The Scary World of Truth

The world can be a scary place. Just yesterday police helicopters were circling the park behind my home searching for a suspect who jumped out of the car and was fleeing through back yards in an adjoining neighborhood. Certainly people should be vigilant when walking in unsafe neighborhoods or unknown city streets.

What's surprising, though, is the fear that so many people have of being exposed to the truth. Philosopher J. Budziszewski in his book How to Stay Christian in College gives one example:

Truth is hot, scary stuff. Truth about God is the hottest of all. It scares some people so badly that they don't even want to search for it. One day in a "great books" course, my students were discussing the great medieval thinker Thomas Aquinas. St. Thomas was a Christian, and some of the students were interested in what he believed about God. As they explored his views, one young man became more and more agitated. Finally he said, "This isn't helping me," and asked whether he could just pick up the assignment and leave. Of course, I said he could.

Later he visited my office, and I found out what his problem was. He told me that he wasn't interested in truth—that the only thing he cared about was what had immediate practical value for him. Searching for truth about God, it seemed, was especially impractical because if he found it, his whole world might turn upside down.

Or could it be that it would turn right side up?[1]

This young man was uncomfortable with dealing with facts that didn't fit into his current belief system. That seems to be the default position more and more these days. I've talked before about how college students have descended into an infantile position of trigger-warnings and campus speech codes. But it isn't only individuals who seem to shrink at facing uncomfortable facts. Yesterday, I wrote about how the media is purposely censoring stories like Planned Parenthood's harvesting and selling of baby organs. They censor the facts that put their favored position in a bad light.

Why are people today so scared of the truth? Because the truth can mean work. It takes work to reexamine how you understand an issue. Questioning one belief may cause other beliefs to be questioned as well. Sometimes one's entire worldview becomes fragile. Sometimes it will take a lot of time and research to figure out how to put your beliefs together in a way that corresponds with the truth and still makes sense. However, it's worth it. If you aren't holding to true beliefs, sooner or later you are going to crash into reality and the consequences can be much worse.

The truth shouldn't scare us. Christians more than anyone else should embrace the truth, even if it means changing some of their positions. I can say that assuredly because I know all truth is God's truth. Jesus declared himself as the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). That's why I have taken my sons to listen to atheists. I talk with them about other views. I myself read newspapers and opinion pieces by folks with whom I disagree. Sometimes their views will cause me to reexamine why I believe a certain thing or if my understanding of a particular position is shallow. However, I've never found the truth to undermine the Christian faith.
References

1. J. Budziszewski. How to Stay Christian in College. Colorado Springs: TH1NK, 2004. (Kindle Locations 650-655). Kindle Edition.

Censorship is Alive and Well in the Newsroom

This morning, the Los Angeles Times carried a front-page story about a controversial political battle that was fueled by an undercover video. But it wasn't the undercover video of a Planned Parenthood senior official discussing how Planned Parenthood is involved in harvesting and selling baby organs. Instead, the editors at the Times gave 1,028 words and premium front page status to the coverage of some middle-aged men chasing other away from their favorite surfing spot.1 Even after two full days of triggering an avalanche social media outrage which prompted both federal and state officials to begin investigating the abortion organization, coverage of Planned Parenthood's hideous practices is nowhere to be found in the Times.

Of course the LAT is not the only media outlet that purports itself to be a news organization but is censoring this story. Mollie Hemingway over at the Federalist has been monitoring media outlets for years on their selective bias against stories that bring the horror of abortion to light. Today, she wrote about the paltry media coverage of the Planned Parenthood scandal from most of the major media organizations. In her article, she shows just how slow these outlets were to cover the story, how few of them gave any mention to it at all, and how most who did, did so in order to help the PR push of Planned Parenthood, even to the point of copying their talking points verbatim!2

Watchdog of Justice, Who Keeps Their Eye on You?

None of this was unexpected. Two years ago, the Kermit Gosnell case checked off absolutely every requirement a news outlet would look for to warrant full coverage and smashing ratings, yet is was conspicuously absent from nearly all of them. Now, the harvesting of baby organs story is again being censored. Why? Because the idea of dispassionately reporting the news isn't the overriding value for those who claim to run news organizations anymore. It isn't even ratings, although ratings matter. It's simply ideology. Ideology is king and one cannot put forth a story that may break a scandal against something like abortion.

To underscore the pint, just as the fetal organ story was breaking, my friend Sean McDowell released a short YouTube clip where he tells of his almost interview on CNN. The organization called Sean because they were looking for an opposing voice on the topic of transgenderism. He recounts the producer asking him for his specific position on transgenderism.3 Sean replied, "My position is this is a complicated issue. We need to have compassion, we need to follow the science, and we need to settle this issue carefully." The producer them paused a moment, looked a Sean and said "You know, you're much too compassionate. My director will get upset if I have you call into this show!" upon finding out that CNN contacted the Southern Baptists to try and find a person who would state on-air that transgenderism "is wrong, sinful, and you're going to Hell!" McDowell refused to do so and so CNN turned to someone from ChurchMilitant.com to be the radical voice the so-called objective news show could carve apart like a sacrificial cow to make themselves look balanced an sane. No one can call this objective reporting and still be considered sane.

