The Daily Hatch

I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control  and issues dealing with popular culture. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline Republican.

On 2-28-13 I posted this on the Ark Times Blog:

Anything  the government can do to limit abortion is a good thing. In 1980 I really was influenced at my highschool by a teacher of mine named Mark Brink. He introduced me to the film series “Whatever happened to the human race?” by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop.

In this film series that came out in 1979 they dealt with the big social issues like abortion and predicted what social problems we have in the future because of humanism. For instance, they knew that the Jack Kevorkians of the world would be coming down the pike. They predicted that there was a slippery slope from abortion to infanticide to youth euthanasia brought on by the materialistic worldview.

Later in the summer of 1980 I saw the film series “Free to Choose” by Milton Friedman and I read his book “Free to Choose” over and over during the years that followed. That same year I worked in Ronald Reagan’s campaign as a volunteer.

Sadly all of those political and religious heroes of mine have now passed away. Francis Schaeffer at age 72 in 1984, Ronald Reagan at age 93 in 2004, Milton Friedman at age 94 in 2006 and now Dr. C. Everett Koop at age 96 on Feb 25, 2013.

I still stay in touch with my former teacher Mark Brink and enjoy corresponding with him. He introduced me to the film series “Whatever happened to the human race?” that truly was an amazing look at the social issues that we would be facing in the coming years in the USA.

I found three more editorial cartoons of Dr. C. Everett Koop from the 1980’s. He also did some work with the Clinton Administration in the 1990’s on several issues. I had forgotten about that.

https://thedailyhatch.org/2013/02/28/rememb…

Infamous Andy responded:

Saline: I’m going to go out on a limb and say that nothing you’ve ever written here has changed anyone’s mind about anything. Yet you keep showing up, posting links to a blog that no one here has any desire to read (because, let’s be honest, it’s terrible on a number of levels).

Why? Why do you show up daily, displaying your poor grasp of everything from law to economics for all the Arkansas Blog world to see and ridicule? What do you get out of it?

Then the person going by the username NB Lives In Pangburn Trailer Home wrote, “No one listens to him in the real world, that is why. He got kicked out of his morning McDonald’s Geezer Coffee Klatch.”

To my surprise the liberal blogger “The ArkansasTraveler,” wrote:

Can we please stop the piling on of SalineRepublican?

He has just as much right to post here as anyone else. I pretty much disagree with 100% of what he posts, I am an unabashed flaming liberal, and I think he’s waaaay off the mark — but those are his beliefs — he is more than entitled to be wrong.

Unlike other trolls, I haven’t seen his attack other posters the way we have unmercifully peppered him with these personal attacks.

Stop — disagree with his ideas or ignore him (best idea), but I’m worn out with the ad hominem attacks.

Although this blog is a safe refuge in a sea of conservative nuttery, I think we do ourselves a disservice to only limit posters to those that only agree with us. My faith, my values and my beliefs are strong enough to withstand posters who may disagree with them. And they are strong enough to withstand posters who may disagree with them without attacking the mental prowess of those posters or acting like some cultural elitist.

So what if SR comes over here and shares his thoughts. True, probably won’t change any minds, but he may every once in awhile help us to understand why he thinks the way he thinks — and that’s not such a bad thing, especially if we are ever going to find common ground or a mutually acceptable solution.

Furthermore, Conwegian noted, “If those with a more progressive or more liberal bent only want to get news and opinion that they already agree with then they’re no better than Faux News watchers.”

I responded:

I noticed back in the 1990’s when I was confronting over 30 religious right leaders about their use of unconfirmed quotes of the founding fathers that many of them accused me of listening to lies from leftists and humanists who lie all the time because they have an agenda hostile to the conservative view. I admitted to many of these leaders that my good friend Dr. John George was an humanist but he also was a scholar who cared about the truth. Many of these same religious right leaders changed their tune when they found out that the religious right’s favorite writer David Barton was also urging people to only use primary documents of the founders.

1. We should welcome posts from various points of view and engage in thoughtful debate with respect for one another.

2. Accusing people of lying because they come with another agenda is not helpful.

3. We need to attack the argument and not the person either.

4. Being friends with those who disagree with you is okay.

I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video below. It is very valuable information for Christians to have.  Actually I have included a video below that includes comments from him on this subject.

Here is an excellent pro-life cartoon:

In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented  against abortion (Episode 1),  infanticide (Episode 2),   euthenasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close look at the truth claims of the Bible.

