He'll Make Kids Have Babies, but not Get Vaccines?

 

December 30, 2024

 

The attorney general of Missouri doesn’t want pregnant teenagers to get abortions because they might be a drain on Medicaid, and because fewer children mean that there will eventually be fewer adults, and a lower tax base. (Yep, he really said it.)

 

So: Where does he stand on getting kids vaccinated? More kids with polio will certainly be a drain on Medicare; and will probably lower the birth rate significantly. That’s not counting cases of measles and whooping cough, which can also impact the health of the population (and yes, lead to drains on Medicare).

 

AG Bailey, can we get an opinion?

 

 

They Came Bearing Gifts

 

December 20, 2024

 

I keep hearing sermons about how Mary and Joseph had to flee to Egypt to escape Herod, and how this poor family of refugees led a sorry life.

 

But Mary and Joseph, for the times, were loaded. The gifts that the magi gave them weren’t mere tokens.

 

So, they had gold; if that ran out, they could have sold the frankincense and the myrrh. So, it’s a touching story, but even if they really did have to flee to Egypt (another dubious claim), the rest seems like someone with imagination filling in some gaps, the same way that people have Jesus being born on a snowy night in midwinter. 

 

In fact, I’m kind of wondering about the whole “poor carpenter” thing. Unless Mary and Joseph were spendthrifts, or the magi traveled all that way to just give them party favors, they should have been set for life. (Again, if the magi came at all. Bible stories are notoriously flexible with the truth.)

 

Anyway, either they were exiled but rich; or the magi never came at all, and they weren’t exiled, and worked for a living.

 

Who really knows?

 

 

 

You Think Christmas is Commercialized? Read On.

 

December 28, 2024

 

I was listening to the pastor on my radio Bible Study talk about how Mary and Joseph, in the teeth of the inevitable gossip surrounding Jesus’s birth, still did everything by the book, as far as registering his birth, getting him circumcised, naming him, etc. They even took him to Jerusalem for the ceremony, instead of staying local and saving themselves the trouble and expense of travel (although later, in another context, he said the distance between Bethlehem and Jerusalem was 5 miles—so, assuming they didn’t pop back to Nazareth and then go to Jerusalem for the circumcision when the baby was 8 days old, it was a hike, sure, but not days’ worth of travel and inn fees).

I’m sorry to say that what fascinated me wasn’t the young couple’s courage, but how much it cost to have a firstborn son back then.

You had to pay 5 shekels of silver to redeem him from the priests, if he wasn’t born a Levite. A shekel was either 5 days’ wages or a month’s wages, depending on which source you look at. (The Bible study guy went with 5 days.) So you lost either 25 days of wages or 5 months; either way, it’s a hefty chunk of change for the average Joseph.

Then, once the mother had finished her term of purification, she had to bring a lamb and a young pigeon or turtledove to the priests; if she couldn’t afford a lamb, then she could bring 2 turtledoves or pigeons. More money. And the pastor implied that the priests charged for the circumcision as well, although I haven’t seen that in my online dive.

In any case, I was getting more and more frosted, thinking of how much money people had to spend when they had a kid. Did the Lord really order all this, or did the priests insert a few passages here and there later on?

So, the next time you’re griping about how Christmas is commercialized, don’t forget to read your Bible. The authors wrote the book on capitalizing on a birth.

 

(As one of my friends pointed out, Jesus himself said to throw out all those old laws, so I guess He redeemed the system—no pun intended, for real.)