Take the Christianity Quiz

 

Okay, I lied - it isn't actually a quiz. Just something to think about:

How do you define Christianity? There are small variations from one church to another, nit-picky things like different understandings of a particular verse; teachings about saints, candles, confession and indulgences. 

But most Christian religions, when painted in very broad strokes, have these beliefs in common:

·       Jesus is understood to be God.
·       Jesus’ main reason for coming to earth was to be a manifestation of God and to save all mankind.
·       You have an immortal soul that continues when you die.
·       At death your soul goes to heaven or hell. 

·       Hell is a horrible place, generally believed to be tortuously hot.
·       Virtually no one you know personally ever ends up in hell. They have some redeeming quality that will keep them out of that place.
·       Eventually, everyone will be reconciled to God - apparently even the ones who were consigned to burn in hell forever.
·       Sex outside marriage is sort of frowned upon, but teachings to that effect are not enforced. While marriage to one of the opposite sex is viewed positively, alternatives are no one's business.
·       Opinions condemning homosexual behavior should be kept to oneself.
·       The most Christian quality is judgment-free acceptance of virtually any behavior that doesn't explicitly hurt a child or an animal.
·       Good Christians celebrate Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter and other holy days. Regardless of their well-known pagan roots, such beliefs are sanctified by  their acceptance into the church.
·       Good Christians reverence their country’s flag, serve in the military, vote, and run for office.
·       A Christian preacher is a paid professional.
·       A Christian preacher should have a special title, wear special articles of clothing, be given special reverence, seats and parking spaces in the church.
·       Christian preachers overseeing churches may be of either gender and any sexuality.
·       The laity’s duty is to be nice to their neighbors and attend church, or at least support the preacher financially.
·       A collection plate is passed at every service. Special services such as weddings are expected to be accompanied by special payments.  
·       The Bible is mysterious and contradictory. It is a wise old book but not the absolute truth.
·       Faith means accepting what can’t be satisfactorily explained.

Since no one seems to agree on anything anymore I don’t expect anyone to look at this list and say, ‘Yup, that’s exactly what my church teaches.’ But you could ask yourself or a friend whether some, many, or most of the items above loosely fit your church.

If the answer is yes, here’s a shocker for you:

Jesus said, very specifically, that there would end up being two kinds of Christianity. He referred to one as ‘a broad, wide road leading off to destruction, and many are on it.’ The other, he said, was narrow, cramped, difficult, and “few are the ones finding it.” (Matthew 7:13, 14) 

Lest you think that he meant ‘Christianity’ was the narrow road and, I don’t know, anti-Christianity, Pagandom, Islam? – is the broad road, notice that a few verses on he says that the people on the broad road call HIM “Lord!” (Matthew 7:22) 

The people on both roads label themselves as Christians.

What do all the teachings in those bullet-points above have in common?

Most of them are held in common by the majority. Hence, the people who agree with most of that list are on the wrong road, the broad road.

Am I reading too much into this? No. Jesus repeated the same point in different words in different places.

In Matthew 13:36-43 he compared his preaching to a man sowing wheat in a field. An enemy then over-sowed weeds in that same field. Jesus, the owner of the field, acknowledged that it would be hard to tell the wheat from the weeds and commanded, ‘Let both grow together until harvest.’ Christianity would include both wheat - genuine Christians; and weeds - fake Christians, side-by-side, down through time until the end.

In another word picture he compared Christians to a flock of mixed sheep and goats. (Matthew 25:31-46) In the illustration, both groups address him as “Lord”, so the entire flock are calling themselves Christians. But when tested, part of the flock fails. They are judged to be goats, weed-like, fake Christians; and they are destroyed. 

In the next column on this subject, we'll go through those bullet-points, one by one, and show from the Bible why real Christians don't agree with them.

Please feel free to copy the link to this column and share it with your friends. To jump to Part Two, click here.

Please leave a comment.

 Bill K. Underwood is the author of several novels and one non-fiction self-help book, all available at Amazon.com. You can help support this site by purchasing a book.

Are you really "saved"?

 

A neighbor asked me the other day if I was saved. 

How do you respond when someone asks you that? Do you know what they mean? Do they know what they mean?

