Yes, BUT . . . .

 A conservative commentator posed a two part quiz, consisting of a yes or no answer to this one  question:

Do traditional gender roles generally make for better relationships?

I voted yes and commented as below

YES

 BUT spiritual gender roles  (I will coin the term for convenience sake, no more, and mean by it the trad role cleansed of sin in Christ)  would make for even better.

in this world even the trad role is FALLEN and therefore  corrupt.

this is something the conservative almost always forgets

I suspect that the Left saw this corruption and like undisciplined thinkers everywhere  did not distinguish use from abuse in this matter  and rejected the lot.

and the resulting mayhem is history

Free speech and hate speech

 The Left these days want to ban speech that may or may not be expressive of hate and therefore violence ; and the Right want to narrow the definitions  of speech as violence so they can rail with impugnity and call it free speech

As the Right, particularly in the USA think they are christians  they would be expected to believe the Bible is the word of God andat least consider its commandments.

I posted this on a conservative channel on a video platform:

Can speech be violent, IOW can it build up, encourage, or demoralize, wound or drive to despair?

Well, is anyone denying this  ever been verbally abused?

to any Christian or religious Jew the answer, believe it or not, is in the Bible itself.

 "life and death are in the power of the tongue" Proverbs 18:1.    If the words life and death mean anything at al then this means words can wound and so speech can be violence.

This is also confirmed in the NT. Jesus said "the mouth speaks the fullnes of the heart" Luke 6:45 - so speech CAN be evil  -  and He also said "out of the heart comes evil thoughts"  Matthew 12:34-36 and mathew 15:18-19, whereby our evil words defile us, not the foods we eat (in response to jewish food law)

this is summarised best in the letter of James  3:5 and quoted here 3:6 "And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.

and to cap it all off  no one can control the tongue, James 3:8.

Conservatives \can call themselves christians if they like but they  are bound to adhere to the word of God, or stop pretending to believe  in it

as is often he case even conservatives ask the wrong questions:  the right quesetion is can   even hate speech be controlled by LAW  and is there any utility in the effort. and the answer is essentially NO. and thios because of JAmes 3:8

to call hate speech free speech  is to skirt this issue and actually agree with the Left that speech can and ought to be controled by LAW,  just differning on what speech should be controlled by law. but then LAW is the way that seems right to men but whicleads to death, for legalsim is never obedience. If legalism were obedience the  Pharisees would not have been hypocrites

the error of the right is to deny that such speech is evil, the error if the left  is to think that evil speech can and ought to be coerced into silence by LAW

The  rightists, invokingfree speech,  want to insult and  verbally rail  with impugnity?

very well but they  WILL account to God if not men for it

Ardern Resigns, my theory

 I now have a theory as to why Jacinda resigned.

I dont know this is true but it rings true to me.

I saw a comment on one of the many videos I saw about this matter, from a fellow NZer.

It says that Ardern was on holiday over the christmas break (our summer holiday here downunder) in a small town here in NZ  known for its hospitality.

and people were crossing the road to avoid her, and some were  giving her a piece of their minds.

So it has finally penetrated her pretty empty little head that she is hated.

and to a little girl with all the maturity of a 16 year old  - see her inveterate  grandstanding, the fuss she made on giving birth to a child while in  office  etc etc etc ad nauseum for evidence of this -  to such an infantile mind such knowledge  is SHATTERING

she is not loved, and now she knows it.  But she had to be on her summer holiday away from her acolytes handlers and hangers on, away from her bubble of self involvement and political isolation from reality  to even hear this. So of course she would be  on the verge of tears at the knowledge and has to run away.

So no, i  do not really believe that this is a calculated measure done in sober and cynical  awareness  of the situation. in order to escape criminal charges, as some sites theorise. They may be right but in my opinion  she is far  too naive for that.

she is a silly little girl way  out of her depth and this was compounded by her corruption as seen in her immense wealth ( 25 million on a PM's salary to a girl who grew up in a country towns fish and chip shop) and also seen in how quickly her power went to her head

So  i see no reason to think she was pushed out by anything other than her own wounded childish vanity

AS I said i do not know this, but it rings true to me

BTW i also heard that the rejoicing here in NZ was so great that one pub (drinking establishment, bar, tavern  to my american friends )  is offering cheap jugs of beer in celebration.

a pity i am not a beer drinker . . . .

What is the hope in us

 The following was written by me as a comment on a video by a creation scientist. Given the point i am making it does not matter who this scientist was, nor teparticular subject he  was speaking on 

The validity of the arguments of the creation scientists is why i am satisfied that the secular cosmologist among others are DEEPLY dishonest and that therefore there is no point in tryng to argue or reason with them. IMO apologetic work is best reserved to persuade christians that we have not believed in vain. it is essentially wasted on unbelievers who are too invested in their dishonesty. Which, I contend, is exactly what Romans chapter 1 says and has said all along I am not satisfied that the scripture, "be prepared to offer an account of the hope in you" justifies what we call apologetics. My conviction is slowly growing that the hope in us is our joy and way of life, In other words it is our fruit. and the account for it is the gospel itself. if we have no fruit we do not hope in any real or honest sense, so all our talk about the truth of the gospel is hot air as our lives show we ourselves do not believe it it is as a christian who was not converted by the clever reasonings of men (mine was a smaller scale Damascus Road event now 44 years ago) that i am grateful for thework of the creation scientists for their work

But, to conclude, if arguments do not convert what does?

I do regard it as an indictment on us that these two things are two things we do not have as christians.

They are the kind of unity which shows we truly love one another as referred to in Jesus' prayer ot make them (his discples) one

and the others is power, for St Paul said that the kingdom is not words but power

So we prefer to talk