My first novel was a 177,790-word, 21st century submarine thriller. I was thirteen—lovesick and frustrated, yet hopeful. The book took two-and-a-half years to complete, was formulaic and cliché, and never saw the light of day.
My life-long dream of becoming a writer for real seemed unreachable. I gave up and buried myself in academics. The dream didn’t die so easily, though.
I turned sixteen in 2018, still looking for my passion and “calling.”
I met a guy at camp that year, and we became friends. I saw him do a kip-up. I wanted to learn. I went on YouTube—and discovered the world of parkour, free-running, and breakdancing. Within days, I was reading, watching, and doing everything I could to “get into” parkour.
The history behind parkour gripped my interest: the primal, human urge to flee or to chase, Georges Herbert’s “La Méthode Naturelle,” a father’s legacy of mental and physical tenacity to his son, the Yamasaki and the beginnings of free-running, and today’s athletes—all that was only the beginning. The freedom, speed, aesthetics, and adrenaline parkour and free-running offered appealed to me. I wanted to jump, run, and fly too.
Sometime later, my sister introduced me to a Christian YouTuber. His parkour videos were not flashy; still, they inspired and intrigued me. He was a normal guy doing something I longed to do. I emailed him, asking for his thoughts on parkour: Should Christians do it? Wasn’t parkour risky, useless, or even wrong in some way? Why did he do it?
His thoughtful, honest answers pointed me in the direction from which Obstacles would emerge, but I still had much to think about.
Then came 2019. I turned seventeen that winter. I wrote a personal essay for English Composition, titled “Am I a Writer?” It was an honest question—one I could not answer honestly then. I was afraid, confused, and unhappy with myself. I’d lost something, but I didn’t know what it was. Meanwhile, I practiced parkour in my basement, and dreamed about becoming “somebody” in the parkour/free-running world.
In March 2019, I went downhill skiing. Something happened after I took the beginner class.
I stood alone at the top of the slope. “Moment of Truth” from The Karate Kid blared into my ears from my iPod. I pushed off.
I remember the exhilaration, independence, and reckless freedom I felt. I remember the feel and sound of wind rushing past, the compact snow beneath my flying skis, the pines lining the slope. I remember the smile on my face as I lived the song I was listening to.
Then—somehow my skis tangled up. I pitched forward and crashed to the ground on my left knee. And I couldn’t stand back up.
I thought my leg was broken. It wasn’t—it was worse. My left knee was torn. Broken bones hurt, but they heal quickly. Not so with “broken” joints.
I lay facedown on the snow, mind reeling. Someone came on a snowmobile and took me away from the hill I was flying down so proudly moments ago…..
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn—Russian dissident, 10-year forced-labor Soviet Gulag inmate, Nobel Laureate, Christian—lamented the “fallacious belief” that “here such things are impossible,” that totalitarianism could not happen in one’s own country. “Alas,” he wrote, “all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth.”[1]
Read those words carefully. It is the point I have been building towards in the last two issues of Solid Ground.[2]
In the first article, I chronicled my own experiences behind the Iron Curtain in 1976 working with Christians living under brutal authoritarian rule in communist bloc countries like Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the former Soviet Union—places where believers suffered significant loss of personal liberty and, in some cases, severe persecution simply for following Christ.
In the next article, I pointed out that citizens in any culture will ultimately be ruled by one of two fundamental forces: either truth or power. Any nation whose people lack the liberty to pursue, discover, and live by truth will be destined to live as victims of lies and frequently crushed under the heels of powerful oppressors.
I then briefly traced the development of the first great lie—what I called “the primal heresy”—from its inception in the Garden to its current divinization of self that some have labeled “expressive individualism.” At the Fall, mankind replaced the external truth of God’s world and God’s morality with the internal “truth” of bald personal preference and naked individual desire. The act of rebellion that traded truth “out there” for truth “in here”—the outside/inside distinction—marked the birth of what has come to be known as relativism.
