Author Archives: Lila

What Did Jesus Really Teach About Divorce?

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Update 2:

I read a bit more about the Rabbinical context of Jesus’ reference to Adam and Genesis and found this excellent post, which points out other problems in the traditional teaching.

Since stoning was, apparently, the correct Jewish response to adultery, the question of remarriage can have applied only to the non-offending partner; the question of marrying an adulterous woman ought never to have arisen, because she would have been killed by stoning as soon as she was judged adulterous.

That conundrum reinforces both the authors’ argument below that taking Jesus’ words out of context leads to nonsensical conclusions, not profound ones.

Update:

Reading more from Dr. Instone-Brewer, I am uncomfortable with some of his conclusions.

Aligning Jesus with the Shammai Rabbinical school would mean that women who were divorced unfairly could legitimately remarry.

But Jesus’ own words seem to refute that interpretation.

Memo to self: Look at this angle a bit more.

However, the context of the debate between the two Rabbis is still very illuminating.

ORIGINAL POST

I came across a  fascinating description of  how divorce was seen during the time of Jesus’ ministry.

The author, David Instone-Brewer, a Professor of Rabbinic and New Testament Studies at Cambridge, examines actual practices and divorce certificates of the period, as well as the teachings of the two major Rabbinical schools then – that of Shammai (which was stricter) and that of Hillel (which was  more lenient).

He places Jesus’ teaching in the context of a debate between the two.

Instone-Brewer’s conclusions dramatically change the Gospel teaching on this crucial matter.

He argues that Jesus implicitly accepted at least one other ground for divorce besides “porneia” (which means sexual immorality) – failure to provide food, clothing and love (including sex) .

Such a failure would constitute neglect, the extreme variant  of  which is abuse.

The defining words in the Gospel passages on divorce, says the author, are “hard-hearted.”

Of course, no ground was to to be seen as automatically granting divorce, should the offending partner repent, since Jesus also constantly admonished his followers to forgive and be tender-hearted.

But a repeat offender who does not repent is not “tender,” but hard-hearted.

It follows that the person who divorces a repeat offender is not the one at fault, but simply the one legalizing the breach of the marriage inflicted by his partner.

David Instone-Brewer:

 Jesus’ teaching on divorce and remarriage sounds completely different when you listen to him with the ears of a 1st C Jew
– so before I take you to Jesus’ teaching, I have to teach you what a 1st C Jew knew
– and then you can listen to the words of Jesus and hear them as they were heard

Jews relied on the OT to teach them God’s Law. So what did God’s Law say?
– they found 613 commandments in the OT, and five grounds for divorce
– the first commandment gave them the first ground for divorce – see Gen.1.28
“Be fruitful and multiply” – it is expressed as a command, so Jews obeyed it
– this meant that they regarded infertility as a ground for divorce
– it was a command which they tried to get round, but nevertheless a command
– Jesus specifically rejected this by saying that you could be a ‘eunuch’ for the kingdom (Mt.19.12)

[Lila: This argument sounds weak to me.

Mt. 19.12 is about becoming a “eunuch” for the kingdom, not because of a lack of fertility. It is a voluntary and therefore moral renunciation of sexuality, not an involuntary inability to conceive.]

[Instone-Brewer]

– that is, you could remain single, because the command to have children was not for everyone.

[Lila: It was, for married people engaged in lawful sexuality.]

– so infertility is not a ground for divorce, though it is frequently a cause of much grief.

The second ground for divorce they found is one which we do recognise: Immorality, in Deut.24.1
“When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favour in his eyes because he has found a cause of indecency in her, and he writes her a bill of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house…”

– the observant among you will notice that the sentence has not ended

– this is part of a case law – an actual occurrence with complicated circumstances

– it goes on to say that if this woman marries someone else, who also divorces her, and she comes back to her original husband, he may not marry her again.
– why? We don’t know. It is described as an “abomination”, so it is very bad
– but why is it worse to remarry your first husband than to marry a third?
– the best solution I know is that this was outlawing pimping your wife
– ie you divorce her, let her marry a customer for the night, then remarry her
– it is legal and common in some branches of Islam, but it was abominable to Moses

Perhaps that’s what the original case referred to, and perhaps not. It matters little
– the important thing is the principle in it: It allowed divorce for a particular ground
– the ground is “a cause of indecency” which the Jews interpreted as “adultery”

The last three grounds for divorce, the most important, were all found in one text
Ex.21.10f: If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money.
– OK, this doesn’t make much sense the first time you read it.
– the context is talking about slaves, and about someone who marries a slave.
– these verses tell him how he should treat her if he later marries another wife
– polygamy was allowed in the OT so it wasn’t wrong to marry another wife
– but these verses told him not to neglect his first wife now that he had another
– and, if he did neglect her, she had the right to a divorce and her freedom

This is revolutionary teaching in the Ancient Near East – treating slaves with dignity
– when the Jews came to apply this, they made various deductions, which I agree with
– they said: if a slave wife has these rights, then a free wife must also have these rights
– and if a wife has these rights, then a husband must also have these rights
– this kind of deduction is normal in OT law, which often gives only an example
– the Law says: Do not muzzle the ox, but let it eat the grain it threshes (Deut.25.4)
– Jews said: if this is the right of an ox, it is also the right of any farm worker
– and the NT uses this same method to argue that ministers should be paid (1Co.9.9)
– so I agree that this text gives these same rights to all husbands and wives
– and if they don’t get them, they have the right to divorce and freedom

