Monday Morning Music Ministry

1-28-19

“Start Your Week With a Song in Your Heart” is the slogan of these essays. I hope always to do that – never failing, that is, to reinforce news of the saving grace of Jesus Christ. Lately, however, the subjects we address point to the many unfortunate tendencies in contemporary life – individual failings we all need to correct; and the crisis in our culture.

Varied examples abound, but all pertinent, especially in recent days. Brutal examples – seemingly trivial things are revealing.

The recent dust-up around Catholic school kids and clashing protesters who tried to intimidate them, is a clear example. The instant interpretation, and the flim-flam of the “Indian” “elder” were hungrily taken up and spread far and wide by the media. When the kids were profiled as kids, indeed; and the nature of the Indians and the black racists exposed, there was a 24-hour period of unusual mea culpas served up by the media.

Then, of course, life went on, the incident virtually disappearing, like Soviets who fell out of Stalin’s favor. Good was called evil… then a reality-check… then good was called evil, hour after hour, all over again.

A news item that is more indicative of the back-story than the actual headlines – horrible as they are – is New York State’s legalization of aborting babies up to the minute before birth. “If its life is in danger,” a ridiculous and cynical addendum; or “the mother’s life,” that tired and never-occurring condition. Babies barely born can be “terminated” too; in the way that lynching “terminated” Black people. What polite terminology.

The nominally Catholic Gov Cuomo of New York praised the passage of this new law. The Empire State Building was lit in pink to celebrate. The worst spectacle was the cheering of crowds at Cuomo’s announcement ceremony. Blood lust by crazed proponents of murder, it seemed to me. I once was in favor of abortion; but thank God, through my shame I see it for what it is.

More than an emblem of our Culture of Death, I see it frankly as even more than mere infanticide. It is cultural Infant Sacrifice. Pagan societies of old sacrificed children to pagan gods. Legalized abortion is sacrifice to the contemporary gods of selfishness, indolence, sloth, hedonism, and convenience.

Old pagan societies sacrificed individual babies at certain ceremonies; even in ancient Rome, babies born with disabilities were left to die outside the city walls. In America, we have killed tens of millions of babies. A death toll surpassing numbers from any other cause. Murdering babies is a “cause” in itself.

The law reportedly allows abortions with “no medical supervision” — that is, possibly by amateurs or hustlers like Dr Gosnell of Philadelphia. He is now in jail, having profited from the assembly-line of death he ran.

What “no medical supervision” means — in effect — all these years after Roe vs Wade, is that those dreaded, red-herring “back alley, coat hanger abortions” have simply become legal, enshrined in law. The law has outlawed shame, not abortions. A neat trick, ushering in infanticide and doing away with conscience all with one legislative vote and one Governor’s signature.

New York State, and much of America, brags that it has abolished the death penalty. So people who have been found guilty of heinous crimes are spared, while innocent babies are sentenced to death. And people not only assent; they cheer.

In truth, abortion is also a death penalty, plain and simple.

The various segments of the Establishment almost unanimously applaud and anoint such things. The masses are deluded… but, frankly, our society has allowed itself to be deluded by such heresy. Our leaders, our teachers, our celebrities (“role models”) and – tragically – many church leaders call good evil and evil good. This was predicted about the End Times… but whether we green-light the End Times, or not, I believe is still in our hands.

As we descend into hell, we step on the wasted patrimony of workers and martyrs who preceded us; step over millions of slaughtered babies; and trample the dreams of the faithful who never imagined this degradation. And yet people cheer.

Hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs – beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people’s bones and all sorts of impurity (Matthew 23:27, NLT).

Since I first posted this essay, Linda Traitz has shared that New York is not the only state that permits full-term abortions. Also in Hall of Shame:
Oregon
Vermont
Colorado
New Hampshire
District of Columbia
Alaska
New Jersey
New Mexico

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But… Start Your Week With a Song in Your Heart.

Click: Softly and Tenderly

1-21-19

January 21 is the anniversary of my wife Nancy’s death. It often seems easier for people to say “passing” instead of “death”; and with many people, about many situations, “passing” is perfectly appropriate. Not like passing, say, over the River Styx. In Greek mythology, that river separated the living from Hades, or hell, and grief was associated with that last journey.

In Christian typology, we pass from this life to Heaven, to Paradise, to Eternal Life. It sometimes has been corrupted by fictions of Limbo and Purgatory, but those way-stations are not in the Bible. Believers can be assured that upon death we will be in the presence of Jesus; standing before the Throne.

Sometimes it is called the Great Hope, also known as the Blessed Assurance. During Nancy’s long illness – several heart attacks, then transplanted heart and kidneys – she started a hospital ministry, praying with patients and their families, and conducting weekly services. This was on the Heart Failure floor of Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia.

She waited four and a half months for a new heart after being listed. The ministry – a family ministry on the floor, with my children and me fully participating – continued for many years. Nancy could identify with hurting patients, because she also was plagued with diabetes, celiac disease, cancer, five mini-strokes, amputation, dialysis. The counsel of people who have shared your pain or problems always resonates.

Remarkably (no, for Christians, “predictably”) we saw conversions, a few miracles, family members and casual visitors touched in vital ways. Jews attended our open services. Blacks loved the Southern Gospel music we sometimes would play; rural farmers discovered the blessings of Black spirituals. One woman whose husband died after transplant told us she believed that her husband’s heart failed just so he would wind up at Temple and attracted to our services, where he became a Christian. A “God thing,” she thought. That is not biblical… but those were the sorts of emotions and testimonies.

I could write this message about hearts around Valentine’s day, too; but the messages are universal. Also… Nancy received her new heart, ironically, on Valentine’s Day. That became her new birthday, but we also remember much on the day of her home-going.

“Home-going” is what some Christians call it. Properly. Other terms were natural about Christianity and salvation… when confronting heart failure. “Give your heart to Jesus”… “Create in me a new heart, O Lord”… so many verses. It made it easier, or frequently more challenging, to construct messages or offer a prayer. But, oh, the church services (funerals; “home-goings”) we discovered, for instance in the Black churches – “preach-offs,” joyous singing and dancing. The ecstatic prayers and songs of the Pentecostals.

One focus of Nancy’s ministry was to enforce and reinforce the point that “head knowledge” was not enough for a child of God. Passing a quiz, reciting Bible verses, even merely attending church gain you nothing in themselves. We had emotional adherents who had never been to churches in their lives; one big fella cried when he confessed to never having prayed, publicly, in his life… before he did so in our fellowship. But Nancy did not feed them weak milk.

“You must do more than know things in your head,” she said. “You must know in your heart… believe deep down in your heart.” That Jesus is the Son of God; that He died for our sins; that God raised Him from the dead. Heart knowledge.

That basic message, the “old, old story,” is all that humankind needs. Head knowledge will follow. Good works will be the result of a redeemed life. The “fruits of the spirit” come in the life of a born-again believer. But Nancy preached about the nature of those “fruits,” what the next steps were after one’s spiritual heart was transplanted.

The heart, even more important than the mind, is the first change in the life of new-born believers. An ancient German hymn is titled, “Heart and Mouth and Deeds and Life.” Tending to those things is not only a road-map for Christians, but wisdom for the lives of every person. In all aspects and ramifications.

Nancy tended to those matters in life, and was an example. Christ’s example, of course; the light unto our paths.

Johann Sebastian Bach wrote a cantata, number 147, based on those words. It is one of his most profound, and contains several passages that are commonly heard today. “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” for instance, is the 10th movement Chorale:

Jesus remains my joy,
my heart’s comfort and essence,
Jesus resists all suffering,
He is my life’s strength,
my eye’s desire and sun,
my soul’s love and joy;
so will I not leave Jesus
out of heart and face.

Let us remember, from the Beatitudes of Jesus: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”

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Click: Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben

1-14-19

What impresses people these days? Rather, let us think about how we are impressed in contemporary society… how we measure success… how “success” conflates with validation… and how we let ourselves be seduced by twisted value-systems.

Ratings? Polls? Fads? The newest trends, dance moves, drinks, celebrities and their endorsements? “We like sheep have gone astray…” In contemporary life it seems like everybody salivates for the latest cultural marching orders.

We should not be surprised by a chintzy value system when the values being pursued are debased. In tragic synergy, we have lowered our standards; the core aspects of our civilization are cheapened; and they in turn inform the next generation. A downward spiral.

Exhibit A, among myriad bellwethers: throughout history (until the Modern Age in Western civilization), virtually all artistic expression was expressed heavenward. Praising God, celebrating His works. Canvases, sculpture, music, architecture. I am ready for nit-pickers: music sometimes was social; art could also be purely decorative. Ancient sculptures to their small-g gods? – still religious in nature. Architecture from, say, public buildings in ancient Greece? – Plato commended artists to reflect the spiritual Perfection that he discerned in the world; Aristotle taught people to strive for the Golden Mean, less abstract, but as spiritual.

But since the Modern Age, coalescing during the Renaissance and Enlightenment, mankind has elevated Self instead of God. We have turned inward – all the while convincing ourselves we are turning outward, with broader visions, and universal sympathy.

Works of art now “explore” ourselves; “explain” our problems; depict our low estate; obsess over our contradictions, flaws, conflict, and doom. Social scientists can say – and artists say, when they process the situation – that confronting problems is the first step to solving them. That analysis is glib, not profound.

There is no way to traffic in humanity’s misery without making it attractive, or at least compelling. Movies, for instance, have to make evil and corruption glamorous, if not inevitable, in order to sell tickets.

At one time, men and women – who knew quite well the problems of the world and the flaws in human nature – dealt with such basic challenges not by depicting awful things in ever starker details, but by glorifying God, employing Biblical standards, discerning His answers for this troubled world.

In John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, the man with the muck-rake was to be scorned – a man who forever focused on the mire and mud, never looking up.

It is sadly inevitable, absent superhuman enlightenment and discipline, that a civilization that empowered the Individual, encouraged literacy, and expanded democracy, would eventually replace God with Self. “Self” is human nature, which all but naive sociologists would agree is flawed. Our various communities cannot help but be flawed as a consequence. Art is debased, government is corrupted, tradition is discarded.

Again inevitably, when disaster impends, mankind in this “value” system tends not to reform but to justify. To double-down. To blame everything and everybody except… our selves. The fault, if we would stop and see it, is not in the stars, but in our selves, that we are underlings.

When Rome began its decline and fall, its leaders reacted to warning signs by distracting the populace with, famously, bread and circuses. And the Roman population, from nobles to citizens to slaves, were happy to be seduced.

The sad proof of our depravity – of the rotting core amid material glitz – is what we celebrate in art. The sensual; self-gratification; the banality of evil. These barometers reveal the reality of broken homes and broken lives; a multitude of addictions; abuse and oppression. Yet we look down, instead of Up.

A re-discovery God and His ways is not the best solution to mankind’s sorry state… but the only solution.

Revival will only come if it is sought. Salvation of the soul is still offered by God to hurting people, as always. But to understand the redemption of a society, we can advance, ironically, by looking backward. If we are not immediately impressed by God Himself as we behold the range of artistic expression, we are mightily impressed by men and women… who gave themselves over to God in profound ways.

A lost paradigm, but not irretrievable.

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Click: Bach: Air On the G String

1-7-19

The last words Theodore Roosevelt spoke, before going to sleep on January 6, 1919, a century ago, were to his valet: “James, put out the light.” The next day, Vice President Thomas Marshall said, “Death had to take Theodore Roosevelt in his sleep. If he had been awake, there would have been a fight.”

Famous, as suggested there, for boundless energy, but also for boundless enthusiasm, interests, and accomplishments, TR was an author of dozens of books, a legislator, cowboy and rancher, police commissioner, cabinet officer, soldier, governor, vice president, hunter and explorer, conservationist and naturalist. Loving husband and father of six children, he earned the Medal of Honor on the battlefield, and the Nobel Peace Prize.

Oh, yes, and President of the United States. For all of his success in that position, he might be the only president for whom the presidency is not the greatest item on his resume. The most interesting American.

An important aspect of TR that curiously has been neglected by history is his fervent Christian faith. In some ways, he might be seen as the most Christian and the most religious, at least the most observant, of all the presidents.

A list evaluating presidents by this rubric would be subjective at best, and a difficult one to compute and compile. Putting TR’s name at the top might surprise some people, yet that surprise itself might bear witness to the nature of his faith. It was privately held, but it permeated countless speeches, writings, and acts. His favorite Bible verse was Micah 6:8, “What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?”

Theodore Roosevelt was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church. He participated in missions work around New York City with his father, whether the charity was church-related or “personal,” public or private—it was all God’s work. TR taught weekly Sunday school classes during his four years at Harvard. Throughout his life he wrote for Christian publications. During the White House years, Edith, a strong Episcopalian, invariably attended her denomination’s church across Lafayette Park, the “Church of Presidents.” The president himself usually walked a little farther to worship at a humble German Reformed church, the closest he could find to the faith of his fathers.

Roosevelt called his 1912 bare-the-soul campaign speech announcing his political principles “A Confession of Faith.” Later he closed perhaps the most important speech of his life, the clarion-call acceptance of the Progressive Party nomination, with the words: “We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord!” That convention featured evangelical songs and closed with the hymn, “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

He titled one his books Foes of Our Own Household (after Matthew 10:36) and another Fear God and Take Your Own Part. He once wrote an article for The Ladies’ Home Journal, “Nine Reasons Why Men Should Go To Church.” After TR left the White House, he was offered university presidencies and many other prominent jobs. He chose instead to become contributing Contributing Editor of The Outlook, a small Christian weekly news magazine—tantamount to an extremely popular ex-president today (if we had one) choosing to edit WORLD Magazine. He accepted a salary approximately one-eighth of salaries offered by magazines like Collier’s that hoped to snag TR’s services. His first essay for the magazine, telling the public why he chose to associate himself with the journal cited The Outlook’s “paying heed to the dictates of a stern morality,” and its “inflexible adherence to the elementary virtues of entire truth, entire courage, entire honesty.” No fake news permitted in his space,

Roosevelt was invited to deliver the Earl Lectures at Pacific Theological Seminary in 1911, but declined due to a heavy schedule. Knowing, however, that he would be near Berkeley on a speaking tour, he offered to deliver the lectures if he might be permitted to speak extemporaneously, not having time to prepare written texts of the five lectures, as was the custom. It was agreed, and TR spoke for 90 minutes each evening—from the heart and without notes—on the Christian’s role in modern society.

TR was not perfect, but he knew the One who is. Fond of saying that he would “speak softly and carry a big stick,” it truly can be said also that Theodore Roosevelt hid the Word in his heart and acted boldly. He was a great American because he was a thoroughgoing good man; and he was a good man because he was a humble believer. In a hundred years we have not seen his like again.

Thoughts of Rick Marschall, Roosevelt scholar, author of 74 books; member, Advisory Board, Theodore Roosevelt Association.

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Click: Rick Marschall at Truman Library Institute, Kansas City Public Library

Millions of servicemen in World War I were sent abroad with New Testaments with a spiritual message from Theodore Roosevelt

Can a Christian serve in politics?

12-31-18

The French have a saying, Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. It often seems apt, and is of course a variant of a Biblical principle (God usually nails it, right?) found in Ecclesiastes – “There is nothing new under the sun.”

These sort of thoughts occur to many of us around New Years, or I might say, specifically after New Year’s, when our resolutions wither and die. The French phrase translates to “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

This is not necessarily white-flag defeatism, but rather a reflection of human nature. And January received its name from the Roman god Janus, the two-faced god of endings and beginnings.

Many of us do not merely make (and break) resolutions around now. And we will not address that famous “road to hell” that is paved with good intentions, because pledges to improve, or reform, or lose weight, or clean the office, are fungible; and at least reflect proper impulses. We also, at this time of year, often grow nostalgic… remember friends… regret mistakes… miss family members… plan to renew old acquaintances. Also proper impulses.

Perhaps the fatal flaw with intentions and resolutions is that ol’ human nature. It seems wiser to pray that the Holy Spirit equip us to be tender and resourceful and sympathetic, rather than relying on our own lists and computer calendars and strings around our fingers.

Implicit in New Year’s resolutions is a whole lot of Self – we can discern; we can assign; we can choose; we can self-motivate; we can mark the dates and goals.

We can… but we often don’t.

I am thinking of this week. Most people are happy (surveys say) with the course of the economy and “optimistic about the future.” Unemployment numbers are good … and so forth. How many people have a bounce in their step as the new year unfolds?

In my own little world, I am happy enough, and grateful to God for my blessings. But just in the past few days, I have learned, or been reminded, of friends and relatives with radically different prospects. A friend whose happily married daughter is… not so happily married. The sudden death, perhaps from meningitis, of 26-year-old commentator Bre Payton, a rising star. A friend whose daughter and grandkids went into hiding because of an abusive husband. A friend whose husband has been ill for months, in pain and not eating, wasting away. A friend whose daughter has been estranged for two years, rejecting outreach and severing relations with grandsons caught in the middle. A friend whose only child is mercurial to the point of heartbreak, variously cheerful and abusive. A friend who has just gone on Hospice.

Is everything seen, all of a sudden, as the “glass half empty”? (– or half-full? I never understood the proper term or distinction of that). No. Of all my friends above, with one exception where “negative confession” is her reaction of choice, these people do count their blessings, and are mindful of silver linings. Another friend whose daughter impulsively got pregnant, got married, and got separated in mind-numbing and sad rapidity, nevertheless praises God for clarity and rededication… and so does her precious daughter. My friend on Hospice is in a situation that would make people cry, yet is full of life and enthusiasm that is inspiring.

We must always remember, or realize, that behind every storm cloud the sun still shines brightly. Storm clouds pass, but the sun shines always, after storms and after dark nights.

Our job as Christians, trying to live as Christians – and maybe to be, or to reflect, that sun to others – is, if I may put it this way, how to order the gloomy news and the hopeful news. Joy… BUT? or horrible news… BUT!

But there is hope; but there is redemption; but there is the bright day ahead.

So, here we go again, in January. Rather than relying on our own “Do-Better” lists, why don’t we all make a New Years Resolution to let God order our ways, light our pathways, and inhabit our praise?

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For all the friends with challenges and grief I listed here – and for each other – let us pray. Farther along, we’ll know all about it…

Click: Farther Along

12-24-18

I invite us to think of the manger scene, the Nativity creche, which despite the hostility of judges and hatred of some types of people, we all still see uncountable times throughout this season.

But let us try to think of the real Nativity group – not the shiny plastic, bright colors, or even inflatable angels, shepherds, animals, and Babe. How humble it was. How very humble. The root word of manger means “to eat”; and even if new straw was placed in the stable’s manger to receive Jesus, there likely were bugs and dirt and spittle that received Him too.

Aside from the fulfillment of prophecy, why did God orchestrate a situation where Joseph and Mary were rejected in all the inns? (In a city where the census was planned and held, I have often wondered if innkeepers did not want an unmarried young pregnant girl in their rooms…) Why were lonely shepherds and random animals the witnesses to Jesus’s first cries and naps? Could Mary have wondered, for a second, that the Savior of mankind deserved something a little less… humble?

The child she carried was conceived supernaturally. Behind the shepherds and next to the animals were angels. There were miracles aplenty in that lonely stable. But…

Jesus the Messiah could have descended from the clouds, just as, thirty-three years later, He would ascend to the Father.

God could have sent His only-begotten Son into the world full-grown, with the shout of angels and sound of trumpets, as He will come His second time.

The Christ did not necessarily have to be a Christ-Child; He might have appeared as a man from the wilderness where, after all, He often would go to pray.

Such appearances surely would have affirmed His divinity, no? Perhaps the world might have received Him better, believed in Him more, not be so skeptical.

Is that so? Think ahead to those thirty-three years, when even His disciples, who lived and ate and traveled with Jesus, and saw miracles and healings and raisings from the dead… they abandoned Him when things got tough, scattering like dry leaves on a windy street.

No, we should consider it a miracle that the Incarnation – Jehovah, God-with-us – was in the most unlikely Form possible. It was not God’s sense of humor or irony, but the most gentle yet powerful means of reminding the world that He identifies with us. God Almighty, Creator of the universe, Holy and August Lord… reached down.

At that moment, that first Christmas as we call it, God did not need to remind us of how omnipotent He was… but how humble He could be.

Indeed, no other Jesus could have laughed and cried and thirsted and hungered and loved and been disappointed as He was to be. No other Jesus could, later, have suffered betrayal and endured pain like we experience. No other Jesus would have submitted to crucifixion.

Another Jesus – still looking ahead to the Easter counterpart – might have summoned 10,000 angels as He loosed Himself from the cross. But He didn’t; God’s way is always the right way, and instructive to us, if we listen.

How pathetic that the world shakes its collective fist, and spews hatred, at scenes that remind us of a humble Baby in crummy, smelly, yet holy, hay. How mysterious that the most humble setting and circumstance of the Nativity yet thunders though the centuries: the nexus of history; the reminder of God’s identification with us; the confirmation of His love.

How much like Him, however; right? As he chose humility, and Jesus ultimately was humble, even unto the cross, we are humbled by His workings.

Merry Christmas, and Humble New Year!

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Click: Flash – O Come, All

12-17-18

Bells, presents, decorations, smiles, carols, parties… is there anything about Christmas that is not happy – or Merry, the inevitably paired adjective?

A few things, we note with sorrow and regret. It is commercialized to the point of smarm, almost everyone admits; but kitsch increases relentlessly. It is the time of year when the incidents of suicide spikes; remember, therefore, the lonely and “forgotten.”

The holiday (holy day) itself, however, has a DNA of sadness, even grief. The Bible tells us that King Herod, aware of the prophesies of the Messiah’s birth in his time and his domain, ordered the death of baby boys. This horror was visited on a grand scale and was, as we know, the reason that Mary and Joseph fled to Egypt with their Baby boy. Throughout Bethlehem and Judea there was widespread lamentation.