Remember, relativism is the ultimate negation of truth, and when truth dies, power is all that remains. The immediate payoff for relativism—the unrestrained narcissism of expressive individualism—may be satisfying for a season, but it’s a fleeting gratification. Bald force eventually fills the truth vacuum, and relativists’ values begin cannibalizing relativists’ liberties. Whoever has the power to nullify liberty ultimately gets to enforce his own preferences. Postmodern people are leaning on a bent reed.
These musings have not been idle reflections, however. Rather, the downward arc of the shifting ethos of the West has revealed a disquieting trend. Liberal democracy—in the best sense of those words—is becoming a thing of the past. America is moving rapidly toward the brink of a peculiar species of totalitarianism that promises to erode freedom, hinder our ability to proclaim the gospel, and compromise our liberty to live peacefully with our Christian convictions.
I have not been alone in my concern. Émigrés from former Soviet bloc countries who fled the totalitarianism of communism for the freedom of America are mortified at the trend. When author Rod Dreher asked if they thought America was drifting toward some type of totalitarianism, “They all said yes—often emphatically”[3] (emphasis in original).
Totalitarianism
I wrote “peculiar species of totalitarianism” above because what we are experiencing now is actually an amalgam of two forms of totalitarianism—soft and hard. First, a general description, though.
Totalitarianism is not the same as dictatorship, where an individual tyrant’s jackboot stands on the neck of liberty. That is simple authoritarianism. Totalitarianism goes further. Drawing on insight from expert Hannah Arendt, Dreher clarifies:
A totalitarian society is one in which an ideology seeks to displace all prior traditions and institutions, with the goal of bringing all aspects of society under control of that ideology. A totalitarian state is one that aspires to nothing less than defining and controlling reality. Truth is whatever the rulers decide it is.[4] [Emphasis added.]
Notice the militant relativism that makes totalitarianism possible. When truth comes not from the outside but from the inside, power prevails. Truth becomes “whatever the rulers decide it is.”
The indoctrination to an alternate reality at the heart of totalitarianism has a curious effect……..continue reading
There are big, big problems in this world. Those of us who see these problems often fall into the trap of hoping that big solutions will work. That was how it was for me. At the back of my mind, I knew it would not work, but what if…? What if we can get a good President or Prime Minister into office? What if we can pressure our countries’ legislatures into outright banning abortion? And so forth.
Those are tempting ideas indeed. Last year, the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) held a leadership race; I participated in it, because there was a good candidate. I thought: here is a chance for us to get a good Prime Minister into office! If only this candidate can win the leadership race; if only the CPC can go on to win the federal election! Then perhaps, we can “fix” Canada from the federal level, from the top down. Those dreams were soon dashed to pieces, as one of the “liberals in conservative-clothing” was elected. The candidate I had rooted for was even thrown out of the party a few months later for “destructive behavior”, that is, for daring to question the actions of his own party.1 So the CPC is done; there is no help for Canada there.
But honestly, could we really expect the government to change?
2020 was the year the true spirit of our government came into focus. Unlawful and deadly COVID measures were implemented all over the country.2 The government forced hundreds and thousands of businesses to close. Anti-lockdown protesters were harassed and scattered by the police.3 Churches were ticketed for not obeying the regulations that hindered their worship services. Pastor James Coates was imprisoned, and the building of his church was forcibly shut down.4 Hospitals turned away those who needed urgent medical care in order to make space for “COVID patients.” Canada mandated quarantine in government facilities for people returning from international travel.5 Even if the government was not criminal before, it is now.
And where is the church? Sure, there are a few who have been courageously defying the COVID measures, and I thank God for them, but where are the others? Why do we not see thousands of churches opening together, thereby refusing to put the government in the place of God? Why do we even see certain Christians and pastors railing against those who are standing up for their, and our, religious freedom? Many churches, who are called to be the light of the world, are now the helpers of darkness.
An evil, broken world and a weak, unrepentant church… was that a recipe for disaster?