What does this law say a husband should give to a wife, and wife to a husband?
– “food”, “clothing” and “marital rights”
– what would a lawyer make of this? It all sounds too vague
– and that’s exactly the conclusion of the Pharisees – the Jewish lawyers

– they debated exactly how to define neglect of food and clothing and love
– they defined how much food and clothing preparation the wife had to do
– so that if she fell short of this, the husband could divorce her for neglect
“These are the kinds of labour which a woman performs for her husband: she grinds flour, bakes bread, does laundry, prepares meals, feeds her child, makes the bed, works in wool.” (Mishnah Ketuvah 5.5)

– they also defined how much money for food and clothing the husband had to give:
– “he may not provide for her less than two qabs of wheat or four qabs of barley [per week]…. And he gives her a bed, a cover and a mat. And he gives her a cap for her head, and a girdle for her loins, and shoes from one festival season to the next, and clothing worth fifty zuz from one year to the next. ”  (Mishnah Ketuvah 5.8)
– I did some calculations, and found what this minimum support actually entailed
– for a normal day labourer, the cost of his wife’s clothes was 1/7th of his income!
– and if a husband didn’t support his wife properly, she could get a divorce

[Lila: So,  a bit more than 1/7th of the husband’s income was due to the wife for her upkeep, at a time when women were not earning in the market-place like men. This is far from 1/2, which is what modern feminism-instigated laws seem to demand, even though women are now in a position to contribute just as much or more to the finances of a marriage.]
Marriage was a contract in the Bible, and if you had to keep your side of the bargain
– both sides vowed to supply food, clothing and love, and to be faithful
– and if you didn’t keep your contract, the wronged partner could end the contract
– ie ask for a divorce, because marriage is a contract made before God (Prov.2.17)

We used to think that only men could get a divorce, and women were helpless
– but now we know that it was normal for Jewish women to get a divorce
– in fact half of all the divorce certificates surviving from the 1st 2 centuries are written for wives divorcing their husbands.
– before you stow that away as a useful fact, let me admit this is a statistical trick
– because but actually only two divorce certificates have survived from that time
– and 50% of them, ie one, was written for a woman divorcing her husband

– See more at: http://www.instonebrewer.com/visualsermons/Jesus-Divorce/_Sermon.htm#sthash.fTrPffZy.dpuf

For a refutation of Instone-Brewer’s analysis, see John Piper’s post at Desiring God.

Piper claims that too much of Instone-Brewer’s analysis relies on extra-textual elements and silences in the Biblical texts.

British Feminism’s Lies About Domestic Violence

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Exinjuria.wordpress.com:

The Home Office is also responsible for disseminating the common claim that 1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence in their lifetimes.  This statistic cost the British tax-payer £3.5 million when it was commissioned from the Professor of Criminology at Royal Holloway College, Betsy Stanko.  Her study was based on 49 partially completed postal responses and a survey of 129 self-selected women from GPs’ surgeries in the far-from-typical London Borough of Hackney, the former haunt of Jack the Ripper.  It is a mass of guesswork and estimates (Stanko, Crisp, Hale, & Lucraft, 1998), but coincidentally close to more reliable figures: over a life time 23.1% of women and 19.3% of men will experience an incidence of domestic violence (Desmarais, Reeves, Nicholls, Telford, & Fiebert, 2012a).  This means that three quarters of women will never experience a single incident of domestic violence in their lives.  Furthermore, because the Home Office includes a wide range of non-violent activity under the catch-all heading ‘intimate violence’, only a quarter of reported incidents actually involve physical force (Smith, Osborne, Lau, & Britton, 2012).  If we factor in the Home Office statistic that 7% of women experience violence every year (Ibid.) we must conclude that it is the same group of women who are the victims.  If we really wanted to help these women we would ask what it was that made them more susceptible to violence.

Another familiar claim is that two women each week are murdered by a current or former male partner.  The true number is about six women each month; nowhere is the corresponding statistic mentioned: that three men each month are murdered by current or former female partners (Povey, Coleman, Kaiza, & Roe, 2009).  Or there’s the popular claim that domestic violence is the leading cause of ill health (or even death) in women, which is quoted by the Home Office, the Home Affairs Select Committee, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Ministry of Justice and others, demonstrating the typical dispersal pattern of a rogue statistic.  This figure also is false: homicide is not even in the top ten leading causes of death.  The Home Office, an early source of the bogus figure, defends it as merely ‘illustrative’, while others maintain that while the figure isn’t true, it should not be challenged, because domestic violence is such an important issue.

In 2001 the Prime Minister’s wife, Cherie Blair, presented an award to Kiranjit Ahluwalia at the Asian Women Awards ceremony for the laudable achievement of pouring petrol – bought for the purpose – onto her husband Deepak while he slept and setting fire to him.  He took six days to die.  Her defence, that she had only intended to cause pain, failed: she had assaulted him several times previously and was convicted of murder.  After re-education by the Southall Black Sisters she claimed on appeal that she had lived in fear of him, and had killed him because he was about to leave her.  Deepak was not available to confirm either claim.

