Old Testament Adultery Law
The dominant evangelical view
The dominant evangelical view
These actually matter. White people aren't used to high UV indexes. They come from the Northern Lands, clinging to the pole of our planet, where the sun is dimmed by the tilt of the earth. Their DNA is exposed in semi-translucent skin, to the dimmer pole-sun. Their skin does not contain enough of the armor of melanin, that shields DNA against our Star's radiation in the more equatorial latitudes.
e.g. in London
in late April the UV index maxes out at a 3. In Phoenix on the same
day, its a 9. Being closer to the equator makes a huge difference. Then
throw in the never-ending blue sky, and even compared to Dallas TX, we
have no "off" days where cloud cover keeps the UV to a 3. Its
unrelenting sun all the time. In June and July, Phoenix tops out at
11/12.
The swarthy Mediterraneans of Europe correlate to the latitude of America's 'far-northern' Massachusetts & New England. Arizona and Texas, correlate to Northern Africa and the Middle East, Iran, Pakistan, etc. where people either have more melamine-rich skin or drape themselves in fabric like the Tuscan Raiders. Or both.
Daily UV index matters, note the peak hours. Playing outside for 2 hours before 10am exposes you to the same amount of UV as 10 minutes at noon.
Play outside before 10am, and after 4pm.
UV index for April in Phoenix. As the peak index rises with the summer, the entire graph shifts up in exposure, but it always keeps this general shape. |
Roughly, equinoxes are March 20th and Sept 20th.
Solstices are June 20th and Dec 20th. So from a UV exposure perspective,
the danger zone is April through September.
UV index changing with the months.
Since the kids are inside from 8 to 4 June through September (too hot to be in the sunlight), the "danger zone" is really March & April, October. This is when it feels nice and cool, but the UV index is still very high (compared to the Northern latitudes to which their ancestors grew up.) So they aren't programmed to avoid sunlight at these nice temperatures, even though the UV index is frying their DNA through their translucent northern skin. This is when insisting on hats is very important.
"Getting a tan" isn't a sign that all is well for a white kid. (My Jenny can tan to Pakistan or indigenous Mexican levels). That melamine deposit is like the reconquista. The UV has already come in and won a major victory. The damaged body then fought back, and erected a make-shift wall of melanin to protect the DNA for the rest of the summer. But there has already been damage done. Battles lost, DNA messed with, collagen destroyed. And the white kids that don't tan, merely means they lose that battle over and over, and can never even muster that makeshift wall.
But kids hate hats.
So be smart. Strategize shade. You'll never get it all, aim for the 80% rule.
Study them in their natural habitat. Ascertain their habits, where they hang out. And then alter that habitat. Strategize ways to shade where they play 80% of the time. Study their playing patterns. (E.g. make sure the tree's shadow hits the playset after school hours. Put structure near the kiddie pool that shade it in afternoon, when the kids are there. Pay attention to how they play. (e.g. In the early spring, secure some shade cloth to the top of the swing set with cable and T-posts for shade at noon, since the cool weather means they play outside all day, even during peak UV hours, in the summer, note where do they hangout in those cool-but-dangerous hours)
Rig shade (or better yet, grow shade trees) over the key areas they spend 80% of their time. (e.g. the mulberry tree shades the playset in the morning, so I need to rig up a shade cloth whose shadow will hit the playset in the afternoon). Be aware of how sun angles and seasonal shift move where the shade from the shade cloth (or tree) ends up.
I plant trees, and then rig up shade, because trees take time to grow. (Pakistan Mulberry Trees will grow SUPER FAST in Phoenix, if you water them a lot)
Shade ideas:
Simple Lifelong Strategies for White Children:
A very white baby. She doesn't even have hair to shield that very white head from the UV rays. |
You know...this year, I really really thought about it, and decided it would be good for my life to have winter end this year.... It may even help the farmers. And it'll lift everyone's spirits to see some flowers, and have a blue sky, so...you know what, let's plan on having Spring this year! Lets see...2023....about March, maybe?
Let's start in March, we don't want to wait too late in the year because we want to be sure to make it to our family camping trip in June. And if we don't have spring this year it, may be hard to make it through the roads without a snowplow attachment....
