Strip club boss killed, hypocrisy example

I mean, forget about the obvious hypocrisy that this guy "Lolly" Jackson (South Africa) was caught speeding in his car supposedly on the "way to church." That's not even the irony, the hypocrisy that I'm going to point out.

No, his strip empire manager has asked "for privacy" during their time of mourning.

Privacy for a STRIP empire manager? That's rich. Strip is the opposite of privacy, no? He had controversial billboards, no? His employees live off of girls' lack of privacy, no?

So I think they ought to publish photos of his bullet ridden body. He'd approve, no?

Faith case study: importance of intentions

Hi and especially to young people (!) I have you in mind most particularly and affectionately as I thought of this idea for a blog this morning. I'm going to concentrate on this case study with you because I think it is more important that you understand than my listening on radio, twitter, news to the verbal and mental diarrhea that spews unabated, it seems. *sigh* So I continue to listen but with only one ear (because listening to the crap helps me to understand how urgently I must explain sanitation over and over again, ha).

Here is the case study I want to present to you today. The purpose is to help you try out through faith and logic (reasoning) why two basic truths exist. One is that God knows the intention of a person's heart and soul in everything that person thinks, feels and does, and that intention makes a difference to God. For example, a person can present themselves as the most lovely and spiritual person on the outside, but if they are full of mean crap on the inside, all the "good deeds" and "popularity" and "spirituality" of the person on the outside is pointless because God knows that the person is insincere and even malevolent on the inside, and that person will be judged accordingly. Thus some really "sweet" and "popular" people on the outside do indeed end up in hell, since God knows the motivations of their heart and soul.

The second truth, then, is related to and indeed derivative from the first truth. As a result the Bible clearly states that having an evil heart is sinful (by evil I mean not only flat out evil but also a begrudging, mean, lying, hypocritical and bullying heart, say nothing of being idolatrous) but the Bible also states that all bad thoughts, including ones that are simply foolish, are sins. I blogged about this a while ago, citing the scripture, and commented on it, check and see if you can find those postings under the label "sins," in case you've not read it before, or need to take another look. I'm sticking to doing a logic case study so I'm not going to cite previously cited scripture in this particular post.

So here I am going to give you the case study: Why if, in theory, two people advocate the same action, does it matter if one person is evil (or has evil intention) while the other person is faithful to God and has good intentions? In other words, let's say these two opposite people each agree on some government policy decision... why does it "matter" in the health of their soul, where one will be favored and blessed by God, while the other will not?

As a corollary to this, remember this is a favorite argument of atheists who are "moral" "ethical" and "peaceful." They figure if they advocate the same good things as the believers that they are "the same" in intention and thus in worthiness. Let me tackle this one first as a prelude to the main case study.

Here's the problem with intentions in the atheist example. Bad intentions can hide the truth from you, which affects things in both a specific decision but also one's whole life. Here is the analogy to understand that. Suppose two people, one atheist and one a believer, each rent an apartment from the same landlord. These two people get together on their job (let's say they are peace activists) and they work together on some good project to promote peace. The atheist would argue that because he or she agrees (without the "need for religion") with the believer on a good sound project to promote peace that he or she is as worthy and ethical and moral as the believer work partner. OK, so after work they go back to their own apartments, and the rent bill is due. The believer goes to pay the rent, handing the landlord the cash. The atheist ignores the bill because he or she does not believe the landlord exists. When the atheist is, after repeated bills from the "imaginary" landlord is finally thrown out into the cold, the atheist says, "Hey, how come you aren't throwing out the believer?" The atheist thinks that "equivalent" ethical actions means they are in the same position as the believer, and that of course is not true because the atheist in our analogy thinks that the landlord does not exist and he or she can just ignore bills for their monthly rent. This is an example of how an alliance of actions (the peace project) does not yield equivalent results, because of the intention of each person differs, not only their conscious inner thoughts but of course the entire context of their life and faith philosophy. Interestingly the analogy implies that the atheist renter would continue to not believe in the reality of any landlord, so where would he or she turn to, in our analogy? I guess he or she would find shelter in houses of those who also do not believe in landlords. This is why a person can continue in their whole life without believing in the reality of God, while still doing "equivalent" "good deeds," and only find out there is a landlord indeed when it is too late and he or she had died and is judged unworthy of heaven, and thus ends up in hell. All the "good deeds" and "good intentions" mean naught because the atheist refuses to acknowledge existence of the landlord and pay what is due.

So that is the first part of the case study. Here is the secular part of the case study. I am thinking of this secular case study (as I write it here) so that everyone, regardless of the condition of your faith (or lack of it) or religion/spirituality can understand the practical "bread and butter" secular life reasons that intentions DO matter even in "equivalent" ethics and deeds. To keep this easy to understand I'm going to choose a commodity that is not controversial, such as alcohol, and instead use an imaginary candy, a sweet, a dessert, as the analogy.

Suppose there is a very successful candy, a wrapped single serving sweet, that is found to contain an incredibly high amount of sugar, fat, and thus a HUGE amount of calories with each bite. Let's say that one of these candies had 3000 calories in it, more than most people should have in all their food in a day. So a whole bunch of people with various intentions get together and advocate that this candy be banned. On the surface it seems that everyone is in agreement with a "good cause" to "protect the public" from an "unhealthy" food. They pass a law banning this candy in whatever country or state that they have this influence. Now, let's think about why differing intentions can lead to vastly different results (and worthiness, both in practical life and in spiritual matters) by making a list of people and their intention frameworks and their implications. I'm just going to do a few here to show you how it is done, and you can think of some of your own! :-)

1. A woman is a nutritionist and really, really, really believes that this candy would destroy the health of many people, so she favors the ban.

Here intention is good, but one sided. If it tasted so wonderful and was such a popular sweet, could she not have used her nutrition expertise to help the manufacturer develop a sweet that tastes the same but has less calories? Or suggest to them a way that a person could once in a while have the sweet, but on high activity (like sports or exercise) days? By having a scolding and forbidding orientation, even though there is "good intention" (to preserve some ideal of diet and nutrition), it would never occur to her to have both, by using her expertise to modify the product and avoid a ban of such an innocent and fun sweet.

2. A man is an "expert" in consumer safety, and feels the sweet is just one of a list of things where the public must be protected from "unintended dangerous consequences."

Ahhh.... interesting. The "professional" "consumer safety" guy. Here is it nothing personal, because he's not against the candy and only the candy. He is against anything that the public is "ignorant" of possible "dangerous consequences." Again, many people would think that is a worthy calling. But is it? It sure is when there is a clear and present danger, such as toys that could choke a young child. His "intention is good," most particularly when he is indeed protecting the public from a built in hazard in a toy or product that could harm a child, for example. But he has two blind spots due to his intentions. One is that he stops thinking about each item and rather view them as a continual conveyor belt of "danger" that a continual conveyor belt of "ignorant" public might be harmed by, and thus he is in the taboo business, of looking continually for things to ban. So he has the error of thinking that all items he considers are dangerous deserve the same banning remedy AND he assumes a continual level of public ignorance (none of them are ever smart enough to pick their "dangerous" product). So his intention while certainly "good" on a certain level (dangerous toys for young children, for example) but is very slippery because it has made a factory of demonizing both products and the intelligence of the public.

3. A woman pretends to be a "concerned mother" and "homemaker." She secretly holds stock in a competing candy and sweet company.

Need I say more? That is obvious where the hidden intention is to hurt the successful competitor of a company whereby she holds a hidden financial stake. But let's examine this because my not so hidden intention is to tell people that they are harming themselves when they do not come clean with their own intentions. This woman would justify, I suspect, her advocacy of banning the sweet under consideration because she would say, if confronted, word for word, the following: "Well, even IF I didn't hold stock in the competitor company, as a mother and a homemaker I'd be against that unhealthy and dangerous candy!" Oh my. "Even if." Really? Only God knows how people would have behaved under alternative future scenarios. She is kidding herself, perhaps even honestly fooling herself, actually thinking that she'd be hoisting the banner and flag of advocacy against that product if she didn't have a dog in the fight. Odds are that if she did not have stock in the competitor product that the whole dangerous sweet controversy would have, in that "alternate future," just been a news story that she sees on TV or in the newspaper and like dozens of other stories, leave it to other people to sort out and act upon, as she'd have other interests and concerns. Having the competitive stock makes her more sensitized for both sinister (hurt the competitor company) and innocent (she's paying attention to products of competitors and news about them) reasons. There is no "even if" because humans are not single line entities where everything in their life goes the "same" "even if" "just one thing" were "different."

