Monday Morning Music Ministry

4-25-22

It is commonly asserted that religion is on the decline in the United States, in the West, and indeed around the world. The polls affirm this; Christians decry the figures; and the growing numbers of secularists in established centers of power and influence celebrate.

The trend is noted about Christianity, but is widely applied to other faiths as well. Islam’s imperialism often is as much military as militant, and of repressive, societal goals. Eastern religions often have faded into traditionalism, and the billions of people who live under Communism endure the illegality of religious practice.

Yet I maintain that the 21st century is one of the most religious eras in the history of humankind.

It is not a word game to invite you to understand the distinctions. Words and definitions are important in an essay, and vital to proceed in our daily lives. Approximately 2.5-billion people in the world are Christians. Roughly one in three souls in the earth’s population profess a belief in Christ. Islam is second in total numbers.

Many people assume that Islam is “on the march” in places like Africa, and Christianity is in retreat. But in fact Christianity is gaining adherents at a faster rate throughout the continent, and it is no coincidence that Mohammedans have turned many areas into bloody battlegrounds. Frequent attacks on Christian schools, Black girls kidnapped and raped, is part of the campaign to intimidate and stifle the spread of Christianity.

There would not be such savagery – or similar attacks in India, Southeast Asia, and China – if Christians were docile, if the faith was in retreat by itself.

… like it is in America and Europe.

Numbers of professing believers in Christ have declined annually for years. Many mainline denominations, churches, and colleges increasing deny the Divinity of Christ. The inerrancy of the Bible is widely renounced. In the view of government, courts, and schools, Biblical standards are rejected – a steady secularist evolution from the beliefs and practices of the Founders.

And so forth. Consistently, people who argue against these points do not defend our spiritual foundations and heritage – they largely and happily welcome the changes; but rather maintain that the trends should cause joy throughout the land.

They are, of course, doomed to repeat the lessons of history, as per Prof. Santayana’s dictum about those who do not learn. It is arrogant nonsense, indeed suicidal foolishness, to think that we have become the first society to successfully experiment with licentiousness, toleration of greed and dishonesty, sexual laxity, corruption of youth, imperialism, and rejection of spiritual values.

Why, then, do I claim that we live in a high-water period of religion?

The distinction I invited early concerns the difference between religion and Christianity.“Religions” are systems of human creation – systems, rules, customs, patterns, laws, inclusions and exclusions. I believe that religion possibly has sent more people to hell than any other external forces.

The difference with Christianity is that (despite the lazy terminology we all employ) it is not a religion. It sounds like a bumper strip, but Christianity is not a religion – it is a relationship. Christ had few “rules”; in fact He was quite clear that the way to find salvation, acceptance by God Almighty, was to believe that Jesus is His Son; that He paid the price, the punishment we deserve before a Holy God; and that He rose from the dead. Believe in your heart, confess with your mouth. That’s it.

Rules, robes, memberships, committees, sacrifices, tithing, memorization, candles, doctrines, all count for nothing in terms of being accepted by God – being a follower of Christ. Oh, we will be motivated to do and share many of these things… but in their proper order! “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God.”

So – again – why do I call this era the most religious of times?

Because of what religion is. As true Christianity declines in America and Europe, religion – remember my definition: belief in human-created rules and regulations – has risen. In this sense, America and Europe live in a post-Christian Age.

But a religion of Secularism has supplanted Christianity. We have secular popes. We have worldly commands and “Thou Shalt Nots” aplenty. There is a common “salvation” according to secular views. Some people anointed – the new “saints” and others are demonized.

The new gospels are agreed upon and advances by Hollywood, Big Media, the Educational-Industrial Complex. Political Correctness provides the new Ten – or more – Commandments. Surely, more and more, people (those with traditional values and Christian standards) are excommunicated: from jobs, schools, neighborhood associations.

It is surprising, really, how the new Secular Religion is counterfeiting many aspects of Christendom. Greta Thunberg is cast as a contemporary Joan of Arc. Activists who discern sudden rights to indoctrinate children act like they have divine revelations; those who resist are cast as heretics. Books are burned by the Politically Correct – an up-to-date Inquisition. Those who impose mandates, or assert that men can declare themselves female, and who legalize abortions and euthanasia… are frankly, declaring themselves gods.

