The World Tomorrow

On a pleasant late July evening in Victoria, B.C. two years ago, 16-year-old Mark Arrieta pulled out a handgun at the strident urging of his 22-year-old “friend,” Somphanvanh Chanthabouala, and shot at point-blank range three other young people, seriously injuring two while killing 20-year-old University of Victoria student Philbert Truong.  The shooting was the result of Chanthabouala feeling “disrespected” earlier in the evening at the Red Jacket nightclub by one of Philbert Truong’s friends, Thuan Le. A witness later said that Le’s disrespect was inadvertent, but literal. He stepped on Chanthabouala’s toes that evening at the crowded nightclub.

Quickly arrested after the shootings, Arrieta and Chanthabouala passed their time in the police station’s interrogation room by composing, singing, and dancing (in handcuffs?) a rap song that glorified another recent shooting in the news—that of a Victoria policeman.   Later, the judge presiding at the trials of Arrieta and Chanthabouala watched the CCTV footage of the accused performing their rap song that night and was struck by Arrieta’s and Chanthabouala’s nonchalant attitude towards violence that exhibited a “disturbing callousness.”

Most criminals hide their inner thoughts and feelings from the authorities. But Arrieta exposed his inner state by writing a bit of doggerel that was discovered during a routine search of his cell. He composed it while awaiting trial:

I ain’t got a heart bitch, I got an ice box…Packing for that action bitch u better know I got mine, Any type of situation, I ain’t got no hesitation, Imma real g [I’m a real gangsta] don’t compare me to an imitation.

A callous disregard for another human being’s life doesn’t happen all at once. After all, we aren’t born with a full slate of anger and hate. It takes time to build up a nonchalant attitude towards violence. In grade 4 Mark Arrieta was suspended for starting a small fire. The grade 5 teacher described in her reports that the 10-year-old version of Mark Arrieta whom she taught was disruptive, angry, and disrespectful. Before moving to Victoria from Toronto the troubled youth was involved in an estimated 20 to 30 fights. In grade 8 Arrieta was suspended for hitting a teacher and for bringing a knife to school.

Going from bad to worse in grade 9, Mark Arrieta rarely came to school and reportedly smoked pot every day. Arrieta’s last suspension from school in April 2008 was due to the now well-established pattern of fighting with other students and threatening a teacher. This last suspension from school came only five months before Mark Arrieta murdered Philbert Truong.

Like a missile veering off course, destruction was the inevitable outcome of this angry trajectory. Sadly, both Arrieta’s parents and the school system proved unable to effect a course change.

While awaiting trial, Mark Arrieta told the detention centre’s chaplain that his principle motivation in life had been to escape what he described as the “poverty” of his youth. He resented the fact that his hardworking immigrant parents couldn’t afford to buy him the luxuries he wanted. When other elementary students had something he wanted he became jealous of the material possessions belonging to others. He wanted money to buy the objects he desired.  After his last suspension, Arrieta moved out of his parents’ home, and into the alluring embrace of a “dial-a-dope” drug ring led by Chanthabouala.  Dealing drugs provide Mark Arrieta with lots of money and a like-minded social circle that shared his twisted materialistic values and his nonchalant attitude toward violence.

A long time ago the Apostle Paul warned future readers about what happens when a society turns it’s back on the God of the Bible and His teachings.

For people will be lovers of self and [utterly] self-centered, lovers of money and aroused by an inordinate [greedy] desire for wealth, proud and arrogant and contemptuous boasters. They will be abusive (blasphemous, scoffing), disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy and profane.

[They will be] without natural [human] affection (callous and inhuman), relentless (admitting of no truce or appeasement); [they will be] slanderers (false accusers, troublemakers), intemperate and loose in morals and conduct, uncontrolled and fierce, haters of good (2 Timothy 3:2-4 Amplified Bible).

Even on a purely materialistic level of understanding we know that you are, indeed, what you eat. A nation that readily promotes and eats fast-food becomes swollen, fat, obese—in a word, physically unhealthy. This is simple, observable, provable cause and effect. So, why is it that we can’t see that when it comes to feeding the mind “garbage in does indeed equal garbage out”?

Our society overflows with images promoting endless mountains of “stuff” to sell us. It “entertains” us with images of every sort of violent act on our illuminated screens. Why our society even entices us to waste countless hours of our very short lives in this violence-rich entertainment milieux via interactive computer/virtual reality games. Billions and billions of dollars are being made in this greedy exploitation of the gospel of selfishness, materialism, and violence.  The whole world (mostly) has embraced these destructive values. Why should we be surprised when a young convert to selfishness, materialism, and violence goes overboard in youthful exuberance and acts out the images in his head?

Chapter 23 of the book of Proverbs has a lot to say about the case of Mark Arrieta. If the people and institutions that had influence on this young man’s life had considered and acted to furnish this young man’s mind with the wisdom presented there, then Mark Arrieta’s life would have turned out differently. For, paraphrasing Proverbs 23:7, as a young man thinks in his heart so he will be.

What we think about and celebrate is of critical importance in determining who we are and what will be our future. Simply put, a good future will come to those who think about good things. But a bad future will come to those who think about bad things. The moral logic of the universe is clear. As the Apostle Paul concluded:

8-9Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies (Philippians 4:8-9, Message translation).

From the sublime to the ridiculous—that’s the news this week. But there is a common link. Can you see it?

