Preaching is an art, not a form, not learned, but an art, a gift from God from birth.

I have talked about this issue in my last sermon which I posted the audio here.  

Preaching is very close to my heart. I still remember the first time I preached when I was 14 yrs old. From then, I haven't stopped preaching, at least once a month, and then, on a weekly basis. So I've been preaching for the last 25 years!! Wow, that's a realisation. 

I've been to seminary, and has commented how I did in my preaching class. I have also commented how some want to make preaching a mere cerebral exercise, and not an exercise of the heart. I understand that there are many preachers who are not preachers, rather, entertainers. But that does not mean that we shouldn't entertain during our sermon. Not only to keep people's attention, but also, to help them in their memorisation. 

The following post is a good example of the way I view preaching, and I think it's worth having a look at it. 

Here We Are Now, Entertain us
By thefuerstshallbelast

In my early years of preaching, I used to start all my sermons with a good joke, supposing that grabbing the audience’s attention in that way generated interest in my message. 

After my junior year of college, however, when I started taking academics more seriously, I forsook the funny forewords and focused on my homily’s propositions and argumentation, assuming what people really need is not more entertainment, but more theological acumen. 

My favorite preacher at the time reinforced this assumption when he said, “America’s tombstone shall read, ‘We entertained ourselves to death.’” 

Preaching, after all, I reasoned, is not a stand up comedy show. It’s not supposed to entertain us, it’s supposed to transform our minds through logical argumentation – even if it bores us to death along the way. In other words… 

Preaching isn’t art, preaching is argument. 

So I thought. 

Over the last few years I’ve come to realize the wrongheadedness of this…or at least part of it. 

I was right to reason that much of what represents the preaching craft in many churches is pure entertainment for entertainment sake, distracting from the gospel of Christ and reinforcing the “Here we are now, entertain us” mentality of church goers. 

But I was wrong to bifurcate preaching and entertainment under the assumption that entertainment must equal shallow and trite messages. 

This is simply not the case. In fact, more than just being wrong, it is unbiblical. 

The very presentation of the Bible, with its symbols, images, and word-plays; it’s stories of mystery, love, intrigue, and murder all suggest that the Bible is intended to entertain us and stick with us! But that entertainment is not for entertainment sake, it has a telos: the illumination the kingdom of God and our role in it. 

That’s why Jesus tells parables instead of giving logical propositions. These stories talk about both mundane and fantastic events in life. They both reveal and hide the truth. They are literary genius, but were simple enough for illiterate farmers to comprehend. They entertained their audiences with both their form and their message, but they did so with the goal in mind of helping people love God and be conformed more to His image. 

My avoidance of entertainment, then, was an attempt to be more “holy” than Jesus(you know, like Jonathan Edwards!). If Jesus entertained his audiences for a purpose, then we should understand that entertainment is not the Devil. In a sermon, entertainment without the goal of the Kingdom might be trite, but the problem is the wrong goal, not the means of communication. 

Preaching isn’t argumentation. Preaching is art.

6 possible reasons why people don’t like preaching

Murray Campbell, the pastor of Mentone Baptist Church, has posted on his blog an interesting number of reasons why people may not like preaching today.

Read them, and see if this also affects your church, or ministry.

(in no particular order)1. we’re accustomed to the 30 minute sitcom that contains 7 and a half minutes of advertisements. Sitting for an extended time and engaging with a humourless monologue is hard work (against this, uni students sit through hour long lectures every day and everyone enjoys 2 hours at the cinema).2. We have talked up the singing time in Church to the point that we have relegated preaching to a secondary and uninspiring place.3. We’ve accepted the lie that theology is unimportant4. We are a culture of doers not thinkers.5. We have sat under years of boring and irrelevant preaching6. We have hard-hearts, not wanting to hear what God has to say

So now abortion is safer than childbirth? Safer to whom?

It's not everyday that you read, really stupid things of such magnitude, that you are so appalled that you really wish you could talk to those who were personally involved in such a study as I am going to talk about today.

TIME has published a study that says that abortion is safer than child birth. Yes, you read that right. According to this new study, abortion supposed risks are none existence.

Abortion has a scary reputation, regardless of whether you’re for or against it. But the perception that it’s a high-risk procedure isn’t rooted in truth, according to new research. 

Although more than half of states counsel women on the risks of abortion, a study published online Monday in Obstetrics & Gynecology finds that a legal abortion is actually far safer than giving birth.