As the Bible prophesied, we live in a time when humankind practices a form of godliness, but denies the power thereof. New England, for instance, is still dotted with beautiful old churches, but many have become literal whited sepulchres – community centers of feel-good and do-good. Maybe people do feel good and do good… but how many throughout America and Europe still preach the Gospel? Accountability for sin? Personal encounters with the Risen Savior?

I am not worried about Jesus – I am not being flippant – but I am worried about His People, His church, the precious heritage we squander. I have peeked ahead to the end of the Book, and… God wins. But that does not at all mean that America wins. Or survives. At the current pace, we don’t deserve to.

We are doomed unless revival comes to the land. I have heard many Christians pray for it, but it is not in God’s nature to bless a wayward generation, the willfully sinfully, so to speak.

Rather it is our task to bring revival, “going forth into all the world,” which in these times means our very neighborhoods. Then we plead for His blessing on the revival we spark. It is useless and false otherwise, much like the charade of godliness this nation has adopted.

Who shall prevail? Is it too late? Is the coming generation too uninformed and misinformed? Is it drugged in bodies and minds? Are the powerful too powerful? Do we have the will to fight – do we know Scripture; do we seek the Lord – in order to defend and counter?

For Christ’s sake, it is all too important.

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A musical allegory of the grief we face. From the 1600s, but regard it as a dirge for Western Civilization, if we do not redeem ourselves.

Click: Dido’s Lament

4-18-22

We have just passed through the darkest days of humankind’s history.

I don’t mean the headlines and videos of the war in Ukraine, or the travails and statistics of our contemporary challenges. I don’t mean, in sweeping reference, to the bloody horrors of the last century.

As we recognize events and commemorate moments of history, whether we learn from the past or pretend things did not happen; whether we honor people or invent heroes of distant days; whether we celebrate fictional events or ignore noble events – I think the most horrible… the coldest… the loneliest… the most confusing… the most frightening days of humankind were the days between the death of Jesus and His rise from the grave.

He died.

The life was gone from Him. The Roman guards pierced his side to make sure, and blood flowed from His heart. He was taken from the cross, and His dead body was cleansed, prepared for burial, covered in a shroud and placed in a donated rich man’s tomb, secured with a heavy stone. His mother and others tended to His burial. Officials placed 24-hour guards at the tomb to make sure that zealots, or His enemies, did not steal the Body.

At the moment that Jesus breathed His last breath, there arose stormy skies and winds. The earth shook. A giant veil in the Temple spontaneously ripped, ceiling to floor. Reports of citizens and contemporary historians, not only Scripture, told of these things.

Turbulent nature was reflected in the minds and hearts of His followers. Distraught that their precious Friend was tortured and killed – taken from them – was compounded by confusion. And terror.

Would they be next?

What of their “movement”?

Not remembering the prophecies of Scripture, or Jesus’s predictions – or His comforting promises – they wondered whether the past three years were a bad dream. Or a ruse, a plot, or a fraud.

They scattered in fear.

What to do? Where to go? Hide? Pretend the Man from Nazareth was a mere teacher, a persuader only, unreliable about all the wisdom He shared?

How to explain all the miracles… the healings, the supernatural wisdom, the changed lives – their changed lives???

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Those few days – after Jesus suddenly had been ripped from their lives and hopes and dreams – must have been the emptiest, coldest hours anyone could experience. Women weeping, men crying for blood, authorities threatening, and… His friends huddled, hiding, shivering in fear.

One disciple said that He had believed Jesus was going to start a revolt against the government. Another said He was sure that Jesus was going to strike the religious leaders and the Roman authorities dead. Another must have doubted that Jesus was the Messiah after all, as they had come to believe.

Surely some – certainly His mother Mary, at least – must have remembered Scriptures, like the symbolism of Jonah in the great fish for three days; or what Jesus said, confusing at the time, about the Temple: if destroyed, it would be restored in three days.

Then the women went to the tomb.

The women intended to honor the dead Jesus, leave perfumes and oils if they could.

The women found the guards gone. The women found the tomb empty. The women saw the burial cloths that had covered the Body… but there was no Body there.