Two well-promoted British atheists, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens announced that they are paying lawyers to draw up a legal argument to persuade a British magistrate to issue an arrest warrant for Pope Benedict XVI, accusing him of complicity in covering up the sexual abuse of children. Is it imaginable that the Pope could actually land in the docket before a British judge over his role in trying to keep quiet decades worth of allegations about Catholic priests’ sexual assault or molestation of children?

As an institution, the Roman Catholic Church has always tried to wash its dirty laundry solely within the opaque walls of the Vatican. In this their non-transparent behaviour is no different at all from, say… multi-national oil corporations, investment bankers, or pesticide/pharmaceutical manufacturers who face their own egregious moral lapses or ethical failures from time to time. But, the Catholic Church is quite different from these secular mega-companies in at least one crucial legal point. The pope is the only absolute monarch left in Europe who has his own sovereign mini-state known as the State of the Vatican City. The pope, of course is also the head of the Holy See, the Roman church’s global-girdling administrative hierarchy. The bottom-line is that Pope Benedict XVI is the absolute boss of the most unusual, long-running church/state combo entity that the world has ever witnessed.

The power that the popes in Rome have exercised over the centuries ought to give Dawkins and Hitchens a little pause! In medieval times popes could easily humble the most powerful European kings and emperors. In more modern days Joseph Stalin once dismissed the power of the Vatican with the comment, “How many divisions does the Pope command?” However, Stalin’s successors might disagree with old Joe considering the Catholic Church’s powerful role in engineering the collapse of the Soviet Union’s domination of eastern Europe. Historically speaking, crossing a pope took a lot of guts—Henry VIII’s sort of guts—because it was extremely dangerous to do so. I doubt Benedict XVI thinks of himself as accountable in any way to lowly secular British courts or Church of England ecclesiastical courts!

Still, there are hardy journalists siding with the unrepentant, hell-for-leather team of Dawkins and Hitchens who maintain that if crimes have been committed, then there must be an accounting—even if it means arresting the Pope. I never thought I’d be offering this dynamic duo of atheism an encouraging word, but good luck, boys!

Moving on…. It would appear that Karla Homolka, an honest-to-God blood-sucking Canadian vampire, has a good chance of being pardoned for her crimes this summer by the National Parole Board. As you remember, Homolka negotiated a sweet deal that got her charged only with manslaughter by the government in exchange for her testimony against her ex-husband Paul Bernardo about the early 1990s rape-murders in St. Catharines, Ontario, of the teenagers Kristen French, Leslie Mahaffy and even Homolka’s own sister, Tammy. Videotapes found after the “Deal with the Devil” was struck revealed Homolka to be a willing and active participant in the rape-murders. The names of Homolka and Bernardo are forever linked in the public’s mind with depravity of the worst sort. Their crimes are the stuff of screaming, bed-soaking nightmares. An old-fashioned word to accurately describe Homolka and Bernado is wicked.

However, our legal system of pardons for past crimes will be available for Karla Homolka to wipe clean her record from all police databases. For many Canadians linking the word “pardon” with Homolka is obscene, a travesty of justice. The Conservative government is vowing to introduce legislation this fall to tighten the system in regards to sex offenders. Unfortunately, Homolka should be able to get her pardon before the legislation is enacted. Is our legal system just anymore? Criminals of the worst sort are literally getting away with murder.

Meanwhile in Iran, Islamic cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi made the news on April 16th for this comment:

Many women who do not dress modestly… lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which [consequently] increases earthquakes.

The Islamic cleric’s comments spawned a reaction from outraged feminists, some 43,000, who signed up on Facebook to hold a “boobquake” day to see if an earthquake will really follow their scheduled showing off of their cleavage. Will God create an earthquake to punish us if 43,000 woman decide to strut their low-cut stuff for a day?

All three stories that appeared in the news this week have a common thread. The thread is justice—perhaps our frustration about the lack of justice in our society. We don’t seem to understand what justice is anymore and its function in our society. Read what the prophet Isaiah wrote some 2,700 years ago. He might as well have been writing about our day:

8 They don’t know where to find peace
or what it means to be just and good.
They have mapped out crooked roads,
and no one who follows them knows a moment’s peace.

9 So there is no justice among us,
and we know nothing about right living.
We look for light but find only darkness.
We look for bright skies but walk in gloom.
10 We grope like the blind along a wall,
feeling our way like people without eyes.
Even at brightest noontime,
we stumble as though it were dark.
Among the living,
we are like the dead. (Isaiah 59 New Living Translation)

But the purpose of this column is not to express frustration, but hope. You see, the great hope of those who believe in the Hebrew and Greek scriptures is that there is a world tomorrow that will right what is wrong. To bring justice to this earth is going to take a real miracle. But the prophet Isaiah foresaw that there is a person unlike any other who is coming who will establish justice. This person is known as the Messiah.

1 Out of the stump of David’s family will grow a shoot—
yes, a new Branch bearing fruit from the old root.
2 And the Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and might,
the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
3 He will delight in obeying the Lord.
He will not judge by appearance
nor make a decision based on hearsay.
4 He will give justice to the poor
and make fair decisions for the exploited.
The earth will shake at the force of his word,
and one breath from his mouth will destroy the wicked.
5 He will wear righteousness like a belt
and truth like an undergarment. (Isaiah 11 New Living Translation)

So, when you read the news, today, remember that there is coming a big change. A good change. This will be a time when entrenched bureaucracies will not be able to get away with covering up systematic sexual abuse no matter how powerful they are. It will be a time when the vile and base will no longer be able to pull the wool over the eyes of those entrusted with administering justice.  It will also be a time when our daily behaviour, including what we wear, say, and do will reflect the way of peace, good, and light. Isn’t that really good news for a change?

