David Stayed in Jerusalem

This may be one of the saddest verses in the Bible. Instead of doing what kings are supposed to do in the spring – go to war with his troops – David stayed behind. He must have had a good reason to remain in Jerusalem, especially since the battle was against the Ammonites who had rejected David’s peace envoy. It would seem that he could have had a personal stake in the outcome of the battle. There may have been other royal duties that caused him to stay home, but one thing is sure: he found something to do that ruined his life.

Because David wasn’t out avenging his shamed emissaries, he had occasion to be on his rooftop one night when his neighbor’s wife, Bathsheba, was bathing on her roof. This is when the second saddest verse comes to play: “He saw a woman bathing.” Actually, it wasn’t what he saw that got him in trouble; it was what followed his look: lust. James puts it like this: “Each one is tempted when he is dragged away and enticed by his own desires. Then desire, after it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin when it is brought to completion, gives birth to death.”

If you know the story, you remember that literal death soon followed as David arranged for the murder of Bathsheba’s husband when the king’s attempt to cover her pregnancy with a conjugal visit by her husband failed. A few months later, the child of the illicit affair died. More death visited David’s family when his second-born, Amnon committed incest with his half-sister and her brother Absolom had him killed. Several years later, Absolom was tragically killed during his attempt to usurp his father’s throne. This was all predicted by the prophet, Nathan, after he confronted David with his adultery. The Lord said, “Because you have despised me and taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife, …I am going to raise up evil against you from within your own house.”

There is an important lesson to be learned by watching what happens after Nathan confronts David. Two things are worth noting. First, David immediately admitted that he had sinned, and he begged for forgiveness from God. Read Psalm 51; David penned the psalm in the aftermath of his affair. He expresses repentance and contrition, and he asks God to purify him – maybe to help him handle his lustful thoughts. David’s attitude is exactly what God requires when we sin. The word confess means to agree with God concerning our sinfulness; David did that, “Against Thee only have I sinned.” Uriah might have felt differently had he lived, but David was correct in placing the focus on his relationship with God.

The second thing that happened, or perhaps I should say didn’t happen, is that God’s promise to David concerning his royal dynasty was not revoked. Our human sense of justice might cause us to expect that God would have punished David by passing the throne to someone else. That is what He did with King Saul, because he failed to do what David did: Saul did not repent; he pretended righteousness with Samuel and made excuses for his indiscretion. His attitude cost him the throne. God’s covenant with David was secure though, and we now understand why. God planned to bring salvation to the whole earth through the ultimate Son of David, Jesus Christ.

It should give us comfort to know that God doesn’t remove His grace when we sin. Quite the opposite: His grace covers our sin – even sin as grievous as David’s adultery and murder. This is not to say God doesn’t care how we act. He certainly does. What it says is that our salvation is not based on what we do; it’s based on Who we know. Know Jesus; know peace. No Jesus; no peace. Seeking God’s kingdom and His righteousness sets us in good standing with the Giver of all good and perfect gifts. But as we see with David, it doesn’t relieve us of the consequences of our bad behavior.

There is a side issue that I think is worth mentioning. David fell prey to an almost universal weakness of human flesh: lust of the eyes. This is particularly damaging when it involves sexual attraction. Because marriage and its sexual component is elemental to God’s plan for humankind, the enemy loves to play on our weakness. (I have written about this previously.) We can fall into the same trap David did if we stay home in front of the TV or computer instead of going out to do whatever it is God would have us do. We may slip into a bad place if we linger longer than we should in that glance at the attractive person at the next table. Modern society has abandoned many of the conventions that used to help guard against temptation.

We need to listen to the Proverb and keep our hearts with all vigilance and look straight forward with our eyes. As Jesus said, “The eye is the lamp of the body. Therefore, if your eye is sincere, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is evil, your whole body will be dark. Therefore, if the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” The word Jesus used, sincere, means simple, single, or clear. Looking as David did when he stayed in Jerusalem was anything but “simple.” His life became complicated in the most painful way. Let me rephrase the KISS principle: Keep it simple, servant.

 

Related posts: Christian Cleavage; Women’s Attire Again; What About Men’s Attire; How to Watch TV Part 4; Creating Chaos

Parental Responsibility

A couple weeks ago there was another school shooting. A fifteen-year-old took a handgun to school in Oxford, Michigan and shot several students and one teacher. Running parallel to the dramatic reporting of the incident was the ongoing search for the boy’s parents who were being sought by police. The parents tried to hide, but they were quickly discovered and arrested. The original charge was involuntary manslaughter. Defending her decision, Karen McDonald, the prosecutor, said, “I wasn't elected to do the safe thing, and this is just far beyond politics. To me, this was the right thing to do. I don't think anyone looking at it … could have decided to just allow those two individuals to move forward in their life and never have any consequences.”

McDonald later told a reporter that she was angry that it’s 2021 and we still have school shootings. I assume she is disturbed by the fact that since the 1999 Columbine shooting, school tragedies continue to take place far to frequently. I’m not sure anger, no matter how well justified, is the best motivation for a public servant of any kind, especially a county prosecutor. The judicial system in this country is supposed to apply the appropriate law to every circumstance in a rational manner apart from emotional considerations.

This is not the first time someone has suggested charging the parents of a school shooter; however, according to McDonald, she is the first to attempt to do it. Involuntary manslaughter is defined as the crime of killing another human being unlawfully but unintentionally. If a parent handed a child a gun and told him to go shoot people, there may be some complicity. In this case, the parents didn’t know their son had taken the gun from the house. The boy acted independently. Unless emotion trumps rational thinking, I cannot imagine a jury applying the legal definition of manslaughter to the parents in this case.

The situation does lead me to ask myself how far parents’ responsibility extends in the life of their children. At what age do children become morally responsible for their actions? Child psychologists have tried to identify a stage of development at which moral responsibility applies; opinions vary, but it is usually put in the early teens. The Bible refers to an age when children can tell the difference between right and wrong, but it does not pin a number on it. Ancient Jewish tradition assigns thirteen as the age when a boy becomes a man, or more precisely, a “son of the covenant,” the definition of bar mitzvah.

In Western society today, there seem to be few thirteen-year-olds who have mastered what psychologists call higher level thinking or formal reasoning. We seem to be pushing adulthood and its responsibilities into the twenties for many young people. That is not to say that apart from a clinical mental deficiency a fifteen-year-old doesn’t know it’s wrong to shoot his schoolmates. Very young children can tell that some things should not be done, even if it is only because they know it will displease their parents and possibly result in punishment for them. This does not necessarily mean they know right from wrong in the abstract, however.

Parents can either help their children mature morally, or they can impede them. The Oxford shooter’s mother seems to be in the latter category. When her son was caught using his cell phone against school policy, she texted, “LOL I'm not mad at you. You have to learn not to get caught.” Supporting rule-breaking does not qualify as good parenting, but I don’t think it rises to the level of involuntary manslaughter. The father of the shooter seems to have been a bit more rational. When he heard of the shooting on the radio, he rushed home to see if the gun they had purchased for their son was there. When he discovered it was missing, he phoned the police to tell them his son might be the shooter. That must have been painful, but it shows a sense of responsibility not apparent in his wife.

