I'm laughing at you (not with you)

The mid-Atlantic region is being pounded by record snow falls this week and last week. Being from a region that would routinely get snow falls, it is amusing to me to see how people are handling it. It is also illustrative of a people that depends on the government to fulfill its needs. A couple of examples:

First, many people in my apartment complex spent a day or two complaining that our parking lot and walkways had not been plowed. They stand there decrying their situation, but they don't lift a finger to change it. They want somebody else to come and change it.

To be fair, there is also a group of neighbors that took whatever shovels they could find and started shoveling the parking lots and cleaning off the vehicles. Well, they actually carved a pathway through the parking lot to the road rather than shoveling the whole lot. The point is, they saw a problem and came together to solve it. They acted. Still some them complained about the lack of help they got from the city or the complex, but they decided to be self-reliant.

Finally, a news story this morning was asking a question about plowing roads. The area is obviously not prepared for weather like this, so the city governments are having a difficult time clearing the roadways. The news story was asking the question whether or not citizens with plows "should" plow the the roadways. This is the most ridiculous question I have ever heard. "Should citizens act neighborly?" The answer is "YES!" People asking the question were worried they might be breaking the law. If so, that is a silly law. It does nothing but put the countries (states, counties, cities, etc.) citizens in fear. Here are citizens that see a problem and are willing to act, but are paralyzed by fear of the law. Where I grew up, this was common place. During storms like this you help each other out. Here, people are afraid to help because of a silly law. A law like that forces dependency on the government and perpetuates the mentality of the first kind of individual I mentioned: the kind that does nothing to help themselves and nothing to help their neighbors.

One more point: please stop using the word "snow" in various puns, for example "snowblivion," "snowpocalypse," "snowtorious," etc. Please stop. You're not funny. It is a snow storm. Albeit a bad one, but people in other parts of the country deal with things like this every year. You'll live.

Update: Apparently the city has seen the error of their ways and are looking to employ those with private plows. Probably only have to make a phone call... then go in and fill out two days worth of paper work. (Yes, I'm still skeptical.)

Life

Today, thousands of people will gather on our nation's National Mall to give witness to a part of our nation that lives in darkness. This gathering will be ignored by all media outlets. The liberal media will dismiss them as a group of uninformed, hate-filled people clinging to an archaic ideology. The conservative media have given up hope and would rather not be called names by the liberals. Our country wishes we would remain silent, that we would "respect the rights of others," and that we would "open our minds" to understand the other way of thinking.

Abortion has plagued this country for many years. Currently, 3500 babies are killed everyday in this country alone. That figure does not account for the number that are conceived each year, but are not given the chance to develop because they are unable to attach themselves to the mother's uterine wall thanks to some form of birth control like the pill. The death will continue, and because the individuals being killed cannot be seen and at the moment, lack voice, it will go largely forgotten and unnoticed. But not entirely. Though it is an uncomfortable truth, it is a truth nonetheless. That truth will be given a voice again today.

As a male, it is often difficult to speak about such things. Arguments that this is a women's issue are often used to quiet a voice like mine. Those arguments are appealing because men often want to comfort and protect women. I've watched a man walk his partner into an abortion clinic with his arm around her in an attempt to do just that. The skewed notion of protection is disturbing, evil in its subtlety.

Men have been happy to leave this as a women's issue. But this slothfulness is just as disturbing. Abortion is not the root problem. Abortion is merely a fruit of the tainted tree of our twisted sexual desires. Christopher West said, "Behind every abortion in this country is a man who went looking for an orgasm." Rather blunt, but to the point. The creation of every child requires two individuals. Men who have been consumed by their sexual desire rather than mastering it are one of the roots, and I would argue the root of this problem. Every man who has allowed himself to view a woman as object for his pleasure shares the blame for this insidiousness.

It is ironic that I write this little note on the internet, whose very creation and growth was fueled by a man's lust for pornography and his desire for easy access to it. The objectification of women is a sin that man... men, will have to answer dearly for. But in the midst of all this evil is hope. Christ did not abandon us to wallow in our sin. We have hope of overcoming this evil. We have hope of untwisting those desires. We have hope of redemption of our bodies. We have hope! "Evil had made itself unmistakably manifest... in the exploitation of one human being by another, economically, politically, or sexually. But evil did not have the final word, because at the center of the human drama is Christ, whose entry into the human condition and whose conquest of death meant that hope was neither a vain illusion nor a defensive fantasy constructed against the fear at the heart of modern darkness." (-George Wiegel)

We have hope. We have voice. We have determination. And we have the power of life supporting our cause.