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So....shall we talk about expanding definitions?

Our definition of sexual assault is any type of sexual behavior or contact where consent is not freely given or obtained and is accomplished through force, intimidation, violence, coercion, manipulation, threat, deception, or abuse of authority. This definition gets beyond our society’s narrow understanding of the issue and expands the spectrum of actions to be considered sexual assault.

("Rid Of My Disgrace" by Lindsey and Justin Holcomb)

What is the problem with this definition?

"assault" is an ugly word, and it should be. But (for the sake of the victim and the aggressor) it needs to be defined objectively.

For instance, define "freely given" - does that mean that a partner needs to explicitly give consent each and every time an encounter happens? Does it mean that a consent that was granted when a wife accepts her husband's advances because he wanted her, even though she wasn't in that perfect "mood," that consent was not "freely" given?

Who gets to decide when "manipulation" happened?

The big one is "abuse of authority" - I'm firmly in the complementarian camp and I believe that the husband is an authority over his wife. If there is a pattern of him denied access to the blessings of the marriage covenant, and presses the issue, is that an "abuse of authority?"

These are subjective definitions.

If a girl or woman was treated inappropriately, does that rise to the level of "assault"?

For instance...when I was a teen, one of the fashions of the day was a button up shirt...not buttoned, but tied in a knot right at the bridge of the bra. Lots of cleavage there. (this, by the way, is something that I may have told one or two people...ever) A friend and I had been baby-sitting and when the man in the home came to pay us and send us on our way, he got real close to me, put the backs of his fingers inside my shirt and stroked my breast.

It was sexual behavior, consent was not give, and I felt intimidated. Inappropriate, certainly. Absolutely - and I was very uncomfortable with it. But, Inever ratcheted up to the level of "assault."

I rarely think about the incident, only when I hear similar stories, only the "victim" is so wound up about her "assault" that she cannot function. I end up thinking..."really?"

I have a friend who was brutally raped by multiple young men. The wounds went deep, and they should.

I have a problem when the distinction between my incident and gang rape is blurred. There should be "levels of guilt" (for lack of a better term) in this area. If we bring everything to the level of "assault" - then everything is assault and everybody is a victim. I'm not prepared to live life as a victim.

Women are strong (or should be) and resilient (or should be) - instead of being told that we are all victims of assault, we should be taught to distinguish between those levels and deal with the behavior at that level.

My friend, Jan, has what her husband calls the "awfulizer" - she can take a fairly mundane thing and "awfulize" it (but can't we all?")

By taking an inappropriate act and "awfulizing" into "assault" we are running the risk of taking an objective definition, leaving it at the mercy of subjective feelings, then having a few women "awfulize" it, leaving men to wonder if they're going to be forever branded as sex criminals on Megan's List.

That could be a very bad thing.

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When I was in California, I shopped a couple of local yarn shops.

One was Purlescence. They had spinning wheels on the floor! and full size floor looms! And great drop spindles! I was looking for local yarn (another story about that later) and they have their own line of yarn, that they process and dye on site. It's called "Purl up and Dye" - a great name. I got a couple of skeins in bright pink - enough to make a pair of socks - PLUS. I also got a pretty heave drop spindle. The down side of the store is that there are "New Age" signals (but I've shopped such stores that have been fine) and the biggest detractor to the experience was that the operator/manager was not all that friendly. Phil wanted to see a spinning wheel in action and they were having a spinning class in the back. They were taking a break, and rather than just letting us know that it was a private area, she was pretty rude, and physically put her body in between us and the class. It would have been easy to let us watch the instructor for a minute. What was interesting was that when I as there by myself earlier, I didn't have that experience. Perhaps I was there on a mission (shopping for yarn, not wheels) or maybe the presence of an alpha male upset the balance of their universe.

The other store was Green Planet Yarn. I pre-judge the store by the name, thinking that this one would be the "New Age" store. Wrong! They had a wonderful selection of non-animal, sustainable and third world yarn. I picked up a couple of different yarns, one made out of sugar cane, the other out of cotton and wood fiber, in beautiful, soft color. The sales women went out of their way to talk about how to care for the yarn, how to combine skeins to get a consistent color (the yarns were make suing local and ancient dying techniques) - which is not a big deal when making socks.

Short story, if I'm in CA and want a spinning wheel, spindle or class, Purlescence is the only party in town. For local and specialty yarn, Green Planet is the planet I'll be choosing.