4. A wealthy woman really believes the product is dangerous and puts her money into the cause of having it banned.

So she is sincere in believing it is dangerous..... and she has the money (and thus influence) to do something about it. Hmm. Sounds good so far, right? A celebrity or an industrialist or media figure "putting good money to the cause!" Maybe so. But here are the different forks in the road of different intentions. 1) She has lots of money and thus bans it for everyone else, but stockpiles the candy for herself, figuring that it's a "dangerous" treat that "she can handle." 2) She really does believe it is dangerous and doesn't want the candy, but her success in this power play goes to her head. She looks for other "causes" that she can provide the money as "fuel" to muscle through people's agendas, both "good" and maybe "bad" ones. She gets hooked on being a power maker. The problem is that she becomes hooked on the power she has rather than the genuine worthiness of the cause, because of her intention to "make a difference." How many times do we hear those words: "I have the money to 'make a difference.'" Automatically that attracts such a person to causes that are able to be purchased, and in all innocence may not see causes that just need a pair of hands and a willing and open heart. Her "good deeds" become skewed and ultimately blinded and invalid because the motivation, the intention, is to use money and power as a lever.

Can you think of others? I could but I'm bummed out enough at always having to point out the faulty spiritual and secular reasoning that so very many people follow, without thinking of even more for you here, ha.

So think of other ones. Here's a hint (think about people who are killjoys because they were deprived in some way in their childhood or whatever....they can and do kid themselves that they are protecting others, while just begrudging what they did not have themselves).

After you've added one or two other examples to my list, now imagine the wrap-up. All these people agreed to a single "good deed" of "consumer protection from a dangerous product."

A. All people engaged in the same activity and got the law passed, banning the sweet.
B. Each person had a totally different motivation and hidden intention.
C. If they were honest about their intentions, many of them would have changed their minds about the law in the first place.
D. Better alternatives than the flat out ban are never even considered.
E. Alternative better actions are totally missed, so there is a high "missed opportunity" cost.
F. When one is not honest about one's inner motivations and intentions, one becomes the willing or unwilling slave to those intentions, continuing to act in that intentions mindless "service."
G. Serving those intentions results in missing other sets of priorities as one seeks out repeated gratification of those intentions in all things.
H. Hypocritical and coveting temptations have a greater and greater hold.

So now by expanding this analogy into faith, it is not at all difficult to see how God at the time of their personal judgment will place in front of each of these people, who agreed on one action (the banning of the sweet), how worthy or not their lives actually were, and how widely divergent all of these people will be. Same action but different intentions yield not just later but in the immediate wildly different results.

Ha ha, I can't resist, so here's another example, if you've not thought of it already.

5. A lawmaker is the author of the law banning the candy. He thinks it is unhealthy and dangerous.

OK, sounds like a responsible consumer advocate legislator, right? Yeah, but what if he knows that it will get voted down? He is trying to look good for the voters by banning the "unhealthy candy" but he knows it is "win-win" because if it passes, sure, that "bad candy" got banned, but if he is voted down, "well, he tried to do the right thing" and that ends up in his campaign ads. So at heart he cares neither if the candy really is dangerous (or he'd try hard to get all the votes lined up in favor of his banning law) or if the dangerous candy ban loses, and people keep legally eating it.... he's "won" either way as he looks like either the victorious, or losing, "hero."

Now, think of those intentions in the faith context. Some of the people above are flat out lying, sinful, coveting hypocrites. How will God judge them? It will be quite obvious that they will be harshly judged.

So this case study shows you how 1) even if you omit God from the situation under discussion that the same action can and does result in wildly different outcomes depending on the totally individual conscious or unconscious intentions and 2) since God IS in this and every situation, God knows not only the worthiness of the intentions (their genuine or not benevolence) but God also knows all the subsequent life directions and implications of letting those intentions rule.

I hope that you have found this helpful!

A writing exercise

I have not suggested a new writing exercise in a while, but I thought of one tonight, so here it is. Like the other writing exercises it focuses on being creative without morbidity and despair. You'll see that this one is on the edge, but the reason is that whether it is on the edge or not is entirely up to you. Thus the two choices you make in writing this story (or script or outline) should lead you to exploring your own optimism, but also illuminate some unhelpful shadows.

1. The scene: There is a planet inhabited entirely by robots. They are aware, purposeful, and have organized themselves into a coherent and one might even say "contented" existence.

The first challenge: What would a "contented" society of robots be like, to you, in your mind? You could make a myriad of choices regarding how this "coherent and content" robot society would be organized, how sophisticated they are programmed, and whether they are creative.

2. The situation, ie, the plot tension: They know they are robots, but they have no record of how they came into being. One day they find a fragment of information that states that they will all melt down and turn into slag on an exact day in the future. There is no further information such as why and exactly how that it will happen; only that it is a certainty.

The second challenge: What do they do?

Again, there is a myriad of choices you could make as you think about how the robotic society you created "would, will and should" react to this news.


Use this exercise to learn the boundary between edgy and morbid, danger and despair, the actual meaning of life and whether mechanics ever are actually "life" in any fashion, and creative problem solving (on the robots' behalf) ha.

Understanding God: how God "thinks"

I am going to give you an analogy and a case study that will help you to understand "how" God "thinks" (by that I mean his perspective on human actions). My purpose is not to help you to try to understand what cannot actually be understood by humans (or even by angels, who while they share God's vision they cannot comprehend how its perfection originates in God, which is why they constantly praise God in heaven). Rather, I am going to help you to look at a sad and unpleasant earthly issue and be better able to make just, righteous and virtuous choices and thus form your own opinions accordingly. I've thought of a few analogy and case studies so here is the first one.

As you know, many people who oppose abortion understand that even certain forms of birth control have shades of abortion, since they destroy the created embryo by not allowing it to implant, etc. While the Catholic Church and others of their belief oppose all forms of terminating preborn life, they recognize that there is a difference between contraception (preventing the embryo from even forming in the first place) and abortion (destroying or hindering the growth of an actual embryo). Thus the Catholic Church opposes both but for different reasons, though both rest on the reverence and valuing of all human life. Contraception is opposed because there is a Biblical prohibition of "spilling one's seed on the ground," which means that all sex acts should occur in a marital situation that is open to the possibility of a pregnancy occurring. So contraception is opposed because it appears that God has instructed that the raw material of pregnancy should not be discarded, wasted or hindered from combining into a pregnancy. Abortion is opposed because it is viewed as not only being devaluing of life and irreverential toward God's commission to be fruitful and multiple, but because it also violates the Commandment against killing. So that is the medical and spiritual background against which this case study takes place.

One way people promote both birth control and abortion is to accuse those who oppose either or both of those practices of being "insensitive" and "cruel" in certain situations. The usual situation is whereby a victim of rape seeks an abortion. Now, the specific case study I want to give to you is the situation regarding why some people oppose giving "morning after" so called "emergency contraception" pills to a rape victim. In other words, working in slightly different ways, these pills create an environment hostile toward a pregnancy either occurring (if it has not yet happened) or the embryo if it is in place being able to attach and grow. Many people, including those of good will and emotional thoughtfulness, wonder how people can be mean as to "condemn" a rape victim to a possible pregnancy.

Before I move to the analogy, where I explain God's way of thinking in the matter, let me remind you that I am not an absolutist, as I have blogged before. I believe that a small child who is raped and pregnant and who is seeking an abortion for the good reasons of her extreme youth and her fragile health, should receive one, and the sin of abortion thus rests upon whoever allowed the rape to occur. I remind you that I blogged about the most recent case of this happening so that you are not distracted in reading my analogy by the thought that I am insensitive and inflexible, for I am not, obviously.

So let's go back to the case study, which is a teenage or adult woman (in other words, not a child as I outlined above) is raped and seeks immediate "after the rape" "emergency contraception," which is medicine that either aborts the newly formed embryo or prevents the sperm and egg from fertilizing, if they had not yet. So I am speaking of someone who could bear a child with the normal risks of pregnancy, but not the additional risk and trauma of a little child being raped.

Here is the analogy that helps shed some light on how God views this dilemma. Imagine there is a poor and primitive village of indigenous people in a remote area, where they barely eke out a living to support themselves, but are otherwise content. One day a man goes insane and kills a married couple, leaving their small child alive, but now with no one to provide for her. How would you feel if the village decided to kill the small child, because they could not support her in the place of her parents and, and this is the important point, the fact that she is now unsupported is the result of a crime.

So think this through. These well meaning villagers have now lost two pairs of hands and legs that used to raise food, build dwellings, haul water, etc due to the crime of murder, and now with that loss of sustenance providing married couple, the village is stuck with a burden, the little girl, that did not exist before, and all because of a crime.

I'll bet many of you have to haul yourself back from the slippery slope of "understanding" that the "poor indigenous" people just "might have to" make a "tough decision" and being "unable to support the little girl" "through no fault of their own" and "because of someone else's crime," they just "can't support the little girl due to this crime" and thus (how long can we delay saying it?)... they kill her, either outright or by allowing her to starve or perish due to wild beasts in the forest, or from exposure to the cold.