The young man had scribbled violent images and disturbing phrases in class that day, and the parents were called in to discuss disciplinary measures. They decided not to take their son out of school, and the school administration allowed him to stay. At that point, I believe (as a former school principal) that both the parents and the school were making a mistake. The suggestion to take him home and seek counselling should have been insisted upon. The school officials made the right suggestion even though they didn’t know about the recent gun purchase, but the parents did, and the father apparently had his suspicions. If there is blame to be shared for the ensuing tragedy, there is plenty to go around.

The Bible gives little precise information about when a child stands independently before God. At age twelve, Jesus seemed to know where He belonged to the surprise of His parents.  During His ministry, Jesus praised the faith of children and encouraged adults to copy their simple faith. When the Sanhedrin questioned the parents of the blind man Jesus healed, they deferred to him saying he was on his own. While there is no exact “age of accountability,” as it has sometimes been called, Scripture clearly teaches that at some point in time, people become responsible for their own actions.

I don’t think the Oxford parents should be charged with a crime, but I do think they may have failed to teach their son to properly discern right from wrong. The often-quoted proverb says, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” If parents raise their children “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” as the New Testament prescribes, they can hope their children will mature into morally responsible adults. If parents choose the path the Oxford mother seems to have chosen, the outcome may be disastrous. Whatever the parents do, the child becomes an adult at some point, and at that point, the parents should not be charged with any crime except poor parenting. As far as I know, that crime is not in the books in Oxford or anywhere else.

There is a larger issue beneath this tragedy that none of the media coverage has broached. Ever since the 1960’s, children have been taught by government schools that morality is relative. “Values clarification” leads them to believe they are the arbiters of what’s right and what’s wrong. Common decency would seem to dictate that killing another human being is wrong in any value system, but like common sense, decency has become less and less common in our society. It is no simple coincidence that at the same time the Bible and prayer were removed from government schools, students attending those schools eventually became morally deficient.

The New Testament is peppered with prophecies that in the last days, people would turn away from God and moral degeneration would be the result. In Romans, Ephesians, Timothy and elsewhere, Paul specifically warned that those who reject God would be left to wallow in their own decadent ways. What began as seemingly benign political correctness in the late 2000’s has morphed into the militant WOKE culture that is attacking traditional Judeo-Christian morality on every front.

I pray that the backlash against critical race theory and other elements of the WOKE agenda will prevail. Parents across the country are telling their local school boards that they are not happy with the current school policies and curricula. America’s founding fathers wisely noted that without a moral populace, government of, by and for the people would fail. It is every parent’s responsibility to see that sound moral teaching is provided for their children in their home and in their schools. The multiple tragedies from Columbine to Oxford should be enough to motivate anyone.

Related posts: I Pray for America; Truth Dysphoria; Critical Race Theory; Woke TV; True Lies

Adolescence. Ugh!

I can’t decide if it’s God’s sense of humor playing a joke on parents or an example of His deep wisdom that our children go through the trials of adolescence. It is not a modern development. I think I hear it in Joseph’s interaction with his brothers (Genesis 37); even Jesus at twelve (pre-teen? tweener?) demonstrated what looks like typical teenage behavior on one level. When He stayed behind in Jerusalem after the feast and was not found until three days later by his parents, his retort to His distraught mother might be updated thus: “Duh! You should have known where I was.” (Luke 2:49)

My own teenage rebellion was mild by comparison to some. I think my desire to please my dad and earn some expression of affection kept me from the worst I might have considered. As a teen in the sixties, I grew my hair as long as he allowed (collar length, no more). I listened to that dreaded rock music my parents despised (while they made me listen to classical in proportion to the rock). I smoked the tires a few times on my mom’s 396 c.i./325 h.p. Chevy Caprice station wagon. In the sex, drugs and rock-and-roll days, my deeds were very mild-mannered.

While the adolescent trials may be endemic to the human condition, I do believe our society has increased the likelihood that trouble may come. First, we have extended the period during which teens may express themselves independently. For most of human history until the late twentieth century, children went to work and began a more-or-less adult life at the start of adolescence. The development of universal education lasting thirteen years pushes adulthood and its responsibilities much later, even later yet for children who attend college right after high school.

The other societal phenomenon that makes today’s adolescent more likely to have problems is the freedom most children are given at an early age. In many modern homes, children have their own room, their own TV, their own computer giving them a degree of independence that was unknown until recently. Add to this the almost universal teenage driver’s license and often free use of a car, and you have a recipe for disaster. The teens who don’t kill themselves (and their friends) by driving insanely drive themselves into all sorts of places they would not otherwise be able to access. Prognosis: trouble.

One would hope that teens from Christian homes would be spared these temptations. As a teacher in Christian high schools for many years, I have witnessed the evidence that this is too often not the case. In fact, it seems as if the children from stricter parents tend to push the limits even harder than their less restricted peers. I cannot count the number of times I have heard teens say they despise rules when the reasons for the rules are not explained to them in any acceptable way. When petty infractions incur draconian discipline, many teens decide that all rules were made to be broken. I have seen many disasters including suicide committed by teens who could not bear up under the seeming mindlessness of their parents’ requirements.

One can understand the frustration that caused Mark Twain to quip, “When a boy turns 13, put him in a barrel and feed him through a knot hole. When he turns 16, plug up the hole.” Overkill, yes, but understandable. Children differ in how they react to adolescent trials and must be treated accordingly. As I watched things in the home where I grew up, I saw everything from complete compliance in one of my siblings to near disastrous rebellion in another. There is no one-size-fits-all approach as Twain humorously suggested.

The Bible principle that best instructs parents on this issue is found in the often quoted, often misunderstood Proverbs 22:6, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” This is often misunderstood as meaning that parents can mold a child in the way they think he should go: make rules for him to follow. I don’t think this is what the Teacher intended. Hebrew is a picture language, and the picture painted in this verse is instructive. A literal translation might read, “Begin training your youngster according to his tastes (literally: mouth)….” Many parents do take the mouth analogy seriously, thinking of a horse’s bit that forces the way. I prefer to see it as a call to find out the child’s interests and talents and help him develop them. Naturally, if a child “likes” breaking things and hurting people, this does not apply. But generally, children gravitate toward things they enjoy, and they can succeed at. Here is where the parents “lead.”

This idea of helping a child find his sweet spot in life is a metaphor for what God does with His children, I think. He places His Spirit within us at [re]birth, and the idea is that we will develop the natural talents we are given alongside the spiritual gifts God provides each one of us. If we allow God to “train us up in the way we should go,” when we mature in Christ, we will find satisfaction and have no desire to, “depart from [God’s plan for us.]” I’m glad God’s treatment is not like Mark Twain suggested but instead of stifling us, He “provides us all things richly for [our] enjoyment.” That enjoyment is doubled when we seek His path for us and walk in it.

The New Iconoclasts

 I was visiting family last weekend, and somehow the question of who discovered America came up. I asked my eight-year-old (“I’m going to be nine.”) grandson if he knew. He shook his head, and to be fair, he may simply have forgotten that lesson if it was ever mentioned. However, when I asked if he knew about Columbus, his Mom informed me that they no longer teach that Columbus discovered America because he is thought to be an evil person. We also discussed the fact that the continent of America was probably “discovered” by Vikings, possibly Leif Ericson, long before Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. And, of course, the island Columbus first landed on isn’t even American territory.

Columbus did eventually get to the American mainland where he continued his “evil” European domination. I will not deny that the European taking of the Western hemisphere was arrogant imperialism with a large dose of bigotry and condescension. However, to discard all mention of the great explorer is to lose a sense of his truly great achievement: he debunked a false notion that ruled the scientific community of his day. He proved the earth was not flat. He may have miscalculated the planet’s size, but he was correct about its shape. He opened the door for the Age of Exploration.

