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The Wintery Knight’s greatest fears about the future

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I was asked recently to explain some of the big fears I have about the future, and I wrote a horrible paranoid screed that probably has scared her away from me for good. So, I thought I would re-write it in a more organized and sensible way.

So, I basically don’t have too many fears about the future as a single guy. I have economic fears about the future, but since I’m a good saver and having been saving all these years, I’m not worried about taking care of me because I’ve got the money to do that. And I don’t think things will get too bad before I die. Basically my fears for myself alone are because young people are being neglected by their working parents, and indoctrinated in the public schools.

Things that public schools teach:

  • taught Darwinism
  • taught sex education
  • taught that capitalism is evil
  • taught global warming alarmism
  • taught anti-Christian views
  • taught religious pluralism
  • taught moral relativism
  • taught postmodernism/skepticism
  • taught that Western civilization is evil
  • taught that America is evil
  • taught that war is never justified
  • taught that traditional marriage is wrong

…not to mention all things they don’t learn that put Christianity, America, capitalism, business, marriage and Western civilization in a positive light. I worry about how they will act and vote and demand entitlements from government to “equalize” their life outcomes after they make self-destructive decisions based on what they learned in school. And many of them are growing up without fathers which brings a whole host of other problems. But I am not too worried about this because I can always pick up and move somewhere else if things get really bad here.

But these fears pale in comparison to my fears about what might happen if I took on marriage and parenting. That’s when things could really go downhill fast, and all the chastity and money in the world won’t save me.

Below I’ll summarize some of the biggest problems:

  • The biggest fear I have about marriage is that my wife will be pressured to abandon the idea that marriage and parenting is about self-sacrificial love of her husband and children in order to please God. That could mean ignoring or not meeting my needs as a man for things like sex and approval. It could also mean just giving up on the children and refusing to protect their worldviews from the outside world, e.g. – the public schools, Hollywood, etc. Maybe she will just become totally disinterested in the threats posed to the children by these enemies? Or undermine my efforts to teach the children theology, apologetics and morality?
  • I am also concerned about increasing encroachment by the state into the education of children. I hear stories about homeschooling being outlawed, about parents not being able to opt children out of anti-Christian educational programs, about children as young as five being put on hate registries for being politically incorrect, and homeschooled children being placed in government-run schools for believing that Christianity is true. My fear is that this trend could get worse to the point where children are seized by the government because they are being taught Biblical Christianity in the home.
  • What if government spends so much money that they end up increasing inflation and raising taxes such that my wife has to go to work, or that I lose my job due to economic decline? Without money, it is almost impossible for us to protect the children from all of the anti-Christian influences we would face. If we took government money or relied on government services (e.g. – health care) then we might even have to comply with government regulations and conditions that would be antithetical to our plans.
  • I am also afraid that I will be charged by something like the Canadian Human Rights Commissions for expressing traditional Christian views in public. In Canada, there is no such thing as free speech. If you cause someone to feel badly with your speech, you will be placed on trial for several years, pay about $100,000 in legal fees, and then you will be convicted, forced to apologize, force to deny your Christian faith in public, and prohibited from speaking freely in any public forum including on web sites or e-mail.
  • I am concerned that government programs that push feminism, no-fault divorce and generally paint men as irresponsible and aggressive could turn my wife against me and cause her to divorce me for the money. I read a lot about divorce courts, fake charges of domestic violence, etc. And I think there is a concerted effort to paint men as being unreliable, aggressive and harmful to children. What if my wife began to believe all of these myths and felt that she could do a better job parenting the children without me? The children would be harmed, I would be penniless and I might never see my children again.
  • Finally, I am worried that she will become less tolerant about my desires to be romantic and chivalrous and just sort of check out of the marriage emotionally. That she will not give me things to do, or dragons to slay, trophies to collect, etc. That she won’t speak to me for long periods of time, or write to me, spend time alone with me. I worry that she will instead become interested in her own interests and causes and forget that I need a romantic relationship with her! I’ll die if I can’t express myself romantically.

So I hope this explains to all a little bit about why I am skeptical about marriage, even if I met a perfect person to marry. I would like to see a lot more work being done by the church to focus on things like fiscal conservatism, small government and politics. As it stands, I am not hearing very much that is re-assuring me that potential Christian wives are as aware about these issues as I am, or that they are prepared to fight them.

When I talk to Christian women, they are usually not aware of any of these concerns, and in fact are quite secular and leftist in their voting. This is very disconcerting to me because it seems like they are not applying their state Christian beliefs to their future plans for marriage and parenting. Instead, they are happily voting for bigger and bigger government and they are oblivious to how this undermines Christian marriage and family.

When I ask them what they have read about these issues, they are usually reading Christian self-help books, devotional literature, theology-lite (Phillip Yancey), emergent church, social justice stuff from the religious left, sensational Dan Brown fiction that undermines the Bible’s authority and makes women appear to be the victims or men, or end-times fiction. Many read things like “Blue Like Jazz” or other mystical craziness. Are there any women out there who read Thomas Sowell and Wayne Grudem and William Lane Craig and Stephen C. Meyer and Craig Evans and Stephen Baskerville and Jennifer Roback Morse? Or even Lee Strobel and C.S. Lewis, for starters?

