I’ll Tell You What…

As everyone no doubt knows by now, Terri Schiavo has passed away after her water and food were withheld for a few weeks. Across blogdom, the full spectrum of emotions are being expressed. From those cheering the husband who ended the life of his wife to those condemning in the harshest of terms Mr. Schiavo for doing it.

I think there’s more to this event than meets the eye. This wasn’t about a loving husband who wanted to fulfill the “wishes” of a wife who could no longer communicate. In fact, the husband can not even be considered “loving” in any sense of the word since he had an affair and fathered two children by another woman while his wife lay in her bed. No, this is about how we, as an American society, view the worth of another human being. This perceived worth is different for different groups of people.

Some see the value of another by how much they can contribute to the society in which they live. If they produce much for the common good then they are of high value. If they are disabled or lazy they are of lesser value. This valuation places the worth of an individual on their abilities to contribute and the worth over time line is bell-shaped.

Other people view the worth of an individual from a distance. In other words, one tries to place themselves in the other person’s shoes and tries to self-evaluate (from a distance). This sounds a little stupid but people do it all the time. They think, “If I were in that position I would <fill in the blank>.” Many think this is a very noble position to take because it appears selfless but it’s really just the opposite because the person from afar is justifying their position on what they think they would do or want in that situation without even knowing the situation. The worth over time line is different for most people but contains spikes based on emotions.

Still others place value on the beauty of an individual. If you haven’t ever noticed this then where have you been hiding? We are blitzed with images in magazines, the movies, and television shows and advertising telling us that if we were only thinner, only had that car, went on that vacation, used that make-up, etc we would be more acceptable as a human. This is the end result of marketing. Create the desire and then offer a product to fulfill that desire or perceived need. But what is this really telling us? It’s saying that we are worthless if we don’t conform to what is “normal.” The more over-weight you are, the less worth you have. The less attractive you are, the less worth you have. Is it any wonder that our teens are killing themselves at a record pace? This worth over time line is bell-shaped with its peak in the early to mid twenties.

But then there are those people who are always causing trouble by pushing their morality on others. These are the same people who think their way is the only way. Stupid elitists. Yep. I’m talking about they way others see me as well as other Christians in today’s society. I hear it all the time. “Only the weak believe in religion.” “What are you? A sheep who can’t make critical decisions?” “Religion is only about money and control.” And that’s from people I know!

The view that life is precious is central to the Christian faith. After the fall of man, God could have wiped out his creation and started over but He didn’t. He loved what He made and saw so much worth in man-kind that He made a way to reconcile His creation back to Himself even when we didn’t even care. So, our worth as human beings shouldn’t be measured by another person. It should be measured by the One who created the person.

The ultimate example of our worth was demonstrated on the cross. The death of Jesus on the cross wasn’t a tragic event; it was a necessary event because without the shedding of blood (a sacrifice) there could be no forgiveness of sin. This demonstrated God’s intense and passionate love for us and elevated the worth of a person beyond anything a man or woman could dream up (beauty, money, power, talent). In fact, it was counter to the culture in the first century and it’s still counter to the culture today. Every person is valuable even those yet to be born, those with disabilities, and those who are elderly. Human life is precious and the taking of that life is counter to way God intended us to treat others.

I have Yahoo! 360 invites if anyone wants one. Just leave a reply…

Want to have some fun with Google? Head on over to Googlebattle.com and enter your keywords to see who the winner will be.

Dallas Cowboys vs. New England Patriots

I just finished watching Wave that Shook the World on PBS. What an amazing event that was. If you have the opportunity to watch this episode, I would strongly encourage it.

According to one of the scientists on the show, this earthquake was so big that it shifted the earth’s mass so that it now wobbles approximately 1 cm off axis. This event caused mass to be shifted closer to the earth’s core causing the length of a day to be shortened by 3 millionth of a second much the same way a figure skater speeds up when their arms are pulled in close to the body during a spin.

If anyone would like a Google Gmail account, reply to this post and I’ll send you an invite.

Did you ever want to be a doctor? Here’s your chance to be one without having to worry about lawsuits. Virtual Knee Surgery.

This is just too cool!

From the moment of conception, every human baby embarks on an incredible journey of development. Now, revolutionary imagery sheds light on the delicate, unseen world of the womb.

From National Geographic.

Celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ at church today. (Greek/Orthodox Easter will be celebrated Sunday, May 1, 2005.)

Derek Gilbert over at Weapon of Mass Distraction has a write-up on a mother who was arrested for trying to intervene in her 14-year old daughter’s abortion. This was originally reported in the Illinios Leader.

Evidently, the mother of the male responsible for the abortion lied to school administrators saying she was the girl’s grandmother and removed the girl from school. The parents and grandfather were the only ones authorized to removed the girl from the school. The parents of the girl somehow found out and suspected that their daughter was at Hope Abortion Clinic in Granite City.

