No Limits To The Evil of Their Caliphate

Islamic State Stones Four Rape Victims for ‘Adultery’

Mary Chastain
BreitbartNews

Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) militants raped four women and then stoned them for adultery in Mosul, Iraq.
“The four victims were arrested earlier on [W]ednesday in a raid by ISIS jihadis,” stated Raafat Zarari, spokesman of the Nineveh Media Center. “The jihadis claimed to have captured the women while committing adultery.”

A Sharia court operated by the Islamic State sentenced the women to death.  “The four women were stoned to death on Thursday in front of a large crowd of people in central Mosul,” continued Zarari.  The sentence did not mention the men who raped the women, who, it can be assumed also committed “adultery” if they were married when the rape took place.  “The four women were most likely exposed to sexual abuse at the hands of ISIS militants before being driven out of their homes and transferred to the Sharia Court,” explained activist Abdullah al-Malla.

He added:

The statement of the Sharia Court regarding the case of those four women has avoided mentioning the men who have been involved in the alleged adultery. Apparently, the victims have been raped by ISIS jihadis and then stoned to death on charges of committing adultery.

The Islamic State has a history of stoning rape victims or anyone who allegedly commits adultery.

Daily Devotional

Don't Be Afraid of God's Power

"The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power."
Nahum 1:3

Charles H. Spurgeon

Jehovah "is slow to anger." When mercy cometh into the world she driveth winged steeds; the axles of her chariot-wheels are red hot with speed; but when wrath goeth forth, it toileth on with tardy footsteps, for God taketh no pleasure in the sinner's death. God's rod of mercy is ever in his hands outstretched; his sword of justice is in its scabbard, held down by that pierced hand of love which bled for the sins of men. "The Lord is slow to anger," because he is great in power.

He is truly great in power who hath power over himself. When God's power doth restrain himself, then it is power indeed: the power that binds omnipotence is omnipotence surpassed. A man who has a strong mind can bear to be insulted long, and only resents the wrong when a sense of right demands his action. The weak mind is irritated at a little: the strong mind bears it like a rock which moveth not, though a thousand breakers dash upon it, and cast their pitiful malice in spray upon its summit.

God marketh his enemies, and yet he bestirs not himself, but holdeth in his anger. If he were less divine than he is, he would long ere this have sent forth the whole of his thunders, and emptied the magazines of heaven; he would long ere this have blasted the earth with the wondrous fires of its lower regions, and man would have been utterly destroyed; but the greatness of his power brings us mercy. Dear reader, what is your state this evening?

Can you by humble faith look to Jesus, and say, "My substitute, thou art my rock, my trust"? Then, beloved, be not afraid of God's power; for by faith you have fled to Christ for refuge, the power of God need no more terrify you, than the shield and sword of the warrior need terrify those whom he loves. Rather rejoice that he who is "great in power" is your Father and Friend.

NZ's Anti-Family Madness

A Huge Failure Born of State Overreach

In 2007 the NZ Parliament passed a law which made the parental smack of a child a crime.  It represented at the time a gargantuan sledgehammer to crush a nut.  But the do-gooders meant well. They were convinced that violence against children perpetrated by adults was endemic in New Zealand.  In this they were right.  They were convinced that passing the law would set a bright line in societal consciousness--violence against children was never to be tolerated.  In this they were completely wrong.

But politicians exist to make laws.  For the vast majority, if not all, of them making laws, rules, and regulations are they only tools they have to "change things".  Adult violence against children was endemic in New Zealand; passing a law would fix things up.  Three politicians stand out (there were many others) as believing most passionately that the anti-smacking law would stop violence against children.

Serial protester, Sue Bradford had increased her sense of self-righteousness and self-worth over many years campaigning to make the parental smack of children for purposes of training and disciplining them a crime.  In Parliament at the time, she seized the opportunity to introduce just such a bill to the House.  She promised, she vowed, she gave solemn oaths that if her bill became law, the tidal wave of abuse against children in this country would begin to recede.  She misled the nation.

Taking Stock of Where We Are

Rhymes With Bruise

Douglas Wilson

Blog&Mablog

I want to begin what I say here by honoring the memory of Justice Antonin Scalia. He was a man who understood himself, who understood the Constitution, and who understood the enemies of constitutional liberty — whose name unfortunately is Legion. Here is Scalia on the reason for this.

