Monday Morning Music Ministry

9-30-24

Oh, no! – Another political message? No… it’s not. I hate the clogged mailbox, and the repeated TV commercials, and the “blind” phone calls, and the annoying e-mails, as much as anybody.

So, I invite you to rest easy. But this topic is one that transcends partisanship (or should). It is something for us to think about whether or not an election is imminent. If there is a danger associated with Socialism – and I believe there is – perhaps societies should have been thinking, and acting, since the 1840s when this current version of governmental pick-pocketry was foisted on our culture.

We can dispatch all the kindly excuses for Socialism advanced by well-meaning folk, especially the moon-eyed “Christian Socialists.” Yes – some of its root impulses are to help the unfortunate. Yes – there are systemic inequities in our societies. Yes – if I may run immediately to the arguments of religious folk – the Bible admonishes us to care for the widow and the orphan, the “least of these.”

But, as we bankrupt ourselves and lose our freedoms, there are NOs that we should listen to, and consider, instead. No! – Government is not, should not be, and cannot be the major agency to distribute charity. No! – If there are inequities in societies, we should fix them, not arrange for governments to take from us… without our input, often, or permission, especially when contrary to our standards and beliefs. No! – The Bible admonishes us to care for the widow and the orphan and the “least of these.”

St Augustine, whose writings have nurtured me more than any church father between St Paul and Luther, opened my eyes to these points… and he wrote about 1450 years before the destruction of free enterprise and Christian social values was even a gleam in the eyes of Karl Marx. A rough contemporary of St Patrick – they never met nor likely knew of each other – he had evangelic effect, but largely though teaching, writing, and the force of logic.

In his Confessions, Augustine addressed the words of Jesus that “the poor you will always have with you.” He dismisses what many people still think without thinking. The Savior was not a defeatist; He did not mean that charity is futile. Neither was He a cynic. Is poverty inevitable? – is that what Jesus said, a cold-hearted acceptance of inequity? No! Could He have meant that we should have benign neglect toward the poor? No!

Rather, Augustine argued that Jesus wanted to remind us that our hearts must always be inclined toward charity – that anyone we might deem less fortunate in areas of resources, health, emotions must evoke love and care on the part of Christians. (And we know that the proper translation of “charity” in Scripture is “love.”)

These views cannot be mere lessons in ancient Post-Manichaean, Neo-Platonic, Patristic theological debates; nor should they enable weaponization of Scriptural truths to serve in contemporary political arguments, as I said above. No, we are living in a time of world history larger than things like inventions and labels. Mighty achievements like the nuclear bomb, miraculous advances in medicine, and tools like computer chips and Artificial Intelligence are mere details. They are virtual toys, with impacts as substantial to us as pyramids were to the ancient Egyptians, or as astronomy was to the Persians.

… meaning, those civilizations ultimately crumbled and were covered in dust, as ours someday will be. Scabrous pathologies like Socialism are not the actual enemy: not the disease, but the symptom. We live in an arc of history that is self-indulgent; Socialism is a result. We are self-destructive; Socialism draws standards down instead of elevating. Since the Renaissance, the post-Christian world has promoted “self” in the arts, philosophy, and religion. Luther declared that even in his time, Modernism was a false god – and it since has slid to worse manifestations. He declared, as much as our contemporary age is shocked to admit it, that Faith is the enemy of Reason.

And our world for 500 years has made the choice, Reason over Faith.

In the meantime, Socialism (and its theories under different names) has crept into all aspects of daily life. Western societies basically do not look to God anymore for help or strength or wisdom: the Government has co-opted all such functions. The logical extensions of economic Socialism – state-run schools; government mandates in all spheres of life; monopoly-capitalism – are entrenched. The Government sees all, knows all, controls all.

Jesus’s reminder, and its holy application, is what suffers. The victims are our souls, more than a poor widow or hungry orphan. The Savior’s message was that our hearts should always be inclined to love, then help, our fellow men and women. People are in distress? Families in trouble? Instead of looking to government programs, we should act as sensitive friends and families and… churches, communities of believers.

The mindset of Socialism has crept into other spheres of life. I have come to resent the campaigns of stores, banks, TV shows, fast-food restaurants, and sports teams that announce financial pledges to this-or-that charity. They also rob us of our personal choices and our own impulses to help people or causes. We can make those decisions because we have the desire to, not because some corporation wants to pick our pockets (and usually for their cozy relationships, PR, and tax benefits).

Hey! Charge less for groceries and services… and let us decide what charity we seek to support. “Socialism” is the blanket-term that covers all sins, and has permeated thought, word, and deed in our post-Christian world. The Apostles, we know, pooled their resources – while they were being persecuted; but thereafter raised money, spent money, and financed their missionary journeys.

We remember also what Jesus said about Money and the “root of all evil.” The Savior did not say that money is the root of all evil… but that the “love of money is the root of all evil.” In the same manner also may we see that the denial of Christian charity – the organized thievery of Socialism – is a cause, not the solution, of the disintegration of society and the corruption of the church.

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Click: He Reached Down

5-1-23

I am enamored of the hilarious BBC mockumentary series Philomena Cunk that has found its way onto American cable outlets and the internet. Comedian Diane Morgan plays a determined blockhead who conducts educational tours and interviews actual experts and professors about history, the arts, and culture.

She is relentlessly clueless, and manages to surprise and confuse her stuffy guests. Normal hosts begin their interviews with respectful introductions or a detailed resume of the person’s credentials, but Philomena routinely demands, “So, who are you?”

Don’t get whiplash, but I will pivot from her silliness to a legitimate thought: When we think about it – which we often should – life is always asking us, in effect, “Who are you?” To take stock, and to know where we’re going. We should ask it of ourselves, too. “The unexamined life,” Socrates said, possibly going overboard, “is not worth living.”

And then, of course, we must be aware that God is forever asking us, “Who are you?” – not waiting for Judgment Day. Who are you?

We evolve; and we should. It is the essence, after all, of the requirement to be “born again.”

Who are we? People different than we were yesterday. People whose tomorrows will be different than today. “Better”? That depends on the definition of “better,” and certainly it depends on choices we make, and our determination to draw closer to God.

The act of “drawing closer” was given a name in the early church and in church history: to be “Imitators of Christ.” It clearly means to walk in the footsteps of Jesus; to apply His teachings and His examples of love, forgiveness, humility, mercy, charity. To be Jesus to those who hurt or are lost. A few decades ago it was manifested in the WWJD wristbands – “What would Jesus do?”

The books of the Gospels and Epistles have numerous adjurations to be like Christ. St Augustine made a brilliant recommendation: Why art thou proud, O man? God for thee became low. Thou wouldst perhaps be ashamed to imitate a lowly man; then at least imitate the lowly God. St Francis; St Bernard of Clairvaux; St Thomas Aquinas, all sought ways to be Christ-followers best by “imitating” His ways, not only believing in Him.

The Imitation of Christ is a book by Thomas à Kempis written in 1418. It can be seen as Christendom’s first devotional manual. With Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress it probably is the most-printed book in the Western world, after the Bible itself. It still is a worthwhile “user’s manual,” so to speak, for being a Christian. It is not a 12-Step program or substitute for Salvation. It helps us be like Christ, subsequent to Salvation. Find it! Many translations and versions exist.

You will discover, when you ask “Who am I?” and determine to “imitate” Christ in every way, that you have great company! Imitation, that is, as a theological practice. We could do worse. The Bible overflows with examples of people who examined their lives… asked “Who am I, really?”… and then were changed. Discover “Before and After” examples of people who can inspire us.

David slew a giant (anthropologists, by the way, have discovered that there were races of giants) but was also the “sweet singer of Israel.” He could be such a rotten schemer that he arranged to have his lover’s husband killed… yet he ultimately was, after forgiveness, the king “anointed of God.”

Was there ever a better example of “Before and After” than Peter? An impulsive fool, sometimes, and one who denied Jesus three times… but after Pentecost he matured and became what Jesus promised, the leader of the Church.

Saul persecuted believers, even having some put to death. After his own “Who am I?” experience, he became Paul, the first and greatest evangelist; writer of half of the New Testament.

The examples are many. We think of Luther, we think of C S Lewis, we think of Billy Graham. We think of so many saints of history who found new lives by examining their old lives… and were transformed from the Old Selves to New Creations in Christ. Imitation may be the best form of theology!

Who are you?

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Click: Who Am I?

8-8-22

I am risking censure to say that I am not an automatic fan of NGOs and a type of charity work that has become prevalent in our society. In fact I have a major problem with it.

So I must explain: first, I am not against charity per se, the impulse that God planted in our souls, Jesus taught us to act upon, and the Holy Spirit encourages. There are myriad commands, and many examples, of common people and sainted people in the Bible extending love.

Saint Augustine’s interpretation of “the poor ye always shall have with you” is not accepting the plight of unfortunate folks, but a reminder that others will always need our attention and compassion and action. And love.

We can find those folks in our very neighborhoods. And usually within our circles of friends, even our families. If we feel led to reach out to the lame, the halt, the blind; the needy, the sick, the endangered in other countries, there are amazing mission groups and charities that we can locate with little trouble. We can be Samaritans walking paths and encountering the abused and abandoned. Of course, vulnerable people are our neighbors in faraway lands too.

I have grown uncomfortable with corporations and governments, however, who decide on charitable works – perhaps quite commendable ones – without asking us. Sometimes there might be causes we decline to support; often they are handled by agencies without accountability; frequently we “donors” know little where the funds and efforts end up.

Enormous sums of government money are sent to victims of hurricanes and diseases, yes; but also as “aid” and “charity” to unknown destinations in unspecified places, with foggy accountability. “Oh, it’s for a good cause…” And how many TV commercials and product labels tell us that “a portion of every purchase…” will be sent who-knows-where; or “every sale will support..” such-and-such.