“My husband and I rushed to the abortion clinic where we saw our daughter’s name on the roster and the time she had checked in,” the mother said. She then went into the clinic and searched a room filled with young women awaiting abortions but did not see her daughter.

She took a seat near the main desk and said, “I was told I could not prove my daughter was there so I began calling her name. A medical tech at the clinic told me , ‘It’s your daughter’s rights, it’s her body. You have no rights.’”

After continuing to call out her daughter’s name and telling her “don’t do it,” authorities were called and the mother was arrested.

“You have no rights.” That statement must have been devastating to that mother. Fourteen years of age is barely beyond adolescence and this mother is being told that she cannot protect her daughter from something that will cause her physical, mental and emotional anguish? My youngest daughter is a little older than this young girl and I am very protective of her. The same goes with her older sister and younger brother, for that matter. To be arrested for trying to protect my daughter would be fuel on my fire.

Employees assured this girl on her departure, “No-one will ever know you were here, we’ll bury your records.”

Anything for a buck…

In the meantime, the woman who had taken the girl for the abortion was slipped out the back door of the clinic.

Aiding and abetting.

The police in the community in which the family lives allegedly told the girl’s mom that they couldn’t intervene despite her making a charge that her daughter had been raped (by statute) because the charge was stale–7 weeks after the incident. They did tell the girl’s mom that, while she had no right to stop the abortion, she did have a right to go into the clinic and speak to her daughter.

The parents are expected to file charges.

Ya think?

Here’s another one that is used every once in a while on the net. The word grok appears in the Robert Heinlein book, Stranger in a Strange Land and is part of the Martian language. One of the characters in the book explains it this way:

‘Grok’ means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed - to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science - and it means as little to us (because we are from Earth) as color means to a blind man.

If you say you grok something, for example, a programming language, you imply that you fully and completely understand it.

Oftentimes, I will put myself in Paul’s shoes and try to experience the personal struggles that he faces throughout his ministry. I consider the situation that he’s in and wonder what I would do or how I would react if I were in the same situation. Sometimes I’m the hero that Paul was but sometimes I get so caught up in my past failures that I see myself doing the opposite of Paul.

In this chapter we find Paul in Ephesus. I don’t know what he said or how he did it but verse 1 tells us “he found several believers.” (Acts 19:1) I doubt these people were holding up signs proclaiming the end was near or standing in the market place screaming the Good News of Christ. No, I’m sure these people were either Jews or Jewish converts who were members of the local synagogue. Paul usually went to the Jews first whenever he entered a new town.

Where he found these particular Jews we’ll never know but his encounter with them changed their lives. They were believers in Jesus but didn’t have the whole picture because they only knew about John’s baptism. When Paul told them about the Holy Spirit they were puzzled. “We don’t know what you mean. We haven’t heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” (Acts 19:2) Boy, were they in for a surprise! After their Baptism in the name of Jesus, “when Paul laid his hands them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in other tongues and prophesied.” (Acts 19:6)

This was only the start of change for the people of Ephesus. After Paul’s encounter with the men earlier he went to the synagogue to preach the Good News. Many believed Paul but there were some that did not. There must have been some lines drawn in the sand because Paul left the synagogue, along with the believers, and began preaching daily in the lecture halls of Tyrannus. Paul did this for 2 years. That’s a long time to lecture on a daily basis but when you’re fueled by the love of God for a lost world anything is possible.

It’s also noteworthy to mention that God gave Paul unusual miraculous abilities. The scripture says that “even when handkerchiefs or cloths that had touched his skin were placed on sick people, they were healed of their diseases, and any evil spirits within them came out.” (Acts 19:12) As far as I can tell this particular kind of miracle is unique in scripture.

I saw this word used somewhere today and thought it was a strange one. The context in which it was used escapes me at the moment but I think it was used to describe something, eg, that is a meme. Anyway, I looked up the definition and it’s really quite cool.

WordNet over at princeton defines it this way:

meme — (a cultural unit (an idea or value or pattern of behavior) that is passed from one generation to another by nongenetic means (as by imitation); “memes are the cultural counterpart of genes”)

How cool is that?

Some other noteworthy definitions floating around the internet:

• Nanotechnology Now
  

  Meme: An idea that replicates through a society as it is propagated through person-to-person interaction, both direct and indirect. Memetics is a field of study that focuses on memes’ role in the evolution of a culture.

• Levity.com
  

  A term coined by Richard Dawkins, who defines it as “a unit of cultural inheritance, hypothesized as analogous to the particulate gene and as naturally selected by virtue of its ‘phenotypic’ consequences on its own survival and replication in the cultural environment.”

• Silicon Beach Westnet
  

  As defined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene(1976): “a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation.” “Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.” In this sense, chain letter components are memes.

• Access eGovernment
  

  Contagious ideas. Term is used to explain viral marketing.