I received a few comments castigating me for supporting pre-teen sex with my post about the 11-year-old girl giving birth.

There was nothing in that post, as I read it anyway, supporting pre-teen sex. I never said that. The gist of that post was the interesting dichotomy of something that Jesus would have considered quite normal, we consider abnormal and even criminal. And yes, I was also poking fun at our (and Fox News) apparent love of hysteria and finding things we can get all worked up over. We do love to get worked up over things…

Mother’s Age & Birth Defects

Also, just an hour after I posted, a study was made public discussing the higher incidences of autism in children born to older mothers. While the study listed data for a continuum of mother’s ages, it focused on those over 35 who have the greatest risk of a child with autism (about 1 in 300 at age 35, about 1 in 200 at age 40). Looking at the data though it is clear that the risks of autism begin to significantly increase with mother’s over about 24.

Further, the probability of a variety of chromosomal issues, such as Down’s Syndrome, increase with mother’s age over 20. Below 20 the risk is about 1 in 3,000. By 25 it’s about 1 in 500. By 40 it’s 1 in 60.

There have also been a number of studies regarding the danger of birth defects and other health problems for young mothers, under about 14. A very quick perusal of these reveals that the primary cause is not actually the age of the mother, but the poor healthcare that many of these young mothers receive.

I’m not recommending that we start encouraging teens to have babies (or sex). But this does seem to raise an interesting issue. Throughout Biblical Israel and the first 1500 years of Christianity girls married at about 13 and produced children from about 13 to perhaps 25 or 30. This also seems to coincide with the age their bodies were designed by God to normally and safely produce children. Let’s not forget that God can do miracles though – Sarah was 90 when she gave birth to Isaac.

There is a lot of gnashing of teeth over jobs and the need for ‘the government to do something’.

Let’s consider what happens when the government does something as opposed to the citizenry doing something.

If I earn $100 I will pay $40 in taxes and take home $60. Of this $60 I’ll save $10, invest $10 and spend the other $40 on housing, food, clothes, transportation, and entertainment.

If the government ‘does something’ they’ll take an extra $10 from me in taxes so that they’ll have money to ‘do something’. Of this $10 about $2 will go to the government bureaucracy to run the ‘do something’ programs. Another $2 will go to the government of China to pay interest on the money we’re borrowing from them. Of the remaining $6 that actually goes towards ‘do something’ jobs programs maybe half, $3, will be used to actually employ someone – if we’re lucky.

So that’s good, we’ve employed someone. The program is working.

Oops, there’s a hitch. How many people lose their jobs because of the higher taxes? Since I now have $10 less of what I’ve earned I won’t eat out as much so some restaurants will close, others will just lay off staff. I’ll have less to spend on clothes and I’ll postpone buying a new Ford.

The worst part of the monetary equation though is that I will have less to invest. I’ll cut that $10 to maybe $3. So, U.S. manufacturers will have more difficulty raising capital for new ventures that over future years would have become self-sustaining enterprises that employ people, bring capital into the U.S. from other countries, and prop up the value of the U.S. dollar.

OK, so the monetary side doesn’t look so good…

What about people? Our nation was built on the ingenuity and work-ethic of its citizens. Interestingly, the Democratic party was founded on the principle of freeing citizens from government. The Democratic party’s goals during the 1800’s was as little government as possible. They fought to give every person the freedom to pursue their dreams – Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Their mantra for decades was ‘We’re Americans, we can accomplish a lot if government will just get out of our way. We don’t need government interference.”

Fortunately, the Democrats won, with perhaps the biggest break coming in the Supreme Court’s decision in Gibbons v. Ogden that limited government meddling and opened up business to unfettered competition. Every person was free to pursue their dreams. Someone who valued life and leisure over wealth could choose to work less for less income. Someone who valued wealth could choose to work harder to obtain the luxuries they desired.

People were responsible for themselves. If someone wanted something they had to work for it. During the 1800’s and into the 1900’s we had the hardest working, most productive, and most inventive and creative citizenry in the world. Because of this we’ve enjoyed the highest standard of living of any nation in history. And this highest in the world standard is not the wealthy, but the average laboring citizen.

Compare all of this to what happens when government gets involved. A government program doesn’t encourage me to work hard or be inventive. Why should I work hard if the government will provide me with what I need? If I work hard and start earning money to support myself the government will just reduce how much it’s giving me and give it to others. If I work even harder and take some risks to invent something or start a company, the government will just tax me more.

Suddenly it seems really stupid for me to work hard or invent anything. What benefit will there be? The only inventiveness that will benefit me is the inventiveness in how best to take advantage of government programs.

But wait, what if the government is just providing job training or education assistance? Certainly that’s OK? How can that hurt?

