tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55769850082755112552024-03-18T16:04:56.193-04:00Lindsay's LogicLindsay Haroldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094965953749825163noreply@blogger.comBlogger181125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576985008275511255.post-81654375653458684462024-03-18T16:04:00.000-04:002024-03-18T16:04:02.516-04:00Evidence for the Authenticity of Daniel<p>The book of Daniel in the Bible is an amazing book! It contains hundreds of very detailed prophecies, most of which are known to have been fulfilled. They include such things as the sequence of world empires from the Babylonians through the Medo-Persians, Greeks, and Romans as well as many specific events like the premature death of Alexander the Great at the height of his power, the division of his kingdom into 4 main empires, and the squabbles of the Seleucids and Ptolemies in the centuries afterwards. This presents a problem for skeptics of the Bible, which they resolve by claiming Daniel was written after most of the events it describes, and thus that the prophecies weren't prophecy. They were just history. <br /><br />Because Daniel clearly describes the events of the mid-2nd century BC when the Maccabees revolted against king Antiochus of the Seleucid empire and cleansed the temple, the date assigned to the book is right around 164 BC when these events took place. This is in contrast to the traditional date for Daniel around 603-536 BC when the prophet Daniel lived. This earlier date was during the Babylonian exile of the Jewish people and during the reigns of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar of Babylon and Cyrus of Persia. In other words, the traditional date assumes the book is authentic, written by the actual prophet Daniel during the time the book describes. The late date assumes the book is a fraud, written in the time of the Maccabees but pretending it was written by the prophet Daniel hundreds of years earlier. The fraudulent author was thus writing known history as if it was prophecy. <br /><br />These two views of the book of Daniel are in stark contrast. Defending the Bible requires defending the early date of Daniel. There are many other lines of evidence for the Bible, of course, but Daniel plays an important part in showing the supernatural inspiration of scripture through accurate, fulfilled prophecies. <br /><br />As it turns out, there are many lines of evidence that support the earlier date for Daniel while the late date is mostly wishful thinking and bias against the supernatural. If someone rejects the inspiration of scripture or the existence of God, they <i>need</i> Daniel to be written late. It's the only option. Daniel's prophecies are too detailed and too clearly shown in history to deny unless they were written after it all happened. So the late date exists because skeptics need an explanation. In contrast, the earlier date relies on the evidence.<br /><br />Here are some major reasons to accept that Daniel was written in the 6th century BC when it claims to have been written.<br /><br /><b>1) The book of Daniel recorded history that wasn't known at the time of the Maccabees.</b><br /><br />The book of Daniel has been mocked and ridiculed for its supposedly false claims, yet newer information has vindicated Daniel. For example, skeptics claimed for many years that King Belshazzar never existed. The book of Daniel records a King Belshazzar who was ruling in Babylon at the time the Persians conquered it. However, secular historical records, such as the list of Babylonian kings compiled by Herodotus, did not list any ruler named Belshazzar. The last Chaldean king of Babylon, according to Greek historians, was Nabonidus. He was king when the Persians conquered Babylon. So this was widely used as evidence that Daniel contained errors, probably because it was written much later by someone who wasn't familiar with that time in history. <br /><br />However, in the late 19th century, the Nabonidus Cylinders were discovered which identify Belshazzar as the oldest son of Nabonidus. Further information has revealed that Nabonidus was away from Babylon during much of his reign. Thus, it is now believed that Belshazzar was acting as ruler of Babylon while his father was away, but without holding the official kingly title. He reigned in his father's name, but he was the acting ruler. <br /><br />This information is good evidence that the book of Daniel was written by someone who was living in Babylon in the 6th century BC. A later writer in the 2nd century BC would have known the Greek history with the official king list that didn't include Belshazzar. Thus, a later fiction pretending to be written by Daniel would have said that Nabonidus was ruling in Babylon when the Persians invaded. Only someone living there at the time would have known to write about Belshazzar. <br /><br />Not only does Daniel include Belshazzar, who was unknown to secular history until fairly recently, but the details are accurate. In Daniel 5, the prophet Daniel intepreted the writing on the wall during Belshazzar's party. This prompted Belshazzar to promote Daniel to third highest ruler in the kingdom. Why third? Because Nabonidus was the official king, Belshazzar was under his father, and so the highest honor that Belshazzar could give was third place. These are details we can fill in now, but a writer in 164 BC could not have known them. This shows that Daniel really was written in the 6th century BC, as it claims.<br /><br /><b>2) The language and customs recorded in the book of Daniel are accurate to Babylon in the 6th century BC. <br /></b><br />There are many details under this one heading. I can't go into all of them here, but I can give some examples. Daniel records that the laws of the Medes and Persians could be issued by the king, but the king was then unable to alter them. This is extremely unusual in history. Usually, kings are able to issue and rescind decrees as they choose. Yet King Darius was unable to change his decree that those who worship anyone other than the king would be thrown into the lion's den. He tried to change the law to save Daniel, but the law could not be changed. This has been found to be true of the Medes and Persians during this time period. Kings could issue laws, but the laws applied to everyone, including the king, and could not be changed. So Daniel accurately reflects the customs of the correct period that later writers are very unlikely to have known.<br /><br />One of the main criticisms of the early date is that the book of Daniel contains some Greek words. Since Greek influence and language spread around the world with the conquests of Alexander the Great, some 200+ years after Daniel lived, the inclusion of Greek words seems to support a later date. However, the Greek words in Daniel are of musical instruments. Musical instruments tend to retain their original names without translation, and they often spread to other cultures without requiring conquest or force. That's why we still refer to a ukelele by its Hawaiian name, even for those of us who don't speak Hawaiian. It's not because we were conquered by the Hawaiians and adopted their language. Thus, it is not surprising that the kingdom of Babylon in the 6th century BC would have musical instruments from the Greeks which retained their Greek names. </p><p><b>3) The book of Daniel was included in the Jewish scriptural canon in time to be translated as part of the Septuagint.<br /></b><br />The Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. The Torah portion was translated about 280-250 BC in response to a request from King Ptolemy II Philadelphis of Egypt since he desired to add all the books of the world to his great library in Alexandria. The rest of the Hebrew scriptures were translated after that, but the exact dates are not known for sure. It is certain that they were translated by the end of the 2nd century BC (around 100 BC) because we have copies from that time period. <br /><br />In the best case for skeptics, there is, at most, about 60 years between the late writing of Daniel and its inclusion in the Septuagint. This essentially rules out a late date. While it's theoretically possible, in the real world, it takes a lot of time for a new document to be copied, disseminated, accepted, and canonized. Sixty years is not enough time. It wouldn't become widely known in that time frame, much less accepted as part of the Jewish canon that would be included in the Greek translation.<br /><br />The short time frame is further complicated by the fact that the Jewish leaders would never have accepted a late forgery as scripture. A book of known authorship, written by a proven prophet like Daniel in the 6th century BC, would be revered and added to the canon of scripture. A much later document from the 160's BC pretending to be written by the prophet Daniel some 400 years earlier would have been easily identified as a fake. As a comparison, suppose someone writing today were to claim to have found a previously unknown document from the Jamestown colony in Virginia back in the early 1600's. Everyone would be immediately suspicious. How could such a document lie undetected all this time? Wouldn't it be obvious that the writer sounded recent and not like someone writing in the 1600's?<br /><br />Further complicating this issue is the location. An authentic book of Daniel would have been written in Babylon in the 6th century BC and brought back to Israel with the returning captives. There would be a known history among the Jewish people. Yet in the 2nd century BC, at the time of the Maccabees, they were living in Israel. A forgery would be written in the land of Israel. You can't simply "discover" a previously unknown, 400-year-old Babylonian document in Israel. How would it arrive in Israel without anyone knowing about it? The Jews were not stupid. They would have recognized the forgery. <br /><br /><b>4) The book of Daniel was included in the Dead Sea Scrolls.</b></p><p>The Dead Sea Scrolls date from the late 2nd century BC to the middle of the 1st century AD. Among the documents discovered are 8 fragmentary copies of Daniel. Daniel is the third most represented book, after Psalms and Exodus. The oldest copy of Daniel dates to around 100 BC. If the late date of origin were true, then this copy of Daniel is only a few decades removed from the original writing, which would be extremely unlikely. The entire collection of Daniel manuscripts in the Dead Sea Scrolls also argues against a late date. Why would there be so many copies of this one book if it's a late forgery that had only recently been written and had not yet circulated widely? How did this one fringe sect of Essenes living in isolation in the desert get such an early copy of the book if it had just been written? These complications argue strongly against a late date. <br /><br /><b>5) Josephus records that Alexander the Great was shown a copy of the book of Daniel when he arrived in Jerusalem.<br /></b><br />From secular history, we know that during Alexander's conquest of Tyre, he sent a letter to the Jews in Jerusalem asking for troops to help him in his conquest. The Jewish leaders refused, claiming they had vowed not to take up arms against King Darius of the Persians and could not aid Alexander. Alexander was a hothead. In fact, he was attacking the island of Tyre because they had refused his request to worship in their temple and had killed his messengers. He was so angry that he set his soldiers to throwing the remains of the mainland city of Tyre into the sea to build a causeway out to the island. In doing this, he fulfilled the prophecy of Ezekiel 26 that Tyre would be thrown into the sea and made bare like the top of a rock. The location of Tyre is a peninsula to this day because of the actions of Alexander's army.<br /><br />Everyone knew that Alexander was coming for Jerusalem next. It was only a matter of time. Yet history also records that Alexander became a great friend of the Jews, left Jerusalem unconquered, and gave Jews equal rights with other citizens in Alexandria, Egypt, which he founded. This seems like a very strange outcome. Here we have the greatest military leader the world has ever seen, who conquered the entire Persian empire and more in just 13 years. He had just come from conquering the island city of Tyre, which had stood for over 2000 years, because they insulted him. He had been denied by the Jewish leaders when he asked for their aid. Yet when he arrived in Israel in 332 BC, he didn't attack. He made peace instead. Why?<br /><br />Well, as it turns out, the story recounted by Josephus explains this strange turn of events. The high priest received a dream that instructed him to wear white robes and take a procession out to welcome Alexander as he approached. Alexander was stunned and said that he had seen the high priest in white robes in a dream back in Macedonia where he had been encouraged to take over the Persian empire and assured of victory. Alexander went into the city with the Jewish leaders and sacrificed at the temple. He was shown a copy of the book of Daniel which prophesied that a king from Greece would destroy the Persians. Alexander made peace with the Jewish people and granted them a reprieve from taxes every 7th year. He then left Jerusalem intact and moved on southward toward Egypt. <br /><br />This account has been dismissed as false, mainly because the late date for Daniel is so widely accepted, and that would mean that the book of Daniel would not have existed yet. However, the account does explain some otherwise inexplicable known facts, and we have no other reason to believe it is false. On the contrary, the Talmud agrees with the account, suggesting this was a well-known story in ancient Israel, not an invention by Josephus. <br /><br />It also makes sense that Alexander, as a student of Aristotle, would have been aware of his teacher's view that the Greek pantheon was false and there must be some Creator who was an uncaused cause of the universe. This may have made him more open to hearing about the Creator God of the Jewish people and more sympathetic to their monotheistic religious views, which most other peoples found very offensive.<br /><br />If this story is indeed authentic, it proves definitively that the book of Daniel existed at the time of Alexander the Great in 332 BC, some 170 years before it was supposedly written at the time of the Maccabees. This would then require the early date for Daniel and prove its prophetic nature.<br /><br /><b>6) The book of Daniel still contains prophecy about later events, even if we accept the late date.</b><br /><br />Even if we assume that Daniel was indeed written in 164 BC and all the events before that were actually written as history and not prophecy, Daniel offers prophecy of events after that time which have been fulfilled. As I mentioned earlier, the oldest manuscript of Daniel that still exists today dates to about 100 BC. Yet Daniel prophecies the death of Jesus which took place in 33 AD and the destruction of the 2nd temple in 70 AD.<br /><br />In Daniel 9, a prophecy is given that there will be 70 sets of 7 (sometimes translated as 70 weeks) which begin with a command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. These "weeks" are simply the word for a set of seven, and the context shows them to refer to years because of the 70 years of Babylonian captivity that are mentioned. This was in turn because of the refusal of the Jewish nation to keep the Sabbath years by refraining from plowing and planting the land every 7th year. They had not kept 70 Sabbath years, and so they were punished with 70 years of captivity in Babylon so that the land would lie fallow and receive its Sabbath years while they were away. It is in this context that Daniel is told about this set of 70 sevens. <br /><br />The 70 sevens would be composed of 7 sevens and 62 sevens and then a final seven. The temple would be rebuilt and the wall. After the 7 and 62 sevens, then Messiah would come. So this places a timeline on the coming of the Messiah. Daniel's prophecy says that the Messiah would be cut off after the 69 sevens, but not for himself. Being cut off is a judicial term, meaning a legal sentence of death, not death from injury or disease or war or old age. Yet He will die for others, not for his own crimes. After that, a prince will come to destroy the city of Jerusalem and the temple. All of this is prophesied in Daniel 9, which we know for sure predates the time of Christ. All of this happened, which we can verify from historical records.<br /><br />The exact date of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem is debated as there are a few possible options, but regardless of the exact date, the 69 sets of seven years (483 years) put the Messiah somewhere in the early 1st century AD. By one way of counting, where the years are 360 days (suggested by some Biblical passages) and the command is the one in 444 BC at the time of Nehemiah, the end of the 69 sevens lands in the spring of 33 AD, exactly when Jesus was crucified. <br /><br />Not only was the Messiah cut off exactly as prophesied, but the temple was also destroyed after that, just as Daniel said. The Roman army was led by Titus, the son of the reigning Emperor Vespasian (and thus a prince, just as Daniel prophesied). They destroyed the Jewish temple and the city in 70 AD. </p><p>So even by the late date, Daniel still contains accurate prophecy. Since it contains accurate prophecy, it must have been written by a true prophet, not a lying forger who pretended to be writing during the Babylonian captivity and who falsely claimed to be Daniel. The accuracy of the known prophecies of Daniel argues for an early date by a true prophet. Either way, the prophetic nature of the book of Daniel is evident. <br /><br />---<br /><br />In conclusion, the Bible contains information that could not have come from the mind of man. It demonstrates its divine inspiration with objective evidence. The book of Daniel provides many of these evidences that show the God of the Bible exists, that He is active in history, that He knows the future, and that He has revealed His word in the writings of the Bible.</p>Lindsay Haroldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094965953749825163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576985008275511255.post-62722050027499178972023-07-07T15:30:00.000-04:002023-07-07T15:30:03.950-04:00The Hawaiian-Emperor Chain Provides Evidence for Catastrophic Plate TectonicsHere's a breakdown of just how explanatory the Catastrophic Plate Tectonics (CPT) model is in comparison to both slow and gradual plate tectonics and the Hydroplate model. Let's take a look at the North Pacific. You'll need a map which shows the sea floor. Here's a <a href="https://earth.google.com/web/@32.75362761,-170.92402418,-7255.68780994a,9291572.95199275d,35y,0h,0t,0r?fbclid=IwAR2zmKE4MJSwDyYi6s4NqTH_0Zs4GhDx3R6svhzpiuMtCK3cQJRM3RvKVAo" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">link</a> for your convenience. Bring up this link in a separate tab or browser and follow along here or reference these pictures:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi26lRZHe6GCz1vhpP4XWy-RFKZJ-lABYBtbo9LXzJbN8tGb_h-cs7Pmf3H9t89oKr7F-kHQyoUyp48SL6v1g7d3tONCAduddepyFgKBXMGQqqZs7SaSM6Q2qcGFlje5cHwfk0ctdQT5aft-tSs36glO9E6BYy3AUo2Q_RCy0xyCWoXQgcOnhbzGCdrTwQ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="423" data-original-width="670" height="404" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEi26lRZHe6GCz1vhpP4XWy-RFKZJ-lABYBtbo9LXzJbN8tGb_h-cs7Pmf3H9t89oKr7F-kHQyoUyp48SL6v1g7d3tONCAduddepyFgKBXMGQqqZs7SaSM6Q2qcGFlje5cHwfk0ctdQT5aft-tSs36glO9E6BYy3AUo2Q_RCy0xyCWoXQgcOnhbzGCdrTwQ=w640-h404" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiZZ-Fah1mAhYDEBFRfhGSHB97o3iFrcxd46vLYm_q1V76vUOEb6glwjOFcMBJgRMwwkHKdOyqKa0omIBdAFV-7cbEf-iEp-RRWVEFRAY2RQbN7NtZuwTwmwtx5BtzkSpwXjAYiphT4wla65WnYmjtOKSSr7Ayt9ERUzevf5uIjqS0vtvA3In09VmtjSjw" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="394" data-original-width="711" height="354" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiZZ-Fah1mAhYDEBFRfhGSHB97o3iFrcxd46vLYm_q1V76vUOEb6glwjOFcMBJgRMwwkHKdOyqKa0omIBdAFV-7cbEf-iEp-RRWVEFRAY2RQbN7NtZuwTwmwtx5BtzkSpwXjAYiphT4wla65WnYmjtOKSSr7Ayt9ERUzevf5uIjqS0vtvA3In09VmtjSjw=w640-h354" width="640" /></a></div><br />The first thing you will notice about the sea floor in the north Pacific is that it shows a long line of seamounts and islands stretching from the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia, toward the south, and then going southeast to the Hawaiian islands. These are a long chain of volcanic mountains known as the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain, formed from lava flows on the sea floor.<br /><br />The conventional explanation for this chain of volcanoes is that there is a hotspot in the mantle which sends up heated plumes of magma in a particular location due to convection cycles in the mantle. The Pacific plate, one of several tectonic plates that together form the crust of the Earth, is moving across this hotspot, and this forms a series of volcanic mountains that may or may not reach the surface of the ocean to form an island.<br /><br />This conventional explanation is a good one. The Hydroplate theory does not even have an explanation for volcanism in the middle of a plate, as far as I am aware. The Hydroplate model suggests crustal plates with water chambers underneath that broke up catastrophically during the global flood and which may have moved sideways as the water was expelled from below. In that model, volcanoes occur at the margins of plates as they collide with each other. I have yet to find any reasonable explanation within this model for the existence of the Hawaiian-Emperor chain at all. The conventional model, in contrast, does fit a number of lines of evidence and at least explains the existence of this chain.<br /><br />However, there's more to this explanation. The CPT model involves rapid plate movements during the Biblical flood. In particular, at least one crustal plate subducted down into the mantle in a very short time (several weeks), setting off a catastrophic chain reaction around the globe and rapid tectonic movements that produced global flooding. The plate movements we observe today are remnants of these movements, but much slower than in the past. The conventional plate tectonics model, unlike CPT, assumes that current plate movements have been more or less constant for many millions of years at today's very slow rates.