Education – Divine Council

Apologetics

Mathematician James Nickel on ‘The Unrelenting Issue of Intelligibility’

By Terence Gillespie August 1, 2019

James Nickel explains why mathematics work. Or, as scientists put it: “The Unrelenting Issue of Intelligibility.”

He also describes why most mathematical breakthroughs (and mathematicians) are driven by the pursuit of beauty rather than utility.

How could it be that mankind is able to predict behaviors in the universe based only on abstract mathematical principles “invented” in his mind?

Could it be that mathematics is the language of God’s creation?

Nickel expands on this theme and topics in his excellent book, Mathematics: Is God Silent?

Even better, he’s finally fulfilled his life-long ambition to create a math curriculum that inspires the student by tying math with wonder, meaning, applications, & philosophy. He calls it “The Dance of Number.” Perhaps the myth of mathematics having no applicability to life and daily inspirition are finally over!

Catholic

Ecumenical School of Exorcism’s ‘Best Practices’ Assembles in Rome

By divinecouncil May 22, 2019

by Jamie Seidel

Exorcism is going multi-denominational. Where once those competing for the souls of followers would burn each other as heretics and engage in bloody wars, the world’s mainstream Christian denominations are now rallying together to battle a resurrected threat.

And that’s no less than Satan himself.

The Roman Catholic Church has for the first time opened up its annual exorcism class in Rome to representatives of all major Christian faiths. The Pontifical University of Regina Apostolorum is a Vatican-affiliated university in Rome that has been conducting the increasingly popular annual exorcism conventions for Catholic priests for the past 14 years.

But now the doors of the 14th Exorcism and Prayer of Liberation Course have been thrown open to groups once considered heretical and demon-infested only a few short centuries ago.

Now some 250 Catholics, Lutherans, Greek Orthodox and Protestant priests have assembled to arm themselves with the sword of the holy word to battle Satan amid the souls of their parishoners.

It is itself a dark art, born of a dark age.

The Catholic Church, however, insists demonic possession is on the rise.

In 2014, it formally recognised the ancient ritual of exorcism under Canon Law and gave official approval to the formal creation of the International Association of Exorcists.

It blames the secularisation of society (separation of religion and state) along with the increasing popularity of competing religions, tarot readings, astrology, the internet and atheism for opening the demonic floodgates.

And the best way to fix this, it believes, is to tackle the ‘possessed’ head-on.

SWORD OF THE SPIRIT

“We are called to fight against the Devil with all our might and determination,” keynote speaker and Catholic priest Jose Enrique Oyarzun addressed the assembled exorcists in Rome.

In this enlightened age, the practice sounds odd to many.

And that’s the problem, exorcists insist.

Speaking in lost tongues. Vomiting weird objects. Unexplained wounds. Writhing. Shaking. Shrieking abuse. Supernatural strength.

While there is rarely evidence beyond the anecdotal, exorcism practitioners insist their behind-closed doors experiences are very real.

And it’s a threat Pope Francis himself has been keen to highlight, making regular references to the power of the Devil in his sermons.

“He is evil, he’s not like mist. He’s not a diffuse thing, he is a person. I’m convinced that one must never converse with Satan — if you do that, you’ll be lost,” the Pope recently told a Catholic news service.

Now, the Pope has a spiritual army of his own at his command.

The International Association of Exorcists counts some 400 priests among its members worldwide. And the death of its most famous demon hunter, Father Gabriele Amorth, in 2016 served only to inspire a surge of fresh applications.

But they’re not enough.

So the Catholic Church is seeking a source of fresh recruits.

SHIELD OF FAITH

When it comes to skewering Satan, there are problems of doctrine.

Not all the Christian faiths believe the same things. And they’ve put each other to the torch and started wars over such serious matters in the past.

Why not now?

“This is the first time that different denominations have come together to compare their experiences on exorcisms,” Spanish priest and theologian Pedro Barrajon, one of the convention’s organisers, told media in Rome.

