Category Archives: Deception

The Valentine’s Day Gift

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Each time I was pregnant, I craved burgers. I devoured patty melts my first go around, Wendy’s double cheese burgers my second go around and White Castle burgers with my third pregnancy. While I had a great love affair with burgers, I declare I wouldn’t want my husband to try to woo me with a burger, even though this is what White Castle is encouraging.

Did you see this ad? While I commend the fast food chain for capitalizing on broke people who like sliders and people who just want to show their loved ones some love, I just don’t think White Castle is special enough to give as a Valentine’s Day gift. White Castle is something you crave in the moment, get in the drive through when you’re in a hurry, buy when you can’t afford something else or grab when you don’t feel like cooking. White Castle just doesn’t seem special enough for the special person in your life.

The more I thought about how I would feel if my husband took me to White Castle for a Valentine’s dinner, I thought about how God, our first love, feels when we give Him the spiritual equivalent of a White Castle dinner: When we only read our bible when the moment hits us, only say a couple of words to Him as we rush out the door, or go to Him when nothing else has worked or when there’s nothing else to do. While these are probably not the pattern for most of us, I’m sure we have been guilty of at least one of these at some point in our Christian walk. I know that I, trying to balance all that strong black women are expected to balance, have given God some White Castle love. Yes, we all have extenuating circumstances, like perhaps sickness and caring for a new baby, but when we constantly let life get in the way of our fellowship with the person who gave us life, we have to make some adjustments, including planning better so God gets our very best.

This Valentine’s Day I want you think about how you plan to upgrade your gifts to God. I’m not necessarily talking about giving more money to Kingdom work, though some of you may need to do that. If you’ve been giving Jesus White Castle burgers with your time and talent, I want you to figure out how to give Him filet mignon. I want you to give Him whatever your best is. And as you know, He is worth every ounce and then some.

Read what an exSuperwoman is doing with her gifts this Valentine’s Day at Confessions of an ExSuperwoman.

Copyright 2011 by Rhonda J. Smith

Five Choice Lies

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When we hurt and the pain is so deep and the memory consistently fresh, we may choose to live in the grey, that space that blurs the definitive. We want to say yes to help, knowing saying no completely shuts us out from the possibility of help and healing. We live in the grey, the place of self-medication by suppression, an alternate reality we hope will protect us from more pain. In the grey we believe we delay the consequences that come from the yes and the no.

Not because of hurt or pain, some of us live in the grey just because it’s easier that way. I’ve seen this with church folk, those who seek to blur the lines of what Scripture says about abortion so they don’t have to toe the line. They are pro-abortion (pro-choice), not because Jesus is but because they say He is based on his compassion. A classic case of this comes from a sermon listed on the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC) website. The sermon used Mark 5:21-43 to justify why Christians should support women who get abortions, both their choice to have one and healing for them after they have had one.

Yes, without a doubt we should help post-abortive women in their healing process but in no way do I believe Christians should encourage women to have abortions, except perhaps in extreme circumstances. Mark 5:21-43, the story about the woman with the issue of blood, show Jesus’ compassion to heal a woman in pain for 12 years but in no way support a woman’s right to kill. Nonetheless, RCRC attempts to create some grey to dwell in.

Following are statements taken from the sermon that help to lay the foundation for what I call five choice lies:

Statement #1—“As Christians who strive to follow Jesus, we can and must be both compassionate and pro-choice.”
Lie #1—“Jesus was pro-choice which means he would support us choosing abortion.” But Jesus said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second [is] like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matthew 22:37-39). To love God is to obey Him (John 14:15) and he says choose life (Deuteronomy 30:19). And to love our neighbor as ourselves is to love the child in the womb as we love ourselves because the child in the womb is the closest neighbor anyone can have.

Statement #2—“In the 60s, horrified by the injuries and death suffered by women around the country due to illegal, unsafe abortions, religious leaders responded as people of faith and conscience must. Reverend Howard Moody and Arlene Carmen organized the first Clergy Consultation Service in New York City, a network of clergy who agreed to help women gain access to safe abortion providers.”
Lie #2—“It’s better to provide safe abortions so women won’t seek back alley ones.” This is the same notion as giving clean needles to drug addicts and condoms to sexually active teenagers. A safe wrong and an unsafe wrong are both wrong. Romans 13:10 tells us not to do wrong to a neighbor and verses 13 and 14 end the chapter by telling us this: “Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (emphasis mine). We are never to provide support for people to commit sin.

