Here is an interesting assessment of Steve Irwins love for the natural world anda reason why many loved him.
"One aspect of Irwin’s life stands out. He was unashamedly enthusiastic about the wonders of the natural world. Children adored him because he showed them what it might mean to love animals whether great or small.
Tragically there is no indication that Irwin was a Christian, indeed, he and his wife welcomed their children into the world with Buddhist ceremonies. Yet his life is one long rebuke to Christians who take little delight in their Father’s world. If a man could love the creation this much and not know the Creator—how much more should those who love God take delight in the work of His hands?"
It is important to enjoy the Lord's creation. But always make sure you love the Creator more. The Lord has given us the earth and the animals on the earth to enjoy and use for His glory. Unfortunately for Irwin, he had enjoyed the world and the creation, but it got him nothing in eternity.
While living for the moment, he forgot to take care of eternity. Lord, let me not forsake the eternal for temporary happiness. Lord, let me be content in this world, while not being too comfortable that I start to look like the world. Let me be more like you. That is a hard prayer sometimes.
10 comments:
Derrick,
What an outstanding post!!!! You should submit those thoughts to a publication. Very well put, well said, and so true..
Thanks, I DO post on a blog. :-) Does that count?
Derrick
Derrick, you’ve missed a thousand opportunities to use your blog to opine about the dhimmi-makers and their “righteous indignation” over “Pope” Benedict XVI’s quotation of Manuel Paleologos II. (There is no Father but God.) So while you have been busy doing going to work, grading papers, spending quality time w/family and friends, here is some of what has been going on:
1) Pakistani parliament censures or condemns Benedict XVI;
2) Turkey’s ruling party likens Benedict XVI to Benito Mussolini and “Let’s invade other people’s lands and kill their dissenters and Jewish citizens”-Hitler.
3) Turkey’s prime minister insists that Benedict’s words either were ignorant or a deliberate distortion.
4) Shiite cleric Sheik Abdul-Kareem al-Ghazi of Basra, Iraq is quoted as saying: “The pope and Vatican proved to be Zionists and that they are far from Christianity, which does not differ from Islam. Both religions call for forgiveness, love and brotherhood.”
5) Muslim Brotherhood, of all organizations, has the gall to call for an apology from Benedict XVI.
6) Coptic “Pope” Shenouda III is quoted as saying: “Any remarks which offend Islam and Muslims are against the teachings of Christ.”
7) Surprise, surprise: AP is reporting that church buildings have been attacked in the West Bank and in Gaza.
Americans seem to know what time it is WRT to radical Islam. Not sure the Europeans do, even after all that has happened in the past three years. Either way, political correctness and a twisted conception of tolerance threatens to ruin Europe in particular.
Indeed, the BLOG does count. How about sending it to a christian Publication. It really is good stuff.
Kwame, thanks for the update. I am sad to say that in spending all the time with family and work, I don't get to spend as much time keeping up with all the happenings.
I do appreciate your update. So, am I understanding it correctly that the Pope said something like "there is no Father but God", that Muslims are unhappy and call the Pope names, say that Christianity and Islam is the same, but if the Christian offends a Muslim then they are not acting as a Christian should...
If Christianity and Islam are the same-all about forgiveness and brotherhood, wouldn't that mean the Mulims should also extend that to the Pope? Or to the Danish cartoonists? Something tells me the are not willing to extend that hand unless it is connected to a weapon to rid the world of infidels.
Hmmm. Let me guess on the church bulildings: It was the Jews, right? Because according to the Mulims and the news, they are often causing problems in Israel-It's never the terrorist organizations. It is weird that way.
I agree that Europe has been in a spiritual downhill for quite a while it seems. The Christians there do have a tougher time, it would seem, than us spoiled Americans.
I do hope we see the problems they are having in Europe and stop trying to model our justice system and the "freedom from religion" they have going on. If it doesn't work in another society, why try it here?
I hope at least some of that is coherent-the voices in my head think so.