Responding to a swelling tide of outrage at the rapes and other sexual abuses perpetrated by many thousands of his pedophile priests, Pope Benedict XVI said at a Vatican mass on April 15, 2010:

Now, under attack from the world which talks to us of our sins, we can see that being able to do penance is a grace and we see how necessary it is to do penance and thus recognize what is wrong in our lives.

Evidently the pope found it too distasteful to explicitly detail the nature of those sins or to admit his own personal decades-long role in enforcing his church’s official Crimen Sollicitationis policy. The Crimen Sollicitationis policy instructed the Catholic hierarchy about how to deal with pedophile priests in Canada, the United States, Ireland, Germany, Italy—where ever in the world the Catholic Church operates. The policy’s main thrust was an effort to protect the Catholic Church’s reputation by covering up and protecting pedophile priests by moving them to new areas whenever a sexual abuse scandal erupted.  Keeping victims quiet was also part of that policy.  This was accomplished by using a variety of means including excommunication threats and hush money.  You can get more information about this by watching a remarkably well-produced BBC documentary called Sex Crimes and the Vatican. Please note, however, that this documentary will both enlighten and disgust you at the same time: http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/passionateeyeshowcase/

Proverbs 28:13 says:

He who covers his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy (NKJV).

It is interesting to note that the Pope called Catholics to do penance rather than calling on them to repentance. “Penance” means according to dictionary.com: 1) punishment undergone in token of penitence for sin; 2) penitential discipline imposed by church authority; 3) a sacrament, as in the Roman Catholic Church, consisting in a confession of sin, made with sorrow and with the intention of amendment, followed by the forgiveness of the sin.

But, according to Harper’s Bible Dictionary “repentance” is a word “covering several biblical ideas that range from regret to changing one’s mind or behavior so as to bring about a moral or ethical conversion.” I think the pope and the rest of the Catholic hierarchy could use a dose of real, heart-felt repentance and ethical conversion rather than merely saying a few dozen extra “Hail Marys” or wearing an itchy hair-shirt or doing without red meat for a month.

Is the Catholic Church’s insistence on making its priests take vows of celibacy at the root of their pedophila plague? More than a few people think so. The Catholic Encyclopedia’s online article on “Celebacy of the Clergy” (at http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03481a.htm ) seeks to defend their doctrine. Yet even there they have to admit:

We do not find in the New Testament any indication of celibacy being made compulsory either upon the Apostles or those whom they ordained…

What I find amazing in reading their article is that while they know the original Church of God NEVER required celibacy of ANY or ALL of their bishops/elders and deacons, they—the Roman Catholic Church—think they can use human reason to create allegories or inferences that give them the authority to do the opposite of unambiguously clear Scripture! The Pope feels free to add doctrines and teachings that are, in many respects, burdens—big burdens—to those who follow him.

Matthew 23:4 They crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden. 5 “Everything they do is for show. On their arms they wear extra wide prayer boxes with Scripture verses inside, and they wear robes with extra long tassels.

Of course, when Jesus gave the above description, he was referring to the scribes and Pharisees who were the principal leaders interpreting the Old Covenant Scriptures for the Jewish community in Judea. Jesus regularly took them to task for adding all sorts of do’s and don’ts to the written Word of God. Some of them grew to hate Jesus because he was calling them to repentance and to return to the simplicity of the divine intent expressed by the Holy Scriptures.

We know, historically, that the scribes and Pharisees developed and codified their “Oral Law,” which was a complex set of scriptural interpretations, rules, and regulations, that were eventually called the Talmud. This Oral Law or Talmud was intended to be a fence around the written Word of God in order to lead the people of God to more perfectly obey God from the Pharisaical point of view. The Roman Catholic Church has done a similar thing with their Canon Law by adding, for example, a vow of chastity that was never presented as obligatory by the Bible. Isn’t this vow like most of the Catholic Canon Law an unbearable religious “burden” loaded onto the straining backs of both people and priests? Why even the Catholic Encyclopedia’s article admits that the obligatory vow of chastity required for ordination is a “burden”—“You ought anxiously to consider again and again what sort of a burden this is which you are taking upon you.”

It is also interesting to note in context of Matthew 23:5 that the Catholic hierarchy like the ancient Pharisees love their showy religious garb and grand religious processions. Hasn’t the hide-bound, starch-skirted Catholic hierarchy just morphed into the modern gentile equivalent of Jesus’ former unrepentant, myopic, pharisaical opponents?

1 Timothy 4:2-5 NLT 2 These people are hypocrites and liars, and their consciences are dead. 3 They will say it is wrong to be married… 4 Since everything God created is good, we should not reject any of it but receive it with thanks. 5 For we know it is made acceptable by the word of God and prayer.

When God created the first man, He said it was not good for the man to be alone (cf. Genesis 2:18). So, God created the woman and the marriage covenant also in the Beginning.  And the LORD God also said that this was very good. Indeed, He blessed their sexuality and reproduction (cf. Genesis 1:28)!

Any person who wants to approach the throne of the living God must be repentant instead of proud, covering up his sins. And, such a person must be prepared to live by every word that comes from the mouth of God instead of substituting human reason for Holy Scripture. This is an essential point for any person or organization that truly wants to be Christian in fact and not just in name.