Statement #3—“[A] fertilized egg is potential life but not actual life. These Christians hold that the life, health, freedom, and moral agency of the pregnant woman are more important than the potential life in her womb.”
Lie #3—“We cannot scientifically tell when life begins.” This may be okay for non-Christians to say and believe, but Christians who believe the God of the Bible shouldn’t even try to use this one to support having an abortion. Most pro-life advocates believe life begins at conception. The makings of a fertilized egg are the beginning of a baby’s life. But I would add that biblically, life begins even before the womb, in the mind of God. In Ephesians 1:4 God says he chose us BEFORE the foundation of the earth. We were alive to God before we manifested in the earth.
Lie #4—“A woman’s freedom supersedes the life of the unborn child.” 1 Corinthians 10:23-24 says, “‘All things are lawful,’” but not all things are helpful. ‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.”

Statement #4—“Without Roe, life for American women would be thrown more than 30 years in reverse, returning them to the days when women could not fully control the number and spacing of their children. Without Roe, women will be forced to carry fetuses to full term – even when those fetuses have no brain, no limbs, no heart.”
Lie #5—“Abortion is a viable birth control method.” Family planning is something that families should decide together, but death should not be a viable means to help women regulate “the number and spacing of their children.” “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13).

The grey might numb the pain or even the guilt but what’s left is a trail of darkness and deception that is hard to flee.

Copyright 2011 by Rhonda J. Smith

Friday Feature: Keep It Juicy

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It’s Black History Month so we must share our stories, those of the past and ones we are creating right now, even health wise. And health wise, the African American story is not so good overall. Black women contract AIDS four times more than Latina or white women, we have a higher rate of abortions per capita, and heart disease is staggering among us. We have to make a change. That’s what “Friday Feature” is all about, helping us get a handle on our health the natural way.

    WARNING:

The following may be somewhat graphic language, even for strong black women, but I had to give it to you straight.

While in grad school, I was working full-time, researching for a professor and excelling in my classes. I was keeping things together, but in more ways than one. One day, with penetrating pain in my belly that periodically had me doubled over in my seat, I had to leave class and go to the emergency room. After laying a few hours behind a curtain on an emergency room gurney, hearing crying and snotting beat-up Joe call and explain to relatives, police and medical workers how he got caught in a homosexual prostitution crackdown in a local park, the resident gave me the news. “You are compacted. Go to the drugstore and get a stool softener and you should be fine.”

I had left class, drove in pain, waited four hours, and heard sadly hellacious stories to be told my bowels weren’t moving. I wanted a real diagnosis, a prescription given, hospital admittance, surgery performed. I wanted to scream that my pain was because I was keeping things together that should have been moving on and out. Compared to Joe, I had a small problem, at least in that moment, but constipation can lead to more serious problems, like a perforated colon and colon cancer, and even “minor” ones, like halitosis.

My natural healthcare specialists tell me that we should eliminate waste after every meal. Hmmm, I don’t know many people who do that and I even know a woman who says it’s normal for her to handle her business once a week. Once a week may be normal for her but it is not normal. We have to flush the waste out. Otherwise, just like garbage that sits and gets smelly and moldy, our insides will get smelly and moldy. We have enough problems fighting sagging, dimpled and wrinkled skin. Let’s work to keep our insides straight.

So, like natural healthcare practitioner Sunyatta Amen says, we got to “keep it juicy,” her way of reminding people of the importance of eating foods that have lots of water so they can lubricate your body and help your food to flow through and push waste out. Nothing can replace actually drinking water, but here are some of my juicy favorites that do well giving my water an assist:

Cabbage
Collard Greens
Leafy Greens salad
Watermelon
Oranges
Apples
Mango
Strawberries
Blueberries
Squash
Eggplant

What are some of your favorite juicy foods? Share yours and if you don’t eat them raw, tell us how you eat them.

