Justice for All

For the fetus, though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being, and it is a monstrous crime to rob it of the life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man's house is his place of most secure refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light. John Calvin

We are a people that value liberty, who prize the freedom of the individual to exercise his or her own decisions within the boundaries of the laws of our nation. But what do we do when those laws deprive a segment of our population of their inalienable human rights? You might say we defend those people, but...

It has not always been that way. For many decades we condoned the slave trade, as did our English friends before the time of Wilberforce. For nearly a decade we allowed a fascist government in Europe to kill and imprison millions of people on the basis of religion and only became involved when the economic effects on our merchant ships, and the military aggression of Japan prompted our response. For decades after slavery was abolished, we diminished a race in our country through all manner of degrading laws and cultural rules.

I said it has not always been that way. In truth, it is still not that way. In the years of slavery, greed clouded people's moral vision and passivity by the unaffected perpetuated the injustice. In the years preceding WWII, our isolationist views, brought on by the terrible memories of WWI, overrode the need to intervene to protect the Jews and allowed an evil dictator to solidify his power until it was almost too late. Now, we ignore another "nation" of humans who live amongst us, bound not by nationality but by their common residence and their common fate.

We allow their human rights to be trampled; we insure that they are not protected, that their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness never see the light of day. We stand by, numb to their plight just as whites were numb to black slavery, just as common German citizens, free Europe, and the U. S. ignored the development of the holocaust.

Except, in our case, we are not ignorant, just numb, morally dulled and therefore without defense. We know that millions of humans have died and that many more are dying daily. We are abhorred at cruelty to animals, yet a human can be quietly dismembered while otherwise thinking, seemingly morally upright people, stand by and defend the perpetrator's right to murder and applaud the mother's privilege of "choice".

We do not see the expressions of pain, we do not hear the screams, for their lungs are not filled with air. When they inhale, they breathe in the salt water of their world, the ocean of protection intended to help their mother shield them from the early traumas of the world. They cannot defend themselves; there is nowhere to run; the person intended to be their greatest defender has, sometimes coldly, sometimes in ignorance, sometimes in desperation and misguided compassion, and sometimes just inexplicably, decided to end their life--before their eyes can see, before their ears can hear anything beyond muffled sounds, before their sense of smell can be exercised, before their sense of taste can know something besides salt, and before they can touch or be touched in love.

We rightfully condemn the Klan for killing hundreds of African Americans over the course of a century. Yet we are silent as, in each four day period that passes, the number of African-Americans killed legally equals that of all of the Klan's century of evil. Minorities, Black and Hispanic, are disproportionately represented among victims of abortion, yet the civil rights of those lives are not defended. The government sanctions the killing to which the parents have consented.

I am culpable. I have spent the first 61 years of my life, 39 of them after Roe vs. Wade and 34 of them caring for those who are alive but ill at birth , turning a blind eye to the atrocity of abortion, not in favor of it, but, like most folks, too busy with life to focus on what it really means, to really think about the unthinkable of humans being torn apart before they can even see the beauty of the world around us. I have intellectualized, rationalized, sympathized, but I have done nothing.

No more. To the limited extent that this personal record is public, this is a declaration of intent: I intend to do all within my limited abilities, as God provides me with ability and the means, and within the years I have left to turn the tide; to move our culture back towards a culture of life because God is the Author of all life, and if He said "it is good", then who are we to decide to prevent it or end it. Help me; pray for me; pray for your own involvement if you feel moved.

A man trying to push a mountain appears foolish; yet Jesus said if we have the smallest amount of faith we can move mountains. Let us exercise our faith in the protection of the unprotected, and give justice to those who cannot seek it on their own. The task may seem impossible, but our God is the God of the impossible.

Use your imagination to see what abortion really is! Fight against the kind of social stupor that gripped Nazi Germany – the feeling that the problem is so huge and so horrendous and so out of our control that I just can't be wrong to let it be. Use your imagination to see and feel what is really happening behind those sterile clinic doors. If you could see each little handiwork of God and what it looks like when it is being crushed or poisoned or starved, you would say, this can’t be happening. Civilized people do not do this! The children will not be saved and God’s work will not be reverenced without an act of sustained sympathetic imagination. Otherwise it is out of sight out of mind – just like Dachau, Buchenwald, Belsen, and Auschwitz. It just couldn't be happening and so we act as if it isn't. John Piper

Abba, Father. I am committed, with You and whomever reads this as my witness. Thank You for Your love and Your gift of purpose. Amen.