During the recently completed Easter/Passover season there were a great number of headlines in the various media sources I was following about the latest episode of the Roman Catholic Church and the illicit appetites of its clergy for pedophilia. This time around the scandal of Catholic priests sexually abusing children was stunning Europe.  The media has been talking about incidents in Ireland and Germany where, it seems, some are questioning whether the current pope was actually involved himself in covering up some abuse cases that happened there, during the time he was in charge .

A few years ago the scandal of Roman Catholic priests having sex with children (both boys and girls) in their care was outraging the United States. To settle some of those resulting law suits the American Catholic Church paid out hundreds of millions of dollars just in compensation not to mention their legal bills. Canada also has its own memory of the repeated, widespread abuse of Canadian Catholic children, including aboriginals, by Catholic clergy and other members of Catholic religious orders.

People are disgusted, of course, with the actual wolves in sheep’s clothing who committed those acts that have profoundly hurt and even destroyed so many thousands of innocent lives. Their odious predator names will burn in infamy just as long as their deeds continue to haunt the consciences of those they personally abused as well as their victim’s families!

But most thinking people are also angry with the Roman Catholic hierarchy who habitually protected their pedophile priests while turning a deaf ear to the victims for far too long. People are also angry with Pope Benedict for being unwilling to speak or even issue the appropriate profound apologies for an organization that has caused so much suffering. And actually, today, the Associated Press posted this news story written by Gillian Flaccus:

The future Pope Benedict XVI resisted pleas to defrock a California priest with a record of sexually molesting children, citing concerns including “the good of the universal church,” according to a 1985 letter bearing his signature. The correspondence, obtained by The Associated Press, is the strongest challenge yet to the Vatican’s insistence that Benedict played no role in blocking the removal of pedophile priests during his years as head of the Catholic Church’s doctrinal watchdog office.

When you consider this problem, these angry people are right to insist on an apology. Why? Because the root of this systemic evil of sexual perverseness by Catholic priests does indeed lie with the pope!

How so? Well, the pope and his predecessors—who loudly pretend that they are the direct lineal successors of the Apostle Peter—are directly responsible for refusing to allow their male clergy to follow the Apostle Peter’s own personal example! After all, the Scriptures plainly say that the Apostle Peter was married:

14When Jesus came into Peter’s house, he saw Peter’s mother-in-law lying in bed with a fever. 15He touched her hand and the fever left her, and she got up and began to wait on him. (Matthew 8:14-15 New International Version).

Also, consider this statement by the Apostle Paul in defense of his rights to financial support when traveling as a minister of the Gospel:

5Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a believing wife, as do the other apostles and brothers of the Lord and Cephas [Peter]? (1 Corinthians 9:5 New Revised Standard Version).

Next, look at what the Apostle Paul writes about the qualifications for bishops [Gk: episkopos: also elder or minister]

2Now a bishop must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, sensible, respectable, hospitable, and apt teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, and not a lover of money. 4He must manage his own household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way—for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how can he take care of God’s church (1 Timothy 3:2-5 NRSV).

The problem with the Roman Catholic Church is that they have trusted in their human traditions that engender twisted sexual perversions among their clergy instead of relying on the purifying effect that comes from following the Scriptures first and foremost when setting doctrine and moral standards.

The Creator made man with a strong sex drive as a motivation to cause him to marry a woman and engender children. Through these intimate familial relationships a godly man could learn priceless lessons that could enable him to effectively serve in the Church, the household of the Living God. To deprive the man of this Scripturally approved outlet for his God-given sex drive is like giving a free pass to Satan to pervert the man into a pedophile. The evil fruits of unscriptural doctrine should be evident to all.

If you believe mainstream economists, we are on the path leading out of “The Great Recession.” But even if this is true, there are a whole lot of jobs in North America, millions of jobs that need to be re-created just to get back to pre-2008 levels.

Supposedly, human resources—people, moms and dads—are one of the critical elements of any corporation’s success. Just listen to this 2009 testimony from two CEOs of America’s largest companies. “We value our dedicated employees,” declared General Electric’s Jeff Immelt. “Loyal and committed employees are critical,” stated the Pfizer’s CEO Jeffrey Kindler. But one has to wonder about the sincerity of these two very well-paid  guys.

Despite such affirmations of their workers value, GE’s Jeff Immelt laid off 15,000 of his “dedicated employees” in 2009, while Pfizer’s Jeff Kindler purged thousands of the “loyal and committed” from his firm’s payroll last year.

Of course, such CEOs are merely responding to their balance sheet—and the expectations of Wall Street! Wall Street loves aggressive corporate nut cutters—I mean cost cutters! It routinely boosts the stock price of any company as a reward for firing significant numbers of employees. Why? Duh! Because shedding workers leaves more money in the pot for stockholders and bondholders. Ah, the sweet odour of capitalism.

Consequently, we’ve seen many mass layoffs during this recent “Great Recession.” In Canada alone in 2008 486,000 full-time jobs were lost. As of mid-March 2010, over  810,000 Canadian workers are within weeks of running out of Employment Insurance benefits.  And more layoffs are coming to the public service sectors as governments hit with falling tax revenues seek to reduce their budgets.

Layoffs during economic downturns are considered good, sound business practice—a necessary evil.  It seems like the intuitive if not the only thing to do. But is it?  Surprisingly there is a large American/Canadian company that has created a profitable, enduring business model that is totally counter-intuitive to the use of mass employee layoffs to get through periods of financial recession.