My objections are those of Augustine, and of Jesus. These myriad and coercive actions by government and the corporate world are as much about their marketing and public relations as about genuine charity.

Basically, day by day, year by year, they rob us of fostering our own charitable impulses. When governments take our money without permission and send it here or there, that is not the act of a caring public but, at best, a lazy public. When corporations earmark a portion of money we pay them, again without asking… it masks a sweet-sounding surcharge for their own tax breaks and image-campaigns.

In both cases people should be allowed to make their own donations as they see fit, and who soon will rediscover the beautiful impulses to give… to act… and to love.

The real definition of “charity,” after all, is love. In I Corinthians 13, Paul wrote: “Now abides faith, hope, and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” In the original translations, the word was “love.”

The NGOs (non-government organizations) I question are not the completely independent agencies, or even those who do work on the ground independently (increasingly, governments have bureaucratic and ideological strings attached…) – but there are many individuals and groups who are in all ways independent. They answer to their donors, to their consciences, to the recipients, and to God.

One such is Garden of Innocents which has many local chapters across America. Its volunteers provide dignified burials and memorials – sometimes “naming” ceremonies – for abandoned babies and children. “Dumpster babies” is the distasteful term but is the truth in many cases. The volunteers arrange with local cemeteries to apportion a dedicated area of a cemetery; the volunteers make the custom little wooden caskets themselves; and burials with markers honor those most helpless among us.

Another, of many I know, is Grand Staff Ministries, whose hearts are turned to eSwatini in Africa, the former Swaziland. It is a country of a million people with the highest incidence of AIDS in the world, perhaps half of the population with the disease. About 200,000 children have been stripped of their parents – fending for themselves, often with no adult to feed them or send them to school. Becky Spencer and her husband Tracy visit the land from their home in Kansas, supporting schools, ministering to health needs, and… providing love.

In the United Kingdom there is an organization that promotes awareness, does not engage in high-pressure fund-raising campaigns, but compels our attention… and our hearts. Missing People is a Not-For-Profit organization that focuses on the appalling number of children, who disappear or “go missing,” and the families and communities who miss them. There are hundreds of thousands in England each year, and millions, horrific to say, in the United States. Runaways? Abductions? Trafficking? Violent ends? Mental or emotional issues? Ill-advised escapes from family turmoil? – Any and all of the above.

Anguished loved ones suffer for these Missing every moment, sometimes years and years later. Missing People reaches out to the friends and families, engages in education and publicity, coordinates searches; and helps the “Left Behinds.”

Remembering the charitable/loving impulses we need to discover and cherish, all of us need to feel for abandoned and murdered babies; orphans enduring poverty and AIDS; and the runaways or trafficked, and grieving families. But we ought to extend that charity and love to ongoing needs in our midst, too, that perhaps are more prosaic.

A widowed father whose children have moved away and maintain sparse contact; grandchildren he seldom hears on phone calls or has seen in years despite living close by. His nightly tears are almost as bitter as parents in worse situations. The Gospel song says “Tears Are a Language God Understands,” but every morning is cold.

Troubled children – rather, children in troubled situations – might figure that running away can provide solutions. But we should be just as concerned with bringing peace to families while they are together, as much as grieving when they split apart. And the same should pertain to marriages.

Burying dead, anonymous babies is a precious act. But our society should be just as dedicated to preventing those tragedies; ministering to mothers before they make those decisions. Overseas ministries? Giving – to not-for-profits – is admirable, of course, but most agencies need volunteers too; workers; helpers; prayer partners.

We talk, here, of the vulnerable, the abandoned, the missing. Life. What we need to remember – and not let governments and corporations steal from us – is that our Savior Jesus Christ came to remind us of the same things, the same people.

In fact He came not only to have us love such people, but to see that we ourselves are such people. In so many ways each of us has been, or is in a larger sense, vulnerable, abandoned, missing.

Jesus looks for us. He finds us. He loves us. What is our response?

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Video Click: The Missing People Choir

5-17-21

A disease of the 21^st century – frankly, a second pandemic – is what categorizes itself as Fact-Checking.

The name is really a pseudonym. False identity. Camouflage.

Going back to the Age of Legends, it does not represent Diogenes, who with his lantern forsook all earthly possessions and searched the land for an honest man. My friend Bridgette Ehly reminds me that Diogenes is regarded as an actual figure in history, not mythology; and more’s the pity, someone pursuing such a futile goal.

Rather, the practice of “Fact Checking” today resembles the Trojan Horse, something impressive in appearance, but hiding saboteurs and swarming with enemies. It started a few years ago when Important newspapers had “ombudsmen” who kept their staffs honest. You know, The New York Times had a little box on page 2 noting “corrections.” Like “In yesterday’s Travel Section, page C17, the height of Mont Blanc was stated as 15,407 feet. In fact that is its prominence; its height above sea level is 15,777 feet. We regret the error.”

(Whatever a “prominence” is.)

Readers even got the impression that the wayward reporter likely lost vacation privileges at Camp Nawakwa on Lake Sebago up in New York State that summer.

Today, of course, that paper, and the Washington Post, and the three network news departments, and TIME and Newsweek if they still exist, and cable news channels, offer regrets and apologies to readers if they happen to say something positive about President Trump or Christians.

I am exaggerating. But I think they do hand out demerits for mentioning same-sex couples and heterosexuals without describing them as haters.

I think we all have been victims of “Fact Checkers” who lurk on the internet, and watch us all closer than than our parents did when we got our first cell phones. I have a theory about why those spying tricks are called “Al-Gore-Rhythms,” because we know what Big Brother, Big Tech, and Big Pain do. In fact they know what we do, before we do things. Get on the web, mention a country in an e-mail, or do a Google search on the name of a tropical bird you once saw, and within five hours, you will be bombarded with pop-up ads for flights to that country, and recipes for roasting that bird.

It was once confusin’, then amusin.’ Then annoying. Then paranoia-inducing. Rightfully so.

And it was an easy step, especially in the Trump re-election and the plandemic, to be de-platformed, warned, censored, or – at Zuckberg’s kindest – have our posts and messages and blogs slapped with banners pasted over our words with the announcement that “independent” “fact-checkers” have “already” “reviewed” the content and “determined” that… fill in the blanks. We are judged guilty of discussing unproven facts; or spreading rumors; or – worst of all – “violating community standards.”

What “standards”? What “community”? Not a community we want to live in. Yet… here we are. From the guard towers, someone yells through a bullhorn: “You! In that blog post!!! Shut up, and get in line!” Achtung.

Headlines tell us enough. “Christian hate” and “Trump’s Lies” are never conditioned with words like “alleged” or “supposed” – just offered as “facts.” A journalistic crime.

All this is bad enough – very bad – as we surreptitiously are being fitted with ankle chains and GPS-location devices under our skin or by vaccines. But far worse is the censorship and cyber-persecution of Christians.

Almost overnight, sermons about Biblical views on marriage and sex have had pastors arrested and churches closed. A religious perspective on topics in the news is deemed as “hate speech.” Traditional hymns are condemned.

And all this is bad enough when the “community” and press and government and schools and the courts are the storm troopers. But organized religion, heads of denominations, and “mainstream” faith leaders are often the worst offenders. Goons in backward-collars and robes.

So “religion” itself imposes “facts” on those of us they hate. (Aha! Now we get to the real “hate speech”!) The New Puritans are on witch-hunts, and their exclusive possession of Facts are their deadly weapons.

Well, this all is a wake-up call to Christians and conservatives and patriots. Yes, we think we recognize the Truth, but we seek to persuade people, not cancel them. And in the largest sense – life is not about facts. The “keepers” and enforcers of Facts ignore the history of Facts, even “scientific facts,” which often have changed and been proven untrue and abandoned through the centuries.

More valuable is Truth.

We can believe facts, even knowing they sometimes will change. We should trust Truth; and when it seems unclear, we are elevated by seeking truth.

Compulsive fact-checkers, and weaponized fact-trusters, are the totalitarian-minded who have always plagued humanity. On the other hand, truth-seekers, and the hope-filled, have cared for humankind, and want to join the upward paths.

Memo to you brainiacs who invent facts to control the lives of the rest of us: God does not require that we know and accept all your facts. He does require more important things: that we trust and obey. They are the fastest pathways to Truth.

Check that fact, Jack. (And, if this helps, Jesus said, “I am the Truth.”)

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Click: Looking For a City

11-4-19

“If being a Christian were illegal, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”

Sometimes such aphorisms – what I call bumper-strip theology – pack a lot of implications and wisdom.

In many place around the world, being a Christian is illegal, or nearly so. I can tell that this blog is read in some of those countries, perhaps to the peril of those readers.

Will such a thing ever happen in the United States, in Western Europe? Many of us think so – it has happened in societies that were once like ours – and at the moment, if belief in Christ is not yet illegal it is however improper or at best impolite in many places and situations.

When the leader of ISIS recently was killed, we were reminded that one of his countless victims was the young American missionary Kayla Mueller. The Christian woman had been held in captivity for 18 months, a sex slave of al-Baghdadi himself. The man whose Washington Post obituary called “an austere religious scholar” and a shy man behind spectacles, repeatedly raped and tortured Kayla, according to eyewitnesses like Yezidi sex slaves even younger than Kayla.

That description of Kayla says more about al-Baghdadi – and the Washington Post – than it does about Kayla. Almost.

What is scarcely said in the news stories is that Kayla was repeatedly asked, and frequently beaten and tortured, to renounce her Christian faith. This she never did – by ISIS’s own frustrated reports – and it gained her torture, rape, beatings, and death. Photographs of her bruised and lifeless body were e-mailed to Kayla’s parents by ISIS.

She lost her life. By her confession and faithfulness, as a contemporary martyr, she secured a place in Heaven, we can believe.
Correction: she saved her life.

Kayla was not alone, I am sure she would maintain. Every day, Christians around the world are being persecuted, tortured, and killed for their faith.