How can it be that a circumstance of God’s plan was not unalloyed joy? The simple answer is to help explain the complexity of God’s ways. As with Salvation itself, God’s gifts like the Incarnation of the Savior free, but not cheap or easy. Like a mother’s birth pangs, the world had to know the price of Jesus’s entrance into the world. Humanity ultimately would despise and reject Him; His difficult birth foreshadowed such sober reminders.

How can it be that a pagan ruler believed the prophesies about the Messiah – even if he rejected the theology in his heart – when many “Christians” 2000 years later question the Virgin Birth? Contemporary theologians, enablers of the secularists in society as they are, deny many divine attributes of Jesus. Surely Herod would not have ordered mass killings to forestall the coming ministry of a great teacher!

How can it be that the grieving, almost insensate, lullabies of mothers, their dead babies in their laps, or facing imminent slaughter, can reflect a matter of foundational faith? That is a question I cannot answer, as a man or as a reflective Christian. Yet the “Coventry Carol” tells the story of this awful occurrence in a way that is achingly haunting and beautiful.

Many people – many mothers – superficially think the ancient carol with its Old French roots of English, “By, by, lully, lullay…” is merely a bedtime song. Yet the lullaby (which word derives from the lament) is a reminder of what is aptly named The Slaughter of the Innocents, and commemorates the price, sometimes, of being a Christian.

Lully, lullay, Thou little tiny Child, By, by, lully, lullay.
Lullay, thou little tiny Child, By, by, lully, lullay.
O sisters too, how may we do, For to preserve this day.
This poor youngling for whom we do sing By, by, lully, lullay.

Herod, the king, in his raging, Charged he hath this day
His men of might, in his own sight, All children young to slay.
Then, woe is me, poor Child for Thee!
And ever mourn and sigh For thy parting neither say nor sing,
By, by, lully, lullay.

As with Good Friday – the awful price Christ paid, over and above the worst that humankind could assign, even the death of the cross – we can linger at the sad aspects of God’s mysteries. But, as with Easter, Jesus’s life and ministry should be our focus. His atoning gift of Salvation.

“The world received Him not…” Birth pangs indeed, but born not only into the world, but into our hearts. Every day, not just that holiday otherwise known for bells, presents, decorations, smiles, carols, and parties.

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Click: The Coventry Carol

12-10-18

Throughout my childhood, my maternal grandfather whom we called “Little Grandpa” called me to his side every Christmas. He was a man of rituals – stories and jokes at every turn (unfortunately only about six or eight of each, but I indulged the old-fashioned charm); tales of Old New York, which planted my own interest in such lore; playing sentimental ballads and show tunes on the piano from hundreds of old colorful songsheets he preserved.

The Christmas ritual occasioned my mother and grandmother to cry, “Oh, Daddy, not that again!” But I loved it, despite practically having memorized his lesson from annual rites, because I loved him, and I did love the message. Redolent of an earlier time, and rich in poetic truth, was what he read to me from a tattered old newspaper clipping, “Is There a Santa Claus?”

Known through the years by its line “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” it was first printed in the old New York Sun in 1897 as a response to a Letter to the Editor from an eight-year old girl, Virginia O’Hanlon.

As Little Grandpa would explain to me after reading the fragile clipping, children naturally wondered whether Santa Claus is real, the same way they sometimes wonder about sprites and goblins and angels and (when I was really young) the tooth fairy. But, he explained, everything that we think about Christmas and Santa is really supposed to remind us of Christmas and Jesus.

Today, more than ever, Christmas widely is under attack (including, this year, a school banning candy canes because, upside-down, they look like the letter J, which “obviously” stands for Jesus; and therefore must be forbidden). Many Christians find themselves in the position of fighting back, oddly defending the colors red and green, and pine trees, and cartoons of fat Santa as… symbols of Christianity.

They are not symbols of anything other than candy factories and Hallmark cards. But they can be reminders. Let us be open to reminding ourselves, and each other, to remember the Incarnation, God-with-us, the Messiah, and why Christ was sent to earth.

In that spirit, I will slightly edit and revise the warm and familiar words of that newspaper editorial written by Francis Pharcellus Church back in 1897, responding to the query from Virginia O’Hanlon of 115 W 95th Street in Manhattan, “I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Jesus…. Please tell me the truth, is there a Jesus?” (Remember, I am editing and revising in the spirit of the Story behind the story):

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be adults’ or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, we are as mere insects, ants, in our intellect as compared with the boundless world about us, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

No Jesus? Thank God, He lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, He will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

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This familiar hymn’s tune reportedly was written by King Henry VIII, but to secular words, “Greensleeves.” Its Christmas message was appended in 1865 by the American William Chatterton Dix. Here it is performed by Rita Ora and the Kosovo Philharmonic Orchestra in the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, Rome, Italy, where I often have visited, and wrote about recently here.

Click: What Child Is This?

12-3-18

The second group of thoughts – not “second thoughts” – about the Advent season. Many aspects of the Savior’s life were foretold in many Old Testament books. Some people call them Predictions (literally, “speaking things before they happen”) and some call them Prophesies. The origin of the word “Prophet” is “one who speaks with divine inspiration.”

The distinctions, oddly, seem to run slightly counter to Christian exceptionalism. Muslims and, say, devotees of Nostradamus claim that their heroes were prophets. Many prophets in the Bible, speaking as we believe with inspiration (literally, “breathed in”) of the Holy Spirit, predicted events, people, and places.

The validation of myriad Bible prophesies impress us as, literally, predictions that came true. It can be a futile game to persuade non-believers in the truth of the Gospel, or the whole Bible, on the sole basis of predictions that came true; the infinitesimal chance that they were all coincidences. Yet most of us have tried. Atheists and agnostics who want to reject the love and power of God are going to reject, period. Arguments or statistics will not change their minds; only supernatural intervention can – a better way to pray, anyway.

In the meantime, Christians are grateful for historical confirmations. Consider the many discoveries in recent years of Biblical sites, cities, and historical artifacts that “experts” used to laugh at. The “legends and fairy tales” of towns and temples, relics and records, kings and kingdoms, the skeptics told us to dismiss… are being affirmed by archaeologists and historians. Such discoveries warm our souls, but usually our faith did not hinge on such matters anyway.

But a chapter in the middle of an important Old Testament book, written by the prophet Isaiah, describes the life, ministry, passion, and death of Jesus Christ. Descriptions of His physical appearance are thrown in; elsewhere are also descriptions (not mere hints) of the complicated manner and dangerous circumstances surrounding the travails of Mary and Joseph, and the choice of Bethlehem in Judea. The Christmas story to the Easter story are prefigured through the Old Testament.

This can remind us – not convince us, unless we were in doubt – about the supernatural aspects of the Messiah, “God with us,” the Word made flesh Who dwelt amongst us.

Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death. He was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Not written after Jesus’s time, this mini-bio… but 700 years before Jesus was born.

God’s Christmas present to the world, 700 years early.

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Click: Ave Maria

11-26-18

We enter the Advent season, the time preceding Christmas. It is not too early to think about some of the aspects surrounding the birth of the Savior… however, if we judge by shopping malls and newspaper ads, Christmas was upon us before Halloween.

It is never too early, or an inappropriate time, to contemplate the birth of Jesus, is it? But it is interesting to note that the ancient Church observed an aspect of Christmas more profoundly than it did Jesus’s birthday. Throughout most of Christendom for 2000 years, the Feast of the Visitation, or the Annunciation – when the Holy Ghost passed over Mary and the Savior was conceived – was regarded with more services, messages, and accompanying prayers and worship, than was Christmas. Oddly (it would seem to contemporary minds) Christ’s Mass was a minor observance.

Similarly, the Resurrection of Christ – named Easter after a pagan rite; and whose calendar date was fixed more by various secular customs than Biblical history – was a solemn observance, certainly. But Ascension Day, 40 days after the Resurrection, when Christ physically rose to the heavens, was an important day on the church calendar. Today it is barely noticed in many churches.

The Ascension, even more than the miracles of a Virgin Birth or rising from the dead, definitively affirmed the Divinity of Christ. He was sent by the Father; He fulfilled prophesies; yet in the Ascension He was again One with the Father.

Notice that we are talking about miracles in every case. Christians, I notice, can become jaded about such things. “Miracles? Of course!” but how many Christians actually believe that miracles of God still occur; and how many assume they are extinct? Some denominations teach that miracles were MEANT to expire in the “Apostolic Age” – to ignite the first generation of believers who could kick-start churches… but “no, not for today.”

If people don’t believe in miracles… they are not going to pray for them. If people think they are mere artifacts of millennia-old religious folks… they will start to believe that the Bible is not reliable, after all.

In a certain way, the Bible is a book of miracles – supernatural events, supernatural solutions, supernatural lessons.

I think of a list I read once: The Bible is a book about a man made of clay; a rib that turns into a human being; talking animals; a floating zoo; a talking bush; food falling from the sky; sticks that turn into snakes; 900-year-old lifespans; a woman made of salt; Samson’s magic hair; a man who lived in a fish; the Sun standing still for a day; blowing a horn and shouting at a wall, making it collapse; magically multiplying foods; healing mud made with spit and dirt; men walking on water…

Nonsense and legends… or true miracles? Shouldn’t we all have a more awesome regard of Scripture? Regarding the “dusty relic” or “naive legends” dismissals of Bible miracles, contemporary Christians who think they are too mature for such stories should think about this –

If you believe that Jesus was the Son of God, how do you square the fact that HE believed in Biblical Creation, and Adam and Eve, and Noah’s flood? Was He delusional? stupid? naive? … or was He God-made-Flesh, the Messiah?

We are talking about the Christmas season. The Visitation, the Annunciation – the Virgin Birth – is a fact not optional for believing Christians. It fulfilled uncountable prophesies, but, more, as is said about the Resurrection, if it is not true, our faith is in vain. Poof.

One of the most beautiful passages in Scripture is Mary’s prayer, when the Holy Ghost came upon her. I suppose many women would think they had a bad dream; or, alternatively, they might be boastful, unique among all women. But she was humbled to her core. She was not to be the Mother of God as she is sometimes called, but properly the mother of Jesus, blessed among all women. Mother of the Word made flesh who dwelt among us, destined to save His people.

Mary’s prayer is called “the Magnificat,” after a Latin phrase in the prayer (“My soul doth magnify the Lord”). Profoundly moving; with precise spiritual perspective in her heart… and, through the ages, in our hearts too. Her acceptance of a miracle speaks to us. Here is the prayer, found in Luke 1:46-55; and I offer perhaps the greatest of its musical presentations, by Johann Sebastian Bach.

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for He has looked on the humble estate of His servant. For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed; for He who is mighty has done great things for me; and holy is His name. And His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with His arm; He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; He has brought down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of humble estate; He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He has sent away empty. He has helped His servant Israel, in remembrance of His mercy, as He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.

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Click: The Magnificat

11-19-18

This will be a very personal message – sharing some feelings (more, that is, than only thoughts) and inviting you to feel, and think, with me.

I have had some intense spiritual experiences in my Christian life, and I pray that you have too; many. There are “mountaintop” experiences, and God truly wants to lift us from mountaintop to mountaintop. Valleys there will be, but even then He promises to walk with us and comfort us, never leave us.

For some reason I have been looking back on my Christian “walk” this week. I recall many moments: my mother and my grandmother praying with me; my godmother telling me, when I doubted, that her prayers and the prayers of many would see me through, though I did not know what she meant at first. When I was aware of salvation; when I was baptized in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in other tongues; challenges and breakthroughs, crises and spiritual resolutions; when I was parched and thirsty for the Word; when, in ministry, I was able to “pray people through,” finally understanding.

When I first practiced (still learning) to share the Gospel; when I learned the power of answering, “I don’t know!” when seekers cried out to me, “WHY?” (prayer and the Word takes over). When I was gifted to pray in the Spirit, the language of angels.

But having been in uncountable exuberant worship experiences; people dancing in the Spirit; mega-churches with organized programs; ultra-informal small groups… my memory kept returning to the opposite, at least in forms.

– Traditional hymns, ancient settings. Surrounded by stained glass, Christian symbols telling Biblical stories, and by quiet. Silence; quietness; modest singing; patient waiting.

– Days spent in mission chapels in California, almost four centuries old. Contemplation, solitude, feeling God’s presence.

– A week at an abbey where silence is required, except in worship; but even when eating and studying. No electronics; sparse bedrooms; a vast library and beautiful grounds with the Stations of the Cross to walk through, and think through.

– Other profound moments and sites. In Italy, at the Basilica of St-Paul “Outside the Wall” in Rome, where the Apostle is believed to be buried, I was deep in prayer one afternoon until I became aware of children singing… there was no service… I recognized the song… but it was not in English… angels?? I looked up, and discovered it was a small student group visiting from South America, and the song they sang in Spanish was a familiar praise-and-worship song from back in America. I had an intense realization of the “family of God” that day.

– A friend took me to a convent in rural France one evening. The public was allowed into the sisters’ Vespers service – an ancient rite of pure and extended chanting. Four hours long! A darkened church, nothing spoken, just sung, Latin words occasionally familiar to me as parts of liturgy. Nothing to do but listen, take it in, meditate, pray, reflect… and, not inevitable for everyone or even me, but I found myself sobbing. No sins rushed back to mind, but an ethereal awareness of the presence of God.

As in that old Mission, and precious few other times, for me, I came face to face with the glory of God. My insignificance, yet overwhelming gratitude for how He loves me and what Jesus did for me. Burdens for unsaved loved ones. The “scarlet thread of redemption” – that heritage of Christians who have gone before us, what they sacrificed, how precious are the things of God.

The… mystery of God. We can know Him, and surely know His will for our lives. But ultimately His attributes, His glory, can scarce be comprehended. Observed, but hardly understood, even to the angels. Well, He is God.

Too often our contemporary world, our churches, paint God as a Holy Pal. I suppose He can be that, but how often do we put ourselves in places where we can be in stricken awe – lovely, frightening, sweet-smelling, mysterious – of His powerful glory?

Not often. Not my experience. Thank God, often enough to have been touched, and to desire more. Some groups feel the lack of things like this, and construct services with guitars and candles. To me, they often seem to worship guitars and candles more than the Savior, when all is said and done.

We are the same Church, the same Bride of Christ, that He instituted when He ascended. … or we should be. Half the churches and denominations in America seem obsessed with being “inclusive,” yet they seldom include the holy traditions of the holy church. They want to be “open” to “others” – but “others” never seem to include the saints and martyrs and faithful of the ages who have gone before us. Modern theologians seem more interested in connecting with sociologists and political activists than with the writers of the Gospels and Epistles.

These are indictments of a religion that is committing spiritual suicide. A faithless faith.

I am heartened by a movement in Europe, spread to America, known as Taizé, after the French border town where the ecumenical seed bloomed in the 1940s. Founded by Brother Roger, a German Reformed pastor, the movement eventually attracted clergy, workers, and worshipers from Catholic and many Protestant traditions. Their services are meant to supplement, not substitute for, the churches of pilgrims. There is mystery, contemplation, chants, and communal worship.

Pilgrims. One visits a Taizé service, but only for a visit, to return home refreshed and renewed for the other 51 weeks of the year. The quietude, and the trappings of 2000 years of Christian signs and symbols, sounds and songs, bring one closer to God.

They have brought this one – me – closer to God. I invite you search a little, and find a similar worship environment, via a getaway or at a regular sacred spot. Rediscover reverence. It is not on the endangered species list, not quite yet.

And rediscover that precious verse, Psalm 46:10: Be still and know that I am God.

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Click: Mon âme se Repose – My Soul Is At Rest

11-12-18

The recent observation of Reformation Sunday – for those who did observe – sent me back to study some of Martin Luther’s works. I guess in the fashion that we review the stories of the Nativity and the Passion and Resurrection on their holy-days: not as often as I should.

My set of Luther’s works is eight volumes, mostly collected sermons, and his commentaries and fascinating “table talks” run to even more. They are fresh and constructive – instructive – today. I have also recently watched two German films on his life, Reformation and Luther and I. They can be seen on one of my addictions, the foreign-language cable channel MHz Choice, which offers hundreds of drams and comedies and mysteries and documentaries from European countries, all subtitled. (Not a commercial, but my recommendation!) The two new Luther films are separate – one is told through the life-story of his wife Katharina von Bora, and has a valuable feminist perspective – and clearly rank in excellence with two previous theatrical biopics.

Regular readers here will know that I was born Lutheran, graduated to Pentecostalism, but recently have experienced a tug back toward liturgy.

The liturgy – organized worship service, with regular modules including prayers and songs each representing a different aspect of Christ’s mission; and adaptations for different parts of the church calendar – grew cold to me as a child. Indeed much of the twentieth-century church peeled itself away from “old-fashioned” worship.

I noticed how people in my congregation memorized songs and prayers, almost by osmosis, and sleepily drifted through “worship.” In some other corners of the Protestant world, traditional music was abandoned. Folk music, southern gospel, Christian rock, Contemporary Christian Music, and pop filled the void. Many Catholic services sounded like coffee houses; and churches everywhere largely became come-as-you-are parties, even to pastors in Hawaiian shirts and cargo shorts.

And so forth. These were all likely inevitable results of the American culture – increasingly secular as well as informal – and, frankly, the Reformation itself, five centuries ago. With people theoretically free to interpret Scripture for themselves, such things are to be expected, given human nature. In error? Not necessarily… if Christians adhere to Scripture as assiduously as did Martin Luther.

But Martin Luther was unique. A moody genius, hard on himself, a tireless scholar. He never meant to split from the Catholic Church, only to reform it… but it was not to be. He was excommunicated, fled for his life, translated the Bible from Latin (a heresy to the Pope), and his complaints, the 95 theses, and his sermons spread across Europe, attracting princes and peasants and all classes in between.

Eventually the Protest-ant movement fractured into theological divisions; some revolts took on social and political aspects. Luther had to step in against violence and desecration of icons. The side-effects of his reforms spurred literacy, publication of books and pamphlets, political liberty, and the Enlightenment.

But. We have to remember that Martin Luther called Reason the enemy of Faith.

In many senses he was the last of the Western World’s pre-Moderns. He must be seen, despite the intellectual fires he ignited, to have been of the Gothic world, not the Renaissance. To understand this, we must remember that his motto was “By Scripture Alone.” Therefore he directly runs afoul of the contemporary world.

As a dedicated Protestant, of whatever stripe, I cannot myself be comfortable with Mariology, veneration of saints, and other aspects that Luther beheld as extra-Biblical or anti-Biblical. However… what would he say about the Protestant church of the Western world today?

The religious straws that broke the back of the Augustinian monk Luther were selling indulgences to “purchase” the souls of dead relatives from Purgatory. There was no Purgatory; the coins of peasants were kept by corrupt priests, or expressly funneled to the St Peters Building Fund in Rome. Similar “works” were imposed upon the illiterate masses – penance, reciting words, good deeds, all ways to bribe God.

Luther had discovered the verse, “It is by faith, not works,” and it revolutionized his life. It became the ammunition to defy Rome’s corruption,

But 500 years later – widely, but not everywhere; I know – Christ’s church holds up works and deeds and programs as means to Salvation. “Seed faith” offerings… “Prayer hankies”… obligatory service… attendance, participation even in well-meaning charity causes… political correctness substituting for the Gospel… mandatory participation in social causes… pledge drives and vision statements… Relativism replacing relationships with Jesus…

How different are these things than the indulgences and man-made rules of the corrupt Roman church of the 1500s? Not much.

I am certain that Luther would be revolted by much of the church today, even among his own followers; but also, still, by the Catholics. When he argued for the “priesthood of all believers,” it was not for people to lord over each other, but to serve one another.

The Christian church today – at least north of the Equator, generally, and in “free” countries – is too often a collection of clubs or virtual museums or social circles, where the Gospel is obscured by materialism. If Christ Himself returned today, I suspect we often would find Him in bars, slums, and dirty malls, not Crystal Cathedrals and opulent mega-churches. He would not likely be joining in “Dirt Bike for Jesus” races or fried-chicken socials.

The point is – Luther’s point, just like Augustine and St Paul and other fervent exegetes – was that God created us; but we always try to create God, and His Son Jesus, in our image. That’s not how it works.

Ecclesia reformata semper reformanda secundum verbum Dei — “The reformed church, always being reformed according to the Word of God.”
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Click: Trust and Obey

11-5-18

It is axiomatic that the United States of America is not a democracy. At least it was not intended to be an open democracy by the Founders and Framers. In fact those gifted and wise people abhorred and distrusted straight democracy. But this axiom is not accepted by those who willfully dissent, or choose not to understand the distinctions and consider their implications.

Those who claim that the US is a democracy, or should be more so than it is, should realize that the government was established to be (at best, in their eyes) a representative democracy; but otherwise, and by direction, a democratic republic.

What both those terms mean is that our system was appropriate when established – a new people on a new continent established nevertheless along traditional bases of religion, morality, ethical behavior, justice, and good will – and appropriate now. With the exceptional foresight granted to them, they assessed the future. The Framers of our fundamental documents were not political theorists but sagacious architects.

In that view, there have been necessary additions and occasional repairs made to our American Home, but the structure has stood the test of time, at least until now when its stresses and fractures are most evident.

I recently bought a two-volume set of Alexis deToqueville’s Democracy in America, ancient books they are as I hold them, seemingly never read in more than a century since this edition’s publication. I was struck by two things as I read this iconic work: how brilliant this visiting Frenchman, in the 1840s, assessed the American spirit and ethos. He marveled at the bounteous natural resources, and the common virtues of the uncommon and diverse population.

DeToqueville dwelt on religion and its effect on the American people – specifically, the value of Christianity to the American “system” as Henry Clay meant it: the government and its laws. Earlier, Framers like Franklin and Jefferson, supposed “Deists,” revered the Bible and sought to employ its prescriptions for social comity and justice. John Adams predicted that an America without fidelity to Biblical principles would not – could not – long succeed.