Consider the Lincoln Election Company based in Cleveland, Ohio (about 3,000 employees) with a wholly owned subsidiary in the Toronto area (250 workers). Sales for the world’s largest manufacturer of arc welding machinery plummeted 38% last year.  Still, at the end of the year on Dec. 12, 2009, Lincoln Electric’s CEO John Stropki announced—not a large layoff notice—but a bonus cheque for each worker that represented 37% of base pay or about $16,660!

One of this corporation’s earliest managers, James F. Lincoln, believed that avoiding employee layoffs was a sign of a successful manager. Lincoln wrote: “Managers are responsible for efficiency. Efficiency depends on human co-operation. Co-operation demands that fear of losing income be eliminated. This can only be done by guaranteed continuous employment.”

Essentially this company promises lifetime employment to its loyal, committed, and dedicated employees. Such a “no layoff” policy seems impossible to keep today. Yet Lincoln Electric Company has kept its promise for over 60 years and has paid its employees handsome annual bonuses for the last 75 years. Because of such policies Lincoln Electric Company employees trust management. And management knows their employees are willing to work hard, to be flexible, and to risk innovation. Financial compensation fairness while avoiding senior management greed is a key part of Lincoln Electric Company’s prosperous corporate DNA. And it has demonstrably produced good results for company, employees and their families, and the communities they live in.

The Apostle Paul once paraphrased a saying of his teacher Rabbi Hillel. He wrote:

My brothers, God called you to be free. But do not use your freedom as an excuse to do the things that please your sinful self [selfishness]. Serve each other with love. The whole law [concerning human relationships] is made complete in this one command: ‘Love your neighbour as you love yourself.’ If  you go on hurting each other [in workplace unfairness and strife] and tearing each other apart, be careful! You will completely destroy each other [and your prosperity] (Galatians 5:13-15 ICB version).

If this simple principle of love for neighbour was incorporated in all of our businesses and homes, how much more prosperity and happiness would our entire society experience? The good news is that in the World Tomorrow caring enterprises like Lincoln Electric will be the norm not the anomaly. But what suffering must we endure as a nation to learn  this simple lesson!

“The right to liberty… guarantees a degree of personal autonomy over important decisions intimately affecting his or her private life. … The decision whether or not to terminate a pregnancy is essentially a moral decision and in a free and democratic society, the conscience of the individual must be paramount to that of the state.” (Morgentaler et al. v. Her Majesty The Queen, [1988] 1 S.C.R. 30 at 37)

As a consequence of the above legal opinion by Canada’s supreme court, abortion is entirely unrestricted in Canada. In our brave and free True North country, there are about 100,000 abortions to Canadian women each year. Statistics Canada says in its most recent 2005 figures that there were 96,815 abortions, while in 2004 this figure was 100,039. This is more than all the people who live in Nanaimo and its surrounding suburbs! Since 1989 roughly 2,100,000 Canadian babies have been aborted, roughly equivalent to half the population of the province of British Columbia. That’s quite a crowd of not-to-be taxpayers, moms, and dads.

Is abortion negatively affecting Canadian society? Well, I know this is a silly question that has only one answer. Our B.C. provincial finance minister when presenting his post-Olympics austerity budget for the coming year gloomily forecast eroding worker to retiree ratios and warned of a disappearing tax base. To make up for the dearth of native-born workers paying Canadian Pension Plan and other taxes to support our current social schemes, our government admits that it must beat the drum more loudly to convince outsiders to immigrate to our presently affluent but increasingly unsustainable society.

So hey, you would-be immigrant strangers, come to Canada and pay our bills so we can maintain the lifestyle to which we’ve become accustomed! We couldn’t be bothered to have enough kids to take care of us in our old age, but come on you all, and do it in their place! We’ll even let you wave those little plastic Canadian flags on July 1st.

What will happen here in B.C. as the number of babies born to our women continues dropping? We presently whine in our letters to the editor about school closings and other unpopular school program cuts being made by those nasty school boards year after year due to declining attendance. But in the near future many Canadian businesses will start struggling to get the workers they need to replace the aging baby-boomers in order for the economy to just keep running in place. Will we be able to keep our stuff and our society as a whole fixed, running, and safe till we die? Who knows?

But consequences of abortion are affecting other nations in even more serious ways. Consider the case of some of the largest Asian societies. Due to governmental one-child policies, and ancient prejudices favouring sons, millions of baby girls have been aborted in China and India amongst other East Asian Nations. Twenty years ago in 1990 the Indian economist Amartya Sen estimated this “gendercide” at approximately 100 million baby girls. By 2010 the figure has undoubtedly grown much higher. There are now scores of millions of young men with little prospect of finding wives and establishing families.

According to the March 6th issue of The Economist magazine’s article on the subject, “Throughout human history, young men have been responsible for the vast preponderance of crime and violence—especially single men in countries where status and social acceptance depend on being married and having children as it does in China and India.” The problem of this disparity between single men and available women is just getting worse in Asia. One thing The Economist didn’t mention is that also throughout history states have used the aggressiveness of unattached single men, the bare branches, as soldiers in their armies.

Did you know that a vision of hundreds of millions of desperate men on the move in Asia was actually prophesied in the book of Revelation?

Then the four angels who had been prepared for this hour and day and month and year were turned loose to kill one-third of all the people on earth. I heard the size of their army, which was 200 million mounted troops (Revelation 9:15-16 New Living Version).

Just one hundred years ago the idea of a 200 million man army coming out of the East was assumed to be preposterous and just another example of a biblical flight of fancy. Considering the actual facts of what is developing right now in China and India, such a prophecy should sober us considerably.

