Humans Archives

May 12, 2019May 9, 2019

Joy of Motherhood

I would like to be a mother. I can’t imagine the joy of motherhood bringing a new life into the world, nurturing that child and watching her or him grow into a productive adult. I want to be a mother very badly, but I don’t have the equipment to do that.

Yesterday we talked about how atheists and feminists try to vilify Christ and Christianity by suggesting that the Bible treats women as second-class citizens. However, Christ and His apostles treated women as equals. (See John 4 and Galatians 3:26-29.) The passage the atheists point out is 1 Timothy 2:9-15. That passage tells us that women can be saved in childbirth. In other words that role is so important that being a mother can be an opportunity to fulfill an incredible role that God has made available. Women don’t have to accept that role, but it is available. No matter how badly I want to be a mother, it simply isn’t possible.

A woman can accept the role of being a mother, but men have no way to choose that role. In the spiritual realm, God has given men a role. Just like the baseball team, having the male lead the family spiritually doesn’t diminish the value of a woman any more than being a first baseman diminishes the value of a catcher. A woman’s worth is not diminished by allowing her husband to fulfill his role as a leader in worship.

Unfortunately, most men are not up to fulfilling the role of being the spiritual leader of the family. Frequently women have to step in and help when the male refuses or is unable to fill the role. A first baseman can fill in for a catcher, but that is certainly not the way the roles are assigned or work their best.

Read Proverbs 31:10-31, Acts 16:14-15, 40, Acts 21:8-9 and Acts 2:17-18. Look at Ephesians 5:25-28 and consider God’s plan for both men and women. Christianity has elevated women and provided a basis for gender equality. Equality does not mean sameness, and we should thank God for the special design He has built into men and women to allow them to have meaningful roles producing happy and fulfilling lives – including the joy of motherhood.
— John N. Clayton © 2019

May 11, 2019May 9, 2019

Women and Motherhood

Tomorrow is “Mother’s Day,” and we have some thoughts on women and motherhood.

We are seeing a new aggressiveness on the part of atheists and feminists to vilify Christ and Christianity. Feminists take passages like 1 Timothy 2:9-15 to suggest that Christians make women second class citizens. Atheist speakers like Richard Dawkins attack the Bible saying it is one of the most misogynistic (hating women) books ever written. The truth is that Jesus and the teachings of the Apostles were centuries ahead of the secular world in treating and presenting women as equal to men in every way.

It is essential to look at the example that Jesus set in his interactions with women, such as the Samaritan woman in John 4. There was great animosity between the Jewish culture and the Samaritans. John 4:9 reminds us of this when Jesus speaks to the woman, and she responds, “How is it that you, being a Jew, ask me a Samaritan woman for a drink of water?” She is both a hated Samaritan and a woman who in that misogynistic culture was indeed a second class citizen. The passage even adds, “for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.” When the disciples of Jesus show up in verse 27 “they marveled that He talked with the woman.” Jesus not only talks with her, but He stays in the Samaritan city for two days.

Jesus treated women as equals, and they worked with Him in His ministry. (See Luke 8:1-4.) The Apostles taught that men and women were equals. Galatians 3:26-29 tells the Christians of their day and ours, “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free, there can be neither male nor female for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

The passage in 1 Timothy 2:9-15 has to do with roles. We need to understand that equality does not mean sameness. As an example, is everyone on a baseball team equal? The answer to that question is undoubtedly “Yes, they are equal.” The catcher has a different role than the pitcher, and the first baseman is different from either of them. They are all essential and equal. They have different roles and even different equipment, but all of them are critical to the success of the team.

As we have said before, there are no second-class citizens in the Church. We are all one in Christ Jesus. I will have more to say about women and motherhood tomorrow on Mother’s Day.
— John N. Clayton © 2019

May 1, 2019April 30, 2019

Understanding Pain

The May 2019 issue of Smithsonian Magazine (page 48-) carried an article titled “A Mystery in the Family” by Matthew Shaer. The article describes a family in Italy in which the family members feel almost no pain. It also shows how far we are from understanding pain.