We smugly think that things in this world are growing brighter and better. Not everything. There were more Christians killed simply for being Christians in the 20th century than in all the combined centuries since Christ, including the iconic grotesqueries of Nero.

This week we noted – did you? – Reformation Day, the commemoration of Martin Luther’s challenge to the Church of the day. He nailed 95 complaints about corruption to a church door in Germany. It spread beyond Wittenberg’s town square; past the triangle of land formed by Hannover, Berlin, and Dresden; through Germany; to Rome and other territories of the Vatican; through the Christian world… and even unto today.

Luther had not intended to leave the Catholic Church – he was an ordained priest – nor establish a denomination, much less see his protest turn into Protestant-ism. Yet the “world system” that had corrupted the people and practices of the Church transformed widespread dissatisfaction into open revolts.

Luther’s reliance on “Scripture Alone” – that is, not mankind’s rules or new doctrines not found in the Bible – was a revolution of the spirit, conscience, and faith. Indeed, Luther was not the first anti-Romish reformer: previous theologians had similar heartfelt critiques… and had been martyred.

Fired, exiled, imprisoned, tortured, killed for their consciences. Luther was to be the next. Hunted and excommunicated, he was hauled before a council in the city of Worms, Germany.

All his writings – books and pamphlets, sermons and essays – were laid on a table, and Luther was ordered to renounce them. Outside the castle, at night, the Church was burning his books.

“Renounce them?” he said in effect, “How can I, when they all quote the Bible and rely on Scripture?”

Further, he argued that they were the result of his conscience, and “no man, no council, no Pope” can force me to act “against my God-inspired conscience.”

It was made clear that he would suffer death if he did not deny his writings. He said “I will not and I can not.”

With his life on the line, and conscious of the blood of martyrs before him, in the hushed council, Luther firmly said, “Here I stand. I can do no other.”

“Here I stand. I can do no other.” Those simple words, spoken in that obscure German town, have rather thundered like mighty artillery through the ages. Indeed for 500 years they have been spiritual and intellectual bombs. They inspired the translations of Bibles into languages of local peoples. They ignited a rediscovery of Scripture. They freed believers from relying on human intercessors when praying or petitioning God. They inaugurated the spread of literacy. They were the underpinnings of democratic movements around the world.

Luther was not murdered; he was secreted away by German princes who likewise “saw the light.” Thrown out of the Roman Church, he married and continued to write and preach. Others who knew him, and many who never met him but were – and still are – electrified by his words, followed.

“Here I stand. I can do no other.” These are the words, perhaps word for word, that the missionary girl Kayla Mueller spoke.

God forbid – which cliché is my hope, but is not a certainty – that any of us will be in the position of a Martin Luther or a Kayla Mueller. It is not an abstract warning: every day Christians are in those positions.

When you have the opportunity, are you however too shy to speak the Name of Jesus? Do you hold back from sharing your faith with a stranger, or a family member, knowing that they might be on their ways to hell? When politicians, from school boards to the presidency, offend the Truth of the Gospel, do you think, speak, and act in opposition?

Do you “stand”? Will you stand? Can you do no other? If being a Christian were illegal, would there be enough evidence to convict you?

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The “Battle Hymn of the Reformation,” words and music by Martin Luther. All my life, tears come to my eyes when I sing, or try to, the last verse: Let goods and kindred go, This mortal life also: The body they may kill – God’s truth abideth still!

Click: A Mighty Fortress Is Our God

9-23-19

My friend Gail Torman recently noted that the “She Built New York” project has denied an honorary statue to Mother Cabrini. Saint and Sister Francesca Xavier Cabrini was America’s first ordained saint, summoned by the Pope to help the flood of Italian immigrants pouring into America in 1889.

“While in New York City, she opened 67 social service agencies as well as orphanages, missionaries, day schools, classes in religious education, a nursery, a hospital, and much more across the city,” Gail quotes the National Italian American Foundation. Many parks and monuments and hospitals and projects in New York bear Mother Cabrini’s name yet today.

The stated mission of the “She Built NYC Project” is to create more statues of women to be installed around the city. A public vote was held to select the top female candidates to have honorary statues. Mother Cabrini obtained the most votes with 219 votes, winning by a two-to-one margin and clearly defining her as the winner; the runner-up polled 93 votes, the Foundation notes. The wife of Mayor Bill diBlasio, Chirlane McCray, leads the project. After the poll was taken, McCray formed a panel to review the results and make its own recommendations on the seven winners to be memorialized. Exit Mother Cabrini.

The project is funded by about $5-million in taxpayer money. So – my opinion, putting words in no other mouths – this is a taxpayer-robbing scam to pander to minorities, feminists, and sexual deviants (LGBT “crusaders” popped up on the winner list).

More clearly, this is the latest example of our culture’s war on Christians and white people. Confirmation that, sadly, America is a post-Christian society.

In this New York City situation, we can feel sure that if Mother Cabrini were, say, Haitian instead of Italian, she would lead the pack. Or if she had been a very public atheist. The same might attend the situation of Mother Teresa, with whom many comparisons might be drawn – a European whose mission field was Calcutta. She has entered the language as the embodiment of charity… but contemporary liberals have been ambiguous and uneasy about her since she scolded Clinton and Gore to their faces in Washington about the sin of abortion.

Way beyond the politicization of charity, and racializing public service, is the new definition of Doing Good. Charity (whose roots as a word are shared with “love”) once was regarded as the impulse that moves us to care for those around us. Now, charity is what the government does; no one else need apply… nor ask questions.

“Charity” is a box to check on tax forms. Charity is performed by the government, and enforced by the Compassion Police. Political Correctness precedes acts of charity. To qualify you must be of the proper group; to administer you must not be of proscribed groups.

As St Augustine pointed out, recognizing that “the poor ye shall always have with you” is not a warning of futility, but rather God’s reminder that He wants us to develop, and exercise, a spirit of compassion, of charity, of love, at all times. No pre-conditions.

And about the poor – and sick and persecuted – whom we serve, I have been impressed by something while praying over these things.

A message to those brothers and sisters too: Some people are imprisoned behind bars; some feel bound by virtual chains. Some people are resigned to being poor forever. Some people feel doomed by illnesses, prejudice, abuse, and other circumstances.

The truth is that these factors might keep you in certain situations, for a time.

But a greater truth is that nothing can keep Jesus out.

This should be an encouragement to the oppressed and needy… also to those among us who are spurred to exercise charity… and should be a rebuke to those dictatorial bureaucrats and thought-police whose obsessions are applying, and removing, definitions of our compassion.

As Christians, we will keep our own consciences, thank you. And by the way, the sick and poor among us, as they are served, will be statues enough, in their own way.

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Click: He Reached Down

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

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

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

10-16-17

You have heard the expression, “It all depends whose ox is gored,” or maybe you haven’t. It is the basis of a common-law precedent, and even a couple of Biblical references. Back when just about everybody had some beast of burden for a little farming or transport, or I suppose for eventual food, we kept oxen or cows or old horses.

If a horned ox injured another, or a person or property; or was injured somehow itself, the bedrock question of adjudication and responsibility – and an owner’s attitude – often boiled down to depending on whose ox was gored.

Outrage was relative; demands for justice were dependent on whether you were the aggrieved party – or owner – or, well, had no control over what a dumb beast did on its own…

The phrase in other words meant and means that our reactions often relate to how much we will suffer inconvenience or liability. Your ox? Get over it. My ox? I demand compensation!

The formal term for this attitude, most exercised in religion and philosophy, is “relativism.”

In broader terms today – taking it, as our culture does, to its logical extension – relativism is a moral disease that infects religion. The contemporary church, in many of its corners, defines Right and Wrong not by traditional biblical revelation, but by what is thought to be right and wrong in each situation – an ethical lapse also known as Pragmatism.

In the legal world, neither the 10 Commandments nor even English Common Law are called upon as they once were, by common consent. What seems right? What can be explained away? What is convenient? Who can say what’s “right” and “wrong”? These attitudes echo in our courtrooms.

When people reject standards and values, there are, by definitions, no standards by which they can live, or will be governed. It is what American society has slipped into: Soft Anarchy.

Relativism? Sex scandals in politics and the entertainment industry? The left howls when preachers and newsmen (for instance) are exposed; and the right drives the stories of political leaders and major entertainers committing atrocious acts.

Relativism? Political and financial corruption are decried by the right and left… selectively.

Relativism? The sanctity of life… attitudes toward war and military action… which Constitutional amendments or principles to champion or ignore… how God’s earth and Creation itself is to be respected… when protest is legitimate or crosses the line… all “depend on whose ox is gored.”

It is hard to remember that at once time the world – the West, the United States – had values and standards that nearly every person honored. If they did not believe them all, they were anyway observed in the breach. A priori ideas were first defined by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason, but the idea of theoretical truths whose validity is independent of deduction or experiments, extended back in time past Kant, to Luther, to the Magna Carta, to Augustine, to the Gospels, to Plato, to the Old Testament – the Decalogue.

Once, despite all the other problems and challenges to humankind, societies operated on accepted truths, agreed-upon principles, “givens.” That is hardly the case in America, in the West, any more. Soft Anarchy. That we roll along, deluded that we advance, is more inertia than progress.

I mentioned Martin Luther, and have in recent essays, and will again until the 500th anniversary month of the Reformation has passed. His revolutionary life (I am ever more persuaded that he was a revolutionary, not simply a reformer) was more than the nexus of previous centuries’ growing contradictions and the world’s future vistas of faith, democracy, literacy, and liberty.

More? Yes – more, to us, than these possibly abstract principles. Luther’s imminent persecution and death; the challenges to his mind and his conscience; the affront to his relationship with Christ – the “free exercise thereof”; where have we heard that, since? – were on trial that fateful day 500 years ago.