In the most disgusting display of politicised misandry Cherie Blair hailed Ahluwalia as a ‘true role model for the next generation’ (BBC, 2001); once again the Government incited violence against men merely accused of a gender crime – it is unlikely we’ll see many men similarly fêted for killing their wives: Ahluwalia was courted by the media, signed a book deal and was even the subject of a film.  This madness became embodied in legislation in the form of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, launched by women’s minister Harriet Harman, which introduced the twin measures of allowing a woman accused of murdering her husband the defences that she was the victim of ‘serious wrong’ or feared she would be the victim of violence, and removed the defence – most often used by men – of provocation.  The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, declared, ‘I don’t think this is a sensible way for us to proceed’ (BBC, 2010b).

One effect of the law, by specifically excluding infidelity from the category of serious wrong and thereby trivialising it, was further to undermine marriage; as with ‘no-fault’ divorce, fault now lay with the betrayed party, and morality was turned on its head.  It was far from gender-neutral: women could kill in cold blood and with calculation, but if they claimed they ‘feared’ violence the charge would be reduced to manslaughter.  Thus cold-blooded killing was no longer murder, while killing in the heat of the moment during a temporary loss of control was.  This separated intent from the grievousness of a crime; it was not just an attack on men, it was a neo-Marxist assault on the moral underpinnings of society and its laws.  In 2012 Lord Judge defied the new law, allowing the appeal of a man who had killed his serially unfaithful wife: excluding infidelity from cases in which it was integral risked ‘injustice’ (R v Clinton, 2012).

Challenging the feminist paradigm requires courage; academics who have queried the accepted wisdom, such as Murray Straus, Suzanne Steinmetz and Richard Gelles, have been threatened with violence, including death and bomb threats, against themselves or their families; universities and government departments have been intimidated to deny them tenure and funding; conferences have withdrawn invitations; fellow academics have used their work without attribution; libraries have refused to stock their books (Gelles, 1999).  Here are their findings:

Domestic violence is not exclusive to men.  Rates of female violence are actually slightly higher than for males at 28.3% compared with 21.6% (Desmarais, Reeves, Nicholls, Telford, & Fiebert, 2012b), particularly among women under the age of 30 (Kessler, Molnar, Feurer, & Appelbaum, 2001).  A meta-analysis of no fewer than 286 studies demonstrates ‘that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners.  The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies exceeds 371,600’ (Fiebert, 2012).  The studies included demonstrate consistently that women are more likely than men to initiate both mild and severe violence.  Slowly the justice system is beginning to catch up; figures obtained from the Crown Prosecution Service in June 2011 showed that almost 3,965 women were successfully prosecuted in the previous year, compared with 806 women in 2004/5 (Cavill & Fursman, 2011); by 2012 the British Crime Survey acknowledged that more married men suffered from partner abuse than married women (Office for National Statistics, 2013).

The strongest predictor of a woman being the victim of intimate violence is her own perpetration of violence (Whitaker, Haileyesus, Swahn, & Saltzman, 2007).  Research shows that women are at greatest risk of violence from an intimate partner when they themselves initiate violence (Capaldi, 2009).  Government victim surveys in the UK (Walby & Allen, 2004), the US (Bensley, Macdonald, Van Eenwyk, Simmons, & Ruggles, 2000) and Canada (Statistics Canada, 2000) consistently reverse these findings due to a variety of factors: methodological bias, presentation to respondents as surveys on violence towards women (Archer, 2000), reliance on police figures (Malloy, McCloskey, Grigsby, & Gardner, 2003), male under-reporting (Stets & Straus, 1992b) and lower female arrest rates (Brown, 2004).  Relying on their own inaccurate figures, governments incorporate the feminist paradigm of domestic violence into their thinking and thence into public policy.

Some studies have presented a profoundly different insight into domestic violence.  A meta-analysis of 50 studies found 59.7% of violence to be reciprocal or bi-directional (Langhinrichsen-Rohling, Misra, Selwyn, & Rohling, 2012).  A study using a large sample of 18,761 respondents showed that in 70% of those cases in which violence was not reciprocal the perpetrator of the violence was the woman.  Reciprocal violence was more often associated with injury regardless of gender (Whitaker, Haileyesus, Swahn, & Saltzman, 2007).

There are correlations between domestic violence and major depression, being on welfare, and having a partner who uses drugs heavily, sells drugs, has a history of violence toward others, has an arrest record, or is unemployed (Williams, Van Dorn, Hawkins, Abbott, & Catalano, 2001).  Living in an area of higher violence and drug use also increase a person’s likelihood of perpetration.  Researchers concluded ‘that it may be possible to prevent some forms of domestic violence by acting early to address youth violence.  Our research suggests the earlier we begin prevention programs, the better, because youth violence appears to be a precursor to other problems including domestic violence’ (Ibid.).

The Partner Abuse State of Knowledge project (PASK) was ‘grounded in the premises that everyone is entitled to their opinion, but not to their own facts; that these facts should be available to everyone, and that domestic violence intervention and policy ought to be based upon these facts rather than ideology and special interests’.  It found correlations with younger age, childhood exposure to parental violence, unemployment and low income and membership of ethnic minorities.  There was a weak correlation with alcohol use and a stronger one with drugs.  Risk was lowest for married couples and greatest for separated women (Capaldi, Knoble, Shortt, & Kim, 2012).”