“God assumed from the beginning that the wise of the world would view Christians as fools…and He has not been disappointed. Devout Christians are destined to be regarded as fools in modern society. We are fools for Christ’s sake. We must pray for courage to endure the scorn of the sophisticated world. If I have brought any message today, it is this: Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity. Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world.”

Scalia was not ashamed to be out of step with the times, so long as he was in step with the truth. Here he is again: “Bear in mind that brains and learning, like muscle and physical skill, are articles of commerce. They are bought and sold. You can hire them by the year or by the hour. The only thing in the world not for sale is character.” Scalia was a bulwark of our republic, and a very great man. He is now at peace, and because of that we are deeper into war.

 Ted Cruz:  I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t mind that flag on the left in the Oval Office . . .

So we need to take stock of where we are.

Daily Devotional

A Diligent Pupil in the College of Content

"I have learned, in whatever state I am, therewith to be content."
Philippians 4:11

Charles H. Spurgeon

These words show us that contentment is not a natural propensity of man. "Ill weeds grow apace." Covetousness, discontent, and murmuring are as natural to man as thorns are to the soil. We need not sow thistles and brambles; they come up naturally enough, because they are indigenous to earth: and so, we need not teach men to complain; they complain fast enough without any education. But the precious things of the earth must be cultivated.

If we would have wheat, we must plough and sow; if we want flowers, there must be the garden, and all the gardener's care. Now, contentment is one of the flowers of heaven, and if we would have it, it must be cultivated; it will not grow in us by nature; it is the new nature alone that can produce it, and even then we must be specially careful and watchful that we maintain and cultivate the grace which God has sown in us.

 Paul says, "I have learned ... to be content;" as much as to say, he did not know how at one time. It cost him some pains to attain to the mystery of that great truth. No doubt he sometimes thought he had learned, and then broke down. And when at last he had attained unto it, and could say, "I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content," he was an old, grey-headed man, upon the borders of the grave--a poor prisoner shut up in Nero's dungeon at Rome. We might well be willing to endure Paul's infirmities, and share the cold dungeon with him, if we too might by any means attain unto his good degree.

Do not indulge the notion that you can be contented without learning, or learn without discipline. It is not a power that may be exercised naturally, but a science to be acquired gradually. We know this from experience. Brother, hush that murmur, natural though it be, and continue a diligent pupil in the College of Content.

A One-Eyed Man Amongst the Blind

The King is Dead

It is with great sadness that Contra Celsum notes the passing of US Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia.  We well remember his visits to Auckland, NZ in 1999 and 2004.  He has been lionised as the leader of the conservative justices on the US Supreme Court--their intellectual champion, their leader, and their mentor.  A giant, some have said.

We suspect that such praise is hyperbolic.  We suspect that Scalia himself would have thought so.  The fact remains that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.  Scalia was the one eyed man amongst a Court stacked with the blind.  We do not mean to imply that the "liberal lions" of the Court (Ginsburg, Kennedy, etc.) are dumb.  Rather that they cling to an epistemology that is so idiotic, so myopic that all it takes is for someone to state the obvious, like the boy who pointed out the sartorial inadequacies of the emperor, to be  seen as profound and far-seeing.

Scalia was the exponent of "originalism" when it came to interpreting and applying the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights.  The original intent and meaning of the actual text, to be discovered by studying the text in its Sitz im Leben--its "Situation in Life"--once uncovered would help us in applying the text appropriately to the modern world.

You Will Do as We Say

The Religious Narrow Mindedness of the Left

2015 will undoubtedly go down as the year the Left’s efforts to impose its absolutist ideology went well beyond targeting lecturers and graduation speakers invited to colleges.

In late spring, the University of California distributed a guide to forbidden classroom phrases, including “America is the land of opportunity” and “America is a melting pot,” to faculty at each of its 10 campuses. Later in the year, George Mason University professor Jagadish Shukla and 19 others went national with a letter to President Obama and Attorney General Loretta Lynch, demanding they criminally prosecute any company or organization that denies climate change.

Now, in 2016, we discover that even public officials directly responsible for the safety of millions—the police chief of Cologne, Germany, and the mayor of Philadelphia, for example—have been cowed into a stunning dereliction of duty by the apostles of political correctness.

