Quagmire's Mom and Matthew 5:23-24

In last Sunday’s Family Guy, Quagmire breaks the law and faces the possibility of twenty years in jail.  Quagmire blames his mother (played by Allison Janney) for his sexual deviancy, for she herself was promiscuous when Quagmire was growing up.  But Quagmire’s mother says that she has changed, for she has become a born-again Christian.  Quagmire believes that his mother’s religious conversion is something she uses to avoid taking responsibility for her actions.

More than one person believes this about Christian conversion.  I sometimes read a blog by a man who used to be a pastor and became an atheist, and he one time talked about somebody he knew.  This person hurt him but later claimed that his sins were covered by the blood of Christ.  This atheist blogger believes that the person is trying to avoid taking responsibility for his actions.

In watching that Family Guy episode, I gained an appreciation for Matthew 5:23-24:

“Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.”

I can’t say that I like this passage, for I fear that it is telling me to do something that I do not want to do.  If somebody has something against me, I’m supposed to go to that person and seek reconciliation?  What’s it mean for somebody to have something against me?  That the person does not like me, and so I should go out of my way to appease that person?  Did Jesus consistently go out of his way to appease those who disliked him, and whom he offended?  Well, he did eat with the Pharisees, so he arguably pursued a relationship with them, in some sense.  But I don’t think that he bent over backwards to get his enemies to like him, or that he apologized for offending people.  Does he call me to do something that he did not do himself?

In addition, while there are cases in which people may dislike me because of something offensive that I said, that’s not always the reason.  They may dislike me because they don’t think I’m smart enough or cool enough or open-minded enough, or whatever.  Why should I go out of my way to appease them?  The world doesn’t revolve around them.

Then there’s the factor of whether I even want certain people in my life.  If a person is an obnoxious jerk to me and to people I know, should I keep him in my life, even if he may apologize continually?  Well, Jesus did say that we are supposed to forgive our brother seventy-times-seven.  I have trouble enduring that kind of continual drama, though!

I one time heard a pastor say that Matthew 5:23-24 means that, before we engage in any kind of worship, we have to reconcile with those who have something against us.  A number of charismatic Vineyard churches tell people not to partake of communion if they have not reconciled with people in their lives.  This is difficult for me to accept.  My hope is that the worship of God and communion can make me a loving person, the type who would want to reconcile.  To make reconciliation a prerequisite for worship is to cut me off from a source of life and strength, which can encourage me to have more love in my heart.  And yet, as good as my rationale here may sound to me, do I use that as an excuse not to reconcile with people?

Essentially, I stumble over any command in Scripture that requires interpersonal interaction on my part, especially when it comes to really thorny social situations that involve confrontation, honestly telling people how they have wronged me, or trying to appease people and get them to like me.   Giving things to people in need or asking them how they are doing is easier for me, though.

I can complain about Jesus’ commands until the cows come home, and I probably will, until I draw my last breath.  But, getting back to last Sunday’s Family Guy episode, the episode gave me an appreciation of Matthew 5:23-24 because it helped me to understand a bit what Jesus may be getting at: that we are not just supposed to think about our vertical relationship with God, but also our horizontal relationship with other people.  In the case of Quagmire’s mother, it was not enough for her simply to receive forgiveness from God and to be cool with that.  She also needed to apologize to her son for her role in him turning out as he did.  Receiving God’s forgiveness, in short, should not be about avoiding responsibility, but it should include taking responsibility.

Will God's Character Change at the Last Judgment?

I was reading the Book of IV Ezra recently.  IV Ezra was a Jewish work, and Michael Stone in the HarperCollins Study Bible says that it was probably written around 70 C.E., which is when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple.  Stone also states that IV Ezra has been respected by certain Christian communities, such as Armenian and Ethiopic churches.

IV Ezra was a disturbing book for me to read, and yet I also found it fascinating.  A major part of this book is a debate that Ezra has with an angel about God’s judgment and hell.  Ezra challenges God’s plan to pour God’s wrath on most of the people.  Ezra has questions: Doesn’t God love God’s creation?  Isn’t God reputed to be merciful?  Why can’t Ezra intercede for them, for God in the past has listened to intercessors, who persuaded God to turn away from God’s plan to wipe people out?

