What Made Me Become Pro-life?

What Made Me Become Pro-life?

by | May 4, 2022 | Abortion, Atheism, Evolution, John Tarr

What Made Me Become Pro-life?

I was an atheist until I was 30 years old.

Being an atheist, I also had the liberal mindset on many issues including evolution and abortion.

My BIG catalyst was my belief in evolution. Either you believed in an intelligent designer (God) or you did not.

To me, evolution gave me and others like me, the platform to believe that all life came from non-life.

Life sprang up from the primordial ooze on its own without guidance from something or someone else.

No God needed.

Evolution does not have morals.

Survival of the fittest is its main tenant.

Nothing is good or bad, it just is…

Murder is not bad…

Stealing is not bad…

Lying is not bad…

Nothing is good or bad it just IS…

Whatever it takes for an animal or species to survive including humans is OK or even needed.

Morals are things that exist because they are a human construct or a made up, imaginary fairy tale by religious people or a law to keep people in line.

Abortion is OK because that is also survival of the fittest.

As a human, that life that is growing in your body really does not constitute a real living, breathing organism capable of complex thought that will turn into something much like you are in the future.

Remember, survival of the fittest.

Your life, your survival.

Only you are important.

Selfishness is a big deal when it comes to evolution.

That is what I believed when I was an atheist.

It helped me to live with myself and put together my limited knowledge of the puzzle of life before me.

When I became a Christian, all that changed.

I then believed that there was a guiding force behind the universe or intelligent designer behind it all.

He gave us morals and things as humans that we should or should not do to keep us alive and functioning without so much chaos and pain.

He also gave us freewill.

Freewill to make certain choices in our lives.

Many of these choices that impact others.

I then understood there was something much bigger than me in control.

When it comes to abortion, we are telling this intelligent designer or God, that He has made a mistake.

Think of it, God has made a mistake!

We are the final decider in our lives and have the right to terminate this life inside our bodies.

We are god and not Him because we know best.

History has proven that humans know best throughout human civilization.

We have the modern, complex notions of what works and does not work because we can see into the future.

Remember in Job 38:34 when God asked Job “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you know so much.”

This is Rhett. He came into this world on 4/26/22. He is the grandson of my friend Joe.

Our culture and modern times truly believes we need no god the tell us what to think or believe.

Our opinions is our god.

But of course, our arrogance knows no bounds.

When I was an atheist, I believed abortion was OK and even needed.

I paid for 3 of them and drove one individual to have the procedure.

I have been on both sides of this debate.

I now feel very foolish and have asked God to forgive me.

My arrogance knew no bounds.

I really believed God had made many mistakes when it came to human life and other issues.

Over 66 million mistakes when it has come to abortion since Roe v. Wade took effect since 1973.

Think of it, 66 million…

I guess Supreme Court knew better than God that year.

Many of our current politicians believe they know better than God as this issue comes before the Supreme Court once again.

The wounds of abortion have not healed after all, since 1973.

Maybe God is asking us “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me if you know so much.”

 

Go here if you would like to read how I became a Christian “What Makes an Atheist”

 

What Made Me Become Pro-life?

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What Makes an Atheist?

What Makes an Atheist?

by | Mar 23, 2021 | Apologetics, Evolution, Intelligent Design, John Tarr

What Makes an Atheist?

Are we born not believing in God or an intelligent designer of the universe?

Is it something else or a combination of things that come to a head in people’s minds that helps us make that fateful decision?

I am sure many reasons are closely related because it may not be a simple process. Is it an intellectual process or something more profound, like an emotional response that clouds our minds that happened from the past?

This world we live in is a tough place for many people and always has been. Life has been physically hard in past generations, but it has also been brutal to the human psyche.

It still hard for many people in our modern times depending on where you live, but even in the best locations, such in the USA and Europe, the human psyche is still a struggle.

One question that one of the top Christian apologetics, Dr William Lane Greig, at Reasonable Faith, asked: “Is this the best of all possible worlds?”

Considering freewill, it appears that this is the best possible of all worlds. 

Why God has decided to make our world this way, becomes more evident as time goes on in human history. 

To me anyway.  

Also, how and why He takes an individual spirit and drops it into a human shell of a body at a particular moment in time and space is an interesting question that only God Himself can answer.

I think it is called Middle Knowledge or Molinism in the apologetic Christian world, meaning only God would have this understanding because He has omniscience.

“First, it is assumed that for an action to be free, it must be determined by the agent performing the action. This means that God cannot will a free creature to act in a particular way and the act still be free. 