Many on the Left will argue that prescience justifies their rigidly enforced opinions. Having twice elected a liberal black president, successfully promoted gay marriage, enabled women to serve in combat roles, and taken major steps toward legalizing marijuana—all in less than a decade—liberals like to see themselves as prodding a cautious public to go where it sooner or later will agreeably follow.

Yet a much stronger case can be made that the Left’s aggressive enforcement of its ideology stems, not from any victory-inspired confidence, but from the very opposite.

Daily Devotional

The Sweet Designs of God

But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace. (Galatians 1:15)

John Piper

Ponder the conversion of Paul, the sovereignty of Christ, and what Paul’s sins have to do with your salvation.

Paul said that God “set me apart before I was born,” and then on the Damascus road “called me by his grace” (Galatians 1:15). This means that between Paul’s birth and his call on the Damascus road he was an already-chosen but not-yet-called instrument of God (Acts 9:15; 22:14).

This means that Paul was beating and imprisoning and murdering Christians as a God-chosen, soon-to-be-made-Christian missionary.

As I was on my way and drew near to Damascus, about noon a great light from heaven suddenly shone around me. And I fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to me, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 22:6–7)

There was no denying or escaping it.

Utopian Madness

Verging On Insanity

The old saw about the genie being let out of the bottle has it that once out, the genie can't be returned; it remains wildly uncontrollable.  Once out, bad consequences follow.  

There is a strong body of evidence to demonstrate that "assisted suicide", when legalised, is just such a genie.  Now, of course, nations that make assisted suicide legal always comfort themselves with the platitude that their particular version will not be misused by the unscrupulous.  After all, the fomenters and the legislators mean well.  They are only thinking kindly of the person suffering as they die.  Their version of assisted suicide is a law of love, dripping with compassion and pity.

But these folk are wilfully naive.  They do not operate on the premise that "the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked", but rather its opposite: viz, "the heart is truthful above all things and comprehensively righteous."  Given the supposed universal righteousness of men, of course it's reasonable to expect everyone will use a law permitting assisted suicides for the sole and only purpose for which it was intended, which was to reduce the suffering of the dying.

But which premise about men is true?

Letter From America (About Political Cowardice)

Stop Applying a Different Standard to Donald Trump

Filed under: General — Patterico 

Journalists do not hold Donald Trump to the same standard as other candidates. When he makes grand, sweeping, and ridiculously unsupportable statements, they let it go — apparently thinking that the silly nature of the statements is self-evident. Maybe they are — to educated, intelligent, and informed people. But those aren’t the people still making up their minds about who should be President.

This idea that we apply a different standard to Trump is likely to be a running theme here. Today, let me start the discussion by showing you this video:

Daily Devotional

There Is No Denying

TO SISTER PENELOPE: On the consequences of Mrs. Moore going into a nursing home; and on cheerful insecurity rather than worry.

30 December 1950

C. S. Lewis

Yours was a cheering letter which warmed my heart (I wish it would have warmed my fingers too: as it is they will hardly form the letters!). . . .

Our state is thus: my ‘mother’ has had to retire permanently into a Nursing Home. She is in no pain but her mind has almost completely gone. What traces of it remain seem gentler and more placid than I have known it for years. Her appetite is, oddly, enormous. I visit her, normally, every day, and am divided between a (rational?) feeling that this process of gradual withdrawal is merciful and even beautiful, and a quite different feeling (it comes out in my dreams) of horror.

There is no denying—and I don’t know why I should deny to you—that our domestic life is both more physically comfortable and more psychologically harmonious for her absence. The expense is of course very severe and I have worries about that. But it would be very dangerous to have no worries—or rather no occasions of worry. I have been feeling that very much lately: that cheerful insecurity is what Our Lord asks of us. Thus one comes, late and surprised, to the simplest and earliest Christian lessons!

. . . I am glad to hear your inner news. Mine, too, is I think (but who am I to judge?) fairly good. Oremus pro invicem [Let us pray for each other].

