To Challenge the Logic of my Psychology

The fist thing I'd like to say, is that if my logic isn't sound, let me know via Facebook message or something like that. The last thing I want to do is look like a jerk talking about logic while using logic that is invalid!

Ok, so there are several things that my Psych professor taught that logically makes sense. Let me start off by saying that I believe that if I [or anyone] were to introduce a line of logic that applies to one area, then it would make logical sense to apply it to different areas to see if the logic holds. What this does, to me in a Christian realm, eliminates Moralism, which says "Black, white. Do it." As I'm sure many who read this realize. As a Christian these areas of "gray" fall into the realm of what's called Christian Liberty. This takes anything not directly declared black or white in Scripture and says, "This is a gray area. This is good, and even beneficial to some people, but to others it is sin." Call it a "Relativistic Doctrine" if you want. But even this follows the logic "Not all things are black and white," therefore it is sound.

Ok, the background has been laid down, here's the meat. The most prominent piece of logic that I'd like to challenge has to do with disciplining your children with some type of hitting, spanking, or what have you. He makes his introductory statements consist of many instances where ordinary children are killed by ordinary disciplines [not abusive in nature]. He gives us some statistics and news articles to back up his claims, and then procedes to concoct an allegory of sorts. He calls it "The Lottery Man." This is how the story goes:
Your child disobeys, and needs a spanking. Instead of just spanking the kid, time seems to slow and you pick up the phone and dial "666." This is the number of the Lottery Man. Upon dialing, A man in appears with a large bin full of lottery balls [one million to be in line with calculatory correctness]. The Lottery Man hands you a ball and you write your child's name on it. The Lottery Man says, "If I pick this ball out of the million contained in my container, then I take your child and lop his head off. But if I don't your child will live to see another disciplining." You pick a ball, and it's blank. The Lottery Man disappears and life continues as normal. It comes time for another spanking, and the same scenario plays out. Soon enough, you end up picking the ball with your child's name on it, and the Lottery Man goes up to your child and cuts his head off. The head then proceeds to bounce across the floor as the Lottery Man laughs at the deed.

That's the end of the story. The story if followed by my professor saying, "Now, you must admit, even if there were 1/1,000,000 chances that you would kill your child accidentally when disciplining them, you'd never hit them again, and believe me, the odds are much greater than that!"

This is the line of logic I'd like to challenge. I challenge it, not because that in this particular instance it's wrong. On the contrary! While it may not be practical, it is at least logical. But it doesn't follow "Jesse's rule for sound logic."

Why? you may ask? Here's why:
Because even though that logic is sound, it should be tested in other areas of his mind. For instance, in any case where there is a small percentage of possible destruction, his logic would say, do not participate. Therefore activities such as driving a car, having gas/electric heat, going out in the sun, eating, drinking, and breathing are all included in that realm. pretty much living is included in that realm. To be more specific, we can narrow the list down to only driving and heating the home, since those have ramifications outside of ourselves. I'm trying to do that in all fairness.

But one area that I think that culture in general would disagree with is that of premarital birth control. Ooooh I said it.
Even with things like condoms and other forms of birth control, there is still a small percentage of STDs that can be transmitted and become infectious. Therefore using birth control is pointless, but so would having sex. Even moreso for the latter.
This poses a new problem. The whole concept of evolutionary thinking is that of Survival of the Fittest, rather the ones that are more likely to reproduce are the ones that will pass down more viable genes to create a better species down the road.
If there is potential to give/contract an STD through sex, then according to his original logic of not participating in something harmful if there is even a small percentage of possibility of that chance occurring, then the very purpose of evolution [which is the religion to which he subscribes] is null, void, and impractical!!!!
Wow, fun huh?

Anyway, I'm not going to even try to create a logical way of thinking to come up with a solution for his statistics on child disciplining. All I'll stick to for that area are the bounds given to me and Scripture.

Again Facebook me with questions/comments on ANY of my blog posts!

To Those of Us Who Need to Become Active Redeemers

Life changing events are some of the most dangerous things one could encounter. These decisions may not necessarily be extraordinarily different from other garden variety experiences, but they carry much more weight to them. These decisions will carry with you for the rest of your life, and you will have to try very hard to change back to the opposite of what you've chosen [if what you've chosen is the wrong choice].

It would be wrong of me to say "These choices define the way your life will play out," because...it's not true. If I said that, then I would be stealing power away from a sovereign God, and that's just wrong. We can't let Life Changing Events define who we are or what we will be, but neither can we act like they never happened, because that would ruin opportunities for us to change and grow and persevere.

Rom 5:3 More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,
Rom 5:4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,

So what is this hope we have? If we endure these trials for Jesus' sake, then will we have any hope left?

The hope we have is in Jesus and only in Him. Jesus redeemed us all with His blood. He lived a life we cannot live. He died a death we should have died. He paid a price we deserved to pay.That price was death.

The Bible teaches that the life is in the blood. We know that to be pretty much Truth today. Without blood, there is no oxygen transfer without that we would stop functioning [die]. So there's no reason not to believe that teaching. When Jesus shed His blood, He shed His life. There is only one reason in the entire universe [which is His by the way] is because He loves us and does NOT want us to spend eternity separated from Him.

re·deem

tr.v. re·deemed, re·deem·ing, re·deems To recover ownership of by paying a specified sum.

The specified sum, is a perfect sacrifice. All of Scripture points to Jesus as the only perfect sacrifice that would meet God's standard of perfection. Jesus redeemed us with His sacrifice.

