Monday Morning Music Ministry

3-27-23

The “issue” of crime is in the news these days. In some polls it is the major concern of citizens, at least as troubling as the virtual invasion of millions of illegal migrants and the rotten economy. Unchecked immigration is a literal crime (“il-legal”); and high prices are cursed as virtual “crimes” by every shopper making every tough choice every day…

But across international stages, to our nation, cities, and towns, on sidewalks and in schoolrooms, crimes are on the rise as an epidemic; crimes being ignored and therefore spreading. Ignored… except by the victims. Spreading… because lack of punishment encourages their proliferation.

Crimes and sins are related – maybe in the chicken-and-egg context – but essentially, crimes are legal questions and sins are moral questions. That’s how “legalism” would define the differences. But there are deeper distinctions.

A crime is an act; sin is a tendency. The moment you commit a crime, you are guilty. A guilty act, and formal verdicts of guilt, can be pardoned. Sins, however, often have worse consequences, whether they lead to actual crimes or not. And where crimes can be pardoned, sins cannot.

Sins can only be forgiven.

Weeks before Easter, this still is an Easter message. In fact it is the message of all Scripture, the whole Bible, all of life.

Jesus was condemned by “legalists” who accused Him of crimes, and He was charged, tried, sentenced, tortured, and killed for “crimes.” We know that He was, of course, sinless. His “crimes” were twisted accusations by haters – healing people on the wrong day of the week; showing compassion to the wrong ethnic groups; citing prophecies – and, much like today, the authorities ignored what they should have respected and were upset by things they ought to have ignored. Does this sound like today?

The eighth chapter of John’s Gospel, despite its events chronologically well before Holy Week, addresses the centrality of Easter’s message: Forgiveness. The stark contrast represented by Jesus’s death on the cross was on one hand the crimes imputed by both the state and religion, and the sins of humankind on the other. More so, between the connivance of the malignant forces of state and religion… versus the liberating peace, freedom, and salvation offered by God: Forgiveness.

John chapter 8 begins with the religious hierarchy of Pharisees – Legalists – hauling an adulteress before Jesus, demanding that He approve her imminent stoning as punishment for her sins. Their first priority was to trap Jesus in a legalistic argument. Their second purpose was to scorn, hate, condemn, and kill the woman. Their last thought was to counsel her and lead her to repent. Least of all, Forgiveness.

Scripture tells how Jesus was diffident during their rant, casually writing in the dust; it does not explain what He doodled. My idea was the numbers 1-10, because He then challenged, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone,” reminding them, perhaps, of the Ten Commandments. In any event, as they dropped their murderous rocks and silently walked away, Jesus said, “Go and sin no more.” The usual interpretation is that He spoke only to the woman, but the message was also to the “Holy” mob… and to us.

Today, too many in the Establishment of media, education, and the state – and, sadly, the Church – want us to confront sin, but find a “welcoming” way to meet it halfway. Jesus spent much time, we read, with sinners. But in the Gospels it was they who went away changed, not Him.

Then John 8 records how the Pharisees engaged in debates with Jesus over His claims about prophecy, and Father Abraham, and fulfilling the Law of Moses, instead of what He taught and how He lived. Legalism was deadly, being a convenient excuse for those who would not see.

And Legalism is no less deadly today, as a crutch for those who wallow in their own sins and errors, rebellion and destruction.

Legalism, so much a component of organized religion, has sent more people on paths of misery straight to hell, than have accumulations of sinning… because it enables sin.

What Jesus taught that day, and spoke through the Message of the Cross, and pleads with us today, is that sin is the problem; not the sinner.

Willingly deaf to His words, the Jews in this chapter did not relent; they peppered Jesus with challenges (“You are not yet 50 years old, and yet you say you have seen Abraham?”) and their logic about the Law of Moses (to which He replied, “I am the Law of Moses”). They found the stones again, to throw at Him… but He disappeared out of the midst of them. His time was not yet come. Holy Week, as we call it, Good Friday, the Cross, and the Resurrection, were yet ahead.

But in the meantime, as we read, when He beheld Jerusalem, Jesus wept.

Surely He weeps today over America and this world of sin and error. He weeps for an apostate Church and a culture that prattles about what is “fair”… but not as much about what is pure, and just, and holy.

