Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Merry Christmas to all!
We've been out of town visiting family so I could blog my Christmas greetings earlier. It's bee quite a Christmas for us/ Clare's been sick since Saturday & running a fever. With the holiday and being out of town we had limited medical resources & didn't want to end up in the ER. Fortunately, we got her in to her pediatrician yesterday. It's made for some sleepless nights. Other than that, it was a good Christmas fo all in the Ponchak household & I hope a good Christmas for you too. Remember, the Christmas season doesn't end on th 25th, it only begins & lasts until the Epiphany on January 6th. So enjoy your 12 days of Christmas.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
I have a confession...
I really suck at this blogging thing. I can't believe I haven't posted anything since Nov 6th. It's not that I haven't had any ideas; I just haven't had any time. So here's my attmept to make up for some lost time:
My baby had her 1st birthday last Saturday. I have no idea where this past year went. It just flew by. Happy birthday Clare Bear.
These billboards have been up around our town for several months & they piss me off every time I see them. The "Perfect Church"?! Sorry, but there is absolutely nothing "perfect" about a cookie-cutter mini-megachurch with no sense of connection to the historical Church and no sense of sacredness or mystery. Sing some warm & fuzzy "worship" songs for 20 minutes, enjoy some flashy, entertaining skit/video, listen to a "sermon" giving bullet points on how to get God to bless & prosper you without any mention of sacrifice, toss in your tithe to "sow a seed" so God will be contractually obligated to bless & prosper you, say a little prayer & get your ticket to heaven punched. Let's not forget to replace real, meaningful community with fake, shallow conversations aimed at keeping up the appearances that all is well least you be shunned.
That's Episcopal Archbishop Schori, head of the Episcopal church in the US. She said some pretty damn crazy things. She implied that having children is displaying poor stewardship of the earth. That of course, got me thinking about the Protestant & Catholic views on contraception. I wrote my senior thesis about contraception, specifically about the Catholic document Humanae Vitae. I was heavily influenced by John Paul II's theology of the body. Lisa and I have never practiced artificial contraception. We have used a loose form of Natural Family Planning (NFP), but mostly we've kept God in our bedroom & our lives open to any new life he wants to entrust to us.
What I find interesting is that until the early 1930's all major Christian denominations held that artificial contraception was morally wrong. That all changed, like dominoes in a chain, when the Episcopal Church decided that it was no longer sinful. They argued that the bible didn't specifically forbid it & passages used to discourage contraception were being taken out of context--never mind 1,900 years of Christian teaching tradition. They felt that this was a private matter and the church had no business poking around in a married couple's bedroom. Soon after denomination after denomination gave in to the same bad theology & logic and acceptance became so widespread that it seemed that to even question the morality of contraception was itself morally questionable.
Now sit back and read that last paragraph again but substitute "artificial contraception" with "homosexual behavior" and you can see where we're heading. And once again, it's teh Episcopalians leading the way.
And finally, now that it's almost over, Happy Advent to everyone. I've enjoyed reading some fo Kyle Potter's blogs about his War on Christmas. You can check it out for yourself here and here.
My baby had her 1st birthday last Saturday. I have no idea where this past year went. It just flew by. Happy birthday Clare Bear.
These billboards have been up around our town for several months & they piss me off every time I see them. The "Perfect Church"?! Sorry, but there is absolutely nothing "perfect" about a cookie-cutter mini-megachurch with no sense of connection to the historical Church and no sense of sacredness or mystery. Sing some warm & fuzzy "worship" songs for 20 minutes, enjoy some flashy, entertaining skit/video, listen to a "sermon" giving bullet points on how to get God to bless & prosper you without any mention of sacrifice, toss in your tithe to "sow a seed" so God will be contractually obligated to bless & prosper you, say a little prayer & get your ticket to heaven punched. Let's not forget to replace real, meaningful community with fake, shallow conversations aimed at keeping up the appearances that all is well least you be shunned.
That's Episcopal Archbishop Schori, head of the Episcopal church in the US. She said some pretty damn crazy things. She implied that having children is displaying poor stewardship of the earth. That of course, got me thinking about the Protestant & Catholic views on contraception. I wrote my senior thesis about contraception, specifically about the Catholic document Humanae Vitae. I was heavily influenced by John Paul II's theology of the body. Lisa and I have never practiced artificial contraception. We have used a loose form of Natural Family Planning (NFP), but mostly we've kept God in our bedroom & our lives open to any new life he wants to entrust to us.
What I find interesting is that until the early 1930's all major Christian denominations held that artificial contraception was morally wrong. That all changed, like dominoes in a chain, when the Episcopal Church decided that it was no longer sinful. They argued that the bible didn't specifically forbid it & passages used to discourage contraception were being taken out of context--never mind 1,900 years of Christian teaching tradition. They felt that this was a private matter and the church had no business poking around in a married couple's bedroom. Soon after denomination after denomination gave in to the same bad theology & logic and acceptance became so widespread that it seemed that to even question the morality of contraception was itself morally questionable.
Now sit back and read that last paragraph again but substitute "artificial contraception" with "homosexual behavior" and you can see where we're heading. And once again, it's teh Episcopalians leading the way.
And finally, now that it's almost over, Happy Advent to everyone. I've enjoyed reading some fo Kyle Potter's blogs about his War on Christmas. You can check it out for yourself here and here.