Securitas and Desperatio*

(Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea)**

I received word that my brother-in-law’s brother, a good man and a kind mind, had passed away. His family was sad and I was sad for them. Yet there was another emotion that rose up in that time of grief over a lost friend.

I am not certain that I can fully characterize the emotion. The closest I can come to labeling my feelings is to admit that they contain an element of envy, a longing to be like the saint who has passed over to new life, borne not of depression but of a desire for relief from the path we walk in this life.

We travel a life-long road that has as its boundaries the sins of pride and desperation—the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.

Saved by grace yet living in this fallen state, we are persistently tempted to a kind of pride that leads the non-believer away from grace and leads the believer to become a casual saint—one who knows about grace but devalues it so that an incautious life and a calloused spirit become tolerable. We become secure in our sin.

The other boundary, desperation, tempts us to look perpetually inward, and backward, and even in a perverse way, forward. We know our past mistakes, we dwell on them, we even dread making them again, knowing that sooner or later we will be weak in whatever realm our souls are habitually weak. We become desperate, but our desperation does not send us to confession and repentance but to the altar of pride where we pronounce ourselves beyond hope.

We travel most peacefully when we look to the end of the road and see Who welcomes our approach. We travel most treacherously when our feet slip into the ditch, pulling us toward temporal destruction, or perhaps as I am now doing, placing a coveted eventuality above His will for me in the present. I make an idol of eternity or a point in time instead of worshipping the God Who gave us time and eternity.

Like Peter, whose brief ecstasy in walking on the waves rapidly changed to panic when he took his eyes off Jesus, we live an entire life buoyed by His gaze or, if not, looking away to sin.

So, there will be relief when the path is at its end, when we are done walking to Jesus, resting in His arms; and moments like these, where one we love has gone ahead, bring a mixture of sadness and wishing to be farther along the path ourselves, beyond the temptations of pride and desperation, beyond the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.

Thank you, Lord, for being there, for not only being at the end of the path, but for giving us Your Comforter to walk beside us and guide us in the daily walk. Amen.

*from Creation and Fall Temptation—Dietrich Bonhoeffer

**from His expedition with the worthy Scots regiment called Mac-keyes—Robert Monro

Corruption

His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

2 Peter 1:3-4 (NIV)

A recent development in the prevention of the spread of disease in medical settings as well as in businesses and homes is the availability of waterless hand cleansers, usually available through dispensers located in strategic locations within the various environs.

As I entered one of our office buildings recently and pushed on the lever which dispenses the hand cleanser from the supply just inside the building door, I was chagrined to note that the dispenser was empty. I wondered at that moment how many others had, as I had, placed their less than clean hands on the dispenser, expecting to receive the benefit of its contents, only to become aware that rather than receiving benefit, they had actually increased their need for the product they sought.

The experience made me wonder: How many other things intended for good in our lives become vehicles for contaminating our emotional, physical, and spiritual lives? And how often do we recognize this phenomenon and turn to the Provider so that He may redeem our perversion, restoring the relationship between creatures and Creation to that which He intended?

If all of God's creation is good, and He said it is, then nothing He created is intrinsically evil. Evil arises when we, the creatures, presume that we are minor gods and decide we know better than He how to use His creation.

Food is good. God gave it to us to nourish us, to give us pleasure, to provide fellowship with each other in partaking of it. We eat ourselves into poor health, either through our choice of foods or our total intake. We ignore or give scant attention to those who go hungry because the ample food in the world is poorly distributed.

Sexual pleasure is good. God gave it to us for our enjoyment and to populate the world He had created. We misuse it by objectifying another person as a means, a tool, instead of honoring the unity of spirit in which it was intended to be enjoyed. We mock the example of the Church as bride of Christ through the perversion of God's greatest gift and example of that relationship.

Spirited drinks are good. God gave them to us "to make our hearts glad". We begin there, but we over indulge either by pure choice or by choice combined with genetic predisposition to intolerance. The result is emotional, physical and spiritual devastation, disruption of families, death, and destruction.