He defended himself before the Holy Roman Emperor, to representatives of the Pope, to influential princes present in the court… and to us, 500 years in the future. Would he recant (deny) his writings? As legend tells us, he said:

Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted; and my conscience is captive to the Word of God.

I cannot, and will not, recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience.

Here I stand. I can do no other. May God help me.

These words, properly, should thunder through centuries, down to us.

But how many Christians, say, think abortion is murder, but fail to do anything for fear of offending their neighbors? Or are outraged that the Bible has been taken from schoolrooms, instructions, and the courts, yet are too timid to act? Or are bothered when their churches stray from the Word of God, but label their own lack of response “not wanting to rock the boat”?

Our oxen are being gored every day, friends. What are we doing about it?

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Click: “I Can Do No Other”

10-2-17

This month is the occasion for a grand remembrance. The last Sunday in October traditionally is observed by Protestants as Reformation Sunday, when, on All Saint’s Day, Father Martin Luther nailed 95 Theses – basically, theological complaints – to the castle church door in Wittenberg, Germany.

Extra special is the fact that his act was in the year 1517, so the 500th anniversary is now observed. Half a millennium, roughly 25 per cent of the age of Christ’s Church on this earth. Even unchurched people know the basics of the revolution that commenced with those hammered nails – Luther’s nails ironically recalling the nails that Christ endured as He offered Himself a living sacrifice for us.

I wonder how the church will observe the “anniversary” of the Reformation. I have noticed that package-tour groups are available to cities in Germany and places associated with Luther’s life. More than that, I don’t know. I made a pilgrimage of sorts to Augsburg, Germany, in 1983, the place and 500th anniversary of his birth. In the Augsburg Cathedral I had reasonable expectations of a grand worship service, and a stirring rendition of his great hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.”

There was, however, a small service attended by mere dozens of worshipers, in a side chapel and a charming but very modest, ancient free-standing pump organ.

Martin Luther is honored only in the breach, as they say, in many of the lands where his spiritual revolution once seized the hearts of men. The reforms of the reform-ation are evanescent; or in dire need of revitalization. Brother Martin is, possibly, in 2017 more of a historical than a theological figure.

I have said that unchurched people know something of his life. That is, to be precise, only to the extent that anyone knows much or cares much about history these days. To paraphrase George Santayana, those who have not learned from history are already doomed. The young Luther, training to be a lawyer, decided after what he perceived to be a life-saving miracle to join the clergy, and became an Augustinian monk. God’s hand might have been in that choice, because there are clear philosophical and theological lines from Platonism to the early Church fathers to St Augustine to Luther.

As a faithful clergymen he made a pilgrimage to Rome, walking from Germany. At the Vatican he was repelled by corruption and open scandals. Even back in Germany, the Roman church was becoming an agency of money-hustling, famously among other acts selling “indulgences” that promised poverty-stricken givers that souls of dead relatives would be boosted closer to Heaven in proportion to their “donations.”

Other offenses Luther identified, such as non-Biblical cosmology, veneration of saints, and Mariology, also led to the 95 Theses. Local Catholic clergy, representatives of the Vatican, and the Pope himself were much displeased, especially as Luther’s critiques gained currency. Germany was a land of greater literacy and ecclesiastical freedom than other corners of Christendom. Rome, already making a practice of suppressing and executing other critics (Luther was not the first voice of protest) sanctioned Brother Martin; demanded that he recant his many writings (including, strangely, those that were quite orthodox); excommunicated him; and sought to imprison him.

Luther was certain that Rome intended to kill him for his ideas, as it had done with previous reformers like Jan Hus in Prague and John Wycliffe (posthumous excommunication of desecration of his remains) in England. But the rising spiritual sophistication of German princes coincided with their growing desire to be free of the Catholic Church’s political and military dominance.

Religion, culture, and politics coincided. So did another great factor: Literacy. The average German could read better, and with more depth, than other Europeans to whom words and ideas were anathema, as so decreed by Rome. Largely proscribed from reading their Bibles and having to sit through Latin church services, Christians outside the German states beheld Christianity as dear to their hearts but largely alien relative to their daily lives.

My Catholic friends will dispute my characterizations of the fervor of Catholics of the day, or of the spiritual hunger of Luther’s fellow Germans and Scandinavians, yet two counter-arguments stand: Luther’s foundation-stone, based on Ephesians 2: 8,9: “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God, Not of works, lest any man should boast,” which confronted the authority of the Pope and efficacy of indulgences and putative good deeds. And… the empirical evidence, the speed at which the Reformation spread through Europe. And the world.

A lightning lesson. We will visit some other aspects of the Reformation in coming weeks. When I refer to “literacy,” I mean more than Luther translating the Bible into German, and common believers having access to God’s Word. We must understand:

Suddenly, men and women could read the Bible themselves. And think for themselves. They could write, and publish, and exchange ideas. Literature, poetry, and philosophy flourished – contemporary works, and those of the past – and political ideas were exchanged. Luther became the patron saint of democracy and the Enlightenment (although he must be considered a Pre-Modern, just as his musical disciple J S Bach, two hundred years later, must be similarly regarded, theologically).

Not a Humanist, yet of the Age of Humanism; living during the Renaissance but not a typical Renaissance man, Martin Luther astonishingly bridged the worlds of total subservience to Word of God, and the absolute independence of the human spirit. The soul. By looking back, to the faith of Jesus Himself, he was able to portend the future.

Threatened in the Church’s kangaroo court in the city of Worms – knowing that torture, burning at the stake, and death awaited him – he nevertheless refused to recant any word he had written, any sermon he had delivered, any “thesis” in his list of complaints.

No.

“Here I stand,” he said. I can do no other.”

At that moment one of the great souls of Christianity, and one of the greatest figures in Western civilization, changed the course of history. Fortified by utter conviction, Luther was also secure in the fact that when when one stands by God, one never is truly alone.

Martin Luther challenged more than Rome – he challenged humankind. In the face of authority, in the face of injustice, he challenges us today.

How would we have responded? How do you respond today… because Authority and Oppression are ever present. No less threatening, even more dangerous.

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From the sublime to the ridiculous? Many readers might consider the knee-jerk reactions of football players during patriotic exercises, in relation to Luther. They kneel; he stood. Not an absurd contrast to discuss. We shall take it up.

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Protestantism has spread worldwide. More than one-fifth of South Korea, for instance, is Protestant. Here are the famous SoKo Christian singers “Golden Angels”: –

Click: Where No One Stands Alone

9-4-17

“Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

Many times we have heard those words of Jesus, recorded in Matthew 25: 40a. Almost everyone knows the parable, if not the full meaning, behind the story of the Good Samaritan.

Another little-understood passage is recorded in Matthew, Mark, and John, when Jesus said that we shall “have the poor with us always.” Almost always misapplied. It was St Augustine (in his Confessions, written around the year 400) who opened the eyes of my heart to this. Jesus was not being a defeatist, that poverty is inevitable in our midst. Nor did He sanction a spirit of resignation in His followers.

No, Jesus instructed us to keep things in proportion – that we need to keep our eyes on Him while we can; that even good deeds can distract us from salvation. Further, Augustine argued, God has a certain loving plan for us, that we cultivate a spirit of charity. We must care for the least of those among us; we must practice compassion… because God Himself is Love.

Can we do that if everyone were on the same plane as we are? just as secure? comfortable? healthy? No. We should be aware, and compassionate, toward the lame, the halt, the blind. So we should be aware that these live among us.

Thoughts like these occur to us especially in days like these, after natural disasters like Hurricane Harvey.

I share here an editorial I wrote this week in response to the responses to Harvey. In the form of a memo to President Trump:

MEMO TO PRESIDENT TRUMP

The flood area in Texas and Louisiana is larger than Lake Michigan, and larger than several of our states, combined. The devastation, by several metrics, is already the worst in American history… and getting worse.

As rains cease, flood waters continue to rise. After flood waters recede, the apocalypse of ravaged homes, buildings, roads, and bridges will have been visited on those lands; as will spoilage, irretrievable ruin, pollution, deaths, and displaced persons. And, of course, massive economic challenges.

We do not need a North Korea in the news to remind us that this aftermath will resemble the devastation of a war – maybe even a lost war – across a broad swath of land and a large population.

As there has been no real precedent, there likely will be no real replication of these conditions for quite some time, so this suggestion would not be activated with every “normal” hurricane or tornado in the future.

Mr President, you should treat the entire area, when this is “over,” like a virtual war zone. Take extraordinary measures of aid and mobilization. Cooperate with locals, but also get involved as if it is a national emergency… because it is.

MAJOR emergency housing, relocation, funding, rescue, cleaning, new infrastructure. Not “normal” sandbags and box lunches and temporary shelters, but renewal as if the whole area had been flattened by an enemy. Because (damn you, “Mother” Nature) it was.

Do I suggest a “statist” response, a federal takeover of others’ functions? No – this response would fulfill one of the few legitimate Constitutional duties of the federal government.

Would cabinet secretaries and current federal departments be stretched too thin with these extraordinary “marching orders”? Borrow from your predecessor and appoint “czars” and “civilian generals” to take charge, category by category.

If Texas and Louisiana had been hit by thousands of bombs and instead of trillions of gallons of water, such a plan would be in place immediately. Move alongside the excellent local and regional (and private!) agencies… do not supplant, but partner… be forthcoming with more than checks, even blank checks, from across the continent.

In an odd way, this might be one reason why you, with your background and instincts, were elected to do.

Trump the Builder and Kelly and the military guys… could do this. Heck, it is what the US military has been doing for 15 years overseas, in places we can’t pronounce and most of us can’t find on maps – planning, building, rebuilding, paving, irrigating, cleaning, planting… even providing kids with hundreds of thousands of laptops.

Why not Texas and Louisiana?

