Well, if there ever was a good time for good news, it’s Christmas time. Now is the time for everyone to remember that our biggest problem – our separation from God problem – has already been solved, because God stepped into history. And if you live in a country that is going in the wrong direction – like the UK – then it can be a very good thing to remember. And that’s exactly what 60% of young people in Britain are planning to do.

Here’s the story from GB News.

It says:

Young Britons are increasingly turning to Christianity as they are “crying out or cultural and moral confidence”, Quentin Letts has told GB News.

Reacting to staggering new data, the parliamentary sketchwriter said UK leaders are “shying away from the Church” and Britain “doesn’t stand for anything anymore”.

New polling by Tearfund has shown that 60 per cent of Gen Z Britons (born between 1997 and 2012) are intending on attending a church service this Christmas.

The data also found that 45 per cent of British adults are planning to attend church this Christmas, which is a sharp rise from recent years.

The article notes that that 60% number is DOUBLE the number of people going to church who are from older generations – boomers and up. As I blogged about previously, it’s mostly young boys who are becoming more conservative and returning to church. Surveys show that young women are becoming more leftist, and less religious.

The article states that the youngsters are interested in two things: 1) formal church services with “smells and bells” and / or 2) conservative preaching with truth and condemnation, i.e. – “fire and brimstone”. I think this is exactly what’s lacking in the UK these days. But I don’t want this to be a political post.

I’ve now hit the time that I was thinking about for early retirement, and it’s caused me to make a few adjustments myself. And part of that is making sure that I get steady doses of conservative preaching and theology. Sometimes, when you are working full-time and fussing about investments and house repairs and chores, it is hard to find time to read the Bible and listen to sermons and Sunday school. So, I am trying to redeem my weights and cardio time with Bible teaching.

For this, I have turned to Mike Winger, and his wonderful YouTube channel. So far, I have been working my way through his playlist on Calvinism, and when he explains the meaning of all the texts, and makes a very strong case, I just get very excited to understand what the Bible is saying.

Here are the three parts that made me say “WOW!”:

• Calvinism, Arminianism, Election & Predestination: Romans 8:29-30, 33
• Non-Calvinist Interpretation of Romans 9
• Why God Hardens Hearts: Romans 9:17-24

And today (Monday), I watched this one:

• Unbiblical stuff the Catholic Church teaches: Mary, Indulgences, Eucharist, Priests, 7 Sacraments

Now, my point in posting 3 lectures critical of Calvinism, and one 1 lecture critical of Catholicism is not to offend everyone. It’s just because this is how I think boys like to approach religion, with lots of Bible teaching and thinking about history and what the meaning of texts are. Boys aren’t think about the social aspects of “religion” – the family gatherings and the getting along and the social aspects. Boys are thinking about truth and disagreements, and why people disagree. And that’s why I picked these to watch myself! To understand why people disagree. To find out who is right.

I’ll just say that I learned a lot of things that I just did not know before when I watched this 4 lectures, and it just made me think that the Bible is really clever, and well worth reading. It kind of re-captured the feelings I had when I was reading the Bible as a young man, and gathering up all the answers from the text, and trying to put them into practice.

If there is one thing that comes out of these Mike Winger lectures, it’s that Christianity is not something that you should take passively, as a spectator sport. It’s not something to accept uncritically from others. But it’s also not something you should do without considering the study of others. I guess I would say that each person has to investigate for themselves, and part of being a good investigator is listening to the reasoning of other people.

I guess as Christians, we often want to make things simple for people, maybe because we don’t want simple people to feel dumb. I think that’s a mistake when we are dealing with young people. Young people want to know if these things are true, and they want to understand the meaning of the text. It can be tempting to brush aside their questions. But a much better idea is to enourage them to dig into the meaning of the text and have reasons for their beliefs.

Everyone is falling over themselves to say “everyone is equally right” these days – especially in the UK.  Feelings are seen by many as more important than truth. I think Christians need to study harder, debate and disagree instead.

One of the reasons why I have an alias for my speaking and writing is that I have seen people in the workplace go after Christians and conservatives who spoke out on controversial issues. It’s not unusual for people to go after Christians and conservatives on issues like evolution, global warming, LGBT, BLM, etc. And by go after, I mean cancel them, fire them, make them pay money.