The big solutions I had hoped would “fix” my country did not work in the end. It felt like everything was just too broken – the church being silently kidnapped by the state, the government flaunting its newfound powers, the people deceived by illusions of safety proclaimed by “experts”… If top-down approaches do not work, where should we start? Where do we sow the seeds of change?
The Beginning of Real Change
“Where should one begin to set the world aright? With others? Or with oneself?” – Chapter 68, The First Circle, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Real, long-term change could only come if we start with ourselves. I know, I know, that is what a lot of people have been saying, but do you really believe it? I think I didn’t, not until it seemed like everything else was lost. It would be easier to surrender. It would be easier to just stop caring. The truth is often painful, especially when you see so many that are either being deceived, or are willingly ignoring the truth. But still I can refuse to believe in their lies; I can refuse to participate in them.
“What is the most precious thing in the world? Not to participate in injustices. They are stronger than you. They have existed in the past and they will exist in the future. But let them not come about through you.” – Chapter 55, The First Circle, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
And I can help others do the same.
Courage To Not Break
Sometimes I wonder when a sane person would break underneath this barrage of insanity. How much can one take before one crumbles? How long until we surrender and accept the evil like Winston Smith in George Orwell’s 1984, or how long until we are tempted to kill ourselves out of sheer desperation to escape it all, like John Savage in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World?
But that, perhaps, underestimates the power of the human spirit. It is true that most people would break under constant stress, but it is also true that there are some who can survive, and even thrive perhaps, especially when the stress is all mental, like it is now for most of us. I differentiate between mental and physical stress, because if it is mostly mental one can control one’s response, though it is often more terrible than physical stress, but one cannot fully control how one’s body (and mind) react after continued physical stress or even torture.
What is it that enables one to resist? In Solzhenitsyn’s The First Circle, I. Gerasimovich, a “zek” in the sharashka (a scientific or technical institute staffed with zeks – prisoners), was offered a choice at one point: he could choose to work on a new technology with the possibility of regaining his freedom, but the technology would help the Soviets catch more innocent people; or he could refuse, and risk being removed from the fairly comfortable sharashka and sent to the brutal labor camps of the Soviet Union. What was it that empowered Gerasimovich to refuse, and say:
“Putting people in prison is not my field! I don’t set traps for human beings! It’s bad enough that they put us in prison…” – Chapter 79, The First Circle, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
How is it possible to have that kind of resolution and courage, to refuse participating in evil even though it will come at a cost?
The Foundations For Perseverance in The Fight
We must go back to the fundamentals and ask the basic questions: What is the meaning of life? What does it mean to be a person? What does it mean to fight for good, for freedom, for justice? Does it even matter if we win or not?
And we must find our answers in the infallible Word of God. We shall see that to fear God is to hate evil (Proverbs 8:13, Proverbs 16:6). It is not a time for us to be passive about the evil around us. And it is never the time to participate in it if we are truly God’s people.
Then perhaps our hearts can echo the words of Aldous Huxley in Brave New World Revisited, where he, after laying out many big problems and after drawing very bleak conclusions, says that:
“Perhaps the forces that now menace freedom are too strong to be resisted for very long. It is still our duty to do whatever we can to resist them.” – Brave New World Revisited, Aldous Huxley
“Whatever we can.” Huxley was not a Christian, and he did not have the hope that we do. Therefore, do we not have even more reason to keep up the good fight?
The future may look grim; unsurmountable obstacles may present themselves to us. But it does not negate our duty, no – privilege! Is it not our privilege to fight the good fight for the Lord Jesus Christ? And do we not have the hope that Christ has already overcome the world?
“The one perfectly divine thing, the one glimpse of God’s paradise given on earth, is to fight a losing battle – and not lose it.” ― G.K. Chesterton
This post was a guest article written by Tiffany Chan. Tiffany Chan is a Christian who lives each day marveling at God’s beautiful gift of Life and at the goodness of God amidst this dark world. A homeschool graduate, she spends time reading about history, law, and politics, though she also loves a good novel. She enjoys the great outdoors as well, and loves working with animals. Tiffany lives with her amazing family in Ontario, Canada.