Many liberals actually truly do argue for abortion rights over human rights. Prochoice advocate Elizabeth Williams came out and said that on 1-23-13 in her article on Salon. We hear reasons for abortion such as poverty,and  child abuse,  but why not consider adoption? Instead, the political left will stop at nothing to push the pro-abortion agenda. Why not stop and take an honest look at when life begins for the unborn child and when she begins to feel pain?

___________

Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 1) ABORTION OF THE HUMAN RACE

Francis Schaeffer pictured above. I loved to read and to listen to both Chuck Colson Francis Schaeffer. They both were giants in the pro-life movement.

Flaming Truth: Recalling Francis Schaeffer’s Challenge

Historic Christianity, biblical Christianity, believes that Christianity is not just doctrinal truth, but flaming truth—true to what is there, true to the great final environment, the infinite-personal God.” Thus said the great prophet of the 20th century, Francis Schaeffer, whose 100th birthday we celebrate this year.

Central casting in Hollywood could not have produced a better character for the prophet’s role: his trademark knickers, often straggling hair, goatee, and intense scowl. His voice may have been shrill at times, but his words were piercing. Those words spoke of what he called “true truth,” and warned the church against succumbing to relativism, which—even back in the 1970s—had conquered academia and infiltrated broader society.

Schaeffer, with laser-like precision, hit upon the most fundamental issue of our day: The denial of “true truth” was not some passing academic fad. In both its post-Kantian and postmodernist garb, this denial detaches language from reality and leads to the kind of moral and spiritual relativism that is the current coin of contemporary discourse, especially in Europe and North America.

Schaeffer’s message impacted both of us at formative stages of our Christian growth. We were stirred by his challenge for the church to be more than a safe haven for the saved, just a comforter of souls. We were moved by his call to bring Christian truth to bear in every aspect of human life, including literature, politics, and the arts.

Young people by the thousands, many of them refugees from the 1960s counterculture, responded to Schaeffer’s call. They made the pilgrimage to his unique community at L’Abri, a word that means “shelter” in French. There they hiked the Alps, listened to Bach concerts, and talked late into the night. They discovered Christianity to be worth considering and capable of being defended. Schaeffer introduced apologetics to a younger evangelical generation and warned against divorcing personal faith from public witness. But L’Abri was far more than a study center. Francis and Edith Schaeffer demonstrated the power of persuasive hospitality lived out in community.

At the heart of Schaeffer’s concern was an uncompromising commitment to the sanctity of human life. More than any other evangelical leader of his time, Schaeffer placed the prolife concern on the agenda of the evangelical movement. As our friend Richard John Neuhaus often noted, Schaeffer’s witness on the issues of life helped form the context for evangelical and Catholic collaboration.

There is another crucial dimension of Schaeffer’s legacy pertinent to this anniversary year. Late in life Schaeffer published a small book, The Mark of the Christian, in which he called for a “final apologetic.” Drawing on Jesus’ words in John 13:34-35, Schaeffer reminded us that Jesus gave the world the right to decide the genuineness of our faith by our observable love for one another. “This means showing love to our brother in the midst of our differences—great or small—loving our brothers when it costs us something, loving them even under times of tremendous emotional tension, loving them in a way the world can see …. Only with this mark may the world know that Christians are indeed Christians and Jesus was sent by the Father.”

Schaeffer’s challenge remains pertinent today. The mark of Jesus in us is crucial, and it is compelling. None of our activities—evangelism, social ministry, mission, and worldview work—will receive God’s full blessing if they are not guided by the “final apologetic” of demonstrating observable love for one another.

Many of us have tried to pick up pieces of Schaeffer’s legacy. But no one has brought charity and clarity together the way he did. No one has spoken with the compassion, precision, and, yes, fierceness that Schaeffer brought to the task.

Some say today that the church should take a sabbatical from speaking to the culture at large. That would be a grave mistake. The alternative to winsomely engaging the culture isn’t blissful withdrawal: it is further subjugation to what Pope Benedict XVI has called the “dictatorship of relativism.” Schaeffer taught us that the undermining of truth leads to the loss of human rights, including liberty and life itself.

The title of this column is an apt description of Schaeffer’s legacy: contra mundum, against the world. Schaeffer swam against the stream and his words were prophetic, sharp, sometimes cutting. But Schaeffer was against the world in order to be for the world, the world God made and for which Christ died. We can hardly celebrate his legacy in any other way but to hear and to heed.

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