Two Michigan police officers are being hailed for making the decision to buy a car seat for a family in need instead of citing the child’s parents.
Officers Jason Pavlige and James Hodges of Fruitport Township, Michigan, responded to a dispatch call reporting a woman at a local McDonalds holding a baby in her arms in a car’s passenger seat.
The officers observed a minor traffic violation and pulled over the driver, also the father of the 10-month-old girl, on the violation, Hodges, 26, a nearly two-year veteran of the force, told ABC News.
When the officers spoke with the parents, who were not identified, they quickly realized they did not have the resources to purchase a car seat for their daughter.
“They had just recently moved to the area,” Hodges said. “We tried to have them contact family but they don’t have anyone close.
“There were no co-workers, no one who could help them out,” he said.
Instead of issuing the parents a citation, Pavlige and Hodges decided to take action in another way.
“We spoke with each other and made the decision to go get them a car seat so we’d know the kid was safe and that this issue wouldn’t come up again,” Hodges said.
While Pavlige stayed with the family, Hodges went to a local Walmart and purchased a new car seat with money from his and Pavlige’s own pockets. They then installed the car seat and gave the family instructions on how to properly use it.
“The father was, I think, almost in shock,” said Hodges, who declined to say how much the car seat cost. “They didn’t say much but were just very appreciative.”
Hodges and Pavlige’s good deed occurred in February but was publicized just last week after a Walmart employee called the police station to report what the officers had done.
“It was only brought to our attention by a clerk at Walmart who saw it and thought they should be recognized,” Fruitport Township Police Lt. Bruce Morningstar told ABC News. “They were doing it on their own without any recognition.”
Hodges says the incident was just another day on the job in the life of a police officer.
“We made the decision that was what we needed to do to solve the issue,” Hodges said. “When we left we went onto the next call.”
“It’s just part of what police officers do on a daily basis,” he said.
Here is another case that happened last year:
That story is also from Michigan.
Well, I hate to politicize these stories, but I do find it funny that the news media normally makes too much of stories that feed their anti-police agenda, and then when something like this happens, almost nobody reports it. And yet, I think this case represents what the ordinary day-to-day work of a police officer is like. Wouldn’t it be nice if, instead of trying to inflame different groups against each other, the news media tried to bring people together by tell the truth more? There never was any “hands up, don’t shoot”, but this child-seat story really happened. Why don’t they make a big deal out of that?
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson solving a mystery
Here is a post from my friend Eric Chabot. He writes about the earliest historical source for the minimal facts about the resurrection, which is the early creed recorded by Paul in 1 Corinthians: 3-7.
3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
5 and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve.
6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.
7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles,
8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
Just in case you didn’t know, Cephas is Peter, one of Jesus’ closest followers.
The general consensus among scholars is the that creed goes back to within 1-3 years after the death if Jesus, when almost all the eyewitnesses were still around.
The creed
In Eric’s post, he quotes very well-known skeptical historians who affirm each part of the creed.
First, the creed as a whole is respected, even by atheist scholars like John Dominic Crossan:
Paul wrote to the Corinthians from Ephesus in the early 50s C.E. But he says in 1 Corinthians 15:3 that “I handed on to you as of first importance which I in turn received.” The most likely source and time for his reception of that tradition would have been Jerusalem in the early 30s when, according to Galatians 1:18, he “went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas [Peter] and stayed with him fifteen days” (3).
And atheist scholar Robert Funk:
The conviction that Jesus had risen from the dead had already taken root by the time Paul was converted about 33 C.E. On the assumption that Jesus died about 30 C.E., the time for development was thus two or three years at most.” — Robert Funk co-founder of the Jesus Seminar.(5)
Let’s take a look at one of the parts of the creed that is respected by skeptical historians… namely, the early belief that Jesus was resurrected shortly after his death.