Columbus also extended the reach of the dominant culture of his day, the consequences of which were not fully positive. Nor were they completely negative. Say what you will about 15^th century Roman Catholic theology, Columbus and subsequent explorers did bring knowledge of the Savior of the world to the “new world.” In his own words, Columbus expressed his desire to bring Christianity to the people of the newly discovered continent. Secular historians, the sanitizers of history, put his evangelistic zeal in the category of arrogant imperialism. How dare he think his religion was superior to that of the natives.

While modern missiologists will no doubt shudder at the tactics of Columbus et al, their motives cannot be impugned. Certainly, the explorers of the Enlightenment day sought riches. Had Columbus not promised to return with ships laden with gold, Ferdinand and Isabella would never have financed his venture as a missions trip. We may never know whether his primary motivation was economic, religious, or simply a burning desire to prove his round earth theory. But if we erase Columbus from the history books, we will never get to have that discussion.

It is a discussion worth having. Just as Israel was commanded to remember her history, America should remember hers. I realize the history of Israel is the story of God’s redemption of the human race and therefore eminently important, whereas America’s history is not inspired Scripture with eternal significance. However, in the same way that the Israelites could track the coming of the Messiah through her past, Americans can trace the development of a nation that is unique in all human history. There are valuable lessons to be learned from a study of the American foundations. We live in an ordered universe where the principle of cause and effect operates not only in the “hard” sciences like physics but in the social sciences as well.

To erase great men from our history because they were greatly flawed is to eliminate the possibility of learning from the ill effects of their actions. To hide their flaws as my grade school history did with Columbus isn’t ideal either. Surely a balance can be found between painting him as the devil incarnate and whitewashing him as God’s righteous servant. Even a third-grade student could be made to understand the man’s sincere religious motivations and his prowess as a navigator and sailor while recognizing his moral and fiscal failures as an administrator.

I know my third-grade grandson can understand the nuances of flawed people. Like too many young children today, he has had live with the consequences of moral failure. Children should not be “protected” from the reality of the mixed alloy of human character; it is valuable information. The Bible certainly does not gloss over its heroes’ moral difficulties. Remember that David and Moses were both murderers. Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived according to the biblical record, couldn’t control his carnal desires. Peter denied his Savior at a critical moment while all the others closest to Jesus fled into the night.

I believe it is foolish arrogance to read our twenty-first century political/moral sensitivities back into history. Deleting Columbus or any other person who doesn’t meet a modern, politically correct standard has the same effect as the ancient historians who made up tales that suited their fancy. Mythology makes for entertaining reading, and often it presents moral lessons, but it is not a substitute for a true account of actual events in the past.

This is a big problem, but a committed group of parents could stage a coup at the next school board election and influence a local body to make changes that would lead to an honest history curriculum. Even within the dreaded Core standards now adopted by most states there is room for a local district to supplement their history texts with those that present the real thing. Our children deserve to know where we have come from as a nation. Who knows; maybe if our public schools had been teaching history honestly for the last few decades there would be fewer young people who think socialism is the answer to all our problems.

The Risk of Raising Children

There are so many ways to mess up kids, it’s a wonder any decent adults are ever produced. My wife and I raised three children, and I am grateful to God that I was unable to ruin them completely by my awkward efforts. I had only the best intentions, but there was a weakness built into me by my parents that had a negative effect on my parenting skills. There were things hidden in my character that worked against perfect parenting.

I have to admit that arrogance was one of my failings as a parent. (For more on this see Confidence versus Arrogance.) So sure was I that I knew how to bring up kids that I wrote an outline for a course I planned to sell called “Raising Perfect Children” or something like that. Understand that my young children were doing quite well at the time, and I was sure it was my stellar parenting that brought them to their well-behaved state. As a high school teacher, I was in daily contact with children who were not as lucky as mine to have such wonderful, talented parents.

I was also an unconscious narcissist. In Greek mythology, Narcissus was that guy who stared with pride at his image in a pool until he got so enamored that he fell in and drowned. Today the term narcissist is applied to people who think they are not just “all that;” we think we are all there is. I was well into my thirties and my children nearly full-grown before my narcissism became known to me. When I discovered it (or it was revealed to me), I realized that it had caused me to live as if I were the only person on earth who mattered. My desires, my feelings, my opinions were the only thing I cared about. It’s not that I ignored other people’s needs; I simply didn’t realize other people had needs or that I was somehow responsible for how my behavior might affect them.

To say I lacked compassion would be an understatement. Couple this with the fact that I had been brought up in a house where it was imperative to be right about everything – not just to be right but to insist that others acknowledged your right-ness. To establish our right-ness, we would engage in verbal battles over everything. I learned from my wife some years later that this was called arguing; I thought of it as surviving. I can barely imagine what this toxic character that was me looked like to my children. Remember, I had no clue that I was messed up as long as I got my way. My wife and kids soon learned to let me. Voila: perfect marriage and children.

After our house became the empty nest, my wife screwed up the courage to tell me what she really thought of me. Ouch! My adult children began to reveal how difficult it was to live in our home and to survive to become decent people. Ouch again! My mother confessed to me about that time that she wanted forgiveness for being such a bad mother. She explained that she never had a caring parent, so she was ill equipped to be one herself. I am not blaming my parents for anything. I am simply trying to demonstrate how it is we become the type of parents we become.

As I said in the opening, my children have turned out quite well; not perfect but way better than they might have given my failures as a parent. This is God’s grace in action. My exposure to thousands of other children teaches me that not all are so fortunate. I have seen the unfortunate results of the doting parent/spoiled child situation. I have witnessed too many children run off the rails in rebellion against parents who were too restrictive. I have seen what happens to a needy boy or girl who goes looking for the love and affirmation that was not available from a neglectful parent. There are just so many ways to get it wrong.

I was about to say there should be some training and a license required to raise offspring, but I don’t really want the government getting into the business of raising kids; the efforts the state has made by default are mostly disastrous. There are many books written about child-rearing, the best of which are founded on the principles found in the One Book you can trust. The difficulty is that good parenting comes from good parenting; it is generational. Parents must raise their children to honor God and His Word so that the children can become good parents.

If you are raising children right now and doubt your ability to be perfect, mid-course correction is possible. The damage done by less-than-perfect parenting might be undone by repentance and recalibration by parents who learn (sooner than I did) how messed up they are. There is one key: parents must love their children as God loves their children. Not doting on them and spoiling them; not over-protecting and over-restricting them; not letting them run free to become whatever disaster they stumble into. (For more on the freedom parents must allow see “The Perfect Father.”)

God’s love is both binding and freeing. We are bound by love to keep His commandments; we are free to do whatever we like within the bounds of those commandments. When we step outside those bounds, He disciplines us – lovingly bringing us back into line with His will. This is perfect parenting; this is very difficult for messed up people – the only kind of people that exists as far as I know. This can be done. Read your Bible and pray with your kids, tell them you love them, then go out and play with them. It’s still risky, but with God’s help, you can give your kids a fighting chance to be what God wants them to be: perfect.