The other factor that struck me about the book Democracy in America is that it is frequently cited and often quoted (or mis-quoted: deToqueville never wrote the aphorism “America is great because America is good”) – but is seldom read. When I determined to own a copy, it was difficult, even on used-book sites. The book is seldom assigned, scarcely read, and imperfectly understood.

Which describes, also, how our Constitution is regarded. Many people who yammer for the overturning of the Electoral College cannot discuss the valuable reasons for its establishment. The Framers thought people with a stake in the government ought be the ones who vote, and dissenters have a point of view. But that point of view approaches the irresponsible (in the view of the Framers, as well as me) when its alteration extended past women and former slaves to anybody with a pulse, including those, as advocated in some parts, who are not even citizens.

I think it should be more difficult, not always easier, to voter. I think the type of questions on citizenship tests should be administered every 10 years or so – not to new arrivals but to every voter. (And I believe many congressmen and senators would flunk a lot of those tests.) When voting costs nothing, not monetarily of course, it is worth nothing.

So for years I did not vote. I followed, and addressed, public issues, but generally I took the view that voting only encouraged the scoundrels. When I repeatedly heard my parents’ generation talk about “the lesser of two evils” every November – and then felt that way myself in the voting booth – I realized I was voting for evil, after all. When I thought that illiterates, felons, welfare cheats, and the uninformed had the same bit of influence I did (and more, counting those who are herded and directed to vote multiple time), I despaired at the futility of it all.

The United States has slid toward a new brand of despotism, perhaps difficult to discern, being in its very throes; a bizarre mixture of corporate syndicalism, finance capitalism, supported by a cabal of media elite and a quiet, sometimes informal, conspiracy of like-minded thought police in the government, bureaucracy, media, educational establishment, and even the church. Mind-control, intimidation, the “compassion” metrics, and the “hate speech” game comprise the New Orthodoxy. Shadowy, in some cases, but dangerous. It engages in a politically correct jihad that permeates every part of our culture, operating the greatest propaganda machine in human history.

So. Now I vote. I am no longer cynical, but a warrior. Do I remain pessimistic? … about our nation, our political system, out beloved Constitution?

Yes, I am pessimistic about their survival.

But that is not our primary concern. For those who call themselves Christian, our first loyalty is to Christ and Him crucified and Him risen. We must be concerned with our souls and those of our families, friends, communities, then our nation and the world. Our opponents with increasing ferocity would deny Christians their rights in the public square, in classrooms, in our very homes. If they succeed… we will still worship and fight, as uncountable martyrs have done for millennia; as uncountable persecuted Christians around the world do every day.

In so doing, we must “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.” I believe Jesus did not restrict His words to coins. That is, if elections mean that we engage in politics… we must engage in politics. If we think abortion is the murder of babies… we oppose it as we would despise any murder. We must stop the acquiescence in secularists’ view that there is no God, and our traditions, or beliefs, should be merely tolerated (or, eventually, not)… and fight back: there IS a God; this is His world; He established the means not only for our salvation but our happiness on this earth. In the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.

I believe we can and should make alliances. We can debate tactics, but there is a man who is very flawed (can we qualify that word?) but who willingly aligns himself with the Christian community on an astonishing number of issues; who has delivered on many promises to Christians and Jews (and many ethnic groups previously taken for granted by politicians). I am not sure, frankly, that I would like Donald Trump as a next-door neighbor, but I daily pray thanks for what he is doing.

The imminent elections can confirm the rebirth of Christian commitment in the United States… or illustrate that the reclamation of “democracy in America” in the way deToqueville assessed and celebrated it, was a passing illusion. Polls do not lie, but polltakers, and those who fashion them, do.

The saving grace of democracy is that the masses can be manipulated, but when they assert themselves, defying their would-be masters… they must be listened to. We are beginning to see: we must be listened to.

That is why to vote.

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Click: Looking for a City

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

10-1-18

Statistics don’t lie, we are told; but statisticians do. More dispositive is that our perceptions often are more aggressive than the biased sources. The corollary is true, I fear – that our biases filter our perceptions. It was not always the case in our culture, not to the extent from which we suffer; and my view is that the Media-Industrial Complex has forced people to be discriminating.

This is not unique in human history, and is famously prophesied in the Bible – we have become a people with “itching ears.” Sometimes wisely picking and choosing; but many people only hearing what they want to hear.

This could be regarded merely as abstract: a society of people withdrawing to their own groups and self-interests. Tribalism, really. But it is more, a crisis of the old order. The West is too integrated, too inter-dependent to allow us to function as myriad separate islands.

History has placed us in a chess tournament, and we cannot pretend it is checkers. We can yearn for simple melodies, but the musical score before us is a complex fugue.

Drift and dissolution are swift. A stark barometer informs us. I observe that a year ago, the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court evinced hand-wringing, angst, and gloom from opponents in the press and politics. The nomination of a man with fairly identical credentials and prospects, now, is met with apocalyptic frenzy.

In 2018, so many geniis have been let out of bottles that a virtual fog surrounds us. It seems impossible to imagine that any Supreme Court nominee henceforth will not be a pawn in bloody wars between right and left.

Or that football and other professional sports will ever again be unaccompanied by contentious politics.

Or that the entertainment world, especially as exemplified in awards programs, will ever be free of political statements and attacks.

Or that town councils, school-board meetings, indeed school textbooks and curricula, will never more be bloody fights between opposing worldviews.

This is the inheritance of an amazing civilization – a culture rich in material goods and intellectual promise, of spiritual foundations but ultimate philosophical drift. Shakespeare wrote in King Lear, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!” America is populated today by thankless children, ignorant or even dismissive of the precious heritage vouchsafed to us, arrogant in assumptions, and increasingly intolerant.

You might agree with me, or not. However I think everybody will agree that the battlegrounds I describe are real; and are many. That these are relatively recent phenomena in America does not mean that they will be fleeting.

Polls and statistics can frighten us, and of late there are so many gloomy assessments that our senses are dulled. It is ironic that in the midst of so many encouraging economic signs – are we getting of winning? – the social signs are dropping like rocks. Notice that the areas of controversy I have listed above are philosophical.

The state of our society is increasingly schizophrenic. Yes, economic signs are positive. Social signs are… disastrous. This ought to trouble us quite enough, and demand our attention and action. But when accompanied by the philosophical disagreements we have listed, it is a crisis, not a challenge, that confronts us.

A bewildering complexity of horrible situations, however, need not defeat us.

History provides the detailed stories of cultures and civilizations – societies and empires – that have crumbled and dissolved. Even disappeared. We could learn lessons. Self-realized revival has been a scarce commodity throughout history, however.

But despite what History tries to teach us from complicated narratives, the Bible provides the simplest of solutions. It has the answer to all of life’s problems – rather, it is the answer to all of life’s problems. In this Age of Anxiety, it is tempting to distrust the wonder-working power of the Prince of Peace, who still speaks through His Word.

“Yes, but…” One negative aspect of education, especially Christian education, is the tendency to think that if we know the answers, we have the answers. With proper stress, that WE have the answers. And that maturity – spiritual or civic – is charging off as lone crusaders.

As Abraham Lincoln wisely noted, it is not important that God is on our side; what matters is that we be on His side. As Grace gives us that sight and perspective, we may proceed to redeem our households, our communities, our culture.

We can put on “the whole armor of God,” but must realize that the Bible’s fashion guide in that passage points mostly to how we may be protected. Once equipped, we can do the Lord’s work.

It seems counter-intuitive, but I think the righteous in America today don’t need a mighty army. Boldness has its place, but so does humility. We might win – or lose – votes, but America might be coming to a place where we wonder what we defend these days. We cannot argue that it is impossible for the secularists, the Left, to impose values bureaucratically downward… only to assume that we can.

Our own hearts, our own households, our own children, our own churches and communities, our own priorities, must change before our own nation can. One person, with God at his or her side, can be mightier than any army. We don’t need to be superheroes: That is why the Holy Spirit was sent. Jesus said that our yokes will be light when He assumes them.

Humility demands that we think less about how bad “others” are; but how we have not been good enough. We are not saviors; we already have One. In the meantime, where have all the average people gone?

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Click: Where Have All the Average People Gone?

9-24-18

It occurs to me more and more, lately, that we – all of us; not only Christians or Westeners; but everyone with a pulse these days – should be a heck of a lot humbler than we are. In fact, not too many residents of the 21st century are humble at all, so we all have a long way to fall.

We have gone, over the past 500 years, from pre-modernism to modernism to post-modernism. From the Age of Faith to the Age of Reason to the Age of Skepticism to the New Age of Personal Inventions of Belief. From Agrarian to Industrial to Post-Industrial Virtual Reality. From the Gothic to the Renaissance to the Enlightenment to.. confusion: societal anarchy, cultural nihilism.

All of human history is characterized by evolution and change, but it has never been this radical, or, actually, as sudden when considered in the arc of human history.

There are many social scientists – probably a majority of “experts” and faculty members dealing with such things – who view all this as perhaps inevitable, but certainly welcome. I believe they feed the cancer that is devouring us in myriad ways. The arcs I described, and many similar ones that can be limned, are not evidences of progress.

Rather the opposite. “Progress” is the meme of our time; the secular religion; the brand-identification of contemporary life. Progress, whether contorted to define a political commitment, or as the assumption behind everything that changes or is new in our lives, encourages us. Forgives us. Animates us.

Not only is Progress a false god – is it really inevitable that everything gets better, is better, will be better, as the globe spins into the future? But Progress is frequently corrosive. Not merely false in its promises and scenarios, but cruel.

Humankind “advanced” to the 20th century, achieving, yes, many industrial marvels, medical breakthroughs, and economic blessings. At the same time – and partly assisted by these very tools of Progress – the 20th century saw more slaughter (wars and oppression) than all previous 20 centuries, combined. More torture, displacements, death, than in all previous 20 centuries. Humankind has developed means to live healthier and longer… and invented more efficient means of killing and ending life.

We have fooled ourselves into believing that, in the name of Progress, killing babies is life-affirming. That euthanasia is not killing but is “mercy.” That slavery is obsolete but sweat-shops around the world, keeping WalMart shoppers in cheap sandals, is… Progress. (By the way, more people around the world are in literal slavery today than during the “slave trade of the 18th and 19th centuries.)

We have progressed to the point where we cringe at the thought of skinning baby seals or hunting rhinoceros tusks. Yet aborted babies are not merely ignored but celebrated in some quarters. We have “progressed” past pagan societies of the past, that practiced infant sacrifice. Yet today, babies are slaughtered to the gods of Pleasure and Convenience or (if you don’t like my one-note sing) – we have sacrificed a generation of children to the hells of broken homes, acceptance of drugs, the corruption – theft of their innocence – of awful music and movies. Progress.

With so many things swirling about us – the thick fog of sensations, pleasures, and diversions – is it possible, actually, that we are missing something in contemporary life?

Yes. We are missing God.

Oh, He is still there, still here. But at one time – the grandest time and times of human history – we were dedicated to Him. Humankind was sold out to God. Painted for Him. Wrote music for Him. Worked, or worked extra, for Him. Wrote poetry, served, wove, sculpted, carved, built, for Him. Lived for Him. Lived for God.

Today we live for ourselves. We eat, drink, and be merry. Even our politics (and I balefully expect revolution in the streets of America within the decade) about which we think we serve the Lord with such fervor, is empty and futile. The same for the “other” side.

Psalm 127 begins: “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Unless the Lord inhabits the city, the watchmen are useless.”

The Monday Morning Music Ministry blog’s catch-line is “Start the week with a song in your heart.” This essay, today, is not of cheer. But the truth seldom is, except for the promise it holds. A remedy for our parlous times is to keep the songs of the Lord in our hearts first. That – and true repentance for what we have squandered, where we have strayed – will restore real Progress to humankind.

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Click: Trauermusik

9-17-18

“Don’t you know that Jesus Himself never claimed to be God?” Many atheists, or agnostics, or armchair theologians have challenged me through the years. In fact: Yes, He did. Often. In many ways. Plus, He proved it by fulfilling prophecy and doing mighty works. Hey, if you cite the Bible, try reading it first. To quote the Good Book (somewhere) (I think) shutteth thy mouth.

Jesus was “only a teacher”? Read His words… see His effects on uncountable multitudes through the ages.

A few decades ago there was a book that flashed in the pan, but persuaded some people whose itching ears were waiting for persuasion, titled The Passover Plot. It represented heresies that have popped up for a couple millennia arguing that Jesus was a fraud; that His miracles were staged; that He was either a charlatan or simply delusional. His disciples, too, were either political manipulators or likewise crazy.

Absurd on its face, even if only for the fact that very few people – certainly not all the Disciples; all the early Church’s martyrs; the persecuted who endured torture and death as Christianity spread; and millions today who die rather than renounce Jesus — would “die for a lie,” follow a lunatic.

The great Christian apologist C S Lewis posed the most profound of challenges to skeptics. To those who are familiar, you can hear it shared one more time.

For those of you who have not heard it, read carefully.

Jesus lived. He lives in the accounts of Roman governments; and of contemporary historians like Josephus, the great Jewish historian. Was He divine? Was He the Son of God… God incarnate? If you are mathematically inclined, you can figure the odds of hundreds of prophesies, written by dozens of writers, over many centuries, in different locations… all fulfilled in the birth, life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

OK. Perhaps that does not persuade you. Here is what C S Lewis proposed:

The historical figure of Jesus, heir to spiritual inheritance and a recorded lineage, was known to have taught and preached and healed. No one claims He was like a Greek god or mythological figure: He lived. So now we confront this Jesus. “Who do you say I am?” Before the rhetorical answer, Lewis confronts us with the logical choice… the only possible answers to Jesus’s claims about Himself.

One: He was a liar. And ringmaster of an elaborate conspiracy.

Two: He was a madman, claiming to be God, but able to convince multitudes.

Three: He was – is – who He says He is.

There is no other logical choice. Much of the world thinks about it – frankly, hardly at all – and bets on the Teacher thing; or the craziness of ancient shepherds; or maybe they bet on the kindness of a god, if there is one, who will tally their good deeds, or make allowances for “good hearts” and charity deductions on their tax forms…

But there is that nagging question: What if Jesus IS who He says He is?

Are you willing to bet? Do you like the odds? Would you bet your life?

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Click: What a Friend

9-10-18

She was sitting on the curb outside her apartment, the little apartment in the row of several small units on one of the rivers that feed into the Atlantic Ocean in central New Jersey. A hot summer afternoon, yes, and the little apartment has no air conditioning.

But mainly she was out there, alone – alone with her thoughts. It was the end of the month; benefits had run out, as had most of the food.

Actually, as I learned of this story afterward, it was not an unfrequent circumstance. But lately, in scenes like this, Barbara was not really alone; not only with her thoughts. She was praying. And her relatively recent and closer relationship with Jesus led her to pray. Jesus, her new best friend. When the New Life happens, you don’t only pray to God. The Holy Spirit inhabits and inspires your prayers. You pray with Jesus, not only to or through Him.

The Lord wants to know the burdens of our hearts, so we no longer feel selfish in asking for basics, big or small. The Word has promised – the Peace That Passes All Understanding bathes our troubled souls.

As she sat there lifting up those burdens, a neighbor from five doors down walked up. An old Black man named Victor, with a very young son or grandson whose puppy was on a leash, greeted her and said he thought she might like some crabs. Now, Victor lays crab traps outside his place on the river, and all along the coastline, selling Blueclaws to shops and restaurants. Blue crabs, common up and down the Atlantic coast and mostly identified with Chesapeake Bay, are interesting creatures with bright azure claws, back fins that act as paddles – they actually swim – and the sweetest, most tender meat you can imagine.

Many of my summer afternoons, on Jersey Shore childhood vacations, were spent in rowboats with my dad, my uncle Gus, and cousin Tommy, in Barnegat Bay. Fastening clunky wire traps with bait, usually mossbunker heads, we would lower the traps and pull them up almost immediately, with one or two crabs in each, all afternoon. On good days we would have several bushel baskets of those clacking crabs. In the evening our grandmothers, moms, and sisters would boil up innumerable crabs – no longer blue but scarlet red – to be turned out onto “tablecloths” of cut brown paper bags; cracking, poking, picking that sweet meat from every small corner and tip.

This history would explain why Barbara responded to Victor’s offer with a shout that could be heard across the Atlantic, maybe as far as to Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn: “CRABS??? Wow! Yes! THANK YOU!!!”

At that moment, the offer of a pack of saltines would have been gratefully met. But an abundance of fresh crabs – especially in these latter days when they are more delicacies in seafood markets and menus than results of lazy, sunburned afternoons in rowboats – seemed like a miracle.

When I heard the story, I knew it was a miracle on several levels. For Barbara – for anyone – to immediately thank God and give Him the glory, is often a miracle in itself, particularly when that spiritual attitude had not been traditional. But, more, she felt that prayer was answered. She acknowledged that God’s blessings often reflect his holy timing; being still and waiting, as the Bible says.

Further, the attitude of thanksgiving is essential. Was Victor an angel, sent with his kid and basket of crabs? Maybe, but she did know him from the neighborhood. The important thing is, as Christians, that when Christ visits His brothers and sisters, it is as He lives in the hearts of the mercy-givers.

Satan knows this. He hates us according to the amount of Jesus we open to Him in our hearts.

So when someone says, “that wasn’t Jesus – that was only a neighbor being nice,” the truth is, for instance in this story, that’s Jesus acting through our neighbors and us, to each other.

It’s what Christians do.

Questions about timing… about further prayers’ further effects… about the temptation to see prayers as magic wands… to wonder why God sometimes seems to say No…

These are still… questions. God did not promise that we would avoid the Valley of the Shadow; only that He would be with us. So there are, and continue to be, questions, challenges, and problems in life. But God answers prayer in His time and in His way. And He honors faith, and faithfulness (two different things) – and He will bless the grateful heart.

How many people, sitting on the curb like Barbara was that afternoon, would have “thanked her lucky stars,” shaken Victor’s hand, and told her friends about an amazing “coincidence” that just happened? I can tell you: a lot of people.

But the New Life brings something sweeter – well, let me say, some great complements and spiritual condiments – to steamed crabs, drawn butter, and Jesus at your table.

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Click: Lead Me To the Rock

9-3-18

Occasionally, maybe more than occasionally if your friendships run a certain way, you chat with religious skeptics or unbelievers. How do your conversations go?

The vast majority of humankind – those who believe in God, or who regard Him in any manner at all – spends a great portion of their “faith lives” explaining themselves to Him. Justifying themselves… asking for forgiveness… praying. Explaining themselves, their lives, to God.

But there are people – pastors, priests, teachers, writers, Christian friends – who take it upon themselves to justify God and God’s ways to humankind, or one-on-one to friends.

And a smaller number of people, quite a small group, unfortunately, explain the nature of God, the ways of God, to humankind and to friends when the opportunities arise. Explain, defend, educate – not “justify” (which depends on our points of view, not His, really). This group is known as “apologists.”

We are not apologizing for anything – how could we apologize, in the contemporary meaning of the word – for God Almighty? Make excuses for His ways? No…

The root of the word “apologetics” is the concept closer to “defending.” In the Bible, a letter by Peter to persecuted young Christians in Asia Minor (I Peter 3:15) says, If you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is within you: yet do it with gentleness and respect.

In this passage – advice that comes down to us through the ages – the defense (not excuse; not justification; not softened explanation) was originally apologia. We must defend God to those who do not know the Truth!

When people ask about “reasons” for God’s workings, or our mature faith, in the letter, that was the word logos, from which many of our familiar words come.

So by Christian apologetics, we defend God by reason and evidence.

Is this such a big deal? Defend? Explain? Persuade? Didn’t Paul say to be all things to all people? Shouldn’t we relate to people in ways they understand?

It is a big deal. You might adopt the pose of explaining away what you think are superficial inconsistencies in the Godhead; or His acts from one millennium to another; or whether He is vengeful or loving; or whether His plan of salvation seems fair. If so – if you mistakenly believe that God needs your help by contradicting His Holy Word – go ahead, but… by the way, you are enabling someone’s descent to hell. If not your own. You would be excusing God, distorting His essence, polluting His message, denying His sovereignty… all while your puny self is misunderstanding Him, and insulting Him.

Defending God instead of explaining or justifying Him immediately assures your listener (and reassures yourself!) that Truth is Truth. There is no need to devise explanations or justifications. It is. Just like God said, “I am.”

And the truth of the Truth does not depend on our opinion of it. Nor our explanation, which is bound to be faulty; nor our justification, which is limited by our human ability to reason. God merely needs defense – (word origins again!) not against arrows and darts; but requires no-nonsense, no-doubt, presentations by reason and evidence.

God does not require our clever justifications. Which makes the calling of the Apologist unique.

So we rely on God’s Word and the evidence in our hearts – we know that God is real; he lives within us! We know that we know that we know. I tell you, that confidence has persuaded more skeptics to accept Christ than any stack of scientific charts and graphs.

We can turn to historical evidence. Or the thousands of fulfilled prophecies. Or the surprising number, lately, of archaeological discoveries that confirm Bible accounts.

We rely, better, on the changed lives, the miracles we witness, the gifts believers exercise. And, yes, the blood of martyrs.

Who would die for a lie?

Millions would not; millions have not; millions do not. But people do die to defend the Truth.

Apologetics, when you read or hear, or if you choose that particular path of sharing the Gospel, is sometimes a rare and lonely profession. But it is the first step to disciple friends; a necessary component of evangelizing strangers. To defend Someone and Something that, ultimately, needs no defense? Yes.

