WATCHING THE ADVENT OF UTTER CHAOS

If you had thought that the insanity of our public officials was merely temporary, on March 11, 2016, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio proved you wrong. He issued an executive order giving men the right to use women's bathrooms and locker rooms, and vice versa:

• The mayor's edict is called, "Access to Single-Sex City Facilities Consistent With Gender Identity and Expression."  It means that all New York City single-gender facilities must accommodate both sexes, including city buildings and offices, parks, children's playgrounds, swimming pools, and more, all access given without showing identification or any proof of gender.

• Mayor de Blasio declared that transgenders using opposite sex bathrooms and locker rooms "is a fundamental human right that should not be restricted or denied to any individual." Ironically, he added, "Every New Yorker should feel safe in our city." (LifeSiteNews)

Just wondering how this might play out, accompanied by my wife, I walked up to a security guard standing by the public bathrooms and asked:

• I happen to feel quite feminine today. Would you mind if I used the Lady’s Toilette?

Fortunately, he knew that I was joking with him, laughed, and confessed that this policy had not yet been implemented. When I asked him how he would be able to distinguish the transgendered from a molester, he again laughed helplessly. We both understood that there could be no way to distinguish.

But according to our mayor, this is their “human right.” However, according to another NYC ordinance, it is not our human right to call a transgendered a “he,” when, biologically, the transgendered “she” is a he! Actually, if you do that, it is the “human right” of the city to fine you up to $250,000. I don’t see how this will accomplish our mayor’s goal that "Every New Yorker should feel safe in our city." I don’t feel safe when I have to watch every pronoun that proceeds from my mouth.

But such are “human rights!” I just wonder from where our empathetic mayor derives them. Certainly not from the Constitution or even from our pre-De Blasio statutes! Perhaps he has his own private bible, and perhaps the rest of us have failed to see the light. I just wonder whether it includes something about the human rights of women for privacy and protection against predators and porn-producers. Perhaps our mayor just hasn’t reached that part in his bible yet.

WHY ARE THE “RIGHTS” OF ONE TRANSEXUAL PLACED ABOVE THE RIGHTS OF ALL THE OTHER STUDENTS?

The American Family Association reported on November 10 that:

·       The Office for Civil Rights in President Barack Obama's Department of Education (DOE) has determined that a Chicago area high school must leave the choice to openly use the girls' locker room up to a 15 year-old student who has male genitalia, but self-identifies as a girl.

Why should this one boy’s choice to be a girl undermine the rights of everyone else?

·       Here is a statement from a spokesperson at the DOE: "Unfortunately, Township High School District 211 is not following the law because the district continues to deny a female student the right to use the girls' locker room."

Why is the one, who decided on his own to identity as a “girl,” overturn the rights of everyone else? Evidently, this administration has determined that it should. But why? Have there been any studies that transsexuals do better when they are allowed to change sexes, either by surgery or otherwise. Not at all! Instead, there is no reason to not regard this as pathological!

Have there been any studies to show that societies will thrive better by undermining the very clear and physically obvious sexual distinctions? Not at all!

Why then force the entire school district (and subsequently the nation) to conform to federal guidelines? It seems apparent that they are guided by a new religion that requires the elimination of any sexual distinctions and sexual taboos and the promotion of any and every sexual choice, no matter how self-destructive. And they are determined to impose their religious values on the rest of the nation.

Why religious? Well, religion is about values and beliefs. However, they will not call their crusade “religious,” because there is an alleged separation between church and state, which is consistently exercised against Christians to marginalize any Christian influence. Nevertheless, the religion of hyper-sexuality and sexual choice operates as a stealth religion without much opposition.

Ethics, Equality, and Human Exceptionalism

It seems that the success of the West has depended on the presupposition of human exceptionalism and human equality. However, this idea is now under serious attack. We are having difficulty defending it against numerous vigorous challenges. For instance:

• What makes humans exceptional? Why shouldn’t we kill and eat humans as we do chickens and pigs? 

Some will argue that we are more valuable than chickens, but to whom? Certainly we are not more valuable to other chickens. Who then can authoritatively assign relative value? Is our value then determined by other humans? Why?

Besides, do we want our value to be culturally or governmentally determined? Instead, we would prefer that our value be based on an objective intrinsic basis – on who we are as human beings rather than chickens.

However, this opens the door to another problem. What intrinsically makes us more valued? Some will argue that we are more intelligent, sensitive, or creative. Well, this is true. However, why should our superiority over the chicken make us more valuable or important? Also, the chicken can do things that we can’t do. She can lay eggs and raise many more young than we can. They are also fearless mothers!

Besides, this kind of reasoning opens the door to many ethical problems. If intelligence makes us more valuable and extends to us more legal protections and rights, then we should be placing greater value on those who are more intelligent, educated, and sensitive, right? Consequently, we would also have to degrade the value of the less intelligent – children, the mentally ill, uneducated, and the elderly. Therefore, to assign value based on human characteristics is to undermine the concept of equality.