“The idea is to help each other, to establish best practices if you will. The Catholic Church is most associated with exorcisms because of films like The Exorcist and The Rite, but we are not the only church that performs them. Expelling the devil goes back to the earliest origins of the Christian Church.”

It’s a spiritual battle winning secular attention.

The Italian government also apparently takes the alleged possession crisis seriously.

Its education ministry this year offered its teachers the option of attending the intensive 40-hour “exorcism and prayers of liberation” crash-course in Rome. At the cost of 400 euros ($A640) each, every attending teacher was promised to be taught how the ancient rite should be “correctly practised”.

The move attracted ire from the Italian opposition parties who insisted the education system had more to worry about than training teachers in magic.

“With all the problems in Italian schools, the ministry is trying to bring back the Dark Ages,” opposition, centre-left MP said Laura Boldrini said.

“Schools need to prepare young people for the challenges of the future. And what does the education minister do? He promotes exorcism courses. (Meanwhile) schools are not safe, gyms are not fit to be used and teachers are not properly paid.”

BREASTPLATE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

Father Barrajon, 61, told the conference in Rome that non-Catholic denominations were less structured in their exorcism rituals. “Some of the other churches are more creative, they don’t use a precise format,” he said.

And that could present a problem: perhaps any harpies inhabiting a human body won’t be entirely evicted.

Which is why they want priests to attend demonology school.

Participants attending the conservative Legionaries of Christ religious order run university study such subjects as “The Symbology of Occult and Satanic Rituals” and “Angels and Demons in the Sacred Scripture”.

The need to get it right, according to the exorcists, is pressing.

Last year, exorcist Benigno Palilla told Vatican Radio that there were some 500,000 cases of possession appearing in Italy each year.

But there are rising concerns about the validity of the priestly practice.

Some faith healers have been accused of sexually molesting their possessed patients.

One case in Palermo saw a priest and soldier arrested after using the pretext of “expelling demons’ to touch the genitalia of women.

In another Italian case, an underage girl was sexually abused by a 69-year-old practitioner, her boyfriend and her mother. “He convinced the girl she was the victim of strong ‘negative forces’ and consequently convinced her to undergo ‘purification rites’ consisting of sexual intercourse, sometimes in a group,” Italian police said at the time.

Pope Francis said shortly before the convention that priests entrusted with the “delicate and necessary ministry” of being an exorcist must be chosen with “great care and great prudence.”

BELT OF TRUTH?

The broader Catholic Church admits to being dubious about most claims of possession.

Its officers publicly state the majority of such claimants are, in fact, mentally ill. Instead of priests, they should be seeking medical attention to address physical health issues.

But Pope Francis has recently adopted a more urgent tone.

In March, he reportedly told a group of priests they “should not hesitate’ to refer confession-box allegations of posession to an exorcist.

“They could also have spiritual disturbances, whose nature should be submitted to careful discernment,” Pope Francis said, “taking into account all the existential, ecclesial, natural and supernatural circumstances.”

The exorcism convention, however, has made some concession to modern science – admitting there may be complicating medical issues at hand and included talks on psychology, criminology, pedophilia and pornography.

Read the Whole Article

Do you find these posts helpful and informative? Please CLICK HERE to help keep us going!

Apologetics

6 Things You Can Tell Your Kids to Explain Pain and Suffering in Our World

By Guest Post April 30, 2019

by J. Warner Wallace

Devastating storms, killer earthquakes, record-setting fires and horrific acts of evil dominate recent news headlines. Why would an all-loving, all-powerful God allow these things to happen? Is God just unable to stop this kind of evil? If so, why call Him all-powerful? Is God unwilling to stop this kind of evil? Then why call Him all-loving? Some non-believers offer the existence of evil as proof that God doesn’t exist. What should we tell our kids when they observe (or even experience) evil?