As a child, I thought the term "planned pregnancy" was ridiculous. Like "planned spring." Grownups were at it again, overestimating the importance of their Ideas of How Everything Ought to Be.
Just like their lofty declarations "no pushing or shoving on the playground." We'll just wait till they were busy talking and us kids who knew what life was really like, could get into a rousing game of tag.
When I heard the term "surprise baby", somewhere around 9 or so, I thought it was a compliment. That a kid had the cleverness and chutzpah to surprise their parents with their arrival. Like a surprise birthday party, with all the glee and joy and shocked faces that that entails. I knew a few families, who "thought they were done", and who had a surprise baby. In my childhood mental framework, those kids were like John the Baptist, showing up with angels and prophecies of greatness.
I felt like surprise babies got extra points.
So I used it like a compliment.
I still remember, doing laundry with my mom, as she folded clothes and tried to explain to me not to use that term, because people may feel hurt. I was confused. She explained people may feel sad that their parents didn't plan to have them.
But God makes the babies, I thought. So why give a heck whether dim ol' mom and dad were up to speed. They'll figure out what's happening soon enough, and have a few months to get a stroller and the bottles and the baby toys.
God makes the babies. He planned it. So why are these grownups taking so much credit?
I know a bit more about biology now than I did at 9. But that simple fact of my child brain, is true:
God wills every human soul, fashions and places each one into each human body He knits together.
Sunday after Sunday, reciting "...conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary...."
Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Born of Mary.
And so is every baby. We are conceived of the Holy Spirit, and born of (perhaps dim) parents.
Every human is God's idea. Each of us is made in the heart of God. We are, individually, uniquely, conceived of in His mind, and hand-crafted by His hand.
We are each of us, specifically, willed by God.
Ruhi looks at family pictures taken more than 2 years ago, and says "Where am I?!"
I open my mouth to tell her she wasn't born yet, and I hear Ana's little voice piping in "Ruhi, you were in duh mind of God"
Hi? I believe God express mailed me to this residence. |
As a child, I firmly believed that every human being is willed and created by God.
But there were challenges to this belief throughout my teenage years, as I learned more about the world, and just how horrible human beings could be to each other. Namely I learned about the existence of rape, and the worst of all, incest.
How can a good God allow such horrors to be done to people?
How can a good God permit people to commit such horrors, when they once were little wispy haired toddlers that just wanted the joy of splashing in puddles and eating applesauce?
That is something I still do not have the answer to. Other than I know that God suffers with every human's suffering.
Then the arguments for abortion came, and I had to make sense of it. How could a woman who was raped carry the rapist's child? How can a girl carry a child conceived in incest?
The question is like a punch to the gut. Its horrible. But its edges are blurry. From a burning hot core to each layer emanating from it, retroactively absolving all abortions.
But lets go to the core, because at the heart of the core is where the real question is.
Peeling pack the layers to the white hot core, let us observe the most outward layer of "non-ideal" conceptions. Adultery.
Adultery is a betrayal, to the beloved, to the children, to the God you sword the oath to.
But there is a difference between an act, and the fruit that God makes from it. As Joseph being sold into slavery, but then saving all of Egypt and his own family too. What men meant for evil, God making good out of. That doesn't mean it was right to lie to their father, and sell their brother. Doesn't mean it was right for Potiphar's wife to lie and get an innocent man locked up for sexual assault for years and years. Didn't mean the ropes, the beating, the slaveblock, the lack of trial and unending years of incarceration were illusory or really not a big deal. They were terrible. But God brought good out of it.
Adultery is a betrayal that God sees as such a big deal that He even prescribed death penalty for it. Then He spared that woman telling her "Go and sin no more", and took the death penalty on himself, to pay her debt. Adultery, like all our sins, cost him blood and slow suffocation on the cross. God does not minimize adultery, or the suffering that it causes all those betrayed. And yet. He sometimes conceives a child even in the midst of that sin, an innocent and holy child, given to the undeserving, as undeserving as we were when He gave us baby Jesus.
Because God brings good out of even our worst sins. He saved Egypt and Israel. This did not mean that Joseph's brothers did the right thing to beat and strip their brother and sell him to a slave cartel.
And that holy child, conceived in adultery, is from God, is pure innocent good, like the Christ Child coming to a screwed up and undeserving world.
