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For this coming Easter, I am working on a number of animations. I won’t reveal the finished pieces until after their debut at church Easter Sunday (to which you are all invited), however, in preparation, I created this six second stop motion VINE video as a working test, just playing around. Not often you get to see animation on this site. Hmmm… Maybe it’ll be a sign of things to come. Enjoy!
“Simeon went on to bless them, and said to Mary his mother,
This child marks both the failure and
the recovery of many in Israel,
A figure misunderstood and contradicted—
the pain of a sword-thrust through you—
But the rejection will force honesty,
as God reveals who they really are.”Luke 2:33-35 (MSG)
As I was studying the story of Christmas, I came across this passage. Picture the scene. Mary and Joseph, a godly couple, are coming to get their miracle baby properly dedicated according to the laws of Moses. I imagine that despite the crazy events leading to the birth, that today they are in good spirits. They’ve seen angles, been adored by shepherds and wisemen, and they were probably full of anticipation about what raising Jesus, a man whose name meant “God Saves,” might mean.
No doubt they, like many others, saw the Messiah as coming down and bringing justice to the earth, lifting oppression from the land, crushing those pesky Romans, and making everything perfect and wonderful and better. And so when a strange old man approaches them, asking them if he could prophesy over their promised child, my guess is that they were like “sure, the more blessings, the better.”
What came next was anything but expected. Instead of waxing on about how their lives over the next several years is going to be a bowl of peaches, he turns to Mary and tells her that this Christ child will be a polarizing character–misunderstood, misquoted, rejected. He even tells Mary that her baby will bring about a pain in her own life so severe that it will be as a sword piercing her very soul.
Not exactly the kind of news you’d like to hear coming from a seer. But that’s the whole paradox of the Christmas season. While the Christmas holiday is a glorious day, we have to remember that the whole reason Christ came to this earth was to suffer. Simeon knew this and prophesied it. It’s about Christ’s deliberate, willing, and redemptive suffering for mankind. Christ came to this earth, not to enjoy a long, plump life, but to suffer at the hands of His own creation. His life was marked by pain from the very beginning.
And consequently, so was Mary’s. By choosing to follow God’s plan, she brought pain onto herself. This, too, is a sobering thought. “Mary,” said Simeon, “this child will wretch pain into the very core of your being. But from it a greater good will come.” Christ later tells His disciples, “no servant is greater than his master. Since I have suffered, those who follow Me will also suffer.”
So this Christmas, as we remember the joys of the holiday–the time with family and friends, the wonderful foods and candies, the twinkle in children’s eyes–let us also not forget the real reason the baby Christ came to this earth. It was to endure great suffering so that we could be saved. And that is a reason to celebrate.
In case you have been living in a bubble the past few years, let me explain this cartoon for you. Obamacare has a provision which mandates that all employers, regardless of their religious objections, provide their employees with abortive and contraceptive care services.
To me, it was quite obvious what an obtrusion of religious freedom this mandate really was. In my narrow world-view, I could not conceive how anybody could choose the side of anti-freedom in this debate.
Then the attacks came and I quickly learned that those in favor of the mandate, through some twisted logic, labeled the mandate as being for freedom, and the churches as being against freedom. And in typical liberal fashion, it did not stop there. Many liberals then went on to conclude that because churches were against this mandate, they must somehow also be against women in general. Thus, conservatives must also want to deny women voting rights, working rights, fair pay, all the way down the line!
I remember a heated debate I had with a liberal friend. What was frustrating was that I just wished he would consider where I was coming from, even for a moment. A church is protected, by the Constitution, with their own freedoms. A church should be allowed to have a conscientious objection to covering abortive care, if it violates their tenants. But according to this man I was talking to, how dare the church push it’s views on its workers (he actually used the word ‘dare’).
I gently tried to explain to him, that the worker voluntarily chooses to work for the church, knowing their stance on these issues. If the worker does not like the church’s position, GET ANOTHER JOB! Nobody is forcing that worker to stay there. If the worker feels like they are being proselytized while at their church job, guess what, it’s the church’s building, the church’s payroll, the church’s right to believe and preach whatever they want. Freedom is allowing the church to have these positions, even if they are contrary to your own. If you don’t like it, too bad. That’s the consequence of a free society.
According to my friend, the church, by not refusing to pay for this lady’s contraceptives, is denying her access to care. Huh? The church is not stopping her from getting whatever contraceptive stuff she wants. If she wants it, she can pay for it. (And that goes for a lot of things by the way, from food, to vacations, to BMWs). If the church followed her to Walgreens and told the clerk not to sell this woman contraceptives, then yes, that would be a problem. But that’s not what is happening here. And again, I stress, if the woman wishes for somebody else to pay for these services, find another job that offers it as a benefit.
