Sandy Hook and guns

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The NRA has released a statement on the Sandy Hook murders: you can read it here. Naturally, at the NRA press conference, Code Pink preferred disruption to discourse – the videos are below.

The NRA believes the best way to protect school children from murderous individuals with guns is to arm those in charge of the children. I think it’s hard to fault the logic of that position although, having grown up in the UK where the most lethal weapons I encountered in the classroom were a rack of proudly displayed canes sized to fit every behind, the necessity of gun slinging teachers in my child’s classroom is yet another example of cultural decay that I would find hard to come to terms with.

Perhaps if the canes had remained and been strenuously administered to Adam Lanza in his formative years, there would be no need to arm teachers and 28 more people would be alive in Sandy Hook school today.

In the interests not of solving the problem, but bowing to an impulse to be seen to do something, Dalton McGuinty has decided to spend $10 million for front door locks, entry buzzer systems and security cameras for every elementary school in Ontario. Someone in his cabinet should tell him that Adam Lanza shot his way through the front door of Sandy Hook.

If anyone thinks that the firearm murder rate in a country is determined solely by the percentage of its citizens who own guns – it isn’t so. From the National Post:

In 2007, the U.S. had the highest gun ownership rate in the world – an average of 88 per 100 people. But the U.S. does not have the worst firearm murder rate – that prize belongs to Honduras, El Salvador and Jamaica. In fact, the U.S. is well down the list with a rate of 2.97 per 100,000 people.

 

Teacher in Anglican School to begin next term as a cross-dresser

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Nathan Upton will start Christmas as a man and end it as a man pretending to be a woman; when he returns he wants to be addressed by his pupils as “Miss Lucy”.

Naturally, he has the full support of the headmistress, school governors, local education authority and church diocese; after all, who wants to be the victim of an Equality Act investigation?

Nevertheless, this isn’t going to end well. When I think back to my school days and the torment to which we subjected any teacher who displayed any manner of weakness – I shudder to think what we would have done to the hapless Mr. John had he arrived dressed as a woman in addition to acting like one – I fear Mr/Miss Upton is doomed.

From here:

A Church of England Primary school has written to parents to explain that a male teacher will be returning after Christmas as a woman.

St Mary Magdalen’s School in Accrington have asked pupils to address Nathan Upton as Miss Lucy Meadows from the start of the Spring term.

Karen Hardman, the head teacher at the school, said Mr Upton, who will also be dressing as a woman, has her full support.

Parents were informed of the decision at the bottom of a school letter, after a number of other retirement announcements and class room changes.

Ashu Solo wishes you a Miserable Christmas

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bus displays2.jpgAshu Solo is a professional whiner or, to use the euphemism currently in vogue, “activist”. He complained about the saying of grace at a volunteer appreciation night and now he is complaining that the City of Saskatoon is wishing everyone Merry Christmas on its buses.

It violates his right to freedom from religion.

From here:

The city of Saskatoon is facing the possibility of a human rights complaint after it refused to yank the “Merry Christmas” message from the top of its buses despite allegations of discrimination.

On Monday, local activist Ashu Solo vowed to take the matter to the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission, claiming the Christmas greetings violate his right to be free from religion.

He said the salutation also favours Christianity over other religions, which is particularly problematic for Saskatoon’s immigrant community, many of whom rely on bus service.

“Christmas messages on Saskatoon Transit buses make them feel like they need to convert to Christianity to be first-class citizens,” he wrote in a complaint.

There is only one thing I can think of to say to Mr. Solo:

prayer2.jpg

Diocese of B.C. selling churches to pay off debt

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From here:

A year ago, the Anglican Diocese of B.C. made the traumatic and dramatic decision to sell nine Vancouver Island church properties or see its $1.2-million debt escalate further.

The move has turned out to be a blessing, despite the turmoil it caused for members whose families had attended the historic congregations for generations.

Five of the nine church properties have sold, the accumulated debt of the diocese is gone, and its financial future and mission potential have been “helped tremendously” for the next several years, said Chris Pease, the diocese’s asset manager.

Listed at $175,000 to $1.4 million, sale prices came “very close” to asking prices, he said.

