"It's not just a matter of faith, it's a matter of science"

A quote from the Republican leader Bill Frist once again proves that religion is just religion to those who consider themselves men of faith. Forget about having your faith influence your thoughts and actions, faith is faith and politics are politics. Or in this case, science is science and the two do not mix. The story is getting old from those who pretend to have faith but allow political inflences to trump it.

Again, the idea of being a Christian is to be Christ-like. Apart from that goal ruling your thoughts and actions, you are not a Christian. So what are our leaders, elected by a majority of Christian conservatives, thinking when they turn from what is right, and support what is evil, and say it is not an issue of faith? How can a Christian use and support the murder of innocence to "alleviate so much suffering (Nancy Reagan)?" Are they Christian at all?

Stem cell research is just what the pro-choice movement needs to validate the act of abortion. While we have a President who is looking to subtly find a way to end the mass murder of abortion, his polical party leaders in Congress are backing the evil minority! The fact is most people believe abortion is wrong, and these Senators who were elected by the conservative Christian majority in the Republican party, are muddying the waters with this idea that the use of stem cells are apart from morality and soley and issue of science because they can potentially do some good.

Where do these so-called pro-life leaders think these stem cells come from? They come from playing God by creating, studying, testing, and then destroying embryos. This is the opposite of the whole point for being pro-life. God alone makes life and we have no right as humans to try to create or take it apart from the ways He had allowed, through the scripture, in a civil society.

The issue doesn't just end with the idea of allowing medical testing with these embyos, but is with the idea that federal funds could be used to support this. The majority of voters backed President Bush, who is against this funding. For a Senate to go against the President, a Senate who has a majority that is the same party as the President, is wrong. It is wrong that near half or more of Americans may not even support this idea of federal funding for such a research, yet our taxes may be used to support it. The same issue occurs in California and other states concerning abortion. Tax dollars are used to help fund abortions for poor women who want one yet a majority of Californians (though not necessarily pro-life) believe abortion is wrong.

We cannot allow our Christian votes to support the Republican party. I believe in the sovreinty of God and His will WILL be done. We need to vote for the best overall canidate and no longer comprimise. The more we comprimise for the sake of trying to "beat the Democrats" or save the Republican party, the farther we will fall out of morality into this political compromise.

(This poem is dedicated to my daughter and the pleasure and awe I have in being her Father)

The Angels Guardian

Two eyes behold
the face of an Angel.
Pure faith in the God
to whom she cleaves.
But who am I?
Father;
Daddy;
Falling to a knee,
Trembling,
Weeping.
Unworthy to tie the shoe.
Her innocent joy,
My terrible fear.
The Angels Guardian
I am.

Nathan Israel DuBois

Copyright ©2005 Nathan Israel DuBois

The Crime of Passion

When some people think about the one crime Christ may be considered to have committed, it would be the loss of His temper in the temple when driving away the money changers. Some people might find us Christians as excuse makers when we say that He had the authority to do so in the name of God, or that He had a "righteous indignation," in which case He acted righteously while indignant against the unholy thieves in the temple. Either way, I think the focus here is all wrong.

He was not excused because He was a special person with special rights to judge those evil doers. He was right because His passion was not self absorbed. He was able to act out in His passion with violence and anger soley because it was to defend innocence outside of Himself. He was not even so much defending the use of His Fathers house for selling, but that it was used to sell sacrifices to the poor who could not afford to bring them from their own house (can anyone say indulgences?)! This was the opposite of charity and the opposite of the heart of God. In Christ's zeal to defend the poor who were being taken advantage of in the house of God, in order to fulfill the righteous law, no less; Christ acted on His passion.

So why, when we think of being Christian, do we look at passion and feel like it is something wrong? Did David not get excused for dancing naked in his passion? However when angered, Moses was punished for striking a rock in anger out of passion. Some would say it was because Moses disobeyed the word of the Lord and that was the sole reason for being punished. Yet did not David break the law by being seen naked? The difference is passion for ones own selfish reasons vs. a passion for others, or more importantly, God.

When we have a passion to serve the Lord and others, God looks upon those actions with joy. When one speaks out or defends innocence, when one praises outside of himself for the glory of God alone, when one loves others so deeply he dies for them, that passion is God given. There is a passion that is evil, however. Some people have a passion for their own innocence, and when someone wrongly accuses them they strike out in "righteous indignation" against that person. Yet even that passion is evil and turns the innocent into the offender. It is a purely selfish passion to defend your honor, especially if it leads to the injury (physical or emotional) of the "offender."

Passion is not a crime. Christianity should not preach passion as one, nor teach that human passions are evil. The evil comes when the passions are self centered vs. being on the behalf of others. The crime of passion is when that passion is for ones self in any way, shape, or form. Let's be passionate for God and others, forsaking ourselves. That is the true passion of love.

Churchianity...Should We Be Required To Participate?

Unfortunately in todays world, we still need to deal with the judgmental attitiudes of those who believe that church attendance is the next step to godliness. In the Christian circles you are looked upon with either scorn or pity if you do not regularly attend a church. For instance, my daughter will attend first grade at a private Christian school next year, and the school that she is attending requires us to attend "a" church regularly. We do not need to attend any affiliates for the school, as long as we are attending a church somewhere. Some might say they are correct to have such a "request." Other might think as long as they are getting the tuition, they should just leave us alone. I have 2 ideas on the matter.