Feminism Damaging UK Health System

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AngryHarry.com:

In areas such as medicine, the requirement to give women ‘equal opportunities’ by demanding that medical schools try to train as many women as they do men to become doctors is leading to far worse conditions and shortfalls in the NHS – a service that is already failing the country abysmally.

The fact that so many of these women doctors will take out years from their profession in order to have children and to look after them (with some never returning) is a major drain on a system that is already unable to cope.

In theory, it sounds great to have as many women doctors working in the NHS as men. In practice, however, the consequence is that EVERYONE has to wait a good deal longer to be dealt with, and the entire service is considerably less efficient.

And with waiting lists already far too long even for urgent surgical operations, the price for this ‘equality’ is rather high. And it costs some people their health and some people their lives.

Most people have a great deal of sympathy with the view that women should be permitted to become doctors working for the NHS if they have the requisite abilities – even if they do log out of the system to bring up families. But there is a price to be paid. In the case of the NHS, everyone who uses it pays a price – particularly the old, the young, the weak, the vulnerable and the sick.

In fact, the most needy of all pay the price!

And these are mostly women.

many times more women are negatively affected by an impoverished NHS than there are women doctors.

Indeed, many times more women are negatively affected by an impoverished NHS than there are women doctors.

Indeed, all women are affected by this.

Further, of course, all of us will need medical treatment at some stage in our lives, and so all of us will suffer from the adverse effects of an NHS that is greatly diminished by the low long-term career aspirations of a relatively small number of women.

[January 2014 – UK citizens will now be aware that tens of thousands of people are known to have died over the years – with thousands more having received appalling treatment – because of the serious shortcomings that have arisen in the NHS over the past three decades.]

Furthermore, the training of doctors is a very expensive business that stretches well beyond the five years that students spend at medical school. And with 60% of women doctors giving up their careers within ten years, the training of women to become doctors is largely a waste of taxpayers’ money.

Moreover, the country loses the potential talents of all those young men who would have embarked upon long-term careers in medicine were it not for the fact that women were taking up the places at medical schools.

And, of course, as with all the major professions, experience is just about everything. And so when women doctors in the NHS give up their careers after a few years of work, the country is denied the services of men doctors who would actually have had the same period of experience.

And who would then have gone on to get even more experience.

In other words, these future highly-experienced doctors are lost forever.

In summary, the training of women to become doctors significantly degrades the health system. It harms the most needy of people the most. It negatively impacts on all of us. It is a waste of taxpayers’ money. And it persistently deprives the country of a large number of highly experienced doctors.

But that’s feminism for you.

As in so many other areas, it has a huge cost.

And why do we inflict this huge cost upon the nation?

We do this so that a few thousand women can benefit from having a career in medicine

We do this so that a few thousand women can benefit from having a career in medicine, with most of them choosing to abandon it for something more to their liking.

What is the solution? Do we stop women from becoming doctors by giving all the limited number of places at medical schools to men?

Well, the purpose of this article was not to provide a particular solution to this problem, but to point out that this is yet another area where feminism extracts a very large price from just about everyone for the benefit of a few women. This needs to be pointed out rather than swept under the carpet.

Indeed, this ideology puts more importance on the career aspirations of a few thousand women than it does on the health of the entire nation; including the health of our children!”

So much for the notion that feminism is about “social justice” or the ending of  the “oppression” of women.  As Dirty Harry points out, for the vast majority of history, most men were as oppressed in their way as women were.

What liberated both were advances in technology and medicine, both largely made by men, as a matter of pure fact. How then did feminism “liberate women” except to turn most of them into entitled harridans who can neither keep home and hearth and please their mates nor compete on equal terms with men.

 

 

 

 

High Rate Of False Rape Cases In India

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So much for the Indian rape crisis, which this blog was one of the first (and one of the very few) to debunk, amidst all the global caterwauling on the Internet:

DNAIndia.com had this report in 2014:

The Delhi Commission of Women (DCW) has come out with startling statistics showing that 53.2% of the rape cases filed between April 2013 and July 2014 in the capital were found ‘false’.

The report says that between April 2013 and July 2014, of the 2,753 complaints of rape, only 1,287 cases were found to be true, and the remaining 1,464 cases were found to be false.

The report further revealed that between June 2013 and December 2013, the number of cases found to be untrue were 525. And in between, January 2014 and July 2014, the number of false rape cases were 900.

The Delhi Commission of Women further said it was investigating individual complaints of rape to ensure the victims get justice. However, it added that in many cases, the complainant turned hostile, and that revenge emerged to be the most common reason for filing a false complaint.”

Hell Is Not Eternal Torment

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An excellent analysis of the correct meaning of “hell” in Old and New Testament can be found at HellHadesAfterlife.com.

It shows that the traditional Christian teaching on this subject is actually unjust and morally repulsive.

The most important points it makes are the following:

1. Biblical Judaism as enunciated in the Old Testament does not teach that the soul is immortal. That is a Greek and pagan idea.

2. The Bible teaches that the REWARD for salvation is acquiring immortality.

3. The Bible teaches that this eternal life is enjoyed by a resurrected body, not an immaterial entity.

4. Misunderstanding of the differences between the terms “Sheol” (Hebrew), Hades (Greek), Tartarus (Greek), Gehenna (Hebrew), which are all translated as “Hell,” has led to a commingling of Pagan Greek ideas (eternal torture in hell) with Jewish.

