Monday Morning Music Ministry

10-22-18

This weekend just passed covered the day we celebrate — or should celebrate and commemorate; a good time to re-dedicate — Reformation Day. October 31, anniversary of the day Dr Martin Luther nailed his 95 These to the church door at Wittenberg, Germany.

These 95 points of “Contention” with policies of the Pope and the establishment Roman Church are regarded as the sparks that ignited the Reformation, and the Protestant movement. There were reformers before Luther – preachers, theologians and Bible translators who were persecuted, tortured, and killed. The English John Wycliffe died a century before Luther was active. Hatred against him, for daring to adapt the Bible to the language of the people, was that his bones were disinterred and burned after his death. The Bohemian reformer Jan Hus was burned at the stake for his reformist beliefs. His last words, tied to the stake, before the flames consumed him, were “in a hundred years, God will raise up a man whose calls for reform can not be suppressed.“

It was 102 year later that Luther nailed his challenges to that church door.
Luther was persecuted, chased, went into hiding, and translated the Bible into the language of his people, the Germans. He sought reform, not revolution, yet revolution occurred: half of Europe caught fire with the belief that faith alone, by God’s grace, actuated salvation; and that people needed no intercessor with God except Christ. He was excommunicated. He married. He preached and wrote lessons… and wrote hymns.

It is my belief that, as last year we observed the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, the church — at least the Western Church, certainly the American church in virtually all its corners — is in dire need of reformation again.

More than that, we need to look to Martin Luther as a Hero of Conscience. He said when he was called on trial to recant his beliefs and writings,
“Unless I am convinced by proofs from Scriptures or by plain and clear reasons and arguments, I can not and will not retract.
“For it is neither safe nor wise to do anything against conscience.
“Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me.“

The time is coming in this contemporary world when Christians have it demanded of them to renounce their faith. That this is already a time of anti-Christian persecution, is abundantly clear. That, daily, believers suffer indignities and are asked to compromise their principles and forced to sublimate their voices, is a reality to committed Christians.

Some days soon Christians will have to suffer no longer in silence, or have the luxury of withdrawing into small groups and communities of believers. The Bible does not merely warn… prophets did not just threaten… but God promised this holy challenge to the saints of God in the End Times.

Can we, like Luther, have the spiritual strength to say: “For it is neither safe nor wise to do anything against conscience. “Here I stand. I can do no other” ?

I have two brief clips for Reformation Day: the first is the powerful “conscience” scene from the 1953 “Luther” movie starring Niall MacGinnis (nominated for an Academy Award).

Here I stand

The second is the “battle hymn of the Reformation” sung a capella by Steve Green. Myself, I can never sing this mighty hymn without choking up. Its final lines describe Luther’s trial… and foreshadow our own:
“Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also;
The body they may kill: God’s truth abideth still,
His kingdom is forever!”

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Click: A Mighty Fortress Is Our God

10-22-18

This admonition, “Share the Gospel. If necessary, use words,” has been attributed to Francis of Assisi, Mother Teresa, and many others. Its meaning is clear and profound.

Its message is so fundamental to life and relationships that its application spreads to less – and to more – than evangelizing Christianity.

But it seems scarcely less significant, and somehow easy to forget, that in all matters we are being seen by our fellow human beings. Family, friends, strangers. When we do not realize it. Even when others do not intend to study our actions. But we are seen; we are judged; we are, often remembered.

The Bible tells us, in Hebrews Chapter 11, that we are always surrounded by a “great cloud” of heavenly witnesses, cheering us on in our faith walk, and runs, and life-challenges. However and moreover, our families, children, neighbors, and unknown eyes see us too. Watch us. And sometimes subliminally, sometimes directly, they learn from us.

This situation might be more vital than in any time of the history that we know. The faithful and secular alike realize that we live in a time when organized religion, the institutional church, and traditional spirituality in general are of diminished importance, at least in our Western culture. The reasons are many, and of disputed origin, but my purpose here is not to debate the Why. Let us deal with the Fact. And the Effect.

Character has been defined as what you do when nobody is watching. That is a useful aphorism too. But there are some people who do not care how they score on “character quizzes.” The point is that we influence others – beyond revealing our standards – whether we realize it or not. And that is something we should care about at all times and in all places.

We are all a part of society, and should be conscious that our roles extend beyond our selves. Our children surely learn more from noticing our actions than listening to our lectures. No different with spouses, neighbors, co-workers… up life’s ladder to God Himself.