The angel offers a variety of responses to Ezra’s questions.  The angel says that the people only have themselves to blame for their judgment, for their lives have a pattern of disobeying God’s law.  While the angel does not talk often about God’s love and mercy, he does at one point say that Ezra cannot understand the mysteries of God’s mercy.  A key point that the angel makes, though, is that God operates in different ways at different times.  In this world, God loves God’s creation, is merciful, and listens to intercessors.  In the next world, God will be a judge, and that’s about it!

I’ve heard different things about such issues from Christians in the past.  I remember walking with a couple of Christians—-one was converting to Catholicism, and the other was a Pentecostal.  The Pentecostal was rattling on about a movie that he watched about the end times and was saying that the end times are near.  The Pentecostal was getting on my Catholic friend’s nerves, for the Pentecostal was dramatically telling us about scenes in the movie in which a devout evangelical Christian grandmother was telling her kids and grandkids to leave the Catholic church and become born again, and the evangelical grandmother got raptured, whereas her Catholic family (at least those past the age of accountability) got left behind.  My Catholic friend did not care for the Pentecostal’s harsh portrayal of Jesus.  “Did not Jesus reach out to the woman at the well and talk with her?”, my Catholic friend asked.  “Oh, at the second coming, Jesus will be through with talking,” my Pentecostal friend retorted.  “The first time Jesus came, he reached out to people; when he comes back, it’s with a sword!”

At least in this discussion, my Pentecostal friend was assuming that God’s M.O. will be different in the eschaton from what it is now.  Now, God shows mercy; at the last judgment, God will be a judge.  That’s why he, and many Christians, believe that now is the time for people to accept Christ as their personal savior and receive forgiveness of sins: they think that, at the last judgment, that opportunity will be closed to people, that those who failed to accept Christ will go to hell, no second chances.  In other conversations with my Pentecostal friend, though, I got the impression that he thought that there was more to the issue than that.  When it came to people in other religions, he said that Jesus did refer to other sheep, and so my Pentecostal friend was open to the possibility that some non-Christians may enter eternal life.  When I asked him one time what the requirements are to be saved, or who exactly will enter eternal life, he said that the requirements are accepting Christ, and also trying one’s best to obey God.  “I doubt I’ll make it,” he said to me.  At the same time, he had some hope that God would be merciful to him.

Will God’s character at the last judgment be different from how God is today?  Will God’s love and mercy go out the window at the last judgment?  If so, can these things truly be said to be integral parts of God’s character, how God essentially is?  Are they essential aspects of who God is, or simply things that God does?  When it comes to the last judgment, even some evangelicals believe that God will have some mercy on people at that time.  When they are asked about those who died before hearing the Gospel, they respond that God will judge people according to what they know, and that God’s judgment will be mixed with God’s mercy.

In terms of rabbinic and later Judaism, I think of the theme in the Fall festival liturgy in which Jews ask God to leave his throne of judgment and to go to his throne of mercy.  That seems to imply that God M.O. is different at different times, though I may be taking the liturgy too literally in saying that.  There is also a rabbinic reference that seems to present God as a balance between justice and mercy—-that, if God were too just, everyone on earth would be eliminated, for we are all sinners, and yet, if God were too merciful, the wicked would get away with murder.  My understanding, though, is that, within strands of medieval Judaism, there is some aversion to saying that God has all these different attributes, for is not God a single unified being?

In terms of where I stand on these sorts of issues, well, at the very least, I believe in seeking God’s mercy for myself and others.  I cannot make others believe or follow certain ideas, but I can ask God to make God’s love known to people.  Often, I’ve flirted with Christian universalism, the idea that God will save everyone.  While I don’t care for how many conservative Christians casually dismiss that school of thought, I have been doubting it lately, as I have read pseudepigraphic apocalyptic literature, which could have formed part of Jesus’ cultural context.  But I may talk about that in another post.

Book Write-Up: The Joy of the Gospel, by Pope Francis

Pope Francis.  The Joy of the Gospel: Evangelii Gaudium.  New York: Image, 2013, 2014.  See here to purchase the book.

