Saturday, July 27, 2024

Caring, Not Just Voting


 

Caring, Not Just Voting

 

 

Caring, Not Just Voting[This essay was composed in 2016 by our friend Viktor and was translated into German. The version below is a Google back-translation from German into English with just a few corrections. Viktor mentions support for mothers with new babies: the best form would be for churches to create such ministries!]

With regard to the upcoming [2016] elections in the USA, it is interesting to see to what extent the two candidates represent the moral values of a society. An American political scientist from the University of Madison, WI describes the situation as follows:

Many people do not agree with the election platform of either the Democrats or the Republicans. The Democrats are a long-established Catholic party. But who should a Catholic vote for today? It is our duty to vote, but neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump meet our expectations. Americans do not see either of them as qualified enough to take the position of president. The idea that one should choose the lesser evil, or that one candidate knows better how to deal with Putin, is uncomfortable for many.

In the end, laws are made by the senators. We call ourselves a democracy but do we really call the representatives to tell them our wishes? We Americans have the power to influence our politicians. We should tell them what they should stand for, not the other way around. Often it is about making the maximum profit. Our American consumerism leads to nothing but selfishness. We are so preoccupied with ourselves that we have become blind to how we can really change society. The presidential candidates behave according to this very American norm. For example, we kill children and soon old people too, just to be able to live a comfortable life. Many people think our system is sick because voters rarely exercise their rights. We no longer know who we can vote for. Maybe we need a third party.

We rarely ask ourselves whether we are fighting the right battle. The most important question is, what are we doing to change society so that it stands up for children instead of killing them in the womb? We must work to build a child-friendly society. Don't we have any personalities left who try to live according to the laws given to us by God and love children? If someone is against abortion, they are immediately told they are ultra-conservative and that women's rights must be protected. "Mothers should have the right to self-determination. Caring for children enslaves them."

Where are the moral values that make up a society? We allow a mother three weeks of maternity leave and say that our economy can no longer afford it. But isn't it about a child who, as an adult, will contribute his talents and labor? A father has to work 16 hours a day to feed his family reasonably well. We prefer to produce in China because it is cheaper there. In doing so, we have destroyed our entire middle class. Large families are the mainstay of a society. But today we have single parents who work several jobs to make ends meet. Statistics show that poverty and hunger are increasing in such households. We need more and more food cards for the poorer population.

In the past, I mean in the old days, in the Bible, people talked about one denarius as a daily wage. That was enough to feed a family and also gave the father time to spend with his loved ones. And today? What can you get with 9 dollars an hour? You can't feed a family with that. To ensure that he can provide for his family, a father must earn at least 20 dollars an hour. I can give many more examples and would like to pick out just two here to give an insight into the current situation:

What options does a woman have when she is pregnant? I knew a woman who had a job as a shoe salesman. After the birth of her child, she was given 3 weeks of maternity leave. That is the time she has here in the USA. In our godless society, I wonder what a woman is supposed to do after 3 weeks. She is forced back to work after the birth of her child. What is she supposed to do with the child? If she doesn't work, she loses her health care. So-called day care centers for infants cost between $1,200 and $1,600 a month. That's not as much as this woman earns. What options does she have? Take the child to work?

I worked in a financial firm. They had a special room for mothers to nurse their children every two hours. This room was always empty. I was in it often, and then I wondered how the babies were supposed to get to the mother? They couldn't bring them to work, and they had no one to bring them from home to nurse them. Who was supposed to look after the child? It was all just a ruse – basically no one asked where the mother would keep her baby at work.

Do we expect a child to be able to take care of itself after 3 weeks and that after that short time it has acquired the necessary emotional, physiological and psychological maturity? A child should be able to stay with its mother for at least a year. At the moment, this has nothing to do with charity. It is more a matter of what nature dictates to us. Doesn't every child have a right to motherly warmth and security? Even a baby's immune system needs that much time to develop.

So far, there has been no presidential candidate who has offered a humane or economic solution in this case. It is difficult to describe a society as Christian if it does not strive to support young mothers. It is easy to verbally express oneself for or against abortion. But that is not what it is really about. It is about what we as citizens do for our children. If we supported young mothers and stood up for young families, they would have no reason to abort a child.