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They got a brand new dance (come on), you gotta move your muscle
Brand new dance, it's called the Cupid Shuffle
It don't matter if you're young or you're old (here we go)
We gone show you how it go (hey hey)
(...)
to the left, to the left, to the left....

("Cupid Shuffle" - Cupid)

politics, theology, life...many things can be aligned into liberal/conservative categories.

In my experienced, every single time (seriously, no exceptions) that I've encountered a person who says that they're neither liberal or conservative, they think like a liberal, vote like a liberal, talk like a liberal.

When I run across a person who says that in some ways they lean liberal, in other ways, conservative, they can point to some of those ways.

So...

1) I've found that "evasion = liberal"

I've also found that only the liberal cause is helped by changing the center.

Pick a topic...gay marriage. The political gay lobby pick a point somewhat left of center and begin calling it "center." As the leftist continue their march to the left, that "left of center" point seems more reasonable, and it becomes accepted as "center."

At which point the leftists move further left, and those on the right, **WHO HAVE NOT CHANGED THEIR POSITIONS** are now labeled "far rights" and "fringe."

"Conservatives" now become "center," in order to be avoid being viewed as "extremists" but that "center" is where the left used to be.

I've been called some pretty foul names. Why? Because I dare to suggest that people of faith should not be forced by law to participate in ceremonies that violate their conscience.

If one thinks that a Christian should be able to opt out of catering a gay commitment ceremony, they are now "bigots"

So...

2) Leftists don't want the right to compromise. They want capitulation.

I recently read a post about "New Wave Complementarianism" - looks like "old wave egalitarianism" to me. The author had made a move (and a good one, from one other of her posts I read) and adjusted her stand accordingly. But adjusting your position should mean adjusting the description you take. For instance, if a conservative begins leaning to the liberal, they should call themselves "liberal" and not try to call themselves "new wave conservative". Okay, this is a rehash of #2, only from an ethical viewpoint.

So...

3) if you call yourself "new" anything, you're probably not. Check the "old" definitions and see which one fits.

I'm not going to play "Leftist says" and move "to the left, to the left"

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Even infants, who have no personal sin of their own, suffer pain and death. Now the Scriptures uniformly represent suffering and death as the wages of sin. It would be unjust for God to execute the penalty on those who are not guilty. Since the penalty falls on infants, they must be guilty; and since they have not personally committed sin, they must be guilty of Adam's sin.

("Reformed Doctrine of Predistination" by Lorraine Boettner)

I've never seen "imputed sin" in Scripture, but I'm starting to see how they get there.

The "wages of sin is death" - did that mean spiritual death, or temporal death? (Note: there is a whole different topic of whether or not physical death was on earth before the fall)

anyway, if human beings did not die on earth before the fall, and the wages of sin is (including) temporal death, we are suffering the wages of Adam's sin.

If a Just God would not punish a person (save Jesus, who voluntarily stood in our place) for the sin of another, does this logic place the guilt of Adam's sin on us, since we are paying the penalty?

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From the beginning...

I was born into a Christian family. My earliest years were in a very small house close to my mother's parents. I remember very little, but remember the wallpaper in my bedroom (?)

My parents were married in a church down the street from my grandparent's house and that is the house I remember best.

When I was a year and a half old, my Grandpa Brown (my dad's dad) talked my parents into moving to the farm - where I grew up. We went to a church that my dad and grandpa helped to build. Our house was built on part of the family farm only a few hundred feet from my grandparent's house. I remember the farm animals, cats galore and always a dog or two.

I remember the best of my grandparents - Grandpa was quiet and content, Grandma was sad, but always took care of us. We were in a rural farming community in the Thumb of Michigan, which meant that we frequently lost power in the winter and we were the last to get plowed out. When the power went out, sometime we went to stay with Grandma and Grandpa (the gravity feed furnace didn't need electricity so they stayed warm) and I had my favorite place to sleep on the floor Eventually we figured out that "my spot" was right on top of the gravity feed furnace. Grandma had a chair next to the dining room table...we figured out that it was right next to the chimney, so she had the warmest chair in the house.

Upstairs at my grandma's house was "the porch" - built on a roof, unheated...there was even a space between the floor and the wall where you could see outdoors. But there were a couple of beds for summer sleepover and the walls were lined with bookcases. Lots of books, so I grew up reading. There were lost of cousins around, but no girls my age. My best friends were the Bobsey twins, Trixie Beldon, and Anne of Greene Gables.

My church memories are vague. I have glimpses of VBS, little memories of Wednesday evening prayer meetings. As a child, my dad prayed for me before an oral surgery to take a tumor off of my gum line. When we went to the hospital the next day, the tumor was gone. I sat next to him while he prayed for my mom when she was in the hospital.