The Winnowing Fork of God

Let me start by making sure we understand the agricultural terms I will be using. Before the days of mechanized wheat combines that do everything except bake the bread, people used simple tools to complete the process of getting wheat from the field to the oven. First the wheat was cut down by reapers with a sickle and bound in bunches called sheaves. The sheaves were taken to a hard surface – a threshing floor – and either beaten with sticks or trodden by animals. Once the grains of wheat were released from the stalk and hull, people used a large fork – the winnowing fork – and tossed the grain and chaff into the air so the wind could blow away the unwanted elements. The remaining grain fell to the threshing floor and could then be scooped up to be ground into flour for baking. Whew!

Who cares? I care because the imagery of harvesting grain is used throughout the Bible to describe the experience of believers. In Matthew 13, Jesus shares the parable of the weeds in the wheat. Jesus explains to his questioning disciples that the wheat represents believers and the weeds are “sons of the evil one.” He explains that, “at the end of the age” His angels will sort out the weeds from the wheat. This is usually interpreted to refer to judgment at the end of time.

I believe there is another possible interpretation. God has been separating weeds from wheat throughout the history of His people. It began with driving Cain away from his family. Then there was the major drama of the flood which saved a tiny remnant. Time and again God used separating forces to separate a people to Himself: plagues, serpents, earthquakes, Assyrians, Babylonians. God’s winnowing fork has been dipping into history from the beginning.

Each of the instances mentioned above were in the midst of God’s redemption story confirming the fact that His selection process will not be suspended until the Last Day. A note in the Faithlife Study Bible on Daniel 8:17 says that, “In apocalyptic literature, references to end times can connote the cessation of a particular activity [italics mine], a future period of God’s wrath manifested in judgment, or the end of time.” Many are predicting that the long-term effects of the COVID 19 restrictions will mark the “cessation of a particular activity,” namely, life as we have known it. I suspect God is using this situation to accomplish His will. (Of course He is; He always is.)

I have begun to wonder if the effects “social distancing” are more significant than the virus itself. Death from the virus is tragic. But one must be clear-headed. Far more people died from the Spanish Flu in the last century than the highest estimates of predicted deaths from COVID 19: the Spanish Flu took perhaps 50 million worldwide and over 600,000 in the US alone. Tens of thousands have died from flu each year since 2012. More recently, between 60,000 and 80,000 people died in the 2017 flu season in the US. (Statistics are hard to pin down.) Outside of the individual tragedies that families and friends suffered in those events, little changed in society as a whole.

Social distancing and shutdowns make things different in this COVID 19 crisis; certainly, anyone who depends on an income from work is being greatly affected. Those of us who have other means of living are inconvenienced by closed stores and such, but we are not going to be destitute. The long-term effects, however, are startling. According to one economist, shutting down the economy will cause between one million and four-and-one-half million businesses to fold, depending on how long the shut-down lasts. That will be devastating. Undoubtedly, many people tie their trust to a job rather than to God. They must be asking, “If I am trusting my job for my daily bread, what do I do now?

More to the point for believers is the closing of houses of worship. We have all heard it said -- I have said it here: it is not the building that constitutes the church; it’s the people. Even though many mouth these words, there are a great many people who still tie their faith to brick and mortar. (See “What is the Church?”) Christian researcher, Barna , recently revealed that fewer than one in five adults read their Bibles throughout the week. I suspect the number of families who worship at home between Sundays is a small fraction of the Bible readers. They must be asking themselves, “If the only time I worship is “in church,” what do I do now?

With both Sunday worship and daily employment on hold for so many people, I can imagine God calling us to bring our faith back to where it belongs: in God and God alone. If God is winnowing out the weak Christians, the church will be stronger for this crisis. Charles Spurgeon once said, “We need winds and tempests to exercise our faith, to tear off the rotten bough of self-dependence, and to root us more firmly in Christ. The day of evil reveals to us the value of our glorious hope.” We need God’s perspective now more than ever. Our entire lifespan on earth is an infinitesimal speck on the calendar of eternity. Pray that as the Heavenly Reaper threshes and winnows during this crisis, He will find us to be the wheat of hope, fit to be spiritual bread for His heavenly kingdom here on earth.

The Perfect Father

Several months ago, one of my pastors, Nick Wagenmaker, shared a teaching on good parenting. He made the point that the best parent is not the one who tells his children what to do and then makes them do it. Rather, the best parent lays out principles of behavior and lets his children apply those principles within the scope of their free will. In other words, a good parent helps his children learn what works and what doesn’t work.

Obviously, there are limits to the freedom a good parent allows. One wouldn’t allow his children to drink poison or run into the path of an oncoming truck. Locking up dangerous substances and monitoring activities near the road are examples of logical limits a parent must apply. On the other hand, if a child wants to exercise his freedom to do something that might cause minor discomfort or loss, the best parent allows the child to suffer in order to learn.

We have all seen the so-called helicopter parents hovering over every aspect of their children’s lives. As a coach, I was painfully aware of how desperately some parents wanted their kids to star on the field. Recently I came across the term “bulldozer parents” to describe the overwhelming pressure some parents place on their children, shoving them into situations the children either don’t want or cannot handle. I have also witnessed the disaster these parents have sometimes created when their children rebel as they get older.

It goes without saying that too little supervision also has a negative consequence. I think of the history of Eli’s sons recorded in 1Samuel 2. Eli was not only too loose with his supervision, he apparently failed to provide his sons with the proper grounding in righteous behavior. Giving children some latitude to experiment is fine as long as there are boundary principles within which they operate. When children are raised without such boundaries, we see results such as school shootings, teen pregnancies and all manner of social disorder.

As with human parents, so it is with our Heavenly Father. Most believers realize that having free will is an integral part of bearing the image of God. Absent freedom to choose, the requirement to love and honor God would be meaningless. Robots can obey commands, but they cannot return love to their creators. The freedom not to obey, not to love is essential to the status of God’s image bearers. God had to give Adam the choice whether to eat the forbidden fruit or not to eat it.

Here we come to the point of this lesson on parenting: God, the best parent ever, allows us the freedom to behave any way we choose. Before joining His family by uniting with Christ, we were more likely to do wrong than right. After being adopted into God’s family, our revived spirits get help from His Holy Spirit to overcome the drag the world places on our souls. The pull of the flesh, the world and the devil is still there; the difference is whereas we had little power to resist before, we now have the power of Almighty God to steer us correctly.

I purposely chose the word “steer.” As the perfect parent, God does not force us into righteous behavior; He guides us through His Word, our renewed conscience and the community of fellow believers. When Paul tells us it was, “For freedom that Christ has set us free,” he adds the reminder that prior to our life in Christ, we were bound as slaves to sin. We now have the “freedom” NOT to sin which was not possible before. Sadly, we often still choose to sin anyway, breaking our commitment to the One who bought our freedom.

The writer of Hebrews points out that, like an earthly father, our Heavenly Father disciplines us when we make those wrong choices. While the discipline is not pleasant, it is proof that we are legitimately children of God according to the Hebrews’ author. If God didn’t care about us, He wouldn’t bother to help us stay on the right track. He wants us to obey Him out of love, but He will use discipline to convince us to obey when love fails to do so.

My children are all grown now. I don’t have the same control over them I once imagined I had. I am happy to say that they are each living lives that, in large part, honor the God they chose to serve while still under my roof. Each of my adult children has made choices at one time that I would have wished to countermand, but I have no power to discipline them anymore. But I am not without the power to affect their lives. I pray daily that God will draw them close and take whatever means necessary to keep them safe and sound – sound meaning grounded in His love. After all, He is the perfect Father.