As I’ve pointed out in other cases, literalism is the problem. The misunderstanding of the poetic language of the Bible has led to the belief that the damned are tortured forever, whereas all the metaphors used for it (blighted trees or branches, cut grass, burnt waste) indicate finitude.

Damnation in the Bible is essentially destruction. The human being who is not “fruitful” (spiritually alive) is struck down like a blighted tree and destroyed.

That is perfectly logical, even from a scientific viewpoint, because he has remained base and materialistic and therefore must share the fate of the base and materialistic (dust unto dust).

Apart from this, there are also hints in the Bible that at some point this destruction may be undone and even the most evil may be reconciled with God.

There are hints in the Bible of something akin to reincarnation.

 

Yeshua (Jesus) As An Anagram For Esau

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UPDATE:

Going back, I see that I’ve used the Yeshua form myself in at least one post. I’ll correct it when I find it again.  I will make sure to use the form Yehoshua.

Note: These posts on Esau should be read as my thoughts on the subject, from varying angles. I equate Edom/ Esau with a world tyrant/super-state.

Since the only power of that dimension today is political Zionism, I equate the two.

So why do I bring up the view of some influential Rabbis of Jesus and Christians as Esau?

Because it is a history and reality that Christians need to understand.

They should also understand that this is by no means a universal view among Rabbis or Jewish scholars. Many Rabbis considered Jesus as a profound Jewish teacher. Many accepted him as the Messiah.

Also, the “Jews” of Jesus’ time (Idumeans and true Jews) did not reject Jesus en masse, by any means.

A substantial number of the earliest disciples of Christ and the most influential were Jews.

Paul himself was a Pharisee, just as Jesus well might have been. [On the contrary, this blog considers that the suggestion that Jesus was a Pharisee is a meme floated by the Hebrew Roots Movement and is subversive in intention. So also, the idea that the Pharisee Hillel “taught” Jesus or that Jesus plagiarized Hillel.  All these notions seem to diminish Jesus, which, ultimately, seems to be the goal of  the movement.]

Finally, Jesus never founded something called “Christianity.” He created a body of believers in his resurrection and atonement, who instituted a practice of commemorating his death among themselves and committed themselves to obeying his commandments – and those of no other.

He never told these believers to call themselves Christians or to call other people’s faiths false or demonic.

He just told his Apostles to take his message of “Good News” about the availability of salvation through grace to the Gentiles (a word that doesn’t mean non-Jews) and the “nations” so that they would see the light and come to it.

Everything beyond that simple teaching is actually controversial, if not controvertible.

ORIGINAL POST

The name Jesus is the Greek rendering of Yehoshua (in English, Joshua) or Yeh – hoshua or Yah (weh) saves. (Strong’s Hebrew Concordance gives it as the Lord is Salvation).

However, I’ve often seen Jesus referred to as Yeshua, especially on Hebrew Roots websites.

Hebrew Roots is a growing movement among Evangelical Christians that seeks to see the Jewish context of Jesus’ teachings. They see Jesus as a faithful Jew and not the apostate he is often made out to be in Jewish writing.

However, there is a troubling angle. These sites often go beyond pointing out how Jewish Jesus was to imposing Talmudic practices – often from several centuries after Jesus – on non-Jewish believers, thus making “traditions of men” more important than Jesus’ atonement..

On these sites you will often find the familiar Greek words from the New Testament given their Hebrew rendering, something I generally find very helpful and a needed corrective.

However, I’ve always wondered where they got the variant Yeshua from, in place of Yehoshua.

Researching the Jewish view of Edom/Esau, which traditionally is equated with Christianity in Rabbinical texts, I came across a comment on a Noahide site that YESHUA is an anagram for ESAU in Hebrew. The equation of the two is made elsewhere.

[The Islamic name for Jesus, Isa, is also said to be derived from Esau/Esav.]

Jesus is Esau in to many Rabbis and thus by extension Christianity and Christendom is Esau or Edom to them.

.

 

The Racist God-Mother Of “Family Planning”

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In the third-world, especially, family-planning is presented as a benign, even necessary, activity.

These countries are told they are “over-populated,” and that’s why family-planning (i.e. contraception and abortion) is necessary.

But over-population is a completely subjective term.

One could as well claim that  America or Russia, for example, is under-populated.

Countries evidently suffer from congestion and over-crowding.

But that is an entirely different thing. It is a matter of excessive concentrations of population in urban areas, not of “too many people.”

Such distinctions never occur to the low-watt “best and brightest” folks who run the faculties of elite colleges from where population-control ideology emanates.

But the best refutation of the “social uplift” justification of family-planning is not semantics. It is history.

The  published words (see further down) of the founding mother of family-planning, Margaret Sanger, show that elimination of the poor, the disabled, and the dark-skinned, was the real motivation behind such programs as the Negro Project.