<br /><br />How could we test which of these models is more explanatory? Well, here's one way of doing that. And you can do it from your home by looking at a map.<br /><br />You have to understand that we can use the size of a volcanic mountain to estimate plate speed. If we assume a relatively constant rate of heated magma rising from this hotspot in the mantle, then the slower the plate moves, the more magma will accumulate in that spot. This forms a larger seamount. If magma continues to accumulate in the same spot, the seamount will reach the surface and become an island. If it continues even longer, the island will become larger and larger. If the plate is moving more rapidly, the seamounts will be smaller because lava did not have time to accumulate before that location on the plate moved away from the hotspot in the mantle. So how large these volcanic mountains are, and how far apart they are spaced, can tell us about the speed the plate was moving when they formed. There are going to be variations, but we want to look for overall trends.<br /><br />We know where the hotspot is today. The largest and easternmost island of Hawaii is still experiencing lava flows today. It is still over the hotspot. If you move backwards along the volcanic chain, you are looking backwards in time. Not only do current measurements of plate movement indicate this, but radiometric dating concurs (though we can debate about the exact ages).<br /><br />So let’s take a look at the chain. This is where the Google Earth link is handy because you can zoom in and rotate in order to look closer. Where the chain begins, the seamounts are all fairly small. If you compare them to the size of the largest Hawaiian island, there is a huge difference. This implies that the Pacific plate was moving much more rapidly than it does today when these sea mounts were formed. In fact, the entire chain of seamounts is much smaller than the Hawaiian islands at the end of the chain. This seems to imply rapid plate movements for most of this history, and then a profound slowing of the plate toward the end.<br /><br />The most interesting feature of this entire chain is the very abrupt change of direction. The volcanoes were forming in a southward line (indicating that the plate was moving northward) and then they abruptly begin to form toward the east and only a little south. It's a very distinct inflection point. The seamounts immediately get smaller at the same time the direction changes. Not only are these first eastward seamounts smaller, but they are farther apart. All of these indicate an increase in speed. This tells us there was an impact on the east side of the Pacific plate that accelerated it toward the west. The plate increased speed and changed direction due to this impact. The plate which impacted the Pacific plate must have been the North American plate. So we can see evidence, in the seamounts, that the North American plate has crashed into the Pacific plate and altered both its speed and direction.<br /><br />As you go from west to east (i.e. forward in time) after this impact, the seamounts grow gradually larger and closer together and then, as the speed of the Pacific plate drops off considerably, they begin to form islands. The islands grow larger and larger until you reach the largest island of all where there are still active volcanoes and slow plate movements and you have caught up to the present day. But this chain of volcanoes tells a story of much faster plate movements in the past.<br /><br />Notice that I told you this assumes a constant rate of magma rising from the mantle hotspot. We can examine our assumption here. Is it reasonable? There are only three options: Either the hotspot is growing hotter, it is growing colder, or it is staying the same. If the hotspot is staying the same, we naturally come to the conclusion that the Pacific plate was moving much faster in the past and is now moving much slower. If the hotspot is growing colder over time, then the deceleration is even greater. If the Hawaiian islands are successively larger and larger even though the hotspot is now cooler than it was, then the speed in the past was even greater and it has slowed even more than we expect from a model in which the hotspot has remained unchanged.<br /><br />The other possibility is that the hotspot is growing hotter and thus sending up more and more magma over time. This would make it possible for the plate movements to have been very slow the whole time. This is essentially the mainstream view. If the plate has been moving at a constant slow rate, then we would explain the increasing size of the islands by appealing to increasing temperature in the mantle hotspot. But that has a problem of its own. If the hotspot is growing hotter, what is causing that? And should we be concerned that it appears to be growing so much hotter than it used to be? In any event, it does not appear that these processes have always been occurring at a constant rate. Either the plate has slowed considerably or the hotspot has grown much hotter. I find the former much more reasonable for several reasons.<br /><br />In this one volcanic chain, we have evidence, not only that the crustal plates are moving, but that they moved much faster in the past. But there’s more. We saw that the North American plate crashed into the Pacific plate and changed its speed and direction. This affects not just the Pacific plate, but the North American plate as well. This is most likely the impact that pushed up the Rocky Mountains. Conservation of momentum says that if the Pacific plate accelerated rapidly due to this impact, then the North American plate must have decelerated rapidly. This abrupt stop would crumple the North American plate along its western side. Not surprisingly, there’s a mountain range there.<br /><br />These features are a lot easier to explain in terms of acceleration and deceleration of plates than if they were the result of slow, gradual processes with unvarying rates. This is just one piece of the puzzle for the CPT model. Yet it forms a handy side-by-side comparison of the competing models. <div><br />The explanation commonly offered by mainstream geology for the larger size of the Hawaiian islands compared to the older seamounts is that the older mountains have shrunk over time due to erosion and subsidence. This explanation fails on multiple points.</div><div><br />1) There's no experimental evidence for this explanation, as far as I know. It is just thrown out there as a possibility.<br /><br />2) It doesn't make sense of the similarity in size of most of the chain of seamounts. Do they shrink until they reach a certain size and then stay the same forever? Subsidence and erosion might be a potential explanation if we had a nice gradual increase in size all along the chain. Instead, we have what is supposedly tens of millions of years of seamounts that are roughly the same size, then a fairly rapid transition to much larger islands. The older north-south section is not significantly smaller than the younger east-west section.<br /><br />3) The greatest erosion should take place on islands, not seamounts. Erosion forces should be stronger for the land above the water due to wind and rain and wave action. Once an island drops beneath the waves, that should slow its shrinking considerably. This should, again, result in a more even chain. That's not what we observe.<br /><br />4) If we're suggesting that all of the islands and seamounts in the Hawaiian-Emperor chain were originally of similar size and some merely shrank due to erosion and subsidence, that simply doesn't work. If you take any of the Hawaiian islands, its footprint would cover several of the smaller seamounts in the chain. If the small volcanoes were widely spaced, it might make sense to suggest they had once been sizeable islands. But most of them could not have been that large initially because they are too closely spaced. A large mountain doesn't erode away into several small mountains. Subsidence might work if a tall mountain with several peaks sank until it appeared to be several smaller mountains, but it really doesn't look like that happened. Especially for the smaller seamounts, the ocean floor around them does not show signs of a larger mountain sinking. It appears relatively flat and undisturbed.<br /><br />5) The older seamounts are not all that eroded. They're not gently sloping and rounded off. They don't appear to be the small remnants of eroded islands, in other words.<br /><br />6) The erosion/subsidence hypothesis still doesn't account for the sharp change in direction or the drop in seamount size and increase in spacing afterward. The CPT theory accounts for all these facts at once.<br /><br />Because of these lines of evidence, the Catastrophic Plate Tectonics theory has more explanatory power than either the mainstream Gradual Plate Tectonics view or the Hydroplate Theory, at least when it comes to explaining the Hawaiian-Emperor volcanoes. This is just one way of comparing and testing models. Creation science actually does offer testable models that hold up to scrutiny.</div>Lindsay Haroldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094965953749825163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576985008275511255.post-59161783768822947662023-06-24T10:17:00.001-04:002023-06-24T10:17:41.363-04:00Homemade Granola Cereal<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5KrRRt7WqWS4VZMuPSADJYk-5p6RpXYOHWBGdBTBlAspeWwN7GyHJZCvhISQtkPHqyGynT8_wL3vmigh9ekRsdxlQOwfx5MD66yGureFVuES0z4OJLAdINwB4mNzhaLNVG16ECUQp_0iTwYAyzePIkuZc1tV792lXFwTbpm1mqNJv3wFjf64x2Ex8LzY/s4116/20230624_090127.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4116" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5KrRRt7WqWS4VZMuPSADJYk-5p6RpXYOHWBGdBTBlAspeWwN7GyHJZCvhISQtkPHqyGynT8_wL3vmigh9ekRsdxlQOwfx5MD66yGureFVuES0z4OJLAdINwB4mNzhaLNVG16ECUQp_0iTwYAyzePIkuZc1tV792lXFwTbpm1mqNJv3wFjf64x2Ex8LzY/s320/20230624_090127.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>This is a super simple recipe that makes awesome granola cereal, and then you can jazz it up with all kinds of extras. This tastes way better than any granola I have ever bought. I might be slightly addicted. It's also cheaper than store bought and very healthy, with no corn syrup or preservatives. It can be easily made gluten free (use GF oats). It takes less than 5 minutes to mix it up and then it bakes. <p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>1/2 cup coconut oil<br />1/4 cup honey<br />1/4 cup maple syrup<br />1/2 tsp salt<br />1/2 tsp ground cinnamon<br />2 tablespoons flax meal (optional)<br />1 cup sliced almonds<br />3 cups rolled oats<br /><br />Preheat the oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.<br /><br />In a microwave safe bowl, melt the coconut oil and stir in the honey and maple syrup until well mixed. <br /><br />(You can use all honey or all maple syrup, but a 50/50 combination seems to get the right flavor and texture. Honey tends to make it chewier and maple syrup tends to make it crunchier. Plus, honey has a more intense flavor, so I find the taste more balanced with half honey and half maple syrup.)<br /><br />Add the salt, cinnamon, and flax meal. Stir in the almonds and oats until all are coated evenly. Spread on the parchment paper and bake about 20 minutes, stirring halfway. Remove the pan from the oven and gently stir again, then let it cool completely. Store in an airtight container at room temperature.</p><p>For extra flavor, you can mix in all kinds of things like extra nuts (walnuts, peanuts, pecans, almonds, brazil nuts, etc), dried fruit (cranberries, blueberries, apples, cherries, apricots, raisins, dates, pineapple, and more), shredded coconut, or chocolate chips. I prefer to add extras when eating rather than stored in the granola itself. That way, everyone can choose the mix they like best. It also prevents the moisture in dried fruit from turning the granola stale or sticky.<br /><br />There are so many ways to enjoy this. Bon appetit!</p><p><br /><i>Note: This lower picture is a double batch, just out of the oven. The upper picture has dried cranberries added. That's my favorite version so far.</i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibEyF7B6E3FHoAqtQOgcBlq8OLCMCAip19PFhUADZfz-MuUBlmr2V8vrvUwElWZsmPfQfNohO-m2QER_md1xmbefahNtVAkahhSWDoxeGvqbu2jm2Gt35wNrkLX4eovn3p2mLQ0RcNAButzcrpwvcI24G5J0KUagaLtwAtCntzr55TU0d--zTDYPJzTnI/s4624/20230622_170708.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3468" data-original-width="4624" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibEyF7B6E3FHoAqtQOgcBlq8OLCMCAip19PFhUADZfz-MuUBlmr2V8vrvUwElWZsmPfQfNohO-m2QER_md1xmbefahNtVAkahhSWDoxeGvqbu2jm2Gt35wNrkLX4eovn3p2mLQ0RcNAButzcrpwvcI24G5J0KUagaLtwAtCntzr55TU0d--zTDYPJzTnI/w640-h480/20230622_170708.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>Lindsay Haroldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094965953749825163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576985008275511255.post-36471964994942478042023-05-12T18:30:00.003-04:002023-05-12T20:18:58.550-04:00Online Church is Not Being the Church<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXVcc-KovC5t28rXqqEUJrUbOjEFJq_58_ao_WoLrrhe5X0kl_KBa78H9fcpVOzDmC4Yrw7GqxMLj8ZqJd5PeCBTE-X2xg4cHe-NvSWtOlUJDTDRuQaCR2yGWlGwcCfblF7csTcKUsNHGwhxdBBUWoiS3zagQOa4I4n1y8coGZt9Lg5KS97Y5VKhif/s1280/church-4565590_1280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="853" data-original-width="1280" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXVcc-KovC5t28rXqqEUJrUbOjEFJq_58_ao_WoLrrhe5X0kl_KBa78H9fcpVOzDmC4Yrw7GqxMLj8ZqJd5PeCBTE-X2xg4cHe-NvSWtOlUJDTDRuQaCR2yGWlGwcCfblF7csTcKUsNHGwhxdBBUWoiS3zagQOa4I4n1y8coGZt9Lg5KS97Y5VKhif/w400-h266/church-4565590_1280.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Having online church services is not all bad, but it does have some major potential problems. In our impersonal, consumeristic society, it is too easy for people to stay at home on the couch and watch a screen for "church" instead of taking the trouble to actually go to church. This has become a significant issue in the last couple of years. Many of those who stayed home from church during the pandemic have not come back even though it is now mostly over. Too many have gotten lazy and no longer gather together with other believers at all.<br /><br />Of course, there are positive uses of online services too. Having sermons available for those who can't be physically present is a generally good thing. Shut-ins or people who are traveling can still watch the service. People who are looking for a new church can view some services before they attend to help them know if the teaching is Biblical. These are valuable uses of our technology.<br /><br />However, pastors and church leadership should be careful to explain that watching online services is not the same thing as being physically present in church. They need to call the people to actually attend in person, if possible. <i><b>Watching</b></i> church is not the same as <i><b>being</b></i> the church. It's better than nothing, but it's not a substitute for the corporate worship, fellowship, and accountability that actually going to church is meant to provide. <br /><br />We are physical creatures, and God has called us to physically gather to worship Him together. There is something that happens when the people of God gather together in one place, in one accord, to worship their Savior as the body of Christ. God is present in a distinct way when we gather, when we sing in praise, and when we pray together. Staying home and watching church online is a little like watching heaven remotely on a screen. Nobody wants to do that! It's just not the same experience as being there. The Bible tells us that when any two or three gather in His name, He is <i>there</i> in our midst. He is in that place. There is a glorious, awesome presence of God in the physical place where believers have come together to bring Him praise and honor. We have to gather together to get those special benefits. We come together as the church to do corporately what we cannot do alone. Alone, we are believers. Together, we are the church. And that's a powerful thing. It's not just about hearing the message or singing the songs. It's about being the body of Christ. <br /><br />In addition to that, we need the church family, and the church needs us. All of us. We need to pray for each other, bear one another's burdens, and sharpen one another as iron sharpens iron. God has a right to have our full participation and to use our spiritual gifts for the benefit of our local church body. We are not called to be consumers, but givers, encouragers, servants, teachers, and exhorters of our fellow believers. We used to have a saying in church circles that being a pew sitter is not one of the spiritual gifts, but so many people aren't even sitting in the pews any more. They're withdrawing from the body and leaving all of us poorer for it. I don't just mean monetarily, though that is also a challenge for many churches, but we're lacking the talents and labor and fellowship that those missing believers were meant to be investing in us. And they're missing what we could be investing in them.<br /><br />There's also another reason that we should be gathering physically as the church. God commands us to do so in scripture. It wasn't just a suggestion.<br /><blockquote><i>Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;) And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.</i> Hebrews 10:23-25</blockquote><p>Lacking a valid reason that one cannot attend, it is <b>disobedience</b> to sit at home and consume content instead of gathering as the church. Disobedience to God is <b>sin</b>. <br /><br />God calls us to leave our comfort zone and come together as the church, messy and uncomfortable though it may be at times. Without the church, we will be anemic Christians - weakened, impoverished, and prone to spiritual attacks. Just as the predator wants to separate the prey from its herd, our spiritual enemies want us divided, isolated, and vulnerable. This is why God instructs us to gather together and lift one another up. He knows what we need and has provided the church to meet those needs. If we neglect the provision of God, we have no one to blame but ourselves. <br /><b><br />It's time to get back to church.</b></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Lindsay Haroldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094965953749825163noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576985008275511255.post-2492506259717580312023-04-18T13:18:00.006-04:002023-04-18T13:29:12.777-04:00If Resurrection is Impossible, so is AbiogenesisA resurrection from the dead is much more likely than abiogenesis (generating life from non-life by natural processes). After all, a dead body has all of the necessary parts for life present already. It already has many proteins produced and folded correctly. It already has a genetic code built within DNA. It has phospholipid membranes already in place. It has cellular machinery. By far the biggest problem for abiogenesis is producing all of these things by chance. Just getting any functional protein without guidance would take billions of years of chance chemical reactions. A dead cell already has many proteins in place as well as all the other chemicals and parts needed for life.<div><br /></div><div>So why don't we observe resurrections all the time in nature? Why don't bacteria, for example, spontaneously return to life after dying? That's many orders of magnitude more likely than abiogenesis, yet we have never observed it. That ought to tell you that abiogenesis is impossible. Generating life from non-life, like rising from the dead, requires supernatural activity.<div><br /></div><div>---<div><br /></div><div>Note that this is a very straightforward and obvious logical argument. It will always be easier to do one step than to do that same step plus extra steps. Both abiogenesis and resurrection require turning non-life into life. That part is the same for both. But with abiogenesis, you don't have the parts present yet so you also have to build and arrange them. Thus, it is necessarily true that resurrection is easier and more likely than abiogenesis.<div><br /></div><div>What continually boggles my mind is how hard the atheists fight this very straightforward logical deduction. I've posted this argument in multiple online groups, and I continually get atheists who deny that this is true. They consider abiogenesis a "scientific" pursuit and resurrection the crazy ramblings of religious people. They refuse to consider that it is necessarily easier to animate a dead organism with all the needed parts already present than to build the parts, get all of them present at the same time and properly arranged, and then animate it. They laugh at the idea of even a microbe coming back to life and accept abiogenesis as necessary in order to avoid God as Creator. And they think they're being the rational ones.<div><br /></div><div>I can only conclude that rebellion against God forces people to descend into absurdity to avoid the obvious truth that there is a Creator to whom we owe honor and obedience. Rejecting God eventually means rejecting rationality.<br /><br /><br /></div></div></div></div></div>Lindsay Haroldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094965953749825163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576985008275511255.post-66989108971920639592023-03-20T20:50:00.002-04:002023-03-20T20:50:40.956-04:00The Biggest Mystery in the Bible<p><i>This is the lesson I taught the Children's Church class at my local church this past week. I thought others might find it useful for teaching their children as well.<br /></i><br />----------<br /><br />Today we're going to talk about the biggest mystery in the Bible. Did you know the Bible has mysteries? This one is the biggest mystery and remained a secret for thousands of years. But before I can tell you about the mystery, you need a little background information.