Help My Unbelief

I was having a conversation with a young lady recently, and the topic of the Bible came up. It was in the context of Chick-Fil-A of all things. Someone mentioned that he absolutely loved Chick-Fil-A, and the young lady said she had never eaten there and probably never would because her boyfriend thinks the owner of Chick-Fil-A hates gays. It came to light that her boyfriend also claims to be an atheist, so it would seem the root of his problem is that the owners of Chick-Fil-A, Truett Cathy and his son, Dan, speak openly about what the Bible has to say about homosexual behavior.

The young lady said that being gay herself, she wasn’t pleased with the Cathy’s position either. I told her that it was unfortunate that people who demand open-minds and tolerance can be so intolerant of someone who thinks differently. The Chick-Fil-A controversy began because the Cathys gave money to organizations with similar beliefs, Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Salvation Army, hardly militant homophobes. I told her that the Cathys do not refuse to serve gays or bar them from employment. In other words, they follow the law regarding discrimination but exercise their First Amendment rights to state their beliefs and support others of like ideals.

The young lady then claimed that she believed the Bible too; admitting that she was mostly Lutheran but didn’t agree with all the church teachings. Apparently she thinks similarly to the gay woman who wrote in the Daily Beast during the height of the Chick-Fil-A controversy that the Cathys position is, “the opposite of Christ-like.” This brings me to the point of this piece: what do you say to people who claim to believe the Bible but want to pick and choose what to believe? I would rather argue with a full-on atheist than a pick-and-chooser.

I am writing this to prepare myself for the next time I face that situation. I wish I could come straight out and say that if you don’t believe all of it, you don’t really believe any of it. I see the futility in that approach, though. I believe that people can truly come to Christ, trust Him for their eternal salvation, yet not believe or even know all the Bible says. We are not saved by our doctrine after all. All we have to believe is that Christ gave his life in exchange for ours. The pews of modern churches are filled with people who hold opinions that are not biblical, yet despite their misbelief, they will one day share eternity with God.

I am not content, though, to leave it at that, especially when the misunderstanding is so detrimental to civil discourse and the sanctity of the family as God designed it. To the latter point, the dissolution of the family in western society is at the root of many of our problems. I could dismiss the studies that demonstrate healthier outcomes for children of man-woman parenting; I could dismiss the fact that gender confusion, so-called, is responsible for a dramatic rise in teen suicide; I could dismiss the fact that the health risks associated with a homosexual lifestyle reduce male life expectancy dramatically. I could dismiss the fact that every society throughout history that lost touch with biblical family values self-destructed in short order. I cannot dismiss what Paul wrote in Romans about, “men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.” Sin always has consequences.

It’s the issue of civil discourse that is most troublesome. Even among people who claim to believe some of the Bible, one is immediately labeled a homophobe for standing on the whole Word of God. I can be against avarice and not be labeled a hater; I can be against adultery and not be labeled a hater; I can be against lying and not be labeled a hater; I can be against theft and not be labeled a hater; but if I come out against gays, I am a hateful person. Where does this emotional militancy come from? I suggest the fervor is fueled by the enemy of our souls. He wants to disrupt family values because he knows that alone will destroy godly society. (For a broader discussion of the benefits of traditional marriage, see the excellent article by Michael Craven on Crosswalk.com.)

I am reminded once again of Paul’s word to the Ephesians, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” I still want to attempt a civil discussion with the pick-and-choosers, but I realize the best approach is spiritual warfare, “praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.” I need to pray that the veil thrown over their eyes by the prince of darkness be removed and the eyes of their hearts be opened to the light of God’s Word in its fullness. Chances are I will still be drawn into a “spirited” discussion.

Deliver Us From Evil

In a recent post I pointed to values clarification as a major factor contributing to the violence that has been plaguing schools in the last 30 years or so. In that previous post intended to say that without a standard for moral values, young people are encouraged to decide for themselves what value system they will embrace. If a young man decides that homicide is permissible under his own particular value system, who is to say nay?

Immediately this sounds wrong somehow to almost everybody (to all my readers, I hope). Most people would consider the taking of innocent life wrong under any circumstances. But wait. The idea that it is wrong to take another life (innocent or not) proceeds from the assumption that there are basic moral principles which apply to everyone. Full stop. That assumption rests on the idea that there are universal moral principles; today’s moral relativism and situation ethics question that very assumption. The murder of millions of innocent unborn children emphasizes the practical reality of this position.

If one goes looking for universal values, it will become patently obvious that they exist. In both the Eastern and Westerner traditions, we find searches for and suggestions of universal truths thousands of years back. You can even discount Hebraic tradition (as so many are wont to do) and still find a trace of universal truth permeating the best thinkers in every age. What we must ask is whether there are constants, survivors in this exploration. The answer is a resounding YES.

What are the values that resonate with every generation and every culture: beauty, goodness and truth. Granted, beauty does have cultural and generational aspects, but if I am reading Francis Schaeffer correctly, beauty itself has a universal anchor. For example, John Cage and Pablo Pascal may have been popular for a short time, but few would call their work “beautiful.” Goodness has less variability across cultures and generations, although philosophers since Socrates have debated what “the good” is. Perhaps the most debatable element in today’s society is truth. Post-modern philosophers (the majority of western thinkers) question whether there is even enough evidence to declare that truth exists.

I believe truth does exist: an absolute, knowable, propositional truth. I believe this because I know God exists, and he created what we know as “reality,” and he communicated with his creation concerning that reality. Truth then exists as the expression of how things comport with or match up to reality. I realize all this stems from my Christian world-view, and most secular thinkers will dismiss it out of hand. Yet I agree with FrancisSchaeffer that this view is the only view that makes ultimate sense of the universe and humanity’s place in the universe.

Goodness, or “the Good” that the ancients were seeking is an outgrowth of our view of truth. The word “good” can be assigned to anything that advances the will of the Creator and aligns with his character. The opposite of good is evil; evil is anything that does not line up with goodness and truth. On that basis, much of what we accept in society as freedom of speech or simply an opposing argument is in fact evil. The lesson on how to boil a frog is instructive here. Christians in America have allowed civil discourse and behavior in general to devolve to the lowest common denominator in the name of freedom. Against this the Bible tells us we are not to use our freedom as acover-up for evil.

So then, it is evil to distort the truth. Somebody coined the term “fake news” recently. In the past, purposely distorting the truth was called propaganda; its real name is lies. Washington DC abounds with this kind of speech. Our “entertainers” who become spokespersons for causes commit the same thing. The recent tirade on gun control is a perfect example. Oprah Winfrey and George Clooney blather on about reducing violence by restricting access to guns. Yet statistics prove that the highest gun violence rates are in the cities with the toughest gun control. These celebrities may be opining out of ignorance, but the old saw that says ignorance is no excuse applies. Purposeful ignorance is also evil.

Another way our society distorts truth is by belittling goodness. This is a form of evil. Look at what the media did to Tim Tebow or any other athlete who openly expresses faith in God. Joy Behar, famous for her views on The View recently made shameful comments about the Vice President, Mike Pence, regarding his strong Christian faith. Saturday Night Live regularly mocks Christians as entertainment. I will grant that this does not rise to the level of roasting Christians alive as did the worst Roman emperors, but it is evil nonetheless, and it is pervasive in our society.

