Human Nature      See also Culture, Hope, Hate & Human Nature and Scriptures that describe our Human Nature America's Spiritual Slide

Home News Index Articles

September 2015

Presbyterian Church USA Criticizes Israel, Ignores Christian Persecution: "Days before the recent Israel/Hamas conflict erupted, the Presbyterian Church USA withdrew $21 million worth in investments from Israel....Soon after, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared on NBC’s 'Meet the Press' and was asked if he was 'troubled' by the Presbyterian Church’s move. Netanyahu responded:

    "It should trouble all people of conscience and morality....  I think most Americans understand this, they see this enormous area riveted by religious hatred, by savagery of unimaginable proportions. Then you come to Israel and you see the one democracy that upholds basic human rights, that guards the rights of all minorities, that protects Christians—Christians are persecuted throughout the Middle East.  ... I would suggest to these Presbyterian organizations to fly to the Middle East, come and see Israel for the embattled democracy that it is ... go to Libya, go to Syria, go to Iraq, and see the difference. And... make sure it’s an armor plated bus...." See Hope, Hate & Human Nature

July 2013

EU Unveils Planned Crackdown On Free Speech:  "...the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation (ECTR), founded in 2008 and consisting largely of former European presidents or prime ministers, has issued a report whose thrust is... that there’s 'no need to be tolerant to the intolerant.' ...the report – which was presented to the European Parliament in late September and takes the form of a 'Model Statute for Tolerance' that the ECTR hopes to see enacted by all EU member states..." See Declaration on Tolerance

June 2013

 Alarming Supreme Court Marriage Decisions: "Today in a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court held that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage for federal purposes as the union of one man and one woman, is unconstitutional. This decision compels the federal government (i.e. taxpayers) to provide federal benefits to homosexual couples who have 'married' in states that have jettisoned sexual complementarity from the legal definition of marriage....

     "In a scathing dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia excoriated the presumptuousness (and incomprehensibility) of the majority opinion. ...we have no power under the Constitution to invalidate this democratically adopted legislation. The Court’s errors on both points spring forth from the same diseased root: an exalted conception of the role of this institution in America."

Islam and Cannibalism: "In a recent video interview, one Egyptian scholar exposed the high school curriculum coming from Al-Azhar university, the most reputable of all Islamic schools, showing that it condoned cannibalizing non-Muslims: We allowed the eating of the flesh of dead humans… under necessary conditions. It [dead human flesh] must not be cooked or grilled to avoid Haram (wrongdoing) …and he can kill a murtadd (apostate) and eat him.

     "According to Al-Shafie, who is considered to be the founder of Islamic jurisprudence: One may eat the fm rule (because he is useful for the society), nor a prisoner because he belongs to other Muslims. But you may kill an enemy fighter or an adulterer and eat his body.... And where did Obama give his 2009 speech in Egypt, which empowered the Muslim Brotherhood? Al-Azhar."

January 2013

Without God, hatred and violence will reign.  Attack on family in Compton latest incident in wave of anti-black violence: "The black family—a mother, three teenage children and a 10-year-old boy—moved... [to] Compton over Christmas vacation. When a friend came to visit, four men in a black SUV pulled up and called him a 'nigger,' saying<> black people were barred from the neighborhood.... They jumped out, drew a gun on him and beat him with metal pipes. It was just the beginning of what detectives said was a campaign by a Latino street gang to force an African American family to leave."

December 2012

Politics From the Dark Side: "...Britain’s most recent census figures... show that almost 180,000 people in the UK identify themselves as 'Jedi Knights' (from the Star Wars films), making this the most popular faith in the 'Other Religions' category on the Census and the seventh most popular 'religion' overall.  ...it served to remind me of an analogy that sprang to mind with regard to the Star Wars phenomenon and America....

     "Despite all of this subterfuge and the fact that America’s gravitation toward socialism was taking place long before Barack Hussein Obama came on the scene, it is still intellectually difficult to reconcile the fact that so few Americans can see what’s playing out before them as clearly as if they were indeed watching Star Wars....

      "There are dark days ahead for the USA, and when we pass into that period, most Americans will be caught completely unaware, and this could prove to be quite dangerous." See Hope, Hate & Human Nature

August 2012

Fear of Suffering: "Never in human history has suffering been more readily relieved than today. And yet, paradoxically, we have never been more afraid of suffering. ...before anesthesia, the agony of surgery may have killed more patients than surgical procedures helped. ... Pain was an integral part of life....