Free actions must be self-determinative.”

I tend to think it has something to do with our success in this life that we live in. 

By success, I do not mean how much stuff we have accumulated or how successful we were in rising to the top of whatever human station that humans would consider a success, but what God Himself would consider a successful life. 

From God’s point of view, success would be if we connected with Him, at some point in our temporary life span, for the sake of eternity, together, for the both of us.

Is that not what He designed us for in the first place? Spending eternity with Him so we can share His kingdom with Him? 

Why else would he create us?

What would be the point from His perspective?

My Battle Was an Emotional One 

As for me and my life, I was an atheist until I was thirty years old, so I will come from my perspective and experience. 

I have a feeling many people will identify with me. 

Being raised Catholic from a German background, I attended Catholic grade school in the late 1950s.

I was a tough kid in that I had specific disabilities that Catholic nuns were not equipped to handle.

Even today, most teachers are not.

They resorted to physical and emotional abuse to get me to function like the rest of the kids in my classroom.

It did not work and only scared me emotionally for many years.

When I came of age to make decisions for myself and my well-being, I jettisoned all belief in God. 

The word Jesus Christ was a cuss word to me. 

Not only did I discard the Catholic and Christian version of God, but I also dumped the mere thought of an intelligent designer behind the making of the universe itself.

Who needs a powerful being behind the curtain like the Great OZ, when Darwin came up with a perfect solution that proved a god was not needed?

Evolution was my god and how we (all life) came to be in this universe we live in.

It was a done deal, or so I thought.

Star Stuff

American astronomer Carl Sagan was my intellectual hero. I would follow him and all his books and writings. I looked forward to his programs, especially the one called Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. 

When he said we were all just star stuff, it made me feel I was worshipping at the feet of an astrophysicist and a cosmologist icon that had ALL the answers to human origins. 

In college, I would attend debates between scientists and atheists versus bible thumpers. I would root for the atheist and think how little understanding the religious bible believing people had on the workings of life around them. 

I finished school, got married, started a business, had children. My life came to a stop when my marriage came crashing down. I had a hard soul, and my wife wanted nothing more to do with it any more.

Hard questions were being asked of me from the inside-out because of the pain I was in. 

The oldest question that has haunted mankind since the beginning of time, emerged from me.

Is This All There Is? 

When we die, is that just the end, and nothing more.

The answers that I got from science did not help at all. The universe became a dark and cold place without any real rhyme or reason.

True meaning was nonexistent. Survival of the fittest was an empty phrase.

God cracked my shell and used the tough things that turned me into this empty atheist into an individual asking more profound questions for the first time in my life.

On a lonely journey, far from those I loved and cared about, God heard my feeble call and answered me.

I had no idea what I was doing when I asked him into my heart the first time. All I knew was I was empty and needed BIG time help, now that I think back on it. 

I still had a conflict with science and Christian belief that would take many years to resolve.

I had a hard time resolving evolution and Darwin’s version of how life came to be versus Genesis in the bible.

I knew the Christian worldview answered so many questions about so many things, especially why men are and have been so evil towards each other since the beginning of time, and it was not just survival of the fittest.

I found an organization called Reasons to Believe, led by astronomer Hugh Ross.

For the first time, I ran into Christians that believed that science and religion could live together. 

Their subtitle is “Where science and faith converge.”

I joined a local science group that is an offshoot of Reasons to Believe in Phoenix that I attended every month.

I also began following Christian Apogeic teachers like Dr. William Lane Craig of Reasonable Faith. 

Dr. Craig is a philosopher of the highest order and will make you stretch your brain to Christian circles and bonder life to its deepest depths. 

He debates many atheists regularly and has left me thinking about what it was that attracted me to being an atheist in the first place.

As I dug deeper into Darwinian evolution theory, I realized there turned out to be many problems with it. 

Today, many scientists turn their backs on it because they believe life is too complex to come from an unguided force of nature.

To this day, no scientist has life come from non-life, even in the perfect conditions of any laboratory on our planet. 

“Too Complex” are the two words that you hear again and again.  

I recently found a website that has over 1,000 scientists in the world today that no longer believe in evolution called A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism.

It shows that even scientists have an ax to grind when it comes to the truth.

 

Going back to the original question, What Makes an Atheist?

For me, it was not an intellectual search for the truth but an emotional cloud that blinded me from digging deeper into things that I held dear. 

My childhood wounds blinded me if you want to know the truth. 