No, God would not "understand" that. God would think that the people who do have enough to eat and shelter don't deserve to have even the little they do have if they cannot raise, support and comfort the little girl whose parents, those two able bodied workers, were murdered. Odds are that God would hardly bless the future of the village who killed the child because "they could not support her." Indeed, these villagers would all have to answer to him when they receive on their inevitable death personal judgment.

Now that you understand "how God thinks" in the analogy, now look back to the case study. In both situations you have a helpless child due to a crime (in the case study, due to rape, in the analogy, due to the murder of the parents). God does not want to hear lame, selfish and craven excuses from a poor village who murders due to poverty, so how much less does God want to hear such excuses from a society that has health care, hospitals, welfare, parents and grandparents with salaries, and the potential for adoption?

It is a hard message to understand how God thinks because his thought is entirely based on love and justice. No human can ever live up to that, but they sure should not provoke the obvious because of greed and selfishness, or, and this is understandable, where shattered emotions and self pity due to the rape can lead, due to the weakness of human nature, of blaming the child for "ruining" their "plans." "My life has been ruined, I've been raped and if I have this child I have to pay money and lose a year of college before getting my high paid job and giving the baby away in adoption." Put in God's point of view, while he understands the broken, selfish weakness of humanity (after all, Eve had everything and she still wanted more in the Garden of Eden), it is hardly as noble and kind hearted as humans think they are being when they urge a rape victim to consider "emergency contraception" and/or abortion.

Back to the analogy. Maybe those lazy ass villagers ought to work a little harder to grow a few more crops, rather than just the bit they have, in order to not murder the child. Maybe their doing so would result in them discovering a vein of gold in a stream that they had not noticed before. Sometimes even those in extreme economic situations through genuine kindness can exert themselves even more to support a child, rather than say "We'd like to but we can't."

God is the ultimate democrat, because every life is equally precious in its creation and its potential in his eyes. Many people alive today exist because somewhere in their family tree someone did not abort a child due to rape in warfare or other circumstances.

I hope that this case study and the accompanying analogy has helped you understand one aspect-a very important one-of God's "thoughts." More so I hope this helps you to not have knee jerk reaction to even painful events when developing your own stance, attitudes, thoughts, feelings and ultimately policies and decisions, where you react to the obvious sympathy and empathy without considering all the routes that genuine mercy, virtue and righteous do take place.

Case study: Fort Hood shooting

I'm going to call this a morality case study, even though the Fort Hood shooting is obviously mostly a criminal and a psychological matter. This is because I want to help my readers, especially the young people (Hi again!) to use powers of faith and reason to understand current events and also to discern the best path to accuracy and justice.

My first point is that human nature likes, yes I would say even craves, simplicity. They will naturally want one and only one reason and cause for why the Fort Hood shooting happened. You hear this on the talk shows where certain hosts gravitate immediately to the Muslim connection, while others gravitate to the stress of exposure (even second hand) to war and post traumatic stress. Yet you must understand that this event, like so many others, are the culmination of several factors all at once. This is why I want to do this as a case study for you.

We have not yet heard from the defendant, and I'm not going to put words in his mouth, second guess him, or try to predict what decisions he will make about culpability. I'm going to teach you how to look at the facts and put yourself in the optimal frame of mind for then processing new developments and information as they occur.

Fact one: The defendant is a psychiatrist, one who is focused on treating and also being among the most grievously war wounded. Thus his contact with the military arena is not firsthand, in that he was not in combat himself (yet). Any soldier will tell you that no one understands combat until he or she is actually in it. So one cannot accurately ascribe a combat mentality to the defendant based on experience, but only his second hand information and his imagination of what it will be like when he is deployed. Think about that last point. He is on the receiving end of those who have returned from combat mentally and physically wounded. He's not treating people who returned from Iraq and Afghanistan but are OK. So he is not part of those who greet the returning veterans and active military who are OK and going home. He is treating those who are severely injured and when not treating them, he is immersed in that environment nonetheless. Thus he gets a "sampling" of combat only from those who are the most injured by combat, and that sampling is the totality of his "experience." He then deduces and imagines what combat is like based on that environment of treating and being among the most wounded and injured of the combatants.

This fact, then, is not "the" cause, but "one" cause. Why is it not "the" cause? Because we can imagine that if other things were different that he might have had more perspective and more comfort in dealing with the one sided view he was receiving of combat. I'm not saying that combat is ever great, but here is my point.

Fact two: He was a lonely and isolated individual. The defendant was never married, had no children, and was not part of a tight knit cultural local community. There are two components to this. The first is reality of military life, which is you go where you are ordered. People from strong local ethnic cultures (Native Americans, for example) often have to leave their intimate support network and be very singular when going to college, joining the military, etc. So there is a cultural isolation that is inherent in that profession. The second and more urgent point is, however, that he was not married. Again and again I have warned that not marrying, the breakdown of the family, and "sexual liberation" will only lead to isolation and ruin. Don't believe me?

Genesis 2:18, 22, 24
Then the Lord God said, "It is not good that the man is alone; I will make him a helper like himself." And the rib which the Lord God took from the man, he made into a woman, and brought her to him. For this reason a man leaves his father and mother, and clings to his wife, and the two become one flesh.

Let's be all grown up here. People are meant to be together, to be married, to be intimate, to have a life partner and to have sex. Society is falling apart and individuals are going crazy because this freak show society has demonized traditional families and created generations of frustrated lone wolfs. Duh. So my point is that even though fact one regarding his combat imaginings and deductions are true, we don't know that he would have had difficulty with that or indeed snapped if he also had been in a traditional loving intimate and, yes, sexual marriage. This is what I mean when I say that these events are rarely "one cause." Do you see what I mean?

Fact three: He is a Muslim and relationships with Muslims can be, but are not required to be, more complex since the reality of September 11, 2001. Further, Muslim attitudes toward themselves and others can be, but are not required to be, more complex since the reality of September 11, 2001. It is a fact that the defendant joined the military and became a psychiatrist before September 11, 2001. The terrorism of September 11, 2001 is also a fact. Thus one must recognize, without excusing, the significance of timing. Suppose he were a younger man and was not ready to either go to college or enlist until 9/11/2001 had happened. Someone of a more timid character might well have decided, "Hey, I'm a Muslim and I'm not sure I can handle entering the military with all the limelight and pressure on any Muslim, so I'm going to go to school or whatever and not enlist." Those Muslim Americans who felt the patriotic call to the Armed Services went ahead and enlisted, during and post 9/11/2001. This guy, had he been younger, might have recognized that he was not cut out to be in the pressure cooker of belonging to the broad "category" of "Muslim" at the height of justifiable suspicion AND draw further attention to one's self by enlisting where one is going to get pressure, either intentional or unintentional. I'm not saying I believe he was harassed. I'm saying that when one is Muslim, or any other minority, one stands out and one must have a certain strength of character to function accordingly and appropriately. So my third point is the significance of timing of global events and the way people's character is tested by the luck of the draw regarding where they were and what decisions they made, and then subsequent events.

Fact four: Isolated and troubled people easily gravitate to increasingly extreme views, in both politics and their faith. When I say "troubled" I do not mean mentally or emotionally disturbed, in this case study. I mean that they are uneasy about something. As a psychiatrist the defendant would have heard disturbing events and feelings expressed by and experienced by his wounded warrior patients, and the others around him, even if he was not actually treating them. This creates an inherent tension that some can handle, while some cannot. Here's an exercise to help you to imagine the situation I am describing.

Suppose that you are a female counselor and all your patients have had violent encounters with females and here I don't mean battering. What if every one of your patients returned from combat where their injuries were inflicted by women soldiers on the other side? Suppose that you are a gay man who is a counselor. Suppose that every one of your patients had issues because they had been beaten up by gay men, and in return had sometimes done some very bad things?

Do you see what I mean? Some people, particularly those who are isolated (as described above) find themselves identifying more and more with a category of people rather than humanity as a whole when they have to deal with repeated examples of unsuccessful outcomes with their "category." In other words, the defendant would feel more and more "Muslim" and less and less "Army officer," less and less "counselor," less and less "American," less and less "humanitarian." The female counselor in my example above would likewise feel more and more "female" and less and less "officer" or "humanitarian" or "American." Also a well adjusted gay guy who is a regular ordinary counselor might start feeling more and more as being "gay" because patient after patient is describing combat or trauma with or at the hands of gays. Again, this is not an excuse at all. I am explaining why members of all groups find themselves more and more isolated and more and more radical if they are exposed to "bad outcomes" in relationships with their "category" of person.