Romans 5:18, depending on your translation, reads:  “So then as through one trespass, all men were condemned; even so through one act of righteousness, ALL men were justified to life.”

Is this to be taken as strictly, literally true? If so, you can throw away your Bible and just get a button or a bumper sticker that says 'I'm Saved!' and get on with your life. (Which, by the way, many who call themselves Christians seem to do.) 

Does that scripture in Romans mean that literally every person is saved? Are ALL who are saved permanently saved?

In Greek, the word pan, "all", is often not modified. The sentence will simply say "all", even when the context makes clear that it doesn't mean all the way we use it today. Consequently, a translator has to figure out the actual meaning based on the context. 

For example, the original Greek of 1 Timothy 6:10 says, ‘The love of money is the root of ALL evil.' Good translators recognize that there are in fact evils that do not have anything to do with money, so they render it as “all kinds of evils,” “all sorts of evils,” “all manner of evil.”

The Greek of Matthew 4:23 says Jesus healed, throughout Galilee, ‘ALL disease and ALL maladies.’ Careful translators render it ‘every sort of disease.' Likewise, Matthew 10:1 says, in Greek, that the disciples cured ‘ALL disease and infirmity.’ If that was literally true, how were there still blind, lame, and lepers later on for Jesus and the disciples to cure, as the Bible reports in numerous places? So good translators render it, "all kinds of maladies."

Luke 16:16 in Greek: “[Since John the Baptist] the kingdom of God is proclaimed as good news, and everyone doth press into it.” But there have always been and still are today some who have never heard of the kingdom. How could they possibly be ‘pressing into’ something they've never heard of? Consequently, good translations read, ‘all manner of men’ or ‘men of all sorts’ are pursuing kingdom interests.

Those translators who claim ALL disease was eradicated, that ALL people press toward the kingdom, when they get to 1 Timothy 2:4, they of course say that ‘God will have ALL men be saved,’ ‘God wills that everyone be saved,’ ‘God desires all to be saved.’ 

People who don’t think too deeply about Bible things, then, assume they must be saved. Surely God is too nice to ever destroy anyone, isn't He? All they need to do is believe. After all, John 3:17 says, “God did not send his Son into the world to be judge of the world; he sent him so that the world might have salvation through him.” 

There you go! Saved – ‘God loves me as I am, I don’t need to change a thing.’

Some of those who have had an emotional experience they call ‘getting saved’ think a bit differently: their belief is that their salvation is the result of some act on their part: They accepted Christ. Consequently, they are also convinced that everyone else who has not had that ‘saved’ experience will go to hell. Their belief flies in the face of the ‘God will save everyone’ doctrine, but they don’t seem to care as long as they are saved. They base this on Romans 10:13, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved,’ and they stop reading before they get to verse 14, which in most translations starts with “But…” or “However…”

 A belief that is contradicted by even one verse of the Bible is false. 

• If ALL will be saved, why did Jesus say, “He that endures to the end will be saved”? (Matthew 24:13) 
• If ALL will be saved, why did Jesus say,  "Strain every nerve to force your way in through the narrow gate, for multitudes, I tell you, will endeavor to find a way in and will not succeed.” (Luke 13:24)
• If ALL will be saved, who are the “many” traveling on the broad way that leads to destruction? (Matthew 7:13, 14) 
• If ALL will be saved, what did Jesus mean by the parable of the wheat and the weeds? (Matthew 13:37-43) Or the rejection of the unsuitable fish? (Matthew 13:47-50) Or of the sheep and the goats? (Matthew 25:31-46)
•  If ALL will be saved, why did Jesus say, “He who disobeys the son shall not see life”? (John 3:36)

If all will be saved, why did Jesus say IF? At John 15:13 he said his ransom was given for his friends, and then he followed it up in verse 14 by defining his friends: “You are my friends IF you do what I command.” So, if I don’t do what Jesus commands, I'm not his friend. If I'm not his friend, his ransom does NOT apply to me, and I won't be saved.