Also, if our legal system is to operate in a manner consistent with this criterion of intelligence, then it should extend more rights and protections to the intelligent. Clearly, this kind of thinking will undermine the fabric of our society.

Some postmodernists avoids this problem by asserting that all life is of equal value. However, this assertion is loaded with its own set of problems:

1. What endows life with value? Is this no more than an arbitrary assertion?

2. How can any legal system accommodate the need to criminalize human murder along with cockroach murder? It would seem that the legal system would crash under the weight of its broadened responsibilities.

3. Such a morality would not be humanly livable. It would mean that we couldn’t swat mosquitoes, exterminate termites, and even take anti-biotics. 

Just as problematic as these three problems is the problem of “equal value.” Where does this notion of equality come from? Instead, we observe inequality wherever we look. There is nothing equal between a termite and a cow. They are different in every respect. Upon what then can equality be based?

Even in regards to humanity, we observe little in the way of equality. Some are old, others young. Some are productive, others not. Some contribute to the welfare of society; others do not. 

Nevertheless, we intuitively know that what we value in the West cannot be preserved without the belief articulated in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal” – an ascertain that transcends the observable and must find its justification in another realm where true equality exists.

What is the basis for equality? The Declaration claims that equality is found in the mind of an immutable God:

• We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Perhaps “unalienable” human Rights” are not “self-evident.” However, what is evident is that these rights cannot be founded on human decisions. Such decisions are always in flux. If the government grants a human right, the government can also rescind that right. However, if it depends on God, then these rights are “unalienable” and unchangeable.

Are we truly more valued than the sparrow before God? Yes, according to Jesus:

• “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of MORE VALUE THAN MANY SPARROWS.” (Matthew 10:29-31)  

Why? We alone are created in the likeness of God Himself:

• Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” (Genesis 1:26)

Consequently, once we reject God, we reject the only rational and sufficient basis for human equality. God help us!

Poverty, the Church, and Entitlement Programs

Christians are routinely bashed for not being concerned about the poor. This charge is based upon our lack of support for “entitlement” programs.

Meanwhile, many are now calling for “income equality” as a basic “human right,” and even claim that this is a Christian thing. But is it? Certainly, concern for the poor is a high biblical priority. Here are some examples:

THE SABBATH  “Observe the sabbath day… Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the LORD your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or your donkey or any of your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you, so that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. (Deut. 5:12-14)

The Sabbath was even a rest for the least of people. Such mercy for the poor was in direct contrast to all other ancient cultures:

• “Tacitus, Juvenal, Plutarch make merry over the idea of presenting one day in every seven to the worker! The far-reaching humanitarian significance of the Sabbath was, of course, undreamt of by them.” (J.H. Hertz, The Pentateuch and Haftorahs)

• “Subordination of the rights of property to those of humanity…a new conception in the history of the world-a conception that could as little have been derived from Egypt as from Greece and Rome.” (Hertz)

• “Among the Romans, the idea of property took precedence over theidea of humanity. Thus, if the debtor was unable to repay a sum advanced to him, the Roman creditor could imprison him in a private dungeon, chain him to a block, sell him into slavery, or kill him…pity for the poor was looked upon as sickly sentimentality, unworthy of a free man…Virgil praises one of his heros because he never felt any sympathy for sufferers through want; Seneca thinks it natural to recoil in horror from a poor man; and Paulus declares feeding the hungry to be cruelty because it prolongs a life of misery.” (Hertz)

According to Mosaic Law, the poor were never to become a permanent underclass. Therefore, debts had to be cancelled every seventh year – an historical anomaly among the nations:

THE SABBATH YEAR:

• At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts. This is how it is to be done: Every creditor shall cancel the loan he has made to his fellow Israelite. He shall not require payment from his fellow Israelite or brother, because the LORD's time for canceling debts has been proclaimed. You may require payment from a foreigner, but you must cancel any debt your brother owes you. (Deuteronomy 15:1-3) 

THE JUBILEE:

• Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each one of you is to return to his family property and each to his own clan. (Leviticus 25:10) 

Land was the means of wealth and security. When the poor would lose their land, they would also lose their means of income. Therefore, the land had to revert to the family to whom it had been originally allocated.

THE THIRD YEAR TITHE:

• At the end of every three years, bring all the tithes of that year's produce and store it in your towns, so that the Levites (who have no allotment or inheritance of their own) and the aliens, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns may come and eat and be satisfied, and so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. (Deuteronomy 14:28-29)

This was not intended for the able-bodied but for the needy. We do not know to what extent it provided for their needs.

GLEANING:

• "When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God." (Leviticus 23:22)

The law of gleaning did not encourage laziness. Instead, the gleaners would have to forage strenuously for scarce resources.

