The World Tomorrow

The lead story in Canada for the last couple of days has been about the guilty verdicts for four first-degree murders that the jury brought down on Mohammad Shafia, his polygamous second wife, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, and his oldest son, 21-year-old Hamed Mohammad Shafia.

They murdered Mohammad’s barren number one wife Rona, and Mohammad and Tooba’s three daughters. From the perspective of the heartless Shafia family killers, the four family members they slew, (Zainab 19, Sahar 17, and Geeti 13 and step-mom Rona 50) deserved what they got because they had “betrayed Islam”, and sullied the family’s honour. Mohammad Shafia, who was in his own eyes a devout Muslim man devoid of those weak infidel Christian virtues like mercy, kindness, patience, and forgiveness was dishonoured by the “perverse” behaviour of those he killed.

Self-righteous man that he was, Mohammad Shafia was even caught on a police wiretap after the four murders wishing out loud that the devil would crap on his reviled daughters’ graves.

But more specifically, how had Shafia’s daughters offended him? It seems Zainab offended by marrying in the family’s mosque (but the Imam Ali Falih Altaie never registered the marriage) a young Muslim man from a family who did not meet with the Shafia’s approval. Sahar deserved death because she had a Christian boyfriend and had some pictures taken of her wearing short skirts. Geeti, apparently, was murdered because she was rebellious, skipped some classes at school, and was breaking the family’s code of silence by asking school authorities to be taken into the foster child care system.

As for the spurned wife, Rona, maybe Mohammad Shafia just got tired of using her for a punching bag? Maybe he thought she was too old or too expensive or taking up too much room in the family’s Montreal house? It’s hard to tell because I haven’t read anything in the various news stories that satisfactorily explains to me just what was Mohammad’s evil motive in her case.

Maybe it was just like a farmer knocking off the heads of a few annoying chickens in the coop. If you’re going to kill three birds what’s the big deal about doing a fourth? After all, a lot of Muslim men just think of their women as chattel. Do with them what you will, as Islam plainly teaches that women are inferior to men. However, thank God, we don’t have Islamic Sharia law in Canada. So at this new year’s opening session in parliament, Canada’s justice minister, Rob Nicholson, during question period, called the Shafia murders “barbaric” and “unacceptable,” and pledged to protect women and other vulnerable people from such violence.

The Shafia family Imam, Ali Falih Altaie, in an effort to deflect any impression that he, his congregation, or Islam in general would support the practice of honour killing as carried out by the bloody Shafias said:

It’s unforgivable, actually, and unacceptable by any religion.
Only people who have lost their brain do that… It’s unbelievable.

I don’t want to put down the Imam, Altaie, as his on-the-record comments about the murders are to his credit, but I must contradict him. Why? Because in reality, honour killing though perhaps unacceptable in Western Islam, is indeed widely practiced in the rest of the Muslim world.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates that perhaps as many as 5,000 women and girls a year are killed by members of their own families. But according to the journalist Robert Fisk, numerous women’s groups in the Middle East and Southwest Asia suspect the number of victims is about 20,000 women and girls annually. See Robert Fisk: The crime wave that shames the world,” London: The Independent. Retrieved 8 September 2010.

Fisk notes the gruesome nature of these murders in Muslim-dominated areas:

It is difficult to remain unemotional at the vast and detailed catalogue of these crimes. How should one react to a man – this has happened in both Jordan and Egypt – who rapes his own daughter and then, when she becomes pregnant, kills her to save the “honour” of his family? Or the Turkish father and grandfather of a 16-year-old girl, Medine Mehmi, in the province of Adiyaman, who was buried alive beneath a chicken coop in February for “befriending boys”? Her body was found 40 days later, in a sitting position and with her hands tied…

Or the young woman found in a drainage ditch near Daharki in Pakistan, “honour” killed by her family as she gave birth to her second child, her nose, ears and lips chopped off before being axed to death, her first infant lying dead among her clothes, her newborn’s torso still in her womb, its head already emerging from her body? She was badly decomposed; the local police were asked to bury her. Women carried the three to a grave, but a Muslim cleric refused to say prayers for her because it was “irreligious” to participate in the namaz-e-janaza prayers for “a cursed woman and her illegitimate children.”

