Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Obama's Genocide

There is a deep irony and hypocrisy now present in the White House. As the recent "Imagine the Potential" video segment has shown, President Obama was a prime candidate for abortion.

He is, in fact, exactly the kind of baby that Margaret Sanger would have liked to squelch in the womb. For those who don't know, Sanger was the racist founder of Planned Parenthood, a group she hoped would erase as many blacks as possible. She also worked actively to sterilize black women and other "undesirables."

Yet President Obama supports the mission of Planned Parenthood. He supports the very racist and inhuman agenda whose founder would have loved to make his life -- and his Presidency -- an impossibility.

It's time for the President -- the very man who has promised us a humble and thoughtful administration -- to face up to some bitter ironies and hard truthes. After all, the very act of pursuing humility and wisdom utlimately excludes the Pro-Choice perspective. (It's not a matter of opinion; it is a matter of having the courage to follow arguments to their only logical conclusion.)

I pray that President Obama may come to his senses on this issue. It's time for change.

The "Imagine" video: http://www.4marks.com/videos/details.html?video_id=987
Black Genocide Information Website: http://www.blackgenocide.org/planned.html

Monday, January 12, 2009

God in Every Day, God in Every Moment

With all the doubt-peddlers en-vogue nowadays, it is truly remarkable that the new Atheist Fundamentalists -- and those who oppose them -- rarely bring up the single most persistent reason for having some manner of faith. That reason is personal experience.

Most people, at some point or another in their lives, have a direct personal experience with God. Even more persuasively, we all have regular experiences of normal things which bring with them divine associations. For those who are trying to pay attention to such things, the experience can become a daily one.

While it's a real stretch, one can understand how things such as love, our reaction to music, or interpersonal relationships all somehow relate to a function of evolution. Yet there are things that strike a chord within us which is too deep -- and at the same time, too far-removed -- to be a Darwinian after-effect.

Take our sense of justice, for instance, or our feeling for the "epic." Or poetry (and poetics and the deeper realms of aesthetics.) Or the way that love can transform from simple animal lust into a chosen and deeply edifying interaction of selfless service, edification, and mutual building-up. Certainly, my desire to have a strong character -- and to help others develop strong character -- is a deeper inclination than that which is necessary to propagate the species or even maintain a stable society? Certainly, good character is something which is often a destabilzing social force, yet it is a desire we all have.

Our how about our sense of the epic, or our feeling for justice? Deep within us all, there is a feeling that "things should be better," that our society -- no matter how advanced -- cannot satisfy the deepest yearnings of our heart. Our hearts point the way to something more pure, more expansive, and more personally edifying than any human invention or relationship can provide.

There is loneliness and homesickness; a particular yearning which is experienced even by those people surrounded by family, success, and love. Our hearts know that this is simply not the end of the road, but the beginning. We yearn for more, and when we look deeper, we know that our life -- and the flawed people around us -- cannot provide what we most desire. What would be the Darwinian function of such a desire? Yet we all have it, as is easily witnessed by the myriad of ways we find to try to kill or satisfy this deepest yearning.

Or music and art: if music were merely a biological afterthought, it would do no more than inflame our animal instincts and encourage us to mate (indeed, this is the function of most popular expression.) Yet there were men like Beethoven, men who dared to storm the gates of Heaven with their poetic explosions. We all understand on some level what Beethoven meant, simply because it is reflective of a desire rooted in every human heart.

When we're at the movies, why do we cheer (especially men) when the underdog hero musters his forces and charges his enemy on the field of battle? It is precisely because this is our reality. When you peal back the misleading veneer of the immediate, you see this as every person's great personal struggle. It resonates with us.

Echoes of origin and destiny. These are the inclinations, hunches, and deep-seated feelings which -- the great masters tell us -- can be followed back along their trails to God. The issue is not the existence of God -- it is the fear of how we will be asked to change when we find him.