I took these photos a few days ago while backpacking in the backcountry of the Central Oregon High Cascade Mountains with my youngest son. After posting a number of things about subjects I wish I didn’t have to deal with, I want to give my readers a breath of fresh mountain air and a drink from water that’s so pure that you can drink it directly from streams and lakes without any kind of filtration.
By the way, I’ve climbed Broken Top and all three of the Three Sisters to the top — years ago when I was much younger. My dad and I climbed some of the mountains, and on some of the other mountains my mom and sister were with us. I’m a third generation mountain climber of glaciated peaks. My grandfather was a professional mountain climbing guide starting about 100 years ago. I don’t climb to many mountains anymore, but I still climb a lot of trees (professionally) with ropes and other climbing gear.
Enjoy!
Jared with his 50 pound pack on our trip in on Friday.
Our trip in over some rough terrain. We’re at about 7,500 foot elevation.
The mountain on the left is Broken Top. The three in the back are the Three Sisters. Broken Top is over 9,000 tall, and the Three Sisters are all more than 10,000 feet tall. Our final destination was past the middle of the picture several miles cross country past all the snowy areas. No trails.
This is an amazing photo. It’s one of the few places in Oregon where I’ve been able to see all nine of Oregon’s major mountain peaks and even Washington State’s Mount Adams in the extreme right of the photo. These mountains range in height from 8,000 to more than 12,000 feet tall.
We had to cross quite a few snowfields to get to our lake.
Here’s our destination. The lake is so small that it was barely visible on our topog map and it had no name. We were at more than 7,100 feet in elevation.
Here’s another shot of our no-name lake at the base of Broken Top mountain.
Jared in front of our tent.
The awesome view from our camp kitchen.
A close up view of our kitchen.
Our fridge — in a snow bank.
Our source of drinking water. Straight from the lake. No filtration or purification needed!
We also got water from this spot where water bubbled right out from the rocks.
Alpenglow on Broken Top at sunset at the end of the Sabbath.
Fabulous sunset on Shabbat evening over the Three Sisters. What a grand finale. The next day (Sunday), we headed home to Babylon.
A New York mother is at the center of an online firestorm after letting her 8-year-old son dress up and dance in the city’s Pride March on Sunday.
Young Desmond Napoles, of Brooklyn, stole the show, according to some parade watchers, as he strutted his way down Fifth Avenue in a rainbow-colored tutu and gold sequined cap.
Photos of the boy have appeared on social media, prompting scorching comments against his mother, Wendylou Napoles, for allowing little “Desi” to participate in the event.
Some of the criticism includes:
“Does he even know or have any idea what and why he is doing this? Are all you people encouraging and cheering for this suggesting and promoting the sexualization young kids?” (Kevin Lam)
“Disgusting abomination. His parents have no morals. You need to REPENT. And live for YHVH-YASHUAH (GOD-JESUS) instead of Satan. You and Satan may of won a battle BUT you have already lost the war!” (Shannon Fraccola)
“And this mother will wonder why later in life her kid will end up in psychotherapy gender confused. This little kid doesn’t even understand the world around him yet we’re to believe that he understands the dynamics of sexuality? Um, I don’t think so sister. But hey, enjoy the eventual sh-tstorm you’re letting build.” (Tracey Hoober)
“This is why Facebook needs a Dislike button.” (Christopher Bechtloff)
Now, the boy’s mother is firing back on the Facebook page of LGBT website NewNowNext.
“If you are offended, don’t look,” Wendylou Napoles said. “I am sickened by the comments that say I am sexualizing him.”
Wendylou asked other parents to put themselves in her shoes in raising a “child like this.”
“Should I encourage him to express who he feels that he is and to be himself knowing that this road will be a hard and cruel one in today’s society? Or, should I discourage him and tell him that he cannot be himself knowing that he will carry a great deal of grief and baggage about this throughout his life and may even grow to believe that there is something wrong with himself? It’s not easy.”
She got into specific detail in her defense, stating:
He has always been very gender fluid when it came to toys and his development. He preferred fashion dolls to action figures. I looked at both in the store and figured that the action figure was as much a doll as a Barbie, so if he wanted the one marketed to girls, that was fine with me. He also likes to play with trains, especially wooden subway trains. He never wanted to play sports and likes to draw pictures and do word searches. He goes to ballet class and loves to dance. He loves drag queens and thinks that it is fantastic that boys can play dress up and become beautiful girls, even after they grow up. He, himself, likes to play dress up in skirts and dresses, but most days he looks like any other “boy.” He is a shy boy who is self-conscious about his missing teeth when he smiles and very intelligent. He doesn’t like school because he gets bullied, but he does well academically. We do our best to stop the bullying and involve the LGBT services at his school. We keep him involved in the LGBT community because we believe that by speaking to other people who were like him when they were his age reinforces that he is of value and that his life as he wants to live it is okay.