The Joy of the Gospel is primarily about evangelism.  For Pope Francis, this includes sharing one’s faith about God’s love for each human being, God’s forgiveness, Christ’s sacrificial death to bring people salvation, and Christ’s triumph over death and evil at his resurrection.  And yet, while Pope Francis does offer helpful advice about how Christians can share their faith effectively in interpersonal relationships and in the pulpit, he discusses other issues as well, including the importance of hopeful service to others and being a prophetic voice against income inequality and systemic abuse of the poor.  For Pope Francis, evangelism is not just a matter of sharing the good news, but also of embodying the good news.

There are many jewels in this book, and I cannot do them all justice.  I did, however, have some favorite passages.  I enjoyed his discussion of Bible study and how we should be honest with God when something in the Bible offends us, for God is patient with us, even if we are not entirely ready to obey God right now; at the same time, elsewhere in the book, Pope Francis says that Christians should not try to lessen the difficult commands of Jesus, as certain commentaries do.  I appreciated that Pope Francis thought of those who did not have much joy in the Gospel, as he encouraged them to pray.  Pope Francis’ discussion of Judaism and non-believers also impressed me, for the Pope said that both Judaism and Christianity draw wisdom from God’s revelation, and that even non-Christians partake of “practical wisdom” from the Holy Spirit that helps “people to bear suffering and to live in greater peace and harmony” (pages 170-171); Pope Francis still affirms, though, that belief in Jesus is important and makes a difference.

Most interesting to me was Pope Francis’ discussion of Mary as a spiritual mother.  Pope Francis offers a Scriptural rationale for that position (e.g., John 19:26-27; Revelation 12) and talks about Mary’s virtues, including her love for Jesus and her passion for social justice in the Magnficat (Luke 1:46-55).  I myself do not believe in praying to Mary (and Pope Francis recommends a certain prayer to Mary on pages 194-196), but, in reading this book, I did gain an appreciation for Mary’s virtues and reasons that people may desire a nurturing and caring spiritual mother.

There were some things in the book that I did not particularly want to hear but needed to hear, even if it is an open question how I would apply certain principles.  Pope Francis is a promoter of Christian extroversion—-Christians going out and being with people and ministering life to them.  He tries to embody that in his own life.  But what about people who struggle socially or who are loners, either by choice or due to a condition that they may have (i.e., autism)?  I do give Pope Francis credit for saying that Jesus brings the lonely into community, but the sad reality is that this does not necessarily work for everybody.  As a person with Asperger’s, I wish that Pope Francis had highlighted that even introverts and people who are in solitude can make a contribution to life.  At the same time, his statements about how we should listen to people’s stories and respect them as a creation of God are an important challenge to me, especially when I get misanthropic and self-centered.

Overall, I enjoyed this book.  I found it to be profound, challenging, prophetic, and also full of love, joy, and hope.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review.

Scattered Ramblings on Prayer

The theme at church this morning was prayer.  In response to that, I will respond to three quotes that I read recently about this subject.

1.  Yesterday, I was reading a post by unkleE (Eric Hatfield) about his experiences in various churches.  He was in a Presbyterian church, and later he was in a Pentecostal church.  He said that they differed in their approach to prayer:

“The biggest lesson we learnt [in the Pentecostal church] was to pray. The Presbyterians are not so strong on prayer, because why would a sovereign God need our advice on what he should do? But with the Pentecostals, we learnt that God doesn’t always exercise his sovereignty, and has delegated some of his work to us. If we want him to be active on our behalf, we need to ask him.”

As my Presbyterian pastor said this morning, Jesus saturated his ministry with prayer.  Some of that, as my pastor noted, was so that Jesus could gain strength, especially before he was about to be misunderstood and forsaken by his disciples, tortured, and shamefully put to death.  Often, Jesus needed to be spiritually centered, to demonstrate concretely his dependance on God, and to go to God for guidance (as when Jesus prayed before selecting his disciples), and prayer was a place where he could do that.  I definitely see value in prayer for those reasons.