The entire Italian family seemed to share a lack of sensitivity to pain. It wasn’t that they couldn’t feel pain at all. When scientists injected capsaicin (the chemical that gives chili peppers their heat) into a family member’s arm, they felt the burning sensation, but only for a matter of seconds.

Our bodies are designed with the ability to feel pain, and we need it to avoid damage from our environment. When you touch a hot pan handle, you feel pain, so you put it down quickly. This is good pain and is essential to our survival. Studies show that one in five Americans suffers from chronic pain which is defined as pain that is unrelated to a recent injury and which lasts more than six months. The recent attention to opioid addiction is undoubtedly connected in some ways to how chronic pain affects us. Researchers are proposing that chronic pain results from our lifestyles. Eating more processed food, getting less exercise, and environmental pollution may all contribute to chronic pain.

Pain is different from our senses of smell, taste, or sight because there is not just one section of the brain responsible for the experience. There may be half a dozen or more areas of the brain involved. Doctors prescribe opioids to relieve the pain. Understanding pain and how we experience it could help us find a better way to relieve chronic pain.

One has to wonder if we have not brought the chronic pain issue onto ourselves. Those of us who have done some world-wide traveling have seen that pain is perceived and handled in various ways in different cultures. People walking on hot coals or running knives through their hands seems to be nothing exceptional in some areas of the world. When I was in the army, a young man assigned to our unit had grown up on the north slopes of Alaska. His view of what was cold in Wisconsin in January was not the same as the rest of us. In the Smithsonian article, an Italian family member showed up on a very cold day with a bitter wind blowing in a short-sleeved dress with her ankles bare. The young man in our army unit used to walk from the barracks to the mess hall in a T-shirt while the rest of us wore heavy parkas.

God’s design of the human body is so complex that it can be disturbed by a variety of external causes. God didn’t design us to have chronic pain. Understanding pain, how it works, and how to relieve it is essential. We need to survive what happens to us without being immobilized by aching that never seems to stop.
— John N. Clayton © 2019

April 30, 2019April 30, 2019

Neanderthal Research Continues

Neanderthal Research The familiar name “Neanderthal” came from the place where scientists found the first skulls in 1856 near Neander, Germany. Writers have published numerous articles about Neanderthals. Most of the articles have been very misleading about who the Neanderthals were, what they looked like, how they lived, and what connection they have to modern humans. Neanderthal research presents a changing picture.

The popular perception of Neanderthals has been connected to the term “ape-man” often used to describe them. At the Max Planck Institute early in the 20th century, a French paleontologist depicted Neanderthals as “apelike and backward.” In 1953, a movie titled The Neanderthal Man popularized them as primitive humans with passions and desires common to apes. The view for years was that the Neanderthals were brutes who huddled in cold caves gnawing on slabs of slain mammoths.

The truth is that Neanderthals walked upright and had larger brains and larger lung capacities than modern humans. They made complex tools, built shelters, created and traded jewelry, wore clothes, created art, buried their dead, had language and a form of worship. What has convinced scientists to change their understanding has been Neanderthal research and the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome. Comparisons of the Neanderthal genome and the modern European genome shows that up to 4% of modern human genes came from Neanderthals. They were not brutes or ape-men. They were totally human.

Probably much of the reason for the negative stereotyping is the “out of Africa” scenario promoted by many as the origin of human history. Some scientists have not wanted to admit that human origins seem to have come from a more northern source. Dr. Joao Zilhao, a Portuguese paleoanthropologist and an expert on Neanderthals, says: “The mainstream narrative of our origins has been fairly straightforward: the exodus of modern humans from Africa was depicted like it was a biblical event: Chosen ones replacing debased Europeans, the Neanderthals. Nonsense, all of it.”

