Action and Reaction

I’ve been MIA lately because of real-life issues that needed to be dealt with, specifically some family things I’ve made reference to and purposely omitted details about. Last fall, a rock was thrown into a pond and the ripples are still going out. Through everything, God has proved faithful. I hope someday it will be appropriate for me to tell specifically just how good God has been. Right now, it’s not obvious how good He is, but we can see it… he’s been carrying us through a very tough time.

I purposely omitted expressing the boilerplate “Tiller’s murder is awful and I disavow it” disclaimer in this Greenroom post. I bet I catch some heat for that from a couple of lefty commenters for that.  But I also don’t feel obligated to say certain things, especially when that standard is arbitrarily set and unevenly applied. Society generally agrees that Muslims should not be required to apologize for every terror attack their co-religionists commit; why should I feel constrained to apologize for some nut job murderer who committed his act in specific violation to both the Christian faith and the principles of the pro-life movement? I linked one article which disavowed the murder because I agreed with it and it was well written, but I don’t feel compelled to include a disclaimer in everything I write that references Tiller from now on.  If the left really wants to provoke that kind of reaction they can start by setting the example and doing it themselves every time one of their nut jobs commits a crime or indulges in excesses like Bush assassination fantasies.

Society’s war on parents continues apace… I often wonder if our just barely over replacement (and Europe’s less than replacement) birth rate is a reaction to how difficult we’re making it to raise kids these days.

Henry Neufeld notes that the reaction to new technology may be more harmful than the technology itself.  Just adjust, already, media.

A very sad, very public disintegration of a marriage with the futures of eight children in the balance… I haven’t got much of an opinion of either parent, especially if the rumors are true, but I would like to note that both times I saw the show  – and from what I hear from friends who watch it regularly, this is ongoing – Kate spoke to Jon like he was an overgrown and aggravating child.  I was so annoyed by her tone that I couldn’t watch the show; I thought that she was an idiot for speaking to her husband in a way that she would never use with a co-worker or neighbor.   There’s no way to know, of course, if Jon’s alleged cheating was a reaction to that, or to really know what was going on in that marriage in spite of the fact that they’ve been hip deep in cameras for years.  Those kids are going to be a train wreck later on if Mom and Dad don’t pull themselves together and act like grownups.  Even if that means telling TLC to take a hike and getting real jobs in order to pay their bills.