A corollary of ‘getting saved’ is the idea of ‘once saved, always saved.’ But if ALL, once saved, are saved for all time:

• Why does Hebrews 10:26 warn that, “if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more sacrifice for sins”? 
• Why do we read in Philippians 2:12, “give yourselves to working out your salvation with fear in your hearts and trembling”? 
• Why did Paul warn us to be careful not to “drift away”? (Hebrews 2:1) 
•  Why did Jesus tell the Christian congregation at Sardis: “Call to mind, then, what you received and heard, and hold to it, and repent. Unless you are on the watch, I will come as a thief, and you will never know at what hour I am coming upon you.” (Revelation 3:3)

Salvation is a gift, it’s true. It cannot be bought or earned. It is certainly not deserved. But it is a gift given only to those who have consistently done their best to listen to Jesus commands, who have obeyed, and who continue to do so, enduring right down to the end. 

You might want to copy the link to this column and share it with your friends, particularly if they claim they are "saved."

Please leave a comment.

 Bill K. Underwood is the author of several novels and one non-fiction self-help book, all available at Amazon.com. You can help support this site by purchasing one of his books. 

 

Blood derivatives and fractions

 

This week, the discussion of blood medicine moved from academic to personal.

If you are a regular reader of this space, you know my feelings about blood. I’ve written more than a dozen columns about it. Here are links to some of those columns:

Advances in Blood Medicine

Government, Parental Rights and Medical Treatment

Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy for Blood Loss

Why Blood is Bad Emergency Medicine

You Must Know about TXA Before Your Next Operation

Spread the word: Transfusion is NOT a “life-saving procedure”

 

The reason I said it went from academic to personal: My wife is preparing for hip replacement surgery, and we had a pre-op meeting at the hospital. I nearly always accompany her to such meetings to make sure we ask enough questions and to compare notes afterward.

But this time, when her name was called, the nurse made it clear I was not included in the invitation. When Wifey came out, she told me the nurse questioned her about her stand on blood.

“Are you sure you want to refuse all blood and blood derivatives?”

My wife wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. “Derivatives?”

“Because we can just get rid of that form you signed, if you wish. No one has to know,” the nurse went on.

When my wife explained she wanted no blood or blood components, but that she might accept some fractions on a case-by-case basis, depending on what the fraction was, the nurse claimed she was unfamiliar with the terms “components” and “fractions”. 

I’m profoundly glad I wasn’t there for that conversation. The nurse would no doubt have been offended at my loudly questioning how she could possibly have ever passed her Medical Ethics class.

Did we get it wrong? Has medicine moved on from “components” and “fractions” to “derivatives”?

No. Medical science decidedly has not. But in a world where people claim to be confused about their pronouns, word definitions are not as clear-cut as they used to be.

It could have been simple vagueness on the part of the person who designed the form. That seems unlikely. Could it be that the hospital is trying to get patients to sign something that lets them off the hook for not precisely following the patient’s wishes?

If you sign the form as written, you have severely restricted what the institution can use to treat you. But if you don’t sign it as written, they may well give you blood.  

“Blood derivatives” is a commonly used billing term that includes whole blood and the four major blood components – plasma, red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets – as well as the blood fractions made from those components. So of course you are not going to give permission to be treated with any and all “blood derivatives”. But you may not want to blanketly rule out all fractions, either.

Without a clearer definition you could be cutting yourself off from literally dozens of fractionated medicines: clotting factors for when your wound won’t seal up; and the opposite - medications for when you have thrown or they’re afraid you might throw a dangerous clot; and dozens of other blood-derived medications for use in rarer circumstances.

Whole blood is rarely transfused anymore. At a blood collection center, a single unit of blood is treated to break it into 3 parts: the red blood cells are collected; the platelets are also collected out separately. The remainder… the plasma, still containing the white blood cells (called Leucocytes), clotting factors, and other more esoteric derivatives may or may not be further treated.

The plasma may be treated by freezing and thawing, a process called cryoprecipitation. At the proper in-between temperature they can lift out some of the clotting factors, though they are still somewhat contaminated with some plasma and some white cells. That product is called cryoprecipitate. The remaining plasma is called cryosupernatant. Both these products have significant risk of transmitting disease.

The majority of the cryosupernatant in the U.S. market is shipped to a manufacturer to be “pooled”. The pool is comprised of donations from thousands or even tens of thousands of individuals. Most of the individual units have been tested for: Lymphotropic virus, HIV, Hepatitis B & C, Syphilis, Chagas disease, West Nile virus and Babesia.