Entertainment is good. God gave us creative minds to beautify the world and stimulate the mind, through the visual arts, the written word, music, and the spoken word. We misuse those gifts by creating idols of the art or the artist, by using those gifts to appeal to centers of our mind that lead to lust and evil thought, and by dishonoring the God of Creation in misusing the forms of expression that He gave us to praise Him.

Competition is good. God gave us minds and bodies that derive great pleasure from exercising the abilities He has given us in enjoyment with others. We make gods of bodies, the competitors, and victory; rather than valuing the opportunity to participate, finding satisfaction in the victory, and contentment in the legitimate effort, we idolize the outcome and lose the joy found in the process, robbed of holy pleasure by our pride.

Religion is good. God gave us minds to seek Him, to study His ways, to study His word, to discern our place in His world using our minds, our bodies, and our spirits. He reached out to us, offered Himself in our place to save us from our sins. As in the Garden, we have tried to become our own god, rejecting His overtures, and assuming wrongly that we need to "do" in order to reach up to Him. All false religions, and virtually all the misdirected practices of Christianity have come from man's attempt to overlook God's offer and create our own salvation.

Compassion is good. God is love, and part of His love involves compassion for us, and His love in us compels us to have compassion for our fellow travelers. But undisciplined compassion, truly false compassion, arises out of our desire to please others instead of God. For a myriad of reasons we enable others to do harm, to themselves and/or to others and call it compassion when in truth we would rather avoid confrontation.

Discipline is good. God is righteous and expects obedience to His commands and for us to establish practices which lead to righteousness, including counseling our fellow man. But unmerciful discipline, really false, self-righteous discipline, comes from our need to control. Its purpose is not to help others please God, but is legalism designed to promote our own misdirected image of ourselves as creator, not creature.

Pretty depressing! How do I avoid jumping off a high bridge after considering this corrupt world and my participation in it?

By remembering that real love is good, that God is love and God is good, and that we have no power to corrupt Him, even if we in our self-delusion as "god" fear inadvertently doing so. God knew all of His Creation would be corrupted before He ever contemplated creating the world. He knew the Fall would occur. He knew we would pervert the good, idolize the Creation, deceive ourselves in attempts at self-salvation--He knew we would sin--yet He created the world and all that is in it because He had the plan of redemption that would undo all that we have done.

My job is the daily renewing of my mind to understand my position as creature, as dependent on Him for my sustenance, as forgiven and in need of a forgiving attitude, in need of His deliverance from all my tendencies to corrupt what is good. My job is to be a disciple, to exercise discipline, to wait on Him, to ignore the cacophony of the world and wait to hear His whisper.

Lord, forgive us for misusing Your Creation; thank You for Your redemptive gift in Christ Jesus. Give us all, young or old, regardless of our abilities the discipline to be humble in your presence and to live our lives with the goal of honoring You; not focusing on avoiding misuse of the Creation, but focused on worshiping You and receiving Your forgiveness when we stray. Help us to find freedom in that discipline and joy in that freedom. Amen.

Glory

When the priests withdrew from the Holy Place, the cloud filled the temple of the Lord. And the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled His temple. 1 Kings 8:10-11.

In this passage and in others, particularly those associated with Moses in the wilderness, God's presence is presented as an incalculable source of energy and light, so powerful that humans could not survive its effects. That makes sense when one considers that the same God whose Presence created such fear and care among the Israelites was the God who initiated the Big Bang we read about in science.

If God can speak and have the universe explode into being from nothing, if he can create an intensely dense particle and then, exerting His infinite energy, cause that particle to expand into the growing universe in which we dwell, then is it so surprising that the power that surrounds His Presence when He makes Himself visibly present to man could be lethally overwhelming?

Scientists are increasingly aware of facts that support a beginning event several billion years ago, an event from which our universe has come. Most philosophers who study the possible origins of that beginning agree that there had to be a cause for the effect. They debate as to whether that cause was a personal God, an impersonal god, or some other force, but fewer and fewer espouse the idea that the universe is self-creative or self-existence, both intrinsically illogical ideas.

If the universe was begun by a single action, and that is what scientifically appears to be the case, then something or someone had to preexist that beginning to set things in motion. Because time began with the creation of the universe, that something or someone would of necessity be eternal in nature.