The Apostle Paul had some advice for the Philippians that we would do well to follow. “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things… and the peace of God will be with you.” That prescription would end the violence in schools and slander in the media and a host of evils if taken to heart. Truthfully, in the final analysis, the real issue is the heart of man, that deceitful, desperately wicked heart. Only God can change that, but we can hope… and pray.

Eulogy for Robert Rosencrants

Because of the 1,587 mile time-space continuum separation, I will not be present in the flesh at the funeral of my dear friend, Bob Rosencrants. I will be there in spirit (whatever that means), but I am going to share what I would say if I could be there in person.

Bob was a good friend; I mean that two ways. He was a friend who was a good man, and he was a good man to have as a friend. I don’t know if I have ever known a more generous man. For example, he once offered to help me buy a house. I don’t mean introduce me to a realtor or give me counsel about what and where to buy (although he did that too). I mean he offered me a large sum of money toward the purchase of a house. The fact that I chose not to accept his generous offer does not diminish the huge generosity of the offer. I know of other similar incidents too, as does anyone who knew Bob well.

Bob was the kind of good friend who would just up and call me out of the blue. Sometimes he had a specific question about something he was reading. He’d say something like, “Hey Clair, I am wondering about something I read and I thought you might be able to help.” Sometimes he would just call to see how I was doing; no particular reason; just a call to connect. He’d ask, “How are you and that wife of yours doing?” or something like that.

I loved having him in the Sunday School class I was teaching. He stopped coming in spite of the fact that I begged him to come back. Even that situation showed what a good heart the man had. What happened is that Bob and I had a disagreement about the meaning of a word. It was a little heated at the time, and I did not handle it properly. We eventually came to a perfectly friendly conclusion to agree to disagree, but no matter how earnestly I begged him to come back to class, he refused. You see, he felt that his presence might engender strife instead of enlightenment, so he chose not to risk the possibility. That was selflessness in action. That was Bob.

None of us who attend Bridge Bible Church with Bob will ever forget his Sunday morning prayer requests: “Hello Church. This is Bob, standing in the need of prayer.” And he was standing when he said that, even toward the last when standing became a major effort. And he was dead serious about his need for prayer, but he was even more concerned for others. I’m pretty sure Lu must have cringed a couple times when Bob shared in his own inimitable way, but those of us in the body with Bob and Lu got to feel what he felt and pray what he prayed… at least a little.

The thing I hope I can remember and imitate is the way Bob faced his last bit of time here on earth. Oh sure, he had a few moments of anger and confusion, but what I remember most is his unwavering conviction whatever happened, he wanted God to get the glory. I think that worked out the way Bob wanted.

I can see Bob up there now having a conversation with Peter, Paul, and Dr. Luke. I can imagine someone saying, "Oh, Bob! Really?" They are the lucky ones now. But we are lucky too, those of us who knew Bob. The Apostle Paul told us to imitate him as he imitated Christ. I know Bob had his crazy moments, but we could do worse than to imitate Bob as he imitated Christ. Bob Rosencrants was a good man to have around. He will be missed.

Coincidental Confluence

My wife and I often remark sarcastically about the little “coincidences” God orchestrates in our lives. One dictionary defines coincidence as, “a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection.” As a synonym the dictionary offers “providence.” This strikes nearer the truth I am getting at. Because I believe in a sovereign God, there really is nothing that happens by coincidence, at least not in the sense the term is usually applied. Divine “Providence” is always behind every “coincidence.”

By way of illustration, let me describe a coincidence that happened today. I was reading an article in Christianity Today by Russel Moore in which he recommends the writings of Frederick Buechner (Pronounced Beek-ner), a twentieth century theologian/essayist/novelist. Moore, being a staunch conservative is quick to say that Buechner is not typically read by such as he, but that he finds much to recommend, if with careful discernment. Moore suggests that an overriding theme in Buechner is that every life has a plot, meaning that if we want to understand ourselves and get some meaning from life, we should notice the everyday trivialities that form the warp and woof of living.

Coinciding with this thought from Moore/Buechner, I happened to read Charles Spurgeon’s devotional thought for this morning. Spurgeon drew his ideas from Colossians 1 where Paul explains his calling to the Gentiles by saying, “To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.” That we will one day be “mature in Christ” is the happy reminder Spurgeon leaves with his readers.

In the confluence of these coincidental readings I find the assurance that all the things that happen to believers, the good, the bad, and the ugly, “work together for our good,” as Paul said elsewhere. The end result of this working together according to Paul is, “to be conformed to the image of his Son.” In other words, the plot of every believer’s life is the working out of sometimes painful, sometimes beautiful incidents that piece by piece write the story of our being made in Christ’s image.

Finally, the backdrop in my life story into which this confluence falls is this: a very dear friend of mine made his way from this life into Glory last week. He was a young man, not that age matters, who had spent the last dozen years in a wheelchair. A fanatic hunter, he had fallen from a tree stand and become paralyzed from the waist down. We all watched as he saw his twin girls grow into teens, and his wife spend herself in his care. To those of us in the little body of Christ where they worshiped, it was a story of struggle and commitment where no one seemed to lose faith in God’s “providence.”

Then the plot thickened: he got cancer; it was terminal. He died. One could scream how unfair this all seems. His wife and daughters must now soldier on with this plot twist as part of their stories. Someone once said that the trials of life either make us better or bitter. I have lost a niece, a sister and my father in unfortunate circumstances, but none compare to what these three young women now face. They have no chance to erase the painful past; they have a choice to make something of it in their future. Bitter or better; broken or stronger.

A few years ago, I wrote a poem that these coincidences have brought to mind. I share it in closing:

Life is a symphony played on your heart

Memories are instruments set to a tone

Harsh ones and gentle ones all have a part

Each keeping time with a voice of its own.

Sometimes the string section brings you to tears

Mellow and soft, yet humming with pain

Notes that repeat themselves years into years

Drumming like drops in a seven-day rain.

Sometimes the piccolo sparkles with laughter

Giggling gayly on some sunny shore

Sparkling notes leave you smiling long after

Wistfully sighing and wishing for more.

The brass will play marches that strut through your mind

Recalling the flags and the uniformed bands

Honor and duty and pride all unwind

In an uplifted cheer and a clap of the hands.

And so it will go with you day after day

Music will come to you bidden or not

Make good of the moment for soon it will play

And the music you’re writing is all that you’ve got.

Childlike, Not Childish

My wife and I are staying in the Salt Lake City area this winter. We normally go someplace a bit warmer, but there are two things in particular that are making the cold bearable: we get to spend lots of time with our new granddaughter, and we can attend Capital Church every Sunday. This is one of those churches that makes you excited to get up on Sunday morning. You never know what you’re going to hear, but it is always timely and drawn directly from the Word of God.

The sermon series we’re hearing now is called “Christmas at the Movies.” My first reaction when Pastor Troy Champs announced the series was doubtful. I wondered if we were going to move away from Bible preaching and get into some warm, fuzzy Christmas culture stuff. I needn’t have worried, although I was really curious when I saw that the first movie we would look at was Elf.

If you haven’t seen Elf, I’ll just say it always struck me as a cross between really sappy and really dopey. In spite of that, the speaker not only drew a solid biblical message from it, but it made me think deeply about what it means to come to Jesus “as a little child.” First let me distinguish between childish and childlike. If the adjective childish is applied to an adult, it is most often derogatory, and this is how I originally saw the message of Elf; it is silly. Most of the humor in the movie is drawn from the main character, Buddy’s, childish behavior. It is funny to see an adult doing ridiculous, childish things, but there is not much material for a biblical application.