The women returned to the cowering Disciples, sharing what they had seen. All ran, entered the tomb, and saw what the women had reported.

They returned to where they had been hiding, and began to discuss, and plan, and remember things Jesus had foretold, and, and… what? Was Jesus in fact alive? Where was He? Is there hope? Was this not a catastrophe, as they had feared? Was this not — God forgive them for their suspicions — all a strange game? Or was God doing something supernatural, again, in their midst?

Mary Magdalene, however, returned to the tomb. While weeping, a man asked why, and she wondered if “they had stolen” the Savior’s body. She assumed the questioner was a gardener… but she turned and recognized the transformed, resurrected, living Jesus.

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She and the women became the church’s first evangelists. The good news was shared with the Disciples, and then the groups of followers, then the city of Jerusalem and countryside of Galilee, then the world.

Supernatural? For the next 40 days, Jesus appeared spontaneously to individuals and crowds. Walking through walls, performing more miracles, dispensing more wisdom. And now He gave His followers “marching orders,” different than advice about merely how to act. He issued “The Great Commission” – that believers in Him should “go into all the world sharing the Gospel [literally, the good news] and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

Not that Jesus’s ministry was ever a game, but henceforth being a follower of Christ became a serious life-commitment.

He challenged His followers: Do you love Me?

He commanded His followers: Feed My sheep.

He promised His followers: Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

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Were they ready?

Are we ready today?

Are you ready?

The Life of Jesus is not a mere story. The ministry of Jesus was more than performances to impress crowds. The torture and death of Jesus is more than a lesson. The Resurrection of Jesus was more than proof that He overcomes death. The Ascension of Jesus will be confirmation that He was Divine. That He is one with the Father.

The world might still ignore Him, reject Him, deny Him, explain Him away, persecute Him (and us), in fact hate Him. And us.

The world can be savage against us – because of the Jesus who lives in us – or it can dismiss us; trivialize the Savior. It can call Christianity a game.

Let them do so. We can turn around and call the “game” Jesus played as something He virtually said that Easter morning:

“Here I come… ready or not!”

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Click: He’s Alive

4-11-22

By the reliable accounts, both historical and Biblical, there were few people gathered on the Jerusalem hill called Golgotha (“the Place of the Skull”) around Passover when three condemned men were put to death. Roman centurions, mostly; and scattered relatives of the criminals. Even friends generally were afraid to be present, as the condemned were outcasts sentenced to die by the most heinous manner the Romans devised – bodies nailed and hanging on wooden crosses – and guards likely were looking for associates of the criminals.

This day we now call Good Friday. Accounts differ about the name’s origin: an evolution of “God’s Friday,” or Good because it was, in fact, good that Jesus died for our sins.

As “fully man and fully God,” He could have halted the execution. He could have caused Pontius Pilate and the Jewish Elders to drop dead instead of their engineering His arrest and trial and torture. He could have summoned ten thousand angels to halt the crucifixion, and swept Him from the cross.

But instead Jesus submitted. It was, after all, the main reason for the Incarnation – why God became man and dwelt among us; why He fulfilled prophecies in uncountable ways; why He proved His divinity by wisdom, by miracles, by healings. Why He had to die.

In fact, for all intents and purposes, Jesus did not avoid, but figuratively climbed up that cross.

I have noted that experts consider crucifixion to be one of the most torture-laden forms of execution. Beyond the pain of spikes driven through the limbs, and hundreds of splinters slicing the body that hanged on the cross, the crucified victim actually died of suffocation, as the weight of their sagging bodies, and pericardial fluids, choked the heart and lungs.

Under Roman justice, the condemned usually were beaten or crucified, not both. Jesus was bound, whipped, tortured, spat upon, beaten about the face and kicked; and had a crown of thorns thrust on His head. He was flogged with the Roman whips that had sharpened bones or filed metal tips on the thongs, so with each of many scourges, the skin was shredded. Jesus was made to carry His heavy cross (the patibulum to which His wrists would be nailed) through Jerusalem’s streets.

When on the cross He suffered yet more. When He said He thirsted, a sponge with vinegar was thrust in His face. A mocking title was affixed over His head. He was goaded to save Himself, since He claimed to be the Son of God. I have written that the worst part of His suffering that Good Friday might have been the fact that His disciples, who had lived with Him for three years and seen the evidence of His divinity… deserted Him; hiding, not even around the foot of the cross.