Packaged as necessary for the social uplift of blacks, the results today are clear for all to see:

Here is the simple truth.  The intent of Sanger’s Negro Project is firmly intact. Nearly 40% of all African-American pregnancies end in induced abortion.9 There is more access to birth control than ever before and the huge disparity in poverty rates between whites and blacks continues. Fatherlessness and poverty are rampant. Unintended pregnancy rates in the black community continue to rise. Today, the same mouthpieces for Planned Parenthood are claiming “lack of access” while black women access abortion clinics at 5 times the rate of white women. This is by design. Abortion kills more black lives (363,705)10 than all other causes of death combined.”

Sanger, who was also a proponent of female sexual libertinism, did start out opposed to euthanasia and abortion, but then went on to embrace them as permissible when needed.

From Diane Dew’s blog:

On blacks, immigrants and indigents:

“…human weeds,’ ‘reckless breeders,’ ‘spawning… human beings who never should have been born.”  Margaret Sanger, Pivot of Civilizations

On sterilization & racial purification:

Sanger believed that, for the purpose of racial “purification,” couples should be rewarded who chose sterilization. Birth Control in America, The Career of Margaret Sanger, by David Kennedy, p. 117, quoting a 1923 Sanger speech.

On the right of married couples to bear children:
Couples should be required to submit applications to have a child, she wrote in her “Plan for Peace.” Birth Control Review, April 1932

On the purpose of birth control:
The purpose in promoting birth control was “to create a race of thoroughbreds,” she wrote in the Birth Control Review, Nov. 1921 (p. 2)

On the rights of the handicapped and mentally ill, and racial minorities:
“More children from the fit, less from the unfit — that is the chief aim of birth control.” Birth Control Review, May 1919, p. 12

On religious convictions regarding sex outside of marriage:
“This book aims to answer the needs expressed in thousands on thousands of letters to me in the solution of marriage problems… Knowledge of sex truths frankly and plainly presented cannot possibly injure healthy, normal, young minds. Concealment, suppression, futile attempts to veil the unveilable – these work injury, as they seldom succeed and only render those who indulge in them ridiculous. For myself, I have full confidence in the cleanliness, the open-mindedness, the promise of the younger generation.” Margaret Sanger, Happiness in Marriage (Bretano’s, New York, 1927)

On the extermination of blacks:
“We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population,” she said, “if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.” Woman’s Body, Woman’s Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America, by Linda Gordon

On respecting the rights of the mentally ill:
In her “Plan for Peace,” Sanger outlined her strategy for eradication of those she deemed “feebleminded.” Among the steps included in her evil scheme were immigration restrictions; compulsory sterilization; segregation to a lifetime of farm work; etc. Birth Control Review, April 1932, p. 107

On adultery:
A woman’s physical satisfaction was more important than any marriage vow, Sanger believed. Birth Control in America, p. 11

On marital sex:
“The marriage bed is the most degenerating influence in the social order,” Sanger said. (p. 23) [Quite the opposite of God’s view on the matter: “Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled; but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.” (Hebrews 13:4)

On abortion:
“Criminal’ abortions arise from a perverted sex relationship under the stress of economic necessity, and their greatest frequency is among married women.” The Woman Rebel – No Gods, No Masters, May 1914, Vol. 1, No. 3.

On the YMCA and YWCA:
“…brothels of the Spirit and morgues of Freedom!”), The Woman Rebel – No Gods, No Masters, May 1914, Vol. 1, No. 3.

On the Catholic Church’s view of contraception:
“…enforce SUBJUGATION by TURNING WOMAN INTO A MERE INCUBATOR.” The Woman Rebel – No Gods, No Masters, May 1914, Vol. 1, No. 3.

On motherhood:
“I cannot refrain from saying that women must come to recognize there is some function of womanhood other than being a child-bearing machine.” What Every Girl Should Know, by Margaret Sanger (Max Maisel, Publisher, 1915) [Jesus said: “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep… for your children. For, behold, the days are coming, in which they shall say, Blessed (happy) are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the breasts which never gave suck.” (Luke 23:24)]

“The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.” Margaret Sanger, Women and the New Race (Eugenics Publ. Co., 1920, 1923).”

 

 

 

 

The Bible: Hebrew, Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant

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It is very important for Christians to understand that when the term Judeo-Christian is used casually, it is often based on a misunderstanding or incomprehension of the differences between what modern Jews believe and what orthodox Christians believe, let alone heterodox.

For instance, Christians may well believe that the “Old Testament” (that is the books of the Bible prior to the Advent of Christ) is something they have in common with Jews.

This is far from being the case. The Old Testament compilations vary even among Christians.

Catholics use a different set of books from most Protestants and Eastern Orthodox believers use a still different set.

Among Jews, there is no “Old Testament” at all, because Jews do no acknowledge any “New Testament” in order to make that distinction.