And I might add, if the lady lives a life that is promiscuous, the church should have the RIGHT to fire her if it violates some sort of ethical code they might have on chastity. There’s plenty of other employers who will hire such a woman. The church should have that freedom.
I could not get my friend to see where I was coming from and before long, the debate was starting to get so heated that I figured I should simply end it for fear of losing a friend. Following our debate, I began to see liberal talking heads repeating his same arguing lines, almost verbatim, without regard to the points conservatives have been desperately trying to make. Our voices are small, and the liberals have placed a bet that this is a winning issue for them on this election.
Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, let me say one other thing, and this goes back to something Joe Biden said in the VP debates. He said that while he is pro-life, he wouldn’t force his morals on other people. This is a tired, old, worn debate I’ve heard most of my life. Every time I hear it, I begin to deconstruct it logically in my mind, and it simply does not make sense. I wish that just once, somebody would throw this back at whomever uses this line in future debates, simply because it is a logical fallacy.
Let me break it down for you. First, don’t tell me liberals don’t like to push their morals on other people. Please! What do you call smoking bans? What do you call the ban on the incandescent? What do you call soda pop bans? What do you call bans on manger scenes at Christmas time? Or crosses at memorials? EVERYBODY tries to push their moral world view through politics. And it’s a good thing, too. We all agree that murder is morally objectionable. Therefore, as a consensus, we have banned murder. If we were to truly hold to the idea that it’s not up to us to push our morals on other people, then we should allow murderers to kill, because it’s not up to us to push our morals on them.
As you can see, that’s utterly preposterous. The same holds true for abortion. If deep down in the soul of your convictions, you truly felt that abortion was murder of the unborn, it would not matter what the other person felt about the issue. It’s morally objectionable to you, and you would work to try and stop it. Since abortion is the law of the land, you would have to go about your work through the legislative process, but ultimately, trying to win the hearts and minds of people to see why you find it so objectionable.
Here’s another analogy. Let’s take another issue, say, pedophilia. Let’s say we lived in a society that found sexual violation of child to be no big deal, so they legalized it. But you thought it was awful. Would you say, oh, I’m against pedophilia, but I’m not going to push my morals on other people? Of course not! You would say that this is a horrible act and you are going to work to ban it!
The same holds true for abortion. To say that you’re against abortion, but you’re not going to push your views on other people tells me that you really are not against abortion at all! If you found it to be the despicable act that I see it to be, then you would work just as hard to stop it as I try to do.
Every child born into this world encounters wonders of the most marvelous sort. Early on a toddler will squeal with delight at the sight of a cat, dog, parakeet, horse, or other animal that shares her neighborhood. When she grows older, a trip to the zoo brings astonishment: Animals never seen in the neighborhood, with strange and exotic forms and abilities, are everywhere in the enclosures.
Going off to school the child studies what is arguably the most dazzling of all creatures— humans, who think, talk, accumulate knowledge, and build civilizations.
This cartoon so brilliantly conveys the point I’m trying to make regarding liberal hypocrisy, that I really shouldn’t write anything more.
I really shouldn’t.
But at the risk of being redundant and weakening the strength of the cartoon, I can’t help myself, I must interject a few words.
I debated on whether or not to portray it as the typical Democrat donkey, since Republicans can be just as guilty of nannyism as Democrats. However, it is the Democrats running around screaming we are somehow waging a war on women, so in the end, the donkey stayed.
I find it fascinating that the same people who say that a woman should be free to do whatever the heck she wants with her body are the first to initiate all these bans on foods. It completely does not make logical sense. So a woman is allowed (for the sake of argument, I’ll call it how they call it) to undergo the ‘surgical’ procedure called abortion, without question, no regulations, and a minor doesn’t even need parental permission. Yet they are not allowed to drink more than 16 oz of soda? Or even eat at a fast food restaurant in some places (yes, some cities have banned fast food restaurants within their limits). Shouldn’t that same woman be free to eat whatever the heck she wanted without government interference? That is, after all, what they claim they want with abortion.
I’ve never seen anybody die from drinking 20 oz of pop. Yet over 50% of people die in every abortion procedure. (Yes, I’m including the unborn in this figure, however, there are still a small number of woman who also die due to complications of abortion. Actual statistics are hard to come by, the abortion industry is very hush, hush about it, but I can say this, if it were any other discipline of medicine, there would be malpractice lawsuits left and right.) Logically, it seems that if you are for no regulations for a procedure as dangerous as abortion, shouldn’t you also be for no regulations for something as innocuous as soda pop? Obviously, logic and reasoning have nothing to do with the issue.