If that person or thing can create with a single act what we see all around us, above and below us, in the precise manner to have it all continue to exist and not collapse, knowledge of physics beyond our comprehension would have to have existed, for the room for error was essentially non-existent according to modern calculations on timing and rates of expansion. A tiny fractional difference in either direction and the universe would have collapsed back into dense matter or disappeared into the granddaddy of all explosions.

If a planet with the capability of sustaining life is so improbable as to defy any random chance of its occurrence, located precisely in the Milky Way, our galaxy, in a manner that gives our solar system a view unique among solar systems, one which allows our scientists to study the universe and arrive at proof of beginning events, does that not imply the creative energy of an intelligent person who wants us to discover the "how", but more importantly the "Who" of the Creation.

Scientists generally agree that there have been no new species since the beginning of recorded time. Alterations in species have occurred and species have disappeared, but no purely new species have appeared. The God Who created for six "days" and rested on the seventh, is still God of the Seventh, the "day" in which we live. He most often speaks with a "still, quiet voice", sustaining His Creation with the enormous energy at His disposal: He causes our hearts to beat, our minds to process thought, our cellular factories to turn substrate into energy, our souls to seek someone or Someone outside of ourselves as a source of Authority.

When one considers that the unimaginable amount of life and energy it takes to sustain the universe, to sustain life on this planet, to sustain life in each of our loosely bound amalgams of chemical compounds we call bodies, is it so surprising that He might need to shelter us from a direct view of Himself as God the Father.

Yet He loves us and desires for us to know His love. So he divested Himself of that incredible majesty, was born in dishonoring circumstances, lived a pure and perfect human life, subjected Himself to terminal injustice, and overcame death to show us the way to live with Him in all His glory, where we will stand in His Presence and not die or be afraid, but in awe, will see Him as only those made pure and perfect through His power are allowed to see Him.

I pray that anyone who reads this will know God and know His Son, will accept the power of the Spirit He has sent to reside within us, God in us, and will allow God to be sovereign in their lives, so that, in death, as we go to Him, or if we are still on earth at His coming, we will stand in loving awe and behold the full display of His power without suffering harm or being afraid. Thanks be to God, Amen.

Suggested reading: Why I Am a Christian: Leading Thinkers Explain Why They Believe, Edited by Hoffman and Geisler
Defending Your Faith: An Introduction to Apolgetics; R. C. Sproul

An Advent Prayer

Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will." Matthew 26:39 (NIV)

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. Isaiah 55:8 (NIV)


Holy Father, we thank You for Your Son, Jesus, whose birth we remember and celebrate in this Season of Advent. We thank You for Your righteousness that provides for the boundaries of a pure and holy life. We thank You that You are Love, Who knows our intrinsic unrighteousness yet loves us in spite of all our shortcomings. We thank You for the love that caused You to sacrifice Your only Son to bestow His righteousness upon us, to save us from our sins, to return our eternity to one of hope and peace and glorifying You rather than one of dark, endless and painful hopelessness.



Help us, Lord, to seek communion with You daily; to praise You in adoration, to confess our sins, to express gratitude for all You have given us, to plead for the healing of body and mind and spirit--for ourselves, for those who surround us in life, and for the world that so needs and hungers for You--even when the world does not recognize the Person to Whom their hunger directs them.



Teach us to have faith that endures when our prayers seem unanswered or unfulfilled. Teach us the faith that understands that our prayers rise in ignorance of Your omniscient and omnipotent will; that He Who allowed His own Son to die a painful and shameful death on the Cross after denying His petition to deliver Him from that death, has ways that are above our ways and purposes that are infinitely beyond our understanding. Teach us that our prayers offered in any manner but complete submission lack the humility of Jesus, for He prayed ultimately that the Father's will be done, not that His own petition be paramount.



Teach us the humility of Jesus and the confidence of Jesus: to offer our prayers without hesitation and to offer them with both the expectation of a response and the acceptance that the response is good, no matter the appearance to our dimly lit vision. Give us grace and love for others, even as they struggle to accept Your answers to their prayers, knowing that when we are strong, we are the Body of Jesus to strengthen others, even as we are strengthened in our weakness by that same Body.