In Alberta, religious services are limited to 15 per cent of a building’s fire code capacity. The restrictions on attendance are meant to mitigate COVID case counts, even though the numbers have plummeted and hospitalizations are down to less than half of what they were a month ago.
When GraceLife refused to turn away congregants to meet the arbitrary 15 per cent rule, and when the church did not force congregants to wear masks, it was put under weekly surveillance by local police and Alberta Health Services inspectors.
Pastor James received a $1,200 fine for violating a public health order, and eventually, when he continued to defy the 15 per cent capacity restriction, an executive order from the chief medical officer of health to close the church was issued.
That piece of paper meant nothing to a congregation and a pastor that are compelled by their faith to gather together to worship every week, and so they’ve continued.
On February 7 2011, Pastor James was arrested in his office for holding services. He was released and the following Sunday, February 14, he again held services while local RCMP waited outside.
However, the police did not arrest Pastor James again last Sunday. Instead they asked him to come and turn himself in on the following business day.
He turned himself in on February 18.
Finally, a brave Christian minster who has the courage to stand up and tell the government that they have overstepped their God ordained boundary in controlling worship services. I know that some Christians have been citing Romans 13 as biblical proof that we have to obey government regulations.
However, it is clear to me that when God’s commandments are being violated by government authority, Christians are no longer under obligation to obey human authority. What is God’s commandment regarding worship? To gather physically with other believers and worship the Lord together. No, Zoom meeting cannot replace physical worship.
And what should we do if government forbids us to gather together? According to Acts 5:29:
"But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men."
During this pandemic, Christians have failed to show the world that we are children of God. I personally know that many Christians are afraid to attend church because of covid. However, they have no problem going to Walmart or Costco. By obeying government and stopping in-person gathering, we are following the world.
(James 4:4) You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
So Christians would ask “What if we catch the virus and are tested positive?” Again, that is the very reason we need to gather in person:
(James 5:15) Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.
I am pretty sure your elders will not be able to lay hands and pour oil on you during Zoom meeting.
If we read history, during REAL pandemics, the Church remained open and was the social hub for the sick and despair. Not only were the churches being opened, people were being cared for physically and spiritually. God’s healing power was manifested when Christians acted differently than the world.
Sadly, most Christians today are too afraid to get sick or die and they forget that death is nothing to be afraid of. It is actually better to die and be with the Lord in glory.
Of course, I don’t mean I want to be sick and drag my family down. I would definitely practise good hygiene like washing hands but NOT wearing masks as much as possible. I would definitely boost up my immune system by taking vitamins C & D and NOT taking vaccines.
Anyway, please pray for Pastor James Coates and watch his last sermon before he went to jail. It is one of the best sermons I have heard regarding authority of government and church:
Our family watched the following documentaries several years ago; they gave us a deeper understanding of the society around us and the time we live in. Recently, I came across these two videos with Chinese captions on YouTube (below). The soundtrack is still in English. It is wonderful that now these two important documentaries can reach a larger audience!
AGENDA: GRINDING AMERICA DOWN is the most powerful exposé of the communist, socialist, progressive attempt to take over America produced so far. This is not a conspiracy documentary about a secret collusion between two or more conspirators to affect some nefarious change, but rather a clear look at the publicized agenda of the hard left and shows how they have effectively implemented that public agenda. The documentary starts with a quote from Joseph Stalin, “America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within.” Then, the documentary shows the steps the Communist Party said were necessary to destroy America’s patriotism, morality and faith. Incredibly, they were able to achieve their agenda.
This clear exposé alone makes this documentary worth watching. More than that, the documentary presents the connections between the different communist, socialist, progressive organizations with great clarity and shows how they implemented their agenda in each area of life. AGENDA is absolutely brilliant for its well-researched understanding of the issues. It is must viewing. AGENDA is a great documentary.