<br /><br />First, did you know that Jesus is in the Old Testament? The New Testament tells us about Jesus being born, growing up, teaching the people, dying, and rising again. But Jesus is God, and He already existed <i>before</i> He was born. He appeared several times in the Old Testament and talked to different people. <br /><br />Let's take a look at some of those times. <br /><br />Remember when God created Adam and Eve and put them in the garden, He told them not to eat of the fruit of just one tree. So then the serpent came and tempted Eve.<br /><br /></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><blockquote>Genesis 3:6-8<i> So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. </i></blockquote><p>Now, you probably know the rest of the story. Adam and Eve disobeyed God and brought sin into the world. They had to leave the garden and the special relationship they had with God. <br /><br />But notice that God came to walk in the garden with Adam and Eve. How does God walk? Wouldn't He need a body of some kind in order to walk with Adam and Eve? Adam and Eve seem to have had a very close and personal relationship with God before sin, and He came and walked with them. <br /><br />I John 4:12 says that no one has seen God at any time. This must be talking about God the Father. No one has ever seen God the Father. But did anyone ever see Jesus? Yes. Jesus came to Earth and we know people saw Him and touched Him. The Holy Spirit is sometimes seen, but not as a man. He appears like a dove descending on Jesus at His baptism or as tongues of fire on the disciples of Jesus at Pentecost. But he's not a man. So if someone is seeing God and He looks like a man, it can't be God the Father or the Holy Spirit. It must be Jesus. So it sounds like Jesus is the one who came to walk and talk with Adam and Eve in the garden. He was there in the beginning.<br /><br />But there's more. A lot more. <br /><br />Let's go to Genesis 18 when God comes to visit Abraham.<br /><br /></p><p></p><blockquote>Genesis 18:1-22 <i>And the LORD appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day. He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing in front of him. <br />When he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth and said, "O Lord, if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree, while I bring a morsel of bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant." <br />So they said, "Do as you have said." <br />And Abraham went quickly into the tent to Sarah and said, "Quick! Three seahs of fine flour! Knead it, and make cakes." <br />And Abraham ran to the herd and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to a young man, who prepared it quickly. Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them. And he stood by them under the tree while they ate. <br />They said to him, "Where is Sarah your wife?" <br />And he said, "She is in the tent." <br />The LORD said, "I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son." And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him. <br />Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years. The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah. So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, "After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?" The LORD said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh and say, 'Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?' Is anything too hard for the LORD? At the appointed time I will return to you, about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son." <br />But Sarah denied it, saying, "I did not laugh," for she was afraid. He said, "No, but you did laugh." Then the men set out from there, and they looked down toward Sodom. And Abraham went with them to set them on their way. <br />The LORD said, "Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring to Abraham what he has promised him." <br />Then the LORD said, "Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me. And if not, I will know." So the men turned from there and went toward Sodom, but Abraham still stood before the LORD. </i></blockquote><p>After this, Abraham talks to God and asks Him if He will spare Sodom if there are still righteous people in it. He starts by asking if He will spare them if there are 50 righteous, then 45, then 40, then 30, then 20, then 10. So God promises not to destroy Sodom if there are even 10 righteous people in it. <br /><br />The text is clear that this is actually God speaking to Abraham, not just an angel. It says this was the LORD, which is the specific name of God, Yahweh. Yet He looked like a man. He even ate with Abraham. A vision can't eat food. He had to have some sort of body. </p><p>Have you ever seen a cartoon where a ghost tries to eat food and the food just plops on the floor because he has no stomach to hold it? That is what would happen if there's no physical body. But that's not what happened here. God ate food with Abraham. <br /><br />So which person of the Trinity would this be -- God the Father, God the Son, or God the Holy Spirit? This would be God the Son. He appeared as a man. This is Jesus in the Old Testament. <br /><br />Ok, so now that we know that Jesus appears as a man in the Old Testament and is identified as God, let's get back to the mystery. Remember that Jesus was prophesied throughout the Old Testament, that He would come and be God with us and save us from our sins. So the whole Old Testament is building up expectations for the Messiah. He was coming, but they had an incomplete picture of who He was. <br /><br />Take a look at Genesis 32. This takes place when Jacob, Abraham's grandson, is finally coming home to his family. His brother Esau hated him and wanted to kill him after he tricked him out of his birthright and blessing. Jacob went far away and he had been away a long time. But he's coming home and he doesn't know whether Esau is still angry with him. So he sends gifts ahead and then sends his family on ahead, and he stays alone on the other side of the river. <br /><br /></p><p></p><blockquote>Genesis 32:24-30 <i>And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he touched his hip socket, and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. <br />Then he said, "Let me go, for the day has broken." But Jacob said, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." <br />And he said to him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Jacob." <br />Then he said, "Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed." <br />Then Jacob asked him, "Please tell me your name." But he said, "<b>Why is it that you ask my name?</b>" And there he blessed him. <br />So Jacob called the name of the place Peniel, saying, "For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered." </i></blockquote><p>So Jacob wrestles with a man, but then the man says that Jacob has wrestled with God. Jacob asks the man's name, but He won't tell him. It's not time yet for anyone to know His name -- the name of the coming One. <br /><br />It happens again in the book of Judges. The parents of Samson get a special visit.<br /><i><br /></i></p><p></p><blockquote>Judges 13:2-22 <i> There was a certain man of Zorah, of the tribe of the Danites, whose name was Manoah. And his wife was barren and had no children. And the angel of the LORD appeared to the woman and said to her, "Behold, you are barren and have not borne children, but you shall conceive and bear a son. Therefore be careful and drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean, for behold, you shall conceive and bear a son. No razor shall come upon his head, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb, and he shall begin to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines." </i><br /><i>Then the woman came and told her husband, "A man of God came to me, and his appearance was like the appearance of the angel of God, very awesome. I did not ask him where he was from, and he did not tell me his name, but he said to me, 'Behold, you shall conceive and bear a son. So then drink no wine or strong drink, and eat nothing unclean, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb to the day of his death.'" </i><br /><i>Then Manoah prayed to the LORD and said, "O Lord, please let the man of God whom you sent come again to us and teach us what we are to do with the child who will be born." </i><br /><i>And God listened to the voice of Manoah, and the angel of God came again to the woman as she sat in the field. But Manoah her husband was not with her. So the woman ran quickly and told her husband, "Behold, the man who came to me the other day has appeared to me." </i><br /><i>And Manoah arose and went after his wife and came to the man and said to him, "Are you the man who spoke to this woman?" </i><br /><i>And he said, "I am." </i><br /><i>And Manoah said, "Now when your words come true, what is to be the child's manner of life, and what is his mission?" </i><br /><i>And the angel of the LORD said to Manoah, "Of all that I said to the woman let her be careful. She may not eat of anything that comes from the vine, neither let her drink wine or strong drink, or eat any unclean thing. All that I commanded her let her observe." </i><br /><i>Manoah said to the angel of the LORD, "Please let us detain you and prepare a young goat for you." And the angel of the LORD said to Manoah, "If you detain me, I will not eat of your food. But if you prepare a burnt offering, then offer it to the LORD." (For Manoah did not know that he was the angel of the LORD.) </i><br /><i>And Manoah said to the angel of the LORD, "What is your name, so that, when your words come true, we may honor you?" </i><br /><i>And the angel of the LORD said to him, "</i><b style="font-style: italic;">Why do you ask my name, seeing it is wonderful?</b><i>" </i><br /><i>So Manoah took the young goat with the grain offering, and offered it on the rock to the LORD, to the one who works wonders, and Manoah and his wife were watching. And when the flame went up toward heaven from the altar, the angel of the LORD went up in the flame of the altar. Now Manoah and his wife were watching, and they fell on their faces to the ground. The angel of the LORD appeared no more to Manoah and to his wife. Then Manoah knew that he was the angel of the LORD. And Manoah said to his wife, "We shall surely die, for we have seen God." </i></blockquote><p>So it says here that the angel of the LORD appeared to Manoah and his wife, but then this person is identified as God. This happens again and again in the Old Testament. This "angel of the LORD" is identified as God Himself, not just an angelic being. But notice that they ask His name and He won't tell them. He says it is wonderful. In some translations, it says secret. It is not something that has been revealed yet. It's a mystery. <br /><br />So this is the biggest mystery in the Bible. The Old Testament reveals that there is this person coming to be the Messiah, but they didn't know His name. <br /><br />There's yet another time this mystery is pointed out.</p><p></p><blockquote>Proverbs 30:2-4 <i> Surely I am too stupid to be a man. I have not the understanding of a man. I have not learned wisdom, nor have I knowledge of the Holy One. Who has ascended to heaven and come down? Who has gathered the wind in his fists? Who has wrapped up the waters in a garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is his son's name? Surely you know!</i></blockquote><p>This is an interesting and unusual prophecy. He says he is ignorant of something important. He's lacking some knowledge. He asks a series of questions, which can only apply to God. God is the one who controls the winds and the waters and established the ends of the Earth. But then he asks what is the name of this God and what is His Son's name. So God has a Son. This is revealed to us in the Old Testament, long before Jesus was born. But they don't know His name. It's a mystery. <br /><br />This question hangs unanswered for thousands of years. Adam and Eve walked and talked with Him. Abraham ate with Him. Jacob wrestled with Him. He told Manoah and his wife about their son who would be born. He was prophesied to save the people from their sins. He would bear their iniquities and by His stripes they would be healed. He would come from Abraham and from the line of Judah and then from the line of David. He would be a king forever. He would be pierced for their transgressions. He would be born in Bethlehem. All this and many other things had been prophesied about Him. But what was His name?<br /><br />About 2,000 years ago, the mystery was finally revealed.<br /><br /></p><p></p><blockquote>Luke 1:26-33<i> In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, "Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!" </i><br /><i>But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name </i><b style="font-style: italic;">Jesus</b><i>. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." </i></blockquote><p>So what was His name? Jesus. The most wonderful name of all time. Jesus means salvation. He came to save us from our sins. This was God's plan from the very beginning. He knew we needed a Savior. We can't save ourselves. Only God Himself could be the perfect sacrifice to take our place and be punished for our wrongdoing so that we could be forgiven. God gave us lots of information about the coming Messiah in the Old Testament so that we would know Him when He came. And finally, He came. He lived a perfect life. He died a horrible death on the cross. He rose from the dead. And now He offers us salvation if we simply trust Him. Salvation is His name. <i><b>Jesus.</b></i></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p> </p><p></p><p></p><p></p>Lindsay Haroldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094965953749825163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576985008275511255.post-24736640348824152962022-11-01T08:00:00.005-04:002022-11-01T08:00:00.192-04:00Top 3 Reasons to Believe Christianity<div>If you're a Christian, what kinds of evidence do you use when sharing the gospel with non-Christians? We all have our subjective experience of how we came to faith, but those may not convince others that Christianity is objectively true. Here are 3 objective lines of evidence that every believer should be able to share with others. These are the biggest reasons we SHOULD be Christians and why they should too.</div><div><br /></div><b>1. The God of the Bible is consistent with the cause of the universe</b><div><br />Science has shown us that the universe is not eternal and must have had an absolute beginning. Because time, matter, and space are all parts of this universe, the cause of the universe must be timeless, spaceless, and immaterial. It must also be extremely powerful and highly intelligent in order to have designed this universe. This begins to sound very much like the God of the Bible. There is much more that could be said here and many lines of evidence to back up these statements, but this is the very quick intro.<div><br /><b>2. The evidence for the actual, historical resurrection of Jesus proves Christianity is true</b></div><div><br />This is the number one evidence for Christianity. If you give your children nothing else, this is vital. Even the Apostle Paul said that if Christ is not raised, our faith is in vain. They must know and understand the evidence for the resurrection. It is on this one historical event that Christianity rests.<br />We have 4 separate eyewitness accounts in the 4 gospels that verify the resurrection event. We also have independent attestation from non-Christian sources as to the major claims of Christianity very early on and we have the writings of the early church fathers to show that Christian claims have not changed over time.</div><div> <br />There are several historical facts that even non-Christian historians agree are true based on these lines of evidence:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Jesus really did die on the cross</li><li>The tomb was empty</li><li>The disciples really believed Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to them</li><li>Christianity exploded out of early 1st century Israel based on the testimony of the apostles</li></ul></div><div><br />The best explanation for these 4 historical facts is that Jesus did actually rise from the dead. People may die for a story they believe to be true, but people don't die for a story they made up and know to be false. The apostles were in the position to know whether the resurrection actually happened and they went to their deaths without recanting. Again, there is much more to be said here, but this is the core of the issue.</div><div><br /><b>3. The morality given in the Bible is consistent with natural law</b></div><div><br />This is a very neglected line of evidence, but very useful in helping young people see that Christian morality is not unreasonable and helping them stand against the ridicule of the culture. This one is more difficult to explain in a nutshell, but we see over and over again that immorality violates our design, not just a set of arbitrary laws.</div><div> <br />For example, God commands us to abstain from sex before or outside marriage. That's not an arbitrary command. Premarital sex produces heartache, disease, poverty, abortion, and children who are raised in broken homes without a mother or father and thus are more likely to commit crimes, be promiscuous, drop out of school, and have emotional problems. Adultery produces many of the same effects, breaking up homes and harming men, women, and children in the process. These kinds of results show that extramarital sex isn't just immoral because of God's law, but because it deeply harms us by violating the way we were designed to live. We weren't meant to treat our bodies as playthings to be used as we please. Sex means more than just rubbing body parts together for fun.</div><div> <br />Our design as humans involves not only our physical design, but our emotional and spiritual design as well and immoral sex violates that design. We can see from nature that extramarital sex is harmful and that shows us that God knew what He was doing when He gave us His laws.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>There are many more lines of evidence and much more detail that could be covered for each of these, but these are the big main points every Christian should be able to explain.</i></b></div><div><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div><b><i><br /></i></b></div>Lindsay Haroldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094965953749825163noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576985008275511255.post-14128502323698321032022-10-28T16:48:00.001-04:002022-10-28T17:03:58.783-04:00Husband as Head of the Wife does NOT mean SourceIt is a common egalitarian argument to claim the husband being the head over the wife doesn't mean he's the leader or authority, but only source. That's simply not true. Some have apparently noticed that the word head is used for the source of a river and thought they could explain away the Biblical teaching that husbands are head over their wives by claiming it just means the husband is a head in the sense of a river's head is its source. There are multiple problems with this line of argument.<br /><br />First, the original word in Greek, kephale, actually means a head, like the part of your body where your face and brain are. Figurative meanings like the head of a river are secondary and derive from the literal meaning of a head on a body.<br /><br />Second, the Biblical passages in question clearly use head and body metaphors for the relationship between husband and wife, not river metaphors.<br /><br />Ephesians 5:22-33 <br /><i>Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.<br /></i><br />Note here that the analogy given is that the husband and wife are like Christ and the church. Just as Christ is the head and the church is the body of Christ, so husband is to be the head over his wife and treat her as his own body by cherishing her. So this is clearly a head/body comparison, not talking about the head of a river. Just read the context. It's clear.<br /><br />Third, we see that the very text using this head metaphor clearly states that wives are to submit to their husbands. So again, we have clear contextual evidence to show us this is about submission to authority. It doesn't make any sense for Paul to be commanding wives to be sure they originate from their husbands because he's the head and she's the river. That's not what it says. The Bible says submit. This is about authority.<br /><br />Fourth, the husband is not the source of his wife. My source is my parents, not my husband. The ONLY case where the husband was actually the source of his wife was Adam and Eve, but that doesn't apply to any other marriage. So it doesn't make sense for Paul to tell people in his day (or people in our day) that the husband is the source of his wife. If anything, that's way weirder than teaching that the husband is in authority over his wife. I mean, think about how weird it would be if Paul was really telling us that the husband is the origin and source of his wife in some way, like that she doesn't exist as a person until she marries and somehow originates from her husband. Creepy. I think I'll stick with the Biblical teaching, thanks.<br /><br />This line of argument that head only means source and not authority is just a really bad attempt to get around the clear teaching of scripture. It has been repeated so often that people just keep passing it around, but it doesn't take a scholar to see that it doesn't fit the Biblical text. <br /><br />The Bible does actually teach that husbands have authority over their wives to which the wives have a responsibility to submit. It's not an unlimited authority, obviously. Only God has unlimited authority. But an authority structure in marriage where the husband leads and the wife submits is taught in scripture.