This boy was always very feminine from day one and instead of denying it or condemning it, we embraced it. We did not need to encourage it, it was always there. He just needed the love and reassurance that he has a place in this world, as does any child. The development into the sparkle loving, happy, tutu-wearing boy in this photo was very natural and gradual and age appropriate. We spoke with doctors and therapists. Not because there was anything wrong with him, but because we wanted to understand and learn and do the right things for our child. We did not force him to be this way. We did not expose him to sexuality in the way some people project. He is 8 years old and is starting to get crushes on boys. That is pretty much the extent of what he knows about sexuality. I do my job as a parent and censor things in his life that may not be appropriate. I am not perverted and letting this boy dress up how he feels he wants to dress up is not perverted. It hurts no one. If you are offended, don’t look.
He is old enough and smart enough to know he would be marching in the Pride parade in front of thousands of people and did all of it willingly. In fact, I thought he would stop after 10 blocks of walking, but he felt so good about being dressed up and being who he is that he vogued and danced the entire two miles. We collaborated on the outfit and this is how he wanted to look today. This was his Pride today. He felt it. He loved it. He was it. These children will be our future. Embrace who they are. All they are asking for is the same love, respect, and acceptance of themselves as any child would.
On the Yahoo Parenting site, senior writer Beth Greenfield marveled at how Wendylou took on her critics and “shut them down with grace and pride.”
Desmond’s mother also received plenty of support from the public, including:
“You are a fantastic mum and he is gorgeous. I’m so excited for you, he already has an amazing outlook and sounds super creative and intelligent. The possibilities are endless! Yay! #LoveWins” (Dan De La Bastide)
“What a beautiful way to celebrate the beginning of a new History. This child is gorgeous and courageous heart emoticon.” (Elle Russell)
“I applaud his parents for nurturing a child who dances to his own drum. There is NOTHING wrong with his costume, especially at this venue. Being a child, his ideas of who he is and wants to be are fluid. I wish I had the opportunity to be this open when I was a kid! BRAVO to him and his parents.” (Wayne Steinman)
On Wendylou Napoles’ remark that “These children will be our future,” talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh noted Wednesday, “That’s why we’re worried.”
Natan’s response:
Isaiah the prophet declared long ago,
Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! (Isa 5:20–21)
These are the times in which we are living.
Sadly, there are parents out there who are viewing their children through their own lenses of moral degradation and perversity, and then raising their children to fit their paradigms of godlessness and immorality. When parents throw off moral restraints, lose their moral compass, turn away from the basic transcendent and immutable spiritual values as revealed in the Bible — the Word of Elohim — and spurn moral and spiritual boundaries, and refuse to accept the fences that the Creator has put in place to protect us from the evil that lurks beyond, we end up in places like the mother of eight-year-old Desmond Napoles, sadly.
Desmond may be a different sort of a boy than the average. He may be less masculine than typical boys. He may be more refined and sensitive than most. He may like ballet and be more nurturing than typical boys. He may show more what some might consider to be even feminine traits. This is not a sin. In fact, this can be a wonderful attributes for a man to have especially in, for example, health care professions. But this doesn’t make him a homosexual! His mother seems to be encouraging him in the directions of what the Bible calls an abominable sin. Shame on her for this!
There are special places in the world for such boys as Desmond, even as there are special places in the world for “tomboy” girls. But this doesn’t mean that they they have to become “gays” or lesbians. When this occurs, this is a result of parental and societal indoctrination or brainwashing pushing these children past the boundaries of what is morally right and wrong and then imposing on them their own perverse mores. There is nothing glorious or laudable about this! In fact, this is a form of child abuse. Furthermore, it’s shameful when children are sacrificed on the altars their parents have created in honor of the demon-idols of abominable sins like homosexuality. Children aren’t born homosexual as the godless humanists and moral relativists would have us believe. If so, then the Creator is the author of sin, and this cannot be!
If we have a special child in our life like Desmond, let’s lovingly guide him or her in righteous paths within the moral and spiritual boundaries YHVH has established for our own good and for the survival of the human race. Let’s help him or her discover and righteously express his or her uniqueness without crossing the boundaries that the Creator has established for humanity’s own well-being and survival.
Numbers 22:10ff,Crossing over. Carnal men want to be like YHVH’s saints, to be the recipients of the blessings of Israel, and to be numbered among YHVH’s chosen, but few want to walk the walk required to receive these blessings and privileges. Many will “court YHVH” by getting as close to him as possible without actually crossing over that spiritual river that divides the land of Israel from the rest of the world. Those who cross over become an Ivrit or a Hebrew, which means “to cross over.”