This horrific practice of “honour killing,” according to some sources is increasing in those parts of the world heavily influenced by Islamic-Arabic-South Asian cultures.

The founder of Christianity, Jesus of Nazareth made a point of strongly teaching against “honour killings.” By deed as well as by words he made the point in John 8:1-12 (New Living Translation):

For any Muslims reading this, here is the truth about “honour killings” in Arabic:

8:1-12 John
Arabic Bible: Easy-to-Read Version (ERV-AR)
ﻳﻮﺣﻨﺎ 8
المَرْأةُ الَّتِي أُمْسِكَتْ فِي الزِّنا
1 أمّا يَسُوعُ فَذَهَبَ إلَى جَبَلِ الزَّيْتُونِ. 2 وَفِي الصَّباحِ الباكِرِ ذَهَبَ إلَى ساحَةِ الهَيْكَلِ ثانِيَةً حَيْثُ جاءَ إلَيْهِ الجَمِيعُ، فَجَلَسَ وَبَدَأ يُعَلِّمُهُمْ. 3 وَأحضَرَ مُعَلِّمُو الشَّرِيْعَةِ وَالفِرِّيْسِيُّونَ امْرأةً أُمْسِكَتْ وَهِيَ تَزْنِي. وَجَعَلُوها تَقِفُ وَسَطَ النّاسِ. 4 ثُمَّ قالُوا لِيَسُوعَ: «يا مُعَلِّمُ، أُمْسِكَتْ هَذِهِ المَرْأةُ مُتَلَبِّسَةً بِجَرِيْمَةِ الزِّنا.» 5 وَقَدْ أوْصانا مُوسَى فِي الشَّرِيْعَةِ بِأنْ نَرْجُمَ مِثلَ هَذِهِ المَرْأةِ، فَماذا تَقُولُ أنتَ؟» 6 قالُوا هَذا لِيَمْتَحِنُوهُ، فَيَكُونَ لَهُمْ ما يَتَّهِمُونَهُ بِهِ.
لَكِنَّ يَسُوعَ انْحَنَى وَبَدَأ يَكْتُبُ عَلَى الأرْضِ بِإصْبِعِهِ. 7 وَلَمّا ألَحُّوا فِي السُّؤالِ، وَقَفَ وَقالَ لَهُمْ: «حَسَناً! مَنْ كانَ مِنْكُمْ بِلا خَطِيَّةٍ، فَلْيَكُنِ البادِئَ بِرَمْيِها بِحَجَرٍ.» 8 وَانحَنَى مَرَّةً أُخْرَى وَأخَذَ يَكْتُبُ عَلَى الأرْضِ.
9 فَلَمّا سَمِعُوا هَذا، بَدَأُوا يُغادِرُونَ المَكانَ واحِداً بَعْدَ الآخَرِ بَدْءاً بِالأكْبَرِ سِنّاً. وَبَقِيَ يَسُوعُ وَحْدَهُ مَعَ المَرْأةِ الواقِفَةِ أمامَهُ. 10 فَوَقَفَ يَسُوعُ وَقالَ لَها: «أيْنَ هُمْ؟ ألَمْ يَحكُمْ عَلَيْكِ أحَدٌ؟» 11 قالَتْ: «لا أحَدَ يا سَيِّدُ.» فَقالَ لَها يَسُوعُ: «وَلا أنا أحكُمُ عَلَيْكِ. فَاذْهَبِي وَلا تَعُودِي إلَى الخَطِيَّةِ فِيما بَعْدُ.»
يَسُوعُ هُوَ النُّور
12 ثُمَّ وَاصَلَ يَسُوعُ كَلامَهُ لِلنّاسِ فَقالَ: «أنا هُوَ النُّورُ لِلعالَمِ. مَنْ يَتْبَعُنِي لا يَمْشِي أبَداً فِي الظُّلْمَةِ، بَلْ يَكُونُ مَعَهُ النُّورُ الَّذِي يَقُودُ إلَى الحَياةِ.»

