Monday Morning Music Ministry

11-30-15

There has been a firestorm of chatter – accusations, distortions, smears, confusion, explanations – lately about Dr Ben Carson and elements of his biography. Whether he had violent tendencies in his impoverished youth in inner-city Detroit. Whether he attacked, or wanted to, kids and even his mother. Whether, as an excelling young student, had the SAT scores he has spoken of, and whether he was told he would be a good candidate, with reason to feel confident, for the US Military Academy.

Et cetera. Dr Carson has noted that the rabid press has not pursued for almost a decade the mysteries and inconsistencies of Barack Obama’s past. Dr Carson’s modesty has not made an issue of the fact that all the calumny has been disproved – the charges have, one by one, been refuted by facts and history and eyewitnesses.

Myself, I am just as (not) surprised that the tsunami of questions at Dr Carson’s press conferences are not about, say, being named head of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins. At the age of 33. The landmark surgeries he performed. Becoming a world-renowned, encyclopedia-named brain surgeon. The number of lives he saved. His dozens of honorary degrees. The work of his foundation, which encourages and supports academic excellence in youth. His Christian witness and talks, inspiring millions. Where are THOSE stories?

… in fact they are in Dr Carson’s book “Gifted Hands.” It is his autobiography, written years before he retired from medicine and turned to public service (what a term – he has been serving the public all his life!), and from which an inspiring movie was produced (Cuba Gooding Jr portrayed Carson).

And that brings me to why I am writing this essay. The “man in the news” I want to share is not Carson, here, but his co-author on “Gifted Hands,” Cecil Murphey. That book is being cited, mis-characterized, and everything in between.

Cecil Murphey is a friend of mine, if I may boast, and I would like to share some things about a man who, to many people at the moment, is just a name. Cec is the author or co-author of almost 150 books. He is the absolute master of co-authoring the works of notables, interesting people, and average but inspirational folks; as well those who are inexperienced or too busy for the nuts-and-bolts of putting a book together.

“…With Cecil Murphey” appears on the covers of life stories of Ben Carson, Don Piper (“90 Minutes in Heaven” and others), Shaun Alexander, Dino, et al., including many famous names on whose books he did not receive credit (which is a common practice in publishing).

He also assisted on Dr Carson’s book “Think Big – Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence.” He has also written scores of other books – Bible apologetics; romance mysteries; travel and self-help; devotionals; and inspirational books addressing addiction, recovery, loss, healing, caregiving, grief, exercise, aging, sex trafficking, loved ones with dementia, and living with sexual abuse. Specifically, sexual molestation from the family’s point of view, living with the victim; and from the victim’s own viewpoint. Cec himself suffered abuse as a child, and his own book (“When a Man You Love Was Abused”) on the subject was difficult to write, challenging to have published, and… is touching, powerful, and useful.

Behind the scenes (for many) – Cec has also written books on the craft of writing. He holds seminars and has mentored many writers; he is an encourager. He has appeared at many writer’s conferences (Marlene Bagnull’s Christian Writers Conference is where I was blessed to first meet Cec) and has – anonymously – donated thousands and thousands of dollars for scholarships to aspiring writers.

He has received honorary degrees, many awards, was a pastor in the Atlanta area, has served as a hospital chaplain, and was a missionary in Kenya for six years. He is a man of unbelievable energy (myself, I am worn out just listing a few of his accomplishments!), with a generous heart, tremendous talent, and – pertinent these days, as his name is being dragged into mud-slinging political smears – utter integrity. A man of God, serving God and humanity. No less than the similarly modest, gifted, and brilliant subject of certain of his books, Dr Ben Carson.

The Founding Fathers of the United States fully intended – and fervently prayed – that future leaders would arise not from a permanent political class but from the general population. They would be farmers, and lawyers, and shopkeeps, and… doctors; they would serve as law-makers for a spell, representing their neighbors, always feeling responsible to them and obligated to serve them. And then they would return to their farms, their offices, their shops, their patients. Citizen Patriots.

Dr Carson understands that vision, and fulfills that aspiration. He lives it. And Cecil Murphey, the man who wrote Dr Carson’s story almost 20 years ago, understood it too, and communicated. In the same manner, he is a journeyman writer with his own Gifted Hands.

Every news item has a back-story. Cecil Murphey is the story behind a lot of other stories, and the stories of a lot of impressive people. There is a good chance that you have read a best-selling book he helped to write, or ghost-wrote, without your being aware of it. I am glad to share his story here, and proud to have him as a friend. He is also a Christian worker who is a Citizen Patriot serving his nation.

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The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune will not deter Dr Ben Carson as he seeks the presidency and, perhaps someday, even higher positions; nor Cecil Murphey, whose pen is a mighty sword of God. Here, a contemporary song of Christian encouragement, sung by Joni Eareckson Tada.

