Creation was imperfect to begin with, which is Biblically unsound, and, did I mention -- entirely pointless in a Jane Austen spin off???)

Common sense was not as common as the Deity might wish for. Indeed, not even angelic choirs were entirely free of a certain vice known as silliness.

"The Diety"??? That's like saying "the dog" or "the cat"!! I can only imagine what the rest of this "novel" (if it can indeed be deemed such) will contain if this is only a mere paragraph! And I thought P&P&Z was bad in its treatment of religion...*shakes head*

Does anyone see how much this ties into the plot of Northanger Abbey (JA's chronologically first and most naive completed novel outside of her juvenilia)? For those of you not familiar with the story, it's a Gothic parody that JA wrote imitating the popular fiction of her time. Somehow I managed to miss the part where JA is insulting religion and making a farce and mockery out of the first passages of Genesis delineating Creation (FYI Mr. Collins doesn't count).

There are few things that truly incur my anger, but blasphemy and intolerance hypocritically masquerading as otherwise are two of them. Even on a non-religious front, I'd still be annoyed, because someone has taken JA's work and hijacked it for religious effrontary and a means to political ends.

So consider this my official I-do-not-endorse/recommend/suggest/approve-of-this-book post, as promised in my own comment in reply to this situation.

Would someone please explain to me how standing up for one's religion makes me a ''fanatical'' and ''homophobic bigot''? (The parts of NA touching on homosexuality must have entirely slipped my mind, or else been deleted by elves, because when I last checked it wasn't there, not even in the modern mash-up excerpt or Andrew Davies' recent sex-laden screen adaptation.) I am never failing to be amazed how those most adamantly professing "tolerance" are among the most intolerant. It seems that anything save devotion to a religious ideal, and reverent mention of said ideals, are the only things not worth speaking respectfully of these days.

You know, I'm getting rather tired of the whole let's-steal-Jane-Austen's-works-and-insert-some-lackluster-material-every-few-paragraphs-and-call-it-a-day type "books". P&P&Z was a raging success initially because it was a new idea -- I should say, rather, a cleverly-packaged-existing idea, because the notion of taking someone else's writings and passing them off as your own has been around for a very very long time -- it's known as plagiarism. I read it and was sorely disappointed though I came with only modest hopes of enjoyment, and I plan to expound on this later in future when I can manage to get a proper review written up.

Your friendly neighborhood fanatical homophobic bigot signing off (who, btw and fyi, just so happens to have a great many books post-1905 gracing her shelves)! ;-P

What's next?

This is absolutely apalling. Do you want the government telling you how to raise your child? California's liberal courts have just ruled that "parents possess no constitutional right to homeschool their children." This is disgusting, maddening, but it is also scary. Our God-given and supposedly inalienable rights are being chipped away at, little by little.

The scope of this decision by the appellate court is breathtaking. It not only attacks traditional home schooling, but it also calls into question home schooling through charter schools and teaching children at home via independant study through public and private schools," stated Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute. "If not reversed, the parents of more than 166,000 students currently receiving an education at home will be subject to criminal sanctions," he continued.

[CLICK HERE to read more]

The wonderful HSLDA (Home School Legal Defense Association) is doing everything they can to change this ruling, and to get it unpublished, which would mean it cannot be used as a law by other courts.

They are also getting up a petition, and we need all the signatures we can get! Please take a few minutes and sign it HERE.