Well, who knows what the President will do… however, already, my first impressions of his first acts are hugely positive. The same with state and local officials. And various agencies. And – not to quantify the acts being performed, because as Portia said in The Merchant of Venice, “The quality of Mercy is not strained” – the uncountable random rescuers we see on TV.

Spontaneous, courageous, sacrificial – these angels of mercy have come from down streets (or, now, rivers) or from across the country. Shoulder-deep in water, paddling makeshift crafts, hoisting old folks, pets, and children. Awe-inspiring. No less is the impressive outpouring of donations – money, food, furniture, meds.

And a hurricane – no, a tsunami – of prayers.

Despite my call for federal action, almost a military response, however, is an unshakable belief I have that is underpinned (I think) by the words of Jesus, and by Shakespeare, while I’m at it.

The government can help in these situations. As I said, however, these situations are among the few actually assigned to the federal government by the Constitution. It is our job, our duty, to respond as individuals. Our hearts, hands, resources.

One of many things I hate about Socialism and the paternalistic state is that they wean us from reliance on God; they persuade us that we should turn to the ubiquitous government for every answer; the State substitutes itself for faith, genuine cooperation, a real sense of compassion… and a true spirit of charity.

“Why do any of these things ourselves, when the government is there? Isn’t that why we pay taxes?”

We do not pay taxes in order to absolve ourselves of the (glorious) burden of helping our fellow travelers along life’s road. Thank God those basic, biblical impulses were not washed away in the flood waters of Hurricane Harvey!

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Click: He Reached Down

5-29-17

I once attended a church where the Invitation at the end of the service invariably was unique. I did not grow up in churches where altar calls were common, a situation I regret. In the church of my heritage it was assumed you were already in the family of God; or did not need a public act to show it or prove it. It was regarded as no one else’s business. Such things were too embarrassing.

It is strange to be in a “family” if you are too embarrassed to share your joy. Or admit to shortcomings. Or show your feelings. It would seem stranger, frankly, to be embarrassed to confess anything – joy, emotion, guilt – before God Himself. Yet many Christians act that way. How many people share virtually everything in their lives with another person, or other people, yet do not talk about their faith? Is it a real faith, or is it not a real relationship, in those cases?

Back to the “Invitation” at the church later in my life. It was a large congregation, and two aspects always impressed me. The pastor would end his sermon with the Salvation message; the importance for every person to ask forgiveness, to accept Christ; and to have a genuine relationship with the Savior. And, as Jesus instructed, to confess Him before all; to go public, so to speak, as His baptism was public.

Many times there would be silence. Often it grew awkward; nobody came forward to kneel at the altar. Was everybody, even among two thousand, already confident about their souls? Then invariably, one by one, people came forward. And as they did – better, believe me, than if dozens had immediately rushed forward – the congregation encouraged them. No embarrassment. They clapped. Cheered.

It was very much a picture of what the Bible tells us in Hebrews Chapter 11, that we are always compassed about by “a great cloud of witnesses.” Watching us… and supporting us, cheering us toward Heaven.

The other aspect I remember from Pastor Focht was his encouraging word to those who hesitated, those who perhaps sought mental excuses for their spiritual shyness.

“You might not think you are quite ready to make confession, and to accept Jesus,” he said, “But you don’t need to take a bath before you take a shower. Come as you are.”

Profound. In truth, even after we are “saved,” forgiven and accepted into the Family of God, we still sin. The difference between the Old You and the New You, of course (quoting a Holy Bumper Strip I saw once) is that we are not perfect, but we are forgiven.

We grow closer to God when we have the spiritual maturity to say “God, I need You so much. I am broken. Heal me. Help me. I cannot do things (including this thing called Life) on my own!” And we grow not one inch closer when we say – as many of us are wont to do – “God, I’ll take it from here. I understand it all now. Thanks for bringing me this far. I’m OK now.”

None of us are OK now, without Jesus. All of us are broken, in some way or other.

Broken in body, frequently. Broken in spirit, more often. Sustaining broken expectations. Battered by broken promises, broken relationships, broken friendships.

I have always loved the not-so-incidental fact that Jesus was a carpenter. First, continuing His father’s craft. But more so, He was a carpenter who mended broken bodies.

Being broken, however, is not a lowly state; we only make it so.

Cathedrals are constructed with broken stones, chosen and arranged just right.

Beautiful stained-glass windows are made of uncountable pieces of broken glass.

Mosaics are made of little broken chips of ceramic, odd and insignificant in themselves, but stunning – and making sense – when a master sees the big picture… and fits everything together.

God loves the Broken Ones, and honors us when we admit to our brokenness. And he sees to it that Broken Ones come into our paths. We do His work when we bind them up, encourage them, and cheer them forward.

It is why the poor are, somehow, always with us. It is why little girls frequently choose tattered old dolls over fancy new ones. It it why our selves and our churches (despite governments’ efforts to co-opt these impulses) minister to the lost, the hurting, the… broken souls in our midst.

In those times we see the broken ones; we see Jesus; we see ourselves. Whether we have a loose button and torn dress as happens to dolls, or are physically abused or addicted, or have felt betrayed and friendless, we all could use some real patchin’ up.

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Click: Broken Ones

5-23-16

Back when I was a writer for Disney Comics, I was given a bible – not the Holy Bible, although it had the properties of life and death in its pages. Like “script bibles” or “story bibles” in filmmaking and TV series, it is a summary of characters, personalities, traits, and background data, to keep writers and artists on-target. The essence was plainly stated: “Stick as close to Barks and Gottfredson as you can.”

Many of us grew up with Disney comics, and the definitive creators, although they were anonymous at the time, were Carl Barks (“the Duck Man”) and Floyd Gottfredson, who drew all the Mickey adventures. What a dream: write and draw like Carl and Floyd (each of whom I was blessed to know), and get paid for it.

I had monthly conferences with my editors, and for a while things went swimmingly. I even bought a house from all the stories I wrote. But there was one major bump in the road that I remember, decades later.

Scrooge McDuck and his nephews often set out on adventures. Humor and suspense, mysteries and slapstick, conflicts and surprise endings – what fun to dream up those stories. Once I was excited to invent a premise that contained a “switch” on a famous historical legend. Just as the Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon sought the mythical Fountain of Youth, I wrote an outline with Scrooge, Donald, and the nephews coming across the Fountain of Age.

The story possibilities were great. Of course Unca Scrooge inadvertently would drink from it; his instant decrepitude would be more than dismaying; it would materially threaten their quest in that story – I think it was a race against his rival; the attempts to counter the guzzling could be funny; and so forth. I was surprised, for all the ink spilled over the centuries about the Fountain of Youth, that nobody ever utilized its opposite as a possible storyline.

One of my editors, in a meeting, rejected it out of hand. “A Fountain of Old? That’s nonsense; it can’t be possible.” No; other editors tended toward my point of view; there could indeed be minerals or properties that could speed the aging process. Maybe a local tribe of elderly looking people could warn Donald and company at the last minute.

But that one editor persisted. “It simply doesn’t make sense that there could be a fountain, or a lake somewhere, whose waters make you age rapidly.”

I remember the session. After a moment of silence, I looked around the room and said, “Wait a minute. We are dealing with ducks here – ducks that walk and talk and dress themselves. One of them is richest duck in the world, and we carefully make sure he has his top hat, spats, and cane, every story. Huey, Dewey, and Louie, each of whom speaks a third of a sentence. Talking ducks!!!” And we were stymied about a plot where a hidden lake’s water aged you quickly.

The larger absurdity – or maybe it was ultimate logic – was that a room full of grown men, indeed an entire industry, made careers out of creating a “universe” of talking ducks and mice. The logic rested in the fact that the American public (and the world’s population, deep down) likes fantasy.

I was struck at the time (by the way, the story did make print), and I still am impressed, by the fact that many of the world’s great stories and legends have to do with water. Of course water is elemental source of life, irrigation, navigation, and all manner of sustenance: no mystery. Considering the dramatic possibilities – but not to be over-dramatic – the great poets and artists and writers and dramatists did not enthuse over air in the same manner as water.

Yes, they breathed; and manned flight might have been more of a technical challenge awaiting these professions. But, for instance to my case, humankind could have ventured into the waters of the world to fish… and been satisfied. But rivers became roads beckoning elsewhere; seas and oceans were irresistible, if frightening, gateways to the unknown. And we are back to Fantasy’s role in humankind’s DNA. From the arts to commerce.

The first chapters of Genesis make seemingly disproportionate references to water and “the waters.” It was through a Flood that God first judged the human race. Water, throughout the Bible, is a “type” of the Holy Spirit over and over. Jesus turned water into wine… His FIRST miracle. When Christ’s side was pierced on the cross, it is reported that both blood and water flowed. Start searching for references to water in the Bible and you will be deluged, by the number of them, their variety, their significance.

Are any of them references to a Fountain of Youth?

In a way, yes. The fourth chapter of John records that Jesus encountered a Samaritan woman who was drawing water at Jacob’s Well. He asked her for a drink and she was surprised, since she was a despised foreigner. Nevertheless she was sarcastic when He said that she would thirst again from the world’s water but He offered water after which no one would thirst again.

She still scoffed, and then He identified her as an adulteress, and other facts that made her call Him a prophet. But He said of Himself that, more, He was the Christ, and His meaning became clear. As clear as pure water.

Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”  The woman then said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

Augustine has explained that the woman was a “type” of the world, the coming Church, for whom Jesus came: gentiles, pilgrims, and strangers who needed the Living Water. “So the woman left her water jug and went into town and said to the people, ‘Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this indeed be the Christ?’”

Truly Jesus provides – and is – the Eternal Water of life. It occurs to me that we all, in a way, are drinking from a Fountain of Old without really intending to do so; and we scurry about, all our lives, looking for a Fountain of Youth – or some other elixir of life, happiness, or prosperity.

And we thirst again, and again. And again. What odd ducks we are.

