Baptism

On this day, in 1968, I was baptized.

Thank you, to my parents, for being faithful in bringing me to the waters of baptism, and for teaching me in the Faith.

"He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we did in righteousness, but in accordance with His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit." Titus 3:5

Belated Remembrance

 

The Nations Were Always The Plan

I was listening to someone recently talk about the nations being God's plan from the beginning. His command to His people after the flood was to be fruitful and multiply, and to fill the earth. Filling the earth would result in geographic separation which would result in new language dialects, cultural separation, and genetic drift, since separated populations would be breeding with a small subset of the total gene pool. Perhaps there would never have been radically different languages, but the nations would have been born all the same.

So, the incident at the tower of Babel was not introducing the concept of nations as a mitigation of the evil of a unified people. It was introducing different languages to force the development of nations, which was His desire all along.

I'll amend this if I remember to whom I was listening when this became clear to me.

Blacksmithing

I love Torbjörn's presentation style and the level of organization and "neatness" in his shop and work. Here is a demonstration of the making of a bearded axe, which I hope to be able to achieve...some day.

You can find him on YouTube here: Torbjörn Åhman

Child Training 101, Lesson 1: It is Not Optional

"Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him." Proverbs 13: 24

"Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22: 6

"Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; The rod of discipline will remove it far from him." Proverbs 22:15

"Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die. If you strike him with the rod, you will save his soul from Sheol." Proverbs 23: 13, 14

"For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it." Hebrews 12: 11

It is not only okay to discipline your children, it is necessary to discipline them, if you love them. 

And, by "discipline", the Bible means spanking -- corporal punishment. There is absolutely no ambiguity in these verses. They say, "strike him with a rod." If you fail or refuse to spank your children, you hate them. If you love them, you will be diligent to spank and comprehensively train and discipline them.

This is the first lesson of raising children to glorify God.

I know many parents who could never come to terms not only with this, but also with even telling their children "no." They could not take God at his word and believe and trust Him enough to obey Him in this very basic command. They thought that they were pursuing a better, more enlightened, more loving way, but in reality, they were treating their children as if they hated them.

They did not consistently discipline their young children, and when they got older, they were incapable of saying "no" or of refusing to indulge their whims. 

The fruit of these dysfunctional parental relationships with their children is older children who are self-willed, unmoored, disobedient, and drifting from God.

Discipline, including spanking, is an indispensable aspect of raising children to love and glorify God. It is the first requirement, before any other training can happen. 

Saying no when your children want to do things that are foolish or dishonoring to God, and not giving in to their persistent pleas, although it can be unpleasant at times, "yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness." It might not seem like it, right after you have spanked your son or daughter, but it will. When you are in the middle of those years, you have to trust that God's Word is true in this as in everything else. I can assure you that His Word is true and you will see the fruit.

You will not find a better way, because there is no better way. 

The one who made you and your children has also told you what you need to do to train and discipline them. If you think you will discover a more spiritual, loving, and effective way to raise your children, you are wrong. You are arrogant and the Bible says you hate your children.

Love your children! Teach them at home. Read the Bible to them. Teach them to obey you and God. Show them what love and forgiveness mean. And spank them when they are disobedient.

The Transformed Wife

Here is a wonderful blog by a woman who is not listening to the voices of the World and the spirit of Feminism that is a cancer on our society and even in our churches. She writes this about her blog:

"My ministry is based upon Titus 2:3-5 in which God commands that older women teach younger women to be sober, love and obey their husbands, love their children, be chaste, discreet, good, and keepers at home. If you would love to learn and grow in these areas and allow God's Word and His ways to transform your marriage and your life, please join me as I teach you what I have learned from His Word, my own experience and mentoring many women, and most importantly, allowing the Holy Spirit to convict and transform you into the image of Christ."

Read more here: The Transformed Wife

I recommend it highly.

Stop Apologizing

I'm ashamed at my level of ignorance of History. When we don't know history in general, and our own history in particular, not only are we, as a society, doomed, as it is said, to repeat the mistakes of our past, but we fall easy prey to guilt-peddlers.

Guilt-peddling is all the rage these days. Secular as well as Christian Progressives love to beat Western Civilization over the head with its supposed atrocities for which it apparently can never be forgiven. 

The Crusades are a perennial favorite for this purpose. Christianity is, of course, a religion of hypocrisy because of the Crusades. Self-righteous unbelievers and self-flagellating believers have only to utter the word "crusades" and Western Christianity is supposed to fall silent and beg forgiveness, yet again.

I have always assumed that there is a lot more to the story than we were taught in the government schools, but have been too lazy to look very far into it. Stefan Molyneux has an excellent lesson where he gives a very high-altitude look at some of the historical background that sparked the Crusades.

You can find it here, and I highly recommend it. (Original Source. Stefan has been cancelled by YouTube, but the link below is a repost on another channel.)
Alternate Source

Listen and see if it doesn't have a profound effect on how you think about the past that you take for granted.

I'll paraphrase, amplify, and expand one of the crucial points he makes near the end of his talk. Of all of the civilizations to ever exist on this planet, there is precisely one that engages in critical moral self-reflection and changes on the basis of it: Western Civilization, a/k/a Christendom. 

This isn't an intrinsic virtue of the men and women of the West, it is a direct result of the work of the Holy Spirit. Don't be ashamed of the legacy of Christendom, which the Progressives and the haters of Christ are doing their best to wipe out and erase from the history books. Learn the history, teach it to your children, and be proud of it. Be proud not for the works (either righteous or sinful) of Man, but because it is the work of God.

Christendom was not and is not sinless, but only Christendom confesses, repents, and turns to God. Pagans don't. Buddhists don't. Atheists don't. Zoroastrians don't. Muslims sure don't. 

Stop apologizing.