But there is something about the Pentecostal approach that resonates with me, for I also believe that Jesus was praying so that his ministry would bear fruit.  Jesus was going up against opposing spiritual powers, who were oppressing people spiritually and physically, and he needed God’s help to make any headway.  Would God have acted had Jesus not prayed, out of concern for the people who were oppressed?  I cannot say, but I do believe that God often acts with people rather than completely on his own, and prayer is one way that we can indicate that we are open to what God wants to do.  In short, God may act according to our readiness for him to act.

I don’t take this in the direction of saying that God is more likely to answer prayers made by a bunch of people than he is to only one prayer.  Or it depends.  If we’re talking about healing, God may be impressed if a bunch of people care so much for a sick person that they pray for his healing.  God can manifest his goodness to more people by answering that prayer.  But I also believe that God may choose to answer the prayer of healing of a few people, or even just one person who does not have many friends, to show his care to that person.  When it comes to great causes, though, God may choose to respond when a significant number of people are ready for God to act.  And yet, even that can start with one person, as when Moses went out to pray at the Tent of Meeting by himself.  For a great cause to have success, more people may need to be on the same page.  Still, if you are one person with a vision, pray, and see what happens!

2.  I read a book a while back, Ordinary, by Tony Merida (see my review here).  Merida talked about the International Justice Mission, which helps people in the Third World, such as a woman who was seeking justice and had to walk miles to court.  This group emphasizes prayer a lot.

But I wondered: Why does God have to be asked to help the people?  Couldn’t God just do so without people asking?  Wouldn’t one expect that of a God who is loving, generous, and kind?

I just finished Pope Francis’ The Joy of the Gospel (which I will review tomorrow).  On page 190, Pope Francis states: “We can say that God’s heart is touched by our intercession [for others], yet in reality he is always there first.  What our intercession achieves is that his power, his love and his faithfulness are shown ever more clearly in the midst of his people.”

Is Pope Francis saying that God is already at work, but prayer makes evident where and how God is at work?  Perhaps prayer can do so.  It can highlight to us God’s priorities.  But I also pray because I want God to act, in a world where enough people suffer and enough injustice occurs that one can legitimately question if God even is acting.  Like the IJM, I want for that woman in the Third World to get justice.  But I fear that she might not get that justice if neither she nor others are praying for it.  What makes me say that?  Because there are plenty of people in the world who do not get justice and who suffer.

3.  At church this morning, the Prayer of Invocation in our bulletin said the following: “You watch over us: to pluck up and break down our errant ways, to build up and plant new possibilities for life in your Spirit.”

New possibilities.  It makes me feel good to get something new, as when I get a new book from the library, or a new review book in the mail.  What do I want that is new in my life?  Well, maybe a romantic relationship, or popularity, or more ways to earn money.  Are those things new possibilities for life in God’s spirit?  Well, that depends.  They can coincide with my selfishness.  But they can also be carried in redemptive directions: a romantic relationship that draws me closer to God, inspires me to be a better person, and provides opportunities for me to show love; people who encourage me spiritually and whom I can encourage; and money for good uses (though, in my case, it would be to pay off my student loans).  There’s nothing wrong with new possibilities, yet I remember the words of James: “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts” (James 4:3 KJV).

Those are some ramblings.  They are far from perfect.  An atheist or someone who questions the idea that God is active in the world can easily poke holes in what I am saying.  Still, I believe that what I am saying contains a grain of truth, or is part of a broader picture of truth.

II Chronicles 19

In II Chronicles 19:2, we read: “And Jehu the son of Hanani the seer went out to meet him, and said to king Jehoshaphat, Shouldest thou help the ungodly, and love them that hate the LORD? therefore is wrath upon thee from before the LORD” (KJV).

King Jehoshaphat of Judah entered into an alliance with the wicked King Ahab of Northern Israel.  Jehu the son of Hanani is criticizing Jehoshaphat for that.  Jehu asks if Jehoshaphat should help the ungodly and love those who hate the LORD.  Jehu’s implied answer to this rhetorical question is “no.”

