WARNING: This is a very blunt and personal view on the issues discussed and are entirely my own views and not those of any organisation I may be associated with!
Just saw this poster that is going to be used I gather by Churches across the nation in the run up to Christmas 2010. It is an interesting concept and design and I think I get where it is coming from.
A design to show that Jesus started as a real baby and it is an image that everyone, or at least most people, can relate to. The lower caption pointing out that ‘Christmas’ starts with ‘Christ’ etc….
I could take issue with the main caption in pointing out that Christ was born 2000 years ago and therefore has already arrived etc… but that would indeed be petty.
What I found interesting was an article on Christian Today that says secularists have got all hot under the collar about it. This following quote being classic secularist nonsense:
“It gives the impression that it was politically motivated, that they are trying to put across some sort of subliminal message,” said Terry Sanderson, director of the National Secular Society, according to The Guardian.
“The image is too specifically associated with pro-lifers to be seen in a benign context.”
Sanderson added, “They should go back to angels and cribs.”
The last sentence showing his true colours and renders everything he said previously as not worth listening to. So as usual with these types as long as Christians stay silent and not dare speak up we can carry on in our freakish weird world of believing in God. But we must not under any circumstance have our faith say anything to rampant secularism and go poking our noses into society with our ‘moral convictions’ about truth and justice.
Sanderson is of course referring to the Channel 4 Marie Stopes adverts that ‘subliminally’ advertises abortion services.
Well Mr Terry Sanderson how is this for a non subliminal pro-life message: Abortion is the murder of the unborn!
Of course I don’t take lightly the horrendous emotional and psychological issues surrounding abortion and unwanted pregnancy. I have heard all the arguments about what about rape, what about babies with some sort of illness or disability, a woman's right to chose etc…. But the bottom line is that for a large majority of Abortions in this country the reason comes down to inconvenience and selfishness on the part of the couple. They simply don’t want the responsibility of looking after a child at that point. There are possibly some very very few instances where there may be some grey area but rarely. How can inconvenience, timing, cost, even disability or pregnancy due to rape (extremely rare by the way) trump the right of a child to have a chance in life? No one can decide that the child's circumstances once born would be too hard and not be fair to bring them into. Who are you to make that decision?
The issue in part comes down to the devaluing of corporate human life in the western world today. For so many different reasons but two being Darwinian evolutionary thinking and the Western idol of self. Where does an Embryo/Foetus become a human life. In UK law it is at 24 weeks! After that the medical profession and Government has deemed that you are now worthy of some protection in law! Despite much evidence to the contrary and babies being born before that time and surviving.
Again I state that I do not say any of this lightly and fully take into account the awful circumstances people find themselves in and the financial, practical and counselling help that they need and that is often not available to them. Yes it can be heart breaking and painful and mind bogglingly difficult to raise a child under, well any circumstances actually.
But this is a human being we are talking about and once conceived has every right to existence as any other human being. It is made in the image of God, knit together in its mothers womb (Psalm 139). Oh no, there I go with that God talk again.
For a great organisation called The Oasis Crisis Pregnancy Centre click on the link. They offer support services for women with unplanned pregnancy or women coming to terms with abortion. A Wonderfully caring counselling service they provide.
Unified Mail Box: This shows all your mail accounts in one unified location, hence the name. It is useful to see all in one go and not have to constantly switch back and forth. also useful when deleting mail.
Application Folders: The ability to organise your apps in folders by simply dragging one on top of another is really great. It means you can reduce the number of screens you have to flick through to find apps. As long as you remember which folder the apps is in. Folder naming is important to get right.
iBooks: This is a new, free download from the App store. It enables you to download and read books. This is a nice addition though reading on an iPhone screen can be straining on the eyes. This may be much better on the iPhone 4 with its fancy new screen or on an iPad.
Calendar Control: A small but neat new feature is the ability to just turn off displaying calendars you don’t want to see. This may sound counter intuitive. Surely you want to see your calendars. However I use Google Calendar synced from the internet as well as seeing my Wife's Google Calendar that she syncs from her Blackberry. This new feature means I can just turn off the standard local calendar and not have to switch again.
Open Attachments in Other Apps: Now this is a useful feature and has been long on the desired list. When you receive an email with an attachment like a word doc of PDF the email app will open it in the standard iPhone reader. However you now have a new option of ‘Open In’. If you have other compatible Apps that can read those docs you get the option to open it in them. I use ‘Documents to Go’ and the option to open and then save to my synced store is a welcome feature. Finally we can transfer between apps.
