Post 177--Millennials and Political Correctness

Again, someone else's article with my comments attached. It seems that Scott Masson of Toronto does not wish to accord the transgender population their full recognition.  I feel very sorry for that group and do not think their condition was part of what God intended when He created humanity. At the same time, they are here and not be their own decision or choice. By birth, would be my opinion. As such, they do not have a lot of choice in the matter. I know a couple of them and know they suffer because of their condition.  It is my firm opinion that they must be given their full human rights same as I do, even though I do not think their condition is desirable and should not be considered standard.  So, it seems I disagree with Masson on this aspect.  

What interests and concerns me in Masson article below is that millennials seem to have lost the traditional freedoms and rights that families have enjoyed for centuries in our Western civilization. They are, in fact, quite prepared to trample on them and force their opinion on everyone else, even to the extent of disregarding the rights of families and of breaking them up when they hold opinions contrary to those of millennials. The sense of social justice, according to Masson, has gone completely topsy-turvey. That to me is a serious issue and does not bode well for the future of freedom and democracy. So, have a listen and see where you find yourself.

=========

A new survey was released in the US last month, and it showed just how far society has moved on the issue of gender confusion. The poll focussed on “millennials” – generally people under 30 – and it found almost half of them would be OK with the notion that the government should take children away from parents if those parents refuse to affirm those children’s gender identities. Scott Masson is an Associate Professor of English at Tyndale University College in Toronto. He says the survey shows that traditional views of family are starting to change, especially in a certain segment of society. “It says that those that are most animated by issues that we would call ‘social justice’ are in favour of breaking into the family and its historic freedoms in order to justify the ends of what they would call ‘social justice’.”

He says the survey shows that respondents don’t have “any notion of what we would call ‘sphere sovereignty’.” Masson says the poll’s focus on millenials shows the impact that political correctness has had in the education system over the past 30 years. “I’ve been living with that in the university system ever since the 1980’s, and certainly it’s the case that millennials (have) experienced nothing but that. They’re not used to freedom of expression. If they find a view that they don’t like, they’re gonna have no tolerance for it.” He says that demographic is not bothered by the loss of liberty that we’ve seen in recent legislation in Canada, because “they never really thought those liberties really ought to exist as long as social injustice was being done.”

Post 152—A Place for Spanking

I hope you don’t get tired of my apologies and my changes in direction or even promises not kept—which is not the same in my mind about breaking promises.  The document that I thought I would discuss in follow up from the last post is not what I expected it to be. So, we will let it go and do something else today. However, in case you’re curious, here’s URL that deals with issues somewhat related to that of Post 151--

               

       https://arpacanada.ca/news/2017/02/14/thoughts-religious-                                           tolerance/#feature

Yes, something else, but not something completely different. While the last post talked about shooting and murdering, this post will talk about spanking. To some people that’s in the same class as shooting and murder—it’s all doing violence to people.  Some time ago a friend of mine, Mark Penninga, the Executive Director of the Association for Reformed Political Action (ARPA) Canada published an opinion piece in the Vancouver Sun under the title”Time and Place for Spanking.” I’ve written about this issue before, because I believe when a government gets involved in ordinary family affairs, it is intrusive and goes far beyond its legitimate reach.  Government and family exist in different spheres, each of which have their own laws and protocols. Governments may only interfere in families when there is evidence of families being highly dysfunctional. To some people, spanking, any kind of spanking, no matter its severity, becomes the government’s business, for its mandate is to protect its citizens, even infants, from violence, including parental violence.   

Penninga’s main point is that the term spanking covers a broad range of meaning, ranging from the gently corrective to that of the cruel and abusive. Attempts to have government make every form of spanking illegal in order to prevent the cruel type, has the opposite effect.  Then he demonstrates his point at length, all of which you can read yourself by turning to the articles’ URL (see below). One study, for example, that covered 50 years and examined 26 other studies concluded, “Whether physical punishment compared favorably or unfavorably with other tactics depended on the type of physical punishment.” The study looked at what the researchers called an “optimal” type of physical discipline — conditional spanking—and upheld it as legitimate.

Penninga wrote:

Sweden in 1979 became the first nation to outlaw all physical discipline. Since then, criminal charges for physical child abuse by relatives against children under age seven increased by 489 per cent between 1981 and 1994. There was also a shocking 519-per-cent increase in criminal assaults by children under 15 against children aged 7-14. Perhaps most devastating, 46-60 per cent of cases investigated under Sweden’s law result in children being removed from homes. About 22,000 Swedish children were removed from homes in 1981, compared with 1,900 in Germany, 710 in Denmark, 552 in Finland, and 163 in Norway.

