What others have to say

In between fixing recalcitrant computers and answering my phone, I’ve been reading some great stuff on other blogs. BTW, I use Bradbury Software’s excellent Feed Demon to collect the latest posts. Much faster than clicking down through a list of bookmarks.

Julana writes at Life in the Slow Lane. She’s written a beautiful post she calls I “chose” a mortal life. It’s about what went through her mind, and what didn’t, when she learned the son she was carrying had Down Syndrome.

I did not choose life for my son. He was given it by Someone else. What I chose was a “mortal” life for myself. I accepted a life that had some limitations it would not have had, if I had collaborated in ending my son’s life before his birth.

When I chose a college, when I chose a major, when I chose a husband, I accepted the accompanying limitations. Accepting boundaries was a submission to the truth of my finity. I cannot live forever, experience everything, everywhere.

My life was bounded by many parameters before I became pregnant. Having a child would add to them. So would having a child with Down syndrome.

There’s a lot of wisdom in those words. I think of Jesus himself choosing a mortal life and all the pain and difficulty that decision brought him. Yet in that mortal life, he also knew his Father’s pleasure.

I wrote on another mother’s thoughts about her Down Syndrome daughter here. Both of these women are reacting against the current “ethical” notion that defective babies should be aborted. What do you think about that? Read these posts before you make up your mind.

Mark Daniels, who believes in Better Living, just posted an interesting essay he calls Why are we so litigious? I can’t for the life of me figure out how Mark finds the time to write so much great stuff.

Here’s an excerpt:

There’s a scene in the movie, Spanglish in which Tia Leone’s character, Deborah, sits with her mother, played by Cloris Leachman, on the night Deborah may have wrecked her marriage through her extramarital affair. … “You are an alcoholic and were a wildly promiscuous woman when I was young and it’s because of you that I’m in this situation now,” Deborah says.

I laugh every time I watch that scene. For a grown woman to blame her actions on the bad example of her mother is, when you think about it, patently absurd. There ought to be a statute of limitations on how much we can blame our parents for what we do.

Yet, we live in a culture where it’s perfectly acceptable to blame everybody else for the troubles we bring on to ourselves. Get burned by coffee just out of the pot? Sue the restaurant. Get overweight from too many fat-burgers? Hey, it’s not your fault.

Ken Brown writes for the Crux Magazine blog Signs of the Times. He wrote a response to my recent post on capital punishment and abortion that he calls The Death of Love, and I like what he has to say:

[Lehardy] therefore proposes a deal with the left: we’ll give up the death penalty, if you give up all “elective” abortions.

My first response to this (admittedly unrealistic) suggestion was overwhelmingly positive. But the more I think about it, the less sure I become. In his amazing little book called Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton argues that a defining feature of historical Christianity is its refusal to take such middle roads, preferring to maintain both sides of any paradox. This applies as much to charity as to the doctrine of the divinity and humanity of Christ. Classic Christian charity is not some vague feeling that we ought to help those in need, nor is it the eminently sensible pagan willingness to forgive some sins but not others. Both of these are dilutions. One allows you to love all people, no matter how unlovely, while the other allows you to treat terrible sins with terrible justice. But each embraces one virtue only at the expense of the other. Christian orthodoxy accepted neither of these.

Go read it all. Ken makes some excellent points about the historical place Christians have held, defending the truth as God has revealed it without compromise. My comment to him something like this: Recognizing that we live in a pluralistic society, Is there a place for compromise and pragmatism by Christians in politics?

Finally, the blogger known only as Skye Puppy (at GodBlogCon she wore a ski mask to conceal her identity!) has vented her spleen about “Happy Holidays” in a post she calls Fighting for Christmas.

To rename a Christmas tree as a holiday tree is as offensive as renaming a Jewish menorah a candlestick.

I like it!