This is different from the phenomenon that many discuss, and I allude to in fact one, where counselors who counsel certain cases of trauma over and over pick up, like second hand smoking, some of that trauma themselves. I don't think that we can conclude that about the defendant based on the facts, beyond what I said in fact one, which is that lacking first hand combat experience, his entire set of information and opinion is based on the trauma of his patients. So what I am saying is that I am skeptical that he is receiving second hand trauma in the classic way that let's say domestic violence counselors often start to pick up residue of trauma from repeated treatment of domestic violence victims. I am saying that based on the facts that 1) he was not in combat himself and 2) all of what he heard was based on wounded and traumatic experience we can deduce that he had a "sampling" of what combat in predominately Muslim countries was like, rather than first hand experience.

Thus when one is isolated (not married, no children, not in a strong local community network) and one receives troubling information about a category of person (in this case, his faith) that one belongs to, one often has the problem of becoming less, instead of more, integrated with humanity as a whole, and often more radicalized in one's perception of one's own category, with potential for feeling part of a one-sided situation with no neutral ground.

We know that some of the most troubling radicalization of Muslim children occurs when they are in dire poverty and the radical groups feed them, clothe them and send them to school, becoming their caregivers and family. This is what I mean that those who are isolated (without family) and/or troubled (in this example, suffering from poverty) are often quite naturally radicalized as they feel either 1) more isolated due to their "category" and 2) "rescued" by zealotry and "belonging."

I could continue with this but I want to wrap up this blogging here because my purpose is a case study, not an analysis with conclusions, since we simply do not know yet, and may never really know all the facts and perspectives. Again, this is by no means a defense of him but, rather, I am taking advantage of a situation to teach you, especially young people, how to understand the combinations of facts and opportunities/situations that mixed together result in a person's actions or an event.

Our society has become so overwhelmingly complex and false that people have "complexity fatigue" and yearn, unrealistically, for "one cause" and "one reason" factors and that simply is not the case for most events. It is usually a progression and a combination that results in such events and they must be understood as such if they are to be reduced or somehow "fixed."

Here is another fact, published in the New York Times. There are just over four hundred psychiatrists to treat a military of over 500,000 men and women. Whether the pressure of such shockingly few counselors for so many military (particularly during several hot wars) is part of the "cause" or not of the Fort Hood incident, I do not have to psychically channel the genius Albert Einstein to tell you that is far from being enough resources, period.

Further, I cannot believe the foolishness of an incredibly sexualized society that while promoting and pushing sex in all ways and forms except long term marriage allows the isolation of so many single frustrated males and females while they are under pressures of career, combat, and whatever. This is why arranged marriages took place in many societies so that people didn't "demand their rights" to "choose their own partner" and then instead drink, do drugs and end up going to bed alone or with "hook ups," all the while being saturated by the media about how "hot" and alluring one should be.

God ordained marriage as a coping mechanism. Life is a miserable drag (and I don't mean cross dressing, ha, no hate mail please) without the majority of people being married. Again, I don't need to channel Einstein to tell you that. People need stable and intimate spousal relationships and access to expression of their normal sexual needs.

Yes, I can hear some of you think, "Yeah, but what about those losers who nearly every day shoot their own wife and children and then commit suicide? If marriage is so great why do these people kill what they have?" This is what I mean by the complexity of real situations. There is rarely "one cause." Often there is a "trigger" or to use the old expression "The last straw" (referring to loading straw on a camel until the final straw added makes the whole load too heavy and breaks the camel's back). When we hear about events such as murder-suicides and the Fort Hood shooting, there is usually a final "trigger" event but that is rarely the "cause." The "cause" is usually an amalgamation of several fundamental facts.

Any good counselor can tell you that there is usually a combination of these factors: isolation, lack of consistent intimacy (love and sex), trauma (first hand or second hand), stress (workload and/or economic), violence (first or second hand, including media exposure) and addictions. What is the tipping point where one "snaps?" It is usually despair.

See, this is why it is so important to have a stable, normal, marriage and children based society. It is the ultimate and only bulwark against despair. Despair can be fleeting, just a moment of pure desperation, in which case if the person is able to be supported through that moment it passes. Or despair can be accumulating and grinding when the person is in a position of having "their back against a wall," such as we see with people who slowly slide into poverty due to years of economic collapse and ruin. An example of that is the many farmers in India who have been committing suicide in despair as they are ruined. So despair can be either "a moment" or "a long grinding path."

It is not enough to have economic governmental "safety nets." The problem is that the safety net against despair has been nearly totally ruined by this freak show modern society. The safety net of neighborhood, community, family, children and committed intimacy (sex is not a commodity to be obtained but part of the overall spousal intimacy) has been almost totally unraveled.

Again, I'm not excusing by any means or condoning any of the tragic and criminal events that we hear about these days. What I am trying to do is finally get your attention that this is a crisis beyond anyone's full comprehension. I come from a heavy World War II generation and I know what I'm talking about: the change from then to now regarding the "despair" safety net is almost indescribably vast.

I don't, however, want to further dilute the case study by going into my general rant about how these "do your own thing" generations have instead of being liberating have enslaved themselves to modern idolatry, isolation and despair. I concluded with those observations so that one can understand the fact finding that I have demonstrated in this case study about the tragic and criminal Fort Hood shooting against the panoply of so many of these "events" that seem to defy having a simple one source "cause" or "reason." Life and human needs and health are remarkably simple; it is the way that humans are tempted to self destruct and self delude that are astonishingly complex. I hope that this has helped some in regaining some reality based comprehension of what is going on.

Questions for young people

Hi again my friends. Always thinking of you and wishing things could have gone differently, that your parents and teachers (and government 'leaders') could have allowed you to inherit more goodness, and less of the trash, depravity and errors that they have left you to cope with and hopefully start to clean up. I really wish all this crap had not fell upon you, but it was the previous two generations choices.

Anyway, rather than a case study, I thought of two questions for you to ponder. These questions sum up a lot of what I've written about in developing faith and developing reasoning skills.

Question One:

Which is better: If you know someone is doing something wrong or dangerous, do you speak to them about it and risk "hurting their feelings," "being judgmental," or "sounding like a dork," OR do you stay silent for either the above reasons or with thinly disguised glee, as you hope that something bad happens to them and they "get what they deserve?" Your parents and teachers by far selected the second choice.

Question Two:

Which is better: To go to a highly qualified doctor, counselor or spiritual director when one ails, or to insist that you only go to someone who has had the same illness as you? In other words, if you have a broken leg, refuse to allow any doctor or nurse who has not had a broken limb treat you? If you are an addict, insist only on ex-addicts? If you don't believe in God, go to someone else who does not believe in God? If you have swine flu, hold out, don't go to the ER, unless you know the doctors there have had the swine flu themselves? If you fall off a mountain and crush your bones, with your last breath insist that they phone ahead to the hospital and make sure that only mountain climbing members are on staff? Your parents and teachers by far selected the second choice.


Artists and writers looking for good ideas, you can select one of those scenarios and write a short story, or produce a work of art, contrasting the two alternative choices in some specific setting. Or even just write the outline or sketch of how it would develop. Like the cornucopia exercise, if you feel some sort of urge to "defend" the second choice, that's OK, it's free speech after all (LOL!) but use it as a thinking detox tool and ask yourself, why you have the urge to defend the second choice...and see if that is some latent programming by those who firmly embrace that view for kooky reasons.

Let's use the silly example of the fallen mountain climber. You might have an inkling of doubt as you kind of mock the second scenario, thinking, "Well, might not mountain climbing doctors have 'better understanding' of mountain fall injuries?" Test that theory. As the dude or dudette is laying there crushed on the mountain, you might think, well, only mountain climbers are coming to rescue him or her, no? So why not mountain climbing doctors at the hospital? Oh, I see. So if a non-mountain climbing pilot flies his non-mountain climbing rescue team to the injured person and winches them down (hence not needing mountain climbing skills) and then lifts the person in a basket (hence not needing mountain climbing skills), I guess you'd recommend the injured person wave off the helicopter since they aren't "authentic mountain climbers" and "would not understand?" So if you start to fall or seep into that trap use this tip that I've shown you, which is to compare that form of thinking to various scenarios of reality. No one in their right mind would wave away a faster helicopter rescue because the rescuers don't "share the same experience" and have the same "cred" as the injured.

Then, think ahead to the hospital. OK, suppose the injured argues that only a mountain climbing doctor should treat him or her, because that doctor would "better understand" the patient and his or her "reality." Oooooook, so let's think of a reality based scenario. Maybe that patients refuses treatment by a non-mountain climbing doctor, not realizing that this doctor, however, has gone to earthquake areas and set many fractured bones with greater expertise than anyone else. The injured dummy would just have turned down someone with vast and rare experience in exactly their injury, just because the patient thinks only a carbon copy of him or herself can treat him or her. Duh.