When I found God and Jesus in a small church in Oregon, I learned for the first time who Jesus Christ was and not from some abusive nuns with an agenda. 

I believe that is what makes most people, young and old, male and female, rich or poor, and atheists. They cannot lean on intellectual arguments because they do not exist. 

Only emotional wounds from the past that blind us.

Psalm 19:1 Says 

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.”

I look up in the night sky, and all my old intellectual arguments are laid to waste.

I am what is called an Old Earther, meaning that I am a Christian who believes that the universe is 13.8 billion years old. I have found out that I am not alone, and many Christian scientists believe the same thing.

If you look in Genesis, before the first day was made, the universe was already here. Please read it for yourself.

I believe in the Big Bang or the Cosmological Singularity. Albert Einstein discovered it when he worked on the Theory of Relativity.

The Big Bang states that the universe started at one point in time. Most scientists, up until the time Einstein discovered it, believed that the universe had always been in existence. A Steady State. Always been here.

If the universe started at one specific point in time, who or what pulled the trigger on the Big Bang?

Genesis says God spoke it ALL into existence. Therefore, He spoke the universe into being at one point in time.

Science did not even know that until the 1930s.

A illustration of what the Big Bang may of looked like over time.

I ask people if they know how big the universe is?

Here is something that will blow your mind.

There are more stars in our Milky Way Galaxy than there are grains of sand on all the beaches on planet earth. The number: 10 to the 15th power.

But, did you know there are more Galaxies in our universe than grains of sand on the beaches on planet earth?  The number: 10 to the 120th power.

Wrap your head around that.

Who is this Intelligent Designer we call God, that could do such a thing?

 

Mad at God

To be honest with myself, I think I was mad at God for letting me be abused by people that confessed they were followers of Jesus, even though, I would say that I did not believe in Him.

Crazy, I know.

Anger and hate can cause an unstable mind, void of rationality in certain areas of one’s own mind, even in the most rational of people.

You find scientist are like this all the time. They have preconceived beliefs even in the field that they have undertaken.

Albert Einstein was one of these people. When he came up with the Big Bang, he spent a number of years trying to find holes in it because he knew what the implications were.

Who was behind the Big Bang?

It was not until the 1930’s that Edwin Hubble, the great astronomer, invited Einstein out to California for the summer, and proved to him that Einstein’s mathematical equations for the Big Bang where correct when viewing the universe through his telescope.

The universe did start at one specific point in time.

If that is true, who pulled the trigger and got this time and space rolling.

Things do not just pop into being from nothing!

 

Check out the other blogs I wrote. Life from Non-life. Is it possible?  or Who Made God?

 

What Makes an Atheist?

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Lift Off

Lift Off

by | Nov 23, 2020 | Gratefulness, John Tarr, Tribute

Lift Off

 

My friend Charlie lifted off from this planet and universe in the very early morning hours November 17th, in the arms of his wife.

By all indications, from the telemetry, the launch went smoothly without a hitch.

He soon touched down into another set of arms that were patiently waiting for him.

That touchdown also went without a problem, after all, he was caught by the Creator of the Universe.

This Creator, who so carefully designed time and space, in His infinite wisdom, made our universe so vast in size, that all the grains of sand on all the beaches on planet earth would not add up to all the sun’s in our Milky Way Galaxy. 

To top that off, He made more galaxy’s in this cosmos that we live in, than all the grains of sand on our little blue planet’s beaches.

Wrap your head around that!

 

I would say, Charlie, is in very good arms and hands indeed.

What Are the Benefits of Being Grateful?

A very proud Charley as he walks down the aisle with his daughter Mary. 

Lift Off

 

Charlie knew this was the location he wanted to end up in when he took his last breath and many breaths in-between.

He has moved on from this boot camp called life, leaving behind a legacy of life that touched many people.

A wonderful wife and three precious children and grandchildren were his main contribution to this legacy.

 

Charlie was the Star Wars Mandalorian when it came to the Christian faith.

 

He was always ready to defend this faith and to spread the hope he had within himself when he accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.

He knew where his treasures were stored.

Charlie was a huge success in this life by the mere fact of accepting Christ.

That alone is something that heaven celebrated beyond all measure.

I can just imagine when he touched down in his new existence, what he must have felt and seen with all his new senses.

All the things he read about and studied from church and the Bible came to life in an instant.

I wish I could have been there to see his face and soul upon meeting Jesus face to face.

I will soon enough in my own time, and most of all, in God’s time.

What Are the Benefits of Being Grateful?

Charley presenting his daughter Mary to his new son-in-law, Josh, at wedding. 