<br /><br />Lindsay Haroldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094965953749825163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576985008275511255.post-80599354209641891342022-09-12T10:17:00.003-04:002022-09-13T12:24:37.805-04:00Homosexuality Violates the Design of our BodiesHomosexuality, at its root, says that my body tells me nothing about how I should function sexually, and that I can do what I feel like rather than fulfilling the design of my sexuality which is rooted in the biology of the human body. This treats the body as if it is inconsequential and pointless - just a shell of meat that we wear rather than part of who we are. The "true self" in this view is the soul or mind or some non-physical entity that is inhabiting our bodies. The body is viewed as separate and unconnected to the true self, to be used as we please.<div><br />This mind/body dualism is actually a very low view of the body compared to the traditional Christian view, which says the body is inherently good, created by God, and part of who we are, not just a shell we inhabit. A lot of Christians today have lost this understanding, but this has been the historic Christian view since the beginning.</div><div><br />This presents a powerful way to reach those struggling with homosexual desires or similar issues (like transgenderism) with a positive message that their bodies are not irrelevant to who they are, but are good and integral parts of their being. Our bodies do have a lot to show us about who we are because they exhibit features that have a design. Behaviors that fit with our design are good and behaviors that violate our design are bad - not just morally bad, but bad for us as well.</div><div><br />Rather than a negative message that they are evil and twisted for having same-sex desires, we can present a positive message that their bodies are good. Our design tells us how we should live.</div><div><br />For example, we can study the digestive system to see what it is for and how it works. But that study also shows us good ways and bad ways of treating our bodies. If we eat nutritious food, then our bodies are helped. If we eat junk food or overeat or binge and purge or starve ourselves, these violate the way our bodies are supposed to work and cause harm. We can see that anorexia and bulimia are disorders precisely because they violate the way the body is designed to work.</div><div><br />It is exactly the same with the sexual organs. Our bodies have a way they were designed to work. They are designed as either male or female and the sexes are designed for their sexual organs to fit together and through that action to create new life. Our desires or attractions do not trump the design of our bodies. If we treat our bodies incorrectly, it causes harm.</div><div><br />This is a high view of the body that treats the body as an important part of who we are and which gives us valuable clues about how we should live so that we can flourish. Note that we do not have to rely on Christian moral teaching at this point. This is an argument from natural law, which is accessible to anyone, even if they don't believe the Bible. And that makes it easier to reach those who are not Christians.</div><div><br />It is worth noting at this point that Christian teaching, not coincidentally, is in line with what we can see in nature. This is good evidence for the truth of Christianity. Christian morality doesn't violate our design. It fits perfectly.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><i>For more arguments like this about the design of human bodies and human sexuality, check out my new book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bible-Science-Gender-Sex-Marriage/dp/B0B9QM4YPW/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3U8OTABKVHEWX&keywords=lindsay+harold&qid=1662991560&sprefix=lindsay+harold%2Caps%2C194&sr=8-1" target="_blank">The Bible and Science on Gender, Sex, and Marriage</a>.</i></div>Lindsay Haroldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094965953749825163noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576985008275511255.post-25146173884533862372022-08-15T10:52:00.002-04:002022-09-13T12:25:42.717-04:00Is Your Birth Control Abortifacient? It might be.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbl1o2Qzj7p9joym_wM-vRjlr9QN29lF9A8TYp_6l413fp7uvRRBS5rH723v95uUbEkgXcg74l7GtnytQUeCcQS98Y6L-Izj4ekFNS0FXbka60zycKl2uKve7k7HcREBgPSwbH4B_ekv9TfUOEurREqC2tu1VYuXP0Vm8FCusJe0BNuOlym9A26f7H/s1920/contraceptive-pills-849413_1920.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1107" data-original-width="1920" height="370" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbl1o2Qzj7p9joym_wM-vRjlr9QN29lF9A8TYp_6l413fp7uvRRBS5rH723v95uUbEkgXcg74l7GtnytQUeCcQS98Y6L-Izj4ekFNS0FXbka60zycKl2uKve7k7HcREBgPSwbH4B_ekv9TfUOEurREqC2tu1VYuXP0Vm8FCusJe0BNuOlym9A26f7H/w640-h370/contraceptive-pills-849413_1920.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div>For pro-life women like myself, the issue of abortion is a major moral issue. Killing a human child in the womb is a moral evil that we strongly oppose. But while the very thought of having a surgical abortion is abhorrent, many of us may not know that many of the birth control options on the drugstore shelves or available at our doctor's office and touted as purely contraceptive can also kill babies. There are pro-life women who are popping a pill every day, have an implant in their arm, or are using an IUD to prevent pregnancy and may be unknowingly aborting their own children.</div><div><br /></div><div>Which forms of birth control have this risk? The short answer is that all hormonal contraceptives currently available and all IUDs have the potential to cause early abortions by preventing a newly formed embryo from implanting in the womb. The baby then starves to death. Because there's no implantation, the woman's body never knows it was pregnant. She will never get a positive pregnancy test. She won't miss her period. But her baby died all the same.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, that's a very serious issue! I would certainly want to know if I were causing my children to die, and I'm sure you do too. So why isn't this commonly known? Shouldn't women be informed about all the risks?</div><div><br /></div><div>If you ask most ob-gyns or other doctors, they will tell you that hormonal contraceptives and IUDs are purely contraceptive. They will say they don't cause abortions, and cannot do so. However, there's a very clever trick that allows them to say this. They don't count the first few days of a baby's life. Let me explain.</div><div><br /></div><div>The evidence from science clearly shows that <a href="https://therationalabolitionist.blogspot.com/2015/01/proof-that-life-begins-at-fertilization.html" target="_blank">human life begins at fertilization</a>. When egg and sperm join, the resulting single-celled zygote is a separate and distinct individual with all the genetic material of a complete human organism and the ability to grow and develop his or her own body into adulthood. This child is already either male or female. The hair and eye color and many other traits are already set. The zygote needs only nutrients and the right environment to enable him or her to grow, just like any other child does.</div><div><br /></div><div>During the trip down the fallopian tube to the uterus, the zygote divides several times until it forms a small ball of cells called a blastocyst. Again, this blastocyst is a distinct human individual. The scientific terms like zygote, embryo, and blastocyst are just stages of growth that all humans go through just like infant, toddler, adolescent, or adult.</div><div><br /></div><div>The blastocyst is the stage that implants in the womb. This process of implantation occurs from 6-12 days after fertilization. Implantation cannot occur unless there is a living human child present. It is the blastocyst that initiates implantation. The mother's uterus has a thick, highly vascular layer of tissue called the endometrium on the inside surface and the tiny blastocyst must burrow into this tissue and attach to a blood vessel to begin forming a placenta in cooperation with the mother's tissues. The placenta is the organ that gives nutrients to the baby from the mother's blood supply and produces the hormones that will tell her body that a baby is present so that she does not shed the uterine lining through menstruation and instead begins making changes to support her growing child.</div><div><br /></div><div>Because the baby must travel down the fallopian tube and attach to the uterine lining before getting any nutrients, those first few days of life are a little rough. The egg must be large and have stores of nutrients in order to feed the growing embryo during this time period. By the time the baby gets to the uterus, he needs food. The implantation process is a time crunch to get connected in time, before precious stores of nutrients run out. </div><div><br /></div><div>Those first few days of life, before implantation, that baby is alive. Yet back in 1965, pregnancy was redefined to begin at implantation rather than fertilization. So there are 6-12 days when a woman's body contains her living child's body and yet modern doctors don't count her as pregnant because the baby hasn't implanted in the womb yet.</div><div><br /></div><div>That seems misleading, right? Why would we count pregnancy as beginning at implantation rather than the creation of the child? In times past, pregnancy was synonymous with the old-fashioned term "with child." It meant a woman was carrying a child inside her. So if she's not pregnant, you would think that means there's no baby inside her. That's the way people tend to think about it. Yet with this change of definition, people have been misled to believe that there's no baby inside her during those 6-12 days before implantation.</div><div><br /></div><div>The really startling fact about this change of definition was that it was intended to mislead people about how birth control works. You see, hormonal birth control - specifically the combination birth control pill - had just been approved for use as a contraceptive in 1960. In the 1950's, female hormones were available to treat menstrual irregularities, but not for use as a contraceptive even though it was known to work as contraception. With the advent of an effective contraceptive pill which could potentially prevent implantation also, it was argued that counting pregnancy as beginning at implantation would be helpful in encouraging the use of the new birth control pill among women. <br /><br />Even Wikipedia (not exactly known for its honesty on controversial matters) admits that this was the motivation:</div><div><br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;">"In 1959, Dr. Bent Boving suggested that the word "conception" should be associated with the process of implantation instead of fertilization. Some thought was given to possible societal consequences, as evidenced by Boving's statement that "the social advantage of being considered to prevent conception rather than to destroy an established pregnancy could depend on something so simple as a prudent habit of speech." In 1965, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) adopted Boving’s definition: "conception is the implantation of a fertilized ovum.""</div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beginning_of_pregnancy_controversy?fbclid=IwAR2hcn5egt3FfbQ0UCub6FD1hf9ynweGS7BSnYfBXk--SPsrPOKWP7K93DY" target="_blank">Wikipedia "Beginning of pregnancy controversy"</a> </div></blockquote><div><br />In short, it was considered "prudent" to tell women that the birth control pill only prevents pregnancy and not that it can end the life of a child. In order to do that, they defined pregnancy to begin at implantation so as to hide the fact that human children who had not yet been implanted could be killed by this new "contraceptive." If pregnancy has not yet begun because the baby has not implanted, then there was no abortion. Thus, preventing implantation is not counted as abortion on a technicality, due to this faulty definition of pregnancy, despite the fact that it does kill a human individual.</div><div><br /></div>The potential for ending young human lives with hormonal contraceptives has been known for decades and covered up with misleading definitions. There are several other problems with hormonal contraceptives as well, but this is the most serious moral issue. The hormones in birth control make the uterus inhospitable for a baby to implant and thus can cause an early abortion by preventing implantation.<div> <br />In fairness, this is not the main mode of action. There are three mechanisms by which hormonal birth control works. The main mechanism is to prevent ovulation. If no egg is released, there can be no conception. This mechanism is truly contraceptive by preventing conception. The secondary mechanism is to thicken cervical secretion to impede sperm motility. If sperm do not reach the egg, then no conception occurs. However, the third mechanism works as a backup in case the first two mechanisms fail (which they sometimes do). The uterine lining is thinned by the hormones and becomes less able to care for an implanting child. A thin lining means less blood flow and difficulty in connecting to a blood vessel. If an egg is released and fertilized, then the new child will usually fail to implant in the womb. The baby then starves and dies. There is no way of knowing which is happening each month for any particular woman.</div><div><br />Here are some secular health sites that discuss the mechanisms for hormonal birth control. It is well-known that the uterine lining is affected and may prevent implantation. In fact, one of the main beneficial effects they tout for birth control pills is that they thin the uterine lining and produce lighter periods or even none at all in some women. A thinner uterine lining means a baby cannot implant and get the nutrients he needs.</div><div> <br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: justify;">"The hormones in the Pill can also sometimes affect the lining of the uterus, making it difficult for an egg to attach to the wall of the uterus."<br /></span><a href="#" style="text-align: justify;">Kids Health</a></blockquote><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: justify;">"Birth control pills contain synthetic hormones that work to prevent pregnancy. These hormones can stop ovulation and make it more difficult for sperm to enter your uterus. They can also alter your uterine lining, which can reduce the likelihood of implantation."</span></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><a href="#" style="text-align: justify;">Healthline</a></blockquote><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="text-align: justify;">"The pill also thickens cervical mucus so the sperm cannot reach the egg. It makes the lining of the uterus unreceptive to the implantation of a fertilized egg."</span></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="#">HealthyWomen</a></div></div></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="#"></a></div></div><div><div><br />The abortifacient potential of the combination birth control pill is shared by all hormonal contraceptives because they all contain the same progestin hormone that thins the uterine lining. This includes the regular birth control pill, the mini pill, the implant, the ring, the patch, the depo shot, and hormonal IUDs. All of these have the same mechanisms. They all contain progestin. They all thin the uterine lining. They can all prevent a human embryo from implanting in the womb.</div></div><div><br /></div><div>It's not just hormonal birth control that can be abortifacient though. The copper IUD (Paraguard) can also prevent implantation and thus kill children. There are two types of IUDs - hormonal and copper. The hormonal type works just like other hormonal contraceptives. The copper one is often chosen by women specifically because it doesn't have the female hormones, with their sometimes harmful side effects. Yet the abortifacient side effect remains.</div><div><br />The copper in the copper IUD does kill sperm as the primary mechanism, but it also inflames the lining of the uterus and makes it inhospitable to an embryo, if fertilization were to occur. It does appear that preventing fertilization occurs more often, but killing an embryo can occur on occasion. Again, we don't know how often each mechanism is occurring in any particular woman.</div><div><br /></div><div>Take a look at these scholarly sources that verify that all IUDs can be deadly to a human embryo:</div><div><br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;">"All IUDs induce a local inflammatory reaction that disturbs the functioning of the endometrium and myometrium and changes the microenvironment of the uterine cavity. Moreover, these effects alter signaling between uterus and ovary. The entire genital tract seems affected, at least in part because of luminal transmission of fluids accumulating in the uterine lumen. Copper or progesterone-releasing IUDs may attenuate or accentuate the inflammatory response, disturb the physiology of the gametes in the female genital tract, or <i>destroy the viability of the embryos or endometrial receptivity to implantation</i>." (Emphasis added)</div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8972502/?fbclid=IwAR3KUuMzXFSYNN98DZOA4Gjqv15ZodV3AGckeE_cZQf8-hwOBlm-lzuxDag">https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8972502/</a></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;">"All intrauterine devices (IUDs) that have been tested experimentally or clinically induce a local inflammatory reaction of the endometrium whose cellular and humoral components are expressed in the tissue and the fluid filling the uterine cavity. ... In the human, the entire genital tract appears affected due to luminal transmission of the noxa that accumulates in the uterine lumen. This affects the function and viability of gametes, decreasing the rate of fertilization and <i>lowering the chances of survival of any embryo that may be formed</i>, before it reaches the uterus." (Emphasis added)</div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17531610/?fbclid=IwAR1hZEWEaZp7v-bSCS70e2oI9gmHwmZA9lKehPnjZ6umFuUzy2gRfnohrog">https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17531610/</a></div></blockquote><div><br />Note that you have to read the fine print carefully on this issue because a lot of resources will tell you that IUDs are not abortifacient because the <i>primary mechanism</i> is to prevent fertilization. While it's true that the primary mechanism prevents fertilization, an occasional abortion is ignored, yet is very much an important moral issue that should be considered. They skip over that part on purpose in order to persuade women to use such devices. If you look at the scientific literature, they do admit that IUDs, including the copper one, can kill an embryo if fertilization does occur.</div><div><br /></div><div>If we believe every human life is sacred, then we need to show that in our actions. I could never take hormonal contraceptives or use IUDs because of the risk of killing my child. There are other ways to prevent pregnancy that don't have this moral stain.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, it should be mentioned here that there are sometimes other uses of female hormones besides contraceptive use. The birth control pill and other female hormones are sometimes used to regulate a woman's cycle, treat PCOS, raise abnormally low estrogen levels, or similar medical uses. This is distinct from using these hormone treatments as contraception. It might be the same pill in a lot of cases, but the reason for use is very different. </div><div><br /></div><div>Still, these women need to be aware of the risks of causing an early child death when they use these hormonal treatments in order to make an informed decision. If the hormone treatment is needed, they may want to use a barrier method as a backup, to be sure to prevent fertilization. Or they may want to look at other options for treatment. If they're past childbearing age or otherwise infertile, this may not even be an issue for some women. But the information should be available so that they understand the risks. There's also a difference in the morality of taking a necessary medical treatment that has a small risk of causing an abortion versus taking hormonal contraceptives for their contraceptive purpose and taking on that risk of abortion when there is no medical necessity for the woman. These factors take some careful moral reasoning and should not be ignored.<br /><br />There is one more objection that some will use to argue for these birth control methods. It goes like this. A large fraction - <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170613101932.htm" target="_blank">estimated from 10-40%</a> - of human embryos will die naturally even without these birth control methods. In fact, they will even claim that since these methods prevent so many fertilization events, the total number of babies dying goes down. Yet this does not justify occasionally killing human babies. </div><div><br /></div><div>When deaths occur naturally, that's tragic, but we aren't responsible for them. People dying of natural causes does not make it okay to kill them, either intentionally or through negligence. When we intervene to control fertility by choosing methods which can be deadly to some babies, we are morally responsible for the outcomes in ways that don't apply to natural deaths. <br /></div><div><br /></div><div>As an analogy, suppose there was a nursing home that cared for the elderly, but occasionally gave some of them a lethal injection. Yet the rest of the time, they such a great job at giving the rest of the patients excellent care that, compared to other nursing homes, their death rate was a little lower overall. Would you consider that a good facility? I would hope not. Saving some lives with great care doesn't mean they can now kill a few people. They don't have that right.</div><div><br /></div><div>Using these abortifacient birth control methods is a similar situation with the statistics. They might prevent some natural deaths by preventing the fertilization in the first place, but they also cause deaths. And because we intervened to use the method, we are responsible for the deaths we cause.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, for many of you, you didn't know. You weren't intending to kill any babies. And you're probably upset that no one has told you this before. It's not right that this information is kept from women with sneaky definitions designed to conceal the truth. </div><div><br /></div><div>But now you know. You're now responsible for what you know and what you do with that information.