Click: Alone Yet Not Alone

Cecil Murphey

8-18-14

The suicide of Robin Williams has had many people talking. The columns and airwaves, lunchrooms and sermons, are filled with the gamut of opinions and emotions. Sympathy, criticism, speculation, curiosity; “expert” judgments on whether suicide is the act of cowardice or aggression.

Christians have gotten into the act with stories of Robin Williams “accepting Christ” or talking about God in his final months, or during rehab. Maybe so, maybe so. I am not referring to any of my friends, of course, but I sort of wish some of these Christians would shut up. Whether Robin Williams accepted Jesus or not, was between the two of them, and not just as a matter of privacy.

We do not know what anyone does, really, in their spirits and in their last moments, sometimes even if we are at their bedsides. If they ask for prayer, if they confess Jesus then, or had done so years previously, that is a different matter. Why can’t we leave things to God in those sacred last moments; to the Holy Spirit, when crucible-conversions might take place?

If Paul was chief among sinners, I surely am chief among name-droppers, I will confess. So I can understand those who once buttonholed celebrities and now love to tell the stories. How often do those stories reveal more about the tellers of tales than the persons in question?

And, we must be careful about tales of presumed deathbed conversions that are related in order to be “an encouragement” to the rest of us. If Robin Williams, for instance, had drawn closer to God… did he find spiritual “fulfillment” in killing himself? That is a tenuous argument for the gospel’s efficacy (not that being born again is a magic wand, of course) to the world’s hurting and desperate souls.

I am trying neither to presume not condemn. But the omniscient spiritual post-mortems are not only foolish things, but dangerous. My friend David Barton (whoops), historian and expert on America’s spiritual foundations, recently was embarrassed when his publisher pulled his books from shelves and their catalog because of his overreaching claims about the Founders and Framers of the nation. I always thought his attitude – that virtually every Colonial was a born-again Christian – was patently false. (He is not the only Christian historian to make such claims.)

In fact many establishmentarians of that time, in and out of churches, were not the fervent Christ-followers of today. Some were Deists, but Unitarianism had not yet developed. Many thought Jesus the teacher and not the carpenter WAS God’s conception of an only-begotten Son. That is to say, good and obedient Christianity was of a slightly different template in those days. Evangelicalism was both more circumspect and more common in those different times. Believers of the “Dark Ages” might view today’s born-again Christians as whited sepulchers. Same Savior, different times, different modes.

As in Robin Williams’s case, the peace between the Founding Fathers and God (“Providence”) has been sealed and is none of our business, literally. (What IS important about the Framers, and missed by Barton et al., is that the Founding Fathers to a man respected the Bible as a blueprint, morally and civically, for the new nation. THERE is America’s biblical foundation.)

Our time would be better spent, whether we consider celebrities or neighbors, on their moments before death… not speculating on their afterlife. We can do something about the former; we are powerless regarding the latter.

To whatever extent you know someone, you can never rightfully say, “I never had the chance…” after they die. You can only say “I never took the chance.” We have opportunities. We can invest in a conversation with a Bible verse or word of encouragement. We can share a witness, draw a spiritual lesson from what the person says. You can end a conversation with a prayer. You can send brief e-mails with a verse or a prayer. You can check in at random moments, and if the Spirit encouraged you, say so. You can introduce them to Jesus, leading to conversion.

You might be resisted as that “religious nut.” You might be thought of as foolish. Pray for discernment, but you might risk offending them. You will be out of your “comfort zone.”

But every chance you take will make the world’s discussions of therapy and counseling and medicines a little less exclusive. Every word you share will be a little seed planted in a person’s soul. And if they are troubled, you plant in fertile ground. If Robin Williams had recalled one strong witness that however was never shared… well, I don’t know, and don’t presume to.

But we all can be better Christians one-on-one before certain events. The Bible IS the best therapy, counsel, and medicine. For those who find solitude, loneliness, and insecurity to be frightening and horrible things, recovery can start with the words of Psalm 32:7: “You are my hiding place; You shall preserve me from trouble; You shall surround me with songs of deliverance. Selah.”

I am one who knows the satisfaction of amusing friends, and the legitimate goal of making the world laugh, but the greatest ambition of us all must be to receive the simple but profound smile of acceptance from our loving God.