Asian societies do not have the heritage of the Judeo-Christian scriptures. The massive slaughter of girl babies in Asia reflects their traditions and would appear logical according to their values. That is their excuse. What is ours?

A foundational moral teaching of both Old and New Covenants is that “you shall love your neighbour as yourself.” Aren’t our unborn children the closest neighbour any parent could ever have? If we are willing to consign an innocent neighbour to death for our mere personal convenience, don’t we deserve the same? Perhaps the future holds out something far more ominous from the East than merely hordes of immigrants whom we import to pay our debts in the places of sons and daughters who never were.

If you love James Bond movies or follow the American TV series Burn Notice, the real-life, continuing news story about the January 19^th assassination in Dubai of the Hamas intelligence (terror) chief Mahmoud al-Mabhouh makes for fascinating reading and viewing to both Middle Easterners and Westerners. Who hasn’t been fascinated to watch the hotel CCTV tapes broadcast worldwide by the media that purportedly show the hit squad stalking their kill.

Most everyone assumes the hit squad is Israeli. Like everyone else, Israel doesn’t publicly acknowledge its secret ops successes or failures—at least not for a generation or two. I’ve known a couple of people connected to intelligence work and truly mum’s the word.

Right now a variety of governments are expressing indignation publicly that the assassins dared to use their nation’s passports (British, Irish, Australian, French) issued under false identities to carry out the assignment.  Like who hasn’t watched Roger Ludlum’s Bourne Identity spy thrillers! Creating false identity papers is what every nation’s intelligence service does to facilitate dirty work.

Meanwhile, the mystery just grows deeper. Who really sent Mahmoud al-Mabhouh to his own private hell? The Israelis truly had cause. Al-Mabhouh used to boast about his killing of two Israeli soldiers in the mid-1980s and even posed for pictures standing on one Israeli’s corpse.

Al-Mabhouh also directed the purchase and smuggling of arms into Gaza for Hamas. Arms smuggling involves lots of cash, lonely docks or landing strips, and a rather unsavoury circle of contacts. A double cross or did somebody not get fully paid? At least two of the suspected members of the hit squad escaped from Dubai by taking the boat across the Persian Gulf to Iran! Israeli secret agents fleeing from  Dubai to Iran??? Go figure.

Now Hamas’ man in charge of its Iranian ties, Mahmoud Nasser, who worked closely with al-Mabhouh, asserts that Egyptian and Jordanian intelligence services tracked his dead boss prior to the hit. Perhaps another example of the age-old Middle Eastern proverb that says, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Or maybe this is just disinformation to cover up some sort of internal settling of accounts! Who knows?

What we do know is this—the God of the Judeo-Christian scriptures has a way of settling up with each and every one of us, including Mahmoud al-Mabhouh! This past weekend was Purim, which is a Jewish holiday celebrated yearly on the 14-15th of the Hebrew month of Adar. The backstory for Purim is recounted in the book of Esther, which is part of the Hebrew Bible or Old Covenant.

In short form, the story is about a bad guy named Haman who wanted revenge. He was the prime minister of ancient Iran (Persia) during the reign of King Xerxes I (ca. 486-465 B.C.). As an Amalekite, Haman’s people had been enemies of the Jews for almost 1,000 years by that time. The people on the opposite side of this story are Esther and Mordecai.  Esther became Xerxes’ queen via a competitive beauty contest but because of enemies concealed her ethnic Jewish identity by adopting a common Iranian name. Mordecai was Esther’s uncle, and adoptive father. He worked as a low-level bureaucrat in Xerxes palace.

Using his powerful position, Haman deceptively persuaded the king to allow an ethic cleansing from the Iranian empire of a “troublesome” people whom he conveniently refrained from identifying to the king. But in his orders to the empire’s leaders Haman specifically targeted all Jewish men, women, and children living in an empire that covered all the ancient Middle East from India to Greece, including Egypt.

For a Christian this is scripturally crucial because the whole story of the New Covenant and Jesus being born in Bethlehem would never had occurred if Haman’s “final solution” had been successful.

But Haman’s plot was not successful due to a remarkable series of “coincidents” and the actions of a brave young woman and her uncle as well as a small group of the palace’s servants who decided to assist Esther and Mordecai in getting rid of Haman and his fellow co-conspirators.

Most of the conflict and strife in our present world would end if we focused on these words of the Apostle Paul:

If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. Therefore, “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head” (Romans 12:18-20 NKJV).

Esther and Mordecai were willing to live peaceably with all men in the multi-cultural Iranian empire of their day. But then, as today, there are men like Mahmoud al-Mabdouh who prefer using the tools of terror and war to achieve their ends. Such men forget the One who said, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay.”

We as individuals should never take the law into our own hands to resolve our personal grudges. Rather we should show kindness and patience to all men. Heaping coals on a neighbour’s head was performing a good service to another. In the days before matches and lighters, if your fire went out starting a new one was a laborious affair. It was always easier to go to a helpful neighbour and ask for some live coals from his cooking fire. They would put the burning hot coals in a clay jar, wrap up a piece of cloth in the shape of a donut, putting this on the head as an insulator/stablizer and on that you carried the jar with the hot coals. See, no hands to get burned when you carry the coals of fire on your head!