Let us weep too. Not to respond and act would be more than a crime. It would be a sin.

+ + +

Click: When He Was On the Cross, I Was On His Mind

3-20-23

The French have a phrase that is memorable and useful, because it is true, not a mere facile epigram. “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Its universality, and applications, are so basic that it is often quoted in the original: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” It was written by Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr in 1849.

The concept can be said, or thought of, as pessimistic or fatalistic. Also it can be considered as merely a statement of fact, even an encouragement to a realistic view of life – a viewpoint from which we might brush the dust off out feet and seek new directions.

The Bible addresses the idea of course in a perfect way, and as often the case with bits of wisdom – proverbs – in the words of King Solomon. We recently visited the first chapter of Ecclesiastes, in which this verse appears:

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun.

This came to mind again this week when I chanced upon a political cartoon I drew (gulp!) half a century ago, almost to the day. Isn’t it amazing how a four-year-old could draw? (I am not good at math, so I might be off by a few years…) But more than the archaeological discovery from my files, I was struck by the issue I addressed in the pages of the Connecticut Herald back then.

This cartoon could have been published this week – only better drawn, I would hope – and it would be just as pertinent, just as impertinent, every detail of my critique and complaints resonating the same way.

I would give my right inkpot if such were not case. For this is not an amusing coincidence; it is evidence of rot in American life. We might acknowledge that there might be nothing new under then sun, but – despite Solomon and Jean-Baptiste – we hope that things can at least vary their colors and flavors, can change or evolve. In 1973, for instance, the Soviet Union was our international threat; now it is China. In 1973 Vietnam was a diplomatic vortex; now it is Ukraine.

But the crises in American schools, as I identified them in this cartoon, are the same today (with, perhaps, the only change being greater degrees of severity). In my drawing I pictured sex “teaching” in the classroom; “new math” (the crazy numbers on the blackboard did not reproduce well here); anti-American teaching and actions; the presence of drugs, violence, and alcohol (I drew a syringe, a knife, and a beer can); the Black Power poster would be BLM today; and a Marxist textbook, which lives today as Critical Race Theory and other propagandistic school books.

Oh. And the assault on Bibles and prayers in schools, and the courts’ malignant interference in public education.

When I drew this cartoon, “thanks” to the Supreme Court, Bible reading and Christian expression in schools had been outlawed for about 10 years. To many people, this seems like the world of centuries ago, but I was in seventh grade; I can remember another America. Until that time, my schools in suburban New York City – and it was no different anywhere in the United States – opened every day with the Pledge of Allegiance. Moments of silence. Every week opened with Bible readings, round-robin with classmates. Out of deference to the Jewish kids in my classes, Bible readings often were Old Testament psalms.

If kids came from households of no faith, or other faiths, they could opt out; no ostracism of any sort. I had no friends who felt persecuted. The Lord’s Prayer was also recited weekly, and the Protestant kids added “For ever and ever, Amen,” nothing odd about it. We had Thanksgiving and Christmas and Easter programs… with the spiritual backgrounds discussed matter-of-factly.

These were aspects of American schools until the early ‘60s. Ten years later… this cartoon was not a fantasy or a warning, but a critique of unfolding situations. Fifty years later… Nothing new under the sun.

I was not too young when Bibles were outlawed, nor when I drew this cartoon, to be unaware of predictions from many quarters. Don’t think citizens did not object. There will be consequences if children are not grounded in an awareness of God’s role in American life… morals will degrade in a generation of young people… If Biblical values are stripped from history and science classes, children will have no standards… We will raise up generations with false values, little respect, and no traditions… and other predictions that are “la même chose.”

Every movement, through many centuries – indeed, back to the Garden – that has attacked God’s Word and orderly societies, has commenced with corrupting children. Of late, in the West, whether it is the questionable Protocols; or the manifestos of Marx and Engels; or the “Progressive Education” of Dewey; or the well-funded subversion of George Soros, corrupting the youth is the tip of the spear.

I wish, today, I could draw a cartoon predicting a better future – American classrooms free of subversion and perversion; shining with patriotism and traditional values; teaching, and learning, the Three Rs; not woke but awakened; outcomes and advancement of students by merit.

But I am afraid that my pen has run dry.