Unrelated to this cartoon, but worth mentioning for the sake of argument: liberals LOVE to distort our side of the abortion argument, to make it sound like we are for something we are not, thus it makes it easier for them to provide their counter-argument. They’ll run around telling everybody what our point of view is, and be completely wrong about it. Nothing is more evident to this than the abortion issue. The big talking point is that Romney and conservatives hate women and don’t want them to have any freedoms. (First off, Romney’s anti-abortion stance is weak at best, so to try and lump him in with the rest of us right wing wackos is a bit unfair.) It is a war against women, the mantra goes. But they are completely missing our argument. It has nothing to do with women and what they want to do with their bodies. Heck, a woman can body-pierce herself into a straightjacket for all I care, whatever, not my life.
However, what a woman does to the life inside her, I do care about. Every human should be guaranteed the rights provided to us by the Declaration of Indepedence, and this includes life. The ONLY argument that we need to be discussing in the abortion issue is whether or not the unborn fetus is a human life, and at what point it becomes human life. During the sixties, the answer to this question was a lot more vague, but with new technologies, we can clearly see that even at a early stage, the developing child is unique and individual. Conservatives see no difference between a baby in the womb and a baby out of the womb. Both deserve protection from harm. Despite all of the liberal accusations and distortions, this is the only argument worth talking about.
A woman is free to do whatever she wants to her own body, and this includes eating salty foods. But the baby insider her is not her own body. She is a steward of that life. It is her divine privilege to be delivering the new life into this world.
When this article was written, the TEA party was just starting to gain momentum. I do get the sense that even as Europe and France spiral into socialistic chaos, Americans are starting to swing back to conservative values.
Of course, I loved creating this illustration, simply because of my deep love for baseball. I actually created this drawing while Rockies were playing on television. Nothing like mixing a little play and work together.
One of the most significant developments of 2011 is that conservatism, a philosophy many commentators were writing obituaries for not long ago, is making a comeback.
This is a startling turnabout. After Barack Obama’s election, Newsweek proclaimed in a cover story, “We Are All Socialists Now.” “Whether we want to admit it or not,” the editors opined, “the America of 2009 is moving toward a modern European state.” Democrats controlled both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue by wide margins, and a new, youthful president in the model of JohnF. Kennedy, with a background as a community organizer, prepared to usher in a new era of progressive reform. He vowed to repeal the Bush tax cuts, close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, passh ealth care reform and cap-and-trade legislation,and end the war in Iraq.
I debated on whether or not I wanted to go through with this cartoon. I know it’s going to cause controversy, and believe it or not, despite being a political cartoonist, I really don’t like controversy. What pushed me over the edge were the multiple cartoons out there equating Santorum as being the leader of the Crusades, here to chop off your head if you don’t accept his religion. What a bunch of inflammatory nonsense! And while the Catholic church does have the stain of the Crusades as part of their history, many, many more Christians and Catholics lost their lives from Roman times to present day, due only to their faith.
These recent attacks on Santorum are not really aimed at him, but at Christianity in general. They are quite telling. According to a number of Liberals I’ve talked with, if you proclaim your faith, it’s ramming it down people’s throats. Therefore, equating Christians to all kinds of horrible activities is justified. Yet, they wouldn’t dare say those kinds of things against the Muslim faith, even though some jihadists will kill you if you don’t accept their faith.
But the most frustrating thing of all is the legislation Obama passed that would force Catholic organizations to provide abortion and contraceptive services to their employees, despite their moral objections. What’s frustrating is not that Obama did this, for he has shown his true colors by now, but that many of my friends are saying this is an issue of freedom. By not forcing the organization to provide contraceptives is denying the employees their freedom, thus this legislation was necessary. Huh?
The choice of what the organization provides as compensation, paid or in benefits, to its employees, should be up to that organization. That’s freedom folks! Freedom is allowing everybody their choice, including the so-called big guy. It’s the employers company, the employer’s money, the employer’s risk and the employee freely chooses to work there. Nobody is forcing that employee to work there. If they don’t agree with the company’s moral standards, then find another job. Santorum had it right. By forcing Catholic organizations to provide contraceptive services, it’s the government forcing its belief system on the church! Liberals get so worked up about the imaginary “Wall of Separation,” yet if they want to have this wall, then they need to be willing to keep their liberal government out of the church as well.