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Lindsay Haroldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094965953749825163noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576985008275511255.post-86856963440448144102022-08-13T13:45:00.001-04:002022-09-13T12:27:24.542-04:00Egalitarianism is a Step Toward Acceptance of HomosexualityEgalitarianism is the gateway drug to acceptance of homosexuality. Once you accept that men and women are interchangeable in their marriage roles, why not in the bedroom?<div><br />If men and women have no specific roles in marriage such that the woman is to have certain responsibilities because she is the female and the man is to have certain responsibilities because he is the male, then why do you need one of each sex? Some might say that you need a male and female to produce children, but fewer and fewer see any reason why marriage and children are connected. If we accept that a marriage need not be open to children, then why does the ability to create children form a requirement for marriage?</div><div><br />It is also very notable that every church denomination that has accepted homosexuality has first adopted egalitarianism and female pastors and they use the same arguments for both positions. If "there is no male or female in Christ" means men and women are interchangeable and have no difference in roles, but should be treated identically in every respect, then that means we can't tell the difference between men and women when it comes to what marriage is either.</div><div><br />The two positions are logically connected, not because egalitarianism entails acceptance for homosexuality, but because acceptance of homosexuality entails egalitarianism. If you accept homosexuality as normal and healthy, then you necessarily accept egalitarianism.</div><div><br />Egalitarianism is the premise that men and women are not complementary, or at least that they don't need to be - that there is no design such that men and women are fundamentally different in complementary ways. There's no requirement that a healthy relationship requires a woman who is feminine and a man who is masculine under this view. Egalitarianism claims that the man and woman can act exactly the same, with the same responsibilities as one another, or that the woman could hold the masculine roles while the man holds the feminine roles. It doesn't matter how they do it, in this view. There's no proper roles. They don't have to complement one another. A union of two sames is just as normal and good.</div><div><br />Homosexuality is a further step that claims even their bodies need not be male and female. But you have to accept that there is no complementary design of males and females in order to accept that a healthy relationship could include two people of the same sex. You have to start with egalitarianism in order to get to acceptance of homosexuality. Egalitarianism lowers the activation energy necessary to accept homosexuality, if you will (to use a chemistry analogy).</div><div><br />If you believe that males and females are complementary by design, each having attributes throughout their design that provide something the other needs and lacks, then homosexuality is dead in the water. It could not possibly be healthy or proper. But you're already a lot closer to accepting homosexuality as a valid and healthy type of relationship if you don't see any reason that men and women have a complementary design that shows us their proper roles in the relationship.</div>Lindsay Haroldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094965953749825163noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576985008275511255.post-46636794470253473692022-02-11T16:38:00.002-05:002022-02-11T16:45:23.048-05:00Best Banana Bread<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjAbzj6lyOChTKusxKFZyVbtXHdeQIqLj4lf63LlILI8IeYBuLY6KFeUIKih3MgaxCT-npoypotipwiJx71DCNAen4XRoTzKxm7aq3rkKkA98RIg0emAJp4tswv7IEAu_tn9rOHxOgqV5SYgXsv_4VsiFbh3LqnwbWsiPgYUwxqx-ahfbsh1St7Y4hE=s4032" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjAbzj6lyOChTKusxKFZyVbtXHdeQIqLj4lf63LlILI8IeYBuLY6KFeUIKih3MgaxCT-npoypotipwiJx71DCNAen4XRoTzKxm7aq3rkKkA98RIg0emAJp4tswv7IEAu_tn9rOHxOgqV5SYgXsv_4VsiFbh3LqnwbWsiPgYUwxqx-ahfbsh1St7Y4hE=s320" width="320" /></a></div>This recipe makes the best banana bread ever! I was never a fan of banana bread until this recipe. I even won 1st prize at our local fair for this banana bread. It can be made into loaves or muffins easily, and it disappears quickly around here. <br /><br />This is a great way to use up overripe bananas. If you're a mom, you know how that goes. One week you can't keep bananas in stock because the kids eat them constantly, so you buy more only to have them sit there until they turn brown because nobody wants bananas. This is how you turn those unwanted bananas into a treat they will eat.<p></p><p><br /><br />1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened<br />2 cups sugar<br />4 eggs<br />5-6 overripe bananas, mashed (about 2 cups)<br />1 teaspoon salt<br />2 teaspoons baking soda<br />1 cup white flour<br />1 cup whole wheat flour<br />2-3 tablespoons ground flax seed (optional)<br />1 cup chopped walnuts (optional, but highly recommended)<br />4 ounces cream cheese, cut into small pieces (optional)</p><p>Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Stir together butter and sugar until well-blended. Mix in eggs. Mash bananas and add them immediately. You don't want to mash the bananas until you're ready to add them or they will turn brown and oxidized. Also, don't mash them to death. You don't want banana soup. I use a pastry blender to mash/cut the bananas. You want small pieces and some mush. It adds to the texture and keeps it flavorful.<br /><br />In a small bowl, mix together the salt, baking soda, flours, and ground flax seed (if desired). You can use all white flour, all wheat flour, or a mix of the two. I prefer half and half for the best taste and texture that is hearty without being too dense. The ground flax seed adds a mild, nutty taste and some healthy fiber and omega-3's.<br /><br />Stir the flour mixture into the wet ingredients. Mix in the chopped walnuts, if you're using them. I like mine very finely chopped. Last, stir in the cream cheese pieces, if you want them. I usually don't do the cream cheese, but I have done it occasionally. <br /><br />Pour the batter into the greased pans. This recipe makes 24 standard muffins or 2 loaves (or 1 loaf and 12 muffins, if you can't decide). Bake for 30-35 minutes for muffins or 60-70 minutes for loaves. It's done when a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Don't under bake and, actually, a little extra baking won't hurt. I usually aim for about 35 minutes for muffins because I like to let mine get a little extra brown and toasted on top. The muffins are moist enough that this does not dry them out. <br /><br />If you add the cream cheese, you'll want to store the banana bread in the fridge. Without the cream cheese, it can be covered and stored at room temperature. <br /><br />I also reheat muffins in the toaster to give them a slightly toasted crust on the outside and leave them soft and moist on the inside. These warm, toasted muffins are great dipped in milk (like maybe, in a cereal bowl). The bread slices are better untoasted and warmed slightly in the microwave. If you don't add cream cheese pieces, you can still spread cream cheese on the bread when you eat it, if you want to. Enjoy!</p>Lindsay Haroldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094965953749825163noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576985008275511255.post-61091573281159711002022-01-31T19:53:00.002-05:002022-01-31T19:53:59.877-05:00Easy Salmon Patties<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEje68pSk1pnb-HBLOJkocw3ZX_5jkIgsmHMrzVffg2vIMPBkTvQEg9mpFClT9WGjDmUnU0h2xbHS2RjX1v5jVR2flCpEPrPuzI9ifeK6TyKoRGVEl71sCd8GyNAFsZvWny9HoOFG4AQlfUOS1VjUp9qepCtxT3-IE6x5CNB8dLx2s4idT7bbxsy66Hs=s4032" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEje68pSk1pnb-HBLOJkocw3ZX_5jkIgsmHMrzVffg2vIMPBkTvQEg9mpFClT9WGjDmUnU0h2xbHS2RjX1v5jVR2flCpEPrPuzI9ifeK6TyKoRGVEl71sCd8GyNAFsZvWny9HoOFG4AQlfUOS1VjUp9qepCtxT3-IE6x5CNB8dLx2s4idT7bbxsy66Hs=w200-h150" width="200" /></a></div>Salmon patties are an old-fashioned, Southern food. These salmon patties are flavorful and super easy to make. They're also a great source of omega-3's. Add cornbread and beans for a complete meal.<br /><br /><i><br /></i><p></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p><i><br />10 minutes prep time<br /></i><i>8 minutes cook time<br /></i><i>Makes about 6 servings</i></p><p>1 (14.75 oz) can of cooked salmon<br />1 egg<br />1/4 cup real mayonnaise<br />3/4 cup Italian bread crumbs<br />Pinch of salt<br /></p><p>Drain the liquid from the salmon and place meat in a mixing bowl. Remove vertebrae and skin, if desired. You can leave these in and eat them, but I prefer not to. Flake the salmon with a fork. Mix in the rest of the ingredients until fully blended. You can also add a little chopped onion, if you want. Form into thin patties, about 3/8 inch thick and 3-4 inches in diameter. Add an extra tablespoon of mayo, if needed to form patties that will stick together.<br /><br />Cover the bottom of a large skillet with a thin layer of olive oil or canola oil and preheat on medium high heat until a drop of water will sizzle in it. This can be an iron skillet (recommended) or any skillet that can be preheated while empty. Bonus points if it has a lid. I have a large anodized aluminum non-stick pan that works great for this. Do NOT use teflon-type non-stick pans. They are unsafe to preheat or use with higher heat.<br /><br />Place the salmon patties gently in the pan, laying them away from you so that any splashing of the oil will not splash toward you. Cover with a lid. Fry for 3-4 minutes, until the bottom side is golden brown, and turn over. Fry an addition 3-4 minutes on the second side, until browned. Drain on a warmed plate covered in dry paper towels.<br /><br />Serve the salmon patties with buttered cornbread and your choice of beans (pinto, great northern, navy, red, etc). Garnish with a little mayo, if desired. Enjoy!</p>Lindsay Haroldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094965953749825163noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576985008275511255.post-38316580632143857362022-01-13T12:52:00.004-05:002023-01-02T18:46:34.049-05:00Playing God with Human Reproduction: The Immorality of IVF TechnologiesHumans are sacred. The creation of humans is sacred. Children are designed to be formed from the act of sexual intimacy between a husband and wife. When you take the conception of the child outside the marital union and involve third parties (doctors, technicians, etc), you are separating things that God designed and intended to be kept together - sex, marriage, and children. Creating a child in a lab is as much a deviation from God's plan as creating that child through fornication or rape. The child, of course, is just as valuable, regardless of the circumstances of their conception. But we should recognize that an injustice has been done to the child in these cases. <div><br /></div><div>Every child is made in the image of God and has natural rights. But we violate the natural law when we take conception outside the marital sexual union. It is unfair to children, it treats them as property, and it misuses the sexual design God gave us.<div><br /><b>Killing Children</b></div><div><b><br /></b></div><div>The most serious and obvious problem with in-vitro fertilization is that it commonly results in the intentional killing of human children. We see a lot of dehumanization of embryos created through IVF. They only get implanted if they're judged to be healthy enough. Clinics discard embryos that have genetic defects or "extra" embryos. If too many embryos implant, the babies are "reduced" (i.e. some are killed). These are human children we are talking about, and it is common practice to create more than can be implanted or carried and kill the rest. It's not okay to kill a few babies to get one to hold.</div><div><br />The IVF process also provides opportunity for eugenics and further dehumanization of children. If you want a boy, they can discard the girls for you, or vice versa. "Extra" embryos are commonly frozen for later use (notice the wording - they are there to be used), which increases their risk of damage or death. So we are placing human children in dangerous situations for the convenience of adults, so they can be used as their parents see fit.<br /><br />Freezing embryos is a risky process. Not only can the freezing itself cause damage or death to a human child in this way, but there's no guarantee that the parents will be able to gestate the child later or that they will choose to, even if they can. People most often freeze embryos in case their current IVF cycle fails, but it if doesn't fail, they may or may not ever implant those frozen embryos. There are currently nearly a million frozen embryos in storage. The vast majority will likely never be given a chance to develop and be born. Many are donated to science, to be experimented on as if they were not living human beings. Others are discarded directly. Some are "donated" like unwanted clothes or trinkets at a thrift shop. At least they get to live. But what are we doing to their psyche when they find out their own parents gave them away?<br /><br /><b>Eugenics</b></div><div><b><br /></b>There has also been talk of genetic tampering with embryos to fix genetic defects or imperfections. This is currently something science is capable of doing. This is not decades down the road. We can do this now, with technology available today. In the very near future we may have designer babies that have been genetically modified to the parents' specifications. You may be able to pick your child's height, eye and hair color, athletic ability, intelligence, and so on. It will certainly be possible to eliminate children with genetic conditions like Down syndrome, Turner syndrome, Celiac disease, Autism or even just nearsightedness or hearing impairment. After all, if children are products designed to fulfill the desires of adults, the customer should be happy with their purchase, right? Nobody wants to spend all that money and get a broken child. This is the mentality that IVF leads to, and we are already seeing it today.<br /><br />We have to remember that children are people, not a collection of traits designed to make their parents feel good. Treating them as products to be manufactured to specification or discarded when they are not wanted is dehumanizing. It's not a coincidence that people tend to dehumanize human children when they play God in creating them. None of this is possible without IVF first being accepted and normalized. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Destroying the Family</b></div><div><b><br /></b>IVF also allows for any number of further deviations from God's design for families. The biological parents need not be the parents who intend to raise the child, for example. The biological parents may not have even met one another, much less had love or a marriage covenant. With sperm or egg donation, the child is being deprived of their biological heritage on purpose. Homosexual couples use IVF in order to create custom children since their unions are naturally infertile. Surrogacy depends on IVF. <br /><br />Sperm and egg donation is immoral. Children have a right to know their biological parents. It actively harms children when we deprive them of their biological heritage. They need to know such things as whether diabetes or heart disease or cancer runs in the family because that's important to their own health care. They need to know whether the person they're dating might be a lost sibling with the same donor father or mother. But more than that, they need to know where they came from and who their parents are. They deserve to be loved by the people who gave them their nose and eyes and whose smile they bear. They need to hear how they look like their grandma or how they have daddy's chin when they are growing up. This gives children a vital understanding of who they are that is missing when their biological parents have been stripped from them. Many adopted and donor-conceived children feel this loss as an ache inside them to know where they came from and who their biological parents are. It is a tragedy when a child loses their parents to accident or disease or abandonment. Why would we impose that tragedy on them on purpose? We don't have that right. <br /><br /><b>Surrogacy </b></div><div><br />Let's talk a little bit more about surrogacy as well. Surrogacy compounds the dehumanization of the child by also treating women as mere incubators for growing a child. It is bad for both women and children. Gestation is not just a biological process. It is highly emotional and spiritual as well. The bond between mother and child that develops during gestation is completely ignored in surrogacy. At birth, a baby already knows the mother's voice and heartbeat and needs her specifically. I have seen this for myself at the births of my own children who knew and were soothed by the sound of my voice, above the voices of others in the room, when they were mere minutes old. They knew me. They wanted me. No one else would do. Studies have shown that babies learn in the womb. There's a sacred bond between mother and child that develops during gestation. Yet with surrogacy, the child is taken from the only mother she knows at birth. This is highly traumatic for an infant. It has been termed "the primal wound." We should not be intentionally causing trauma to babies so that adults can obtain a child on demand.<br /><br />There is also a very serious problem that no one wants to talk about when we give children to people who are not their natural parents. There's a certain connection and investment that happens with natural parents that tends to help prevent child abuse. While it is certainly possible for natural parents to abuse their children, it is actually fairly rare. Most abused children are abused by boyfriends or girlfriends of their parents, step-parents, more distant relatives, or unrelated caretakers, not their natural parents. In fact, the mere fact of biological relatedness is not necessarily protective if the child was not created in the natural way and raised by those biological parents. This is a major reason that we carefully screen foster parents and adoptive parents (or at least try to) to be sure they are capable of caring for the child properly and will not be abusive. We don't generally just hand children to strangers without any sort of vetting process. One major exception to this is with surrogacy. <br /><br />As it stands now, almost anyone can buy a child through surrogacy, with no one checking to be sure they aren't neglecting or abusing that child. There have been a number of cases in recent years where children were being harmed after being obtained through surrogacy. In one notable case, a mentally handicapped man who was not married and was already caring for elderly parents alone had obtained several infants within a short period of time through surrogacy and could not care for them adequately, but little was done since he was their biological father. In another case, a disabled child who had been obtained via surrogate was being denied life-saving medical care by the biological parents who did not want to raise the child while the surrogate who carried him wanted him and was being denied the chance to save his life. There have been multiple cases of biological parents demanding that surrogates abort a disabled child before birth or abandoning them once they are born. Again, we see dehumanization because they're treating the child as a product to be manufactured to specification and they want a product that is not defective. It is also common practice to hand children over to homosexual couples or single parents through surrogacy and thus intentionally deprive them of a home with a mother and father.<br /><br />There is also the problem of the rights of surrogates being trampled. Many are poor women in countries like India who carry a child for money. This womb-for-hire commerce has some serious problems. If a natural mother plans to give up her infant for adoption, she has every right to change her mind after the birth. Women often change their mind when their child is born because there is a strong emotional bonding that takes place during childbirth. Yet a surrogate is usually not given this option. She can be strongly bonded to the child, yet the child will be taken from her to be given to people she often does not know and cannot be sure will care for the child properly. In several cases, surrogates have been pressured to abort a child for developmental problems and refused and then are required to hand that child over to the same parents who wanted that child dead. In some cases, the intended parents refuse the child due to developmental problems and leave an impoverished surrogate with a child she can't afford to raise, but yet she hates to give up to a foster system. If a surrogate accidentally becomes pregnant with her own child during the surrogacy process, this may not be realized or, if it is, she may be forced to hand her own biological child over to the commissioning parents until the legal issues are worked out.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Clinic Mistakes</b><br /><br />There are so many serious problems with surrogacy and other uses of IVF technology. Even when a married couple intends to produce and gestate their own biological child and they don't kill extra embryos, mistakes can occur and the wrong egg or sperm can be used. What do you do when your wife is carrying another man's child because of a mistake like this? You don't have this problem with the natural delivery method.