Then the average age in our society would not be increasing. Then we wouldn't have to worry about not finding caregivers for our grandparents and old people's homes putting senile and those seriously in need of care on the street as soon as they become too expensive for Medicare to insure them. All of this has happened here. The aging of society is not only an economic problem, but also a security risk. In one sense, immigrants are a stroke of luck. But how often do we hear that highly educated immigrants le who could be of great benefit to us, have the greatest difficulties. I know many doctors with degrees from elite universities who are not allowed to work here and instead have to wait years for their green card. Politicians then simply say that it is a law and no one can change it.

As one of the wealthiest countries in the world, do we really not have the economic means to provide better care for our fellow human beings? There is so much money involved in the presidential election. I personally can think of a very practical model: we have so many old people living alone. Why don't we ask them if they would take a young mother into their home for a while. The young woman could look after the people and be with her child at the same time. Such help would benefit both. In this sense, it is not so important which candidate is the better successor to Justice Scalia. Because it is we, personally, who can do something to make America more humane. We cannot shift our responsibility onto politicians and their laws. Whether abortion is legal or illegal ultimately does not help the mothers affected, who need our personal involvement in this situation the most.

You can read and download the whole article at https://agape-biblia.org/PeaceOnEarth/, and share it!

 

Friday, July 12, 2024

Ukraine's Fork In The Road


 

Ukraine's Fork In The Road

 

 

village church in Ukraine Our friend Viktor from Wisconsin, now stuck in Ukraine, was working on a new project to detect landmines remotely, without risk to human life and equipment, using a neutron generator and gamma ray detectors from drones. This would speed up one-hundred-fold the de-mining of war zones in Ukraine. But the project ran out of funding, so now he has no source of income. He writes – "If we pray and get funds to order parts for a neutron generator and gamma ray detector, then things will start happening."

He also shares with us both the positive and negative sides of the effects of Russia's attack on Ukraine on the civilian population. A priest he met has a vision to care for disabled veterans of the war, as shown in the above photo of a village church. This would be a good fit for our plans to build Agape Restoration Communities in Ukraine. War always has innocent victims and unintended consequences: what may start out as noble motives of self-defense can degenerate into the defenders adopting forms of violence as bad as the attackers. Ukraine is not merely recruiting its men to fight against Russia, it is adopting semi-criminal tactics using press gangs to kidnap Ukrainian men, snatching them right off the street and sending them to the front.

"Recently in Odesa, there was a fight between press gangs and doctors of emergency services. Everything started when a gentleman who was severely beaten up at the press gang location called for emergency vehicle. When doctors showed up, they checked the patient and discovered that he had indeed been beaten up. Intead of letting the patient be taken to the local hospital, the press gang blocked the doctors and the patient for 4 hours or so. Doctors called their coworkers in Odesa and the help came: over 20 ER vehicles showed up with sirens blaring.

"The press gang started to repeatedly spray tear gas into the eyes of one of the doctors or vehicles drivers. The response was understandable: a baseball bat in the hands of the victim, however just to scare away the attackers. More press gang members in civilian clothes jumped at a few doctors and started beating them up. Just looking at the skills of some of the doctors, one can see their professional wresling experience, thank God. More doctors ran to defend their coworkers. The entire situation turned into a brawl."

"The result was that doctors and patient hostages were released by press gangs, good won over evil this time. Just for statistics, according the mayor of Odesa, in about a 9-month period, over 600 emergency doctors and drivers quit their jobs. The situation in Odesa is difficult because of press gang criminal activity with impunity.

"In addition, I visited a few smaller food stores and asked about food deliveries. Because many of the semi truck drivers and van drivers were kidnapped by the criminal press gangs, certain kinds of foods cannot be delivered to the stores. It looks like cops, who are supposed to protect the civilians, have teamed up with press gangs for kidnappings. According to insider information, the press gangs have a certain quota, as well as the cops. If they do not fulfill it, they are told they will be sent to the front instead. A friend of mine paid $6k just to get out of a van after he was kidnapped. He is selling his car now to pay back the money he borrowed."

Watch this YouTube video about the situation in Ukraine degenerating into the use of Soviet-style tactics: the speaker Drozhdov is Ukrainian, so tap the "gear" symbol to turn on subtitles, then select English or another language. Here's another video of a press gang member trying to snatch a Ukrainian Orthodox priest, and a third video of a mother protecting her children by fending off a press gang. Ukraine is facing a fork in the road: it must choose to behave like a civilized Christian society, or degenerate into the same old soviet mentality of inhumane brutality. Let us pray for the former!

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