Lift Off

 

For the time being, I have been reflecting on the times, my family shared with the Atwell family.

What a historic life we celebrated together.

“Papa, papa, please help me” Charlie’s oldest son, Jimmy would cry out with a big smile on his face when he was small. “Shaun and Jason are picking on me.” Charlie would laugh as he watched his son fly through the air from one of my boys to the other, and always reply “I am not getting in the middle of those two. You’re on your own”

I imagine, my two sons picked on Mary and Jack the same way.

 

Mr. Atwell, was how I would address Charlie from time to time, loved to fish and he loved taking his family on these adventures to different lakes.

I took my small boat one time to one of these adventures, with my son Shaun and my wife, Monica, to Lake Mary in Northern, Arizona.

We wanted to catch something bigger from what you could hook into from shore. We left our wives sitting onshore waving at us.

After fishing for a period of time, a storm started to move in. The waves started to grow large and were lapping at the edges at the top of the boat.

Out of safety and concern, we dropped my son off on the other side of the lake to lessen the load in the boat.

Charlie and I were NOT small people, so this baby road low in the water, even in calm conditions.

By the time we made it halfway across the lake, Charlie and I were in some serious prayer and having a conversation with the Almighty.

To this day I still do not know how we made it with only a trolling motor for propulsion.

When we landed on shore, I thought I could see Charlie’s hand impressions of where he had squeezed the front of the boat on each side.

When he placed both feet on the rocky shore, he bent down and kissed the ground.

 

Big, bad, fisherman we both were.

What Are the Benefits of Being Grateful?

Charley dancing his daughter Mary with his wife Susan dancing with Jack in the background. 

Lift Off

 

There were many stories like that we all have replayed in our heads in our time with this interesting, creative, and funny individual called Charles August Atwell.

One of the best memories for me, was sharing his daughter Mary’s wedding with the Atwell family, friends, and relatives.

What a blast that was for my whole family, including grandchildren.

My daughter-in-law, Candace, and my son, Jason, took the wedding photographs that you see here on this blog.

My grandson, Zeke was the ring bearer and my granddaughter Fran Cesca was the flower girl.

It was a weekend we will never forget! 

 

Our families were not perfect by any means, and if it were not for forgiveness that our Christian Faith believed in, and Jesus made the forefront of His message, I have no idea how our families would have survived.

I think the restoration of the rebellious human spirit is God’s greatest miracle He can perform.

With everything else in the universe, God can just breathe into existence, material things out of nothing.

 

He is the Word!

What Are the Benefits of Being Grateful?

The Atwell Family. (from left to right) Charley and Susan in front. Along the back, Jack, Jimmy and Mary.  

Lift Off

 

When it comes to us humans, it’s a different story when you consider freewill in the mix of our existence.

God is the perfect gentlemen and will not go unless He is invited.

What patience He has for the human race and us as individuals.

He keeps setting up scenarios for us to connect with Him over and over again.

Some are very hard scenarios that are absolutely heartbreaking in the human mindset, but God will use everything in our lives to bring us to Him.

 

Eternity is in the balance.

 

Most people will not embrace God throughout their lifetime which is very sad, and I can only imagine how God Himself must feel.

We did not have this problem where Charlie, me, and our families are concerned.

As it says in John 14:6, our families have all embraced The Word, The Way, The Truth, and The Life.

See you soon my brother, save a spot for me.

Do not forget the lunch date we made to have in heaven, out on one of many planets in the universe, and we can watch as a distant sun goes supernova.

What Are the Benefits of Being Grateful?

Charley with his wife Susan, my wife Monica and me (John) after one of the many photo shoots we shared every year at the Salvation Army Christmas event in Phoenix.

He loved doing this event and got so much joy bringing happiness to people less fortunate with the gift of a family portrait.

Lift Off

 

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Can Good Come from Evil?

Can Good Come from Evil?

by | Nov 5, 2020 | Apologetics, Evolution, Free Will, John Tarr

Can Good Come from Evil?

 

I am sure this is a question that will tie many people in knots both for Christians and non-believers.

It has also been around since the beginning since humans have walked this earth and could think and analyze questions in a deeply meaningful way. 

Life on our planet is very hard for many individuals and at times seems like evil has had free reign at times. 

I know I am stepping into the realm of God, but I think that it is OK because I am not shaking my fist at Him and being accusatory and blaming Him for many hardships in life but one of sincere interest and wanting to find out how God ticks.