Among the few there was His mother, Mary. “Behold your son,” He was able to say to her. Through tears, their eyes met.

If you and I could have been there, we would have seen how few people were present. Some artists, and recent movies like The Passion Of the Christ, actually have presented an accurate depiction of the ugly hill, the forsaken site, the three crosses (other condemned criminals on either side), the centurions, and scattered onlookers.

In a real sense, however, you and I were there. We, and all of humankind, were there during Holy Week, in fact. We would probably have welcomed Jesus on what we now call Palm Sunday; and we probably would have been part of the crowd several days later screaming for His crucifixion. Do you think you would have been any different than the average people in the city, driven to frenzy by lies, hate, and the leaders’ persuasion? The effects of “Cancel Culture” are not new.

Also, we probably would have denied, betrayed, and deserted Jesus just as the Disciples did. I received mail after I recently wrote that. “Not me!” some wrote… but even Peter, who had spent a thousand days at Jesus’s side, yet swore three times to officials that he didn’t know this “Jesus.”

No, you and I virtually were there, because when we sin, we offend God and justly deserve punishment. A perfect God cannot welcome us to His Heaven except that we are sinless… and that is what we become in His eyes when we accept Jesus’s substitution. A “Good” and loving plan of salvation for us… all the more exquisite when we realize the agony God designed by having His Son take upon Himself all the sins of the world. But in the meantime every sin is a nail through Jesus’s hand.

It is no stretch to picture ourselves as present during Holy Week; gathered around the foot of the cross. We were there. We can imagine, quite easily, that this miracle-man, the Son of God, looked down from the cross, and through the ages, at each one of us.

He meets our eyes. He knows us.

And we look up. We meet His eyes. Do we know Him? There are times in our lives we have avoided His gaze; we too have denied Him, even betrayed Him. He has knocked on the doors of our lives, and we have not always answered or let Him in.

But He offers forgiveness. All He has ever asked is that we believe He is God’s son and – as we see – is the sacrifice for our sins. And that He will be raised from death. His Blood, which we see in this imagining, is the payment for our guilt. This Calvary scene is, rather than awful, one of love – joy unspeakable and full of glory.

You have heard this: We ask Jesus how much He loves us; He says, “This much!” and spreads His arms wide; and then they nail those arms to the cross, and He dies.

An old Negro Spiritual recreates the scene, and the urgent message to our souls:

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Were you there when God raised him from the tomb?

Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.

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Click: Were You There When They Crucified My Lord

4-4-22

In one of my former lives – not that I believe in reincarnation; I mean I have had several and varied careers – I was a writer of Walt Disney comics. Numerous treatments and scripts for Mickey, Donald, Uncle Scrooge, and the rest of the gang.

When I was hired, I was given a “story bible” – note the small-b – which instructed artists and writers how to handle the characters. My essential requirement was to “write like Carl Barks and Floyd Gottfredson.” These were the men most responsible for the Donald and Mickey, respectively, we knew from comic books and strips. These men were heroes; as a fan and scholar I already knew them personally; and of course it was a dream assignment. (Carl had even created the Uncle Scrooge character.)

I have copped a few awards and plaques through the years, and they are on my office wall, but they are arranged around my framed membership certificate from the Mickey Mouse Club, 1955. Dearer to me. “Ricky Marshall,” printed in red, around which those trivialities orbit.

I was, in childhood years and in grownup-childhood years, Mickey’s pal. Uncle Walt’s pal, really; of course I went to the theme parks and collected toys and went to the Disney movies. To kids in America for almost a century now, Mickey has been part of our DNA, in our blood.

Suddenly we are diagnosed with a blood infection, however.

The dissolution of the Magic Kingdom’s magic, the betrayal of Uncle Walt’s vision and ethos, have not been precipitous, but recently have accelerated with a vengeance. At the parks and in cartoons and movies, the words “Ladies” and “Gentlemen” and “Boys” and Girls” literally will be proscribed. A Princess is an endangered species because girls who might not dream of being princesses must not be offended nor have such awful visions planted in their hearts.