But doesn’t God want us to love everybody?  Didn’t Jesus tell us to love our enemies, to do good to those who hate us, and to pray for those who mistreat and persecute us?  Did not Jesus say that God himself makes the sun to shine on the good and the bad, and the rain to fall on the righteous and the wicked (Matthew 5:44-45)?  Does not Proverbs 25:21 tell us to feed our enemy if he is hungry, and to give him a drink of water if he is thirsty (Proverbs 25:21)?  Are we not supposed to love and to help those who hate the LORD?

“Sure, you can do that, but you’re not supposed to be in an intimate relationship with those people,” some conservative Christians might answer.  They would point to II Corinthians 6:14, where Paul tells Christians not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers.  The way this is often explained is that unbelievers are going one way, and believers are going another way, and an intimate relationship between the believer and the non-believer would be difficult.  Not only are the two going in different directions, but the believer may also be pressured to compromise his or her Christian life in order to maintain the relationship.  But was not Jesus criticized for eating with tax collectors and sinners (Matthew 9:10-11)?  Did not Jesus do so because the sick were the ones who needed a physician?  Was not Jesus trying to enter into a relationship with them to encourage them to seek and to find a better way?

Another relevant passage is I Corinthians 5:9-13: “(9)I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators: (10) Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world.  (11) But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat.  (12) For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within? (13) But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person” (KJV).

Paul is saying there that Christians can be around immoral unbelievers.  I don’t think that Paul means that Christians should enter into intimate relationships with them, however, for Paul’s point seems to be that Christians would have to take themselves out of the world altogether were they to follow a blanket prohibition on keeping company with immoral non-believers, and that is not feasible.  Paul appears to be saying that Christians can keep company with immoral non-believers, if they have to do so.  But when it comes to immoral believers, Christians should not eat with such a person, and should put that person out from their midst.

How that plays out on the ground can be tricky.  I have heard some conservative Christians use this passage to justify not eating with homosexual Christians, and some conservative Christian parents appeal to it to justify kicking their gay kids out of the home.  Yet, there are conservative Christians who believe in cultivating friendships with homosexuals to encourage them to come to Christ.  Pastor John MacArthur here gives advice to Christian parents on how to relate to a child who comes out to them, and his advice is essentially this: if the child professes Christ, confront him, and separate yourself from him (i.e., don’t eat a meal with him) if he refuses to repent (after the Matthew 18 process of confrontation); if he is a non-believer, however, confront him with the Gospel.  The thing is, in addition to being horrible, such a rule is not particularly helpful, for the dividing line between Christians and non-Christians is not always clear in this society.  Many of the gay people I was encouraged to “reach out to” as an evangelical Christian probably professed to be Christians
themselves, for Christianity is a significant part of our culture; plus, Christianity is pretty diverse.

Was Jehoshaphat wrong to help a man, King Ahab, who hated the LORD?  Well, one could say that Jehoshaphat could expose Ahab to righteousness by doing so.  The problem was, however, that the alliance may have led Jehoshaphat to compromise his convictions: in II Chronicles 18, Jehoshaphat asks Ahab to consult a prophet of the LORD who is not a yes-man, then Jehoshaphat proceeds to disregard the true prophet’s message.  Plus, would entering an alliance with Ahab be a tacit approval of Ahab’s anti-God policies?

I listened to J. Vernon McGee’s commentary on II Chronicles 19, and it was interesting.  McGee was using II Chronicles 19:2 to criticize U.S. aid to Russia, and he also said that some of the people who professed to love him turned out to be trying to undermine him.  He said that all this rhetoric of loving everybody, when actually there are few people we truly do love, is hypocrisy.  McGee still was walking a fine line, though: he said that Christians should still love non-believers, but their hope should be that the non-believers embrace the Gospel.  I did not entirely like what McGee had to say, but I did like the part about hypocrisy.  It was honest: can any one of us—-even those Christians who like to toot their own horn and lecture others and bloviate about how they love everybody—-truthfully say that we love everybody?  I can’t.  Still, I believe in respecting people’s dignity, and I hope for a society in which people help each other out and do not fall through the cracks.