      "...when people actually did die in agony, there was little agitation for euthanasia. Yet today, when writhing demises are entirely preventable—even if it occasionally requires sedation—many support voluntary killing as the best solution to incurable disease and disability. ... Why euthanasia now, when there is less 'need' for such drastic action than ever before in human history?...

     "It isn’t just euthanasia. Consider the exploitative practice of buying kidneys from the destitute in poor countries like Pakistan and the Philippines, commerce that can leave sellers with destroyed health, continuing pain, and shortened lives. Even more insidiously, some well-off exploiters of the powerless purchase organs in China despite knowing that their 'donors' were most likely political or criminal [or religious] prisoners tissue-typed and killed so buyers can avoid transplant waiting lines." See The Martyrdom of Polycarp

Human Nature. Random thoughts on the passing scene: (Thomas Sowell) "Even squirrels know enough to store nuts, so that they will have something to eat when food gets scarce. But the welfare state has spawned a whole class of people who spend everything they get when times are good, and look to others to provide for their food and other basic needs when times turn bad....
      "The 14th Amendment to the Constitution prescribes 'equal protection of the laws' to all Americans. But what does that mean, if the President of the United States can arbitrarily grant waivers, so that A, B and C have to obey the laws but X, Y and Z do not — as with both ObamaCare and the immigration laws?
      "Two reports came out in the same week. One was from the Pentagon, saying that, in just a few years, Iran will be able to produce not only a nuclear bomb but a missile capable of carrying it to the United States. The other report said that the American Olympic team has uniforms made in China. This latter report received far more attention, both in Congress and in the media....
     "One of the most dangerous trends of our times is making the truth socially unacceptable, or even illegal, with 'hate speech' laws. It is supposed to be terrible, for example, to call an illegal alien an 'illegal alien' or to call an Islamic terrorist an 'Islamic terrorist.'>       "For more than two centuries, the U.S. military never had a public celebration of anybody's sex life — until the recent 'gay pride' event under the Obama administration. ...the gay political agenda is not equality but privilege....
     "If we wake up some morning and find some American cities in radioactive ruins, courtesy of a nuclear Iran, nobody is going to care whether the president who lets this happen is the first black president or the last WASP president."

July 2012

Bystanders Walk by Dying Man as He Lays Motionless on the Sidewalk in Virginia: "...a man was struck by a vehicle, and he ended up lying face down and motionless on the sidewalk. But that isn’t what has officials horrified: '...not a single person stops to check on the man, who was either dead or dying. A woman carrying shopping bags walks right by, without hesitation. One man crosses himself after getting on the bus...
      "The video is eerily similar to one out of China last year. There, a little girl was hit by two vans and several bystanders did nothing."
      

       [Berit:] Some years ago, a car hit an elderly couple in a busy local shopping complex. A crowd was already gathering at the scene when I happened to come by. It didn't take long to see the streams of blood from both their heads, yet no one had stopped to help or covered their shivering bodies. I cried out for blankets or jackets, scarves -- anything to stop the bleeding and slow the shock. Nobody responded -- neither men nor women. When I tried to stop the bleeding from the woman's broken skull with a tissue from my purse, the spectators just stared with blank faces. I called to the owner of the car for a blanket or clothing. He didn't move. When I ran to his car and grabbed some dry cleaned clothes from his back seat to cover them, he protested. I suppose he didn't want blood on his clean clothes. Eventually an ambulance came and took the victims away...

The Ugly Brutishness of Modern Britain: "One small manifestation is the littering of the country....Every Friday and Saturday night, the police riot vans come to my otherwise charming small market town...where, were it not for the mass drunkenness of young people, no police would be needed....The paralysis of the public administration in the face of the problem induces a state of despair in the more civilized half of the population.... Multiculturalism is damaging because it denies that, when it comes to culture, there is a better and a worse."

Art in a Fallen World: "When it was reported that Kinkade ["The Painter of Light"] had died on Good Friday this year, at age 54, after a night of heavy drinking, no one was more shocked than his legion of Christian admirers who consider his paintings beacons of serenity and faith....To those who questioned the prettiness of his paintings—their too-good-to-be-true sentimentality—he had a theological answer: 'I like to portray a world without the Fall.'"