The “clap” is now resistant to all of this world’s most powerful antibiotics. Anyone who knows something about the microbial world knew it would happen someday. It was just a matter of time. Yesterday, Dr. Magnus Unemo announced at a Quebec City conference for specialists in sexually transmitted disease research that he had discovered a new strain of gonorrhea called H041 that has proven to be resistant to all types of antibiotics (cf. http://home.mytelus.com/telusen/portal/NewsChannel.aspx?CatID=National&ArticleID=news/capfeed/national/TG1110.xml).

This means that what was once an easily treatable sexually transmitted disease will become within a few years a global public health scourge not seen since the Middle Ages. For untold millions, rampaging incurable gonorrhea microbes will cause infertility, an increase of HIV transmission rates and, even fatalities. In a word: suffering. Suffering on a massive scale.

Gonorrhea is one of the world’s most common sexually transmitted diseases. This highly infectious bacterium can cause incredible personal “dis-ease” both emotional and physical. It is the second most common bacterial sexually transmitted disease after chlamydia. Annually, at least 700,000 Americans become infected according to the U.S.’s Center for Disease Control (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonorrhea).

However, as bad as the above statistic may be, once the antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea strain becomes widespread in North America, the number of those infected will skyrocket!

The consequence of gonorrhea for women is disastrous. It causes pelvic inflammatory disease, PID. We’re talking infertility and ectopic pregnancy, which is the leading cause of pregnancy-related deaths in women among other nasty symptoms. Mothers can pass the disease to their babies at birth resulting in serious health complications and even blindness for the rest of that baby’s life.

For men, gonorrhea can result in inflammation of the epididymis, which is “a curved structure at the back of the testicle in which sperm matures and is stored. This condition comprises gradual onset of testicular pain that can vary from mild to severe, and the scrotum (sac containing the testicles) may become red, warm and swollen…, Epididymitis is the most frequent cause of acute onset scrotal pain in adults” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epididymitis). As if this weren’t enough, incurable gonorrhea may easily result in permanent male infertility.

All this misery will come on us because gonorrhea bacteria know how to adapt and overcome whatever medical counters human scientists throw at them. Human hubris thought we could have our cake and eat it, too. In our post-modern scientific age we thought we no longer needed to live by the sexual morals taught by the Judeo-Christian scriptures.

Since the end of World War II, our liberal, governing elite thought that the idea of sexual abstinence before marriage and faithfulness to one’s spouse during marriage—both biblical principles of long standing—were seen as terribly old-fashioned, unhip, un-cool, un-liberated, and not necessary according to most lefty journalists, entertainment media hipsters, as well as the teachers/professors in our schools and universities who all bear some responsibility for the current amoral behaviour practiced by our people. These “progessives” thought magic bullet antibiotics would cure all STDs like gonorrhea and so free us up “do your own thing.”

Wrong! I wonder how many millions will experience despair and heartbreak because of the liberal governing elite’s lies?

The bottom-line is that promiscuous sexual behaviour is still sin. And those who commit sin reap unpleasant consequences both in terms of physical well-being and spiritual things. Listen to what the Apostle Paul wrote:

5 But you have a hard and stubborn heart, and so you are making your own punishment even greater on the Day when God’s anger and righteous judgments will be revealed.
6 For God will reward each of us according to what we have done.
7 Some people keep on doing good, and seek glory, honor, and immortal life; to them God will give eternal life.
8 Other people are selfish and reject what is right, in order to follow what is wrong; on them God will pour out his anger and fury.
9 There will be suffering and pain for all those who do what is evil, for the Jews first and also for the Gentiles.
10 But God will give glory, honor, and peace to all who do what is good, to the Jews first and also to the Gentiles.
11 For God judges everyone by the same standard (Romans 2:5-11 Good News Translation).