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Click: There Is a Fountain

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Real Clear Religion, on whose site many readers have followed Monday Music Ministry, has been to many people an indispensible part of their daily fare. It is going through changes right now after almost seven years.

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8-24-15

Angel-mania seems to have cooled off in our culture. A few years ago there was a spike in television shows and movies about angels. Angels who adorned jewelry and ornaments were common. In these manifestations, among the unchurched as well as with Christians, there was an acceptance of angels that transcended their biblical roles.

No: “transcended” is the wrong word. Angels in our commercial culture generally are separate from the angelic beings of scripture. As such, caricatures. Or counterfeits.

Many Christians ascribe to angels powers that don’t exist. Sometimes people who attend church faithfully will pray to angels, which is error. I wonder whether in America there is more superstition than spiritual clarity associated with angels. The fads in jewelry, fiction, and the World According to Hallmark have abated somewhat, but almost are a permanent part of our culture.

Some people are determined to be dogmatic about things that are not even Dogma.

I am not disputing the existence of angels. No, I believe in the Bible, and therefore – as Jesus did – I believe in the existence of angels and demons, Heaven and hell, in the account of Creation, where angels are described; and in End Times, where angels likewise are depicted.

But I invite a thought about angels that is different than those who perch on our shoulders with cute devils in cartoons, or the angel Clarence who tends to George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. Angels are real; created before mankind, which means we are “a little lower than the angels” (Psalm 8:6); and of course Satan and his minions were rebellious angels. St Michael the Archangel is, roughly speaking, the counterpart of Satan in heavenly disputation. The devil is not, therefore, the opposite of God, nor Christ, which should remind us of how little power we should grant him. There are multitudes of descriptions of angels in scripture, and we inherit portraits of their glorious beings, their specific roles and assignments… and the Bible’s metaphorical references to them.

We shall linger in the metaphorical. That there are varying allusions to angels in the Bible reflects God’s multi-faceted glory, but also, a little bit, the occasional paucity of the English language. “Angel,” the word, derives from the Greek “aggelos,” and the related Latin “angelus.” The most employed Hebrew word we translate as “angel” means “messenger.”

This helps us understand the job description of angels! We know that they praise God before the Throne; always have, always will. But we know from the Bible that they indeed have been messengers, sometimes imparting specific news or warnings in earlier dispensations. And sometimes they are (in another translation) “ministering spirits,” a sweet picture.

Angels cannot be in several places at once; they have no more wisdom and no more knowledge of God’s ways than we do – otherwise they would be as God.

We should never be envious or jealous of these heavenly figures. They are created spirits whose roles are ordained, and without sin… but as such, unlike us “lowly” humans, they cannot know the joy of salvation, the loosened shackles come by repentance, the unspeakable gift of God’s forgiveness, or be recipients of Christ’s atoning sacrifice. No angel can ever sing – and feel the power of – “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound…”

But I promised to address angels in the way the Bible occasionally does: metaphorically. The same words translated from Ministering Spirit and Messenger are also used to describe things like the Pillar of Cloud the Israelites followed in the desert, and plagues. St Augustine took the larger, metaphorical, point and wrote angelus est nomen officii – that is, “angel is the name of the office.” In other words, God wants to speak and minister to us in supernatural ways, and sometimes He administers through spirits called angels.

Sometimes, by other means.

I have a friend who has a five-year-old daughter, the same age as my granddaughter. The little girl has been away for the summer, although in daily phone contact with her mom. She was reared a Christian but was going through… well, some typical behavioral things all five-year-olds go through. On a recent phone call, the upset girl confessed to wanting to be closer to Jesus, feel Him nearby, talk to Him.

It was time for an innocent little girl who knew the Truth to act on it. Five is not too young! She understood, and her mom asked if she wanted to give her heart to Jesus, which she did. Right over the phone. “Jesus on the main line.”

I tell the story because – back to metaphor – my friend, a Christian mom, surely had been a ministering angel to her daughter. The power of this moment of dedication, and many more to follow, reveal that little Sophie will, perhaps many times, likewise serve the role of angel to her mom Jen. Christian mothers never forget such moments, and there will be reminders to come.

We may be angels to each other. Think of the times someone has made a difference in your day, in your decisions, in your life. Metaphor? If we are “to be Jesus” to others, as the Bible directs, it cannot be wrong to consider that humans can sometimes do the work of angels, too.

Angels are not only pieces of jewelry and cartoons. Nor are they only cherubim, seraphim, and archangels, “all the company of Heaven.” Metaphorically, they can be kids. Neighbors. Strangers.

Yourself.

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Click: Sending Me Angels

6-29-15

As sure as there are troubles in our lives, there is deliverance. Not always, or so it seems to some of us. Not immediately: that is certain. It can come. When it comes – any manner of relief, answers, healing, comfort, understanding, peace – we often to pray thanks to the God whose pity and mercy we so recently sought. Or, we do give thanks or do penance or share with the world what God has done.

It is a tempting thing to suppose, especially when the Creator of the Universe wonderfully has intervened in our affairs, that the crisis is settled, that God has done His work. We adjust our sandals and move ahead, refreshed, toward the next goals in life.

But that is not exactly God’s way, not the Bible way. It is more the case, when He has delivered His people, His children, that He not only saves us from something… but for something.

St Augustine, before the year 400, preached the following words in a sermon. This important man is an essential figure in the theology, cosmology, and philosophy that is a continuum that includes Plato, other early church fathers, and Martin Luther, as readers of this column know (or at least know of my sympathy and wellsprings). It is a miracle that so many of Augustine’s sermons, lessons, and books have survived, lighting our paths through the centuries.

Anyway, he wrote about the idea of deliverance, and God “bringing His people through”:

Brothers, look and see: The Judeans [Jews] were liberated in the sea, the Egyptians were destroyed in it…. The Judeans go beyond the Red Sea and walk through the desert. It is the same way with Christians after baptism: they are not yet in the land of promise, but they live in hope….

The Egyptians who chased the Judeans out of Egypt were not their only enemies – but they were their old enemies. In the same way, our past life and our past sins… continue to haunt us. There are enemies in the desert as well…

Interesting! We know the story of Exodus; and we think of other examples in the Bible of God saving His people. When we think of it, many individuals and populations were saved… only to face greater challenges. Is these the acts of a kindly God? Yes! God is love! We remember the “Hall of Fame of the Heroes of Faith” in Hebrews chapter 11: the Bible’s greatest champions of faith and obedience are there honored.

And every one of them came short of his goal, never making it to each one’s “promised land.” Also interesting, and instructive. The Promised Land, the Land of Milk and Honey, the desert after captivity, “over the Jordan,” Canaan Land, Beulah Land – have you heard these terms?

Exodus 33 has the account of God speaking to Moses:
‘Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; for I will not go up in your midst, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.’…  And when the people heard this bad news, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments. For the Lord had said to Moses, ’Say to the children of Israel, You are a stiff-necked people. I could come up into your midst in one moment and consume you.’… [But] He said, ‘My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.’

Rest? These people yearned for even more, and more, and more, deliverance. Free of the Pharaohs, they wanted also to be free of… God. They wanted to live as they wished – to sin and be rebellious – and not merely trade metal shackles for moral restraints. They were free of the bondsman’s lash, and thought they deserved license to revel in decadence and debauchery. (If this sounds to you like a description of America-up-to-date, we share the same shrinking desert island…)

But God knew the basic natures of His children; He knew the desires of their hearts; and He would not answer those prayers to be free of responsibilities as well as actual chains.

The Promised Land, the Land of Milk and Honey, the desert after captivity, “over the Jordan,” Canaan Land, Beulah Land… many people believe these were earthly symbols of Heaven in the Bible, poetry and hymns. But they were not, never were. Heaven is… Heaven. If there were a physical Promised Land with miracle blooms, and flowing milk and honey, why should any inhabitants desire the real Heaven?

“Beulah,” in the Bible and in many hymns through the years, refers to “marriage,” a word, and a land, where believers might commune with God, even be in a relationship akin to marriage with the Son. But. That all precedes Heaven. Paradise, Eternity, Heaven is our final home.

As sweet as God’s promises, His deliverances, His dwelling-places of communion on earth, are… Heaven will be sweeter. A wise-guy skeptic friend of mine once challenged me: “If Heaven is so wonderful, why don’t you end it all, and go straight there for eternity?” Apart from the proposition that God hates murder, including of one’s self (and, by the way, that includes morally, not just physically), that is not in His plan, either.

We stay on earth, and should desire to, to serve Him. We cling to this life in order to fulfill whatever plans He has for us. We embrace life so that we can share His glory, bring others to saving grace, to minister to a hurting world as “imitators of Christ.”

In that perspective, we need to see, first, that the mercies He offers us here – in ways represented by Beulah Lands, “milk and honey,” Promised Lands – are havens of rest, foretastes of Heaven, gifts to make our days here sweeter as we work for the Master. Not Heaven… but on the way! We have jobs to do for Him, and they become easier, perhaps; or maybe more challenging. But the Hope, and Victory, are within view.

Truly – and always – when God saves us from something, He saves us for something.

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An old hymn, Is Not This the Land of Beulah, and a more recent gospel song, Sweet Beulah Land, share the distinctions and the reality of that place we may all seek. Wonderful words. Here, the two are explained and performed by the composer of the latter song, pastor and singer Squire Parsons. “I’m kind of homesick for that country, where I’ve never been before…”

Click: Beulah Land

4-1-15

I recently have quoted St Augustine, from more than 1500 years ago, to the effect
that “He who sings, prays twice.” In the early days of the church, it was music
that helped attract worshipers… and was, naturally and powerfully, an irresistible
means to praise God and express joy.