Catholic Resources has the following:

“Although the “New Testament” contains the same twenty-seven books for almost all Christians, there are some major and important differences between the “Hebrew Bible” (HB) used by Jews and different versions of the “Old Testament” (OT) used by various Christian churches and denominations:

  • The foundational texts are different:
  • Jewish Bibles are based on the HB;
  • the OT section in Christian Bibles is arranged according to the order of books in the “Septuagint” (LXX), the ancient Greek version of the Jewish scriptures;
  • however, the translations of individual OT books in Christian Bibles are now usually based on the texts of the HB.
  • The total number of biblical books is different:
  • Jews count 24, Protestants 39, Catholics 46, Orthodox Christians up to 53;
  • certain books of the HB are subdivided in the LXX; e.g., “The Twelve” minor prophets are considered one book in the HB, while the LXX and Christian Bibles count these as twelve separate books;
  • the LXX contains several additional books not found in the HB; Orthodox and Catholic Christians regard these additional books as part of the OT canon (calling them the “Deuterocanonical Books”), while Jews and most Protestant Christians do not (calling them the “Apocrypha”).
  • The arrangement of the categories of books is different:
  • e.g. the “Latter Prophets” come before the “Writings” in the HB, but all the “Prophets” come after the “Wisdom” literature in the Christian OT.
    the order of the “Prophets” is also different between the LXX and the Catholic and Protestant OT.
  • The titles of some of the books are different.
  • e.g. “Samuel” of the HB is split up into “1 Kingdoms” and “2 Kingdoms” in the LXX, which are renamed “1 Samuel” and “2 Samuel” in most Christian Bibles.
  • The categorization of some books is different:
  • e.g. several of the books categorized as “Writings” in the HB are placed among the “Historical Books” or the “Prophets” in LXX and the Christian OT; the displacements of Ruth and Esther, Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles (1&2), and Lamentations and Daniel are indicated with highlighted colors in the chart below.

Notes:

  • HB = Hebrew Bible; LXX = Septuagint; OT = Old Testament; see my Biblical Glossary for detailed explanations of all these terms.
  • Books in CAPITALS are found in Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Bibles, but not in most Jewish or Protestant Bibles.
  • Books in Italics are also in the LXX and considered biblical by various Orthodox Christians, but NOT by Jews or most other Christians.

Comparative Chart:

HEBREW BIBLE
(a.k.a. Mikra or TaNaK/Tanakh)		 ORTHODOX BIBLES
(based on larger versions of LXX;
exact contents & editions vary)		 CATHOLIC BIBLE
(based on Alexandrian canon of LXX;
with seven Deuterocanonical books)		 PROTESTANT BIBLE
(retains Catholic order, but
seven Apocrypha removed)
Torah / Books of Moses
1) Bereshit / Genesis
2) Shemot / Exodus
3) VaYikra / Leviticus
4) BaMidbar / Numbers
5) Devarim / Deuteronomy		 Pentateuch
1) Genesis
2) Exodus
3) Leviticus
4) Numbers
5) Deuteronomy		 Pentateuch (Law)
1) Genesis
2) Exodus
3) Leviticus
4) Numbers
5) Deuteronomy		 Law (Pentateuch)
1) Genesis
2) Exodus
3) Leviticus
4) Numbers
5) Deuteronomy
Nevi’im / Former Prophets
6) Joshua
7) Judges
8) Samuel (1&2)
9) Kings (1&2)		 Historical Books
6) Joshua
7) Judges
8) Ruth
9) 1 Kingdoms (= 1 Sam)
10) 2 Kingdoms (= 2 Sam)
11) 3 Kingdoms (= 1 Kings)
12) 4 Kingdoms (= 2 Kings)
13) 1 Chronicles
14) 2 Chronicles
15) 1 Esdras
16) 2 Esdras (=Erza + Nehemiah)
17) Esther (longer version)
18) JUDITH
19) TOBIT20) 1 MACCABEES
21) 2 MACCABEES
22) 3 Maccabees
23) 4 Maccabees		 Historical Books
6) Joshua
7) Judges
8) Ruth
9) 1 Samuel
10) 2 Samuel
11) 1 Kings
12) 2 Kings
13) 1 Chronicles
14) 2 Chronicles15) Ezra
16) Nehemiah
17) TOBIT
18) JUDITH
19) Esther (longer version)
20) 1 MACCABEES
21) 2 MACCABEES		 Historical Books
6) Joshua
7) Judges
8) Ruth
9) 1 Samuel
10) 2 Samuel
11) 1 Kings
12) 2 Kings
13) 1 Chronicles
14) 2 Chronicles15) Ezra
16) Nehemiah

17) Esther (shorter version)
Nevi’im / Latter Prophets
10) Isaiah
11) Jeremiah
12) Ezekiel
13) The Book of the Twelve:
Hosea, Joel,
Amos, Obadiah,
Jonah, Micah,
Nahum, Habakkuk,
Zephaniah, Haggai,
Zechariah, Malachi
Khetuvim / Writings
14) Psalms (150)
15) Proverbs
16) Job
17) Song of Solomon
18) Ruth
19) Lamentations
20) Ecclesiastes
21) Esther (shorter version)
22) Daniel (12 chapters)
23) Ezra-Nehemiah
24) Chronicles (1&2)		 Poetic Books
24) Psalms (151)
25)    Odes (w/ Prayer of Manasseh)
26) Proverbs
27) Ecclesiastes
28) Song of Solomon
29) Job
30) WISDOM of Solomon
31) SIRACH, a.k.a. Ecclesiasticus
32) Psalms of Solomon		 Wisdom Books
22) Job
23) Psalms (150)
24) Proverbs
25) Ecclesiastes
26) Song of Solomon
27) WISDOM of Solomon
28) SIRACH, a.k.a. Ecclesiasticus		 Wisdom Books
18) Job
19) Psalms (150)
20) Proverbs
21) Ecclesiastes
22) Song of Solomon
. Prophets
33) Hosea
34) Amos
35) Micah
36) Joel
37) Obadiah
38) Jonah
39) Nahum
40) Habakkuk
41) Zephaniah
42) Haggai
43) Zechariah
44) Malachi45) Isaiah
46) Jeremiah
47)     BARUCH
48)     Lamentations
49)     LETTER of JEREMIAH
50) Ezekiel
51) Daniel (2 chapters listed separately):
52)     SUSANNA
53)     BEL and the DRAGON		 Prophets
29) Isaiah
30) Jeremiah
31) Lamentations
32) BARUCH (incl. LETTER of JER.)
33) Ezekiel
34) Daniel (14 chapters)35) Hosea
36) Joel
37) Amos
38) Obadiah
39) Jonah
40) Micah
41) Nahum
42) Habakkuk
43) Zephaniah
44) Haggai
45) Zechariah
46) Malachi		 Prophets
23) Isaiah
24) Jeremiah
25) Lamentations26) Ezekiel
27) Daniel (only 12 chapters)

