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Saturday, December 30, 2017

News Weakly - 12/30/17

God gave them up to a debased mind
Canada has a "summer jobs" program in which the government provides funding for small businesses to hire full-time students for a summer job to gain work experience and some income. Nice. But they've just changed the rules. Now, in order to be eligible for this funding, an employer must affirm the values of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. "So?" Those rights and freedoms include "reproductive rights" and no discrimination on the basis of, among other things, "sexual orientation or gender identity or expression." In other words, if you are an employer -- say, a church or a Christian employer -- and you would like to offer some student(s) a job through this program, you will need to affirm the murder of children in the womb and deny that the Bible is clear on homosexual behavior and gender. Oh, it gets worse. The government calls this a "blueprint for moral conformity." No, it's not just a policy; it is a morality code, a statement of what will be regarded as moral. In this, it overrides religion, Scripture, what God has to say on the matter, anything else. It does this while affirming "freedom of conscience and religion" and "freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression." They intentionally place sexual orientation as a higher moral value than religious freedom or religious equality. In other words, the Canadian government has lost its collective mind.

Kind of what you would expect if Scripture is right (Rom 1:28; Rom 8:7).

National Pastime
It used to be, at least in word, that baseball was America's national pastime. I think we're so over that. Now? I think the obvious choice is litigation.

Eight northeastern states have sued the EPA because of pollution in the Midwest. They want to be part of the "Ozone Transport Region".

Three cities are suing the Pentagon because of failures to report some crimes to the national database for gun control. It was spurred by the mass shooting in Texas. (None of the cities suing the Pentagon are in Texas.)

Men are suing Iliza Shlesinger for her "Girls Night in with Iliza — No Boys Allowed" show. Perhaps it's fair, considering the number of women who sued "men only" clubs and such for the same thing. It's just ... come on ... does everything have to be a lawsuit?

On the other hand, the court threw out the Trump administration's appeal to reinstate the ban on transgender enlistments. The court gets to decide who is suitable for military service, not the president or the Pentagon.

Who's Telling the Truth?
The billboard in Phoenix, aimed at encouraging Arizonans to legalize marijuana, tells readers that there has been no increase in marijuana usage since Colorado legalized it a couple of years ago. A recent study would beg to differ. Marijuana use among pregnant women is up ... way up. "Among pregnant teens younger than 18, marijuana use climbed from 12.5% to 21.8%, and among women 18 to 24, marijuana use climbed from 9.8% to 19%, the researchers found." Who, do you suppose, is telling the truth?

Unclear on the Concept
The World Health Organization (WHO) is planning to classify gaming addiction as a behavior addiction. Fine. On the other hand, "I have all the body parts of a male but I think I'm a female" is not a mental health issue while "I'm white but I think I'm black" is. I suppose we should have a high level of confidence that the WHO is competent to make such a classification.

The Penalty Stands
Once again the courts have ruled that the feelings of homosexuals outweigh the Constitutional rights of Christians. They ruled that the Oregon baker owed the lesbian couple $135,000 for emotional distress. Clearly violating their freedom of speech and freedom of religion overrides the (not Constitutionally protected) feelings of the few. Perhaps this isn't news; Constitutional rights for Christians are in a general decline. And we're still waiting for the SCOTUS to rule on the same issue in the case before them. Perhaps God can work there as He did in this case.

My Bad
Yeah, I apologize. I missed this. I thought Jesus cared about sin, but apparently they've found the lost fragment from the Gospels where Jesus actually affirms everyone's sin. From the Gospel of Mark, it reads,
And so Jesus went up to the mountainside to preach to the crowd, saying, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, you're beautiful no matter what they say. Don't ever change."
My mistake.

Must be true; I read it on the Internet.

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