Go easy on me, Kwame,
Derrick
P.S. Russ, I'm afraid I'm not ready for the big time. Maybe when my readership is consistantly above 7 a day. :-) thanks though.
It is indeed possible that Steve Irwin accepted The Lord as he was in his final moments. At least there is hope of such. Only The Lord knows that one.
It is possible, though, I am afraid highly unlikely since it seems his death was fairly immediate.
D.
Derrick wrote:
<< I do appreciate your update. So, am I understanding it correctly that the Pope said something like "there is no Father but God", that Muslims are unhappy and call the Pope names, say that Christianity and Islam is the same, but if the Christian offends a Muslim then they are not acting as a Christian should.... >>
Nah, I was just clarifying my use of quotation marks around the word “Pope.” Benedict XVI ain’t my papa, nor is he the father of just about any member of the Roman Catholic Church. Here, perhaps this URL will still work (it should): http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/september/documents\
/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg_en.html
That’s what Benedict XVI actually said. That is what appears to be behind the recent shooting of that nun in Somalia, this after reports of attacks on church buildings in the West Bank and Gaza. Islam sure isn’t looking like a religion of peace and tolerance these days, is it?
<< Kwame, do you think that offending Muslims is against the teachings of Judaism and Christianity as some Muslim leaders have suggested? >>
How or why would it be against the teachings of Judaism and Christianity? You yourself know very well that Christ offended a lot of people during his ministry on earth. You yourself probably also know that there are unbelievers out there in this world who are offended by the declaration that they are evil (though in fact they sin and are evil) and that they deserve to be punished, this despite the fact that these statements are true and pretty much are part and parcel of the gospel of Christ.
The Western world’s current obsession with neither offending anyone nor appearing to be chauvinistic--something which started long, long ago and is shared in various forms by believers and unbelievers--has got to stop. Again, this has gone way too far, and this stuff has got to stop. Things had gone way too far when Jimmy the Greek lost his job back in the day. Things had gone way too far when the use of generic “he” was deemed sexist and was anathema....
Now, fast forward to today. The average Joe has no qualms no and no fear to speak about some of the real and unflattering truths about passages of the Qur'an and Hadiths, about interpretations of these things, and about life in countries under Sharia law or where extremist Muslims run rampant. But the media elites and the government elites on the other hand--they are the ones who are going to get a lot of innocent people killed, or rather they are the ones who are cordially opening the gates wide for the barbarians to march in to kill and ruin the lives of millions of Europeans and, ultimately, American citizens.
If you are not already familiar with all the political machinations leading up to the next 9/11 and 7/7 attacks, and with all the crazy, insane, and suicidal compromises that European and American governments have been making over the past 5 to 20 years WRT unassimilated European extremist Muslims and others, I will commend this URL (and there are others) to you as a sort of clearinghouse for a lot of the information:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/
(Of course, it is funny that dhimmis should be referred to as “protected people.” Sixty years ago the Gestapo used to take people into what was called “protective custody,” and it is very much unclear just what they were being protected from.)
Europe and the British Isles have already had their 7/7 attacks, their political, Islamofacist assassinations, and their Islamist (vs. Islamic or Muslim) citizens and residents openly calling for 9/11 attacks on European soil and for the imposition of Sharia law in Europe (something which would make someone like you a dhimmi and would make women second-class citizens). And this is the same part of the world with declining or otherwise zero birth rates among its native-born residents and which receives its workforce from parts of the Mideast with large numbers of radical Muslims. But those who are in power in these countries--you know, the media elite and those in government--they never learn. After all that has happened, they still have not learned. Apparently they still are denouncing Benedict XVI while saying nothing about the hypocrisy and intolerance of the people who are condemning Benedict XVI and attacking church buildings and people in the Palestinian territories and Somalia. (This would be similar to President Bush’s mantra that Islam is a “peaceful religion” and the downright surreal statement [if accurate] that one finds at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Rahman_%28convert%29 [“We will invite him again because the religion of Islam is one of tolerance.”])