From the beginning, you can ask, "safer to whom? Not for the baby of course, who is killed. Does the baby in the womb count for something to this people? What if they were threatened when they were at the womb with death, would they still say the same about abortion being safe?

The research discovered that women are actually 14 times more likely to die during or after delivery than as a result of complications from abortion. “There’s a lot of stigma surrounding abortion,” says Elizabeth Nash, who tracks state policies on reproductive health for the N.Y.-based Guttmacher Institute, a pro-choice reproductive health research group. “This study is telling us it’s a lot safer than having a baby.”

There you go, a group that promotes abortion says that abortion  is safe, and even better than giving birth, is not surprising for them to reach such a conclusion. Well, if it is safer to abort than giving birth, then I think they hope for people to abort by hordes, and make them a lot of money along the way. What's a baby for them? Worthless as it seems, seems it doesn't matter if the baby dies during abortion, therefore, it's not safe for the baby.

Twenty-six states have intensive counseling for women who seek abortions. Some of the states distribute materials with questionable information, such as the risk of breast cancer after having an abortion or the negative impact on mental health. 

“The people developing these counseling materials are not really interested in talking about the facts,” says Nash, who wasn’t involved in the study. “They are interested in persuading a woman from getting an abortion in the first place.” 

That said, most of the counseling materials also includes information about the risks of pregnancy, although it can get overshadowed by the emphasis on the dangers of abortion.

Well, I don't know about cancer, but sounds about right. But a woman who performs a lot of abortions, may damage their womb so much, that they end up being unable to hold onto an embryo, therefore, never being able to have a baby. 


The article goes on praising the new figures about abortion, and how better it is to abort than to give birth. I wonder, if everybody opts to abort, within a few years, these people would go broke, since there wouldn't be anybody to abort!!


It is a good thing, that at the end, and with few lines, the study was refuted. But I get the feeling that the article wanted to promote abortion, rather than to report on the new study.

Anti-abortion groups took issue with the study, complaining, as did Paul Wilson of the Culture and Media Institute in a post on LifeNews.com titled “Reuters Pushes Biased Study Claiming Abortion Safer Than Birth,” that the researchers “were either abortion doctors or had strong ties to the abortion industry.” 

Dr. Donna Harrison, director of research and public policy at the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told HealthDay News that she doubted the study’s findings and called them “speculation.”

If the authors of the "study" have strong ties to the abortion industry (yes, it is an industry, they make millions out of killing innocent kids), then such a study is suspect to the most!!


We will have to wait till another, more credible study appears, to see if really it's safer to abort than to give birth.


But then again, even if it would be clinically true, you know that by killing the baby, that position is totally wrong!!

Is Vegetarianism a Heresy? It might be as well!!!

By Sebastian Moll
Theological Faculty of the University of Mainz
Germany
January 2012

Modern vegetarians often refer to theological terminology such as “reverence for life” or “respecting creation” when defending their position. Ironically, in the Early Church the situation is exactly the other way around. Abstaining from meat is considered a sign of heresy. In the Canons of the Council of Ancyra (314), it is stated: “It is decreed that among the clergy, presbyters and deacons who abstain from meat shall taste of it, and afterwards, if they shall so please, may abstain. But if they disdain it, and will not even eat herbs served with meat, but disobey the canon, let them be removed from their order.” While never included into Church Law, this anathema is confirmed by several later councils, such as the Council of Braga (Portugal, 561), at which the anathema is expanded to include clergy and lay people alike.

Many heretical groups in early Christianity indeed practiced vegetarianism, for example the Marcionites and the Manicheans. Traditional scholarship attributes this behavior to just another form of asceticism. But if the councils wanted to condemn radical asceticism, why is there no anathema for people who abstain from alcohol, for example? What is the reason for the special concern with the question of eating meat? Are vegetarians really a threat to Christian orthodoxy?

As a matter of fact, the issue is already raised within the New Testament. In 1. Timotheus 4:1-5, we read:

The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.

The irony is conspicuous: whereas today respecting creation implies above all leaving it “untouched,” for the early Christians, it was a sign of disrespect towards God not to make use of his creation and thus a definite sign of heresy. Remember the careful distinction: according to the above mentioned council decree, it is perfectly all right to abstain from meat if you simply don’t like it. After all, de gustibus non est disputandum. However, if you abstain from it because you consider it somehow impure, you sin against the Creator.

How did this shift of perception happen? Perhaps the answer lies within a little nuance: the Bible speaks of thankfulness towards the Creator; today one tends to speak of respecting creation. Towards an abstract entity the most one can offer is respect; thankfulness, however, is a feeling one can only have towards a person – and the presentee will always consider refusing the gift as insulting.