Consider the 2010 case of a mother and father from Karlstad, Sweden, jailed for nine months and ordered to pay 25,000 kronor ($11,000) to three of their children who were spanked. More damaging than the jail and fines, all four of their children were removed from their home. Although the court concluded that the parents “had a loving and caring relationship to their children,” apparently spanking is serious enough to merit such an extreme sentence.

And then he concluded,

Parents will have a variety of opinions about the merits of physical discipline. But problems arise when the state assumes the role of parent. The role of the state is limited to preserving an orderly society and punishing wrongdoers (including child There is much that the state can do to promote a society in which children are safe and families can flourish. Banning physical discipline will achieve neither.

Parents will have a variety of opinions about the merits of physical discipline. But problems arise when the state assumes the role of parent. The role of the state is limited to preserving an orderly society and punishing wrongdoers (including child abusers), so that the other institutions of society can flourish. The institution of the family is an independent part of civil society accountable directly to God (although the state increasingly understands itself to be a god it seems). Parents are entrusted with the authority to lovingly raise their children and the state may only interfere in exceptional circumstances, such as real child abuse.

There is much that the state can do to promote a society in which children are safe and families can flourish. Banning physical discipline will achieve neither.  So far my friend Penninga. 

The Vancouver Sun published an editorial supporting Penninga’s main argument, while the highest court of the land agreed as well, but not everyone did, as you can see on the last of the three websites that appear below. As to myself, I am the product of a tradition of occasional reasonable spanking when deserved and emerged a humane, highly educated and successful person from a peasant background without any spanking baggage to sour my life. The same holds true for all 9 of my siblings as well as for the 11 and 9 siblings of my father and mother respectively. As the Bible puts it, “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” That’s ancient wisdom that liberals tend to deny, often having contempt for the past and its ways.

So, here are three URLs for you to check out, with the third one vigorously rejecting the point of this post.

 http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Opinion+Time+place+spanking/11049750/story.html.

See also www.keep43.can for supporting arguments.

            See www.nospank.net for opposing view.

Post 84--—Time for Explanation and Further Introduction

I had hoped to complete this post and publish it between Christmas and New Year. In addition to all the things I write about in the rest of this post, we visited our youngest son and family in Atlanta, GA. While there, no time or opportunity to write!  Returned home yesterday and decided to post a piece I had written earlier for such a time as this, when it is high time to post but have nothing ready.

I don’t write as many posts as I would like. So many other things that keep me busy, like getting all my published books, articles, lectures and some correspondence—some trivial even or attempts at humour—onto my website at <  www.SocialTheology.com >.  The time you may have spent on Christmas shopping in December, I spent on writing and a host of other things like…. 

I am an active member of our local West End Seniors Network (WESN) here in Vancouver as well as a couple of churches. I am the co-ordinator for the WESN’s monthly Men’s Breakfast Club, while wife Fran does the calling the day before to remind people. We both love social life and often accept invitations to or organize coffee times and visits from or to various friends and relatives whom we have here in BC by the bushel! We visit especially older people who are alone.

Fran, my wife, and I love to entertain people for lunch at home over soup and salads. She enjoys making salads while I specialize in soups. We are both good at our individual specialties. Such invitations are of a “social revolutionary” type, since the people in our West End area of Vancouver almost live in restaurants and do very little entertainment in their homes. Sharing lunch with them at home seldom is reciprocated, except perhaps over a coffee in a coffee shop. Individualism and a sense of exaggerated privacy has gone amuck so that people don’t easily open their doors to each other and loneliness has become a serious malaise in the neighbourhood. 

This particular sentence was written during the early morning of Christmas Day 2015. We had invited four people to enjoy Christmas dinner with us, all of them people who have no family nearby.  In fact, all of us, including Fran and myself, are either immigrants or former refugees, except for one, an Asian born in Canada whose family lives far away in another Canadian city. I do have family near by, but the others don’t and needed a place to celebrate.

I also mentioned churches. Yes, we are full members of the Christian Reformed Church here in Vancouver, while we are “adherents” to First Baptist Church in downtown. Why two? Well, that’s for another post sometime in the future. But these take time as well. We love attending church services and participating in other stuff during the week. The why and how, well, that, too, is for another time.

