The Fight for Human Dignity

On a plane home from Orlando yesterday, I opportunely sat next to a women who is a friend of Sochua Mu Leiper, the former Minister of Women's and Veteran's Affairs for the Royal Government of Cambodia. She held that position until resiging in 2003 to join the political opposition. Sochua feels that her primary purpose is fight the sex industry and trafficking of young girls in Cambodia, a problem simply out of control there. In fact, in one month period last year, 5 of her colleagues struggling against the slave trade were assassinated by crime bosses who were upset with what they were doing to their business. Sochua is constantly in danger of assassination.

Here is a profile of Sochua from Oprah's magazine last year. If you can stomach reading anything produced by Oprah, the article is amazing and the discussion of the sex trafficking will make your heart ache.

A friend of mine attending an international Christian law school in South Korea was in Cambodia a two weeks to ago to help start a university in Siem Reap, Cambodia, and she roamed the red light districts researching and digesting the sights and smells of the underworld. Anyway, she may be headed back soon and I have put her in contact now with Sochua through the woman I met on the plane yesterday. Perhaps, a relationship will be able to be established for future fights against this blight on civilization that we know as slave trafficking.

William Wilberforce was able to defeat the slave trade after 30 years of lobbying and pushing leigslation in parliament in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Despite a multitude of failures, he persisted and with the help of brothers in arms he eventually was able to turn the tide against the horrible practice. Today's slave trafficking is essentially the same issue that he was fighting, just in a new form. It is our obligation as people who believe in justice and that men and women are created in the image of God to fight this as strongly as we fight for the unborn and stand up for the poor, the widow, and the orphan.

Goode Endorses Bolling

Goode has now officially endorsed Bolling. Go ahead and tally that one up as well. That's 5 of the 8 current Republican Congressman in Virginia supporting Bolling. Only one supporting Connaughton. That's a pretty huge lead.

fourth GOP Congressman in VA endorses Bolling

Today, the Bolling campaign announced the endorsement of their campaign by new Congresswoman Thelma Drake. She is the fourth of the eight Republican Congressman in Virginia to commit to the Bolling campaign. Former Congressman Tom Bliley also has endorsed Bolling.
Check it all out here. Last night, the Bolling campaign got a warm reception in Prince William County in the enemy's camp. Interesting.

We hear there is another endorsement on the way.

Four More Years, Thank Goodness

"We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom. Not because history runs on the wheels of inevitability; it is human choices that move events. Not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as He wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul. When our Founders declared a new order of the ages; when soldiers died wave upon wave for union based in liberty; when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner "Freedom Now" - they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled. History has an ebb and flow of justice, but history also has a visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty."
- George W. Bush, January 20, 2005

Gillen Is Gone

My Virginia Tech colleagues here on the blog, Zach and Addison, have not been too charitable about the fact that the only ACC school in Virginia that has won a conference game is Virginia Tech and not Virginia. They disregard the fact that Virginia has been banged up and missed their leading scorer for two of the top ten teams they have played, and Tech has played a much weaker schedule thus far, UVA playing three top ten teams (Duke, Wake Forest, and Georgia Tech) including two on the road.

Nonetheless, I believe Gillen is done. At best, he will make a run at the tourney later in the ACC schedule and will come up short like he did last year. If that comes to pass, he will be gone regardless of the fact that everyone loves his personality. His luck hasn't changed as far as injuries and he has proven unable to coach a team with lots of potential but very raw talent in the ACC.

Lincoln Was Gay? Somehow I Missed That One

In a book coming out this week called The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, C.A. Tripp, apparently a sex researcher of some sort, asserts that Abraham Lincoln enjoyed sleeping with other men in beds a little more than your average 19th Century man. Somehow he manages to discuss this for 295 pages, a remarkable feat. This conclusion reminds of English Literature classes in college and the wild speculation and assertions made by literary criticists and deconstructionists based on random lines of prose or poetry.