Now, even if Sharia law never becomes the law of British Isles and Europe, things in that part of the world have the potential to become much worse. It is said that an age-old strategy for the acquisition of land is as follows: you have some of your people colonize a foreign land, or else have them build up their numbers there through procreation. Having done this, you can use their presence there as a pretext of invasion and annexation of that land. Just stage a phony round of persecution and oppression of those people, and invade and annex as a consequence. Well, the case with greater Europe will be a tad bit different. The vast numbers of radical Muslims and unassimilated Muslims is already in place in Europe. But instead of seeing a miliary invasion from the Mideast you will probably see a revolution (of sort) from within. Consider bin Laden’s rationale for the formation of Al-Qaeda after Gulf War I and long before 9/11 (he wanted the US military out of the Arabian peninsula--you know, Muslim land, even the land of Mecca and Medina). Consider the rationale behind Al-Qaeda terrorists in Iraq today. This echoes the quotation attributed to the founder of Muslim Brotherhood (reportedly whence came Hamas and Al-Qaeda) at http://ftrsummary.blogspot.com/2006/07/ftr-561-economics-911-part-ii.html: “Islam is doctrine, divine worship, the fatherland, the nation, religion, spirituality, the Koran and the sword.” But we see harbingers of worse things to come in the 9/20/06 story “UK Home Secretary Reid jeered during speech to Muslims” at http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/. Apparently, in the minds of some people, once a land comes to be dominated by Muslims, un-Islamic law becomes null and void.
The Iraqi government has already made concessions to insurgent forces in Iraq. The Afghan government, meanwhile, seems to have made its own concessions to anti-government forces there. So, what happens when the numbers of radical Muslims in greater Europe reaches its fatal 20% threshhold (or whatever) and the infidels of Europe start getting blown up, picked off by sniper fire, and beheaded before video cameras? Well, who cares? Innocent people are already dying at that point, this before concessions are even made to the terrorists of tomorrow.
So it looks like what you are going to be seeing in the next few years is a continuing story: a story of the bad cops (the Islamofacists who kill people), a story of the good cops (the Muslims who wail and cry and complain and call for “tolerance” when anyone says something unflattering about either Muslims or Islam, and then turn around and poor money into the coffers of Hamas and related groups, and a story of the people who stupidly comply with the wishes of these “good cops” and call for people like Benedict XVI to be more “tolerant.” The cry for the new tolerance is a way for fallen man to feel righteous; and it is also a cry that is made for fear that one chip or one crack in the edifice of Political Correctness will bring the whole thing crashing down. At the end of the day, there are people who are going to have blood on their hands, a list of these persons may well go as follows:
1) Newspaper editorial writers;
2) Newspaper staff writers;
3) Lazy TV journalists and producers;
4) TV journalists and producers working for companies owned by Saudi money in the first place;
5) Lazy politicians;
6) The White American racists of yesteryear (whence came political correctness!?);
7) The wife-abusers of yesteryear (again, whence came PC!?);
8) Muhammad;
9) The people who spread his message without honestly and actually having any good epistemological reason for believing he was a prophet;
10) Christian servants of Politcal Correctness.
Please make sure that you are not one of these people. And hopefully you will spread the word about the facts and ideas underlying what I have just said. And hopefully in the future you and yours will be fully cognizant of the world war which now surrounds us even if you will not assume an alarmist approach to the whole matter.
Shalom!
Post-script:
I could add an eleventh item to the list of ten groups that may end up contributing to the destruction of Western Europe, an item which suggests that what we are seeing now is a continuation of the Second World War. The view is that of Dave Emory, and as far as I know he pioneered the view; the man is also probably correct in this regard.
History is a series of causes, of unintended and belated effects, of people who are very analogous to Darth Siddious, and of people who realize that the measure of ambition or boldness of a plan is commensurate with the number of ethnic groups and interest groups that must be utilized to achieve success.
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