And it is saddening that not too many politicians would publicly say that they are pro-life. And the one who clearly states that he is pro-life in our province is being kicked out of his party…
“I don’t understand…I don’t understand why it is controversial…..” – Sen. Lankford
FULL TRANSCRIPT OF SEN. LANKFORD’S REMARKS From FAITHWIRE:
If you buy a new GM car, a Nissan, Honda, Kia or Toyota, even a Hyundai. You’ll notice they started installing a new feature in their cars. It’s a reminder when you turn off your engine to check your back seat. Quite frankly, I rented a car not long ago, and it started dinging, and I tried to figure out what I had done. I kept looking around until I saw the little monitor on the dashboard, and it said check the back seat, which I thought was great. Because the makers of those cars all believe every child is precious, and they shouldn’t be harmed.
We’ve all heard stories like this, but I distinctly remember last summer seeing in the news the story about an infant who died because they were left in a hot car. That’s why these carmakers are making this feature now. I remember as I saw the story on the news and just the reports and how angry people were in the community, and they were angry at the store and they were upset on the news. And they couldn’t believe that a mom had left a child in the back seat of a car, and they had slowly died in the heat, because no one wants to see a child harmed. Everyone believes that every child is precious. But I remember when I saw the story on the news last summer, I remember turning to my wife and saying, ‘I can’t figure out our culture sometimes, because that same mom and that same baby could have gone into an abortion clinic just a few months before, and that child’s life could have ended, and it wouldn’t have made the news. In fact, no one would have flinched.’ In fact, the very same people that were furious at that mom for leaving her child in a hot car to die would have argued for her right to destroy that exact same child, and in fact would have called it her reproductive right or even the new euphemism out there reproductive ‘care.’ Same child, same mom, nothing was different but a few months in time.
Reproductive care seems like such a nice little euphemism, but what it really means is paying someone in a clinic to reach into the womb with a surgical instrument to pull the arms and legs off of a child in the womb so that they will bleed to death in the womb and then suction out the little boy or girl’s body parts one at a time. That’s what reproductive care means. And I don’t understand why that’s normal, but leaving a child in the back seat of a hot car is a tragedy. Maybe it’s because as a nation, some people are afraid to answer the most obvious question: is that a baby? That’s the most obvious question. That face, that nose, those two eyes, that mouth, that chin, those fingers—is that a baby?
That’s really the only question. Is that a child?
Maybe there’s a second question that needs to be answered: are all children valuable, or are only some children valuable? We seem to have a great deal of debate today in our society—and we should—about facts. People say we can’t seem to agree on the same set of facts and truth. You can’t have your facts and my facts. We just only have facts. The media, big tech, activists have all decried of our loss of our ability as a nation to just accept clear facts in front of our face. The obvious truth.
So let me ask a question again: is that a baby? Yes or no?
Because if we’re all supposed to say let’s at least agree to the most basic of facts, how about that one? Is that a human child with a future and a purpose and a name? Are all children valuable, or are only some? Gold is valuable. It doesn’t matter its size. I have gold in my wedding ring. Many people have gold in their wedding rings. If we found a small piece of gold on the floor, it would be valuable. It wouldn’t matter its shape, wouldn’t matter its size, small or large. We don’t discriminate. Gold is valuable because everyone recognizes its worth. Every single senator in this room recognizes the value of gold. It’s around $1,800 an ounce right now to get gold. No matter how small gold is valuable, but we can’t seem to agree that all children is valuable. Literally gold is more precious to some people in this room than children are. Children aren’t valuable only sometimes, or only certain children. Children are valuable. It can’t be just if a mom or dad wants a child they’re valuable, and if they don’t want a child, they’re not valuable, they’re disposable. The mom or dad gets to choose who’s precious and who’s medical waste.
Is that a child? That’s really the only question that has to be answered, because everything else flows from that.
