Chuck Colson (Breakpoint)
June 24, 2009
There was a lot going in the news last week—riots over the election in Iran, North Korea’s nuclear saber-rattling. But the biggest story of the week, it turns out, was—drum roll, please—the story of President Obama swatting a fly.
“I got the sucker!” Obama told CNBC correspondent John Harwood after killing a fly that had been buzzing around his head.
Harwood laughed and the camera crew applauded. But the sight of the fly’s corpse lying on the White House rug was too much for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals—and insects, apparently. They sent a letter to the Fly Swatter in Chief, expressing their disapproval.
In the future, PETA said, they hoped Obama would treat flies in a more “humane” manner. To underscore their point, PETA sent the President a Humane Bug Catcher, which allows flies to be trapped and then released outside.
The story of the squashed fly afforded us a moment of comic relief. But there’s a serious point at stake here. We are seeing more and more examples of people treating animals—and even insects—as if they had as much value as humans.
The other day, I saw what I first thought was a school bus. It wasn’t. It was a doggie daycare bus, taking the neighborhood pooches to a dog-sitting facility. As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up.
Go online, and you’ll see many ads for expensive clothes for dogs and cats. And a few years ago, during the making of the film Men in Black, the American Humane Society was on hand to make sure none of the hundreds of cockroaches used in the film were injured. Cockroaches!
Groups like PETA illustrate a philosophy of reductionism, which treats all life as morally equivalent. Of course, if reductionists really want to be consistent, they would not even boil water, because every time they do, they kill millions of innocent microbes. If all life has equal value, then the logical conclusion is to treat all life the same, no matter how lowly—or how deadly, like mosquitoes carrying the West Nile virus.
Obviously, nobody can live in the real world on the basis of this philosophy.
A realistic and livable philosophy of life comes from Scripture, which teaches that God created us in His image and set us up as stewards over the rest of creation, from amoebas to apes to houseflies.
That doesn’t give us license to treat animals cruelly. But it’s one thing to treat animals kindly, and quite another to accord them equal status with humans.
Christians need to learn to press people to face the logical conclusion of their own beliefs. The idea that animals—even flies—ought to be treated with the same respect as humans may sound humane at first. But press the idea to its rational conclusion, and people will soon begin to see how irrational and illogical it really is.
The good news is that this many Americans did begin to think about these ideas last week. The result: Many people told PETA to buzz off. So I think we ought to congratulate the President for squashing that sucker, as he put it. It ignited a great national discussion about the absurdity of putting flies on the same moral plane as humans made in God’s image.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
An Unhappy Trend: Decoupling Children and Marriage
Taken from BreakPoint by Chuck Colson
According to a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control, 40 percent of American babies born in 2007 were born to unmarried mothers. That’s up from 34 percent only five years ago.
When most Americans hear the expression “unmarried mother,” what nearly always comes to mind is a teenage girl. But that’s not what’s driving the recent increase. In 2007, only 23 percent of the out-of-wedlock births were to unmarried teenagers. The rest were to women in their 20s, and now increasingly, in their 30s.
The increase among older women accounts for the six percentage point increase of the past five years. In 2007, 60 percent of all births to unmarried women were to women in their 20s and 17 percent to women in their 30s.
Or, as Emily Yoffe of Slate magazine put it, “the vast majority of unwed mothers are old enough to know what they're doing.” Yoffe sees these numbers as evidence of “an extraordinary decoupling of marriage and procreation.”
But what’s behind this “decoupling”?
A significant part of the answer lies in changing ideas and attitudes towards marriage. Marriage is no longer seen as an institution whose ends have a communal, as well as personal, purpose. Instead, it is an expression of private affection whose ends are almost entirely about personal fulfillment.
Thus, getting married is increasingly something you do after the rest of your life is arranged to your satisfaction. You go to school, find a job, get established in your career and then you think about getting married. As a result, the average age when people first get married has risen by five years since 1970.
But while our ideas about marriage have changed, our natures haven’t. One thing that Christians and dyed-in-the-wool Darwinists can agree on is that we are driven to reproduce ourselves. With a few exceptions, no matter how successful we might be, many feel that if we leave no descendants behind, all the striving is beside the point.
What’s more, our biology doesn’t care about our sense of personal fulfillment. A woman’s most fertile period is her late teens to early 30s—precisely the time when young people are going to school and getting established in their careers.
Thus, the longer we put off marriage, the more difficult it will be to fulfill one of our most fundamental instincts—have a child.
Throw in the complications of meeting “Mr. Right,” getting to know him, and deciding that he’s the person you want to marry, and the “ticking clock” begins to sound like Big Ben.
So it seems that more and more women have decided to have children while they still can, regardless of their marital status. The result is, in Yoffe’s words, a “culture [that] is out of touch with the needs of children.” And I would add that what a child needs most is a stable, loving family with a mom and a dad at the helm.
Re-coupling marriage and procreation will not be easy in this “me-first” culture. That’s because marriage and having babies—as fulfilling as they are—are not about self-fulfillment. They are about love, fidelity, and self-sacrifice for the good of the other—for the spouse, for the children.
That message is a tough sell these days. But it’s a message our culture ignores at its great peril
According to a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control, 40 percent of American babies born in 2007 were born to unmarried mothers. That’s up from 34 percent only five years ago.
When most Americans hear the expression “unmarried mother,” what nearly always comes to mind is a teenage girl. But that’s not what’s driving the recent increase. In 2007, only 23 percent of the out-of-wedlock births were to unmarried teenagers. The rest were to women in their 20s, and now increasingly, in their 30s.
The increase among older women accounts for the six percentage point increase of the past five years. In 2007, 60 percent of all births to unmarried women were to women in their 20s and 17 percent to women in their 30s.
Or, as Emily Yoffe of Slate magazine put it, “the vast majority of unwed mothers are old enough to know what they're doing.” Yoffe sees these numbers as evidence of “an extraordinary decoupling of marriage and procreation.”
But what’s behind this “decoupling”?
A significant part of the answer lies in changing ideas and attitudes towards marriage. Marriage is no longer seen as an institution whose ends have a communal, as well as personal, purpose. Instead, it is an expression of private affection whose ends are almost entirely about personal fulfillment.
Thus, getting married is increasingly something you do after the rest of your life is arranged to your satisfaction. You go to school, find a job, get established in your career and then you think about getting married. As a result, the average age when people first get married has risen by five years since 1970.
But while our ideas about marriage have changed, our natures haven’t. One thing that Christians and dyed-in-the-wool Darwinists can agree on is that we are driven to reproduce ourselves. With a few exceptions, no matter how successful we might be, many feel that if we leave no descendants behind, all the striving is beside the point.
What’s more, our biology doesn’t care about our sense of personal fulfillment. A woman’s most fertile period is her late teens to early 30s—precisely the time when young people are going to school and getting established in their careers.
Thus, the longer we put off marriage, the more difficult it will be to fulfill one of our most fundamental instincts—have a child.
Throw in the complications of meeting “Mr. Right,” getting to know him, and deciding that he’s the person you want to marry, and the “ticking clock” begins to sound like Big Ben.
So it seems that more and more women have decided to have children while they still can, regardless of their marital status. The result is, in Yoffe’s words, a “culture [that] is out of touch with the needs of children.” And I would add that what a child needs most is a stable, loving family with a mom and a dad at the helm.
Re-coupling marriage and procreation will not be easy in this “me-first” culture. That’s because marriage and having babies—as fulfilling as they are—are not about self-fulfillment. They are about love, fidelity, and self-sacrifice for the good of the other—for the spouse, for the children.
That message is a tough sell these days. But it’s a message our culture ignores at its great peril
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