Monday Morning Music Ministry

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

12-2-13

There is an exhibition quietly and modestly making its way across the United States that is one of the most astonishing displays I have ever witnessed. I choose my words carefully – actually, an unbreakable habit of mine, even on good days – but I have been to America’s great museums, as well those of the world, including the Louvre, the Musee d’Orsay, the Uffizi, down to treasure-filled Halls of Fame. But currently (until Feb 1) housed in an otherwise ordinary former retail space in a neighborhood of Colorado Springs, is “Passages: The Experience.”

I think the weak link in their chain might be “branding,” since it is impossible to guess the exhibition’s theme from its title. And this is counter-intuitive, since the person behind this exhibition is one of America’s great marketers: Steve Green. The President of Hobby Lobby, Steve recently has been the focus of news – and prayers – because of his determination to resist the government’s ObamaCare guidelines to provide and pay 100 per cent of abortifacients , contraceptives, and abortion procedures for his employees. He and the Green family have sacrificed much to fight this battle, which has this week been accepted by the Supreme Court for a hearing.

“Passages” is an exhibition of Steve Green’s substantial collection of Bibles, illuminated manuscripts, ancient scrolls, biblical relics, and artifacts of the faithful. After Colorado Springs
( http://www.explorepassages.com ) the exhibition will continue its tour to other cities, ultimately top reside permanently in Washington DC.

Papyrus 39

After the Colorado Christian Writers Conference in May, my friend Diane Obbema read about the exhibition and suggested we visit. It was a great day of my life. First, we were impressed by the sheer scope. An iPod audio guide is eight hours long, for visitors who visit every display case and presentation. Cases, captions, actors and robotics, videos and interactive stations. Portions are designed for younger visitors. History comes alive. You see a Gutenberg press, you can pull one’s own prints.

More than that is the impressive display of scarce, often one-of-a-kind, artifacts. The second-largest private collection of Dead Sea Scrolls. Many cuneiform tablets; illuminated manuscripts; the world’s largest collection of vintage Jewish scrolls and ancient Torahs. Wycliffe’s likely Middle-English translation of the New Testament; the majority of the rare Gutenberg Bible; many of the famous early printed Bibles, like the Geneva Bible and the first King James Version. The exhibition’s surprises are… very surprising, and inspiring to see: a letter Martin Luther wrote night before his trial in Worms, half will and testament of the presumed martyr, half a rehearsal of his defiant “Here I Stand’ statement. In another display case, the manuscript copy of Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Amazing.

Martin Luther’s Will

This is the story of Christendom – the Church through the ages, managing to survive and spreading gloriously.

There is an overarching story beyond the gospel story itself, yet usually missed by most of us. Often it is willful ignorance or rejection. My mother-in-law was one of myriad, in this land of many churches, who fundamentally doubted the Bible’s authenticity or reliability. “It was written by men,” its first putative offense, and she also indicted its authorship “by many people, over many places, across many years, and through many translations.”

A slippery slope it is, of course, to dismiss the Bible as a collection of fables, or purloined wisdom, or irrelevant stories and lies. And, at first glance in the presence of the Green Family’s collection, the sheer variety of translations and versions can seduce the credulity of an average believer.

But none of us should be average believers! We are indwelt by the Holy Ghost, the same Spirit of the Living God who inspired – literally, “breathed life” into – these scriptures. “The word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword” (Hebrews 4:12). It has advanced despite hideous persecution. It has survived, sometimes, in remote outposts where Christianity was anathema and believers were hounded. It has also at times triumphed, in the worldly sense… inviting corruption and diluting its tenets.

Yes, many men wrote the first lines; and many were there who copied, and translated, and transliterated, and remembered verses, and strove to record the words of Christ and the testimony of apostles and martyrs, who saved the songs of poets, the wisdom of the anointed, and the letters of evangelists. When men first sought to put the Words of God into the languages of the people, they were, for hundreds of years, pursued, humiliated, tortured, and killed for so doing. Yet more than a thousand tongues now have Bibles in their own languages.