+ + +

Click: The Darkest Hour Is Just Before Dawn

3-13-23

A friend recently asked about Messianic Jews and Christians who choose to observe the traditions of the ancient Hebrews. Festivals, dietary laws, customs of holy days. Should Christians, and “fulfilled” People of the Book, feel obligated or be encouraged to observe practices from centuries prior to Christ’s incarnation?

Those ancient traditions pointed toward the Messiah’s coming. Discernment was required with all prophesies, customs, ceremonies, and the most minute elements of observances. Things that inspired people of Old Testament times can provide reminders to Christians of our time: God’s sovereign and eternal plan; the unity of the full Gospel; the confirmation of His miracle workings.

To the extent that awareness of ancient observances can turn into obsessions into substitutions into replacements, we should discourage these things. Anything that takes our eyes from Christ Himself must be resisted. Christ and Him crucified, Christ risen and reigning – all else pales. Customs and prophecies become academic; signs and wonders are confirmations. Luke 12:30 warns us that “these things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers all over the world.” Turn your eyes upon Jesus.

Taking these thoughts further, I remembered one of the most powerful books of warnings, so to speak, in the Bible, and one of its most powerful chapters. Amos the Prophet speaks to us today.

The customs and observances of the Old Testament were for the times in which they were given by God. As I said, they are for our edification still today; all of Scripture is inspired. Laws and commandments are likewise of God, and yet we should remember that Jesus is the fulfillment of the law. However, the books of the Prophets are slightly different, in my view. Many of the prophecies, especially the Jeremiahs, were for people of the day – warnings to repent and return to God. And many of those warnings, as we know, were rejected… resulting in punishment, wrath, and exile.

Yet many prophecies were spoken and written to us, too. For us. About us. Not only in human-nature categories of advice, but specifically to our circumstances – our places is historical dispensation; our situations. The sixth chapter of Amos reads that way, as if Amos looked almost 3000 years into future and knew our society, reading our headlines.

And what he saw is not pretty.

We know things are not pretty today. And the more serious our crises are, contemporary life dresses things up to look pretty… taste sweet… and appear harmless. But don’t we know that these are perilous times? Problems barely beneath the surface? Amos did. God does.

Woe to you who are at ease…

Woe to you who put far off the day of doom, Who cause the seat of violence to come near; Who lie on beds of ivory, Stretch out on your couches, Eat lambs from the flock And calves from the midst of the stall; Who sing idly to the sound of stringed instruments, And invent for yourselves musical instruments like David;
Who drink wine from bowls, And anoint yourselves with the best ointments, But are not grieved…

The LORD God of hosts says: “I abhor the pride of Jacob, And hate his palaces; Therefore I will deliver up the city And all that is in it.”

You have turned justice into poison, And the fruit of righteousness into bitterness.

“Behold, I will raise up a nation against you…” says the Lord God of hosts; “And they will afflict you…”

“Woe to the complacent” is the thrust of this prophecy. It is a stark reality – a tragic truth – that America and the “Christian” West have arrived at a point where we are not only diverted by, but we put our trust in, bread and circuses. We look to wealth and armaments for protection. We believe we are privileged and secure. We think that because the world loves our rock ‘n’ roll and blue jeans, others are not jealous and lustful after our resources and blessings. We call good evil and evil good, fooling ourselves that it makes no difference. We have manufactured our own morality – believing that sin has no consequences; that we can exploit and abuse each other; that marriages, babies, and the “inconvenient” among us are expendable. Crimes are not crimes anymore; and substance abuse is assuaged by more and more substance abuse. We have become insensitive to beauty and truth.

We have come, on this mad journey of democratic license and self-indulgent capitalism, to a point of elevating Self – the deity of contemporary life. Human nature reigns supreme, the ultimate force to be trusted, a secular god that believes nothing, forgives everything, and demands our worship and trust.

All of this instead of trusting in the Lord.

How is this working out? How has it ever worked out, three thousand years ago or in any civilization, past or present?

We have turned the fruits of righteousness – to which we delude ourselves into thinking we are dedicated – into bitterness. And justice in contemporary life – whether regarding neighborhood crime, or respect for the sanctity of life, or international relations – we are turning into poison. And poison kills.

Thus spake the Prophet. The words are true, even if we ignore them.