Or to that holy child, conceived in a petri dish by scientists making money or trying to create a clone army (as I think will probably happen). That child is not the property of the scientist who sinned so greatly in exploiting human life. The situation of that's child conception was sin, but God breathed the life and soul into that little zygote, struggling in the petri-dish, with all the other zygotes, as the scientist randomly picks one to sell, leaving the others to be experimented on. God who called Jacob's name, called the names of each of those little ones in the dish, the names only He knows. And He has breathed souls into them, and they are His.
Now, concerning rape. This is worse, because it is not just betrayal, but a violation, a blasphemy on what sex was created to be. Instead of vulnerable love, there is violent devouring. By the time the question of aborting the pregnancy comes up, the woman has gotten away from the violator. She is deeply traumatized, and needs help, and then finds there is a human growing inside of her. How do we comfort her, how do we make this horrific situation right? We treat the child like it is the rape, or at least, the rapists spawn. If we can just delete the "rapists child", it will be on some level, as if we are erasing part of the rape. But are we? No one would say, that if a man has 2 yr old child, and then goes out and rapes a woman, the woman's family may find and kill his 2 yr old child in revenge. But as long as we cannot see the child, as long as it's face is hidden from our eyes, we can feel it is purely the "spawn" of another human, that must be erased.
And then the blasphemy of love gets kicked up a notch, in cases of incest, which is an abomination before God. This, because it is a blasphemy of all that makes life worth living, is too much to think about. Even thinking about it feels like breathing in smoke, we want to break a window and get out. We want to help get the girl out of the situation as soon as possible, forget it as soon as possible, and act as if it had never been. And abortion seems the fast way, to make it as if it had never been.
But that's desperate lie, as we desperately claw about for a solution.
You can't undo the horror of rape or incest.
You can't undo it by killing a small human. That sacrifice is not enough to undo that great an evil. Only the blood of a God can wash that away.
Violated women have lived through the "solution" of abortion, and described it as the second rape. Abortion cannot undo the horror that has happened.
We hate that.
We rage that there is no way to make it as if it never had been.
The little one is not the abomination. The abomination has happened. The little one is the like the Holy Child, sent to a screwed up horrific world. We may ask God what the hell is he thinking, sending a child to a deeply traumatized girl, to gestate for 9 months!?
I don't know. I have asked Him. He has his reasons.
All I know is sometimes healing comes in strange ways.
I remember watching a video about a girl in Africa, 13 years old, kidnapped, abused and impregnated by the LRA. She was rescued, gave birth to a little girl. She named her Grace. I wish I remembered the name of that documentary.
But I remember the face of that child-Saint smiling, holding her little Grace. Her eyes looking at us, over her little Grace's shoulder, through the screen into us. She spoke of forgiveness.
She must have even forgiven God.
Draw spartans n brutes with Isaiah on a lightboard.
Embroider the girls plain jumper dresses, with the girls.
Make self watering planters from the old Rubbermaid containers and plant lettuce and carrots with the kids.
Go on a date with Josh, dawn walk through the bird preserve, holding hands.
Caroling around the Christmas tree. Atleast 12 carols, with harmony. And holding candles.
St. Lucy's day celebration with the kids and mariam wearing a crown of candles, and hot cross buns.
Make a plain dark dirndl, and embroider it.
Go to adoration, work things out with God. Have a sacramental communion. Possibly a prayer vigil.
The very end of September is when the insane rush of summer hints it is weakening, maybe, just after Bilbo's birthday. You still are wearing thin cotton short sleeves and shorts, outside, after sunset, to go outside.
October....comes in on triple digits and refilling the ice cube tray, and on the last day, leaving with grey skies, rooting around in the kid's room for their long sleeves and boots, as desert-born babies cry about needing mittens in the frigid 60's.
One month ago, October first, the kids clustered into the tiny pockets of shade created by my pathetic shade tarps, torn by the wind. They clustered, like bees around the water-spigot in the Phoenix street. Groups of living beings huddled together in the small patches of relief, provided by a little bit of frayed fabric flapping between them and the relentless face of nuclear reactor that lights our world.
Now, November first... the shadows lengthen far beyond the height of the structures that created them. The shadow of the house falls across the entire middle of the backyard, a solid dark coolness, barely skirting the trunks of the citrus trees on the edge. Peter fig struggles to get enough sunlight, his little green figs stuck in stasis, as I scramble to find a new place to plant him. The shed turns the back corner into a deep shadow, damp and cool.