Well, the same principles apply. If someone else is paying why should I be careful in what training I choose, how well I do in it, or how hard I work to learn? If I’m having to pay for it myself I’ll make sure I get MY money’s worth. I’ll choose a program that I think will have a very high likelihood of providing me with gainful employment in the future. I’ll make sure that the training provided is ‘up to snuff’. I’ll work really really hard to learn so that when I’m done I can earn as much money as possible.

The problem with government programs is that they simply kill individual initiative. I’m a pretty ambitious person (pause of laughter…), but if there is no benefit to me in doing something I’m not likely going to do it. Why waste my time and energy?

There are individual stories of people who have taken advantage of government programs to make a better life for themselves. The problem is that for every one of these there are 9 others who wasted the effort. If these same 10 people were having to pay for it themselves, my guess is that 7 or 8 of them would have chosen not to pursue it, but that the 2 or 3 who did would have each been more successful than the 1 person who succeeded in the government program.

And from a cost perspective, since we wasted money on 9 people, we spent 10 times as much to educate 1 person as that person would have otherwise spent. What a waste! What a waste of our money. What a waste of the resources of the instructors. What a waste of the time of the 9 people who just took up space in the training.

A couple of days ago FoxNEWS’ Martha MacCallum was apoplectic over the news that an 11-year-old girl had given birth. She had guests Dr. Manny Alvarez and psychologist Dr Keith Ablow on to comment. Both discussed how awful this was and listed a plethora of physical and emotional trauma that can come with an 11-year-old giving birth.

And I guess to some extent this is somewhat sensational in our day and age.

Historically though, this would not have been unusual.

Jesus mother is widely believed to have been about 13 when she gave birth to him. So did God impregnate a 12 or 13-year-old? What kind of physical and emotional trauma did God inflict on her?

We include in our Bibles a rather erotic sonnet written by a 45-year-old man to his 13-year-old bride. Imagine if a 45-year-old in your church wrote something even mildly like Song of Solomon to a 13-year-old girl in your church’s youth group. Why do we include such a horrible thing in our Bible?

Well, despite all of the hand wringing the 11-year-old girl is apparently both physically and emotionally OK and the 5 lb baby is reported to be very healthy. We will likely inflict far greater trauma on his girl by making a big deal out of it than she would otherwise experience. We are a pious lot aren’t we?

Quote from Tom Russell, Democrat. On why we need smaller government and fewer taxes.

One of the loudest responses to the Christmas Day Muslim crotch bomber has been the call for full-body scanners in airports. One side touts how this will detect these types of bombs and another side screams about privacy concerns.

There’s a much bigger issue – they won’t work.

Yes, they would, with experienced, well-trained, and alert monitors, likely have helped to detect the bag of powder in Abdul’s crotch. But what if that powder were spread out? Evenly distributed in the lining of his jacket? Distributed in 4 or 5 pens or pencils in his carry-on?

Realistically neither full-body scanners nor IR scanners will provide much improved security. Islamic terrorists are plentiful, well funded, and well organized. They will figure out easy ways around these scanners and their plots will surely branch out well beyond their current fascination with planes.

President Obama made the right move with increased security for those coming from or through known terroristic countries. That is only one tiny step though (assuming he can get other countries to abide by it).

If we don’t want terrorists blowing up innocent people in our planes, trains, and café’s we need to deal with the people carrying out these spineless acts. We need to eliminate their funding, their ability to organize and recruit so easily, and we need to eliminate them. Otherwise we will live increasingly in the grip of fear of the next attack and always being one step behind.

Note for my family: This is not an appropriate topic of conversation when guests are around. EG, it s/b off limits from 24 Dec until 3 Jan. 

Now, let’s see how much trouble I can get myself in.

According to Barna Research, Christians have a nominally higher divorce rate than non-Christians. Worse, from some preliminary research I’ve done, divorce of those who meet at Christian universities appears to be about 22% higher than that. You stand a better chance of a successful marriage if you meet in Bullwinkle’s Bar than at Bethel University.

Purely from a lot of anecdotal evidence I’ll go out on a limb and state that divorce is very harmful to everyone involved and in particular to children. Even adult children are negatively impacted by their parents divorce.

Why do we get divorced so often? From conversations with a number of pastors the core cause of divorce among Christians centers around high expectations that go unmet. Number one unmet expectation: sexual monogamy. Religious incompatibility and financial issues come in tied for second, but way down the list. Interestingly, an unmet expectation of him becoming a pastor or missionary is a measurable reason given for Christian divorces.