There are political conversations in this room about the value of children, and every time it comes up, it gets noisy. People will say, ‘Well, you don’t fund enough money for education or child care or health care in communities, so you don’t love children.’ I would say I voted for the exact same bill you did last year for billions of dollars for assistance in child care, billions of dollars for early childhood education, elementary and secondary education, higher education. We did additional assistance for SNAP benefits last year and assistance of benefits of moms in need, increased health care for all communities, for federally qualified health centers to make sure we get health care to every single community. I voted on those exact same things multiple other people did in this room. I care about children outside the womb.
But those questions really aren’t the question. They are distractions to the question, and I get it. Because if I ask: is that a child, people respond, ‘Well do you spend enough for child care or health care?’ And I still say, “Stop, answer my first question. Is that a child?’ Maybe I should ask a more basic question: does everyone in this room believe in the principle we should do unto others as we would want done unto us? What would you want done to you when you were in the womb?
Listen, I don’t want to address this issue lightly. This is a difficult issue for some people. I don’t think an abortion is a flippant thing that anyone walks into an abortion. I don’t meet anyone that had an abortion is somehow gleeful about it. Quite frankly, I can’t imagine that anyone who had an abortion would ever forget the sights and the sounds and the smells of an abortion. Knowing that a helpless child is dying at that moment. I grieve for moms and dads who will never, ever forget that they went into a clinic and paid someone to get rid of their child in the name of ‘reproductive care.’ I can’t imagine what their emotion is. But we as a society have to answer this question still for every child that is yet to come.
Forty-eight years ago this week, the Supreme Court made a decision that has now resulted in the death of 62 million children in America—sixty-two million. That is hard to fathom. And like so many other Supreme Court decisions, America has not forgotten about this one. Our culture has not just moved on and accepted it. Every year since 1974, the first year after the Roe v. Wade decision, individuals from across the country have gathered in Washington, DC, in defense of the unborn. Friends, families, church leaders, community folks, they have all marched in the rain, the sleet, the snow. It’s cold every year this week in January. But they come. This year will be different due to COVID-19 and the ongoing security concerns in Washington, DC, marchers are staying home, and they are engaging virtually. Maybe this is one more moment where even more people can get involved online because I expect the rally this year will draw an even larger number of people. Students and families and people, quite frankly, from all over the world, just to ask a question is on the motion: will we recognize the most obvious thing in front of our face? That’s a baby.
President Biden this week celebrated the passage of Roe v. Wade by declaring that he wants to pass a federal law requiring abortion to be provided in every single state in America. Not just trust a court decision from 1973. He wants us to proactively require in statute that every state demands abortion in their state. And that the federal taxpayers with hard-earned tax dollars should actually be required to pay for those abortions all over America. It wasn’t long ago that Senator Biden was saying things like ‘taxpayers shouldn’t be required to pay for abortion. They shouldn’t be required to pay for something that they find so morally objectionable.’ It wasn’t that long ago, Senator Biden was talking about abortion being safe, legal, and rare.
Now as president, within the first week, he’s moving as fast as he can to promote abortion and demand taxpayers pay for it. In fact, painfully so, President Biden’s nomination for the Secretary of Health and Human Services has actually no health care experience at all. It’s a little surprising to a lot of us when we saw it because we are used to seeing the leader of Health and Human Services be a physician or scientist. Which would make sense in the time of enormous global pandemic to have a physician leading health and human services, but he actually nominated someone that his biggest qualification is he is one of the most radical advocates for abortion in the country. He did as a House member. He did as an attorney general in California. And clearly, the promise was made he’ll do it if you put him into Health and Human Services.
Let me just give you an example of what I am talking about for Mr. Becerra. I just, I can’t process some of these things. Mr. Becerra, when he was the Attorney General for California, actually went to Mississippi to be able to lead a suit against Mississippi, another state, obviously, because that state was talking about limiting abortions, only the earliest days of abortion. Their belief was after a child feels pain, we should at least not tear a child limb from limb in the womb when their nervous system is developed. Mr. Becerra led a coalition of state attorneys general to fight Mississippi and say, ‘You can’t protect children that way.’ He actually argued before the United States Court of Appeals in the Ninth Circuit against the Little Sisters of the Poor, trying to require that group of nuns to provide birth control services so the group of nuns literally attacking the Little Sisters of the Poor to kind of push this whole agenda.