Our conversations will certainly look (and sound) differently depending on the age and maturity of our kids, but in all the years that I have been discussing the “problem of evil” with students (either at conferences or as a youth pastor), several key issues continue to dominate my discussions. When explaining why an all-loving, all-powerful God would allow natural disasters (or human evil), consider incorporating the following truths:

Remind Your Kids That Eternity Can Helps Us Cope with Evil
All of us hope to live a long life without free from pain or hardship. What if we knew, in advance, we were going to live forever and experience a pain-free existence for all eternity? Would we view pain and suffering in our temporal life differently (even if it lasted for many years) if we knew we would eventually experience bliss forever? Remind your kids that God offers us life beyond the limits of our short, material existence; we are eternal creatures. All experiences of evil must be considered in light of eternity.

Remind Your Kids That God Loves Us Enough to Allow Us Free-Agency
A loving God would create a world in which love is possible, right? Love requires each of us to act freely, because true love cannot be coerced. God didn’t create us as robots; instead, He gave us free will so our expressions of love would be genuine. But, this also means we have the freedom to ignore God’s commandments and behave badly. Remind your kids that much of the evil we experience in the world is the result of humans who freely choose to disobey. God may allow some evil because free agency is required for love to exist in our world.

Remind Your Kids That Some Suffering Can Actually Develop Our Character
As a parent, you’re probably more concerned with your kids’ character than their comfort, and character is far more likely to be developed through adversity than advantage. Hard times can bring out the best in all of us, providing us with opportunities to help those in need, rise to the occasion, and come to the rescue. Remind your kids that God may allow us to suffer discomfort because He knows it will develop our character, especially since we are eternal creatures. God cares more about our eternal character than current comfort.

Remind Your Kids That God Can Use Some Evil to Call Us to Himself
Many of us ignore God until something happens to get our attention. Tragedy has a way of redirecting our thoughts and pointing us to a life beyond our current struggle. If God has designed us to be with Him in eternity, He might use hardship to refocus those of us who haven’t been paying attention. Remind your kids that some forms of evil may simply be part of God’s loving effort to point us in the right direction.

Read the Whole Article

Do you find these posts helpful and informative? Please CLICK HERE to help keep us going!

Christianity

Free Christian Movies to Watch for Easter Week

By Terence Gillespie April 17, 2019

Yesterday was Darren Wilson’s “Finger of God” and today is his “Furious Love”. WP Films is making their films watchable for free during Easter week!

I’m half-way through Furious Love and can now recommend it. Here’s the trailer:

I don’t know what movies will be shown, tomorrow, so tune in to find out!

Bible

How to Read the Bible through Comic Books, and Why It Matters that we do

By Guest Post March 12, 2019

by Zanne Domoney-Lyttle

Comic Books. Graphic Novels. Cartoons. Illustrated Pictures. The ‘Funnies.’ Methods of visual storytelling through sequential art have been around for centuries, yet this mode of narrative-sharing is often looked down upon, branded a lowly form of popular culture that is ‘just for kids’.

The label ‘just for kids’ is derogatory on three levels; firstly, children are inexorable in their ways of combining learning through fun, and that is nothing to be ashamed of. To suggest children’s literature is less important is to devalue the very education systems we pride ourselves on. Secondly, branding comic books as something that only the lower echelons of society can and should access, diminishes the amount of collaborative effort and work it takes to produce the things in the first place.

Thirdly, it does not take into account how comic books are often used as visual aids for learning in higher education institutions, as well as in homes around the world. In fact, you could argue that active modes of learning have frequently centred upon the combination of image with word to get its point across; pictures, as the saying goes, are worth a thousand words.

This is a concept that Bible illustrators have known for a long time. Consider, for example, the Garima Gospels, an illustrated Bible manuscript which dates back to the 5th-century CE. Biblical texts are incredibly difficult to read, understand interpret in some parts, so illustrating biblical texts was seen as a natural way to either clarify Scripture, or potentially fill in the gap between text and understanding. They are a form of visual exegesis if you will.

Post-publication of the Gutenberg Bible in the 15th-century, there was something of an explosion in the number of illustrated Bibles being produced. Ian Green argues that the reason biblical illustrations and illustrated Bibles grew in popularity at this time partly resulted from an increase in demand for visual aids as a well as a return to a more moralistic reading of Scripture, which meant readers wanted increased access to biblical texts.