From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume III
Compiled in Yours, Jack

The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume III: Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy 1950-1963. Copyright © 2007 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Yours, Jack: Spiritual Direction from C. S. Lewis. Copyright © 2008 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

More Delicious Irony From the US Primaries

Egalitarianism's Faithful Sons (and the Odd Daughter)

On the grand banquet table of delicious ironies, here's a morsel to keep you chuckling through several courses.  Bernard Sanders--candidate to be nominated by the Democratic Party in the United States as its very own presidential candidate--is doing pretty well in the early primaries.  He is a serious socialist.  We mean by this that he believes fervently in egalitarianism.  Enforced equality should characterise human society.  In everything.  Thus says Bernie.

But, hold on.  Bernie is running in a political race against Hillary Clinton.  It's expected that there will be a winner and a loser.  Not co-winners.  That very notion should be a severe provocation to Bernie.  But, thankfully sanity has broken out.  Bernie had a big "win" in the New Hampshire primary.  He trounced Hillary.  Theoretically, in an unjust world, he would have left New Hampshire with significantly more delegates than Hillary.

But justice has prevailed--and just as well.

See No Evil, Hear No Evil

Sweden's Somnolence

Oliver Lane
Breitbart London

The world recoiled in horror in January after a young woman who worked in a ‘unaccompanied minor’ refugee centre was murdered by one of her charges, but it has now been revealed the killer shouldn’t have been in the children’s centre at all, as he lied about his age.

Twenty-two year old Alexandra Mezher was rushed to hospital in late January after being repeatedly stabbed. She had been a worker at a migrant centre in Mölndal, Sweden caring for unaccompanied minors aged between 14 and 17 years old and was killed by one of the residents there, Somali-born Youssaf Khaliif Nuur.

There were some doubts of the man’s true identity from very early on in investigations, including over his age which seemed remarkably young for the bearded, six foot man.

Daily Devotional

Always in Heaven

TO BEDE GRIFFITHS, with whom Lewis shares an insight from The Great Divorce (Chapter 9), which he is writing at the time: On the utter truth of losing one’s life to save it (with another word about Charles Williams).

C. S. Lewis

25 May 1944

Thanks for your letter. I too was delighted with our meeting. About the past, and nothing being lost, the point is that ‘He who loses his life shall save it’ [Matthew 10:39] is totally true, true on every level. Everything we crucify will rise again: nothing we try to hold onto will be left us.

I wrote the other day ‘Good and evil when they attain their full stature are retrospective. That is why, at the end of all things, the damned will say we were always in Hell, and the blessed we have never lived anywhere but in heaven.’ Do you agree?

You’re right about C.W. He has an undisciplined mind and sometimes admits into his theology ideas whose proper place is in his romances. What keeps him right is his love of which (and I have now known him long) he radiates more than any man I know. . . . Continue to pray for me as I do for you.

From The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume II
Compiled in Yours, Jack

The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume II: Family Letters 1905-1931. Copyright © 2004 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. Yours, Jack: Spiritual Direction from C. S. Lewis. Copyright © 2008 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Scintillating Confabulations of Outrage

An Internationalist Bridge Too Far

The cause of fighting against the Trade Pacific Partnership ("TPP") has been weakened by the syndrome of embarrassing advocates.

A local journalista/opiner has written:

The opposition to the TPP was ugly. Worse than that, it backfired. At first, the crowds of thousands walking Auckland's streets in protest were impressive.  Until you talked to them.

Too many of them didn't even know why they were protesting.  "I dunno, to be honest," was roughly what one man said.  "I'm just here for my people."  The sight of Sue Bradford wrestling with police - again - can do quite a good job of drawing attention to a cause.  But the sight of Sue Bradford sitting on the tarmac in the middle of a main road to deliberately disrupt the traffic of a city already cursed with motorway constipation is just infuriating.

How did the TPP become the fault of Aucklanders who are just trying to get to work? How did it require vandalism of one minister's electorate office?  How would molotov-cocktail bombing another minister's office stop it?

A  delicious irony emerges when considering these embarrassing advocates.

Pakistan's Version of Islam

More Horrific Persecution of Christians

Pakistani Police Strip Christian Man Naked, Beat Him to Death with Logs

Thomas D. Williams

Breitbart News

A gruesome story of anti-Christian police brutality has emerged from the Punjab province of Pakistan, where police allegedly tortured a Christian man to death in an attempt to make him confess to stealing from his Muslim employer.

