Quote from BabyShark on November 11, 2018, 9:10 pm

Today is November 11th.

As many problems as we have in North America, we still have countless blessings and things to be thankful for.

We have a great many freedoms that we often take for granted that are *not* found in all countries in the world.

We can:

• pursue education (or not)
• marry who we want (or not)
• move where we want (even out of the country)
• freely travel within our countries or outside of them
• get health care
• pursue the kind of work that interests us
• start our own businesses
• have as many children as we want to
• go to many public places that offer various services in peace and safety
• eat the kinds of foods we want of the limitless options at the many grocery stores and restaurants and farmers' markets available
• freely follow any religion we choose
• peacefully protest
• vote in elections
• read and buy the books we choose

There are so many it's hard to even make a complete list of all the things North Americans can be thankful for that many people all over the world don't have.

Some of these freedoms are under attack today.

In spite of the many conflicts and struggles we face in our own lives and as nations, if we look at the big picture of the whole world and all the atrocities that have been suffered by people across all time, our complaint list should be dwarfed by a colossal gratitude list.

The horror of war is too dismal for most of us to even imagine. My own grandfather was forced out of his home when he was young by an enemy country. They fled in the winter and were forced to shoot their animals so they wouldn't freeze and starve to death. He had to drag bodies off a battlefield as a teenager. Even imagining what he lived through is very unpleasant, but nothing like having actually lived it.

We owe a debt of gratitude to those who were willing to stand between us and someone who wanted to destroy or enslave us. We have what we have because people who came before us fought for it.

The world has a very bloody and violent history that isn't isolated to any one place, time, culture, or people. The stain of sin and evil corrupts humanity universally.

The stance that every human life is valuable regardless of age, gender, wealth, ability, color, is however unique and is founded on the Bible's teaching that God created humans and loves each one.

There are those today who would like to dispose of inconvenient lives, especially those who are very young, very old, or have serious health problems. Abortion and euthanasia are both legal today.

These aren't new ideas. Female infanticide has a long history of being common in countries like China, India, and Pakistan. Various cultures including Inuit, Japanese, Heruli, Serbia, Sweden, and others, have practiced senicide, or killing of the elderly. In many places, poor people are considered disposable and worthless. People with disabilities have fared even worse, having a long history of being killed off, including in initiatives like the Nazi Euthanasia Program whose goal was to kill people with physical and mental disabilities.

Hitler's desire to create a superior race of human beings by killing all those he considered defective or inferior was based on the religion of evolutionism which wrongly taught that some "races" of people are more evolved than other "races". Science since caught up with what the Bible taught all along, after studying human DNA, that we are all one race, the human race, and are all of one blood, descended from one couple.

These kinds of attacks on humanity and the value of human life have always been around and will always be around, and the brave men and women who have given their lives fighting to help others keep theirs will go down as the heroes of history.

May we look at them and be inspired to take a stand whenever and wherever we see the value of human life attacked, starting and ending with the freedom to live, regardless of what that human life looks like.

Thank you to all those who have stood up for life, for freedom, for truth, especially those who gave their lives in the fight.

https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-8/unworthy-live

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/004908570203200205

https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/309162-karachi-becoming-a-killing-field-for-newborn-girls

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senicide

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/04/race-genetics-science-africa/

https://www.livescience.com/47627-race-is-not-a-science-concept.html

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-is-a-social-construct-scientists-argue/

https://darwintohitler.com/hitlers-ethic/