We know that, but the world does not. So we engage in Christian apologetics. It’s what lonely and brave Paul did at Mars Hill. It’s what Jan Hus and Martin Luther did against the raging establishments… of church bureaucrats. It’s what millions of Christians in Communist and Muslim countries do, in our world today.

Can we at least do the same thing at family dinners… at school board meetings… in political discussions?

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Click: He Lives!

8-27-18

She’ll take the painting in the hallway, The one she did in junior high.
And that old lamp up in the attic, She’ll need some light to study by,
She’s had 18 years To get ready for this day,
She should be past the tears… She cries some anyway.

I usually trot this song and video out every year around back-to-school time. First, old as I am, manly-man I may be, I get a little pile of Kleenex ready. This song by Doug Rider and Matt Rollings, a chart record for Doug’s wife Suzy Bogguss, is not a gospel song… but it is spiritual.

“Spiritual” in the sense that family bonds are sacred. The lyrics are about a girl going off to college, and they can apply to children leaving home for camp the first time; or boarding school; or military college. I get misty-eyed, even when recalling my own children’s first solo runs to the grocery store…

Oh, letting go – There’s nothing in the way now,
There’s room enough to fly.
And even though she’s spent her whole life waiting
It’s never easy… letting go.

Moms and dads and children. There are bonds that should never be broken… sometimes, sadly, they seem to be broken… but in truth never can be broken. Spiritual? It’s biological too: Family relationships are intertwined with a weave that is so dense and complicated (thank God) that our affections become part of our DNA, just like freckles and buck teeth.

The passage of time, and the rites of passage, whether the years of rearing a family are harmonious or rocky, have the same “bottom line.” Parting or major “breaks” are seldom, if ever, welcome. Pieces of each of us part-and-break, too.

Mother sits down at the table, So many things she’d like to do.
Spend more time out in the garden, Now she can get those books read too,
She’s had 18 years To get ready for this day,
She should be past the tears… She cries some anyway.

A few years ago here I observed that in every family – once again, harmonious or rocky; large or small, nuclear or blended, single-parent or adoption situation – there is hubbub, and crowded moments… silly problems and the occasional real crisis… “major” homework assignments… disagreements with classmates… “first loves” that melt away; and first dates… driving tests and applying for college…

Applying for college??? Wasn’t it last week they could barely climb aboard the school bus? I remember saying in a rare moment of wisdom, that when you manage a family, the days crawl by – and the years fly by. How does that happen?

Oh, letting go – There’s nothing in the way now,
There’s room enough to fly.
And even though she’s spent her whole life waiting
It’s never easy… letting go.

The element that makes the tears sweet, or anyway less bitter, is the pride a parent feels when we do let go. It’s the way life is supposed to work. Spreading their wings. Yes, part of God’s plan, the Family unit that He ordained for His children.

You pray that the children will shed some tears, too, occasionally – but they’re off in their new lives now, busy. And the grandchildren… well, there is a season; turn, turn. Just make an accounting to God, and to your inner self, how you handled His most important assignment in your life, training those little birds to leave the nest.

But I won’t pretend, It’s never easy… letting go.

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Click: Letting Go

8-20-18

NEWS ITEM: June 22, 2018 –
UN Chief ‘Personally Concerned’ about Return of Christians to Iraq and Syria
“I am fully convinced that after the stability of the situation in Iraq and Syria and the adoption of a certain political decision, it is very important to ensure the return of the Christians, in general, to the religious minorities, and the Yazidis themselves, to their homeland,” António Guterres told Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill yesterday.

NEWS ITEM: June 27, 2018 –
Slaughter of More than 200 People in Plateau State, Nigeria, Shocks Christians
Weekend attacks took place in the predominantly Christian villages of Xland, Gindin Akwati, Ruku, Nghar, Kura Falls, Kakuruk, Rakok, Kok, and Razat, sources said. The villages are in the two districts of Gashish and Ropp in the Barkin Ladi Local Government Area (LGA).

“In Nghar village alone, about 70 corpses of Christians were recovered and the entire village has been burnt down by the Fulani herdsmen,” area resident Thomas Chuwang, 45, told Morning Star News… adding that the victims there were members of the Church of Christ in Nations (COCIN).

NEWS ITEM: June 27, 2018 –
China’s “Underground” Churches Told to “Seek Guidance” from State-Approved Bodies
A newly implemented directive from the Chinese government forces Protestant “house churches” and Catholic “underground” communities to seek “guidance” from recognised religious organisations….

One hundred churches were closed in Nanyang, in central Henan province… “Christians who used their own church building for meetings were targeted, and their buildings closed.” Consequently… Christians had gone back to meeting in homes.

NEWS ITEM: July 10, 2018 –
Twenty Christians Severely Injured in Assault on Prayer Gathering in Northern India
International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that last Monday, July 2, 20 Christians were seriously injured in an assault on a prayer meeting in Raikashipur village, located in the Pratapgarh District of India’s Uttar Pradesh State. According to local reports, a mob of 35 Hindu radicals stormed the meeting and beat the group of over 150 Christians gathered for prayer. Following the assault, the Pradhan (village president) filed multiple false criminal charges against six of the Christian victims.

NEWS ITEM: July 27, 2018 –
Christian North Korean Defector Speaks Out against Persecution and Indifference
A Christian woman who defected from North Korea said the world cannot “just sit and keep watching” as North Korea persecutes Christians and others.

Ji Hyeona spoke at the US State Department’s Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom event at the Harry S Truman Building this week. She told her story of abuse and torture while trying to escape North Korea.

“Since I first escaped from North Korea in 1998, I have since escaped from the North a total of four times and got repatriated to the North three times until I finally came to South Korea in 2007,” Ji said. “In between, I fell victim to human trafficking and I was also subjected to abortion violently forced on me even with no anesthesia because the North Korean regime couldn’t accept what they call “mixed love”….

“We can not just sit and keep watching what they are doing because indifference is the most tragic tool that puts people to death and kills them,” she said, “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said: ‘The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.’”

NEWS ITEM: July 31, 2018 –
Assault on Christian Leader in Nepal Reflects Growing Threat
Pastor Sagar Baizu, 46, had finished one meeting and had an hour before the next one, so he decided to stop at a café on a major thoroughfare in Kathmandu, capital of Nepal, on July 19.

As he was about to sip a coffee in the crowded café at 2 p.m., six to eight men suddenly attacked the spokesperson and co-general secretary of the Federation of National Christians in Nepal (FNCN) from behind.

“They beat me for a minute and a half and suddenly fled the site,” Pastor Baizu told Morning Star News. “They said, ‘We will blast your church and all the churches with bombs and shoot you and all your leaders.’”

NEWS ITEM: Aug 1, 2018 –
Rwanda Closes More Than 8,000 Churches In Major Crackdown
More than 8,000 churches throughout Rwanda have been closed by the government as part of an alleged crackdown on unsafe structures, although religious liberty advocates say the government is closing congregations that should be considered acceptable.

Christians in the country fear the movement is a cover for the government’s drive toward secularism…. One church was closed during a wedding, with the guests “told to leave the church during the service,” World Watch Monitor reported.

Churches have only 15 days to make the required changes upon being reported by the government. The Rwandan source said in some instances, even house meetings are banned.

Pastors are now required by the government to have degrees from accredited institutions. Bible schools are mandated to teach science and technology in order to teach theology. Among the other rules, access roads to churches must be paved and inside walls and ceilings must be plastered and painted, according to World Watch Monitor.

NEWS ITEM: Aug 16, 2018 –
Atheist Military Group Files Complaint Against Decorated USAF General
CBN reports that the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) has filed a complaint against Brigadier Gen. E. John Teichert this week. The MRFF filed this complaint to Defense Secretary James Mattis requesting an investigation into Teichert, the newly installed commander of the 412 Test Wing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

The MRFF is claiming that Teichert’s website is violating rule against religious proselytizing that the Air Force and Defense Department have in place. On his website Teichert describes himself in the following way:

“John is an active duty Brigadier General who has served in the United States Air Force since 1994, and who was saved by grace through faith in Christ in 2004. He has commanded at the wing, group and squadron levels, and is currently serving as Air Force commander. The Lord has blessed his career while burdening his heart with the need for our nation to return to its Christian foundation. He serves alongside his amazing wife of 20 years and their three incredible children. It is their desire to fully invest their lives to maximize their impact on people and on our nation for the Lord.”

CBN reports that … the MRFF said Teichert “should be doing time behind prison bars, not commanding a wing wearing general’s stars.” The MRFF continued, saying Teichert was “a fundamentalist Christian tyrant and religious extremist predator.”

NEWS ITEM: Magic Show at Saddleback Church, Lake Forest CA –
Join us at Camp Hope and witness some incredible illusions performed by Scott Tokar. Scott will be performing for about 25 minutes directly following the 4 pm and 6 pm services. This will be a night you and your family won’t want to miss!

NEWS ITEM: “All Is Well” Yoga at Mars Hill Church, Grand Rapids MI –
These classes can assist you on your health, healing, and wholeness path by creating a space where you can encounter God while caring for your physical well-being.

NEWS ITEM: Authentic Manhood Class, Lakewood Church, Houston TX –
Authentic Manhood is a discipleship journey for men. This 24 session curriculum helps men understand their identity and shows them how to pursue authentic manhood. It offers a clear definition of what a man is and challenges each man to develop his own manhood plan. All men are welcome to attend this life changing class.

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Click: The Storm is Passing Over

Also in memory of Detroit’s Aretha Franklin

8-13-18

Years ago our family worshiped at a neighborhood church in Connecticut. By “neighborhood” I don’t imply small; it was where a lot of our friends spent their Sunday mornings… and Wednesday nights, and Saturday mornings for Bible studies, and many weekend evenings for fellowship and book review groups. A thriving church.

The pastor had been converted to a fervent Christianity in his youth by Billy Graham; and, ironically, when he “graduated” from the church he joined the staff of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in North Carolina. He was a wonder pastor; more, a great teacher.

One of the adult Sunday School classes was in his office. Changing topics and lessons, but my wife and I were in the sessions about some of the Pauline letters – the Epistles of Paul on his fascinating and varied missionary journeys.

My wife and I had recently, in a different church and under different teaching, become Pentecostals, believing in – accepting – the Gifts of the Spirit as described in the Book of Acts; listed in I Corinthians 13; and elsewhere in the New Testament. We had traveled to crusades held by Jimmy Swaggart, the great R W Schambach, Kenneth Copeland, and others; and some couples in this new fellowship had, with us; and were intrigued by ministries of tongues, healing, wisdom, prophecy, and such.

There are 12 such “Gifts of the Spirit” listed carefully in the first letter to the church at Corinth. Now, this new church of which I speak, was not a Pentecostal church; it was Evangelical Free. And the good pastor was not Pentecostal, evidenced by his answer to the question posed by one of the couples, “What do you think of the 12 Gifts of the Spirit?”

He answered, “Well, they are in the Bible, yes; but I have a problem with several of them.” Wise-guy Rick immediately asked, “Howe many of the 10 Commandments do you have a problem with?”

My timing might have been that of a wise guy, but my point was, and is, serious. I know (believe me; from hundreds of discussions and debates) I know the arguments of the anti-Pentecostals – that the Gifts of the Spirit were specific “ministry gifts” for the First-Century Church; that such miracles were withdrawn by the Giver of the Gifts after the Apostolic Age, after the Apostles were all martyred. And so forth. Of course the Gospels say no such thing; the Books of Acts recorded miracle-gifts throughout; there is no hint of expiration-dates in the Epistles of Paul and other writers; no warnings in the Book of Revelation. In fact John wrote there of the End of Times, not the End of Gifts.

Beyond my spiritual snarkiness just concluded, I do not, here, want to litigate the question that will be solved to our satisfaction when we arrive in Glory.

But I do want us all to consider the manner of Christian religiosity that my tale represents. All of us, me too, and conservative and liberal Christians; Catholics and Protestants; evangelical and Pentecostal and fundamentalist and “seeker” and post-modern and Orthodox; in other words, all human beings… practice at the altar of a Pick-and-Choose belief system.

In a way, of course, that is another way to describe hypocrisy; but few of us intend to be hypocrites, especially in matters of core beliefs. These days, it is explained away as “relativism” in many places, in the way (it seems to me) that skin cancer could be called an itch. Now, I recognize that this dilemma is not restricted to religious beliefs, but political affiliations or even patriotic fervor do not have rules that are strict.

“Strict”? Yes. We – in the 21st-century West – scarcely regard our spiritual affiliations as requiring strict adherence. As recently as a century ago, this would have been regarded as anathema by most of those spiritual affiliations – denominations.

My daughter, a youth pastor, has been hired by churches where she was not required to know denominations’ doctrines, yet was obliged to teach children. Not Luther’s Catechism in a Lutheran church, not Calvin’s Institutes in a Presbyterian. Sort of like joining the Boy Scouts without having to be a boy… oh, wait.

To take to its logical extension, what is the point of systematic theology? God gave humankind the Ten Commandments, not the Ten Suggestions. Jesus taught; He did not propose debates. When He healed and forgave, He said “Go thou and sin no more,” not “Hey, whatever; go for it.” When talked about the necessity to be Born Again, He did not say, “No one gets to Father except through Me… and Buddha and Tuesday Meditation classes and Oprah.”

The culture seduces us; and the double-edged swords of modernism and intellectual vanity, and secularist education. And the mistaken trust that everything in life is either settled democratically… or according to whatever the heck feels right to us.

Think of every challenge that might confront you, or disaster that might threaten you. You might pick a certain reaction, or choose a way to respond… but the serious things in life are not defined – cannot be defined – by a pick-and-choose acceptance or rejection. Life is real; life is earnest, as Longfellow tellingly wrote.

And nothing is more real than the disposition of your soul for eternity, and your respect for the word of God.

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For Nancy

Click: The Church’s One Foundation

8-6-18

There is a story – probably apocryphal, but most good stories are – about W C Fields, the great comedian. In his last days, the man whose comic trademarks were finding humor in drunken turns and misanthropy, was dying of alcoholism and in solitary loneliness.

He was to die on Christmas Day 1946, and shortly before then one of his friends, I believe Gene Fowler, visited Fields in a sanitarium. He was surprised to see him, alone in the corner of a room by the window, leafing through a Bible.

“Bill! This is a first! I’ve never seen you with a Bible! What are you doing?”

Fields looked up and said, “Looking for loopholes.”

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Gather together, gather yourselves together, you shameful nation, before the decree takes effect and that day passes like windblown chaff, before the Lord’s fierce anger comes upon you, before the day of the Lord’s wrath comes upon you. Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land, you who do what he commands. Seek righteousness, seek humility; perhaps you will be sheltered on the day of the Lord’s anger” (Zephaniah 2: 1-3).

Whether a nation or an individual has strayed from the Truth, the results will be the same. In our culture, with our traditions, ignorance of God’s commandments and the teachings of Jesus is no plausible excuse. And willful defiance of God will bring the greater wrath.

Not swifter wrath. God is sovereign, and at times in His-story He has stayed the “terrible swift sword,” and many of us believe that judgment in this land of sinfulness and a culture of death, that we continue along at His sufferance.

The Apostle Paul said, in his time of persecution, “I am not ashamed of the gospel.” Why do so many among us act like we are ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ – even as doing so invites more and more persecution? We often are seduced by enticing lies.

Like a belief that if we all withdraw to our tight circles, we can create the Remnant and be insulated from God’s wrath;

Like a belief that if our fellowships, or denominations, send enough missionaries abroad, or feed enough hungry people, that we counterbalance the sin all around us;

Like a belief that compromising with error will draw sinners to salvation;

Lake a belief that being ashamed of the gospel – when we know the Truth but we do not allow the Truth to set us free – is, for the first time in history, pleasing to God.

Be not deceived: God is not mocked. God is not bribed. God is not fooled. There ARE no loopholes.

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We cannot suppose that God will change His mind about His solemn promises, or His warnings. In fact, He cannot change His nature – although the Post-Christian church acts like it hopes He will.

God, the God of Peace, the heavenly Father, who sent Jesus to be our substitute for sin-punishment… is still a God of Wrath? Didn’t that end with the Old Testament?

The essential nature of God is Holiness. It is impossible for Him to countenance evil, to allow sin to stain the Heavenlies. Like camels passing through the eyes of needles, better that we work to repent; have our families and churches repent; have our neighborhoods and nation repent; and have our leaders and culture repent.

And in the words of Zephaniah’s prophecy, we cannot assume, but we may pray that – after repentance, not instead of repentance – perhaps we “will be sheltered on the day of the Lord’s anger.” May that be our fate, not because of loopholes, but by repentance, forgiveness, and mercy – God’s Grace.

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Click: Sheltered In the Arms of God

7-30-18

A birthday card for Leonard Bernstein.

Recently I compiled notes and gathered thoughts for a memorial service I was asked to conduct for a dear friend, Stephane Irwin, who recently died of cancer. I do almost all my writing, drawing, and sleeping to background music, and on this evening I punched up YouTube on my big screen; found performances of the great funeral masses of Mozart and Fauré to help set the mood … and noticed a clip I had never seen – Leonard Bernstein conducting Mozart’s Requiem.

The Requiem was the last thing Mozart ever wrote (and in fact never was completed); which makes the Funeral Mass a little spooky, at least intriguing. This performance is astonishing. It was recorded in 1988, and by happy coincidence I commend and share it on the centenary of Bernstein’s birth.

“Lenny the Lion” was a kaleidoscopic character in American music. Composer and conductor, he was also a “popularizer” of serious music. When I was a child, I watched his series on CBS-TV, Young Peoples’ Concerts, in which he explained the history and musical essentials of pieces performed on the broadcasts (imagine that on network – or cable – TV today!). He composed operas (Candide), Broadway musicals (West Side Story) and symphonies. He conducted an array of music, and was largely responsible for the rediscovery of Vivaldi and Baroque music. He was a public figure, frequently recalled in a Tom Wolfe essay pandering, in plaid bell-bottoms at his posh New York apartment, to Black Panthers – “I dig. I totally dig.”

He was “out there,” outrageously talented and irrepressible. Many of his musical contemporaries, fellow Jews, were conflicted about performing in Germany after the war. Isaac Stern made a show of boycotting concerts there. Yehudi Menuhin (family name Mnuchin, by the way) and Daniel Barenboim were among those who were comfortable performing in that land of the great composers, to discerning and welcoming audiences.

Bernstein was in the latter group. He chose a relatively minor church in a small Bavarian town – short drives from Munich, Dachau, and Berchtesgaden – to perform Mozart’s sacred works. The church’s design is of the off-putting late-Baroque and Rococo styles of fluff, ornaments, and countless filigrees; but of Mozart’s own time. Other conductors, like Karl Bohm, recorded in the same church.

But my little guided tour here is about more than music’s universality, or Bernstein’s open mind, or Germany’s musical soil.

Note well Bernstein’s conduct as a conductor in this video. He always revered Christian sacred music so much that – when conducting in churches or cathedrals – he carefully explained to his musicians and his audiences that church music, not mere concert music, was the fare. He would broach no applause, before, during, or after the work.

More than that, you will see, he begins with head bowed and a long silence. Praying? Maybe so; his own wife died shortly before this Requiem mass was performed. He ends the performance again with head bowed and almost uncomfortable silence throughout the church. And between several movements, Bernstein paused for seeming prayer or meditation, at one point dabbing his eyes with his handkerchief.

This is sacred music, he said… and says the same to us through the years. Too much Christian music today is performed as, well, performances – with applause, curtsies and bowing, encores and whistling. In or out of church. Worshiping God? That priority largely has become obsolete.

So: in the presentation of 200-year-old Requiem masses, or cantatas, oratorios, or Te Deums – where is the reverence; the original, spiritual intentions? For that matter, in our contemporary churches and their worship services themselves, where is the reverence today?

How many of us attend churches where Hawaiian shirts and cargo shorts are encouraged? Where people shuffle in and out, casually chugging from ever-present water bottles? Where – turning Bernstein’s ethos on its head – music is a literal concert performance, no opportunities for the congregation to sing lyrics or do anything other than clap and jump? Where services have the form of spontaneity but deny the power thereof; tightly managed? Where creeds and the Lord’s Prayer are never spoken?

Am I being legalistic? No; I don’t think there have to be neckties and below-the-knee dresses and strict reliance on old hymnals to get to heaven, or present meaningful worship. Or to commune with God among fellow believers.

But neither should 21st-century Christians feel like they are weird strangers to miss… reverence in church. What a concept.

How many of you feel this way; have been smothered by these things; miss the things that I miss? Many of you – I get mail. My messages on “When Worship Music Is Neither” elicit more mail than any other topics here. These are not matters of mere nostalgia. We miss – and, complicitly, make other people miss – the respect, the opportunities for contemplation, the privacy of prayer and meditation, the… reverence of worship services.

Not those of our childhoods, not of Bernstein’s time, nor of Mozart or Bach’s days, but of 2000 years of corporate worship. We can be exuberant, but the core of “reverence” is to revere God. Just because there are no prohibitions of dirty shirts and sandals… should not require us to make uniforms of such things.

Clear an hour, try to ignore the stupid YouTube commercials, and commune with the music linked here. And the liturgical settings. See if you agree how profound it is, and how the period-performance and setting the American Jewish conductor respecting a Christian mass in Mozart’s heimat, can teach us about reverence.

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Click: Mozart: Requiem
(click icon in lower right for full-screen)

7-23-18

At one time during humanity’s long march, whose trudging we cannot escape, death was almost too horrible to face for most people.

And Heaven was almost too wonderful to imagine.

The proper view (inescapable after all) is that life and death are part of the same Great Adventure… and this has led the devil to make this life seem like the end of everything. Evil forces try to persuade us that there IS no tomorrow – and therefore no consequences of this life’s choices; no eternal perspective; no judgment. No Heaven, no hell.

And when Heaven was marketed – yes, sometime by churches themselves – as too wonderful to be reached without those churches and their rules and additions and conditions and games and systems of bribing God – uncountable substitutes were invented.