Before the church fathers (and mothers; St Cecilia becoming the Patron saint
of Music) Plato identified not only music but harmony as capturing – as best
humankind could – the abstract but Perfect Good that reigns over us. Plato did not
particularly ascribe it to the manufactured Greek gods, but he believed that there
existed an Absolute Truth; and that, even if we could never fully know it, humans
are ennobled by seeking it. Although he lived 300 years before Jesus, the early
church recognized his philosophy in some ways as proto-Christian; and many of
them were neo-Platonists.

So the musical impulse, in many ways, was concurrent to the institution of
worship, formal and informal. Plainsong and chants predominated, and in the
evolution of corporate worship, the trends moved from singing individuals to
ensembles and choirs. In the Gothic era, polyphony – “many sounds,” part-
singing, basic harmony – entered church music. There was actually a time when
the Roman church considered banning harmony as rebellion against tradition, but
the impulse of reformers from Luther to Bach opened the floodgates of glorious
harmonies, attractive melodies, the regal organ, full organs, and the resumption of
congregational singing.

This is a brief introduction, in Holy Week, to a brief introduction to the history of
church music. Linked here is a 90-minute BBC-TV documentary on sacred music,
using Easter themes as the touchstone.

It covers approximately a thousand years of Western church music, from Plainsong
to Polyphony, simple chants to the complex but captivating musical expression of
J. S. Bach. The setting is St Luke’s in London, staged as a reverent mixture of the
ancient and modern. There is tasteful narration between numbers. It ultimately is
a concert, not a church service, and I hope the occasional audience applause is not
disconcerting.

If you are a person who enjoys listening to the Messiah at Christmastide, or even
if you are not, sometime during Holy Week you should find this interesting.
The church’s heritage; musical history; the sweep of cultural changes; artistic
expression of another time, almost another world, are here. And, by the translation-
subtitles of chants, songs, choruses, and motets, the essence of the Easter story is
told.

… as, maybe, only music can bring it to our souls.

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Click: An Easter Celebration

8-4-14

“Caring” is a buzzword that has become – as most buzzwords do – overused, oversold… and underappreciated, to the point of emptiness. In our society, Caring is a word that covers a multitude of sins: bureaucratic assembly-lines; government overreach; the tyranny of a minority. All in the name of Caring.

There is nothing wrong, of course, with caring. Quite the opposite. But it is a word that must be coupled with something, or else it is a disembodied emotional phantom. Abstract.

It has entered the realm of “Politalk.” A few years ago, some politicians received memos suggesting they insert the words “Caring” and “Children” every so often in speeches. We listeners were supposed to start wagging our tails like Dr Pavolv’s dogs at the words. Enough of us did. “Do anything to me, but just tell me you care.”

The inherent problems are more than emptiness of meaning. The Caring meme charts a steady course from compassion to compulsion to coercion. Next, the Compassion Police come knocking at the doors of our conscience, serving writs of Guilt.

Lest I sound like Scrooge, think of what the vulgarization of Caring has come to mean in the 21st century. In the name of Caring and Compassion, we have allowed governments to co-opt the role of individuals, and individuals’ consciences. The point of the parable of the Good Samaritan was that an individual was moved, and acted alone – in fact, out of character and social expectations. Jesus Himself healed, and empowered His followers to heal… notice that He never empowered or commissioned the government of His day. In fact it was “render unto Caesar,” not “demand from Caesar…”

Through history, the great agencies of Caring, after individuals and family, were more than governments. The authorities in ancient Greece and Rome did build public baths. But it was the church, in a thousand ways, that delivered charity and succor. Also, it was guilds and businesses. The Fuggers, bankers and merchants of Augsburg in the Middle Ages, established almshouses for the poor. In 1858, individual donors enabled a doctor to open baths and health facilities for the poor in County Cork, Ireland. By 1860, around the engine works of the Great Western Railway in New Swindon, outside London, the directors built worker’s cottages, libraries, and hospitals; they provided health care and free medicine.

The point of this history lesson is that in recent years, governments have co-opted care-giving functions from individuals and associations. To cite “efficiency” is to worship a false god, because in the process, individuals are being robbed of the option to emotionally notice; denied the challenge to intellectually consider; discouraged from the initiative to assist. In fact, when governments collect taxes in order to be the agents of Care, people eventually will feel less obliged to do charitable work themselves.

St Augustine (in his Confessions) speculated that the meaning behind the reminder “the poor you will always have with you” is that God desires to set before us circumstances to which we will be inspired to act charitably. Our broken hearts touch His heart.

Through it all (or despite it all), Americans still contribute more money and more missionaries and social workers than do most other countries to most world needs. But the relentless socialization of charity has brought us to a realization – confirmed as we watch the nightly news these very days – that regimes that ruled in the name of managing peoples’ fates, are having their true natures revealed: corruption, theft, oppression.

We give our lives over to institutions that care… but they crumble. Leaders who care… but they get turned out. Officials who care… but they play the system against us. Politicians who care… but they lie. Programs that care… but they run out of resources. Meanwhile, all the time, Jesus has been standing at the door, knocking. When Jesus cares for us, it is not because He has compassion, but because He is the essence of compassion.

And when He cares about us, and cares for us, something happens. He offers healing, provision, and the peace that passes understanding. Those things are not in the fine-print of anything the world’s “compassion” can deliver.

We should not suspect the motives of the compassionate in our midst; not at all. But we always need to remember that without the godly component, the world might care about, but truly cannot care for, its people.

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Does Jesus Care?

A powerful, simple song was written a hundred years ago around this question – and this answer: Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you (I Peter 5:7). It is sung here a capella by the Isaacs – brother and sisters Ben, Becky, and Sonya. From the excellent beanscot Channel on YouTube. It will stay in your heart all week!

Click: Does Jesus Care?

10-8-12

A provocative blog this week by my friend Craig Bubeck on the site Internet Monk addressed the role of Christians in the political process. Drawing upon his own reassessments, he dealt especially with this season’s hot buttons: the role of morality in civic affairs; loyalty to nation and party; and the legitimacy of coerced charity as practiced by government.

He makes the point that too many Christians automatically reject state-mandated charity, when (recalling Jesus’ admonition to show love “to the least of these”) believers should applaud charity, no matter what the source; and that “values voters” tend to compartmentalize acts of love and charity. The church’s domain, many think.

Craig’s essay did provoke thoughts. I believe I have fairly stated his theses, and my own thoughts are based on his, not the second round of debating-points. I think that a lot of sincere citizens – sincere about their love and country and love of God, including therefore love of fellow men – do not often enough admire or support acts of charity when committed by government agencies.

However, the “other” side of the question (and it IS a foundational question facing Christians and all Americans) concerns how many governmental acts of charity are acts of love. That is to say that Jesus’ bedrock challenge, the element of love, should be the yardstick by which we formulate national policy and our own responses. Long-term, does the state’s co-option of charitable impulses – picking winners and losers, deciding between those in need, attaching strings to aid and comfort – assist the least of these amongst us solely? Or does it, ultimately, interfere with the prerogatives of churches and individuals? Is it a distinction with a difference?

The widow was praised for giving a mite, all she had. The rich man, in the parable, is not praised for, at least, giving something. There is nothing in Jesus’ story about mandating that the widow give, or setting her donation level, or rejecting the rich man’s donation. Love, in the heart, was the Lord’s determinant. Likewise it is evident, even to the extent of using a Roman coin in another of the Lord’s lessons, that “giving unto Caesar” meant the things of Caesar’s – first amongst them money and taxes. Surely the “things of God’s” meant the currency of love, deposited in the heart.

“The poor you will always have with you.” Many Christians do not dig deeply into yet another verse. It is not easy so to dig; my suspicion is that the parables and admonitions of Jesus seem to meet us less than halfway in order to oblige us to think a little harder than usual.

The statement about the poor is some times, at least subliminally, regarded as a reminder that “there are always those who are less fortunate than ourselves.” Perhaps a sanctified defeatism, that poverty will never be totally eradicated? Yet St. Augustine viewed Christ’s words not as a statement of fact or a statistical view of society, but a command, a challenge, a commission from God Almighty.

In the Augustinian view (in his “Confessions”) Christ was saying that no matter how severe the relative poverty — or, that is to say, also the relative comfort-level — of our neighbors, we must retain the spirit of charity. We believers, that is. In the original tongue, “charity” meant “love,” the act of Christian loving and compassion.

It would seems clear that such an impulse, a holy command rather than a feel-good, do-good suggestion, would find little fulfillment in the cultivation of systems that would transfer personal responsibility, and personal commitment, to others. In fact when governmental agencies assume the impulses and instincts toward charitable impulses – and sometimes virtually outlaw them, by sanctions against churches and faith-groups – we witness a war against religion.

A giant step in my political and ecclesial maturity was when relatives from Europe (where in many countries three per cent of citizens attend church, and where “state churches” are a matter of course) told me that many people attend church three times in their lives: baptism, marriage, and funeral. When the clergy is paid by the state, the Bible recedes to a book on the shelf among driver’s manuals and counselor’s handbooks; and the clergy is relegated to a list of state-supplied counselors you may call on, or not.

My own relatives in America, my grandparents, shared Great Depression era stories with me. A propos cheering “charity” when dispensed by the government, I recall that my grandmother, who sold cookies (not apples, as in the common images) on street corners, frequently confronted by “block captains” that government assistance for her family was tied to registering and voting with one of the two political parties. Render unto Caesar – Washington – indeed.

Simply: it is seems to me that if Christians perceive that there are problems in society, they ought to act more Christian than, perhaps, they previously have been acting; and should encourage fellow Christians and churches and faith-groups to respond better. That includes monetary gifts and it certainly includes physical involvement.

But when Washington says it can do such things better than Christians can – but moreover, and increasingly, attaches conditions regarding Christians’ freedom of conscience about things like abortion, homosexuality, reliance on the Bible’s instructions and God’s commands – we ought to reconsider the extent of “rendering unto Caesar.”

Surely Jesus did not categorize conscience and liberty, much less the charitable impulse, as things that are primarily the government’s domain.