However, Buddy was also unswervingly trusting and totally uninhibited like a child. There is the biblical message. Our speaker Sunday pointed out just how relevant this is to Jesus’ words in Matthew 18. In 1^st century Jewish culture, children were considered of no value until they could contribute to the family’s support. They were on the lowest step of the socio-economic ladder. In this context Jesus said, “Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3) Kingdom entrance requires complete trust, total absence of an agenda, and an admission of our complete worthlessness outside of God’s grace, in other words, a childlike attitude.

It struck me as I was reading about the visions of God in the first few chapters of Ezekiel this morning that a childlike view of the indescribable things the prophet saw is necessary. An adult artist’s concept of perspective and spatial relationships makes drawing what Ezekiel saw virtually impossible. Many have tried. Just Google “Ezekiel’s vision image” and see them, all 405,000 of them. Yet I suspect a child would have no trouble putting crayon to paper and representing the vision. Cast aside all the grownup ideas of what can and cannot be “real,” and the Bible becomes more “real” than ever. I’m thinking of things like The Garden of Eden, Jacob’s ladder, crossing the Red Sea, David and Goliath, the visions of the prophets and so on endlessly.

The other thing that really struck me after thinking about a childlike attitude is all the places where Scripture refers to believers as children of God. The Israelites were repeatedly called the Children of God. According to New Testament teaching, believers today are children of our Heavenly Abba, adopted into His family through the work of Christ on the cross. Even secular writers sometimes say we are all children of God, which is true, but only a select few enjoy the benefits of inheritance. Disobedient children will not fare so well in the next life.

I still think Elf is pretty dopey, but I also think that my attitude toward God and His Word might look “dopey” to the unbelieving world. I have often heard the intellectual elite of the world talk about how ridiculous it is for thinking adults to buy into all the myths or fairy tales of the Bible. If we were believing in Zeus or the evil stepmother, that would be childish. However, I believe Ezekiel saw a wheel-in-a-wheel, even though I will never be able to draw it. I also believe the Messiah rose from the dead and reigns over all the earth today. That is childlike faith, and it is far from childish.

God Wants Me Unhappy

I have been thinking a lot about my own happiness lately, so it is no coincidence that Randy Alcorn’s discussion of happiness slid across my Facebook page recently. God has a way of planting supplements to my devotional diet directly in my path so I can only avoid them on purpose. Many times I have had the subject of print or other media floating in my thought hopper only to find that it is the perfect preparation for a teaching or preaching assignment I am about to be given. It is exciting to work with an omniscient God. I am not yet sure what all this business about happiness is leading to.

When I taught high school students, the subject of God’s will for their lives was a frequent topic of discussion. Since the middle of the 20^th century, Christian teens have had to face numerous life choices that were seldom presented to earlier generations. Do I consider military service? Should I attend college? If so, what career should I pursue? Must it be a Christian college? Should I take on student loans? Who should I marry? Does God want me to get married at all? These are vexing questions to a young person who has been taught that God has a perfect will for each of them, and it is their responsibility to figure out what that will is.

I remember one young man who was horrified with the thought that God might call him to remain unmarried, to be celibate. He believed that sex outside of marriage was clearly forbidden, so marriage was his only hope to satisfy his biological desires. The idea that it might be outside God’s will for him to marry literally gave him many sleepless nights. He could not imagine being happy unless he was married.

I don’t recall the exact words I used to counsel him, but I do remember the general tenor of my advice. First, God will never ask us to do anything for Him that he does not give us the strength to accomplish. Next, God does not reveal His plan for our entire life all at once; that would negate the need to walk by faith which is what builds our trust in Him. The best we can do is take the step that is before us and wait on God to reveal the step after that. As long as we avoid taking steps we know are against God’s revealed will, His personal will for our lives will become clear as we live step by step.

In my recent response to Alcorn’s book, Happiness, I mentioned three of the countless episodes in the Bible that present unhappy servants. Here I might add Abraham who waited unhappily for 25 years for the son of promise only to be told he was to be sacrificed to the God who gave him. Abraham would not have been a happy camper trudging up Mt. Moriah knowing what lay ahead. Happiness came naturally when the angel stopped the knife and a ram appeared in a thicket to take Isaac’s place, but one cannot miss the agony through which Abraham walked as he followed God’s will up that hill. Nor can we miss the same thing when our Substitute walked up that same hill years later. I think Jesus was not happy about the crucifixion; he rejoiced in what it would accomplish, but to call that happiness is to wrench all meaning from the word.

Many of us find ourselves in circumstances that make us unhappy. The high school lad with raging hormones is not the only one who must wait on God’s answer to the burning question. Consider the husband or wife who has lost a spouse to divorce or death. While some may dispute the option of remarriage, none will argue that celibacy is the only righteous option outside of another marriage. Consider the man who, because of medical procedures or health issues, can no longer function normally. It would be comforting to think that the urge dies when the capability ceases, but that is often not the case. Consider the wife of that man. In these and countless other cases unrelated to sex, God’s will leads to unhappiness at least for a time.

There is a statement I probably borrowed, and I think I have posted it here before, but it bears repeating: God is less concerned with our comfort than our character. We are called to conform ourselves to the image of Christ, who for the joy set before him endured the cross (Hebrews 12:2). Endurance builds character; character, biblically defined, is what suits us for heaven.  Just as there are no atheists in foxholes, there are few prayers at parties. If my unhappiness makes me more like Christ, I’ll be “happy” to endure it.

Everybody Knows That

June is approaching fast, the month of weddings. Everybody knows that. But did you know there are some interesting theories to explain June’s popularity. According to the Examiner, one says it goes back to the Roman custom of honoring the God of marriage, Juno. Another says it is the most practical month in an agrarian society because the inevitable first child will not be far enough along to hinder the mother from helping get in the first harvest for the new family. One of the most curious says that during Medieval times May was the time of the annual bath, so a June wedding assured all concerned would smell their best. (Agh!)

The Examiner goes on to reveal that June is being edged out by August if you can believe Hallmark Cards’ statistics. (Don’t let me get started on the outrageous price of greeting cards.)There are other traditions associated with marriage that are equally arcane and equally baffling to me, but then I am still just a guy (cue Brad Paisley). If you add up the cost of the traditional elements in the modern, Western wedding, you have a budget-buster. Cost of Wedding.com reports that the average wedding in the US costs $25,200.

Not surprisingly, the largest expense is the venue with its associated accoutrements, catering and rentals. Couples spend over $3,600 on average just for a place to say, “I do.” Add a $500 for a cake and another $4,700 for dinner and you are quickly approaching ten grand. That’s before you add $100 for each of the tuxedo rentals and $1,200 for the bride’s gown. Top it off with the obligatory wedding photographer at $1,600 and 10K is gone. The web site lists fifty (50) other items that commonly appear in the expense column of the average wedding. Fifty.

At the risk of sounding completely tone-deaf to the cries of all those brides-to-be and their mothers, I would like to offer some suggestions for trimming the cost of the blessed event (Wait; that refers to something later, doesn’t it.) For the venue, since not everyone lives on a farm with a giant barn anymore, renting a church is a good option, especially if a religious ceremony is being planned. In West Michigan, churches can be rented for under $500, many being free to members.

