In the eyes of her family and friends, teenager Taiana Pilitati died a hero.
The 18-year-old from Wellington drowned in Samoa this week while desperately trying to save her 8-year-old sister Vaiola after they became caught by a large wave while swimming in a river.
“She’s a hero. She gave her life [up] for Vaiola,” her uncle Pati Umaga told the Weekend Herald. “Vaiola will grow up knowing that her sister saved her life.”
Her uncle, Pati Umaga, told the Weekend Herald Pilitati saved her eight-year-old sister Vaiola in the river.
“They said Tai was holding on to Vaiola when they were swept away – she was trying to help Vaiola. At the last minute she threw Vaiola towards Tino [an older sister], as she went under,” he said.
No Blog tribute can do justice to such an act of Humanity! I stand in awe. I bow my head.
From The mouth of The Lord Jesus Christ Himself… “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” John 15vs13. In this case…” No Greater Love than this, that a woman lays down her life for her little sister…”
Eternal Vigilance places Taiana Pilitati on our Roll of Self-less Heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice in the name of Love.
This letter to the editor was spotted recently in the Press.
Ken Orr’s argument against euthanasia is that ‘‘the state is to provide legal protection for the right to life of every member of the community . . . and not preside over their destruction’’ (March 13). What a travesty of truth. In a civilised and free society, all individuals have rights and responsibilities. The role of a government is to protect those rights, not assume those responsibilities.
If I choose, when my time comes, that I want to die with dignity, that is my right, and one that should be protected by law.
The state is not ‘‘presiding over my destruction’’, as Mr Orr says it is. It is protecting the wishes of a free man who rightly owns his life and death.
A reasoned morality of man qua man is where true human compassion is found, not in Mr Orr’s cold mysticism.
MARK HUBBARD
Geraldine
A travesty of truth? Yes. Rights and responsibilities are two sides of the same coin, not the same side of the one coin! A right to remain alive is not a duty to remain alive. If confounding the two is Ken Orr’s argument, then the best I can say is that I don’t like his style. There’s a fine line between disingenuity and dishonesty, and Mr. Orr should check to see he hasn’t crossed over to the other side. Meanwhile, Mr. Hubbard should check his premises!
(Suppose, for the sake of argument.) You don’t own your life. God does. Your life is God’s property and He’s entrusted it to you. You are His servant. You have a responsibility to take care of God’s property as you would your own.
Think of your life as if it were a car. Except you can’t trade it in for a new one. So you look after it. You service it regularly. You keep it in good running order. If it breaks down you get it fixed if it can be fixed. You drive it until it grinds to a halt.
But what if your life still “goes” but is in no way, shape or form “roadworthy”? What’s the right thing to do? A good and faithful servant doesn’t leave rubbish lying around, cluttering up the place. Your life is rubbish now. I say dispose of it. Drive your life to the dump. Or pay someone to take it away.
(Old abandoned cars are sometimes photogenic. Dying in pain is never pretty.)
Memories are all that’s left behind
As I lay and wait to die
Little do they know
That I hear their choice of life
End it now, it is the only way
Too cruel, that is what they say
Release me from this lonely world
There is no hope – Why don’t you
Pull the plug
Let me pass away
Pull the plug
Don’t want to live this way
Once I had full control of my life
I now behold a machine decides my fate
End it now it’s all too late
What has now been days, it seems like years
To stay like this is what I fear
Life ends so fast, so take your chance
And make it last
End it now, it is the only way
Too cruel, that is what they say
Release me from this lonely world
There is no hope – Why don’t you
Pull the plug
Let me pass away
Pull the plug
Don’t want to live this way
This is the eighth in a 13-part series wherein I give you Hell, a little booklet by the inimitable Dr. Jeff Obadiah Simmonds.
The image of God as a destroyer is hardly a popular one today. Personally, I think it is a much more Biblical idea than the image of God as one who tortures His enemies in hell for ever and ever. This makes God into an evil tyrant. Amnesty International does a tremendous job in opposing the use of torture in the world today. (They deserve our support for doing so.) But the torture of some African dictator or Middle East extremists would be nothing compared to the horror of a mass torture of billions of souls in hell, which lasts not for days or weeks, but for trillions of years and on into eternity. This view of God is, I believe, completely unbiblical. There is not a single instance where God commanded torture. Such forms of punishment are always evil and satanic. Crucifixion—one of the most ingenious torture devices—was the invention of the Romans, not a punishment devised by God. Christ endured the cross, but his suffering lasts for a few hours. The fires of hell would be greater torture still, and would last forever! God would not permit or tolerate the existence of such a place, since God always came to the rescue of the oppressed and the suffering.
We must be clear that we are not saying that God would never send anyone to hell because He is a God of love and will forgive everyone. This is simply not true, for God will judge those guilty of injustice or evil by destroying them. But, given that God’s judgement comes upon such nations for the suffering they inflicted on others, God is hardly likely to inflict such suffering Himself.
The doctrine of hell is often based on the idea of God’s justice. This is understood to mean that because God is just He must punish sin. However, “justice” really means to act with righteousness. When we talk about social justice we think of concern for the poor, the widows and orphans. Specifically to do justice is to side with the oppressed and the victims and to alleviate suffering and remove oppression.