Neanderthals were not apes or brutes of a different species of humans. They were a race of humans that had specific physiological characteristics that are somewhat different from the appearance of humans today. The Neanderthal Museum near Dusseldorf, Germany, displays a recreation of a Neanderthal by renowned paleo-artists Adrie and Alfons Kennis. He is groomed, wearing a business suit, and looking like the politician he could have been. For that matter, his name might have been Adam. As Neanderthal research continues, we will see what develops.
— John N. Clayton

Reference: Smithsonian Magazine, May 2019.

April 29, 2019April 23, 2019

Biblical Protein

I always enjoy hearing a skeptic berate the Bible on some point that he or she considers absurd because the skeptic always comes out of such a tirade looking very foolish. Sometimes it is not immediately obvious why the biblical statement is sound, but it always is. One such tirade involved what you might call biblical protein.

Some time ago, an article appeared in one of the atheist journals ridiculing the idea that men such as John the Baptist and Samson could live on a diet of locusts. The question is whether eating locusts and honey is unwise nutritionally and medically (not to mention aesthetically). I never had an answer to that allegation until I came across an article concerning medical research on the subject.

It turns out that the protein content of all insects, especially locusts, is very high. Locusts and grasshoppers have over three times as much protein as chicken and fish and over four times as much as pork and lamb. Beef is more than three times lower in protein than locusts. Among insects, the protein content of locusts is very high. For example, locust protein content is three times as rich as ant protein.

So that seems to settle the question of biblical protein. From a nutritional standpoint, I would have to say there was great wisdom in eating locusts. I cannot comment on the flavor, but for the time being, I suspect McDonald’s will stick with hamburgers.
— John N. Clayton © 2019

April 27, 2019April 23, 2019

Democracy Without God Will Not Work

We were sitting on a rock at the bottom of the Grand Canyon talking about how different the world looked in that setting than it does in the realm of politics and human affairs. My friend told of a statement he heard explaining why democracy without God will not work.

The statement was “democracy without moral underpinnings is simply mob rule.” He went on to say, “Suppose you had a society made up of three men and two women. One of the men proposes a new law which says it is acceptable for men to abuse women. The new law is put up to a vote, and the law passes 3 to 2. Is this a democracy? The answer is, ‘No, it is simply mob rule.'”

It is ironical that in the world today the whole human rights issue seems to be integrated with the idea that democracy is the answer to all political problems. While the United States is pushing for democracy overseas, the basis of making democracy work is being systematically removed in America. The only way a balanced, stable, functional political system can work is for everyone to agree on what is right and what is wrong. There was very little controversy about what was right and wrong 200 years ago because people accepted the Bible as a guide for moral conduct. The system was not perfect because people still did things they knew the Bible condemned both on a personal and a political level. But democracy without God will not work.

Today we can’t decide what is right and what is wrong. Much of our population considers all sexual behavior acceptable. People who murder or steal are excused based on bad childhood experiences or chemical problems. The majority of Americans are close to accepting the idea that it is okay to kill an unwanted baby or elderly person.

If you don’t believe in God and in the Bible as God’s plan for how we should live, then what do you use? The answer is mob rule whatever the majority is willing to tolerate. The majority already tolerates abortion, and a landslide of other behaviors are being forced upon us.

If democracy without God will not work, it becomes vital for us to convince our fellow citizens that God does exist. They need to know that they can logically and rationally believe in Him and His Word. It is also vital that we show our young people that the Bible system is not a negative wall of “do not’s” but a positive guide to happiness and successful living.

What is right and what is wrong cannot be left to the legislators and lawyers. It must come from the Bible — a proven standard. We encourage you to join us in teaching and motivating others to adopt to a positive, active, productive belief system that enables democracy to exist.
— John N. Clayton © 2019

April 26, 2019April 23, 2019

God’s Toilet Rules

God's Toilet Rules There are many commandments and teachings of God that people have only come to understand in modern times. Among those are God’s toilet rules for disposal of waste.

In the Roman world, residents used chamber pots. When the pot was full, they emptied it in the streets and alleys. In Pompeii, the sidewalks were raised with high curbs along the streets so that pedestrians could cross on stepping stones and avoid having to walk in human excrement.

