Showing posts with label virtue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label virtue. Show all posts

Saturday 8 October 2011

Not all ability to preach

"It is the duty of every Christian man to preach the gospel.
But all have not the ability.
Those who know so little about the cause they profess to love that they cannot open their mouths to plead for it, and who from natural incompetency are incapable of doing so, are bound by Christian virtue to minister of their substance to those who can."
John Thomas

Thursday 17 March 2011

Are Christadelphians so Old Fashioned?

Dutch version / Nederlandse versie: Zijn Christadelphians zo 'Old fashioned'?

The ‘Sunday Reading’ from The Christadelphian (90.1072.309), 1953 is quoted and called 'old fashioned’ by popular opinion but numerous professional studies confirm their opinion about what we do have to encounter or the many sexualized content is damaging.
Today we can find an over sexualized media content and do find an attitude by people that it is just great to have good fun. When we hear some people at work speak about partners it looks like they are changing them as they are changing their underwear.

Today we have to face the many divorces and difficulties in households and in schools, but no wonder.

  • Numerous studies have shown a connection between stereotypical attitudes about women’s sexuality and aggressive sexual behaviour. Several have shown that women and men exposed to sexually objectifying images from mainstream media were significantly more accepting of rape myths, sexual harassment, sex role stereotypes, interpersonal violence, and adversarial sexual beliefs about relationships.’, Bailey, ‘Consequences Of the Sexualization of Girls: American Psychological Association Report Part IV’, From Now On: The Newsletter of the Montgomery County Chapter of the National Organization for Women (2007).
  • The mass media have been shown to affect a broad range of adolescent health-related attitudes and behaviours including violence, eating disorders, and tobacco and alcohol use.
  • Youth exposure to sexual content on television shapes sexual attitudes and behaviour in a manner that may influence reproductive health outcomes.
  • Pornography tends to see sexual practices as divorced from any tender considerations for one’s partner There is plenty of evidence that it sometimes does harm.
  • Worse even than the violence and the ridicule of all the kindly virtues is the preoccupation with sex.
  • Today there is a stimulation of the wrong kind of emotions by making sex, drink and the different ways of having “a good time".
  • Let the conning of certain modern magazines be utterly banned, and let the modern sex-ridden novel—one of the curses of this generation—be wisely consigned to the dustbin.
Read:Sexualized media & sex education
+ Social effects of media
+ Social effects of divorce

Friday 16 July 2010

Martin Luther King's Dream Today

Dr. Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther King jr., spoke on June 22nd 2010, at a meeting of the Working Group on Human Dignity, in the European Parliament in Brussels.
Please read her thoughts on the role of civil rights movements and the protection of life, which is a main topic of interest for her.

Martin Luther King's Dream Today - Thoughts by his Niece
Dr. Alveda King
“The message I share comes from my heart, from love of life and family, and from an inherited sense of duty to defend the most vulnerable in society.
My talk today and my work as a civil rights activist are based on three very simple truths –
* that every human being is worthy of respect by virtue of his being human;
* that at no time does anyone’s life become less human or more human;
* that each human life begins at its physical beginning
As a result of these three propositions, every single human being, born or unborn, has rights and those rights should be respected by society and protected under law.
Repentance is the first step in a soul being saved; it’s also the first step in a culture being changed. I know this because I have seen my culture, my America, change in my lifetime.
So much bloodshed and heartache happened because some people in the United States thought that African Americans were not worthy of respect. We were spat upon. We were clubbed and beaten. And we were lynched. We were killed because we were regarded as less than fully human. So it is with the lives of unborn babies – who are womb-lynched today.
But racism not only oppressed African Americans, it seared the consciences of the oppressors. People found that the fabrications of racists made their own lives more comfortable, more convenient, and they became invested in those falsehoods. They depended on those falsehoods. And so they believed, what they knew in their hearts to be untrue. So it is with the lies of abortionists today.
Today’s unborn are yesterday’s blacks – best kept out of sight and out of mind lest they remind us of the injustices we commit. The problem for abortionists and their supporters, though, is the same problem racists and segregationists faced: reality. Unborn babies won’t go away. So the work of the abortion industry has been to deny the humanity of those they exploit and discriminate against.
But what if, like the Texas abortion clinic director who recently quit her job when she saw the ultrasound image of the baby she was helping to abort, we can no longer rationalize away what we’ve been doing all these years? What if the truth becomes so clear and so compelling that society simply can’t go on being indifferent or complicit in the big lie? Well, that’s when we have to do what is against our nature – we have to humble ourselves, admit our wrongs and change our ways.
And that, in fact, is what my country did because of the civil rights movement. America changed because Americans were touched in their hearts – hearts that the Bible tells us are inscribed with God’s law. We can try to deny our consciences, indoctrinate or medicate our minds so that we can’t or won’t think, but a sense of right and wrong has been given to each and every one of us. It is that very moral awareness that changed America’s culture on racism.
I believe it is that same moral awareness that can change any culture on abortion. It won’t happen overnight. But it is already happening.
In our hearts, we know this. For too long, though, we have looked the other way. We have not wanted to get involved. We have convinced ourselves that people will never change when it comes to abortion. I’m here to tell you that this is not true. I have seen change, in myself, in others, and in my nation. What happened with slavery and racism is now happening with abortion. Those in power who can speak up for the persecuted must do so, we are our brothers’ keeper and what happens to him, happens to us.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote from a jail cell, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Whether a child is aborted in Birmingham, Alabama or Birmingham, England, that abortion is an assault on what my Uncle Martin called the Beloved Community.
My Uncle Martin had a dream. He dreamt that we would live out that which is self-evident – that all men are created equal. He called on America to admit our wrongs and turn from them.
Today, I call on all of us, regardless of nationality, race or religion, to admit our wrongs and turn from them. I believe that the denial of the right to life is the greatest injustice we face in the world today. There is no compassion in killing. There is no justice in writing people out of the human race.
I only ask: How can such a dream live on - the dream of equality for all - if we kill our children? How can the dream live on if we deny others their basic human dignity and respect? How can the dream live on if we do not act on their behalf?”