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I cannot be judgmental about any suicide. What drives people to that extreme is, almost automatically, incomprehensible to the rest of us. Robin Williams was depressed by career downturns, with all his successes? Maybe. He was disheartened by a diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease? Tell Michael J Fox; so I doubt that. There were “demons” we don’t know. Joni Eareckson Tada is someone who received more than a “normal” portion of life’s junk: quadriplegic from a swimming accident when young; the victim of cancer in later years; and many challenges in between. Yet she has been more than a conqueror, and an inspiration to millions. Among her gifts is a beautiful singing voice, heard here in her (almost) Oscar-winning song, “Alone Yet Not Alone.” A condition, a promise, that many despairing hearts should claim:

Click: Alone Yet Not Alone

3-3-14

“Farther along we’ll know more about it, Farther along we’ll understand why; Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine, We’ll understand it, all by and by.” We have many hymns of faith to uplift us and remind us of God’s promises. But this old song can rightly be called a “Hymn of Doubt.” It does not intend to shake our faith, but rather it expresses the pain, the confusion, the questions – and yes, sometimes, the doubt – we all experience when life collides with life.

That is to say, when circumstances go radically off-script. The scripts we write for ourselves.

I have a friend who has been making some breakthroughs in her chosen field of writing, and has just been diagnosed with breast cancer, tearing her world apart. Another friend has made a place for herself after a hard road, or several of them, early in life; and now is at the top of her chosen field. Yet she is under attack, and will suffer, from intrigues and corporate politics – as old as human nature, a fact that never makes the devastation any easier. Another friend has been involved in ministries and charities for years, and now is virtually destitute, feeling hopeless.

“Tempted and tried, how often we question Why we must suffer year after year, Being accused by those of our loved ones, E’en though we’ve walked in God’s holy fear.”

We accept the fact that bad things happen to good people: Are we being tested? We remind ourselves, sometimes grasping for straws, that Job was tested, too. In that eponymous book, the oldest of all the books in the Bible, we are told that Satan accused Job and taunted God, saying, “He doesn’t love You; he just loves Your blessings.” Without knowing it, Job issued a challenge to our own faith with such an argument – an encouragement to seize upon what was later written: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

Job ultimately answered, “Though He slay me, I will put my trust in Him,” the Lord God.

But yet – I know this; we all do – the crud of life is still crud. To my friend dealing with the worst cancer news, what can I say, what can any of us say? Of course we pray for healing. Of course we trust God’s mysterious ways. Of course we try to believe that some “greater good” will be served. But. BUT…

“Tempted and tried, we’re oft made to wonder Why it should be thus all the day long; While there are others living about us, Never molested, though in the wrong.”

I recently wrote to a friend that God never promised a detour from the Valley of the Shadow of Death, only that He would BE with us when we have to walk through it. There is sin in the world – besides the sins we commit that contribute to our problems – and we simply are assigned the task of dealing with those consequences. Planning against pitfalls, battling disease, fighting corruption, deflecting hatred, protecting the weak, comforting the sick, and… loving. And loving. And loving.

“Sometimes I wonder why I must suffer, Go in the rain, the cold, and the snow; When there are many living in comfort, Giving no heed to all I can do.”

The mysteries of God – why, indeed, some of the unrighteous might enjoy material comforts; or how forgiving others can bring forgiveness to our own souls, those kinds of mysteries – are not to be understood now. The friend to whom I wrote about the Valley was once at the lowest of low points in her life, an alcoholic. Now that she has magnificently overcome, she admits that she might have gone through those horrors so that she can now be a better witness, counselor, friend to uncountable others. She gained a genuine voice after walking a difficult road but now is in a serene place, rescuing other lives. God’s way? Maybe.

“Farther along we’ll know more about it, Farther along we’ll understand why; Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine, We’ll understand it all by and by.”

This chorus, true as it is, does not promise that we will understand life’s cruelties and God’s mysteries, and blessings, after a few more prayers. Or more Bible study. Or another sermon message. Or reading a few more blogs. “By and by” refers to Glory: Heaven.

In Heaven we will not know all things – that would make us like God. But we will understand better, by and by. Can we suffer less by loving God more… by yearning for Heaven more? Yes – another mystery, a comforting mystery. As Joni Eareckson Tada, well acquainted with mortal distress, as a quadriplegic in constant pain, and recently afflicted with breast cancer, proclaimed, “God permits what He hates, to accomplish what He loves.”

“Faithful till death, says our loving Master; Short is our time to labor and wait; Then will our toiling seem to be nothing, When we shall pass the heavenly gate. / When we see Jesus coming in glory, When He comes from His home in the sky, Then we shall meet Him in that bright mansion; We’ll understand it, all by and by.”

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Joni has been in the news because she sang the title song for the Christian-themed movie “Alone Yet Not Alone,” which, amid controversy, was pulled from Oscar consideration recently, after receiving a prestigious nomination. Here she offers great testimony and the comforting old song “Farther Along,” with Homecoming friends, legendary gospel singers. Affirmation and a second chorus by Vestal Goodman. I once had the privilege of interviewing Joni at Billy Graham’s retreat center, the Cove. She spoke at length of her trials, and she sang, as here. Some day I will share that video in the Monday Ministry blog. (Also present that day were Cliff Barrows, George Beverly Shea, and Joni’s mom; see photo.)

Click: Farther Along