It's been obvious for years that "reality" television is nothing of the kind. They are formulated, staged, scripted, and edited to get the biggest reaction out of the audience possible. The newsroom is the next reality television. They are simply no longer trustworthy. It's no surprise that Pew Research just reported more people are getting their news from Facebook and Twitter than watching it on television or reading a newspaper or magazine. 4

Mainstream television and print journalism has died. Edmund Burke's Fourth Estate no longer exists; we only see the estate sale with ideologues pawing through its previously grand hallways and closets, selling both its duty and its good name for ten cents on the dollar.

References

1. Therolf, Garrett. "'Gang Mentality' of Middle-age Surfers Keeps Outsiders off Palos Verdes Estates Waves." The Los Angeles Times. 16 July 2015, morning ed., A1. Print.
2. Hemingway, Mollie Zeiger. "The Bad, Worse, & Ugly: Media Coverage of Planned Parenthood's Organ Harvesting Scandal." The Federalist. The Federalist, 16 July 2015. Web. 16 July 2015. http://thefederalist.com/2015/07/16/the-bad-worse-ugly-media-coverage-of-planned-parenthoods-organ-harvesting-scandal/.
3. McDowell, Sean. "Lessons from a CNN Interview." YouTube. YouTube, 14 July 2015. Web. 16 July 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1Rs2bu6f8E.
4. Barthel, Michael, Elisa Shearer, Jeffrey Gottfried, and Amy Mitchell. "The Evolving Role of News on Twitter and Facebook." Pew Research Centers Journalism Project. Pew Research Centers, 14 July 2015. Web. 16 July 2015. http://www.journalism.org/2015/07/14/the-evolving-role-of-news-on-twitter-and-facebook/.
Image courtesy Publik15 and licensed via the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) license.

Archaeology and the Bible (podcast)

The Bible is unique among sacred texts in that it is set against a historical backdrop. Do recent archaeological discoveries validate or discredit the Biblical accounts? Listen to this complete series as Lenny explores the relationship between the Bible and archaeology and shows why the Bible can be considered reliable historically.

• Archaeology and the Bible (Part 1)
• Archaeology and the Bible (Part 2)
• Archaeology and the Bible (Part 3)
• Archaeology and the Bible (Part 4)

 To subscribe to Come Reason's podcast, click here.

Planned Parenthood is Selling Body Parts. Here's What You Can Do.

The plot of Michael Crichton's 1978 film Coma turns on a surgical resident who uncovers a private medical facility that induces comas in healthy, young patients in order to sell their organs on the black market. After the film's release, one reviewer cautioned "See it and worry" but Dennis Schwartz dismissed the film as "more entertaining than credible."

Yet, today the story is breaking that Planned Parenthood has been selling the organs of aborted babies on the black market for some time and they've even captured top Planned Parenthood staff negotiating a deal and explaining how they do it. Live Action News just released the hidden camera footage (embedded at the bottom of this post) along with the story of Planned Parenthood Federation Senior Director of Medical Services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola talking with two undercover reporters about how to order children's hearts, livers, legs, or other parts they desire.1

The video is gruesome. It shows the actual web-based order form that allows customers to select gestational age, the type of tissue you would like, the quantity, and shipping options, like these are automobile parts and not organs of a human being who must be killed for them to be harvested.

The undercover meeting with Nutacola is no easier to watch. There, she explains how they will alter their method of aborting the child in order to preserve whatever parts are requested by their customers. One undercover reporter asked, "How much of a difference can that actually make, if you know kind of what's expected or what we need?" Nutacola cooly responds:

It makes a huge difference. I'd say a lot of people want liver. And for that reason, most providers will do this case under ultrasound guidance, so they'll know where they're putting their forceps...

We've been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I'm not gonna crush that part, I'm gonna basically crush below, I'm gonna crush above, and I'm gonna see if I can get it all intact. And with the calvarium, in general, some people will actually try to change the presentation so that it's not vertex.

You may have missed the meaning of Nucatola's last statement about changing the presentation. She is stating that she will turn the baby in utero from a head-down position to a breech position of feet first in order to make the mother dilate more as the abortion progresses and the baby's head won't need to be crushed. That's the textbook definition of partial-birth abortion which is illegal under federal law. Of course so is the buying and selling of human fetal tissue. 2

What You Can Do About It

This is all horrifying and many will be shocked. Others will say, "What did you expect? The abortion industry has many gruesome stories." However, I think this particular case, given the high-level involvement and the clearly illegal nature of the acts affords us a unique opportunity.