When a wealthy Muslim businessman was robbed last November, he accused his Christian employee, 47-year-old Liaqat Masih, of the crime, and reportedly “pressured police” to arrest and force a confession out of the man and his son, Khurram. The businessman, Mohammad Raza Hameed, is a leader of the Pakistan Tehreek Insaf political party in the community, and although he had many Muslim employees, he only accused Masih, a Christian who had served as his driver for over 15 years.

Based on the accusations, the police arrested Masih and his son and brought them in for interrogation. When the son Khurrum refused to confess to the crime, the police forced him to strip, tied him up and beat him. When the young man continued to protest his innocence, the police brought his father in and also ordered him to strip naked.

Daily Devotional

Better Than Money, Sex, and Power

Do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. (Hebrews 10:35)

John Piper

We need to ponder the superiority of God as our great reward over all that the world has to offer. If we don’t, we will love the world like everyone else and live like every one else.

So take the things that drive the world and ponder how much better and more abiding God is. Take money or sex or power and think about them in relation to death. Death will take away every one of them. If that is what you live for, you won't get much, and what you get, you lose.  But God's treasure is abiding. It lasts. It goes beyond death. It’s better than money because God owns all the money and he is our Father. “All things are yours, and you are Christ's and Christ is God’s” (1 Corinthians 3:22-23).

It's better than sex. Jesus never had sexual relations, and he was the most full and complete human that ever will exist. Sex is a shadow — an image — of a greater reality, of a relationship and pleasure that will make sex seem like a yawn.

The reward of God is better than power. There is no greater human power than to be a child of the Almighty God. “Do you not know that we shall judge angels?” (1 Corinthians 6:3).  And so it goes on and on. Everything the world has to offer, God is better and more abiding.

There is no comparison. God wins — every time. The question is: will we have him? Will we wake up from the trance of this stupefying world and see and believe and rejoice and love?

The Next Domino to Fall? Part II

The Deaths of Two Fathers

Guest Post by Alwyn Poole
The Care Alliance

I had two fathers who died two quite different deaths. One, my birth father (who I never met), chose suicide assisted by a shotgun in his back shed. The other, the one who adopted me and brought me up, died of natural causes in his lounge – at home with his wife – in 2006.

Strangely enough, re the debate on euthanasia, it is the death of the second one I want to address. This should not be a nice trendy issue for someone to try and gain electoral support. It has stunning potential to become a slippery slope for a range of groups in society. It also has the potential to confer power to a group of people (doctors) who are highly fallible in a range of ways.

As I said – my adoptive father died naturally at home. His life almost did not end that way. A few months prior to his death I received a phone call at work that my father was “dying that day”. It was a Tuesday and he was in intensive care in a hospital in a small city in NZ. I had spent time there with him on the Sunday and had left him on the improve and​, apparently, ​ in good spirits.

Ray Poole was 67 years old at the time and had a terminal illness, emphysema, that had progressed.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

A Six-Inch Swath of Orange Shag

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

So the other night at the recent Republican debate, three candidates said they would be fine with women having to register for the Selective Service. Those three were Christie, Bush, and Rubio. After the debate, Cruz said that he thought the idea was “nuts.” “We have had enough with political correctness — especially in the military,” Cruz said.

You traditionalists need to develop a more
realistic view of what it would actually
be like to have women in combat.

So let us talk about this for a minute, shall we? I have some random thoughts on the subject, which will probably require systematic organization later.

First, I want to say that there are a number of striking things about Rubio’s conservatism that I like. I like his free and open confession of Christ. I like how unabashedly pro-life he is. But this answer of his reveals that he is not functioning with an integrated biblical worldview at all. This is a profound and radical inconsistency in his professed conservatism.

Once you have signed off on the nation/state conscripting your daughters to go serve in combat roles, whatever it was you thought you were conserving — thus allowing you to call yourself a conservative — has had a fork stuck in it and is done. Nothing really to conserve any more.

A nation that conscripts its daughters for its defense is a nation that no longer deserves a defense. We may have to fight later as a practical matter, but this is a matter of rudimentary allegiance.

The compromise runs deep also (as it does with Christie and Bush), because the formal legality of women serving in combat roles is merely weeks old.