One of the people who tracks this sort of ideological pressuring of Christians and conservatives is Tyler O’Neil, who writes for the Daily Signal. He had a recent article posted where he talked about a case of cancel culture going on in Cleveland, Ohio. Now, you might think “Ohio is a red state” but cities like Cleveland, Toledo, Columbus and even Cincinnati are pretty blue. And Christians and conservatives living in these cities don’t have the same freedom to speak as people in Nashville, TN or Birmingham, AL.

Anyway, here’s the story, which concerns the attempted cancelling of Aaron Baer, president of the Center for Christian Virtue:

[M]ore than 100 LGBTQ+ leaders and organizations across Ohio signed an open letter denouncing the City Club for hosting Baer and urging the venue to “cancel or modify this forum in a way that does not platform an organization that has been designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBTQIA2S+ hate group.”

The letter makes four demands: cancel the event or include an LGBTQ+ activist; replace Moulthrop with a likely pro-LGBTQ+ “external moderator”; “disavow platforming hate speech”; or “structure the event so that diverse and impacted perspectives are not only present but also meaningfully centered.”

More than 20 organizations—including HRC Cleveland, the LGBT Community Center of Greater Cleveland, Equality Ohio, GLAAD, and Plexus LGBT & Allied Chamber of Commerce—signed the letter, which aims to “prevent extremism from going unchallenged” and suggests a distinction between “facilitating dialogue and platforming organized hate.”

“Free speech is a cornerstone of our democracy,” Dwayne Steward, CEO and executive director of Equality Ohio, told The Daily Signal. Yet he argued that Baer’s message is “rooted in oppression and erasure.”

That part always makes me laugh – the invocation of “tolerance”, “inclusion”, “diversity”, “equality” and “free speech” by secular left fascists. I have seen this so many times with my own eyes at university, in the FT100 IT workplace, and these speeches by left-wing activists. They love to use these words, but then they follow it up with actions that show no respect for the human rights of the people they disagree with. Just look up the stories of the Christian bakers, florists or photographers. Or look up the story of Floyd Lee Corkins and his attempted domestic terrorism at the Family Research Council HQ.

And remember, this is coming just a little while after a high-profile assassination of a well-known conservative Christian by a left-wing assassin. And this combination of cancel culture and domestic terrorist actions is not uncommon among secular leftists.

I have noticed a very strange thing when I talk to regular non-apologetics-equipped Christians at church or at work about how much they advocate for Biblical views about controversial issues. On the one hand, Christians really want me to know that if they were threatened with death for their faith in Jesus, they would totally be ready to die for their faith in Jesus. But, when I look at their social media, it’s filled with non-controversial things. Their travels, their athletic achievements, their sports teams, photos of their kids, etc. So, there is this weird thing going on where we POTENTIALLY have millions of bold martyrs for Christ, but ACTUALLY have a bunch of Christians in hiding.

And listen, I don’t blame these hiding Christians, because I’m careful myself about what I say under my own name, that’s why I have an alias, and probably why I have no wife and no kids (because a wife and kids means you have responsibilities and obligations that keep you from losing your job due to speaking out). What I’m saying is that we need to have laws and policies that make it as easy for the hiding Christians to speak their minds. That’s why we have to get noisy when we see the rights of Christians and conservatives curtailed by bullies from the secular left. There are a lot of people watching who want to know if it is safe, and we have to fight to make it safe for them.

I wish I didn’t have to have an alias. But in order to survive in STEM programs at university, and then in corporate America, I had to have an alias. Some people have lives where they are strong enough financially and well-connected socially that they have what they need to speak out already, and that’s good. But many Christians and conservatives are not safe to speak out without being punished. They are running the calculations, and choosing to stay silent. We need to make it as easy as possible for them to speak their minds, so they can have the impact that they are meant to have.

I was having a conversation with my friend Katy the other day, about whether men are not interested in marrying because they find older women unattractive. I told her that men find older women very attractive, if they are slim and athletic. I left it at that, but I wanted to go on and explain to her why men are declining to  marry, even good Christian men who have good jobs and savings,

My thesis is that men have recognized that the legal system is very much against them, and it is unwise for them to expose themselves to that legal system.

What’s the evidence?