When he was a Representative in the House of Representatives, he voted against the Born-alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act so if a child is in a botched abortion, is actually delivered instead of destroyed, he wanted to say, ‘No, even after they are fully delivered, that child can still be destroyed, even though they are fully delivered,’ which would make sense because he also, as a representative, fought against the partial-birth abortion ban. The procedure where they would—it was a rare procedure but it was a procedure—where they would deliver the child all but the head, and then penetrate the head with scissors and kill the child. He fought against that.
He fought against the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which really is odd to me. All it did was criminalize if someone attacked a pregnant woman and killed her child, they could also be liable for that death as well. He also didn’t want to recognize the child as a child, even if the mother saw the child as a child. He also fought against crossing state lines for minors and saying they shouldn’t have to get parents’ permission if they cross state lines to go get an abortion somewhere else.
As the Attorney General in California, he fought to require churches to pay for abortion care in their health care plans when it directly violated their religious belief. Unbelievably so, he also fought to be able to require pro-life medical clinics where you could go and say, ‘I don’t want an abortion, but I do want a sonogram. I want to be able to get some more information about this child.’ If you went into one of those pro-life centers and got a sonogram, he fought to require there to be a poster on the wall that would say, ‘If you would rather have an abortion, here’s the place that you would go.’ Now, this is beyond just protecting abortion. That has moved to promoting abortion, encouraging the death of children.
It got even so bizarre that in California, when there was a video taken of a Planned Parenthood group of folks that were trafficking the body parts of children and it was caught on video, instead of confronting the folks that were trafficking the child body parts, he went after the folks that took the video, the whistleblowers, and exposed them. I have to tell you, this is not an attack on Mr. Becerra. It’s just a shock to me that all of those things seem normal. I don’t understand that, culturally. I don’t understand how the person who is being appointed to lead Health and Human Services can say that children are sub human. I don’t have to recognize that as human, though I’m leading Health and Human Services. That’s apparently optional tissue, not a human child. I believe that children are human. We should honor every child’s life.
It should be baseline for us to be able to say, ‘If a child is actually delivered in a botched abortion and had been fully delivered outside the womb, we should help that child get medical care.’ I don’t understand why that’s so hard.
I don’t understand why it’s so hard to say, ‘Some people are absolutely appalled by the taking of a child’s life. Don’t force them with their tax dollars to pay for it.’ I don’t understand why that’s controversial.
I don’t understand why it’s controversial that when a child can feel pain in the womb, that we shouldn’t dismember a child in the womb. I don’t understand why that’s controversial.
I don’t understand why it’s controversial to some that if a health care provider who has sworn to protect life, that that person shouldn’t be compelled to take life in an abortion procedure by their employer. I don’t understand why that’s controversial. But for some reason, it is.
Among our most basic rights in America, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, one of the most basic things that come out of our founding documents is these things are referred to as self-evident. Facts are facts, especially when those facts have a face. How can you look at that picture and say, ‘That’s not a human child?’ How can we not acknowledge the simple facts? Now, I do understand for some people, this is very difficult because they fought for years for abortion, and they don’t want that to change, because if it changes, they would have to admit there have been deaths of millions of children on their watch. That is not a simple thing to admit. But please do not tell me you’re following the science. Because that child has ten fingers and ten toes and a beating heart and a functioning nervous system. That child has DNA that’s different than the mom or the dad. That’s not random tissue. That is a separate person, and science would confirm that, so please don’t tell me you follow the science wherever it goes, because some facts are obvious. And the science is clear.
And this all gets resolved when we answer one simple question: is that a child or not? Because everything else goes from that.