The early belief in the resurrection
Skeptical scholar E.P. Sanders:
That Jesus’ followers (and later Paul) had resurrection experiences is, in my judgment, a fact. What the reality was that gave rise to the experiences I do not know. “I do not regard deliberate fraud as a worthwhile explanation. Many of the people in these lists were to spend the rest of their lives proclaiming that they had seen the risen Lord, and several of them would die for their cause. Moreover, a calculated deception should have produced great unanimity. Instead, there seem to have been competitors: ‘I saw him first!’ ‘No! I did.’ Paul’s tradition that 500 people saw Jesus at the same time has led some people to suggest that Jesus’ followers suffered mass hysteria. But mass hysteria does not explain the other traditions.” “Finally we know that after his death his followers experienced what they described as the ‘resurrection’: the appearance of a living but transformed person who had actually died. They believed this, they lived it, and they died for it. (14)
Skeptical scholar Bart Ehrman:
Historians, of course, have no difficulty whatsoever speaking about the belief in Jesus’ resurrection, since this is a matter of public record. (17)
Why, then, did some of the disciples claim to see Jesus alive after his crucifixion? I don’t doubt at all that some disciples claimed this. We don’t have any of their written testimony, but Paul, writing about twenty-five years later, indicates that this is what they claimed, and I don’t think he is making it up. And he knew are least a couple of them, whom he met just three years after the event (Galatians 1:18-19). (18)
You know, if all you did was give someone his post, I think that would be enough to show people that a more complete investigation of the historical Jesus was certainly a reasonable thing to do. It’s amazing to me that people who grow up at this time when access to the data is so easy do not take the opportunity to look into Christianity.
List of virtually undeniable facts
Finally, below is a list of facts about the historical Jesus that are accepted by ancient historians – Christian, non-Christian, atheist.
These are compiled by non-Christian scholar E.P. Sanders:
From his book “Jesus and Judaism” (1985):
Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist.
Jesus called disciples and spoke of there being twelve.
Jesus confined his activity to Israel.
Jesus was a Galilean who preached and healed.
Jesus engaged in a controversy about the temple.
Jesus was crucified outside Jerusalem by the Roman authorities.
After his death, his followers continued as an identifiable movement.
At least some Jews persecuted at least parts of the new movement.
From his book “The Historical Figure of Jesus” (1993):
Jesus was born c.4 BCE, near the time of the death of Herod the Great;
He spent his childhood and early adult years in Nazareth, a Galilean village;
He was baptized by John the Baptist;
He called disciples;
He taught in the towns, villages, and countryside of Galilee (apparently not the cities);
He preached “the kingdom of God”;
Around the year 30 he went to Jerusalem for Passover;
He created a disturbance in the temple area;
He had a final meal with the disciples;
He was arrested and interrogated by Jewish authorities, specifically the high priest;
He was executed on the orders of the Roman prefect, Pontius Pilate;
His disciples at first fled;
They saw him (in what sense is uncertain) after his death;
As a consequence they believed he would return to found the kingdom;
They formed a community to await his return and sought to win others to faith in him as God’s Messiah.
The way the resurrection of Jesus is presented on TV, you would think that mythical stories about Jesus emerged decades and even centuries after the fact in other parts of the world from where the events happened. But the trouble is that no ancient historian thinks that. Only Hollywood TV producers and movie makers think that. Now, if you are getting your view of the historical accuracy of basic Christian beliefs from television and movies, then don’t be surprised if you are wrong. No one is saying that you have to go to Christian pastors and preachers for the facts, but you should go to the historians. They at least know the minimal facts.
The best way for a skeptic to tackle these issues is, I think, to watch a decent debate on the resurrection of Jesus between two respected scholars. My favorite debate on the resurrection is William Lane Craig versus atheist historian James Crossley. I have a video and a summary already ready made just waiting for you to check it out. Don’t worry, no one will be looking over your shoulder making you change everything your life should you be convinced. Just watch the debate and decide what you are going to do with it on your own. You don’t have to change your whole life overnight. Becoming a Christian is instantaneous and easy to do. Living like a Christian is a process, and it’s between you and God how fast you go. So just see what the facts are to start with and then take it from there.
The story behind America’s love affair with no-fault divorce is a sad and instructive tale. As Baskerville documents, no-fault divorce laws emerged in the United States during the 1970s and quickly spread across the nation. Even though only nine states had no-fault divorce laws in 1977, by 1995, every state had legalized no-fault divorce.
Behind all this is an ideological revolution driven by feminism and facilitated by this society’s embrace of autonomous individualism. Baskerville argues that divorce “became the most devastating weapon in the arsenal of feminism, because it creates millions of gender battles on the most personal level.” As far back as 1947, the National Association of Women Lawyers [NAWL] was pushing for what we now know as no-fault divorce. More recently, NAWL claims credit for the divorce revolution, describing it as “the greatest project NAWL has ever undertaken.”