Biblical illustrations were used either as visual aids to Scripture (for example, Biblia Pauperum which were printed block-books visualising typological narratives from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament), and as decorative items to adorn the bookshelves of wealthy households. Poorer households were not left out of the picture-Bible trend. For the less-wealthy connoisseur of biblical illustrations, cut-and-paste sheets of biblical imagery were produced.

Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677) was one artist who produced such images. Born in Prague, a centre of arts, science and ambition in the early 17th-century, Hollar was a prolific artist who produced over 2,000 pieces of art, mostly in the format of etchings. Subjects varied from geographical and topographical scenes to portraits, fashion, visualizations of ancient and classic figures, and biblical motifs. On the last theme, Hollar produced visual interpretations of the classic stories of the Bible and drew inspiration from major figures such as Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Paul.

Hollar produced two cut-and-paste sheets on biblical stories; one on Abraham’s story between Gen. 12-24 (see image below) and one on Jacob and Joseph (Gen. 25-48). Both are unsigned, untitled and undated. Cataloguer of Hollar’s works, Richard Pennington suggests that these prints were most likely produced as cheap, visual aids for the Bible reader, meant to be cut up and stuck in personal Bibles or to be used as a cheap and alternative way of decorating walls. The format of each image supports this – the grid-like pattern and the annotations to each image shows where to cut, and where to paste.

Read the Whole Article

Do you find these posts helpful and informative? Please CLICK HERE to help keep us going!

Bible

Can We Please Stop Appealing to Rabbis for Biblical and Ancient Text Interpretation?

By Guest Post February 19, 2019

by Dr. Michael Heiser

I have this topic stuck in my head today in the wake of some conversations with folks about the Dead Sea Scrolls. But it could just as well be about interpreting any passage in the Hebrew Bible. I’ve grown weary of people (especially in Christian Middle Earth) appealing to rabbis to “prove” some idea they have about Scripture.

You have to realize appealing to rabbis means nothing. Rabbinic thought and biblical thought (and academic work) are miles apart. Hey Christians enamored with rabbis: The rabbis can’t even get the messiah right (or, to be more charitable, the two powers in heaven doctrine right — that belief they used to have in Judaism until it became uncomfortable due to Christianity). If you’ve ever listened to Ben Shapiro (I’m a fan of the show) you know what I mean. He often does “Bible time” on his podcast. But what you get isn’t exegesis of the text in its ancient context. What you get is rabbinic opinion (with all the contrarian rabbinic opinions shelved to the side). Rabbinic interpretation (think Talmud and Mishnah) contradicts itself over and over again. That’s what those works do — they fling opinions at each other. That Hebrew food fight got codified into the Talmud and Mishnah. And Judaism is fine with that. We shouldn’t be. Most of what you’d find in rabbinic writings bears little to no resemblance of exegetical work in the text understood in light of its original ancient Near Eastern worldview. Not even close. They’re frequently making stuff up (they apply biblical material to situations in which the community found itself in; the work of the rabbis was responsive to community circumstances — it’s very applicational or situational).

In short, “the rabbis” are not authorities on biblical exegesis in context or on deciphering scrolls and inscriptions. A modern analogy might help. If you put 100 pastors in a room and asked them what a given passage meant and why, and then recorded their debates and codified them in writing you’ve have “evangelical Christian rabbinics.” In academic terms, they are mostly amateurs, unaware of the historical contexts (ANE, and even Second Temple — most of which period preceded the classic rabbinic era). It’s a pool of contradicting opinions. It’s really not very useful. Rabbinic commentary about the biblical text will tell you only about the opinions rabbis have had on a passage. It won’t tell you at all how the ancient biblical writer was producing content from the context of his own pre-rabbinic worldview. “Rabbinic period” and “biblical period” do not overlap chronologically. The classic rabbinic period (“Rabbinism”) dates from the 6th century AD forward. Some of what worked its way into the Mishnah and Talmus is earlier than that, but NONE of it (recall it’s commenting on the Hebrew Bible) is from the Old Testament period. The Dead Sea Scrolls also pre-date the rabbinic period (by centuries). NOTE: This is also why the church fathers aren’t authorities in biblical exegesis, either. They are centuries (even millennia) removed from the biblical period and had no access to things like ancient Near Eastern texts and the Dead Sea Scrolls for help in interpretation. They were brilliant, but far removed from the right contexts and under-sourced.