Daily Devotional

Watch and Pray

"Lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil [or, the evil one]."
Luke 11:4

Charles H. Spurgeon

What we are taught to seek or shun in prayer, we should equally pursue or avoid in action. Very earnestly, therefore, should we avoid temptation, seeking to walk so guardedly in the path of obedience, that we may never tempt the devil to tempt us. We are not to enter the thicket in search of the lion. Dearly might we pay for such presumption. This lion may cross our path or leap upon us from the thicket, but we have nothing to do with hunting him. He that meeteth with him, even though he winneth the day, will find it a stern struggle. Let the Christian pray that he may be spared the encounter. Our Saviour, who had experience of what temptation meant, thus earnestly admonished his disciples--"Pray that ye enter not into temptation."

But let us do as we will, we shall be tempted; hence the prayer "deliver us from evil." God had one Son without sin; but he has no son without temptation. The natural man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards, and the Christian man is born to temptation just as certainly. We must be always on our watch against Satan, because, like a thief, he gives no intimation of his approach. Believers who have had experience of the ways of Satan, know that there are certain seasons when he will most probably make an attack, just as at certain seasons bleak winds may be expected; thus the Christian is put on a double guard by fear of danger, and the danger is averted by preparing to meet it. Prevention is better than cure: it is better to be so well armed that the devil will not attack you, than to endure the perils of the fight, even though you come off a conqueror. Pray first that you may not be tempted, and next that if temptation be permitted, you may be delivered from the evil one.

The Next Domino to Fall? Part I

Riding the Tsunami of Secularism

In Proverbs 8: 35-36 we read:

For whoever finds me finds life
    and obtains favour from the Lord,
but he who fails to find me injures himself;
    all who hate me love death.

The extended context is one of Wisdom being personified.  It speaks of how God's wisdom is immanent throughout the creation.  Consequently, those who "dismiss" God from their lives end up hating life and loving death.  Proverbs 8: 35-36 is a fearful condemnation, for it indicts the smart and intelligent as well as the ignorant and the brutish.

In the West we have seen how this works out at the extreme end of the spectrum.  Literally.  Abortion is a love affair with death and a hatred of new, innocent life.  It deploys an entire infrastructure and industry devoted to death in the name of human rights.  It is celebrated by those who hate God's wisdom as a profound respect for life (the "mother's").  It loves the death of the child.  It cheers and celebrates the murder of the defenceless, innocent child.  Surely our culture hates God.  Surely it loves death.

In New Zealand we are about to debate (and probably legislate) another preference for death over life.  "Assisted dying" is likely to be approved by our Parliament, and made the law of the land.  One can see the logic.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Title Nine, Schmitle Nine

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

While nobody was looking, the swells who run our international affairs effectively destroyed the entire concept of women’s athletics. We have now advanced well past the absurdity horizon, the point past which no recovery is possible without resorting to the forces of dark bigotry and reaction.

It used to be that for a male to compete as a female in the Olympics, he needed to have had the requisite surgery two years prior. That was stupid and perverse, but at least it was post-op stupid and perverse. If some guy wanted a gold medal bad enough, he had to do something drastic for a chance to get there. But now, wafting along with the zeitgeistian breezes, the intelligentsia has effectively destroyed women’s athletics everywhere.



Meet Tiffany, silver medalist in the 2016 hammer throw. Her teammates call her Bruno, but not when she is around.

This rules adjustment by the Olympic committee will make it necessary for every institution down to high school to make the same adjustments, and poof, there go all your feminist advances. Title nine, schmitle nine. And it wasn’t even done by the religious right. Of course, we conservatives are allowed to get a certain wheeze out of it, but we had nothing to do with it. Not our zoo, not our monkeys.

Daily Devotional

God is Not Static

All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that ‘God is love’. But they seem not to notice that the words ‘God is love’ have no real meaning unless God contains at least two Persons. Love is something that one person has for another person. If God was a single person, then before the world was made, He was not love.

Of course, what these people mean when they say that God is love is often something quite different: they really mean ‘Love is God’. They really mean that our feelings of love, however and wherever they arise, and whatever results they produce, are to be treated with great respect. Perhaps they are: but that is something quite different from what Christians mean by the statement ‘God is love’. They believe that the living, dynamic activity of love has been going on in God forever and has created everything else.

And that, by the way, is perhaps the most important difference between Christianity and all other religions: that in Christianity God is not a static thing but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance.