Mexican Mafia member ordered gangs to target blacks, police say: "A local leader of the Mexican Mafia prison gang ordered Escondido's rival Latino street gangs to stop fighting among themselves and target black people instead.... In Oceanside, black gangs have a strong presence. Federal authorities last year said they broke up a major prostitution ring run by three of Oceanside's mostly black gangs.... But Latino gangs have battled each other at least as fiercely."

October 2011

The 'Hunger' Hoax [by Thomas Sowell]: "Twenty years ago, hysteria swept through the media over 'hunger in America.'...When the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Agriculture examined people from a variety of income levels, however, they found no evidence of malnutrition among those in the lowest income brackets. Nor was there any significant difference in the intake of vitamins, minerals and other nutrients from one income level to another....

     "The political left has turned obesity among low-income individuals into an argument that low-income people cannot afford nutritious food, and so have to resort to burgers and fries, pizzas and the like....[But] Burgers, pizzas and the like cost more than food that you can buy at a store and cook yourself. ...the problem is 'to get people to see cooking as a joy.'... In other words, the nanny state to the rescue!"

September 2011

Eternal adolescence lacking in romance: "...as Miss Ingraham says, 'Even if our economic and national security challenges disappeared overnight, we’d still have to climb out of the cultural abyss into which we’ve tumbled.'...She opens with a lurid account of a recent visit to a north Virginia mall – zombie teens texting, a thirty-something metrosexual having his eyebrows threaded... grade-schoolers in the latest 'prostitot' fashions – and then embarks on a lively tour of American cultural levers, from schools to social media to churches to Hollywood. If there is a common theme in the various rubble of cultural ruin, it’s the urge to enter adolescence ever earlier and leave it later and later, if at all....

      "...the prolongation of adolescence...appears to be the default setting of huge swathes of humanity....If Big Government is a 'family,' with the bureaucracy as its parents, why be surprised that the citizens are content to live as eternal adolescents?...Yet one of the curious features of a hypersexualized society is that it becomes paradoxically sexless and joyless."

August 2011

 Race War At Wisconsin State Fair: "According to witnesses, a group of anywhere from 30 to 100 young black men descended on the Wisconsin State Fair last night, beating fairgoers and looting carnival games.... Eric, the war veteran, recounted this brutal attack on one white teenager: 'I saw them grab this white kid who was probably 14 or 15 years old. They just flung him into the road. They just jumped on him and started beating him. They were kicking him....'"

Security Video Shows White Teens Killing Black Man During Hate Spree: "...two carloads of white teenagers drove to Jackson, Mississippi, on what the county district attorney says was a mission of hate: to find and hurt a black person. In a parking lot on the western side of town they found their victim."

Women Falling Away From Religion [Christianity]: "Women today are attending church and Sunday school less, reading the Bible less, and consider their faith less important in their lives. ...women have become less likely to hold traditional views of God as the all-knowing creator and ruler of the universe. Women today are less likely to see the devil as a real person, considering him more a 'symbol of evil.'  Women used to put men to shame in terms of their orthodoxy of belief and the breadth and consistency of their religious behavior. No more; the religious gender gap has substantially closed."

"Professing to be wise, they became fools....And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting..." Romans 1:22,28

June 2011

America's New Racists [Walter Williams]: "Born in 1936, I've lived through some of our openly racist history, which has included racist insults, beatings and lynchings....Today all that has changed. Most racist assaults are committed by blacks.... Last year, four black Skidmore College students yelled racial slurs while they beat up a white man because he was dining with a black man.....Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel ordered an emergency shutdown of the beaches in Chicago because mobs of blacks were terrorizing families." See Moral Corruption

July 2010

Whitewashing Black Racism: "Radical black racism doesn't fit the Hope and Change narrative....This week, Justice Department whistleblower J. Christian Adams came forward with damning public testimony about how Obama officials believe 'civil rights law should not be enforced in a race-neutral manner, and should never be enforced against blacks or other national minorities....
     "In the wake of Adams' expose on how the Obama DOJ [Dept. of Justice] abandoned default judgments against the NBPP [New Black Panthers] bullies for the sake of politically correct racial politics, a shocking video clip of one of the lead defendants in the Philadelphia voter intimidation case resurfaced on the Internet. It shows bloodthirsty King Samir Shabazz during a 2009 National Geographic documentary interview spewing: 'You want freedom? You're gonna have to kill some crackers! You're gonna have to kill some of their babies!...
In the fall of 2008, just days before he showed up to hector white poll workers, Shabazz told the Philadelphia Inquirer:
     "I'm about the total destruction of white people. I'm about the total liberation of black people. I hate white people. I hate my enemy... The only thing the cracker understands is violence... The only thing the cracker understands is gunpowder. You got to take violence to violence." See a longer clip of Shabazz here

February 2010

America's deadly blind spot: "We know how to create vaccines and custom genes, replace body parts and build space robots. Our knowledge of life and the universe continues to grow dramatically in every field imaginable. Except one. We don't understand evil – what it is, how it works, and why it so routinely and effortlessly ruins our lives....