Sovereign states are different, however, from individuals. States are charged with the protection of their people. Ancient Israel was actually commanded to deal on God’s behalf with terrorists and aggressors. Should we be surprised if modern Israel successfully deals with bloody hands in a way that reminds us of God’s ironic intervention in the downfall of Haman. Haman, the duplicitous prime minister, who Xerxes ordered to be hung on the 75 foot high gallows that Haman had built the previous day for the purpose of hanging Mordecai.  Talk about the biblical “ falling into a pit of your own making!” The celebration of Purim recounted in the book of Esther some 2,400 years ago, reminds us of God’s judgment and vengeance, and a brave woman who was willing to lay her life on the line in order to save her people from destruction, at the hands of the genocidal Haman.

During the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, as in all other professional or amateur athletic competitions, it is easy for participants to confuse what it means to have the right stuff with just plain old being stuffed—with ego and pride.

The Canadian Olympic Committee, VANOC, and Canada’s sport federations established the Own The Podium program five years ago with the goals of winning more medals than any other country at this year’s Olympics. The Canadian public spent heavily for the opportunity to thump our collective chest: a total of about $117 million was spent on athletes, equipment, facilities, and support organizations—$66 million of this was taxpayer dollars.

But on Monday, February 22nd, reality hit—or maybe one could say bit! With seven days of sports competition remaining, the Canadian Olympic Committee announced that they had failed to achieve their team’s goal of finishing first overall in the medal count. “We are going to be short of our goal,” CEO Chris Rudge admitted at the team’s daily news briefing. “We’d be living in a fool’s paradise if we said we were going to catch the Americans and win. We’re not throwing in the towel [Canada is presently 5th in the overall medal count]. You never do that when you are in the middle of a fight, but it’s difficult. They are way out ahead at this point and it would be unrealistic to state that we are going to catch them.”

Some commentators have been having fun with this uncharacteristic Canadian Olympic hubris by suggesting that the best we, Canadians, can do is occasionally rent the podium from the Americans and Germans!

Is athletics strictly a fight to own the podium? Is getting gold, silver, or bronze what counts to the exclusion of all else? Our present materialistic society makes it all too easy for both those with elite athletic prowess as well as your common everyday couch spud to confuse what should be our most important goal as well as the nature of true success. Yet, there is a real difference between what is temporary and what is enduring in terms of significant achievement.

Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon who is attending the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, says you don’t need to be first to be successful. “The various national media mostly focus on how many gold medals their nation’s team win, and where they stand in the total medal count in relationship to other countries. That’s not the point.”

The point for sports participation should be about personal improvement and growth through training and self-discipline. It is also about encouraging fellow teammates to reach their own personal goals. That philosophy helped Aldrin and fellow astronaut Neil Armstrong to become the first men on the moon 40 years ago.

For years Aldrin and Armstrong trained together and encouraged each other to develop the technical capabilities, physical stamina, and mental self-discipline that they would need as a team to go to the moon and come back alive. They had to master many challenges.

For Olympians, Aldrin observed, “everything adds to what has been achieved before. Between each Olympics, the standard is improving as the maturing of the human body learns how to behave and train itself to a much higher degree.”

Familiar with the Olympic sports of ancient Greece thousands of years ago, the Apostle Paul made an analogy that seeking first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness was not all that dissimilar from the training an athletic undertakes to gain a winner’s wreath at a sports competition:

You’ve all been to the stadium and seen the athletes race. Everyone runs; one wins. Run to win. All good athletes train hard. They do it for a gold medal that tarnishes and fades. You’re after one that’s gold eternally. I don’t know about you, but I’m running hard for the finish line. I’m giving it everything I’ve got. No sloppy living for me! I’m staying alert and in top condition. I’m not going to get caught napping, telling everyone else all about it and then missing out myself (1 Corinthians 9:24-27, Message trans.)

The big difference between the Christian’s spiritual Olympics and the International Olympic Committee’s games is to be found in both the goal and the exclusivity. How do you compare the prize of a never-ending, fascinating life and the power to make a real difference in this world as part of a winning team of like-minded people with the prize VANOC will hand out this year: a piece of metal on a ribbon with a footnote in sports history?

While the IOC limits its podium to three medal winners who “own” the podium for a fleeting moment of glory, the Christian “Olympics” has a podium that will be “shared” by millions but their glory will never fade or be forgotten. Make no mistake, the personal diligence, spiritual growth, and mature self-disciple required to win the spiritual race described above by the Apostle Paul requires a total commitment to overcome and prevail by a spiritual athlete for an entire lifetime. Such a high calling and goal will some day win gold at the Divine Olympics. As Bruce Coburn sings in one of his current hits, “I’m thinking about eternity.”

This week Canadian Prime Minster Stephen Harper and French President Nicolas Sarkozy visited Haiti to pledge, together, more than half a billion dollars in aid for the earthquake devastated Caribbean nation. Will this money make much of a difference in the lives of desperately impoverished Haitians? Will Haiti’s future get better due to the outpouring of help from Canada, the U.S., France, and other concerned nations?

NOT LIKELY according to one knowledgeable “free market do-gooder” who visits the various hell-holes on this planet. Doug Casey of the Casey Research financial newsletter believes that it doesn’t matter how much aid you shovel down Haiti’s bottomless pit, the long-term outlook for average Haitians will remain grim. Oh yes, today’s flow of aid will alleviate temporarily some suffering. A band-aid, a bottle of water, or a gangrenous leg cut off today is better than no help at all. But Casey predicts that utterly ruthless Haitian officials will siphon off into their secret bank accounts most of our well-intentioned donations.