I just poured a bunch of paint onto the wall, paint with different colors.  Where do I land?  Well, I can see a certain logic in the different guidelines: we have to respect our own walk of a righteous path and remember how relationships can impact that; we should love others, even if they don’t believe as we do; a community should stand for something.  I don’t care for what John MacArthur says in that video, even if he can back it up with proof-texts, for it does not come across to me as particularly loving.  “But it is loving, since it encourages the gay son to repent,” one might say.  Not really.  For one, the gay son may feel that he should not have to repent about who he is.  Second, the result of the sort of policy that MacArthur recommends is often a permanent alienation between the parents and the child.  On a related note, see this post by Rachel Held Evans.

Anyway, those are some ramblings.

Book Write-Up (Loosely-Speaking): Where Courage Calls

Janette Oke and Laurel Oke Logan.  Where Courage Calls.  Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2014.

A little background on why I decided to read this book:

I am part of Bethany House Publisher’s blogger review program.  Each month, I receive two newsletters from them.  On one, I can request a non-fiction book from Bethany House to review on my blog.  On another, I can request a fiction book to review.  People in the program are offered choices in both, and they can only select one fiction and one non-fiction book.  It’s on a first-come-first-serve basis, too.

One of the fiction books stood out to me was Where Trust Lies, by Janette Oke and Laurel Oke Logan.  The description of the book said: “After a year of teaching in the West, Beth Thatcher no longer feels at home among her wealthy Eastern family. Torn between two worlds, will she find the place where her heart belongs?”  That intrigued me: a person coming back home after a time of service and having a new perspective.  I enjoy books in which life changes a person.

I saw that Where Trust Lies was the second book of the Return of the Canadian West series, so I thought that I should read the first book, Where Courage Calls, which is about the time that Beth Thatcher was teaching in Western Canada.  I also noticed that there was an even earlier series than that, Canadian West, and that some of this concerned Beth’s cousin Elizabeth going out to the Canadian West and teaching.  But I decided not to attempt to read all of those books before I got Where Trust Lies.  And, after reading Where Courage Calls, my conclusion is that I did not need to read the entire Canadian West series to understand Where Courage Calls.  Still, as I read some of the Amazon reviews of Where Courage Calls, I did see that reading the Canadian West series can give readers a certain perspective of Where Courage Calls.  One of the reviewers wondered how Beth’s parents could have become so socially-snobbish (not that this is entirely the case, for Beth’s father seemed pretty level-headed).

Well, I requested that my local library put Where Courage Calls on hold for me.  I was expecting for Bethany House to send me Where Trust Lies, since it has sent me every book I have requested so far.  Bethany House then told me that I would not be receiving a review copy of Where Trust Lies because the quota of people requesting it had already been reached.  I then debated with myself: should I cancel my hold of Where Courage Calls?  I decided not to do so, since I would not want to put my local library in the position of receiving the book, then having to send it back to the other library.  Plus, I figured that Where Trust Lies would eventually be in the library system anyway—-and it is, though most of the copies are currently checked out.  So I chose to go ahead and read Where Courage Calls.  I got that book, and also Lynn Austin’s book on Reconstruction, All Things New, which I wrote about here.

To be honest, I did not really enjoy Where Courage Calls.  I was just bored with it.  The writing-style was all right, I guess—-it was grammatically correct and the author was trying to be reflective—-but the book did not grab me.  At the book’s end, when Beth was saying good bye to the people in the Canadian West, I wanted to feel something, but I struggled to do so.  I did not particularly care about what was going on.  Also, Where Courage Calls required a bit of an adjustment after I had read All Things New, which was an awesome book, one that drew me into the plot.

Don’t get me wrong.  The book did have some excellent things.  I could identify with Beth, one who did not like her friend Edward and was looking forward to going away so she would not have to see him anymore.  Christians can find themselves in that sort of situation?  They’re not perfect and in love with everybody?  Apparently so.  What I like about Christian fiction is that it acknowledges that even Christians are not perfect.  I also appreciated the homespun Christian wisdom that Beth received from Molly, who lived in the West, and who gave Beth sound advice on pursuing a calling and honoring her parents.  On pursuing a calling, Molly said that Jesus promised that his burden would be light, and so, if one finds that one’s burden is too heavy, maybe Jesus does not expect her to carry it.  On honoring parents, Molly said that Beth can honor her rather controlling mother in her thoughts, even if she does not in her feelings, and that she can work that out with the Lord.  Molly’s advice can probably be fleshed out, but I appreciated it for this reason: Christianity gives us all these commands that are hard to live up to, and it’s nice when one can have a mentor to help her obey them, without beating up on herself for being imperfect.