I know this is a ridiculous example but it's not all that far from the truth, unfortunately. I see that a lot in medicine, most obviously in the areas of mental health, but oddly enough, also in the areas of disease and physical ailments. It's scary, the mindset that I am pointing out here, and the cause of much of the alienation and gloominess in society today. When people are constantly categorizing themselves and others based on large traits, small traits and/or imaginary traits, they inevitably alienate themselves and others. This, by the way, is one reason why cults isolate members so much. It's both elitism and fear of alternate doctrines, but underlying all of it is an obsessive compulsive disorder to categorize people. Young people, instead of growing up in groovy times where all are equal (as all the major faiths teach), you've grown up in times that categorize to such an insane degree that no one really ever really belongs in any group, and you see that with tragic results in the school systems, in gangs, and in prejudice.

Another example of what I mean you can test yourself with by thinking how like a kind of code language or short hand you immediately know "what kind of person" someone is by what brand of clothes they wear. That is far different from when I grew up, when it was really "cool clothes" or "not cool clothes," or "has money for clothes" or "does not have money for clothes." You young people actually know a lot about each other if you just hear a few brand labels about what the other person is wearing. For example, in my day we didn't have punks who dressed punk. In my day we had punks, some of whom could afford cool clothes. Do you see what I mean? And we had cool kids who brought very cheap no label jeans because they just refused to spend the money on a label brand. But today, you have so much ridiculous categorizing that all it does is depress, promote anxiety, alienate and ultimately provide very bad medicine, rather than unifying and promoting genuine individuality. It's scary what is happening, even though I use benign and silly examples here.

I want to keep this thoughtful but relatively light, so I won't go off into more doomsday hand wringing, but I'm counting on you young people to be strong enough to take a look at what I am saying and start to ask yourselves some very serious questions about what attitudes you've been taught are really solid and worthy, and what is bogus crap.

Case study: why spying leads to worse information

One of the things that the cultists who stalk me are most proud of is that they "know everything about me." This was told to me by one of the head cultists in 2003. This is how I first realized that far from being just nosy neighbors of the ordinary sort, they actually have wiretapped my home for many years, being fascinated with every detail of my life including, puzzlingly, bathroom habits. That fascination continues to even today, and if only I had realized it sooner I could have started a potty blog for them and saved them the effort. It just isn't all that mysterious.

Back to my case study, though, to illustrate my main point. The past two generations believe that "knowledge is power" and they glorify spies in popular culture and so forth. That is great when done in a sane context. Yes, in armed conflict (or suspicious times), nations have great incentive to spy on each other about military capabilities and plans. And yes, knowledge is power, because a dummy should not pretend to be an expert on a subject without gaining knowledge through study, practice, apprenticeship, life experience, etc.

But here is the problem. The more "details" of activities and even thoughts that a stalker collects about a person, such as me, the more they lose sight of what is actually holistically going on. Worse, they start to draw opposite conclusions to the truth. For our case study, let's use some specific examples from my life.

Scenario one: Cultists never observe me reading the Bible.

Wrong conclusion: They conclude that I am either irreligious or that the Bible is irrelevant.

Factual truth: I read the entire Bible around the age of thirteen and retain perfect recall. Additionally, I was born with the ability to witness to the truth of what is in the Bible and the Qur'an.

So here is a stark example of how statistical and "knowledge" building data collection is totally bogus. Far from measuring my devotion to the Bible, attempting to measure my devotion by the number of times I read the Bible has drawn cultists to a conclusion opposite to the truth. I am living devotion to the Bible and it is engraved, spiritually, in my heart. I only turn to the Bible when I am blogging or when I wish to lose myself in the comfort of what is there. I was doing neither when cultists attempted to demonize me via "counting" my supposed usage of the Bible.

I could give other examples but this is the key, the heart of the problem of stalking, and I'll leave this one to my readers to meditate upon.

This, by the way, is why gossip, stalking and spying is a violation of the Eighth Commandment about false witnessing against one's neighbor. One collects judgmental and often false or gravely misunderstood information against someone who is the victim of gossip, spying and stalking, and thus comes to believe and communicate calumny, lies and distortions, ALL of which is false witness in God's eyes (remember, the Bible explains that even thoughts are sins; it is not necessary to act upon those thoughts).

Gossip, stalking and spying for "tech" reasons are also a violation, in addition to the Eighth Commandment, to the First Commandment against false gods and idolatry. Collecting power enhancing information against another person is putting that "tech" and activity ahead of God in determining the purpose and direction to that person's life. One cannot "tech" and serve God; God will not tolerate other masters.

For example, one has no way of knowing that an adulterous affair that results in a baby is not ultimately the will of God. God is not saying that adultery is no longer a sin. However, only God knows all the paths of all people who ever lived, and it is often his will that humans cannot understand how their own actions (say nothing of their "neighbors") fit into his plan. A woman who is gossiped about and demonized for having an adulterous baby is thus treated in an extremely ungodly way by the stalkers. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that people should take justice into their own hands based on evil gossip. Rather, Jesus explicitly comdemns hypocriscy and turns into disciples many who were accused by the hypocrites of "sin."

God has a plan for everyone. Why do hypocrite Christians stalk others and thus gossip, oppress and put their feet on the necks of those they spy on, harming them with their sinful thoughts and deeds, when they should confess that they know that God has a plan-known only to him-for everyone?

I blogged before that thank God the "righteous" early Christians did not decide to slay Saul, their chief persecutor, out of "self defense." If gossipers and stalkers had their way, they would have killed Saul before he became Paul.

God will not tolerate having his will hampered by spies, gossipers and stalkers.

So ponder how the "counting how many times I read or do not read the Bible" led to a complete misunderstanding and hampering of God's plan and will for my life, and think about how those deeds are in direct conflict and offense to the First and Eighth Commandments (not a good place to be in if one hopes to be saved upon death).

Self appointed morality watchdogs not justified

When I look back on my blog posts, I am always sad at how irate, chastising and warning of divine retribution is the tone of many of them. Just think, though, that if I am shrill and often livid in my nagging how irate God, Jesus Christ, and the angels must be. If you need a refresher in being reminded that Jesus is not the peacenik stoned grooving “anything goes” guy, read any part of the Gospels where he speaks of the hypocrites, the vipers, and the false words of those around him. And, of course, the Old Testament provides much reminder of the wrathful God, who never changes: he is both loving and forgiving, but also perfect in his rendering of judgment, both at the end of one’s life, but also day to day in the course of knowing all that there is to know about each person’s thoughts and deeds. If I stood on the top of this building and screamed with a megaphone, “You are all in danger of not being saved and going to hell,” I would not be understating things.

Here is the problem. People have become consumed with a sexualized and idolatrous view of life, including of God and his will for how humans should live. As a result, even those who believe in Jesus Christ and have been born again in him do some very inconsistent things for being saved, due to the prurient and vicious, easily tempted, problem of human nature. Here is an exercise that I think all of you will find “relevant” and spiritually revealing.

Imagine that someone that you know, or a perfect stranger, has been secretly photographed while performing what one considers being an unchaste, adulterous, or fornicating activity. Would you look at the photograph? If you would, and you have, you are in grave danger of your soul, despite how often you proclaim Jesus Christ. Would you tell other people about the photograph and the acts? In other words, would you treat that information and visual as something to share with others? Worse, would you keep a copy for prurient and even sexual self gratification? What do you think any of the above does to the state of your soul in the eyes of God?

To obtain the answer, get out your Bible and read the four Gospels with a pad of paper and a pen or pencil next to you. Write down every time that Jesus chastises a person for a sexual act, including adultery. Are you having trouble finding any examples at all of Jesus expending even one word of chastisement regarding sexual misconduct or proclivities? Now, at the same time, write down how often Jesus condemns people for the words from their mouths, such as hypocrisy, false pride in their holiness, gossip and other problems of the tongue. Do you find that Jesus has provided plenty of examples of his irritation and condemnation? Would you feel comfortable bringing a sexually explicit photo that was secretly taken of someone to Jesus and telling him that you viewed the picture, kept a copy, told others about it, shared it with others, and found ways to harm the people in the photograph, and then insist that Jesus look at the photograph to see what an “adulterous sinner” is depicted there? Could you even bear to look in the eyes of Jesus with such a mission, and such a list of your own sins of pride and lack of charity? Did you perhaps think that God, and Jesus Christ, need spies to keep them abreast of the sexual doings of other people?

I do not understand how so many people that I know are totally obsessed with acts of intimacy between other people, especially adultery or homosexual acts, so that they involve themselves in the judging and propagating of this information, while at the same time think they have clean eyes, ears and hands in front of Jesus Christ. Do you remember what Jesus said about plucking out one’s eye if it leads on to sin? What kind of sin do the eyes lead one to commit? Looking at secretly taken intimate photographs of other people is one of them, just like being a voyeur (“peeping Tom”), or a pornography producer.

I know many of you will deny this, but I know that many of you value what St Paul says more than you value the totality of what Jesus said and did. So I invite you to do the same thing with all of the writings attributed to St Paul in the New Testament. Please write down for me (actually, for your own use, since I already know the answer) all of the times that St Paul condemns, chastises or even mentions a sexual impropriety. Then also list the number of times that St Paul condemns or warns against what is spoken, the deeds of the tongue, and no, he did not mean French kissing.