In combination with cuts to expenditures, the diocese has paid off its accumulated debt, and will use some of the proceeds “to finance the annual operating deficit until revenues and expenses are back in balance,” Pease said in an email.

What does this really mean?

snake

Gay Baby Jesus

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Gay Baby Jesus

St Matthew in the City, Auckland is at it again with its Christmas billboards. This time they have decided that Baby Jesus may have been gay. He may not of course.

Similarly, the Reverend Glynn Cardy, rector of St Matthew in the City, may be subject to bouts of schizotypal personality disorder during which he bites the heads off stoats. He may not, of course.

From here:

Jesus may have been progressive in more ways than one, according to a new billboard in Auckland.

The St Matthew in the City billboard, which is released each Christmas, this year depicts the baby Jesus in his crib surrounded by a halo of rainbow colours.

“It’s Christmas,” the billboard reads. “It’s time for Jesus to come out.”

Reverend Glynn Cardy said the sign was about trying to lift the humanity of Jesus.

“The fact is we don’t know what his sexual orientation was.”

[….]

More importantly the billboard was meant to ask whether Jesus’ desires in the bedroom would make a difference for those of faith.

“Would it make a difference if he was gay? Would that change the picture for you? Would it mean what we revere about him changes?”

Bullied by Baby Jesus

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When something becomes a fad – and placing anything and everything in the category of bullying is a fad – then people normally regarded as sane are prone fall for the most extreme and ridiculous manifestations of the fad. Hence we have reached the point where carols about baby Jesus are a form of bullying.

Be warned: I will subdue any hint of disagreement with a rousing chorus of:

Bully, lullay, Thou little tiny Child,
Bye, bye, bully, lullay.
Lullay, thou little tiny Child,
Bye, bye, bully, lullay.

From here:

A group of parents in Missoula, Mont. are upset over the religious nature of Christmas songs performed at a local elementary school – alleging the songs about the Baby Jesus is unconstitutional and a “form of bullying.”

Bestiality to become illegal in Germany

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From here:

Newspaper die Tageszeitung reports that the governing coalition are soon to amend the country’s Animal Welfare Act to make sex with animals punishable with a fine of up to 25,000 euros ($31,000).

Bestiality was legalised in Germany in 1969, the same year that gay sex was also removed from the criminal code. After that, sex with animals was only punishable if the animal was severely injured.

However animal welfare groups have pushed for the ban to be reinstated, in an advertising campaign that used dramatic examples of “animal rape”.

Agriculture minister Ilse Aigner has agreed to change the law to make it illegal for people to “use (animals) for their own sexual activities or sexual acts of third parties” – which also bans the ‘pimping’ of animals to others.

However the move has aroused the ire of zoophile group ZETA.

Lobbyist Michael Kiok, who lives with his dog Cassie, told the newspaper there were more than 100,000 zoophiles in Germany.

“Mere morals have no place in law,” he said.

Kiok makes the familiar argument: you can’t legislate morality, therefore you cannot outlaw sex with animals.

However, you have to base your legislation on some moral framework. Judeo-Christian morality has served Christendom quite well up until now; and it does not approve of bestiality. Most Western nations are working vigorously to undermine their own heritage, hence we have legalised homosexuality, prostitution, pornography, drug use, abortion and we are now working on paedophilia, polygamy and bestiality.

When we attempt to remove morality from our laws, we replace it with the only thing left: immorality, and by doing so give tacit permission for demonic howling chaos to have its way.

Besides that, what about a generous pastoral response to long-term monogamous man-beast relationships?

Sandy Hook

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One of our friends has a grandchild who attends Sandy Hook Elementary School. She was not physically harmed; the horror of Sandy Hook is difficult enough to contemplate without it being brought into stark relief through personal involvement. This is what our friend wrote:

This is to let you know that all is well but we must go on praying for all the community there. They are truly suffering.

A few days before this horrible tragedy took place, our daughter in law (Nancy) went to see one of the mothers with whom she had become friendly while they were both living in the same Apt. house. Both their husbands work for the same company. She told Nancy how good it felt to have finally moved and settled into their new home….. A few days later their 6 year old daughter came to such a tragic end wearing Katherine’s old clothes Nancy had brought over for her a just a few days ago.