In addition to all that good stuff we’re involved in, we are both from very large families. Fran is the youngest of seven while I am number five out of ten. She has three brothers, two of whom have already passed away, and after them came four sisters, one of whom passed on. I have four sisters older than me and five brothers younger than me, with one sister and one brother already with the Lord. All of these siblings have together produced an entire battalion of kids, grandkids, even some great grandkids. This battalion is scattered all over North America, with Fran’s concentrating on Michigan, where her family immigrated to back in 1942, while mine are concentrated in British Columbia (BC), where our family immigrated to in 1951. I was thirteen at that time. Being as family-conscious as we are, we serve sort of as the glue for the two different families, though more so for the Boers in BC, since that’s where we now live.  For example, we organize the annual Boer get-together on Boxing Day (December 26) in Surrey. Fran is the Boer family consultant, since she keeps track of addresses and birthdays down to at least the fourth generation.  

Our own three children and seven grandchildren are scattered—near Seattle, in Silicon Valley and in Lagos, Nigeria, with regrettably none in Canada. Well, they did not grow up in Canada but in Nigeria, while they did their undergraduate work in Michigan in the shadow of my in-laws and our mission employer. This means travel and more travel for us to all three of them. Seattle is close by. So, there we can do weekend visits. But when we visit the Silicon or Lagos crowds, we spend a lot of time; Silicon often takes up to ten days a couple of times a year, while we recently spent almost a month in Lagos. 

All of the above personals have—or is it “has”?—two reasons. One is my own feeling that when I deal with people over any length of time, I need to know who they are, where they come from and how they spend their time. I think and live wholistically. I cannot divide my own life nor that of people I associate with into little boxes that would make me deal with them only at the specific point of contact and never mind the rest. I just cannot relate that way, nor do I want to. 

We are basically social creatures more than isolated individuals. Put in another way, we are individuals in community. When either one of these is emphasized over against the other, we get social distortions, sometimes with very serious consequences. I hope to do a post on this subject one of these days. So, if you are one of my regular readers, you may be curious who I am, where I come from and what I do. Well, here it is. I have tried to satisfy your curiosity. That’s one reason for this post:  to establish a stronger connection with you. I hope I am not just imposing a personal opinion or relationship on you guys but filling a need also on your part to firm up our relationship.

The other but related reason for this personal stuff is to explain the occasional time lag between posts. Work, travel, socializing often intervene and leave me little time for blogging, as much as I love this writing activity.  No matter how short of time, my heart constantly urges me to write

So I have made a decision, a policy decision of what I have already started practicing, namely to intersperse my own writings with “guest articles.” Such guest articles-- while perhaps expressing opinions I agree with at least partially, or that I take on to undermine, or that I simply enjoy and want to share with you--, take less time to produce than fresh stuff from me. Of course, many of my “fresh stuff” also frequently includes materials from and references to other writers, something I always faithfully indicate. 

This semi-new policy will not only prevent unpleasant gaps but also create variety. My Dutch language has an expression, “Verandering van spijs doet eten,” which is to say that a change of diet increases your appetite and your enjoyment of food. Though not part of the expression, change is also more pleasant for the cook, at least, for this writer-cook. The same is true of both reading and writing.  

I had really intended to feed you a guest article about Justin Bieber, the singer, today, to be preceded by a short explanation and introduction. Well, that “short explanation” turned into a complete post!  Justin will have to wait a few days. Sorry, buddy. I don’t think it will bother him, since he is not, to the best of my knowledge, one of my regular readers. 

In the meantime, you’ve learned a bit about me, while I snuck in a bit of social philosophy on the side—but that’s also me. I am not a professional philosopher, though I wish I were, but I do like to philosophize about social stuff, especially about the relationship of religions and worldviews to culture and society.

Time to wind up. I hope you had a good Christmas celebration in the midst of family and friends. I end this post with wishing you a very happy 2016. For me, such a wish always goes together with the unexpressed silent Biblical prayer, “Maranatha,”  “Lord Jesus, come back soon.”