When my youngest son wants to do something I’m not too excited about, we’ll talk together and come up with a compromise solution in which each of us gives a little so that the household can continue on in harmony.

Compromise is a normal part of the give and take of any family or human relationship. We adapt our personal preferences and opinions for the greater good of getting along with another. That’s normal.

But when it comes to the moral logic of the Universe and the demonstrable truth of the Judeo-Christian scriptures about what is right and what is wrong, it has always been required of Christians in every epoch of history to draw a line in the sand over something with which they cannot compromise.  To accept the sinful cultural practices of their time or civilization would have been anathema.

For first century A.D. Christians it was not offering a pinch of incense on the Roman altar of state in order to acknowledge that Caesar was supreme: a small act of Roman paganism that clearly violated the Bible’s first commandment:

Many thousands of Christians were hideously murdered by the barbaric Roman state for refusing to compromise with the “most noble Caesar, the civilized world’s benefactor” and just offer that little act of worship.

For post-modern Christians living in the 21st Century, there is now a tremendous pressure to conform to what may be labelled “politically correct paganism,” which like all the pagan ideologies of the past, essentially worships and exalts human ideas of right and wrong above the divine ones taught by the Hebrew and Greek scriptures.

In the latest edition of a sorry series of similar events, a biblical-values sensitive, conservative Anglican congregation was forced out of its long-held church property—St. Albans Anglican Church on King George Street—at which they had been meeting since before Canadian Confederation in 1867 by the “politically correct” Anglican Diocese of Ottawa. The issue was same sex marriage.

The pastor of this forced-to-leave congregation, George Sinclair, said:

The move was “an issue of conscience, and for us, conscience trumps building …
A church that just has the building, but does not have the dreams and visions that come from God, is on its way to dying … If you end up thinking you’re smarter and nicer and wiser than the master [Jesus Christ], in what way are you still his disciple? … The Bible is very clear on certain things, as to what is right or wrong.”

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/Anglican+Church+followers+find+home/5008958/story.html#ixzz1QcGf00LT

These conservative Anglicans came to understand that when it comes to sin—compromise is indeed the language of the devil.

Sin? What is sin? Why can’t one compromise with sin?

The Apostle John gave a succinct defintion of just what sin is:

The law that the apostle was referring to is God’s law as contained in the Hebrew and Greek bibles—not Canada’s federal and provincial law, not even the rules and policies of the Anglican Diocese of Ottawa.

God’s law divides behaviour and thought patterns into those that are permitted, generally called “righteousness” and those that are forbidden, which is “sin.”

Spiritually speaking, there are serious consequences for those who deliberately chose to live sin-full lifestyles. As the Apostle Paul wrote:

The reason no one can compromise with sin and get away with it in the long run is because…well, without God we’re just dead meat. The Bible does NOT say you have an immortal soul! The scriptures clearly teach that eternal life is only for those who belong to Christ and who are resurrected from among the dead (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:23).

The whole purpose of Jesus first coming and His sacrifice was to rescue His people from the consequences of sin. We cannot cuddle up to or give ourselves permission to do what the Scriptures say is wrong and not pay the price! Again, listen to this warning from the Apostle John:

Eastern Canadian radio host and National Post columnist John Moore is glad that a California court recently overturned the results of a 2008 referendum (passed by a majority of California voters) that made gay marriage illegal. In his published commentary in the National Post entitled “The Bible loses again,” Moore can’t help himself from gloating about this latest victory of the unbelievers over the believers. Moore writes:

Six years ago when same sex marriage was a roiling debate in Canada I hosted a segment on my radio show where I challenged listeners to offer a single non-biblical argument against gay marriage. They failed utterly. True, there are plenty of admonishments against gays, pigskin and the mixing of textiles in the Old Testament (notably none in the Gospels) but since the Bible has no standing in modern courts these arguments are moot.

