Hope versus Fear

I’ve had a hard time this week dealing with our new president’s first actions in office. With the stroke of his pen, President Obama ushered in the use of federal funds for abortions in other countries. So now our tax money, like it or not, goes toward women across the world killing the life that is within them.

For a long time I grappled with what science and faith topic I could elaborate on that might explain why abortion really is murder. In my previous blogs, I’ve talked about the fact that a person has all the DNA they’ll need to become a unique individual from the time of conception. This is a scientific fact. It has absolutely nothing to do with religion. I even used the Scientific Method to discuss whether the preborn child is human. See: http://lorettaoakes.blogspot.com/2008_10_01_archive.html

In today’s society, there is no excuse for ignorance on this subject. The plethora of information on the formation of the fetus from conception to birth is all over the internet, churches, and science books. So what’s the real problem?

Fear.

The Webster Dictionary describes fear as:
To feel a painful apprehension of; to be afraid of; to consider or expect with emotion of alarm or solicitude.
http://www.webster-dictionary.net/definition/fear

So why do I say the real problem with abortion is fear?

The hard-core feminists who push abortion as a right are truly fearful. They fear that if the abortion debate is removed, they will have no platform on which to exist. There will be no reason for feminists to exist if the topic of abortion is obsolete. It isn’t that they don’t understand that the fetus growing inside a mother’s womb isn’t human. They do! It’s that if they admit that abortion is wrong, no other feminist arguments exist. They are afraid that their reason to exist will cease to exist.

Let’s look at something feminist Camille Paglia recently stated in Salon.

“But the pro-life position, whether or not it is based on religious orthodoxy, is more ethically highly evolved than my own tenet of unconstrained access to abortion on demand. My argument (as in my first book, "Sexual Personae,") has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature's fascism. Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.

Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue. The state in my view has no authority whatever to intervene in the biological processes of any woman's body, which nature has implanted there before birth and hence before that woman's entrance into society and citizenship.”

http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2008/09/10/palin/index3.html

Here is a grown educated feminist actually stating that abortion is murder.
So what are we supposed to take away from this? Two things: People know abortion is wrong, and people believe they are in control.

Even though people know abortion is wrong, they are fearful of losing what they perceive to be a freedom: the freedom to do what they want with their bodies. Ms. Paglia loses rational thought when she says that a baby is the mother’s biological process. The developing child has its own biological processes. Even from conception, that child sends its own personal messages to the mother’s body in the form of lymphocytes and later stem cells. Literally the two are mingled. For more info see:
http://lorettaoakes.blogspot.com/2008/04/inheriting-traits-from-our-children.html

If two humans are mingled together, where does one leave off and the other begin? An abortionist may scrape the developing child from a mother’s womb, but does he go in remove all the stem cells that baby has given her mother? No, and what Ms. Paglia has failed to comprehend is how that mother has and will continue to grieve that loss emotionally, spiritually and physically. That child is forever a part of her—literally! No amount of scraping will take that away.

The feminist argument is based on a false hope: the hope that a woman maintains her own life—that she’s in control. No one is control of his or her life, we all live on borrowed time.

Fear drives control. Yet control is a façade. It doesn’t matter if you are an atheist as Ms. Paglia, or a devout Christian, we all have to admit that sooner or later we are not in control—even of our own lives. Yet that is what drives feminism. Control. Therefore, to admit a lack of control would mean they would have to change their mantra. It would leave them with nothing left to grasp, but the unimaginable. God.

Letting go is feminism’s Achilles heel.

That’s what makes this last week so sad. Signing the agreement to allow money to flow to other countries for abortion only fuels the façade of control. While President Barack Obama’s campaign ran on tag line, “Hope”, really all he fueled this week was the continuation of fear. And when we live in fear, we have lost hope.

(Thank you to my dear friend, Jane, who guided my thoughts for this post.)

Below is a link to an interesting way to talk to people about abortion. I hope you will follow up on it.


http://listen.family.org/miscdaily/A000001766.cfm

Blessings in Review

We’ve made it through the holidays! I hope your Christmas season was truly blessed with quiet moments of divine reflection and a hope for the future.

It has been a rollercoaster for me. Emotions from the extreme joy with our kids during Christmas, to the emotion of sheer sadness at learning that one of my dear friends is battling a type of bone marrow cancer, have taken me to both extremes. Some days it’s left me speechless, some days I’ve cried. During the holidays, another dear friend’s husband was in a motorcycle accident. He is still struggling to recover.

All of these things really played havoc on my mind as I tried to focus on the season. Then a mixed blessing happened. A friend of mine dealing with dystonia (an early form of Parkinson’s) asked me why it had to happen to her. She is Jewish in her traditional thinking , but she is not a practicing Jew. Therefore she has a different concept of salvation.