- "Europe for Christ!"

Thursday 25 February 2010

Life in gratitude opens glory of God


“A life in gratitude opens God’s glory.”
- Bengt Sundberg

"It is always possible to be thankful for what is given,
rather than to complain about what is not given.
One or the other becomes a habit of life."
- Elizabeth Elliot

“Gratitude is not only the largest of virtues, but the parent of all other.”
 - Cicero

“Real gratitude means that we must thank God for what he has done for us,
and that we tell Him what we have done for Him.
- George R. Hendrick

"Offer to God thanksgiving,
And pay your vows to the Most High."

Psalm 50:14

God I thank You for al your works
and for supplying to be allowed to enter your kingdom.


Dutch version / Nederlandse versie > Leven in dankbaarheid opent glorie van God

Monday 4 January 2010

The Days Review

THE DAYS REVIEW

Let no slumber close my eyes,

Ere I have recollected thrice

The train of actions through the day;

Where have my feet marked out their way?

What have a learnt, where’er I’ve been,

From all I’ve heard, from all I’ve seen?

What know I more that’s worth the knowing?

What have I done that’s worth the doing?

What have I sought that I should shun?

What duties have I left undone?

These self-enquiries are the road

That lead to virtue and to God.

Author unknown

Tuesday 14 April 2009

Your struggles develop your strengths

Dutch version / Nederlands > Uw strijd ontwikkelt uw sterke punten


"Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength."

- Arnold Schwarzenegger

"Prosperity discovers vice, adversity discovers virtue."
- Francis Bacon

"For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ."
2 Peter 1:5-8

Lord God, I am grateful that Jesus has conquered death for me.
Give me that I have the perseverance to surmount the difficulties of this world to overcome.
Let me always walk virtuous by the life in Christ Jesus' name, Amen.



+++
2015 update: adding of related articles

Thursday 5 March 2009

If we, in our prosperity, neglect religious instruction and authority

Daniel Webster was one of the great orators of the mid-1800s. As a Member of Congress; debater before the Supreme Court; and twice Secretary of State, he loved America. He once said: “If we, in our prosperity, neglect religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us that shall bury all of our glory in profound obscurity.”
  We have become a nation of idol worshippers. No, I don’t mean that we carve out little forms, put them on an altar and kneel before them. Though that would be no more offensive to God than the things we do. When we think only of our man-made security; when the things we treasure are material (for “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”); when we believe that we ourselves are responsible for our successes; when we drag God down and turn Him into mortal man and worship that man as God - then we have turned away from God and are worshipping idols. We have been warned that, as the result of such abandonment, “there shall be great tribulation such as was not since the beginning of the world nor ever shall be.” We are asking for that “great tribulation.” Our conduct as a nation, is begging to be destroyed. Our hearts should be repentant and our prayer should be for forgiveness before we have the nerve to ask God for His blessing.
  Abraham Lincoln wrote: “We have forgotten the gracious Hand which has preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.”
  - A Christian in California