… are these prescriptions for error and mistakes, prejudices and bias, carelessness and sloppiness; for local churches and leaders with tempting agendas, to bring distortion? Would it not be logical – with all the people, places, and possibilities over the years represented in the display cases of “Passages” – that, instead of one True Bible of thousands of translations and versions, that there be thousands of competing Bibles?

Yet discrepancies are a tiny fraction, seldom close to any major theological or historical point, and always quickly reconciled. To me, THIS is the evidence of the authority, even inerrancy, of scripture. Tried, tested, true: a living document that is not malleable to suit every generation’s distractions. No: living, to be a vital source of hope, truth, and salvation; a reality to every one in every time and every place.

The texts studied in Northern Africa, in the Fourth Century, say; or the lessons taught in Asia Minor or to the heathen in northern Europe at the same early times; or the sermon themes in faraway Ireland – all are virtually identical to the words of the Bibles we have in our homes today. About what other books can this be said?

To visit “Passages” is inspiring. Yet when Diane and I left the “Experience,” I could not help but see the physical evidence of devotion, scholarship, sacrifice, martyrdom, and enterprise of uncountable saints through the millennia… and not feel a chill of caution.

Is America today capable of such fidelity to the Word of God? Does Western civilization have the loyalty to Christianity that it once did at Saragossa and at the Gates of Vienna? Right now, no.

The Word of God will survive always: axiomatic for the Eternal Truth. But if the Church of Christ dies in what is left of Western Civilization, it ultimately will be due not to persecution by its enemies, but neglect by its adherents.

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For those who cannot visit the “Passages” exhibition, or until its goal of a permanent home in the nation’s capital, books and other materials are available from the organizers: https://store.explorepassages.com

I have chosen a beautiful performance in a beautiful setting of Mozart’s beautiful “Laudate Dominum.” The text is the entire Psalms 117, shortest in the Bible, followed by the doxology. The music, if I might presume to characterize it so, is by the Holy Spirit, received and passed to us by Mozart. One of his supernal masterworks. The singer is the beautiful – yes, beauty abounds – Katherine Jenkins. The captions are the Latin text and Czech. Here is the English:

Praise the Lord, all ye peoples,
Praise Him, all ye peoples.
For his loving kindness
Has been bestowed upon us,
And the truth of the Lord endures for eternity.

Glory to the Father, Son, and to the Holy Spirit;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
World without end. Amen.

Click: Laudate Dominum

6-10-13

I recently visited an exhibition of biblical artifacts that, weeks later, still has me breathless. Properly, the traveling exhibition called “Passages” is an enormous presentation of ancient texts, original documents – letters from the early Church Fathers; even a portion of the Dead Sea Scrolls – illuminated manuscripts, Torah scrolls, first printings of the Bibles of Wycliffe, Tyndale, Gutenberg, Calvin, and more.

One item particularly caught my attention: a letter – not a reproduction, you understand – from Martin Luther to a friend, written the night before his trial before in Worms, Germany. He thought it likely he would be convicted of heresy, surely then to be tortured and executed. So there were elements of a Last Will. But in a slight rehearsal, he wrote in strong words that were spoken the very next day – that before God and his conscience, he could not recant what he had written about the Bible and about corruption in the Church.

I lingered over this letter. It is not only a foundational document of the Protestant Reformation; nor is it merely a notable artifact by a famous figure in history. That humble hand-written letter is one of the great documents of mankind, representing a fulcrum of history. Metaphorically, a stone thrown into the lake of Western civilization, and among its ripples were the liberty of men and women to know Scripture on their own… the invitation to people to learn to read… to be free to think… to challenge people in authority… to worship freely. These were the ripples that also empowered people to assemble freely and form their societies and governments just as they could run their churches.

The simple letter represented a wind that would blow across Europe to the American colonies and back to Europe, ultimately around the world. Religion, philosophy, the arts, science, economics, and government were never the same.