I think some of these problems might go away if I married someone with the foreign policy views of Marsha Blackburn, the fiscal conservatism of Michele Bachmann, and the social conservatism of Jennifer Roback Morse. But one woman cannot remake the whole world. One woman can’t get taxes lowered, secure school choice, protect religious liberty, and get the government out of the marriage and away from the children.

And it’s not just that there are problems today – it’s tomorrow, too. I am quite surprised at how passionately young people advocate for ideas that undermine their own liberty, prosperity and security. The very things needed to make Christian marriage and Christian parenting work. Can one woman fix the irrationality of the young people who are voting today? I don’t think that one woman can fix everything.

Well, Michele Bachmann can fix everything if we would just vote her in as President, like I want. If we put Michele in charge of the world, then I’ll get married.

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News

How euthanasia eroded medical ethics in the Netherlands

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Joe Carter writing in First Things. (H/T Secondhand Smoke via ECM)

Intro:

For centuries, the Hippocratic Oath, including the admonition against abortion, assisted suicide, and euthanasia, formed the core of Western medical ethics. While the Hippocratic ideal has been eroding for decades, the most direct challenge has emerged in the Netherlands, with the cultural and legal acceptance of the right to die. The medical community and broader citizenry have so embraced the right to choose death for oneself that the Dutch parliament is currently considering legislation that would allow assisted suicide for anyone who has reached the age of seventy and has merely grown tired of living.

Excerpt:

The Royal Dutch Medical Association has since called for increased reporting to bolster public trust in euthanasia laws. But enthusiasm for following these procedures and standards remains muted, since doctors know that no penalties will be incurred by simply ignoring the law. Prosecutions for guideline violations are exceedingly rare and no doctor has ever been imprisoned or substantially penalized for noncompliance. Even when the government is made aware of cases of non-voluntary euthanasia, no legal action is likely to be taken.

The Dutch have even expanded the scope of protected physician killing to include children. With their parent’s permission, a child between the ages of 12 to 16 years old may request and receive assisted suicide. Initially, minors could obtain an assisted death even if their parents objected, but after domestic and international criticism, the law was changed to require parental consent.

[…]As reported in one Dutch documentary, a young woman in remission from anorexia was concerned that her eating disorder would return. To prevent a relapse, she asked her doctor to kill her. He willingly complied with her request.

[…]Over a period of forty years, the Dutch have continued the search for where to draw the line with euthanasia, shifting from acceptance of voluntary euthanasia for the terminally ill, to voluntary euthanasia for the chronically ill, to non-voluntary euthanasia for the sick and disabled, to euthanasia for those who are not sick at all but are merely “suffering through living.” While the initial impetus may have been spurred by a desire to give expanded rights to the person who faces extreme suffering or imminent death, the effect has been to concentrate power into the hands of state-sponsored medical professionals. And while the justification for assisted death is usually the supposed well being of the suffering patient, the Dutch have redefined natural dependency into an unacceptable or unwanted social burden.

This is another concern I have about single-payer health care. The way the system works is that people have taxes deducted automatically from their pay checks when they are working. And when they get older, and stop working, they have to ask for treatment from a supplier that has no incentive to provide treatment or care, since they are no longer socially useful because they can’t pay taxes. Instead of doctors thinking that they have to treat a paying customer, the doctors think that they have to avoid wasting “society’s” money on people who are too old to pay into the system.

So if you don’t pay into the system, and the system needs money to treat those who are still paying, then why would they treat you? You have no value to society unless you are making money.

There was a good article on socialized medicine and euthanasia by Richard Miniter in the Wall Street Journal a few years back that explains my concerns more.

To deal with his point about doctors changing to view their purpose as ending suffering instead of getting people well, I think that this is scary because it shows how far we have come with our hedonism. My concern is that people are viewing the purpose of life as hedonism.

People want to have happy feelings all the time, and they don’t want to be burdened with the needs of anyone else. There’s no longer any moral dimension to life that makes taking care of others worthwhile. No one sees the experience of self-sacrificial love for others as an opportunity to imitate Christ.

UPDATE:

More horror. Patients in the Netherlands are suing to require that sexual gratification be part of the “medical services” that nurses should perform. I can’t even begin to express my revulsion at this story about health care in the Netherlands. Women were not made to be treated like this, they’re made to love and to be loved. I’m so scared of the future. It’s things like this that put me off of wanting to pursue marriage and children. What kind of world will my children grow up in? What will the government force them to do that will destroy their willingness and ability to follow Jesus? I can’t re-make the whole world.

News

New video of Planned Parenthood abortion clinic covering up statutory rape

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Story from Hot Air. (H/T Neil Simpson‘s latest round up)

Video:

Excerpt:

Yesterday, Barack Obama released his health-care plan that contains $11 billion in funding for “community health centers,” much of it destined for Planned Parenthood clinics around the country. What do they do with that money? Lila Rose and Live Action Films released their ninth video exposing the tenth clinic that broke laws requiring medical providers to report potential child abuse to the state. This time it’s the PP clinic in Milwaukee, Wisconsin that advises a 14-year-old girl how to get an abortion without disclosing that a 31-year-old man is responsible for impregnating her…

Neil has a few more good links in that same round-up, too.