Where in the Bible, Old or New Testament, have any of you thought that you have the right to observe, judge, and propagate knowledge of other people’s sexual activities, whether “adulterous” or not, when you cannot show me Jesus 1) allocating any of his valuable ministry time on that subject and 2) Jesus praising those who ran to him or to others with tales of other sinners? I mean, I must have missed the part in the Gospel where Jesus offers a special place in heaven for the gossips that catch other people having nookie, who pass around scrolls depicting their acts and telling others about it, and then hurting the people who have been secretly spied upon? I have lots of Bibles and none of the translations seem to contain that part of the scripture. Am I missing some pages in my Bible? Just curious, because I have trouble finding the intimacy secret police and pornography producer reward section.

How ironic that many western Christians and seculars condemn the morality police of Islamic countries. Is that not funny when you think about it? The morality police are trying to enforce actual current behavior, not secretly spying on people for prurient purposes and star chambered judging of the intimates. And westerners do not mind flooding the media with visual pornography, exposing their children to increasingly sexualized images, yet if they “catch” someone “doing the dirty” they secretly photograph them and while proclaiming their righteousness on the one hand, get their “rocks off” through prurient possession, viewing and distribution of the material, or at least a good long gossiping description of it to equally self righteous people. It’s not too long ago that I blogged that this modern generation would care more about “what position” that Abraham and Sarah used to be intimate, rather than the miracle of her conception of Isaac. Those of you who are, as I am, disgusted at what I just wrote, please excuse me, for that is part of the great sadness of my life and the state of the world, that I have to dash people with cold water of such images to make them see how sick and depraved they have all become.

How happy people are when they “catch someone” being imprudent in intimacy, yet they often go the entire day without thinking once about fear of God. It is impossible not to think about someone else’s sex during the day (especially if you have electricity and hence TV, video, the Internet and other media), yet it is very possible and very common to never think once about God in a day.

You ought to be scared and you ought to be half wishing that you could have removed that eye of yours, rather than participated in the spreading of knowledge and visuals of someone else’s acts of intimacy, sinful or not.

One of the reasons that God is so protective of marriage and monogamous intimacy is because the focus is always on the bearing of children, children who need a stable home and to know who their parents are. How ironic that the abortion loving generation loves to sneak pictures of adultery or other sexual acts and then, hypocritically, cite scripture as their justification. As I pointed out, I would like to see where in the scripture God, or Jesus, spends any time condemning sinful intimacy itself, and encouraging vigilante and prurient monitoring of it as “justice” and “information gathering.” If you really understood the Bible the bulk of the concern is the spiritual harlot and the human adulterer who cheats on God. That is why the adulterer and harlot image is so predominate. God considers those believers who even dabble in idolatry (such as love of money) as being adulterers in their divine relationship with God. That is the kind of adultery that God knows humans will almost always lose their soul because of, not the nookie in the back of the car kind of adultery.

How many of you go to church, yet gossip and defame those you consider to be “sinners,” such as I described above in the photos of adultery example? How “in the model of Jesus Christ” is that?

How many of you go to church, yet receive daily briefings about activities and news that are provided by users of the secret and the occult?

How many of you go to church, yet believe that you are “privy” to “information” that makes you a participant in divine events (and thus a servant of false prophets?)

Woe, woe, woe, woe to this generation. I see no hope, really.

Western women would make Eve blush

So western commentators are "outraged" at how "women are treated by Islamic fundamentalists," and indeed, some of the abuses are abhorrent. However, at least they have an excuse of either ignorance of what the Qur'an really teaches, or cultural excess that has continued without moderation.

I suggest, though, that westerners shut their mouths and clean up their own situation. From what I see, many western women, enabled by men, do things that would make Eve blush and that Eve, mother of humanity, would never have considered doing (nor would have responded to if the devil had tempted her in those ways).

o Abortions, especially as it is more casual and with less thought than updating one's wardrobe or getting a new hair style.

o Women teachers who sexually prey on both boy and girl students.

o Women who abuse and murder their own children.

o Women who are neglectful in daycare centers.

o Women who enable their children to use drugs and/or alcohol.

o Women who allow or even encourage their children to have plastic surgery and other beauty "enhancement" treatments.

o Women who know about every diet on the planet but give their infants and toddler children soda pop and tons of fruit juice instead of milk, and then wonder why they are "fat," or have hyperactivity issues.

o Women who bring "lovers" and "boyfriends" into their home who then sexually abuse, beat and even kill their boy or girl children.

o Women who dress their little children like whores.

o Women, whether celebrities or in the community, by life style or as paid promoters, who role model sexualized behavior and demeanor so as to degrade the morality of the young who observe them in public.

o Women who raise their children ignorant of God, and worse, use them in occult or bizarre pagan beliefs, ruining those children's peace of mind for life.

o Women, teenagers and girl children who use the Internet and cell phone cameras to sexualize themselves or violate the privacy of others, and who thus promote a child pornography and visual rape mentality.


So before you get all worried about what the Taliban or fundamentalist Islamists are doing with their women and children, how about a little focus on one or all of those problems? Notice that in fundamentalist Islamic communities, no matter what else you think of them, they are not "struggling" with even ONE of the above issues. And you wonder why they don't want "western women 'values'" in their society? Even the most well meaning and virtuous western woman who tries to intervene in Muslim fundamentalist matters brings with her the taint of all that is happening above in the society at large. It is embarrassing and disgraceful at how low western society has fallen in these extreme matters (and I'm not talking about the age old issues of 'fooling around;' what I list above is the terrible destruction of the feminine as guardian of the young and overall bulwark against depravity and total loss of social anchorage).

Do we want to send the female Sunday school teacher who is accused of raping and murdering an eight year old neighbor to the east to role model "liberated female morality" to the Muslims? I didn't think so.

As Jesus stated, before removing the mote (a very small particle) out of the neighbor's eye, be sure to remove the beam (a huge piece of lumber) from your own eye.

Embryo case study: ethics decision process

Here is more about moral ethics, using the embryonic stem cell research controversy as the case study. In other words, I am going to give you some general moral and ethics guidance, and you can see how to apply that moral guidance to the specific example of embryonic stem cell research.

The first point that I want to make, stated as a principle that everyone should strive to follow, is this: When alternative actions are available, always start first with the most morally and ethically conservative position, and if that is not successful, move step by step toward the more questionable, also known as the “slippery slope.”

If I had a sketch pad capability here I’d draw a picture that on the left side has the label “Most morally conservative and highly ethical option.” On the right side I’d label the diagram “Totally slippery slope that could lead into very unmoral and unethical options.” I’d actually draw what looks like that wintry icy slippery slope where at the bottom are outlines of rocks that represent decisions and options of potential moral and ethic breakdown.

So then in the middle of the picture you can draw some columns, unlabeled and empty, just like a blank spreadsheet, and they represent the possible actions that are increasingly morally and ethically questionable, those options you have not yet identified or if you have, you have not yet pursued.

Let’s use a mundane example of how to use this chart. Suppose you wish to obtain a house in which to live. Your first choice ought to be the highly ethical and moral option, the far left column, of purchasing or building a house. Your first choice is the most moral and ethical purchase of a house at a good price with all legal and ethical requirements totally fulfilled. That should, obviously, be your first thought of action. However, suppose you totally lack any morality or ethics and still need a house? This would be the extreme right hand column. You might get a gun, kill the occupants of the house that you want, and move into their house. That is the opposite extreme of the highest morality and ethics, which is to purchase a house using good and fair bargaining and honest merchandising and legal safeguards. The opposite of that is to covet someone else’s house, kill them, and take their house.

In business most normal people of course start with the highly moral and routine transaction of seeking a house that one can legally and fairly purchase. However, in this society, increasingly people have some twists to the most ethical option, which are some of those blank columns in the middle. For example you could collude with the real estate agent to cheat the home seller of some of their home’s value. That would be a column that is nearer to the ethical best of honest bargaining and purchase, but has inched toward the slippery slope. People today are, sadly and incorrectly, much more comfortable with such options that are not of the totally correct, but are one or two steps toward the slippery slope. Another example is to obtain a house that you could not afford in return for doing something legally or morally questionable, such as you receive the house at a reduced cost because you engaged in something like industrial espionage for someone. That’s another step toward the slippery slope. Yet another example of stepping toward the slippery slope is to jack up house prices, or, conversely, trash a neighborhood so that you behind the scenes manipulate the desirability of the community within which the house you want resides.

In the “old days” of classic capitalism no one would have even thought of those options. People built houses and people bought as much house as they wanted and could afford, and that was that. But in these wily and “make a killing” and “get the most for yourself” modern mindsets, far more people think that shady steps that are toward but not totally on the slippery slope are morally and ethically “fair game.” They think these are options that the “free market” ethos endorses as being acceptable in ethics.

