One of the organizations I belong to is called the American Family Association.  It is an organization that has been around since the late seventies, and as its focus, is trying to fight for family values.  This is not an easy agenda to achieve in light of American popular culture which seeks to move away from family values and towards self gratification, the Hollywood vision of America and acceptance of all alternative lifesyles.  Despite the overwhelming odds, the AFA continues to bring to light the assault on family values by the judicial system, TV and movies and liberal politicians.

A recent e-mail notice from the AFA spoke of the degrading, disgusting afront to Christians everywhere by the student newspaper 'Insurgent' at the University of Oregon. It is interesting that the newspaper there is called the Insurgent since media around the world daily refer to the terrorists in Iraq as insurgents.  We know them by their real world name; terrorists.  For those Americans of deep faith, the students who write for, and run the Insurgent would seem to pride themselves as domestic terrorists, as long as the victims are Christians.  The student editor of the Insurgent as much as said so.

What did the newspaper do to offend Christians?  They did something purposely vile.  As I instructionally stated in a previous posting, Christians don't only see Jesus as the Son of God, but as God in the flesh as well.  If you are not a real Christian, it is hard to explain the importance of Jesus to Christians or the roll He plays in our day to day lives. Suffice to say, there is nothing, or no one more important.  I can not even draw a comparison for non-Christians, because none exists.

Having stated the place Christ holds in the lives of Christian people, imagine if you will the deep pain Christians feel when they see the University of Oregon student newspaper's depiction of a naked Jesus kissing another naked man, both aroused.  If you find this humorous, you are not a Christian.  You have just been through a true litmus test. 

If you are sickened that anyone would be willing to degrade your beliefs so crudely, with such a lack of conscience or compassion and with such ignorance for the prejudice they practice, then you are a Christian, or at least a Christian sympathizer.

It did not stop there though.  They also showed a naked Christ, on the cross with an erection.  The same newspaper would never create the same depiction with the late Martin Luther King, reasoned the AFA e-mail, and I would add, they would never do the same with Mohammed.  While making certain not to offend African Americans, Muslims and those who live alternative lifestyles, the Insurgent is more than happy to insult Christians worldwide to an extent that is perverse and cruel.

The AFA notice went on to urge members to write the Oregon Governor, state officials and the University's president.  After all, there should be no place in America for anti-Christian bigotry………….bigotry is bigotry, no matter who the victim is.  On principle, anyone opposed to bigotry should be opposed to all bigotry.

A little research led me on a path of discovery and disappointment.  The e-mails to the University's president, Dave Frohnmayer, would fall on deaf ears.  To read some of Mr. Frohnmayer's speechs, one quickly realizes the environment that would nurture the likes of those who created the sickening depictions of Christ.  Mr. Frohnmayer is, in every way, the type of far left wing person who loathes Christians, loathes conservatives and loathes those advocating family values.

Few would argue that Harvard and UC Berkeley are two of the most liberal institutions of higher learning in the land, and Mr. Frohnmayer is a graduate of both.  His indoctrination into the left-wing mindset would have begun during his undergrad years at Harvard and then would have been reinforced during his law degree studies at the most liberal of American institutions; Berkeley.  Most alum at these two liberal thinktanks look down their noses at Christians with suspicion and disdain, as if they are delusional lemmings set on a path that circumvents intellectual thought.  Mr. Frohnmayer's brother had served as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.

While Mr. Frohnmayer has an impressive resume' including a stint as the Oregon Attorney General, with two re-elections and a former member of the state's house of representatives, he has still found academia and institutionalized bigotry more to his liking. 

Sometimes, it is hard to understand the need of Christian-haters to resort to such ugliness as Mr. Frohnmayer and the students who staff the Insurgent have gleefully done.  For most in the insulated world of academia, whether students or faculty and administration, there is a sense that the world rotates around their every thought.  They live in a world of theory, studies, awards and publications and self aggrandizement.  Their lives consist of gathering more memorized facts, quoting more of their counterparts and rationalizing their beliefs with experiments performed by social engineers and psychology professors.

Those, who are left wing intellectuals believe that Christians are people who have been driven to such because of personal tragedy, personal failure or addiction recovery. While there are many Christians who look back on these turning points, there are many more who came to Christ out of a revelation of truth.  They were not forced to turn to God in despair, but instead turned to God to rejoice. Life was good before, and then got better.   

For liberals, like Mr. Frohnmayer, who has known great personal pain, a loving God is someone they turn away from instead of towards.  When they felt God let them down, it reinforced the mind numbing that went on years before. Hating Christians is justified to liberals and so disgusting depictions of Christ are justified.

Leftwing intellectuals remind me of a snowball rolling down a snowy hill.  As the snowball finds its way down the side of the hill, it gathers more snow.  At the bottom, it is a larger snowball. It has done nothing else but gather more snow, but it has now added to its size.  If you chip away at the larger snowball, you will find only more snow at it's core. 

In a speech Mr. Frohnmayer gave in 2004 entitled 'Situational Ethics, Social Deception, and Lessons of Machiavelli', he spoke of several sources of ethics, giving brief mention to "spiritual commands or principles of a religious belief," and "rabbinical tradition and the gospels."  Most of the speech covered the studies and conclusions of Zimbardo, Milgram and Princeton neuroscientist, Joshua Greene. Ethics, or the lack thereof, in man can be summed up in the studies of psychologists and academics.  This is the view of the extreme left.  Faith is in whatever empirical evidence that results from studies.

To understand the shock, hurt, pain and revulsion that the University of Oregon, the Insurgent student newspaper and Mr. Frohnmayer have caused Christians, is to understand this simple fact.  Christians believe that God takes three forms; the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.  Christians believe that Jesus Christ was God, the Son, in the flesh. God who walked among us as a human.  The being who paid the ransom for man's sin.  Christians think of God as a loving father. 

I would ask the staff of the University of Oregon Insurgent newspaper and University president Frohnmayer to remove Christ in those depictions they published, and replace him with a depiction of their own father.  This may help them understand how Christians feel.