1. Ask Your Elected officials to Revoke all Planned Parenthoood Government Funding
The level of corruption within Planned Parenthood is s patently obvious from the video. There, even PPFA President and CEO Cecile Richards is caught praising Nucatola after the reporter told here "We do fetal collection and she's been very helpful with figuring out who to talk to." It would take a fool to believe that Richards doesn't know what's going on especially when Planned Parenthood's lawyers are providing council on how to handle this from an organization's legal liability perspective.

Listen, Planned Parenthood, according to their own reports, received $524 million last year from various government grants.3 Given the horrific nature of these crimes, every person needs to call their elected official and demand the suspension of all grants to Planned Parenthood programs, no matter what their purpose, until this case can be properly investigated. The money stops now.

If you think this is a long shot, think again. It took only 24 days of public outcry over the Confederate battle flag to force the state of South Carolina to remove it from their capitol. Twenty four days for a change to happen that had no direct factor in the killing of those nine church members. Certainly something this terrible warrants investigation and given both houses of congress are currently controlled by Republicans who are less sympathetic to Planned Parenthood, now is the time to act.

2. Spread the Word.
I anticipate the major media outlets will ignore this story like they ignored the Gosnell trial. But if enough people make enough noise, they won't be able to turn away. If the House of Representatives debates pulling all funding for PPFA, the media will cover it. Therefore, we need to spread the word. Tweet about this. Share this story and share the video with everyone you know. Keep up the pressure. Challenge people to watch it. Don't let up. Make it news too big to ignore. If you are more outraged by a Confederate flag than this, you're a monster.

3. Pray
Lastly, let's pray that God will use this discovery to dismantle Planned Parenthood. PPFQA is the #1 abortion provider in the United States. They are based on the racist beliefs of Margaret Sanger and were formed as an avenue to practice eugenics. 4 Pray that God will open people's eyes and we can put an end to this bloody chapter in America's history.

In his review of the movie Coma, Schwartz believed that the film's premise wasn't creditable. Perhaps he may be right; the patients in the film simply weren't young enough. As the video shows, reborn babies are much easier to harvest and dismember for parts. See it and worry.

References

1."BREAKING: Planned Parenthood director caught on tape selling aborted ‘baby parts'" Live Action News. Live Action, Inc. 14 July 2015. Web http://liveactionnews.org/breaking-planned-parenthood-director-caught-on-tape-selling-aborted-baby-parts/
2. Prohibitions Regarding Human Fetal Tissue, §§ 6A-289g-2-289g-2 (2003). Web. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/289g-2
3. 2013-2014 Annual Report. Planned Paerenthood Federation of America. 2014. Page 21. Web. http://issuu.com/actionfund/docs/annual_report_final_proof_12.16.14_/0
4. Grossu, Arina. "Margaret Sanger, Racist Eugenicist Extraordinaire." Washington Times. The Washington Times, 5 May 2014. Web. 14 July 2015. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/5/grossu-margaret-sanger-eugenicist/.
Image courtesy drsuparna [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Want to Draw Closer to God? Use a Map!

In book four of Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis tells of having a conversation with an old air force officer who believed in God, but felt that the theologies we teach somehow diminish his reality. The officer proclaims, "I know there's a God. I've felt Him: out alone in the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. And that's just why I don't believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about Him."1

This "all I need is Jesus" concept has only grown since Lewis' writing that story, and I can understand why. For those that have been delivered from a life of misery or the effects of addition, the real changing presence of the Gospel is powerful and moving. Theology seems to be about somehow deconstructing God, making him more distant than He is experientially. Lewis agreed with that assessment, yet he cautioned against abandoning learning theology simply because it is less experientially powerful than the direct witness of the Spirit. He used the analogy of an Englishman learning about the Atlantic Ocean by walking along the beach. Surely this experience, too, has a feel that informs the man in a far more powerful way than seeing the ocean drawn upon a map. Yet, the map is important. Lewis explains:

The map is admittedly only coloured paper, but there are two things you have to remember about it. In the first place, it is based on what hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic. In that way it has behind it masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a single isolated glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together.

In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary. As long as you are content with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America.

Now, Theology is like the map. Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God—experiences compared with which any thrills or pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further, you must use the map.2

A Map to God's Character

I like Lewis' analogy. The study of theology is perhaps drier than the experiential aspects of the Christian life, but it informs us about God as he is, not simply the small sliver we experience. Further, when difficulties come into our lives, we can refer back to our learning of who God is and how he works and have confidence in his character. We grow in our devotion to him as we grow in our understanding of him.

The writer to the Hebrews rebuked those Christians for not moving beyond the pure milk of the word. He expected them to mature in their relationship with God as Christians. He wanted them to deal with more complex theological ideas than "repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment" (Heb. 6:1-2, ESV). Those are all important foundations of the gospel, but there is so much more to learn.

If we wish to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, we need to learn more about his essential nature and his character. We need a map to guide us on our journey in understanding him better. We will need to be shown those hidden treasures that can build us up as believers. After all, what lover doesn't want to know everything he can about his beloved?

References

1. Lewis, C. S. "Mere Christianity." The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 2002. 127-128 Print.
2. Lewis, 128.