Be aware

Today I was looking through different documents on the website for the Diocese of Toronto in the Anglican Church of Canada and I found something very interesting and even a little disturbing. This is because it shows just how much this diocese is trying to show off some of their activities and yet others then are trying to keep hidden from the general membership of the diocese. On one hand you have all the evangelical activities such as ministering to the poor, and outreach that they are doing and trying to make known they are doing but other more liberal initiatives.

Now on to the document I was reading that inspired me to write this post. It is an instruction book to clergy and more specifically the section dealing with human sexuality. First off I should mention that recently the Bishop of the Diocese has made moves to initiate the blessing of committed same-sex unions. Yet in this document you see the following quote:

“We accept all persons, regardless of sexual orientation, as equal before God; our acceptance of persons with homosexual orientation is not, however, an acceptance of sexual union of persons of the same sex. The College of Bishops of the Diocese of Toronto does not accept the blessing of homosexual unions.”

So if homosexual unions are not acceptable in 2007 I just wonder what has changed in two years since the Holy Bible has not changed and what it teaches us is still the name. I will offer up my opinion though. My opinion is that it is the pressure put on by homosexual activists. Their purpose is to force acceptance of homosexuality of normal whether we want to or not. They don’t want to give us a choice they just want it to be so. You can see that in the diocese of Toronto since this initiative to start blessing same-sex unions is being done as a “pastoral” response so there will never be a vote on it and the Bishop can go ahead with it regardless of what anyone thinks about it. It also means there is less chance it will be shared with the general membership of the diocese. So in the end that shows there is a great hypocrisy within the Anglican Diocese of Toronto. They want people to think they are evangelical since that is what the majority of Christians in the world believe but they still want to keep believing the way they do at the same time so I offer this warning to Anglicans in other dioceses in North America and Europe watch what the leadership in your diocese is up to the liberal attitude is infecting the western church and attempting to destroy all Christian thought so be aware.

Astro Pt. 2

So Now I get to talk about what the movie Astro Boy meant to me since I was surprised as to what was in that movie in the character of Astro. I actually didn’t notice it until near the end when Astro basically has the chance to escape alive but goes back to save his friends knowing that he will die. Notice I said he will not that he might or could but he knew he would die for sure with no doubt. It was then I realized what that was like. It brought to mind John 15:13 which is where Jesus was talking about the greatest commandment and part of it was he said:

”There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

This is exactly what Astro did he gave up his life for his friends, he showed the ultimate gift of love towards those he called friends. This got me thinking about how he acted throughout the movie. When I did that I realized how much like what we as Christians should be Astro is. He is kind, caring and loving in the best way. He did all this without thinking of himself but rather thinking about others and trying to figure out who he really was. So this is only part of what’s in my mind about this movie but it’s all I can get out right now. So all I have left to say is if you have not seen the movie go see Astro Boy while you can it is well worth it and can teach us a lot about what it means to be a Christian.

Astro

Normally I would be on here to talk bad about a movie that painted a bad image of Christianity but today I am here to talk about a movie that I just saw that gives us a model of what’s good part of being Christian is all about. That movie is Astro Boy so stay tuned while I prepare a post about what was so great about the movie but i will leave it here for now since I am writing this on my iPod lol so stay tuned for more.

What does it mean to serve God?

Recently as per usual I have been reading the various issues of the national paper for the Anglican Church called the Anglican Journal. Recently I came across a letter to the editor that disturbed me. The link to it is here:

http://www.anglicanjournal.com/issues/2009/135/oct/08/article/letters-to-the-editor-36/?cHash=7f01da70c5

The one I am talking about is entitled “Remove their voice” and talks about how two priests that have had major roles in various parishes leaving the Anglican Church of Canada should not be able to weigh in on what is going on the Church since they have left. It also mentions how they are “ex-Anglicans” and have disobeyed the vows they made as priests.

If you actually look at the vows they would have taken while yes it’s true that they did break one of the vows they made it was probably the least important of the ones there. That is because that one about respecting their bishop and following their guidance is all about us as humans and the rest of the vows are all about following the will of God so I ask you which ones are more important.