A Biblical summary of these principles is found in James (1:22) – “Be ye doers of the Word, and not hearers only.”

Sharing the Gospel is not a memory quiz. It should be seen as Performance Art.

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Click: Take My Life and Let It Be Consecrated, Lord, To Thee

10-15-18

A robust element of many stories in the news these days, and a subtext of many articles, particularly political stories, is the resurgence of socialism. Significantly, the church is at the center of matters.

Socialism has experienced an awakening, at least in debates as its governmental structure is being somewhat dismantled. Wasn’t it dead and buried after the Reagan years? Didn’t the failure and overthrow of Communist regimes around the world teach people that socialism was a miserable failure? Weren’t the statistics of misery, poverty, and oppression in socialist paradises enough to inform people of its toxicity?

Quite the opposite. In America, anyway, it has been more than resuscitated. More than acceptable again, it is fashionable and urgently desired by broad swaths of the public and media. The Fourth Estate has become the Fifth Column, and Americans are, among other means of propaganda, “guilted” welcoming the socialist agenda.

No less than politicians and media and wealthy foreigners and the academic-industrial complex, many contemporary church leaders – Catholic, Protestant, Jewish – are fervent cheerleaders. For neo-Marxism.

My problem with Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and Left-wing Socialism is that, at essence, it is anti-Biblical. Church Marxists will argue that Jesus was the first socialist because of His dedication to equality and peace and his rebuke of the wealthy and concern for the poor. They say that His Disciples and the early Church were examples of communistic communities.

Why are these viewpoints anti-Biblical?

Jesus was devoted to equality… but never did He pull people down. He always lifted people up. Equality was a thing to be desired, and all are born with equal opportunities (never in history more than in non-socialist states), but Jesus made references to the real world’s ambitions on one hand and charity on the other.

Peace? We all know that Jesus had a temper, yes, and let His righteousness take precedence over peace as the world might define it yesterday or tomorrow. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”

Jesus’s attitude toward wealth? We know that He commanded to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s; and to “forsake all” and spoke of the rich entering Heaven as easily as camels passing through needles’ eyes. His distinction was not that “money is the root of all evil” but that “the love of money is the root of all evil.”

Were the early Christians prefiguring socialism in their communities of sharing? The answer is found in later, more organized Socialist states that have imploded thanks to inequality, wars and counter-revolutions, inflation, corruption, and – have you noticed? – suppression of religion.

In virtually every Socialist state, religion is oppressed; believers persecuted. In mild “mixed” socialist countries, church attendance and fealty to Scripture drastically has been diminished.

I think Christians should be opposed to socialism, moreover, because it is based on the state planning, state supremacy, or state control. Goods and services… economic choices… private enterprise… educational standards… prerogatives of daily life. When the population is reared on a socialist worldview, the government is assumed to be the ultimate answer to every problem, the ultimate source of every blessing, the ultimate judge of every challenge.

The government, not God, becomes people’s go-to resource. Google the proper agency instead of praying to the Lord.

Major culprits – wolves in sheep’s clothing – are “Democratic Socialist” or “Christian Democrat” or Democrat parties that substitute themselves for the church. How do they attempt to supplant the church? It is not always as blatant as pre-censorship of sermon notes, as the mayor of Houston attempted a few years ago; nor the many attempts to proscribe the Bible, and public monuments and celebrations, as “hate speech.”

It is more in the poisonous worldview of modern socialism: textbooks written by unelected secularists; the aspects of national health insurance that would discourage private and personal care, and force caregivers to sometimes act against their consciences.

The foundational aspects of the welfare state discourage (or attack) the concept so strongly commanded by Jesus that we care for one another as individuals. Massive taxes for a welfare bureaucracy allows people, or obliges them, to transfer their giving to the State – and in so doing, “free” them of the Biblical necessity to care for the poor and sick. Ultimately, allowing people to stop caring about the poor and sick.

I believe, as St Augustine believed and wrote, the real meaning behind “the poor you shall always have with you” is not that poverty is a futilely resisted pestilence, but that we need to be aware at all times of those who hurt. For their sake, and our souls’, not to check boxes on tax forms to fund some program somewhere.

Finally, consider: Marx spoke (supposedly) to the working class. Good at first glance?

But Jesus spoke to ALL.