I sat down with her and we talked for a long time. I don’t know that I was able to help her much, except to listen and share my faith with her, but she helped me a great deal. I realized what a great blessing my Christian heritage provides. It gives me hope, day after day. I know that this life is not the end of everything. I know that God has created me in His image and that I will have eternal life. I know that God’s own Son, came down from heaven, lived a human life and opened the gates of heaven all to enter. I realized just how vast my God is.

After considering this, I heard a song that mentioned the following (if anyone knows the author, please help me out): “my God is not the sun or the moon, but the One who created them; my God is not the earth and what it provides, but the One who created it.” I’ve paraphrased here, but the theme is what is important.

Each day heralds a unique sunrise and sunset. Everyday provides me with a new opportunity to do better than the day before. I can assess my actions, make improvements and do things better. Each day is a blessing rich with time with my kids, my husband and my family.

I may be rushing around like a chicken with my head cut off being taxi-mom or whatever, but I’m rushing around with my kids, having pleasant conversations and sharing each other’s company. I’m having just a few quiet moments with my husband, laughing and talking about the day’s events.

I’m praying very hard for my friends and their trials, and I hope you will too. But in the end, I hope you will see what a gift time is for us all. One of my favorite quotes comes from Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, when Gandalf says to Frodo, “That is not for us to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

I hope you will share some time with me this year as I explore new and interesting topics of creation and how the Lord is ever present in our lives. I look forward to a new year full of surprises, good and bad, and I look forward to having fun on this rollercoaster of life. Thanks for spending a few moments with me.

Originally, I was going to blog on the historical significance of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and it’s meaning not just for Catholics, but all Christians, all people of the Americas. But life caught up with me.

I had also promised that I would talk about the significance of the star that shown over Bethlehem, but again everyday life interrupted that thought as well.

As I reflected further on the topic of my blog, I realized what interested me most was something that encompassed both celestial stars and miraculous appearances. From here on earth, in our little corner of the universe, what strikes me is that we are important enough to warrant the ability to see stars from other galaxies as well as receive visits from heavenly guests.

For the most part, viewing stars and heavenly figures requires the human sense of sight.

We create powerful telescopes to view fiery balls in far away universes and run thousands of tests to find out more about our own sun. Scientists spend entire lifetimes dedicated to determining the future of our galaxies.

What about heavenly figures? Can we determine when they will appear? The wise men knew to follow the star, but they could not predict where it would appear or exactly where the new king would be born.

It seems that our sight is limited. Are we bound to the sense of sight or do we possess more?

We hold in the depths of our hearts a treasure that goes far beyond the physical. Truly, our spiritual soul makes us tick. While we are driven to understand the cosmic aspects of our universe, that knowledge won’t make or break us. However, failing to understand the inner workings of our souls will.

When Jesus came to earth, what did he teach? Did he spend his time discussing celestial stars and how they work? No, he was occupied with teaching us how to save our souls. He spoke truths about humanity that we still grapple with today. Time after time, he tried to explain that God’s love was more important than any physical aspect we could see, touch, feel, smell or taste with our senses.

Yet today, what makes the news… scientific findings or how many souls have been saved?

We’re still focused on the physical aspects of this universe and not the spiritual. Just last week, we heard from scientists that the earth’s magnetosphere works completely differently than they first postulated. “Scientists have found two large leaks in Earth's magnetosphere, the region around our planet that shields us from severe solar storms.” http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,468268,00.html

Does this surprise anyone? Even when we think we know something, we don’t! In our continuous quest to be “like God”, “Masters of our own Universe”, we fail. But we keep trying.

Why don’t we put as much time into the quest of salvation as we do the quest for knowledge? We haven’t changed much from Adam and Eve, have we?

OH!!! But that is the Good News! We have. We have received salvation from a babe born in Bethlehem so long ago. This second Adam came to give us what we desire; he quenched the thirst of spiritual dehydration. And it is a condition that all humanity suffers, no matter what mouths profess.

It comes down to this: the ability to believe.

What will you believe? Will you believe in scientists whose findings constantly change or will you believe in the spiritual force that drives every human being? Will you be viewing life from a telescope? Or will you be viewing life from the depths of your soul?

Merry Christmas!



(The picture above is a NASA photo of solar flare taken by the TRACE space probe in 2005. But I prefer to think of it as my soul on fire for the Lord!)

The Burden of Divine DNA

"…The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God." (Luke 1:35)

We read this story every Christmas. In our faith, we know that Jesus came down from heaven and became human for our sake. So who were Jesus' parents?

Our Christian faith tells us that Jesus had a human mother, a virgin named Mary. Luke tells us this in his story of when the angel, Gabriel visited Mary. In Hebrew tradition, when the Old Testament uses this terminology, the author refers to a man and woman coming together to produce a child.