Substitutes not only for Heaven, but for ways to become a citizen there, with God, for eternity.

Therefore, ironically, the devil and the church-system both have often lied to us. And the contemporary world, too, lies even more. The secular realms, all around us, have piled on. Everyone wants a piece; the contemporary world needs to reinforce the lie that contemporary life contains and offers all we need for happiness.

When humankind rushes to that message, it runs away from the Cross.

Peace? Healing? Reconciliation? Love? Forgiveness? Broken homes? Heartache? Disappointment? Addictions? Betrayal? Insecurity? Rebellion? Lack of respect? Loss of self-esteem? Pride? Failure, fear of failure? Loneliness? Rejection? Abuse? Discrimination? Grief?

Negative and positive; real or threatened; momentary or long-lasting… The secular, contemporary world tells us that these things, and more, and anything and everything, can be solved by dental work and face lifts; tummy tucks and yoga classes; diets and exercise; different clothes and newer cars; the right friends from malls and concerts; hotter obsessions in sports; cooler mastery of games; music, movies, TV series; political correctness; and, of course, drinks and drugs in general.

The bitter, bitter truth is this: the world jumps like a trained dog, believing that these lies from the devil are true about the afterlife – but they obviously, clearly, self-evidently are lies about contemporary life too. Today. Now. Music of this dance of death that people choose.

Who cares…

Who cares when your children split away from you? The music producers? Who cares when your marriage is on the rocks? Hollywood? Who cares when you feel horribly alone, maybe betrayed? Game designers? Who cares when you lose a job, suffer insecurity, are hit with loss of self-esteem? Brewers and distillers? Who cares when you need forgiveness? Celebrities and star athletes? Who cares when you endure abuse or discrimination? Superheroes?

Ah. The pharmaceutical industry. How could we forget them? Oh, and the politicians. Plus all those government bureaucrats, of course… they care. They all care, right?

That’s called a rhetorical question. The devil does not care, except to hate your soul. The glitterati do not care, except to exploit you and your misery. Even – as hard as it is to state the truth – in many cases we cannot even trust friends and family to care, when all is said and done.

But…

Jesus cares. We know He cares. When the days are weary, the long nights are dreary, our Savior cares.

Put aside your “theological” arguments, if you have any, resisting this love of the Savior. Evil hates us. Friends, even family, can be unreliable. The “world” cannot care because its motives are rotten. What’s left? Who cares? Jesus, lover of our souls.

But… don’t really put aside theological arguments! Think on these things. The very foundation of life, and the irreducible fact of our existence, is God’s love. Brought to us by Jesus’ care.

Someone is reading this – or might read it in the future, thanks to the permanent presence of the internet! – who needs to know it, not only for a minor challenge along the road. Or a major crisis that looms. But to confront life, see life, and live life in a new way.

To know, really know, that the Creator of the Universe cares. He cares. Who cares? No one, hardly, on earth… and surely no one in hell; nobody in hell cares about you like Jesus.

The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of hell, a hell of Heaven. – Paradise Lost, I: 254-255

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Click: Does Jesus Care

7-16-18

That we live in an upside-world ought to surprise nobody who has even a cursory relationship with history and tradition. Our age is often called “modern times,” but according to philosophers and cultural anthropologists, the Modern Age ended after the Renaissance; after the Enlightenment came Postmodernism, in which many people we currently are mired… but we are past, or below, that. Clearly this is a post-Christian Age; but is has also been described as Post-Post-Modern (yes), Nihilistic, and so forth.

I raise these definitions not because there will be a quiz in in-boxes tomorrow. We are better off if we understand where we are in the sweep of time, to what twigs and leaves we cling as we helplessly ride the rapids of time.

Why? Perhaps we can discern the evidences of madness that beset us; perhaps the better to resist. In my biography of Johann Sebastian Bach a major goal of mine was to pain the absolute centrality of faith in that composer’s life. It is almost impossible to understand the genius of Bach, and his music, without understanding the role of faith in his life.

His jobs were not merely at churches where he wrote to order. He was as learned as professors of religion; he had a large library of Christian books; he taught Catechism; two-thirds of his approximate 1800 compositions were church music; and his secular music was virtually always dedicated to God.

It is how life was in Germany of the 1700s. And his fellow Protestants took their cues from Martin Luther and other Reformers of the 1500s. Remember, Luther rejected the term Modern, and declared Reason to be the enemy of Faith.

The son of friends recently returned from a bicycle semester in Europe, 11 countries. We had an evening enjoying his photos, including the great town square in Prague, where there is a statue of the great Reformer Jan Hus, bound to the stake before his immolation as a martyr for the faith… a hundred years before Luther. (From my visit, years ago, I assumed that it was the spot where he was put to death for his faith, but that was in Konstanz; the great Bohemian was commemorated in his home city.)

In those days people died for their faith. Today, they still do… mostly in what we call the Far East and in the Middle East and south of the Equator. Not so much in Europe and America. Here we largely, at best, endure annoyance for our faith; or complain to each other.

Some, like the Masterpiece Cakeshop decorator, are not asked to die for their faith, but probably would. At moment people like Jack Phillips sustain abuse, vandalism, and sacrifices to their businesses and home lives. The most our culture forces, at this moment in time.

I bring up Bach’s livelihood and terms like the Dark Ages because, as noted, it can be a healthy thing to realize how different we are than those of earlier generations. In the days of Bach, Luther before him, and especially back to the Dark Ages, churches were at centers of every community.

The center? Yes, for prolonged worship, several days a week; for municipal events of all sorts requiring space; for schooling and civil ceremonies. And many churches, especially cathedrals, took decades and even centuries to build – and every citizen took on duties. Often when a day’s work was done in fields or shops, people ate and hurried to put in long hours – willingly – for carpentry work, masonry, sculpting, stained glass arts, and so forth.

It is what they did. And desired to do.

And in ages where illiteracy was common, the churches also “spoke” the Revealed Word of God – every color of vestment or altarpieces, every carved lectern, every sign and symbol in elaborate tapestries and stained-glass windows… MEANT something, telling the Gospel story, representing Biblical truths, reminding worshipers of the lives of saints and martyrs.

In other words, as Henry Adams noted in his great book Mont St-Michel et Chartres, the “Dark Ages” where not so dark at all. One of the only times in human history – certainly the last time in Western Civilization – when an entire culture was of one mind in matters of heart and head; when societies were unified in belief and purpose.

I was reminded of this when I came across a video of singers and musicians gathering to rehearse a performance of Vivaldi’s great Gloria, in Venice, in a cathedral, at night, dedicated in a haunting performance. Chilling, and a little taste of people gathered just more than 300 years ago at the School for Wayward Girls, where Vivaldi was Music Teacher and Priest. The profound liturgical words likely date from the Fifth Century.

Appropriate association: it was in 400s that Christianity largely had been swept off the European continent. At outposts like Hippo in northern Africa, Augustine kept the scriptures alive; and in far-off Ireland Saints Columba and Patrick kept Western Civilization, and scholasticism, alive, in shrouded monasteries. Slowly, Patrick made missionary journeys to Germanic lands, converting the Vandals who previously had chased and slaughtered Christians, from Rome and elsewhere.

Look, if you can, at this video of performers gathering in Vivaldi’s place to perform Vivaldi’s sacred music. You will get a taste of times when spare times of people were devoted to serving, and praising, God.

And note the great sacred environment, also a symbol of forgotten times. Today, in this Post-Christian Era, we have tunred many churches into museum, empty of spirituality. And we have turned museums in today’s equivalence of sacred places – venerating the art of music of earlier Christians into exhibitions and concerts.

An upside-down world.

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Click: Gloria

7-9-18

I recently delivered the message at a friend’s memorial service. I was asked by her mother, who had only three months ago lost her husband too. Life and death are not supposed to run that way, mothers burying daughters. But I have learned of other sicknesses and deaths in my circle. And people who came to me after the service also shared many stories of recent sad news, deaths, and afflictions.

Life happens.

What should not happen is that we, God’s children, take comfort in fantasies of our own imaginings. Not that these things happened at the service, but we often hear and perhaps say – and I pray not believe – that so-and-so is now dancing with angels. Or reunited with his or her favorite pets. Or watching over us.

Such fables perhaps are well intentioned. But to describe Heaven, or to contemplate our own eternal lives, in such ways, reveal that we do not know the Bible. Or, if know the Bible, we thereby presume to know more than it says. Are we wiser than the revealed Lord? Will He turn the universe of His creation upside-down because we hope to act in a fictional play of our own desires?

Whatever we do NOT know of death and eternity – indeed, all of life’s mysteries – puts us in the position of wanting to create God in our own image. Let it not be so! The riches of His glory are so great, so literally indescribable, that we cannot begin to choreograph what He has in store.

Remember that truth, that whatever we cannot imagine is so much greater than that which we know. Trust God: there is a reason we do not know all. Trust Jesus: “In My house there are many mansions [prepared for you], if it were not so, I would not have told you.” Trust the Holy Spirit, who has been sent to lead us to all Truth.

Coping, as we must, however, with life’s challenges and griefs, and with all the mysteries of life, not to mention death, it is natural that many of us turn to books and tracts that collect Bible verses of comfort. They are sometimes arranged by category of concerns; otherwise a Bible concordance can serve the same purposes. They contain “God’s Promises.” Yes, from God’s word.

In all respect, literally, to God and to all of you, I say that we must remember that another “Promise Book” can be compiled from many proverbs, warnings, commandments, epistles, sermons, and exhortations in the Bible. These “other” promises are also God’s words, after all.

God, by His inspiration of writers and prophets and judges and apostles and disciples and missionaries, spoke of many things.

You might lose jobs; your family and neighbors might think you crazy; you will be a lone, and very lonely, voice defending the truth.

These are not threats or warnings, strictly. Coldly, these are promises of God. The way of a Christian is not easy… never has been… never will be. In God’s providence, He did not mean it to be easy. Jesus took up His cross, and we were told – yes, promised – that we must do the same to be worthy of Him, worthy of Eternity.

A downer? No! Even more Bible promises assure us that it is a privilege to die with Christ. We are His ambassadors here on earth. He lives within us, and His Holy Spirit empowers us… that we will be more than conquerors.

And those trials of life? Challenges, disappointments, rejections, fear? I ask you to look at the promise that He would never leave us nor forsake us, and remember some incidents.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego could have been spared the fiery furnace if God chose to destroy it. Yet they displayed faith, and were protected through the fire. God could close up the Valley of the Shadow of Death… yet when we walk through it, we are protected by His rod and His staff; they comfort us. By faith, Abraham was even willing to sacrifice his son Isaac, yet the Lord stayed his hand, blessed Abraham and his descendants, and gave us a picture of Jesus’s sacrifice when God was willing. And so on – the list of God’s promises, and their fulfillment or puzzling postponement, that Mystery of His ways.

“God had planned something better… so that only together with us would they be made perfect.” We are parts of that “scarlet thread of redemption.” The powerful truths of His promises do not depend on our understanding of them! He asks only faithful obedience.

If you ignore the least commandment and teach others to do the same, you will be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But anyone who obeys God’s laws and teaches them will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt. 5:19).

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Click: Come Harvest Time

7-2-18

I have told this story before. Readers have liked it, and some have asked that it not get buried in Archives. It is about a holiday far away from home… but very close to my heart. It happened on a Fourth of July years ago.

A number of years ago I was working on a book, a three-part biography of rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis; evangelist Jimmy Swaggart; and country-music superstar Mickey Gilley, all first cousins to each other. My good friend Maury Forman offered me his unused condo in Montgomery, Texas to get away for a bit of a personal research and writing one summer. Since Lewis lived in Mississippi, Swaggart in Louisiana, and Gilley in nearby Pasadena Texas, it made geographical sense.

Once settled, I took out the Yellow Pages (remember them?) to chart the location of Assembly of God churches for all the weeks ahead, intent on visiting as many as I could. East Texas was in every way new to me, and I wanted to experience everything I could.

Well, the first one I visited was in Cut and Shoot, Texas. That’s a town’s name; you can look it up. A small, white frame AG church was my first stop that summer… and I never visited another. For one thing – coincidence? – I learned that a member of the tiny congregation was the widow of a man who had pastored the AG church in Ferriday, Louisiana, the small town FOUR HOURS AWAY where, and when, those three cousins grew up in its pews. She knew them all, and their families, and another piano-playing cousin, David Beatty; and had great stories. Beyond that, the pastor of the church in Cut and Shoot, Charles Wigley, had gone to Bible College with Jerry Lee Lewis and played in a band with him, until Jerry Lee got kicked out. Some more great stories.

But there was more than that kept me there for that summer. In that white-frame church and that tiny congregation, it was, um, obvious in three minutes that I was not from East Texas. I was born in New York City. Yet I was treated like family as if they all had known me three decades. A fellow named Dave Gilbert asked me if I’d like to go to his farm for the holiday where a bunch of people were just going to get together and “do some visitin’.”

I bought the biggest watermelon I could find as my contribution to the pot-luck. Well, there were dozens and dozens of folks. I couldn’t tell which was family and who were friends, because everybody acted like family. When folks from East Texas ask, “How are you?” they really mean it. There were several monstrous barbecue smokers with chimneys, all slow-cooking beef brisket. (Every region brags about its barbecue traditions, but I’ll fight anyone who doesn’t admit low-heat, slow-smoked, no sauce, East-Texas BBQ, Lo and Slo, is the best) There was visitin,’ surely; there were delicious side dishes; there was softball and volleyball and kids dirt-biking; and breaks for sweet tea and spontaneous singing of patriotic songs.

I sat back in a folding chair, and I thought, “This is America.”

As the sun set, the same food came out again – smoked brisket galore; all the side dishes; and desserts of all sorts. Better than the first time. Then the Gilberts cleared the porch of their house. People brought instruments out of their cars and trucks. Folks tuned their guitars; some microphones and amps were set up; chairs and blankets dotted the lawn. Dave Gilbert and his brothers, I learned, sang gospel music semi-professionally in the area. Pastor Wigley, during the summer, had opened for Gold City Quartet at a local concert, playing gospel music on the saxophone. But everyone else sang, too.

In some churches, in some parts of America, you are just expected to sing solo every once in a while. You’re not expected to – you want to. So into the evening, as the sun went down and the moon came up over those farms and fields, everyone at that picnic sang, together or solo or in duets or quartets. Spontaneously, mostly. Far into the night, exuberantly with smiles, or heartfelt with tears, singing unto the Lord.

I sat back in the folding chair, and I thought, “This is Heaven.”

I have grown sad for people who have not experienced the type of worship where singers and people who pray, do so spontaneously. From the congregation. Moving to the front. Sharing their hearts. Crying tears of joy or conviction. Loving the Lord, freely. If you have not… visit a church where this is commonplace; even witnessing it is an uplifting balm to the soul. Where there is freedom and joy in singing spontaneously.

I attach a video that very closely captures the music, and the feeling – the fellowship – of that evening. A wooden ranch house, a barbecue picnic just ended, a campfire, and singers spontaneously worshiping, joining in, clapping, and “taking choruses.” There were cameras at this Gaither get-together, but it took this city boy back to that holiday weekend, finding himself amongst a brand-new family, the greatest barbecue I ever tasted before or since… and the sweetest songs I know.

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Click: The Sweetest Song I Know

6-25-18

We are reaching full employment in America, the experts say. I know one job category whose openings are greater than the number of workers or applicants these days: Jeremiahs. Biblical Jeremiahs: that is, not mere prophets but those who discern the times, the danger signals, the warnings; and raise the alarums.

The Old Testament’s Jeremiah was not simply a grouch, or a pessimist, or someone who got out of too many wrong sides of beds too often. And we need a similar fiery servant who can know God’s mind, analyze the crisis of the age, and deliver articulate solutions.

America has been gifted with preachers and teachers, with revivalists and reformers. But our times are different, and a different messenger is sorely needed in our land, in our time.

I once was phlegmatic about the pendulum-swings of social pathologies. But I am now convinced that challenges have turned to problems have turned to crises. Contemporary turmoil is no longer evolutionary release-and-realignment. It is the harbinger of disintegration and destruction. Of course I have a point of view about this retrogression – and I believe, humbly, that it is an informed, Biblical view – but the inevitable firestorm of opposition we receive will prove my larger point. Only a few years ago, reasonably presented opinions perhaps risked arguments and debates… but now are certain to invite savage billingsgate, and insure obloquy. Forget Thanksgiving dinner disruptions; innocent Facebook posts and overheard mall conversations routinely incite everything from heated rhetoric to hate-filled rhetoric.

America has, with shocking rapidity, become a country where good will is an endangered species. Quoting Bible verses or Rodney King (“Can’t we all just get along?”) is unlikely to have everyone waking up tomorrow morning, desirous of kissing and making up. One time that theoretically would have made people happy. Now, many people are happy to be unhappy; they love to hate.

We see it every day, every where. We see it – for instance; and I know I am tap-dancing in a mine-field – in the “debate” over today’s border problems.

People arrive who claim asylum from lands south of Mexico; but no one proposes helping those countries solve their problems, the source of social angst.

Mexico (whose own Southern border is harsher than Trump’s fantasies for our own), allows “caravans” to trek hundreds of miles… protected, not even challenged; but no one proposes treating Mexico as a virtual accessory to felonies.

Adults, often with evanescent “asylum” claims (and in spite of orderly remedies and applications where we have embassies) use children as “anchors,” because, as children are released into the maw of America, they must be too.

Well, these are the challenges, and I honestly did not want to start yet another debate over these issues. My point, however, is that goodwill in American has left the building. And this issue illustrates it. Even among Christian friends, I have seen it go this way:

They once agreed with border and immigration policies of Clinton, Bush and Obama. Trump enforced the same policies… which oddly earns him the sobriquet of “nazi.” If you object to children being separated from adults so they are spared jail-house situations, you are a nazi. If you accede and say they should be incarcerated with the adults, you are a nazi. If you look for a solution that would return them all to their home-countries, or neutral locations, even while their cases might be adjudicated, you are a nazi. If you advocate shelters built for (grateful) hurricane victims, temporary and probably superior to homes the migrants have left, you are a nazi.

Showing contempt for America’s previously normal and compassionate laws, and a larger concern for the orderly welfare of children, today has Christians judging fellow Christians as… bad Christians. And worse.

Lost in all this is concern over social burdens, costs, crimes, that accompany these radical disruptions whose details-of-compassion are rudely dictated to the rest of us. The parents of Kate Steinle are supposed to be compliant. After all (I suppose) they are nazis, too, if they object to the state of affairs and dare to miss their daughter. Twenty years ago – before this all came to a head – I had a friend who taught the second grade in a Southern California school. All but two of her (oversized) class were Mexicans – not Mexican background, but kids whose parents were not citizens, many of whom were driven across the border every day to attend school from towns south of the border. And that was 20 years; no doubt more widespread, and farther north, now. I am sorry to sound like a nazi if questioning the lunacy of such things fits your definition. No… I’m not.

I mention the immigration flash-point, and the vicious vituperation, because it clogs the headlines right now. But the same evaporation of comity and reasonable goodwill marks other, and widely separate, topics: the crusade to ban religious expression; coercion in the form of regulation and taxes; prior censorship of decorations on cakes by bakers, and sermons by pastors; mandatory sex instruction in schools but regarding parents’ opposition as “hate speech”; attempts to violate the consciences of doctors, nurses, clergy who resist being complicit in aborting babies.

Wow, how many of us nazis are there? No matter, they will try to silence us all soon.

The question of abortion provides a focal point. The radicals claim that keeping children of criminal migrants out of jails is nazi-like. But they often are fine with killing babies in the womb. Forgive me for thinking the lunatics are trying to Occupy the asylum.

Can we return this to a Biblical context? I am not especially optimistic about God’s imminent intervention in America. I might change my opinion if someone can show me an example of any time in history when God sent revival to a people when they did not pray for one as a people. He certainly may intervene through judgment, because He has done that many times throughout history. And because, frankly, America deserves it.

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Click: Dido’s Lament

6-18-18

Thinking back on family scenes on Father’s Day, I was reminded of my parents’ story about days of my childhood, when I was too young to have remembered myself. Among the first words I spoke (that is, “words” and “spoke,” with qualifications) was “Hobbo-loody.” It seems I uttered the phrase often and emphatically, and to much consternation. How could mom and dad show off my skills to visitors (I was the first-born) if the sound was gibberish?

Howdy Doody? “A baloney,” as in sandwich? They finally solved the mystery as I jumped for joy when my father exclaimed, in another context, “Absolutely!” It was his frequent, if hyperbolic, word of agreement, or affirmation. “Yes” would not do; “I agree” apparently was too weak – “Ab-so-LUTE-ly!” he boomed. My immature fealty was “Hobbo-LOOdy!”

People do that today, saying “Absolutely!” even substituting the word for “you’re welcome!” when they are thanked.

Hyperbole and exaggeration in our time betray a conversational laziness, because we can remain detached but switch in some camouflaged emotional investment. Many times I hear toddlers in shops and malls say “Oh my God!” Besides the blasphemy, it is ridiculous to think that young children can so regard, say, a soiled gumdrop on the floor. My late mother-in-law dropped the phrase at the slightest turns until one day I asked her what she was saving for a presidential assassination or world war.

An additional feature of the word “Absolutely,” beyond its frequently needless employment, is what it really means. Absolute things are the “max,” unable to be topped, extended, or multiplied. On the other hand, something that is “absolute” cannot be diminished and remain absolute. Nothing can be LESS absolute, or modified, or qualified – because then it is out of the realm of the absolute.

In today’s spiritual world – that is, reality; not passing fads and trends in society – the word “Absolute” needs to be re-asserted. This is not a mere word-game.

God’s Word contains ABSOLUTE truth; in fact it IS Absolute Truth.