LOANS:

• If there is a poor man among your brothers in any of the towns of the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward your poor brother. Rather be openhanded and freely lend him whatever he needs. (Deuteronomy 15:7-8) 

Jesus seems to have only reiterated the Mosaic laws:

• Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. (Matthew 5:42)
  

These loans weren’t gifts. They had to be paid back or else the Israelite might have to sell himself as a servant until the debt is paid off. Giving was never to be administered in a way that created dependency but in a way that would help the needy to escape dependency.

Those who received the loan had to be treated with dignity. The loaner could not simply enter into the home of the indebted one. His dignity had to be preserved:

• When you make a loan of any kind to your neighbor, do not go into his house to get what he is offering as a pledge. Stay outside and let the man to whom you are making the loan bring the pledge out to you. (Deuteronomy 24:10-11)

Although the indebted might have to provide security on his loan in case of default, the loaner could not deprive the indebted of his means of repaying the debt:

• Do not take a pair of millstones--not even the upper one--as security for a debt, because that would be taking a man's livelihood as security. (Deuteronomy 24:6)
  

Christians, therefore, rightly want to give in a way that will help and not hinder. If giving creates dependency and laziness, it is destructive. Instead, compassion argues that the lazy should reap the appropriate consequences of their laziness so that they might wake up:

• He who gathers crops in summer is a prudent son, but he who sleeps during harvest is a disgraceful son. (Proverbs 10:5) 

• Diligent hands will rule, but laziness ends in forced labor. (Proverbs 12:24)

• A sluggard’s appetite is never filled, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied. (Proverbs 13:4)

• One who is slack in his work is brother to one who destroys. (Proverbs 18:9)

Consequently, Paul argued that the lazy should not be enabled in their laziness:

• For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat." (2 Thess. 3:10) 

When giving is not coupled with wisdom, it can damage:

• As for younger widows, do not put them on such a [support] list. For when their sensual desires overcome their dedication to Christ, they want to marry. Thus they bring judgment on themselves, because they have broken their first pledge. (1 Tim. 5:11-12)

Giving can also elicit contempt and an entitlement mentality. The Occupy Movement believes that they are entitled to the money of others. They decry the riches of the “one percent” and even talk violently against them, as if they have committed a great injustice. (Sometimes, it is a matter of injustice. But if this is so, then it must be mediated by the courts, or new laws must be passed to protect the poor. However, the Occupiers have never seemed able to articulate what the new laws should look like.)

From where do their threats come? They have been told that they are entitled to more, and that they have been unjustly cheated out of their “human rights.” While poverty is sometimes a matter of justice, it is not always so. It might instead be the product of other causes, including laziness and substance abuse.

It is therefore important to exercise discernment and wisdom. Many entitlement programs have actually hurt those who were supposed to be helped by them, creating dependency and an angry entitlement mentality:

• We hardly need another polemic about the failure of America’s “war on poverty.” After decades of bitter wrangling and torpid inaction, there is at last a broad consensus that the welfare system is a cure no less malignant than the disease it was intended to remedy. Liberals and conservatives, politicians and program administrators, social workers and taxpayers have all been forced to acknowledge that the poor are not best served by our current lumbering and impersonal entitlement bureaucracy. They never have been. They never will be. On this, we now all agree.

• If the poor are to be equipped with the tools of self-reliance and initiative, they must first restore family ties and community connections that have been sundered by privation and irresponsibility. Promiscuous philanthropy does little to solve the long-term dilemmas of social disintegration. It is little surprise then that programs that emphasize personal accountability, family responsibility, and community cooperation are much more likely to succeed than programs that simply dispense aid as sheer entitlements. 

How can we truly help the poor? First, we have to understand their must fundamental needs. Gracey Olmstead writes:

• In his excellent essay at the end of the book, Peter Greer references a World Bank survey from the 1990s, in which surveyors asked financially poor people throughout the developing world how they would describe poverty. “The poor did not focus on their material need,” writes Greer. “Rather, they alluded to social and psychological aspects of poverty.” They referenced poverty in terms “shame, inferiority, powerlessness, humiliation, fear, hopelessness, depression, social isolation, and voicelessness.” 

Can we give in a way that helps the needy recover their sense of dignity? Many Christian aid groups have! In The Tragedy of American Compassion, Marvin Olasky, editor-in-chief of World Magazine, argues that, for 300 years, the church has been doing a good job of addressing the needs of the poor:

• Faith-based groups a century ago helped millions out of poverty and into homes. Local organizations had the detailed knowledge and flexibility necessary to administer the combination of loving compassion and rigorous discipline that was needed.

Caring for the poor is not an option, it is a Christian duty! However, this duty must be wisely fulfilled, or it will damage the ones we are to help.