Christianity often has been reproached for the fixation on man and his exalted position within creation. It was above all Charles Darwin who caused this worldview to alter. Christian belief always assumed that animals were created for man’s sake and thus allowed for the above mentioned perception of treating them as gifts. By pointing out that many of these animals existed long before man, this form of thankfulness was shattered to the core.

Far be it from me to question the theory of evolution at this point! However, there is something true and beautiful in the Christian concept of thankfulness. For thankfulness has a fascinating double effect: it promotes self-confidence and humility at the same time – self-confidence, because I feel valued by the gift; humility, because I feel the dependence on somebody else. Thus, thankfulness is by far not the worst basis for modern food ethics.

It is the tragedy of life that our food consists of annihilated life, no matter if you are a meat eater, vegetarian, or vegan. This very tragedy, this brokenness of human existence, the condition between paradise and damnation – this is the great topic of the book of books. Man lives in this tragedy like any other creature on this planet, but he is the only one aware of it. That is the burden which he once took from the tree of knowledge and which he has been carrying until this very day.

Talk about Guilt by Association

Darth Vader was predestined to be bad.

Jewish cursing of Jewish Christian converts? Something not heard of lately

Interesting essay where the issue of Jews cursing Jews who become christians is taken.

I suggest that we need to address this evidence with immense caution, admitting that while it is abundantly clear that the birkat haminim eventually was, in its medieval forms, a curse of Christians, we simply cannot document this in the period of its putative origins in the late first or early second century CE. It therefore cannot be identified with any certainty as a player in the “partings of the ways,” although it certainly served later to reinforce the boundary between the two communities.

Have a read of the whole essay.

If only Obama or Newt would have the decency Representative Giffords has.

Obama, Newt, Rommey, et. al. think that by doing what they are doing, they are doing the country a favour.

If they had the decency of Grabielle Giffords to step down, their names would go down in history as decent people. In the meantime, they are going down as the self aggrandisers that they are.

Why can't the American people praise virtue where it is present?

A good quote

Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat. Sartre.

Autistic sixth-grader suffers videotaped beating at a bus stop in Cecil County

How can our society fall to such a low. First, "conservatives" supporting a guy to be president who is willing to live in an open marriage, it should not surprise us.

What are the parents teaching their children? What morals?


Autistic sixth-grader suffers videotaped beating at a bus stop in Cecil County

Washing sins with cold water. As if the blood of Jesus wasn't enough!!

For the Russian Orthodox, they have a tradition that if they go into the cold water on Epiphany (their Epiphany, was this last week),hat by going into the water, one of the benefits they get is that their sin will be forgiven.

Just another example as to how wrong people are, and how they try to save themselves, and don't rely on the grace and mercy of God through Jesus.

Total disregard for Jesus' sacrifice.

Ephesians 1:7New International Version (NIV)⁷ In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace

What really bothers me, is that apparently, even their priest are ignorant of the work of Jesus, and still go down themselves into the water.

Total disgrace, and an insult to their "vocation".

Obama Administration just became American Christianity's worst enemy.

President Obama seems to be very desperate, since he is leaning towards the liberal camp in order to get more votes.

Obama Admin. Gives Church-Affiliated Institutions 1 Year to Comply to Birth Control Coverage Rule - Urban Christian News

Two ways of reading Scripture. The second one is the better one, but the least liked

Who is your best friend, the world, or Jesus?

It is very easy to be a friend of the world, isn’t it? The world offers us everything we want, material things, entertainment, and sometimes even some sentimental things. But we read that if we are friends with the world, we become enemies of God!

Sometimes, we can come to the conclusion that the world is a better friend than God. The world doesn’t seem to required or demand anything from us, rather, seems to be very good at giving if we accept its way of thinking and living. Jesus may look to be a very demanding person, cf. John 14:15 “If you love me, you will keep my commands”. Isn’t friendship a two-way relationship? Well, it seems if you are a friend of Jesus, you must not be a friend of the world.

What can the world offer us that is better than what Jesus offers? Jesus offers to us eternal life, and he offers us real peace, not temporal and illusory peace, cf. John 14:” ²⁷ Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

What the world offers us is temporal, Jesus offers us eternal life, and his love, that fulfils way more than what the world does. Let’s be friends with God, since it will pay up in this life and the next.

An interesting reason why you should follow my blog

I found this quote on tumblr.com, and wanted to share it with you.

Your life is meaningless without following this blog.

3,000 babies die a day, not from hunger, not from neglect, but from abortion.

"Abortion is as American as Apple pie"-The Culture of Death Finds a Voice.

By Albert Mohler.

Abortion is now America’s most common surgical procedure performed on adults. As many as one out of three women will have at least one abortion. In some American neighborhoods, the number of abortions far exceeds the number of live births.

Most Americans will pay little attention to the 38th anniversary of the infamous Roe v. Wade decision. In 1973 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that a woman has a constitutional right to arrange the killing of the unborn life within her. Since that decision was handed down, more than 50 million babies have been aborted, at a rate of over 3,000 each day.

One of the most chilling aspects of all this is the sense of normalcy in American life. Abortion statistics pile up from year to year, and each report gets filed. Moral sentiment on the issue of abortion has shifted discernibly in recent years, as ultrasound images and other technologies deliver unquestionable proof that the unborn child is just that — a child. Nevertheless, the larger picture of abortion in America is basically unchanged.

A middle position would require pro-lifers to accept that the deaths of some unborn children are acceptable, and abortion rights activists to accept that some decisions for abortion are wrong. Given the logic of their positions, there is no means of compromise.With predictable regularity, cultural authorities call for the emergence of a moderating position between the pro-life and pro-abortion positions. But efforts to achieve a stable compromise on the abortion issue are doomed to failure. The two positions hold irreconcilable views of reality. The pro-life movement holds that the central issue is the unborn child’s right to live. Abortion activists have staked their entire case on the claim that the only determinative issue is the woman’s unrestricted right to choose.

In recent years, some on the pro-choice side of the controversy have called for abortion proponents to use language indicating that abortion is a painful and wrenching, but sometimes necessary procedure, and to accept that some reasons for abortion are just not sufficient. Nevertheless, this is received as a call for treason within the abortion rights movement, and these voices are regularly sidelined.

At the same time, there has been an effort to protect abortion with euphemism and evasion. Abortion rights activists speak of being pro-choice, not pro-abortion. The unborn child is reduced to a fetus, or a bundle of cells. Abortion clinics are described as women’s health centers.

There are some abortion activists who will not join that bandwagon. With chilling candor, they defend abortion as abortion, they defend the decision to abort as a morally superior decision, and they lament the evasiveness of their colleagues in the abortion rights movement.

Just recently, Merle Hoffman, a major voice in the abortion rights movement and founder of Choices, a major center for abortions in New York City, has written a memoir,Intimate Wars. In telling her story, Hoffman calls for her colleagues in the abortion industrial complex to defend abortion as a moral choice.

Abortion is the ultimate act of empowering women, she argues. “The act of abortion positions women at their most powerful, and that is why is is so strongly opposed by many in society,” she asserts.

A central portion of her memoir deals with the abortion rights movement’s attempt to defend abortion in the face of pro-life arguments that the fetus has a right to life.

“The pro-choice movement had to find a way to navigate these narratives,” she explains. “The simplest option was to negate the claims of the opposition. And so many pro-choice advocates claimed that the fetus was not alive, and that abortion was not the act of terminating it. They chose to de-personalize the fetus, to see it as amorphous residue, to say that it was only ‘blood and tissue.’”

As she explains, the pro-life movement thought that, if women really knew what abortion was — the killing of an unborn human being — they would decide to keep their babies. She rejects the argument.

Hoffman argues that woman do know what an abortion is. Abortion does stop a beating heart and that it is not “just like an appendectomy.” Her conclusion is that women know that abortion is “the termination of potential life.”

She then makes this statement:

“They knew it, but my patients who made the choice to have an abortion also knew they were making the right one, a decision so vital it was worth stopping that heart. Sometimes they felt a great sense of loss of possibility. In the majority of cases, they felt a great sense of relief and the power that comes from taking responsibility for one’s own life.”

Rarely do we see abortion defended in such unvarnished terms — “a decision so vital it was worth stopping that heart.” Merle Hoffman goes on to explain how she can speak of abortion so directly. She has, she tells us, no conception that life is sacred.

“Abortion is as American as apple pie.” Hoffman made that statement in a recent interview about her book. She laments that abortion is the cause of shame in some women and that shame attaches itself to abortion in the large culture, even now. In her view, if women would start talking more honestly and directly about their abortions, the shame would be removed and women would discuss their abortions like they speak of “a bikini wax.”