And that remains the raw point for some people of faith: they can’t find a legal means of forcing Bible-based morality on the general population. Sorry. That’s the price of living in a free and secular society. And if you can’t persuade gay people that they are going to Hell then that’s your loss not theirs.” http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/08/05/john-moore-the-bible-loses-again/

Of course, Margaret Somerville, who is called one of Canada’s top ethicists, does present a good secular argument that legalizing homosexual marriage dramatically alters the understanding of what has been and nevertheless remains the cornerstone of human society: the committed, reproductively fruitful relationship between a man and a woman that engenders, nurtures, and educates a succeeding generation who will in turn repeat the pattern thus ensuring that society’s continuation. Marriage has never just been about the desires of two people.  It has been about children and the future and faithfulness to the past.

But TheWorldTomorrow.ca is not about presenting secular reasoning or arguments concerning today’s issues to its readers. Rather, it is about using the spiritual lens provided by the Judeo-Christian Scriptures to examine the attitudes, decisions, and behaviours of our present world in order to see the implications and consequences that will logically flow from such attitudes, decisions, and behaviours.

Also, for the record, the WorldTomorrow.ca will on occasion correct error from people like John Moore, who misrepresent the Bible, its teachings, and its morality. While Moore recognizes that the Old Covenant or Hebrew Bible is totally clear in its condemnation of the practice of homosexuality (Leviticus 18:22; 20:13), he doesn’t seem to think the New Covenant or Greek Bible does the same. Of course, it does. But notice, any sin—including any sexual practice not approved by Scripture whether heterosexual or homosexual—gets the same consequence.

Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:8-10 New International Version).

Jesus taught that an individual wouldn’t have a good future if he or she chose to live merely by the fruits of ingratitude to God and secular materialism—(Matthew 4:4; Deuteronomy 8:3-20). And when it comes to marriage, John Moore should note that Jesus quoted from the book of humanity’s beginnings (Genesis) to show that marriage was designed from the very start to be an exclusive, committed sexual relationship between a man and a woman (Matthew 19:4-6). A homosexual relationship doesn’t meet the Designer’s specifications. And anyone who refuses to follow the Designer’s Instruction Manual on how to use his or her sexuality will have very undesirable consequences (Romans 1:18-27).

But what will be the consequences for the nations of the United States and Canada as our governments embrace homosexual marriage and many more practices directly in contravention to God’s plain teaching?  This is the 13 trillion dollar question! Talk about a national debt. The answer to this question is simple and sure, resting on the fact that Jesus Christ, the God of the Old Covenant (1 Corinthians 10:4), is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8).  What He inspired the Prophet Isaiah to write so long ago equally applies to us today in 21^st Century Canada and the United States. Read what is coming soon to our nations as the price for living in a reprobate society that has turned its back on God:

For our sins are piled up before God and testify against us. Yes, we know what sinners we are. We know we have rebelled and have denied the Lord. We have turned our backs on our God. We know how unfair and oppressive we have been, carefully planning our deceitful lies. Our courts oppose the righteous, and justice is nowhere to be found. Truth stumbles in the streets, and honesty has been outlawed. Yes, truth is gone, and anyone who renounces evil is attacked.

The Lord looked and was displeased to find there was no justice. He was amazed to see that no one intervened to help the oppressed. So he himself stepped in to save them with his strong arm, and his justice sustained him. He put on righteousness as his body armor and placed the helmet of salvation on his head. He clothed himself with a robe of vengeance and wrapped himself in a cloak of divine passion. He will repay his enemies for their evil deeds. His fury will fall on his foes. He will pay them back even to the ends of the earth. In the west, people will respect the name of the Lord; in the east, they will glorify him. For he will come like a raging flood tide driven by the breath of the Lord (Isaiah 59:12-19 NLT).

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.