His promises are ABSOLUTELY true and trustworthy. Not “mostly”; absolutely.

When Jesus spoke, He had the authority of ABSOLUTE Truth, not – as relativists and liberal Christianity and Post-Modernists and Emergent church leaders say – “relative truth.” Or “relational truth.” Truth is truth: it is inherently Absolute. Any adjective other than ABSOLUTE unplugs the essence of what Truth is. (In lexicography, “Absolute” here is emphatic, not qualifying. Lesson over!)

This world, as it always has been but seems more so then ever before, is relativistic. “What’s right for me is right.” “Believe what you want, if it doesn’t hurt anybody.” “What’s true for you is not true for me.” “There is no right or wrong” – which sums up all the equivocations.

In the 1960s, Jean-Paul Sartre presciently maintained (with approval) that in the coming age, “authenticity” would be all that mattered. This is a cruel philosophical version of the advertising industry’s saying, “Sincerity! Once you fake that, you’ve got it made!”

Around the same time, Dr Will Herberg beheld the vaunted “New Morality,” and seeing no trace of respect for Absolute Truth, said it should rather be called, “No Morality.”

When there are no Objective Standards in peoples’ lives – that it, no respect for absolute truths in their core beliefs – there are no standards at all. Humans are wired to worship SOME thing, and when we neither recognize nor seek Absolute Truths, or standards greater than ourselves… we fall back, virtually, on worshiping ourselves.

Not a recipe for spiritual health or societal wellness. As the world slid toward more self-worship and less God-awareness, in the 20th century… well, we cured polio and put footprints on the moon, but slaughtered more people than in all previous centuries combined.

“You shall be careful to do as the Lord your God has commanded you; you shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left. You shall walk in all the ways which the Lord your God has commanded you” (Deut 5:32,33a). Oh, the world will ask about other Old Testament verses that seem cruel or obsolete… we will be challenged about rules that seem not to apply to post-industrial societies… and so forth.

The Bible confirms itself, almost endlessly, and those who confront us with seeming contradictions (there are none) or ancient cultural contexts (there are some), would better spend their time absorbing truths than straining to find loopholes. From mighty saints of God to, say, humble cake decorators (possibly also mighty saints of God) who regard the Truths of the Almighty as Absolute – not in ancient times or distant places, but right where they are – are all good and faithful servants.

Sorry, Dad – and others who use words like “Absolutely” a little too freely. You gilded the lily. When paired with the word “Truth,” we must obey.

Absolutely.

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Click: There Is a Balm in Gilead

6-11-18

This has been a week of tremendous news, emotional and important for everyone on every side of (seemingly) every issue. International diplomatic breakthroughs; daring trade confrontations; history-setting economic news at home.

“Winners” (for instance, those happy with the Supreme Court’s decision) should refrain from hyperactive victory dances. These days, spiking the ball can bounce back in our faces! We should prayerfully be grateful, but respect the debate if well-intentioned.

Of course, these days, well-intentioned discourse seems rare. Jack Phillips, the decorator at the modest mom-and-pop Masterpiece Cakeshop of Lakewood, Colorado, is not a raging bigot who barred homosexuals from entering his shop, as his detractors claim. Very few people can even cite his denomination, if he has such membership, and ascribe anything more than his fidelity to the Bible. (Many people do not know the origin of “Masterpiece” as his shop’s name. It is Ephesians 2:10 – “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things He planned for us long ago.”)

But Jack’s policy at Masterpiece was based on conscience, informed by faith. The modest, flour-splotched baker is actually in the pantheon of Heroes of Conscience alongside martyrs of the early Church and Reformation; Luther; persecuted Christians around the world today, both notable and anonymous.

He is consistent, and willing to sacrifice for his beliefs. If that means closing on Sundays, so be it. If that means declining to decorate cakes with off-color themes or requests for sexy or violent images (his artistic talent could tackle any challenge, if he chose), or Halloween or homosexual messages; if his “bottom line” is decreased, so be it.

Chick-Fil-A and Hobby Lobby close on Sundays too. In fact if Jack’s standards reduced him to selling only a few cupcakes to class reunions, he would proceed. God has given Jack a talent… and a conscience. He does not need to be loved by everybody, but he would like to be respected by everybody. And he does not NEED to be attacked by anybody, yet within hours of politely declining to design a homosexual message on the icing on a cake, the attacks started – organized protests; thousands of robo-computer e-mails; automated phone messages; vandalism; etc. In the name, you understand, of “love.”

My friend Penny Carlevato, also of Lakewood and in whose home we recently shared thoughts and lasagna with Jack, made a clever observation, that America was built on religious liberty, and has succeeded in large measure because of it; but ironically those who hate religion and our cultural heritage now use that freedom to attack the traditional foundations.

Jack and his family endured emotional distress, a down-sizing of his business, and other privations during the years of these trials (approximately six years). The Colorado Civil Rights Commission would have forced him to express messages contrary to his values; to accept a set of rules written by some external moral arbiters; to force his workers to undergo training sessions in “sensitivity”; regularly to report compliance to a state agency.

Some of his friends were slightly downcast as the nature of the Court’s “narrow” decision became clear – that the conflict between conscience and public accommodation was not solved. News flash – at the current stage of democracy’s evolution, it never will be solved; get ready.

No, the “narrow” aspect is that the Commission, on the first rung of this long ladder, exposed the virulent anti-Christian bias of two commissioners. Religion led to slavery, Jack was lectured before he could open his mouth; and Christianity was responsible for the holocaust.

The gist of the Court’s “narrow” ruling is that the government in this instance was NOT impartial; exposed a very uneven playing field; displayed prejudice against people of faith.

THAT, friends, is actually a silver lining of the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision. Because of it, every local board of self-righteous commissioners, every tyrannical town council, every petty school board, every legislative committee, every gaggle of unelected bureaucrats high and low, have been put on notice that they cannot act arbitrarily and imperiously. They cannot display bias against religious traditions, against people of conscience, against Christians exercising their faith.

In the future, at least for awhile, these little Big Brothers will think twice before imposing their secular agendas – their revolutionary stink-bombs, their Rules for Radicals – on the rest of us.

The martyrs’ hall of fame, those who died and those who fought for individual conscience, and the essential importance of one’s faith, has a new figure, as noted above.

If the media try to ask – “Such a big deal over WEDDING CAKES?” and “Is this really a Constitutional crisis, led by a neighborhood baker?” Let us recall what James Abram Garfield said when he was elected president. He left his position as an elder in his local church in Ohio to move to Washington, and he said: “I resign the highest office in the land to become president of the United States.”
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Click: I Shall Not Be Moved

6-4-18

You can discern the face of the sky; but can you not discern the signs of the times? This is a famous rebuke from Jesus to the Pharisees and Sadducees found in Matthew 16:3.

Christians in America and much of the West, and traditionalists at large, should be praying that these are the End Times, because sometimes it is hard to contemplate things being much worse. We are lulled by good economic news, and the general prosperity that envelops us – the culture’s “bread and circuses” taking our eyes from the signs of the times. Those signs flash, these days, as brightly as they ever have.

In Charles Wesley’s great sermon on this passage he notes that Pharisees and Sadducees often disagreed on many matters, but they came together to challenge Jesus; to test him; to ensnare Him in contradictions. Of course they failed, and He confounded them.

The fuller Biblical passage reads: The Pharisees also, with the Sadducees, came, tempting, requesting that He show them a sign from heaven. He answered and said, When it is evening, you say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather today: for the sky is red and lowering. O you hypocrites, you can discern the face of the sky; but can you not discern the signs of the times?

There are several things to take away from this exchange, pertinent to today.

The first fact is pertinent but seems impertinent to many Christians today. And that is: Jesus rebuked his interlocutors. He often rebuked people. If we dig deeper, He tended to be silent with outright accusers – as during Passion week – but frequently rebuked those who played to the crowd; who devised trick questions they hoped would stymie Him; He angrily dispatched liars and those who would seek advantage in arguments… but not seek the truth.

Christians are in that situation today – the world is full of vicious opponents who work to steal, kill, and destroy our faith. Another class of opponents, making convenient alliance as haters of old, especially in our midst, use other means to attack us. Ridicule. False charges. Mis-characterizations. Guilt by association. Seduction by pleasures of the sinful world. Corruption. Regulations and laws. Dishonest values.

I recently was a speaker at a Christian conference where a round-table discussion was assembled to address the “crisis” of how Christians are perceived in contemporary society. I was rather in the minority, holding a) that the crisis is in the culture, not with Christians who resist its corruption; and b) that believers who judge their effectiveness by the world’s reaction, or approval, have lost the fight already; and likely do not even recognize the fight… or the stakes.

“Are we perceived as haters?” and “How do we counter that perception?” were the assigned questions. I received a lot of pushback, especially from two relatively prominent writers / teachers. The usual categories of those people determined to reject the Gospel were trotted out, and I was fairly accused of caring little about their souls.

I would like to think that my standard is that of Jesus: I love their souls so much that I desire to deliver the purest, least compromised truth, that I can. And I firmly believe – and plead with other believers – that if people reject the Truth today… we have nevertheless planted the seed. The Holy Spirit was sent into the world to finish the jobs we have been privileged to do, as per the Great Commission: preach the Gospel.

There was a dear friend in the audience that evening who was almost in tears, confessing to spending many nights in tears because some Christians talk about how terrible these times are. Can’t we see the “light”? Can’t we accept the workings of a loving God today?

I tell all such friends that I have in fact peeked at the end of the Book. Yep, God wins.

But does that mean America succeeds? For all our recent sins, do we deserve to “succeed”? to prosper? to get a pass from the judgments God has visited on other apostate peoples? Will revival come to a nation determined not to seek it… to not even recognize that it needs revival?

Why does it surprise us that schools have turned into so many drug-infested, values-confused shooting zones, when two generations ago Bible reading and public prayers were outlawed in their classrooms? Read other headlines – hospital workers who believe that abortion is murder, are nevertheless ordered to perform infanticide. Public airwaves have become cesspools of filthy language and filthy ideas, protected by “free speech” arguments (denied, however, to traditionalists).

One of the last countries in Europe votes to allow abortions, and vast oceans of people cheer the outcome in public squares. Not by the relatively few women whose medical conditions possibly were threatened, but by thousands of women – and men – who could otherwise be rallying against drugs and corruption and a culture of social hatred. No… blood lust. Back home in America, widespread angst about the legal fate of a baker who declined to decorate a cake with a message that offended his values.

That a nation of one-third of a billion people can be awaiting such a momentous Court decision that carries incalculable implications… turning, literally, on a vote of one or two people in black robes… is somewhere between ironic and absurd – but soundly a Sign of the Times.

It is a virtual reality these days that Christians wear Scarlet Letters. Or might soon, literally. A mark of the beast. Nonsense? Hester Prynne wore the letter A (for Adultery) on her forehead in the 1850 indictment of Puritanism in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel. Fewer than a hundred years ago, Jews across Europe often were obliged to display yellow Stars of David.

Signs of the times plausibly might include an obligatory red “C” (for Christian, anathema!) on nuns and doctors who refuse to provide abortions; on teachers who secretly allow students to read Bibles; to people praying in public (street-corner evangelism is already outlawed in some European countries); to bakers who decline to violate their beliefs when they decorate cakes.

If it were not for double standards these days, secularists, liberals, and relativists would have no standards.

I wrote above that I have two take-aways from Jesus’ famous rebuke. The first must be our willingness to rebuke evil – to defend, if not ourselves, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The second lesson is to simply be aware of the signs of times. Pray for discernment, wisdom, knowledge, then boldness as appropriate.

Like with the group at the round-table discussion, it is too easy for Christians to confuse peoples’ compliments for their convictions. Christianity is not a democracy: the number of preachers in backward collars, or church-attendance numbers “run” each Sunday, all mean nothing if people do not hear, do not understand, do not believe the Gospel. It is worse than nothing… because a generation is being coddled and lied to on their way to hell.

Jesus challenged His challengers. Three hundred years ago, Wesley asked, “How is it, that all who are called Christians, do not discern the signs of these times?” The question still burns today – even as the signs burn brighter in our faces.

Yes, we win at the end of time. But until then, God wants us to run the race.

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Click: Ain’t No Grave

5-28-18

Memorial Day. It is easy to get caught up, these days – or lost – in the homogeneity of patriotic holidays. Fourth of July? Veterans Day? Memorial Day? The culprits, if we forget the specific origins, are the general diminution of patriotism in America, and also the side-effect, the lack of teaching and remembrance. A disregard, frankly, of the importance of who we are as people… how we got here… and who paid the costs.

The Fourth of July, of course, commemorates our independence, and the spirit behind that independence. Veterans Day generally honors the veterans amongst us. Memorial Day, once “Decoration Day,” honors not so much the veterans who live, but those who died.

I wish we had few such holidays. Not because I want to wish away wars, and certainly not against the spirit of sacrifice. But just as “President’s Day” cheapens the immense honor due to Lincoln and Washington and few others, when officer-holders high and low are commemorated, so would more holidays. Especially when our contemporary age creates or re-fashions national holidays around weekends and possible commercial sales opportunities.

On Memorial Day, “we call to mind the deaths of those who died that the nation
might live, who wagered all that life holds dear for the great prize of death in battle, who poured out their blood like water in order that the mighty national structure raised by the far-seeing genius of Washington, Franklin, Marshall, Hamilton, and the other great leaders of the Revolution, great framers of the Constitution, should not crumble into meaningless ruins,” said Theodore Roosevelt in a Memorial Day address.

Speaking personally, I have opposed many of our wars, especially in my lifetime. I am a man of the Right, in Whittaker Chambers’ phrase, ready to die for the red, white and blue, but not always for the flags of strangers. I revere the American Republic; not necessarily the American Empire. But what I think is statistically irrelevant, and irrelevant in my slight role as an essayist with some followers.

My own ambiguity about foreign policies and priorities that result in shed American blood is put aside – cast aside – on these Memorial days.

I pray that we all share admiration and respect and honor for those Americans, especially in these days where the military draft no longer exists; those who did what they did for the heritage of our past, the reality of our present, for the hope of the future.

What were these men and women made of? They volunteered; they sacrificed; they died. They suffered nightmarish injuries. When able, many of them re-enlisted.

No matter what progressives, especially those of an earlier generation, say, our servicemen and servicewomen did not wear uniforms and train with weapons because they hated.

They loved.

They loved their comrades. They loved their flag. They loved their missions – the people whose situations they liberated, the people they rescued. They loved their families back home, believing that the sacrifices ultimately were worth it. They loved their homes and streets and towns; their way of life.

Even the least-schooled understood the inchoate but essential virtues behind the tattered flag – that America has stood for something. They fought, and were willing to die, for something greater than a village, or bunker that must be cleared. They were conscious of being children of a great tradition (even if they were recent immigrants in uniform)… and were conscious of being fathers and mothers of that continuing tradition.

I put aside the controversies surrounding our wars and rumors of wars. On this Day especially I stand, and salute, and visit graves at random, of men and women who did the unimaginable courageous things, often in dutiful and routine ways.

Because of who they were. Because of what America is. Or was, God help us.

We salute you.

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Click: Thank You

5-21-18

Some of you might remember that song title. I am dating myself (which actually is a useless pastime, dating yourself – you always wind up with half the food going cold and saying things you already know) but it was a movie from 1966.

It is hardly remembered today. It was the film that made a star out of Michael Caine, and the first movie to be “Suggested for mature audiences” by the Motion Picture Association of America, precursor to a PG rating. Its theme song by Burt Bacharach and Hal David was sung by Cher and flopped; a later release by Dionne Warwick was a hit. The movie was very “Sixties,” with Caine playing a wastrel and what that age called a womanizer – #MeToo alert – whose escapades and affairs led to broken relationships and abortions. In the end, Alfie is bitter and alone, very alone, and a swinging theme that trafficked in glamour ends sadly.

Ironically, the “naughty” and edgy movie presented a moral. Well, that was the 1960s. It was the “Me Generation,” in Tom Wolfe’s phrase, before MeToo… the social chickens coming home to roost… which provides us a moment for a detour to mourn the passing of Tom Wolfe last week. As famous as a celebrity for his foppish attire as he was significant as a 20th-century American author, he was able to infiltrate and dissect the fashionable limousine-liberal Establishment in a series of social-commentary essays and novels, as well as flag-waving Americana, for instance in The Right Stuff.

And little remembered is that Tom Wolfe also was a brilliant cartoonist and biting caricaturist.

To return to the ‘60s, as I was familiar as a teen with the movie of this essay’s title, What’s It All About, Alfie? As well as the tectonic shifts in society around all of us. From trivial things like bell bottoms to substantial factors like relationships, it’s hard not to notice major changes in society.

Or is it? The title song What’s It All About, Alfie? went through my mind recently when the unusual name Alfie popped up in the news. Do you remember it? In Mercyside, England, home of the Beatles, Alfie Evans, 23 months old, was dying of a mysterious nerve ailment. In brief, the hospital’s doctors judged that he was brain dead, and ordered life-support removed. Since Alfie responded to stimuli and opened his eyes, his parents objected. A glimmer of hope!

Lawsuits, appeal after appeal, went to the High Court, which also ordered that life-support should end. The parents approached the Vatican, and the pope made an appeal for mercy. The Italian government granted emergency citizenship to little Alfie, that he might be taken to Italy for treatment. The British government barred the boy’s travel and prohibited the parents from attempting any such measures.

In the end, the hospital and the government prevailed. Life-support was removed. Alfie lived another five days on his own, and died.

What’s it all about, Alfie? A generation ago, euthanasia was a taboo subject, yet people pushed the law and argued for mercy killing. Ten years ago, a vice-presidential candidate warned of governmental “Death Panels”… and was widely ridiculed by liberals. Yet – abortion itself aside – today we have the government preventing parents from exercising medical rights over their children; sanctioned killing of Down Syndrome children (at a 90 per cent rate); and death penalty verdicts for impaired children. No matter what the parents desire.

Yes, Alfie’s case was in England. But we take note because it made more news than most comparable horrors. It happens across Western Europe… and, more and more, in the United States.

The Founders had to prioritize their major priorities desired for the nation they built – LIFE, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But now unelected bureaucrats and unaccountable judges hold the power of life and death over their subjects. In a different flavor of significance, the Masterpiece Cakeshop case has been decided by the Supreme Court, and its decision – probably with a surfeit of concurrent opinions and dissents – will be handed down this summer.

That such a case was brought, much less having risen to the Supremes, is enough of a barometer for us to gauge the state of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness in the United States. You have heard of the case: a pair of homosexuals sought to have their “wedding” cake decorated in a certain way, and for their nuptials; and having found a Christian baker, Jack Phillips in Lakewood CO, who said “No thank you” on the basis of his religious beliefs, they and their backers filed suit.

Jack had maintained courtesy, and offered to sell any other cake and any other decoration; and he recommended other local bakers who might accommodate them. But their intention was to sue. After years of court appearances, decisions, appeals – and a business harmed; a family’s life rocked – Jack, and the world, are about to learn whether the Founders deliberated, and patriots lived and died, for the sake of cake decoration.

Of course it IS more important than that. Because the Left and Secularists have made it so. Freedom of action – that a shop owner can exercise his own standards. Freedom of speech – argued on both sides. Freedom of religion – can Jack, and therefore all of us, be coerced to act contrary to conscience? Artistic expression – must an artist, yes, a dedicated cake decorator, be told what he can design… or not? Civil rights – are the homosexuals harmed, as Blacks were under Jim Crow laws? Freedom of association – Rather a different level than public restrooms or seats on a bus or the right to attend neighborhood schools, can a court force people to fraternize, even via simple business transactions?

If the Court says that Jack Phillips must accede to antithetical messages being produced in his workplace… would it follow that a Jewish baker must fulfill a demand to decorate cakes with swastikas on Hitler’s birthday?

These ARE questions with significant import… and deeper implications. If the Court decides against Christians who want to act like Christians – fill in names and beliefs of anyone these days, except the politically correct and approved – it will let loose the Establishment’s fury against sermons (hate speech?), Bible studies (already proscribed in some San Diego neighborhoods), parental authority (expect more “divorce petitions” filed by children against parents, yes), more restrictions on prayer in public places… et cetera, au nauseum.

It is coming. It was predicted in the Bible. No surprise.

And it was forecast in a quirky film in the Crazy 1960s.

What’s it all about, Alfie?
Is it just for the moment we live?
What’s it all about when you sort it out, Alfie?
Are we meant to take more than we give?

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Click: God Of Our Fathers

5-14-18

I never have had the privilege of being a mother. As closely bound as I was to fathering, being present at the births of our children, then nurturing and rearing them; fatherhood in all senses… I am aware it all is a far-distant second. The special relationship of mother and child – among all species – is a unique and precious blessing.

A birthright, in fact.

For all the good feelings engendered by Mother’s Day, I reserve a portion of contempt for those creatures who denigrate the institution of Motherhood. Not loutish men alone, but women themselves who, ultimately, are self-loathing. Those who deny the privilege – to others, not only for themselves – of sanctifying the foundation of the family; for hating what we love; for hating what is love.

I reserve a portion of pity, too. I must. What I often call in this space the Culture of Death extends beyond the trashing of motherhood and women’s traditional roles. Biologically, homosexuals cannot naturally procreate (pro-create). Abortion fanatics crusade for death – disguising their “advocacy” as concern for “convenience” for the mothers; as birth-control-after-the-fact. And so on. They are to be pitied, and prayed for.

In the meantime, my Mother’s Day is filled with memories of the Mom I knew. I loved her, and love her. She was an example whose nurture appears stronger through the years: seeds, planted, and growing in my life. A servant’s heart, making silent and willing sacrifices. Was she perfect? Smoking and drinking were regrettable but did not affect her salvation. Big deal. My sisters and I prayed for Jesus to turn the wine back into water.