Suddenly, the sun is no longer an enemy, trying to burn you into retreat. It's glimmer peeking over the eastern horizon no longer threatening, but cheering. Rays that touch your skin feel friendly, warming. Long-forgotten socks need to be hunted down and matched, suddenly no longer the unwanted refugees offloaded from laundry basket to laundry basket and ending up stashed behind hampers in the laundry room.
All those ranger boots and cloaks, worn only by proud and overheated 8 yr olds in front of the mirror for 10 minutes, before they were shed in sweating desperation.... are now suddenly practical. A fire seems like a real thing, not an expensive way to toast a few marshamellows as we cosplay "camping" for the kids, before retreating into an air-conditioned building.
So November is Ranger month. When things like long sleeves, cloaks, fire, and boots are suddenly no longer ornaments and props from a different world... but real.
We are the prisoners of the sun, released. Our ship has docked from the deserts of mars, into the realm of Arnor.
We are rangers now, under a grey sky.
For June, July, August 2022
Big Goals
Category 1. Learn how to draw my strength from God. Learn how to drink in His beauty,, His presence through worship,, through looking at Him. To see nothing without Him in the picture.
Its the only way I'm making it through this life.
Category 2. Spend more time with the kiddos. Because they won't be kiddos much longer. Savor the time. Enjoy *being with them.*
From babies to toddlers to teens in the blink of an eye.
Time with them, sacred, unrepeatable.
It's a precious gift, running like water in a river, unrepeatable, fleeting as the sunlight shimmering on that water.
Category 3. Family Adventures. Camping, hiking, water-fight.
Category 4. Share my now-ancient hobbies with the kids. (Gardening, painting, drawing, sewing, Leather-work, etc)
Category 5. Make significant progress in homeschool. Because while overrated (see category 2.) education is somewhat important.
Category 6. Chores & cleaning. Because its hard to enjoy life when there are no clean spoons or clean underwear.
Category 7. Home and garden improvement.
Category 1.
Category 2.
Category 3.
Category 4.
Category 5.
Category 6.
Category 7.
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Ideas for aug sept
Category 2: Hold a meeting with the 3 big ones where you field their questions before homeschool time-----
Category 4: Start the Crafting Rotation, Sew 2 calico critter clothes for/with each girl over 2.
Category 7:
Big Goals
Category 1. Learn how to draw my strength from God. Learn how to drink in His beauty,, His presence through worship,, through looking at Him. To see nothing without Him in the picture.
Its the only way I'm making it through this life.
Category 2. Spend more time with the kiddos. Because they won't be kiddos much longer. Savor the time. Enjoy *being with them.*
From babies to toddlers to teens in the blink of an eye.
Time with them, sacred, unrepeatable.
It's a precious gift, running like water in a river, unrepeatable, fleeting as the sunlight shimmering on that water.
Category 3. Family Adventures. Camping, hiking, waterfight.
Category 4. Share my now-ancient hobbies with the kids. (Gardening, painting, drawing, sewing, Leatherwork, etc)
Category 5. Make significant progress in homeschool. Because while overrated (see category 2.) education is somewhat important.
Category 6. Chores & cleaning. Because its hard to enjoy life when there are no clean spoons or clean underwear.
Category 7. Home and garden improvement.
***********************
I will set a tangible goal(s) and a habit for each category, every 2 months.
For April & May 2022
Category 1.
Category 2.
Category 3.
Still recovering from childbirth. Try Saturday morning picnics in the park.
Category 4.
Category 5.
Category 6.
Category 7.
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Ideas for June-July
Category 2: Hold a meeting with the 3 big ones where you field their questions before homeschool time-----
Category 4: Start the Crafting Rotation, each kid a turn
Stay outside as much as possible in the beautiful months, November, [December, January], February, March, April. Do major garden plans. Try to spend at least 2 hours outside every day. Plan local family hiking trips. Lost Dutchman, Fat Man's pass, Hidden Valley, Pioneer Museum. Also, do outdoor home improvement and anything that involves curing concrete or climbing up into the attic, e.g. installing lights or fans, in this time.