CNN reports on the book's claims here.

Prominent House Church Leader Imprisoned

Zhang Rongliang, the leader of the Fangcheng fellowship house church network, consisting of over 10 million Christians in China was arrested on December 1 in Zhengzhou, in what reports are saying is a renewed attempt by the central Chinese government to suppress the house churches.

Imprisonment for his faith is not a new phenonomenon for Rongliang. He has been imprisoned seven times before for a total of 12 years of his life. He is probably being tortured as you read this, and he also has diabetes which makes it difficult for him to stand the hardship of prison in China without medical assistance which is rarely afforded Christian "counterrevolutionaries." His wife and children have gone into hiding after esacaping detention successfully. Read about his arrest here. There are also other links to read more about the persecuted church in China.

What We Value So Little

My leisure reading recently has been focused on the burgeoning house church movement in China which continues to grow exponentially. To give you some idea of the amazing growth of the illegal churches in China, the best estimates we have today are that there are over 80 million Christians attending illegal house churches in apartments, basements, caves, and barns all over China. When the Communists took over in 1949, there were an estimated two to three million Christians in all of China after over a hundred years of Western missionaries attempting to gain a small foothold in that nation. It is amazing to see the growth of the church now that it is forbidden by the government to attend anything other than one of the government run and controlled Three Self Patriotic Churches.

If you want to get a sense of the spectacular growth and nature of the house churches, I recommend David Aikman's Jesus in Beijing which chronicles the history of Christianity in China and its amazing growth in the last half century and really the last twenty years. A book which I am currently reading is called The Heavenly Man: The Remarkable True Story of Chinese Christian Brother Yun, an autobiography of Brother Yun and coauthored by Paul Hattaway. It is an inspiring testament to the reality of God in our times and an amazing account of someone who has lived a sacrifical life and cares nothing for the material things of this world. Brother Yun, whose full name is Liu Zhenying, has been imprisoned three times for significant amounts of time and arrested over 30 times in all for his faith. He has been tortured, starved, shocked with electric batons, beaten for days on end, and made to crawl through the excrement of his fellow inmates. Yet nothing has been able to stifle his faith in God, nor that of his fellow Christians all over China. They are a church that has bled and suffered just as Christ did. Aikman argues in Jesus in Beijing that the Christian church in China is doing to the People's Republic of China what the Christian church did almost two thousand years ago when a dozen revolutionaries and a handful of friends overthrew the mightiest empire the world has ever known, not through political agitation or counterinsurgency, but by appealing to the world through demonstrating the suffering of Christ in their own willingness to lay down their lives quit literally even unto death.

Brother Yun writes on page 214 of his book: "The path of following the Lord Jesus Christ is not an easy one. Along the way lies suffering and hardship, but nothing experience will ever compare to the suffering Christ endured for us on the cross. I have a problem with the 'prosperity' teaching prevalent today, which tells us if we follow the Lord we'll be safe and comfortable. This is completely contrary to Scripture as well as our experiences in China...To follow God is a call not only to live for him, but to die for him also. 'If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.' Romans 14:8." These are the words of a man who has put his life on the line for his Redeemer over and over again.

If you want to follow the lives of persecuted Christians in China or in other parts of the world, I recommend bookmarking this website: www.prisoneralert.com, where you can read about Brothers and Sisters in Christ who are imprisoned all over the world and being beaten for their faith in Christ which we enjoy so easily.

Frustrating Loss for the Cavs Against Wake

Those of you who were in U-Hall this evening understand my frustration with the referees. I believe I lost my voice before halftime from constant booing for several minutes straight. If the Cavs had been able to have Devin Smith, their leading scorer averaging over 17 points a game, available for the game instead of sitting the bench, they might have a chance. Oh well, they move with the knowledge that they aren't competitive with the elites in the ACC without their leading scorer. For the record, Adrian Joseph was spectacular.