Katherine’s class was in a dark room for 2 1/2 hours before they could be sent home.

Katherine’s father spent some hours at the airport watching this all on TV and only got a message that there was  shooting at a school in Newtown Hartford. They gave them no more information. But thank God they are all home safe now.

No understanding of what happened at Sandy Hook is possible without acknowledging the existence of evil: personal evil, an evil that lurks in the heart of every man. What took place at Sandy Hook Elementary school was an act of undiluted personal evil. Whether the murderer was mentally ill, whether he should not have had access to guns or whether the principal should have had access to a gun – none of these can alter the tangible reality of the evil that was on display.

While the parents of the murdered children should, eventually – for their own sakes – forgive the murderer, it is right for the rest of us, for Christians, to hate the evil; it is even commanded. It is right to want justice – God’s justice. It is right that there should be a hell where God’s perfect justice will be satisfied. It is ironic that the mainline denominations that are obsessed with justice have, for the most part, ceased to believe in hell, one of the only two places where perfect justice will be found; the other is on the cross.

The suffering of the innocent was something that Dostoevsky dealt with in the famous Grand Inquisitor passage in Brothers Karamazov. I have to admit that, even re-reading it as a Christian, I find Ivan the atheist’s argument against a God who makes the suffering of children a necessary part of his creation  – compelling.

David Bentley Hart attempts to address the problem in his article: Tsunami and Theodicy:

Famously, Dostoevsky supplied Ivan with true accounts of children tortured and murdered: Turks tearing babies from their mothers’ wombs, impaling infants on bayonets, firing pistols into their mouths; parents savagely flogging their children; a five-year- old-girl tortured by her mother and father, her mouth filled with excrement, locked at night in an outhouse, weeping her supplications to “dear kind God” in the darkness; an eight-year-old serf child torn to pieces by his master’s dogs for a small accidental transgression.

But what makes Ivan’s argument so disturbing is not that he accuses God of failing to save the innocent; rather, he rejects salvation itself, insofar as he understands it, and on moral grounds. He grants that one day there may be an eternal harmony established, one that we will discover somehow necessitated the suffering of children, and perhaps mothers will forgive the murderers of their babies, and all will praise God’s justice; but Ivan wants neither harmony—“for love of man I reject it,” “it is not worth the tears of that one tortured child”—nor forgiveness; and so, not denying there is a God, he simply chooses to return his ticket of entrance to God’s Kingdom. After all, Ivan asks, if you could bring about a universal and final beatitude for all beings by torturing one small child to death, would you think the price acceptable? . . .

I do not believe we Christians are obliged—or even allowed—to look upon the devastation visited upon the coasts of the Indian Ocean and to console ourselves with vacuous cant about the mysterious course taken by God’s goodness in this world, or to assure others that some ultimate meaning or purpose resides in so much misery. Ours is, after all, a religion of salvation; our faith is in a God who has come to rescue His creation from the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death, and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred. For while Christ takes the suffering of his creatures up into his own, it is not because he or they had need of suffering, but because he would not abandon his creatures to the grave. And while we know that the victory over evil and death has been won, we know also that it is a victory yet to come, and that creation therefore, as Paul says, groans in expectation of the glory that will one day be revealed. Until then, the world remains a place of struggle between light and darkness, truth and falsehood, life and death; and, in such a world, our portion is charity.

As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child I do not see the face of God, but the face of His enemy. It is not a faith that would necessarily satisfy Ivan Karamazov, but neither is it one that his arguments can defeat: for it has set us free from optimism, and taught us hope instead. We can rejoice that we are saved not through the immanent mechanisms of history and nature, but by grace; that God will not unite all of history’s many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history false and damnable; that He will not simply reveal the sublime logic of fallen nature, but will strike off the fetters in which creation languishes; and that, rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, He will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes—and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away, and He that sits upon the throne will say, “Behold, I make all things new.”

h/t First Thoughts for the David Bentley Hart quote.