Tag Archives: Love

News

Homeless man who found $3300 tracks down owner to return it

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Another story for our series on heroic men. (H/T Wes Widner, who IS a heroic man!)

Here’s a print version of the story.

Excerpt:

When a homeless Arizona man found a backpack containing thousands of dollars in cash, he could have seen it as a windfall. Instead, he saw that it was returned to its owner, an honorable act that’s now paying off.

Dave Tally, a recovering drug addict, came across the lost backpack earlier this month in a light rail station in Tempe. He opened it up, trying to find some sort of identification or baggage tag.

Inside, there were no clues about its rightful owner, but Tally did find an envelope stuffed with $3,300 in cash, as well as a laptop computer.

“Finding the envelope with the case was just mind-blowing,” Tally said. “There were lots of crazy thoughts that went through my head.”

The cash could have meant a lot for Tally, who’s lived on the streets for several years after losing his home. He now sleeps n the basement of local churches, saving what little he can to fix his broken bike, his only source of transportation.

“I went into survival mode for a moment, actually more than a moment,” Tally said, “thinking about all the things I could do for myself.”

But in the end, the money wasn’t worth more than his honor.

“It wasn’t easy, but I know it was the right thing to do,” Tally said. “I beat myself up pretty hard for even thinking I would spend one dime of that person’s money.”

What an awesome story – it shows that some people refuse to do wrong no matter what their situation is. I think it’s amazing because so many people justify taking their neighbors money (through taxation) by pointing out inequalities between rich and poor. Here’s a man who is very poor, and yet he did not consider his own modest situation to be a justification for stealing money from his neighbor. This is the problem with modern Democrats – they feel entitled to a perpetual adolescence by spending their lives working in the government or the schools or collecting welfare – and they are willing to steal from other productive people to finance it.

Podcasts

Is marriage just an arrangement for people who love each other?

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Mary sent me this article from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, which is liberal like the CBC and BBC, but Australian.

However, read this excerpt:

As proponents for gay marriage turn up the political temperature on this issue, the catchcry has become ‘equal love’ – if two persons of the same sex love each other, who are we to tell them they cannot marry? Greens MP Adam Bandt has this week reintroduced the argument in the Federal Parliament, stating, “It is the power of love that has brought us to this moment in the debate over marriage equality.” This is a persuasive argument for it evokes in us our own needs to receive and to give love, but is ‘equal love’ a valid proposition for legalising same sex marriage?

Let’s think about it. If ‘equal love’ is the only prerequisite for marriage, then why not legalise marriage between uncles and nieces, or between mums and sons, if they are so inclined? I doubt if many people would accept such sexual unions, and yet if love (and take note that love in much of this debate is left undefined) is the only requisite for marriage how can we exclude a union between any two consenting persons, regardless of their status? Let’s not stop there, what if three people love each other, should they not be permitted to marry? And if marriage is so malleable why not introduce, as one newspaper article recently suggested, fixed terms for marriage rather than being for life?

The point is simple, ‘equal love’ is an inadequate ethic for deconstructing marriage. There are some human relationships which are appropriately deemed unsuitable for marriage. Particulars such as ‘kinds’ and teleology must play a role in defining marriage: what is a man and what is a woman, and what is the purpose or goal of marriage?

This guy is a pastor, yet he makes a good rational argument that is accessible to anyone. Is marriage really about adult feelings and the needs of adults to be happy? Or is it about something else?

Jennifer Roback Morse explains the purpose of marriage

If you want to learn more about how to define and defend traditional marriage, then take a look at these videos by Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, which I found at Lex Communis.

Details:

Dr J addresses the Sacramento Department of Evangelization and Catholic Schools on the question of altering the definition of marriage to include same-sex unions.  She also examines the break-down of traditional marriage and the consequences of no-fault divorce.

Clip 1 of 4:

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Or you can download the MP3 here. If anyone is wondering who I consider to be an ideal woman, Michele Bachmann and Jennifer Roback Morse are two of my favorite women. I really like women who I can sit and listen to and learn from, especially when they are passionate about what they believe and have lots of evidence to use in debates.

Commentary

On women leaving marriages that don’t make them happy enough

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Don’t blame me! I didn’t write it. Alisha wrote it. She’s the meany, not me!

Excerpt:

I have a certain friend, a great guy I’ve known since I was a gawky teen, and who continues to be my friend in  my fully grown yet still gawky state. He has always been strong- fights hard, works hard, but loves the hardest.

When he married a few years ago, I was a little worried. Now that he’s divorced, I’m very hurt. And taken aback that he is not the only guy I know in this situation. In fact, I know about 4.