I remember what Dr. William Lane Craig once said about our existence here on earth “Is this the best possible of all worlds?”

Given the freewill additive in the mix, how would you answer this?

Remember this is not a question of good and bad but one that is essentially asking “Can good come out of evil?”

“Is this the best possible of all worlds?”

What Are the Benefits of Being Grateful?

To atheistic evolutionists, the question,“did man spring from low life forms”, is a nonstarter. They would argue that there is no evil or good and bad but just “is”

To them, nothing can be wrong because they have a mindset of “survival of the fittest” but, as Christians, we come from a place of ultimate authority and view the universe from an intelligent designer perspective and not one that evolved by happy accidents throughout the millennium. 

Being an atheist for the first part of my adult life, I understand the atheist mind, because I was one. 

Yes, I had ulterior motives in those days because of the childhood I suffered through, but I believe it made me intellectually smarter because I had to tear down a preconceived bias that I held dear to my existence.

How could there be a God, with all this crap going on in the world?

I was not willing to flip the question and look at the positive aspects of this question because all I could see was the bad in the question “Is There Good in Evil?”

If there is a God, how could He allow evil in the first place much less, bad?

From our limited perspective, we ask these questions, without hesitation, because of our arrogance and human understanding.

What Are the Benefits of Being Grateful?

Are we qualified to make that judgment?

We are know-it-alls from our birth until we die. Maybe that is why the bible says we are in a state of rebellion from the get-go.

Our sinful state is something to be overcome. 

Freewill does have its limitations and distractions.

God knew from the beginning, we would be this way but yet, He still puts up with us.

“And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” — Romans 8:28.

In times of chaos and strife, we have to hold onto God’s word and His promises.

We have to know that there is nothing that He cannot do when He has a mind to do something.  

As humans, we do not have the power on our own to overcome our sinful state but with God in control, we can.That takes the burden off my shoulders and gives me hope to start again and again and again…

 

R.C.Sproul at Ligonier Ministries, had an interesting take “How Can God Bring Good Out of Evil?”

 

We have many more articles you might be interested in by going here Two Measures Foolish Blogs

 

Can Good Come from Evil?

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Life from Non-life. Is it Possible?

Life from Non-life. Is it Possible?

by | Oct 20, 2020 | Apologetics, Atheism, Evolution, John Tarr

Life from Non-life. Is it Possible?

Many scientists say evolution is a done deal. Is it really? To this day, scientists have not been able to produce life coming from non-life, even in the most perfect conditions in laboratories the world over.

It’s not for lack of trying.

Many scientists are obsessed with proving evolution actually happened, and have worked on making life come from non-life in their own laboratories.

If they have not been able to reproduce the catalyst or mechanism for life springing from a non-living entity, how can they say that evolution is even remotely possible?

After decades of trying to reproduce life in these perfect conditions, many of these scientists have come to believe life is very complex to the extreme.

Darwin believed life sprang from the primordial soup in a basic non complex form. He had no idea how that would happen because it was way beyond his pay grade of understanding in 1840.

He just believed scientists would figure it out in future generations.

After 150 years they have not.

Not Even Close

There is absolutely no living organism on this planet today that is not complex even right down to living cells.

From the very smallest forms of life to the largest, the complexities are amazing.

Life from Non-life. Is it Possible?

Every year biological scientists gather in a central location in Europe, and review the new discoveries in the field.

Evolution is always on top of the list, and the big question that is asked every year, “has anyone of their colleagues” come up with the solution to reproducing life coming from non-life in their labs.

It would be a real feather in the cap of any scientists who would discover how this happened. They would be revered among all their colleagues for years to come.

Evolution, is many scientist’s Holy Grail or even their god.

Evolutionary biologists believe that evolution is a done deal, and have fooled the general public that it is, but truth be told, there is nothing done about it.

It’s actually quite undone.

Many average people put these great researchers and so-called great thinkers on such a high pedestal and believe everything they say because they do not have even have the basic understanding of the problems these scientists are facing.

Those who believe that natural selection explains the development of new totally different species speak in generalities about evolution and claim that any changes developed over millions of years.

Do the fossils speak to this?

That’s where much disagreement has sprung. How to interpret fossils is far from conclusive. There is something called the Cambrian explosion, an event that happened 541 million years ago, when practically all major animal phyla started appearing in the fossil record.

In other words, animal groups and their great diversity showed up out of nowhere in the fossil record. There were no transitional fossils going from basic life forms, to more advanced ones. Thousands of animal groups just appeared in the fossils.

A broken record to be sure!

