News Weakly - 11/30/19

Don't Bother Me With Facts
Last week Attorney Manfred Nowak's U.N. report titled "Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty" hit the airwaves and the world, us included, went crazy. According to Nowak, the U.S. currently has more than 100,000 children in migration-related detention. That's evil. Trump is evil. Except, of course, it's not true. That was the number held under Obama throughout 2015. Oops! Well, it doesn't matter. Trump wanted to, we're pretty sure. At least some of the outlets that ran the story retracted it, but you can be pretty sure that folks will be quoting the horrors of Obama's Trump's administration for some time to come, because once it's out there, it's out there, and too many cannot be bothered with facts.

Christmas Decoration Control
An 88-year-old veteran responded to a neighbor's plea for help. Her younger sister was being attacked by a dog. He rushed out the door and snatched up the first weapon he could find -- a plastic nutcracker, part of his neighbor's Christmas display. He mercilessly beat the pitbull until it released the 10-year-old girl. Neighbors are calling for his arrest for animal cruelty and the township is looking into extending Christmas decoration control to cut down on anti-dog violence. Okay, no. The man bravely defended the girl against a vicious animal and, somehow, today's twisted mentality (like "Save the dogs but kill the unborn babies") didn't mess that up.

More Fake News
There was a story out that mothers were binge drinking more than before. Turns out it's fake news. Turns out that between 2006 and 2018 mothers are binging on alcohol the same amount as women without children. Oh, sure, that number has been on the rise, but that it's just mothers is fake news. What disturbed me most about the story was that the medical world defines binge drinking as four or more drinks at once for women and five or more for men. That seems like a sexist standard suggesting that genders are not equal and there is actually a biological difference between men and women. I thought we'd banished that idea.

When Equal Treatment is Hate
An organization known as "Created Equal" did all the required steps and paperwork to get permission to put up a display at Georgia Tech, Georgia State, and Kennesaw State universities as well as the University of Georgia. Their aim? Their message is that "to treat the preborn in a way we’d never treat a born person is a grievous violation of human equality. College students deserve to see the victims of this injustice and to know the science and reasoning behind defending the preborn." They plan to show images of fetuses to show that they're preborn children. Georgia State warned students that it was coming and labeled such speech as "hateful or mean-spirited." The group calls the murder of preborn children "ageism" and opposes unequal treatment. Pro-choicers apparently consider "ageism" hate and equal treatment "mean-spirited." Otherwise they wouldn't care if someone showed pictures of a non-human, right?

Speaking of Abortion
So here's the story. According to "all statistics measuring abortion in the U.S.", abortions reached an "historic low" in 2016. Yippee! That's good. Like saying, "Fewer children were murdered in 2016 than in the previous years of murdering children took place." Being one who values human life, it's good that the number is down. Being one who values truth, it's misleading to fall into the trap. You understand that abortions were not tracked prior to 1969, that immorality in 1969 was on the rise (meaning that abortions before that were likely less), and that no one really knows how many abortions took place in prior years. (The CDC started tracking them in 1969, but since it was illegal, they had no reliable means of actually knowing how many there were.) (It should also be noted that Wikipedia reports that, according to the CDC, there were 193,491 abortions reported to the CDC with an induced abortion rate of 52 per live birth. Significantly less than 2016. Making the story itself a lie.) You understand that it is considered "good news" that "only" 623,471 babies were murdered by abortion in 2016, down from 638,169 in 2015. I'm glad the number is down. I'm sad that "only over a half million killed" is considered good news. That's more than the total number of Americans killed in World War II. That's more than the total number of Americans killed in the Civil War where every death was an American. Don't let them tell you it's "safe, legal, and rare," because it's legal, but it's still not safe and it's certainly not rare.

Going About It The Wrong Way
Wayne Grudem is a biblical scholar, conservative, complementarian, generally good things. Recently, it seems, he has been listening to sad stories of marital abuse and has decided to change his view on divorce. Originally he recognized only adultery or desertion. Now he has added ... well ... just about anything. (He lists verbal and physical abuse, drug or alcohol addiction, gambling addiction, and pornography addiction for examples.) Ostensibly, on the basis of the phrase "In such cases" found in 1 Cor 7:15, he has concluded that anything that destroys a marriage is included, and "destroys a marriage" is not defined. I say "ostensibly" because clearly he came to this conclusion not on the basis of Scripture, but on the basis of horrible stories of spouses staying in abusive marriages because they were told they had to just sit and take it. This is the same basis that others have used to change their view that homosexual behavior is sin. Because of Scripture? No. Someone in their family or someone close to them has come out as "gay" and circumstances -- their feelings about these people -- have dictated their position, not Scripture. We don't get to offer a "new and promising kind of argument" for God's Word. Not even Mr. Grudem. Sorry, Wayne.