Post 83—It’s Christmas Time

Post 83—It’s Christmas Time                                                     

Merry Christmas to you all! Yes, it’s that day and that season. The season that many of us dread because of the tremendous pressures we put upon ourselves with our frantic buying. When I see the crowds in the malls—I only see them on the screen!—and listen to the shoppers interviewed by reporters, I shake my head and thank God for the wise decision that we have made. Seeing that giving presents is often a matter of bringing coal to New Castle, that is to say, giving presents to people who already have more than they need, we do our gifting to charities who make sure the poor are taken care of.  So, instead of pressures, my wife and I are free to enjoy the season with its many instrumental and choral concerts, joyful church services, street events, etc., etc. We love this season, not the least because of the parties that come with it.

“Merry Christmas” is the traditional if no longer the most popular greeting.  “Merry”—it sounds rather flippant and superficial.  “Let us eat, drink and be merry,” as the Biblical saying has it.     But “merry” became a tradition because in the past it had a much deeper meaning with a spiritual undertone. I insist on using it along with the term “Christmas.” For others who have no reason to celebrate Christmas, fine, let them make do with the superficial “Happy Holiday,” but holiday for what? What are they celebrating? Yes, for some, great family time and that is indeed important and worth celebrating. But today so many have no families or they are far away. In fact, for many it’s a sad and lonely season.

Of course, originally the time was marked by a pagan feast that Christians recast in order to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. The rest of this post is devoted to the Old Testament passage of Isaiah 9, where that birth was prophesied in the words of the people of Israel thousands of years ago. That means in words and concepts that we do not immediately understand, but I believe the basic thrust of the passage should make clear what the major concerns were that Jesus came to address.

There are many, many different Bible translations. Most of them are not created to compete with or correct other translations. Rather they all have different purposes and, especially, target audiences. A major purpose is to make the Bible more easily understood to today’s reader. The first translation is from the English Standard Version; the second, from The Message. But both are translations of the same passage.

`

                        A New Day Is Coming

             (From English Standard Version)

9 But there will be an end to the gloom those people suffered. In the past, people thought the land of Zebulun and Naphtali was not important. But later, that land will be honored—the land along the sea, the land east of the Jordan River, and Galilee where people from other nations live. ² Those people lived in darkness, but they will see a great light. They lived in a place as dark as death, but a great light will shine on them.

³ God, you will make the nation grow, and you will make the people happy. They will rejoice in your presence as they do at harvest time. It will be like the joy when people take their share of things they have won in war. ⁴ That will happen because you will lift the heavy yoke off their shoulders and take away their heavy burden. You will take away the rod that the enemy used to punish your people, as you did when you defeated Midian.^[a]

⁵ Every boot that marched in battle and every uniform stained with blood will be destroyed and thrown into the fire. ⁶ This will happen when the special child is born. God will give us a son who will be responsible for leading the people. His name will be “Wonderful Counselor, Powerful God, Father Who Lives Forever, Prince of Peace.” ⁷ His power will continue to grow, and there will be peace without end. This will establish him as the king sitting on David’s throne and ruling his kingdom. He will rule with goodness and justice forever and ever. The strong love^[b] that the Lord All-Powerful has for his people will make this happen!

               A Child Has Been Born—for Us!

              (From The Message)

9 But there’ll be no darkness for those who were in trouble.

Earlier he did bring the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali into disrepute,

but the time is coming when he’ll make that whole area glorious—

 the road along the Sea, the country past the Jordan, international Galilee.

^2-7 The people who walked in darkness
    have seen a great light.
For those who lived in a land of deep shadows—
    light! sunbursts of light!
You repopulated the nation,
    you expanded its joy.
Oh, they’re so glad in your presence!
    Festival joy!
The joy of a great celebration,
    sharing rich gifts and warm greetings.
The abuse of oppressors and cruelty of tyrants—
    all their whips and cudgels and curses—
Is gone, done away with, a deliverance
    as surprising and sudden as Gideon’s old victory over Midian.
The boots of all those invading troops,
    along with their shirts soaked with innocent blood,
Will be piled in a heap and burned,
    a fire that will burn for days!
For a child has been born—for us!
    the gift of a son—for us!
He’ll take over
    the running of the world.
His names will be: Amazing Counselor,
    Strong God,
Eternal Father,
    Prince of Wholeness.
His ruling authority will grow,
    and there’ll be no limits to the wholeness he brings.
He’ll rule from the historic David throne
    over that promised kingdom.
He’ll put that kingdom on a firm footing
    and keep it going
With fair dealing and right living,
    beginning now and lasting always.
The zeal of God-of-the-Angel-Armies
    will do all this.