Here we see that Luke says that Jesus' father is indeed our "Most High". In essence, this means that the two parents of Jesus were Mary, his human mother, and God, His Heavenly Father.

The implications of this for DNA are very interesting. As humans, in our human nature, we know there are imperfections with regard to our DNA. But with the "DNA of God", there would be no imperfections, if indeed there were such a thing. In studying biochemistry, we learn that a child’s DNA comes from both the mother and the father. Did Jesus have Mary’s DNA only, or was half his set divine DNA?

Once we ask this question, many more come to mind. If Jesus did indeed have a divine DNA piece, is this DNA in fact what allowed him to see things from his Father’s point of view? Is this why he was able to readily perform miracles and read people’s souls? Do we consider the distress Jesus’ soul felt constantly saying no to sin in his humanness?

Can you imagine the torment you would have knowing that you are contained in a human body and feel all the pain, the mental and physical suffering, yet you do not take yourself down from the cross? You allow the human side of you to face the anguish of knowing that your body will die and it doesn’t have to. That is truly what it means to do the will of the Father…to deny yourself and instead life yourself up as a sacrifice for the salvation of human souls. It was a decision Jesus made.

Jesus Christ took on the form of a human being. He constrained himself to the human form and all its limitations. He knew before he said “yes” to the Father, what his humanness would entail and yet Jesus still took on the weight of our sins.

I discovered the following link while I was researching something else. It is an interested treatise on Mary’s role in Jesus’ life. I hope you’ll find it compelling as well.

http://www.pjpiisoe.org/pamphlets/176US.pdf

Next week, I’ll touch on the subject of the star above Bethlehem and the meaning of the angels singing at the birth of the Savior.

I Love You This Much!

Dear Child of Mine:

Do you know how much I love you?

Do you know how the light refracts off a simple red rose and into your retina to give you that vibrant color you see? Do you know how many neurons fire when you smell and taste your favorite food?

I love you that much.

Do you know that 7.5x10(24) molecules are in that glass of water you drink? Water nourishes your body, it hydrates your cells, but I can hydrate your soul. I can hold all those molecules, but I want to hold you.

I love you that much.

Do you know that Mount Everest is 29028 feet high and the oceanic Mariana Trench is 36090 feet deep?

That means just on earth the difference between the highest peak and the deepest oceanic trench is 12.33 miles. Can your arms stretch out that far? Mine can.

I love you that much.

Do you know how far light travels from the sun to kiss your skin here on earth? Do you look up at night and wonder how far away that twinkling star is?

I love you that much.

I love you so much that I sent my son to stretch out his arms high on the cross, just for you. The soldiers pulled so hard they dislocated those arms, and Jesus endured that just for you.

I am God of the universe. My love stretches to infinity. My arms stretch to infinity. So what do you think will happen if you allow me to love you? My arms will encompass you as nothing else can. You will feel the warmth of the sun, the hydration of your soul, the vibrant colors of all creation, the love that stretches its arms to infinity.

That’s how much I love you.

When Does Life Stop?

At last!!! We reach the final step in our “Scientific Method”…the conclusion. There are plenty of you who thought last week’s “experiment” was a little different, but I hope it made a point.

So what is our conclusion? In our first couple of steps, we asked the question: “Given the scientific data of what it means to be human, does the pre-born child qualify as a human being?”

If we look at our observation, hypothesis, experiment, etc., we see that a new human being begins when the egg and sperm meet. We find our pre-born child is human because its unique blueprint, its DNA, is intact at the moment of conception. We also find that it is a distinct life form, not the mother’s body, but it’s own.

A new acquaintance of mine, Dr. Kevin Langford, the Director of the Pre-Health Professional Program at SFASU, agrees with me. However, his statement goes even further and is much more provocative. In a recent email, he said,

God initiated life at the “Creation” and life has continued unabated ever since that moment. My work with cells has also shown me that cells (the basic unit of life by scientific definition) are in fact, “ALIVE”. That would most certainly include a sperm and an egg. If either of those cells is rendered non-viable, there will be no fertilization, and no offspring. So, the argument of when life begins isn’t one in which I even consider. By the time there is a fertilized egg inside of a mother’s uterus, the discussion of when life “begins” is rather a moot point. Personally, I feel a better more thought provoking question would be, “when did it stop?”

Very powerful!

So why does abortion exist?

The entire pro-choice movement is predicated on the following statement, “A woman has a right to do with her own body as she sees fit.”

Thomas Jefferson penned in the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

http://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/

If we use this statement in conjunction with the United States Constitution then a woman does have the right to do as she sees fit to her body.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.preamble.html

However, we must note something very important. If a woman is pregnant, then the life within her body is a separate person. “All men are created equal…” The rub is that she shouldn’t have the right to end that life just because it exists inside her body. The argument that a woman has a right to do what she wants with her body becomes illogical and moot if another person is harmed in the process of a woman considering only her body.