In fairness, though, I don’t want to overstate the situation. Just as we might find a pastor who is a trained scholar in our hypothetical analogy — and whose opinions would be more informed (i.e., he’d be aware of the scholarly give and take, the published literature on a passage, and the wider worldview contexts), we might find a rabbi who is a trained scholar as well. But it’s light years from a 1:1 equation there. “Rabbi” isn’t a synonym for “Hebrew Bible scholar” any more than “pastor” is a synonym for “Bible scholar.” You might find that overlap, but it’s far from a given.

Read the Whole Article

Do you find these posts helpful and informative? Please CLICK HERE to help keep us going!

Atheism

Former Atheist & Philosophy Professor Edward Feser On How Studying Philosophy Convinced Him of God’s Existence

By Guest Post January 30, 2019

By James Bishop

Philosopher Edward Feser perhaps has one of the most well articulated and detailed testimonies I recall having read (which at this point is quite a few). Feser is a professional philosopher after all, so it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. Nonetheless, in this short post I have attempted to summarize Feser’s journey while also attempting to outline some of the key moments that had taken place within it. I am confident that this summarized testimony will be helpful to those who don’t necessarily have the time to read through the 7000 word testimony on Feser’s own website. However, I do encourage reading the full testimony for there is much in the details not included here.

As a way of biography, Feser is a well-known philosopher in the profession having penned numerous academic articles on several subjects ranging from the philosophy of mind to metaphysics. He is the Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College, previously a Visiting Assistant Professor at Loyola Marymount University, and a Visiting Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center. He has authored numerous books including Aquinas, Five Proofs of the Existence of God, Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction, and The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism. Feser was also once an atheist naturalist until he converted to Christianity.

Feser explains that he was a convinced atheist naturalist for a period of 10 years in the 1990s and that his transition away from it “was no single event, but a gradual transformation.” He was brought up Catholic but ultimately lost his faith while a teenager around the age of 13 or 14. His atheism stayed with him well into his university years as a passionate philosophy student. While at university he discovered a new interest in existentialism and existentialist philosophers, particularly Soren Kierkegaard. This interest led him to discover other existentialists such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Walter Kaufmann of whom he both appreciated but especially Kaufmann in particular. In the more modern philosophical climate, the atheist analytic philosopher J. L. Mackie proved appealing to Feser, and he considered Mackie’s book The Miracle of Theism to be a solid piece of philosophical work. Feser remarks that Mackie’s book was “intellectually serious, which is more than can be said for anything written by a “New Atheist.”” Philosopher Kai Nielsen would also appeal on issues of morality and religion. According to Feser,

What really impressed me was the evidentialist challenge to religious belief. If God really exists there should be solid arguments to that effect, and there just aren’t, or so I then supposed… Atheism was like belief in a spherical earth — something everyone in possession of the relevant facts knows to be true, and therefore not worth getting too worked up over or devoting too much philosophical attention to.

However, when he examined analytic philosophy in some more detail during the course of his studies it would, before long, bring his “youthful atheism down to earth.” The genesis of Feser’s transition away from atheism came about when he first began to look into the philosophy of language and logic. Over the several following years, during which he weighed information and arguments presented in his course materials, he reasoned that the existing naturalistic accounts of language and meaning failed to satisfy,

I already knew from the lay of the land in the philosophy of language and philosophy of mind that the standard naturalist approaches had no solid intellectual foundation, and themselves rested as much on fashion as on anything else.

Read the Whole Article

Do you find these posts helpful and informative? Please CLICK HERE to help keep us going!