Life from Non-life. Is it Possible?

Astronomers and Evolutionary Biologists talk about the conditions in the universe to produce life. With the billions and billions of galaxies in our visible universe surely life must be on some of those.

You constantly hear in the news how it is possible that we have life on other planets in our own solar system like Mars, Venus and some of the moons of the gas giant planets.

All of it is just conjecture and unproven.

In a field that prides itself on reproducible experiments, they have none!

If you are a fellow scientist and bring up the problems with the evolutionary paradigm, you will be attacked by other scientists.

If you are a teacher in high school or college and bring up the problems, they will seek to have you fired.

What is amazing to me, is that many Christians believe in evolution.

Why? Do they not understand or believe what the bible says about who created all life, especially humans? Why do they allow the secular world to dictate what they should believe in, even if it is wrong and unscientific.

I wrote a blog that you should read “Evolution and an Age of Confused Children”

There are many objections by scientists who work in the fields of Microbiology, Biophysics, Bacteriology, Biochemistry, Quantum Chemistry and the study of DNA. They are ringing the alarm that evolution has many problems and they are voicing their concerns. 

I found a website called “Dissent from Darwinism” that lists over 1,000 scientists worldwide who have come together to voice their objections. I was shocked at how many there were and the diverse scientific fields they came from.

Life from Non-life. Is it Possible?

Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, has written a book that has taken the science world by storm called “Darwin’s Doubt”. A scientist himself, he points out from a scientific standpoint why there are many problems with this theory. It is a hard book to understand, in that he goes into detail on many aspects of how life works and functions. You can find Dr. Meyer’s on his Website.

My advice to you, as a Christian, is do some research of your own on where man came from for the sake of yourself, your family, and friends and try to think deeply on the question of all questions, that has haunted mankind since the beginning.

“Where did we come from?”

Can you answer that with confidence as if your life depended on it?

 

Life from Non-life. Is it Possible?

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Can You Admit You Are Wrong?

Can You Admit You Are Wrong?

by | Oct 12, 2020 | Christian Thought, Forgiveness, John Tarr

Can You Admit You Are Wrong?

How hard is it for you to admit you are wrong about something? How about admitting that to those close to you, like your wife, children, or people at work, or someone that you may not have seen eye-to-eye with in the past?

Let’s face it, admitting you have been wrong takes a certain amount of humility. Your self-esteem takes a real hit.

Romans 12:3 says “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.”

Philippians 2:3-4 “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”

I know it has been very hard for me at times in my life to admit I have been wrong, especially with my wife. If I admit I am wrong, my brain shoots back to my childhood where everyone seemed to consider me as not very intelligent.

My teachers in first and second grade and my family thought I was of low IQ (and still does) because of attention deficit (they did not name it that in the 1950’s) but called it retarded.

Everyone was convinced I was retarded.

They sent me to a counselor when I was 7 or 8 years old for help with my cognitive skills. After one session he told my parents that my IQ was not low but that I needed to have my hearing checked.

They did and found my hearing was very bad. I had lost hearing completely in one ear and about 50% in the other. That is why everyone thought I was ignoring them.

I had exceptionally bad earaches as a child and would scream for hours on end because of the pain. Eventually the doctors took out my tonsils which turned out to be the cause of the infection in both ears.

By that time the damage was done, and my hearing would never improve.

The damage was also done in my psyche in my early years of child development.

That mindset has followed me my whole life so when I have had a problem where something did not work or I have to admit that I am wrong about something,  it shoots me back to feeling stupid and retarded.

That feeling has been lurking in the back of my brain all my life and has done damage in many of my past relationships, especially with my wife.

God has been working on this issue with me since I became a Christian, but it is not totally gone. I have become much better with her, but it still raises its ugly head from time to time.

Funny thing is that I have noticed when I do admit I was wrong about something with her, she finds it very hard to forgive me, at least right away.

She also finds it much harder to admit she was wrong about something.

I think many wives are like that. Why is that?

I think it’s because we as husbands have wounded them far more than they have wounded us. I know this is an overgeneralization, but I have observed this play out in many marriages.

My last two questions for us to answer. 

1.) How hard is it for you to admit you are wrong about something?

2.) What is our opinion of ourselves and is it accurate from God’s perspective?

 

I hope you enjoyed this article. We have written many on our relationship to God and Jesus Christ. If you would like to read more go to Two Measures Foolish Blog. 

 

Can You Admit You Are Wrong?

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Two Measures Foolish: Foolish to God for we sin – Foolish to the world for the cross.