However, no testing is done for over 60 known blood-borne diseases. In some cases, because there is no test; in other cases, because the blood collection center deems the risk to be remote. A collection site in Oregon isn’t going to check for Chikungunya, a disease common in Latin America (even though my brother-in-law who lives in Oregon has it.) ONE of the units going into the pool may well carry one of those diseases. It if does, it pollutes the entire pool.  One unit of blood containing Chikungunya or Parvovirus or Malaria or yellow fever could potentially spread that virus to every one of the thousands of patients who receive blood-based medicine manufactured from that pool.

Most fractional blood derivatives have trade names, like Zemaira, Albuminex, or Corifact. All are supposed to come with a Drug Fact Sheet.

The Drug Fact Sheet for Zemaira, for example (a medication for people with emphysema), says:

“Because Zemaira is made from human blood, it may carry a risk of transmitting infectious agents, e.g., viruses, and theoretically the Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).” (CJD, in case you’re unfamiliar, used to be called Mad Cow disease.) “The risk of transmitting an infectious agent has been reduced by screening plasma donors for prior exposure to certain viruses, by testing for the presence of certain current virus infections and by inactivating and removing certain viruses. Despite these measures, such products can still potentially transmit disease.”

Has anyone ever been diagnosed with Mad Cow from taking Zemaira? I don't know. However, it is listed there because people have contracted CJD from transfusions of various blood components.

Some derivative Drug Fact Sheets specifically mention, ‘pooled blood’, or they may have the warning similar to ‘you could get Mad Cow’; others seem to be more adamant that their product when used correctly is totally free of any threat of catching something from someone else. Here’s the pertinent part of the label from a product called Kedbumin:

“Albumin is a derivative of human blood. Based on effective donor screening and product manufacturing processes, it carries an extremely remote risk for transmission of viral diseases and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD). There is a theoretical risk for transmission of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), but if that risk actually exists, the risk of transmission would also be considered extremely remote. No cases of transmission of viral diseases, CJD or vCJD have ever been identified for licensed albumin.”

However, the FDA warning label for albumin says:

“Albumin (Human) 25% is made from human plasma. Products made from human plasma may contain infectious agents, such as viruses, that can cause disease. The risk that such products will transmit an infectious agent has been reduced by screening plasma donors for prior exposure to certain viruses, by testing for the presence of certain current virus infections, and by inactivating certain viruses by pasteurization. Despite these measures, such products can still potentially transmit disease.”

So, I suppose if you need albumin, Kedbumin might be a better choice...maybe? Still, a study about albumin said:

“For patients with hypovolaemia there is no evidence that albumin reduces mortality when compared with cheaper alternatives such as saline. There is no evidence that albumin reduces mortality in critically ill patients with burns and hypoalbuminaemia. The possibility that there may be highly selected populations of critically ill patients in which albumin may be indicated remains open to question.”

What about blood derivatives that are not made from pooled blood?

One type of antithrombin is created by inserting the human DNA that forms antithrombin into a female goat. After some time has elapsed, the milk of the goat will have human antithrombin in it which can be extracted for use as a blood thinner.It is called a blood derivative, but clearly it is far removed from blood.

If you get bit by a rattlesnake you may, depending on your health, need antivenin. Antivenin is made by injecting a small amount of a given species of snake’s venom into a horse, waiting a few days for the horse to build up antibodies, then drawing blood from the horse and filtering out some of its antibodies. Antivenins for other poisonous bites are made similarly.

Every unfamiliar medication your doctor prescribes, you'll want to ask if it is a blood derivative. They're not necessarily all bad. In some cases, depending on how you live, you might be taking greater risks every day. But certainly it is better to be educated. Read your medicine's warning material. If it is a blood derivative it will include the disclaimer, “Because yada-yada is made from human blood it may carry a risk…” or wording to that effect.

“Blood and blood products are likely always to carry an inherent risk of infectious agents. Therefore, zero risk may be unattainable. The role of FDA is to drive that risk to the lowest level reasonably achievable.” – fda.gov

If it is a blood-derived medicine, you might want to ask your doctor if there is another medication, that does roughly the same thing, that is not a blood derivative, such as a synthetic, a recombinant, or some other product. Ask if your need for this medication is life-threatening or if it is merely advisable. Research it yourself to get a better understanding of what it will or won’t do for you. 