Catholic

Why Thomas Aquinas Stands the Test of Time

By Guest Post January 29, 2019

by Casey Chalk

The 2016 data breach of the personal Gmail account of John Podesta, chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, garnered much attention from Catholics. They took umbrage at an email exchange discussing the possibility of a “Catholic Spring” aimed at fundamentally changing their identity and beliefs. In that conversation, John Halpin, a Catholic and fellow at the Center for American Progress, noted that many “powerful elements” in conservatism are Catholic. He speculated that “they must be attracted to the systematic thought,” and added, “they can throw around ‘Thomistic’ thought and ‘subsidiarity’ and sound sophisticated because no one knows what the hell they’re talking about.”

I’m not sure Halpin knows “what the hell” Thomistic thought is, but I certainly wish he—and all Americans—did. Thomism, 745 years since the great theologian’s death, remains perhaps the best philosophical system available to the West.

As I’ve argued elsewhere at TAC, we are all philosophers in the sense that we all develop, either consciously or subconsciously, a system of thought for evaluating ourselves, the world around us, and what counts as truth. We make choices, form opinions, and offer arguments, all based on philosophical presuppositions. When we go with “what works,” we channel the pragmatism of William James and John Dewey. When we seek to maximize sensual pleasure and minimize pain, we are drinking from the well of John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism. When we act off of scientifically verifiable data, we are the intellectual heirs of empiricist David Hume. Those who believe morality can be changed by will honor the memory of Friedrich Nietzsche. And those who reduce human persons to their economic output have embraced the thinking of Karl Marx.

There are fundamental problems with all of these philosophies. One error that unites them is a belief, either explicit or implicit, in materialism, or the idea that man (and reality) is reducible solely to what is material, what can be sensed, and what can be empirically studied. Even that which separates man from all other animals—his intellect and will—are explained away as physical properties. Yet without an intellect and will, appeals to an essential human dignity quickly collapse. We are all just a bunch of colliding atoms in a universe of colliding atoms. It’s just that our atoms are a bit more evolved and sophisticated than everything else.

Thus do all these philosophical systems tend to dehumanize man and overemphasize certain goods at the expense of others. For example, pace the pragmatists and utilitarians, of course we should prefer things that work over things that don’t work and pleasure over pain. But sometimes what “works” isn’t immediately perceptible to our senses. Additionally, the greatest pleasures in life sometimes require great sacrifice and suffering. Making decisions based on empirical data is a good, but not all things worthy of our attention can be empirically derived (e.g. the arts, human love, knowledge of eternal truth). There is something to Nietzsche’s argument that knowledge can be an instrument of power, but his claim that reality as we know it is simply an artificial creation of our minds unravels when one asks whether his own presuppositions are really real or just perspectives he has created and thus just as ephemeral as everything he attacks. Marx was right to recognize that man’s economic output contributes to his dignity and value—but it certainly isn’t the sum of his worth.

Who can save us amid this messiness? I would offer Aquinas. His philosophy doesn’t get as much attention as other philosophers, and certainly not as much as those of the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment. When Americans think of Aquinas, if they ever do, they’re more inclined to think of his role in Christian theology, especially his contribution to the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. Perhaps if they’ve taken introductory theology or philosophy courses, they’re aware of his famous “Five Ways,” or proofs of the existence of God, which prominent New Atheist Richard Dawkins sought to take to task (and failed) in his bestselling book The God Delusion.

Yet Aquinas is a philosopher par excellence who is worthy of our attention. He stands tall on his own merits as the one who “was able to provide the principles,” to quote French philosopher Pierre Manent, for political communities governed by reason and grace. Yet his value also lies in the larger intellectual project of which he is a part. By this I mean that Aquinas, in a way that was perhaps unprecedented in the 12th and 13th centuries, consolidates the wisdom of the Western tradition into a coherent whole. He draws upon an impressive variety of sources. Certainly Holy Scripture and earlier theologians like Augustine, John of Damascus, Dionysius the Areopagite, and Anselm loom large in his work, though he is also incredibly well-versed in the history of philosophy.