I have no problem with the school being concerned about the lifestyle of the families that send their kid to private school, especially thier own school. They do not want to get kids who come from reprobate parents when the potential for those types of children to victimize other kids is so high in todays society. When I say reprobate, I mean parents who do not know or care about God, might do drugs, be sexually and verbally explicit, etc. They may be sending their kids to private school for the academic benefits only. These are the families they are trying to avoid. I admire and half chose this school for the care they put into family selection. It is their right as a private school and I would always defend that right.

In my families case I have a gripe on the level that we do not attend church on a regular basis. I am theologically in line with their Reformed beliefs. I hold to their opinion of the nature of God, sin, this world, and mankind in general. I do not, however, believe that church attendance is a point that can determine whether families are more or less "Christian." We attend a home group more often than we do not. Our friends in this group are closer than any I have maintained in a church. Behavioral accountability is more closely held in my home group than at any church. However, I am still required to show that my family has regular church attendance, to the school.

Faith defines my life. I would not live the way I do apart from faith. I love my family, my God (THE God), my nation, my friends. I believe that God created this world, that this world will be around forever and we are to maintain our stewardship over it. I believe that without faith in Christ, our children will be doomed to failure in life. There is no life apart from Christ.

Basically, church attendance does not lead to godliness. I have known as many bad people from church as from without. I have met people who love others more from outside the church than from within. Church is an organization. Church is a business that specializes in the business of ministry. Church is a club for like-minded individuals who have like-faith. It is a place where people go to get pumped up about their faith, find peace for their conscience, and encouragement to go on in Christ. If they can get that type of encouragment from somewhere else, so be it. If the church system was the road to truth, there would not be so many denominations that are divided on what they view as truth. If church was ordained by God and not by man, then they would all be speaking in one accord. The fact is, church is a good place to go, but is not a required place to go. God does not judge you based on your church attendance. You can avoid the forsaking of the gathering of the saints in other ways.

It is Christianity, not churchianity. It is called that because we are followers or Christ in our own lives. We believe and try to mold ourselves into what He wants us to be. He made no "church" demands.

May God bless all those who love Him, no matter how or where they fellowship.
Nate

Death's Road
The dark cloud has gone
Angel of Death
Bringing the beginning
The old has passed
The history has been writ.
New journals now begin
Traveling through the unknown
Happily the wanderer
Not looking back
For I can never travel
Death's Road again.

Nathan DuBois
Copyright ©2005 Nathan Israel DuBois

Is the world really getting worse?
Does the sin of today mean a shorter tomorrow?
How can we view the scientific data of today objectively? On one hand we have Hal Lindsey and Jack Van Impe predicting doom and gloom to come. They view the war in Iraq as a sign of the times and pile it upon the natural disasters of Tropical Storm Emily as a reason to predict the second coming of the Christ.

But is our point of view just skewed? Is this really the majority point of view? While the world was losing it's mind during the Y2K scare and predicting cataclysmic events, Pope John Paul II had predicted that the world would make it through Y2K with no major incidents. Not only would the world go into Y2K without incident, he also believed that the next 1000 years would be another great step up for the church. It would be another church age.

Now I am not Catholic, but I do respect the person of Pope John Paul II. He was a man who kept his head when the protestant majority would have had us running for the nearest bomb shelter (regardless of the fact that they believe in a rapture, which would make us escape all the evils of such a thing like the tribulation, which was to begin at Y2K). He encouraged his people to keep their heads up and be encouraged for the coming millenium. Why?

I believe that Pope John Paul II understood something that too many Christians do not comprehend. The Catholic church is probably the oldest organization that exists in the mainstream and they are probably one of the best record keepers in the world. It is my assumption that they hold data which gives them an opinion outside of their contemporary concerns. They can view history objectively through their knowledge of the past, and not allow the sins of the present to move them into a false eschatology predicting doom and gloom in the coming years. What is it that they know?

The world is a much BETTER place today that 100, 1000, and possibly, 10,000 years ago.

- Scientific study of weather over the past 200 years is not enough time to determine if the world is dying. In a world that could be as old as 10,000 years, how can 200 years tell us that natural disasters are occuring more now that ever before? We have recorded and carefully observed maybe 2% of weather history and we think that is enough to predict doom to the planet? Do we know the earth has not slowed down before and sped back up? Do we know that the the world has not suffered greater damage from natural disasters before? Do we know that natural disasters are disasters at all to the planet and not "growing pangs?" 200 years is not enough data. Talk to me in 2,000 years.

- Can we walk down the streets of Paris, New York, London or even Berlin and see people dying of the plague? Do they even lie in the streets dying of aids? This common situation from not even 300 years ago is not common anymore in our world. In all civilized societies the sick and dying can now be cared for by the common people. Dignity is given to those who would have in the past, died on the side of the street and buried without markings. Now that situation is kept to the 3rd world nations, who are now even being supported by the nations with cities like New York, London and Paris so that they may also increase their standard of living. This is not just a Christian doing, it is a change in the fabric of human society that has improved over the last 300 years.

- The war in Iraq has taken less lives in 2 years than even one battle in the Civil War claimed, and the benefit of that reduced number of losses is a nation freed from it's oppressor, and a people liberated and emboldened to fight for their own freedom. These wars, for freedom and to battle evil like terror and communism, are the only wars of the world today. Petty land grabbing battles and even genocide are not the practice of civilized nations today, and are even being rooted out of the 3rd world little by little by the civilized nations with the guts to stand for justice.

The reasons given for a world that is dying do not stand up in the ligh5t of social, political and scientific history. In some cases we do not have the data to say that the world is getting worse, in other cases, the data screams the opposite. The earth is being civilized. Thanks to Christian influence, which points out the evils of slavery, genocide, caste systems, aristocricy, etc, the world is increasingly getting better.

God Bless,
Nate