The feminists and NAWL were not working alone, of course. Baskerville explains that the American Bar Association “persuaded the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws [NCCUSL] to produce the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act.” Eventually, this led to a revolution in law and convulsions in society at large. This legal revolution effectively drove a stake into the heart of marriage itself, with inevitable consequences. In effect, no-fault divorce has become the catalyst for one of the most destructive cultural shifts in human history. Now, no-fault divorce is championed by many governments in the name of human rights, and America’s divorce revolution is spreading around the world under the banner of “liberation.”
Baskerville gets right to the heart of the matter, labeling no-fault divorce as a “misnomer.” In reality, the “no-fault” language was taken from the world of automobile insurance. These new divorce laws did not really remove fault from the context of divorce, but they “did create unilateral and involuntary divorce, so that one spouse may end a marriage without any agreement or fault by the other.” As Baskerville explains, “Moreover, the spouse who divorces or otherwise abrogates the marriage contract incurs no liability for the cost or consequences, creating a unique and unprecedented legal anomaly.”
In many cases, the reality is even worse. In effect, no-fault divorce means that the courts now assist the violator of marriage vows. Any spouse can now demand a divorce for any reason and be assured that the courts will award the divorce–and will often grant disproportionate favor to the party seeking the divorce.
As Judy Parejko, author of Stolen Vows, argues, no-fault divorce means that legislators created an “automatic outcome” in issues of divorce. “A defendant is automatically found ‘guilty’ of irreconcilable differences and is not allowed a defense,” Parejko notes.
Researcher Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, author of the influential book, The Divorce Culture, points to the therapeutic seduction of the culture as a contributing factor. “According to therapeutic precepts,” she explains, “the fault for marital breakup must be shared, even when one spouse unilaterally seeks a divorce.”
In other words, no-fault divorce laws actually assume that both parties are equally at fault, since no party could be innocent. The perverse assumption inherent in this argument is that if any individual is unhappy, someone else must necessarily be at fault. Once no-fault divorce became a reality, spouses found themselves simply informed of the fact that their marriage was effectively over. Many of these spouses were not even aware that the marriage was in trouble–and trouble is not even necessary.
Why did all this happen? How could an institution as fundamental and basic as marriage become transformed in less than a decade’s time? Baskerville insists that no-fault divorce laws were not demanded by the public. “No popular clamor to dispense with divorce restrictions preceded their passage; no public outrage at any perceived injustice provided the impetus; no public debate was ever held in the media.” As Baskerville summarizes: “In retrospect, these laws can be seen as one of the boldest social experiments in history. The result effectively abolished marriage as a legal contract. As a result, it’s no longer possible to form a binding agreement to create a family.”
No-fault divorce is worse than same-sex marriage, and there is almost no support among Christians for taking it on, although my view is that both no-fault divorce and same-sex marriage need to be repealed. I don’t know how we are going to fix this unless Christians start to get serious about marrying well, and for the long-term. But more is needed – we have to make it harder for people to get divorced, and harder for people to get money from the government just for having children outside of marriage. We have to shame behaviors that harm children, and shrink government so that men become more indispensable, and staying married becomes more important to women. (over two-thirds of divorces are initiated by women)
And (in response to a comment below) we should be showing young people the benefits of getting married and staying married – not just for children, but for society as a whole. That’s especially true for young Christians in church – in my experience, the men often don’t see marriage as an exciting enterprise that could make a difference for Christ, and the women often think of marriage as something boring to put off for as long as possible. I think one of the great ways of evangelizing the culture is showing them a romantic marriage, a home that is warm and welcoming, and happy, healthy children who are respectful and hard-working.
No-fault divorce permitted divorce by mutual consent, thus making divorce less acrimonious
We cannot force people to remain married and should not try
No-fault divorce has led men to abandon their wives and children
When couples cannot agree or cooperate about matters like how the children should be raised, a judge must decide according to “the best interest of the child”
Divorce must be made easy because of domestic violence
I hope this clears up the false charge that people who oppose same-sex marriage do so only because of animus towards homosexuals. There are many reasons to oppose same-sex marriage – religious liberty concerns, concerns about the needs of children, public health concerns, and so on. But social conservatives like me are consistent. We oppose no-fault divorce because it harms children, and we oppose unrestricted welfare for single mothers for the same reason, because it pays people to have fatherless children. There are reasons for socially conservative views, it’s not just “dislike”. Only someone who has never been presented with conservative views by conservative scholars would think such things. But that’s what happens to students in universities – it’s just indoctrination.