It was Thomas who “baptized” Aristotle by appropriating significant chunks of his philosophy, including such concepts as act and potency, hylemorphism, the four causes, essence and existence, transcendentals, and being. Even Aquinas’s proofs for God’s existence, as many Thomists have noted, are drawing upon Aristotelian premises. He also builds his philosophical system upon the shoulders of Plato, Cicero, Boethius, Avicenna, Averroes, Al-Ghazali, Maimonides, and John Scotus Eriugena. This enterprise reflects conservatism at its best: studying, honoring, and incorporating the very best of our intellectual forebears, while carefully and humbly critiquing where they went astray.

Read the Whole Article

Do you find these posts helpful and informative? Please CLICK HERE to help keep us going!

Biology

Don’t Pretend Drag Queens at Libraries Aren’t Promoting Anything to Kids

By Guest Post January 29, 2019

By T.R. Clancy

Just when you think the left can’t behave worse, we find the inspiring story of public library officials in a Detroit suburb heroically defending their “children’s story hour hosted by drag queens.”

Since 2017, the Huntington Woods library has been hosting “Drag Queen Story Time,” where little kids are read to by characters like former Miss Motor City Pride, “Miss Raven Divine Cassadine.” Library official Joyce Krom discovered the San Francisco-born program online, after she followed a Google Alert promoting literacy. Huntington Woods, a “progressive, diverse community,” shares borders with three other woke towns – Ferndale, Royal Oak, and Berkley – which taken together constitute the highest concentration of “CoeXist” bumper stickers outside of California. Consequently, nearly all city officials fully support DQSH, because they want to keep their jobs. But one city commissioner, Allison Iversen, a mother of four who resigned her seat last month to move to another city, dared to push back. In an email to librarian Krom, Iverson questioned the wisdom of DQSH “trying to push this idea that this is something … completely natural.” Iverson also worried that “the program could be ‘planting a seed’ about gender fluidity in children who would have otherwise never had to wrestle with the issue in their own lives.”

Part-time library clerk Jon Pickell, “who has proudly watched the program thrive,” rejects Iverson’s concerns as “hogwash.” The clerk, who identifies as gay, says DQSH “is not promoting anything. You’re not going to end up as transsexual … because you saw a drag queen story hour.”

But according to the mission statement on the program’s Facebook page, DQSH is indeed promoting something:

DQS captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models. In spaces like this, kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where people can present as they wish, where dress up is real.

Role models are exactly that – models of behavior that adults want children to admire and emulate. Ideally, a child learns from the behavior and values of the role model and wants to do likewise. And what’s being promoted by Drag Queen Story Hour is being “unabashedly queer.”

Enlightened parents are bringing their small kids to see a drag queen because they want them to experience “all sorts of people.” But this story time isn’t just listening to a drag queen tell his own story, and it’s for certain not about literacy. The goal is that the children “play” with their own identities, exploring “the gender fluidity of childhood.” There’s a testimonial on the DQSH website from a first-grade teacher who held Drag Queen Story Hour for his class. He triumphantly describes what his pupils told him afterward, “[d]uring our debrief”: “they were preaching the incredible lessons they had learned, like ‘It’s OK to be different’ and ‘There’s no such things as “boy” things and “girl” things.'” So which is creepier: the idea of six-year-olds being “debriefed” after a pro-trans school activity, or that they come out of it “preaching” a first-grader’s version of queer theory. It sounds positively evangelistic.

Read the Whole Article

Do you find these posts helpful and informative? Please CLICK HERE to help keep us going!

Art

How to Read the Prophets

By Guest Post January 20, 2019

A transcript of “How te Read the Prophets” by The Bible Project.

Ezekiel, Obadiah, Habakkuk What do these names have in common? Well, they are three of the 15 prophets that have their own books in the Bible.

And if you have tried to read these books, odds are you got lost in their dense poetry and strange imagery. But these books are super important for understanding the overall biblical story.

So, let’s talk about “How to Read the Prophets“.

When I hear the word “prophet”, I think of a fortune teller, someone who predicts the future.

