Forester Lecture

So I went to the Forester Lecture hopeful. I figured I would get to listen to two intelligent adults have open discussion about a hot issue. I was disappointed.

The debate started out promising. They both stated how they were friends and respected each other and didn't fight and I decided to take them at their word and believe them. This is was dumb and niave on my part. They did not follow their own rules. What started out as a friendly discussion between two friends turned into a sniping argument about who was more wrong and who actually followed the Bible.

I want to talk on three of their issues specifically. The first was economics. The woman, who was the Liberal, stated her views on the economy. She believed that the big businesses in America were hurting the lower classes. I agree with her that the empire status of different businesses is not good, and I loved her theory on how if businesses took the Sabbath off they couldn't grow to empirical size. This is, I believe, the only point I agreed with her on. After that she descended into lunacy in many of claims.

The second point I want to talk on is the issue of same-sex marriage, which was talked about for quite a while. Both had interested viewpoints. In principle, I actually agree with the woman. She stated that she doesn't think marriage should be legislated. I agree. As Christians, we can't expect the rest of the world to follow our moral code. We have morals and they are ours. If a Christian is living outside the moral code of Christianity, then we need to confront them, but if a non-Christian is, we have no right to tell them otherwise.

What I did not agree with her on was her rationale for getting there. She claimed that marriage has never been an institution, it has just been a a commitment between the husband, wife, and God. Her exact words were "back then if you had sex with a girl she was your wife". This is patently untrue. They had week-long wedding celebrations in the ancient near east. Marriage was a big deal and it was not simply a commitment between two people. Her theory that the term is an ever evolving word was absurd.

The last point I wanted to touch on was that of illegal immigration. She tried to argue that we should take care of illegal immigrants because both Jesus and Abraham were immigrants. She is wrong, however. Jesus was not an immigrant, he was a refugee. We do not turn away refugees in America. Abraham was an immigrant it is true, but did not sneak into another country and hide. He entered the nation, contributed to the society, and was a blessing to the nation he entered. This is not the same as illegal immigration, but she tried to make it that way.

In all of this, I was very disappointed with both speakers. The fact that I only spoke about the woman is because she was verbal in her stupidity. The man kept his ignorance to himself.