So I ask this question are we serving God if we either leave the Anglican Church or not over this issue of same-sex “marriage”. I think the answer is we can serve God either way because God will call us to do what He needs us to and if they feel this is God’s will for them then they are serving God no less then those of us who stay at least for now. They have not given up their orders since they come from God and not from man so we have no authority to take them away, and they are also still Anglicans because they have stayed true to what being an Anglican is. Well that’s my rant for today and hopefully I will update this blog more often now.

Unity

Lately I have been asking this question of myself: What price should we be willing to pay for unity. Now i am not saying unity is a bad thing but where should we draw the line as to what we do and don’t do for this unity.

At the end of May I went to the Synod for the Anglican Diocese of Toronto. Now for those of you who may not know, Synod is like the governing body of a Diocese or the larger church. It is made up of representatives for all the Churches in the area. They happen every year or every two years depending on where you are.

This year in amongst talking about the Missional Church, which is a great thing to talk about, we also talked about a proposed pastoral response on the blessing of same-sex unions. The following is a link to somewhere to get the text of this pastoral response:

http://toronto.anglican.ca/images/1Discussion_document____FINAL.pdf

The big problem is that even though the largest churches usually hold a more Conservative or Evangelical viewpoint ,which would be against this proposal since it really is not the way to go forward with this issue and love those people that are struggling with homosexual feelings, there are physically more liberal churches so the discussions that will essentially shape the way our Bishop is going to go forward with this were very biased in favour the liberal view.

At this point you may be wondering what this has to do with unity but I shall tell you now. The problem is if this actually happens and these blessings actually do start happening what is going to happen with Conservative and Evangelical churches. Some Churches may feel they can’t live with this situation and well will just leave and this will just cause all sorts of problems. Right now I just hope the Truth and the Word of God will prevail and this will not happen but I don’t know what will happen. I hope you can be more informed but what I have said.

Some Interesting Articles

Just recently I was looking at a couple articles from the student newspaper of the University I used to attend Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Well I found a couple of articles that are quite interesting.

The first which can be found at the following URL: http://theathonline.ca/view.php?aid=1050 . This is interesting because it really highlights the way a lot of people in society view people who hold to more traditional beliefs which does include Christians. Generally this comes from a very liberal way of thinking.

The second was an article I wrote for the paper while I was at Acadia and was about a movie I saw and I used it to provide a base to examine other issues happening at that time. If you want to read it the URL is: http://theathonline.ca/view.php?aid=524.

I will probably take one or both of these articles up in more detail hopefully soon but I though hopefully someone might want to read these and comment on them and start a discussion and maybe take some action. Well I am out for now and hope to write again soon.

Rawanda….What Happened??

The title of this post I think accurately represents the question that I ask every time I think about what happened in Rawanda in 1994. Right now I am watching a movie entitled Shake Hands with the Devil. As I am watching it I remember all the frustration I felt when I first watched a documentary by the same name. It was then that I saw the truth about what happened in Rawanda. I know what I am saying may be old news to people but I hope if someone doesn’t know the truth they will read this and seek it out. The truth is very simple. What happened in Rawanda is the fault of Western societies. I mean what caused it was all the experiments done on the Rawandan people by the colonial power that occupied the country. This is what separated them in the the Hutu and Tutsi groups that fuelled the genocide. The UN Peacekeeping force that was sent there was led by Canadian General Romeo Dallaire. What he had to endure was horrific and yet he stayed to protect the innocent. In the face of a world that didn’t want to see what was happening and even when told refused to provide him the support he needed to stop what was happening even when countries such as the USA and European nations had the forces and resources to do it. So ultimately you know what the cause of the Rawandan genocide was. It was the failure to act of Western societies.  The death toll was between 800,000 and 1,000,000 people but with the right support that could have been a lot less. That is support that countries had but refused to provide. Even when countries like France and Belgium sent in troops just to rescue people from their own countries and seeing what was going on.

So I say this if you don’t already know this the Rawandan genocide is one that is our fault because it was the UN who sent these people in there and even when they reported back what was going on all they were told was that regardless of what was going on they were not to use forces only in self-defence even if doing so could save innocent lives. We the western countries of this world tied the hands of the UN forces there behind their back so they couldn’t do anything to stop what was going on. So we are to blame regardless of what anyone says or will admit to.