That is what being a prophet means in many cultures, but not in the Bible.

While the biblical prophets sometimes speak about the future, they are way more than fortune tellers.

How should I think about them?

Well, they were Israelites who had a radical encounter with God’s presence and then were commissioned to go and speak on God’s behalf.

Like a representative.

Right! And the thing that they cared about the most. It is the mutual partnership that existed between God and the Israelites.

Right! the partnership. God rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt and invited them to become a nation of justice and generosity, that would represent his character to the nations.

So, this partnership required all Israelites to give their trust and allegiance to their God alone. In the Bible, this partnership is called the “Covenant”.

But the leaders — the priests, the kings — led Israel astray and they broke the covenant.

So, this is where the prophets came in, to remind Israel of their role in the partnership. They did this in 3 ways.

First, they were constantly accusing Israel for violating the terms of the covenant. The charges usually include idolatry, alliances with other nations and their gods and allowing injustice towards the poor.

So, they are like covenant lawyers.

Right. So, second, the prophets called the Israelites to repent, which means simply, “to turn around”. They spoke of God’s mercy to forgive them if they would just confess and change their ways.

But, Israel and its leaders didn’t change. Things went from bad to worse.

And so that brings us to the third way that prophets emphasized the covenant. They announced the consequences for breaking it which they called, “The Day of the Lord”.

Oh, yeah! The apocalypse. Visions of the end of the world.

Well, sort of. The prophets were mostly interested in how God would bring his justice on Israel’s corruption and on the violent nations around them. And while explaining these local events, they often used cosmic imagery.

Cosmic imagery?

Yeah! like Jeremiah. He described the exile of the Israelites to Babylon as the undoing of creation itself. The land dissolves into chaos and disorder, no light, no animals or people. Or Isaiah described the downfall of Babylon as the disintegration of the cosmos. Stars falling from the sky, the sun going dark. For the prophets, when God acts in human history to bring justice, it is a “Day of the Lord”.

So, the prophets aren’t talking about the end of the world?

Well, hold on. They are doing many things at once. The cosmic imagery shows how these important events of their day fit into the bigger story of God’s mission to bring down every corrupt and violent nation once and for all. The prophets cared about the present and the future. And the cosmic imagery allowed them to talk about both at the same time.

Got it. So, no matter when you live, the Day of the Lord is bad news if you are part of Babylon.

But, it is good news if you are waiting for God’s kingdom. The Day of the Lord pointed to the return of the exiles to Jerusalem. And once again, the prophets use cosmic poetry to describe it. They see a New Jerusalem, like a new Garden of Eden, with all humanity living at peace with each other and with the animals. And, there is a new Messianic King who restores God’s kingdom in a renewed creation.

Beautiful! So, those are the three themes in the prophets. These prophets must have been very powerful, persuasive speakers.

Well, some were. But others lived on the margins. They would often perform strange, symbolic stunts in public to communicate their message. Like when Ezekiel lay in the dirt and built a model of Jerusalem being attacked by Babylon. Or when Isaiah walked around naked for 3 years as a symbol of the humiliation of exile.

So, did people pay attention to them?

Not really. The stories in these books show how the prophets were a minority group mostly shunned by Israel’s leaders. And their writings were a kind of resistance literature. Most people ignored them. That is, until their warnings came true in the Babylonian exile.

And after that, people began to take their word seriously.

Yes! The works of these earlier prophets were inherited later by unnamed prophets who studied these texts intensely. They’re the ones who arranged the Hebrew scriptures as we know them, including the books of the prophets.

Okay. And there are 15 books of the prophets. The big 3 are Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

Then, there is a collection of 12 smaller prophetic works unified on a single scroll. And in each of these books, you will read stories about the prophets and their poems and visions, all arranged to show the cosmic meaning of Israel’s history. How God will turn their tragic story of failure and exile…

…into a story of hope and restoration for all nations.

And it’s that twin message of prophetic warning and of hope that the prophets cared about so much. And, it is a message that we still need to hear today.