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Saturday, August 05, 2017

News Weakly - 8/5/2017

Marriage Declines
I found this article from Bloomberg quite startling. According to reports, marriage is on the decline. (No surprise there.) Average ages for first marriages for women has risen from 25.5 in 2005 to 28 in 2015 and for men it was 27 in 2005 and almost 30 in 2015. Beyond that, numbers of new marriages have been falling regardless of the economy. (It dropped in the 2008-2009 recession, but didn't recover afterward.) In 1995 the number was slightly less than 9 out of 1,000 having a first-time marriage; today it's less than 7. Further, in order to align ourselves with the rest of the developed countries, we'd have to fall about a third to get to their levels -- 6.9 for us versus 4.6 for the European Union. Face it, folks, marriage is on the decline, and not in a good way.

The article goes on to discuss the effect on wedding businesses because, after all, Bloomberg is a business magazine. I'm not thinking about business. I'm thinking about the condition of marriage. Divorce is high; marriage is falling. Paul said that marriage "refers to Christ and the church" (Eph 5:31-32). Now, imagine that you're anti-God -- say, Satan -- and you know that marriage is intended as an illustration of Christ's relationship with His Church. What would you do? Well, I'd do exactly what we observe. Diminish God's intent in the eyes of the people. Defame marriage. Deconstruct marriage. Minimize marriage. Eventually redefine it into oblivion. Congratulations! Marriage is on the decline, but, better yet, God's perspective is also negated. That's just the ticket ... if you're anti-God.

And I find people that call themselves Christians applauding this. Blinded ... at best.

Misapplied
J.K. Rowling is the British author of the Harry Potter series. Recently she ranted against the Amerian president because of a video she saw that depicted him refusing to shake the hand of a disabled boy. As it turned out, the video was edited and the president actually did greet the boy in the wheelchair. So, attempting to show good form, Rowling apologized for her remarks ... to the boy and his family. Of course, she didn't insult the boy and his family, so ...? Bad form, J.K. An apology for an unwarranted attack on someone that is not applied to the someone who was attacked is a misapplied apology -- or, if you prefer, not an apology at all -- thus demonstrating that even when some people do what might look like good, it's not necessarily good.

Missing the Point
Scientists from Oregon Health and Science University have reported a huge breakthrough in medical research. They created multiple human embryos via IVF with a gene that contributed to a particular genetic heart problem. They used these to experiment with a gene-editing technique whereby they could fix the problem -- repair the genes. They are reporting that the experiment was a success and they successfully edited the genes to correct the defect. Woohoo! Now, it is illegal in this country to allow these things to come to term, so the embryos were destroyed, but, hey, they believe they can edit genes to fix problems and even enhance human beings. It's as if they're saying, "Of course we had to kill quite a few babies to do it and we don't actually know what will happen if we carry this to the end of the process without killing them, but, surely, this is a good thing, right? I mean, it's good that we killed some people to accomplish this task ... right? Besides, we're the best ones to figure out how to improve on God's design." (How is the not child sacrifice?) You see, health and comfort and all sorts of things are far more important than life. And the ramifications of that kind of thinking will not end well.

A Shocking Feminist
This really was a shock. A '60's feminist sees where her ideology has brought us, and wonders, "Will my baby granddaughter pay the price of my fight for equality?" An example of her observations:
It's somehow ironic that the one section of society which still dresses modestly — women in ethnic and religious minorities — say they do so to protect their sacred space as females. Meanwhile, the majority of other young women brutally expose their bodies, catering to every tawdry male fantasy, as a sign of their 'freedom'.
No, it's not a fully "Christian perspective", but from a simply rational human point of view, she gets it.

Need to Increase Research Funding
Despite the years of effort and work and research and the money thrown at the problem, the latest reports say that mortality rates are still very near 100% for human beings. Sad, isn't it?

4 comments:

Marshal Art said...

Missing the Point

I'm sure that with this "huge breakthrough" the notion that "correcting" the "gay gene" will likely be outlawed...because for all the reasons we might kill our own offspring, none of them is as bad as making a homosexual normal.

A Shocking Feminist

The "Christian perspective" turns out to be far more rational on even a secular level than the secular are willing to admit.

Anonymous said...

An office coworker 20 years back would sometimes quote scripture to me, and tell me about the doctrines of his church. He worked there at the office about two years. I mentioned to him once about how he needs to be sure not to forget his anniversary with his wife, the mother of his two kids. He was curiously dismissive of that idea, saying something like, "Ah, she doesn't care about stuff like that." The day came when another coworker who knew the fellow better than I did confided in me that the man was never formally married. I won't quite say I was shocked, but I was a bit surprised, given his passion for the Bible. I never confronted him about it, but I would have liked to have known how he squared that lifestyle choice with the epistles of Paul.

David said...

Anonymous, he did it like most people do, with cognitive dissonance. Our theology says one thing, but our desires say another, and since we're sinful, we let our desires trump our theology, which is called sin.

Stan said...

Anonymous, I'd be curious, too, but don't have a clue what this has to do with the entry today.