An Appeal To The Mind (Caution: Graphic)

This is an urgent appeal to the logical mind (Be forewarned this post is graphic in nature.)

Let's start with pictures...  How do these pictures make you feel?

Guangxi Zhuang Region, China

Faroe Islands, Denmark

Zulu Tribes participating in Ukweshwama.

  

To make my point clear, I am not advocating animal abuse. I believe that violently imposing ourselves over other life in a tyrannical and inhumane way is to be bad stewards of this world that God has called us to look after.  

These images are a few of the myriad of images found on animal activist websites.  I found them in about two minutes.  They vilify human beings and call us to the repentance of the sins of animal abuse.  I understand and empathize.

Let's take a look at some more pictures now and see how they make us feel.

Partially Aborted "Fetus"

Nazi Holocaust

Victim of Slavery

Let me expose to you the fallacy of relativism.  None of these instances are excusable no matter where you live or what you believe!  They violate basic morality!  I find it interesting that when discussing moral issues (the sanctity of marriage, the sanctity of life, sin, salvation, etc...) the mainline view is relativism (especially when one culture is introduced to another). Yet, when images arise, via social media, of other cultures engaging in ritual events that harm or mutilate animals, everyone suddenly agrees on a common morality and condemns it!

Once again, do not misunderstand me, I do not condone animal cruelty, instead I am calling out the hypocrisy of people who claim that whatever is true and right for one person may not always be true and right for the other, and that we should all live and let live. Well, what's it going to be? If it's all relative, then you cannot claim the moral high ground, even if what you see appalls you. On the other hand, if mutilating animals for ones enjoyment is wrong all across the board, you'd better consider why murdering a baby in the womb isn't...  

This is the challenge of today's society! These types of things used to be universally condemned, but now we have eliminated all points of reference!  We have nowhere to draw our standards from, but from ourselves. As a result, any individual whose convictions can be tied to any form of absolute are accused of imposing their morality and are silenced by those imposing theirs.  There it is folks!  The emperor has no clothes!  Relativism is illogical and unsustainable, yet for some reason it is heralded by a mindless generation ascending to the loftiness of speculation to justify its sins.

That's right, the "S word."  It's time we face it.  It is destroying our lives!  Let's take sin at one of its many forms, unfaithfulness.  Let's introduce unfaithfulness to our marriage...  If you're not married, introduce it to your parents relationship.  How does that make you feel?  No one wants to see their mother or father gallivanting around the streets anymore than they want their own spouse coming home with someone else's fragrance on their shirt!  Introduce that same unfaithfulness to your bank account.  We teach students that morality is relative, but when they grow up and go to Wall Street and live like its relative, we throw them behind bars!  

Think about it, even if we were just animals, a little more evolved from a chimpanzee, we still have a lot of explaining to do.  Sure lions kill gazelles to satisfy their need to eat, but I have never seen a lion construct a system of death camps to eliminate 6,000,000 gazelles in compliance to a political ideology.  It's true!  Dolphins enjoy sex, but we still haven't uncovered the dolphin sex trade where dolphin calves are forced into a life of forced drug addiction and prostitution.

Do animals de-animalize?  We de-humanize, don’t we?  For the sake of the male-ego, women are subject to incredible dehumanization so that the basest desires of men (and women) can be gratified.  For example, watch a little hardcore porn that is almost ubiquitous on the internet.  Women are slapped, choked, spat on, and turned inside out for the pleasure of the viewer.  People don’t want to see romance and love, they want to intrude on what is sacred, they want to crush the innocence of another and steal their dignity!  Violent pornography is king of the underworld, and even the mild stuff debases its participants.  Is it not saddening when women play along, acting as though they enjoy the abuse, thinking it's powerful and sexy, when in reality they are simply being heaped up and discarded as useless piles of flesh?  

Where do you side on all of this?  Malcolm Muggeridge said, “The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact.”  Try to disprove it!  Throw some porn on your computer.  Start with the mild, then be mindful and sink ever lower, as the twisted and sinful mind of men lead you on a journey into the most unimaginable depths of grotesque reality.  Witness the abuse, look into the eyes of the used and broken!  

Delve a little deeper, study history and step out of your comfort zone to a place where millions are murdered at the expense of an evolutionary ideology.  Carry your pillow to Africa, to see child soldiers, robbed of their innocence, killing not to be killed.  Fly to an AIDS infested Thailand, where the gains of prostitution exceed that of the national budget.  Step into your cul-de-sac and peer through your neighbor's window to catch a glimpse of children's dreams being dashed as their families are ravaged by divorce.  Turn on your TV, open your Newsfeed, or go to a lecture hall!  It is the most empirically verifiable reality, but the most intellectually resisted fact!

Knowing this malady, we often point the blame rather than take ownership of any sin committed by our own hands.  That's how we can cry bloody murder at African Tribes beating a bull to death, but remain silent as children are torn limb from limb out of their mother's womb.  Sin is a reality in all of our hearts.  Whoever says they have not sinned makes God a liar (1 John 1:8-10), because it was God Himself who ransomed you out of the dead slave market of sin (Romans 5:8).  You see, God is love (1 John 4:8) and because He is love He must punish sin (Ezekiel 18:20).  If someone murdered your mother and father, you wouldn’t expect the judge to say, “well he’s basically a good person, let him go!”  No, God is far too righteous to let such atrocities go unpunished.  Therefore, by His shear inability to stomach His whole creation being eternally separated from Him, He poured out His wrath for sin upon His Son (2 Corinthians 5:21), that He might become the sacrificial lamb, offered for the sins of the world (Genesis 22:8, John 1:29).

  

Be sure of it, I am a sinner and you are a sinner (Romans 3:23).  We are not just dirty people in need of a cleansing, we are dead people in need of life.  Jesus said that “because I live, you will live also” (John 14;19).  He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me” (John 14:6).  He said, “I am the bread of life…  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood will never die” (John 6:48-58).  If Jesus was at least a good teacher, what He taught was that we are all dead in sins and only in Him is there a path to life (Ephesians 2:1-5).

Think for a moment, don’t you have that aching feeling that you are wandering around in a world that you don’t belong in?  Have you ever stopped to realize that you never asked to be part of this frame of existence?  In fact, nothing has guaranteed you the right to exist in this universe.  You're just here.  We are simply subject to reality!  What makes us so sure that when we die we are no longer subject to it?  We can believe that we are mere byproducts of time and chance, just a blip on the radar screen of an entropic material universe, or you can believe that you were created for a purpose and that purpose lies just beyond what your sin has separated you from.  It takes faith in both scenarios to identify yourself.  If God is calling to you to be reconciled to Him, cry out to Him.  Confess your sin.  Stop trying to justify it.  He earnestly wants to dispose of it for you!  If He didn’t, He would not have commissioned His Son to face the ultimate in de-humanization for your sake!  Pray, seek Him with your whole heart, and you have His promise, that He is there and eagerly anticipating your arrival to His Kingdom.

 But from there, you will search for the Lord your God, and you will find Him when you seek Him with all your heart and all your soul. -Deuteronomy 4:29

I love those who love me,

and those who search for me find me. -Proverbs 8:17

Seek the Lord while He may be found;

call to Him while He is near.-Isaiah 55:6

You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. -Jeremiah 29:13

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. -Matthew 7:7

Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. -Revelation 3:20