Of vital importance is that she knew Jesus, was active in churches, and related almost every question I ever had to the gospel.

A preacher in aprons. A saint in curlers. An invariable forgiver.

And that example was no less special because it is the frequent role of mothers – not stereotyped, not clichéd, not pressed upon her as a dirty, leftover job – the role of imparting life lessons, of teaching values; sharing love.

Fathers can do such things before mothers do, with their children. Life’s circumstances dictate such things, and some fathers might be the more tender of a set of parents – but we all know that in the vast majority of cases in the Human Family, it is the mother who holds, hugs, shares tears, teaches, and smiles, a little more than the father, or at least a little earlier. And we children remember.

Fathers discipline; mothers forgive. Fathers prod the way forward; mothers welcome us home. Fathers mold us; mothers know us.

I believe God created Woman not only as a helpmeet to Adam, but as an Assistant to Himself. As Mothers, to show unconditional love; to bond in unique ways with their children; to bear the essence of comfort, understanding, acceptance.

Think back to the first song you learned, maybe a lullaby. The first prayers you heard, or memorized. The first gentle nursery rhyme or fairy tale. Chances are that was your mother’s voice, mother’s smiles, mother’s tears. And if not… probably Grandmother’s. This is our DNA, emotions as strong as genetics.

I admired my Dad, oh yes; I still finish every project wondering if he would approve; to be a good professional. But Mom? If I can be as good a man as she was a mother, I will die grateful and content.

There are some women who, by circumstance or infirmity, sadly cannot become mothers. Most women whom I have met from those groups have hearts even more tender for families and for children.

However, sorry to tell all of you radical harridans who hate, you have disinvited yourselves from family reunions – not at ballparks on summer afternoons, or Grandma’s house on Winter evenings – but from that mystical, privileged, and sacred Family that truly is a gift of God.

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Does this essay seem to dwell on old-fashioned things? I plead guilty! There are too many old fashions that we are losing. Here is one: a tender lullaby, a mother’s song, written by Stephen Foster 150 years ago. Recently we shared another tender song by this great American poet and composer. This, sung by Alison Kraus, is equally impressive. And some crazed radicals are tearing down his statue in the town of his birth…

Click: Slumber, My Darling

5-7-18

I don’t care so much about ages of rocks. What’s more important to me is the Rock of Ages.

So said William Jennings Bryan (or perhaps it was Matthew Harrison Brady) in a famous confrontation over points of the Creation / Evolution debate. The Rock of Ages, familiar in the eponymous old hymn of 250 years ago, refers both to the smitten rock of Moses and the broken body of Jesus, both “cleft” for us and our protection.

Turning around the phrase “age of rocks” is another double-meaning, suggesting the pursuit of scientific, even beneficial, discoveries should not blind us to life’s priorities.

Evolution is not our agenda here, no matter how it would turn out. Priorities are.

Godly people, Christians, the spiritually inclined, usually live out their faith by service. Service and sacrifice; good works; dedication; charity and charitable work; missions work; good deeds. I can personally attest that after a conversion experience – in fact, usually especially after a born-again or life-changing transformation – we are filled with zeal.

We want to know God. We hunger and thirst for the Word. We pray, sometimes as the Bible says, virtually “without ceasing.” And, as night follows day, we want to serve Him. How many of the faithful for 2000 years have done everything from be dedicated to personal piety, profoundly, to abandon lifestyles and become missionaries or serve the sick or poor… or join holy orders, preaching and teaching, sometimes taking vows of silence or poverty… or, like holy sponges, study, study, study, the scriptures.

Since I asked “how many,” I will answer truthfully: we cannot know. There have been uncountable such believers, transformed by the power of the Holy Ghost. Thank God for them, recruits and foot-soldiers in the army of the Lord.

I do not suggest these people – most of whom, frankly, I regard with jealousy – are misguided. Not at all, but as I have yielded to these impulses through the years, responding in myriad ways, I can also identify with what sounds at first like “knowing God and making Him known,” a motto of many churches. Not bad, I want to suggest… but not the best response.

I must quickly explain my distinction! Citing the recognition of the “Rock of Ages” as being our refuge; and remembering that Abraham Lincoln said in response to wartime prayers, “We should not be so concerned that God is on our side, but that we are on His side,” I believe we get warmer about proper priorities.

Knowing God… desiring that we feel good about Jesus… and urging others to want to know and feel better about God… must not be our top priority. Those are good impulses, but not entirely His. Wanting to feel better about God might be a cloud-parting revelation to some people. And… inspires us, certainly, to do good deeds.

Yes, there are “fruits” of our changed lives. But pleasing God – feeling better about Him – should not take precedence over the corollary. That is, the impulses of our Holy Spirit indwelling can be parallel, not either / or.

My point is that when we know Jesus, it is not as important that we feel good about God. It is more important – essential, really – that GOD feels good about US.

In the end (literally, the End Times) he will not look so much at our deeds. Yes, we are told He may declare, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” And we do tasks and works: after all, He has a calling on every believer’s life.

But a miracle-working God can do deeds independent of us; and does. He does not need us, really… except as His Plan is worked through us. And remember that the Bible reminds us to be humble – and remember priorities! – when we are told that our deeds, our “righteousness,” are like dirty rags in His sight. He is holy.

What impresses God, so to speak, is not our acts so much as our hearts. Jesus did not come in service of committees and ministries and campaigns.

He came for us.

Individuals. God sees our hearts… knows our hearts. THAT truth might make us tremble at times. But is no less truthful. God wants to feel good about our hearts and is not automatically blinded by “works.”

Listen: “By their fruits ye shall know them.” Yes! The natural response of believers will be to serve, and that is 100 per cent proper. And we desire to know Him and please Him.

But never lose sight of God’s priority – that He cares more about knowing you than anything you can do or say. How about your heart? Is it right with God?

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Click: Search Me

4-30-18

I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God. It changes me.

This is a line written by C S Lewis, the preeminent Christian apologist; and spoken by Anthony Hopkins’ portrayal of Lewis in the motion picture Shadowlands.

The movie observes its 25th anniversary this year. It is also the 25th anniversary of me being an idiot for never having watched Shadowlands. I revere the Oxford don Lewis and frequently quote him (for instance, in last week’s blog essay); I pass out copies of his humble but monumental Christian books (Mere Christianity; The Screwtape Letters); I had never read his children’s classics (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; others of the Chronicles of Narnia series) but my children did, and loved them. My daughter urged the movie Shadowlands on me.

But I never saw it. Sloppy and neglectful. I heard only good things about the biopic, as it were, of a hero.

I made up for lost time (reminding me that his friend Malcolm Muggeridge’s autobiography was entitled Chronicles of Lost Time) and perhaps prompted by last week’s quotation, my friend and I rented and watched. It was profoundly moving, one of the best motion pictures I have beheld.

Readers might recall that last year I described staying a night in the delightful Old Inn at Crawfordsburn in Bangor, County Down, outside Belfast, Northern Ireland. The sprawling, creeky, artifacts-crowded ancient inn had numerous charms of its own, not the least of which was a plaque modestly stating that C S Lewis and his bride Joy Gresham had spent their honeymoon (“a perfect fortnight”) there. Not very odd in itself – though a delightful surprise for me – because Lewis was born in nearby Belfast. Through the years he and his famous literary circle convened there.

Lewis had been an atheist and had traveled the same path to faith, or back to faith, that those literary fellows like J R R Tolkien, G K Chesterton, and Muggeridge did. Fallen-away, agnostic, skeptical, Socialist, atheist… all became not merely orthodox Christians but fervent believers, uniquely sharing the gospel with the world in ways that we categorize as “apologetics.”

Joy Gresham was an American Jewess who also converted to Christianity. During their short marriage she contracted and died of cancer. The agonizingly brief love story, their marriage of blossoming awareness, lasted from 1956 to 1960.

After Joy’s death, Lewis wrote a tender and thoughtful book on spiritual confrontations with death. Pain, grief, and suffering ironically had been major themes of his early lectures. After Joy’s death he wrote A Grief Observed, but he published it under a pen name, so as not to traffic in his loss. It was such a meaningful and profound book that on its publication, many of Lewis’ friends sent him the book as perfect reading to assuage his grief… not knowing he was the author.

The movie takes a few liberties, as movies do. For instance, the glorious and significant irony of that book about grief “cast upon the waters” and returning to him is not mentioned. Their movie-honeymoon was not to Crawfordsburn, but to a Lewis scene of fond childhood memory (imagine the eagerness to see the places of last year’s visit!)

Shadowlands had my memory race back in time, but not only to favorite books or a tourist spot. I hope it would have the same effect on you… even if, as I have pleaded guilty, you might not have not watched it either! When we confront the things that C S Lewis contemplated – the simplicity of Christianity; the overwhelming love of God; the profundity of grief; the essence of love – we savor the unique wisdom provided by those sensitive souls who know how to translate the Gospel from English to English.

That is, to bring us the blessings of seeing better, hearing more clearly, understanding in a richer manner, and feeling in ways you never thought were available to us. What life holds… what God offers. Things that were always there, of course; but somehow we miss. And by seizing them at the late moments of life, they are appreciated not as “last chances” but as sweet rewards.

Lewis had known Christianity, but ultimately came to know Christ: his head met his heart when Joy entered his life. Joy had known about religion, but when she taught her husband how to hold hands (literally), they found their way to the cross.

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Click: Miserere Mei Deus

4-23-18

I was a guest on a couple of podcasts this week, most of the questions having to do with one of my “other lives” – in the cartoon and comics fields. I drew political cartoons, edited notable strips like “Peanuts,” wrote for Disney and TV animation, and was Editor at Marvel Comics.

Ancient history, but to many fans today superheros are a little like Holy Writ. The podcast interviewers sometimes asked questions about projects I had nearly forgotten! Previous to my time at Marvel (a different Marvel in those days) I had never been a big fan of superheros themselves. I explained that to Stan Lee, whom I admired (still do!) and had known previously.

Part of Stan Lee’s credo was that we were in the business of “suspending disbelief” – an aphorism credited to him but actually coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge about three centuries ago. Coleridge likened the concept to “poetic faith.”

I have come to regard the superhero ethos as rather unhealthy – the guys in the white hats (or white Spandex) always win? By power, force, and violence? “Morals” at the end of every story? Naw – any values divorced from biblical truth are counterfeit. Readers were being weaned on “New Gods” whist the old God was ignored, dismissed, and, most tellingly, disbelieved.

Disbelieved by fans and creators on this basis – get ready: I had many such debates, so this is accurate – “that stuff in the Bible can’t be true… those supernatural events and miracles are all fables… Jesus couldn’t have done all those things; get real, Rick.”

That reflects neither poetry nor faith.

‘nuff said, true unbelievers. I suppose I am supposed to find comfort in the saying that believing nothing is better than believing the wrong thing. Save that for fortune cookies, not life principles. It is a Super-Lie. (Not to mention the pragmatic imperative — a society with no core beliefs CANNOT, by definition, operate on any positive standards or values.)

In the parlance of today’s comics culture, Jesus was the greatest superhero of them all. He was sent to earth; He knew the past of prehistory and could foretell the future; he read peoples’ minds; He turned water into wine, fed a multitude by praying an increase over a basket of fish and bread; He walked on water and walked through walls; He raised people from the dead, and rose Himself despite agonizing torture and putrefaction in a tomb.

His costume was a simple robe, except for the holy Blood that covered Him according to uncountable prophesies and predictions. The greatest of His superheroic acts, in my eyes, is that He did this all for us sinners, while we were yet in our sins. But more of that another time…

This view of Jesus – certainly proper and very biblical – was scoffed at when I had discussions back during my comic-book life. Strange, it seemed to me, and it still seems strange.

However, Jesus was not a fictional character, but indisputably a historical figure. I knew Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who invented Superman as teenagers in Cleveland. “It just seemed like a fun character, a fun story to think about.” I asked Bob Kane how he came to create Batman. A similar story – at least no high-culture or pop-culture babble about cosmic forces of evil and revenge from him. “A fun idea,” not to mention, in each hero’s heritage, some fictional antecedents.

Motion pictures have reinforced a generation’s tendency to think of superheros as plausible, and their powers as virtual. Art imitates life imitates art. Yet Christianity teaches not the opposite nor the corollary – but the truth that Jesus was God-with-us (“Emmanuel”); that He had super powers; and that He still does. His miracles were not virtual but real.

Christianity is nothing if not about the supernatural. Welcome to Reality, not Fantasy!

Jesus, as a historical truth, is not a mere character in a story. His acts and teachings are not merely symbolic. And He is a Man who lives today. And confronts us. He looked at you from the cross; He looks into your eyes as He leaves the tomb.

More than a symbol, more than a character, more even than a superhero. You must confront Him in return; you cannot ignore Him. For, as C S Lewis said, this Man of history, after what He claimed and what was claimed of Him, was one of only three things: a deluded fool; a master charlatan; or… the Savior of humankind, lover of your soul.

All hail the POWER of Jesus’ name!

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The podcast interview referred to above: cbh-podcast-episode-17-rick-marschall-interview-part-1-newspaper-strips-to-marvel-comics

PLEASE watch this moving performance of a classic hymn, performed in praise and worship, and discernible singing in tongues —

Click: All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name

4-16-18

There are a lot of things in life we cannot control. Or so we tell ourselves, and believe. Self-evidently, there are things that happen outside our power to anticipate or escape or even plan.

But we also affect more things than we know. Our attitudes affect our altitudes. Our morale influences our morals. And all the other fortune-cookie sayings; cliches are cliches, usually, because they ring true. Heed them… and realize that the “little things” are really big things, or might be the seeds of big things to come. You know, “big oaks from little acorns grow.” That’s true too.

I have been thinking along these lines, lately, in moody moments when I realize how minor decisions made years ago led to major situations – places, jobs, friends. Choices have implications. Let’s say a casual choice about a job, or between two places to live, set us on paths with many implications. Sometimes complications, too; but that’s life.

Seemingly casual choices can affect your life situations, and those of your children too – places, jobs, friends. Spouses, of course.

None of this is to say that life is doomed to be a game of chance, casual in the extreme. No, it is said in Ecclesiastes that “Time and chance happeneth to all.” This is not a lesson to accept the dictates of a mindless universe; we are not ball bearings in a cosmic pinball machine.

Just the opposite. As we make life choices – and life seems to make choices for us – we do best to remember a couple of things.

Life is not so random, despite appearances. God orders our steps. He creates opportunities. The “trick” is to be open to His leading, and not fearful of a soulless fate.

Even when making choices, we should remain in prayer about the next steps, future opportunities, the fields beyond the horizon we can barely see. Fervent prayer avails much, especially when that prayer enables you to be intentional about your reality.

Putting yourself in a position to serve God, to please Him in whatever you do, will put yourself in a place of blessing. You will indeed find fulfillment, to see how your dreams merge with life’s joys and God’s Will.

Never mind what the world tells you about quantum physics, or the results of random choices, or a universe that operates on karma. These things will be assigned thanks or blame for this-and-that as long as you wake up every day, and have a pulse. Design your own filing system and use your own Post-It notes when you look back on life.

Chances are you will be wrong. We cannot ascribe a full life – or even short-term happiness – to random choices, or no intentionality. We are not leaves on streams, but human beings going through life.

Thermometers display temperatures, or our surroundings. They reveal… but only to a degree (ha). We are positions to be thermostats, however: to set the temperatures of our existence. Are we hot? Are we cold? How do we start the day? What choices will we make? What standards do we apply? What situations, among thousands of choices every day, will we face and consider and act upon?

God has given us minds and free will and, most importantly, a channel through which to seek Him; speak to Him; and listen to Him.

And at the end of our lives, when God takes our virtual temperatures – how we have lived and served Him and walked in His will – it is in our power to count our blessings… not count our regrets. Setting that course is something we can do now, and not wait until the end of our days.

Make that journey worthwhile and joy-filled. You have that choice.

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Click: When I Get To the End Of the Way

4-9-18

Three men meet by a well in a Jerusalem square. Around them, women draw water, men walk their sheep to market, people haggle at the market stands.

“Did you hear? More news about the Nazarene. First he came into the city and everyone praised Him. A week later, everybody wanted His blood…”

“And they got it!”

“Yes, they buried what was left of His poor body. And now I hear…”

“We are all hearing about it! They say He rose from the dead!”

“He did! I saw Him! I heard Him preach yesterday in the hills!”

“I saw Him too, walking past the temple. There were crowds of people following Him! More than when he was just a teacher.”

“My neighbors went to listen to Him preach. They say He looks like He used to… but more handsome, almost serene… except for the nail-scars in His wrists…”

“It’s just like it used to be. He’s preaching and teaching and healing and talking to people one-on-one too.”

“What do you think? He never really died?”

“Don’t be crazy. He could have faked death? What about the whip-marks and the spear-thrust and the crown of thorns and all the pokes and scratches and…”

“Right. His body looks perfect. Jospehus, the Jewish historian, saw Him and said the Nazarene came back to life just like He predicted.”

Another man, who had been listening, joined the conversation. “It was not only Jesus’ prediction, friends; it is just like the Prophets foretold.”

“Yes… He is reminding us of those Scriptures. Daniel. Isaiah. It is hard to count all the things that are happening just as the Holy Books said they would.”

“What now? Will He live forever? He speaks to multitudes; He visits the sick; He puts His arm around widows and the persecuted; He teaches and preaches; then nobody sees Him for a while… Does He sleep? Where does He go…?”

The stranger spoke up again. “No. He won’t walk these streets like this forever, like the man we remember. Remember, He told us, ‘It is better that I leave, for if I do not, the Helper and Comforter will not come to you. But when I go, I will send Him to Believers.’ That was also His prophesy…”

“But why stay here for a time?” one of the men asked.

The stranger said, “To bear witness to the Jews who demanded His death, and to be seen by the Romans who killed Him, to show His resurrected body even to His followers like Thomas, who doubted. To inspire accounts even among the heathen and those like Josephus… To silence the skeptics.”

“OK,” wondered one of the men, “But I wonder where He disappears to at times… where is He when the crowds go home, when He is not seen praying with a few or healing one by the gate…”

The stranger spoke up again. “He has proven Himself the Son of the Living God, and who Himself lives, having conquered death and hell… so I am not being disrespectful, or trying to put my thoughts on His actions…”

“Yes?” the others asked.

“It could be that, in His own way, Jesus is rehearsing for Eternity. Because just like He did in His ministry here, and just as He promised about the Holy Ghost to come… God walks the dark hills.

“… the ways, the by-ways. He walks through the billows of life’s troubled sea. He walks through the cold dark night, the shadows of midnight. God walks the dark hills… Just to guide you and me.

“God walks the dark hills, to guide our footsteps. He walks everywhere, by night and by day. He walks in the silence, on down the highway… God walks the dark hills… to show us the way.

“God walks in the storm, the rain, and the sunshine. He walks in the shadows, or through glimmering light. Helps us walk up the mountains so high, cross rivers, through valleys…

“God walks the dark hills… ‘cause He loves you and me.”

The men were silent for more than a moment. The hustle of the neighborhood’s activity continued on its way, however. When they looked up, the stranger was gone, but they looked at each other and agreed that their day’s business could wait. They wanted to find this risen Lord… to listen to Him more carefully… to remember the things He preached.

And somehow in their minds they knew that if they lost their way in life, if they strayed from the Truth… Jesus would would be walking the dark hills that sometimes surround us… and find them. We want to – we need to – look for Him. But, no worries, He is willing to walk the dark hills to find us where we are.

‘Cause He loves you and me.

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This haunting Gospel song was written by a woman in Oklahoma about whom little is known; and who, evidently, never wrote another song again. A gift…

Click: God Walks the Dark Hills

4-2-18

The arcane vagaries of the church calendar are not necessarily negative. Jesus was not born in December; and the observance of Easter is on different dates each year, and across various Christian sects. If the changeable dates oblige us to focus more on the events and their significance, and less on the secular-tending aspects – Holy days, not holidays – that can be a good thing.

Occasionally Easter coincides with April Fool’s Day, a secular day if there ever was one; a tradition devoted to pranks, whose origins are appropriately shrouded in obscurity.

There is another association between Easter and a silly practice that is more profound than would first seem.

The late Anthony Burger, remarkable Christian pianist, told the story of his young son in an Easter pageant in Sunday School. The boy had the unlikely role of Jesus – unlikely because he was probably the youngest of the children in the play; but his only acting assignment was to emerge from the tomb.

On the evening of the performance, the nervous parents and the curious audience waited – and waited – for “Jesus” after the Resurrection moment to walk out of the tomb. And nervously waited long moments more. Then, finally, in the portrayal of God’s miracle-working power, but also a testament of the beautiful innocence of childhood, the boy leaped from the cardboard tomb and yelled…

“Ready or not, here I come!!!”

Laughs, relief, sympathy. And – “out of the mouths of babes.”

In a real sense, Sunday-School pageants aside, that virtually IS what Jesus said when He conquered death and emerged from the tomb. Uncountable prophecies were fulfilled; He confirmed His role as Messiah; Satan was defeated; hope was extended to a humankind that had chosen sin and death; new life was proclaimed; eternal paradise in the presence of this resurrected Jesus was available to all.

Salvation is free, but a price must be paid. That holy anomaly is explained not only in the terrible sacrifice of the Incarnate Savior. There is a price still to be paid by you and me, beyond what Jesus “paid.” It is inherent in the ironic truth in the symbolic shout –

“Ready or not, here I come!” That actually is what Jesus meant; what He virtually said.

As the Bible teaches, we must believe in our hearts that Jesus is the Son of God; and confess with our lips that God raised Him from the dead (Romans 10: 9,10). Not as easy as it sounds, but… Ready or not, we must make those decisions.

To be a New Creature in Christ, we must be, well, new creatures. Changed attitudes, new priorities, a rebirth. Ready or not, we must make those decisions.