     "...big lies possess an inherent power to upset us – triggering a key control mechanism. Why are boys doing worse in school today than girls? (As America becomes increasingly "feminized," boys, men and masculinity are being subtly but seriously maligned.) Why do we treat mental-emotional-spiritual problems like rage and depression with drugs? (We've been seduced by secular medical 'experts' who tell us what all egos love to hear: 'It's not your fault.')."

 

British sex and the modern-day 'slave trade': "When morality goes, government grows. The London Telegraph just reported that British "massage parlors and escort agencies will be banned from advertising their services in newspapers under Government plans to stifle the sex industry." Well, not exactly to "stifle." The U.K. worries that "many of the advertisements are offering women who have been forced into prostitution by criminal gangs." ...In 2008 a U.K. study estimated there were 921 locally advertised brothels bringing in "at least £86 million" to newspapers marketing sex. Many offered "very, very young girls." See God's Warnings for our Times

Taking a stand. Narcissism and Your Family: "Deeply embedded in today's culture, narcissism has crept into our children's mentality like a thief in the night, actually robbing them (and everyone around them) of much dignity and happiness. Young people spend hours every day updating their Facebook pages, post and e-mail countless pictures of themselves, and plug their ears with music to create a self-indulgent existence shut-off from everyone around them. I recently went online and viewed the page of a friend-of a-friend-of a-friend-of my daughter's on Facebook and discovered literally hundreds of pictures of the girl posing like a super model. Where are our children learning to be so obsessed with self?" See God's Wisdom versus Human Pride and The Triumph the Cross

July 2009

Whales Are Not 'Us': "Something very strange is going on these days; a desperate desire to personalize and humanize nature, while we are depersonalizing and dehumanizing some humans....

     "...that whale who gave him the eye was unquestionably a magnificent animal who may have been curious. But the writer's deeply romantic yearning to transform whales into huge versions of us notwithstanding, was quite indifferent to his existence. What are whales trying to tell us? Not a blessed thing." See New Beliefs for a Global Village

June 2009

U.S. Teens Think They're Going to Die Young: "A surprising number of teenagers - nearly 15 percent - think they're going to die young, leading many to drug use, suicide attempts and other unsafe behavior, new research suggests. The study, based on a survey of more than 20,000 kids, challenges conventional wisdom that says teens engage in risky behavior because they think they're invulnerable to harm. Instead, a sizable number of teens may take chances 'because they feel hopeless and figure that not much is at stake.'"

December 2008

Human Nature (apart from Christ). Fourth grade students try to poison teacher's pet: "Her fourth grade classmates apparently disliked the smart girl because she got the best marks and had already skipped two classes. Two boys and two girls were so jealous they plotted to poison her. One of the boys mixed what the students thought would be a deadly cocktail of shoe polish, perfume, window and bath cleaner at home. Another boy poured the mix into the girl’s drink bottle during recess the next day at school.... 'Why do kids do things like that,' the mother of the eight-year old girl asked. 'One of the girls was even her friend.'” See Hope, Hate & Human Nature

      But our God reigns in the midst of all the changes! Those who trust Him will see heavenly victories no matter how fierce the battles.

March 2008

"Non-Judgmental" Nonsense  (By Thomas Sowell): "What Eliot Spitzer did was not out of character.... When you start thinking of yourself as a little tin god, able to throw your weight around to bully people into silence, it is a sign of a sense of being exempt from the laws and social rules that apply to other people.... For someone with this kind of hubris to risk his whole political career for a fling with a prostitute is no more surprising than for Michael Vick to throw away millions to indulge his taste for dog fighting or for Leona Helmsley to avoid paying taxes -- not because she couldn't easily afford to pay taxes and still have more money left than she could ever spend -- but because she felt above the rules that apply to 'the little people.'" See Human Nature