Now that I have that rant over with I can get back to what I was talking about before in my next post and I hope this got you thinking about our place in the world as both Christians and just being human in general.

The Tyranny that is purposely hidden

Well I am at it again now that I have something to write about and this will keep me going for a while I can say that. Also this is something that some groups such as special interest groups like homosexual activists and other group don’t want getting out since there goes an easy tool for them to use to force their agenda upon us. Now what I am talking about are the supposed “Human Rights” Commissions and Tribunals.

Recently I started reading a book called The Tyranny of Nice by Kathy Shaidle and Pete Vere. Basically this book is about exposing the hypocrisy of these kangaroo courts that are called “human rights” commissions. After reading just the Introduction which is written by Mark Steyn I realize I need to convey the main points of this book to you so this tyranny can be exposed and Canadian’s can see these commissions for what they really are and see what they are really doing. That is they are slowly taking away our freedom of religion and freedom of expression.

So as I read a chapter I will post something about each one. So far though I have only read the introduction which was actually not written by the authors of the book but by a man named Mark Steyn. Just reading this though made me confront the truth and accept it. So that is what I will be talking about today. Just to start off I want to give you a quote from Mark from the introduction but first a little context for it. What he is talking about is a book he wrote called America Alone: The end of a world as we know it over which he was part of a human rights complaint in recent times. So the quote I want to share is:

And that’s where the “unfortunately” comes in: In their innocence, my publishers were not aware that the Canadian state no longer believes in freedom of speech. Instead, it increasingly believes in government-regulated speech, which (as we’ll see in the pages that follow) isn’t the same thing at all.

That is just a taste and what this introduction has but I think that really sums this up but some highlights are that:

• Mark talks about the complaint against him and Maclean’s over his book and how he was surprised that a supposed expert was flown in to review the merits of a review of a CBC sitcom he wrote and to comment basically on the validity of things Mark had wrote over the years
• He also talks about the fact that people generally argue that we need reasonable limits on hate speech  to prevent things like the Holocaust from happening again. This argument falls apart when you take into account the fact that before Hitler took power there were these reasonable limits already in place in Germany.
• Another thing to note is that some powers Hitler made sure to take after he took power such as the right to search and seizure without a warrant and the right to monitor communications are powers that these supposed “human rights” commissions already have.
• He also talks about how if two protected groups such as homosexuals and Muslims came up against each other it would be obvious who would win every time since some groups are favoured over others.

All the other stuff he talks about in this introduction is covered in later chapters and is quite interesting so I hope you come back and read more and never forget that Big Brother is watching and they don’t have to tell you so you may never know till it is too late.

So in the end all I want to say to anyone who doesn’t like what I wrote and thinks I shouldn’t say it I have only this to say to you, “Tough, I have every right to say what I have and I dare you to try and do something about it.”

The Beginning of something…..

Right about now your probably wondering why your here reading this. Maybe you decided to check it out because a title of the blog or post was interesting to you but you had no idea what it is about. Well since this is my first post I hope to clear that up for you right now.

I want to tell you what this blog is going to be about as simple as that is. First thing I really should mention is that I am a Christian. Second of all I believe that you are either a Christian or you are not and that there is no middle ground to it. I am still working on how exactly you can define who is and who isn’t a Christian but some people are obviously not but that is something for another post.

So on to what this blog shall be about before I get sidetracked yet again. For years I have tried to get the word out somehow about what Christianity is really about so people can get around the warped view that society presents to us. I have tried many different ways but yet every time I get shot down since I find that society is naturally hostile to Christianity. So recently I decided that the blog was the best way to go since it is something I can add to at my own pace, though hopefully once a week, and no one can say anything about since I have a right to make my opinion known. So I hope you enjoy and please regardless of if you agree or disagree with me please comment. Oh and I can almost guess what my next post will be about if I see it. Think Bill Maher and the movie Religulous and I think you can get it. Well hope to post soon and hope you will read it.