So that is an example that is easy to understand of how to understand where one individually is, or where society is, for any given issue on the total ethics/morality-to-total slippery slope of moral/ethic breakdown continuum of options.

Now, let’s use this chart as an example regarding embryonic stem cell research. But before diving into it, let’s look at the decision that is one step in front of the one now being discussed. At some point when it was discovered that infertile women could receive implanted embryos, one did not start with the most conservative position. The most conservative position would have been to create two and only two embryos and implant both of them. If both became viable the lady had twins. If one failed the other would develop and the lady would have a child. If both embryos failed it is like a miscarriage where for some reason birth circumstances just were not naturally correct. That is what should have been the standard procedure and there should not have been “bank vaults” of numerous embryos which are planted and “culled” like weeds in a field. Thus one would not have the embryos lying around frozen “which are just going to get thrown away anyways” in the first place if the most highly moral and ethic standard was followed in the first place. People did not think through the entire ethics and morality of the scientific gift of embryo creation and implant in the first place, which is to stick to the natural model in the first place. The natural model is one embryo and, often two, as is common when a woman has twins. Embryonic creation and implantation should have stuck to that model.

This is why the Catholic Church opposes these procedures because they perceive, correctly, that it leaped in one bound from a loving and desirable fixing of a medical condition (infertility) to factory line manufacturing of throw away embryos. If people had gone for the most conservative moral and ethical implementation, as I describe here, in the first place, the Church would have been much more able to tolerate the medical goodness of what is being attempted. However, in one leap embryonic development and implanting left the natural model and made embryos throw away commodities. That was a grave moral and ethical lapse, and put everyone squarely into the slippery slope of sin.

So that is an example of how individuals and society ought to be able to start with the most conservative moral and ethic position and thus prevent further disastrous ethics down the line. If ethics were followed in the first place we’d not have those “poor embryos that are just going to remain frozen or tossed out anyways, so let’s conduct experiments on them” argument.

Likewise, when researching any illness or infirmity one should always start with the most conservative moral and ethical options and as they either result in steps toward a cure, or do not pan out, then cautiously step one increment at a time toward the “right” side of the chart. We have lost years of research on NON-embryonic stem cell research (much of which, doctors attest, look more promising in results today than do the embryonic sources) because people decided to dive into the middle, even the total slippery slope side, before fully exploring the first and ultimately, most likely, productive research options. There should have been massive funding of adult stem cell and non-embryonic (such as umbilical cord) research for the past several decades rather than the immediate embrace of the embryonic route. The terrible irony is that if the more moral and ethical choice were made from the start and vigorously funded, Michael J. Fox and other celebrity sufferers and advocates of progress toward cures might actually have been seeing some progress in those cures today.

People might respond to me, “Well, we should try all options at the same time.” Be real, please. You know that funding is fought over and scarce and not all options can be funded, especially as this balloon economy is imploding. An abundance of funding should have been poured for the past twenty years or more into the most conservative ethic and moral options, research into non-embryonic stem cell and other sources of cures, rather than starving what ultimately will probably be the most successful route, discovered only after so much of the country, including Nancy Reagan, can only think of the most morally questionable route to help the suffering and think that this is the highest ethics.

So modern people have, without their own conscious realization, settled their ethical and moral “homes” dangerously far into the slippery slope and don’t even realize that there is a scientifically valid approach that starts with the most moral and ethical scientific options first. Not to be too extreme, but it is like, well, “I need that house more than you, and I have a good reason, so I’ll just shoot you and take the house.” It no longer occurs to people, in the stem cell debate, to start with the ethical and moral equivalent of what should be the norm, which is to start with the most conservative scientific research position, to look at adult supplied research solutions, such as using the adults own stem cells, or from umbilical cords, skin cells, placentas, whatever. But no, everyone is immediately assuming that the only “cure” must come from embryos being experimented upon, researched and destroyed. I cannot understand how people cannot see this. Well, this is why I have explained using the “chart” approach how to better understand how it is that we are in this sorrowful position. I believe that if people had funded non-embryonic research from the very beginning fully and most vigorously that we’d have today the beginning of some of those much craved breakthroughs today. Instead people are actually cheering doing more embryonic “work” instead of realizing they’ve not funded the most likely cure routes at all. Who are REALLY the “compassionate” ones? If I had had it my way we’d have breakthroughs without using embryos by now. I don’t blame President Obama because the people just will not see until they fully crash on the rocks on the slippery slope, and when they look up from the crash, find there’s no cure that way either.

And by the way, here is my last thought about the “we are going to throw the embryos out anyway so let’s use them.” Not too long ago animal shelters sold or gave abandoned pets to medical researchers. "After all, the dogs or cats were going to be euthanized anyway, so let’s give them to laboratories for humanitarian research.” Pets were even stolen out of yards by people who sold them to animal laboratories, so great was the demand for dogs and cats to experiment on until they died. It was one of the great scandals of the 1970’s and an area of early activism. Pounds stopped, due to public outrage, giving abandoned pets “that are just going to be destroyed anyway” to laboratories to use them in experimentation. Using today’s logic, I guess we should have kept giving abandoned animals to research laboratories to experiment upon rather than stop that practice. So, sure, “Got embryos ‘anyway?’ Let’s experiment on them rather than ‘just’ destroy them.” When one has residents of a concentration camp anyway, and they are going to die anyway, why not do some good ‘humanitarian’ experimenting? That is the slippery slope of that thinking, and those of us old enough to remember the fight against using abandoned animals for laboratory experimentation, “since they are just going to die anyway” remember a higher ethical and moral society when people, repulsed, said “No,” even though those abandoned animals were “just destroyed.” Or, rather than waste those abandoned animal carcasses, why not skin "Fido" and "Kitty" and let the pounds sell euthanized dog and cat fur in order to raise money? That is the mindset of not wanting to just "throw out" embryos without "putting them to good use." Can you not see how repulsive the slippery slope is? I hope that you young people in particularly understand your ethical options more as I described the abandoned animal experimentation battle that took place before your time.

Abortion case study: the Brazil raped child

I commented a few days ago that I thought the nine year old girl in Brazil, raped by her stepfather and now pregnant with twins, and of delicate health and no doubt greatly traumatized, should of course be viewed as someone who should be given an abortion since that is what she wants and her doctors concur regarding the risk. She went ahead and had the abortion and now the archbishop has responded. Here is the article and let's use this as a sad but very helpful case study to find some common ground of understanding even if people disagree on the conclusions and principles.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29531755/

snip

RIO DE JANEIRO - A Roman Catholic archbishop says the abortion of twins carried by a 9-year-old girl who allegedly was raped by her stepfather means excommunication for the girl's mother and her doctors.
Despite the nature of the case, the church had to hold its line against abortion, Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho said in an interview aired Thursday by Globo television.
"The law of God is higher than any human laws," he said. "When a human law — that is, a law enacted by human legislators — is against the law of God, that law has no value. The adults who approved, who carried out this abortion have incurred excommunication."

***
OK, here is the commentary and analysis. Here are the facts:

1) She is a nine year old child.
2) She was not only raped but it was done by a family member, her own stepfather.
3) There is a mother in the household and while we do not know the specifics, a mother has responsibility for knowing whether or not her live in boyfriend or spouse is raping her child.
4) The child wanted the abortion.
5) The doctors recommended that she obtain one due to extreme youth, delicate physical constitution and the stress of bearing not only one baby but two.
6) These were medical doctors at a reputable hospital, not abortion pimps and procurers. That is an important point in my mind.
7) We know that abortions are not mindlessly "pushed" because in the same article we learn of an older child, 11 years old, in the same situation who plans to bring her child to term and birth.
8) We know that the Catholic Church correctly opposes abortion.

Now, before we analyze what is the most defensible and balanced position in this disagreement and remedy, here are the exact words on the Church's doctrine:

2270 Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person-among which is the inviolable right of every human being to life....(supporting scripture cited)...

2271 Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law.... (supporting cathesis cited)...

2272 Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life. "A person who procures a completed abortion incurs excommunication latae sententiae," "by the very commission of the offense," and subject to the conditions provided by Canon Law. The Church does not thereby intend to restrict the scope of mercy. Rather, she makes clear the gravity of the crime committed, the irreparable harm done to the innocent who is put to death, as well as to the parents and the whole of society.

2273 The inalienable right to life of every innocent human individual is a constitutive element of a civil society and its legislation.... (detailed supporting analysis and canon law cited)....

2274 Since it must be treated from conception as a person, the embryo must be defended in its integrity, cared for, and healed, as far as possible, like any other human being.... (more wording emphasizing that the fetus is a life and a person and not some lesser entity, thus it experiences unjust death)...