Deception Demotes

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Did you ever think someone should get kicked out of your church or has someone ever gotten kicked out of your church? I know some people think that everyone who wants to be at church should be allowed to stay there. They have issues, but at least they came to church to try to get rid of them. Well, some people don’t come to church to get help for their issues; they come to church to start some issues. That is their ONLY reason for being there. And because that is their only reason for being there, they are singularly focused and easily cause deception to sweep through swiftly. What should be done with these people? What if you find yourself to be one of these people?

This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.—1 Timothy 1:18-20

In this passage we see the Apostle Paul teaching the younger minister, Timothy, how to occupy his position in the church and giving him an example of what he did to people walking in deception. He told Timothy to “wage a good warfare,” meaning fight with all his spiritual might by holding on to his faith and following what he knows to be right. For Hymenaeus and Alexander, those who abandoned their faith and spoke bad things (probably about the Christian faith or its leaders), “Paul handed over to Satan.” We know Paul didn’t literally hand these men to the god of all evil spiritual entities, but his metaphor suggests that Paul no longer served as a spiritual guide, a protector, for these men. He cast them away from his arch of safety, allowing Satan to have free reign in their lives. Parents sometimes do this, throwing up their hands to allow wayward kids to go their way. It’s not that the parents don’t love them, but when the kids have gone too far in their deception the only thing that may bring them back where they need to be is the natural consequences of their sin. Paul realized this and simply helped to facilitate that with Hymenaeus and Alexander and so do churches that kick out troublesome members who “have made shipwreck their faith.”

With strong black women historically allowing our own strength, ethnicity and gender to dictate to us how we handle situations, it’s likely that there have been some Alexander and Hymenaeuses among us. My hope is that we put ourselves in check so we aren’t kicked out of a church, a job, a friendship or a position of confidante in a friendship. Let us leave our place of deception to come back and sin no more.

Copyright 2011 by Rhonda J. Smith

Friday Feature: Abstinence and Trust

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Life and death have met me a lot this week—their notions and results of those who have chosen each have caused me to think deeply, more definitively, about my own beliefs, particularly in light of the 38th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. Whenever a hot button issue surfaces, Christians should take a stand, if not publically, in their own hearts based upon the heart of God. His counsel to us—not our feelings or conscience—is what we must follow, but this is not always easy to do, especially for women like strong black women.

In keeping with natural methods of healthcare, abstinence is undoubtedly the only natural way to keep from getting pregnant. This should be the decision for Christian singles, with sex being reserved for marriage. In marriage, ideally you and your husband should agree on whether or not to have a child. If you decide not to have children, the only natural form of birth control is the rhythm method. You could abstain from sex, but you would have another set of issues besides unwanted children, and those issues you don’t want.

But what about those hard issues, like an unexpected (and unwanted) pregnancy that comes from a slip in decision on a lonely night or from a cruel man, a stranger or one in your own bedroom? Is abortion acceptable in these situations? Is abortion the “natural” response to getting rid of something you didn’t expect, want, or plan for or don’t want around to remind you of a bad decision or the violent act? If the mother of a poet I love who loves so many or an evangelist who feeds the souls and bodies of thousands each year decided abortion was natural after they were raped, I and so many others would miss the love of these soul-feeding wonders. And I wonder what soul-feeding wonders were among the more than 50 million babies aborted since the passage of Roe v. Wade in 1973. And I wonder how many mothers thought their decision was natural because they were told that what was in their womb was not yet life or that they had the power to change their destiny and they believed it, wanted and needed to believe that, because they didn’t know or hadn’t considered the counsel of God.

We have believed that we have the freedom to choose in all things. God would not have given man volition if we didn’t have the right to choose, we say. But He says, “This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19). God gives us a choice but then commands us to choose life. I choose life, personally knowing the horror of rape and the turmoil of receiving something I didn’t expect from it. God’s council is true and life affirming even in the midst of personal darkness, death visited upon us. His council is the only one that we can trust and eventually rest secure in (Psalm 56:11, 2 Corinthians 1:8-10).

Copyright 2011 by Rhonda J. Smith