The heart of the matter is something that we’ve grown to accept in this country and in modern society in general. We are horribly inconvenienced by others. We are even inconvenienced by ourselves.

I recently saw an ad for a woman’s contraceptive whose whole ad campaign was: pre-menstrual symptoms can “impact your life.” Duh! (Very unprofessional, but nevertheless it fit here.)

We want convenience at any cost. We have become a society that sees our own personal needs as the most important aspect of our existence. Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and others recognize the fact that sacrifice (for others) becomes a benefit for society as a whole. Although these religions state this ideology, members of those faiths are many times oblivious to what their traditions teach.

From time to time, I’ve mentioned Amendment 48 here in Colorado. Many people have asked why Amendment 48 in Colorado failed and why similar amendments around the country failed.

Socialism, communism, and fascism have won. We no longer know or understand what our Christian, Jewish, or Hindu roots teach. We have lost respect for the individual completely. We have become so numbed down that we don’t even know what we should believe.

With this numbing down, it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out why we can differentiate a woman’s body from a child’s body. It’s no doubt that we call it a “woman’s right”. It’s no doubt that we can’t seem to agree on when human life begins. If it’s all about us, then how can we possibly see what’s outside of us?

The funny thing is science knows when life begins. If it didn’t, it would be interested in embryonic stem cells or in-vitro fertilization. Science knows when life begins. Deep down we do too. It’s just become inconvenient for us to be stewards of life. So when Dr. Langford says, “the thought provoking question is when did it (life) stop?” I think we’ll find that the only place life stops is in our minds when we refuse to see past ourselves.

"The Experiment"

For the last several weeks, we’ve been using the Scientific Method to talk about the pre-born child. I’ve received a couple of emails on this topic. One thanked me for covering such a topic and the other asked why bother. “Why is such a topic important?”

I’ll address that question at the end of this posting, but I’d like to continue my original theme first. This week’s posting deals with the fourth aspect of the Scientific Method called the Experiment. It tests the hypothesis. In our case, we are testing the following TOPIC (or question): "Given the scientific data of what it means to be human, does the pre-born child qualify as a human being?"

According to the scientific method website
http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/scientific_method.html , the experiment “is the most important part of the scientific method. It’s the logical process that lets scientists learn about the world.”

(I don’t know about you, but I don’t think you are required to have a degree in science to learn about the world.)

We know that DNA exists for each individual from the moment the first cell is created from the sperm and the egg. For nine months, that individual grows and matures inside the mother’s womb without the world “looking in.”

So what’s our experiment? So many experiments out there touch on human life. Which one do we choose?

I’ve actually chosen something completely different. Why rehash all the old arguments?

Therefore, my experiment is an exercise for our imagination and logic skills.

Let’s say that the human race is visited by an alien race whose technology includes reducing all human life to its basic individual signature. In one instant, we are all turned to dust, but our DNA still exists in that dust. Going along their merry destructive way, that alien race continues through the galaxy.

Later, another more peaceful alien group, determined to undo the damage caused by the first alien race, visits earth. They have a method they use to “reconstitute” the DNA back into a living being. Based on individual DNA they go about undoing the destruction, giving humans back their bodies.

Question: If the alien’s method relies on DNA, will they be unable to reconstitute the pre-born child?

Since that child had its own DNA, it is reconstituted as its own life form. Why not? Everything that defined that person existed from time the first cell came into being.

As human beings, we are very short sided. We claim that because the pre-born child isn’t “fully formed”, it is not human, but that is incorrect by all scientific standards. Its DNA identifies it as human, not the maturity of its lungs, heart, brain or any other organ.

Our society has taken the “don’t see, don’t believe” stance. In other words, because we don’t “see” the life outside the mother’s womb, we as a society think we have domination over it.
Not only is this a fallacy, but it reeks of an elitist attitude that is selfish beyond the core. We did not choose our own life; it was a gift. We have no right to “choose” life for another—that is also a gift.

So back to the email I received that asked the question on why I would view the pre-born life a discussion worth “the time of day.” The very basic value of life is under discussion right now.

Amendment 48 makes that clear. Do we have a right to take another’s life simply because they cannot voice their opinion? No. As soon as that line is blurred, we will move on to the next line. Can an infant defend itself outside the womb? No. Then it has no right to life. Can an elderly person defend himself? No, then he is not needed. Can physically or mentally challenged people defend themselves? No, then they need to make room for those who can.

The list will never stop, the lines blurred forever.

We have a “no tolerance” bullying policy in our schools, so why can’t we have a “no bullying” policy on those who cannot defend themselves in life?