Pioneer Museum |
2nd half of June, July, August, September...are a cross to be borne. You can try to beat the sun up, but often its a warm tired world even at dawn.
Sunrise and Sunset times. Sunrise and Sunset times here.
STRATEGY:
1. Homeschool.Home improvement with toddlers |
Recap:
Beautiful Months
Survive, School, and do Indoor things, start from seed indoors.
Chase the Sunrise , outside at sunset
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Note on UV indexes:
These actually matter. White people aren't used to high UV indexes. They come from the Northern Lands, on a pole of our planet, where the sun is dimmed by the tilt of the earth. Their dna is exposed in semi-translucent skin, to the dimmer pole-sun. Their skin does not contain the armor of melanin, that shields their dna, against our Star's radiation in the more equatorial lattitudes.
e.g. in London in late April the UV index maxes out at a 3. In Phoenix on the same day, its a 9. Being closer to the equator makes a huge difference. Then throw in the never-ending blue sky, and even compared to Dallas TX, we have no "off" days where cloud cover keeps the UV to a 3. Its unrelenting sun all the time. In June and July, Phoenix tops out at 11/12.
Roughly, equinoxes are March 20th and Sept 20th. Solstices are June 20th and Dec 20th. So from a UV exposure perspective, the danger zone is April through September.
Since the kids are inside from 8 to 4 June through September (too hot to be in the sunlight), the "danger zone" is really March & April, October. This is when it feels nice and cool, but the UV index is still very high (compared to the Northern lattitudes to which their ancestors grew up.) So they aren't programmed to avoid sunlight at these nice temperatures, even though the UV index is frying their dna through their translucent northern skin. This is when insisting on hats is very important.
Chart when UV index hits 3, and comes down from 3
hits 3 | down to 3 | |
April | 8:15 | 4:15 |
May | 8:15 | 4:45 |
June | 8:15 | 5:00 |
July | 8:15 | 4:40 |
August | 8:15 | 4:40 |
September | 8:30 | 3:45 |
October | 9:30 | 2:45 |
November | 10:15 | 1:45 |
December | 10:30 | 1:30 |
Jan | 10:30 | 3:30 |
Feb | 9:45 | 3:45 |
March | 9:15 | 3:45 |
Full chart, including when it hits 4
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We bought a house! (our first house ever!)
And we live in the desert. So this is the backyard, when we moved in.
Now it has 7 struggling saplings that I planted in the first month when we got the house. After a brutal desert summer (one week solid 115's) and some near deaths, all teh little saplings are...still alive....still alive.
Not grown at all, but alive.
I've discovered Geoff Lawton's "Permaculture: Greening the Desert" videos about Jordan, and after seeing their before and after shots, I have hope. Jordan also gets annual rainfall between 5 and 10 inches, and looks, well, like my backyard.
Permaculture is full of hope. Of man working within the created order to make the earth better.... where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow....
The wilderness and the desert will rejoice,
And the desert will shout for joy and blossom;
Like the crocus
2 It will blossom profusely
And rejoice with joy and jubilation.
The glory of Lebanon will be given to it,
The majesty of Carmel and Sharon.
They will see the glory of the Lord,
The majesty of our God.
3 Strengthen the slack hands, and make the tottering knees strong.
4 Say to those with anxious heart,
“Take courage, fear not.
Behold, your God will come with vengeance;
The retribution of God will come,
But He will save you.”
5 Then the eyes of those who are blind will be opened,
And the ears of those who are deaf will be unstopped.
6 Then those who limp will leap like a deer,
And the tongue of those who cannot speak will shout for joy.
For waters will burst forth in the wilderness,
And streams in the desert.
7 The scorched land will become a pool
And the thirsty ground springs of water;
In the haunt of jackals, its resting place,
Grass becomes reeds and rushes.
8 A highway will be there, a roadway,
And it will be called the Highway of Holiness.
The unclean will not travel on it,
But it will be for the one who walks that way,
And fools will not wander on it.
9 No lion will be there,
Nor will any vicious animal go up on it;
It will not be found there.
But the redeemed will walk there,
10 And the redeemed of the Lord will return
And come to Zion with joyful shouting,
And everlasting joy will be on their heads.
They will obtain gladness and joy,
And sorrow and sighing will flee away.