A wedding dress is just about the most impractical item a woman could ever buy. It is intended to be worn only once; it glamorizes the one person who is already the star of the event; by the wedding day, there is no need to impress the guy (still a guy) standing at the head of the aisle. Incidentally, I feel the same way about “prom” dresses. If something uniquely special is essential, there are rentals available, but even that is money thrown away. A nice rig that can be worn to dress-up affairs after the wedding makes a whole lot more sense to me. And let the guys wear their “Sunday best” and let it go at that.

With all due apologies to my dear friend, Kirk, who makes his living as a photographer, are the wedding photos that get put in an album and parked on a shelf really worth $1,600? If one family member or guest knows how to operate a digital SLR, a few portraits of the bride and groom and maybe one of the wedding party can be taken and sent to Walgreens for enshrinement in a lovely binder at one tenth of the cost. For some great additional memories, place a disposable camera at each table and invite your guests to offer their photographic impressions.

If a sit-down dinner must be part of the event (as a kindness to attendees who are far from home), why not make it a pot luck? Everyone who lives close enough to participate in this very homely tradition can bring a dish and supply the recipe so the bride has a start on her own box of favorites. I know I am getting into some really wet sand here, but the real tradition of marriage is the celebration of community; what better way for the community to honor the new couple than with something homemade and helpful?  

Maybe you think that talking about average costs is unrealistic since the million dollar weddings weigh against the under $100 justice of the peace affairs. Consider then that the median number, the cost most couples incur, is still $10,000. What good might be accomplished by a believer with that amount of money? Meals From the Heartland packages meals to ship to hungry people around the world at a cost of about twenty cents per meal. Ten grand would feed an entire village of 500 people for over three months… or 22 families of six for a year. Or your diverted wedding expense could dig 277 wells to provide safe water for people in Africa. Get together with four of your soon-to-be-wed friends and pool your savings and support one overseas missionary for a whole year. Etcetera ad infinitum.

If this whole topic has been distasteful to you, post a reply below and tell me how you would defend the expense of an extravagant wedding. If this topic has made you rethink your plans for an upcoming event, share it with your friends. Christians believe that our possessions are not our own; how we spend our money is the truest expression of our faith. But everybody knows that.

Debating "Christian Cleavage"

An eye-catching headline floated across my Facebook wall yesterday containing the words “Christian Cleavage.” Curiosity compelled me to investigate. One definition of the word “cleavage” suggested it might have been about church splits. It was not; rather it was the title of a blog about standards of modesty in women’s apparel, as I originally suspected. Since that is a subject that has drawn my attention in the past (pardon the double entendre), I linked to the original post and read it with interest initially, then with disappointment. The blog writer, Jayson D. Bradley, took it upon himself to apologize for what he considered to be generations of misguided teaching about the need for modesty in women’s apparel.

Bradley disagreed with the idea often advanced that because males are visually stimulated, it is incumbent upon women to avoid dressing in a way that might “stimulate.” This has been the accepted wisdom since the introduction of the fig leaves as coverings after the Fall in the Garden of Eden. Bradley suggests that it is unfair to place the responsibility for a man’s sin on any random woman he happens to gaze upon. Several female respondents to his blog thanked him for relieving them of this onerous accountability issue.

One female responded differently; she reminded Bradley that even he mentioned that all believers are admonished to avoid placing a stumbling block in another’s path. She argued that dressing in an alluring way represented an example of that kind of behavior. Bradley responded to her saying, “I am ALL for modesty. I am not for men deciding for you what your convictions should be based upon their proclivities.” This statement betrays a fundamental lack of understanding what modesty means. The Greek word the Bible uses when admonishing women to dress “modestly” is cosmion from cosmos which implies order versus chaos. Women should not dress in a way which creates chaos in men who see them. This standard may change somewhat from culture to culture and time to time, but pretty much every honest interpreter can see that certain modes of fashion are not modest in the sense that they do cause chaos.

One of the ways the Greek word cosmion has come into English is “cosmopolitan.” It is ironic what cosmopolitan has come to mean in popular culture as represented by the magazine by the same name. Women who do wish to attract men know exactly how to dress to accomplish their goal; if they have any doubts, Cosmo will clear them up. It seems disingenuous for modern women to say that attire is not a factor in how they are perceived, or that they are not at least partly responsible for perpetuating the blatant eroticism of our culture.

It seems that Bradley is missing something that is obvious to me. Even in our admittedly licentious culture, the excessively short skirt, the excessively tight top, the excessively deep plunge of the neckline is considered alluring. A woman who is not advertising should not dress to excess. There is almost no good thing under Heaven that cannot be abused by going to excess.

Curiously, the word modesty is in the same family as moderation. The Bible teaches that eating, drinking, working, playing, and yes, dressing must all be done with moderation in mind. Perhaps it would help if a woman were to ask if her attire is moderate in its exposure. This cannot simply mean saying, “I’m not as bad as her,” pointing to the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine. It is not good enough to be just a little less wrong than the culture, it is necessary to be at least a little more right than the culture. So, I beg to differ with Jayson Bradley: it is a Christian woman’s responsibility to maintain Biblical modesty.

The Sad Anniversary

If one seeks the silver lining in the dark cloud that is abortion in the US, it might be the fact that over fifty million souls have been added to the rolls of Heaven since this date in 1973. That’s my take on it theologically; I believe human life begins at conception, and I believe innocent children are ushered immediately into God’s presence when they are taken from earth. I know it’s a stretch to find anything good resulting from the holocaust that Roe v. Wade initiated, but it is something.

What really puzzles me is how the same people who shed tears over baby seals being slaughtered or polar bears suffering due to global warming can blithely advocate for the “right” of a woman to end the existence of a living being that cannot become anything but a human being if natural processes are allowed to continue. Even if we agree to disagree about when human life begins, and if we accept for purposes of argument that all sentient creatures are equal, that would seem to place the fetus in a category worthy of protection? Apparently not. I like Ronald Reagan’s comment: “Everybody who is for abortion has already been born.”

Then there is the more direct parallel between what many abortion advocates think about situations where “terrorists” slaughter innocents and the wholesale slaughter of unborn infants by abortion. The number of deaths by abortion would dwarf the number of people killed by Al qaeda and ISIL and Boko Haram combined. Not even Hitler and Stalin together killed more innocents than abortion has since 1973. I know abortion advocates would not accept my parallel since they have convinced themselves that a fetus is not a human being. That is nothing but a mind-trick they play on themselves. For some it soothes their conscience.

For others, not so much. This crowd has closed their eyes to the millions of women who have followed their encouragement to have an abortion of choice, and who afterward struggle mightily with emotional and psychological trauma. Or consider the women’s rights lobby that decries the treatment of women under various harsh regimes around the world, yet fails to consider that the basic right of life has been denied to twenty to thirty million fetuses that would have become women had abortion not been so prevalent here at home.

I shudder when I read of the ancient Israelites abandoning Jehovah for the worship of the Phoenician god, Molech, which included infant sacrifice as part of the ceremonial rights. What god have fifty million women bowed to in the last four decades since Roe v. Wade opened the door to abortion access in the US? Many of the pro-abortion arguments end up being about convenience. Ultimately the rationale sounds eerily similar to the motivation for sacrificing a child to Molech to “ensure financial prosperity for the family and future children.” We moderns may not be as different from the ancients as we presume.