For those of you joining the March for Life online this week, good for you. Keep going. Don’t give up. Defend the facts that are self-evident. Speak out for those who can’t speak for themselves because millions of future Americans are counting on it. And they’re watching for someone to admit the facts, the facts that have a face.
Our daughter Odelia has launched Conquest Press recently. The following is the welcome post of the site.
Welcome to Conquest Press
Thank you for visiting Conquest Press! We are glad you stopped at our site. It is our prayer that our books, posts, and other content would be a blessing to you.
The purpose of this post is to provide an introductory history of how Conquest Press came to be, and why we are committed to bringing “old Christian books” back into print.
Introduction
My name is Odelia. Ever since I learned how to read, I have been blessed by countless wonderful Christian books and their authors, all of which have shaped me as a person and guided me in my Christian walk. About a year ago, I wondered how I could share these treasures with others. Most of those book have been written in the 19th and 20th centuries, and have since gone out of print, and now exist only in digital formats. Some sites offered a few printed copies, but I was unable to find most of the books I loved. Perhaps there was something I could do to make these books available to fellow Christians, young and old. But I had no way to print them.
For months, I hesitated, doubting. Then my mother—who had introduced those books to me when I was young, handpicked them for my siblings and I, and read them to us by turns—urged me to find some way to reprint those books and make them available in hardcopies. Several mothers in our local homeschool group were looking for hardcopies of such books. Encouraged by her support, I began to look for ways to fill this need.
I found that Amazon offers a “free” publishing platform for those who want to produce books but did not have the means to print and distribute them. I did some research, then brought the idea to my sister Tiffany, and my mother.
We prayed about it. We discussed the idea for a few more weeks. Then, we began to plan.
And thus Conquest Press was born.
Our vision and mission at Conquest Press is simply this: we aim to publish books that edify, encourage and equip Christians who read them. We believe that words are powerful, because they carry messages and ideas that argue for one view of life and the world, or another. Stories hold even greater power, for they engage not only the mind, but also the emotions and imaginations. That is why each of the books we offer goes through rigorous, careful evaluation to ensure that the messages and arguments they contain align with Biblical values and truths.
Why “Conquest Press”?
The word “Conquest” succinctly defines how the life of the Christian is, or should be. We serve not only our Savior and Master, but the conquering King of Kings. We are His servants and soldiers. We are both to seek His kingdom and righteousness (Matthew 6:33), and to go out and teach all nations for Him (Matthew 28:19). We are to be Kingdom builders for a victorious Lord Who reigns over all.
Our tagline for Conquest Press, “The World is a Battleground,” speaks to what it is that we are to conquer; that is, the world, the flesh, and the devil. The world we live in, the activities we engage in, and yes, even the books we read, are not to be enjoyed without prudence and discernment. The world is not a playground. The world is a battleground—it is a battleground of conflicting ideas and worldviews, a battle for souls.
As Christians, we must be steadfast and single-minded. We are soldiers of Christ the King. Through Him, we are more than conquerors; through Him, we can and must cast down strongholds and imaginations that rise up against the truth; through Him we can proclaim the power of God unto salvation to all who will listen and receive Him.
It is our prayer that every book, every article, and every other thing Conquest Press offers will aid in equipping Christians for life-long service as a good soldier under King Jesus (2 Timothy 2:3), and continue fighting the good fight of faith (1 Timothy 6:12).
In closing, we would like to thank you for taking the time to read this behind-the-scenes introduction to Conquest Press. We encourage you to sign up for our newsletter; that way, you would be notified of new books and articles, as well as any news and updates on our website, when they become available.
Thank you again for stopping by! May God bless you.
We all hear his name a lot this year. He seems to have all the solutions and ideas to lead us all into this next ‘Brave New World‘. The question is, should we listen to him?
For other parts of this series and their transcripts, please visit this link Who is Bill Gates.
Below is a less than one minute clip taken from an interview by CNBC with Bill Gates this year:
