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World Views

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What's On Your Book Shelf?

My friend Bill Mehaffey sent me this interesting article by Mihail Neamtu, entitled, "Dostoevsky and the Triumph of Poetry over Ideology." Dostoevsky's literary work's give us insight into understanding the origins of modern atheism, Western nihilism and the logic of the secular age," contends Neamtu. Neamtu discusses," The Brothers Karamazov" as a prime example of Dostoevsky's understanding of the human condition and it's relationship to the theological and philosophical issues of his day. My big take away from reading this article was a reminder of how timeless the books are that we consider to be Classics. They wrestle with the big issues of life that never become outdated and deserve to be read over and over again. 

Posted by Art Flickinger

Lesson From A Bird's Nest

One of life’s lessons learned at a very young age, I will never forget, and that is that life is a precious gift from God. 

My friend’s and I found a robin’s nest full of eggs one day, and would visit the nest on a regular basis to see if the eggs would hatch. I got the bright idea of removing the nest and bringing it in to my second grade’s “show and tell” session, and then thinking, I would put it back afterwards. My ill conceived plan went awry, as I was riding away with the nest on my bicycle, I hit a bump and all the eggs were thrown from the nest and smashed on to the pavement. I realized I had just killed soon to be hatched robins. I was mortified and felt guilty at killing these yet to be born baby robin's. To make matters worse when my friends found out about my misdeed, I was taunted with, “Who killed Cock Robin? Artie killed Cock Robin!”  At that young age I realized what I had done was wrong and needed to pray for forgiveness. So what’s the point of this story? Why am I “fessing-up” to you some 60 years later? Well, it was an opinion piece in the New York Times written by John Irving that brought my story to mind. Irving wrote the book “Cider House Rules,” where he explored the social conscience of the times on abortion. Hailed as a great work by feminist’s, it was made into a movie with the same title,“Cider House Rules.” The movie won an Academy Award as well as a Maggie Award—named after Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, to which the author admits he was most proud of.

If a six year old child can understand the significance of destroying a bird’s egg surely a mature adult can understand the significance of destroying a human fetus. It is wrong and there is no getting around it. I am attaching the article for you to read that is classic dogma for the “right of women” to control their own bodies, by destroying their fetus. One disturbing statement that the author made about pro-lifer's is that we have sanctified the fetus. As Christian's we don’t sanctify anything, God does. Herein lies the difference between the clash of world views.

 Click Here for the Article

Posted by Art Flickinger

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