This, indeed, is central to the Biblical doctrine of the justice of God. While God does indeed punish sin, God’s justice does not cause him to inflict suffering but to alleviate it. God is concerned with justice—that those who cause suffering and affliction are opposed and overthrown.
It would therefore be contrary to God’s character to become One who causes affliction and suffering. Yet the usual view of hell is a place of eternal torment. However, just as God sided with the Hebrews who were suffering in Egypt, and as He sided with the outcasts in first century Jewish society, so too the character of God would demand that He side with those who suffered in hell, if indeed it was a place of endless torment and suffering.
One evangelical writer says:
Everlasting torment is intolerable from a moral point of view because it makes God into a bloodthirsty monster who maintains an everlasting Auschwitz for victims whom he does not even allow to die. (Pinnock [1990] 253) How can Christians possibly project a deity of such cruelty and vindictiveness whose ways include inflicting everlasting torture upon his creatures, however sinful they may have been? Surely a God who would do such a thing is more nearly like Satan than like God, at least by any ordinary moral standards, and by the gospel itself. (Pinnock [1990] 246-47)
“Human Beings act according to their Ideology.
Religion is what separates Man from Beast. Theism elevates Man, whereas Atheism Devalues him. To deny the reality of Moral/Spiritual truth is to reduce Individual Man down to a mere Beast.”
Tim Wikiriwhi.
“DECIDE TO SURVIVE. Skills, fitness and fortune all play a key role in the fate of the survivor. But ultimately your survival depends upon one thing: your will to survive. SO KEEP FAITH in yourself and faith in the Almighty. They can be your greatest ally and Strength.
God Speed.”
Bear Grylls. Priorities of Survival: Pocket Guide.
Whoever corrects a mocker invites insults;
whoever rebukes the wicked incurs abuse.
Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you;
rebuke the wise and they will love you.
Instruct the wise and they will be wiser still;
teach the righteous and they will add to their learning.
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom,
and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
For through wisdom your days will be many,
and years will be added to your life.
If you are wise, your wisdom will reward you;
if you are a mocker, you alone will suffer. (NIV)
This post pays tribute to Lawrence Oates (17 March 1880 – 16 March 1912), “a brave man and an English gentleman.” Oates was a war veteran and Antarctic explorer, and a member of Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition to the South Pole.
100 years ago today, he walked from a tent into a blizzard, with the immortal words, “I am just going outside and may be some time.” Aware that his ill health was compromising his three companions’ chances of survival, he chose certain death.
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. (KJV)
Members of Wellington protest group the Queer Avengers have rained glitter down on visiting feminist writer Germaine Greer, who has a history of outing and denouncing transwomen, even describing them as “ghastly parodies” of womanhood.
Glitter-bombing has gained prominence internationally as a way to highlight transphobia and queerphobia, particulalry in the US where a number of politicians have been targeted.
“Transphobic feminism is so 20th Century,” says Stacey of the Queer Avengers. “It wasn’t okay then and it’s not okay now. Women’s liberation must mean the right to refuse imposed gender roles, to fight for diverse gender expression.”
The Queer Avengers also handed out leaflets stating “transphobia is bullshit,” pointing to the fact Greer was arrested in 1972 while touring New Zealand, for saying the word “bullshit.”
Bullshit and glitter-bombs! Greer was not the first to be arrested in New Zealand for using the word ‘bullshit’. In 1971, Tim Shadbolt published his autobiography Bullshit and Jellybeans, supposedly written while incarcerated in prison cells in Mt Eden and Mt Crawford. The title alludes to the charge which led to his arrest.
Looking back, it all seems quaintly absurd. Today I can say, with impunity, “Censorship is BULLSHIT!” I can, but I won’t. Because the adjective ‘bullshit’ is too good for censorship. I’ll cut to the chase. Censorship is EVIL. And, from my point of view as a free thinker, it is one of the worst of evils.
Yes, Christians have been major culprits in the long history of censorship. Yes, that’s embarrassing. Index Librorum Prohibitorum? I deplore the very idea. Nihil obstat! Imprimi potest! Imprimatur! We live in an age of bullshit and when we encounter it we should call it what it is.
Consider the Ninth Commandment.
Thou shalt not bear false witness.
Consider censorship.
Thou shalt not bear true witness.
Now combine the two.
LOL. I just Googled “thou shalt drink a nice big cup of shut the fuck up” and top in the list of search results was Uncyclopedia’s entry on Feminism. Uncyclopedia says
Most men hate feministic bull shit and wish Germaine Greer would drink a nice big cup of shut the fuck up.
I wish that Germaine Greer would say whatever she wants to say. I don’t have to listen to her transphobic feministic bullshit.
Walking through a Christian Bookshop I was supprised to see Super Man Bear Grylls staring at me from the cover of his Autobography ‘Bear Grylls Mud, Sweat and Tears’.
“Yes he’s a Christian”, spoke the saleslady. I should have known.
Thus the secret is out The Faith which makes Bear Grylls such a Gentleman… such a nice guy.
He’s an inspiration!
Descovering Bear is a Brother in Christ is enough to make a Hard man dance a little jig!
See what a Nice Guy Bear Is here on The Graham Norton show and watch Cameron Diaz Fizzing over Bear.
I bought my Wife Joy a Bear Grylls Knife like that for our 10th wedding anniversary… today 16-3-12 XOX Baby!