I’m not a Catholic, and I rarely get offended, but this past week has been very instructive about how people really view the church. And let me tell you, some of the talk has been scary. Religious freedom in America is on attack, and that’s really what this cartoon is about.
Was privileged to illustrate the article by Lee Strobel discussing the various proofs for the existance of a Creator. You can read the full article here:
http://www.ccu.edu/centennial/review/mar11.asp
Sometimes the far left just makes my job so easy. This cartoon is based off of the news story that came out a few days ago regarding the elementary school in Mass. that has banned ANY Christmas reference whatsoever for their “Winter Holiday,” including Santa Claus and candy canes! What really got me rolling, however, is when the administration, in defense of the decision, came out and said that they wanted to have a religiously neutral holiday*, and that it was enacted so that they could teach tolerance to the kids. Huh? Yeah, maybe in high school, this might have been appropriate (okay, so it’s never appropriate), but in elementary school? You’re going to confuse the poor tikes.
“Teacher, what’s tol-tolrr-torllrrance?”
“Well, Johnny, that’s when you ban everything and don’t let certain religious people express their faith during holiday celebrations.”
“Oh…”
Talk about doublespeak. Gotta love it. When it gets this extreme, all I can do is sit back and laugh. And create a cartoon to invite you to laugh with me.
–oh, and in case I forget… Merry Christmas!
*um…, doesn’t the word “holiday” itself come from “holy day?”… more on that in a later cartoon.
In a recent teleconference, Barack Obama said that he would greatly reduce the amount of charitable tax deductions individuals and businesses who make over $250K can make on their tax returns in order to help pay for his health care plan. What a horribly conceived idea. This move will cripple many nonprofits across the nation.
Let’s examine why. Yes, the Bible does say give so that your left hand doesn’t know what your right hand is doing, but the truth of the matter is, that’s not how most individuals or corporations choose to operate. When you remove the tax incentive from them, they simply will stop giving. This is unfortunate, because, as one who worked for a nonprofit for three years knows, most charities subsist on the large corporate donations. While the small $25 widow’s mites are genuinely appreciated and coveted, they do not add up enough to cover the overwhelming costs of BOTH running a small corporation as well as doling out resources like food, medicine and education, to those who need it. Most nonprofits work on skeleton budgets as it is already, with much of the staff accepting lower pay than their for-profit counterparts might receive. A lot of the fundraising efforts are spent to find the big donors who are looking for a nice tax write off. While this motivation may not be “ideal,” there is nothing government can or should do to change that.
Barack Obama must know this (or be grossly naive), so why would he propose such an idea? I have my theories.
First, charitable writeoffs take away tax dollars from what otherwise could be used by the government agencies that perform the same services. In essence, private charity is in competition with government for the same dollar, to be used, in theory, for the same purpose. If Obama removes the incentive to give to charity, that money gets funneled into the government instead, so that the government programs end up having a competitive edge over the charities. I find it interesting that when given a choice, most donors would prefer private charities to handle the problems of homelessness, sickness, feeding the hungry, providing after school programs for troubled youth. By removing the writeoffs, government puts restrictions on that choice, meaning if one wants to give to the private charity, they have to do so in addition to giving to the government programs.
The problem with government programs is the lack of competition. We all have heard of corruption occurring within various private charities through the years. The advantage, however, is that if you find an issue with one private charity, simply pull your funds and give to another that does the same job. There are countless of watchdog agencies that do their best to investigate all the various nonprofits, so that one can be an informed giver. Corruption exists because humans exist.
Government lacks that kind of oversight. When corruption occurs, one cannot choose to stop paying taxes. Even when corruption is exposed by various media groups, change is very slow to take place.
The other possible motivation for this (and I’m not saying this is Obama’s motivation, although I’m sure it certainly belongs to a few who support this legislation) is that the greatest source of nonprofits are Christian agencies. I know that there has been a concentrated effort to extinguish Christianity by lobbyists and some in congress. What is the best way to shut down any organization? Remove their source of revenue. This proposal will do just that, forcing many Christian agencies to close their doors.
Thus, I vehemently oppose this idea.
abortion bail out Barack Obama Baseball big government Bill Ritter business Carbon Christianity Christmas conservatism Constitution Democrat Party draconian laws easter economy election Election Day elections fairness doctrine free speech Global Warming healthy living immigration John McCain liberals Nancy Pelosi Nanny state oil PETA Political Correctness Public Education Religion Republican Party Rockies Sarah Palin Socialism stimulus package TABOR taxes TEA party Terrorism Thanksgiving tolerance _health care
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