The Tiger scandal is just the latest in a very long list of ‘men behaving badly’. In our society we expect that when men get married that they will be sexually monogamous. No sex with anyone else. Till death, or more likely, divorce, do they part. Going one step further, Catholic folk expect that their priests will remain sexually celibate for life. Realistic expectations?

Numerous studies have indicated that somewhere around 80% of men have sex outside of their marriage and this isn’t unique to the U.S., but holds true for pretty much every nation in the world.

Of all the marriages in the Bible only about 28% could possibly have been monogamous, because we know that at least 72% were not. Those we know who were not monogamous include such heralded folk as Abraham, David, Judah, and Moses. As one Biblical historian and anthropologist mentioned to me, it’s unlikely that any more than a very small minority of men in the Bible were monogamous as sexual monogamy, for men, was simply not a moral concept that existed until several hundred years after Jesus ministry.

Even Catholic priests were apparently not required to be monogamous in marriage until about 800 and celibacy was not required until around 1050. Such figures as St. Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther argued against both the celibacy requirement for priests and monogamy for anyone as not Biblical and not realistic.

Whatever your beliefs, reality is that when a couple gets married, when they’re walking down the aisle, there is about an 80% likelihood that he will, at some point during their marriage, have sex with someone else. And in all probability, many someone else’s. It is a little better for Christians, about 28% of evangelical Christian men appear to remain monogamous (though over 90% admit to regularly viewing porn which has been the basis for a number of divorces). Even for evangelical Christians it is very unlikely that he will be any more monogamous than Abraham, David, Judah, or Moses (and my hats off to those very few who are more monogamous than Abraham, David, Judah, Moses, and all the rest!)

This isn’t saying that it’s OK for him to have sex with someone other than his wife or that viewing porn is OK, just stating a statistical reality. And historically this appears to have been the case since Adam and Eve.

Is there any point then in an expectation of monogamy?

If you know that there is greater than an 80% risk of failure, why make the vow? Why take the risk? Why get married and more importantly, why have children, if the likelihood of foisting the pain and agony of divorce on everyone is so great?

Statistic: Over 40% of children in the U.S. live with other than their biological or adoptive parents. Many more than that will by the time they graduate from high school.

Imagine for a minute that you are a pastor counseling a young couple who is getting married. You know that there is greater than a 70% likelihood that he will have sex outside of their marriage and that there is a high probability of divorce if she finds out. What do you tell them? What responsibility do you have in effectively assisting in planning for a large number of children becoming the victims of their parent’s divorce?

We know fairly unequivocally what God thinks about divorce. He doesn’t like it. At all. He told us very clearly that the ONL, even mildly acceptable reason for divorce is the unfaithfulness of a wife. Even in this case he makes it clear that he’d still prefer that we not get divorced. Otherwise God’s commandment is to remain married.

Not too surprisingly, in our 2003 survey of approximately 1200 professing born-again Christians, over 50% of women said that if they found out their husband had any kind of sexual relationship with someone else, she would divorce him immediately. So right from the start about 60% of Christian marriages begin with a probability and expectation of divorce.

We can certainly say that men just shouldn’t visit escorts or look at porn and that priests should just remain celibate. Good luck.

Knowing all of this, is monogamy an unrealistic expectation? Should we keep expecting it and then just keep divorcing when it goes unmet? Or goes unmet a second time? Or a third? Or?

At one time a Nobel Prize meant something. No more. If President Obama HAD achieved some level of peace in the Middle East or HAD dealt a deathblow to fascism and communism or HAD accomplished almost anything relatively significant in making for a more peaceful world I would be proud of an American getting the award. The Nobel committee has shown their irrelevance by giving this award to him and he has shown his lack of character by accepting it.

Sermon. Doesn’t that word just conjure up warmth and excitement? Wish you could hear one every day instead of just once per week?

A bit of unvarnished honesty from me… In 33 years of being a Christian I’ve listened to approximately 1600 sermons. Overall I’d say that about 5% were interesting or valuable, 5% were OK, and about 90% have been boring and of little or no value whatsoever. But every week I go to church and endure another. Why?

Permit me, if you will, to think out loud for a bit…

In my years of being a Christian I’ve come to greatly value Christian fellowship. I think that routinely (like at least a few times per week) getting together with other Christians is vitally important. I think that coming together and worshipping God, in song and prayer, is important. I also think that studying God’s word and learning about God is important. Most sermons meet about zero of these.

From what I can tell, there is nothing in God’s Word about weekly sermons. The weekly sermon is purely man-made tradition. We passively endure them for the sake of tradition, not because of anything God has instructed us.