It is seldom that one document can represent so much: sum up, codify, and forecast great shifts in human history.

Another such document is a book, an American book. I thought of it this week, with everything going on in the headlines. It once was a best-seller, and its author one of the major celebrities of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Except for occasional historical reassessments, the book and its author have tended to slip into relative obscurity. And that is why every year or two, I re-visit “Witness” by Whittaker Chambers.

Chambers was a genius, a sensitive product of a troubled family. He drifted for a while in the corridors of intellectual and artistic pursuits, a student at Columbia University and a convert to radicalism. He became a Communist, and a spy; he also translated “Bambi” to great acclaim. He underwent a spiritual journey that led to his break with Communism, and embracing of Christ. Thus began his painful testimony against former friends in the Communist underground who had risen to the highest posts in government.

It was his conflicts — the pain of revealing old friends as enemies of the nation, of the American heritage, of Christianity; as well as his one-time adherence to these heresies – that makes “Witness” compelling reading. Chambers captured the sweep of history and the war of ideas. He precisely defined the choices that thoughtful people of his generation had to make, in eloquent, persuasive words.

… those choices still confront people today. Whittaker Chambers and Alger Hiss are dead. So are Stalin and his Soviet Union. Yes, the American flag still waves.

But the brutal choices of the recent century still confront us: liberty vs tyranny; spirituality vs secularism; values vs relativism; the Bible vs “Das Kapital” by Karl Marx. The choices should be easy. They always have been easy. But the wrong choices almost prevailed in Chambers’ day. And it is clear they are losing today, in America, in Western Civilization.

At a flash-point in Chambers’ conversion, he wrote in “Witness”:

At some point, I sought relief from my distress by trying to pray … As I continued to pray raggedly, prayer ceased to be an awkward and self-conscious act. It became a daily need to which I looked forward … The torrent that swept through me … swept my spirit clear to discern one truth: “Man without mysticism is a monster.” I do not mean, of course, that I denied the usefulness of reason and knowledge. What I grasped was that religion begins at the point where reason and knowledge are powerless and forever fail — the point at which man senses the mystery of his good and evil, his suffering and his destiny as a soul in search of God.

This brings me, here today, full circle, because Martin Luther, the harbinger and prophet of individualism, freedom, and democracy, also once declared that “Reason is the enemy of Faith.” Does this mean we are to reject our learning, distrust our intelligence, deny science? No! But it does remind us that Man cannot serve two masters.

This week, many citizens are face-to-face with a situation that seems like it is from another popular book of the recent past, “1984” (Saturday was the 64th anniversary of its publication, coincidentally). Americans are reaping a harvest of years of social policies that encouraged trust in the state before trust in God. We see the fruits of denying God in schoolhouses and courthouses – a culture and an Establishment that have no anchors, adrift. And a government that has grown to be a power unto itself, seeking us ill instead of serving us first.

Whittaker Chambers, despite his spiritual conversion, was convinced he had joined the losing side in the world’s great, historic battle. Liberty against tyranny; self-reliance against entitlements. He was aware of the forces at work. He knew how the public could be flattered into submission. He was familiar with the ways of infiltration and subversion. Whittaker Chambers wrote to Bill Buckley toward the end of his life a rueful assessment and prediction:

The enemy – he is ourselves. That is why it is idle to talk about preventing the wreck of Western civilization. It is already a wreck from within.

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When society – Western Civilization itself – is threatened and seems doomed, we need to remind ourselves of one sure thing on which we may rely: It is described in Psalm 62:2, “He only is my rock and my salvation; He is my defense; I shall not be greatly moved.” Millions of people have found comfort in this truth through the hymn composed by Augustus M. Toplady in 1775. This impressive video features a performance of “Rock of Ages” by the Antrim Mennonite Choir, thanks to the Sesamonte Channel.

“Witness” and other books by Chambers are in print today, published by Regnery. Click “Passages” for information about the biblical artifacts exhibition.

Click: Rock of Ages