I spent many, many hours researching this. The first thing I learned is that it is a really complicated subject. But don't let that put you off. The second thing I learned is that you can understand it if you keep looking things up. Hopefully, this column will serve as a starting point for your research. 

Please copy and share the link to this article with all your friends.  You might keep one of them from catching Chikungunya. 

Please leave a comment.

 Bill K. Underwood is the author of several novels and one non-fiction self-help book, all available at Amazon.com. You can help support this site by purchasing one of his books.

 

 

 

Abortion and Christians

 

Isn’t it amazing how the world can change in just a couple months? 

Conservative politicians found ways to pass laws that seemed to contradict the Roe V. Wade ruling. They used their political power to put biased judges into what was previously seen as a bastion of political neutrality, the Supreme Court. The Court overturned Roe V. Wade. Millions of voters began protesting the loss of their ‘rights’ and began threatening to vote those politicians out of office. So now many of those same politicians, who claimed they were only doing the 'Christian' thing, are back-pedaling, changing their stance on abortion, and trying to distance themselves from the Roe v. Wade fallout they instigated.

This is not a discussion of the pro-life/pro-choice debate. That discussion is purely political, not biblical. I want no part of it, no matter how loudly politicians try to attach ‘Christianity’ to it.

The word ‘abortion’ is in the Bible, but not in its 21^st century meaning. In English Bibles that translate the Hebrew word shakhal as abortion, the context makes clear it refers to what today is called a miscarriage: that is, an accidental, unwanted loss of a pregnancy, not a purposeful termination of one.

The Bible does not say, ‘Thou shalt not commit abortion.’ But neither does it say that until childbirth a pregnant woman has complete autonomy over her body, including the fetus she’s carrying.

So does that mean the Bible is silent on the subject of terminating pregnancies? Not at all. Let’s take a look at what the Bible does say about pregnancy and childbirth and see what principles it contains.  

The very first childbirth mentioned in the Bible is that of Cain. On that occasion Eve remarked, “I have brought forth a man with the help of Jehovah.” (Genesis 4:1) The statement could be misleading: Eve no longer had a relationship with Jehovah. It’s not impossible that she was crediting the miracle of birth to Jehovah even though she was no longer in His favor. Or, it being probably the most pain she or Adam had ever experienced, she may have been crediting Jehovah with keeping her alive through the ordeal. Far more likely, however, is that she believed (based on Genesis 3:15) that this man-child would be the savior who would get them out of this mess they’d gotten themselves into. She was, not surprisingly, wrong about that. 

But that attitude – that somehow the next child born would be the one to fix Adam and Eve’s colossal mistake – persisted throughout Bible times. 

For Israelite mothers, bearing a child was a sacred experience; being barren was viewed as a curse. Pregnancies were a blessing. Harming a pregnancy was a crime, potentially a capital crime. (Exodus 21:22-25)

Children are consistently described as ‘an inheritance’, ‘a gift’, ‘a favor’, from God - by those in an approved relationship with the God of the Bible. However, we also read in the Bible about those with a different view.

People who abandoned Jehovah and turned to worshiping pagan gods such as Molech would voluntarily toss their infants into the burning lap of a huge metal cow-headed image of their god. (Jeremiah 32:35) I cannot imagine how parents who loved their children did so. I suspect that most of those pagans who practiced this secretly viewed those babies, like mothers seeking abortion today, as an inconvenience.

If the Bible contained a “Thou Shalt Not...” for every possible scenario it would be so long that it wouldn’t fit on any library shelf in the world. More than that: would a list of thou-shalt-nots really draw you closer to God? There’s a story that as his death was approaching, comedian W. C. Fields was seen reading the Bible. When asked what he was looking for so late in his life, his reply was, “Loopholes.”

If you approach the Bible with an open mind and the intent to find out how to be acceptable to God, you’ll find principles that you can apply in every situation. Those principles make clear that God views life as a gift and children as an inheritance. 

I hesitate to think what He views politicians as.

For Part One of this column, click here. Feel free to leave a polite comment. Comments are monitored, so don't waste your time trying to post spam.

Bill K. Underwood is the author of several books, all available at Amazon.com. You can help support this site by purchasing one of his books.