From Mere Christianity
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis

Mere Christianity. Copyright © 1952, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1980, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. Copyright © 2003 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

A Picture More Profound Than A Thousand Words

Reality--Unrehearsed and Spontaneous

Remember the 'Napalm Girl' shot which aroused the world over the horror of US napalm being dropped on Vietnamese villages?  The picture of the naked, fleeing infant, amidst the other terrified children, said it all.

Sometimes a news photos capture a reality which is so profound it becomes indeed much more powerful than thousands of words.

What is wrong with this photo? What is so graphically epitomic about this image?



A group of migrants walk on the road near a border line between Serbia and Croatia, near the village of Berkasovo, Serbia, Monday, Oct. 19, 2015. Tension was building among thousands of migrants as they remained stranded in fog and cold weather in the Balkans on Sunday in their quest to reach a better life in Western Europe, two days after Hungary closed its border with Croatia and the flow of people was redirected to a much slower route via Slovenia. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

Some hints:
Count the number of young men. Consider their clothing and what they are carrying.
Compare and contrast with the woman.

The culture which Western feminists lionise and idolize is portrayed quintessentially in this image.  It is a negative parable of how the truth of Jesus Christ sets people free.

Letter From New Zealand (About An Imaginary Sex-Crime in the UK)

Tried for a Sex Crime... 

'because I brushed past a film star in rush-hour'

NZ Herald

Their paths crossed for precisely half a second during the evening rush hour at Waterloo Station.

Mark Pearson, a 51-year-old artist, was on his way home from work, weaving through a thick tide of London commuters.  Walking towards him across the concourse came an award-winning star of film, TV, theatre and radio. She had just been to a yoga class and was heading to a rehearsal. Neither knew the other.

What happened next - or rather what didn't happen - would cast Mr Pearson into what he calls a year-long "Kafkaesque nightmare" from which he has only just escaped, and for which he squarely blames the Crown Prosecution Service.  It cannot be said with certainty that the artist and the actress made even fleeting physical contact. CCTV images showed only that they walked past each other.

Yet the woman, who is in her 60s, claimed Mr Pearson sexually assaulted her - penetratively - for "two or three seconds".  This was followed, she insisted, by a violent blow to her left shoulder. Images of the moments before and after they passed were captured from CCTV and shown to a jury during Mr Pearson's three-day trial at Blackfriars Crown Court in London last week.

Daily Devotional

Gladly Not God

Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples, ascribe to the Lord glory and strength! (Psalm 96:7)

John Piper

Here’s what I think would be some of what’s included in a full experience of what the psalmist calls for when he says, “Ascribe [=give] to the Lord strength.”

First, by God’s grace, we give attention to God and see that he is strong. We give heed to his strength. Then we give our approval to the greatness of his strength. We give due regard to its worth.

We find his strength to be wonderful. But what makes this wonder a “giving” kind of wonder is that we are especially glad that the greatness of the strength is his and not ours.  We feel a profound fitness in the fact that he is infinitely strong and not us. We love the fact that this is so. We do not envy God for his strength. We are not covetous of his power. We are full of joy that all strength is his.

Everything in us rejoices to go out to behold this power, as if we had arrived at the celebration of the victory of a distance runner who had beaten us in the race, and we found our greatest joy in admiring his strength, rather than resenting our loss.

We find the deepest meaning in life when our hearts freely go out to admire God’s power, rather than turning inward to boast in our own — or even think about our own. We discover something overwhelming: It is profoundly satisfying not to be God, but to give up all thoughts or desires to be God.

In our giving heed to God’s power there rises up in us a realization that God created the universe for this: So that we could have the supremely satisfying experience of not being God, but admiring the Godness of God — the strength of God. There settles over us a peaceful realization that admiration of the infinite is the final end of all things.

We tremble at the slightest temptation to claim any power as coming from us. God has made us weak to protect us from this: “We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Corinthians 4:7).  O what love this is, that God would protect us from replacing the everlasting heights of admiring his power with the futile attempt to boast in our own!

Reality Shock

Paper Tigers Face Up to Jihad

World views matter.  Tacitly believed world views are as profoundly influential as the world view of the self-aware.  When however the tacit believer is confronted by an alien world view most often confusion results.  A normal reaction is for the tacit believer to retreat to the old "certainties", like "Nobody believes that", or "What an extreme view", or "Everybody agrees that's wrong".

