“I am Yahweh; that is My Name!  I will not give My glory to anyone else, nor share My praise with carved idols.” (Isaiah 42: 8)

_____________

#####

“Liberal Progressive” Culture is the Problem, not Guns

I was born in South Georgia and spent the early years of my life there.  Where I grew up, guns were part of our culture.  My father gave me my first rifle when I was about 8-years-old.  He taught me how to use it and gave me safety instructions.

That was normal.  I don’t know what percent of boys my age had guns.  I assume most of us did.  We also had toy guns and used them in all sorts of games.  Guns were as much a part of our culture as baseball and baseball cards.

In South Georgia when I was a boy, gun violence was almost unheard of.  I don’t recall any gun violence except the occasional use of a gun in the commission of a crime.  That was a rare occurrence.

Something has changed since then, and it’s not the prevalence of guns.  The most significant change that I can see is the extent to which our society glorifies violence and the merciless taking of human lives.

Our Culture of Violence: Abortion

This example may seem far afield, but it’s not.  We legalized abortion in the U.S. in 1973.  Since then, more than 60,000,0000 innocent unborn babies in our country have been mercilessly slaughtered by their mothers with the help of medical professionals who took an oath to heal the sick and to abstain from intentionally inflicting wrong-doing and harm.

Below are descriptions of several commonly used abortion procedures:

• Suction Aspiration: A vacuum that is about 29 times more powerful than a household vacuum is used to suck the baby out of the mother’s womb.
• Saline Injection: A strong salt solution is injected into the amniotic sac where the baby gestates. The baby swallows the solution, and his outer layer of skin is burned off.  This procedure takes about an hour to kill the baby, and the mother gives birth to a dead child about 24 hours later.
• Dilation and evacuation (D&E): The baby is cut into pieces inside the womb and extracted one part at a time.

Partial birth abortion is no longer legal in the United States, but it was until 2003.  When word got out about what the procedure involved, there was a public outcry.  Typically, partial birth abortions were performed on babies that were very near natural birth.  The doctor induced labor and turned the baby around so that it would be a breech birth.  When the base of the baby’s skull appeared, he punched a hole at the base of the skull and sucked it’s brain out with a vacuum to collapse the skull and make it easier to remove the baby from the birth canal.

After the partial birth abortion procedure was outlawed, pro-abortion activists fought for 4 years to keep it legal.  In 2007, the Supreme Court finally put the issue to rest in its Gonzales v. Carhart decision.

Pew Research published some interesting statistics relating to the acceptance of abortion on demand in the U.S.  The statistics are broken down by political party affiliation, religious preferences, gender, and other variables.  They are revealing.

Abortions are grotesque, cruel procedures.  They remind me of medieval torture.  Even so, they are legal, and they are not rare.  Right now, about 3,000 abortions are performed each day in the U.S.

Don’t you think the legality of abortion on demand has had an effect on our society’s attitude toward the sanctity of human life in general?  If mothers in our society can willingly inflict torture on their unborn children and fight for the “right” to do it legally, nothing is out of bounds.

Abortion devalues life.  It has caused us to become callous toward the taking of innocent human life in other ways.  Killing people with a gun is just one example.

Our Culture of Violence: Entertainment

John Grisham is the author of many bestselling books that have been turned into movies.  Grisham hasn’t stopped writing books, but movie and television producers have stopped making them into movies.  What happened?

Grisham offered some insights during a Q&A session in the summer of 2017 while he was doing a book tour:

“It has been 15 years since there was an adaptation,” Grisham said. “And they’re all for sale!”

[…]

So, what’s the deal? Grisham didn’t offer any guesses, other than that in recent years, it’s nearly impossible to produce any film that’s not a superhero franchise. “Hollywood has changed so much in the last 20 years that it’s just very difficult,” he said. “It’s hard to get a movie made.”

[…]

“As we know, there are so few good adult dramas being made, you can’t find one,” he said. He acknowledged it’s especially confusing considering how well the adaptations of his novels did at the box office. “Given the success that the early ones had, it’s hard to believe that they don’t get that model. I can’t control it.”

Today’s moviegoers 40% of whom are less than 25-years-old want to see lots of action and violence.  That’s the easy path to a box office bonanza.  The more blood and gore, the better the box office receipts.

Grisham’s books are not like that.  That’s why you haven’t seen a new Grisham movie for a while.

Video games are big sellers.  Some of the most lucrative video games on the market involve a lot of killing.  According to a CNN legal analyst, “Literally, by the time a child is 18 years of age, they’ve killed over 100,000 people in video games and other online things.”

A casual look at primetime television shows the same trend.  Violence and killing produce ratings and ad revenue.  It’s a matter of dollars and cents.  Entertainment industry executives produce what people want to buy, and consumers want violence and killing.

“Liberal Progressive” Culture is the Problem, not Guns

Guns are an easy target for “liberal progressives” who detest everything our country stands for.  The Constitution is their real target.  They are chipping away at it around the edges in hopes of one day tossing it on the trash heap.

That’s not a political statement.  It’s fact.

“Liberal progressives” march in the streets to protect and defend a woman’s so-called “right” to choose to murder her unborn children.  “Liberal progressives” make up the vast majority of entertainment industry executives and stars who get filthy rich making and selling products that glorify violence of all sorts, perversion, and indiscriminate killing.  They are the same people who come out in force every time there is another mass killing with guns and demand that we abolish our Second Amendment rights.

The culture they created is the problem, not guns.  We stood by and let it happen. Abolishing our Second Amendment rights would not solve our problem, but it would leave law-abiding citizens defenseless.  It would do nothing to reduce gun violence.  Criminals can get guns any time they want.  That’s true everywhere.  Laws don’t influence lawless people.

Conclusion

We have allowed “liberal progressives” to change our culture in profound ways.  Now, we are paying the price.  Mass murder in our schools is part of that price.

There’s a solution to our problem.  It’s something that “liberal progressives” don’t want to think about.  We need to return to Yahweh.  By that I mean we need to demonstrate faith in Him and obey Him.  There are consequences for not doing those things.  Gun violence is part of it.

Guns are inanimate objects.  They cause no harm unless they are in the hands of unholy people.  Unholy people are the problem.

Holy means “set apart” for Yahweh.  It doesn’t mean perfect, but it does mean striving for perfection.

#####

_____________

#####

#####

_____________

#####

“The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17: 22-24)

See “His Name is Yahweh”.