For most of its tragic history Haiti has been run as a kleptocracy—where the power of the state has proven the most efficient means of stealing from the people. According to Casey, the very idea of putting the Haitian government in charge of rebuilding the place is “insane.” Casey must find some dark ironic humour in the news that Canada’s government proposes to rebuild a “banana republic without bananas” headquarters complex while France’s government offers to give the kleptocrats $40 million to help support their budget (lifestyle). After all, we’re talking about strengthening the power and position of a circle of bureaucrats who have reduced their fellow countrymen to utter poverty by corruption and oppression in order to selfishly enrich themselves. If you want to read Doug Casey’s full interview about the reasons behind Haiti’s poverty, then go to Conversations with Casey at http://www.caseyresearch.com/displayCwc.php?id=38.

Sadly, the problems in Haiti are nothing new in human experience. The issue of poor and/or corrupt human governance has long brought difficulties on everyday people. The Scriptures have something important to say that applies specifically to Haiti’s situation!

When the country is in chaos, everybody has a plan to fix it—But it takes a leader of real understanding to straighten things out. The wicked who oppress the poor are like a hailstorm that beats down the harvest. If you desert God’s law, you’re free to embrace depravity; if you love God’s law, you fight for it tooth and nail (Proverbs 28:2-4 The Message translation).

Of course, considering the current financial situation and political challenges facing the Western democratic governments right now, what are the real qualities of leadership that are needed for public service in not only Haiti, but also Canada, the U.S., and France?

The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spoke to me: ‘He who rules over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be like the light of the morning when the sun rises, a morning without clouds, like the tender grass springing out of the earth, by clear shining after rain’ (2 Samuel 23:3-4 NKJV).

The ideal of good government carried out to benefit the governed as expressed above is entirely possible. Men can govern correctly—but it does take a knowledge of the moral logic of this universe and the personal commitment and discipline to walk the walk as well as talk the talk. In the 21^st Century when we think of King David of ancient Israel we tend to think of his personal bravery fighting the giant Goliath (whose name, by the way, was recently found etched on a potsherd discovered in an official archaeological dig) or perhaps his affair with Bathsheba. But for his contemporaries, what really made an impression on them was how David organized and ran his government and its legal system:

David ruled over the whole nation of Israel. He did what was fair and right for all of his people (1 Chronicles 18:14 New International Reader’s Version).

If we all had rulers who really cared for us, who were incorruptible, and who always acted in the public’s interest, who were motivated to ensure justice and fairness for all, then how our world and personal lives would be different today.  Only when such fair and right-doing people finally occupy positions of leadership in Haiti will it have a real hope instead of today’s faint-hope that somehow a few of the hundreds of millions of dollars in aid will actually end up being spent to help them.

Last week I wrote a column objecting to the premise of a campaign being pushed on our community by Victoria’s sole daily, The Times Colonist. This premise asserts that selling sex—prostitution—should be treated just like any other business regulated and protected by government. I can see it now—El Gordo benevolently smiling as B.C. balances its books with the HST windfall generated by the sweating backs of its whores.

But it seems that I wasn’t the only one unhappy with the newspaper’s favoured position. On Friday, Feb. 5, the newspaper published their riposte, “Time to reduce sex-trade risks,” in order to counter the objections they received. The TC editorial board thinks:

Many people object to the trade [euphemism] based on personal views on the role of sex in life and relationships. While those views should be respected, so should the right of adults to make their own choices and to be either customers or suppliers in the trade.

Further, on Feb. 9^th, the newspaper chose to publish a letter to the editor entitled “Film fest offered tremendous riches.”  That letter writer quotes “Mia Bella,” a self-acknowledged prostitute, as proposing after the screening of the Brothel Project documentary, “The exchange of money changes everything. It means that I am not a slut.”

Now, I am flattered the TC editorial writer should assume that what I wrote last week was strictly my, Jeff Patton’s, point of view. But the editorial writer wasn’t calling objections to the “trade” as being “personal” in order to flatter or praise me. He/she wrote it in order to dismiss me—and to dismiss my objections about transforming prostitution into: 1) acceptable human behaviour  2) a legitimate business model/profession for our community’s young women and men.

Our present culture of materialism and meaninglessness believes all opinions weigh the same. This assumption makes it easy for a media gatekeeper like the Times-Colonist to dismiss whatever opposes its harm-increasing editorial policy. However, being an ordained episkopos (elder/bishop/guardian) for the Church of God, what I wrote last week and this week are far more than my mere personal opinion.  It reflects the stated position of the One who defined at the very beginning what role human sexuality should play in our lives. Heaven’s official policy statement, as it were, says this about sexuality and prostitution:

There’s more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact. As written in Scripture, “The two become one.” Since we want to become spiritually one with the Master, we must not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy, leaving us more lonely than ever—the kind of sex that can never “become one.” There is a sense in which sexual sins are different from all others. In sexual sin we violate the sacredness of our own bodies, these bodies that were made for God-given and God-modeled love, for “becoming one” with another. Or didn’t you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don’t you see that you can’t live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for?

….Remember that your bodies are created with the same dignity as the Master’s body. You wouldn’t take the Master’s body off to a whorehouse, would you? I should hope not. (1 Corinthians 6:16-20a, 15 Message trans.).

I find it extraordinarily sad that the editorial board of the Times-Colonist wants to downgrade our whole community into a second-class society of sexual materialism and meaninglessness. Forsaking the moral logic of the universe and our Creator-given ideals for a happy society will bring neither justice nor good in any real sense of these words.