We are seeing this every day in the confrontation between Islamic world views, on the one hand, and sophisticated secular humanists in the West who have spent most of their adult lives in the thrall of the fallacy of argumentum ad populum.  Everyone believes the mores and principles of secular humanism, so it must be right.  Islamic believers are a devastating threat because they don't give a fig for the Western world-view.  Moreover, because Islamic believers are far more self-conscious about the foundations and fundamental principles of their world-view, their militancy comes as a great shock to the fellow-travellers of Western secular humanism.

Here is an example of one writer expressing his bewilderment over the behaviour of Islamic migrants:  Karl du Fresne opines--

Letter From America (About Venezuela)

Venezuela is on the Brink of a Complete Economic Collapse

Matt O'Brien,
The Washington Post

The only question now is whether Venezuela's government or economy will completely collapse first. The key word there is "completely." Both are well into their death throes. Indeed, Venezuela's ruling party just lost congressional elections that gave the opposition a veto-proof majority, and it's hard to see that getting any better for them any time soon — or ever.

Incumbents, after all, don't tend to do too well when, according to the International Monetary Fund, their economy shrinks 10 percent one year, an additional 6 percent the next, and inflation explodes to 720 percent. It's no wonder, then, that markets expect Venezuela to default on its debt in the very near future. The country is basically bankrupt.

That's not an easy thing to do when you have the largest oil reserves in the world, but Venezuela has managed it. How?

Daily Devotional

Hallelujahs of Eternity

"Thou shalt call his name Jesus."
Matthew 1:21

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

When a person is dear, everything connected with him becomes dear for his sake. Thus, so precious is the person of the Lord Jesus in the estimation of all true believers, that everything about him they consider to be inestimable beyond all price. "All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia," said David, as if the very vestments of the Saviour were so sweetened by his person that he could not but love them. Certain it is, that there is not a spot where that hallowed foot hath trodden--there is not a word which those blessed lips have uttered--nor a thought which his loving Word has revealed--which is not to us precious beyond all price.

And this is true of the names of Christ--they are all sweet in the believer's ear. Whether he be called the Husband of the Church, her Bridegroom, her Friend; whether he be styled the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world--the King, the Prophet, or the Priest--every title of our Master--Shiloh, Emmanuel, Wonderful, the Mighty Counsellor--every name is like the honeycomb dropping with honey, and luscious are the drops that distil from it. But if there be one name sweeter than another in the believer's ear, it is the name of Jesus.

Jesus! it is the name which moves the harps of heaven to melody. Jesus! the life of all our joys. If there be one name more charming, more precious than another, it is this name. It is woven into the very warp and woof of our psalmody. Many of our hymns begin with it, and scarcely any, that are good for anything, end without it. It is the sum total of all delights. It is the music with which the bells of heaven ring; a song in a word; an ocean for comprehension, although a drop for brevity; a matchless oratorio in two syllables; a gathering up of the hallelujahs of eternity in five letters.

"Jesus, I love thy charming name,
'Tis music to mine ear."

Useful Idiots

The Syndrome of the Embarrassing Advocate

Both the Republican and Democratic parties in the United States are learning all about the Syndrome of the Embarrassing Advocate.  It's that feeling of hollow victory when someone who is a few sandwiches-short-of-a-picnic starts to advocate for a position you hold dear.

We have seen Republicans wincing when Donald Trump, a celebrity politician, has started to espouse conservative causes.   We in New Zealand can afford to laugh at Trump because none of the avian excrement is likely to foul our nests.  So he has been good for us--as a comedic figure can be.  After all, laughter is the best medicine, they say.  Thus, we were heartily amused when, being confronted by his ideological and philosophical about-faces, Trump (with a straight face, no less) justified them by saying, "Well, look, back then I was a business man,  Now I am a politician."  What a deliciously ironic turn of phrase.

And don't get us started on Hillary Clinton.  Democrats and Independents all over the country must be wincing every time she opens her mouth to change feet.  It pays to be sanguine about it all.  As Mr Bennett has said, "What do we exist for, eh Lizzy, but to make sport for our neighbours, and for us to laugh at them in their turn."

We have had our own Kiwi incident of the embarrassing advocate right here in NZ.