My dad was a deacon in that small church for most of my years at home and it never grew beyond under 100 in number (not surprising in a very small town.) The pastors came and went, another came and went.

I never knew a time when my life wasn't grounded in family Christianity, but I don't think the faith was MINE until later on. My parents gave me the foundation, but it had to be the Holy Spirit who built it.

My pastor said this morning..."A church believes what it sings." And I grew up on "Amazing Grace,"

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I'm reading "Fair Society" (at the suggestion of a liberal "book buddy" at work) and once again it strikes me that how you define "fair" makes a huge difference in how you view the world.

The opening parts of the book talks about income and power disparities and "fairness."

If "fair" means equal outcome, regardless of effort, then the world will never be fair. Those who work hardest and risk the most...will not be rewarded for their efforts.

If only the privileged can succeed, then life certainly is unfair....but...

According to Forbes, the person whose income increased the most in 2011 (the most recent year) is Mark Zuckerberg. Although he was in a family of educated people, he was hardly on the tract to billionaire.

Our current president is the son of a middle-class American woman and an African, Muslim, polygamist father. Hardly the stuff that "automatic political success" is made of.

We have free public education, but "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink." Is it "fair" to make sure that all graduate, regardless of how they apply themselves at school? Is it "fair" to the kid who works hard to see a forced success rate? It is "fair" to the one who doesn't apply themselves - to teach them that life will hand them success on a plate?

Mark Zuckerberg and Barack Obama are living proof that life in America IS "fair" - if you apply your skills, if you work hard, if you take big risks, there are big rewards.

Scripture tells us that

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On this Resurrection Sunday, I am reminded that

The assurance that Christians can never be separated from the love of God is one of the greatest comforts of the Christian life. To deny this doctrine is to destroy the grounds for any rejoicing among the saints on earth; for what kind of rejoicing can those have who believe that they may at any time be deceived and led astray? If our sense of security is based only on our changeable and wavering natures, we can never know the inward calm and peace which, should characterize the Christian.

(From "Reformed Doctrine of Predestination" by Loraine Boettner)

When Jesus died on that cross, He bought us with His blood. When He rose, the conquered death.

We live because He died, we die to ourselves because He lives.

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.

This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Savior all the day long;
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Savior all the day long.

Perfect submission, perfect delight,
Visions of rapture now burst on my sight;
Angels, descending, bring from above
Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.

Perfect submission, all is at rest,
I in my Savior am happy and blest,
Watching and waiting, looking above,
Filled with His goodness, lost in His love.

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This is a repeat - the reminder of fulfilled prophesies is precious to me always.

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Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.

“God sent me before you to preserve for
you a remnant in the earth, and to keep
you alive by a great deliverance.” Gen. 45:7

“…Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors….”

Today you will be with me in paradise

He will call upon me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble,
I will deliver him and honor him. Psa. 91:15

″And it shall come to pass that
everyone who calls upon the name of the Lordshall be saved.” Acts 2:21

Woman, here is your son…here is your mother.

Yet you brought me out of the womb;
you made me trust in you
even at my mother’s breast.
From birth I was cast upon you;
from my mother’s womb you have been my God.
Psa. 22:9-10

“If anyone does not provide for his relatives,
and especially for his immediate family,
he has denied the faith and is worse than an
unbeliever. 1 Tim 5:8

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from the words of my groaning?
Psa. 22:1

“He has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death,
in order to present you holy and blameless
and above reproach before him” Col. 1:22

I am thirsty

If your enemy is hungry, give him
food to eat;
if he is thirsty, give him water
to drink. Prov. 25:21

They gave me poison for food,
and for my thirst they gave
me sour wine to drink.
Psa. 69:21

I tell you the truth, anyone who gives
you a cup of water in my name because you
belong to Christ will certainly not lose his reward.
Mark 9:41

It is finished.

“The time is coming,” declares the LORD,
when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah.” Jer.:13:31

Unlike the other high priests, he does not need
to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins,
and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their
sins once for all when he offered himself. Heb 7:27

Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.

Into your hands I commit my spirit;
redeem me, O LORD, the God of truth. Psa 31:5

“…and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.
Do you believe this?” John 11:26

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I like this - when "borrowing" writing from a person who is now is that great cloud of witnesses, putting a blog tag on it that says that.

I'm borrowing the idea from "Foolish Confidence"

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” —Hebrews 12:1