2275 "One must hold as licit procedures carried out on the human embryo which respect the life and integrity of the embryo and do not involve disproportionate risks for it, but are directed toward its healing, the improvement of its condition of health, or its individual survival"... (more about the immorality of the exploitation for science of embryos or to manipulate custom features in human beings...)

Now, when you read the doctrine of the Church is it very clear, reasonable, scripturally founded and also a doctrine in existence from the time of only one to two hundred years after the time of Jesus Christ himself. Thus one cannot argue with the valid position of the Church.

However... and this is a huge point... as you read this you observe that rape and child molestation are not part of the imagery of the typical abortion situation. The canon law addresses adults who have consensual sex and who decide to abort as a matter of convenience. It is clear by the wording that there is a significant gap in the doctrine, which is to address abortion in cases of rape, child molestation and the endangering of the woman's life as a result of pregnancy. Now, it does not take a genius to realize that the Church would, rightfully, feel that addressing those cases directly would open the door to the logic that "well, it's a human life, but it is 'OK' to take that life in certain circumstances." The Church cannot and will not take that position and we need to respect their constancy and integrity. However, we must also be good shepherds and reasonable. Here is how I would recommend navigating through that dilemma while maintaining moral principle.

I totally agree with the archbishop that the mother (and obviously the raping stepfather, though we notice he's not addressed by the archbishop) bears the brunt of doctrinal punishment, not the child. So I agree with the wisdom of not harming the spiritual and emotional well being of the child by dragging her into the doctrine and, instead, correctly lay blame for the situation with the mother. So I give credit to the archbishop for, however imperfectly in action, discerning that doctrinal blame lies with the parents rather than the child herself.

Let us set aside whether excommunication is correct for a moment since that hinges on the medical advice and actions taken.

If the doctors were employees of abortion providing specialists, rather than a general hospital, I believe that of course excommunication would be entirely appropriate. I do think that Catholic hospitals have a right not to offer abortion at all, and I do believe that Catholics who work in abortion providing mills or other specialized services are abortion "procurers," matching the logic of the catechism and doctrine. However, I believe that the Catholic Church must recognize that abortion is, in secular and civil society, a medical procedure that is going to be practiced where the need is extreme, and that is the key. As I've written before I think that abortion is medically valid in certain circumstances, as sad as it is and the fact that it is a human life that is lost. Thus I would not have excommunicated the doctors unless they were working in a Catholic hospital or they were working for full time abortion specialist providers and procurers. However, as the facts show, rather, these doctors prescribed, reluctantly, out of concern for the life of this very young girl, an abortion as a medical service that they deemed was called for.

We need to look at the example of saints for further information in this regard. Recently a woman was canonized because she would not undergo life saving medical treatment that would have resulted in the termination of her pregnancy. She lived to deliver the baby and then died. The Catholic Church correctly recognizes this example of spiritual heroics and I use the term so that you can think about it. A woman should not be expected to die to deliver a baby; she and her family should choose whether to risk death or not. Many women will choose to take that risk and they are spiritual heroes. This does not mean that other women and of course, especially not nine year old children, should be forced to be spiritual "heroes." They are children, for goodness sakes. Thus I think the eleven year old child who is going to have her baby is a spiritual hero. However, I do not think that heroism of having an incest baby, a baby as the result of rape, or an endangering pregnancy should be forced upon her. This, I believe, is where the Church needs to use more discernment and nuance.

I believe that excommunication should be consciously enacted when we are dealing with, as the Church doctrine puts it, those who have "formal cooperation" and "procurement." These are adult (healthy adult) concepts, not concepts that are so easily applied to the very young and the molested. A child who is raped and who chooses to have the infant is a hero, but that does not make those who do not so choose or who cannot without risking their life or their mental health for the rest of their lives non-heroes. It is a hard reality in life, life that humans have made very complicated by their thoughtlessness, their cruelty and their sin, that something can be both hideously wrong (abortion) yet sometimes be necessary (abortion). One cannot really appreciate God's all knowing and mercy, and ability to fix even the worse of situations, if one does not recognize such a conundrum and deal with it in a realistic way.

Thus I would not have excommunicated the doctors, assuming they are not abortion procurers by profession and that they were, as the article reports, rendering a sad but realistic medical recommendation. If they were abortion procurers, sure, excommunicate them, as they work to legitimize what cannot be legitimized morally or canonically.

I would not have excommunicated the mother because she accepted the advice of doctors. However, I would have explained that she is not in good grace in the Church because she allowed such a situation, the molestation of her daughter, to take place, either knowingly or through neglect of attention and protectiveness. I would have proscribed a cycle of confession and penance and spiritual counseling to remediate her sins of, at least, neglect of the situation in the first place.

I would have delivered full wrath upon the perpetrator: why is he not soundly voiced as a hell bound soul by the Church? I mean, talk about someone who needs even worse than excommunication. The bulk of the verbiage should have been on his head.

Also, as I blogged originally about this case, I would have been low key rather than high profile for this particular case of abortion. Why? Because this poor girl has to grow up with her childhood destroyed already. I believe that the Church should go beyond the "not" condemning her for the abortion, of course, but also have been low key about the entire controversy so that the doctors and her care givers could guide her to spiritually think of the abortion as being akin to miscarriage. Her body simply was not mature enough and safe enough to continue to bear two pregnancies, yes, of full human lives. But this is why in this case it is more akin to miscarriage, a miscarriage after an act of violence. The press should not be loaded with the sinfulness of abortion; that very valid statement should be reserved for the discourse among the mature practitioners and those who procure. It's a bit shameful that the poster child for the legitimate dialogue about abortion is... a child... a child who was raped and violated by her own stepfather. How in the world could anyone think that this is the right "high profile" "take a stand against abortion" case?

Rather, if she had opted to and had been able to bear the children, she should have been trumpeted in the press-and by the Church-as a spiritual hero, of such a tender age and under such cruel circumstances. So I would have said, "Sure, elevate her story and her glory" if she had been able to have the children, either for the family keeping or for adoption. But since she cannot be a "hero," goodness, I would have found other adult abortion promoters to point the finger at, rather than her and her doctors. The Church would also have had great credibility in giving regular fire and brimstone preaching about child rapists. The faithful of this modern time need reminding that not only their willies will be burned off in all eternity for doing such to a child. I would have ordered extra bottles of ink for all the press I would have given to that subject, to the perpetrator (the stepfather) and the at least clueless and unprotective wife and mother of the victim.

The truthful conundrum of the middle ground sure is an uncomfortable place, but that is the problem of life and death, and the material world. Be careful, though, not to jump on the Catholic doctrine and call it insensitive or in error, for it is not. The Catholic Church continues to hold the gold standard in its doctrine, particularly the sanctity of life. The trouble is that the Catholic Church is very reliable and glorious in "keeping up the standard of the good," but the problem is that the Church, like the rest of society, has trouble keeping up with the evil. By this I mean that the doctrine is written with consenting adults who procure abortions in mind, and not with the thoughtfulness regarding spiritual heroics, of the young, those pregnant through incest and violence. It's brushed over not for a nefarious reason but because for centuries abortion was a problem of adults, not children. When the Catechism is next updated I would like to see more regarding comforting those who are in the position where heroics may be called for, and more focus on confession and penance where heroics, sadly, cannot take place by reasonable people. This by no means would undermine that life is always life and sacred. Mercy and options are not a "slippery slope," even though cheap arguments depend on the slippery slope fear and, its converse, the illogic of citing the slippery slope as justification. Life can still be life, the embryo still sacred and protected, yet the implications and nuances of the growing, rather than lessening, of evil options that humans seem to impose on each other and ways that people can be healed rather than further wounded as they walk that thorny road of necessity.

I hope that you have found this helpful, particularly those of you who have grappled with this dilemma and who have only seen the two, in theory, opposing sides. "Jesus would want it that way." Remember, Jesus was merciful to all, but "hell on wheels" regarding those who abuse children or lead them to sin. He would have been condemning the perpetrators from the pulpit and on the street (and in the hypocritical media) a hundred times more often than causing more pain for the violated child regarding the abortion itself. He'd be condemning perpetrator and the enabling members of the family and looking to root out all the other brutes like this from the pulpit, mark my words, he would. The Church should not allow shame over its own sex abuse problem (and those among the other faiths too) to silence it from condemning child abuse in many, many homilies, and reminding people of the very real penalties in eternal perdition. He'd not want the child dragged through the press or the poster child for the general abortion debate and horror in our modern times, goodness, of course not. We can talk about the millions of adults, not the few young, weak, the victims who suffer and who must, medically, make this difficult decision. The Church is actually very good at counseling adults who have had abortions, with worthy programs to accomplish this. People need to understand that they fall naturally into a state of grave sin with abortion, whether anyone knows about it or not, since God knows, and they should seek out such programs to comfort and advise them to feeling more authentically part of the fold again.

http://www.hopeafterabortion.com/