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Health Problems</b><br /><br />There is also the issue of health concerns for children. Babies produced by IVF also have a higher rate of embryo death and a higher rate of birth defects or other health problems. More than half of IVF cycles fail. So they're creating and implanting babies that we don't know can be carried successfully. They may be implanting those babies in a womb that cannot care for them. Of course, babies can also die from natural causes when IVF is not used. Some couples have repeated miscarriages, for example. But that's not something we humans are causing. It's a natural outcome. When we take it on ourselves to control the process of conception and implantation, we also own the outcomes in ways that don't apply to natural processes.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Financial Concerns</b><br /><br />In addition to the above concerns, there is the issue of money. Not only is IVF extremely expensive (and therefore difficult to justify given the number of existing children who need homes), but that money is given to doctors and reproductive clinics who are discarding embryos, sending them to be experimented on, or freezing them until some future date that may never come. Even if a couple does not discard their extra embryos and does not freeze their children for a later date, they're still funding an entity that does. The money they pay for their "ethical" IVF is keeping the doors open for clinics that mistreat other embryos.</div><div><u><br /></u></div><div><b><u>The Root of the Problem</u></b><br /><br />The problems of IVF go beyond these more obvious issues into the depths of what sex and procreation mean. I don't think God ever intended for us to separate the creation of children from the marital act and involve third parties like doctors and technicians. I understand that it is a natural and good desire to want your own biological children, but good desires cannot be rightfully fulfilled outside God's rightful means. It's a good desire to want sex, but we have to fulfill that good desire only in marriage because that is the proper way. It is the same with bearing children. We have to stick to God's way. The tragedy of infertility does not justify taking matters into our own hands or inflicting harm on children. Children are a gift from God, not an entitlement. <br /><br /><b>Sex and Reproduction are Sacred</b><br /><br />Sex, marriage, and childbearing are all an interconnected web by God's design. They are sacred because they mean something more than just the sheer biological facts. Sex isn't just a pleasurable rubbing together of body parts as our society claims. It has meaning. A sacred meaning. Similarly, the creation of a new life is not just a matter of two cells merging to start a new life. It has sacred meaning. We tamper with that at our peril.<br /><br />Part of the sacredness of procreation is the mystery and symbolism that God gave us in sex itself and how it is meant to bring husband and wife together to become one flesh and through that union to create new life. The union of husband and wife symbolizes Christ and the church, as we know, but I think we often fail to understand how deep the imagery goes. During the marital act, the husband gives, emptying himself into the wife, and she takes what is given and gives back the fruit nine months later. Similarly, Christ emptied Himself, pouring out His life on the cross. We, the church, take what is given, and bear fruit - not only in our own lives, but in others we bring to Christ. Our biology means something much deeper than we realize. Christ creates new life that will last forever by unity with us just as we create new lives that will last forever through our marital unity.<br /><br />When we create children in a petri dish, without sex and that union between husband and wife, we are destroying the pattern God gave us which points to Him. We are taking that which is sacred and treating it as if we could re-design and re-purpose it for our own ends, in violation of the Creator. We are treating the physical as the only reality, and ignoring what it means.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>The Tragic Results of Violating God's Plan</b><br /><br />It's no surprise that when start playing God with our reproduction, lots of evil results. That's why we have hundreds of thousands of frozen embryos - human children - stored in freezers around the country with little hope of ever having a life. That's why we have embryos discarded as "extras" with no regard for their intrinsic value as human beings who bear the image of God. That's why doctors can so casually suggest a "reduction" if too many embryos implant. That's why it's such a mess when doctors inadvertently use the wrong sperm or mix donor eggs with donor sperm and create a child with biological parents who have never even met and who will not be raising the child together. That's why we have children born from donor sperm who will always wrestle with the heart-rending question of "Why did daddy not want to know me?" That's why we have people commissioning a child through surrogacy who think nothing of aborting or abandoning their biological child when he's "defective." <br /><br />Ignoring the sacredness of reproduction means denying the sacredness of our humanity and treating the physical as all there is. When we deny that we are more than physical beings and think we can manipulate human creation to our own ends, we deny the intrinsic value of ourselves and our children. This leads to many abuses, but most commonly the children are the ones most harmed. Keeping the God-given connections between sex, marriage, and children means valuing humans as made in the image of God and therefore designed to be created according to God's plan. The mentality of IVF is that humans are not sacred, but only flesh that can be manipulated and repurposed as we desire. <br /><br />These many serious problems I have outlined arise, not as occasional, unrelated bugs in the process, but as intrinsic features because of the wrong worldview. There are systemic problems with IVF technologies because the underlying worldview is false. The fruit of IVF is rotten because the tree is rotten. </div></div><div><br /></div>Lindsay Haroldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094965953749825163noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576985008275511255.post-15010440190365791672021-12-04T16:10:00.000-05:002021-12-04T16:10:00.890-05:00God used Alexander the Great to Accomplish His WillIf you want to be amazed at how God works through history, here are some interesting facts. Note that God didn't just work through Biblical history and the Jewish people. He works through all kinds of people and in all places and times to accomplish His will.<br /><br />The Bible has several interesting prophecies that have to be mentioned here as background. First, there's Psalm 22 in which a public death is described via piercing hands and feet, a gloating crowd, thirst, and bones out of joint. This is fulfilled 1,000 years later when Jesus Christ is crucified. But at the time David writes this psalm, there was no such thing as crucifixion yet. It hadn't been invented.<div><br />Secondly, Ezekiel 26 prophesies the destruction of Tyre in great detail. The city walls would be destroyed and the city would be thrown into the sea and scraped clean like the top of a rock. Some of the fulfillment occurred when Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to the city and destroyed the part of the city found on the mainland, but part of the city was found on an island off the coast. Destroying the island portion of the city awaited a later fulfillment.<div><br />Third, Daniel 7 and 8 predict the rise of a great empire after the Medo-Persian empire that will destroy it. In particular, Daniel 8 predicts that this empire will be Greek and that the first king will grow to great power very quickly, then be suddenly cut off in the height of his power followed by a division of the kingdom into 4 main kingdoms that will not have the strength of the original.</div><div><br />So let's see how these prophecies are all intertwined in the life of one remarkable man: Alexander the Great.</div><div><br />Alexander the Great became king of Macedonia in Greece at age 20 and consolidated Greece under his banner. Shortly thereafter, he began conquering neighboring lands. In 332 BC, he approached the city of Tyre and asked to make a sacrifice in their temple, which was on the island. The leaders of Tyre refused him and killed his messengers. Alexander was enraged at this response and set out to completely destroy Tyre. The mainland portion of the city was still mostly in ruins at this time from the ravages of Nebuchadnezzar some 250 years earlier. The island was extremely well fortified, with a tall wall all the way around and a strong navy to protect it.</div><div> <br />Alexander had no navy, but this did not deter him. He set his soldiers to work throwing the ruins of the mainland city into the sea to build a causeway from the shore out to the island. They scraped the area clean, even throwing the soil into the sea. After a lengthy process of building the causeway, Alexander’s men finally took Tyre. They destroyed the walls of the island city, killed the men, and sold the women and children into slavery. But in the process, Alexander introduced a new form of excruciating death for the soldiers of Tyre. They were crucified. Alexander did not invent crucifixion, but his use of this method made it more known and likely contributed to the later Roman use.</div><div> <br />After the brutal destruction of Tyre, few dared to stand against Alexander and his conquest proceeded rapidly. In about 10 years, he conquered the extensive Persian empire. He then died suddenly of disease, leaving no heir. His kingdom was divided among his generals, with a period of struggle for power resulting in 4 major divisions that were fairly stable for many years.</div><div> <br />In his brief 32 years, Alexander fulfilled multiple Biblical prophecies and conquered most of the known world at the time. As far as we know, he did not know the one true God, yet he was used by Him. He is not named in scripture and no scripture was written during his lifetime, yet God was clearly orchestrating the events of his life for a greater purpose. Alexander’s conquests not only fulfilled scripture, but spread the Greek language and culture far and wide. This set the stage for the Messiah to come to a world where communicating the gospel was much easier, thanks to the widespread use of the Greek language. The New Testament documents were written in Greek and spread rapidly to many nations. They changed the world.</div></div>Lindsay Haroldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094965953749825163noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576985008275511255.post-4068756166767760522021-04-02T14:34:00.003-04:002022-09-13T12:28:42.846-04:00Almond Joy Cookies<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wEcVMgH4djw/YGdjCYG3HUI/AAAAAAAAKUA/zETEVrviZxoA0blSbQSgIPZ6GacqrL_dACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/IMG_20210402_142851268%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1881" data-original-width="2048" height="184" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wEcVMgH4djw/YGdjCYG3HUI/AAAAAAAAKUA/zETEVrviZxoA0blSbQSgIPZ6GacqrL_dACLcBGAsYHQ/w200-h184/IMG_20210402_142851268%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>These cookies are super easy to make and so tasty. If you take a look at my recipe posts, you'll see that I like coconut. So here's yet another coconut recipe. These are great as snacks or dessert and they have the added bonus of being gluten-free.<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /><br /><i>14 oz bag</i> sweetened, flaked coconut <br /><i>2/3 cup</i> chopped or sliced almonds <br /><i>1/2 tsp</i> sea salt <br /><i>2 cups</i> milk chocolate chips <br /><i>14 oz can</i> sweetened, condensed milk <br /><br />Prepare cookie sheets by lining with parchment paper. Mix all ingredients thoroughly. Form mixture into balls and flatten slightly. This step is easier if you wet your hands with cold water periodically. Bake at 325 degrees for 12-14 minutes or until starting to brown. Enjoy!<br /><br /><br /></div>Lindsay Haroldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094965953749825163noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576985008275511255.post-85930760457089383012021-04-02T14:16:00.001-04:002021-04-02T14:17:29.687-04:00Healing Lip BalmI make this healing balm from natural ingredients and it is great for healing and restoring dry skin. It's good for chapped lips, but also any dry or irritated skin. It clears up my husband's eczema on his hands. It heals that dry, crusty skin on your nose after a cold. I use it on cracked, dry knuckles during the winter or on my feet. It's just all around great skin care. It's not very greasy, so it works even on your hands or face, but it also produces a sort of protective layer that helps keep skin from drying out again. <br /><br /><b>Healing Lip Balm</b><br /><br />2.4 oz (70g) cocoa butter<br />2.4 oz (68g) beeswax<br />1.2 oz (33g) shea butter<br />1.5 oz (42g) coconut oil<br />6 capsules vitamin E or 6-8 drops liquid tocopherols<br /><br />In a double boiler, melt the cocoa butter, beeswax, and shea butter until just melted. Turn off the heat and add the coconut oil. Stir until melted and combined. Open the vitamin E capsules with scissors and squeeze the oil into the mixture or add liquid tocopherols. Stir gently.<br /><br />While the lip balm is still warm and liquid, pour into lip balm tubes or a small jar. Allow to cool completely before disturbing.<br /><br />This recipe fills about 50 0.15oz lip balm tubes.Lindsay Haroldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094965953749825163noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576985008275511255.post-15357828239032001582020-05-18T09:00:00.000-04:002020-05-18T09:00:03.316-04:00Preparing for Marriage: Self-Improvement<div style="background-color: white;">
In a <a href="https://lindsays-logic.blogspot.com/2019/09/marry-sooner-rather-than-later.html" target="_blank">previous article</a>, I recommended that Christian singles make an intentional effort to move toward marriage. If you don't aim for marriage and take concrete steps to get there, you may marry much later than you should or, potentially, not marry at all. So, how do you move towards marriage? It can help to have some practical ways to prepare for marriage. That's why I'm starting a series on the topic.<br />
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<span data-offset-key="l5j2-0-0"><b><i>There are several ways to move toward marriage besides building a romantic relationship. You don't need a boyfriend or girlfriend right now in order to prepare yourself for marriage.</i></b></span></div>
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<span data-offset-key="l5j2-0-0">Even if you are dating or engaged, there are probably ways you still need to prepare for marriage. And if you aren't dating or engaged now, you can still move toward marriage by preparing yourself in several areas.<br /><br />I would group these kinds of pursuits into 3 categories: Self-improvement, searching for a partner, and initiating a relationship. In this post, I will talk about ways to improve yourself in order to make yourself more ready for marriage. </span></div>
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We all have areas we could improve. Working on yourself is something you can do without a date and will help you get closer to marriage readiness. You don't have to reach some magical "readiness" point before you can pursue a relationship or move toward marriage, but some facets of your marriage resume, as it were, are more helpful than others. </div>
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<b>Good Character</b><br />
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The most important aspect of preparing for marriage is developing good character. This is something all Christians should do anyway, whether or not they marry. So you can't go wrong in improving your character. The effort will never be wasted. Identify your character flaws (we all have them) and work on them through prayer, Bible study, practicing better behavior, finding mentors who will help you, and seeking the accountability of the body of Christ. Whether you struggle with anger, lust, laziness, greed, gluttony, pride, selfishness, or any other sin, God calls you to grow in grace and to overcome these sins through the power of the Holy Spirit. Study the Fruit of the Spirit and develop them in your life. They are attractive on everybody and very useful for building a strong marriage.<br />
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This point cannot be overemphasized. Your character defines how you will treat your future spouse, as well as everyone else. Your character defines whether you will be faithful, trustworthy, kind, encouraging, loving, and self-controlled. The marriage you build will depend directly and unavoidably on what kind of people you and your spouse are. There is no substitute for good character. It is vital to a good marriage. You should be looking for a spouse of good character, but you should also be a person of good character. You want to be the kind of person that the kind of spouse you are looking for will want to marry.<br />
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<b>Social Skills</b></div>
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Another area to work on is social skills. Some people have more difficulty in social interactions than others. If this is something you struggle with, learning how to develop your social skills may help you meet, attract, and build a relationship with a good potential spouse. Social skills are about learning to put other people at ease around you and carry on pleasant and useful interactions with them. Building a relationship headed toward marriage usually begins when someone finds you interesting and pleasant to be around. Social skills really help with that.<br />
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Social skills include things like how to introduce yourself, how to make small talk, how to pay attention to non-verbal cues from people, how to have a conversation without either dominating it or making the other person work to draw you out, how to be considerate of other people's feelings, how to confront someone gently, how to apologize, and how to smooth over social tensions. If you are especially shy, cocky, awkward, withdrawn, brash, or insensitive, it can affect how other people see you and how willing they are to get to know you better. You might have lots of great qualities, but if they never get to know you, they won't know that. Don't let poor social skills scuttle your chances of building stable and rewarding relationships. Like building good character, developing good social skills is useful even for those who do not marry. So it is not wasted effort.</div>
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<b>Financial Wisdom</b><br />
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One very useful area of self-improvement is financial preparation. Financial issues are one of the most common problems within marriage. Being financially stable and having good money habits helps get a marriage off to an easier start. Now, money is not everything. It's not about how much money you have, per se. It's about how wise you are with the money you have. You don't need a 5-figure nest egg before you marry. However, you do need to know how to live within your means, save for the future, avoid wasteful spending, and pay bills on time, at the very minimum.<br />
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For men, it is important that they develop a stable career that can provide for a family. God has called men to be the providers, which means that men preparing for marriage should be demonstrating that they can provide for a family while women preparing for marriage should be learning how to live within their future husband's income. Women should be evaluating potential husbands on their work ethic and responsibility with money because they will need to rely on their husband for provision. If he can't keep a job or spends as much or more than he makes, run away, ladies. Similarly, men should be evaluating potential wives by their ability to handle money wisely, such as living frugally and understanding the value of money. Preparing to show a potential spouse that you can handle money wisely is a big part of being attractive as a marriage partner.<br />
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<b>Physical Attractiveness</b><br />
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Yet another area of preparation is physical preparation. This includes physical fitness, mental health, personal grooming, and overall appearance. Let's be honest. You're obviously going to be more attractive to the opposite sex if you're not an overweight couch potato wearing sloppy or dirty clothes and you bathe and groom yourself and don't have neurotic or obsessive tendencies. Get yourself as healthy and attractive as you can.<br />
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Of course, health and physical appearance is not everything. Not everyone is model material. Most of us have imperfections. Some people have health problems that are not their fault and that they can't change. Plus, you are likely to have to deal with various health problems as you age and a marriage is going to have to hold up in sickness and in health.<br />
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However, if you're trying to get someone to want to get to know you in the first place, make sure any health or appearance issues you have aren't of your own making. And do your best with what you have when it comes to your appearance. Sometimes a change in hairstyle or clothing or exercise habits can make a big difference. Ask some trustworthy friends if there are changes you can make that would make you more attractive.<br />
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Another aspect of the physical attractiveness issue is being honest about your own attractiveness. Like it or not, most people marry someone who is similar in physical attractiveness to themselves. If you're a super model, you can probably be really picky about who you go out with, but if you're average, holding out for a super model means you're going to stay single. Be realistic.<br />
