Pro-choice is the belief that free will is a precious gift of God and we aught to promote it’s right use. The pro-choice movement encourages women to choose.

There’s no obvious disagreement between these two positions. The false dichotomy is propagated by both the fringe group of pro-lifers who are against choice and the fringe pro-choicers who are for abortion in most circumstances of inconvenient pregnancy. (I’d like to discuss this at great length, but I’m a male and it’s not really my issue.)

So what can I say? We aught to make it obvious that life is a better choice than not life. Are you pro-life? support single mothers, reach out to the poor and battered pregnant women in your community. Are you pro-choice? understand the benefits that the choice of carrying any baby to term presents to the community (if nothing else, larger populations are more adaptable to changing circumstances, i.e. evolution supports none but population growth, take that Ray Comfort, you putz). And, I’d say most importantly, teach youth about proper birth control methods. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, right? Birth control prevents abortion; end of that discussion.

So it comes to this, a woman is pregnant, she has a choice. Is life better than no life? Every time she says no life is better, the Christian Church has failed! We are used to failure, but this has become a very extreme failure of Christian people to make life seem like a  better situation than death. Yes, every abortion is not a failure of the government, but a failure of the Church.

The Verdict;
Both

PS.
God Himself was both pro-choice and pro-life. He said, “I have set before you life and death… so CHOOSE LIFE.” He didn’t interfere with our God-given right to choose, but laid it out and told us the best option is life.

Complimentarianism is the understanding that men and women have different roles in life that compliment one another. This is based on Genesis 2:18: essentially men cannot do what needs to be done when left alone, so God had to create a help for them. It is carried on in the writings of Paul where he commanded that officers and slaves of the church be monogamous.

In their extremes, these cannot co-exist with one another. It seems that one is either an egalitarian and believes that single untrained women can pastor a church if they are called by God to do so, or one is complimentarian and says that only married men can pastor. Extreme complimentarianism is more often found in more traditional churches. In such an environment the opinions of the womenfolk is pushed out, making them not equal at all. Extreme egalitarianism accepts all opinions equally, even wrong ones, accept for the opinion that one person must be supported and helped by another.

I have come to understand that one must be both semi-complimentarian and egalitarian lite. While everyone is entitled to an opinion, not every opinion is entitled to airtime. opinions that are deserving of being heard though can come from anyone, slave or free, Jew or Greek, male or female. And it is always best to have an opinion peer reviewed by someone who compliments your faults. These two octo-syllabic words do not need to be on opposite sides of the room.

The Verdict;
Both

PS.
(I was taken by surprise once when because of my complimentarian views, I was called a chauvinist. I used to think that a chauvinist was someone who thinks that their gender is better, not that their gender is in need of help from the other gender.)

I am so happy to know you. I hope that you will keep your sense of adventure and never shrink from the challenges that life gives you. You know that whatever challenge there is in front of you, it is nothing but an opportunity to overcome something. That is a great thing to know at such a young age, I hope you never loose that too.

Being a girl will give you different challenges than I ever had. I’ve never had someone question my qualifications based on nothing but my gender. If you go to any given church and God tells you to say something, haters are gonna hate. They will try to twist scriptures against you, saying that women shouldn’t be allowed to speak. They might even use 1 Timothy 2:12 as if Paul wrote that to suggest that men aught to teach or usurp authority. Only God has the right to teach in Church, neither men nor women aught to teach or usurp authority. Don’t let anyone fool you.

God has given everyone something to share. Some people think that they know what God intends for all situations. That is not the case, but just because someone is so obviously wrong on what God wants on one thing doesn’t mean that he’s wrong on everything. God is able to use even that person to deliver a good message.

Your mother and I have tried to be examples of how to love God and live for God. We hope that should you ever become a parent that you can be that good example too.

Kids Feel What Parents Expressively Feel from John Piper on Vimeo.

To often in our culture a group of people will say that they have God on their side, or will act like they have the monopoly on God. These people are numbskulls to think that they have an infinite being at their beck and call to the exclusion of others. The true Christian does not have the monopoly on God, but God has the monopoly on the true Christian.

So a conservative “complimentarian” can read his world-view into the bible just as easily as the liberal “egalitarian”, but neither can claim they have the monopoly on good biblical interpretation. To choose to be neither conservative nor liberal, neither complimentarian nor egalitarian, may seem to some to be “lukewarm”, but one can actually be just as hot about accepting both as either side can be about their argument.

I have seen many useless things in my day, one dies young trying to do what is right, and another reaches an old age never wanting to do any good for anyone else. So don’t be over-righteous, it’s not worth breaking yourself over. But don’t be wicked, you’ll die before your time. The one who is truly understanding weighs all things and will hold fast to what is good from one side without letting go of the good of the other. Eccl 7:15-18 +/-

I’m going to start a series called Both or Neither where I will look at topics I believe to be false dichotomies in the church that cause divisions.

Being a hardly Christian and mostly pagan celebration rejected by puritans, our family barely celebrates “Christmas” though, we celebrate Advent. This year we will be letting Abigail choose the gifts we send through Compassion Canada as our present for the birthday boy.

“It is not lawful, O Stranger, for us to change the date of Crissmas, but would that Zeus would put it into the minds of the Niatirbians to keep Exmas at some other time or not to keep it at all. For Exmas and the Rush distract the minds even of the few from sacred things. And we indeed are glad that men should make merry at Crissmas; but in Exmas there is no merriment left.” ~ C.S. Lewis, Xmas and Christmas: A Lost Chapter from Herodotus

Merry Xmas,
Timothy Favelle

Finally, be strong in the Lord and the power of His might. Put on the full armor of God so that you will be able to stand against the schemes of the evil one. Our struggle isn’t against flesh and blood, but against rulers, authorities, powers of darkness; against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realm. Therefore, put on the full armor of God that you may withstand the evil day, and when all is said and done, stand.

We have a few pre-apprentices on our crew because people are wanting to leave their company and join us, but the union is sending some more journeymen Ironworkers because we just picked up a huge new project on this site (taken from the CLAC contractors who couldn’t man the job).

I’ve been spending most of this week thinking how blessed my life has been. I’ve been watching the Comedy network, and they’ve been playing a lot of commercials for match.com, eHarmony and Quest, and I’m so glad to have known my wife since the day I met her, and how great she’s been with me. I’m so glad she’s helped to make this website a little more reader friendly even from this distance.

My car may not be fixed yet, but I’ve got pretty well everything I need right in this crappy hotel. Troy (the mechanic) thinks that it probably had something to do with the oil pump. I haven’t gotten a quote or anything yet, and I think I’ll ask for one tomorrow or Sunday.

I rolled into town doing 60 km/h on the highway from Terrace to Kitimat with a terrible ruckus coming from my engine block. As soon as I got in to a 60 zone I saw the first law enforcement officer of the road trip, so that was an answer to prayer. If he would have seen me doing 60 in a 100 zone my car would have been impounded and sent for an inspection for sure.

This project has no finish in sight, it’s just getting started. (Wow, my writing skill has really deteriorated in the last year or so. Or maybe I’m just tired.) As soon as I got to this hotel where the Ironworkers are staying, I thought, only the best for us strong union Ironworkers. This place is one inspection away from being condemned. And the view from my window, a condemned hotel across the street. The locals call this place the zoo, the bar downstairs doesn’t open until 11 and stays open until 4 am. The hallways reek of semi-digested alcohol from months gone by. The obviously water damaged floor in the bathroom has yellow marks on the tile that one can wash off with a damp cloth, if one were so inclined. This place hasn’t been vacuumed in weeks. $30/night seems a little steep, but the bed’s comfy.