Even in America the disposal of waste was an issue. An epidemic of yellow fever in Philadelphia, which was the nation’s capital at the time, was related to cesspits which eventually contaminated the aquifers that supplied drinking water.

Among the laws of hygiene for ancient Israel were rules for disposal of excrement. In Deuteronomy 23:12-13 we read “Designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself. As part of your equipment have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover your excrement.”

We tend to romanticize what life was like in early times without thinking about how complicated it was to take care of waste. The smells in Pompeii and other ancient cities must have been pretty revolting. However, the bigger problem was disease spawned by using the simplest method of getting rid of waste by throwing it out the window. Following God’s toilet rules may have taken time and energy, but it was essential for the health and well being of ancient Israel.
— John N. Clayton © 2019

Data from Archaeology Magazine, May/June 2019.

April 24, 2019April 23, 2019

Bigfoot Conferences Summer 2019

Bigfoot Conferences Summer 2019 Evidence has exposed hoax after hoax, but Bigfoot still draws large audiences. This summer enthusiasts are holding Bigfoot conferences in Ohio, Texas, The Smoky Mountains, Oregon, Georgia, and at least one international conference.

On August 27, 1958, a bulldozer operator was clearing land in northern California when he found large humanlike footprints in the mud. Andrew Genzoli, a reporter for the Humboldt Times (the local newspaper), published a story with the word “bigfoot.”When the media picked up the story, Genzoli said, “We had reporters from all the wire services pounding on our doors.” It turned out that a man named Ray Wallace made the prints by stomping in the mud with a set of carved wooden feet.

Bigfoot has different names and stories from all over the world. In British Columbia, indigenous tribes have Sesquac which has been anglicized to Sasquatch. In China the name is Yeren, and in Australia it is Yowie. Alexander the Great demanded that the Himalayans bring him a Yeti. In America, there is the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) which has more than 5000 sightings from every state except Hawaii. There are two children’s films: Son of Bigfoot and Smallfoot. Animal Planet has had a series titled Finding Bigfoot which ran for 11 seasons. And, of course, there are the Bigfoot conferences.

The reasons people believe in Bigfoot are quite varied. For many, Bigfoot is a proof of human evolution – a missing link. For others, Bigfoot is a symbol of freedom in the modern world – a simple creature that lives “free of civilization’s rules and boundaries.” David Rains Wallace who has studied this phenomenon says, “It is comforting to believe another hominoid evolved without the cruelty, greed, vanity, and other childishness of homo sapiens.” Lynne McNeill says that Bigfoot “satisfies a deep human hunger for the mysterious and the magical, and serves as proof that humans have not totally dominated nature.” The famous anthropologist Jane Goodall said she believes in Bigfoot and give her evidence as: “I guess I’m a romantic. I don’t want to disbelieve.”

We applaud Ms. Goodall’s candid admission. When people reject God, they are very likely to grab hold of a substitute. Many people use Bigfoot as a substitute for the faith they have discarded. This journal is dedicated to evidence. We contend that the evidence must resolve questions of the existence of Bigfoot or any other creature. There is absolutely no evidence for a Bigfoot creature that has stood up to scientific study. The Week magazine for April 12, 2019, page 11 contains an article on the fakes.

Bigfoot is a myth that draws people to Bigfoot conferences around the world. In contrast, there is enormous evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ as the Son of God. His activity in human lives is not a legend but a living testimony for those who continue to serve Him.
— John N. Clayton © 2019

April 11, 2019April 9, 2019

Tardigrades – Water Bears – Indestructible Life

Imagine an animal that can survive without water, can withstand 300-degree temperatures, can live without oxygen, can survive the vacuum of space, can survive almost any amount and kind of radiation, and can hibernate for decades. This is not science fiction; it is an animal phylum known as tardigrades, often called “water bears.” There are as many as 1,200 species of tardigrades, and they live all over the Earth.

