The Christian Vanguard

From the early church up to 1930, virtually every church believed contraception was a sin. That fact alone should have us induce that contraception is in fact a sin. Yet, there are many Christians today, even in my own congregation, that will never entertain the possibility of contraception being a sin.

There have been debates emerging about gun control after each tragic shooting that I have seen on the news. Virginia Tech, Aurora, and now Newtown (I was too young to remember the reaction after Columbine). The debate that has emerged after the Newtown shooting seems to be fiercer since many of the victims were little children, and as responsible Christian citizens, we ought to have some biblical background to the debate, so that we may safely navigate through the issue. So, what does the Bible say about gun control?

I saw “Bowling for Columbine” a long time ago. I bought it at Wal-Mart because it was on sale for like three bucks. I had purchased it during the time in my life where I had already left behind communism, but wasn’t completely a conservative. I was free-market on most of the fiscal policy issues, and only partially in line with the republicans on the social issues (I supported the death penalty, “torturing”, our presence in the middle east [I believed a war with militant Muslims was attractive for an atheist] and was pro-gun [basically all the violent stuff lol!], but was for abortion and same-sex marriage). And so while I thought the documentary was crap, an off the cuff comment, or slogan, about health care had me thinking.

I risk being called a racist for this. My better judgment is telling me not to make this thought public, but my gigantic ego is telling me to not be a fairy and put it up like man. I’m thinking we ought to abolish hate-crime. What is hate-crime? Basically, what happens is, if I, a “Mexican-American” (I prefer just “American”, thank you very much) beat up a gay man, and while doing so, call him derogatory names in reference to his homosexuality, like “queer” or “faggot”, my punishment will be more severe. My targeting of his demographic for a crime makes my punishment more severe. There are difficulties with this.

The story of Babel in the Bible used to confuse me. I didn’t understand what was going on that was so bad and I never understood why God did what he did. I never found the explanation that God realized that if men were to be united in such a powerful way, they would be united in evil, a plausible explanation. Whether we are united in evil or divided in evil, we’re evil nonetheless, so destroying B abel would be inconsequential. But wrapping up my course in Political philosophy, I think such an explanation is plausible now. Having a one world government is scary to us now. Why? Because it so often leads to tyranny. We ought to have, like we do in the US, a separation of powers. “Ambition counteracts ambition”, “if men were angels” , etc. Because human nature is corrupted, we cannot centralize it. If it is divided, peace can be achieved. That is why God divided the people. Application: the story of Babel shows us that God favors a government that has a separation of power...

What is the Rosary? The Rosary is technically not the necklace. The Rosary is a prayer. The necklace is just supposed to aid you in your prayer, since the prayer is so long. Because the Rosary is so long, you risk focusing on where in the prayer you are at, instead of focusing on the Mysteries. So you finger the beads as you pray. Once your fingers come to the end of the necklace or to certain points, you know to change or stop. The basic structure is this: You start off at the bottom with the crucifix, do the sign of the cross and you recite the apostles creed. Then you have a few hail marys. Then there are a few sets of ten beads, for ten hail marys, also known as a decade. There are four decades for the four types of mysteries. During the hail marys, you ponder the mysteries of christ as Mary pondered them as described in Luke 2:19.