Have you decided to cross over?
Crossing over means surrendering one’s life totally to the Elohim of the Hebrews who is YHVH. The sacrifice of doing so is too great for most people to pay. To leave spiritual Babylon and to cross over the Jordan River to YHVH’s side and come into the land of Israel as a spiritual Hebrew means that the fame and fortune that this world has to offer must be laid aside and one must become a servant-slave of YHVH.
Balaam couldn’t cross over all the way. He still preferred the riches and fame Babylon had to offer. He was willful, carnal and greedy (Jude 11). Many people in the mainstream church are like Balaam.
How serious are you about serving YHVH? The Scriptures say of the end-times saints that they loved not their lives unto death (Rev 12:11). Paul declares that followers of Yeshua must become “living sacrifices” in service of YHVH (Rom 12:1). Yeshua gave his very life for you. Are you holding back some of your life for him? Do the cares of this world, the desire for pleasures, material goods, money, entertainments or acclaim still have a grip on your heart? Are they preventing you from moving into your spiritual calling and destiny—to truly walk by faith?
1 Corinthians 14:21, In the law.Usually the word law (in Gr. nomos and in Heb. torah meaning “teachings, instructions or precepts) in the Scriptures refers to the first five books of Moses, but here Paul uses the term to apply to the writings of Isaiah the prophet. Obviously, Paul had a more expansive view of the law than just to the books of Moses, for here he applies it to the prophets sections of the Tanakh or Old Testament.
Similarly, in the Gospel of John, Yeshua refers to the Psalms (which were contained in the Writings part of the Tanakh) as the law (John 10:34), and Jewish people, like Paul, regarded Isaiah as part of the law as well (John 12:34). What all this means is that Yeshua, Paul and the Jewish people in a general sense viewed the entire Tanakh as the law, or more correctly, the instructions or teaching of YHVH, since the Hebrew word for law (i.e. torah) means exactly this.
What this means to us is that Elohim’s entire word should be viewed as his legal code or instructions to men on how to act. As such, no parts of it can be eliminated, relegated to the past or “done away with.” It is thus important to view the entire Word of Elohim as equally binding and relevant to all people at all times.
Orthodox Christians Must Now Learn To Live as Exiles in Our Own Country
Rod Dreher is a senior editor and blogger at The American Conservative.)
Voting Republican and other failed culture war strategies are not going to save us now.
It is hard to overstate the significance of the Obergefell decision — and the seriousness of the challenges it presents to orthodox Christians and other social conservatives. Voting Republican and other failed culture war strategies are not going to save us now.
Discerning the meaning of the present moment requires sobriety, precisely because its radicalism requires of conservatives a realistic sense of how weak our position is in post-Christian America.
The alarm that the four dissenting justices sounded in their minority opinions is chilling. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia were particularly scathing in pointing out the philosophical and historical groundlessness of the majority’s opinion. Justice Scalia even called the decision “a threat to democracy,” and denounced it, shockingly, in the language of revolution.
It is now clear that for this Court, extremism in the pursuit of the Sexual Revolution’s goals is no vice. True, the majority opinion nodded and smiled in the direction of the First Amendment, in an attempt to calm the fears of those worried about religious liberty. But when a Supreme Court majority is willing to invent rights out of nothing, it is impossible to have faith that the First Amendment will offer any but the barest protection to religious dissenters from gay rights orthodoxy.
Indeed, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito explicitly warned religious traditionalists that this decision leaves them vulnerable. Alito warns that Obergefell “will be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy,” and will be used to oppress the faithful “by those who are determined to stamp out every vestige of dissent.”
The warning to conservatives from the four dissenters could hardly be clearer or stronger. So where does that leave us?
For one, we have to accept that we really are living in a culturally post-Christian nation. The fundamental norms Christians have long been able to depend on no longer exist. To be frank, the court majority may impose on the rest of the nation a view widely shared by elites, but it is also a view shared by a majority of Americans. There will be no widespread popular resistance to Obergefell. This is the new normal.
For another, LGBT activists and their fellow travelers really will be coming after social conservatives. The Supreme Court has now, in constitutional doctrine, said that homosexuality is equivalent to race. The next goal of activists will be a long-term campaign to remove tax-exempt status from dissenting religious institutions. The more immediate goal will be the shunning and persecution of dissenters within civil society. After today, all religious conservatives are Brendan Eich, the former CEO of Mozilla who was chased out of that company for supporting California’s Proposition 8.