In 2007 scientists put two species of tardigrades in containers and launched them into orbit and opened them up to cold, airless space with no protection from the punishing radiation of the Sun and stars. When they returned the tardigrades to Earth, they were alive, and they are still producing offspring that are also alive and reproducing.

These animals are microscopic, about half a millimeter long when fully grown. Under a microscope, they look like a combination of a chubby bear and a single-eyed alien. They have legs but no circulatory system or skeleton. In extreme environmental conditions, they curl up and enter a survival mode called cryptobiosis. When conditions improve, they revive and resume their normal life processes. They eat algae and aquatic plants.

Scientists have studied the tardigrade genome and found ways to improve crop survival in bad weather. The United States government has allotted five million dollars to scientists attempting to find ways to protect vaccines and human blood using what they learn from the genome of tardigrades. Other uses include preserving organs for transplant and producing a sunscreen that protects against ultraviolet rays as well as reducing radiation damage in cancer treatment methods.

The development of life on Earth has not been a hit-or-miss process. As science looks at smaller and smaller things that our technology allows us to see, we realize that there is a whole world of carefully designed microscopic plants and animals that form the base of the animals we CAN see. Every time we look into the world around us, we see that a wonder-working hand guided by an intelligence far beyond our own has gone before and provided for our well-being. Thanks to technology, we realize that now more than ever before.

Data from an Associated Press article titled Ultimate Survivors by Beth Borenstein, April 2, 2019. For more on tardigrades click HERE.

April 7, 2019February 27, 2020

Leaders Can be Wrong, But Not Jesus

It seems that hate dominates the world news every time we read the paper or turn on our TV. I recently heard a news commentator suggest that hatred began with the Bible and continues today in extremists that go into a building with a gun and start shooting those they hate. The commentator suggested that New Testament battles between Jesus Christ and the Pharisees are an example of religious hatred similar to the violence in our world today. The truth is that leaders can be wrong, but not Jesus.

The commentator suggested that Matthew 23 is a demonstration of the hatred that Jesus preached. The chapter does present Jesus using strong language to condemn the Pharisees and religious leaders. He called them hypocrites (verses 13,15, 23, 25, 27 and 29) and blind guides (verse 16). He even accused them of murder (verse 35). That commentary is a classic case of “cherry picking” the Bible by taking verses out of context to make a point while ignoring dozens of scriptures which contradict the argument.

If you read Matthew chapters 5-7 you won’t get a picture like the one in Matthew 23. What is the difference? The difference is to whom Jesus is talking. The Jewish leaders in Jesus’ day should have understood and accepted what Jesus was teaching. Instead, many of them were blind guides who wanted to murder Jesus. When Nicodemus who was a ruler of the Jews (John 3:1-18) came to Jesus, he didn’t understand what Jesus was teaching. Jesus asked him, “Are you a master of Israel and don’t understand these things?” (John 3:10). Later Nicodemus became a worker for the Lord, even securing Christ’s body after the crucifixion.

When Jesus talked to the common people like you and me, He was kind and patient and full of compassion. When he spoke to the Jewish leaders who should have been understanding and supporting Christ but were advocating violence, Christ was firm and strong. But He still rejected violence and any kind of hatred. It was the leaders who crucified Christ, not the common people.

Leaders can be wrong, but not Jesus. I have never in my 80 plus years seen a president that I felt never made a mistake. When I was in the army, I had superior officers who made dumb mistakes and who were abusive themselves.

The reality of life is that leaders are frequently wrong, and in Christianity that is also true. Denominational and congregational leaders can be wrong, and that is why we must rely on the inspired Word and not on human teachers. Second Timothy 3:16-17 makes it clear that the only way to completeness is by following God’s Word. Christ opposed violence, but some “Christian” leaders have acted contrary to what the Word teaches, and the result has been catastrophic.

We repeat that leaders can be wrong, but not Jesus. We don’t defend what humans do. We follow what Jesus did, what He taught, and what He left for us in His Word.