Now, these men are far from perfect. No one except God is. Yet in all these collapsed marriages, the women openly and willingly admitted the men they promised to be with until death had never hit, pushed, sexually or emotionally accosted them. They quite simply, no longer wanted to be married.

Of course, there is nothing really simple about dissolving one’s marriage, except for my simple-minded incomprehension as I sat at a showing of “The Devil Wears Prada” with one of these ladies a few years back. We had gone to the mall to do a little window shopping, and for what seemed to be the entire trip, this young lady- I’ll call her Amber- complained non-stop about what her husband wasn’t doing. He wasn’t buying her new clothes or shoes or taking her on vacations. She worked hard, many days 10 hours. And well, he worked, too, but it wasn’t fair he didn’t buy her more.

“Can he afford to buy you all that stuff?” I asked. She looked at me as if I were stupid. “MY FATHER works two even three jobs to make sure Mama gets everything she wants and deserves! Sometimes, he is away for weeks, working at construction sites to ensure it!”

[…]Another girl I know got hitched- only to ditch her groom before a tan line started to develop on her ring finger. The very same things she loved about him while they were dating- his commitment to God, desire to go into the ministry, his “good guy” sweetness- were instantly repulsive in marriage. Their marriage annulled, she jumped into a long term dating relationship which turned into cohabitation and a child together. But fortunate for her, no wedding.

I actually blame the men for choosing these women. Men have to test women during the courtship to see if what they are interested in is making a commitment and then acting self-sacrificially to honor their obligations. I could tell you nightmare stories about Christian women I know who can do the most amazing acts of selfishness and then totally refuse to make amends or accept any responsibility. But then, I’m not married to those women – because that all came out before I ever got serious about them. Many women are judging men today based on how amusing they are and whether their girlfriends will be envious and approving based on secular criteria supplied by TV shows and music videos. This all has to be detected during the courtship by the man. Courting is when the man has to detect if the woman is thinking anything other than “if I don’t like this – if it doesn’t make me feel happy all the time and impose no obligations on me – then I can get out of it”. Is she ready for a commitment? That’s the man’s job to find out.

What courtship is really about for men is communicating your plan and the challenges you’re facing and then standing back to see if she wants to help. I once met a Christian woman who would not so much as sit down with me to see what I did for a living. She wanted to have fun! And understanding my job so that she could help was not fun. (Presumably, spending my money that I earned from that job would have been more fun). So if a man marries a woman like that, then it is the man’s fault. If men are too stupid to know how to detect lemons then they deserve to suffer. Learning how to court is more important than playing video games. Knowing what laws strengthen men in their roles as husbands and fathers is more important than watching X-treme sports. Men are responsible to understand marriage, understand what women do in a marriage, and understand policies that strengthen or weaken marriage. Many men who are divorced today voted for the party of no-fault divorce (with the custody battles and fake charges of child abuse) and domestic violence laws (which criminalize criticizing your wife’s spending or weight) yesterday. And those men are fools. And they must be punished.

Men are terrible at knowing what they want from women. What matters to the stupid men about women today is not whether they are chaste and self-sacrificial and organized and goal-oriented, but only their physical appearance, how much they are willing to drink, and how far they are willing to go physically. Even Christian men have no idea what Christian women are supposed to DO in a marriage. Many men think that marriage will be 50% playing video games, and 50% sex or something. It’s just totally unrealistic. Not to mention that women are not inanimate objects. They are more like employees. If you bring a woman into your home and do not know how to motivate them, then they will not fill the role that they are assigned. Surely a wife is as entitled to as much “management” as an employee. Having sex with someone is not effective management. One-on-one eye-to-eye communication about current concerns and future goals is effective management.

I think that men and women really need to sit down and think about marriage and parenting as an engineering problem. What are the use cases? What are the requirements? What is the design plan? What are the possible solutions? What are the tradeoffs? What is the schedule? How much of this can we build ourselves, and how much of it can we purchase or outsource? If the woman is not on board with the seriousness of marriage, because she resents obligations, saving money and structure, then drop her like a hot potato. If she does not want a man to fulfill his roles in the marriage – protecting, providing and leading on moral/spiritual issues – then kick her to the curb. Spontaneity is good for a Sunday afternoon or a Friday night. It is not the way to run a a marriage, especially when there are kids. Spontaneity is not the way to produce quality software – with garbage in, you get garbage out. Can you imagine hiring an engineer based solely on their physical appearance and amusement value? Yet this is what men are doing. Christian men are doing this.