Third, the Court majority wrote that gays and lesbians do not want to change the institution of marriage, but rather want to benefit from it. This is hard to believe, given more recent writing from gay activists like Dan Savage expressing a desire to loosen the strictures of monogamy in all marriages. Besides, if marriage can be redefined according to what we desire — that is, if there is no essential nature to marriage, or to gender — then there are no boundaries on marriage. Marriage inevitably loses its power.
In that sense, social and religious conservatives must recognize that the Obergefell decision did not come from nowhere. It is the logical result of the Sexual Revolution, which valorized erotic liberty. It has been widely and correctly observed that heterosexuals began to devalue marriage long before same-sex marriage became an issue. The individualism at the heart of contemporary American culture is at the core of Obergefell — and at the core of modern American life.
This is profoundly incompatible with orthodox Christianity. But this is the world we live in today.
One can certainly understand the joy that LGBT Americans and their supporters feel today. But orthodox Christians must understand that things are going to get much more difficult for us. We are going to have to learn how to live as exiles in our own country. We are going to have to learn how to live with at least a mild form of persecution. And we are going to have to change the way we practice our faith and teach it to our children, to build resilient communities.
It is time for what I call the Benedict Option. In his 1982 book After Virtue,the eminent philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre likened the current age to the fall of ancient Rome. He pointed to Benedict of Nursia, a pious young Christian who left the chaos of Rome to go to the woods to pray, as an example for us. We who want to live by the traditional virtues, MacIntyre said, have to pioneer new ways of doing so in community. We await, he said “a new — and doubtless very different — St. Benedict.”
Throughout the early Middle Ages, Benedict’s communities formed monasteries, and kept the light of faith burning through the surrounding cultural darkness. Eventually, the Benedictine monks helped refound civilization.
I believe that orthodox Christians today are called to be those new and very different St. Benedicts. How do we take the Benedict Option, and build resilient communities within our condition of internal exile, and under increasingly hostile conditions? I don’t know. But we had better figure this out together, and soon, while there is time.
Last fall, I spoke with the prior of the Benedictine monastery in Nursia, and told him about the Benedict Option. So many Christians, he told me, have no clue how far things have decayed in our aggressively secularizing world. The future for Christians will be within the Benedict Option, the monk said, or it won’t be at all.
Obergefell is a sign of the times, for those with eyes to see. This isn’t the view of wild-eyed prophets wearing animal skins and shouting in the desert. It is the view of four Supreme Court justices, in effect declaring from the bench the decline and fall of the traditional American social, political, and legal order.
I just got back tonight from a backpacking trip into the high cascades of Central Oregon with my youngest son. We camped at the 7,100 foot level just below Broken Top, which is a 9,177 foot tall extinct volcano. Here are some picture to prove it:
While I was up in the mountains, five Elohim-hating, secular humanist, moral-relativist judges of the U.S. Supreme Court thumbed their noses at the Creator of marriage, and His moral code, the Torah, by which humans are to live or face YHVH Elohim’s divine judgement, and they “legalized” “homosexual marriage” in the U.S. At least two of these foolish and miscreant judges are Jewish and were raised with an understanding of the Torah. Shame on them!
I feel a little bit like Moses who after having gone up to Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Statements from Elohim, he came down to find that the children of Israel had largely abandoned Elohim’s commandments and had gone whoring after the idolatrous gods of sensuality. You know the rest of the story.
After prayer and reflection, I will have more to say on this sorry turn of events in this nation that once claimed the motto: “In God We Trust” (i.e., the God of the Bible who is YHVH Elohim), and to be “one nation under God.”
In light of the current events, we can only wonder what “god” these perverts are now following.
Make no mistake about it! It is Baal — the ubiquitous god of sexual perversion and the hater of all of YHVH’s laws. Baal’s motto is “Do what thou wilt” and “If it feels good, do it.”
Baal is known by many names around the world in all the false, non-biblical religions, but it’s the same god. It’s a front for Satan the devil, who is YHVH’s chief opposer.
Here’s a video I did not long ago on what the Bible says about homosexuality. I love homosexuals, but I hate their sin!
In the mean time, maybe I’ll head back to the refuge of the mountains to await the second coming!
Most of this week’s blog discussion points will be on these passages. If you have general comments or questions on the weekly Scripture readings not addressed in a blog post, here’s a place for you to post those. Just use the “leave a reply” link below.
The full “Read Through The Scriptures In A Year” schedule, broken down by each day, can be found on the right sidebar under “Helpful Links.” There are 4 sections of scripture to read each day. One each from the Torah, the Prophets, the Writings, and from the Testimony of Yeshua. Each week, the Torah and haftarah readings will follow the traditional one-year reading cycle.
Weekly Blog Scripture Readings for 6/28 through 7/4/15.