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<b>Other Useful Skills</b><br />
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One other way to prepare for marriage is to develop skills, habits, and hobbies that will make your future marriage more enjoyable and make you more attractive to potential spouses. Most people like to be around people who can do cool or useful things. Plus, sharing a common interest or hobby is a great way to meet new people. So find something you like to do and pursue it.<br />
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For men, learn to do handyman work like basic plumbing, electrical, or carpentry. It saves a lot of money if you can fix simple broken things around the house. It can also be helpful if you can do simple maintenance on vehicles like changing the oil or fixing a flat tire. A lot of women really appreciate a man who knows how to do these kinds of things.<br />
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For women, learn how to cook. Food is something your family needs every single day. Making a variety of delicious, nutritious foods on a budget is a vital skill. Developing your skills as a good cook is also a great way to catch a man's attention. Most men would prefer a wife who knows how to cook.<br />
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For both sexes, learn more about the Bible. You can never know too much about the Bible. Develop your apologetics skills. Be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks you about your faith. This is not only a Biblical command and very attractive to godly potential spouses, but very useful when you have children as you will need to disciple them in the faith. This is also an important part of developing good character. Don't just learn what it says, but practice what it teaches.<br />
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If you have spare time and you have your character and social skills and finances in good order, find a hobby you enjoy and pursue it. These can include things like hiking, bird-watching, sewing, coin collecting, flying an airplane, building model cars, painting or drawing, playing a musical instrument, or something similar. Having something that makes you unique and shows you to be capable of investing time in something worthwhile make you a more interesting person. And you just might find someone else who appreciates your particular skills or shares your passion.<br />
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These are just some of the major ways you can improve yourself as you prepare for marriage. And you don't have to stop after you're married either. All of us can improve in various ways. </div>
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Lindsay Haroldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094965953749825163noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576985008275511255.post-64145041567572891222020-05-14T09:05:00.000-04:002020-05-14T09:05:02.310-04:00Marriage Role Reversal Will Make Husbands and Wives Feel Unhappy and UnlovedIn my <a href="https://lindsays-logic.blogspot.com/2020/05/discipline-helps-children-feel-loved.html" target="_blank">last post</a>, I discussed how children need discipline in order to feel loved. You can give them gifts and attention and let them do all kinds of fun things, but they won't feel properly loved unless they are disciplined. God designed children to need discipline, and when they don't get it, they will be unhappy and feel isolated and alone and unloved. It's an emotional need that is not being met.<br />
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There's an interesting parallel in marriage. God designed women to need leadership from their husbands in order to feel loved. Not only did God give the husband the position of authority and leadership in the home, but He did so because it is best for both men and women.<br />
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Men have a need to lead. They're designed for it. They don't feel loved if their wives don't follow their lead. At the same time, God made women to need to be led. They don't feel loved if they are in control. They feel abandoned and lonely when they aren't following their husband's lead. They need the husband to be the head, to lead them and protect them - physically and emotionally.<br />
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What too often happens in a marriage is that the wife pushes for control. She thinks she wants to take the lead. She's trying to get her way because we always want our own way, even when it's not good for us. This is the sinful tendency of all of us. Ever since the fall, the main temptation of women is to try to take the lead in marriage.<br />
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So this newly married woman starts pushing for control. She may not even realize that is what she is doing. It's just that she knows so much more than her husband, or she feels really strongly that a certain course of action is the right one, or she can't see why they should do what her husband wants instead of what she wants since he's supposed to want to please her, right? There are all kinds of reasons that she can come up with that she's right and her husband is wrong. But she's sure her husband should be doing this her way and she lets him know it.<br />
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Meanwhile, the husband's greatest temptation is to give in to his wife - to be passive and follow her lead. Leading isn't always easy. It means taking the flak when people don't agree and taking the blame if things don't turn out well. It means being somewhat alone because you're the only one who has the responsibility of making the final decision. It means making a lot of effort to weigh the possible choices and settle on one. It's often easier to follow than to lead. So ever since the fall, this is the temptation for men. They find it easier to give up their proper position of leadership and follow instead.<br />
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So the wife is letting her displeasure be known and pushing for the husband to give in to her choice instead. Leading takes a lot of effort and it isn't getting him any brownie points because she's mad or upset over what he's trying to do. So he gives in.<br />
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The problem develops when this becomes a pattern. Over time, it becomes easier and easier for the husband to give in and easier and easier for the wife to push for her way. They reverse roles. Now, she's the leader and he's the follower. But neither finds this situation satisfying.<br />
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The husband doesn't feel loved because his wife isn't following his lead. His emotional needs are not being met. She's telling him what to do. She's more like his mother than his wife. (Now, that will kill attraction in a hurry.) She doesn't trust him to make decisions by himself. She doesn't respect him enough to follow him.<br />
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The wife doesn't feel loved because she isn't being led. Her emotional needs are not being met. How can she feel loved when he's left her alone to have to make all the decisions, without his protection? She can't respect him when he isn't strong enough to take the lead. She needs the security of having a strong man, and she feels exposed and vulnerable when her man isn't leading. She might think she wants the leadership when it comes to getting her way, but the burden of leading weighs on her because it's a burden she was never designed to bear.<br />
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This is the situation so many marriages develop. It's even worse today than for many in the past because our society actively pushes role reversal. The husband isn't leading. The wife isn't being led. And both are unhappy. They can't connect well because they're not in their proper roles. They both feel isolated, unheard, unloved, and frustrated, but they may not be able to discern why. In many cases, they decide they have drifted apart and they divorce. They both believe the other person isn't who they married any more and things didn't turn out the way they thought.<br />
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In reality, they're suffering a lack of proper marriage roles. Men and women are designed for different things. Marriage has a particular design that fulfills the needs of both spouses, if they stick to their roles. Men and women have different needs. Men need to lead to feel loved. Women need to be led in order to feel loved. If they stay in their proper roles, and if both are being generous to one another, then they will both feel loved. But when they reverse roles, they don't feel satisfied or loved.<br />
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The Bible tells us all of this. It tells the husband that he is the head (Ephesians 5:23) and calls him to lead and protect his wife. It tells the wife to be sure she submits to her husband's leadership and respects him (Ephesians 5:22, 33). These aren't arbitrary rules. They are rooted in God's design for men and women since creation. The leadership of husbands and the submission of wives is also intended to reflect the union of Christ and the church. Imagine if Christ were to constantly give in to the church because the church wants its own way. That's not how it works. And a marriage doesn't work properly when husband and wife leave their designed roles either. Christ is the head of the church. This is not only good for Christ, but good for the church. In the same way, husbands are supposed to be the head of the home. This is not only good for the husband, but also good for the wife.<br />
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The modern church has too often ignored or flouted God's design for marriage by not upholding Biblical marriage roles. Some deny that there are any proper marriage roles in the first place. Others claim there are roles, but then rob those roles of any power or usefulness by claiming a husband leads by giving in to his wife. They usually call this "servant leadership." They think a husband leads by serving his wife, catering to her desires and doing what she thinks is best in an attempt to make her happy. This is not only unbiblical, but it doesn't work.<br />
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While serving one another is an important part of marriage, it is not correct to say that a husband should lead by serving his wife. That's just a back door to have the wife in charge. If you tell a man to lead by serving his wife, what you're telling him is that he has to make his wife happy as his first priority. When she wants or needs something, he should serve her, and then call that leadership. But in saying this, you've made the desires of the wife the gold standard of what needs to be done. In order to be a "leader," he has to do things for her that she wants. So she's really in charge. She's setting the goals.<br />
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Saying a man leads by serving has it all backwards. The truth is, a man serves his wife by leading her. He may serve her in other ways too, but leadership - real leadership - is a service to his wife that she needs him to perform. Every marriage needs leadership, and being the leader of a marriage is good for a man, but bad for a woman. The wife needs her husband to lead in order to be happy, fulfilled, protected, and in proper relationship with her husband. That's the way God designed it.<br />
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So let's do away with this silly nonsense of leading by serving. Leadership means setting goals and then pursuing those goals and giving instructions to those under that authority, even if those under that leadership do not like or agree with them. Ideally, that leadership will be kind and gentle rather than harsh. Ideally, the wife will agree with the goals of her husband. But the goals are set by the leader. Whoever is setting the goals is the leader.<br /><br />We need men to step up and lead - really lead - in their homes and families. To do that, we have to stop telling them they lead by doing what their wife wants or what she is comfortable with. Instead, we need to be telling them that leading is serving their wives. She needs him to actually lead, and so do our families, our churches, and our society.<br />
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We also need wives to purposely choose to follow their husbands. They need to encourage their men in their leadership roles and submit to his authority. They need to stop pushing for their way. They need to respect their husbands. This makes everyone happier in the long run and builds the marriage rather than tearing it down.<br />
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Lindsay Haroldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094965953749825163noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576985008275511255.post-52277571564674322582020-05-11T08:52:00.000-04:002020-05-11T08:52:00.684-04:00Discipline Helps Children Feel LovedWe were watching Little House on the Prairie last night with the kids, and it was in the last season where the Olesons have a little girl named Nancy. Nancy is a spoiled little brat who throws a fit whenever she doesn't get her way. She wants attention all the time, and she gets it. But she's always saying how everyone hates her, even her parents, if they deny her the slightest thing she wants. She eventually runs away when her older sister, Nellie, comes back to town and takes up all the attention for awhile. She really believes no one loves her despite all the attention and gifts showered on her on a regular basis.<div>
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It occurred to me that this is very accurate. Nancy was suffering a huge lack of discipline. She wasn't being trained to behave herself and think of others. She was allowed to do whatever she wanted all the time, without consequence. This made her feel very unloved. </div>
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It might seem counter-intuitive to a lot of parents today, but children who are spoiled do not feel loved and are not happy. Some parents try to make their children feel happy by showering them with gifts and letting them do whatever they want, but this does not work. Oh, they will feel happy momentarily when they get presents or get away with bad behavior, but they become more and more unhappy over time. </div>
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Now, does a child know they need discipline? Of course not. They're children. They're immature. They don't like discipline as it is very unpleasant at the time. But God has designed children to feel safe and happy and loved when they are disciplined. They won't feel love if they don't get discipline. They need to know there are limits on their behavior. They need to be taught. If they don't get discipline, they can't feel love properly. And the reason they won't feel loved is because they aren't being loved properly. Parents who love their children discipline them. The Bible even tells us that.</div>
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<i>Proverbs 13:24 He who withholds his rod hates his son, But he who loves him disciplines him diligently. </i></div>
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<i>Proverbs 3:11-12 My son, do not reject the discipline of the Lord Or loathe His reproof, For whom the LORD loves He reproves, Even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights. </i></div>
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Love doesn't just mean having happy thoughts about someone. It means doing what is truly good for them. It is good and necessary for children to be disciplined. They have to be taught to behave. They need consequences when they do wrong. They have to be taught that their own desires are not the standard and how to deny themselves for the sake of others. This will make them happy. Indulgence will not.</div>
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If you love your children, you will discipline them. It's not the easy road, but it is far better for everyone in the long run when children are trained to act properly and think of people besides themselves. Children also need training in how to control their emotions. A child who is constantly at the mercy of their emotions is an unhappy child. Parents have to give their children the tools of self-control and a moral compass by disciplining them. This is what love does. It provides for the spiritual and mental needs of the child. They can't feel your love if you don't.<div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="5j8o0" data-offset-key="e2ram-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
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Lindsay Haroldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094965953749825163noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576985008275511255.post-83981361461798702192020-02-11T16:53:00.000-05:002020-02-11T16:53:44.198-05:00Functional Orphans: How Lack of Discipline Hurts ChildrenI was in the church nursery the other day and I noticed again how interactions with my own children are different from interactions with other people's children. My children are my responsibility. Thus, when my children misbehave, I correct and discipline them. But when I am watching someone else's child, there's not a lot I can do to correct their misbehavior. I can gently encourage them not to hit, bite, or push other children and tell them it's not nice and then try to redirect them, but it's not my place to discipline them or explain to them why they should be kind to others. That is the job of their own parents.<br /><br />So why am I telling you this? It occurred to me that this soft, hands-off approach we use for dealing with unruly children in the nursery is no longer reserved for temporary caretakers in our society. Many are pushing parents to treat their own children in this way - never punishing or correcting them, but only gently encouraging them to behave and redirecting them to other activities. This isn't fringe either. It's pretty mainstream advice.<br /><br />It's no surprise, given this approach, that so many children these days are badly behaved, anxious, and lack self-control. But it's not just poor parenting to allow children to disobey and hurt others and throw fits and so on without disciplining them. It's treating the children as if they were someone else's children. It's a failure to parent at all.<br /><br />The Bible has something to say about this topic as well.<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
Hebrews 12:6-8 <i>For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.</i></blockquote>
So, the Bible tells us that parents who don't discipline their children are treating them as if they were not their children. Discipline is one of the main responsibilities of parents. Undisciplined children are functional orphans. They have no parents. They have someone who meets basic physical needs and manages them so they don't get seriously injured, much like a daycare worker might, but they aren't getting the training they desperately need. They aren't being disciplined.<br /><br />Why doesn't anybody notice this? A large part of the reason is that our society has a hollow and abbreviated understanding of the role of parents. Everything is supposed to be delegated to a professional these days. Education? That's what school teachers are for. Spiritual training? Take them to church to be taught. Sports? Find a good coach.<br /><br />The one thing most people still agree that parents are supposed to do for their children is foot the bill for all their collection of experiences. But if your view of parenting is that it’s a mostly managerial position involving paying for a host of experts to provide your child with the proper inputs and making sure they appear at the proper places at the proper times, that’s a poor substitute for actual parenting. (It also makes sense of the weird trend to ask parents of large families how they intend to pay for all their children’s luxuries like a college education. I guess if the main role of parents is to pay for everything, you better not have too many kids or else it gets expensive and you might not be able to afford the best experts.)<br /><br />Along with this view of parenting, you get the rise of the term “quality time.” Rather than spend quantity time with their children (which is how almost all parents did it in the past), parents today are encouraged to spend quality time. This is usually interpreted as having special, memorable experiences together on the rare occasions you are together, often involving the spending of lots of money (are you seeing a trend here?). Parents don’t have the opportunity to spend quantity time with their kids because they’re too busy making money to pay for all the quality time. In those special times when parents are actually present with their children and actively engaged, they are trying so hard to have pleasant “quality time” that they don’t want to ruin the moment with such unpleasant matters as discipline. They don’t want to be the bad guy when they finally interact with their kids. So I don’t think it’s a mere coincidence that the rise of laissez-faire parenting coincides with the rise of absent and distracted parents.<br /><br />Of course, not all households with two busy, working parents fail to discipline their children. And even some otherwise involved parents have fallen for the “gentle parenting” nonsense that says they should never punish their children. These are societal trends, not descriptions of any particular homes. But there is a lot of overlap.<br /><br />The sad thing about these trends is that many children today are suffering a tremendous lack of parenting. They are growing up as functional orphans. There is no substitute for careful, involved, loving parents who discipline their children and teach them. This necessarily requires quantity time, not just quality time. You can’t raise children by long distance or by a collection of babysitters, teachers, coaches, and other professionals (or grandparents). You have to be there. And you have to discipline your children. They need it desperately.<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