Believing, confessing, and forgiving – oh! Forgiving, as we need forgiveness ourselves! – and yielding to the tugs of our new best friend, the Holy Spirit who will guide us and inspire us and empower us. Ready or not, we must make those decisions.

So the child’s deceptively simple transference of the “Ready or not, here I come!” game teaches us a profound lesson.

During Lent, this year, there was another game in e-mail threads and social media that diverted eyes from the truth and power of the Resurrection, rather than focusing our proper attention. And this was frequently perpetrated by “Christian” sites and “experts.”

You might have seen them: articles about Who killed Jesus? Was it the Jews or the Romans? Have the Jews been smeared by anti-Semitic charges? What does the Bible really say? What have recent historical studies suggested about Roman law in their courts and Jewish rules in their temples…?

Academic pabulum, scholasticism that diverts.

God killed Jesus. To put it another way, Jesus virtually scrambled up the cross.
Jesus’s “killing” was God’s plan, set out long before. His Will was done, and Jesus the Messiah – even Jesus the Man – submitted willingly. A sanctified suicide, in its way, for our salvation. Nit-picking about Roman laws and politics, Jewish traditions and rules, does little but to move the focus from the Savior’s vicarious act to take our sins upon Himself.

These “experts” seek to persuade us that it was not that “God so loved the world…” but that “Roman authorities and Jewish leaders so shaped events…” This view is evil. We should not consider for a moment that the most heinous acts of cruelty and suffering, the shedding of Holy Blood, was – Ready or not, here comes the truth – anything but an act of love.

The most extreme form of punishment was endured so that we would not endure it ourselves at the hand of a Just God. For God so loved us. And when Jesus emerged from the tomb we were graced with the means to avoid eternity in hell – which brings up another fairy tale of this season, a church leader’s reported intimation that there IS no hell. This is for another discussion, but Jesus’s death and Resurrection were in vain if this were so.

In the meantime, welcome the risen Savior with open arms! But be “ready” for the implications of the New Life.

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Without denying the undeniable joy of the Resurrection, I have tried to suggest today that in the freedom of the New Life comes a spiritual responsibility that is profound, for our own souls and those of our families and friends. In that sense, the tears of former life are mirrored in the tears we shed as born-again believers for the unsaved, and tears of joy as New Creatures in Christ.

Therefore I chose this video clip, “Have Mercy, My God,” from Bach’s “St Matthew’s Passion.” Julia Hamari, solost; Otto Büchner, violin; Karl Richter conducting the Munich Bach Orchestra and Choir.

Have mercy, my God, for the sake of my tears! See before You heart and eyes that weep. Have mercy, my God. / Erbarme dich, mein Gott, um meiner Zähren willen! Schaue hier, Herz und Auge weint vor dir bitterlich. Erbarme dich, mein Gott.

Click: Heart and Eyes That Weep

3-26-18

The night was so different from all the rest,
And a silence covers the Earth;
The stars have no glimmer, the moon tries to hide,
For in death lies the Man of their birth.

In a room filled with sorrow, a mother cries
For Jesus, her Son, now is gone;
Her Child sent from heaven was taken away,
Heart broken, she feels all alone.

At the feet of a mother a little boy cries,
Saying, “Mama, I don’t understand;
I remember the look of love in His eyes,
That I saw, by the touch of His hand.”

The King of all ages, the Giver of life,
For a moment lies silent and still;
But a power from heaven comes breaking the night,
And death must bow to His will!

A stone moves, the Earth shakes, birds start singing!
The sun shines, the Earth warms for new life that’s bringing;
The little boy stops crying, the mother is smiling –
For death could not hold a King!

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We all know “The Night Before Christmas,” but have you thought about the night before Easter…?

These lyrics were written (and here sung) by Donnie Sumner, gospel singer. The nephew of legendary singer J D Sumner, Donnie sang with the famous Stamps Quartet, his own groups, and behind Elvis Presley. Caught up in show biz for a while, he overcame addictions to gain a powerful testimony, which fueled his “second career” as songwriter and minister.

Click: The Night Before Easter

3-19-18

In some ways, St Patrick is more of an American saint than an Irish saint. He was born in Britain and enslaved, while young, in Ireland. While tending flocks in the lonely hills, the unschooled boy sought God in his musings and humble prayers. Eventually he came to faith, followed God’s voice to dare returning to Britain. He did… he learned more of the Bible and Christian doctrine… returned to Ireland and mightily evangelized a special race of people, leading to their empowerment to great things, temporal and spiritual.

Why do I say he is, in a way, more of an American saint? Because in America, not Ireland, cities hold massive parades, dye entire rivers green, and festoon homes and schoolrooms, even those of Blacks and Jews, in green. I once was in Dublin on St Patrick’s Day, and in the Temple Bar section of the city there were uncountable drunks in funny green hats, green vests, and “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” buttons.

To a person, they were all American tourists. The Irish, north and south (and the Anglican Communion too) revere St Patrick in a more proper and reasonable manner. My son-in-law Norman McCorkell, of Derry, Northern Ireland, is our guest blogger this week. He is a BA (Hons) graduate of the Irish Bible Institute in Dublin, and is passionate about discipleship and mission. He serves on the teaching team of Foyle Vineyard Church in Derry; and visits the local prisons as a volunteer through Prison Fellowship Northern Ireland.

During the “Patrick celebrations” the more theologically minded among us will find it difficult not to marvel at the prolific missionary work in Ireland led by Saint Patrick. After returning to the land of his enslavement as a teenager from western Britain, some 400 years after Christ gave the command to go and make disciples, Patrick inaugurated a disciple-making movement in Ireland that would change civilization. His burden to see the pagan “barbarians” transformed through the Gospel stood in stark contrast to the church of the Roman Empire, which for many years constrained the Gospel to within its borders. A lack, frankly, of missionary zeal.

Patrick passionately embraced the best of Irish culture, redeeming it for the Gospel by firmly standing against elements that were incompatible – ending the slave trade; reducing tribal warfare and murder. His life was an example of a new and different kind of courage – one that lived fearlessly and peaceably through God’s promises in an atmosphere containing daily threats of those horrors: murder, betrayal, and enslavement.

Despite the violent, and even magical, opposition from locals (druids and chieftains), and criticism from church leaders (conventional bishops in Britain), Patrick used his lack of formal church training to work creatively within his context. Instead of employing church structures used by the civilized Roman Empire – based in cities, where bishops were supreme – Patrick formed an ecclesiastical model more like the Irish, who were rural and tribal. The inhabitants of Ireland had no settled towns, roads, currency, written law, government bureaucracy, or taxation. Society was decentralized, and organized around tribes led by local “kings.”

With Patrick’s influence, monasteries were established and developed as places of spiritual devotion and learning. Young men who had once given their lives to clan feuds were now transformed by the good news of Jesus Christ. Monasteries became “sending centers,” noted church scholar Steve Addison: “the Irish church took on the character of a missionary movement.” And thus Ireland became a glowing spiritual base for sending out monks into western and northern Europe to “be pilgrims for Christ.” This made Celtic monasticism “highly flexible, adaptable, and able to be transplanted – everything that the Roman Empire was not.”

“Sending Monasteries” grew rapidly throughout Ireland and Europe bringing with them unprecedented prosperity, art, and learning. These population centers on the continent would eventually develop and become cities.

Norman tells us several enormously significant things here:

Saint Patrick was a real saint, not a manufactured icon – a real man who overcame ignorance and slavery; sought God’s leading… and followed it.

His work, and his powerful, persuasive witness, transformed the social manners and repressive tendencies of countless tribes and warrior-kings in ancient Ireland. The Irish indeed saved Western civilization.

St Patrick overcame his challenges by love, and the Gospel of love. He was brave, all by God’s grace.

Four hundred years after Christ, it is notable that even when the mighty Roman Empire adopted Christianity as the state religion, it kept it within its borders, as large as the Empire was. It was Patrick who first preached to alien and hostile tribes and barbarians… the first missionary since Saint Paul.

— These are lessons for today: what we can do, too, even by ourselves and against great odds, to bring the revolutionary message of Christ’s Good News to others.

I thank Norman for these words from “the ould sod” itself. My daughter worked for awhile for the St Patrick Foundation, which works to bring healing, knowledge, and reconciliation to the two Irelands.

For Patrick is not an American saint, no. But he was not a Catholic saint alone, nor Protestant nor Church of England nor Church of Ireland.

He was a saint for all, and is a Saint for today.

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A thousand-year-old Irish hymn, “Be Thou My Vision,” has an extra meaning, sung here by Ginny Owens, who is blind.

Click: Be Thou My Vision

3-12-18

I’m going to revisit a couple places I have been to recently; and shared here. One is a place of memories, and imprints my soul. The other is physical, also soul-stirring.

I have written about Billy Graham’s effect on the world during the near-century of his ministry. People in my family were transformed from nominal Christianity to an on-fire commitment to be new creatures in Christ; and those changes spread to other family members, to friends and neighbors, to children, nieces, nephews, and godchildren. Billy Graham touched millions.

I was part of a planned PBS documentary, ultimately never finished, about American religious music. At one point, however, the crew traveled to Billy Graham’s Conference center, the Cove in North Carolina (where his funeral was held and seen on TV). Dr Graham’s Parkinson’s Disease kept him from granting an interview, but we did meet Joni Earecksen, who was there on a retreat with her mother; and Crusade leader Cliff Barrows; and “America’s Gospel Singer,” George Beverly Shea, who had been with Dr Graham since the mid-1940s.

Switch to another re-visit. Last week I wrote about visiting Colorado and taking a few days to luxuriate in God’s majesty. The excitement of a writer’s conference and historic Denver was followed by trips to the thin air and magnificent vistas of Breckenridge and Vail.

Snow-capped mountains (not quite enough snow for the skiiers) and deep valleys; profound silences and distant, circling eagles; deep blue skies and blinding white snow; the mysteries of Creation.

On other trips to this high “corner” of the world, every May in Estes Park – and will be, this year, too – I am on the faculty of another Christian Writers Conference, conducted by Write His Answer Ministries. Many years, some of us spend the “day after” decompressing and enjoying fellowship, up, up, up, even higher than the grand YMCA Conference Camp.

Above the tree line, past where pine trees alone grow, to mountaintops where the only “vegetation” is the green covering on rocks, lichens – not a moss, but nature’s strange hybrid of algae and fungus, no two tiny of which are alike. Signs warn against stepping on lichens, because they take two centuries to regenerate. Those mountaintops, when we reach them, are as other-worldly as the lichens. Frigid air but definitely shirt-sleeve conditions; snow that other signs claim might be 100 years old; and views of seemingly bottomless gorges and… even high peaks above.

One year several of us stood on a cliff, taking it all in, occasionally whispering that a fly-speck below might have been a mountain sheep or a giant hawk….

And someone of us started humming the old hymn, “This Is My Father’s World.” Then the words. We all joined in, singing softly. I can tell you that when the air is cold but the sun is bright, tears do not freeze quickly as they run down your cheeks.

These two memories gently collided this week in my mind… because that hymn was one of George Beverly Shea’s signature hymns, such to millions around the world. This week it came to mind again, appreciating that song and that God whose world it is.

But another thought collided, too. Prompted by missions newsletters from a friend in Africa… letters from friends, several, with family deaths and news of cancer diagnoses… flying into Detroit and driving home past Flint, Michigan… I was reminded that life’s mountains only rise in magnificence when contrasted with the valleys below. Life’s valleys are often dark, frequently dangerous, and always reminders of “the pictures from life’s other side.”

The uncountable souls who suffer from disease and despair; persecution and oppression; violence and assault… the countries where people are herded from their homes and where starvation is their lot… where they suffer for their consciences and cannot be free… where the shuttered homes of Detroit and the slums of Flint would be palaces to many desperate people…

these people? these conditions? these places?

THEY are parts of our Father’s world, too.

God would have us praise Him, and be forever grateful for the beauty of His creation, surely. But we cannot believe that He would forgive us – we cannot allow ourselves to forget the fact – that there are other parts of God’s world, too.

And a funny thing occurred to me on that mountaintop: we cannot move mountains or create such scenes as in the Rockies or Alps. But we CAN change slums and build neighborhoods. We can watch for eagles and sheep as they hunt for food, but we can actually feed our own neighbors.

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Click: This Is My Father’s World

3-5-18

I recently returned from the wonderful Writers On the Rock conference in Colorado. I was one of several speakers, conducting a couple of classes, and meeting a lot of great new friends. I also was reacquainted with some old friends.

I managed to squeeze in some private time. My friend and I visited Breckenridge and Vail and thanked God frequently for His amazing handiwork. We visited historic sites in Denver with our hosts Penny and Norm Carlevato – you can thank Norm for the faithful appearance of this blog; he has been the web-master for years.

The Christian writers’ conference was attended by almost 200 people, a majority of whom were aspiring writers, and many who had published one book or some blogs, still looking for tips to advance further.

There were many writers, even the aspirants, who had something or other in print. When you want to write, you write. And write. And read and write. It’s what you do because you are wired that way. Which is a good thing! God has inspired us; planted seeds of creativity; and God bless (He will) anyone who exercises those gifts.

I told the organizer, Dave Rupert, how often I heard people before and after classes, in the auditorium and lunch room, in hallways: “Did you read what I wrote since last year?” or “Have you read my book?”

Never boasting, these questions were asked by people from justifiable pride, and every writer’s sub-textual intention – hoping that people notice and understand your message; affected by what you have to say.

It struck me afterwards, especially since this was a Christian-focus conference, that the frequent question – “Have you read my book?” – might indeed have been the de facto theme. “Up above our heads”; all around us; and a part of everything we did, everything to which we dedicated our careers… in a very real sense, God Himself also asked “Have you read My Book?”

Of course He asks that every day.

He asks us, not to read the Bible every moment of every day, but sometime during every day, as many of us do. A passage, a chapter, a book. It is not an unreasonable request – but a request is inherent in the question – as God’s admonitions never are unreasonable.

The Bible is what we know of God. Yes, there is nature – I know well enough from our mountaintop experiences in Colorado. Agnostics who pose, and Christians who are lazy, can say that they can know God from communing with nature.

Wrong. That is one of the ways we can see God, even feel Him. But to know Him, we must read His book.

He meant it to be so. We have the Ten Commandments… written. We have Jesus’s teachings… recorded and written and published. I recommend visiting the new Museum of the Bible in Washington DC. I saw its substantial portions when it was on tour (in Colorado a few years ago!), and a lesson for believers and skeptics alike is that, for the hundreds and hundreds of texts from different countries, different scribes, different languages, different centuries, the texts of the Holy Scriptures vary hardly at all. The Holy Spirit “dictated” to the hearts of many writers, and oversaw the consistency of God’s Words.

Words.

Jesus communicated God’s love for us. And words, books, scripture, communicate Jesus to us.

The Bible says we are to “hide His word in our hearts.” How better than through study of those words? They are precious. I shared with an attendee at the conference that, even when I read a Bible passage for maybe the hundredth time, some new revelation dawns on my heart.

How much Bible reading is proper? Are some passages obsolete? II Timothy 3:16 tells us, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”

Have you read His book lately?

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Stephen Hill (1956-2012) Was a Baptist preacher and session singer before he launched his own gospel-music career. This is a song he sang when he and Woody Wright were invited to perform in the Netherlands. A moving song; you will be impacted in spite of the overlapping Dutch and Norwegian (he was very popular in Europe) subtitles. Words!

Click: Will He Look At Me and Say ‘Well Done’?

2-26-18

Even since last week the “gun debate” in America has intensified, taken on a new tone. What’s next?

“We need to change hearts, not laws.” Cliches generally become cliches because they are true. Laws are useful; often necessary, but raise false hopes and can be cruel tricks if people believe they will bring Heaven on earth. And the extreme of firearm confiscation or severe restrictions will only remove hardware… not hate.

I can write a book, or deliver an hour-long sermon, but my counsel for ending gun violence and similar social maladies can be summarized simply. Not Washington; not Congress; not the President; not laws; not armed guards. Simple… but not easy:

America, stop glorifying violence. Hollywood, stop making movies that preach violence – and guns – as the tools of justice (and stop the hypocrisy of those same actors rallying against the violence that makes them rich). Christians, stop letting your kids go to such movies, and play such video games. Choose.

America, stop destroying your families. Girls, stop having babies and start having weddings; men, start respecting yourselves and your girlfriends – wait until they are wives. Churches, teach your children standards. Black Church, why are 75 per cent of your teenage moms single? White church, why are your divorce rates as high, or higher, than in the general population? Choose!

America, get off drugs, get off drink, get off the cell phones, start eating together. Guys, pull up your pants and wear your baseball caps straight, and not inside the house. Teenage girls, stop trying to look like women your moms’ age when you go to the mall. And moms, stop trying to dress like teenage girls. CHOOSE!

America, stop the secularization. Re-institute prayer in public places; return Bible readings to classrooms. I am not ancient, but I remember opening each day with Bible readings in the public school. Did it “save” anyone? Maybe not, but it implied “values” to all. The Jewish kids read from the Old Testament, and one Hindu girl read from her holy book; two kids from atheist families were allowed to read or stay silent or however they felt comfortable. Choices.

A nation that is raised – as ours now is, make no mistake – not on DIFFERENT values than previously, but taught that there ARE no values; that nation is doomed to die. And worse than die, its children are consigned to respect no rules but their own. When they do not respect themselves, they cannot respect others – which I believe is why there are so many PC Thought-Police today: at our core, we all still desire rules and standards, so secular nonsense is imposed by elites. “Do as they say…”

A generation ago, “stiff-necked bigots,” as we were called, predicted that if we disconnected God from our nation’s formal workings, our nation would fall apart at the seams. “Hurting the feelings” of minorities, atheists, etc., became more important than affirming our own standards. We predicted that if heritage and tradition became loathsome values… that we risked raising a generation of self-indulgent, morally loose, selfish kids who largely were more interested in pleasure, even drugs and alcohol and sex, than the earlier generations of kids who made American great, and sustained that America. Silly predictions?

The answer is easy. “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord” (Acts 3:19). Easy… but not simple. Holy behavior, often empty, is not the true way to Jesus, but Jesus truly is the way to holiness.

Do-able? America just has to decide between a return to morality and Biblical values; repenting of personal and social sins; giving up immorality and self-indulgence, leading to a safer, happier, more just society – or deciding for more of what America has become. Arguments, hate, lack of trust and respect. More shooting, more guns. If fewer guns, then more knifings. If fewer knives, then other forms of ugliness, pick ‘em. Hatred can be very inventive, as we see.

The answer is sincere changes of hearts. Brother Billy Graham, who recently died, was represented on TV by clips of his quotation of the simple Bible truth: “Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life” (Matthew 7: 13,14).

Without making such a simple choice, America’s fate is to endure more rot in society, more anguish, more mothers’ tears and fathers’ grief; more bitter fights within families. Worse Thanksgiving dinners and family picnics… more, and worse, school shootings.

These are the bitter fruits of the seeds we choose to sow.

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Click: Hide Thou Me

2-19-18

Another week, another school shooting. Or so it seems; the news media and politicians recently cited 18 deaths by firearms on American school properties in the first six weeks of this year.

Well, it turns out that most of those were parking-lot encounters after dark, between adults; or accidental discharges barely near schools, and so forth. Four angry, and ugly, assaults – but I am not saying “only four,” Any is too many.

The gun issue is one of many in contemporary America where hyperbole has overtaken rationality. Everyone – I think on both, or all, sides – readily adopts exaggerations and logical extensions and, lately, personal invective, to press their points.

What once was abstract is individual, and we see it in the “gun debate” as much as in any other area, and even among people who never encountered danger or grief. We can of course be passionate about issues without being touched personally. But I know the real root cause of our heated debates these days in America – that are more heat than debate.

It is the Slippery Slope. The term in logic indicates the danger of granting one point, in fear of losing the entire argument. To open the door a crack threatens to destroy the entire house, given time.

The Slippery Slope is more than a debating term. When it is used today, even when not called by name, people in effect indicate distrust of the opponent. In the gun debate, for instance, many defenders of the Second Amendment believe that any compromise will be seized upon, leading to… seizure of all firearms. “Give an inch; they’ll take a mile,” and it did not help rational debate when a Democrat officeholder a few years ago admitted that, yes, she would not stop at each restriction.

We can avoid slippery slopes by not even going near the slopes.

For instance, the solution to the “gun problem” in America is simple.

Not “easy,” but simple. Questions and answers:
For two centuries we have had virtually unrestricted access to firearms, and virtually no mass slayings and “senseless” attacks. Why?

Is it because guns are more sophisticated and deadly? Nonsense. Everything exists in the context of its time. Daggers are more convenient than dueling swords, yet there were not mass stabbings when they were readily available.

Speaking of knives, if the automatic reaction of many people – ban all guns – were a solution, should we look at the growing numbers of mass killings around the world by weaponized cars and trucks, and, yes again, random stabbings, and… ban cars and trucks and knives?

Such scenarios depend on slippery slopes, to propose and dispose… and will never lead to solutions.

It is self-swindling delusion to look to Washington for the answer to these problems, and almost everything, these days. “Why doesn’t the president act?” “Why doesn’t Congress DO something?”

Let’s explain something to America: Shut up. Washington is not the answer to everything… cannot be the answer to everything… and, as often as not, is the answer to nothing; unable to have the answers. Washington is not our savior.

We already have a Savior. And now we are face to face with our solution. Remember, I said “easy,” but not simple; not simple to make happen. Not in America, 2018.

Guns don’t make kids shoot. Hate makes them shoot. Listen to people shouting about laws and calling for more guards and more psychologists and more counselors. Where is Jesus in the middle of it all? Can you hear anyone calling for Him? For more God?

Some of the “simple” solutions in next week’s message.

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Click: Hard Times, Come Again No More