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“Be Thou My Vision,” a beautiful Irish hymn of the fourth century, associated with St. Patrick, seems appropriate to hear in relation to this message. This version is by the trip Selah:

Click: Be Thou My Vision

9-19-11

My granddaughter Elsie was dedicated this weekend. Since I was not able to attend – partly because she is in Northern Ireland and I am not – Emily and Norman did the next best thing these days: hooked up a Skype connection. The ceremony “streamed live,” and when I was asked to pray, a microphone was held to my spectral, flickering image. I am not sure the people in the church could hear (in fact I heard only every fifth word or so of theirs), but we all know that God did. I got to wondering: would the 120 have gathered in the Upper Room if there had been Skype 2000 years ago?

The screen has become a part of our lives now. Tekkies tell us that, soon, smart-phone screens will substitute for computer screens, and soon will projected onto walls, even to handle touch-screen capabilities once projected. (In the meantime, of course, it took me 20 minutes to remember how to charge the laptop’s batteries…)

In recent history, much of my supposed field, popular culture, essentially has been related to the small screen. Even our political history. Richard Nixon might have been kicked off Dwight Eisenhower’s presidential ticket in 1952, but for the “Checkers Speech” he made on TV (decades later my mother still grew misty-eyed, recalling that piece of political theater). Eight years later, radio listeners to the Nixon-Kennedy debates rated Nixon the winner; but on TV he came across as sweaty, shifty-eyed, and dark (here merely was ill, warm, and had a five-o’clock shadow)… and such was the power of TV that Kennedy narrowly won that election. It has always been my opinion that much of the American public and even a lot of Ronald Reagan’s supporters viewed him as an overly amiable “aw, shucks” guy, until one night in the 1980 primaries, a moderator tried to shut off Reagan’s microphone in a hall he had rented. The Gipper angrily shouted, “I’m PAYING for this microphone, Mr Breen!” Even Reagan’s political rivals broke out in applause; and I remember thinking, “THAT’s how he’ll face down the Soviets.” I think America saw him differently too, because of a TV moment.

Last week a similar moment happened. I doubt whether history will turn on the exchange… but for one moment the crux of the Great Debate of the 20th century, and the American government’s fate in the 21st, was in the headlights. Then things moved on, maybe never to be raised again. It was a moment in the Republican debate when moderator Wolf Blitzer asked a hypothetical health-care question of the only doctor on stage, Ron Paul. If a healthy man who chose not to buy insurance got very sick, “are you saying that society should just let him die?”

I am not making a brief for a candidate, believe me: The response was mechanistic, not theological. However, Rep. Paul spoke some common sense when he recalled that he began his medical practice before the days of Medicare and Medicaid. He never turned a patient away, and never knew a hospital to do so. “What about family, friends, and churches?” he asked rhetorically. Is that a heartless attitude… or is it biblical?

Statistics indicate that Americans bestow more charity than do citizens of most other nations; that Christians donate more than people of other faiths; that conservatives are far more generous than liberals, along these lines. This is instructive, especially in the face of concerted campaigns to the contrary. That is, there are serious political efforts to end tax deductions for charitable contributions, and since the New Deal, we are confronted with philosophies that attempt to have government substitute for private charity.

The dilemma is not, of course, whether to render assistance. It is co-opting the impulse behind it, making war on our freedoms of conscience and action. When government “takes care of the poor,” we don’t have to, is the general proposition: that is the mindset of the modern state. Whether the poor, or sick, or homeless, are measurably assisted, is actually an open question (poverty rates have changed little since the Great Society) – but many people’s consciences are deadened “because the government will take care of the needy.” And this is apart from the question of whether it is moral to coerce one person here to support the children of another person there; or a woman from, say, Arizona to have to pay for the surgery of a man from, say, Maine. Eventually, citizens will be unable on their own to assist folks when they hear about children needing assistance, or surgical procedures requiring help. Already 1.75 citizens supports one Social Security beneficiary, and then we start adding Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, disaster relief, foreign aid…

Years ago I was impressed, when reading St Augustine’s Confessions, how he regarded charity. He quoted Christ’s words, “the poor ye shall always have with you,” and explained this otherwise enigmatic verse. Augustine identified with the poor, in part because Christ did, and he was extraordinarily active on their behalf. Augustine had a vision of corrupt man as someone who, despite our best intentions, keeps returning to self. He warned in the same vein against a circular form of love where even acts of charity were futile if divorced from the love and will of God.

“Anonymous” charity – that is, actions devoid of love; empty – is self-absorbing at best, and an offense to God at worst. For Augustine came to realize, through the humility to which the Cross inevitably brings us, that an act of charity (that word is also translated as “love”) is a godly construct. The poor, who we will always have with us, inspire us to imitate Christ in their care… and that pleases God.

That the humility, even the shame, of the Cross, takes us (drags us?) to more of an outwardly focused life, is the essence of the fulfilled believer’s life on earth. We evolve from awareness to compassion to identification to brokenness with the hurting, needy, and dependent. Which is, of course, our state too. Even when we are in Christ – I say, even MORE so, when we are in Christ – we must practice sacrificial love, tender mercy, and authentic assistance.

“That TV moment” I mentioned above is when political types, and TV watchers, had a chance to think about the drift – more like a tsunami – of the past several generations. It is mighty hard to maintain the impulse of individual response, when the “world system” keeps saying it is not our job, but theirs. St Augustine seemed to be looking 1600 years into the future when he wrote, “Woe to the soul which supposes it will find something better if it forsakes You!”

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Casting Crowns and the Beanscot Channel combine for a simple but powerful lesson drawn from true “Christian Charity” – with Christ in our hearts we trust Him more; and with Christ in our hearts we do His will more willingly.

Click: It’s So Sweet To Trust in Jesus

(Last week’s music was from an ancient opera, Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell, which prompted a few questions about a “pagan” theme. First, I offered it with a Christian application, but [“full circle”] St Augustine himself is thought to have patterned the structure, not the contents, of his Confessions after The Aeneid. And Virgil, of course, patterned his epic after Homer’s Odyssey. And my point was that the nation of America, like the character Dido, is appropriate for a Lament to be sung.)

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“Caring” is a buzzword that has become – as most buzzwords do – overused, oversold… and underappreciated, to the point of emptiness. In our society, Caring is a word that covers a multitude of sins: bureaucratic assembly-lines; government overreach; the tyranny of a minority. All in the name of Caring.

There is nothing wrong, of course, with caring. Quite the opposite. But it is a word that must be coupled with something, or else it is a disembodied emotional phantom. Abstract.

It has entered the realm of “Politalk.” A few years ago, some politicians received memos suggesting they insert the words “Caring” and “Children” every so often in speeches. We listeners were supposed to start wagging our tails like Dr Pavolv’s dogs at the words. Enough of us did. “Do anything to me, but just tell me you care.”

The inherent problems are more than emptiness of meaning. The Caring meme charts a steady course from compassion to compulsion to coercion. Next, the Compassion Police come knocking at the doors of our conscience, serving writs of Guilt.

Lest I sound like Scrooge, think of what the vulgarization of Caring has come to mean in the 21st century. In the name of Caring and Compassion, we have allowed governments to co-opt the role of individuals, and individuals’ consciences. The point of the parable of the Good Samaritan was that an individual was moved, and acted alone – in fact, out of character and social expectations. Jesus Himself healed, and empowered His followers to heal… notice that He never empowered or commissioned the government of His day. In fact it was “render unto Caesar,” not “demand from Caesar…”

Through history, the great agencies of Caring, after individuals and family, were more than governments. The authorities in ancient Greece and Rome did build public baths. But it was the church, in a thousand ways, that delivered charity and succor. Also, it was guilds and businesses. The Fuggers, bankers and merchants of Augsburg in the Middle Ages, established almshouses for the poor. In 1858, individual donors enabled a doctor to open baths and health facilities for the poor in County Cork, Ireland. By 1860, around the engine works of the Great Western Railway in New Swindon, outside London, the directors built worker’s cottages, libraries, and hospitals; they provided health care and free medicine.

The point of this history lesson is that in recent years, governments have co-opted care-giving functions from individuals and associations. To cite “efficiency” is to worship a false god, because in the process, individuals are being robbed of the option to emotionally notice; denied the challenge to intellectually consider; discouraged from the initiative to assist. In fact, when governments collect taxes in order to be the agents of Care, people eventually will feel less obliged to do charitable work themselves.

St Augustine (in his Confessions) speculated that the meaning behind the reminder “the poor you will always have with you” is that God desires to set before us circumstances to which we will be inspired to act charitably. Our broken hearts touch His heart.

Through it all (or despite it all), Americans still contribute more money and more missionaries and social workers than do most other countries to most world needs. But the relentless socialization of charity has brought us to a realization – confirmed as we watch the nightly news these very days – that regimes that ruled in the name of managing peoples’ fates, are having their true natures revealed: corruption, theft, oppression.

We give our lives over to institutions that care… but they crumble. Leaders who care… but they get turned out. Officials who care… but they play the system against us. Politicians who care… but they lie. Programs that care… but they run out of resources. Meanwhile, all the time, Jesus has been standing at the door, knocking. When Jesus cares for us, it is not because He has compassion, but because He is the essence of compassion.

And when He cares about us, and cares for us, something happens. He offers healing, provision, and the peace that passes understanding. Those things are not in the fine-print of anything the world’s “compassion” can deliver.

We should not suspect the motives of the compassionate in our midst; not at all. But we always need to remember that without the godly component, the world might care about, but truly cannot care for, its people.

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Does Jesus Care?

A powerful, simple song was written a hundred years ago around this question – and this answer: Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you (I Peter 5:7). It is sung here a capella by the Isaacs – brother and sisters Ben, Becky, and Sonya. From the excellent beanscot Channel on YouTube. It will stay in your heart all week!

Click: Does Jesus Care?