+ + +

Click: Purcell Funeral March

3-6-23

Like the boy who cries wolf, the people behind the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists seldom are noticed anymore, or as much or as often as they once were. In 1947, at the dawn of the Atomic Age, the group’s “Doomsday Clock” was calibrated and publicized, meant to represent how close humankind was to obliterating civilization on earth.

Significantly it was issued at a time when nuclear weapons were a monopoly of the United States, and indeed the USA was the only nation, and remains so, to have unleashed nuclear weapons on people, military or civilian. To me that is a matter of shame, but my purpose is not to discuss wartime strategies.

Peacetime strategies of certain groups also deserve our attention. The “Doomsday Clock” – how close the world supposedly is to annihilating itself, “midnight” being the death-knell – was set at “seven minutes to midnight” as per the Bulletin’s first press release. Two months ago our current death sentence, so to speak, is calculated at 90 seconds away from doom. There are 86,400 seconds in a day, by the way, so we can see what the fuss is about. Since 1947 other nations have joined the “nuclear club.” (The Soviet Union in 1949; the UK in 1952; France, 1960; China, 1964; and at least five other countries.) The Bulletin of “scientists” has widened their list of threats to life on earth include over-population, green concerns, and global warming (or as it is known at the moment, “climate change”).

The United States is always cast as the boogy man in such alarums. I do not doubt the malign effects, both wanton and avoidable, of civilization and its discontents. It might even be the case that Chicken Littles in white lab-coats have inspired reforms. Yet there have been unseen consequences of Doomsday scenarios despite the absence of nuclear bombs being dropped during all the wars since 1947. My generation of schoolkids surely absorbed psychic poison from warnings about our homes being incinerated, and the necessity of hiding our little heads under desks during bombing-raid rehearsals in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Some day soon I believe we also will look back on the futility of two years of societal lockdowns over a relative of the flu.

I suggest that our problems with ticking clocks and last pages of calendars, of big bombs and little viruses, is “not in the stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” That quotation is from Shakespeare, not the Bible; but there is wisdom in it. Another wise man wrote in the Book of Ecclesiastes: “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.”

In these famous lines, the “Preacher,” acknowledged as the son of David, King Solomon, did not address “vanity” as being conceited or boastful, or chasing after fashion, except in the (much) larger sense – the contrast between substantial things and temporary concerns. The difference between the pertinent and the impertinent. The important things in life, and, yes, the futility of some things we humans chase after.

In that sense, things like atomic bombs and fossil fuels pale in significance to the many things the entire human race is doing in myriad other ways to kill itself. Yes, a bomb’s blast is palpably horrific: ask the many survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet the moral decay of hatred, prejudice, corruption, deceit, abuse, addiction, exploitation – of sin – is individual, widespread, and, unlike international treaties and federal regulations, within the power of each of us to remedy.

This human condition – vanity; the sense of futility we share in ever-increasing ways – can be addressed by humans. Spiritual crises require spiritual answers

Solomon, thousands of years ago, addressed the same challenges to “human nature” wherewith we contend today:

Says the Preacher, “Vanity, vanities, all is vanity.”

What profit has a man from all his labor In which he toils under the sun? One generation passes away, and another generation comes; But the earth abides forever.

The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, And hastens to the place where it arose. The wind goes toward the south, And turns around to the north; The wind whirls about continually, And comes again on its circuit.

All the rivers run into the sea, Yet the sea is not full; To the place from which the rivers come, There they return again. All things are full of labor; Man cannot express it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, Nor the ear filled with hearing.

That which has been is what will be, That which is done is what will be done, And there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which it may be said, “See, this is new”? It has already been in ancient times before us.

There is no remembrance of things past, Nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come By those who will come after.

Does this mean we should do nothing about our manifold problems? No – I have listed the problems I believe ultimately are most important that face our species and our families. If we can solve those, the “larger” crises might sort themselves out, for we will be wiser, more responsible, more loving.

Does this suggest a new form of hyper-individualism, addressing our problems ourselves? To the extent we should rely less on scientists who cry wolf with Bulletins, or governments who intimidate us by claiming to have all answers to all things… yes.

Does it say that life is futile; we are doomed according to a ticking Doomsday Clock?

No. These thoughts remind us that God is in charge. We are not to look to the stars, be scared by clocks, or even rely, solely, on ourselves – but to Him.

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap (Galatians 6:7).

+ + +

Click: The Great Judgment Morning