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Click: Just a Closer Walk With Thee

10-8-18

There is a coming conflict in America, a war – a civil war – whose first battles are being waged already.

The contentious nomination, debate, and confirmation of a Supreme Court justice has merely accelerated the bellicosity. We are living through a rapid decline in society’s civility, which reminds us that most of history’s civil wars commence as “civility wars” – when factions no longer reasoned together, and have abandoned good will toward their enemies who yesterday were merely opponents.

Judge Kavanaugh’s victory will not change this devolving dissolution; nor would his Congressional defeat have interrupted the trajectory of toxicity. America is in a fateful vortex; no longer a slippery slope that so long was warned. The bizarre acceleration is stark when we recall that the nomination, hearings, and confirmation of another judge – of virtually identical background, resume, clerkship under the same Justice, service on the appellate bench, and judicial philosophy – encountered opposition, but was approved amid comparative calm. Eighteen months later, there were cries of apocalypse and unprecedented angst.

It is as if a bandage has been ripped from a festering, not a healing, wound.

I truly believe that a conflict is coming, and as I said, already here in many ways. This does not mean I welcome it; although I am increasingly convinced that difficulties must be endured and burdens borne, because if one “side” hates, our other side must love, or hate, and otherwise engage… but cannot ignore. Because in that hatred, the secularists hate not only us, but tradition, religion, the Constitution, the heritage of societal norms, the family unit, and nature’s apportionment of gender aspects.

This is not overstating the case, either as concerns fact or prediction. The French Revolutionaries were not content to behead members of royalty (then nobility, then clergy, then merchants, then the middle class) but introduced new calendars and clocks. No matter that their “bellyful” of “reforms” were short-lived, nor that history recorded that such revolutions turn on themselves as they collapse. And, by the way, in their deadly futility usually usher in reactionary counter-revolutions.

I am not an alarmist, except to the extent that alarms need to be sounded.

We cannot turn the clock back, even a couple of years. There will be no more civil debates in primaries or elections any more. There will be no more inaugurations or confirmation hearings without violent and obscene protests, complete with arrests. There will be no more debates, in town halls or national television, without gratuitous accusations whose bases in fact are now regarded as peripheral.

Democracy has failed. The Republican (dictionary meaning) form of government has been subsumed.

The coming conflict is a civil war more desperate than most. The War Between the States was largely geographic but today the divides are within towns, job sites, neighborhoods, classrooms, even families.

We can understand things a little better if we examine one issue that both characterizes the crisis, but also animates it. Let us call it the New Scarlet Letter.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s eponymous novel, the Scarlet Letter was “A” and stood for adultery. The book superficially was an indictment of Puritanism but was a metaphor for the nation’s hypocrisy, the sin of slavery in his day. Today there is a new “A” that fuels debate, challenges traditions, overturns norms, confronts conceptions of morality… and divides families. It, too, has enormous consequences, far-ranging implications. That “A” is Abortion.

Abortion has become the litmus test of candidates (now on the Left, no longer exclusively the Right); the bottom line of political activists; the symbol of the New World. I believe if Judge Kavanaugh adhered to ALL the views he advanced, but declared a commitment to abortion on demand, his confirmation would have been Springtime in Washington. “A” is the new password to the virtual future.

About the New “A,” it is interesting to me to read comments along the “personally opposed, but…” and “abortion is regrettable but government should not be involved” arguments… So I can imagine how these people might have responded at other times in history:

“I am personally opposed to slavery. But it is too well established… the slaves are better off than in their previous lives… they could not successfully thrive in society outside the slave system… it is not my job to interfere with their owners’ property…”

or

“I am personally opposed to discrimination against Jews… it is none of my business, however, if other people do… a lot of people believe that Jews are not actually humans on our level, and who am I to force my views on them… prejudice would not necessarily lead to discrimination; discrimination would not necessarily lead to violence; violence would not necessarily lead to arrests; arrests would not necessarily lead to deaths – that is not who we are… Jews want freedom? Well, I am free to do what I please, too…”

But right is always right, no matter the consequences or personal inconvenience to us. Slavery took a war to end (and it still is rampant in the world – which does not suggest that we be resigned to live with it, but that we maintain integrity and fight in new ways); abortion is not right merely because many people support it. I once supported it, to my everlasting shame. The new Scarlet Letter is not right or wrong based on a poll taken yesterday, today, or tomorrow.

Abortion is wrong because it kills babies.

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Click: Komm, süßer Tod