Extremely few people are capable of either writing a good sermon or of delivering one. People become pastors and the weekly sermon is a traditional expectation of the job so regardless of qualification or ability these pastors spend valuable pastoral time every week writing and then practicing their weekly sermon. It is the center of most of their universe. How much better if these pastors instead spent time being a shepherd to their flock? Spent this time helping people in the congregation? Or to go further, do we even need paid full-time pastors?

I most often get far more out of discussions with other Christians than from any sermon. This is not only more valuable to my growth as a Christian but is also far more interesting and enjoyable.

Perhaps our churches are backwards. I wonder if smaller home groups shouldn’t be the core of the church. Instead of going to church every Sunday morning (or Sat night or whenever) maybe we should instead focus on going to a home group every week. And then maybe once a month on a Sunday night all of our home groups get together for a corporate worship time and MAYBE for a brief and relevant sermon.

These are very incomplete thoughts. More later…

Week two of the State of Texas vs Raymond Jessop is rolling along. He is accused of rape of a minor – his 16 year old wife (married in church, but no license from the state). If he did, in any way, force this girl to have sex against her will then he is indeed guilty and should be punished. In my opinion, very harshly. But what if she was a willing bride? What if marrying this 33-year-old man and becoming a mother to his children was her earnest desire?

All of those Bible believing folk on the jury need to consider their very own Bible as they consider judgment. Let’s assume for a moment that this girl did desire to be his wife and the mother of his children. In that case convicting him would be tantamount to convicting Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And Solomon, Joseph (father of Jesus), and Gideon. Are we so much better than these six men whom God loved and adored and held out to us as examples? To the best of my knowledge none of these six men were ever criticized or punished by God or anyone for having more than one wife or for their brides being under the age of 18 (most of their brides were actually about 13 or 14 year old).

As I mentioned the week of the raid, if Jesus came back today he might very well consider the lifestyle of all those polygynists at the El Dorado ranch to be far more Godly than that of the average Baptist, Evangelical, or Catholic. What with our divorce rates greater than non-Christians, hypocrisy and judgmentalism rampant, over 70% of our teen girls losing their virginity well before marriage (most often while at Christian colleges), and piousness blowing out the roof.

Jessop is being tried for having sex with someone under the age of 18, why bring polygyny into the discussion? Does anyone really think that any of the jurors will not be thinking about his having multiple wives? About that whole horrible community down the road with all of those perverted men with multiple wives?

Surely the prosecution won’t slip in a few extra ‘influencers’ like pictures of Jessop with his wives and children, and comments about his ‘other wives’.

Will Jessop get a fair trial? We’ll see. Of course this is Texas we’re talking about. A state with one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy and single-parent families in the nation. A state that does less about these problems than just about any other. But let those polygynists with their conservative dress, happy intelligent responsible children, and near zero divorce, move in and something must be done!

If she was a willing bride then in my not very humble opinion every Bible believing juror who votes to convict him needs to go home and rip Song of Solomon out of every one of their Bibles and should probably also leave any church that doesn’t do the same. Either you believe in God’s Word or you don’t. It’s not difficult. Maybe they should just get rid of all of their Bibles.

Interesting discussion between Bill, Margaret Hoover, and Gretchen Carlson about legalizing drugs on Bill O’Reilly last night. Interestingly Bill seems to be softening his typical hardline approach. Me thinks maybe he and John Stossel have been talking backstage…

Margaret Hoover said something like “If you legalize it then crime will move in. Crime controls vice the world over. Just look at what’s happened in Amsterdam and The Netherlands.”

If we had lower crime rates than Amsterdam and The Netherlands I might agree with that part of her argument, but… Per capita we in the U.S. have 2 times as many auto thefts, 12 times as many drug offenses, 5 times as many murders (we have 3.5 times as many if you eliminate those in the U.S. committed with a gun), 4 times as many assaults, 3 times as many rapes, and 1.5 times as many robberies. The only crime that they have more of is petty theft.

By most measures we have 2 to 3 times the per capita drug users as The Netherlands. As just one example, twice as many of our teens smoke pot as theirs. And who controls this much larger drug industry in the U.S.? Organized crime. In The Netherlands approximately 50% of the industry is through the semi-legal coffeeshops. We not only have a much larger industry but more of ours is controlled by criminal organizations as theirs.

OK, so much for Margaret Hoover.

Gretchen Carlson said “what do we tell our kids? Telling them that drugs are illegal is the best thing we have to hang our hats on. If it’s legal then what do we tell them?”

Here is an even bigger argument for ending our war on drugs. Telling our kids to not do drugs just because they are illegal is the absolute worst reason. The average teen in the U.S. is already so accustomed to breaking laws (mostly by drinking alcohol) that this is meaningless to them. “So what” they think.

What Gretchen needs to tell her kids is that doing drugs is stupid! There is nothing better to hang our hats on than that.