Mickey and Tinkerbell have been dethroned as Disney spokespeople; “Goofy” would be more appropriate; I hereby nominate him. Or Cruella.

Today, I would refuse to work for the transformed Disney, this counterfeit colossus. I knew a delightful lady, Virginia Davis, who as a little girl was a neighbor of the unknown Walter Disney in Kansas City. When the ambitious cartoonist dreamed up a concept of a live-action girl in an animated world, which became the silent cartoon series Alice in Cartoonland, Ginni played the role. And when the series became a success, Disney moved to Hollywood to produce more, and the Davis family followed. Decades later, when I invited her, out of retirement in Boise, Idaho, to comics conventions here and in Europe, she recalled uncountable stories of Walt… who, several years after Alice, created Mickey Mouse!

Ginni Davis remained friends with Walt’s widow Lillian. Even 25 years ago, I was told, Lillian was very unhappy with what the Disney “brand” had become; and she thought Walt would not have recognized, or liked, it either. And that was before the studio’s PC-pledges, this week, to sanitize its vocabulary and to make a corporate commitment (as per the Disney website) to design half of the studio’s characters to “come from underrepresented groups.”

Disney’s President of General Entertainment Content Karey Burke confirmed the policy. Despite her title, she claimed in a Zoom call to employees that she was shocked to realize that there were only a “handful” of “queer” lead characters in Disney productions. Odd, since she proudly said that she has two “queer” children herself. Technically, one “gay” and one “pansexual,” a category whose meaning eludes me (as do a couple of the letters in “LGBTQIA+”).

The spark that ignited this latest bit of lunacy was the Florida legislature’s law to prohibit the discussion of topics like transgenderism – including counseling and invitations to role-play – to students from kindergarten to second grade. The governor signed the bill; the growing “woke” elements of the nation’s “virtuous” elites erupted in protest; and Walt Disney World in Orlando – the sprawling megalopolis that enjoys tax and regulatory privileges from the state – went public with its dissent, and initiated political threats.

“Underrepresented,” for those of you who have not been following the map, navigating this new Fantasyland, does not mean creating characters with disabilities, or are Amish or Orthodox or Pentecostal, or albinos, or kids with developmental challenges, or birth defects, or cerebral palsy or Down Syndrome. No conjoined twins, sightless, nor (literal) dwarfs. No, the vast Disney “universe” will be populated 50 per cent by characters representing the minuscule portion of the population with rare sexual attributes like gender dysphagia. Pandering, that is, to a different audience in a particular demographic pool.

Disney’s declaration of war on traditional culture and America’s spiritual and social heritage is a pop-culture version of Russia’s brutal visit to Ukraine. American childhood is the innocent, unsuspecting landscape. This not only represents a serious matter; it is a serious matter.

Speaking of wars, they can be lost, or won. Any of us can go broke or lose a job, but we get a new job, we recover. Couples split up, and get back together… or don’t, but we find new loves eventually. Friends move away; we make new friends. Someone might betray us, and it hurts; but time heals the wound, or we forgive; usually we forget. In awful situations, we get sick, and recover, or cope. Wounded soldiers manage and, increasingly, are supported by those who love and appreciate them. Pets die; we get new pets. Life is a wheel.

But there is one thing that cannot be restored, or repaired, and certainly not redeemed when violated or lost. That is the innocence of a child.

“Kids grow up too fast,” we often hear, and that seems true, but I address more than that. As life has become too loud, too rude, too new, too strange, and, yes, too fast for adults… it surely has for children. Do technology and new media rob children of imagination… or maybe encourage imagination? I suspect it will take generations for that judgment.

But I am not inviting us to think about imagination. I am talking about innocence.

Aspects of sex and sexuality ought to be the domain of parents within the family setting. Similarly, matters of morality. Values. Standards. But teachers, teachers’ unions, liberal politicians and judges, the “entertainment” industry, and the talking animals and prancing fairies at Disney theme parks – they mostly agree that parents are the last people who should inculcate knowledge and wisdom to their children.

Maybe, next, they will propose that parents can be the responsible parties for reading, writing, and arithmetic, since those disciplines are no longer the priorities of schools.

Train children in the way they should grow, and when they are old they will not turn from it (Proverbs 22:6).

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Click: Slumber My Darling