28) Hosea
29) Joel
30) Amos
31) Obadiah
32) Jonah
33) Micah
34) Nahum
35) Habakkuk
36) Zephaniah
37) Haggai
38) Zechariah
39) Malachi

 

 

The Misandric Law

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Dadi.org has a great list of the growing list of legal sanctions imposed on men and men alone:

The List of Legal & Social Sanctions Against Men

“. . . . In the ’90s, we’ve entered a phase of “female chauvinism.” You see –and hear — female chauvinists everywhere — in movies, novels, on television and worst of all, in real life.

Such meanness does not go undetected by men.

The word “misandry” (hatred of men), in fact, is insinuating its way into the male vocabulary as a form of protest. Men’s organizations have long argued misandrists always focus on men as violent and abusive, and this has had dramatic effects on a man’s and/or father’s sense of self, their social valuation, and their potential for being criminalized.

Today’s men remain competitively individualistic, despite the growing trends that impose a frightening number of legal and social sanctions against masculinity per se. These sanctions have been initiated under the guise of “protecting” women and children.

Unlike women’s groups of the 60’s, men’s competitive individualism – a valuable quality in the protection of their family – has worked against them in developing the kind of networking needed for combating the criminalization of men as a class.

Sadly, most men will think these legal sanctions are focused on the other (really bad) guy, until they innocently encounter the system. Meanwhile, the misandric legislation is growing by leaps and bounds.

The following list exemplifies the growing body of laws and social sanctions against men:

Domestic Violence (VAWA – clearly unconstitutional legislation):

“A surprising fact has turned up in the grimly familiar world of domestic violence:

Women report using violence in their relationships more often than men. This is not a crack by some antifeminist cad; the information will soon be published by the Justice Department …”

legal representation and support available free to all women, not men.
recantation is not allowed in most jurisdictions
the physically “bigger” individual will be taken to jail

can be alleged and prosecuted via anonymous source

restraining orders are virtually automatic

loss of parental rights for the accused (read Dad)

loss of 2nd amendment rights (gun ownership)

risk of criminal charges and imprisonment

elevation from misdemeanor to felony consequences

does not provide punitive awards for false allegations

Divorce

“few of these divorces involve grounds such as desertion, adultery or violence.

The most frequent reasons given are “growing apart” or “not feeling loved or appreciated.”

(Surveys consistently show that fathers are much more likely than mothers to believe parents should remain married.) ”

legal representation and support available free to many women, or must be paid by the husband/spouse. Not available to men

75% of all divorces are initiated by wives

nearly all divorces are initiated by wives when children are involved

false allegations of child or spouse abuse have become more frequent with presumed guilt issuing to the husband

loss of parental rights for the dad is an 87% probability

family courts can and do negate shared parenting

arrangements agreed to by divorcing spouses,

awarding physical custody to the mom
alimony: can be a lifetime award to the wife after five years of marriage

can mean a lifetime of court appearances and attorneys’ fees

child support awards are arbitrary and capricious,

but at minimum extract 35% of the dad’s net income

– and are constantly reviewed for income increases
loss of home and family is virtually assured for dads.”

More at dadi.org.

 

The Beauty Of Cultural Appropriation

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UPDATE:
Reading more about the Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking case, one that I’ve been looking at since it came out several years ago, I spotted Naomi Campbell’s name among his associates.

I don’t like erasing the whole post, so I’ve just deleted that part. I’m afraid it doesn’t make the same sense any more. But I hate to endorse anyone whose name appears in Epstein’s black book.

DELETED

I tried the “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” look for a very short period of my life – four months, to be precise.

Five-inch heels, a hat, and a classic black dress  I starved myself to get into.

Green cigarette-holder (senza cigarette).

I even got a wig. It was great while it lasted, but you needed a ballerina’s boy body  for it.

I hid my ink-stained wretchedness behind a fake Mme de Winter persona.

I now realize I probably had severe body image problems at the time.

Of course, it was all theater. Not an ounce of reality. Just play-acting.

But the little masquerade  worked.

I cheered up.

In a few months, I lost the size six dress and went back to my comfortable weight. Now, I tramp around in old jeans and over-sized t-shirts, my hands caked with dust and dirt most of the time.

I look at beautiful women as I look at beautiful birds or animals – as one more reason to love the God who made them.

And, after that, I don’t give them much thought.