The visit of Beth’s sister Julie to the Canadian West was also rather interesting.  Julie was technically polite, but her scorn for the people in the West still managed to come through.  I struggle with that, albeit not in the way that Julie did: I try to be polite, people may detect that I’d rather not interact with them, I get rejected, and I wonder what exactly I did wrong!  Beth apologizes to Molly for Julie’s behavior, and Molly responds that Julie may have some rough edges, but nobody’s perfect.  Beth had to laugh at what Molly said about Julie having some rough edges, for Julie had been trained in the fine art of social etiquette!  Notwithstanding Julie’s flaws, Julie tried to change after Beth challenged her.  Julie became caring to the people in the Canadian West, and she offered Beth insight about where their mother was coming from, so that Beth would not resent her mother so much.  The scenes in which Beth had brought different people together and Beth came to empathize with her mother after a certain experience were also all right, even if they were not effectively executed.

In criticizing Where Courage Calls, I am not saying that I can do any better.  Writing a fiction book can be difficult.  I am just sharing my reaction as a reader.  I was wondering if I should read other books by Janette Oke or if they, too, would bore me, but I read Amazon reviews that said that the Canadian West series and other Janette Oke books were good, even if Where Courage Calls was not-so-good.  I’ll still feel free to read Janette Oke.  I may even read Where Trust Lies sometime in the future.  I may go through it quickly to get it over with, though!

Vaccines (Not That I Am Qualified to Opine)

I was going to write about the current vaccination controversy today, but I am a bit hesitant to do so.  A lot of people trust what they read online, and that can include my little blog.  I don’t want people’s lives to be on my hands!  “Get over yourself, James, you’re not that important.”  Yeah, true.

I did not get my shots when I was a little kid.  It was mainly for health reasons: we thought that there were health risks in getting them.  One of our sources for this was Dr. Robert Mendelsohn, who wrote Confessions of a Medical Heretic and How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor, and who debated medical doctors on programs (see here for wikipedia's bio).  Because of our stance, I had to carry a note to school saying that I would not receive vaccinations, and it appealed to the legal exemption of philosophical reasons.  I did that throughout much of my education: in elementary school, high school, and college.  As a matter of fact, when I was in junior high, I had to stay home from school for a couple weeks because the school was giving the measles vaccine.  By the time that I was entering my second graduate school, I decided to stop fighting the system and got my MMR vaccine.

When I hear about Governor Chris Christie saying that the rights of parents not to have their children vaccinated should be respected, that brings back personal memories.  While it seems, though, that many conservatives are championing the rights of parents while a number of liberals are pushing for vaccination, many conservatives do not consistently favor non-traditional medicine or shy away from substances that some believe could be dangerous—-consider their support for the pharmaceuticals, chemical companies, etc.

Something that I heard a while back was that Roe vs. Wade actually protects the rights of parents not to have their kids vaccinated.  I have not read the entirety of the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision, which primarily concerns abortion rights.  It was interesting, though, to read libertarian Judge Andrew Napolitano argue along the same lines in his latest column.

Nowadays, vaccines are not entirely like what was around when I was a kid, especially after thimerosal was removed from them.  Still, there are even some medical professionals who question the wisdom of pushing vaccines on kids at a young age.

I am not a doctor, though.  I do not even know much about medicine and science!  If you are a parent, you should do your own research.  I’m writing this post to share how this issue intersected with my life, since that is one thing that blogging is about—-sharing.  But I also hope to add a bit of perspective to the debate, since some see parents who don’t have their kids vaccinated as selfish or as the equivalent of flat-earthers.  It’s a bit more complicated than that.