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Lindsay Haroldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094965953749825163noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576985008275511255.post-35195536556108340162020-01-13T10:38:00.001-05:002020-01-13T10:39:32.179-05:00Submission on Matters of Conscience"My husband wants me to do something, but I have a conviction against it." This is one of the most misunderstood issues in conservative Christian circles.<br />
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Most conservative Christian women will agree that women are to submit to their husbands and that God has given the husband the position of leader of the home. However, we often don't realize the extent to which feminism and individualism have infected our thinking and we often fail to renew our minds with the scriptures. The issue of conscience is one of the most problematic areas where I see a lot of otherwise obedient wives justify their rebellion because of their personal convictions.</div>
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The Bible teaches women to submit to their husbands in everything (Ephesians 5:24). This is a very inclusive statement. It does not say to obey except where we have very serious disagreement. It does not say to obey only if we don't have any personal convictions against it. It says we are to submit in everything. Every. Thing. </div>
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We know that God's authority is higher than our husband's. Thus, husbands do not have authority to overrule God. If God has commanded something in scripture, we must obey God over our husbands in such cases. So, for example, God's word tells us that we are not to murder. If a husband were to command his wife to murder, such as getting an abortion, then she should not obey that command. She must obey God over her husband where they directly contradict. But our conscience is not God. Our personal convictions are not commands from God. We cannot elevate our convictions over God's clear command to obey our husbands.</div>
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There is a very relevant passage for this issue in Numbers 30. Yes, this is the Old Testament, but the principle still applies because this is God commanding women on how they are to handle sacred vows to God. While a woman is under the authority of her husband or her father, and she makes a sacred vow to God on some subject, she is obligated to perform what she vowed unless her husband or father forbid her. Keep in mind that these sacred vows are generally considered very binding. They are usually made in response to some conviction. Yet if her husband (or father, if she is unmarried) disallows her, she is freed from her vow and not bound to fulfill it. If her husband forbids her to fulfill her vow when he first hears of it, then she is freed from the vow and there is no sin for not fulfilling it. If her husband allows it at first and later disallows it, she is still to obey her husband, but the sin for not fulfilling the vow will fall on her husband for forbidding her. Read the whole chapter for yourself. It's very clear. Either way, her responsibility from God is to obey her husband. This is very clear teaching on how far a husband's authority extends. The husband's authority trumps the wife's conscience and even her sacred vow made to God because God has given this authority to the husband.</div>
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So where does this leave modern women? Too often, our society and even Christian culture tells us that what we feel very strongly is supremely important. In Christian circles, we speak of personal convictions very soberly, and this is warranted. All other things being equal, we are not to violate our conscience. Yet when a husband commands his wife, all other things are not equal. It sounds very pious to say that we have a personal conviction and thus cannot obey our husbands. Yet this is not what the Bible teaches us about such matters. The authority of the husband extends over our personal convictions.</div>
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There is a very good reason for this hierarchy of authority. If the wife can feel a strong personal conviction and act counter to her husbands authority because of it, this would essentially eliminate the husband's authority on most matters. All a wife needs to do is genuinely believe that her own plan is morally superior in some way to her husband's plan, and magically she has a conviction about it and doesn't have to obey her husband. This leads, not only to women disobeying their husbands on all manner of issues, but believing themselves to be more pious than their husband and looking down on him. He is asking her to violate her conscience, so in her eyes, he's asking her to sin. She's the good one who would never dream of doing such a thing while he's the bad guy. This false piety kills marriages, tears apart families, and gives women a rationalization for their disobedience while feeling superior for it.</div>
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I have seen this problem appear on many issues, and in many cases, the preference of the wife is an otherwise good thing. Maybe she wants to wear dresses all the time to be modest or wants to give more money to the church. Perhaps she believes they should homeschool their children. She might want to reduce sugar in their diet or have a family prayer time every morning. These things are perfectly good choices, and ones I would often recommend. But when a wife uses her belief that these things are good to overrule her husband and ignore his God-given authority to lead his household under the excuse that she has a conviction, then she is being disobedient and destroying her home. No longer is she submitting. Instead, she is ruling the house with her own preferences and views.</div>
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Instead of giving women the ability to set aside the husband's authority whenever she has a strong feeling that something is right or wrong, the Bible commands her to submit to her husband. Only where God has specifically commanded in scripture is she bound to obey God over her husband. That way, it's not up to her internal feelings or moral leanings, which might be misguided. Her conscience is not the leader of the home. Her husband is. This is God's very good design for the family and we cannot improve upon it.<br />
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Lindsay Haroldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094965953749825163noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576985008275511255.post-23852026238874936972019-12-09T13:56:00.003-05:002023-05-20T15:39:42.463-04:00Top 5 Reasons NOT to Use Hormonal Birth ControlHormonal birth control is extremely common today and many people, including many Christians, take it without a second thought. But there are some important reasons to avoid hormonal contraceptives. Here are my top 5 reasons not to take hormonal contraceptives, in reverse order.<br /><br /><b>#5 - Hormonal birth control can produce mood swings and even depression in some women.</b> We all know our female hormones can make us moody at certain times of the month. There's a reason we say we're "hormonal." The hormones in birth control can do the same thing. Many women report an increase in feelings of being down, depressed, anxious, or angry while on hormonal birth control. Some women do not seem to be affected in this way, but some are. It can be especially important that women with existing depression or anxiety watch out for a increase in symptoms if they take hormonal contraceptives.<br /><br /><br /><b>#4 - Hormones in birth control can kill a woman's libido.</b> They have even been known to affect her attraction to her husband. A woman's normal cycle is intended to have a period each month where her libido naturally rises and she desires sex more strongly. Hormonal birth control prevents her natural cycle and this natural increase in desire. The estrogen and progestin in hormonal birth control also lowers testosterone production. While many people believe testosterone is a male hormone, even women produce some. In women, testosterone is one of the major factors that controls the sex drive. Without enough testosterone production, a woman's libido can drop greatly. In some women, it can take away any desire for sex and greatly reduce pleasure during sex. A lot of women go on birth control before becoming sexually active and thus don't have a normal baseline for comparison, so they may think they don't like sex when in fact birth control is destroying their sexual desire and enjoyment. <br /><br /><br /><b>#3 - Hormonal birth control carries a risk of blood clots</b>. This can be especially dangerous for those with a family or personal history of blood clots, high blood pressure, or various other circulatory problems. The early birth control pills were solely estrogen and killed a number of women due to blood clots. The more recent combination pills, patches, shots, and rings have much lower doses of estrogen, but there is still a risk of blood clots, especially for those with other risk factors.<br /><br /><br /><b>#2 - Hormonal birth control increases the risk of some female reproductive cancers.</b> This link is especially strong for breast cancer. There is some indication that ovarian and endometrial cancers may have a lower risk while taking hormonal birth control. However, breast cancer risk may increase up to 20% while taking hormonal birth control and for 10 years after stopping. Not only does the pill increase the risk of breast cancer directly, but delaying childbearing can also increase the risk of reproductive cancers. Having children young and breastfeeding them protects against breast cancer.<br /><br /><br /><b>#1 - Hormonal birth control can be abortifacient.</b> The hormones in birth control make the uterus inhospitable for a baby to implant and thus can cause an early abortion by preventing implantation. In fairness, this is not the main mode of action. There are three mechanisms by which hormonal birth control works. The main mechanism is to prevent ovulation. If no egg is released, there can be no conception. This mechanism is truly contraceptive by preventing conception. The secondary mechanism is to thicken cervical secretion to impede sperm motility. If sperm do not reach the egg, then no conception occurs. However, the third mechanism works as a backup in case the first two mechanisms fail. If an egg is released and fertilized, then the new child will fail to implant in the womb. The baby then starves and dies. There is no way of knowing which is happening each month for any particular woman.<br /><br />Because of the potential for causing a human child to die, hormonal birth control is not only a health concern, but a moral concern as well. The birth control advocates will tell you that hormonal contraception does not interrupt a pregnancy, but what they don't tell you is that <a href="https://lindsays-logic.blogspot.com/2022/08/is-your-birth-control-abortifacient-it.html" target="_blank">the definition of pregnancy was changed a few decades ago</a> to begin at implantation rather than fertilization so that they could claim hormonal birth control does not cause an abortion. Yet human life begins at fertilization, not implantation. Ending that life is a very serious moral issue. <br /><br />If we believe every human life is sacred, then we need to show that in our actions. I could not take hormonal contraceptives because of the risk of killing my child. There are other ways to prevent pregnancy, if you must. There are many good reasons to say no to hormonal contraceptives.<div>
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Lindsay Haroldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094965953749825163noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576985008275511255.post-6107481519969212462019-11-22T08:00:00.001-05:002023-11-02T20:04:42.106-04:00Savory Potato Soup<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-bCFTI3e0C1rlt-fKMZ5ghT-j7CLywzoEJX_sBL0qEF1ltiE4GEyN1Ki0qiZOdCaUEjjggMiy9riXRYpnHdrLUfJp2rcOXaXivIOjTzUQOI3A54TYiJypJFtyPBTolvWknIMKeUML_2M6Crs2iqnF8l385dT_BzBXnGS3aQ8SCjUxDERgmkQYpwam-SI/s2048/potato%20soup.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-bCFTI3e0C1rlt-fKMZ5ghT-j7CLywzoEJX_sBL0qEF1ltiE4GEyN1Ki0qiZOdCaUEjjggMiy9riXRYpnHdrLUfJp2rcOXaXivIOjTzUQOI3A54TYiJypJFtyPBTolvWknIMKeUML_2M6Crs2iqnF8l385dT_BzBXnGS3aQ8SCjUxDERgmkQYpwam-SI/w200-h150/potato%20soup.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>This is, by far, my favorite potato soup. I might be slightly addicted. It is definitely not boring. It's very savory and creamy and really awesome on a cold day. Serve with a hearty sandwich or some cornbread or use it as an appetizer before a nice meal.<br />
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8 cups chicken broth<br />
2 tablespoons chicken base (such as Better Than Bouillon)<br />
8 large potatoes, peeled and cut into bite-sized pieces<br />
6 tablespoons butter<br />
2 teaspoons minced garlic<br />
2 tablespoons dried chives OR fresh chopped chives<br />
6 tablespoons flour<br />
8 ounces cream cheese, cut into small cubes<br />
1 cup heavy cream<br />
1/2 teaspoon black pepper<br />
Bacon bits<br />Shredded cheddar cheese<br />Chopped green onions<br />
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Bring chicken broth, chicken base, and potatoes to a boil in a large pot and cook until potatoes are just tender. <br />
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While the potatoes are cooking, melt the butter in a small saucepan and stir in the minced garlic and the dried chives. Alternatively, you can use fresh chives instead of dried and add them at the end, but I don't usually keep fresh chives on hand. <br />
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Add the flour to the butter mixture and heat until bubbling. Cook for 2-3 minutes, stirring constantly. This mixture forms a roux which both thickens and flavors the soup. Once the potatoes are getting tender, add the roux to the soup, stirring as you pour. Continue boiling for a minute or two until it begins to thicken. <br />
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Add the cream cheese, heavy cream, and pepper, and stir until combined. Heat through. Top each bowl with bacon bits, shredded cheddar, and green onions.<br />
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This soup is really good served with grilled cheese or grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. I use sharp cheddar for the best combination with the soup. I lightly butter the outside of the bread, put the cheese in the middle, and heat on a griddle or pan until the bread is browned and toasty and the cheese is melted. These are great dipped in the soup. The sharp cheddar really complements the creamy soup. <br /><br />Another great option is serving the soup with buttered cornbread. It makes for a warm and satisfying meal on a cold day.</div>
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<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-5hrwSnMZlWQ_nztS0qpXZARc0hWwy2nVK_AvBTO5wDJ83QbwMvjdUwlO1k_880xzU7Aklmt5ZjPOpnJtZe_BnjkBpJzppEoIDBbCUzWh2nLwDZI7leA9khTUiebbRaJ8JGpHhSDgaZQEr9NusAsHKeKz5aVHU79i7AgnV9bXc95Oq_MsAiHzZzDJ6Fc/s2048/potato%20soup.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-5hrwSnMZlWQ_nztS0qpXZARc0hWwy2nVK_AvBTO5wDJ83QbwMvjdUwlO1k_880xzU7Aklmt5ZjPOpnJtZe_BnjkBpJzppEoIDBbCUzWh2nLwDZI7leA9khTUiebbRaJ8JGpHhSDgaZQEr9NusAsHKeKz5aVHU79i7AgnV9bXc95Oq_MsAiHzZzDJ6Fc/w640-h480/potato%20soup.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br />Lindsay Haroldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094965953749825163noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5576985008275511255.post-26084673694804799312019-11-21T16:04:00.002-05:002022-09-13T12:29:42.932-04:00My (Rather Controversial) Advice for New BridesThere's lots of advice out there for newlyweds, some of which is helpful and some of which is not. A lot of it gets repeated many times. "Don't go to bed angry." "Happy wife, happy life." We've all heard these and others. I won't repeat the classic snippets of advice everyone tells new married couples, mostly because they're not always super helpful, but also because I don't need to. Yet there is some advice most people won't tell you because it's not politically correct and doesn't always produce warm fuzzies.<br />
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I give this advice specifically to women. There is advice that applies equally to both husbands and wives, and some of that is very good and necessary. For example, I recommend that both husbands and wives get in the habit of selflessly serving one another, even in the little things, and without keeping score. That applies equally both ways. But a lot of the best advice for the newly married is specific to their sex. Men and women are different. They have different strengths, different temptations, and different roles. Since I'm a woman, I speak to women. I will leave it to the men to advise their own. <br />
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So here is what I would recommend specifically to young brides. It applies to all married women, but a new marriage is a chance to start fresh and build a strong relationship from the ground up, and having a good foundation is vital. These are things that you can do to avoid some of the most common pitfalls that cause strife and unhappiness in a marriage.<br />
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<b>Let him lead you.</b><br />
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Follow his lead, ladies. You will be happier. He will be happier. Everyone will be happier when you live according to the marriage roles God designed for us. Don't push for control. Step back and let your husband lead. This is a lot easier to learn if you practice it from the very beginning, when you're still in the honeymoon phase. Defer to his judgment. Don't manipulate. Just let him be the boss and look up to him. Make him your hero and follow his lead. It works out better all around.<br />
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<b>Don't hold him hostage to your emotions.</b><br />
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We women tend to be emotional, but our emotions should not control us. We shouldn't make people walk on eggshells, afraid to make us upset if they tell us what we don't want to hear or do something we don't like. That is especially true when it comes to our husbands. Because they love us so much, it is easy for our husbands to avoid anything that upsets us, even if it's something that needs to be done. And it's easy to let our emotions become a tool to manipulate him into doing what we want. Don't let yourself do this. Control your emotions and don't try to punish him with your displeasure if he chooses a course of action you don't agree with. That means no sulking, no pouting, no silent treatment, no outbursts of anger, and no crying fits. Your emotions should not rule the home. It's an easy habit to get into, so make it a priority not to let it develop.<br />
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<b>Don't argue with him. </b><br />
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It takes two to argue. The cycle can stop with you. Simply don't argue with him. Arguing is the least productive way to handle a disagreement. You're going to have disagreements at some point or another in your marriage, but they don't have to be handled disagreeably. Discuss the matter calmly and without pushing for your way. Bite your tongue if you can't be kind and considerate. Make a decision together, if at all possible, but if you can't come to an agreement, let him make the final decision and support him in it. There's no reason you need to argue. Arguments are not a necessary part of marriage. I've been married almost 10 years now, and my husband and I have never had an argument. We have more productive ways of <a href="http://lindsays-logic.blogspot.com/2012/05/how-to-settle-disagreements-without.html" target="_blank">settling disagreements</a>.<br />
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<b>Stand by your man.<br /></b><br />
In a difficult world, you ought to be able to count on your spouse, of all people, to have your back. Be there for your husband. Be his biggest fan. Take his side against the world. Don't let in-laws or friends or kids or anyone else come between you. <a href="http://lindsays-logic.blogspot.com/2012/03/being-on-same-team.html" target="_blank">You're on the same team</a>. Act like it. Every problem you face is the two of you together, working on a solution, not one of you against the other. Make that a habit from the start. Don't complain about him or air his faults to anyone (including, and especially, your mother). Don't do things behind his back. Don't compare him negatively to other men. He's your husband, and you need to be on his side.<br />
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This is by no means a comprehensive guide to a perfect marriage, but these are issues that I have seen handled poorly in many marriages, so I offer a better way. Marriage can be a wonderful oasis in a broken world where we build one another up and provide a safe haven for each other. But bad habits can destroy a relationship if we let them get established. Building a good marriage takes effort and intentionality. It doesn't happen automatically. Nobody ever drifted together. If they drift, they drift apart. So taking the time to identify good marriage habits and purposely develop them is worthwhile. May God bless your marriage.<br />
<br />Lindsay Haroldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13094965953749825163noreply@blogger.com0