I submit that the least we can do for Jesus is to allow Him to redeem things through us as we live our lives daily.
Music.
Friends.
Video Games.
Family.
School.
Work.
All can be redeemed by Jesus through us, His servants.
Lets get our there and use our own Life Changing Experiences to better other people, rather than ourselves; to be outward redeemers, rather than selfish fools.

To Those Who Do Whatever

"1Co 10:31 So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God."

This verse, as many others, transcends generations. I've heard this verse taught wrong all my life by Christian institutions, and I'm getting annoyed. This passage is in the context of Christian Liberty and conscience.
Christ has set us free. Has opened up a choice that we never had before: the choice to do good, or evil. Before we were enslaved to various passions [Titus 3:3], but the passages that speak of Christ setting us free from those lusts are all over the place [2 Cor. 3:17, Gal. 2:4, 5:1, etc.].
In everything we have this choice now. In every situation there is a choice to do good, as well as a choice to do selfishness. That is what this verse means.
But that is not what I have been taught all these years. The legalists tell me that we don't have this freedom that Christ gave us. They say that we can only do good, and when we fail, we change our relationship with God. Does this make sense? Did Jesus pay for only some of our sins on the cross? No...He paid for all of them. He chose death for my eternal life, that can't be taken back. That's pretty "all or nothing". God never moves farther from me, if anything I move farther from Him.
When I choose myself over Jesus, God doesn't say, "Dang, oh well. I'm leaving!" He's a fighter, and He'd die to get me back...quite literally.
These are the reasons why Scripture says "whatever you do" not "don't do this in order to glorify God". Reason being, there's a choice for Jesus in every situation, and it's our responsibility as Christians to take those opportunities, or consciously walk away from Jesus. That's what life comes down to.

Write on my Facebook wall in response if you want.

To those who are for both morality and themselves: Selective Morality

Tonight, as I was listening to a conversation some of my friends were having concerning alcohol, I thought of this "selective morality" concept. It is exactly what it sounds like: people who are ok abiding by the "rules" in one area of life, yet not willing to abide by the "rules" in other areas of sin that they enjoy.
We all do this to a degree, but I've been finding this particular area of "theology" particularly perplexing pertaining to witnessing to my friends. Like the conversation I witnessed tonight, about underage drinking. Statements like "Yeah, it was the worst decision I made in my life. I was throwing up all night" and "My parents can't tell me what to do. They try, but they don't really care if I go out drinking with my friends" make me get the shivers. I mean, these people are underage so they're breaking the law, but with little or no conviction.
Also, I overheard another conversation that sounded like this: "When you sleep with your boyfriend, does he sleep naked? I find it so annoying when they just walk around naked all the time."
Yeah, I just didn't know what to think about that. I mean these people seem really nice, and are really nice on the outside, but are selectively moral on the inside.
As I mentioned earlier, we all do this. That's why we need to be so careful. We have a tendancy to be a totally different person on Facebook than in person. When we're on the internet, we have the tendency to be "morally selective". People are cursing and talking about things that I never would hear them say back when I went to Christian school.
We have an obligation to Jesus to be all or none. He doesn't want us on the fence. He wants us to make a decision, yes or no for Jesus. That's what we all, saved and unsaved alike, to do. We are designed to have an innate desire to worship, just be sure you worship the right thing:
Jesus

Conflict Theory

Kill the babies, kill the babies

This is a video blog entry about one of the problems in my sociology class. it's really disturbing as far as i'm concerned

Tolerance today, is king

It's amazing how the world changes. One day people tell you "There's so much pressure on you to conform to the world".
Then when you actually go out into the world, the world tells you "Tolerance! It doesn't matter who you are or what you think! Tolerance!"
Is there any way to fix this problem?
I think a lot of people who preach the first phrase are either speaking from experience of scare tactics. I'm not gonna discredit them completely, because there really are people who try to make you conform to whatever they want you to conform to.
But also, many of those people who are using the first phrase as scare tactics, generally are lie-ers. First off, if they're trying to scare you, they're not really giving you a choice. They're the ones that are very closed minded people. But you know what's a shame? Many of these people are in Christian circles. They are so concerned about "not looking like the world" or "not thinking like the world" or "don't give in to the world's style of music", that they're willing to take their eyes off of Jesus in order to accomplish their agenda.
Shame on them!
The truth is, there aren't really that many people out there trying to get you to think "their way". What is happening, though, is this:
"It's ok to believe what you believe, but just accept everyone else in the process"
This is a twisted form of tolerance. It's twisted because by attempting to be "tolerant", they are not tolerating those who aren't tolerant!
So technically, yes they are trying to get you to believe what they want you to believe, but tolerance isn't normally mentioned outside a religious context.
People just don't care what you look like, what music you listen to, etc...
This is what I'm referring to when i say "there's no pressure"
You can basically do what you want without anyone talking to you about it.
This is a problem though.
As a Christian, I don't really want to be "tolerant". To me, there IS a right way and a wrong way. I'm not going to "tolerate [or "allow"]" someone else to believe something other than Christ.
Why?
Because I don't want them to go to hell!
Does this mean I'm always upset with someone or angry at someone or not willing to talk to someone just because they don't believe in Jesus? NOOOOOOOO...
If that were the case, I wouldn't really be living a Christian life!
Therefore, tolerance is not something to be admired necessarily, rather, Jesus is to be desired. And to desire Jesus is to admire both bold/in your face while at the same time gentle and loving.
But please, don't sacrifice one or the other!