Is Merle Hoffman right? Is abortion “as American as apple pie?” To our great shame, she has a right to make that claim. How can it be refuted when abortion on demand has been legal in this country for almost forty years, when one out of three American women will have an abortion, when within some communities far more babies die by abortion than are born?

In Merle Hoffman the Culture of Death has found a new voice. Almost forty years after Roe v. Wade, abortion remains a central part of the nation’s moral landscape. Over 50 million unborn children have been aborted within the span of just one generation.

A titanic clash of absolutes is taking place in full view, and this clash indicates just how much work remains to be done in the great effort to protect the dignity of every single human life. As those who contend for the sanctity and dignity of each human life try to reach the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens, others are at work as well. If they have they way, Americans will one day openly speak of abortion as nothing more shameful than a bikini wax.

3 ways of reading scripture

This is what I wrote in my church's newsletter, and was based on a previous sermon. If you want to hear the sermon, you will find it on this blog.

Last week I stated three manners to read Scripture. The Intellectual (for our own knowledge of the text), the Spiritual (what the text is telling me) and the Ethical (what the text tells me to apply it to my fellow human beings). An example of this can be seen in Mark 1:1-11.

Intellectually, we find out how Jesus was baptized, and how we know that John was the prophet promised from the book of Malachi. Without that information, we would be asking how do we know that John the Baptist was who he said he was, and why do we practice baptism.

Spiritually, we can be sure Jesus comes from God, since God the Father affirms his ministry from heaven. This brings assurance to all Christians, because we know that Jesus’ ministry if approved by God, and that the Holy Spirit is with him. Also, we see, right there at the beginning of the story, the blessed Trinity.

Ethically. I was told that this was difficult to extrapolate from this text. My take on this text starts from the view that we are all sinners, and Christians are baptized sinners. At their Baptism, they are brought to new life. We are to treat others according to this new life given.

I hope that this helps you in your bible reading.

Make me a bishop, or I will sue. Gay priest wants to be a bishop, no matter how

When people see ordination more as a right, and not like a privilege, there must be something wrong with them. But even worst when there's a person who is living or promoting a sinful lifestyle, and yet, demands to be ordained. This is exactly the case of The Very (I)Reverend Jeffrey John, Dean of St Albans. The Daily Mail reports:

A controversial gay dean has threatened to take the Church of  England to court after he was blocked from becoming a bishop.The Very Rev Jeffrey John, Dean of St Albans, has instructed an eminent employment lawyer to complain to Church officials after being rejected for the role of Bishop of Southwark.Sources say the dean, one of the most contentious figures in the Church, believes he could sue officials under the Equality Act 2010, which bans discrimination on the grounds of sexuality. Such a case could create a damaging new rift within the CoE.

See how this works. We all remember how Gene Robinson was elected the first practicing homosexual priest by the Episcopal Church USA (ECUSA). The leaders in that "church" say that they were led by the Holy Spirit to take such a decision (I wonder how the Holy Spirit will contradict himself so blatantly, but then again, the ECUSA are like the Mormons, they believe in a different Holy Spirit as it seems). Now, it seems that they don't need the guidance of an spirit, these people want to get ordained, because it is, apparently, their right!

Dr John was at the centre of a storm in 2003 when forced to step down as Bishop of Reading by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams after it became known that he was in a gay, though celibate, relationship. The furore fuelled a bitter civil war within the Anglican Church that has dominated Dr Williams’s decade in office.The dean was again a cause of infighting in 2010 when he was a candidate for Bishop of Southwark. A respected theologian and former canon at Southwark Cathedral, he had strong backing from senior Church liberals and it was said even David Cameron was supportive.

David Cameron? Isn't he supposed to be from the Conservative Party? Anyway, he is a politician, therefore, no real moral position. But Dr. John, has already being a bishop before, but needed to step down because of his gay celibate relationship. Ok, let's say he was truly celibate, it seems that he was seeking affirmation, and didn't get it, so he was diposed.

But this time around, he is not taking things sitting down, he is taking action:

Dr John has instructed Alison Downie, partner and head of employment at London lawyers Goodman Derrick, to write to the Commission to suggest it risks breaching gay equality laws if it is blocking the dean over his homosexuality

Well, I wonder if he is in a homosexual relationship today. The issue with this man is that he doesn't care if the Bible bars him, if he is practicing homosexual, from practicing ministry, period.

I Corinthians 6:⁹ Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men ¹⁰ nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. ¹¹ And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. 

We have a lot of other sins, but in this post, I want to single out the sin of homosexuality, and how this man is so blind, that he wants the position of bishop, and he has actually cut himself from the body of Christ, but promoting such a lifestyle in the church.