We love You and adore You; we ask for Your blessings in the Season of Advent and throughout the year. Let our focus always be on Jesus, He Who authored and sustains Creation and is the Savior of our souls. We pray all of this in His name. Amen.

Thoughts for Thanksgiving

The sum total of my sins is sufficiently great that I should have no time to keep track of the sins of others. The grace I have received is sufficiently and infinitely great that I have no need to question the quantity given to others.

A grateful heart cannot keep being grateful and keep score at the same time.

A joyful heart cannot be changed except by changing its focus from the Giver of Joy to circumstances.

Hope comes when we need nothing to change because we believe in the omniscience and omnipotience of the Giver of Life.

Love and grace are gifts that are given freely but received only when we are willing.

The Lord is my shepherd; the implication is that I am a dumb animal in contrast to God, and that is not just true, but infinitely and eternally true.

Freedom is not living without limits; it is living within the will of the Giver of Life and desiring nothing outside His will.

Thank you, Lord, for grace, for friends, for family, for loving us first. Amen

Regrettably, The Last to Come and the First to Go

If I.....have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 1st Corinthians 13:1 (in part)



As Paul in 1st Corinthians 13 points out, I can have many manifestations of my faith, but if I do not have love, then my faith, in expression at least, is empty and useless. The faith with which God gifts me gives me hope; the hope we have in Christ causes us to seek to be like Him, to seek to know His mind; and if we truly know His mind and seek to emulate Him, then we will love.

Talents such as great oration, eloquent writing, wise understanding of life and its intricacies are a resounding gong if they are not used in the context of love. In fact they are frequently misused if not used out of love, becoming weapons with which others are abused. This has been true in my life, and is notable in the lives of many who are public figures professing Christ as Lord.

Generosity, self-sacrifice, attention to tithing, all of these, if not motivated by love are just a clanging cymbal--noisy, drawing attention, but ineffective as witnesses to the love of Christ.

To know the mind of Christ requires we know how He loves. If we do not know how He loves, then we do not know His mind. We may have accepted the facts: God created us, man sinned and we along with everyone else are sinners, Christ came to redeem us out of obedience to the Father. But until we understand His love, we cannot really know Him and try to be like Him.

For some, love is a natural response to many circumstances. God has gifted many non-believers with the ability to love; that gift is part of His prevenient grace. But we may be, in our minds, committed believers, without being committed to loving like Him. If we are not naturally endowed with that gift, we have to cultivate it by asking God to shower us with His grace and love, asking Him to make us vessels of His love, to give us understanding of how He sees those around us. For many Christians, for me, loving in that way was the last thing I really understood and am still struggling with understanding.

More importantly, or as importantly, understanding and applying His love is the first thing I lose sight of when the stresses and struggles of daily life impact my emotions. I may still speak or write or read with comprehension about God and His Son, but as soon as I cease to seek to love as He loves, I become just a noisy nuisance to the cause of Christ.

For me, and I suspect for you, having the mind of Christ is an intentional act: praying in supplication daily in a quiet time; praying to act lovingly in circumstances that cause me to want to do anything but act lovingly; seeking to take an eternal perspective on things that seem so important now but that will have little significance in just a day or two except for the relational benefit or damage that can be done in the moment.

When Christ told us in Matthew to "seek first His Kingdom" I believe He meant the most significant aspect of that seeking was to know His mind, to view others as He sees them, and to change our conduct to so that we are vessels for His love. Do we risk being used by others if we do that? Absolutely. Will it matter in eternity? Well, yes, if we are self-protective and do not love for fear of being used, we will be ignoring the needs of others. Christ was used by all mankind; if He had been self-protective, we would have no hope at this point, Paul would not have had the Damascus road experience, would not have written First Corinthians, and I would not be writing this. Might we enable someone to be irresponsible and cause themselves harm? Yes, and we should guard against that; but first I have to check my motive: am I protecting another from harm or protecting myself from some imagined disadvantage?

Love, the last thing I really understood about Christ, after all the reading and studying, the thinking and writing, love was the last thing I got and am still getting. My goal now is to not let it be the first to go when life is not as I wish.


Pray that will be true for me as I pray for you.

Thank you, Jesus, for loving us first. Help us to love You and to allow our lives to be conduits of love to others. Amen.