So, on this blog, I have written about how women overall initiate 69% of the divorces that they are involved in. In fact, college-educated women initiate 90% of the divorces they are involved in. And I’ve written about how the sentences for men are 63% more severe than for women, for the exact same crime and criminal record. And I’ve written about how a high number of the accusations of rape or sexual assault by women (20-40 percent) are hoaxes. And I’ve written about how men are often the victims of paternity fraud. Men don’t even have to cohabitate with a woman to be billed for thousands of dollars in alimony and child support. False accusations of child abuse are routinely used in order to eject husbands from their homes, and to get custody of the children (and the child support money that comes with having custody).

I could go on and on, but I hope enough has been said to show what the evidence supports the view that the legal system in America is biased against men.

But wait! There’s another reason. Men have also noticed that women can easily press false accusations, and they suffer virtually no consequences when those accusations are proven false and / or recanted.

Here is a recent example, reported by New York Post:

A Pennsylvania woman who admitted to fabricating kidnapping and rape allegations against a stranger whom she “specifically targeted” because she thought he was “creepy” last year is paying for her lies.

Anjela Borisova Urumova, 20, was sentenced to from 45 days to 23 months in Bucks County Correctional Facility on Tuesday by Judge Stephen A. Corr, according to the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office.

The article notes that she “pleaded guilty to seven misdemeanor counts, including tampering with or fabricating physical evidence and false reports.” As a result of her lies, the accused spent 31 days in prison.

Three things. First, he is married:

Pierson, 41, was present with his wife in court Tuesday but did not wish to make a statement during the sentencing since the ordeal has been “too emotional” for him and his family, the DA’s office said.

Second, the false accuser recanted her accusation:

She then went to the police and accused Pierson as her attacker before eventually fessing up to the tale.

Third, she judged him as evil based solely on her feelings (intuitions, first impressions) about his appearance:

Urumova told investigators that she “specifically targeted” Pierson because she had seen him and his blue Ford F-150 pickup truck in the area before and thought he was “creepy.”

I asked Grok what the average sentence is for a false accusation of rape, compared to a real conviction of rape, and it said:

Data on sentences for false accusations of rape or sexual assault by women in the USA is limited. Available studies and legal cases suggest most convictions result in light punishments, often suspended sentences, fines, or no jail time. Estimating based on available information, including cases with zero jail time, the average sentence is approximately 2 months (0.17 years).

For men convicted of rape in the USA, the average prison sentence is 212 months (17.67 years), per 2019 USSC data.

So, women get “approximately 2 months” for a false accusation of rape, and men get “average prison sentence is 212 months” for a rape conviction.

False accusations deter good men from marrying

Even if a good man is very clever about choosing the right women to be his wife, he would still be vulnerable to false accusations from women in the workplace, and other places. It’s not the Christian homeschooling future wife in the house who is the problem. It’s the radical feminist single mother in the office who is the problem. The bitter, angry one with the 200+ body count, and the 200K of student loan debt for a degree in misandry.

And the worst part of this is that when you tell pro-marriage people about these false accusations, they dismiss it. I’ve been told “why would you make decisions off of evidence and calculations? One day you’ll meet a nice girl and fall in love” It’s terrifying to be dealing with people who approach major life decisions by feelings and wilful blindness. They try to goad you into bad decisions by shaming you.

Imagine if someone tried to sell you a lemon at the car dealership by attacking your masculinity. “I dare you to buy this used car without getting it checked out by a mechanic!” You would have to be really lacking in education and work experience to think that the “man up!” approach would work on a man. And yet, when I talk to pro-marriage people, this is their only argument. They scream “Get Married!” and then refuse to address any of the evidence of the threats posed by feminism, such as false accusations.

Who is going to support the good wife and good children if the man is in prison because of a false accusation? Not the pro-marriage advocates. And the younger generation of women are sliding further and further into secularism and leftism, making the risk of false accusation even higher. Why would a wise man expose himself to these risks? Especially when no one wants to fix the problem.

Here’s the bottom line: It’s an enormous deterrent to a good man’s desire to be a husband and father that they are exposed to prison and / or financial ruin because of false accusations. You have to give men a good value proposition if you expect them to go the husband and father route. Good men have other things that they can do with their money and time. Just because you really want them to do your plan with their lives, it doesn’t mean that they can’t find something else to do with their time and money – like focus on serving God. If you want men to marry, then take men’s concerns seriously.