So there you have it, somebody demanding to be ordained, or else, he will go to the courts. He is so blind that he can't see that God is not going to call him, unless the Church of England follows this new spirit that ECUSA is following.

Totally shocking, and amazing how blind people have become!!

Brad Gregory discusses The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society by Harvard Press

I am intending to buy this book.

I have always wished for the time when we will look at the Reformation with so much romanticism, but with a cool head, and recognise it as a historical occasion, not without God's hand of course, but as a product of Western European culture. It never touched the Orthodox Church, or other churches where Western Europeans were not involved.

If you want, you can hear also the podcast included, it will make for very interesting listening.

Brad Gregory discusses The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society by Harvard Press

The top 100 products on Amazon

Just for those who want to know which items are the ones that sell the most on amazon.com, here you can have a look.

This may say where our interests lie. I have to say, I only buy books from Amazon, and the occasional item my daughters ask.

Well, have a look. You may have bought some of the stuff there as well.

Dumb criminals. Woman calls the cops after finding out that her cocaine was really sugar!!! Stupidity at its best!!

Podomatic is giving tips for podcast gear

In the ever search to give everybody a different choice of gear, according to their needs and situation, I offer to you the gear recommended by Podomatic, if you choose to use their services to create your podcasts.

If this is for you, take a look.

Tennis and same sex marriage? Yes, you read right, for some, they should go together

Tennis and same sex marriage have become an issue here in Australia, that is holding the annual Australian Open Tennis tournament.

Australia's greatest female tennis player, Margaret Court, said in an interview to Reuters that she opposed same sex marriage:

Tennis great Margaret Court told Reuters on Wednesday she was sad her religious views were being used as fuel for a planned protest at next week's Australian Open, but said she remained staunchly opposed to same-sex marriage. 

Activists are calling for people attending the year's first grand slam event, starting on Monday, to unfurl "rainbow flags" at the Margaret Court Arena, the third show court at Melbourne Park, named after the Australian.

So one person does not agree with same sex marriage, they target the Australian Open with protest. They ruin the experience to many, because they can't offer the right of opinion to one individual. Disgusting.

But it is my opinion (yes, I am entitled to have one) that Court has been singled out because of her faith:

Court, a 24-times grand slam singles champion and a pastor at the Victory Life Centre church in Perth, has long opposed same-sex marriage but sparked a fierce backlash from retired women's champions Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King, both homosexuals, when she reiterated her views in a Western Australian newspaper recently.

She is a pastor, who is allowed to make her views public. She continues:
Court was quoted describing advocacy of same-sex marriage as promoting "unhealthy" and "unnatural" unions.

"To dismantle this sole definition of marriage and try to legitimise what God calls abominable sexual practices that include sodomy, reveals our ignorance as to the ills that come when society is forced to accept law that violates their very own God-given nature of what is right and what is wrong," the newspaper quoted her as saying.
Court yesterday told Reuters that she stuck by her views on same-sex marriage but denied she was anti-gay.
"I actually love homosexual people," the 69-year-old said in a telephone interview. "I do not have anything against them. It's just my view [about gay marriage] and it's in the scriptures ... The Bible will always be the TV guide to my life.
"I believe marriage is something between a man and a woman."

She believes what's marriage has been for the last 5,000 yrs, and suddenly, she is bullied by a minority who wants to rule the majority!! Is this democracy?

"Minority groups can have their views [but] as soon as a Christian stands up it's not allowed," she said.

You got that right!!! Christians stand up for their beliefs, and are vilified in the media. What makes me more upset, that some so-called 'christians' say that we, the majority who are trying to keep God's laws, should make way for these people who want to rule over us. Here in Australia, the Greens, a minority party, is moving the Labour Party into accepting gay marriage, but they are the junior coalition partner. But the Labor Party, is such a party without a backbone, they are willing to bend before the Greens, on this issue, and others.


In a following news item, Court was quoted again. I think she properly represents how the gay lobby works:

Last week, Court, 69, reportedly said: "Politically correct education has masterfully escorted homosexuality out from behind closed doors, into the community openly and now is aggressively demanding marriage rights that are not theirs to take.
"The fact that the homosexual cry is, 'We can't help it, as we were born this way,' as the cause behind their own personal choice is cause for concern."

I commend Margaret Court for saying the truth, and standing up for it. If we let those who oppose truth to silence it, it is homosexuality today, what's tomorrow? Human freedom of thought?


Good on you pastor.